by Tim C Taylor
Dock laughed. “Really? You’re Laban Caccamo. Even if you don’t have solutions… yet… You can always offer them something.”
“I mean it, Dock. I’m empty. What do I tell Rammy Narciso in 2nd Squadron? That’s his mother out there, telling 2nd Wing to turn off the one advantage that makes X-Boats unbeatable. What do I tell him, Dock?”
“Easy, old friend. Just remember this. Indiya has known for decades that we were flying into a trap. She’ll be listening in on every report from every ship and yet she’s not told Puja to abort her mission. Why not?”
“Because…” Caccamo swallowed hard. “Because Indiya has something up her sleeve that we don’t know about. Good work, Dock. First Earth-side bar we hit, drinks are on me.”
“Splendid! Perhaps over these drinks we can discuss my outrageous demotion for–”
Without needing to be asked, Colin cut off Dock and switched to the wing comm channel.
“Acting 1st Void Wing Commander Caccamo to all call signs. I know you’re listening in on 2nd Wing’s reports. The New Order has screwed with the K-M Region. With nowhere to dump our momentum, our birds can no longer turn on a dime or slam on the brakes. Shields are out too. But our energy shunts are only one of the two key components that make our squadrons invincible. The other is you – the pilots and AIs who remind the New Order fliers every time we tussle with them that they should have stayed deep underground where they belong.”
He paused – his belief in his own words suddenly deserted him. Colin whispered into his mind what he should say next.
“Ladies, gentle-beings, and shovel-headed rogues,” announced Caccamo, “it’s time to finish your coffee and strap in tight. To give Tawfiq’s thugs a sporting chance, we won’t be flying X-Boats this time. I’m temporarily re-designating all X-Boat formations as Z-Boats, because all call signs will switch off energy shunts completely. And you know what? We’ll still smear Earth orbit with so many Hardit corpses that the poor civilians down there on the planet will look up and think they’ve teleported inside a fur glove.”
Good? he thought at Colin.
Maybe you went a little far.
Hey, I have a reputation to live up to.
“It’s time, people,” said Caccamo. “All squadrons. Launch! Launch! Launch!”
— Chapter 33 —
“Updates coming through,” reported the Blood Virus officer, that ridiculous little runt, Senior Technician Kremsup.
Fully a quarter of General Ulmack’s command center was given over to the Blood Virus team, and as far as she was concerned, that was a quarter too much. Lagging and unreliable at the best of times, now that they were on the brink of combat, the Blood Virus intelligence was worthless. Nonetheless, Supreme Commander Tawfiq claimed credit for the intelligence coup that had indeed penetrated to the heart of the Legion commanders. To snub Kremsup would be considered politically provocative.
Ulmack lifted her tail in acknowledgment of the little shit. “Report!”
“Multiple human assets within the Legion First Fleet are indicating increased anxiety. X-Boat pilots flying combat air patrol missions in near-Earth orbit are reducing energy shunts to minimal levels.”
“An obvious point,” snarled Ulmack, unable to contain her contempt. “If the X-Boats had not reduced their shunts then they would already have burned up. Do not waste my time telling me things that even a brain-damaged human would realize I must already know.”
The Blood Virus officer almost fell off her chair in surprise.
Ulmack bared her teeth, making the little runt flinch, which was satisfying enough to get Ulmack out of her chair and striding aggressively toward Tawfiq’s lapdog.
Kremsup looked around for support, but discovered her fellows were too stunned by Ulmack’s sudden change of demeanor to offer any.
Ulmack pushed her snout up against the Blood Virus officer and growled. “Listen good, you little turd. I’m about to fight the most crucial battle in the history of the New Order. If you have something to say to me that I do not already know, then you may beg to report. Otherwise you keep your snout fully shut. Do you understand?”
“Yes, General.” Kremsup squirmed in her seat and gave off odors of submission, as well she might.
