Sword of Mars

by Glynn Stewart

  “We’ll take the first two salvos unopposed,” Roslyn said quietly. “Our first salvo will hit before their third wave does, which should screw with their command relays.”

  “Assuming we kill any of them,” Kulkarni replied. “Otherwise, those antimatter explosions are going to be our best shield.”

  “Yes, sir,” Roslyn confirmed. She was already flagging high priority targets for the crews of her Rapid-Fire Laser Anti-Missile turrets. The RFLAMs were her key defenses after the countermissile salvos were done, but Stand’s role in this fight was as a picket ship.

  The missiles heading at her were at the top of her priority list—but it was tied with missiles headed at Righteous Shield of Valor. The destroyer’s job was to protect the battleship.

  “Second intercept,” she announced as a new series of antimatter explosions tore through space. The radioactive debris from the explosions was doing a number on their communications with their offensive salvos now.

  Hopefully, it was doing the same to the Republic crews!

  “RFLAM range…now.”

  Thirty-six turrets on Stand in Righteousness’s hull spun to life at her command. The first Republic salvo had been gutted by antimatter explosions, with over seven hundred one-gigaton warheads going off in their midst.

  They were designed for that environment, however, and they didn’t look nearly blinded enough to Roslyn as her lasers opened fire.

  More missiles died, but each death was another antimatter explosion. Like black powder cannoneers in the past, a modern space warship had to deal with “gunsmoke” fouling their targeting. As the missiles approached, magic tore into the storm as well, the amplified magic of the Martian ships’ Mages destroying dozens more of the weapons.

  Despite everything, missiles made it through. Four of Stand’s sisters died in balls of antimatter fire, and a chill ran down Roslyn’s spine.

  “They’re focusing fire on the destroyers, sir,” she said as calmly as she could. “Our part of the formation, specifically. I would guess they’re using the first two big salvos to degrade the escorts around Righteous Shield so they can try and scratch a battleship.”

  “I wonder if they know Her Highness is aboard,” Kulkarni asked, but it was a rhetorical question. “Stretch the gap, Lieutenant Coleborn,” she ordered. “Let’s put ourselves between the flag and the enemy. No one is taking down the flagship while Stand in Righteousness is in front of her!”

  It looked like Kulkarni was going to get her wish. With the losses in the first wave, only four destroyers and two cruisers managed to get in front of Righteous Shield of Valor before the second Republican salvo came screaming down on them.

  Missiles from the rest of the fleet tore gaping holes in the missile swarm, and the lasers from every ship were slashing through space ahead of them, but Roslyn was grimly certain the odds weren’t in their favor.

  Antimatter explosions filled the space around them, blinding her sensors and leaving her turrets firing almost randomly after the first fractions of a second.

  Then she could see missiles clearly through the cloud. There was no time for her to do anything, not with missiles moving at over fifty thousand kilometers a second within a few thousand kilometers of her ship. Her part in stopping this salvo was already over.

  Her RFLAM turrets fired automatically on the programs she’d loaded in. Four missiles were coming directly at Stand in Righteousness and had made it through everything, leaving only the final automatic defensive protocol to save her.

  Roslyn didn’t even have time to inhale before the destroyer rang like a bell and her screens went completely blank.

  Everything had gone blank. They’d lost power to the bridge. Thankfully, their gravity runes didn’t require power and neither did the amplifier.

  The pale emergency lights were enough for Roslyn to see Kulkarni lock her hands on the simulacrum in a death grip. Without power, the only defense the destroyer had was her Captain.

  Roslyn felt power flash around her as Kulkarni’s magic spoke, shielding her ship from a threat they could barely see.

  Something flickered, and then her screens rebooted. The only light in the bridge was the pale emergency lights, but many of their combat-critical systems were coming back online.

  “Reactor core is rebooting but we can’t bring it back up to full,” Engineering reported. “We’re running at twenty-five percent. That’s coms, minimal engines and RFLAMs.”

