With the plan finalized, Ekatya sat back in relief while Lancer Tal spoke directly to the warriors nearing their destination. They’d run out the clock long before, and had been instructed to greatly reduce speed in order to delay their arrival. Upon hearing their new orders, they set up such a roar of approval that the room rang with it. Even Lhyn smiled.
Now began the hard part: waiting. There was nothing else anyone could do from here; it was all up to the Whitesun fleet. So they sat amid a low hum of conversation as the Alseans spoke with each other and occasionally with the Gaians, and everyone marked time while the weapons officer worked on the missile conversion. Lhyn was uncharacteristically silent, not translating the more general chatter and not interacting with Ekatya or Baldassar, either. She seemed to have mentally withdrawn, and Ekatya was unable to help.
It was a relief when Candini called in, giving Ekatya something to do that she actually had control over. The pilot had been busy dealing with the locals, getting her fighter towed in to a hangar, and going over it with a fine-toothed comb.
“I’m glad you sent me off with an Alsean copilot,” she said. “Tesseron’s been invaluable. I don’t think I would have fared so well if it had just been me dropping in on these people, but he got everyone lined up and hopping. Must be that pilot panache; it’s universal.”
“So I’m told…by pilots. I think the Lancer’s direct order for cooperation might also have had something to do with it. But I’m more concerned about your inspection, Lieutenant. Did you find the problem?”
“Yes and no. I found it, but I don’t understand it. It’s the hullskin, Captain. It’s showing the same type of damage as the Caphenon. It’s not nearly as bad—actually it’s hard to see—but I would swear it was perfect when we did the preflight in the fighter bay. The flight controls were as smooth as an ice cube on a hot body. Now they’re jammed up with tiny flakes and deformed hullskin. Besides that, the airflow over the wings has been disrupted. We probably wouldn’t have noticed at lower speeds, but at the rate we were going, small problems turn into big ones.”
That was for damn sure. “Do you think this is related to the issues you had piloting the Caphenon down?”
“I’m really wondering about that. I thought it was weapons damage that kept the hullskin from forming the atmospheric flight extensions, but this makes more sense. It’s like high-speed metal oxidation, except hullskin isn’t metal. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say something is eating it.”
“That’s exactly what Commander Kameha said.”
“Then we’re thinking alike. It’s the damnedest thing.”
“He’s looking into it right now. Maybe he’ll have some answers by the time we return to the Caphenon. In the meantime, get back here. I understand that your ride home has already been arranged.”
“Yes, and this time Tesseron gets to fly. What’s happening with the ground pounder?”
“We have a plan. One of the military geniuses in this room came up with a weakness no one ever thought of.”
“Really? One of the Alseans?”
“Dr. Rivers.”
Though Lhyn didn’t look away from the wall of viewscreens, Ekatya could see her smile.
“Ha, fantastic! You never know about those science types, do you? What’s the weakness?”
“The shielding only goes to ground level.”
“Okay. So what?”
“So this ground pounder isn’t on land. It’s in a river.”
“I’m not…Oh! Holy Seeders, you’re going to mine it!” Candini laughed in delight. “So our high-tech solution is sitting on the ground with jammed flight controls, and you’re going to kill that thing with the technological equivalent of a rock. Never mind what I said about bringing slingshots to a gun fight.”
Lhyn sat up as a voice announced something, and made an urgent signal to Ekatya. “They’ve finished the missile modification.”
“We’re on, Lieutenant. Pray to your Seeders.”
“Consider it done. Best of luck to the Alseans.”
Four of the viewscreens were now showing rapid flight footage, as the chosen bombers set out on their mission. On the larger tracking screen, four red dots separated from the rest and leaped ahead, soon appearing on both the holographic map and the two-dimensional one. They flew a wide loop around the blinking yellow dot indicating the ground pounder, rejoining the river some distance ahead and hovering in place.
Ekatya leaned forward, intent on the screens now showing video from the bombers’ landing cams. Three uniformed warriors came into view, each riding a cable down. The fourth screen showed nothing at first, but then the nose of a large missile slid out. Slowly it emerged, revealing itself to be taller than the Alseans.
The three warriors were already at the river’s surface and slid neatly into the water with hardly a splash. Two of them let go of their cable when they were waist deep, but the third ended up having to tread water. He swam toward the others and was soon able to stand. The bombers retracted their cables and swung away, looping back around to rejoin the fleet and leaving the last transport alone.
The missile was now halfway to the river. Its weight made the drop difficult; care had to be taken that no swing was introduced into its movement or the warriors waiting below would not be able to catch it safely. Ekatya found herself tensing as she watched, her gaze moving from one screen to another. A quick glance at the tracking screen showed that her urgent sense of time running out was inaccurate; the ground pounder was still three river bends away.
Finally, the missile reached the waiting hands of the warriors, who carefully leveled it out and unhooked the cable. It snaked back up, vanished into the aircraft, and reappeared not one minute later with the fourth weapons officer on it. She rode it down rapidly, landing next to the other warriors and taking her place at the tip of the missile.
