Duty
Part 5 – Misdirection
(Art source unknown)
Index: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4
This publication began with me and Sakura chatting about Japan of my Starshatter alternate history universe, samurai, and mecha maidens. When I posted the 1st chapter of “Duty”, from my A Mandate Of Sword And Railgun story collection, I did not expect that so many of you would read it!
This is the last part 5 of the story, where everything comes together. For some, like the Alduri invaders, certain things rather come apart… but this you will discover as you read the story.
Enjoy and do not forget to support my work, if you are able, by buying one of my published books!
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The Admiral sat in his command chair and browsed the most recent scanning data, which the frigate’s Fleet Captain had ordered. Not one to question the much older and experienced officer, he also accepted the captain’s other request – their two escorts were immediately ordered to cloak. Adopting once more an ambush formation, his invisible command frigate, flanked by the two corvettes, lurked in the dark of space.
All scanners, set on passive mode, were nevertheless operating well beyond their standard capacity – his captain had ordered the deployment of cloaked spy satellites. Deck crews were standing at the ready, all of his and the corvettes strike craft ready for launch. One wing of their starfighters had already been deployed and they too, cloaked, lurked nearby, cannons and missiles ready to shoot dead any Shimazu attacker.
The star trooper complement of their vessels, even though less than full, was raised to alert status two. Every important spaceship system, tactically valuable intersection defended by double the number of troops they originally had stationed there. Somewhat relaxed by all of these most prudent measures, the Alduri admiral sifted through the files, noting that except some weird background star noise, his scopes were clear.
Until they weren’t...
Suddenly, as if ordered by some insane star deity, the scan network of his squadron was aglow with attacking Terran ships. Coming from exactly the direction he had originally expected them to, the enemy force consisted of three big carriers, surrounded by fourteen strike corvettes and a swarm of escort vessels. He blinked somewhat confused, startled yet not scared – the Humans have deployed perhaps all of their Colonial Navy units in this quadrant, a quite visible force.
No monstrous craft shifting in and out of hyperspace, firing weapons which defied conventional military wisdom. No swarms of samurai warriors flickering out of the dark, their shimmering blades slaying brave Alduri. Moreover, the enemy moved towards Luxa Secundis, meaning that his starships had remained fully undetected! Rising his hand, he gained the attention of his command staff and then the Admiral ordered:
“Now we will successfully ambush these brazen colonials and ruin their entire force! Capture one of their carriers if possible, present the naive Human commander to our ruling Council, and thereby achieve a great feat. Ready yourself, Alduri! The hour when these upstarts, these producing defective clients barbarians will finally feel terror draws nigh! Move the squadron, abandon our spy satellite network – it has served its purpose. Deck crews, deploy the strike craft; instruct all attack wings to fly close in tight formations – they will be quite safe under our cloaking shields.”
Everyone and everything moved with purpose; attack wings were deployed, they reformed under his frigate’s shields. Then something else happened – Ops reported a strange occurrence. His officer swore that an object passed through their cloaking field, vanished and then reappeared, only to vanish again.
Before he could order another scan, his command ship shook, collision alarms rang and one of the nearest bulkheads flew apart. Showered by molten metal, many of the bridge officers died instantly. Then, as if to reveal the depths of his and his people’s ineptitude, all Terran sensor readings vanished. The huge ball of nuclear fire he clearly saw on his sensors, engulfed one of the corvettes.
Together with her entire crew, all strike craft and every support shuttle launched beforehand, she went down in but a second...
“Ops, what is happening?! You were sure of those readings! Where did those torpedoes even come from?!” – Screamed he, while emergency bulkheads slid, attempting to close the hull breaches.
“This was a Terran trap – we never saw anything on our screens, Ser’vah! Those had to have been some newly developed munitions, Admiral. According to Coalition intelligence, only Shimazu specialist raid ships are given those, sir.” – The Chief Ops officer responded, one hand on his sidearm and eyes darting between his command console and the hull breach.
“Drop cloak and reinforce all shield arcs! Order the strike craft to spread their formations immediately and...”
He could not continue because everything on the bridge suddenly went dark. What he and his officers thought to be a simple bomb was instead a breaching charge, which flew before the boarding pod. These tactics were only used by Terran special ops, but the Alduri admiral and his Coalition informants had no knowledge of this.
His bridge crew, whose systems were successfully disabled by an EMP charge, found themselves under assault. Dashing through another breach, which was created by plasma cutters, a team of Human commandos began mowing down everyone in their sights.
“Comms, immediately order the backup security team to the bridge!”
