Flight Of Prometheus

Chapter 12 The King of Thornes

"Prometheus, you are authorized to land at outter platform 32J. Follow your marshaler and do not deviate from his commands." anounces the ground operator for all of Ondourus 4's air space.

"Roger tower, proceeding to 32J." replies Terock. As he guids the Prometheus into the atmosphere, he lowers the main landing legs and prepares the ship for atmospheric flight. A few minutes later and the giant matchbox with wings sets down.

"Open all outer hatches and begin air recycling. Im sure the crew would appreciate it," Orders Baker.

"Sir you are aware my O2 Filters and scrubbers remove 99.8 percent of harmful gasses as well as any impleseant smells," Violet says.

"I know, its so filtered I can't smell anything. I'd like the ship to atleast have a smell so I can tell if my nose still works." he laughs.

As the passengers and crew begings to disembark a small group has been selected to stay on board for shifts to man each station. General Baker makes his way to a personal loading ramp and proceeds to find the closest dock worker.

"You there, I need to speak to whoever is in charge of your security."

"Yes Sir, Follow me." the young man leads him through the various docks and finally up into a control tower. "Hey Franks, take this man to Knight"

Before this "Franks character can answer, Baker interupts, "No not to night. Right now." both men look at him puzzled.

"Sir, Nathan Knight is our Captain of the Guard."

"Oh" he says half embarrassed, "well I need to speak with King Rose."

"But why does he need to speak with you," a third voice, much deeper then the other 2 says behind Baker.

"Because the son of a bitch owes me his life," Baker says while turning around to face his friend. "I knew it was you," he says as he finds himself face to face with King Rose. "How have you been?" he asks while extending a hand to shake.

"Been better," Rose takes and shakes his hand with a vice like grip. "Have you heard of the training spacestation New Cornado?"

"Yeah, its where the Royal Guard trains their Seal teams at. Or it was until it was lost almost 2 years ago, Why?"

"Well its not lost anymore, the spacestation had a close encounter with a rogue commet that towed them into this sector 3 months ago. They crashed on the far side of this continent and have been wreaking havoc throughout the country side. From what my men can tell they haven't been able to contact Royal guard command, but they are trying. My men can hold them back but we are slowly loosing ground to them."

"And you need my help to get rid of them?"

"Yes"

"Why haven't you just taken them out from space?"

"They have a few anti-air batteries and a couple railguns that survived the crash as well as missile pods that still work. Every ship I've sent has been destroyed and im not willing to risk my capital ship against it. Here lets go to my command and control room and I'll show you the layout." Baker follows Rose back to his castle all the while chatting about whats been happening and how both have been doing. After around 20 minutes they finally enter into a room bigger then the bridge of the prometheus and filled with more computer screens then Baker has ever scene. In the middle of the room sits a wide table with a 3D holo projection of the planet and its moons. They approch the table and rose begins to mess with some buttons. "Ok so here we are at the capital," the image zooms in to show a satellite view of the capital, "and over here is the crash site,"the view pans westward about 500 miles. The spacestation shown is destroyed, entire sections just pancaked flat and evidence of a fire from several other spots. 100 yards away is an encampment up against a cliff face. Massive piles of rock have been placed in a defensive wall around the entrance of a makeshift cave. The railgun turrets surrounding the entire area.

"Looks like they are dug in like ticks. I see they have even built themselves a fallback bunker. Is this a live feed?"

"Yes, I've got a satellite in position above them."

"Why have they not shot it down yet?"

"Because the satellite is only this big," Rose hold out his hands about 6 inches apart. "They probably can't even spot it."

"Or they know its there and have been giving your boys false data."

"I doubt that. We have been watching them close since the reports of them first came in. They have been constantly working on getting their bunker dug out. We estimate they have managed to move around 2 million metric tons of dirt and rock out of their bunker and moved about half that much metal from their station in."

"Ok so we are going to have to hit them hard as soon as possible. I'll have Higgins roll out our mech units. Speaking of Higgins, where is the brother I sent you?"

"We put him threw some training to better use his powersuit. Where did you get that by the way?"

"One of my engineers found it in some Royal Guard hidden R&D file. He then deleted is so they couldn't use it."

"Oh, well they stole that design from us, but they didn't get the training program that goes with it, or the upgrades. I see your engineer managed to develop some upgrades of his own so thats good."

"Thats good. Im guessing he is still in training?"

"Yeah, anyways how many troops can you have deployed by...."