Operation Hammerhead - 23. Charlie-Mike

Charlie Mike (1)

Shuttle Sierra-Alpha-24

Sokolsky had a three-hour shuttle flight. Guam and her escorts had approached the planet closely to pick up survivors and were still on their way to rejoin the fleet. With some time on his hands, Danny used a TacCom channel to spend some quality time with Albert.

The TIGER (Technical Intelligence Group Exploitation/Research) team forming aboard the Guam was impressive. Eight fleet officers were assigned. Three senior engineers and two interns employed by DESERD Corporation rounded out the group. They brought five years of close observational experience with the enemy and samples of hardware and minerals the enemy had been mining.

Twenty minutes into his flight, Sokolsky’s orders caught up with him. He was the ranking officer on the TIGER team, and the fleet's flag officers expected him to run it. Immediately, he went to work with Albert to plan their first meeting. Albert suggested an agenda and teams that focused the scientists’ skills into several broad areas of study: materials, networks, computer language, and associated technologies.

Cracking the Toasters' ability to communicate via subspace links would be a discovery ranking with jump drives and electricity. FTL Communications would be a game changer. If the team could figure out how to subvert control of the Toasters, they could undo the tremendous damage they had done to Pacifica and other terraforming projects on the far rim.

Albert reported that Tom had arrived in Saratoga’s sick bay an hour into his flight, injured but in good condition.

Guam and her escorts had not been a part of the fleet when Albert had to restore the ships’ AIs. That might be tricky, but it would be easy enough to dedicate one of the TacCom channels to involve Albert.

This was shaping up to be interesting.

Republic of Pacifica

Jessie's Crossing

Strike Team Dagger

Before the invasion, Jessie's Crossing was a small mining town that had grown in the pass between the east and west sides of the McClintock mountains. Upon close examination by a geologist named Bosch, he discovered the pass was the collapsed caldera of an ancient volcano, which left a rich vein of heavy-metal-bearing ores. Bosch named the caldera after his wife and made a small fortune with the ore. They had all been killed on the first day of the invasion.

The enemy had wasted no time installing a mining facility on the site. Its proximity to the base at Cape Titan made it an obvious first target for Operation Jericho.

Two assault shuttles flew nap-of-the-earth approaches up the connecting valleys just short of the pass. Team 1 dropped twenty kilometers short of the objective, and Team 2 was a bit closer at seventeen kilometers: as close as they dared.

Wearing powered armor, the teams approached fast through the gorges on both sides of the pass. Running emissions silent to avoid detection, the teams relied entirely on hand signals like generations of infantry soldiers.

At 25:59, local midnight, a seventeen-year-old Corporal named Barry Williamson on Team 1 and an eighteen-year-old Corporal Frankie Liao from Team 2 launched missiles into the site's central sensor tower.

Both missiles scored, blowing the top fifty meters of sensor mast into shrapnel, ashes, and acrid smoke.

Much to their relief, absolutely nothing happened. There were no alarms or deadly swarms of drones.

The two teams entered the facilities, destroying or disabling enemy drones and defensive equipment. They worked their way to the facility control center, where the specialists went about tapping into the network. The specialists went to work on the alien network.

Lt. Larson looked around the facility. There were doors, hatches, and ladders. The machines had facilities to be serviced by someone. Judging by the size and shape of the access facilities, whoever it was, they were shaped a lot like us.

After fifteen minutes, Larson went to the specialists working on the control node and said, “I need a SitRep.”

Specialist Linda McAlister said, “The enemy network is hierarchical. None of the top-level command nodes are alive. This site control node has all the equipment in standby mode waiting for orders.”

She pulled out some of the enemy equipment and said, “This box serves the purpose of a router.” She opened the box to reveal the circuitry inside, which was charred and melted. “This looks like it received a major power surge. I’ve worked on systems hit by lightning that show similar damage.”

Larson asked, “What should I tell Headquarters?”

McAlister said, “The enemy's command and control network is dead. All their equipment is in standby mode.”

Larson changed his radio to the command circuit and reported, “Home Plate, this is Rover. We have taken objective Pickaxe. The installation is inert. According to our specialists, all enemy command and control assets are Bravo-Delta. We are Charlie Mike to our next objective.”

Saratoga Sick Bay

Tom opened his eyes. He was still bewildered by the anesthetic and felt as if everything was wrapped in cotton. A hand touched his shoulder. “Easy, Tom, you had a wild ride. Here, have some water.”

