“That is a patent falsehood. None of their vessels arrived at Shoorash System.”
“Accidents do happen, unfortunately. Perhaps their vessels were lost during transit, in which case we offer our sincere condolences.”
“I ask again. Where is Boosha?”
“I cannot answer that question.”
“More easily discerned lies. You have seventeen minutes to produce Syndic Boosha or we will board your station, using force if necessary.”
“Please stand by,” Secretary Goftalu said before shutting off the channel. “Well, that doesn’t give us a lot of time.”
“They sound much too sure of themselves, considering Xanadu’s reputation,” General Gage said. “They know bigger fleets than theirs, by which I mean not just that flotilla but their entire navy, have been destroyed by the Tah-Leen. They know something is going on.”
“One of the civilian freighters passing through might have noticed something was amiss,” Heather suggested. Her face was twisted in concentration while she tried to do multiple things at once. “They could have picked up some comm chatter during the takeover.”
“In which case this is probably a reconnaissance in force, to find out if the Tah-Leen are still in charge.”
“That’s a big gamble, putting a second dreadnought in harm’s way.”
“Not that big,” Captain Benchley explained. “That’s an old Communal Property-class. Positively ancient: one of the first capital ships they built after achieving Starfarer status, and barely deserving of the classification. The escorts are equally outdated. This is a throwaway formation.”
“Well, let’s see if we can bluff a little while longer. Wait until the time is almost up, then open a channel.”
Soon enough, the ET’s none-too-pretty pseudo-head reappeared in the holotank, its shoulder-mounted eye stalks swiveling in every direction like a pair of angry snakes.
“Where is Boosha? I will not ask again.”
“Boosha is not here. The Lampreys are no longer welcome in Xanadu System,” Sec-State said, deliberately using the slang term for the aliens. “You have seventeen minutes to leave peacefully. Stay and be destroyed.”
“You will be dead in seventeen minutes, American scum!”
Guess the jig is well and truly up, Fromm thought.
Things were about to get interesting again.
* * *
“Enemy order of battle as follows,” the Tactical Officer of the USS Ataturk said. “One dreadnought, Communal Property-class; three Lynch Mob light cruisers; and four Class Consciousness destroyers, configured for point-defense.
“That’s a pretty pathetic lineup,” Captain Naomi Benchley said in a confident tone that was about sixty percent feigned. At age seventy-nine, a grandmother of thirteen strapping boys and girls, she’d seen a lot, both in and out of the Navy, and she was utterly unimpressed with what she saw on the tactical screen. The only problem was that she was even less impressed by her own squadron. “We could probably take them even if we didn’t have the mother of all space fortresses watching our backs.”
“Yes, ma’am,” her XO agreed. “The throw weight of that so-called dreadnought, even with upgrades, is about the same as one of our new light cruisers. Eight thirty-centimeter plasma guns and no graviton weapons; their secondaries are all low-yield lasers. The cruisers are even worse off, and the destroyers are only good for catching missiles. They might be useful anti-fighter platforms, too. Except we don’t have any fighters to throw at them.”
“Unless Major Zhang can get that flying skeleton to work, that is.”
“That’s true, ma’am.”
Benchley wasn’t sure she wanted a ship that was made out of a sophont’s bones to join in the fight. The whole concept disgusted and disturbed her. She had to admit they needed all the help they could get, though. Bravado aside, her five destroyers might be able to destroy that antique dreadnought in about half an hour of continuous firing, but only if the target sat there and let them do so. Her missiles were a different story, if only she had enough anti-ship warheads to survive the enemy’s point defense. Unfortunately, her magazines were mostly filled with brand-new Interceptor defensive rockets. This was going to be like trying to kill a bear by stabbing it with icepicks. And the figurative bear was likely to object to the process.
“Range one-point-eight light seconds and closing.”
