by P W Hillard
He turned, his suit stomping as it spun in place, his head unit shifting towards what Meg’s machine was pointing at. A cluster of black dots in the sky, coming in from the sunny side of the planet and getting closer with each moment. Xander could tell they were aircraft, even at this distance. There were three heading towards his fire team, whilst two were flying upwards, into the upper atmosphere.
“Ok, so by soon I clearly meant right the fuck now. Defensive positions. Meg, Anya, up front, try and shoot them down if you can.” Xander pulled himself away from the wall quickly, moving behind one of the undamaged warehouses and crouching behind it to get cover from the incoming planes. He had sent the two women forward because they had the fastest firing weapons. If these were dropships, and Xander had a hunch they were, shooting one down was unlikely but could save a big headache if it could be managed. Xander’s mind couldn’t help but drift back to his first encounter with Black Rose forces, an anti-air gun firing on the dropship he was travelling on. He wished he had that kind of specialist equipment on hand, it would have swung the odds heavily in his favour.
“Those two going up, we should warn the Sunchaser,” Anya said. She had positioned herself in the centre of the courtyard, her cannons spinning ready.
“You’re right. Cain to Sunchaser, do you read?”
“We’re reading you, Cain. I’ve got to give it to you, that was a hell of a crazy idea. Bloody new one on me firing a laser at the surface. You’ve got the big bollocks, I’ll give you that.” The voice was Mikal’s, the pirate’s tone and accent unmistakable.
“Heads up Sunchaser, we’ve got two bogeys heading for the upper atmosphere. Looks like you’ve got incoming.” The Sunchaser was still sat in the blind spot, but Xander knew that once the enemy got high enough, they would be able to detect its location easily. If those aircraft were rated for orbital operations, the ship was in trouble.
“Thanks for the warning, don’t you worry about us, we’ll deal with them, Sunchaser out.”
“He sounds confident,” Meg said. She was standing in the gap blasted into the wall. It was on the far side from the warehouses, facing the direction the aircraft were coming from.
“Advantages of being an old pirate, I guess.”
“Not sure I follow.”
“I mean, it's like us, mercs, right?” Xander said. “The old ones are the most dangerous because they're the ones tough enough to survive.”
***
Tamara smiled as she watched the live feed from the camera attached to Meg's suit. The footage of Meg leaping over the wall and blasting tank crews as they sprinted to their vehicles was unusable, Tamara had no intention of including graphic violence in her videos, it didn't make the Paladins look good. The camera had caught Anya's defence of the tunnel entrance, however, and that made for dramatic viewing, the perfect thing for an exciting webcast.
The camera view shifted, wobbling as Meg’s suit moved. She was crouching in the hole blasted into the wall, looking up at the skyline.
“What are you doing, Meg?” Tamara tapped the side of the monitor. She knew that wouldn’t help, but she felt better anyway. “We don’t need footage of mountains.” She peered in closer at the footage. “What are those dots…?”
An alarm began to blare, a loud piercing wail that repeated over and over. Tamara had heard it a few times before, during the long boring drills that Mikal had insisted on running over and over when they had first acquired the Sunchaser.
“All hands to battle stations. I’m not fucking around this time; this is not a drill.” With almost perfect timing Mikal’s voice came over the ship’s intercom. “Anyone not at their station in five I’ll kick up the arse myself.”
“Oh damnit,” Tamara said to herself. She was alone in the small supply room she had been using for producing. Whilst Sergei had agreed to her studio idea, after much arm twisting, there hadn't been any opportunity to start work on it yet.
Tamara glanced around the room, looking for the emergency locker. She was in the spinning part of the ship, experiencing the pseudo-gravity that made it liveable, but as a non-combatant, she was supposed to stay well out of the way of the crew. She found the locker, opening the door. They were spread throughout the ship at regular intervals, their contents designed to allow people to survive should the worst happen. Within each locker was an emergency spacesuit, a spare oxygen canister for the suit, and a folding chair that locked into place once opened.
