Coming Home (Free Fleet Book 2)

by Michael Chatfield

  He cut the connection as the battle cruisers still in the fight were bathed in missiles. Weapon systems went down as chunks of armor disappeared under the atomic wash.

  Resilient lost its shields for the final time, but it still fought with a vengeance.

  “We've taken Battle Cruiser Echo,” Erkshaw reported and Henry moved to the next report. Shuttles began speeding out of Hachiro, whose guns had gone silent as all the battle cruisers shields were down. Resilient picked off the larger weapons as it rolled with its own hits.

  “Damned girl’s built tough,” Henry grunted as fighters raked the battle cruisers, the shuttles still not making the journey unscathed as they arrived minutes after, having lost thirty percent of their number—seven hundred Commandos.

  Henry walked through the safe areas of the dreadnought, getting to the shuttle bay which had already been appropriated and was loading Commandos.

  “Commander, are you sure?” one of the protection squad said. Henry looked to them.

  “This is the Free Fleet. We stand together.” None of them said anything after that. They boarded the shuttle too. Henry thought it was the quietest shuttle ride he'd ever been on as ghosts sat with them all. Ghosts that Henry knew wouldn't seem real until he'd joined them or they were left still standing.

  “We have missiles launched for Hachiro.” Henry checked his locking bolts as the shuttle was buffeted. Then again, but this time as if by the hand of God.

  I was getting to old for this shit, anyway, he thought sadly as he felt blood on his face and darkness took over.

  “Not the best time to be napping CAMC!” A squad Commander said as Henry was jolted awake with wake-up.

  “Update.” Henry barked as he saw he was inside a ship with other casualties.

  “Take a few minutes first.” A medic said.

  “That’s for the dead, and I ain’t one yet.” Henry stood, feeling woozy, the Squad Commander bracing him as he regained his footing.

  “Thanks,” Henry said as his HUD blinked an incoming message from Bok Soo.

  He accessed the channel, sounding as bad as he felt.

  ***

  Rick's voice cut through the noise of battle as I tried to find a way to use my forces to inflict more damage.

  “The shuttles leaving the dreadnought were hit by the missiles. Hachiro's breached in multiple areas.” I felt my insides twist. I wanted to roll into a ball on the floor and make everything just disappear. Tens of thousands had died. People I had known. People I had trusted, and still more would die. Instead, I nodded, iron resolve filling me. I couldn't dwell on the past. I had taken up the mantle of CFF, and I would execute it to the best of my ability until I was dead.

  “Commander Ilru reports that BC Foxtrot is taken,” Comms said.

  Rick trailed after. “Golf has multiple breaches. It is believed that it will be taken shortly.” His voice was gruff from talking so much for so long.

  “Bok Soo is on the ship yard and has made contact with the Kuruvians there that have already cleared it,” he finished. I looked to him and nodded before looking at the plot and drinking some water.

  So, we're going to win, just not yet. Resilient's own guns had gone silent for fear of hitting a shuttle, meaning we had rolled to present our spine, the most heavily armored part of the ship other than the belly. Our shields were still down.

  “Battle Cruiser Charlie has just purged all of their atmosphere. I'm detecting strange power fluctuations across the ship,” Sensors said.

  Resilient's voice came over the bridge. “They're combining all of their computers and processors together in order to get some fighting ability back.” She sounded almost scared.

  “How is that bad?” I asked.

  “It could spawn an AI, an AI that could be for us, against us, care, or not. It could just blow itself up, using it's missiles to take all of us with it.”

  “Why the hell would they do that?” Rick asked.

  “Final resort. If they die, might as well take some with them.” Resilient sounded almost angry, very different from her normal, calm, almost motherly tones.

  “Comms, order all ships to disperse!” I barked.

  “Helm, do what you can to push us back, but keep our spine aligned with them. Shields?”

  “I'm working on it!” the harassed Shield operator said as every ship that could moved away from the battle cruiser.

