It can’t be helped, he told himself. The Admiralty would hold an inquest if there was a fatal blue-on-blue, a starfighter blown to atoms by friendly fire, but he already knew what it would say. It had been a tragic accident, one of the tragic accidents that always happened during wartime; there was nothing anyone, even the finest officers in the navy, could do to keep it from happening again. We’ll worry about it later.
“They’re landing on the hull,” Monica said. Her voice was grim. “Should we try to blow them off?”
“Yeah,” Richard said. The enemy starfighters were getting closer. Worse, the gunboats and the shuttles were sweeping point defence weapons off the carrier’s hull. It wouldn’t be long before the next waves could land unopposed. “I think we have no choice.”
He forced himself to think as he swept along the hull, waiting for the enemy shuttle to come into range. The aliens would have problems opening the airlocks, wouldn’t they? Normally, they were designed to be easy to open - at least to allow anyone trapped on the outside into the airlock itself, if not to let them into the rest of the ship - but Invincible was on red alert and the airlocks would be sealed. Did they intend to use tactical nukes to blast their way through the armour? It would work if the nukes detonated under the plating, he figured, but it would also vent the compartments directly underneath the blast. That would put a crimp in the virus’s plans to infect the ship. There was certainly no suggestion that the virus could survive in a vacuum.
Although we can survive for a few minutes in a vacuum, he reminded himself. His instructors had made it clear that it was possible, barely. They’d also said that, if emergency supplies were more than a minute away, the pilots might as well spend their last few seconds kissing their ass goodbye instead of trying to find a way to survive. Maybe the virus can last for a few seconds too.
A flare of white light caught his attention as the alien shuttle came into view. The craft was holding position above the hull, burning into the armour with a giant plasma torch ... Richard stared, unable to help being impressed. The virus had taken a standard mining tool, one that could be found right across the human sphere, and turned it into a weapon. They’d seal the gash in the hull, then send the assault troops into the ship. Richard grinned, then opened fire on the alien shuttle. It exploded in a blinding flash of light.
“They’re coming in hot,” Monica said. “Sir?”
“Get them off the hull,” Richard snapped. He’d assumed the aliens intended to board, but they could cause worse trouble simply by using their plasma torches to melt their way further into the ship. And then they could detonate nukes inside the armour. That would put Invincible out of commission for good. “Hurry!”
***
“They’re trying to board us?”
“It looks that way,” Arthur said. “They’re trying to burn through the hull.”
“Order the marines to deploy to stop them,” Stephen snapped. His mind raced. They’d practiced counter-boarding operations, but never under fire. In hindsight, that might have been a mistake. Half his crew was qualified to operate plasma rifles and cannons, as well as handguns and gaussrifles, yet too many of them would be needed elsewhere. “And order Major Parkinson to draw reinforcements from the beta and delta crews, damage control crewmen excepted.”
“Aye, sir,” Arthur said.
Stephen swore under his breath as new alerts flashed up in front of him. The damage was mounting rapidly with each shuttle that made it to his hull, even if the wretched craft didn’t last long enough to start drilling into the heavy armour. His point defence was already a mess, giving the aliens a clear window they could use to get their shuttles through his defences and onto his hull. The CSP was blowing them off the hull as fast as they could - new alerts appeared, warning him that the armour was starting to take heavy damage - but the enemy starfighters were forcing his starfighters to concentrate on defending themselves, rather than shielding Invincible from her foes. If the assault continued, it was almost certain that the aliens were going to force their way into his ship.
His fingers touched his console, bringing up a subroutine he’d never expected to have to use outside simulations. And yet, he’d forced himself to consider it as soon as he’d realised the true nature of the alien threat. The virus wasn’t a signatory to any treaty that defined the proper and acceptable ways to treat POWs, even if they surrendered as soon as the situation became hopeless. No, there was no way Stephen could merely destroy his ship’s datacores and render her nothing more than a giant hunk of scrap metal. He had to blow up the entire ship.
The situation isn’t that desperate yet, he told himself. The self-destruct system was completely isolated from the remainder of the datanet. It was possible the virus could hack the datanet - the analysts had come up with some terrifying scenarios - but it wouldn’t be able to deactivate the self-destruct once it was activated. We have time to try to push them back out of the hull.
He gritted his teeth. Invincible’s bridge was at the very centre of the ship, surrounded by layers of internal armour. It would take time for a determined assault to make its way through the defences, even if the virus moved ahead of its host-bodies, infecting everyone it encountered along the way. Stephen would have plenty of time to trigger the self-destruct if it looked as if the virus was on the verge of winning. And yet, he couldn’t help asking himself what would happen if he was wrong. The virus could not be allowed to overwhelm and capture his ship.
“Captain, they’re on the verge of breaking through,” Commander Newcomb reported. “I’ve had that entire section vented. The marines are taking control of the access hatches.”
“Good,” Stephen said. He was tempted to order Major Parkinson to swarm the compartment, to be ready to greet the aliens when they forced their way into the section, but he trusted the marine to know what he was doing. “And the reserves?”