Ulmack would deal with her later, but there were battles to win first. As she returned to her command console, she wore a smile openly on her face. Kremsup’s submission had felt good and there was no point in hiding the reality of the situation. The Legion would fight hard but was as good as dead. The deadlier of the two battles about to commence was between Ulmack and Tawfiq, and with her humiliation of Kremsup, Ulmack had just fired her opening shot.
Tawfiq Woomer-Calix. Ulmack’s tail swished through the air as if slapping the jumped-up maintenance engineer who dreamed of immortality. Tawfiq would never permit Ulmack to claim the honor of the final victory. No matter. Unlike Tawfiq, Ulmack had risen through the ranks on merit, not through murder and mob rule. Which meant that Ulmack knew precisely how to win a war on two fronts: first knock out the weaker opponent with a swift blow and then turn your full attention on the stronger.
The weaker of Ulmack’s foes was the Human Legion. It just didn’t know it yet.
After clearing his throat, Ulmack gave the order to educate the Legion in New Order superiority. “This is Luna Strike Pack Actual. Initiating countdown at T-40 seconds. Janissaries, our ascendancy is assured. One race! One scent! One empire!”
Tension clogged the area of the lunar command bunker as the numerals on the main screen counted down to the final reckoning.
“Beam throttles relaxing,” reported the Devil Eye senior technician at T-12 seconds. “Polarizers initiating.”
“General, Fleet Commander Shi-X’Il reports weapons hot and preparing to de-cloak.”
“Exhaust lasers operational.”
“All enemy ships well within target zone.”
Ulmack’s hands crushed the arms of her seat. This was the most dangerous part of the coming battle. The humans on this planet had never accepted their rightful place as a subordinate species whose extinction was delayed only by the whim of the New Order. There had been resistance.
A shudder passed up Ulmack’s tail. The human insurgents had been deadly and inventive in their attacks and seemed not to notice the devastating reprisals. As a consequence, the Devil Eye beams had never been fired at full-strength to avoid revealing themselves to human saboteurs. The possibility of catastrophic failure was a real one.
“Beams firing now, General.”
Ulmack had rehearsed this moment in her mind, even though she couldn’t know in advance what this experience would feel like. She kept her face and her scent utterly impassive while she felt her guts pulled inside out, stretched to many times their original size, and then stuffed back inside her at right angles to reality.
That was how she experienced the beam’s backwash.
A junior signals operative must have felt something similar, because she collapsed to the floor and vomited. Ulmack was determined she would not be the next to succumb to the unnerving effect of these unnatural weapons.
The weapons designers called them Devil Eyes. Weapons specialists often used foolish names, but in this case the description was apt. The Devil Eyes buried beneath the lunar surface consisted of three coordinated energy weapons, arranged like the three eyes on a face. Each eye was in reality a 250-terawatt directed energy beam, each polarized to a different anti-neutrino phase.
At the weapon’s focal point, the three phases would fuse together, provoking no easily observable result in conventional space-time, but with the effect of igniting a miniature sun that blazed through several higher dimensions, such as the one used by the Legion X-Boats to cheat the natural laws of thermodynamics.
That focal point was currently in the middle of the X-Boat wing that was strutting arrogantly amongst the captured orbital defense platforms, a region of space whose associated higher dimensions had already been heated over many years. It was about
to get much hotter.
And if all went to plan, disabling the X-Boats would not be the only effect of the Devil Eyes.
“General, we’ve decrypted X-Boat voice comms.”
“Excellent. Now that is signal intelligence of real value. Stream the translations to my monitor but let me hear their words on audio too. I wish to hear them die.”
– “K-M hot and rising. I think I’m being targeted. Turning off–”
– “Goblin’s gone, sir. Ice Dealer too.”
– “Enemy ships emerging. My God, there’s hundreds of them.”
– “K-M’s real hot here.”
– “Shut it down. This is 2nd Wing Actual. Shut down your energy shunts. I repeat shut them down!”
– “Seventh Squadron. Assume pike formation and let’s take out those fur frakkers.”
– “Drones on my tail. Can’t shake them.”
