More forces poured in from the far side of the depot, and for several moments it was impossible to see who or how many. The com picked them up. It was Wasteland’s raiding force, joining the fight. Both Hellhound and Icefall seemed to be nearing their position, too.
“Helsingor here,” came a familiar voice over the com. His voice, so calm and executioner-like, had climbed half an octave. It was his berserker tone. “We hit a tech room, hit it hard. Set it on fire.” He gave a manic chuckle. “Don’t need to worry about jamming anymore. We’re coming in now. Watch it.”
The floor heaved, and suddenly raiders and white-armored marines were clambering through a gaping hole in the middle of the room. The explosions and gunfire amplified until Svensen’s armor vibrated with it, making his teeth rattle.
He’d hoped that the arrival of Icefall’s raiders would put an end to the fight, and they could move on with the general assault, but a door opened on the far side, and dozens of figures came in, wildly firing assault rifles in their direction. No mech suits, the fools—they’d be turned to hamburger.
He’d mowed down the front rank before he realized with horror that it was humans he was killing. Behind them, driving the humans like sheep, were more green-armored decimator units. They used the flailing, dying humans as a shield to take up position.
He looked for who was driving them, thinking he could knock out a few aliens and liberate the humans. At the very least, get them clear of the murderous Scandian gunfire.
But as the humans kept stumbling forward, kept falling in waves, he caught glimpses of their faces. There was no terror in them, only . . . what the devil?
A woman dropped at his feet, her forehead ripped open by a concussive shell. She rolled onto her back, lips moving, a beatific smile on her face. Tears of joy trickled down her cheeks, and her eyes were luminous. Then they went glossy and dead. Other humans staggered and fell, all wearing the same rapturous expression as they died.
The sight of the humans dying willingly, joyfully, was almost enough to break his will. The human wave had collapsed, but it had allowed scores of additional Adjudicators to enter the room and take position opposite. He had to find cover.
Svensen found Kelly and joined her behind a small mound of dead mech units of both sides that she’d thrown into a gruesome barricade. Three other raiders ducked in with them. The incoming fire was as fierce as any he’d faced in his life.
“Did you see that?” he asked. “Did you see those people?”
“Damn, that gunfire is coming in hot,” she said. Apparently, she hadn’t. “What do we do? How do we get out of here?”
It was a good question, and swept away the horror of the dying humans. Svensen’s concern had been growing since the initial confrontation. They’d had the initiative, and should have swept the enemy aside. He’d been expecting no more than a skirmish during the initial breach, but it had turned into a full-fledged brawl. And now, they were stuck here, no way to advance.
A sick feeling settled into his stomach as he realized what he had to do.
“We have to pull back.”
She whipped her head around. “Are you nuts?”
“We’ve been pinned down too long. The enemy is converging on us. Any longer, and it will be too late. But if we withdraw now, fight back the way we came, we might get out in time.”
“These men believe in you,” Kelly said. “They’re fighting and dying because you convinced them they could win. Now you’re saying it’s for nothing?”
“Not for nothing,” he said. The words tasted like dust. “But we won’t capture this star fortress. That much is clear.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Peerless and Triumph swung wide to screen Blackbeard’s charge at Star Fortress Charlie. Tolvern brought the battle cruiser in beneath a deadly rain of missiles. Warthog sat in front of her like a shield, absorbing blow after blow. Her striker wing deployed, ten falcons peeling away and maneuvering while under fire from dragoons.
Charlie seemed eager to meet Blackbeard in open battle, but Bravo and Alpha were also trying to get in on the action. Even Delta, star wolves still attached to her flanks and harried by Apollo and Bailyna Tyn’s sloops, was maneuvering toward the battle, and somehow working her guns. Did that mean Svensen had failed?
“King’s balls,” Capp swore as Bravo and Alpha shouldered their way into the fight. “Keep ’em off us, will you?”
Tolvern tore her gaze away from the side screen, where her other ships were attempting to do just that. She had to concentrate on Charlie.