“Set targeting solutions for the squadron. Target is Sierra-Two.” One of the light cruisers. Killing it would be much easier, and they might as well whittle down the enemy force before tackling the big kahuna. “Engage at one light second.” Pretty long range for her guns, but she wanted to start in early.
The Lampreys were coming in at cruising speed, which meant they would reach that point in fourteen minutes, give or take a minute. The enemy didn’t wait that long, however. About five minutes into their attack run, they began to fire.
“Missile launch. Vampires inbound. Ninety-nine from the dreadnought, sixty each from cruisers, total Two-one-niner inbound.”
“Point defense?” the XO asked. Her squadron could easily pick off that entire volley long before it reached them.
“Negative. We’re behind three layers of shields, counting our ship defenses If they can’t handle a couple hundred missiles, we might as well find out. Shift all available power to the main guns.” That would increase the output of the destroyers’ grav cannons by a good thirty percent. That boost might be enough to punch through Sierra-Two’s force fields and armor, maybe even enough to do the same to the dreadnought. With that advantage, they would do better than icepicks against this particular bear pack.
Traveling at one-hundredth of c, the missiles would cover the distance to her tightly-packed squadron in two and a half minutes. You normally didn’t want a swarm of ‘vampires’ to come your way without thinning out its numbers with your secondary guns, but she decided to risk it and trust the Tah-Leen shields.
“Second missile launch. Flagship only. Nine-nine additional bandits inbound.”
Each missile carried a multi-stage shaped-charge plasma warhead designed to pierce a warship’s force fields and armor before unleashing a heavy dose of hellfire on its interior. If those three hundred vampires reached her destroyer squadron, they’d do quite a bit of damage. She was taking a big leap of faith.
“Activate warp shields,” she ordered when the first volley was thirty seconds away. Not having her passive defenses up was too much of a leap of faith, even if warp shields added a whole extra level of stress to her crews. The view on the tactical screen – destroyers didn’t rate holotanks – flickered a bit as clouds of rippling space-time formed up around her ships. Warp shields protected some seventy percent of her destroyers’ surface area. Most missiles that got that far would be swallowed up by the dimensional tears without inflicting damage. Most but not all.
“Enemy is firing energy weapons.”
Traveling at just a hair under the speed of light, eight plasma packets struck the massive force fields extending some ninety miles ahead of DESRON 91. Blobs of light blossomed up in the distance, bright enough to be seen with the naked eye, if anybody felt like going outside to take a gander.
“No effect. Vampires arriving in ten, nine, eight…”
The lightshow when hundreds of ship-killers struck the invisible dome sheltering her formation was far more impressive. A wall of fire pushed up against the barrier; nearly doubling in size when the follow-up volley struck a handful of seconds later. Plasma flared up furiously for several moments before dissipating like the breath of an exhausted dragon.
“Minimal effect. Force Field One remains at a ninety-nine percent capacity.”
“Not bad at all,” Captain Benchley said. “We’ve got to get us some of those.”
“Sierra-One is firing its main guns again. No effect.”
More missile volleys came their way, each slightly smaller than the last as launcher magazines were exhausted or components were damaged by heavy use. A poorly-mai
ntained or decrepit ship could be rendered ineffective by breakdowns as easily as by enemy fire. Her guess was that the Lampreys she was facing were afflicted by both problems.
Fourteen minutes went by.
“Sierra-Two is in range.”
“Our turn. Open fire.”
* * *
“This has got to be one of the most ridiculous naval engagements in history,” General Gage commented.
Fromm had to agree. The American destroyers were like children teasing a caged gorilla: as long as the cage bars held, they could poke it with sticks with impunity. Only problem was, it would take a lot of pokes before the gorilla died.
They were doing their best, though. A Lamprey cruiser broke apart under the steady hammering of the American squadron’s twenty-five main guns. The flaming wreckage began to drift away as the rest of the alien force steamed past it. DESRON 91 shifted its fire to the second cruiser, saving the dreadnought for last.
“Enemy is changing course,” the tactical officer in the situation room reported. “They are retreating.”