Ekatya could imagine the physical difficulty of holding on to a heavy, wet, slippery missile while clambering over rocks in a river current. The warriors moved slowly, not wanting to risk one of them falling, and it took them several minutes to maneuver the missile to the position they’d chosen. Then they all sank under the surface.
Ekatya held her breath.
After what felt like too much time, one head popped up, then three, then a fourth. The warriors clambered back to the shallows and began hiking around the sharp bend of the canyon. They waved off the bomber, which retracted its cable and followed its compatriots.
At this point, everyone in the strategy room was effectively blind and deaf to the mission. Their last video contact had departed with the transport, and none of the warriors in the river would risk making a transmission that the ground pounder might detect.
All eyes were now on the holographic map and the baleful yellow dot closing the distance to the trap. The timing was critical. If the fleet arrived too soon, it would take heavy casualties trying to distract the ground pounder long enough. Arriving too late was even worse.
Now and again one of the colonels or Shantu would say something, but neither Lancer Tal nor Colonel Micah uttered a word in response. Eventually, the others gave up, falling into the same silent expectation that gripped Ekatya. She had always hated this part of a mission, when she had laid her plans, committed her people, and was reduced to the status of an observer. A battle of ships was much more to her liking, when she was fighting along with everyone else. She wondered how it worked with Lancer Tal. Did she ever see action as a warrior, or was she too high in rank for it? Given what she’d said about honor, it was possible that for Alsean warriors, no rank was exempt from fighting. She’d have to ask about it.
The ground pounder passed the last bend in the river.
Lancer Tal snapped out an order, and the tracking screen showed the entire fleet leaping forward. Within minutes they were in range, but still they held their fire. The ground pounder, not yet able to see or engage them due to the high canyon walls, continued its march. Closer and closer it came to the next bend, every incrementa
l movement raising the tension in the room. Ekatya had been here many times herself, holding off until the right moment, but it was far more difficult to tolerate when she wasn’t the one giving orders.
A few minutes later she revised her difficulty rating upward. The ground pounder was now so close to the next bend that she was beginning to worry they might have waited too long, and her hands itched with the urge to give the order herself. She glanced at Lancer Tal, who seemed unnaturally still, her expression carved in stone as she watched the holographic display.
At last the Lancer spoke a single word.
The battle began.
Chapter 25
Battle of the ground pounder
The fleet had been divided in half, with the fighters charged with engaging the ground pounder while the bombers were assigned to eliminate the missiles it would fire. Both tracking displays showed a complicated ballet of fighters dancing back and forth across the canyon, while the bombers moved in a separate sphere outside them. The com came alive with voices, calling out status and location as the pilots fired on the ground pounder and then moved on, making room for the next attacker.
The second main screen was now rotating through the forward cam footage of each fighter on an attack run, as the pilot thumbed a switch giving its footage temporary priority in the system. Tal leaned forward, anxious to get her first look at the ground pounder in real time.
It was an ugly monstrosity, but it was also the most efficient, vicious killing machine she had ever seen. It reacted instantly to the attacks, firing out a never-ending stream of laser bursts and rapidgun bullets that were tearing the fighters apart. Not all of the pilots were as good as Modro had been, and most of them took hits as they strafed the river. They were also hampered by the canyon, which not only limited their approach path but also narrowed the range that the ground pounder needed to target.
But that wasn’t the worst of it.
Amidst the steady firing of its other weaponry, the ground pounder was launching missiles, one after another. The smaller viewscreens were showing missile tracks in the air, and the pilots were shouting warnings right and left. Every fighter that appeared over the canyon was marked and targeted, at which point it could only flee and hope the pilots on defensive duty would take care of it.
Most of them did. Some failed.
A red dot winked off the displays as a missile found its target. Then another. Then a third. Other pilots were reporting themselves hit by rapidgun or laser fire, but their lights stayed on, meaning the cabin itself was still intact. But every time a missile hit its target, a transport was disintegrated along with its pilot. They weren’t blowing their cabins in time.
Another red dot vanished.
“Dammit,” Tal whispered, clenching her hands into fists. “Get over the trap.”
The ground pounder hadn’t stopped moving, and she guessed its pilot was not liking the location. The high walls of the canyon may have made the fighters easier to target, but they also protected them once they were out of range, and kept the ground pounder from fully engaging the fleet. Those Voloth wanted to get out into a more open area, which meant that forward was the only option. But with warriors getting shot out of the sky, every piptick seemed too long.
One pilot managed to eject his cabin just before a missile hit, followed soon by another, and Tal’s hopes rose. Perhaps they’d lost all they were going to.
The thought had hardly crossed her mind when a fifth dot winked out. Just as the ground pounder reached the point where she thought the mine had been placed, two more dots went dark.
But then the river erupted into a geyser, the water shooting so far up that it breached the walls before falling back. A fat cloud of smoke billowed out, obscuring the cam of the fighter currently in the canyon.
As the system switched to the next cam, several voices shouted in victory.