“They’re drawing weapons and armour now,” Newcomb assured him, irritated. “The first squads should be ready in ten minutes.”
Another fucking oversight, Stephen thought. He didn’t blame his XO for being irritated. Naval crewmen normally carried sidearms during wartime - Invincible wasn’t the first starship to be boarded by alien forces - but assault rifles and other heavy weapons were normally kept locked up in Marine Country. Next time, we’re going to have to distribute weapons long before the boarding action actually begins.
A dull quiver ran through his ship. More alerts flashed up in front of him. Stephen studied the warnings for a moment, then dismissed them. Either they cleared the outer hull of enemy shuttles - and wiped out any boarding parties - or they died when the self-destruct was triggered. He’d worry about getting back home if they lasted long enough to drive the aliens away and make it through the tramline. He was starting to think that they’d have to kill every last alien craft to break contact.
“They’re entering the ship now,” Newcomb said. More alerts flashed up. “And they’re pumping polluted atmosphere into the hull.”
“Make sure everyone has a mask and a shipsuit,” Stephen ordered. Thankfully, as far as anyone could tell, the viral particles couldn’t be absorbed through the skin. A mask was enough to keep someone uninfected, as long as it wasn’t ripped off. Hopefully, they’d be able to eradicate the virus without having to vent the entire ship. “And tell Major Parkinson ...”
He shook his head. “Tell him to proceed as he sees fit,” he said. There was nothing to be gained from micromanaging the marines. “And alert the remainder of the crew to be ready to repel boarders.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Alice had never really liked the shipboard armour, although it was better than wearing her BDUs or dress whites. It was heavy enough to make it difficult for her to move, particularly as it lacked the servomotors and exoskeleton of a heavily-armoured battlesuit, but - at the same time - it wasn’t armoured enough to make up for the lack of manoeuvrability. There was certainly no way she could slip through a Jefferies Tube without getting stuck halfway to her des
tination, something that would limit her - and the remainder of the squad’s - ability to take advantage of their greater knowledge of the ship’s interior design. And it was hot, sweaty and thoroughly uncomfortable. She would sooner have worn her body armour over a standard shipsuit, gambling that she could tear off the armour if it became necessary for her to make a hasty escape. But Major Parkinson had ordered them to wear the shipboard armour and she knew better than to argue. The carrier had suddenly become a combat zone.
She hefted her rifle as she stared at the airlock, uneasily aware that an alien boarding party was flowing - perhaps literally - into the carrier. The internal sensors on the far side had practically been melted when the aliens had burnt their way into the hull, but enough had survived to show movement heading towards the airlock. Alice was relieved they hadn’t been in the compartment when the aliens started their attack - they would have been melted along with most of the internal sensors - but she couldn’t help finding it a little frustrating. It was impossible to say, with any real certainty, just what was happening on the other side of the airlock. The aliens might be preparing to blast their way further into the ship ... or they might be stacking tactical nukes into a neat little pile before they hit the detonator. Alice found it hard to believe that the virus hadn’t considered the possibility. It certainly didn’t want Invincible to make it back home after blowing the virus’s shipyard to hell.
And if it didn’t think of using nukes before now, we certainly showed it the way, she thought, wryly. It must have worked out what we did to the shipyard now.
The airlock seemed to bulge, then exploded outwards into a shower of fragments. Alice ducked instinctively, hoping and praying that the pieces of makeshift shrapnel wouldn't hit one or more of her comrades. Holding the enemy was going to be difficult even before someone was hurt, forcing her to choose beside abandoning him to the virus or taking the risk of dragging a wounded man down the corridor to the next set of defences. She gritted her teeth as a shower of grenades followed, half of them exploding with terrifying force. The remainder showered droplets of sickly yellow liquid everywhere. Concentrated virus, she guessed as alerts flashed up in her HUD. It didn't look like an acid attack.
“Here they come,” Hammersmith said. “Captain?”
“Fire on my command,” Alice said. She hefted her rifle, hoping the aliens would have as much trouble seeing in the darkened compartment as an unenhanced human. “Let them come closer first.”
The aliens advanced forward, moving in a pattern that made her think of untried troops who hadn’t - yet - learnt to read a battlefield. One group advanced forward, covered by the second group ... it wasn’t a bad tactic, but in a confined space it could be disastrous. She smiled coldly, one hand unhooking a pair of grenades from her belt as she saw two blobs following the humanoids. The infected aliens would have done a better job if they’d tried to charge the human defenders, rather than give them time to recover from the grenades. There just wasn’t enough cover to make standard tactics workable.
She hurled the grenades, aiming at the blobs. “Now,” she snapped, as the grenades detonated. “Take them out.”