– “Missile lock! Missile lock!”
– “Locking AI for ram speed. Smoke me some monkeys, guys.”
– “Pull back. Do not engage!”
– “First Fleet. Why aren’t you moving up in support? What? What do you mean you’ve lost main drive? Every ship? Marooned?”
– “1st wing. Leave the enemy ships. We’re no match. Form up on me. There’s a massive energy release on the moon. Don’t know what it is, but we going to shoot it to shit. Form up… Where did everyone go?”
“General Ulmack, sir. All X-Boats destroyed.”
“And the main fleets?”
“All First Fleet main engines disabled. They’ll be lucky to avoid crashing into the Earth. Secondary shields and point defense still effective but rapidly degrading. Second Fleet and Reserves have sporadic drive capability and taking hits now.”
“Fleet Commander Shi-X’Il, concentrate all fire upon enemy First Fleet. Rip open their ships and the remnants of their sorry armada will flee for their lives. And, Shi-X’Il. You have tactical command now.”
The commander of Ulmack’s warships acknowledged her revised status without comment, but in her head she would be trying hard to figure out what her superior was up to.
“Zeynth,” barked Ulmack at her personal assistant as she rose from the command chair. “Ready the nearest private communication chamber. I have an urgent conversation to arrange.”
— Chapter 34 —
“Drones on your tail, Cacco,” warned Polecat. The fact that she was a pilot from another flight cut Caccamo to the core. It was his wingmen’s job to watch his back… but they were all gone.
She’s right, you know, Colin pointed out directly into Caccamo’s brain. The intense gees were wrenching such groaning protests from their Phantom that the AI had abandoned communicating through speakers.
Can’t be helped, Caccamo thought back, grimly focusing his attention on the targeting reticle as he tried to track the enemy drones in front of him. He couldn’t let the drones destroy the Swordfish fighter-bombers. He had to protect them whatever the cost.
Colin conceded his human’s priorities and the two split their attention: Caccamo firing the twin-linked railguns mounted in the nose, while Colin threw out every last countermeasure from the Phantom’s rear in a desperate attempt to keep the four drones on their tail from shooting them to drent.
At last, thought Caccamo. Target lock! He thumbed the firing stud and grinned as the drones disintegrated. He’d bought the Swordfish at least a little time.
The grin was a mistake. At these insane g-forces, acceleration tried to rip his lips from his face.
He closed rapidly on the cordon of enemy monitor boats that had appeared out of nowhere, but the Swordfish still weren’t close enough to release their bombs. Ever since the Hardits had reduced his X-Boats to Z-Boats, every distance seemed farther, and the threat they faced every inch of the way was far more dangerous at these slow speeds and pitiful acceleration.
I’m all out, said Colin. They have a clean shot at our tail.
The Phantom juddered as kinetic rounds clipped their rear armor. A diagnostic view solidified in the HUD, showing in numbers the rapid degradation of the craft’s outer structure.
Caccamo tried to look on the bright side. Every second the drones remained locked onto him, was a second longer for the Swordfish to move closer to strike range.
But his rear armor was almost gone. His bird wouldn’t last long enough.
OK, Colin. I want you to peel off those drones. Passing you flight control.
>Outstanding! the AI acknowledged. Finally, we’re off to the races.
Without the energy shunt to magic the laws of thermodynamics away into the Klein-Manifold Region, Caccamo felt every Newton of force crashing down on his chest as Colin took control of the Phantom and veered away from the Swordfish.
Shifting g-forces padded across Caccamo’s torso like a procession of overweight Tallermans, the crushing pressure ratcheting ever higher, not relenting even for an instant.
Caccamo tried to make sense of the HUD but the acceleration was smearing his vision across the back of the couch, so Colin fed a simplified situation summary into his brain stem. All four drones were still following – they’d successfully pulled them away from the Swordfish, but that meant the drones were moments away from getting the killing shot on him. And the Swordfish now initiating their final attack run would do no more than slow the Hardit demolition of First Fleet’s capital ships.