Someone – one of the civvies, most likely – began cheering before realizing nobody else was joining in. The cheerleader shut up.
“This is all well and good,” General Gage said in the silence that followed. “But now they know those destroyers are our only weapons.”
“Warp transit detected at two light seconds. Small unidentified vessel jumped into warp. It only showed up briefly on our sensors.”
“Stealth ship,” Heather said. “Gone back for reinforcements, I’m sure.”
“That was a probing attack,” Gage said. “Now that they know the Tah-Leen’s heavy artillery isn’t in play, they’ll bring something better than those relics to the fight. Wouldn’t it be great if we managed to activate those systems when their real fleet shows up?”
“We’re no longer trying, General. Unfortunately, the security locks will trigger a self-destruct command if we try to brute-force our way past them. The ensuing explosions may or may not destroy the entire habitat. They will almost certainly degrade or shut down the force fields protecting us. Instead of wasting time and risking everything, we are looking for alternative means to engage the enemy.”
“Point taken. Do what you can.”
DESRON 91 scored a few more hits on the retreating Lampreys, but the enemy had gone into full defensive mode, and they only managed to lightly damage another cruiser before it moved beyond effective range. The alien task force left the system in good order.
“Three hours to Shoorash System,” General Gage mused. “If they have a fleet ready at the other end, we’ll detect the incoming emergence sometime after that. We’ve got a minimum of six hours before they show up. Hope you can come up with something before then.”
Fromm had his troops stand down but remain at their posts. It would take a while before they were needed, if they ever were. Everybody tried to relax, knowing the calm wouldn’t last very long. Most of the combat veterans managed; Fromm made himself comfortable and took brief nap, noticing General Gage doing the same. You rested when you could, because it was likely to be the last chance you got for a while. Or even for the rest of your life.
His imp woke him up. As expected, they’d detected an incoming fleet, due to arrive in four hours.
In the ensuing time, two civilian vessels arrived, paid off their transit fees, and headed to their exit points at flank speed, having been warned that hostilities were imminent. Others had simply turned around and gone back the way they’d come. He wondered what kind of tales those merchantmen would tell, and who else might decide to come poking into Xanadu to see what was happening. The ruthlessly pragmatic move would have been to destroy those innocent bystanders, but even if moral considerations hadn’t mattered, practical ones did: the destroyer squadron didn’t have the firepower to chase down and destroy those ships.
Heather hadn’t gotten any sleep. She’d been too busy looking for ways to turn the systems she could control into some sort of weapon. He silently wished her luck.
“Multiple warp emergences, matching the initial readings. Enemy order of battle: three People’s Choice dreadnoughts; four missile battleships, unknown class; ten battlecruisers, half of them new missile platforms; the other five are Grievance Committee-class ships; twenty Antithesis destroyers, and thirty Social Revenge frigates.”
“That’s the Middle Quadrant Armada, near enough,” General Gage said. “About the same size as the force that we broke at Melendez System. Most of those are brand-new, too.”
Left unsaid was what everyone knew. Nothing DESRON 91 could do would destroy that force before it could either batter down Malta’s shields or physically reach the station.
“With your permission, General, I will see to my command,” Fromm said.
“Of course, Captain. Good luck.”
“Thank you, sir.”
He didn’t think there was enough luck in the universe to help them, but he would do what he could.
* * *
“This is your final warning,” Supreme Spacer Rep Keesh said. Despite the fancy title, it didn’t look very different from the last Lamprey fleet commander, except for a few gold studs embedded on its leathery skin. The jewelry didn’t improve its looks one bit.
“You will stand down, lower your force fields, and surrender the Tah-Leen Habitat for Unique Diversity, which you have obviously seized through typical American savagery. And possibly some surprising and commendable cunning,” Keesh went on. “Neither will save you from our wrath, however. You have ten minutes to comply if you wish to save your miserable lives.”
The toothed maw vanished from the holotank.