Taking the suit from the locker, Tamara clambered into it. The suit was in two parts. Tamara put the legs on first, she hated wearing them. They were thickly padded and squeezed at her legs uncomfortably as she stepped into the suit. Next came the torso. This bit Tamara had found tricky during the drills. The torso locked to the legs with a twisting motion, the metal rings at the end of each sealing automatically once in place. It meant Tamara had to put both of her arms in at an angle, then twist the suit around to her front.
A loud click told her that she had managed it, a small green light on the inside of the metal ring around the collar signalling the seal was airtight. Tamara picked up the helmet, finding her newly gloved hands awkward as she did so. It locked into place, using the same twist and seal mechanism as the suit itself. A second green light came on, signalling the suit was now fully airtight. Tamara looked at her left wrist, a small gauge showing the amount of oxygen she had remaining was attached to the glove.
She unfolded the seat and parked herself onto it, pulling the straps over her shoulders and locking them into place.
“Really regretting this idea now, aren’t you, Tamara,” she said to herself. “Better hope your friends know what they’re doing.”
Chapter Fifteen
Sergei watched the screen at the front of the bridge, a two-dimensional representation of the planet below displayed across the glass. Two red circles were moving away from it, towards the blue blob that marked the location of the Sunchaser. Mikal had shouted at him to put on an emergency spacesuit, so Sergei had squeezed his way into the outfit and strapped himself into a chair at the side of the bridge. He had been careful to make sure he was out of the way of the bridge crew, none of which had put on their suits, too busy preparing to deal with the incoming craft.
“Do we have a read on those ships yet?” Mikal said. He clicked shut the clasp on the seat straps, pulled them tight and then snapped closed the clips at the top that held the belts into position.
“Yes. They're much bigger than dropships. From the size, I would say we've got two gunships on an intercept course.” The crewman was tapping furiously at the console before them as they tried to get more information on the incoming craft.
“Sounds about right for our bloody luck, doesn't it?”
“Gunships?” Sergei said. He realised immediately that it was a stupid question, one that just showed his ignorance of military terms.
“Like dropships but filled with guns instead of mechs. They’re used for close space support missions. Taking out satellites, boarding stations, that kind of thing.” Mikal’s focus was locked on the screen, the gears in his mind turning as he planned what to do.
“Are they a threat to us?”
“’Let’s ‘ope not. Only one real way to find out though.” Mikal pointed at a crewman near the front of the bridge. “Launch defensive missiles, front bays, four from each.”
“Yes, cap,” replied the crewman. They tapped at their console as a swarm of dots appeared on the screen. They moved away from the blue circle, pulsing each time the screen updated.
Sergei winced. Missiles weren’t cheap and he could almost see the funds flying from the company coffers as each one rushed out from its tube. He wasn’t going to second guess Mikal, the ship’s captain was only doing what he thought was right, but Sergei silently wished he would do it cheaper.
“Missiles away. Estimated time until impact four minutes.”
“Keep a lock,” Mikal said. “Be ready to launch a second spread. What’s the time on the laser?”
&
nbsp; “Chamber is still cooling,” said a crewman behind Mikal. “We’ve got maybe fifteen minutes before we can fire a low power shot. We’re talking thirty if you want to fire at maximum power.”
“We’ll be in effective weapons range in three.” The crewman manning the sensor array didn’t look up from their console as they tracked the incoming craft.
Mikal sighed. “Laser’s out then. Bring us about to face them, I don’t want any shots ‘itting our engines.”
“These things must be how they took the station,” Sergei said. It was an obvious statement, but he felt like he needed to contribute to the conversation somehow. It was an old reflex from his corporate days, where any ideas generated in a meeting were attributed to the last person to speak, rather than the person whose idea it was.