  Roslyn might not have sensors, but having communications meant that she was able to link back into the main tactical network—in time to see the third salvo, the last gunship-augmented one, come crashing over the destroyers.

  “Fire incoming,” she snapped. “They’re targeting the Flag…engaging.”

  Less than two-thirds of her turrets responded to her commands, and Roslyn tried not to think of what that meant. The systems might be slaved to central control, but those turrets still had crews.

  Twenty-two lasers stabbed into space as the missiles charged past the crippled destroyer. The rest of the fleet had already gutted the salvo, but hundreds of missiles still swarmed toward the battleship.

  Roslyn’s turrets tore into them from an unexpected angle, distracting the weapons’ electronic brains for a critical fraction of a second. It wasn’t enough to stop them all…but it was enough to tip the balance as the battleship’s own weapons tore into the enemy fire.

  Three missiles made it through, detonating within meters of the battleship’s immense armor. Radiation washed over the big ship…but she emerged untouched.

  “Righteous Shield’s armor is holding,” Roslyn reported slowly. “Fleet is maneuvering to cover the cripples.”

  That included Stand in Righteousness. They were one of the lucky ones. Of the eight destroyers and two cruisers that had been covering Righteous Shield of Valor, only two destroyers and a cruiser remained…and those were the “cripples” Roslyn was referring to.

  Other ships had been battered as well, but the focus had been on the flagship. Roslyn had to wonder if the RIN had known which ship Alexander was aboard.

  “Our fire has been minimally effective,” she continued, continuing to download from the tactical network. “One enemy cruiser has been damaged, but the gunships are blunting our fire. They’re more effective in the missile defense role than we accounted for.”

  Stand’s bridge was silent for several seconds.

  “Damage report,” Kulkarni finally said, her voice quiet.

  “We took two hits, one on each of our starboard faces,” Roslyn detailed as the data flowed onto her console. “Fusion plants went into emergency shutdown and at least one missile flagged us as dead and kept going.

  “Ten of my RFLAM turrets are gone and four more are disabled. Main battle lasers are…gone,” she continued. “Too much damage to the resonance chambers. It may be repairable but they’re offline for now. I can’t be sure about the launchers without power, but it looks like we’re down at least half.”

  Roslyn was staring blankly at her screen now, until she finally swallowed and forced herself to look up at Kulkarni.

  “I’ve got at least thirty people headed for medbay and twice that just…gone,” she told the Captain. That was half of her tactical department wounded or dead. A quarter of the ship’s crew, and Roslyn only knew about her own people.

  “Engineering is telling me not to push past one gravity,” Coleborn added from navigation.

  “So, we can’t maneuver, we can’t shoot, and we can barely defend ourselves,” Kulkarni summarized. “It seems this battle is over for us.”

  Half a dozen ships were now unable to decelerate at the same pace as the rest of the fleet. Adjusting formation was stretching out the entire fleet to cover the cripples, but with the gunships’ missiles expended, it was probably safe to do so.

  Roslyn hoped, anyway. The first Republic cruiser finally died as she watched, escape pods spewing from the ship as the armored outer hull broke in half under the pounding of antimatter missile
s.

  Fragments of the RIN’s new armor were being examined in Ardennes, and she hoped it was a productive examination. That cruiser had taken over a dozen direct hits from one-gigaton antimatter warheads before the armor finally broke.

  As she watched, though, another pair of Martian destroyers came under fire from the Republic missiles. Song of Guardians simply vanished in a ball of fire, and Blade of Glorious Freedom reeled out of formation, her engines turned to vapor as her own antimatter conduits ruptured.

  Safety precautions saved Blade, but the fleet was losing destroyers fast.

  The loss of the first cruiser seemed to be the crack they needed to get through the Republic’s defenses, however. A second Republic cruiser reeled out of formation and a dozen gunships blew apart around her.

  Without launchers, Roslyn hadn’t been watching the tactical network. She checked and saw that a quarter of their salvos were being targeted on the gunships now—and it was starting to show.

