Icats attack!

The Icats were coming, I felt it in my bones. These devils had robbed six planets so far and it looked like we would be number seven. 1

It stood for the Intergalactic Cartel of Artistic Thieves Society. They thought themselves the best and smartest thieves in the galaxy. Since they stole the reserve wealth of six planets and got away I suspect that maybe they had some valid claims to it. 2

As a sergeant in the reserves and sitting behind a Barrett .50 cal sniper rifle, I was going to try and not let it be a seventh successful heist. I was originally told our government had gotten a secret tip that we were next. I later found out it was in fact a web site on the Galactic Web that had published the targets of the Icats in advance, all six of them. All six had been hit from three months to a year after the posting and ours was now listed for five months. 3

After I was reactivated I found what I could on them. They had been around only eighteen years. They had popped up first on HellHole II which was a small mining planet circling Barnard's Star, almost 5.9 light years from earth. At that time the Web page was not known but it was there and yes, they advertised the hit almost six months before they executed it. They took the estimated value of 800 Billion in metals and gems from a vault almost a half mile inside solid rock. Eighty-three guards and directors and staff had died, all killed by what was believed to be swords or knives but it wasn't sure. Not a trace of them, their craft, or their weapons, nothing was found. The next four heists were similar. Impossible security defenses overcome with ease, most, if not all guards and staff dead, all by swords or something similar. No enemy dead seen. Every drop of blood ever found was traced to the dead people on that planet. 4

Yes, these Icats had done as they said, maybe they were artistic as well, they did impossible things but I had a gut feeling we had the edge this time, if we didn't get complacent. I and three other snipers had light wave bending camo uniforms. The tech background was from the twenty-first century on earth but it was originally easy to detect through other simple devices. I felt these Icats had a further developed type and had all simply walked into these other sites and attacked, totally unseen until to late. 5

Our Captain was probably the smartest man I'd ever met. He was independently wealthy and was also my father-in-law. He and his father had helped build Freedom's Ring almost since she was officially founded sixty years ago. Our planet was new as a named planet but had a history of almost twohundred years of mining. A little gold and platinum was found but the big red diamonds and a few other gems put us on the map as one of the richer planets and quickly. Our vault had two entrances and both were about onehundred feet apart. It was built as a vault, not a converted mine. Both tunnels went in for fifty feet to separate doors with time locks and every sensor currently known but the Captain added a simple one. 6

Unseen with almost anything and only known to be in place by the nine snipers and nine spotters and the Captain and one or two members of the Government, the new system blew a little dust around. 7

To protect the gems and other precious metals all people going in wore special suits with breathers and the vault was filled with a type of knockout gas. That wasn't the secret, it was the dust. It was slightly radioactive. Our scopes saw that radiation as small lines as the dust blew down from the top and was sucked back in at the bottom to be recycled. If anything walked through that dust they stood out like a sore thumb and even left footprints into the tunnel a ways. The two tunnels were one way. The left was in and the right was out, if anyone went against the grain that also stood out with foot prints going the wrong way. We hoped it would be our edge. 8

We worked three eight hour shifts, and ran twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week. We were escorted to our three towers by armed guards and the towers had two openings, a bombproof door and the two inch wide gimbaled hole in the thick Lexan polycarbonate window that was facing the vault for the rife barrel. 9

Any tower can be brought down but the amount of explosive needed would alert a third of the planet and it was believed the Icats didn't work that way. Day after day and week after week we waited. Today I was on the left tower so had the entrance, the center tower covered both and the right got the right. As my spotter watched his screen and I watched my scope we saw nothing. I saw the two guards at the door one second then I saw their heads simply fall off their bodies. I hit the alarms and I suspected both the others did as well. As I watched I saw the other guards drop as well, one by one, but I still saw nothing. Then I heard the right tower spotter give a short gurgled scream then nothing. I recognised her voice, she was the only girl on duty today. I felt something in the room as I turned to look I saw a shadow move inside. I saw the blade and my spotter had no head. My god, they had some sort of transporter machine. As it dawned on me how they did it I saw the glint of the blood drenched blade as he spun toward me, I died. 10

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