“It actually used human time units for his deadline,” Sec-State commented. “That was rather nice for a Lhan Arkh.”
“And we can trust its word as much as we could any Lamprey,” General Gage said.
Secretary Goftalu nodded. “I know. The Imperium would spare our lives if we surrendered. The Lhan Arkh merely want to take the station unscathed. We wouldn’t survive capture by more than a few hours at best. I will try to stall them when the ten minutes are up, but I doubt they will listen.”
“Every minute you gain us could make a difference,” Heather said.
“We all have the utmost confidence in you and your team, Ms. McClintock,” the Marine commander said. “Carry on.”
In other words, you better come up with something good, or we’re all dead.
In retrospect, concentrating all their efforts on unlocking the Central Battle Conduit had been a mistake. She should have detailed someone to look for alternatives, just in case they didn’t break through in time. Next time she had to assume control of an ancient alien facility, she would know better. By the time they’d given up, it was probably too late.
If someone is breaking into your home, and you can’t get to your gun, find an improvised weapon. For the past seven hours, her team had been doing just that.
“I think we can reconfigure the orbital thrusters into something that will damage a ship,” Mario Rockwell reported.
Heather went over the data and ran it past a retired Fire Controlman in her team.
“Won’t do much good, ma’am,” he said. “Even generating the equivalent of a five-inch grav-gun blast would cause the station to start drifting. And the range would be terrible. Hundred klicks, maybe twice that with a lot of finesse. Not enough to make a difference.”
“Well, so much for that,” Rockwell said in a disgusted tone. “I think that covers about every secondary system. Except communications. Maybe we can drive them crazy by beaming them a constant stream of rom-com flicks. Or War-Metal music.”
“Wait. Communications,” Heather said, mostly to herself. A glimmer of an idea began to form. “Dammit! I should have thought of this sooner!”
“Whatever it is, better make it quick. I’m considering using tractor beams to throw garbage at them.”
“I think we can do better than that.”
She ran a
quick inventory of the items she’d thought of, compared the specs on the screen with another set of data, and smiled.
“A lot better than that, as a matter of fact.”
Seventeen
“All systems are nominal,” Machinist Mate Kruger said; he and several other spacers under Chief Hong had spent some time away from their shiny new fabber and helped make the Corpse-Ship space-worthy. Captain Benchley had approved the reassignment, although the commander clearly didn’t expect anybody to get an ancient rust bucket made out of an even older alien carcass to ever become operational.
Well, they’d proven the bubblehead officer wrong. More or less.
“What MR Kruger means, ma’am, is that all systems we can figure out are up and running,” Chief Hong clarified. “We mated those components to this… this thing, as per your instructions. It took some doing, but they will work as advertised, and all the seals are set, dry and good to go. Won’t get no atmosphere leaks, that sort of thing. But you have no sensors or targeting systems, no propulsion system of any kind, no weapons at all as far as I can tell, no shield generators, and only a cobbled-up power pack to keep life support and commo running. So no, I can’t certify this boat as fit for duty. Or even certify it as a boat. As far as I can tell, we just stuck a few hundred thousand bucks of extraneous equipment on somebody’s art project. Ma’am.”
“That’s because you haven’t listened to anything I’ve said about how this vessel operates, Chief,” Lisbeth said. “Or rather, you heard me but refused to believe me.”
They’d moved the corpse ship to a new room; the one she’d turned into a perfect sphere wasn’t suited for any sort of construction work. Everyone had seen it, though. They all knew the Corpse-Ship had done that, not to mention killed every Tah-Leen in the station. But since they couldn’t understand how those things had happened, they dismissed them.
Behind the belligerent non-com, Atu the Three-Eyed Alien thumbed its nose at the bubbleheads. Lisbeth almost started giggling, which wouldn’t have helped her cause one bit. She had to keep her insanity a secret or they wouldn’t let her fly.
Warp Marine Corps- The Complete Series Page 92
