Chapter 26: A Hunt Joined

After making the jump to hyperspace General Chad handed over the bridge of the Divine Savage and retired to his quarters. As he looked round the sparse apartment consisting merely of a cot, a cluttered desk and chest of some of his most treasured possessions, he suddenly felt weak. With Taveius dead Greeny in critical condition and now S117 dead the Terran high command was looking severely weakened. Not only that, but John Howard dead as well throwing to the Federation into the disarray of its complex election process. These humans had all been close friends of Chad's and for neither the first nor the last time he cursed the Slah'ke and the Invaders for these attacks and betrayals.

Pulling himself out of his self pity he sat down at his desk, pushing aside some paperwork on building violations in Achernar and called up the Orfine Council tactical net. Clicking though some inconclusive skirmishes in the Serpens sector he was surprised to find Lord Womble had personally taken a fleet to fend of the Dagons in Aldebaran. As Chad read down the report he was more and more unsettled with what he learnt. The fleet Womble led had entered Aldebaran to find a much larger fleet than was usual for the Dagons and without firing a shot had agreed to met with the leader of the fleet. Very soon after meeting the Dagon fleet leader Womble had sent for two elite Orfine Close combat squads, sent the fleet back to Olfus to be re-dispatched under Marc7005 (Chad always found Kolari names odd, even for giant light bulbs) On a mission to take Mizar, then headed off with the Dagons.

The old Orfine leaned back on his chair and puzzled over this, the Dagons were sworn enemies of the Orfine, trying to extend an ancient claim over many Orfine systems and harassing Orfine patrols regularly. After considering this for a while he decided that his leader must have his reasons. Chad, whilst respecting Womble as his friend and superior, always thought that he had far too a lax attitude towards war. Even though Womble's tactical prowess was undeniable Chad considered him to lack the killer instinct that most species assumed all Orfines to posses. Rubbing his tired eyes Chad punched out a report to the council to the council saying he had been unsuccessful at locating Machinehr in Adhara and was moving on to El Nath.

Standing up Chad went over to his trunk and opened up the old leather chest and pulled out his battered copy of "L'Orinoco de colección" a classic novel dating back to the Orfine days on Uranus, and Chad's personal favourite. Intending to spend an hour or two reading it before turning in, Chad laid down in his cot and fell asleep before he finished the first page…

Eight hours later the General was woken by a soft chime over the quarter's intercom.

"Chad here," he said groggily, he was getting too old to be fighting had to hand with these damn lizards "what's the situation?"

"Sir! We are about enter the El Nath system." His first officer Dark Lycan replied

"I'll be right there" he grunted shutting off the intercom and gently putting his book back in the trunk for another time.

"Long range sensors report" Chad said striding onto the bridge of the Scarab.

"System appears to be empty sir"

"Helm requesting permission to set course for the primary planet sir"

"Granted" Chad said walking over to the Helmsman. A talented young recruit, but over promoted due to the fact that his Uncle was a system Lord.

"Take us in slowly" Chad said quietly to the helmsman "approach along a vector close to the primary star, I don't want us being detected"

"Aye sir!" he replied, slightly too loudly.

Sitting down in the large cracked leather Command chair Chad flicked the Ship wide intercom on with one claw

**

This is General Chad speaking, We are now approaching the Planet where we believe Machinehr to be hiding, Security teams report to the transporter stations, the rest of you man your posts with extra vigilance, this may turn heated very quickly

**

With this and strapping his Battle Claws to his side Chad left the bridge and headed to the docking bay to lead the attack on the Union's 'Secret' Base.

As Chad was strapping himself into the Co-Pilots seat of one of the two customised Nexus Photons Docked on the Divine Savage he got a call from Dark Lycan on the bridge.

"Sir we have an encoded transmission from an unidentified source, it's an older code but it checks out, do you want me to patch it though?"

"Go ahead Lycan" the general replied, this transmission was very strange, the Divine Savage was deep in enemy territory and no other Orfine ships were within twenty-five Parsecs.

As the com panel switched turned on Chad let out a short gasp of surprise, it was a Genus on the secured channel! Chad quickly regained his composure and addressed the mutant.

