Chapter 120: Gloria Plucks a Phoenix

Chapter 120: Gloria Plucks a Phoenix

Marrow looked at the military officer on his screen with distaste.

"So you are telling me," Marrow said calmly, "that Jon Wintersmith simply flew up to the side of the Tartarus Detention Facility, cut a hole in the side of it, and walked off with the single largest intelligence asset we had?"

"Pretty much," the blonde woman replied with a shit-eating grin.

"Impossible," Marrow said. "He had to have assistance from the inside."

"Nope," the naval commander said cheerfully. "We've reviewed the sensor logs thoroughly. There was absolutely no sign of whatever they used... ever. We only knew they were there when we got breached."

"And they just strolled through the facility completely unopposed?"

The commander laughed.

"I wouldn't exactly call it 'unopposed'," the commander replied with a huge grin. "I think 'unhindered' might be a better term. They were in power armor. None of the internal defenses nor the bots could touch them."

"And what about the actual humans?" Marrow glowered. "They just stood idly by and let it happen?"

"If the turrets and the bots couldn't scratch them," the commander chuckled, "what the hell do you think the staff were going to do besides get themselves killed? They aren't packing anti-tank weapons up there, you know."

"And why aren't they?"

"Because," the commander replied in a very condescending tone, "If you live inside a balloon, you don't go around passing out pins, do you? Besides, they didn't expect walking tanks to show up. The place is designed to handle prisoners, not a military assault by elite operators. Its defense against that sort of thing is supposed to be the squadrons of fighters that patrol the area... Which, of course, only works if we can see them coming."

"I see," Marrow replied, "Thank you for the report."

"Don't thank me, asshole," the commander said with a smile. "If I had my way, you would be the one in there."

"I will bear that in mind, commander."

"You do that," the woman responded and switched off the transmission.

"Yet another one for the list," an elegantly dressed brunette lounging on the couch in Marrow's offices said as the screen went dark.

"Indeed," Marrow replied.

"We're going to have real issues with the Navy," the woman grumbled, "I told the boss a few, heh... 'key individuals' ain't gonna cut it. We needed to purge the whole goddamn thing. To think otherwise is just fucking stupid."

"Stupid?" Marrow replied in a dark tone. "Being so benighted as to pass judgment when one does not fully comprehend Her Ladyship's designs is what is truly 'stupid'. You should choose your words much more carefully, Monarch."

"It's just us Bloodlords in here," she replied, the holographic butterfly tattoos covering her body glimmering in the light. "We can skip the cult bullshit."

"You dare to equate Her Ladyship and all that she has built, all she has achieved, with a cult," Marrow hissed, his eyes narrowing.

"If the shoe fits," Monarch snickered, "And our beloved 'Mother' has been getting pretty goddamn flaky here lately."

"Her Ladyship is not a cult leader, and she is just fine!"

"Really?" Monarch smirked. "Never leaves her chambers? Always clutching at her side where that little puppy cut her? Constantly asking about 'Jon'," Monarch said in a gushing, simpering voice as she caressed her breast. "She's been a bit 'off' ever since she found out that her miracle treatment isn't a miracle, and ever since she has gotten back from that debacle in the Federation, it's gotten about ten times worse, and you know it."

Marrow clenched his jaw.

Monarch laughed a nasty laugh.

"Starting to doubt your god, eh?"

Marrow just snarled. He hated her. He hated her so much.

"Well, one of us has to inform her ladyship of the latest developments," he said, trying to change the subject.

"Could you do it, please?" Monarch sneered. "When she gets all moist over 'her Jon's' latest victory, she won't start touching herself in front of you. I may not be as lucky."

Marrow didn't even bother with a reply. He just turned his back on her and walked out of his office.

***

There are dead systems, and then there are dead systems...

Then, there is Barnard's Star.

The Barnard's Star system is about as "useless" as a solar system can be, an ancient population II star "lost in time" drifting through a much younger and far more metal-rich galaxy. There are plenty of rocks, even a planet or two, but, much like their parent star, very, very metal-poor.

Those rocks are just rocks, not worth the time and expense to mine.

