“Dammit!” Terry shouted when he got the news of another explosion near the shipyard.
“I’ve got it,” Kimber told him. “Your place is on the bridge.”
She tried to shoo him away, but he hesitated. “He’s out there.”
“And we’re going to do him, upside-down and backward. We’ll find him, and you can bet, if any of these good people can, they’ll rip his ship apart with their mech hands.”
Terry nodded, his face a grim mask of anger and grief. At this point in the big game, they were losing. They were down five ships, with five more having gone through the Gate.
“Go!” Kimber pointed at the hatch.
Terry jogged across the hangar bay with Floyd firmly in his arms and into the ship.
“Another enemy ship has impacted a mine in the field, Lord Mantis,” the pilot reported.
The commander regretted his initial strategy. Unless he pushed a mass of ships through the minefield at one time, they’d figure out where the field was, causing him to waste precious resources. He could assume they had already figured it out.
“Change of plan,” he declared. “Recover the surviving deployed mines.”
Delivering and recovering the mines took no extra power. They could do that with the shield securely in place, hiding the Traxinstall from prying eyes. They left the last attack point before firing weapons and headed to the far end of the minefield, and the crew smiled darkly as the ship flew between and past the enemy vessels, taking the shortest route to their destination.
They moved deliberately but without hurry. Their power was in their stealth.
I will kill each and every one of you, no matter how long it takes. For the glory of Myriador.
Terry rushed through the hatch and almost ran over his wife. Char looked beyond exhausted.
“Go to bed,” he told her, supporting her until she collapsed. He held her with one arm and put Floyd on the deck with the other. Then, Terry picked her up in his arms and carried her, although he didn’t want to leave the bridge. He turned to Micky. “Any good news, Skipper?”
“I think you were right, TH, but it’ll wait if you need to go.”
Terry shook his head and pointed at the main screen with his chin.
“Right.” Micky didn’t want to argue. “The last explosion shows what could be a double strand of mines along a single axis.”
“Straight line?”
“Yes.”
“What do you say we power up the mains and send a few thousand projectiles down that line? See if we can get lucky,” Terry suggested.
“That would leave the station unattended,” Micky countered.
“Move a couple of the Harborian battlewagons over here. We can head out as soon as they’re on station. Hell, bring some frigates for escort duty. Let’s camp a shitload of metal between the station and open space.”
“I like that plan, as long as Dionysus or Plato is in charge of the ships. I don’t trust the spacefaring skills of the Harborians. Not yet, anyway.”
“I’m with you, Micky. Execute the plan. I’ll be back as soon as possible.” Terry went through the captain’s conference room on his way off the bridge to check on the others. They had crashed where they were. Christina was on the table, sound asleep. The weretigers had made it as far as the door before they laid down on the floor. The vampires were beneath the table. Cory waved from where she sat at the table. Dokken was sitting by her side.
Floyd waddled toward her and stopped when she saw the dog. The two stared at each other.
Terry nuzzled Char’s face. “I don’t understand what you had to do, but I know that you gave it all you had trying to help me. To help us,” he mumbled into her hair.
“I’ve never seen it take this much out of them,” Cory said softly, patting for Floyd to jump into her lap. The wombat hesitated before running and bouncing off Dokken as she jumped. Cory caught her and held her tightly. Floyd turned around and stuck her tongue out at Dokken.
I am at a loss, he complained.
Be the bigger man, Terry told the dog. She’s just a little girl, no more than a puppy.
I know, but can’t you train her a little more quickly?
I think she is trained about all she’s going to get, buddy. She’ll be forever young. Maybe we should be envious of her instead of trying to change her? She might be the happiest creature I’ve ever met. You’re a grumpy old man.
You’re the grumpy old man, Dokken retorted before lying down, head between his paws. I’ll think about it.
That’s all I can ask. You’re a good boy, Dokken, no matter how old you are.
The large German Shepherd closed his eyes and feigned sleep as Terry left the room with Char in his arms. He could feel the ship moving. He hurried toward the stairs.
“Deactivating Mine L7-16T,” the weapons specialist stated evenly. Each weapon carried a unique designation and had a unique disarm code to prevent an enemy from deactivating an entire field with a single series of commands. The disarming was done in close proximity to the mine using a directed millimeter wave beam to limit the chance it would get intercepted by an enemy.
The Traxinstall floated serenely as the weapons specialist manipulated the digital commands, entering one after another, handshakes, verifications, more codes, and finally the beacon extinguished. “Bring it in,” he ordered.
His subordinates used a remote control to drive the mine toward the launch door. There was only one tube, so during recovery operations, other mines couldn’t be launched.
They’d never contemplated having to launch mines while recovering them at the same time.
“Bring it all the way in, and attach a magnetic grapple,” he ordered. “That makes one, only a hundred and seven to go.”
The commander watched from the bridge. He resisted the urge to tap his foot or drum his fingers to release the energy that was building up within him. The larger ships were starting to move. With massive weapons, it would take one direct hit to vaporize his ship.