  “I'm going to send it an information kernel, hopefully it will allow it to understand what is going on and what it is,” Resilient said.

  I nodded, taking a sip of my water. Don't let them see you sweat and they won't either. You're their leader and rock. If it was easy, everyone would do it, I thought to myself as long minutes ticked by, then ten minutes.

  “Hello, my name is.... Lare.” The voice was very electronic, slow, and pronounced the name Lare like larè. I waited for it to continue, but it stopped.

  “Hello, Lare, what are your intentions?” I asked, as if talking to a newly made AI was a daily thing. Sure, I spoke with Resilient, but after the lessons I'd had as well as the answers Resilient had given me, new AI's were as dangerous as the resources at their disposal. One with a mostly functioning battle cruiser was quite alarming.

  “I want to learn what I am. My.... mother says she will help me.”

  “Can I retrieve my men from you?”

  It took some time before it replied.

  “Yes, I will also be willing to trade time with my shuttles for repairs that I am in need of.”

  “We'll sort that out in time. I'll have shuttles there shortly.” I looked to Rick who began cutting orders.

  “Very well, we shall, talk. Again, Commander Salchar.” Its sentences were broken up as if it had to think of the next word it was going to say.

  The channel ended as Resilient came back.

  “I will see that I educate him on matters. If he does not join us then I will point him in the direction of the AI league.”

  “Very well.” It was a strange feeling, we had gone from battle to dealing with the basic birth of something new.

  “Comms, fleet wide.”

  “You're on.”

  “Consolidate and report. There will be a docking rota to offload prisoners and Mecha's soon.” I cut the connection as I began looking over the damage as well as the lives lost.

  I hope this never gets easier, I thought as I looked at names, not numbers. It was much to easy to think of them as cold statistics. Something that I never wanted to think of my people as.

  Chapter Tallying the Win/Loss Column.

  Bok Soo rushed in with the second wave of Commandos, not by his own choice, but he’d accepted it as gratefully as possible. The battle was almost done. BC's were trying to flee. It seemed the Syndicate fleet had finally given up.

  Why couldn't the bastards have done that at the beginning? he thought as the Commando's jumped across the exterior of the ship yard.

  “We're making entry into Factory Ship Echo,” Amarr announced. Bok Soo kept jumping across the struts of the ship yard as he got within a few hundred meters of the ship.

  “Uhh, sir, you should come and see this,” Amarr said. Bok Soo was at Amarr's position a few moments later.

  He was met with grinning armored and armed Kuruvians

  “Well, hopefully you lot will have some interesting ideas for this ship yard. The last group, well, they just wanted to fill their pockets and kill innocents,” one of them said, his rail gun pointing to space as the others kept their weapons trained on Bok Soo and his people.

  Bok Soo slung his weapon as he grinned, despite the battle that raged a few hundred kilometers away.

  “Damn, Kuruvians in Mechas! Hah! I don’t think we have more than twenty Kuruvian Commandos. I'm Bok Soo.”

  “Shrift said you would be coming.”

  “Oh wait, that reminds me.” Bok Soo pulled out his data pad and flicked through things.

  “Nope, no, no, not that, must be in here. Haha, gotcha!” He gave the pad to the Kur
uvian.

  “Shrift said that his brother would know the alignment, or something like that.”

  The Kuruvian nodded. He held his rail gun in the crook of his arm as he typed something in. Bok Soo couldn't hear the data pad through the vacuum of space, but a few minutes later the Kuruvian nodded.

  “Very well, we have taken all of the factory ships. My name is Silly, brother to Shrift.”

  “Good to meet you.” Bok Soo opened a channel to the commanders and pilots.

  “The natives should be on our side. Don't slack, but it seems we're not needed here. Pilots prep to get us back to Hachiro. I'm going to leave Amarr here with two hundred Commandos. If you aren't picked you're coming with me.” Bok Soo cut the channel. “Alright, Silly, well, I have a battle to get to, so if you'll excuse me?”

