Operation Catskill Read online

  Operation Catskill

  An Oblivion Saga Prequel

  J.R. Mabry

  B.J. West

  OPERATION CATSKILL

  An Oblivion Saga Prequel

  © 2017 by J.R. Mabry & B.J. West

  “One of you will be Captain. One of you won’t be. Are you okay with that?” Admiral Jason Tal waited. He was a patient, largely silent man—a big man, not used to suffering objections. Jeff looked at Danny. Danny looked at him.

  “Answer me, dammit.”

  “Admiral, sir,” Commander Jeff Bowers began, “I would be honored to serve under Commander Hightower.” It was highly unlikely that would ever happen, but it seemed to Jeff a good way to address the question.

  “I feel the same way,” Commander Daniel Hightower said. “There wouldn’t be any hard feelings at all. I mean…we have time, right? If Jeff makes Captain this year, I’ll buy the champagne. And I know he’ll do the same for me next year…or whenever.”

  “You always this chatty, Commander?”

  “No sir. I mean, yes sir. I’m just…I’m answering your question. Sir.”

  The faintest hint of a smile played at the corners of Tal’s brown lips. He nodded. “I’m glad to hear this from you, commanders, because I’m going to put you to the test. Captain Bowers, I’m proud to present you with your captain’s bars.” He leaned over his desk and held a ceremonial presentation box out to Jeff. Jeff’s mouth opened, but nothing came out. Instead he simply lifted his hand and received the box. Danny looked down. Then back up at Jeff. He nodded. “Congratulations, man.”

  Jeff opened the box and stared. Two gold Captain’s bars stared back.

  “I guess you’re wondering why you’re finding this out now, instead of at a ceremony.”

  “Um…I’m proud to receive the bars however they come, sir.”

  “Good answer. Bullshit, but good. What I’m about to tell you is classified.” Tal sat down and steepled his fingers. “Which means, for the moment, Commander Hightower, you are dismissed.”

  Danny and Jeff met one another’s eyes for a brief second, then Hightower stood and saluted. “Yes, sir. Thank you sir.” He turned and saluted Jeff. “Sir, thank you sir.”

  Jeff gulped. He looked down, unable to meet Danny’s eyes. He gave a perfunctory salute. A moment later he and the Admiral were alone.

  “Captain Bowers, we have a situation.”

  * * *

  He didn’t know why they chose him, or why they’d put him in charge of Operation Catskill, but he didn’t need to know. He only had one request: that Commander Hightower be his number one. Admiral Tal hadn’t been too sure about that, but he granted it. Jeff had been relieved. If they were heading into the field, into the line of fire, with an untested and unfamiliar unit, he needed someone he trusted at his back.

  There were lots of things he didn’t know and didn’t need to know. But he knew this: the captain’s chair felt right. He gripped the arms of that chair as the helmsman brought them in for a landing near the Appalachian Colony.

  “I’ve got the handshake from the Colony, Captain,” Lieutenant Eliza Todd said.

  “Handshake back,” Jeff instructed. It was a kind of code. They had to acknowledge that they were on the Colony on official business, but did not officially state what that business was. Handshakes were unusual, but not unheard of. It just meant that a Colonial Defense Fleet maneuver was too classified for the local colonial government to know any details about it. Not that it would be hard for the governor here to guess. But the less people knew anything, the better. They needed the element of surprise.

  “Shut ’er down. Lieutenant Todd, I want you here on the bridge. Once we’re out, you lock this puppy up tight. Then make sure that every pixel of information from our body cams is transmitted back to Sol Station.”

  “Aye, sir,” Todd nodded, anticipating the order.

  “The rest of you, tend to your gear and meet me in the bay in seven minutes.”

  He turned and charged for his own cabin. He made sure his gear was in order, tended to his toilet, then headed out to the bay.

  “Captain on deck!” Danny shouted. Everyone was already in place. They were suited up in combat exoskeletons, their helmets dangling from their left hands. Their right hands rested over the photon canons dangling diagonally from the straps around their necks. None of them made eye contact, but uniformly stared straight ahead at the bay doors.

