Chapter 476 (2/2)

The night was dark and cold, the sky clear but empty of pinprick stars, instead full of slight streaks in the night sky. The ground was cold and hard, the trees massive giants that ignored everything around them as if nothing was consequential to them.

The hydrofoil was silenced, the design of the hull crafted in such a way that it was almost undetectable, and the surface was of modern stealth materials. It shimmered as the optical camouflage systems dropped as the hydrofoil settled into the water and the lift foils retracted into the body. The back opened up, the top sliding into the body, the back end lowering into the water.

Four figures moved out of the completely covered hydrofoil and onto the back deck, checking their gear, and then lowered themselves into the water.

The back deck reconfigured so it was covered again and the vessel shimmered and vanished as the optical camouflage system came back online.

Nothing moved in the dark night, not even a breeze to shift the underbrush or the lower branches of the massive trees, which swayed back and forth gently in the upper wind a few hundred feet up.

Finally the five figures appeared. The top of their heads first, exposing their eyes, as they scanned the shoreline. Finally they moved forward, coming up out of the water like strange rude beasts from ancient tales.

Four legs, four arms, a long lower body and a thick torso at a right angle to the long lower body. They removed their swimming gear, putting it in the bushes, and pulled on black stealth suits. They took time to check their gear, then began assembling a bare framework with stealth grav lifters and a reactionless engine. Muffled drills were silent as bolts and screws affixed plates to the frame, until a vaguely teardrop craft had been assembled.

Small drones on stealthed systems buzzed away as the foursome worked on assembling the infiltration vehicle, designed to be undetectable by the best technology it had ever run the risk of being fielded again.

Before the vehicle was assembled, the drones had managed to get a look, then dissolve into powder after sending out a single split-second tightbeam squeal across multiple channels. The heavily encrypted signal, using cutting edge 16-bit psuedo-random seed generation that would take a million years to decrypt, went out and was received by the team working on the craft.

The team leader examined the data as his four man team worked.

Their target was less than eight hundred miles away. Lightly guarded, mostly a tight perimeter around the house. The target was, according to the drones, inside the house, sipping tea without a care in the world. The house was made from harvested plants, iron fixtures, and common silicate glass windows. Nothing about it was higher tech than basic electrical appliances.

Patrolling around the house were a half dozen massive robots, festooned with ornamental chains and decorations devised to be fearsome to those who view the robots, a primitive superstitious attitude the team leader scoffed at. They did not patrol further away than a hundred meters from the white wooden picket fence.

Once inside the field portable stealth lifter the team leader turned on the red light as the pilot lifted it a scant few meters off the ground and began moving forward in a low almost inaudible hum.

”We will stop two kilometers from the house. It is isolated, no other structures for twenty kilometers. We will be out of range of any passive sensor,” the team leader said.

”Method of termination of the Tnvaru?” one member asked.

”Precision laser,” the team leader said. ”One, two, maybe three shots will be required. Be ready.”

”The windows, are they designed to disperse or attenuate a laser beam?” another asked.

”Negative. The wood is dry, lacquered and painted in different places. If worse comes to worse a plasma round should destroy the wall and provide access for a precision laser shot,” the team leader said.

They all nodded, watching as the team leader went through the information. He carefully went through every angle for where they could set up, finally settling on a slight hill, covered by trees and brush, that overlooked the house.

It took nearly three hours, the huge moon setting, to reach the point. The vehicle slowly lowered to the ground and went into standby, the sides opening up to allow the strike team to exit the vehicle. They began gathering equipment.

The group moved slowly, carefully. They set up the camouflage systems carefully, then went back to the vehicle for their weapons. The team leader hung back slightly, looking around with all six eyes, to make sure that they had not been detected and that everything was properly camouflaged as well as making sure their exfiltration path was unblocked.

The team leader and the four others stopped in shock, staring, as there was a hissing noise and pale gray smoke suddenly billowed out in a cloud. Before the five Lanaktallan could figure out what was going on the smoke dissipated, revealing the strangest sight.

Two bipeds, dressed head to foot in black cloth, their faces covered, only their oddly tilted dark eyes visible, stood between the strike team and the vehicle. They had the hilt of some kind of long weapon over their right shoulders at an angle, but otherwise looked unarmed.

The Lanaktallan, realizing that what they were seeing was Terrans, went for their silent neural pistols, which were turned up high enough to damage the heavily resilient nervous systems of the Terrans.

The two figures darted forward, their hands going up to the hilt and smoothly drawing their blades. The blades themselves were covered in a light oil that kept the folded warsteel blade from gleaming in the dim light.

They darted through the ranks, each in between two.

They made two quick motions, hard overhead strikes, on each side of them as they moved between the Lanaktallan so fast they would have been a blur if they had not been all in black and merging with the shadows and darkness of the night.

The two black clad figures stopped in front of the team leader, who stared.

The four members of the strike team sagged weirdly.

The upper torso slid in half, cut diagonally, all four arms severed either down by the wrists or up by the shoulders.

The lower flanks fell into two pieces, cleanly cut.

The Team Leader started to draw his own pistol.

The two black clad figures ran by him, their blades whispering as they sliced through the air.

Both figures stopped and slowly turned, using their fingertips to squeegee the blades clean.

As they both sheathed their swords the Lanaktallan Team Leader fell into eight pieces.

Far to the north a gray skinned female saurian, all chiseled muscle that her wet-suit enhanced the appearance of rather than hid her musculature, swam up and placed a flat circular charge against the bottom of the hydrofoil.

As she swam away it went off, putting a massive hole in the side of the boat.

It listed to the side, burbling, and slowly sank as the Rigellian Commando swam toward the stealth sub.

Aboard the sub Ba'ahnya'ahrd clapped two hands, his other hands busy, one petting the purrboi, the other scratching the goodboi's neck.

He looked from the monitor as the black clad figures backflipped into the bushes and vanished, to stare at his minion, Chrome Cortez.

”NINJAS ARE FUCKING AWESOME!”