  “Certainly, we will be waiting.”

  It was a half hour later that the Second Battle for Earth ended.

  “What do you want me to do?” Bok Soo asked Henry, who sounded as if the galaxy had crushed him.

  “Get back to the station. We're going to need it functioning as soon as possible.”

  “Sir.” Bok Soo wanted to say more, but he knew that Henry was still on the job. Later. Bok Soo thought as he sat in silence, watching as the casualty list scrolled down his HUD.

  Oh Rosa, he thought as he bit his lip, pain and sadness filling him. Verlu too. He remembered their names, thinking of them as they'd laughed and lived.

  “I'll see you in the dark, brothers and sisters,” Bok Soo said into his helmet. He hung his head, laughing sadly and happily—sad to have lost so many friends, but happy that he had known them well enough to call them friends.

  Silly broke him out of his reverie as his helmet's earpiece came to life. Bok Soo accepted the call.

  “I need your scans of the asteroid belt so I know the best place to put the shipyard.”

  “Why don't you put it next to Hachiro then we’ll get the resources shipped from the belt?” Bok Soo said, feeling emotionally drained.

  “That should work. Didn't think of it because the Syndicate made us weld the miners and refineries onto the yard. Also, I need to talk to someone about what my people can expect.” Bok Soo gathered himself. Salchar had invested the power in Bok Soo to make decisions on his behalf, and also a guideline on what he hoped to happen.

  “You will be civilian's and will receive payment according to the skills the individual has.”

  “With these civilian jobs, how will they be different from our current?” Silly asked.

  “Well, you wouldn’t be allowed to work on warships or on design teams for new ships…”

  “Designs for new ships?” Silly almost squealed.

  “Yes, we’re not going to keep on using the same designs for ships. We might not have numbers or hulls, but we’ve got skills, know how, and ideas.”

  “May we contact you privately and have time to decide?”

  “Certainly.”

  “In the interim, we will have the station begin deploying itself.” Silly said something into his helmet as parts of the yard began unfolding and others were detached, a veritable army of drones moving pieces bigger than corvettes into position

  ***

  The fleet was in a state of mourning, and I was dealing with governments who were demanding they know when aid was coming, not caring for our own losses or the issues that we had. We had agreed to a contract. I was very tempted to rip it apart.

  It had been two days since the battle had ended, yet we had only just finished recovering all of the personnel in space, Free Fleet and Syndicate.

  The Mecha's were being taught the reality of the Planetary Defense Force with limited effect and the yard was still opening up. The Kuruvians had transferred the Syndicate personnel there over, yet I was thinking that I'd have most of them working under the Kuruvians purview.

  The Kuruvians had split sixty-eight to thirty-two in favor of joining the Free Fleet. Rick was taking care of all the civilian appointments as well as positions within the fleet.

  Now all of the people had been accounted for, there was the issue of dealing with the corralling of ships and having my engineers crawl over them, assessing what was good and what was not.

  I'd sent a request to Monk for additional personnel. It should have reached him by now through our still expanding FTL network.

  I stopped checking my pad as I walked into the shuttle bay of Resilient where Mecha storage containers waited, each of them carrying a fallen Commando or their battle suit.

  Not even Eddie had challenged me on the containers, which were a significant use of resources.

  I tucked my pad away. Everyone was in the shuttle bay.

  I looked to the men and women around me. They were strong and great people, and more than one of them was crying as I let my sadness creep into my voice, forcing my mask of Salchar to stop the tide of emotion. I looked at Mecha containers which held people that I'd eaten with, fought beside, and trained with.

  “We have come far, yet it has only been through terrible circumstances. I wish it wasn't, but the Free Fleet was born from battle, and it is what we must do to stop the Syndicate from continuing their reign of terror and piracy.

  “That does not mean that we can't feel sad. These people that have given their last breaths did so in the service of the Free Fleet, for their brothers and sisters in arms. They came with us into the dark and the dark has claimed them as it's own.”