When Colin caressed his mind and told him he’d done well, Caccamo drew a little comfort because he knew it was true. He was no glory seeker, but if this was his time to go, he wanted to die well.
I’m not done yet, Cacco. See you on the other side.
Colin stomped on the gas pedal, and Caccamo blacked out.
He awoke screaming in agony. His body was filled with lava that burned every cell of his body. The pain was unrelenting, and he fell into the pit of hell, falling… falling…
A hand reached down to him, and he clasped it, weeping with the punishment his body was suffering.
Why did the searing agony not kill him? He yearned to curl into a scorched cinder, but the helping hand would not let go and hauled him up from hell, through waves of cooling void and spun his head around so rapidly that he was sure his brain twisted through 180° inside his skull.
The spinning stopped with a savage jolt that threw his eyes open.
He was inside the cockpit of his Mark 6 Phantom. His body was alive – more than alive with the blast of revitalizing drugs pumped into him. In front of the fighter’s nose, the barrier of monitor boats was fast receding, but the drones were still in pursuit, despite Colin’s hard-gee maneuvering. The only reason he was still alive was because the Phantom had spun about so now the drones were eating through the Phantom’s front armor.
Still too dazed to think clearly, Caccamo stopped trying to think his way out. Higher order brain functions would only screw things up. Instead, he allowed his subconscious to merge with Colin, and together they blasted the drones into pieces just moments before they did the same to him.
Let’s see what other damage we can do, he thought, his mind returning. Swiveling the Phantom while applying thrust through the main engines he hunted for targets, but the tussle with the drones had taken him too far away from the battlezone. The monitor boats were already out of his railguns’ effective range.
“Dog tits!” he yelled, slamming the console with his fists. If the energy shunt was operational, they could have braked within a second and be amongst the monitor boats before they knew he was there. Frakk, fuck, and chodderation!
He started to form a question: Can we…?
No, Colin answered. The K-M Region is cooler here, but still too dangerous to switch on the energy shunt.
Danger isn’t something we can take off the table, old friend. Nice flying while I was out, by the way. Okay. Let’s see what’s up.
Caccamo stepped into Colin’s view of the battle. Doing so cost a couple of seconds and a sickening lurch to his abused guts, but with Puja and 2nd Wing
lost, Caccamo was the senior X-Boat commander in the Legion. It was down to him to figure how to turn his reduced Z-Boats into a battle-winning force that would rescue the Legion from Tawfiq’s trap.
Their joint mind built up a detailed model of the battlezone and began running scenarios of how the X-Boats could play their part.
The Hardits had known the exact time and position of the Legion naval attack. That much was abundantly clear.
Hardit monitor boats had de-cloaked around the Legion fleet in a deadly funnel formation with guns pointed inward at their trapped victims. Barely maneuverable and lightly armed, monitor boats were little more than rafts mounting particle cannons. If the enemy hadn’t heated up the K-M Region in advance, his X-Boats would have cleared the protective clouds of Hardit drones with ease before slaughtering the monitors. But something else was happening. Another Hardit weapon was disabling the zero-point drives that powered the main engines of the Legion capital ships whose heatsinks were failing too, meaning they were unable to fire energy weapons without melting themselves.
True, Arun’s special ops project had won control of the orbital defense platforms and had already turned the Hardit weapons against the monitors closest to Earth orbit, but their weapons had limited effective range.
Caccamo had launched his squadrons against the Earth-side end of the Hardit funnel to widen the possible escape route for the capital ships. The Swordfish fighter-bombers had taken out scores of monitors, but at a heavy price that left thousands of the enemy warboats still functioning.
Legion ships were registering continuous hits from cannon fire. It was a slugging match, the Hardits slowly pummeling the Legion ships into oblivion. The only answering fire came from missiles streaming into the funnel of monitor boats. Most of the missiles had been taken out by the Hardit drones, but the Hardit defensive screens were wearing thin now and the Legion’s own drones were taking the fight to the enemy.