"Identify yourself Brood! How did you have access to this channel?! And how in Varak's name did you know we were here?!!"

The Genus' face contorted in what Chad assumed was a smile.

"In answer to your questions in order I am Leader of Darkness, there is little that the Brood do not know, and you Orfine aren't exactly renowned for your abilities in a cloaker now are you?"

Chad could feel his nose drying out in embarrassment and anger and hoped that this Genus knew as little about Orfine physiology as he knew about theirs.

"Well what are you doing here, and why didn't you contact us on a standard channel?"

"Why I'm doing the same thing you are my good dog, looking for that traitorous lizard Machinehr"

'Sir' Lycan's Voice sounded in his personal COM-piece in his ear 'The Genus is sending us his tactical data and requesting we reciprocate, should I comply?'

Chad tapped the earpiece one signalling an affirmative, as he looked at the Photons tactical display it showed a brood Venom-class light interceptor by the name of Lockheed eight Mkm off the starboard bow of his Scarab, it was shown in italics on the screen indicating that no visual lock was available to confirm its presence.

"The Brood must be in worse economic trouble than I realised if they can only spare one Venom to hunt this lizard" Chad said with a slight mocking tone in his voice.

"Let's just say this is a personal matter for me not a Factional one" the Genus replied "anyway, I take it your heading down to Drammal?"

"Possibly" Chad cautiously replied still not entirely trusting this smooth talking Genus

"Well then I'm sure you won't mind me tagging along then will you?"

Chad was getting irritated with the slow progress of this conversation now, he wanted to get down to the surface and get this mission over with

"Land at these co-ordinates, Chad out"

He turned off the communication screen and turned round to the Orfine Shock troops sitting patiently in the Improvised cargo area where the secondary gun and hyperdrive were housed before Chad had them hauled out and refitted.

"Ok Hounds, time to go catch a lizard!"

With the hearty roar that greeted this statement Chad nodded to the pilot and they headed out towards the planet below.

On the turbulent ride down to the frozen cobalt blue surface of Drammal General Chad, Lord of Capella, forth in command of the entire Orfine empire, was as quiet as a mouse. He just couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong with this mission, it undoubtedly had something to do with Leader of Darkness, the Genus that had discovered them in the system while cloaked then invited himself onto their mission. But he couldn't put his finger on why that made him so uneasy, the Brood were technically allies against the Invaders and Slah'ke. Shaking him self out of his pensiveness he noticed that the assault squad were getting restless, he checked his chronometer as was fairly surprised to see that twenty minutes had gone by since they had departed from the Divine Savage. The General lifted himself out of his chair and turned to the squad of eleven hardened combat troops, all eyes were on him.

"Hounds of the twenty seventh Blood Pack!" he roared "we are about to undertake a mission of vital importance, we have information that upon this frozen waste of planet lies a Union base"

"The vicious lizard dictator Machinehr, himself may be here" Chad paused to allow this to sink in

"Make no mistake our enemies outnumber us vastly and many of you may die. However we have a unique opportunity to strike a crushing blow on our enemy, are you with me?!"

The roaring and baying in reply to that last rhetorical question was so loud that Chad half thought that they might be detected simply because of it, then dismissed the thought for the nonsense it was.

"Landing ETA two minutes" the pilot shouted of the dieing roars of the combat troops "Get into your seats pups, were going in at high speed"

The Photon transport streaked down through the alien air at just over five times the speed of sound. Its cloaking device projecting the image of a fifty metres asteroid burning up in the atmosphere as it went. As the pilot dropped down to a mere two hundred metres from the surface two particle bombs were released as the Photon pulled out of its dive, killed its speed and shifted its cloaking device to project the asteroid over the bombs.

The end result of this was a fairly convincing display of an asteroid crashing into the planet rather than a troop transport coming in for an assault.

The ship landed about a kilometre behind the still rising cloud of smoke and debris from the faked asteroid crash and twelve Combat Orfine quickly bailed out of the uncloaked ship and as soon as they had done it shimmered seemingly out of existence and took off with a gust of wind.

"Good luck guys" came the pilot's voice "Give 'em hell for me!"

And with that Chad lead the Orfine assault squad on the twenty kilometres trek to where the Union base had been spotted during the decent.