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  Chapter 1 Council of War

  He carefully slipped between the bodies sprawled out asleep on the floor of cave. Lowering the force field and raising it again behind him as he entered the makeshift command centre, tucked into a small recess, at the very back of the cavern. Carol, Bryson, David and Anna were already huddled around a large metal crate that served as a crude table, smaller ones served as chairs. A single cone shaped power core sat atop the table providing them with heat and light, humming quietly as it illuminated their faces with a soft blue glow.

  Carol was in her early-thirties, athletic in build. Her family had been bankrupted by two previous planetary evictions. The second time her parents had used what was left of their savings to pay for her safe passage to Anobar and remained behind as indentured servants to the aggressively expansionist Malstrom. Every scratch on the scarred, battered, grey combat armour she wore was a testament to the personal nature of her fight with Malstrom. Her helmet, like the rest of them, had been retracted into her suits high collar revealing tumbling locks of flame red curly hair and hazel eyes that burned with a fire to match. Formerly an air traffic controller at the spaceport she was now their communications and intelligence officer.

  Bryson in his late-forties sported a healthy crop of crew cut black hair. His meticulously maintained gunmetal combat armour barely had a mark on it. Its finely chiselled contours mirroring the firm lines of his jaw. The former head of planetary security he was the highest ranking member of the resistance command council still at large. A quartermaster par excellence he had secured a large number of secret catches of Delware arms and tech around the planet, several of which still served the rebels. Few people had the nerve to try and out-stare the steely resolve of his cold grey eyes. His sniper rifle ensured that those who did never got close enough to try.

  David was the youngest of the quartet. An auburn haired, blue eyed, baby faced engineer in his mid-twenties. If it wasn't for the rebellion he would have been the boy every woman wanted to mother. As it was he was an orphan of the rebellion whose parents, unable to afford the exit fees, had chosen suicide in preference to servitude. It was from that point on that used his engineering skills to devastating effect taking out a series of key installations with carefully concealed charges. Their munitions and demolitions expert, his combat suit was a patchwork of scavenged armour and tech. Able to inflict massive amounts of damage with small amounts of explosive and improvise in the field where necessary. So long as they could get him close enough, few if any targets survived his measured and explosive onslaughts.

  Finally there was Anna, pushing fifty, she was the oldest member of the team. A Doctor by profession, she had been stripped of her licence to practice and sentenced to 10 years hard labour for treating injured rebels. They'd rescued her when they launched a daring attack on Malstrom's main prison complex in the wake of Jasper’s public executions. Although traumatised by the brutal prison regime, the grey haired, blue eyed, diva had lost none of the youthful allure that had made her a femme fatale. Her strictly functional white medic’s combat suit came pre-loaded with a suite of medical nanobots she could program to treat most combat injuries.

  A smile crossed his face as he lifted up his hands and pulled his hood back to reveal his black helmet and the reflective amber visor that hid his face. He would trust each and every one of them with his life. As he deactivated his HUD and retracted the helmet and visor back into the high collar of his combat suit he hoped it was a trust he wouldn't have to put it to the test tonight.

  He slipped his right hand inside his cloak pulling out a pair of silver spectacles and slipped them over his ears. Pushing the gel cushioned bridge up the crest of his nose, with his forefinger, till they came to rest a comfortable distance from his deep blue eyes.

  “You know I could rectify that with a quick injection of Nanobots.” Anna said, turning towards him, readying the emergency medical injector attached to the left forearm of her suit as she did so.

  “She’s right you know,” added David, “they belong in a museum. They're antiques even by my par…” he paused, “even by my grandparents standards.”

  “You should listen to her they're nothing but a liability, particularly in a combat situation.” Bryson chimed-in.

  “I’m touched by your concern, but I don’t like injections and my HUD automatically compensates in combat as it happens, so call me old fashioned if you like. Anything else you’d like to add Carol?” he asked quizzically, turning to face her with a broad grin.

  “Well now you come to mention it what’s with the hair? Everyone can see its going grey even with that buzz cut, let it grow a little for God's sake and don’t get me started on that silly little goatee of yours! But as for the glasses who cares? I mean where would you even get an old earth antique like that out here on the rim?”

  There was a moment’s silence and then they all burst out laughing. It was his way of releasing the tension with the senior command staff before a dangerous mission. As the laughter died down he answered Carol as best he could.

