Chapter 6

The week of R&R ended far too quickly. By the time I had to report back for duty, three of the girls had decided they wanted to look for a better fit with one of the other guys near to my age. Kate and I took them to Grams who assured them that there were several more guys in the family near their age, especially now that my mom’s extended family had joined us here.

Kate and I had spent one afternoon discussing what I wanted in our home when it was designed. I wanted an attached aviary where the eagles could stay if they wanted to be inside. Still, the aviary would be an outside building near the back door of the house. Inside, I wanted a large bedroom, even if Kate only kept one or two of the girls. If she wanted to keep more than two, the bedroom would need to be even larger. I wanted a large master bathroom with at least three sinks and toilets--more if Kate felt she would keep more than one or two girls. I also wanted a shower and tub big enough to accommodate four comfortably.

I reminded her to take into account how many rooms we’d need for kids in the future, although we could do like my parents and add prefabricated rooms. To do that, one hallway needed to be designed so we could add modules. Aside from making sure the doors in the house were taller and wider than normal, that was all I could think of.

Gramps took Striker and me back to the base. He had me bring the TLK-19 four-barrel mini-gun, the one I had been carrying when I was bitten by the red asp.

“Good, you’re here early. How are you feeling?” Lieutenant Harris asked when I checked in.

“Fully rested and recuperated,” I replied. Even the bite marks on my neck were fully healed and only noticeable upon close inspection.

“You’ve got time to stow your gear and check in your new weapon. We have a meeting with MilIntel at twelve-hundred hours,” he told me. I already knew about the meeting. Gramps had warned me this morning. Gramps went with me as I dropped off my gear and registered the TLK-19.

The meeting was interesting. MilIntel had several targets they wanted us to consider. All the officers in First Platoon were there, too, but most of the questions were directed to Gramps and me. While everyone else ate the provided meal, I walked around the room, carefully checking each surveillance photo of the potential targets and reviewing the data listed for each target.

“Can we go talk to the people from the Powder Burn Express?” I asked Gramps.

“Why?” he queried.

“They met me as I was leaving the back of one of the transports. They didn’t even want to try to save the factory. They just asked if I’d take them with me. They could have escaped, and I’d have never known they were there. Why did they want to escape Giloh? How were they able to collect five thousand people and get them out of the area in an hour? Why didn’t those people just take their belongings and leave the area? There’s something we’re not seeing here, and it may affect our choice of targets or how we approach the target.”

Gramps spoke with the Major in charge of the meeting and he came over to talk with me. “What do you think you’ll learn from them?” he asked, although his tone was curious.

“I’m not sure. If I’d been one of those men and someone was attacking the factory where I worked, I’d have put up a fight. They could have looked for the guards I shot and taken their weapons. It seemed as if they were anxious to get out of there. Maybe there’s something going on that we can exploit.”

The meeting was scheduled to reconvene tomorrow morning. Colonel Patterson accompanied Gramps and me as we boarded a small transport and flew to an old army base that had been decommissioned several years ago and was now being used to house the detainees. Once Giloh attacked Trindi, work began to prepare the base to house POWs. Part of the base had been fenced off and the 5,249 Gilohan civilians from what had become known as the Powder Burn Express were housed there. The rest of the compound housed some of the Gilohan prisoners who had been captured near the border.

Two guards met us when we landed, saluting the Colonel and Gramps. They led us to the section where the Powder Burn Express people were staying.

“He’s here!” the man I originally spoke with at the Trex-Gel factory shouted to a knot of people a short distance away. We were about thirty meters away from the gate where he was standing.

“Thank you,” he said to me emotionally when we were only three meters away. I saw the other man who had been with him approaching, along with two women and several kids ranging in age from grade school age to my age.

“We never got to introduce ourselves,” he continued. “I’m Jake and this is Ryan,” he introduced himself and his cohort.

“I’m Lucas,” I replied. “And this is Colonel Patterson and my grandfather, Captain Powell.”

Jake and Ryan shook hands with everyone. “You must be proud of Lucas,” Jake said to Gramps.

“Our whole family is proud of him,” Gramps replied.

“The guards told us that you wanted to talk to us,” Ryan commented.

“I was curious about why you asked me to take you with me instead of just escaping. I’d have never known you were there if you had just left,” I explained.

