The Fall of Valdek: A Military Sci-Fi Series (The Unity Wars Book 1)

by Peter Nealen

  He very nearly flinched at the sudden deep ka-chunks of missile launches. Fry’s call of “Missiles away” came rather too late.

  “Missiles?” Mor grunted. Those were anti-starship weapons, carrying enough punch to knock a battlecruiser out of the sky from long range. They hadn’t been designed for anti-fighter fire.

  But Fry knew what he was about. The missile engines ignited with roars heard through the ship’s hull, barely a few meters away, and leapt away. Less than a second later, both of them detonated, very nearly right in the middle of the fighter formation.

  The double, sun-bright detonations would have blinded anyone looking at them, and the nearest fighters simply disappeared in the bright flashes.

  It was the shockwaves, however, that did the most damage.

  The twin explosions were so intense that they created a vacuum at the point of detonation, forcing the atmosphere away in nearly solid spheres at substantial mach numbers. When those twin shockwaves hit the Unity fighters, they sent them spinning out of control if they didn’t crush them into scrap immediately. White-painted, wedge-shaped darts went tumbling wildly, some already breaking up, others colliding with their wingmates in fiery conflagrations that nevertheless seemed dim compared to the incandescent fury of the missile warheads.

  The Dauntless and Vindicator hit the shockwave a split second after the explosions, unable to avoid the superheated blast wave. The massive starships shook and rattled like leaves in a stiff wind, but Mor clenched his teeth and sent his fingers dancing over the controls, fighting to keep from striking the wrong key or control as the ship threatened to spin out of control. He imagined he could actually feel the rise in hull temperature as they bored through the still-dispersing fireballs.

  The sky felt strangely calm once they were through. Mor released a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “A little more warning would be appreciated next time, Fry!” he called.

  “Sorry,” the weapons officer replied, sounding almost as breathless. “It was a stroke of genius, and there wasn’t time.”

  Mor was about to retort acidly, but held his peace as he began to bring the Dauntless around in a wide arc to come to the aid of the Boanerges and the Challenger. Fry’s action had been risky, and they might very well all have died… but he had, in the end, cleared out their entire opposition with one shot. Mor would have to remember that move if they ever found themselves in a similar situation again.

  “Make sure you log what you did, so next time we’ve got some advance warning,” he said.

  Then he had to concentrate on flying. The Boanerges was in trouble.

  The Boanerges had a tighter turning radius than the far bigger Challenger, and so had found herself facing the second wing of fighters nearly alone. It was more an illusion than anything else; the firing arcs and ranges of the starships’ weapons made dispersion at these altitudes and distances nearly irrelevant, but that didn’t negate the fact that the Boanerges, being closer, momentarily became the sole target for nearly a hundred Unity transatmospheric fighters.

  Even as the distance to the enemy closed and her onboard powergun turrets ravaged the formation ahead of her, each bolt blasting as many as three or four fighters out of the air, the fighters’ lighter weapons hammered at her hull, tearing glowing wounds in her plating. Follow-on bolts penetrated more deeply, blasting into the inner hull and striking more vital systems. One powergun turret was sheared away altogether. The starship’s ECM defenses were almost pointless against that volume of fire from such close range. With such a blizzard of plasma tearing through the sky, aiming didn’t matter; some of it couldn’t help but hit.

  The ammo feed for the destroyed powergun shut down automatically, preventing a catastrophic explosion. Chain reactions had been known to tear ships into subatomic bits in the past. Even so, the impact nearly made the ship spin out of control; only Captain Trakse’s skill kept her on a steady course.

  Her remaining powergun was still spitting bolts, her point-defense lasers were scoring less spectacular kills, and the Challenger’s full batteries were tearing the fighter formation to shreds. But even as the Dauntless and Vindicator added their own fire, swatting the remaining fighters out of the air with brilliant explosions that momentarily lit the forest below through the growing pall of smoke from fires set by earlier crashes, it was clear that the Boanerges was in serious trouble.

