Chapter 10

Dumitrescu was trapped. He had been awoken by the sound of blaring alarm klaxons. Worried, his attempt to contact the op center went unanswered. His apprehension rose to new heights.

All attempts to contact his command staff also went unanswered. Even the stilling of the alarm did nothing to quench his rising dread.

He didn't fully trust the Colonel. If there was a problem it could be him behind it. Still he needed to know if that was the source of the problem. He decided to call him.

His comm refused to complete the call to Colonel Haddis. Either there was a problem with his comm or the op center was compromised and they had shutdown internal communications.

He was blind. He needed to find out what was happening. Was it time to cut his losses and bolt?

He suppressed his worry; he was a man of action and a warrior. He strode purposefully to the dresser in his room and belted on his holster and pistol. He grunted as he checked the charge on it and put a spare power pack in his pocket.

He made his way to the door of his apartment and cracked the door open a hair and peeked out. His eye caught movement, but it didn't really register on anything. He stared harder at the point where he had seen the motion. More movement suddenly resolved itself into a camouflaged human figure that was moving along the outside wall of the building next door. He could barely make it out and only while it was moving. He drew back in alarm and gently closed the door.

His worst fears had come home. It was those damned chameleons. Nothing else made sense and matched with what he had just seen. They were obviously searching for him. Well he had the answer to that as well. He had contingency plans.

He paused. He held no doubts that VonHaden and the rest of Ragnor wanted him dead. He still needed more information in order to try to salvage what he could. How strong was the opposition? Were his troops holding out? He thought hard, and then nodded. His mind made up, he quickly walked back to his bedroom.

"That's the last building. The General is not here in this residential cavern," Tarra said to the rest of the team. Tarra was frustrated. Dumitrescu was the one individual that they really needed to locate and he couldn't be found.

"He must be in the other residential wing with his techs. Luke said Colonel Haddis asked him if the General was dead. It's obvious that he's not in with him. The spacers have finished canvassing the main cavern; no others were found." Joe sounded resigned. The risks were increasing the longer they took to locate Dumitrescu.

Colonel Haddis was a real wild card and had a lot of firepower under his control. Joe knew they could make him pay dearly if he attempted to take back the base, but he had real doubts that he could actually stop him.

"Let's get back to the op center and rejoin Luke. The Colonel's 30 minutes are up and we need to continue that discussion if only to try to delay any action from them," Joe said.

"There is the community pavilion over near the park at the back of the cavern that we still need to check out. There are some public bathrooms there and we need to make sure no one is holed up there," Tarra reminded her father.

"You and Howard go finish that last check and then come back to the op center. James, come with me back to the op center, then I'd like you and your suit's abilities to get over to the merc's tunnel entrance. If they make a break for it, your shields and firepower will be needed. Fritz, Wilma take the four lieutenants to the ship and secure them in a hold. Keep them sedated." They nodded at Joe and moved off.

"Colonel, I'm sure you realize that this engagement is done. Dumitrescu is a criminal and is in hiding. You do not have him with you or you would have already tried to take back this base. We've contacted the techs in their residential area and they deny that he is in with them. But he must be. There is no place else he could be hiding. We are about to enter that area to root him out. It is in both of our best interests for you to stand down and let us do just that. We've offered you and your men parole and safe passage out of the system." Joe spoke earnestly and waited patiently for Haddis' reply.

Haddis paused and frowned. His voice came out grim, "Mr. Donovan, I have no doubt that you believe what you say. But hear me clearly. I will take back this base and remove you from it. You can not effectively search the tech area and keep my men bottled up here. I take my obligations very seriously. Unless the General is dead or you have him in custody, my path is crystal clear. I will retake this base and find the General myself. No matter how costly or personally unpleasant that task is, I will undertake it and we both know that I will succeed. You will slow us down, you may inflict some damage on us, but in the end my trained, experienced combat troops coupled with space support will prevail." The Colonel paused and let his statements sink in.

His eyes narrowed and he continued, "I've walked a fine line already - delaying my counter attack. As long as we both know the General is alive and on this base somewhere, my duty is clear. Good day Mr. Donovan." The hologram of the Colonel disappeared.

Joe sat unmoving for a moment, no expression on his face. He turned to Luke.

"I want you to stay here and run the op center with Nick. If he calls in for space support, you'll both be needed to hold them off. Bounce the Didgeridoo to the north west of the base where it can keep the emergency airlocks off of the merc's cavern under observation. Full stealth settings — I don't want her at risk from the Colonel's ships. I don't expect them to come out on the surface where they would be too exposed, but we need to watch them closely.

"I'm going to leave a skeleton force by the tech corridor entrance and pull the others off to reinforce the guard near the merc area. I expect they will try to break out down both tunnels and retake the main base. Get everyone into a p-suit in case the cavern loses pressure. Issue ablative armor to the rest of the strike team. There is no surprise left; our camouflage is not needed now."

"Yes sir." Luke turned to the control console and started issuing commands to the op center computer.

Joe sighed, and then made a call to VonHaden to bring him up to date on the mission. It was not an enjoyable conversation.

"Tunnel is patched, sir," the fleet space mechanic reported to Joe. He thanked him and moved to the open door of the merc tunnel. He had ordered the holes that had been punched through to be patched. They had served their purpose of delaying a response from Haddis.

If there was going to be a fight, he preferred to do it under pressure and not in a vacuum. By this time the mercs would have all of their troopers in p-suits or, worse yet, personal combat suits anyway.

Haddis' firepower was unknown. Personal combat suits were expensive to purchase and maintain. However, he was certain to have at least a few. James' suit was going to be needed when they broke out.