  “Well if you can recommend a good stylist I'll pay them a visit when this is all over, but the beauty of amnesia is you never have to explain your past or,” he added tapping his glasses, “the baggage that comes with it. And no Anna you can't fix it that with nanobots either.”

  “We all owe you our lives, if there's anything we can do to help you recover yours you know you don't even have to ask.”

  “Thanks Anna, now let’s put the past behind us and focus on the mission.” he punched a couple of buttons on his left forearm and activated his suits inbuilt holoprojector. A three dimensional image of the refinery hovered in the air above their heads. He highlighted several key points, sentry patrols, automated gun emplacements, sensor stations, communications array, power plant and control room. “There was no unusual activity on my last reconnaissance sweep, so I’m guessing they have no idea we’re here. Anyone want to add anything?”

  “I’ve been monitoring their comms traffic and I don’t like it something's off.”

  “How so Carol?”

  “It’s all too routine. Almost like their trying to create an illusion of normality. So I ran a deep scan and came up with this when I filtered out the routine transmissions.” she overlaid his image of the refinery with a holographic representation of the comms traffic. The mass of signals slowly resolved themselves into a single sine wave.

  “Impressive.” said David. “What is it?”

  Bryson frowned. “At a guess I’d say it was a hidden carrier wave embedded in the normal comms traffic.”

  “Exactly and it’s heavily encrypted.”

  “Can you replicate it?”

  “No way, it’s a gold channel encryption. It would take weeks just to decipher it never mind reproduce it.”

  “Do we abort the mission then?” asked Anna.

  “No we switch, to plan B.”

  The four of them exchanged blank looks.

  “So what’s plan B?” Bryson finally asked.

  “I’m working on it. Any news on our exit strategy?”

  “It seems the zombie virus Iverson released into their computers at the spaceport last year has penetrated all their systems and lain dormant as planned. As soon as zephyr team transmitted the activation code to it twenty minutes ago the freighter that makes the routine supply run reported it was making an unscheduled landing to investigate an engine malfunction.”

  “Good man Iverson.” said Bryson smiling as he remembered the man he’d once shared an office with. “Glad he didn’t die in vain.”

  “Wait. I’m picking up another transmission from the freighter.” said Carol. ”Fault identified, primary fuel injection matrix needs recalibrating. Estimate repairs complete in 2 hours, no assistance required.”

  “That’s zephyr team confirming they’ve secured the ship, well at least our ride out of here is booked, now here’s plan B.” he rotated the holomap and zoomed it in and out as he gave everyone their mission obj
ectives and allocated teams. There were fifteen of them in total split into five fire teams, three to a team. Once they were all in place Carol would inject a dummy message about a comms malfunction into the refineries data stream. Thirty seconds later, after taking out the two sentries he’d marked on the holomap, Bryson’s team would take out the communications relay, then suppress the automated defences. Carol meanwhile would attempt to jack into their systems and steal intel. Anna’s team would provide additional cover for David’s team while they laid the demolition charges. “And I’m going to provide a little distraction for you to keep them busy.”

  “What sort of distraction did you have in mind?”

  “I was planning to knock on the front door and ask them their views on cold calling.”

  “Works for me.” said Bryson as a sly grin crossed his face.

  “Good, now assemble your teams, the clock is ticking.”

  A few minutes later the cave was a hive of activity even Bryn was recalled from watch to kit up for the coming engagement. A hush fell over the cave as he called for their attention so he could address them all.

  “Listen up people we’re going to go in hard and fast to put this facility out of action. Take no unnecessary risks and stick to the plan. You’re the best fighters the resistance has and we can’t afford to lose you. Oh, and make sure you’ve got plenty of spare power cells. If your suit runs out of power out there you’ll freeze quicker than going into stasis.”

  “Sir.” a lone voice interjected. “What if they have our people in there are we going to attempt a rescue?”

  “Negative, no one would last more than few minutes out there.” he pointed towards the cave mouth. “We have neither the equipment nor the transport to affect a rescue. Intel says this refinery fuels seventy-five percent of their operations in the northern hemisphere. We put it out of commission their off world fuel imports triple overnight, creating a series of choke points in their supply line we can attack. Degrades their ability to operate and brings us one step closer to freeing everyone.”

  “Yes sir.”

  He turned and muttered something to Bryson before turning back and calling Bryn and his questioner over to him. “Bryn, Harvey, you're with me, no heroics, stay close and do exactly as I tell you, understand?” they both nodded silently. “Time to move out people lets go.”