All That Glitters Ch. 39

"No, sir, the Jean Jacques Aucoin, Lt. Jacques Marneau commanding, is not far off, sir," the Boatswain replied.

"Bring her in, I am going down to the planet, closer to the action, to see what is happening," Raymond shouted, then sprinted for the EVA chamber where he swiftly donned his Combat EVA suit.

************

David had noted that the Master, Adolphus, was panicking. "They are here to kidnap me!" Adolphus shouted.

"Sir, if they were here to kidnap you, why are they touching down near the slave barracks?" David asked. That seemed to jar Adolphus out of his diatrade. The man got a positively evil grin on his face.

"I know what will stop them!" Adolphus snarled, calling up the lists of slaves in the various barracks. Wherever there were Navy shuttles on the ground, he chose names at random and pressed the destruct button. Kilometers away, at Barracks No. 30, one of the slaves in the lineup suddenly died, his explosive collar severing his neck. The death was so unexpected that it caused a panic in the line of slaves waiting to be freed.

"Stop, get your collars off if you want to be safe!" the sergeant called out. Some of the slaves listened, others ran off, the sergeant cursing under his breath.

Because he could not see the location he was targeting, Adolphus had no idea of the effectiveness of his attacks, if any. Every thirty seconds, he called up another one of the names of the slaves on the list from the different barracks under attack and pressed the button to end their life. However, many of those he chose had already had their collars removed, he could not know that his finger on the button caused no harm. Adolphus kept calling up random names and pressing the button, more than occasionally randomly killing his slaves one after the other.

David watched helplessly as slave after slave was killed by the Master. He seriously thought about killing the Master, and even picked up a small statue to hit his head with. Unfortunately for David, the Master saw and pushed a button on his wrist comp, sending a signal to David's collar, which jolted his brain stem. Pain laced through David's body and he temporarily passed out, leaving Adolphus to continue his killing spree.

************

A panicked call went up from the assault Marines at Barracks No. 30. "Someone is randomly killing the people down here! They are blowing the slave collars. They are not even Union Citizens! We need to find the command site and stop them, NOW!"

Raymond was high in the atmosphere, effectively directing the assault by the Valour Class against the local Militia who were bringing their attacks against his raid to a standstill when he heard the call.

"Can you pinpoint where the destruct signal is coming from?" Raymond demanded of Science.

"Aye, sir, it is coming from the estate two kilometers below us," Science replied, indicating on a map where he was speaking of.

"Who's closest?" he asked the Tac O.

"We are, sir!" came the immediate reply.

"Shit, Lt. Morneau, get us down there as close as possible. Once we are down, I want the five Marines in Combat EVA to exit with me to find the source of that signal and put an end to it, hopefully without killing some son-of-a-bitch!" Raymond ordered.

The little ship dropped down and landed within the courtyard of the estate, the hatch opening even before the ship had completely settled. The six men and women in their Combat EVA suits used their suit's augmented systems to jump to the ground and rush up the stairs into the house, taking the large doors off their hinges when they hit them.

They followed the source of the signal to a room on the fourth floor of the building and broke through into the room. There were two men there, one was wearing a slave collar but was dressed rather well for a slave, the other was dressed quite well thank-you and did not wear a collar.

"Cease what you are doing immediately," Raymond shouted, using his suits built in loudspeaker to enforce his command.

The man ignored him and continued to call up slave names. He never got the chance to push the button again as one of the Marines hit him with a stun gun.

David screamed when the Master fell over, though secretly he was happy that the Master got to experience some of what a slave did. Stunning a person hurt. Waking up after was even more painful.

"Don't worry, he has just been stunned," the female Marine stated as the yelling man suddenly went silent. "Who is he?"

"That is Master Adolphus, youngest son of Peotre Adenomere," the man replied.

"And you are?" Raymond asked.

"I am David, his PA, sir," the man replied.

"Very well then, David. We don't want to stay here but we need to put an end to any opportunity this idiot will have to indiscriminately kill more people. How do we do that?" Raymond asked.

"If you take the main computer offline, we will not be able to send out any messages of any kind from the estate," David offered, very much afraid for his life.

"Where can we find the master computer?" Raymond demanded.

David turned and took them to a door which entered into a small room. In the center of the room, on a small stand, was a micro-mainframe. Raymond nodded to one of the Marines, who attached a link to the mainframe. He took all the data he could, sending it directly to the Jean Jacques Aucoin.