“They got it!”
“It’s down! The shekker is down, kill it! Kill it!”
“For Fahla and Alsea!”
A huge roar poured out of the com as every pilot repeated the battle cry. “FOR FAHLA AND ALSEA!”
The pilot now in the canyon slowed, giving Tal a good look. The ground pounder was indeed down, its square top partially submerged and at an angle. Large chunks were missing from its formerly intimidating structure, and she thought she could see a piece of it sticking out from the water some distance away.
“Yes!” She leaped to her feet, along with every other person in the room except Captain Serrado. She was gripping Micah’s arms in delight when a new voice came on the com.
“This is Shankenthal, reporting from the river. The ground pounder has been disabled. Its legs are gone, the top is shredded, and the shield is down. It is no longer returning fire.”
“Confirm that it’s neutralized,” Tal ordered. “If we can salvage that tech and take prisoners, I want both.”
She’d barely gotten the words out when the pilot said, “Shek!” and threw his craft into a climb.
“Correction, it is still weapons capable,” said Shankenthal. “The laser cannon just fired.”
Which meant the other weapons could still be online as well. The Voloth crew had probably been knocked senseless in the explosion, but if one was trying to get back on the job, there might be others. She looked at the faces on her team and saw their agreement. With an internal sigh at the loss of potential, she gave the order.
“Destroy it.”
There was a whoop as the next pilot dropped into the canyon and flipped on her cam. “Time to finish the job,” she said, sounding cocky as only a pilot could. “Eat this, you pile of dokshin!”
The laser cannon was indeed firing, and the pilot rolled one way and then the other before releasing two missiles in quick succession, setting off explosions that were even more spectacular than the first. Without the dampening effect of the water, these missiles connected directly, lighting up the canyon with a fireball that pulsed once, twice, then swept up the walls to blow itself out in the sky above. When the smoke cleared, the ground pounder had been reduced to a pile of rubble.
As cheers and chants filled the com, Tal exchanged arm grips and palm touches with her strategy team. When she turned to Captain Serrado, she paused at the unfettered joy emanating from the Gaian. Serrado may not have been Alsean, but she was just as invested in this battle as they were, and her triumph was just as fierce.
“Well done, Captain,” Tal said, holding up her hand. As Lhyn translated, Captain Serrado gripped her hand firmly. “And Lhyn, if you ever think of making a home on Alsea, consider yourself invited to be a permanent member of my advisory team.” She held up her other hand, connecting with both women.
It was like completing an electrical circuit. The shock was both physically and mentally overwhelming, giving her instant access to their innermost emotions. This sort of intimacy was reserved for the closest of family and friends, and even then only on the most special of occasions. She felt like a criminal trespasser. It took an act of will to casually release their hands when her instinct was to drop them as if they burned. Pasting a smile on her face, she leaned over to offer a palm to Commander Baldassar, then turned back to her own team with relief.
There was so much yet to do. They had to tally up the casualties and damages, and get the injured to the trauma center in Redmoon if they could handle the longer flight time, or to Whitesun if they could not. A second fleet was needed just to handle the logistics of repairing the transports that could be made airworthy on site and towing out the rest. The base at Last Port was preparing for that duty, but would not launch until dawn, as there was little point in leaving so close to sunset. They also needed to clean up the remains of the ground pounder, though that was a last priority. A higher and far grimmer one was dealing with its depredations along the river. The local militia, which had been dispatched earlier to enforce the evacuation, now had new orders and a very long night ahead.
Tal’s euphoria sank rapidly under the weight of the aft
ermath as the numbers began appearing onscreen. The entire battle had taken less than five ticks. And in five ticks, they had lost seven fighters to total disintegration, nine more to damage so extensive that the pilots had ejected their cabins, and had a further twelve reporting damage serious enough to need onsite repairs. Of the thirty-two fighters that had engaged the ground pounder before the missile explosion, only four had flown out clean.
The fatality list took longer. There were transports scattered all over the landscape, and not every pilot had been able to report in after ejection. Com silence could mean unconsciousness, or it could mean death. The fleet had divided up coordinates and was chasing down transponder signals, lowering rescue personnel as fast as they could. Every report changed a number on the screen.
Eighty ticks after the battle, the count was confirmed: ten warriors had gone to their Return. With the deaths of all six crew on Transport WSC813 early that morning, the total fatality count stood at sixteen—a number that was certain to multiply by a factor of at least ten as the bodies were collected from the ground pounder’s path of destruction.
When the final count of warrior dead was announced, Tal felt a spike of misery from the Gaian side of the table and realized that she’d been sensing a gradual buildup since the battle’s end. She hadn’t consciously acknowledged it before, having neither the time nor mental energy to focus on it, but now it was too strong to be ignored. She turned to see Captain Serrado enfold Lhyn in her arms, soothing the scientist as she cried into her shoulder. Lhyn choked out something in her language and wept harder, her good arm sliding around the captain’s shoulders and holding on tightly.
The Caphenon Page 20