  “At ease,” Jeff said. He handed his own rifle to Danny, who received it fluidly without appearing to look. Jeff put his hands on his hips and took a deep breath to calm himself. This was it, the moment when he would either succeed as a captain or fail miserably. His hands were sweating, but he couldn’t let the men know he was nervous. He had to be rock solid for them.

  “This is a need-to-know operation. And as Captain, I think you need to know what we’re up against before I can ask you for your lives. Does that seem fair to you?”

  “Sir, yes sir!” they responded in unison. Whoever had drilled this unit had been damned good. They were already in sync. He just needed to make sure he was in sync with them. “As you have probably heard, there has been a minor rebellion on the Appalachia Colony. The CDF sent a negotiator out to meet with both sides. That negotiator is Desmond Paart, a distinguished member of our diplomatic corps. Negotiator Paart has been kidnapped by the rebels and is being held in a farmhouse three clicks from our current location. If you’re wondering why we came in dark…that’s it.”

  He watched the comprehension alighting in their eyes. They kept them facing forward, but he could see their intelligence, their resolve, their will to put right whatever was wrong.

  “The locals call the rebels ‘Rednecks.’ That’s what we’ll call them too.” Jeff gave them a grim smile. “I know, I know, it’s ironic, since that’s what everyone calls folks on Appalatia. But they don’t see themselves that way. They see themselves as loyal members of the Colonial Union, and that they are. All local attempts to communicate with the Rednecks have been unsuccessful. All CDF efforts to communicate have failed…miserably. Which is why we’re here. The CDF has tried talking. It got us nowhere. Now it’s time for us to act. Our orders are to locate Paart, extract him, and return him to Sol Station for debriefing. It’s a simple retrieval. You’ve prepped for this a thousand times, and I am confident you know what you’re doing. So do it.”

  “Sir, yes sir!” his team responded. Now there was pride in their eyes. Good. They had reason to be proud.

  “Any questions?”

  One of his team looked over at him.

  “Lieutenant Junior Grade Mbeki? What is your question?”

  “How do we locate Paart?”

  “Excellent question, and a difficult one.” He studied Mbeki’s face and saw excitement and fear and uncertainty. He also saw that he was just a kid playing soldier. Inwardly Jeff vowed to do everything in his power to make him a real one. “His neural is offline. This could mean it’s been deactivated, it could mean he’s dead, it could mean it’s malfunctioning. We don’t know. What we do know is that we can’t use it to locate him, dead or alive.”

  The idea that Paart could be dead had not yet occurred to them. He noted the barely perceptible slump in their postures in response to the notion. “We also know that Appalatia colony has picked up an unidentified radiation signature. All Diplomatic Corps members travel with what’s called a Radium Pill. Crack it with your teeth and swallow it, and you start emitting a trackable level of radiation.”

  He saw alarm in their faces, although they tried to hide it. “Yes, it’s dangerous. It’s fatal if untreated. Which is why we have to extract him quickly. Lieutenant Todd is triangulating on that signature and feeding the result directly to my n
eural. We’ll find him, I promise you that.”

  They looked confident. Hell, they looked eager. “Nobody messes with the CDF” was an unofficial motto, but it was widely expressed.

  “We’ve got about four hours of dark. Call up night-vision filters for your helmets, and lock in encrypted communication code 17. Make sure your bayonet is fixed and your powder is dry.” He actually heard one of the men snort involuntarily. Good. They didn’t know him yet, or trust him, and he needed them on his side. “Let’s head out.”

  * * *

  Jeff’s men moved silently through the forest, invisible as shadows on a moonless night. Jeff saw everything around him in crisp detail through his night vision filter. The sound of his own breathing was loud in his helmet. He spoke quietly, almost in a whisper, yet everyone was hearing him fine. Operationally they were on target, but Jeff could not allow himself to relax for a second.

  A CDF marine named Charlesworth was on point. He was battle hardened and had clearly put in some time—the kid was nearly thirty. He also looked like he could eat nails for lunch. Just behind him was Lucy Kai, a newbie from Seoul Colony who seemed determined to out-grizzle Charlesworth. It was all an act, but Jeff didn’t challenge her. That act would serve her well out here.