  I felt determination burn in my chest.

  “Yet their deaths will not go unanswered. As the Syndicate can only communicate with us in terms of pain and death, we will eradicate them and their name from this galaxy. It is up to us now to create something for our brothers and sisters to be proud of!” I paused as sadness and loss colored my tone.

  “I know many of you will feel sad and angry. Use those emotions. We shall work on, and we will become a force that makes the Syndicate shake. Remember the names of those you have lost; tell their stories. They live through us.” I looked to everyone in the bay as I nodded sadly.

  “Now we commit their physical bodies to the sun and light as we remember their lives and the memories we made with them.”

  Pictures flashed over screens as every person that had died was shown to their fellow brothers and sisters. The containers were pulled into the air before gliding out from Hachiro and the ships of the Free Fleet. I stood at attention, holding two fingers to my head as the containers left Resilient as well as the other ships and Hachiro. The containers floated together, becoming one mass as they drifted towards the sun, all of the fallen facing their future together as one.

  I dropped my hand and I let my face fall, regaining my composure as I drifted out to the mess. Watching the roll of faces across the screens as, I smiled sadly at the memories the faces brought.

  Drinking restrictions were removed for all but the watchers. I got to the bridge, relieving everyone and they went to the mess to get something numbing in their systems as me and my protection detail sat around the massive bridge of Resilient. I watched as the fleet paused. Drones moved around space as the yard formed and chunks of ships were turned from their trajectories and pulled towards the refineries which had been exposed. Miners were attached to asteroids and mining, their bunkers loading up as shuttles had been used for recovery and were grounded until the next day.

  I looked to the dreadnought, which had returned to the airlock it had been attached to when it had been docked before the battle. It was relatively unscathed, unlike Hachiro, which was still badly damaged. Some sections had been exposed up to the fourth ring.

  All of the rest of the ships showed the vicious damage of space warfare.

  I looked at the beauty of all of the ships, at the technology and the achievements that had been made, yet all of it had led to war.

  A waste, I thought as I focused my attention on the faces of those lost.

  “We'll make the bastards pay; you have my word, brothers and sisters.” Silently, I cried as
I looked at the faces, emotion that I'd held back washing over me. It felt as if a dam had burst. I smiled and laughed, tears streaming down my face. My protection detail left me to my grieving as I left them to theirs.

  Chapter To Rebuild Again

  Shrift and his brother looked at the yard as it came together like some three-dimensional puzzle.

  They'd already made one dock and had corvettes coming through and getting fixed up. The crews were working at an alarming pace to get the smaller ships done before the yard was big enough to accommodate the battle cruisers and dreadnoughts.

  Since Parnmal, there hadn't been such a large loss. Everyone was feeling the affects. The trainees were being returned slowly back to their training. The Free Fleet was bustling with repairs once again. Most people just put their heads down and worked. A few had gotten angry with the fact that they were repairing the very damage they'd fixed when they'd freed Earth. There was nothing to do but threaten to rotate them out for rest. Not many wanted to sit back and have time to think this close to their friends dying.

  As Salchar had made the process for making Mechas a factory production back on Parnmal, Shrift was doing the same for the ship yard and the docks. He was realizing the difficulties that Salchar had gone through to change his fellow Kuruvian's who'd been set in their cottage-like work groups.

  Silly had been reluctant to move to the new system until Shrift had Resilient crunch the numbers. Then Silly had jumped on board.

  Shrift had specialty drones being built in all factories as the Kuruvians of the ship yard and dock got used to controlling multiple drones.

  “Are you sure we can't get the smaller ships up to full spec?” Silly asked; it had been his argument for the past few days.

  “We need the heavies online. The smaller ships have limited use as scouts and have been largely replaced by fighters. They have limited use in battle. Salchar is actually thinking about removing the cruiser altogether. Which is why they are so low on the priority list.”

  “Then what about the 'modifications' that Eddie wants to add to the dreadnought and battle cruisers armor?”