What followed was a chronicle of abuses by Gilohan nobles. If they noticed a particularly attractive woman or girl when they were out and about, they asked for her ID card and scanned it. Then, they issued an official “invitation” for her to visit his home. The invitation was merely an unofficial order for her to be at his house to serve as his whore for the night--longer if he wanted.

Failure to appear would lead to her arrest and a mandatory five-year sentence. If the noble was a real asshole, her entire family could be sentenced. If sentenced, when he tired of her, he sold her to a brothel for the remainder of her sentence. The Magisters, Lords, and Stewards could only “invite” women and girls from their designated sections of the city. Those women who lived near the border of another sector shopped in the neighboring sector. If they were stopped, their ID showed they weren’t from that Magister or Lord’s sector.

The only area of town safe from the practice was the area right around the factory that I had destroyed. The nobles were terrified of being too near the factory and avoided it at all costs.

“Does that just happen in Faron, or everywhere?” I asked.

“If it only happened in Faron, we’d all move elsewhere,” Ryan commented.

I looked at Gramps and then at the Colonel. Both nodded.

“We’re thinking about attacking the Trex-Gel factory in Kufelo. Do you think the workers there will want to leave, too?” I asked.

“I guarantee it. If you want, the eight of us will go with you to help organize the people who want to leave. They won’t be able to drive here, but they might make it safely across the border with Langhak,” Jake mused.

“We’ll get everyone out safely,” the Colonel assured them.

“How did you get everyone out so quickly?” I asked.

Ryan explained, “We had an alert system set up in case there was a threat of an explosion. Everyone who worked in the factory knew about it and knew how it worked. We commed one number and it activated the system. Small alarms went off in every apartment and everyone’s com unit started chirping. Everyone living there had a small emergency bag packed with two sets of clothing and anything they had to have, like birth certificates, medicines, and such.

“When the alarms went off, everyone exited the side of their building away from the factory. They either took their own vehicle or kept moving away from the factory until they saw transports coming for them.”

“Do you think they have the same system in Kufelo?” Gramps asked.

“I know they do. One of the men who worked with us used to work there before they transferred him to Faron. He helped us set up our alarm system. Walt, come here,” Ryan hollered at a knot of people still clustered beginning about ten meters away from us.

Walt returned to the base with us to diagram the interior of the factory in Kufelo and to answer any questions we came up with. His family couldn’t bear to be separated so they came with us. We’d send a transport for Ryan, Jake, and the other five men right before our attack.

The meeting the next morning started out orderly enough. Once everyone heard what we had learned, they were clamoring to make the raid ASAP. Walt reviewed the interior of the factory. It was almost identical to the one in Faron, just twice as big. A key difference was the number of transports at the loading dock. Surveillance photos showed between twenty and twenty-two transports each night and showed all of them leaving the factory between oh-one-hundred and oh-one-thirty.

“We could kill two birds with one stone,” I suggested to Gramps during a break. “Put a detonator inside two boxes of explosives in each transport, one in the front of the transport and one near the rear. Rig both to send a radio signal when the box is opened and then detonate. That signal would detonate any other charges within range. That should destroy the place where they’re taking the explosives. If it’s a hidden or underground facility, it’ll save you from having to find and destroy it. If it’s an ammo depot, it’s one less that we’ll have to hit.”

“I like it,” Gramps commented with a grin. He cornered Colonel Patterson. When they finished talking, both of them grinned and nodded to me.

Three nights later, four hot-fusion troop transports left our base headed for Giloh. Just as the Gilohan ground transports filled with explosives began leaving the factory, one of our transports settled in an unlit spot in a nearby park. Walt and I exited, and the transport lifted off again, hovering about seventy-five meters above us. I hid while Walt made four calls and then we waited. Within half an hour, the four men Walt called arrived.

Via the small microphone Walt wore, I listened to their whispered conversation. “How do you know we can trust them?” one of the men asked.

“I’ve already trusted them. Everyone living around the factory in Faron escaped to Cambak. They’ve treated us exceedingly well. We’ve even seen the way they treat the POWs they captured that were massing at the Cambakian border for an invasion,” Walt explained.