For a brief time, the extreme low metallicity of the system was of interest to gas miners, the purity of the gas giants appealed, and the concentrations of some isotopes were different enough to be worthwhile, but as technology exploded in the young Republic, advances in isotopic separation and refining soon made that insignificant. Zeus and a few others built some small refineries around Barnard-4, a particularly nice gas giant, but interest waned quickly. There was plenty of "room" around Jupiter (not to mention Saturn, Neptune, and Uranus) for literally millions of gas miners and refineries, and even with the truly monstrous production rates the Republic was capable of, they weren't going to empty Jupiter for quite awhile.

Within just a few decades, Barnard's Star became a ghost town. Zeus has one ultra pure refinery that runs intermittently, and one dedicated old gas miner that harvests limited amounts of the incredibly pure hydrogen that the system offers, and a few enterprising independents bought another refinery or two on the cheap (for gigantic production facilities) but most of the refineries have been stripped and shut down. Machinery is cheap in the Republic. Man-hours, however, are not. It was cheaper to abandon the refineries and move the workforce to newer, more productive facilities in Sol.

There is also a small research facility in orbit around the star itself. Barnard's Star is incredibly old, one of the oldest in the galaxy. In fact, Barnard's Star is what was responsible for the Empire discovering the humans in the first place. An Imperial research expedition is what first detected electromagnetic signatures from nearby Sol.

Since it is such an old population II red dwarf, the Republic built a research station dedicated to it. It's quite nice, the nicest such station in known space, and often hosts researchers from all over the galaxy, including some of the more reclusive independent species. There is even an Xx who has called it home for decades, refusing to leave even when war broke out.

Aside from that research installation and the couple of refineries, there isn't much else going on...

Well, except for one tiny, almost insignificant thing.

Those giant empty hulks that used to be refineries make great warehouses, and they are basically in Sol, just four light-years away or so.

That, and the fact that "nobody goes there" was not lost on certain types of people...

People like Patricia Hu.

Over the past century, Red Phoenix Holdings quietly acquired all of the old empty refinery facilities, converting them into a vast "Logistics Support Center", making it their corporate headquarters and primary base of operations, and constructing a number of "secondary transit centers" throughout the outer reaches of Barnard's Star.

A lot of them are perfectly legitimate warehouses.

Others, however...The inaugural upload of this chapter took place via N0v3l-B1n.

***

In the dark outer reaches of Barnard's Star, there was a tiny patch of space just a little blacker than the rest of the void.

Gloria crouched happily in an impossibly small cabin. There wasn't a lot of spare room in a Moray, less in a Reaper...

And even less in what she had created.

Still, it was enough. She could get up and almost stretch, go to the bathroom, even actually sleep laying down, sort of.

Most people would consider being shoved in a box that small to be torture. Gloria?

She was the happiest she had been in years!

Perched on the side of what was joking called a "bed", she happily opened a paper bag, pulling out a brightly colored metallic foil clad polymer foam box.

She popped it open to reveal a burger-like sandwich, a "Bix Burger", A loaf of something that was exactly not bread, a pile of genetically-engineered hydroponic force-grown greenery that could no longer be called lettuce, and a patty consisting of a greasy "closely guarded secret". In fact, "What the fuck is a Bix?" was an incredibly successful marketing campaign when she was a kid.

Whatever exactly it was, it was incredibly popular, especially in the belt and outer solar system. Virtually every single Terran starport, transit hub, military base, and anywhere else a ship could park had a Bix kiosk where you could get "whatever the fuck it is" twenty-four hours a day.

Bloodlord Eguchi stood in front of three hundred soldiers standing in perfect rows as their commander, a middle-aged man in combat fatigues, looked at him nervously.

Eguchi smiled, much to the relief of the other man.

"They pass inspection," he simply said.

"Thank you, Sir!" their commander replied. "I do admit I had my doubts, but these convicts shaped up nicely."

"Former convicts," the bloodlord replied. "All of them completed their sentences, no matter how short they might have turned out to be."

"Yes, sir," the mercenary commander replied with a smirk. "Of course."

"You and your men have proven your effectiveness," Eguchi said. "The next three hundred will be arriving at this facility in one wee-"

Bloodlord Eguchi, the merc, the soldiers, and the entire "refinery" simply ceased to exist, replaced by a ball of fusing hydrogen several times hotter than the surface of the red dwarf they orbited.

