Invasion

by Donald Nicklas

  “You as well, Chris.”

  The line went dead and Alaya left the bridge, as did all but the first watch. To be aware of what was happening around the ship, Alaya ordered the external microphones activated. These are only used when on a planet with atmosphere, since all other environments have no sound. Through activation of the microphones, the watch crew could hear what was going on outside without leaving any parts of the ship open. The only part of the ship that was kept open while in atmosphere was the air intakes and these were small and protected against the entry of small creatures. Alaya was spending a fitful night, more worried about her husband than her own circumstance, when the ship’s klaxon came on calling the crew to general quarters. No one questioned this and all sprang up from their beds and ran to their battle stations. The captain’s quarters were just off the bridge so Alaya, who had slept in her jumpsuit, ran quickly to her station.

  “Report,” Alaya ordered Tavia, who had been on watch with Hatch. She could hear a commotion outside the ship.

  “Captain, the Brandenburger night watch reported movement between the buildings and then came under fire. The general called the troops to battle stations as the perimeter guards returned fire. They are now engaged with a large group of Saltic coming in from the direction of the enemy domes.”

  “So much for thinking the Saltic can’t fight at night. Olivia, contact central command and inform them we are engaged with the enemy and to be on the lookout, in case this is a feint.”

  “Yes captain. There is also a message coming in from CEO Schardt.”

  “Put it through then contact central command.”

  Olivia pushed the appropriate buttons and the CEO’s voice came on, “Captain Slone, we are under attack from the Saltic. They are firing on us from the streets where some of our troops are camped. So far we are holding our own. They are attacking us with several hundred troops but I have just over five thousand camped here. My concern is that they could outflank us.”

  “I’ll send my special forces out to scout the enemy strength. Make sure your men use those reflective shields we gave you.”

  Alaya called down to option Brave Claw and explained the situation and asked her to send out scouts to see what was going on. The optio acknowledged and sent out five serpents to scout the enemy and report back ASAP. It did not take long for the scouts to report back and the situation was much worse than expected. The Saltic were attacking the Brandenburger forces with an ever increasing number of their frontline troops. This was not a scouting expedition; this was an attempt to clear the rear area of their installation. Every time they made an assumption about the abilities of the Saltic they were wrong. They were able to fight at night and from the chatter on the combat channel, they were starting to drive the Brandenburger forces back. Alaya could also hear her snipers talking about targets and knew they were engaged as well. Alaya turned to her serpent gunner, Deadeye.

  “Deadeye, can you fire over the heads of the humans into the Saltic forces?”

  “Sss. Yes, Captain. Guns are aimed.”

  “Fire.”

  The large pulse cannons in the turret of the Mary Rose began to fire energy bolts into the attacking Saltic forces. Since they were all crowded into the streets entering the plaza where the Brandenburger forces were camped, the energy bolts cut large swaths through their ranks. Since the pulse cannons on the ship were designed for ship to ship combat, they were unstoppable against the ground troops. This was a major attack on the smaller of the two forces arrayed against the Saltic.

  “Olivia, contact central command and tell them what is going on here,” Alaya ordered. “Make it clear that this is a major attack and not a diversion. Also ask permission to detonate the buildings set with explosives.”

  “Yes, Captain.” A few minutes later Olivia reported to her mother that the legions had come under sudden attack by a large enemy force and were heavily engaged as well. Permission had also been given to demolish the buildings as needed.

  “So basically, we are on our own here,” Alaya said. “Notify the optio and contact my snipers and inform them that there will be no relief and they should look to their own safety if things become hot.”

  Olivia did as ordered and reported that all acknowledged the order and the optio was on her way to the bridge. When the optio arrived she reported on the status of the outside situation.

  “Sss. Captain, I have placed the remaining Special Forces outside the ship for protection. I have also called the scouts back. They report that the Brandenburger forces are nearing the breaking point and expect them to route at any moment. It may be wise to consider firing on the enemy from the air to help.”

  Alaya considered this for a moment. From the air she could also bring her missiles to bear. “Optio, call your forces in and let me know as soon as they are all aboard. I will take your advice and hover to bring my missiles on line.”

  The optio gave a slight bow and called the forces back into the ship. Alaya notified the Brandenburger commanders of her plan, so they would not think she was deserting them. If they had to retreat she would fight a rear guard action for them. The CEO acknowledged and thanked her. He also reported that his troops were close to the breaking point and were moving back to where their shuttles were parked. Once the optio reported all were aboard, Alaya turned to Tavia.

  “Tavia, bring the ship off the ground a hundred meters and rotate us to face the enemy.”

  “Yes, Captain,” Tavia said and did as ordered. Once they were in the air and facing the enemy they could see how hard the Brandenburger rear guard was pressed. Deadeye continued to fire the pulse cannons into the enemy with good effect, but more and more Saltic kept coming out of the building basements. From what was coming over the battle channel, it also appeared that all six legions were now fully engaged.

  “Deadeye, fire cluster missiles into the enemy.”