"Sir, it's starting to get hot out here!" Raymond received in a call from Lt. Morneau. "The local Militia and Airforce are starting to make some serious headway. We need to get out of here."

Raymond gave a questioning look to his tech. "We are finished, sir," the tech advised, then shot the mainframe with his stun gun. The computer overloaded and shut down. "They will have to replace the fuses in order to get her back up and running," the tech told him.

"Right, let's get out of here," Raymond ordered, turning for the only door out.

The six ran back through the house at full speed, seeking the exit.

"Sir, we are in the shit now! We have six local fighter jets heading at us and Militia units are entering the compound. The ship is taking small arms fire!" Lt. Morneau advised.

Raymond stopped to look out on the courtyard from the second story window. He could see immediately that they would not make the ship and even if they did, the ship could not open its hatch for them with all the small arms fire she was taking.

"Lt. Morneau, get the ship out of here, that is an order!" Raymond told him, turning to look at his team. "I'm sorry, we are captured," he told them, getting nods of understanding from the team.

Raymond led them down the steps to the first floor where there were more than a hundred Militia waiting for them. Their capture was somewhat of an anti-climax.

************

The people in the Battle Bridge looked on in disbelief as they heard the capture of Raymond and his fellow Marines, while the Jean Jacques Aucoin fought its way free of the atmosphere and the assault by the local Airforce.

More and more of the shuttles were heading for space, being protected on their way up from assault by the Valour Class ships. As the last of the shuttles left the surface, the Valour Class followed them up, the raid was over.

The Dewfall, In Orbit Planet Adenomere, Adenomere System

Dostier was watching as the shuttles made their way up. Several of them were attacked with the destruction of four in-atmosphere. The aircraft that took out those shuttles themselves being destroyed in retaliation. Eventually all of the shuttles were in orbit, heading for their respective support ships.

The Dewfall's Boatswain, MCPO Alexander Taché, was coordinating the recovery of damaged Union vessels, paring up ships to help damaged ships jump out, or recovering smaller ships onto larger ships. All of the damaged ships got out.

Dostier began to roll up the raid, moving them to the jump out point with a strong rear-guard to support them in case someone tried something stupid. The rescue ships jumped out first, followed not long afterwards by the damaged ships, paired with support ships. Then followed the heavies with the Whippet and Valour Class immediately afterwards.

They jumped into their 'safe' zone, fifteen light years from Adenomere, where they waited out the recharging of the older ships of Task Force Adenomere. Dostier took stock of her fleet.

"During our raid, nineteen of the heavies took major hits, though only five of them could not jump on their own," the Boatswain reported. "Two Whippet Class and eight Valour Class were destroyed in orbit with the loss of all hands.

"We have twenty-one damaged Whippet Class, six of which had to be taken aboard other vessels to make the jump here. There were thirty-six Valour Class damaged to the point they needed to be taken aboard other ships to make the jump, and a further sixteen with minor damage though they can jump on their own.

"We lost five civilian shuttles in-atmosphere with the loss of all aboard. That means six Marines, two pilots and up to eighty rescued citizens lost for a possible total of over 440 lives lost. The aircraft that shot those shuttles down were themselves harassed and three were destroyed, two escaped.

"We do not have the totals as of yet, but preliminary reports say that we lost 762, not including those lost in the shuttles, and 4,018 injured in orbit, those numbers will likely go upward some.

"We had a target of 90,000 citizens on Adenomere, we got 75,108 out. We are not sure at this time how many are actual citizens and how many are non-citizen slaves seeking asylum.

"Our target for all the raids was 180,000 citizens. If we add up all we rescued, we have a total of 218,525. We will need a couple of days to determine how many are citizens.

"Five of our Marines and one Navy officer were captured, that includes Capt. Raymond Clark, Sgt. Jacintha Aurans, Sgt. William Brogues, Tech. Sgt. Brian Donnes, Sgt. Melinda Tanten, and Sgt. Brianna Wilden," MCPO Taché finished.

"Send that report to our two base camps and advise them of the numbers heading their way. See if we can get some more hospital ships out to HD-137982, we will need that support," Dostier ordered.

On paper, the raids had been a massive success, however, it didn't seem like a success to Cmdre. Dostier...

End of chapter thirty-nine.

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