#
Johnny Page glanced over his shoulder at the remains of his bomber fleet. Sixty three ships, barely twenty-five percent his original force, now gathered on the far side of Luna after rearming. Their part of the defense should have been over, but the desperation of the Terran situation demanded every available resource. The loss of the North American shields, and shortly thereafter the African shields, spurred Page, and every Terran, to their utmost. The Cradle of Civilization and the New World were even now under relentless bombardment, and each moment meant another bomb, another blaster stream unleashed upon an unprotected planets cape.
“All ships to me,” Page ordered. “We’re going in hot, and we’re going in fast. You know the game now, but it’s going to be even more dicey. Every Terran ship we can spare is mixing it up with the Golkos in orbit, and the planetary guns are shooting at every Golkos ship that moves, regardless of our position. Get in there quick, release as late as you can and get the hell out of there! Now let’s go to it!” Page muscled the blaster scarred B-52 around the shoulder of the Moon and shoved the throttles up.
A glaring, “yee-hah!” erupted from his exuberant bombardier. A young man of twenty-seven from Alabama, the boy was happily excellent at this sort of thing. In the general’s opinion the kid was simply too new to this to be scared.
“Ignorance is bliss,” he muttered, but then asked, “Johnson, boy, you got me a target?”
“Right you are boss,” the bombardier smiled, hunched over his screen. “We’re running out of fat cats, but there’s a big bastard over New York way whose taken some hits. I’ve got him centered if you want to finish him off.”
“Let’s get him!” Page answered, and immediately a crosshair appeared on his heads-up-display. “Centered!” Page said simply, and he began his eleventh run of the day. Page was now used to the pell mell maniacal frenzy of the space torpedo run, and he was now veteran enough to be aware of what was going on about him. He was surprised at the activity that surrounded him, as this time the scene was mightily transformed. In their earlier attacks the bombers were met by a hail of fire from the Golkos secondary batteries. This danger was conveniently absent now, as the Golkos were fully engaged by Terran warships as well as planetary projectors. The bombers now hurtled virtually forgotten into midst of the melee. The chief dangers now, and they were still extreme, were collision and absorbing fire meant for someone else. They were, in a way more worrisome to Page. He didn’t mind so much being shot down, to borrow an inexact term, but he certainly didn’t want to go down as the victim of a collision or an accidental hit.
“One missile Johnson, one only!” Page ordered against the buffeting of the ship through the war torn space. “We don’t have time to go back and rearm. We need to make each shot count!”
“One missile, one ship, you got it boss!” Johnson acknowledged. Warships sped by their windows at dizzying rates. The clock blinked redly.
“Standby! Hold her steady! I got him, I got him, missile away!”
A glow out of their right window announced the ALCM launch. The missile, already benefit of the B-52’s velocity, sped away from the bomber as its Scythian thruster gave it increased impetus. Page hauled back gently on the yoke and banked away from the weapon, shooting for his exit gate and creating the precious gap of distance between himself and his deadly messenger. There was so little time to get free, and even as he settled the aging giant on her escape course the familiar flash and turbulence of the ALCM shock wave signaled a strike.
“Impacted her shields,” Johnson reported, assessing the strike through his cameras. Patiently they waited for the glow to die down so they could see what lay beneath. The clouds of plasma dissipated quickly enough so that Johnson could report. “She’s still intact, though I see some superficial damage. Hold on, we must’ve taken her shields out! An “Alpha” class sub is diving in on her! That’s it baby, bring it on home! They’re finishing her off! Scratch one battleship!”
“Nicely done, Johnson,” Page sighed. “Let’s bring her around again.”
#
Admiral Sergei Konstantinov could hardly complain about the action he’d seen this day. It more than made up for all the weeks of frigging around and shooting blindly into space.