No direct hits. Stay hidden. Stay two moves ahead. The game board was changing, and he wasn’t sure what it meant. He stood to study the tactical display.
They were reinforcing the station.
Good.
It would leave him free to recover his deployed weapons and use them more intelligently.
That big bastard was moving. It headed toward deep space before approaching the end of the minefield on a direct course toward the Traxinstall. The commander’s heart leapt into his throat. He could barely breathe. It was like they were visible.
“Verify shield status!” he demanded. “Quickly.”
“Nominal, Lord Mantis,” a hand at the engineering station reported.
Nominal. Operating within normal parameters.
“Prepare to move the ship,” the commander said evenly as he focused like a laser on the enemy heavy destroyer.
Terry made it back to the bridge completely unencumbered. The wombat was with Cory, and Char was tucked in in their quarters. Terry strolled forward to look at the screen.
“Good positioning, Micky,” he said, leaning down to eyeball a direct line across where the two ships had been destroyed. “Are we powered up and ready to fire?”
“We are. Care to do the honors?”
“Don’t mind if I do,” Terry replied. He spread his arms as if readying a prayer or a fantasy fireball. “Fire the mains.”
The destroyer thrummed as the projectiles were accelerated to near light speed. Smedley adjusted the heading to create a spiral flow of lethality swinging around and through the estimated line of mines.
They were rewarded with an explosion, and far in the distance, another.
“Maintain your fire,” Terry encouraged. “How many did you put out here?”
The mains took a break to cool down and then engaged at the cyclic rate of fire a second time. Something sparked in the distance, appeared for a second, and then disappeared.
“There he is! Concentrate in a circle around that location.” Terry s
tabbed his finger at the speck in the distance. It was taking too long, two to three seconds to drag the line of fire through that position. He was too far away.
Or was he?
“Damage report!” the commander ordered.
“Shield reset and is restored. Damage to the outer hull did not breach. It was a glancing blow only.”
“Minus five thousand. Get us out of here, now!”
The ship rocketed straight downward, pressing the envelope of how fast it could go and remain shielded. It started to slow as it approached the ordered distance.
“A breach in main stowage,” an environmental technician reported from the side shadows of the bridge.
The commander didn’t blink as he turned to face the one who had issued the report. “How bad?”
“At least fifty percent of the supplies before the emergency bulkhead activated.”
Eight-year missions needed certain supplies despite the best recycling and reuse machines Myriador had to offer.
“Drop markers on those supplies,” the commander ordered.
“Already done, Lord Mantis,” the technician replied.
“We’ll recover them after this mission is over and not before.” The bridge crew kept their eyes on their stations. The commander checked the tactical display. The big ship continued to rain destruction through the minefield. Seven explosions registered the demise of mines that would never deliver a death blow to the enemies of Myriador.
“Prepare to attack the station,” the commander ordered in a cold voice.
Chapter Nine
“The ship is ready?” Bundin asked.
“It can be flown, but this is Ted’s ship,” the engineer responded as he put his tools into their appropriate places in his kit.
“Dionysus, can you fly Ted’s ship and take us into battle?”
“Of course, but Ted hasn’t approved the use of his ship.”
“I do,” Felicity interjected from somewhere out of sight. “We need our Bad Company warriors out there where they can deal with the threat. Ted’s ship in the hangar bay does no one any good. Launch Ramses’ Chariot immediately.”
The engineer shrugged. “Not my call.” He sobered before standing and bowing his head slightly. “Good luck out there.”
Bon Tap jogged by and slapped five on the engineer’s outstretched hand. Chris Bo Runner did the same as they jogged aboard. The others followed. Bundin couldn’t reach with his tentacle arms, so he bounced his shell off the man’s hand instead as he hurried toward the ship.
“A hand, please,” he said on reaching the entry ramp. He had to be turned sideways to fit through the hatch, as he had learned on his trip with Ted and Cory to Earth. The squad reached out to twist him and drag him through. He bounced his stalk head off the metal only once before he filled the corridor. The ramp withdrew and the hatch closed.
“Sorry about that,” K’Thrall said, not sounding sorry at all. “To the bridge!”
The Yollin led the way to the bridge where he assumed a position near the captain’s chair from which he could access the ship’s systems.
“Oooh!” He purred at the expanse of sensors and equipment providing streams of data he’d never seen before. “Give me a minute.”
As a four-legged Yollin, he couldn’t sit in the captain’s position, although he wanted to. The Podder couldn’t fit on the bridge, so he waited in the corridor outside, wedged against the doorway where he could see the main screens. Bon Tap joyously bounced in, flopped into the captain’s chair, and tossed his head, sending a wave through his silver mane.
B’Ichi waited in the corridor with the squad leader. “I don’t like space travel,” he admitted.
Bundin didn’t need to turn to see the Keome since he had eyes on all sides of his head. He wouldn’t have been able to turn his shell body without help anyway since he was firmly ensconced in the narrow corridor. “And you think I do?”
The Keome smiled and started to laugh; the sound registered from his heat suit as a high-to-low-pitch siren’s call. “Who said the corporal didn’t have a sense of humor?” He continued to laugh.