“Torpedoes away,” Smythe said. “And Barker’s on the line. We’re running low on penetrating shot. Two more broadsides with the big guns.”
“Make them count. I need that armor ripped open or we’ll never take her.”
Her war junk remained nearby—so carefully hidden that not even Tolvern knew exactly where—and had turned up the heat on Charlie’s armor. The plasma ring was sparking, but it was still bathing the hull with light, strengthening the tyrillium.
Tolvern called Carvalho. “Hit that shield ring. I need it down.”
“Stay alive, luv,” Capp muttered. She must have opened her own com to Carvalho. “Do your duty, yeah? But don’t get yourself killed.”
Tolvern let this lapse pass as Capp was working with the gunnery, coordinating with the Hroom colonel, and recalling Apollo at the same time. The corvette slipped through a net of dragoons and darted in to aid McGowan and Zenger’s desperate attempts to hold off the other two star fortresses.
In past engagements, it always seemed that McGowan had taken what Tolvern thought was a coward’s path, happy to send other ships into battle while he kept Peerless shiny and clean. HMS Spotless, as Capp called her. McGowan was slow to commit, but once he did, he fought like a lion. She had to hand him that.
Triumph had taken too many blows, and was forced to withdraw, which left Peerless in the firing line. Apollo was doing her best to draw fire from Bravo and Alpha, but Peerless was absorbing most of it. Again and again her cannon roared, and fresh torpedoes kept hurling outward.
Blackbeard fired her main cannon again. They ripped into Charlie’s armor, but the star fortress barely shrugged as it kept firing. Carvalho was in there now, having slipped his falcons past the dragoons to lash at the carrier’s defensive ring.
An urgent call from Svensen. There was so much battle noise in the background that the system struggled to filter it out.
“We’re done,” he said. “Pulling out now.”
“Why?”
“Can’t get to command. Can’t fight forward, can barely hold the line. We’ll do damage on our way out—they won’t forget that we came—but we’re not taking the ship.”
Tolvern’s stomach fell. “Understood. What do you need from me?”
“Can you spare Blackbeard?” He gave a grim chuckle. “No? How about the destroyer and the sloops to shield my withdrawal?”
“That I can do.” Tolvern snapped her fingers at Capp and nodded. The first mate called Bailyna Tyn to tell her to hold position. “You lost two wolves going in,” Tolvern told Svensen. “War Cry and Anvil.”
“Figured it was bad news when they didn’t report. Are they dead or just disabled?”
“Totally gone. I’m sorry. A handful of survivors from Anvil, if we can scoop them up. The rest, dead.”
The briefest of pauses. “Valhalla welcomes them.”
Neither had time for chitchat, and the call ended. Blackbeard shuddered from another class-two explosion. Warthog moved to confront two dragoons, which left the battle cruiser and the star fortress directing all firepower at each other. No distractions.
Another class two. The enemy tried to slip in a trio of heavier missiles—that would have been disastrous—but Lomelí and Ping brought them down with countermeasures. Tolvern tried another attack with her last nuclear torpedo, and with the same results as before. No luck whatsoever.
A dragoon fell, caught by Triumph’s guns and torn nearly in two as
explosive shot ripped through an already damaged hull. A second dragoon took a torpedo and fled the battlefield with its engine bleeding. Another dragoon closed with Apollo, even had a clear shot as its target maneuvered away from Bravo, but its batteries were slow to fire, and the corvette escaped yet again.
But Tolvern couldn’t enjoy these small victories.
First, she lost a falcon. Hit by a deck gun, the striker craft blew her engine and slammed into a carrier with a rippling explosion. Seconds later, dragoons separated one of the colonel’s sloops from the rest and tore at it relentlessly. The Hroom ship made a quick, clever maneuver and nearly broke free, but kinetic fire swept across the bow and burst through already damaged armor. Something exploded inside the sloop, and it continued now on a straight-line trajectory. Dragoons followed and shot it into a gutted wreck.
