Location: Highland Regimental HQ
The alarm klaxons were blaring their gawd-awful wail as the commander popped the hatch on his battle scarred Dreadnought. He slid down the ladder without touching the rungs and sprinted toward the briefing room. For an old man he could still move when he had to. Flashing his access badge at the surprised guard he barely slowed as the doors slid open he turned sideways, jumped through as ran to his office. Not even bothering to turn on the lights he fired up the computer and quickly downloaded a map chip.
"Come on. Hurry up you ancient pile of recycled Anzu." He cut short his rant as the chip beeped. Snatching it out of the slot he ran out the door and straight into the unlucky orderly carrying an arm load of charts and files. Arms, legs, charts all went flying as they both crashed into the floor.
"Never mind all that stuff, private" he said as he brushed himself off, "Just get me the co-ordinates of last last known pirate activity on Yomi.. sector 184D and 188F" He dashed off down the hall, skidding around the corner of the hall he grabbed the wall, turned and called out to the still stunned orderly. "Just upload it to the Staff meeting."
Outside the door he slowed his breathing and straightened his uniform before opening the door. Most of the senior staff was already present and checking their personnel and assignments on hand held battle comps and relaying orders.
"Tango 1 - 7 hold at perimeter"
"Roger that. Bravo 4 at second marker."
" I don't know. No hostile activity this sector"
Holo maps lit up over the center console in the room. Symbols flashed representing units in the area. All blue: Friendlies. No red markers indicating hostile forces. "What's going on,Sir?" asked Major Griffin, "We've got alarms going off every where and no sign of a bogey anywhere. And I thought you were on detached duty?"
"Re-calibrate IFF transponders to frequency 5.64 and send alert force heading 075 degrees" he said. "And I still am."
He pushed a button on the table. " Watch closely gentlemen." Red icons began to appear mixed in with the blue. They shifted back to blue and then flashed a solid red.He pulled on a headset and keyed the mic. "All units, Broadsword, I say again, Broadsword."There was an audible gasp as the code was sent signaling infiltrators in the lines. The comm channels exploded with chatter as the Highlanders went to work.
"Got one on your nine, closing"
"Taking fire"
"Break left, 2-7"
"Lookit tha' bastid burn"
The comms quieted as the Regiment made short work of the surprised foes. The long days and long hours of training payed off. On a battlefield where interplanetary and even interstellar travel was nearly instant, front lines and enemy/friendly territory were nebulous concepts at best. Be prepared to fight, at any time, in any direction. Be prepared,or die.
The commander keyed his mic again. "All call signs, this is claymore one. Visual confirmation of all units switch to manual IFF and verify." He turned to the assembled officers. "Good work. Glad to see you kept up the training in my absence. Captain Lee, assemble the Dragoons and make a full perimeter sweep"
"Yes,Sir" The captain saluted and quickly headed for the door already punching commands into his battle comp.
A young lieutenant spoke first. "Sir, who sold us out out? Who would betray the Regiment?"
"No one,son. They weren't ours"
There were equal parts relief and confusion on the faces of the men in the room."What we have is a technologically superior foe. However, he has to rely on pirates to fill his ranks and that it where we will defeat him." He pulled out the map chip and inserted it in a slot on the table. The display shifted from the battle map to a star chart. There were two flashing points on it. He touched a control and zoomed the map in centering on the flashing points.
"I'm sure you all recognize this" he said. Nods around the room. "That's where we've been hunting pirates, Sir. We cleared those sectors"
"I thought so too. But look at this" An overlay of a several dotted lines appeared on the map.
"These are the current major commercial routes and bulk ore carriers though the reefs. And these", red dots appeared " are where the they were hit and when we eliminated a force" a white circle over the red dot. "Now, we all know that the routes are changed periodically to avoid pirate but once any major threats are eliminated they always change back to the shortest possible route. And we know pirates wont willingly give up a fat cargo route for no reason.... so we provide that reason."
A few chuckles from around the room, " Damn right,Sir" He grinned back at the men."But look at this. This is a time lapse of all pirate activity over the last few months. You can see heavy raiding, our strikes, etc. etc. and then all of a sudden, nothing. Not a slow down in activity, a complete and total halt. So what happened?"
"They found better targets,Sir? Ones we weren't protecting?"
"I considered that, but when I checked, it turns out no one was reporting any losses. Why? Look here, you see the time/date stamp where it goes quiet? That's four days before that Drochah fellow attacked. He had hordes of low budget minions and only a few heavy hitters. Now we know where he got them. I don't know if he promised them better loot attacking civilized planets or just killed the existing bosses and intimidated them into service, a few prisoners we took are claiming some sort of mind control but we all know that's just an attempt at psych ward instead of prison or execution."
He tapped the display. "We have the same situation happening here again, but on a smaller scale. Don't know if its him or just a hireling of his, but I do know where he is." A green dot appeared on the map. "Assemble the men. Assault forces only. I have good intel there are more of those gigantic whatever they were that Drochah had on site. I don't want to lose anyone to this bastard. Gentlemen, we are going hunting."
Submitted by Daniel Scott #164961