“Bring her hard about! Fire all tubes as we come to bear! Let’s finish that bomber’s work for her; I’ll not have them catch their breath!” The orders came sure and sharp, but with the hours of the battle dragging on even Konstantinov felt his frenetic energy on the wane. The Gagarin rolled in on the stricken battleship like an angel of death. Blaster fire poured into the helpless amidships of the battleship, blowing huge voids in the skin and melding deck, skin and ribs into a mindless jungle of twisted metal. Konstantinov’s gunners were adamant in their aim, not random. Under the fused decks were the powerhouses of the ship: her engines. Their blasters burned into those cavernous halls buried deep in the ship’s bowels and Konstantinov rolled his head with pleasure as a golden aura pushed its way outwards from the dying ship.
“Ah, now isn’t that a sight to see; like sunrise in the South Pacific! Nice shooting, you B-52! I never thought I’d hear myself say it, but nice shooting! Chalk us down for half-a-one First Officer. We’ll share that with our comrades in arms!”
“Aye, aye sir!” The First Officer agreed, but then he informed Konstantinov, “Sir, the Iowa is taking quite a beating. We’ve been monitoring the battle above. It started favorably, but over the last two hours the Golkos numerical advantage has begun to tell. The Iowa is surrounded with only half her squadron remaining. The Bismarck and the dreadnoughts have joined her about the Golkos flagship, the Nived Sheur, but all have suffered heavy damage. The Golkos flagship is just about dead in space, but the Golkos have many more support ships.”
Konstantinov closed his eyes. “I have my orders direct from Alexander himself,” he said.
“Admiral, reports indicate that the Iowa has been boarded,” the First Officer added.
Konstantinov cut him off, “We have our orders!” He said, adding somewhat more soberly, “Let us have faith that Alexander knows what he is doing.”
#
The fight had long since deteriorated into a slugging match. Gone were the deft maneuvers Alexander so admired. All that remained was the order to fire at will at everything which moved or showed even the remotest sign of life. The Iowa led three other battleships, thirty-seven ships of the line, and twenty-two dreadnoughts into mortal combat with the Nived Sheur and the one hundred and eighty-nine Golkos ships, of which twelve were battleships. The odds were even at first glance, but for the seven Terran cruisers which started the fight there were sixty-one Golkos cruisers; and for the thirty destroyers and frigates there were one hundred and seventeen Golkos ships. The blow dealt by the Bismarck and Iowa to the Nived Sheur at the onset of the engagement changed the face of the battle immensely. What at first appeared to be a face off turned into a fight for the corpse of the Golkos flagship. The Nived Sheur still lived, though by the intensity of her few remaining batteries it was by a thread. It was obvious to all that the Golkos flagship would never leave the Terran system under her own power. Her mains were down, and her feeble fire was merely to assure all that she would not surrender. The Nived Sheur was a stalwart but barren lady. She no longer had teeth, but she would not, could not retreat. Her consorts risked all to save her, and suffered greatly from dangerous efforts to somehow extricate their Grand Admiral from the floating coffin of his flagship. The Golkos battleships were the first to wade in, but one by one they died under the superior firepower of their Terran adversaries. When only a handful of Golkos capital ships remained the destroyers and frigates took over the fight. To their credit the Golkos captains threw their overmatched vessels relentlessly at the huge Terran ships. The fight turned into a swarm of Golkos destroyers and frigates stinging the titanic Terran ships. It was a testament to Golkos courage, and after some time it began to show success.
That the Terrans suffered immensely from t
he innumerable Golkos guns was obvious, but what was equally plain was the stubbornness with which the Terrans died. The thick tritanium treated steel of the Terran warships was many times the strength of the thin skinned Galactics; designed as they were to be almost wholly dependent on shielding. When shields failed the Terrans fought on when their Galactic counterparts broke up. Still, the Terrans took an enormous pounding. Four of the “Enterprise’s” turrets were quite literally blown off her deck. Bereft of all but one of her main batteries she became a ram, burying her sharp Terran prow into the midsections of one after another Golkos ships. At long last, when her remaining guns were gone and rampant streams of energy spewed from her ruptured bowels, the “Enterprise” could not withdraw her battered ram. She floated, impaled on the dying wreck of a cruiser; a twisted monstrosity of steel trading flickers of flame with her torn prey.