The admiral grabbed his snub gun and took cover behind his comfy command chair, hastily flipping the weapon’s safety off.
“We are unable to follow your order, Ser’vah! The Terrans are interfering with all of our short-range communications.”
“Focus your minds and send a telepathic command then!”
He witnessed the demise of many Alduri troopers; those who acted too sluggish were instantly shot dead by the Human rapid firing, tubular shaped railguns.
“We... cannot, for they,” – wailed his comms officer, her voice laden with much pain and finally, the admiral saw her bloodied face – “they are... blocking us!”
He shuddered by the realization that the members of this commando team were probably powerful telepaths, otherwise they couldn’t have barred the thoughts of his bridge officers.
“Ga’eshte, Nol’tere, bridge officers – everyone come to me! We will slow down, stop these brazen fools or die trying!”
What was left of his troopers dashed, attempting to follow their admiral’s command, yet only a dozen of them survived.
“Quickly – captain, you and the sergeant will make a run for our bridge’s secondary entrance. Hack, blow your way through if need be, but get us reinforcements! The rest of us must do our duty, halt the boarders advance.”
His fleet captain, followed by a heavily-armed sergeant and one of his threes, immediately ran towards the nearest emergency exit, weapons firing.
“Ser’vah, the Shimazu raid ship is now visible with a naked eye – they are assaulting our second escort! I can see the corvette’s point defense cannons shooting enemy torps...”
Jubilantly shouted his Ops officer, whose raised head was then promptly blasted to gory bits by a burst of Terran railgun fire.
“Keep your heads down and return fire!” – Ordered the admiral, eyes looking for another officer who had a safer vantage point, someone who could look through the transparent arnium.
“No, they did not survive, sir.” – Answered the questioning look in his eyes another ops specialist.
“The Shimazu got them with another volley of torps, detonated them all around the corvette. Now they are lasering what is left of the damaged strike craft and all the escape pods...”
“Keep shooting at them, it is only a matter of time before the crew comes to our aid!”
So, Her Eminent Observance was correct and his force doomed from the get go. They have fallen into the elaborately crafted, planned and perfectly executed Shimazu trap! In hindsight, he should’ve done exactly what she advised – scrubbed the surrounding space from Alduri presence, evacuated all his troops and hypered away under cloak.
Yet was retreat even possible?!
Perhaps the sneaky Terrans had anticipated this too and prepared accordingly, deployed hyperspace mines even. That and they apparently had stealth breaching pods, which allowed their specialists to board cloaked Alduri vessels with near impunity. The admiral could only hope that this was the only specialist Terran commando team to board his frigate.
Standard operating procedure during combat when a ship’s bridge went silent, the engineering section would take over. They had backup bridge command consoles there and being some of the most experienced officers on board, could steer the vessel out of trouble. Hopefully soon, his Chief Engineer would order the frigate to hyperspace away from here.
While he thought of this and missed the short burst he fired at one Terran, the frigate shook violently. The Human attackers were ready for this, because they lied down beforehand, while his own troops and officers all stumbled and fell on their behinds. Immediately after what he assumed to be a torpedo or railgun barrage hitting his frigate’s engine section, the enemy charged again.
Were these troopers even commandos?!
Before his eyes, something equally terrifying and marvelous transpired. The Terrans ran with such dazzling speed, their weapons fire was so accurate, that no matter what his crew did, the Humans kept advancing. Mowing down every single Alduri before them, they hastily lobbed powerful grenades which shredded both cover and men with ease. Apparently these boarders were uncaring about the damage their attacks inflicted on any and all of the bridge’s command consoles.
He noticed one of them split from their group, slash through the armored bulkhead, under which his vessel’s mainframe was located, ripped and then dragged the whole thing with him as if it weighed nothing!
For a short few seconds, after his fleet captain’s voice echoed on the bridge, the admiral’s hopes went up. His second in command had been successful and swarming after him, came the bridge’s backup security team. Comprised entirely of Nol’tere, these brave Alduri troopers, three hundred of them, ran towards his position.
In but a flash they died, after two Terran commandos launched a devastating barrage of high-explosive missiles. The multi-launcher’s warheads blasted his troops apart and showered those who survived the detonations with thousands upon thousands of armor piercing shrapnel.
There was another heavily-armed battalion of star troopers on board, but by the time they got into telepathic fold range, everything would be over. He and what was left of his troops resisted, yet all attempts to stop the Terrans were in vain. After only but a dozen star-seconds had clicked away, the Human commandos had successfully killed every other soldier or officer in his vicinity. Someone shot the snub gun he held in his arms to shreds and the admiral rolled screaming on the gory floor plating – one of his hands was now a bloody stump.