The humanoids stumbled, then started to fall. The follow-up units opened fire a second later, blasting plasma bolts down the corridor ... seemingly at random. Alice wasn’t sure quite what they thought they were targeting, but it didn’t matter. They’d be resuming the offensive soon enough. She silently tried to calculate how many boarders might be coming their way in the next few minutes, but it was impossible to come up with a definite answer. She’d flown in assault shuttles that could carry upwards of a hundred troops and stealth shuttles that were barely large enough to carry a single platoon. Besides, more alerts were popping up in front of her eyes all the time. It looked as if the virus was trying to swarm the defenders.
She ducked, again, as more grenades flew towards her position. The deck shook a moment later, the internal armour directing the blast up and down the corridor. Alice thought fast, then snapped out a series of commands as she threw another pair of grenades back towards the enemy. The marines slipped back, leaving a handful of IEDs in their wake. She heard them explode as the marines reached the second line of defences. There was no way to know what, if anything, they’d hit ... but she was sure they’d hit something. She just hoped it would be decisive.
But it won’t be, she thought. We need an edge.
The aliens kept pushing their way into the carrier, spreading out as their boarding parties started to link up. Alice heard Major Parkinson barking orders as the marines combined with naval reservists to form new barricades, knowing that it was only a matter of time before they’d be spread too thin to keep the aliens from penetrating down towards the most vital areas on the ship. She wondered, as she felt another dull thud echoing through the ship, if they might as well press the rest of the crew into service. It wasn’t as if they’d have much of a ship left if they didn’t.
“They’re regrouping, if the internal sensors are to be believed,” Major Parkinson said. “And they’re still trying to poison us.”
“Yes, sir,” Alice said. “But at least they’re not getting the infection down here.”
“The lighting is keeping the virus out, for the moment,” Major Parkinson said. He frowned as he studied the display. The virus was systematically wiping out the internal sensors as well as trying to hack the datanet, although that - thankfully - was failing miserably. “But we’re going to need to think of something desperate.”
Alice nodded. “We could go out on the hull, blow the shuttles and seals off ourselves ...”
She checked her squad, quickly. She’d lost two men - and a third might have survived long enough to be infected - but they were still ready and able to fight. Perhaps there had been some sense in wearing the shipboard armour after all. They could get out onto the hull without changing into shipsuits or battlesuits first. The aliens weren’t wearing suits, as far as anyone could tell. They’d have to change themselves if they wanted to wage war in a vacuum.
“Good thinking,” Major Parkinson said. His lips twitched into a humourless smile, suggesting he had something else in mind. “But I think I have another idea.”
***
“They’re just not breaking into the encrypted datanet,” Arthur said. “But they’re still trying.”
“As long as they’re wasting time,” Stephen said. The virus might not be sentient, as humanity understood the term, but it was terrifyingly intelligent. A brute-force approach to cracking the datanet might just work, particularly if the virus had had a chance to practice on another human-designed datacore first. “Cut out the entire section if there’s even a chance it will hack the network.”
He leaned back in his chair, feeling useless. His crew were fighting for their lives, inside and outside the ship, and there was literally nothing he could do about it. There was no point in giving orders, not when his ship’s weapons and defences had been worn to a nub. The only thing he could do was wait and see what happened. His fingers twitched over the console, a nagging reminder that he might have to trigger the self-destruct and blow up his own ship before she could fall into enemy hands. Cold logic told him he had time, but - in truth - he didn’t really believe it.
His console bleeped. “Captain, this is Parkinson. I want your permission to try something dangerous. And desperate.”
Stephen frowned. “What do you have in mind?”
“I think we should test a theory,” Parkinson said. He outlined his idea. “And if we’re right, we might just be able to really hurt the bastards.”
“Do it,” Stephen said.
***
“This strikes me as silly,” Hammersmith said. “Are you sure it is going to work?”
“No,” Alice said. She sprayed herself with the aerosol, trying not to think too hard about its contents. Her skin crawled, even though she knew that every last inch of her body was covered in armour. “But do you have a better idea?”
“No,” Ham
mersmith said. “I just feel a little exposed.”
Alice nodded in understanding. The remainder of the defenders had retreated back into the interior, leaving her and her squad of volunteers alone. She couldn’t help feeling exposed as the attackers advanced towards them, alerts flashing up in front of her eyes as the sensors registered the presence of viral particles in the air. The lighting was still keeping the virus from spreading much further - and hopefully reducing its ability to keep its host-bodies connected - but she knew that wouldn’t last. The oncoming force was smashing Invincible’s internal lighting as well as her internal sensors.
If nothing else, we’ll go down in the history books, she thought, in a moment of gallows humour. Probably under the heading of ‘how not to do it.’
She tensed as the first of the humanoids came into view, weapons at the ready. Every instinct told her to raise her rifle and blow the alien to hell, all the more so as the alien was nothing more than a mindless slave, but she kept her weapon firmly at her side. The alien kept moving, walking right into the aerosol spray. Alice prayed, silently, that the alien would find the smell convincing. If not, they had practically signed their own death warrants. The boarders would have no trouble wiping them out before turning their attention to the rest of the crew.
Para Bellum Page 37