The Bismarck lived in brief glory only to die again. Transfixed between eight cruisers and innumerable destroyers she traded fire for almost two hours, destroying twelve of her foes before finally bowing out in a pulsing cloud of fire and plasma.
The remaining combatants, surrounded by glowing gas, derelict hulks and a swarm of life pods, continued to wrestle. Like exhausted boxers they leaned upon each other’s shields, clutching closer in their efforts to score a final fatal blow. Relentlessly they pounded each other. Wheezing and grunting, their projector fire now bright with patience, now dim with desperation. Shields fluctuated visibly under overloaded generators and drained engines. Yet no one stopped. No calls for quarter were heard, none were asked for. Lifepods clawed beyond the fringes of the battle. With nowhere to land the survivors milled aimlessly, conserving energy and awaiting the outcome of the slaughter.
Over the last two hours Alexander had no opportunity to issue orders, follow the battle or see to anything but his own survival. When the Astoria rolled away out of control approaching Golkos battleships cut off any chance of extracting the Terran Overlord. Alexander refused to allow the Iowa out of the fight. With the North American shields down and then the sudden loss of the African shields he could not afford to lose the Iowa’s firepower. In short order the battle turned into a scrum. There was no room for maneuver. The Golkos hovered over every metropolis their scanners could find. Terran warships threw themselves at the invaders with reckless abandon. Numbers, size, damage; nothing mattered. It was a slugging match with no élan, grace, glory or quarter. The battle became static. Then the first boardings began. It was strictly a Golkos offensive, as the Terran fleet was not equipped to reply in kind. Still, it was not altogether unexpected, and a healthy contingent of marines waited upon each vessel for just such an occasion. Alexander ordered Admiral Augesburcke to the battle bridge. No sooner had the Admiral checked in than the first announcement of a boarding on the Iowa took place.
He was back in his own tiny world of red fury; the hand-to hand fighting on the Iowa was not so much savage as it was extreme. Although his commanders begged him to take shelter in the battle-bridge Alexander refused to leave. Nazar would not leave his friend and brother’s side. He informed a crusty Alexander that to do so would forfeit his honor and the love of his sister. The Terran Overlord left it at that. The Golkos boarded the Iowa from a score of ships, and while the remnants of the Iowa and Bismarck squadrons pounded the attackers mercilessly they could do little else. The Terran fleet had no boarding pods. The Iowa and her Overlord where quite alone.
Alexander’s worry had always been his soldier’s brevity of training for space borne hand-to-hand combat, especially when the inevitable occurred and the gravitational generators failed.
He needn’t have wasted the energy.
The Terrans took to their blasters and knives with a relish of ferocity their ancestors would have smiled at. Their planet was in peril, and all of Terra rose to the occasion. It was not so much heroic as it was desperate; it was not so much glorious as it was bestial. The Iowa became the focus of the hard cold reality of existence, and the endless struggle to perpetuate the species. Eons into the future neither the Terrans nor the Golkos would leave a trace to tell the universe that they ever existed, but here and now they fought for every last breath of their civilization and their species. Blood smeared bulkheads on the most powerful battleship in the known galaxy. It bore a testament to the will to live, and though the Terrans were the more terrible the Golkos were the more numerous. Just when the ever shrinking number of Terrans would clear the bridge of invaders a fresh surge of Golkos would erupt from the torn corridors. Several times in the last hour the Terrans were surrounded, gathering in a small kernel in a corner of the bridge. Just at the point of final defeat a sortie from the bowels of the Iowa would change the tide. The battle for the bridge was the rallying point of both forces, and from everywhere on the ship the call to a last stand drew any being with breath left in their body. The bridge was a dying place, devoid of all but the red emergency lights, the staccato discharges of plasma, and eruptions of blasters. The wan illumination made it all the more ghoulish and confusing. Venting gases mixed with blood globules, floating bodies and torn equipment. The only sign of life on the bridge was the red number counting down in the corner of the main screen: the chronometer which foretold the arrival of Admiral Cathcart and the Fifth Fleet.