  The earlier focus on the cruisers had left the gunships focused on defending their bigger sisters. The change wasn’t throwing enough missiles at them to wipe them out in one salvo, but suddenly, gunships were dying by the dozen.

  Every gunship lost was another three defensive turrets out of the fight. The cruisers had taken three hundred turrets with them…but in less than three minutes, the ravaging of the gunship squadrons had removed even more of the Republic’s defenses.

  One of the battleships moved to try and reinforce the gunships’ defenses, and Roslyn smiled coldly. Lightspeed delays meant that the command-and-control cycle of the missiles was taking over a minute to respond…enough for the battleship’s crew to think their action wasn’t impacting the target assignments.

  The second salvo after their movement was unchanged, adding to that image and battering cruisers and gunships. The third salvo, well after the targeting orders could have been changed, was not.

  Almost four thousand missiles targeted one Republic battleship, and she was focused on defending the gunships around her.

  Forty megatons of hyper-advanced warship vanished in a series of antimatter explosions that wrecked anyone’s ability to see into—or out of—the gunship positions.

  “Hammer them,” Roslyn whispered, watching as the fleet now tracked their missiles across the Republican fleet with boots of fire. She was half-expecting surrenders at this point—they had to be able to tell that they couldn’t escape.

  None of them could escape, in fact. They were almost clear enough of the Republic warships to launch assault shuttles toward the fleeing transports. Long-range missile fire would neutralize the carriers’ defenses before the shuttles arrived.

  None of the Republic ships were getting away. Their choices were surrender or—

  Her screens lit up with multiple jump flares and she stared at them in shock.

  A Protectorate warship, with fully trained Mages and amplified magic, could jump from orbit of a planet. It was unwise and painful for the crew at best, dangerous and near-suicidal at worst, but a Martian warship could do it.

  The Republic ships had never demonstrated that ability before. Now, every surviving capital ship in the defending fleet and the fleeing transports tried to jump. The rapidly expanding debris clouds told Roslyn the results.

  Some of the RIN cruisers from the defense force might have made it, but the surviving battleship had torn herself apart. Pieces of the warship were now scattering themselves across the system at a significant chunk of the speed of light.

  Worse, though, was the fleeing transports. The carriers had at least jumped. Roslyn wasn’t sure if they’d made it, but they’d jumped. The two transports, each carrying at least thirty thousand people, had not been so lucky,

  9

  Starlight, unlike Rhapsody in Purple, had the space to carry the number of people they’d shoved aboard her. The fast packet only had a crew of seventeen, but one of the many purposes of the ships was to transport people who could pay.

  In theory, a fast packet should have had multiple Mages aboard. Starlight had been officially home-ported in the UnArcana World of Nueva Bolivia, though, which meant that Captain Maata had probably always had problems recruiting Mages.

  Even with the three LMID defectors and Damien’s dozen guardians, there were enough staterooms for everyone to have their own.

  Damien could probably have even brought Persephone. Much as he found himself missing the cat, he was happier having her in hands he trusted…and Starlight was an LMID asset, even if most of the crew didn’t seem to have ever been actual agents of the Legatan government and the ones who had been were retired.

  “This ship is about as innocent as a middle-aged actor,” Romanov told Damien in the Hand’s quarters.

  They were both drinking coffees. Damien had quietly made it clear that alcohol wouldn’t be permitted among his people until they were back aboard Rhapsody.

  “So, it’s tried everything and grown bored of half of it?” Damien asked.

  His security chief snorted.

  “Basically. They’re being pretty clear with us,” Romanov admitted. “I don’t think they’d have let most passengers into Pod Bravo.”

  The guest quarters that Damien and his team had been put up were in Pod Charlie. Pod Alpha was where the crew was staying. The simulacrum chamber bridge was in the core, and the cargo was mounted on spars radiating from the front of the core.