An hour after the meeting started, each of our four transports took one of the men aboard. The four men were let out near their building, along with two of the eight men from the Faron factory, and a fire team. Gramps had run home and collected any Gilohan currency I had in the duffel bags. We split it between the four teams. Each team stayed in the apartment of one of the men Walt had called. That man then made arrangements with someone he knew to let our fire team use a top floor apartment with a view of the factory. It would serve as one of our sniper nests.

Each family housing a team was given some of the currency to buy extra food, even though we carried field rations with us. We watched the factory for two days, two men on each team watching and two sleeping. It was easy to tell that the people living here wouldn’t be a problem. Both days, dozens of them came by to thank us. Either Gilohan women were markedly better looking than Cambakian women were or there were an inordinate number of beautiful women living in the apartments around the factory. Based on Ryan’s explanation, it appeared that they were hiding from the unwanted attention of the Gilohan nobles.

Naturally, late on the morning of our planned attack, things started going to shit. Teora, one of the most beautiful girls in our building came to see us, eyes red from crying. For some reason, the Praetor had been in the area today and issued an “invitation” to her. One of his vehicles would pick her up tonight at twenty-hundred.

“Don’t go,” I suggested.

“If I don’t go, he’ll have troops go through the entire building looking for me. They’ll find your men,” she sobbed.

After half an hour’s discussion and a quick exchange of emails in Valerie’s secret language, we had a plan. Several women in the building spent the day making a hooded robe for me out of old, dark-colored bed sheets. The robe covered everything but my face and part of my boots.

The people living in the area quickly filled the street in front of their apartment buildings with their vehicles, leaving only a single parking space. When the Praetor’s car arrived that evening, I was hiding behind the bush near the parking space. When Teora exited the building, the driver gawked at her. He was still gawking when I knocked him out. Two men from my fire team hurried out to carry him inside the building where they’d interrogate him. I held the door for Teora to enter the car.

She drove since she knew the way. I already had three drones watching the grounds of the Praetor’s estate and one overhead watching us as she made her way there. Teora made sure that she looked disheveled when we reached the gate of the Praetor’s property. “Where’s Giri?” the gate guard asked, annoyed.

She motioned into the back seat. “He’s still buttoning back up,” she replied saucily.

“The Praetor won’t like that,” the guard warned.

“Then don’t tell him. I’ll make it up to you tomorrow morning,” Teora promised.

“You’d better,” he huffed, and opened the gate. He was still watching her boob and never saw the barrel of my silenced pistol.

Amazingly, by the time we reached the front of the manor house, nothing was amiss with Teora’s appearance.

The girl who came out to open the door of the vehicle gasped and stared at me when she saw me. “Where’s Giri?” she whispered.

“He’s tied up right now,” Teora retorted.

“Oh, thank god,” the girl sighed. “Will the Praetor be tied up tonight as well?” she said questioningly--and hopefully.

“That’s the plan,” Teora replied. The girl grinned.

“Follow me. He’s with my sister right now, so please be careful,” she begged.

She led us up the wide polished marble stairs, stopping outside the second door on the left. “Ready?” she asked me. I nodded and she knocked three times, then opened the door.

“About time...” the Praetor grumbled as he continued abusing the girl kneeling before him. She’d have probably screamed but puked instead when he fell in a heap in front of her. While she rested on all fours and caught her breath, her sister ran over to her and comforted her.

“They’re here to rescue us,” she whispered excitedly.

“Thank ... you,” the kneeling sister finally panted before bursting into tears of relief.

“I need to take care of the other guards,” I warned the three girls.

“Follow me, I can show you the quickest way to their barracks. By the way, I’m Alaita,” the first girl introduced herself. “My sister is Izari,” she added, motioning to the girl still panting on all fours.

“Are you taking everyone else?” Izari asked.

“Everyone?” I queried.

“He has six more girls here, as well as his wife. She’ll only be upset that she didn’t get to kill the bastard,” Alaita chuckled.

“Tell everyone to get ready to go as quickly as possible. They can only take one bag with them,” I warned, then motioned for Alaita to lead the way. Teora followed me. Alaita quickly guided me to the door of the barracks. The IR scan from the drone immediately above showed four signatures in a cluster and two others that appeared to be lying down. I nodded and Alaita opened the door, stepping back out of my way as I entered the barracks with my KT-63 ready. The four men playing cards froze. The other two were asleep. It took a few minutes to secure all six men.