“I surrender! Do you hear me, barbarian filth!? Take me into your custody, capture me, I am the Admiral in command of this squadron.”
Three of the Humans now stood around him and only now did he realize how tall they were!
“No, all of our objectives are now achieved.”
The admiral heard an unmistakably Terran voice speak in his mother’s tongue and with such murderous tone were these words said, that he shuddered.
“I am a high-ranking officer of the Alduri Navy! Capture me and your intelligence service can question...”
“There is no need to do that, I will soon have all the intelligence locked inside that arrogant mind of yours.”
The commando, who looked like the unit’s commander, gave his troopers a single hand sign and they quickly dashed away.
“You are the arrogant one, Terran! I am a telepath, you cannot simply waltz into my brain and take whatever it is that you need!”
The admiral spew, confident that he could withstand the Human’s attack, maybe win a bit more time, enough even for his fold capable star troopers to come and save him.
“Yes, we know about those ‘fold troopers’ of yours, Alduri. How naive all of you invader types are! Always assuming that either numbers or your vaunted racial ‘superiority’ will give you the winning edge.”
The Terran immediately proved this statement true, after two full squads of the admiral’s fold capable Nol’tere deployed on the bridge got quickly shredded to pieces by accurate railgun crossfire.
“The fact that they can fold, means not that the position where they appear cannot be pinpointed, you obnoxious fool!” – His adversaries quickly redeployed, grenading another two squads of Alduri.
“This is a feat not possible for anyone, but the most powerful telepaths! Who... who are you?!”
“We are stormtroopers from the Terran Psy-corps, sent here to punish you, Alduri scum.”
The Terran’s voice was unnervingly calm and ever more terrifying since the hastily materializing close by Nol’tere squad did so, their corpses encased in bloodied ice.
“Now... we have ten beautiful star-seconds left, which I will spend rampaging inside your head. Let us see what that ‘superior’ Alduri mind of yours capable of, invader.”
The admiral’s last seconds were spent in torturous, agonizing pain, as the Psy-corps operative raped his mind, ripped neuron after bloody neuron stealing all the secrets he possibly could. Then, after six star-seconds had passed, the Terran stormtrooper stepped away, casually crushing the head of one frozen soldier with his fist.
“Is Exfil ready to pick us up? This pitiful idiot was even weaker than our commander had anticipated.”
“Yes, we can fold at a moment’s notice, Colonel. The warhead is activated, as per your order, sir.”
The Terran nodded, gave one last look to the admiral’s face, as if he wanted to be absolutely sure of something and then, just before he and his stormtroopers flickered away, whispered:
“Who knew Alduri mugs were that ugly looking?”
Star troopers swarmed the bridge, though there was no trace left from their Terran attackers. Seconds later, their entire warship splintered from the inside out – the three hundred megaton nuclear warhead finished what the Yokai railgun barrage had began.
* * *
The Alduri lieutenant heard how every single one of his troopers died. Out of thin air and exactly behind his people, appeared a group of warriors wearing strange, blue colored Shimazu armor. Due to his own, much greater telepathic might and skill with the blade, he somehow managed to parry the killing blow, chopping off his attacker’s hands.
Oh, how the fortunes of War shifted – only a few minutes ago it was him and his soldiers who controlled the battlefield and the Terrans nearly vanquished. The defiant Human duo was nearly beaten – they could barely stand on their feet!
Swinging at the nearest samurai, he heard over the comms that more Alduri units reported the appearance of these blue armored warriors. It was happening everywhere his people still had any living troops left and after parrying another deadly blow, he came to the realization that all of this was one huge, elaborately planned Shimazu trap!
The scream of overcharged Terran engines echoed above and a dropship, bearing the samurai warrior colors landed nearby. For some reason his enemies, even though they could’ve probably shot him dead a couple times over – did not. Before him, the two wounded humans still stood; the male leveled his sword and shouted:
“We missed meeting each other underground, Alduri; although I did kill many of your kin, you survived our traps and kept hunting us.” – The man slightly bowed to the closest blue warrior and that human saluted him in return.
“Saitama San, you have two minutes, but I am sure you could finish this honorless slime even quicker. Also, know this – your adoptive father swore that you were still alive and you Nozomi Chan, your friends vehemently believed that you survived the battle.”
The lieutenant heard their conversation; since he knew their Japanese Human lingo, he understood all of it and screamed:
“What will happen when I slay you... Saitama?! You can’t possibly believe you are strong or skilled enough to face me and live, not in the state you are right now.”