Tom drank, realized it was Holloway, and closed his eyes.

Holloway said, “Chief Jenko’s SAR crew brought you in about an hour ago.”

Tom rasped, “How is the rest of my crew?”

“Everybody got out. They’re all banged up, but you got the worst of it. You lost your right foot. Go back to sleep now, and Liz… excuse me, Doctor May will be around to talk to you about your options. She is a little busy right now. We’ve got a dozen cases from Kaga.”

Tom asked, “Big-K got hit?”

“Yeah, she took a bad one. We lost a cruiser and a pair of tin cans. They’re distributing the injured all over the fleet for treatment.”

Crash McDonald’s voice added, “Thanks to the TacCom relay from India-Romeo, we knew Raid-3 was coming.”

Tom looked around to see his Boss standing beside his bunk. Crash opened a small box in his hand and pinned a Silver Alliance Cross to his pillow. McDonald continued, “If it hadn’t been for the early warning, it could have been much worse. You did well, Tom. After this, you won’t be able to buy a drink in any Fleet town.”

Tom coughed, cleared his throat, and said, “I’m hungrier than I am sleepy. Would you kindly get someone to send me a tray? I'm starved.”

Holloway said, “Can do. Can’t promise the mid-rats will be great, but tonight, the stewards are throwing a victory feast.”

Guam

The big Marine Assault Ship (MAS) grew as Sokolsky’s shuttle approached. After a long intercept flight, he followed the beacon into a hanger, landed on the indicated pad, and sat tight as the bay pressurized.

A Marine Sergeant in gray BDUs met him at the lock.

Danny saluted, handed his ID card to the Marine, and said, “I’m Lt. Commander Sokolsky, here to join the TIGER team. Permission to come aboard.”

The Marine put Danny’s ID card in a slot on his tablet computer, looked at the screen, and handed it back. He returned Danny’s salute smartly and said, “Permission granted, Commander Sokolsky. Welcome aboard Guam. Step through that hatch, and your tablet will guide you to your billet and orient you to the ship.”

Following instructions, Danny checked into the visiting officers’ quarters, grabbed a quick sandwich, and headed to the TIGER teams’ assigned spaces.

Repulse

Bassett and Hutchins had sandwiches and coffee on the flag bridge as the fleet completed its post-battle recovery tasks.

Kaga’s AI managed to get six of the ship's ten reactors back online and plasma routed around ruptured conduit. Once power was restored, a skeleton crew returned to the ship to repair enough damage to get the ship mobile again.

The repair ship Lawrence Tolliver and the destroyer Summers jumped into the system and immediately went to Kaga’s aid.

Minutes later, the destroyer Sheffield returned from the StarCom node in the Sandage system. She had reported the victory at Stonegarden to Fleet HQ and picked up dispatches for the fleet. The destroyer began downloading fleet dispatches to the Flagship when she was in range.

Captain Hutchins began to browse the message traffic, and a stack of ULTRA messages immediately popped to the top of his inbox. He started reading, skimming the messages, and came across a string that forced him to stop, back up, and read the ULTRA traffic more thoroughly.

Bassett asked, “Anything interesting in the traffic?”

Hutchins shook his head and said, “I don’t know where to start, sir. There has been an attempted coup.”

That caught Bassett’s complete attention. “What!?”

Haskins said, “It’s a real cluster, sir. There’s too much here to scan the headlines; in this mess are orders, counter-orders, and disorder. We need to get our JAG and Intel people looking at this to sort it out.”

Bassett shook his head and said, “We don’t need this distraction. The fleet is still dealing with the post-battle cleanup and will jump to Pacifica soon. Get with Colonel Gorman and go over this mess in detail. Then I want you to brief our flag officers before this gets out to the fleet.”

Captain Hutchins said, “It’s not all bad news. The other strike groups have reported in. They all report mission success and an end to organized resistance. It looks like the war might be over.”

Bassett exhaled and said, “We’ve got to be sure the Toasters are gone. We can’t have them pop up worse than ever in a few years or decades.”

“What do you intend to do?”

“Charlie-Mike. We continue the mission.”

Guam

The working space devoted to the TIGER team comprised a suite of offices and a workshop. There was limited lab space available upon request. In this case, it was an electronics shop owned by a Senior Chief named Staley.