  “Sss. Yes Captain,” Deadeye responded and loaded cluster missiles into the forward missile tubes. As soon as they were loaded they were fired and rained large numbers of cluster bombs onto the enemy. The resultant explosions literally ripped huge holes into the enemy lines, yet they filled the holes as fast as they were created.

  “Olivia, put me through to central command, ask for your father.”

  “Yes, Captain. The line is open.”

  “Chris, are you there?”

  “Yes, I’m here. We’re taking quite a beating, how is it at your end?”

  “Chris, the enemy here seems endless. There have to be more Saltic here than the number we expected. They just keep coming. The Brandenburger forces are retreating to their ships. From the looks of the plaza, they must have taken close to 50% casualties and the Saltic keep pulling the bodies into their lines. What do you make of that, since they can’t use dead brains.”

  “I have no idea, Alaya. We are noticing the same here. The Consul has just ordered a general retreat out of the city. Get yourselves out of there and back to the camps.”

  “We’ll lay down cover for the Brandenburger forces and then head back,” Alaya said and ordered the line closed. This was turning into a disaster. In the time they had been with the Romani, she had never seen them retreat. As she watched, the Brandenburger shuttles began to take off with what forces remained. The rear guard was heading to their shuttles, when the Saltic surged forward and pressed them harder. Deadeye kept up fire with the pulse cannons and the cluster missiles, and this seemed to slow them down long enough to get the rear guard into their shuttles and into the air.

  “Tavia, follow the shuttles out of the city. Also, detonate the buildings.”

  “Yes, Captain.” Tavia pressed a button on her console and the five buildings between them and the main plaza shook from the explosions and then began to crumble, with massive amounts of concrete falling onto the streets containing the Saltic. This sudden assault halted the enemy long enough for the remaining Brandenburger forces to get into their shuttles and take off.

  Alaya could see the Branden
burger shuttles running out of the city at full speed ahead of the Mary Rose. Suddenly there was a flash and one of the shuttles burst into flame and fell from the sky. “Olivia, what was that?”

  “The Saltic have armed antigravity vehicles with pulse cannons stationed on the streets throughout the city. They are firing on the shuttles.” Just as Olivia mentioned this another shuttle started trailing smoke and falling from the sky.

  “Deadeye, take out those cannons. Tavia, fly us over to where they are firing from.”

  “Yes, Captain,” Tavia acknowledge and flew in the direction the fire was coming from.

  As soon as Deadeye could see the source of the cannon fire, she placed the target reticle on the vehicle and turned it into dust. More fire started coming up from the streets, but most of it was small arms with an occasional cannon blast. As they moved to the next enemy cannon position, Deadeye reported that the ship’s cannons were down to 20 percent. This meant that each cannon only had twenty shots left before the crystals became unreliable. By this time the Brandenburger shuttles had moved higher into the atmosphere and were almost clear of the city.

  “Tavia, the shuttles are safe, get us out of here.”

  “Right away, Captain.”

  The Mary Rose began to gain altitude as Alaya ordered her snipers to be ready for pickup. As the snipers reported in, Alaya had the ship flown to the roof top and hovered above as they dropped lines for them to climb up. She was doing things with her corvette that corvettes were never designed to do, especially not with the combat damage hers had. She just hoped it would hold together long enough to get her snipers to safety. When the entire snipers had reported in, less than half were still on their roof tops. Some were dead and some had left their post when their buildings were overrun. Alaya felt most of them were probably killed. She picked up the last sniper and began to move the ship higher and out of the city. The antigravity vehicles of the Saltic were firing on the Mary Rose, but they were not anti-ship weapons and could not penetrate the ship armor. As they were moving over the city, the Saltic stopped firing on them. They must have realized that they could not do anything against the ship and did not want to draw attention to themselves. They were beginning to fear the return fire from the Deadeye’s cannons. Alaya decided to fly over the main plaza towards the legionary camps which were the rally points for the legions. She could see large numbers of Saltic troops securing the area. She knew from the battle channel chatter that the legions had taken massive casualties but had killed large numbers of Saltic. The dead Saltic were everywhere, but, oddly enough, even with the highest magnification, there were no human bodies. As Alaya was wondering about this, there was a sudden shutter throughout the ship and a loud pop.

  “What was that?” Alaya asked.

  “We are losing power and the ship is becoming hard to handle,” Tavia reported.

  Olivia sprang up and raced down to the engine room. When she got there, some of the Special Forces were putting out an engine fire. Olivia took one look into the engine room and got on the communicator to her mother. “Captain, the patch engineering put on the starboard engine manifold blew off and tore a hole into the side of the engine room. The fire is out but avionics will be affected.”