“If you fight with honor, then you shall be released, Alduri.” – Answered his question the female, Nozomi.
“I don’t believe this! You barbarians will give me false hope, let me walk away, only for this woman to then shoot me in my back!”
“You project your own and your people’s dishonor upon us, scum! Rest assured that if, and that is a big if, you somehow best my Saitama, the warriors who surround us will let you leave.”
Nozomi still gripped the heavy railgun rifle she killed nearly one dozen of his troopers with, her blood and theirs smothered all over its long frame.
“Though you keep insulting our honor, I will let you know one thing, Alduri.”
“What is that?”
“If my chosen falls slain by your blade, then you can rest assured that I will shoot you! Never in your back, but from point blank range and straight in that butt ugly Alduri mug of yours. IF I die, my friends will follow, finish the job in my stead...”
“Bloodthirsty barbarian scum!”
He could only hiss in response, before that soldier he had lost so many of his own troopers to chase in the caves came at him.
“You are the bloodthirsty one, invader. It wasn’t us who came to your space, attacked your home and threatened to kill your family! Now, stop blabbering and fight me, my two minutes are already ticking away.”
Both men were quite different; their skill, training and most importantly – their way of thinking set them apart. The lieutenant was an accomplished, experienced soldier, his suit was better armored and had an exoskeleton. Yet, soon, he found out that the slightly limping young Human soldier was faster than him.
What was his most prized Alduri blade style, the stance which always gave him the edge, now limited him, shackled his feet to the ground almost. Still, he aimed to act prudently and by prolonging the fight, capitalize upon his less experienced opponent’s injuries. They circled quickly, swung then stabbed at each other, hitting either the air or parrying their weapons.
For the first few seconds of combat, that Saitama human, he wielded his shorter blade with one hand, and his legs moved strangely, to say the least. If that was a swordsman’s step, the Alduri warrior thought to himself, that was the most ludicrous one he’d ever witnessed.
It was a rapid, quick exchange of blows, dodges and sidesteps – whomever made the first mistake, he’d be the one to die. With the speed, size and most importantly, the strength which they swung their vibroblades with, a single proper hit was more than enough.
Not one of his previous battles was so intense! He firmly believed that defiant barbarian Saitama was to become yet another one of his many slain in melee enemies. To the lieutenant’s surprise however, this Human easily resisted all of his telepathic attacks. That and the limp, that bloody leg wound, it didn’t slow him down that much! Before he could think of changing his stance from attack to defense, attempt to lull the Terran into overreaching, Saitama’s blade collided with his.
There existed an Alduri technique, a swordsman’s bluff he was greatly experienced in and he risked everything in an attempt to pull off a sneak attack. When he moved his entire body in a deceptive manner, it would look to his opponent that he aimed to push with the sword, break his enemy’s guard.
Instead, he made a dashing step back and aside, then swung with his blade, putting all of his exoskeleton’s power behind that strike. With the speed, precision and best of all power he committed into this maneuver, Saitama’s chest should’ve been splintered, and the obnoxious barbarian lay dead on the ground.
The sudden change of view, then a sharp pain in his neck area, however, alerted the Alduri officer that something was amiss. Before his brain stopped working, the Shimazu soldier looked at him from above and without any hint of pain in that wounded leg of his, knelt. With waning senses, the lieutenant attempted to assail the Human’s mind for one last time, yet it was a vain pitiable attack and his enemy rebuked it with ease.
“I knew someone as arrogant as you would try to pull an ill planned sneak attack, although why do this against a warrior from our clan? We are the Shimazu, our soldiers are masters of misdirection, for deception is an important, integral part of The Art of War.”
Saitama wearily sighed, stood up and walked away, once more speaking something, but in the far distance:
“Our people, all of them are safe?”
“Yes, the sacrifice of your brothers in arms and those mecha maidens was not in vain. Rest assured, you have earned your new title and blade – Samurai.”
More was said by the female, Nozomi, and yet the Alduri warrior could no longer hear anything for he had since passed away. Chopped off head firmly resting now in the dirt, light from the Terran engines were probably the last thing which reflected from his eyes.
The steps and the presence of these Terran blue clad warriors soon departed this battlefield. A place which would remain littered with the rotting corpses of many Alduri for months to come. Those who arrogantly assumed their superiority in both arms and telepathy could overpower, even outwit the Shimazu, these invaders would soon become one with the earth.
Perhaps, after the planet’s rightful inhabitants returned, they could use this better fertilized, enriched soil, to quickly regrow their orchards? Only time would tell what would happen to their colony, them and the two, soon-to-be married youths.
Great conclusion to this battle.