Chapter Two
Chapter
Three
“No. You can't do that!” He said,
his right eye was already tearing up. The feeling of being weak and
helpless because of the lost connection to the suit and his
enhancements not being able to connect to the system was nauseating.
He felt as lost and as scared as a child.
“They give you false courage with
their machines,” Sandy told him, “They want you and the others to
rush into combat gleefully and without any fear.”
Tom had already understood that the
suit and enhancements did something like that. “So?”
“So,
fear is natural. The mouse is afraid of the snake, it stays away.
Otherwise it will get eaten, the fear protects the mouse.
Artificially brave mice, would just die.” The man said.
“Who
are you?” Tom asked the
man, “A rebel leader, I suppose.”
Sandy
shook her head, “There are no leaders, Tom. Sync will be free
again, we are all working toward the same goal. We don't need leaders
when we all work for the same cause. We don't have to turn ourselves
into robots that follow orders.”
Tom
let his head droop down, he was tired. “I don't even care. Kill me,
or whatever, just make it quick.”
Sandy
put a hand on his shoulder, “We want you to come to our side. We
have to take those implants out, so you can think for yourself.”
Tom
shook his head, “I would have one eye left. I don't think I could
live that way any more.”
“One
eye that really belongs to you is better than an eye that is sending
signals back to the fleet up there, believe me,” The man said, “You
wouldn't even stand out, the Free Republic has tortured and maimed
many people on this world. You would fit right in, nobody would think
you were one of them.”
“I
would have to think about it. This isn't something I can decide on
the fly,” Tom Grier told them. The girls face suddenly had a sad
look cross it.
“There's
no time for that, it'll all be over when you wake up,” she said
spraying something right into his face. The world went blurry and
then dark, he could see shapes moving around. There was no sense of
time passing, but there was a bright light and then people wearing
surgical gear. Tom wanted to tell them to stop, they were right there
in his face but he couldn't say anything. Suddenly the world was
black again.
…
The
Carrier Umbrage
The
Admiral was furious. Everyone on the bridge was tense as his
hover-chair paced back and forth during his loud rant, “How could
we lose an entire platoon? How can a whole landing party become
incapacitated? What kind of rebel device can do that?”
The
Colonels were standing at attention, being judged. Their positions
and their lives could come to an end if the angry Admiral decided to
end it. The Admiral was confined to a hover-chair but it had it's own
holo-screens and was as well connected as any enhanced person.
One
of the Colonels spoke up. “They defied convention. We had not
prepared for the possibility that the rebel army was so
decentralized. They have no leaders, for all intents and purposes the
civilian population and the rebels are indistinguishable.”
“To
hell with the civilians, then!” Admiral James "Jim" Robinson shouted,
“Kill anyone who even looks at our Marines sideways, zot them all!
Also have that village, Jexas, wiped out by Onyx flight,
immediately.”
“Yes,sir!”
They all said before leaving the bridge.
Admiral
Robinson was in overall command of the fleet, but he did not
personally command the ground troops and Onyx flight. That was all
down in the Command & Control Center by other officers, the
Colonels would relay orders to the Controllers who would relay them
to the ground troops.
“We
lost last time because too many were willing to sit on the sidelines,
and I am not going to let that happen this time.” He told nobody in
particular. Admiral Robinson was a true believer in the Emperor, that
they could make the Free Republic great again.
Team
Four had been bushwhacked. The other teams arrived to find three
immobilized platoons and one platoon of Marines with holes through
their carapaces. Evidentially they had continued to try and fight the
rebels who had attacked. One Marine was missing, not even his armored
suit had been found.
Admiral
Robinson brought up the holo image of his beloved Sarah. He spoke to
it, “I don't have too many days left to fight, but I will fight to
the end of them, you betcha!”
It
was eight years ago on Cain when he had first saw Sarah. She was
leading the charge against the enemy rebels, even though she had been
second in command. The leader had been listless, but she had been
energizing the troops.
Sarah
and James Robinson had hit it off great. She didn't mind his age or
his hover-chair. She saw age as wisdom, she saw the chair as a medal
of valor. He had lost his legs in combat and she thought this made
him a hero.
The
fall of Cain hadn't been her fault, but the old Admiral Borner had
blamed her to keep his own reputation intact. Robinson had been
injured, again. He would have been there for her if he hadn't been
carried to a hospital ship on a medical shuttle. Robinson had been
decorated for his actions at Cain, then found himself promoted to
Admiral.
His
beloved Sarah had been disgraced. Although he had tried to change the
past with his new position, he could not have her reinstated. It
wasn't until a few years ago that she rose to prominence again, this
time at the side of the Emperor. Admiral James Robinson was jealous
but he admired the Empire and the way he had grabbed power from the
old regime.
Sarah
belonged to the Emperor now. Robinson understood and accepted this,
to a point. His feelings for her remained, though.
…
The
side of the Umbrage
opened and a half-dozen fighter ships of Onyx Flight shot out from
inside and toward the green planet of Sync below. As they flew into
the atmosphere, shielded from any worries of friction, they targeted
the small village on their scanners.
Each
of the six fighters dropped four bombs, each bomb communicated with
the others to pick their targets without any human involvement. The
buildings below would be their priority target. By the time the bombs
struck they were traveling so fast that they had ploughed through the
targets and embedded themselves several feet below before the
proximity sensors set off the explosions.
The
small village of Jexas was now a series of smoking craters.
“What was the military point of
that?” One of the brass in the
Command & Control Center messaged the open forum aboard the ship.
Admiral
James Robinson responded personally, “The point is that we aren't
going to be satisfied if the whole planet doesn't look like that
before we leave. Let them fight, we'll adjust. If any of you don't
want to go along, then get off my ship! Get out of my fleet!”
No
one in the fleet dared to challenge the Admiral.
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