  Engine power was dropping in the Number Two drive. The hull was breached in too many places to count. Several of the main maneuvering thrusters were holed, fused chunks of scrap, and others had been blasted completely off the hull. Trakse was in a serious fight just to maintain control. He had to lift the nose to try to bring the ship to a hover to stabilize her, and when the Challenger swept past, her supersonic shockwave threatened to throw the Boanerges against the mountainside.

  But Trakse hung on. Struggling mightily against the ship’s degrading handling, he slowly started to bring the Boanerges down.

  Mor watched the Boanerges’s descent helplessly, even as he brought the Dauntless’s nose up and throttled back, not quite hovering over the mountain, but slowing significantly from the headlong velocity of the fight. Fry was still engaged, blasting powergun bolts at the armored formation creeping its way up the mountainside toward the friendly column’s line of march, but his line of fire would be cut off shortly, because the Boanerges was drifting directly toward that formation. Already she was starting to take fire from tanks and assault guns, though thankfully the Unity ground vehicles didn’t seem to be armed with powerguns. Even so, the faint flickers of muzzle blasts and the snap and shudder of impacts against the starship’s hull were evident in the holo-tank.

  Only in the last few moments had Mor realized what Trakse was up to. It appeared that part of the Boanerges’s landing gear had been hit, and was not lowering. There was no good way to land the ship. So dropships had begun to blast away from her ports, presumably with the bulk of the ship’s crew aboard.

  And Trakse… he was going to get the last bit of fight out of his ship that he could.

  The Boanerges dipped lower, her drive flames flickering, and began to drift directly over the Unity formation. Mor couldn’t help but imagine that being under a starship’s main drives at that distance must be very close to being in hell.

  At least for a moment.

  Vehicles burned and detonated under the assault of sun-hot plasma and hard radiation. Ground fire intensified as the rest of the Unity forces realized what was happening and tried desperately to bring the starship down before it cooked them all. Explosions rippled along the starship’s hull, and she shuddered. Then a white-hot fireball gouted from her midsection and broke her spine.

  Trakse lost all control.

  The Boanerges twisted in midair, her drives stuttered, and then she was tipping over. No, not tipping. She was thrown violently aside by a thrust imbalance, and she impacted the center of the Unity formation with the force of a falling mountain.

  The resulting explosion lit the side of Gorakovati as bright as day. A sheet of white fire leapt skyward as the reactor safety dump went off. The shockwave blasted trees to splinters and swept most of that Unity spearhead into oblivion.

  Along with Trakse himself, and anyone else who had remained aboard.

  Swallowing the sudden lump in his throat, Mor steered the Dauntless toward the buried installation. There was nothing more they could do for the Boanerges or Captain Trakse. The dropships had punched out and flown toward the same destination.

  It had been the plan to leave the Boanerges behind all along, and yet Mor had been harboring a hope that somehow they could get the wounded ship off the planet, get her repaired enough in the outer system, and then get away. That hope was now dashed. And only three of the five Caractacan ships were left.

  To make matters worse, a warning chime sounded. Mor had expected it. The first formation of Unity starships was due to crest the horizon at any moment. But when he looked up at the red indicators in the holo-tank, h
is blood ran cold.

  The Unity cruisers were indeed over the horizon. Not by far, yet, and they would have considerable difficulty targeting at that angle and so close to the mountain. But they weren’t the cause of Mor’s concern.

  The dreadnaught was there too, soaring over the peak of Gorakovati, following a very similar flight path to the one the Caractacan ships had taken not long ago.

  The infantry had been able to watch the feeds from the starships, though somewhat sporadically, during the aerial battle. So the ground element saw the dreadnaught coming. Scalas hoped that the Valdekans, already battered by defeat after defeat, wouldn’t simply break in panic at the sight, but then he remembered that the Valdekan vehicles didn’t get these information feeds. A small mercy, perhaps.