  Charlesworth held up a hand. Everyone froze. “Got visual confirmation on the structure.”

  “Show me,” Jeff said. Suddenly he was seeing exactly what Charlesworth was seeing through his helmet. It looked like a small farmhouse, in some disrepair. There was farm equipment around. In the distance Jeff could see a barn to one side, looming and dark. Nearer to the house was an old-fashioned well, with rocks built up to encircle it forming a waist high barrier. Stilling his own breath, he heard a cow lowing in the distance, accompanied by the chitter of a tanik.

  Accessing his neural, Jeff shrank the incoming feed from Charlesworth’s helmet so that he could monitor it yet still see what was in front of him. He created another window and began to stream the radiation locator. It showed the terrain in front of them from a bird’s eye perspective. A yellow glow emitted from a rectangle directly in front of their own location—a house. If Paart was alive, he was in that house. If Paart was dead, his fucking corpse was in that house.

  Everything was dark. Everything was quiet. It was a good time for a surprise party. “Charlesworth, Kai, Tanner, and Lopez at the front. Tillerson, Hightower, Durand, and Chaiprasit with me at the back. Move it out!”

  Holding rifles at the ready, he watched his team diverge into two streams. He followed one to the back of the farmhouse and waited for the signal from Charlesworth. Then he heard the breathy whisper, “All in position, sir.”

  Jeff could hear his own pulse pounding in his helmet. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Take out those doors on three. One…two…three!”

  He heard a percussive crack that came from outside his helmet and he followed as his men rushed up the rickety wooden stairs and into the house.

  “Kitchen is clear,” he heard Durand say. Jeff saw a large, almost industrial sized sink, a washboard beside it. There was a cook-all unit, but it didn’t look functional. A propane stove was set up on the table.

  “Captain, we need you in the front room.” That was Kai’s voice.

  Jeff pushed past the rear team, down a short hall, until he saw the flash of CDF helmets. “What do you have?” Jeff asked. But then he stopped.

  There was no light, but that didn’t stop them. With the aid of the helmets he could see just fine. And what he saw was eight children, five boys and three girls, wide awake, sitting stock still, eyes wide. The youngest looked to be about four, the oldest about thirteen. Between the two eldest was a broken man who could only have been Paart.

  He appeared to be unconscious. His hands were tied together and both eyes were blackened. There were cuts on his face and arms. An olfactory notice popped up in his field of vision indicating fecal matter. Paart had shit himself while he was out. Of course the children had done nothing about that, but they had to smell it.

  “Medic, check him out,” Jeff said. Tillerson slung her rifle to her shoulder and pulled out a diagnostic wand as she knelt beside Paart.

  “Captain, what the fuck is going on here?” Danny asked. It was rhetorical. Danny was saying exactly what Jeff was thinking.

  The children were spooky. They stared at his team—at him—with defiance. They were silent as stones. He didn’t see any fear in their eyes. He did see hate, though, and plenty of it.

  Finally, one of them spoke, one of the younger boys. “Ye’re the bad men.”

  “Shut up, Meeker,” one of the older ones said.

  Jeff ignored them. “How is he?”

  Tillerson was just pocketing the wand. “His vitals are strong and stable. He’s in shock, though. I need to get him back to the ship as soon as possible.”

  Jeff nodded. “Our orders are to eliminate the captors and retrieve Paart.”

  Everyone on his team seemed to freeze, and every eye turned to him. “I know what you’re thinking,” Jeff said, addressing his whole team. “There’s no way we can execute a room full of children.”

  “You’d be surprised at what you can do,” Charlesworth said. He ratcheted his rifle to a different setting, then added, “Sir.”

  “All right, we’re not going to take them out, but we are going to take them down. Medic, I want a morphex prick for each of them. Adjust for body weight—just estimate, Tillerson, we don’t have much time. Just make sure you give them enough to put them under for a few hours. Do it fast.”