All of them had said that. Bundin joined in with a low rumble that bounced off the deck plates from beneath his shell.
Slicker worked her way onto the bridge and squeezed into the pilot’s seat. “Humans,” she complained.
Bon Tap snickered while Chris leaned over his shoulder and watched.
“I have to ask: what do we do now?” Chris held his hands up to emphasize his point, that being how powerless they were to do anything.
“Welcome to my nightmare!” the AI’s voice boomed throughout the ship, followed by metal guitars shredding some riff. Hands shot to heads and covered ears. “Sorry about that. I don’t get to play much when Sir Theodore and Plato are at the helm. Actually, I don’t get to play at all. But now it’s just us blue-footed boobies turned loose against our arch-enemy, the unseen.”
The image of a bird appeared on the screen, a feathered creature with a bill for catching fish and extremely blue webbed feet—the blue-footed booby.
“We don’t look like that,” Slicker said, her eyes reeling from the image and her head still pounding from the heavy metal.
The screen adjusted to show the view in front of the Ramses’ Chariot as it lifted off the deck, turned, and accelerated into space.
“The first order of business is to find the enemy.”
The firepower of the War Axe burst onto the viewscreen as Dionysus enhanced the image.
“What are they shooting at? Should we go over there?” Chris asked.
“They are sweeping the minefield with their railguns, using particle acceleration to detonate the weapons in place,” Dionysus replied.
“They don’t seem to be hitting much,” Bundin offered.
“The mines, like the enemy ship, are invisible to all systems. The War Axe is sweeping the area with fire.”
“Should we join them?” Bon Tap wondered, reiterating Chris Bo Runner’s question.
“No,” K’Thrall stated definitively. “The Chariot’s sensors are different from anything the other ships have. I think we need to start scanning the area of the minefield for anomalies that we can use to refine our search until we can recognize a distinctive pattern from the enemy ship. Finding that ship is our number-one purpose. I suspect anyone can kill it if they know where to shoot, based on how the War Axe is blowing up the mines. The cloak does not protect what hides behind it, it appears.”
“Concur,” Dionysus stated, and slowed as it activated the myriad of systems at its command. “Scanning and parsing.”
“And now we wait,” K’Thrall said as another mine exploded under the War Axe’s onslaught.
“That’s thirteen mines,” the weapons specialist stated after the latest explosion.
“They’ll stop firing when the station comes under attack. After that, we’ll return to collecting our ordnance.” The commander stood near the tactical display, studying it. His center hand reached into the map and started highlighting locations. “Rapid fire, one shot to each of these locations.”
“Yes, Lord Mantis,” the weapons specialist replied, transferring the data to his position.
“Navigation, randomly skew heading thirty degrees at each materialization point. We will not go in the direction we face until the fifth shot, after which we will return to the minefield.”
The pilot accelerated the ship as the navigator detailed the movements at their shared station.
“They will suffer for their intransigence,” the commander stated as the station grew larger on the main viewscreen.
The first firing position exploited a gap between two battleships and the Traxinstall hovered, weapons charged. “Strap in and hold on,” the commander ordered. “Damage Control, prepare for action.”
They hadn’t stood down from their previous engagement. They acknowledged that they had firefighting and hull-breach repair equipment ready for action. They stood in the corridor, strapped to the bu
lkhead, quick-release levers in their gloved hands, their suits providing air for them to breathe and a controlled environment from which they could work within a breached section.
Although they could do so, none of them wanted to see the rest of their supplies jettisoned into space. They wouldn’t survive the trip home. Some of them already doubted that they would ever leave this area. A grazing blow from a single weapon had nearly destroyed their ship.
Death was in the hands of the aliens, but the damage control team would do their duty. As would everyone on the crew.
“Fire,” the commander ordered.
The shield dropped as the main plasma cannon sent its deadly stream between the monstrous alien ships. Within milliseconds after the weapon had fired, the shield rolled back into place, a blanket within which the ship could hide, but it was vulnerable. Traxinstall jerked sideways and headed for its second firing location, not far from the first.
Enemy fire ripped through the space where the Myriador had been.
“Direct hit,” the weapons specialist declared before adding, “Plasma cannon is ready to fire.”
“Fire.”
The ship materialized from the void of space and fired, disappearing to race around the other side of the station. Ships moved toward it, but it was already gone. The pilot jockeyed between an aggressive frigate and a stationary battleship, smoothly accelerating away.
“Fire,” the commander ordered a third time.
The weapons specialist snarled with the fury of the plasma cannon. He watched the impact when a huge part of the station ripped away after a violent secondary explosion.
The station bucked and screamed under the onslaught, but the secondary bulkheads remained stalwart, limiting the buffeting from the explosions. But the gathered group of evacuees could hear it and feel it all the way to their bones.
Felicity stood her ground, glaring at the wall as if her eyes could bore through to an enemy who would attack innocents. She clenched her fists until her nails bit into her palms, and still she squeezed.
Destroyer: A Military Space Opera (The Bad Company Book 5) Page 7
