Chapter 3

It was several hours later that morning when one of Miranda's assistants rushed into her office.

"Pull up channel 63, the Army is calling us," she told her. Miranda brought it up on her monitor and was shocked at what she saw. Miranda saw a young woman with tears running down her cheeks on the monitor. She was strapped into a vest containing explosives. Miranda also recognized the young woman. It was Alexandra, one of Zandra's friends and the daughter of their Chicago office manager.

"You criminals in Allso," a voice said over the monitor, "send out the criminal that attacked our office in San Francisco, or this will be the fate of the hundred hostages that we hold." Suddenly without warning Miranda saw the image of the girl on the monitor explode and all that was left were some pieces of cloth and a scattering of meat and blood. Miranda was shocked to her core by this brutal event.

"You have two hours to turn over the criminal or we will start executing a prisoner every twenty minutes," the voice on the monitor continued to those still watching in shocked dismay.

"Oh dear God!" Miranda exclaimed when she had recovered a bit.

"Who all saw that?" she demanded, pulling herself together.

"Anyone with a television tuned to that sector of the perimeter," came the reply.

"Did Zandra see it? Alexandra was one of closest friends!"

"We don't know," came the reply.

"Was it recorded?" Miranda demanded harshly.

"Yes, everything is being recorded," her assistant responded.

"Get me a copy," Miranda told her in a sad voice. "I'm going to have to inform Zandra. There will be hell to pay when she sees this. She already feels terrible about the ones she rescued in San Francisco." When Miranda appeared in Zandra's office, she was working at her desk.

"Hello, Miranda," she said quietly, as she looked up.

"There is a problem," Miranda told her very seriously while keeping a very tight mind shield.

"There are always problems. What is this one?" Zandra asked, quietly.

Miranda brought up the recording on Zandra's monitor and played it without saying anything. She didn't trust herself to be rational with what she knew was about to happen. Zandra watched the recording play all the way through, twice.

"NO!" she screamed in shock and dismay. "No, no, noooo... !" she screamed again, as she broke down in tears. There was a crushed look on her face, as she buried her head in her arms and cried.

"We have less than two hours to respond," Miranda said after a short time, while trying to control the tremors in her voice.

Zandra suddenly sat back up, raising her head from the desk where it had been for a short while. The expression on her pretty face was anything but pretty to observe.

"What do we have to respond with?" she demanded in a stone cold voice lacking all softness.

"I have six lightly armed shuttles in orbit and three power units armed with Eros attack lasers," Miranda answered in fear.

"Yes, the three power units. Make it so," Zandra answered in absolute calm. "Hit the sector where she was sent out. I will be in operations in less than an hour to give them our answer and personally direct our response."

Time: one hour and forty-five minutes later.

Location: the Command bunker, Central Sector of the North American Union's Army facing the nation of Allso.

"I don't give a damn what he is doing," the General in Command of the Central Sector told the person on the other end of the video phone at the office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs at the Hexagon. "This is a 'goddamn' flash priority call, and you had better put him on."

"What the hell is so fucking important out there?" the gruff voice of an older man demanded in a very annoyed fashion a few seconds later on the video phone.

"I'll tell you what the fuck is the matter. Sector 5 has just been wiped out, that's what the fuck is the matter. The whole god damn sector is gone," the General shouted.

"What do you mean wiped out? The whole damn sector?" the shocked Chairman demanded in disbelief.

"One hour after those idiots at Homeland Security blew up that hostage, we were attacked. We have no idea what they used, but they cut through Sector 5 like a hot knife through butter. It cut through our heaviest tanks like they were made of paper-mache. It sliced through every one of our command, storage and fighting bunkers. Even the deepest buried ones, and they knew where every single one of them was, too.

"Every damn thing it touched burned, even the steel. All of our stored ammunition and explosives were set off and everything else is melted and on fire. The ranking man left in that sector is a Major, who was in charge of transportation, and the only reason he is alive is because they didn't bother hitting the transportation section," the General screamed at his superior.

"Good God!!" the shocked Chairman responded.

"Have you heard from those Allso people?" The Chairman asked, recovering quickly.

"Oh yes, shortly after that happened, a young woman broke into our supposedly secure Top Secret communications system and delivered their own ultimatum."

"What do they want?" the Chairman asked, nervously.

"She demanded that we release all of the hostages, unharmed and in good condition in one hour, or they would make what just happened look like a minor accident!!" the General screamed in rage.