Joe had ordered barricades set up at the main cavern entrance to the tunnels. They wouldn't hold up long against a concentrated plasma fusillade. They would give enough cover to return fire. The tunnels were sure to become a glowing furnace of death.

He had had a squad dispatched to one of the tech tunnels and they had tried to start searching for Dumitrescu. They had come under fire from the techs and had to pull back. Colonel Haddis was right; he could not split his forces to suppress the armed techs enough to conduct the search. He needed a lot of firepower to thwart the mercs and keep them bottled up.

Spacer Scalzo was leaning back against the barricade opposite the merc's tunnel. His chin strap rested on his hand. His face shield was down, presenting a mirrored surface to the world. His hand rested lightly on a combat rifle. The rest of his body was still, waiting.

The far end of the tunnel suddenly glowed bright. A white line completely outlined the doorframe for 5 seconds burning with a harsh radiance. A sudden contained blast sent the door careening down the tunnel.

Hurried shouts raised the Ragnor forces and they pointed their weapons down the tunnel. Two mercs rushed forward through the door carrying a portable shield generator. Blasts of beam weapons converged on them, but the shield held. Plasma bolts followed and ricocheted off the shield and into the tunnel wall making small blotches of glowing rock. The shield glowed brighter. More mercs poured out of the door and their plasma bolts struck the barricade and blew portions of it upward.

Several mercs dropped to the ground and commenced firing their weapons through the gaps in the barricade. The attackers' weapons used electro magnets to accelerate heavy-metal slugs down the bore of the weapon. The slugs screamed down the tunnel with hypersonic velocity ripping apart everything they encountered. The multi-colored streaks as they ricocheted presented an eerie counterpart to the continued blasts from the beam weapons.

The ablative armor, designed for energy weapons, was virtually useless as a defense against the hypervelocity slugs. Scalzo was hit by three slugs; his body torn open and he was killed instantly.

James stepped into a gap in the barricade and leveled both arms, bent at the elbow, down the tunnel. The merc's weapons started targeting him and his shields glowed with the hits dumping energy into the power sumps.

Targeting reticules in his battle helmet superimposed themselves over the mercs and James fired. Massively destructive 2.5-cm plasma cannon rounds impacted the tunnel floor, killing the slug-throwing troops and blasting rock and debris into the legs of the mercs manning the portable shield.

The edge of the shield rose up and the mercs tried to recover. James walked successive plasma rounds up under the shield. His suit's power sumps coupled into the plasma weapons cooling systems eagerly ate up the heat generated by the powerful blasts as they left the bores of his guns. His rate of fire was five times that of a normal plasma rifle.

One of James' bolts hit the power pack of the portable shield and its glowing brightness abruptly disappeared. He switched to particle beams and raked the remaining mercs in the tunnel. Those that could fled back through the wrecked door. A spacer leveled a launcher and sent two high yield grenades through the open doorway. An explosion rocked the tunnel. No further mercs emerged.

Additional explosions could be heard coming from the other tunnel. James engaged his tactical link and spoke, "Joe, do you need assistance at the other tunnel? They seem to have stopped here for now."

"No, stay there. They have retreated here as well. This tunnel attack just seems to be a feint to keep us occupied so we wouldn't reinforce you. I saw the feeds from your battle helmet; your breakout was definitely the main attack. They didn't come at us as hard as they could. This was just a probing attack to test our defenses. Stay alert," Joe responded.

Colonel Haddis and Major Wolfram were reviewing the recordings of the attack against the Ragnor militia. He paused the playback and pointed at an image of James.

"They have a personal combat suit. Looks like just one. I did not expect that at all. It's a model that I haven't seen before either. It looks like a Mark 5 Ranger, but there are too many hardpoints on the forearm. The shields are also very strong. I hardly see any re-radiation from the hits it took."

"The rate of fire from the plasma cannons was insane. Those bores should have melted down from those sustained bursts," Major Wolfram observed.

Haddis' frustration was palpable, "This is not good. We have one Mark 4 suit and two Wombat 3's. The Wombats wouldn't be able to stand up to that suit for more than 30 — 40 seconds tops. What the hell is it and where the devil did they get it?"

"Does it matter?" asked Wolfram.

"No, and that's the rub. I don't think I have any choice left but to bring in a space attack and try to take out the main cavern as a diversion and cause disruption. I'm going to lose some ships doing that. This base is well defended. There are ion cannons in the hills surrounding this base. They have almost unlimited range and the discharge from just a single hit will pretty much fry a ship's shields. They will be sitting ducks after that."

The ion cannon was similar to the particle beam weapons except that the particles used are ionized. The electrical charge carried by the powerful beam was capable of creating havoc in most ships' systems. Anti-ship ion cannons were very large affairs and almost always planet based because of their size and power requirements.

Haddis made a decision, "Let's use the Ragnor fleet components as the leading edge of the attack wave. We can position our ships behind them. Once they absorb the initial bombardment, we'll have a small window while the ion cannons recharge to attempt a missile run and launch against the base. We should target the main cavern where the op center is located. We'll time our breakout for just after the missiles hit when the distraction is at its height. Explosive decompression should rattle them pretty hard if they are not expecting it."

"Agreed. What about the suit?"

"We are just going to have to try and limit its effectiveness — keep it occupied while we flank it and get into the base. They only appear to have the one. We'll send the two Wombats through the first tunnel where the enemy suit was. Have them bring in the second portable shield generator. That should buy them enough time to engage the suit and keep it busy while we send the Mark 4 out the other tunnel with the rest of the unit. Once we are in the main cavern, we should be able to bring it and the rest of the militia into a crossfire. Even with superior shields, it should go down."