Captain of the Guard Mon’Kelron walked across the immaculately manicured lawn where the two spherical shuttles landed. She knew Alex and Monty were gathering something called a stasis module from one of the shuttles to bring to the medical facility for Spy-Mistress Kel’Taraan.
Neither of them asked for aid in transporting the device, but if it was large enough to fit an adult Alandran it had to be heavy. Human technology was so advanced the thing probably floated at their command, and as such, she wanted to get a good look at it, even from afar. As she approached what she hoped would be a nice spot to view the inside of the shuttle without showing herself.
As she arrived at the spot she found Spy-Mistress Isa’Bella already there. Both women were new to their roles, and unlike Nar’Vala and Kel’Taraan they got along surprisingly well. “Well, this is awkward.” She said as she came to the small copse of trees that hid them from view to the back of the shuttle the two humans were working in.
Isa’Bella simply shrugged, “It’s my job to gather information for the crown, this is no different than any other assignment.”
Mon’Kelron peeked around the dense trees then turned back to Isa’Bella, “You could have sent one of your lackeys to do this.”
The Spy-Mistess shook her head, “No, this has to do with the Humans, I want a first hand account of what they are doing. Besides, I find them fascinating.”
Mon’Kelron couldn’t argue with that. Alex was one of the most imposing males she had ever met, a literal giant of a man compared to Alandran males. She had trained in combat her entire life, and while she excelled with pistol and rifle, she doubted she could take him in close quarters combat, and she was the Captain of the Guard.
“Anything interesting so far?” She asked as she peered out.
Isa’Bella shook her head, “They’ve been maneuvering some kind of floating sled over to what I assume to be the capsule they are bringing into the palace. That thing must weigh as much as a supply wagon, it’s all metal and glass!”
She watched as they tilted the sled to a vertical position before attaching it at different points to the capsule. Then she noticed something in Isa’Bella’s ear, “What’s that weird piece of technology you have attached to your ear?”
The Spy-Mistress pointed to it, but never let her eyes leave the shuttle, “This is a listening device that Kel’Taraan entrusted to me, it’s quite good at hearing things from a distance and has made her job easier for centuries.”
She had never seen Kel’Taraan wear something like that, but then she as she thought about it, the elder Spy-Mistress kept her hair long, and covering her ears, she could have been wearing it at all times and no one would know. Then she flinched as she heard a huge ‘Bang’ as the capsule broke lose from the floating sled and fell over onto the floor of the shuttle.
Isa’Bella rubbed her ear and cursed under her breath, it was obviously louder for her with the spy device in her ear. “Alex is chastising Monty for not attaching one of the clamps to the sled.”
Sure enough, after sneaking a peek around the trees Monty had her hands on her tiny hips and was obviously arguing with Alex, “What is she saying Spy-Mistress?”
Putting her hand to her ear she replied, “She’s saying there is no one around, just pick the stupid thing up and put it on the sled.”
Mon’Kelron cocked her head in confusion, that thing must weigh as much as ten full grown Alandrans, maybe more. Then she watched in amazement as Alex looked around, then reached down and grabbed the capsuled by the side and lifted it off the deck of the shuttle to chest height while Monty moved the sled under it. He then lowered it on the sled as Monty attached the capsule back to the sled.
“By the Goddeses!” Isa’Bella exclaimed as she watched the feat.
Mon’Kelron was in agreement, “Did Spy-Mistress Kel’Taraan ever mention Humans being exceptionally strong?”
Isa’Bella shook her head, “No, but she did say they had amazing technology that kept them in peak physical shape. Alex is large, perhaps that is normal for Humans, although I noticed Monty didn’t try to help.”
Mon’Kelron thought back, “While, she did not, I did notice something odd earlier today when Alex handed her a heavy bag she took it with considerable ease. I would have thought someone of her stature would have struggled, but she didn’t even seem to notice the load.”
Isa’Bella shrugged, “The more we find out about the Humans, the stranger we find them to be.”
_________________________________
Alex pushed the stasis pod down the cargo ramp on the hover sled, looking to his right he sent Monty an instant message, “You get to check diagnostics, if you broke this thing Kara is going to be furious.”
Monty answered back, “Fine, I’ll check it, just don’t tell Kara if everything checks out, she’s already mad about the last ore shipment.”
Alex raised an eyebrow at this, sending a reply back he stated, “Ok, spill it, what did you do to the last ore shipment?”
Monty sighed and lowered her shoulders, the message popped up in his HUD, “I wasn’t keeping a close eye on the mining drones and they misidentified copper ingots as lead. It caused auto-factories to shut down for several minutes as they sent out error messages.”
He snickered at this, for an AI, minutes were a very long time. If it took minutes for Kara to notice she would have been quite upset at the lost production time. Especially as she would have to figure out what went wrong and swap for proper materials.
They pushed the capsule towards the palace until they met up with their escort guards who followed them to the medical ward, where the more narrow doors required them to maneuver the sled almost upright to fit into Kel’Taraan’s room. Once the sled was beside the bed and the capsule was opened it was trivial for them with the aid of a nurse to transport her into the capsule.
