The Strategist's Mind

Greetings to everyone, the following story was inspired by the digital art of @xpilar, I invite you to visit his blog. The picture that motivated this story is the following.

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Source

The Strategist's Mind

Nicolas stopped in front of the sea and watched as the surface of the water began to freeze again.

-It is amazing what less than two hundred and forty Kelvins can do to things, -he said to himself.

He took a sip of coffee from the cup he was holding on his cybernetic arm, savoured it lightly, and then spat it out in disgust, forming dozens of tiny crystals before falling to the floor.

-Definitely it's really amazing what this temperature does to things, -he repeated, as he threw the rest of the coffee onto the sheet of ice covering the beach.

Twenty meters from the beach, a team of ten soldiers descended from the landing craft and began the installation of a laser emitter. Cepheus's network of defence satellites was not very effective, barely twenty percent of the planet was under surveillance, only the cities and the busiest areas were observed and this region of the polar circle was part of the blind spot of the Parliament's satellites.

He looked towards the horizon, the sky was completely clear, right in front of him, a star of intense blue glow, stood out from the others, a few minutes of arc to the east, with an equal brightness, its twin shone in company, they were Castor and Polux, the two sister space stations orbiting Cepheus, in geostationary orbit.

There they were, he thought, hundreds of thousands of traitors to his world. Many had fled, another had been expelled from the planet, put on capsules and launched into space, to meet their accursed invaders from the parliament, and the enemy forces had lodged them on Castor and Polux, with the promise of giving them back what they had lost.

The betrayal of their people could not be forgiven, selling out the future of their world to Parliament was intolerable. The exiles, almost all of them from the north of the eastern continent, had authorized pro-Parliamentary military bases in their cities, fed their troops, even joined their ranks.

Now, they hoped to return to the lands from which they were expelled at the beginning of the war, so that they could lead from there a government that would humiliate the people of Cepheus, subjecting them to the mandates of a parliament of which they were not even a part.

Within a few hours, far from the sight of the Parliament's satellites, from this place, a laser emitter would shoot rays towards the two brightest stars in the sky, pointing to the place where, coming from the Lagrange L4 point, dozens of messengers of anger would unleash hell on Castor and Polux, while from the planet, a wave of ships would start the biggest attack ever launched on the Parliament's troops guarding the stations.

This had been his plan, he had had difficulty in convincing the leaders of the other three factions of the confederation to support his idea, but he had succeeded, this would be the greatest effort made to achieve the objectives they had set and at the same time would be the most risky, its failure could also mean the failure of the whole rebellion.

By tomorrow night the parliament troops would be crushed in Cepheus' orbit and the war would be untenable for them, they would have to abandon their intentions to invade the planet, at least for some years, which would give the Cepheus Confederation the opportunity to resupply and strengthen the planetary defenses.

Perhaps this would not be the end of the war, but it would deter Parliament and give an opportunity to strengthen positions to face further advances by the enemy.

The destruction of Castor and Polux would demonstrate to Parliament what they are capable of doing to defend the autonomy of Cepheus and show the traitors how those who defraud their own people are punished.

Text of @amart29 Barcelona, Venezuela, December 2019

Other stories from the series The Age of Perseus

• El Averno / The Avern
• Camino a Dione / Road to Dione
• Las Noches de Palas / The Nights of Palas
• ¿Natural o Generado? / Natural or Generated?
• Los Cristalodermos de Quimera / The Crystaloderms of Chimera
• Una Casa para el Parlamento / A House for Parliament
• Alone
• Fifteen Thousand Years After Perseus
• Storm
• Water
• Vilma
• The Ark
• The Door to Hell
• White Hell
• Today that I'm going to die
• The Strategist's Mind

I can only thank @xpilar for allowing me to use his digital art in my publication and for motivating my creation. Thank you very much @xpilar

Thank you all for visiting my publication, I hope your comments and I appreciate your support, until next time

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