  “Tell me about it,” Tavia said as she struggled to keep control of the ship. The Saltic must have seen the explosion and began firing at the opening. As Olivia was working on cutting the fuel flow to the starboard engine, an energy burst came through the hole and hit the power generator and the electrical system went out. The batteries kicked in immediately, but the damage was done. The Mary Rose maintained her forward momentum but started to fall from the sky. They had been following the boulevard leading out from the main plaza. When the generator was hit, the repulsors went out and Tavia quickly raised the bridge armor and broadcast ship wide for everyone to brace for impact. The batteries kicked in within seconds of the generator going out. Had they been in space, those few seconds would not have made much of a difference. On a planet, they made a huge difference. Since the Mary Rose was just above the highest buildings when the damage occurred, she lost altitude rapidly and by the time the repulsors came back on line with the batteries, Tavia had just enough power to do a controlled crash landing. The Mary Rose hit the pavement and began sliding along the central vegetation strip, knocking down trees and fences as she slid along. After about 50 meters the ship came to rest. Alaya breathed a sigh of relief, when suddenly the underlying pavement gave way and the ship dropped down five meters and came to rest. Since the corvette had six decks, only the lowest deck dropped below the surface and that meant the lower airlock was underground.

  “Olivia, check out the status of the hull. If we have any breaches big enough for those worms to get through, seal off the area. Then see if you can get our generator and engines going so we can get out of here.”

  “Yes, Captain,” Olivia said and left the bridge immediately. She grabbed some of the engineering techs from the forces aboard and they examined the entire ship. There were no breaches of the hull, so they knew they would not have to worry about Saltic entering the ship. Olivia then got to work on fixing the damage to the hull in engineering and repairing the generator before the batteries ran down.

  Back on the bridge, Alaya had Tavia contact central command and report their position. As soon as the serpent legionaries heard that Tavia’s ship was down, they began to assemble a rescue operation. Tavia told them to stand down, that they were safe for now, but would appreciate air cover in case of an attack on the ground. Serpent ships immediately went invisible and flew to where the corvette was down.

  “Blue, do the cameras on the lower hull still work?” Alaya asked.

  Blue Scale looked at her console and moved through the various camera locations. “Sss. Captain, only two cameras one on the bottom of the port side and one forward survived the crash.”

  “Project them on the bridge bubble.”

  “Sss. Yes Captain.”

  Blue Scale pressed some buttons and both the port and forward cameras came on line. They could see that they were in a man-made tunnel that must be part of the maglev train system. Everyone on the bridge stared at the feeds, but it was dark and the system was shut down. “Blue, what do you see in the dark?”

  “Sss. Captain, serpents can only see in the dark when in the dark, not on video, since the camera does not make it better. The camera does not see in the dark and infrared will not help if no Saltic are there.”

  “Tavia, can we put on the mining lights?”

  “Captain, if we do that now, the batteries will run down faster and we will be in the dark inside and out.”

  Alaya called down to Olivia, “Olivia, what is the eta on the generator repairs?”

  “Another hour should do it, Captain.”

  Alaya contacted central command and told them of the repair time. So far the legions were remaining in their camps with fully manned walls and towers. Considering how badly the day went, they were taking no chances. Alaya told Tavia to keep the bridge armor up. The above ground cameras were all working and they could watch their surroundings in both normal and infrared settings. They also knew the serpent ships were maintaining a vigil above them, though they could not see them, Hatch kept track of them through the invisibility console. Once they got the generator going they could fix the damage to the engine manifold and get back into the air. Alaya went down to engineering to see how the repairs were going. She spent some time watching her daughter and the engineering techs working on repairs as the snipers spread through the ship as their battle station. So far there was no indication of Saltic in the area.

  “Captain to the bridge,” Tavia’s voice suddenly came over the ship wide intercom. Alaya ran back up to the bridge, wondering what was happening now. As she entered she could see everyone looking intently at the monitor from the front camera.

  “Report,” Alaya ordered as she went to the captain’s chair.

  “We noted some kind of movement in front of the shi
p,” Tavia reported.

  Alaya left her chair to move closer to the projection. She looked intently at the screen but could not see anything. It was dark down the tunnel but she also noted that there was very pale background whiteness. “I don’t see it. Any idea why it looks like snow in the distance?”

  “We were wondering that ourselves,” Tavia stated. “Captain, look there.”

  Alaya watched as Tavia pointed to an object at the very extreme of the camera’s reach. It was subtle, but Alaya could just make out some movement. What they were seeing was somewhere far ahead of the bottom of the ship in the maglev tunnel. “I see it. Tavia ask Optio Brave Claw to come to the bridge please.”

  The optio came up and Alaya filled her in on what they were seeing. Being a serpent, she looked intently at the monitor and after what seemed like an hour but was only five or ten minutes of intense silence on the bridge, the optio turned to Alaya. “Sss. Captain, I see movement in the distance but cannot say for sure what it is. I would have to go outside the ship to see it.”

  Alaya knew it would be different if the bridge was also underground, they could have dropped the bridge armor and the serpent night vision would have solved the problem. Alaya didn’t want to send anyone outside in enemy territory, but she also knew the maglev tunnel passed under the valley in which the legions were camped. They had found a maintenance shaft and sent guards down to keep an eye on the tunnel, but that was before they discovered the Saltic were burrowers. It was important to know what was moving in this tunnel, before it posed a danger to the legions. As lead scout for the legions, Alaya reported all they saw to central command. The order came from central command for Alaya to investigate the tunnel while awaiting repairs to the engine. She reported that they would do so immediately. Alaya then conveyed the orders to the optio, since she was in charge of all ground based missions.