  Viloshen was staring at the display though, and Scalas could see the man’s near-despair through his translucent visor. If the dreadnaught was here now, there was little doubt that it had destroyed the last standing planetary defense fortress—and had done so in a matter of minutes. Facing that behemoth with only three starships and a column of tanks, tracked fighting vehicles, and combat sleds… they would stand no chance at all.

  Scalas knew he had to say something. “We can still make it,” was all he managed. “We’re almost there, and it will take even that monstrosity time to blast through the thousands of tons of rock over the Pride of Valdek.”

  “What about our other ships?” Torgan asked. For the first time, there was a note of uncertainty, almost fear, in his voice.

  “If that ship’s as big as Rehenek’s holo made it out to be,” Scalas answered, “we can send the other ships ahead as soon as we’re inside. We’ll all fit aboard the Pride.”

  He didn’t know for sure if they believed him or not. He wasn’t sure if he believed it. All signs pointed to that Unity dreadnaught having accomplished in minutes what entire squadrons of starships and regiments of troops hadn’t managed in days. But while there was even the merest hope, Kranjick wouldn’t give up. And he would not allow his men to, either.

  Of course, the column hadn’t stopped just because the fury of battle raged overhead; time was pressing. And the death of the Boanerges had cleared the way. The smoking, flame-lit crater that was the Boanerges’s final resting place was still most of four kilometers down the slope, but the shock of the impact had flattened trees clear to their position. It was taking some extra maneuvering to get some of the tracked vehicles over or around the blow-downs, but they were still making headway, their passage lit by growing forest fires and the brilliant blue-white flames of the remaining starships’ drives.

  The holo display jumped and fuzzed a little. Scalas expected that was due to the nearness of the drive flames and the intense ECM battle going on as the Unity starships got higher in the sky. Orbital weaponry began to hammer the mountainside, laser pulses, powergun bolts, and kinetic munitions sending pulverized rock and smashed trees flying high into the sky.

  “There’s a relatively clear ridgeline ahead that leads to the installation entrance,” Kranjick called over the comm. He must have been in direct contact with Rehenek. “Full speed, cross the gap, and we’ll be under cover.” He paused. When he spoke again, there was an unfamiliar tone in his heavy voice. Was it sorrow? Despair? “Challenger, Dauntless, Vindicator. Launch immediately and get away from the planet. Linger on the edge of the system if you will, but someone must get away from here and back to the Avar Sector Keep. If we succeed and launch with the Pride, then we’ll rendezvous and return together. If not… honor our names.”

  There was an even longer pause before Mor replied. “As you command, Brother Legate.” His voice was slightly choked, heavy with grief. Not only for those who had fallen, and might still fall, but for being ordered away from the battle, Scalas suspected.

  “It is not flight to obey the orders of your superiors, Captain,” Kranjick said. “Your honor is intact.”

  “Yes, Brother Legate,” Mor replied.

  A moment later, a small green light blinked in the corner of Scalas’s visor. He answered the private call from Mor.

  “You had best get to that ship and do whatever menial tasks it takes to get it off the ground, Brother,” Mor said, his voice thick. “This ship is empty enough as it is.”

  “We’ll make it, Brecan,” Scalas assured him. “If God is willing.”

  “God willing,” Mor replied, his voice thick. “Go with Him.”

  “And you as well,” Scalas answered. “I’ll see you on the other side. One way or another.”

  20

  Rehenek must have called ahead, because the gates were already rolling back as the lead vehicles approached the installation’s entrance across a long causeway that bridged the valley between the ridgeline and the solitary peak that housed the ancient dreadnaught. Given the fact that the installation was buried in the mountain, Scalas had expected the entrance to be camouflaged. Instead, the gate was simply a massive, arched tunnel leading into the mountainside, covered over in gray metal. There was a sign in white lettering over the entrance, but it was in Eastern Satevic, so Scalas couldn’t read it, and he didn’t bother to ask Viloshen. He had more pressing concerns.

  Then they were rolling into the echoing tunnel that had been bored into the mountainside, and the outside darkness gave way to lights set into the rocky ceiling. These lights were both dim and green, for an obvious reason: to protect the installation’s defenders’ night vision. But as they moved deeper into the tunnel, the lighting slowly brightened to a brilliant white.