“These and some dropships would certainly do it.” Mikal stared at the screen, watching the tiny blips that marked the missiles he had launched as they travelled towards the two enemy vessels. Four minutes until his missiles hit, but only three until the enemy opened fire. Malik was experienced enough to know that maths was the most lethal killer in space. “I want us to move ‘ard to port immediately when those gunships are in range. And I mean on the fucking dot. Send a high-G warning throughout the ship.
“What are our chances, Mikal?” Sergei said. “Be honest.”
“Not great. The Sunchaser ain’t a warship, and those gunships are right on us. Downside to our little plan to ‘ide close to this fucking planet’s arse-end. At this range, the cannons on those things can do us some serious damage.”
“Don’t we have point defences or something like that?”
“Sure, what the fuck do you think those missiles are? We’ve got some cannons, but they’re designed to take out missiles, you know, things supposed to explode in the first place. If they take out one of these gunships, we got lucky.” Mikal was gripping the edge of his seat as he continued to watch the missiles on the screen.
“So, we’re screwed?” Sergei was sweating, the spacesuit was uncomfortably warm, the beads forming shimmering orbs on his skin, no gravity there to pull them away.
“Well, we’re at the stage of ‘oping for a bloody miracle. Or something crazy.”
“Cap, uh…” began a nearby crewman. “The Summer Breeze is…launching.”
Mikal allowed himself a chuckle. “Well, looks like we’re going with crazy then.”
***
The Summer Breeze had landed in the now-empty mechbay. With the massive war machines removed there was enough space to work on the dropship, and Candice intended to give her a thorough once over. The descent to the planet below had left a coating of black soot across the front of the ship where the heat resistant coating had started to burn away. It was still good for a few more trips, but Candice hated the way it looked.
“Be careful with those!” Candice rubbed the sides of her head. She had pressed the first two crew she had seen into her service, tasking them with reloading the rocket launcher beneath the Summer Breeze’s nose. She was sitting in the cockpit itself, adjusting some of the engine settings.
Candice glared through the glass and the crewman just smiled awkwardly back to her. He had nearly dropped the rocket. They weren’t armed, so it wasn’t dangerous, but a damaged rocket was unusable, and Candice had paid for her supply out of her own pocket before she had joined on with the Paladins. Ordnance wasn’t cheap.
There was a crackle on the radio, an incoming message working its way through the speakers. Candice had toggled the Summer Breeze's communications system onto the same channel that the mercenaries were using on the surface. She had a habit of listening in on the action, finding it helpful to keep on top of what was going on.
“Heads up Sunchaser, we’ve got two bogeys heading for the upper atmosphere.” It was Xander’s voice, distorted slightly by the signal having to fight its way through the Sunchaser.
Candice sat up in her chair with a start. Enemy ships incoming meant either dropships loaded with mechs or heavily armed gunships. She knew the Sunchaser was no warship and its laser would still be cooling off after the shot at the surface. Without help, it was in trouble.
“Thanks for the warning, don’t you worry about us, we’ll deal with them, Sunchaser out.”
Mikal sounded confident, but Candice knew that it was a show. That was part of being a captain, acting as a beacon of solidarity for the crew.
The glass of the cockpit clonked as Candice knocked against it, getting the attention of the crew on the other side. “Get out of the bay! I’m going to take off!”
An alarm began to blare, its warning timed with Candice’s. The crew pushed off from the Summer Breeze, floating across the bay and out through the door opposite.
Hands danced across controls as the Summer Breeze began to spring to life. Candice was still wearing her pilot’s suit and was thankful she had been too eager to begin maintenance on her dropship to remove it. She snapped the glass helmet into place, lights flashing on the collar to indicate a seal.
A few more button presses confirmed the status on the dropship. There was less than a third left in the fuel tanks, but that was more than enough to move about in orbit. The bigger problem was that the crew had only loaded three rockets before their task had been cut short. Rockets weren’t ideal in the first place, and Candice couldn’t afford to get this wrong.
