Cockamamie

[Maj Vaos 0]

Korix stepped carefully, making sure his footsteps didn’t fall in a sinkhole or tree root. Given the animosity he’d propagated with Kansas, he fully expected her to devour him, should he fall and become seriously wounded. Of course, making enemies wasn’t something he worried about, let alone fretted his life away on.

 

Glancing at the Caitian ahead of him, he wondered just how far he could push her before he snapped that legendary Caitian patience. Harper had bet that she wouldn’t break—he’d have to work harder.

 

But at the moment, he was trying just to get back to the shuttle in one piece. About him he heard the disharmonious hum of a disturbed jungle.

 

His thoughts carried him back to the Romulan Civil War.

 

Paxelon VII-B Jungle Moon

 

The stench of a humid jungle filled his nostrils. His skin, what the jungle body armor left exposed anyway, glistened with sweat. All about him, the jungle seemed to be in disarray as the Starfleet Marines skulked through the weaving mess of vines and underbrush.

 

Lieutenant Major Korix Vaos walked point. A type-III phaser rifle at the ready. Dressed in jungle fatigue, dark green pants with several pockets, a black-tight fitting sleeveless vest covering his mid-section and chest with a dark green flack vest overtop, and a non-standard issue bandanna wrapped about his head. On either hip he carried a type-II phaser, extra power-clips, and two very sharp daggers. Along his leg, a long machete lay sheathed.

 

For some reason he imagined a Romulan tourist agency trying to sell vacations to this wonderful little spot. “Come see the 50,000 types of dangerous plant and animal life!”

 

Ahead he saw movement in the vines. Instantly he drew his phaser rifle to his shoulder and peered through the sights giving his own team of 18 Marines just enough time to find cover.

 

“All Clear,” he finally said with a brief sigh. “Just another K’nssae.”

 

Moments later a tall twelve-legged beast emerged from bush and headed towards the stream they were paralleling.

 

Though K’nssae could be dangerous, if left alone, they were harmless; after it passed Korix motioned for his team to resume marching. It was day 12 of their vacation on this lovely bug-infested, humid sauna, they’d transported in on the edge of the Tal’Shiar sensor network and slowly creped in towards their base.

 

The small, relatively remote moon base housed an important communications uplink as well as something called a “Phoenix System.” In essence, it allowed the Tal’Shiar to have access to their central mainframe from a system of secure network nods situated across Romulan space…and rumored to be on several other systems throughout the Quadrant. Capturing one of them, or at least infiltrating one would be invaluable to the Allied war effort. So far they’d failed to take one.

 

Several kilometers later, Korix smiled ever so slightly. They’d just crossed the small river that wound around through the jungle maze and led into the base. Thankfully the Tal’Shiar hadn’t cooked up some exotic and impenetrable defensive strategy that would draw attention to the otherwise unimportant sector.

 

As his team approached the small cave that was to be their way into the base, Korix had a gut wrenching feeling that this was all too easy. He held up his hand, stopping the team and called over his second.

 

“This is the obvious way in,” he said, kneeling and picking up a small stick. “They have to be expecting us to go in this way.”

 

The other officer, M. Captain Gakkin peered at the display nodding. They’d all thought so the entire march in, just no one had said it yet. “What are you thinking?”

 

Quickly sketching a map of the base and its defenses, Korix smiled slightly. “We knock on the front door.”

 

Gakkin blinked his six compound eyes several times. “Sir?”

 

“Assuming they don’t have an ambush waiting for us in the caves,” he said assuredly, “We’ll have to fight them once we get in the facility.”

 

“But the element of surprise…”

 

“I think they know we’re here.”

 

“How can you tell, sir?”

 

“It’s to quite,” Korix said. “Listen to how quite it is…almost dark and they should be serving dinner by now and we should be hearing them talk. But it’s quite…they’re waiting on us.”

 

Gakkin nodded anxiously—it was too quite.

 

“Here’s the plan,” Korix said finally. “I want you to lead the team that takes the front door. I’ll take a second team with the web-monkeys and Joailin into the caves. You’ll distract them, hopefully draw them out of the caves. While we sneak into the base.”

 

Gakkin nodded his approval of the plan. “Yes sir.”

 

In retrospect, Korix would write in his report that this wasn’t one of his better command decisions. In fact, he filled it away as one of his worst cockamamie schemes ever. Gakkin and his entire team were slaughtered before they even got into the base. His team managed to make it to the first stairwell that led to a shaft that they were planning to use to infiltrate the base when they ran into an entire squad of Tal’Shiar and Rei’Krannsu.

 

He and one of the webbies managed to escape to the extraction point, but just barely. Though he was absolved of any wrong doing, the defeat at Paxelon stuck in his head and there it festered.

 

Marching through the underbrush, he wandered just cockamamie his current scheme was.