Kel’Taraan looked up to Alex and smiled weakly, “You’re going to fix me up as good as new, right?”
Alex smiled back, “Better than new, I promise.”
After securing Kel’Taraan in the stasis pod they closed the lid and started the activation sequence. After start up it only took seconds for the stasis field to encapsulate the inside of the pod, covering the elder Alandran in a blurry blue light. Monty nodded to Alex, “She’s in stasis, we’re good to transport her in the morning with the new crew of the Isengard.”
The nurse stared in wonder at the capsule, “This will keep her alive indefinitely?”
Monty nodded, “Sort of, she’s in a time stasis field, which means no time at all is passing inside the pod. So technically she could stay alive forever, but only so long as the pod continues to function. It will be fine for now, it can run for several days on batteries and we’ll plug it into the shuttle tomorrow morning.”
Leaving the stasis pod with the nurse they met back up with their escorts and made their way back to the the Empress’s private dining room. Alex mused that staying in the android body and working at biological speed took up a tremendous amount of time. He hadn’t really thought about how much faster he was as a replicant, as he rarely used his android for more than a few hours at a time, but now it seemed like it took forever to get things done.
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Sitting down at the large dining table they settled in to wait. They were nearly an hour early, and as they didn’t want to go back to their rooms they simply put their android bodies on standby and entered the shared VR environment. Kara looked over from the holo-tank, cookie in hand. “I take it you’ve got some time on your hands?” She asked.
Alex nodded, looking at the buffet for a snack, “We parked our butts at the Empress’s dining room table, they’ll look reasonably bored until she shows up. In the meantime we thought we’d head back to to VR.”
Kara pointed her half of a cookie at the holo-tank, “We’ve got movement in Lynx, looks like they’re going after our probes, I’ve had to self destruct three today.”
Alex looked into the holo, “Three? They’re splitting their fleet to chase down our probes?”
Kara shook her head, “No, their fleet is still combined, they’re sending out small shuttles from the triangular ships, still keeping with their theme, they are also small triangular shuttles, but at far more of an angle than the frigate and cruiser sized variants.”
Monty spoke up, mouth full of chocolate brownie. “They have good legs, looks like a sustained three and a half gravities acceleration. Either they have a way to dampen their inertia on a small scale ship like that or they’re tougher than most biologicals.”
Alex grunted, “Either is bad news, we don’t have the technology to implement dampeners in our shuttles, the field generators are too big and pull too much power. On the flip side, if they can handle that kind of abuse over long periods of time they have a combat advantage over the Alandrans.”
Kara finished her cookie before speaking, “Regardless, they’ll probably continue to try and capture our probes until I destroy them all, but at their current rate they’ll be done in two days. I doubt they’ll sit still in that system for much longer.”
Alex swiped into the holo-tank and brought up the Alandran system, then clicked on the huge number of dots near the primary entry route into the system. “5280 mines laid at this location, the problem is the same as the one we had at Birmingham, the entry area is one astronomical unit wide, and they can come in anywhere in that area.”
Monty looked over to Alex, “Is that a big problem?”
Alex nodded, “If it’s anything like what happened back there, at least seventy percent of the mines will be out of range. They have very rudimentary AI’s that are non-conscious, they have fixed ranges to intercept with the mini-torch drives, only good out to about .1 AU. Then the range is about twenty light seconds, past that and the bomb pumped masers simply don’t have the power to break through shields.”
Kara sighed, “Yes, I remember the last battle. The fleet came in on a weird vector, negating a large number of the mines, but they still did a tremendous amount of damage. It wasn’t enough though, we still had to use our fleet to slow them down enough to finish evacuating the planet.”
Alex poked around the holo for a few mils before speaking, “Kara, I think we will need to have the mines focus on the pine cones. While they’re bigger, they have much less shielding, and we don’t want them to get into range of the planet with all those missiles lashed to the hull.”
She nodded, but looked concerned, “The other ships comprise of one cruiser and four frigates, the damaged one may or may not join the fleet. If it does that means six nearly equal vessels against our four. We’re going to be outnumbered, and some of our tech is untested in battle.”
He picked up a chicken nugget and took a bite, savoring the flavor and giving him an extra millisecond or two to think, “You and Monty put in a good amount of work into the new flak torpedoes, I’m confident they will work. But you’re right about fighting near peer technology ships as well as any pine cones that make it through the mine field. We’re going to have to make a strategic retreat back to Alandra.”
This raised Monty’s eyebrows, “What? Why?”
Alex swallowed the last of the nugget, “I doubt we have the firepower or luck to stand toe to toe against what will be left of that big ass fleet, but if we get within a few light seconds of the planet we can have the planetary defense cannons open up on who’s left.”
Kara nodded, “We’ve put almost five hundred planetary defense satellites around Alandra, each with six shots. That’s a lot of fire power unleash on just six targets.”
Alex tapped on the planet, then on the defense satellites. “We’ve been lucky so far, they waited for overwhelming numbers rather than dive straight in. It’s given us time to build defense in depth, but we have one achilles heel in our plan. This is all for nothing if they slam a ship into the planet, we have to be ready to stop them, which means on the final retreat we take out engines first, even if we have to take a beating while doing it.”