"Where the hell did this attack come from?" the Chairman demanded, shouting himself.

"We have absofuckinglutly no idea. There was nothing on any of our radars or ground surveillance equipment. It had to have come from space though as it was vertical to the ground, but Space Force has just reported that there was nothing on their radars either," the General reported in despair.

"What about the prisoners? Doesn't Homeland Security have control of them?" the Chairman asked quietly.

"They did, yes, but that has changed since the attack," the General replied more calmly.

"What do you mean?" the Chairman demanded, sharply.

"I didn't consider the lives of over 150,000 more of my men worth the lives of 100 hostages. I sent a company of Rangers to retrieve them. The Homeland Security people weren't anxious to give them up, but my people were very ... persuasive," the General said, fairly calmly.

"Define persuasive?" the Chairman demanded.

"There are two of the Homeland Security people that are still alive," the General answered.

"Out of a contingent of nearly fifty?" the Chairman asked, shocked.

"Yes. I lost five men in the engagement," the General responded, "but I consider it a worthwhile exchange.

"There will be a shit storm over this," the Chairman told him, unhappily.

"Let the bastards come out here and man the perimeter and then they can bitch. I didn't need my command reduced to ashes and transportation types," the General responded, vehemently.

"Are you giving them the hostages?" the Chairman asked, as he tried to figure out how he was going to tell the Secretary and the President about this, especially about the losses.

"Hell, yes!" the General responded. "I have people loading them on vehicles right now. Some of them, the younger women especially, have been harshly treated, but they're all alive and in at least fair condition," the General informed him.

"They'll be moved over close to that damn force field of theirs and left in the vehicles. It's a lot cheaper than replacing my entire command and all of the fortification we have built here in the last hundred years would be. Plus how the hell did they manage to break into our supposedly secure Top Secret communication system?" the General wanted to know.

"I have absolutely no idea," the Chairman answered with growing frustration and a very worried look on his face.

In the Allso Operations Center things were much calmer.

"They're sending the hostages out in buses," Miranda reported. "We'll have people meet them and check them over outside the force field to ensure that they haven't done anything funny."

"Yes, an excellent idea," Zandra said, somewhat distracted. Even she had been shocked at the effect of the multi-gigawatt X-ray lasers on the Army positions. The three armed power units had carried out the attack from an altitude of a hundred miles or so with lasers designed for the battle stations around Eros.

Even in an atmosphere from that distance, weapons designed to eat through meters of multiple layers of the most advanced armor of spaceships at hundreds of thousands of miles had had no trouble with the thin armor of tanks or the bunkers buried in the ground. They had left everything they touched molten and on fire; what hadn't exploded that is.

The Allso satellites and ground surveillance equipment had been mapping the layout of the Army positions for over a century and Allso security personnel had transported in to check out the various bunkers and command centers over that time also. Their entire layout was therefore well known and blueprinted.

Zandra herself went out to check on the condition of the former hostages after that and to assure them that there would be more payback. No one could be allowed to do these kinds of things to her people - not and live.

Zandra spent considerable time over the next few days interviewing the returned hostages. She questioned them about where they had been held and how they had been treated. She also asked what they had been able to learn about their captors. She was especially interested in how the young girls had been treated and how they had been moved.

Following that, she returned to her private lab for a few more days to work on something that had been coalescing in her mind since shortly after the emergency started. After a few days she checked with Miranda to see how things were going on retrieving all of their personnel.

"We have retrieved most of our personnel. We only have those in China missing yet," Miranda informed her.

"What is the problem there?" Zandra inquired.

"Our ability to access the site. The Chinese have it very tightly guarded and in great depth. Our people there have food and water inside the force field to last several weeks yet. They are also transporting out buckets of waste into the Chinese lines to get rid of it. They are very unpopular with the Chinese. We are hoping to get them out soon," Miranda told her with a smile.

"Use the power units' lasers if necessary to get them out," Zandra told her feeling no pity for the Chinese, before changing subjects. "What of the other space craft? Did the one going to the Altair system return?"

"Yes, there was an attempt to take them over, but the Captain thwarted it and returned less the passenger hull," Miranda told her.

"Can we retrieve any of the abandoned hulls?"

"Some, yes. Those aboard will be in bad shape if still alive. What have you in mind?" Miranda wanted to know.