“Why aren’t any of you on guard duty?” I asked.

“The Praetor doesn’t like us ogling the girls when they arrive. The gate guard is supposed to let us know once she’s inside the manor,” one of the men explained. When I finished, each man was shackled and sported a pair of composite ankle manacles so he could walk but couldn’t run. I led them back inside the house where we were met by the Praetor’s wife, six “serving girls,” and Izari.

“Thank you. Everything we have is yours,” the wife said emotionally as she knelt suggestively in front of me. Then she introduced herself as Brynn.

“For now, I’ll settle for the contents of his safe,” I replied.

She took his key from around his neck. Several minutes later, everything inside his safe was in pillowcases and the wife was sitting at his computer. “You’ll like this,” she smirked as she transferred data to a small data cube. “The wife of every noble has to have access to the passwords for his computer, bank accounts, and the combination for the safe in case something happens to him. What they don’t have is access to his study as only he has the key. I just emptied the contents of his bank accounts and the city’s accounts onto here,” she said as she handed me the data drive.

“Is that everything?” I asked everyone. Even the six gagged and shackled guards nodded. Once we were outside again, I radioed for my ride. “Powder Burn 2, this is Striker 1. The nest is empty. I have sixteen eaglets.”

“Roger Striker 1, I see you and I’m landing now,” they replied. Seconds later, I heard the quiet hum of the anti-grav units. The transport landed about five meters from us. Less than two minutes later, we were all aboard and were airborne.

“Are you going with us or rejoining your unit?” the pilot asked me.

“I’d like to return to my unit,” I replied, so he dropped me off in the street in front of the apartment. Minutes later, I rejoined my fire team.

“How’d it go?” Sgt. Butler asked me.

“They need a new Praetor. All his guards are prisoners aboard the transport shuttle, and everyone else in the house chose to escape with me,” I replied.

Using two shooters from each fire squad, we started picking off guards at the factory at 2230. Even though there were four times as many guards here as there had been at the Faron factory, we had eight times as many shooters. Once the last of the guards was down, Walt sent the alert signal to everyone living in the surrounding apartments. We headed for the factory as people rushed from the building, each carrying one bag or box of their belongings.

By the time we reached the factory, the men who’d been working inside had the spare military uniforms kept at the factory ready. Four of the workers and four men from one of the fire teams dressed like Gilohan soldiers. Two manned the gatehouse, two walked the loading docks, and four patrolled between the gatehouse and the loading docks. The rest of us began rigging the explosives inside the ground transports. Others helped to finish loading the ground transports. By oh-oh-thirty, the transports were full, and the factory was rigged to blow. We just had to wait for the drivers to arrive. Each driver brought an empty ground transport and switched it with a loaded one before heading for their assigned destination.

MilIntel also had us send aloft one drone to follow each departing transport. Back in Cambak, one person was assigned to keep track of each drone and the vehicle it followed. That way, they’d know where the transport went and if the place was destroyed. If it wasn’t destroyed, they’d still know where the transport went, so they could target the location.

We searched the offices and gathered everything we could find that MilIntel might utilize. We finally found a list of each place where they delivered the Trex-Gel. I photographed it and sent the photo to Gramps. MilIntel might still have time tonight to arrange to have a few of the places bombed. Once the last of the loaded ground transports left, our transports arrived.

A huge celebration awaited us when we made it back to base. It seems that the explosion from the Trex-Gel factory provided the fireworks to help celebrate Trindi’s unconditional surrender. The acting president of Trindi came to Cambak to surrender formally yesterday. He also brought intel about all remaining Gilohan troops and equipment in their territory. Unlike most citizens of Cambak and Trindi, I knew what had happened to the elected President and Vice President, as their teenage daughters had graced my bed while I was home on R&R.

As our bombers blasted the remaining clusters of Gilohan troops and equipment, our government released the document I recovered from the courier with orders to kill the families of the Trindian traitors. Suddenly, several countries that had previously been on good terms with Giloh had sent the Gilohan ambassadors and other diplomats packing, a few coming just short of completely severing diplomatic relations.