She sent the command code to the bay doors, the metal sliding open to reveal the glittering stars beyond. Candice never got bored of the sight, the endless void of infinite possibility. Each point of light held opportunity or occasionally danger. Candice wasn’t so keen on the second option.
Engines flared as the Summer Breeze lifted off from the floor of the bay, moving silently in the vacuum. It slid backwards through the doorway before a short burst of nose-mounted thrusters spun the dropship ninety degrees. Candice gripped the stick tightly, and fired the main engines, rocketing off into space.
***
Through the darkness of space, eight missiles fired their engines, accelerating towards their targets. They had been split into even groups, each tasked with intercepting the incoming vessels. The simple computers within each projectile were only capable of basic tracking. Over the vast distances of space combat, that was enough, the weapons having ample time to change their course.
The missiles themselves were bigger than their terrestrial cousins. Without the aid of aerodynamics, the missiles needed a system of thrusters to adjust their course, along with additional fuel to use them. This meant they were much fatter and thicker than weapons with the same payload and were affectionally known amongst the crews of starships as wide boys.
None of this mattered to the missiles themselves, their computerised minds dull embers compared to Mathias’s roaring flame. They just carried on their course through the black towards the two ships, so close now that they were visible.
The enemy craft had the same basic frame as a dropship, a snub-nosed cockpit at the front with four powerful swivelling engines mounted to its hull. Where the mech bay would hang down like a distended belly there was instead a large muzzle sandwiched between two fearsome looking missile pods. Rows of angry red warheads ready to launch. Mounted centrally on the top of the craft, just behind the cockpit, was a pair of turrets with rotary cannons, weapons designed to intercept incoming weapons fire.
Those cannons did as they were designed to, opening fire on the incoming wall of missiles, light blazing from barrels as the void robbed them of their furious roar. There was a brief flicker of newborn stars as the missiles exploded, the cannons working their way methodically through the barrage.
The cannons stopped for a moment. There was something else approaching them, moving across space on an intercept course. It wasn’t a missile; the object was too big for that. The targeting algorithm listed the object as a dropship, but the simple operating system of the cannons didn’t acknowledge that as correct. A dropship would be heading away from two heavily armed gunships.
The
computer passed a notification back to the pilots of the two armed craft, soliciting confused looks in the cabins of both. That confusion became panic a second later as the incoming dropship fired three projectiles on intercept courses. Both craft adjusted their courses, turning away as their cannons opened fire.
The trap was sprung. The dropship fired its engines hard, drastically adjusting its angle and revealing the second cluster of missiles that were trailing behind it. The enemy craft had known that the defensive cannons would get confused, screening the second salvo with itself.
Missiles crashed into gunships; their defences too busy engaging the rockets to switch targets. Balls of nuclear fire expanded outwards into space, the ships annihilated in moments.
Within the Summer Breeze, Candice breathed a sigh of relief. She had thought up the plan on the fly, hurriedly explaining it to Mikal who had been impressed with the idea. The whole thing relied on something Xander had told her, about the enemy forces being inexperienced. No mercenary pilot would have fallen for the trick, overriding their cannons and manually selecting a target. Human skill beat out machines every time.
Chapter Sixteen
Xander watched as the dropships approached. He knew each would be loaded with enemy mechs, the approaching force threatening to rapidly outnumber his team of mercenaries. His people were more skilled than the Black Rose riders, but there was a point where numbers could make up for that advantage. If the three dropships were fully loaded it meant that Xander and the rest of the Paladins would be facing down twelve enemy mechsuits.
Anya had taken up the position Xander had asked of her, near the wall of the compound. Her cannons were spinning ready, the cameras of her head unit tracking the incoming aircraft. She hadn’t fired yet. Whilst her weapons had the highest rate of fire, they weren’t designed for anti-aircraft duties. Anya lacked the complex tracking systems dedicated weapons and suits had, relying on her judgement alone. She knew that next to her Meg was doing the same, the two women tasked with acting as the first line of defence.