  “Should we question them first, sir?” Kai asked.

  “No time for chasing rabbits, and I wouldn’t trust anything they’ve been coached to say,” Jeff said. “So no.”

  Jeff watched as, one-by-one, Tillerson sized up each child and adjusted the dosage before stabbing them with the morphex prick. Most of them emitted a howl of protest, but that didn’t slow her down. The first of them were just nodding off by the time she reached the last of them. Jeff waited until their lids were drooping too before issuing his next orders.

  “Charlesworth, I want you to carry Paart,” Jeff said. Charlesworth nodded and slung his rifle without protest. He was the strongest and could easily manage by himself, which would help with their speed and mobility.

  “I don’t like it, sir,” Hightower said. “If the children are here, where are the adults?”

  Jeff froze. It was such an obvious question. He felt like an idiot.

  “Sir, this is a setup.”

  Danny was right. Jeff’s mind raced. He felt a swoon of vertigo, and struggled to master himself.

  “Someone among the Appalachian Colony brass sold us out,” Danny continued.

  Jeff felt sick. Danny should be calling the shots here, not him. Danny was seeing much more clearly. He forced himself to focus.

  “Everyone grab a child,” Jeff said. “Use it as a human shield. They won’t shoot their own kids.”

  There were more of them than there were children, but soon all but the smallest of them and Jeff himself had a child in one arm and a rifle in the other.

  “Okay, I know this is going to slow us down some, but we only need to carry them until we get some shelter. And the ship isn’t far away. So let’s move out in single file, quickly as we can, going back exactly the same way as we came in. Charlesworth, I want you and Paart in the middle of the line. Go!”

  * * *

  Kai took point. She was physically the most diminutive, so she picked up the smallest child. Jeff was proud to see that she handled her weapon like a seasoned pro, and the child like a mother. The kid had range.

  Jeff put every sensor on a hair trigger alert and took up the rear. The only one without a child over his shoulder, he held his own photon rifle ready to pick off any threat to his men. He cleared the stairs and turned around, watching behind the single-file snake they formed as they moved across the farmyard.

  “Captain, we got trouble,” Kai said.

  With a bli
nk, Jeff called up the view from her helmet. Resizing it, he left the line and began jogging toward the front, toward Kai. He understood why she was concerned—a single child had stepped into their path, standing between them and a well. She was barefoot, her hair was greasy and unkempt, dirt or soot smudged her face. She was also carrying an old-fashioned carpet bag.

  Jeff arrived at the front of the line and put out a hand, keeping Kai from moving forward. He looked up and blinked, making an adjustment in his sensors. When he looked back down he saw an electronic signature emitting from the carpet bag. He also saw a glint of silver in the child’s hand. Adjusting his helmet’s zoom, he saw that it was actually a pair of handcuffs, one fixed to the child’s wrist, the other to the handle of the carpet bag. The child’s eyes were wide, her face slack with fear.

  “Bomb,” Jeff said.

  Before he could move, Jeff caught a blur out of the corner of his eye. He turned his helmet just in time to see Charlesworth snatch the child up in both hands and, in a single, fluid motion, pitch her head first into the well. Jeff was horrified, his mind flashing on the image of the child hitting the side of the well on the way down, then drowning at the bottom. But he needn’t have worried about that. The child could not have fallen half the length of the well before the bomb went off.

  The blast knocked all of them off their feet. And that was a good thing, too, since no sooner did the reverberations from the blast subside than the shooting began. Photon charges blasted in a random pattern over their heads. “Stay down,” Jeff bellowed. Rolling onto his elbows, he looked around, desperate for some sort of shelter. The house was no good—it was wood, soon to be splinters. He saw a low rock wall about fifty paces north of the yard. “Shelter at 12 o’clock. Crawl,” he ordered.

  It was difficult for them to crawl with unconscious children in tow. They hadn’t gone more than six feet when Todd pinged him. A CDF report spilled out over the inside curve of his helmet about a rash of kidnappings in the colony. Jeff’s heart sank. These kids weren’t going to be much of a shield—they weren’t the Rednecks’ kids.