Three DESERD engineers rescued from Stonegarden were in the assigned office when Sokolsky arrived. He was greeted by their senior man, “Commander Sokolsky, I’m Alex Holmes. I was the chief engineer for DESERD at our Stonegarden facility. This is Lisa Holman and Travis Kyle. The rest of our team are arranging our samples in the cargo bay the Guam’s Captain lent us.”

“What have you got, Chief?”

Holmes replied, “Samples of minerals the Toasters were mining and some of their hardware. Once they all died, we sent volunteers out to take samples.”

Lisa Holman said, “I’m the site mineralogist. One of the minerals they were collecting is unique to Stonegarden as far as we know. We’ve never seen it; it is not in our databases and has unusual properties.”

Sokolsky said, “It’ll be a while before the rest of the team is here. Let’s see what you’ve got.”

The youngest member of the DESERD group, Travis Kyle, led the group forward and down to the cargo handling spaces below the hanger decks.

As they walked, Chief Holmes said, “Travis here is an electrical engineer. He has been looking at their gear for years.”

Danny asked, “Have you made any schematics of it?”

Kyle, warming to the subject, said, “I’ve tried. Their electronics are weird compared to ours, and I’m still figuring out what some of their components are and what they do, but I think I know some of the basics.”

Danny said, “What are you missing? I’ve got access to all the data the Fleet has gathered since the war started.”

Kyle stopped at an elevator, summoned it, and said, “There’s some weird stuff going on in those boxes. We think our molecular circuitry is so hot. They have quantum state memories that store data in dimensions you can only describe with string theory. It's essentially infinite.”

The elevator arrived, and the group entered. Once they were in motion, Danny said, “We popped a big EMP nuke inside hyperspace. That’s what killed them. Other Task Forces are out, and all the enemy facilities have gone dormant. Frankly, I’m surprised that task group even showed up.”

Kyle said, “That's it. When that happened, one component just vaporized: their sub-space transceivers.”

Chief Holmes chuckled and said, “You two are going to figure this all out and make us obscenely rich.”

Sokolsky said, “We’re sure going to try. Alien tech! Can you imagine anything more fun to play with?”

“We must be careful with this stuff,” Lisa Holman warned. “We had a real bitch of a time shutting it down.”

The lift stopped, and they went into the cargo hold. Two other members of the DESERD team were sorting through the alien widgets and gizmos on tables.

A sparkle of red caught Sokolsky’s eye on one of the tables. Lisa Holman said, “Ahh! You noticed, my baby. This is the mineral they were mining. Come check it out.”

Sokolsky looked at a tray with very familiar clear, red Orthorhombic crystals. “I’ve seen these. My shipmate, Lt. Rivers, has a claim on an asteroid in the Capella system that’s lousy with this stuff. We cashed in a couple of kilos of these crystals. I remember that they are incredibly dense for their size.”

Holman said, “Oh, shoot! I was hoping to name it. Oh well, we’ve been studying it for a few years now, and it’s weird, all right. We only have a theory about what it is and how it formed. If we’re right, it’s extra-dimensional matter that formed shortly after the Big Bang and got bound in a crystalline matrix under extreme pressures and heat.”

Travis Kyle said, “Whatever we decide to call it, this mineral in a semi-conductor matrix makes the Toaster’s sub-space transceivers work. I’m pretty sure we can figure out how to make it work. Figuring out how and why it works will be the real trick.”

Saratoga Sick Bay

The 1MC crackled to life, saying, “Saratoga, this is the XO. Standby to prepare to jump to Pacifica on the Flag’s next signal. The jump clock is stopped at two-zero minutes. Enjoy your steak tonight, people. You did well today. Clear.”

Tom Rivers and Jeff Holoway were enjoying their steak and talking about the day's events. Tom had been moved to a room.

Holloway rolled his eyes and said, “I was sitting in my ready bird, when TacCom just flatlined. Ted, my back-seater, said super. He’s cool like that.”

Tom chuckled and said, “That was spooky. All the coordination fell on the forward controllers like a ton of bricks. Thank God the fleet got its systems back, and we didn’t screw the pooch when we had the ball.”

Dr. Elizabeth May appeared in the doorway and said, “Tom, how are you doing?”

“I seem to be missing a foot, but grateful it’s not much worse.”

The Doctor entered the small room, closed the door, and said, “Good. You are both here. People with your genetic package regenerate. To get Tom back on two feet, all we have to do is feed him a high-protein diet. Your foot will grow back in three, maybe four weeks. Maybe even sooner if I try steroids.”

Rivers and Holloway were stunned.