***

"Can someone please tell me what the FUCK is going on?" Marrow bellowed as he stormed into a frantic command center.

A youthful appearing raven-haired Asian woman, dressed in a very nice skirt and blazer, angrily strode forward, her normally perfectly coiffured hair askew.

"What part of 'We are getting the shit kicked out of us' are you having problems with, boy?" she snarled.

"Ma'am!" a young male voice shouted. "Depot 47 is gone!"

"FUCK!" the woman shouted and then turned to face the room. "Did we get ANYTHING?"

"No, ma'am," a blonde woman replied in a nervous voice. "Just a missile appearing out of the void and then a hyperspace flare. No sensor data of any use."

"And does EVERYONE now know not to switch off their point defense if they see a fucking burger box?"

"Yes, Lady Bai." the blonde replied. "We sent out a priority alert."

"Burger box?" Marrow asked.

"They fucking Bix'ed us." the woman replied.

"What?" Marrow asked, his anger replaced with genuine confusion.

"It's an old Navy trick." Bloodlord Bai replied in annoyance.

"If it is such an old trick," Marrow asked, "Then why are your people falling for it?"

Bai screamed obscenities in Mandarin at him and started to turn away.

Marrow reached out and grabbed her shoulder.

Bloodlord Bai and everyone else in the command center froze as silence fell.

"You might want to consider your next action very carefully," Bai hissed, keeping her back to Marrow.

"And so should you," Marrow replied as he removed his hand. "I tolerate a certain level of insubordination out of respect for your abilities and out of my fondness for you, but you WILL answer my questions, understand... Ms. Bai?"

"...They fall for it because it works," Bai said, keeping her back to him. "Bix Burger packaging is made of very advanced materials and is very good at reflecting thermal radiation, along with most of the electromagnetic spectrum. A lot of AI's will misidentify it as either an incoming energetic projectile, a radar jammer, or simply think it is bigger and more massive than it actually is and will engage it with point defense weaponry. That means spending bullets, interceptor missiles, or usage cycles on an energy weapon to deal with a shield-level threat. Most operators will opt to temporarily switch off point defense to prevent this. Our attackers know it."

"Attackers?"

"There is no way a single ship could be engaging this many targets this quickly," Bai replied.

"And you mean to tell me that no point defense system available in the Republic can see through this... garbage?"

"Oh, the top shelf military ones can as well as several others that can easily be obtained on the grey market," Bai smiled, "If only someone had mentioned this before... Would you like to see the emails?"

Marrow scowled.

"Get everything we have in the air. Find them!" he snarled.

"Get everything in the air!" Bai gasped, holding her head in astonishment. "Oh my God! Why didn't I think of that? Hey! Everybody! Get everything in the air, NOW! Thank you, Bloodlord! Thank you for your profound wisdom." she sneered.

"That will be quite enough, Bai," Marrow said in a cold voice. "You waste time with this tomfoolery when you should be-"

"Waste time?" Bai snapped. "The only waste of time here is-"

Bai fell silent as a quiet "ping" issued from a speaker somewhere in the room.

Bai just closed her eyes.

"Where?" she asked the room.

"Relay station twelve," the blonde replied.

"How many ships?"

"Eight," the blonde said helplessly, "Including the Raptor."

"Arban?" Bai asked, her voice shaking slightly.

"Bloodlord Baatar was on board, ma'am," the blonde said quietly.

Bai stiffened.

"I see..." she said after a few moments.

"Do you," Marrow asked, choosing his words carefully, "need to be relieved?"

Bai glared at him.

"Very well then," Marrow said a few seconds later as he clasped Bai's shoulder, much more gently this time, "If there is anything I can do that isn't a 'waste of time', let me know."

Bai just silently nodded.

As Marrow departed, Bai looked up.

"Marrow," she said quietly.

"Yes, Bai?"

"They know exactly where to hit us. They could know about here as well. You should take Her Ladyship and go."

Marrow quietly nodded.

"Good hunting, Bai," Marrow said, drawing his blade and raising it in a salute.

"You too, Marrow."

As he left, Bai turned to face the room, tears starting to form in her eyes.

"Find those assholes!" she snarled. "Find them!"