CHAPTER 19
The bridge of the “King George V” was as silent as the grave. Admiral Cathcart was stolidly planted in front of the bridge’s main viewer. There were no targets in the field, no enemies, only the endless movement of the stars. Slowly, ever so slowly, the chronometer counted down towards zero. There was no great anticipation of its ending, only a lingering sense of dread. No communications had been intercepted from Terra in over an hour. The most telling source of data, the Chem probe on the bridge of the Iowa stopped its transmissions suddenly in the frenzy of the hand-to-hand combat on the bridge. As grim as was this development there were no clarifying announcements from the Golkos either. There was, in fact, nothing at all. Whereas two hours past the “King George V” intercepted the faint but audible cacophony of battle now there was nothing but a crackling ethernet. Where Terra once existed there was only an endless sea of static.
That the rest of the known galaxy listened just as intently was completely lost on Admiral Cathcart. Restlessly he began to pace the bridge, grumbling and cursing to himself. So intent on his own dark thoughts was he that the Captain of the “King George V” had to approach and inform him that they were at long last home. The “King George V” was ready to drop out of superluminal with her fleet and enter the Terran system in force.
Cathcart nodded, approving the order, mumbling, “Now to see how much “home” we have left.”
They dropped out of superluminal outside the orbit of Saturn and proceeded with all possible speed past the graceful world, within the confines of Jupiter, and thereupon into the interior of the Terran solar system. As the fleet approached the twin planets of Terra and Luna there was a marked change in the system, even at long range. Vibrant clouds of plasma swirled around the blue and white orb. Veils of active discharge pulsed against the darkness of space; punctuated by glowing clouds within clouds, and violent arcing from cloud to cloud. Streams of golden gas roiled with intense radiation, setting auroras dancing in the atmosphere. Closer still they pressed, not yet daring to hail the Homeworld. Finally the planet filled the viewer. Innumerable points of ink transformed into savagely twisted wrecks, tumbling against bright cloud cover of the daylight atmosphere. Terran ships floated lifelessly next to Golkos ships, all silent, all seemingly dead. Nothing moved. No one called. The “King George V” passed within the orbit of Luna, and into the Terran system proper. Now they could all see the glows upon the planet’s surface, unmistakable even to the novice; that strange golden radiance of the crust after a blaster bombardment. It illuminated the eastern and western coastlines of North America, and choice spots of the interior. As the nighttime African continent swung into view the Cradle of Civilization, Cairo, Bagdad, and the Arabian penins
ula throbbed with that deadly radiance of death.
“Hail Terra,” Cathcart ordered, almost silently.
“Nothing but static sir,” he was told, the communications officer said. “There is a tremendous amount of radiation in the system. I expect its disrupting all communications at this time.”
“The entire Cold War stockpile went up in a few hours I expect,” the Admiral mused.
“Sir the only scanners working are the visuals,” the Captain added. “Everything else is affected by the radiation.”
“How many ships are ours?” Cathcart asked breathlessly.
“Hundreds, I think. It is really impossible to tell, Admiral,” the Captain told him.
“What about the planetary shields, are any of them still up?” He asked.
“We’re picking up fires from North America and Africa. They are extensive, but I won’t know more until we’ve analyzed the planet, sir,” the Captain replied. “I can’t see any evidence of blaster bombardment in Europe, Asia or South America. Nothing is certain, however. At the moment I don’t have any answers because we have little or no data.”
Alexander Galaxus: The Complete Alexander Galaxus Trilogy Page 90