Peerless was absorbing so many blows that Zenger was forced to bring Triumph back into the line of fire. Bravo, the least damaged of the four star fortresses, made as if to shove Triumph aside so it could keep hammering Peerless.
Deception.
At the last moment, Bravo rolled over and released a terrific belch of fire. Kinetic shot, missiles, some sort of exploding burst fire. It hammered Triumph below the bridge and along the length of the ship. Zenger gave out a distress signal. Hull breached. Bombproofs failing. All hands to escape pods. Tolvern watched in horror.
My God, he’s lost his ship.
Two dragoons hooked down from above. They came in tight, as if sensing that Triumph was in no position to chase them off with cannon, and hung above the cruiser, pounding it relentlessly. Missiles, fired earlier from Alpha, now slammed into Triumph, and there was no defense grid active to knock them down.
No more than thirty seconds had passed since Zenger’s distress call. No escape pods had launched.
A flash of light centered on Triumph’s location. A giant burst of radiation. When the sensors cleared, there was nothing left. Just like that, Captain Mitchell Zenger and the entire crew of a Punisher-class cruiser were no more.
Tolvern was still reeling from the loss of the cruiser when Carvalho’s voice burst over the com. “Captain, I think we got it! I think it is down!”
The torus of blue light encircling Charlie’s midsection now looked like a half-moon failing to complete a circle. That left the upper deck unprotected, and that was right where the war junk had been focusing its energy beam for the last ten or twelve minutes. The suddenly thin armor should be nice and soft.
“Smythe, get Carvalho out of there. Capp, send Warthog to support McGowan or we’re going to lose another cruiser. Nyb Pim, I need a perfectly executed roll. Main battery on that soft spot.”
Tolvern called the gunnery. Barker answered with his characteristic gravelly voice.
“One blast with penetrating shot, and then we’ve got to get down there and hit them again,” she said. Tolvern glanced at her console. “You’ll have twenty seconds after the broadside.”
“You won’t get explosive out of ’em, Captain. Not in twenty seconds. And we already wasted the last nuke.”
“Punch in every torpedo you’ve got. When we pull around, you’ll have a shot with the secondary. Load the secondary with explosive shot, and make it count. There’s no second chance at this.”
“Aye, Captain.”
Tolvern glanced back to the main screen. Warthog arrived just as Peerless fell under attack, her sister ship gone and the corvette being chased all over the place by dragoons, who were eager to isolate McGowan’s cruiser and finish her off.
There was a reason they’d designated Warthog a brawler-class warship. Blackbeard’s rider ship wasn’t particularly maneuverable, couldn’t jump solo, and had limited ability to fight from a distance. But she had the thickest armor on the battlefield, and enough guns to maul an unwary opponent from short range.
Bravo was forced to call off its attack on Peerless to focus on the smaller ship rumbling in with all guns blazing. The much smaller Warthog sat tussling with the star fortress even as Alpha joined the fight.
Nyb Pim looked up from the nav computer. “Ready, Captain!”
“Execute.”
#
Svensen dropped bombs as he retreated. They hit airlocks with charges, knocked apart every structural system they could find. Once, they stumbled upon a computer room and set it on fire.
Meanwhile, he lost men at every turn. Two fell to a counterattack as they blasted their way into a corridor. Another dropped behind and decimators caught him and dragged him off. He was still screaming for rescue over the com two minutes later, saying they’d smashed his guns, broken his arms and legs, and left him to be picked up later.
But the raiders and marines had withdrawn too far, and Svensen couldn’t do anything, couldn’t even figure out where the missing man was. There was a bitter flavor in his mouth as he killed the raider’s com so he wouldn’t torment the others with his pleas.
They fell into an ambush when they reached the original corridor, just down from their breach. The fighting continued at a furious pace for some time before Helsingor bounded up with several men. The man’s helmet was painted like a pink balloon with a crude smiling face, a touch that had always seemed frivolous and silly, but now seemed all the more sinister as he flew through the air and knocked two enemy mech units to the ground.