Then both Alex and Monty jumped as their heads up displays warned them of something going on with their androids that fell out of normal parameters. Monty spoke up first, “Oh shit! That was gunfire.”
Alex turned to Kara, “Gotta go hun!”
They both vanished from the common VR, allowing their consciousness to flow into their android forms. To any biological Alandran who would have been watching them, such as their guards, they would have just been startled out of boredom, much as they were.
Both guards looked to each other before drawing their sidearms and taking up a perimeter at both sides of the doorway from which the sounds of gunfire came. “Stay with the Humans, I’m going to check on that.” The blonde guard said to the brunette.
Alex looked over to Monty and sent her an instant message, “I played back the sound of the gunfire, it was close, maybe even from the throne room. I counted three shots, two rapid fire, then one single shot.”
Monty looked over to the remaining guard before sending him a message back, “If the Empress has been assassinated we may be stuck in the middle of a civil war.”
The blonde guard who left called out from down the hall, “It’s clear Lam’Dil, bring the Human diplomats with you, the Captain has been shot!”
Alex and Monty followed the brunette guard down the hall into the throne room, they both noticed that imperial guards now covered every entrance to the room, weapons drawn. The Empress was down on one knee beside the much larger Mon’Kelron, who was being attended to by another guardswoman who wore a blue shield on her shoulder, evidently a combat medic.
Another woman lay dead a few meters away, half of the top of her head was missing, as they came closer they saw that the Captain of the Guard was shot twice in the gut. Spy-Mistress Isa’Bella was speaking into a radio calling for a doctor.
Monty dropped down to her knees beside Mon’Kelron, looking her up and down. Alex knew she was using onboard scanners to assess damage. A message appeared across his HUD, “Alex, this is not good. One of the bullets is lodged in her intestines, the other is inside what we would consider the liver, which is leaking bile into her body.”
A doctor in an all white robe and a black bag knelt beside the Captain, she ran her hands over her abdomen before looking up to the Empress and giving her an almost imperceptible shake of the head. Monty sent Alex another message, “Does that mean what I think it means?”
Alex watched the Empress sigh while continuing to hold Mon’Kelron’s hand, “Yeah Monty, it means the wounds are beyond the doctors abilities repair. She’s going to die unless we intervene.”
Monty looked from the prone guard Captain to Alex, sending him the message, “We are going to intervene, right?”
Alex did not answer, he simply stood there and watched the Empress. Monty was about to send another message when the Empress looked up to Alex and spoke. “She saw the assassin draw her pistol, I could do nothing. She moved in front of the throne and blocked the attack, one of her fellow guardswomen killed the assailant. She’s going to die because of me.”
He allowed her to continue. “You can save her, can’t you?” She asked, almost pleading.
Alex nodded his head, “We can, but we’ll need to get her in the other shuttles stasis pod immediately. We’ll have to take her aboard our ship to perform the necessary surgeries, she may not be back for some time.”
The Empress looked from Alex down to Mon’Kelron’s unconscious form. “Then do what you must to save her.”
Alex took another step and dropped to one knee, his internal scanners showed the Captain of the Guard was in shock, he needed to get her to shuttle zero quickly. Gently he pushed his arms under her and to the surprise of the other guardswomen lifted her from the ground. “Monty, get moving to the other stasis pod, get it online.”
For probably the first time Monty uttered the words, “Yes sir.” Then turned heel and ran, just barely below what the Alandrans would consider possible.
Turning with Mon’Kelron in his arms he faced the assembled guards. “Half of you run ahead of me, clear any obstacles, including people from my path, the rest stay and guard the Empress.” And with that, he started jogging. About six guards ran ahead pushing people back into doorways and hallways to clear a path for him to the inner courtyard.
A few minutes later he found the back ramp down to the shuttle and Monty attaching the hover sled to the back of the stasis pod. Thankfully she managed to get them all properly attached this time, and with the aid of one of guards managed to get it horizontal and open.
Alex deposited the unconscious Captain of the Guard into the capsule and attached the straps before closing the lid. Monty tapped several icons on the control panel and the inside lit up with the normal blurry blue light. He then moved the pod back to its spot on the wall and put it back to the vertical position before removing the sled and locking it back to the wall.
Once connected back to the shuttles power reserves he checked the control panel. “Ok, she’s in stasis, which means she’ll stay as she is until we can repair her injuries. In the meantime, gather the crew for the Isengard, we’re leaving immediately, they’re probably spread out all over the city, check the bars first.”
One of the guards, who appeared to be the Sargent looked to the others, “You heard the man, get moving!” Almost as one they filed out of the shuttle and left at double time across the lawn. The Sargent then turned to Alex and Monty and saluted, fist over heart, before turning and leaving for the Palace.
Alex turned to Monty, “Gather up Kel’Taraan’s stasis pod and get it loaded. I’m going to the throne room to inform the Empress. I think it’s best if we’re not on planet for the next little while, I think there will be a bit of civil strife.”
Monty nodded, then turned and left the shuttle.