  Rehenek’s vehicles led the way nearly a kilometer underground before coming to a halt in a large vehicle hangar that was only about a quarter full of wheeled and tracked vehicles. The Valdekans didn’t seem to use ground effect vehicles much.

  Kranjick was out of his sled almost before it had stopped moving, and Scalas stepped off the ramp of his own before it had touched the ground. Rehenek was already ahead of the Caractacans, making for a nearby elevator, a clutch of his commandos in tow.

  The Brother Legate didn’t seem to rush, and yet somehow he closed the distance in only a few strides. A man in a Valdekan service uniform was hurrying toward them. He saluted Rehenek and gave what was unmistakably a status report. Rehenek replied briskly before turning to the Caractacans.

  “Commander Schukhin is the installation commander. He tells me that the Pride’s reactor is hot, and has been since the first strikes began. He does not, however, have an operational crew. Captain Horvaset and your remaining spacers should be enough to fly him, but likely not enough to fight him efficiently.”

  “Is the ship crewed enough to lift?” Kranjick asked.

  Rehenek grimaced. “He has always had a skeleton crew at best. The Pride was never the front-line ship of the fleet, and outfitting him with modern weapons that we could support has proved more difficult than anticipated. Some of my father’s advisors had strongly recommended abandoning him and making him a monument instead. I expect that once the war started and the fleet was destroyed, all but the most vital personnel were reassigned to more immediately useful posts.”

  “But the installation is still manned, obviously,” Soon pointed out.

  “Because it’s still an asset, and one of the last remaining to us,” Rehenek said grimly. “I cannot say much more than that. Hopefully the spacers you brought from the Mekadik can fill out the crew, but they’ll have to familiarize themselves with its control layout.” He turned to Schukhin and asked a question, then quickly issued an order before adding, “The survivors from your ship made it to the lower pads. They, and our spacers, are on their way up toward the ship itself.”

  Schukhin wasn’t finished, though. His voice was urgent as he spoke quickly, pointing back toward the gates and the causeway.

  Rehenek’s face turned grimmer, if that was possible. “In addition, there are ground forces even now advancing on the installation’s entrance. They have taken the defenders under fire from the shuttles, and are crossing the causeway. The defenders have t
hem under fire, but are not stopping them.”

  Kranjick keyed his comm. “I need two squads. Volunteers only. Gather at the command sled in five minutes. We will need heavy weapons and a heavy demolition charge.” Rehenek frowned at that, then his eyes widened as he realized what Kranjick had in mind. “Everyone else, proceed to the upper levels and prepare to assist in getting the ship ready to lift.” He turned to Rehenek, lifting his head as he saluted the younger man. “Prepare the ship. We will buy what time we can. Contact me on comms just before you lift, and we will rejoin you.”

  Rehenek returned the salute, his face unreadable. But Scalas thought he saw a flicker of something in his eyes as Kranjick cut the salute. Was it respect? Confusion that a man who didn’t know him as anything but a package to be escorted would be so willing to throw himself into the teeth of an enemy attack to buy him time?

  Such confusion was not unknown, when outsiders first encountered the Brotherhood’s Code and what it meant.

  Kranjick looked at Scalas, Soon, Costigan, and Rokoff. “Centurions, get your men above and ready to lift. Lend what help you can.” He turned and started back toward the command sled with long strides.

  “Brother Legate,” Scalas began, turning to follow. He caught up quickly, and Kranjick stopped, turning toward him and putting a heavy hand on his shoulder.

  “No, Erekan,” he said quietly, before Scalas could utter a word. “If I don’t make it back in time to lift, you are acting legate. Both of us cannot go down there, and I have the advantage of rank.” There might have been a faint smile in his voice, though his heavy, immobile face was hidden by his visor. “Get the men boarded and make sure you and they are doing everything possible to help Horvaset and the spacers. If we can get back to you in time, we will, but do not hesitate to lift if we cannot.”