Other raiders—these ones with helmets like dragons and demons and ram horns, fell in behind the man with the pink balloon helmet. Together, they battered their way to Svensen’s side. Helsingor had brought along raiders and marines from other crews that he’d picked up along the way.
Gunfire was still incoming from both up and down the corridor, but Helsingor grabbed Svensen. “We’ll guard your exit. Make a stand. Fight it out to the end to make sure everyone else gets away.”
Svensen shook his head. The voice of the captured raider was still too fresh in his head, pleading for help after they’d broken his arms and legs.
“I won’t leave anyone else.”
“Then it’s time for me to get the hell out of here before I get pinned down.”
“Does your ship still have torpedoes?”
The pink balloon with the smiling face turned back toward him. “Huh?”
“The nuclear-tipped torpedoes. Do you still have them on Icefall?”
“Only two. The rest went out across the fleet. McGowan—”
Svensen shook him. “Forget McGowan. Get to your ship. Drop those torpedoes as you go. Send them into the breach where you landed. There’s no armor there. Do you understand?”
The enemy was massing again, and Svensen’s raiders had to thrust forward in that direction to push them back enough for Helsingor and his men to break through. Then Scandians were falling back, retreating to their own ships.
Svensen got into the hold, hauled Kelly through, and was followed by Lund and others. Marines and raiders alike. Too many missing, though. Where were they all?
Decimators followed them into Boghammer, hurling explosives and shooting up the hold. If any more entered, the tables would turn on the whole raid. It would be Boghammer’s turn to be gutted from the inside out, her systems smashed, holes blown in her bulkheads and airlocks. Engine and com sabotaged.
Svensen called the bridge. “Get us out of here. Go!”
There were several decimators inside and the doors were still open to the void when Boghammer broke its link with the alien ship and pulled away. Svensen caught a glimpse of the star fortress from close range, holes in her armor like gaping wounds, venting gasses and debris and dead and dying mech unit soldiers from both sides. Flashes along her hull from Alliance attacks—HMS Crown and the Hroom sloops, presumably—already hitting her even while the Fourth Wolves were trying to extricate themselves.
Boghammer’s outer bay doors closed. It was still chaos inside. A raider was screaming, and Svensen saw that part of his suit had broken off or been removed from the elbow joint down. His arm had faced the void for several long seconds. Another man cried
for help as two decimators hammered him with hand cannons.
Other raiders and marines tried to free their companion, as well as fight off a cluster of three decimators who were climbing the slings and netting to get to the lift. A sixth enemy had some sort of charge he was affixing to the floor, trying to blow a hole through the ship from the inside.
In the midst of all this chaos, Boghammer shuddered. A warning light flashed, and Svensen took damage readings from Jörvak in the command room. Decimators inside, enemy ships shooting at them from without.
It was a fight for their lives.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Blackbeard came under withering heavy fire as she rolled onto her back. Star Fortress Charlie was upside-down and oblique to their position, twisting away from the war junk’s energy beam.
Tolvern watched with grim satisfaction as the Adjudicator ship tried and failed to remove its weakened shield from her line of sight. Bigger than her, more cumbersome, and they didn’t have a pilot with the skill of Nyb Pim.
It came into position.
“Fire broadside.”
The gunnery let loose. Blackbeard shuddered from the weight of hundreds of tons of outgoing kinetic shot from the twenty-two guns in the main battery. The cannon fire ripped a massive hole in the length of the enemy ship.
Torpedoes launched. All tubes.
And instantly, Blackbeard was rolling about again, following the next turn of the alien ship. Her secondary battery, seven cannons, fired explosive shot. It hit the gaping wound they’d opened moments earlier, and was immediately chased down by five different Mark-IV torpedoes, slower to arrive, but packing devastating firepower. Heavy explosions, one after another.
Charlie vomited fire and debris from her open wounds. Secondary explosions burst about within, and soon the gaping hole had spread a third of the length of the entire star fortress. It tried to turn about, someone still maneuvering the engines, even as she continued to bleed.
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