  “What’s in Pod Bravo?” Damien asked, since Romanov was clearly waiting for the question.

  “An armory to put a destroyer to shame,” the Marine told him. “Plus, well, six Rapier launchers and the magazines for them.”

  Damien whistled silently.

  “Rapier” was one of the main brands of missiles available to civilian ships for self-defense. Since they could be bought, they also often ended up in the hands of the people the freighters needed them for defense against. Even the best licensing and control systems only did so much against professional criminals, after all.

  Unlike military missiles, they used fusion drives and didn’t have any warheads at all, leaving them with a quarter of the range and perhaps a fifth of the effectiveness of a military missile. They were also a tenth of the price and half the size.

  Six Rapier launchers would make quite the mess of most ships that would try to jump a freighter as small as Starlight. It also meant they’d sacrificed a significant chunk of their passenger capacity and living space to carry the weapons, which supported Starlight being a retired covert ops ship instead of a freighter LMID had occasionally used.

  “So, these quarters have probably been filled with Augment commandos before,” Damien concluded. “Niska isn’t the only defector here.”

  “No. There are Augment-rated combat exosuits in that armory, too,” Romanov told him. “Six suits…so either Niska and his buddies figured they’d need spares, or Maata has a few Augments in her crew no one has told us about.”

  “What about regular exosuits?”

  “None,” Romanov told him. “There are some man-portable, bipod-mounted, anti-exosuit weapons in there, but it’s mostly small arms and concealable body armor. No equivalent to our penetrator carbines.”

  “So, this ship is their version of Rhapsody, but relying on looking normal instead of being invisible?” Damien asked.

  “I think we’re still a step or two down from ‘black ops pocket warship,’ but she was a spy ship,” the Marine confirmed. “And they don’t seem to be too concerned about us working that out, which is probably a good sign.”

  The Hand snorted.

  “We’re still not trusting them.”

  “Not as far as I can throw this ship, no.”

  “What’s our ETA, Captain Maata?” Niska asked at dinner later.

  The Captain had been inviting Damien and Niska to join her for dinner most days of the trip.

  “We’re going from pretty deep in the Protectorate to almost as deep in the Republic,” Maata pointed out. “Mage Foster is very good, but we do
n’t want to push her.”

  Foster, Damien knew, was perfectly capable of running an every-six-hours jump until Starlight fell apart around her. She was a fully-trained Royal Martian Navy Ship’s Mage that the Agency had “borrowed” for their stealth ship.

  Normal procedure, however, called for a Mage to jump no more than once every eight hours. Jumping too often could kill the Mage making the jumps.

  Damien had once almost killed himself with exhaustion by pushing his limits for an extended period—and he’d seen footage of the aftermath when a Mage jumped after less than an hour’s break.

  You only needed to see fatal thaumic burnout in person once to never want to push the limit yourself.

  “So, how long?” the old cyborg asked with a chuckle.

  “Four more days,” Maata told him. “Once there, Starlight will get us into orbit much faster than most ships; call it fourteen hours. I’ll probably be able to spin out finding buyers for my cargo and finding a new cargo for a couple of weeks, but I can only stay so long before it starts getting suspicious.”

  “So, two weeks to follow up on your leads, Niska,” Damien said. “Think that will be enough?”

  “I don’t have a damn clue,” the cyborg admitted. “Worst-case scenario, I suppose we can stay on the ground and have Maata make a circuit and come back for us. That’s risky, though.”

  Niska grimaced.

  “Right now, I’m still officially an LMID agent and have a lot of independent authority and access. You, however, will be public enemy number one as soon as they realize you’re inside our borders.”

  “That will be harder than the Republic might think,” Damien replied quietly. He had more tricks than one to conceal his appearance. Concealing his crippled hands was harder, though, and there were only so many people in the galaxy with elbow-length burns from molten metal.

  “If I didn’t figure that was the case, I’d have suggested you send someone else,” Niska told him. “As it stands, having a Hand for backup is surprisingly appealing.”