by Evan Currie
Druel covered his face with both hands and rubbed vigorously for a moment before pushing his hair back and taking a deep breath.
“Just as well we were covering them, then,” he said, shaking his head. “Weston has the luck of chaos touched, I swear to the abyss.”
“Sir!” the scanner tech blurted out.
“What? What is it now?” Druel dreaded the answer.
“The Odysseus . . . they are coming about, sir. They are angling for another attack run.”
Words left him for a moment as he stared at the man, then back to the telemetry repeaters where, sure enough, the Odysseus was coming about.
“I am almost afraid to ask,” Druel said without looking over at the communications officer, “but what does their battle network have to say about this?”
She looked down, startled. “It seems that Captain Weston is intent on making the enemy believe that his previous maneuver was intentional.”
Druel groaned.
Of course he does.
“Terrans. If they are all this crazy, the Drasin may have been intended as a mercy.”
“Sir?” His second shot him a look as though he couldn’t believe what he’d just heard.
“Back them up,” Druel ordered. “I want our course changed to match the Terran’s vector. Bring us into formation with them. We will take this to the enemy, once and for all.”
► The Priminae squadron, also damaged, shifted course and acceleration to rendezvous with the Odysseus as the ship continued to accelerate toward the enemy. On the other side of the Imperial formation, the remaining two Heroics continued to close at far less insane rates of acceleration, and, hidden in the dark, their Rogues were preparing to make their own runs.
On the Juraj Jánošík, Aleska Stanislaw was not in a much better mental place than her Priminae comrade, though she did have better insight into the commodore’s intent.
“Make a note, Commander,” she told her first officer “I want every system we have scoured down to the quantum level when this is over. Whatever happened to them may have something to do with Priminae technology, but it might be software as well, and we coded that and then used a variant on the Rogues.”
“I’ll make a note of it, Skipper,” Jurgen nodded, doing just that as they continued to close on the enemy.
The Odysseus suddenly going rogue—Aleska winced as she noted the bad pun—had thoroughly overturned their original plans, but the other Heroics were remaining on course and hadn’t signalled for any change in stance, so she was going to go terminal on the planned schedule.
“They tore the hell out of that formation, Captain,” her pilot said quietly from the helm position. “I thought they were done for.”
“They likely would have been if the Priminae had not offered some long-distance support,” she said thoughtfully. “Though I expect the biggest factor was that no one on the other side believed that anyone would be so stupid as to do what they just did.”
People around the deck chuckled softly in agreement.
I would likely require a new pair of trousers had I been in their position, Aleska thought.
The sheer firepower of the Heroic Class was terrifying to behold when let fully loose in what was effectively knife range. Usually when they engaged another force, it was over vast distances, and time and distance mitigated the effect. The recordings they had of the Odysseus unloading everything they had right into the face of the enemy would probably become required viewing when they returned home.
An example of what not to do, of course, but even that was useful.
“Secure for the assault,” she ordered. “They’re hurt, but they still outmass and outgun us, so don’t let the Odysseus’ somewhat Pyrrhic success go to your heads. This fight isn’t over yet.”
► “Good God, he lived through that,” Roberts said, shaking his head.
If pressed, he wouldn’t have been able to honestly say if he was feeling relief, awe, or just utter disbelief at his previous captain’s sheer stubborn refusal to die in situations that would have killed anyone else a dozen times over.
Probably all three, frankly, he supposed.
“Raze is too lucky to die, sir,” Lieutenant Commander Little said from the helm.
“Luck inevitably runs out, Commander,” Roberts said firmly.
“You try playing the commodore at cards sometime, then come tell me that,” Little scoffed. “Wasn’t too damn often we flew into combat without owing Raze money. Used to joke that he wouldn’t let us die until we settled our bill. It worked for most of us too.”
Roberts snorted. “Makes me wonder what god the commodore owes money to, because someone is watching over his dumb ass.”
The crew slowly twisted to look at their normally taciturn captain, not quite believing what they’d just heard, but by the time they had done so, he had returned to his normal stoic pose.
“We’re approaching terminal turnover,” he said. “All systems, final combat check, and sound battle stations.”
There was a brief pause before anyone spoke, then instinct, habit, and training kicked in to get them all moving in the same direction again.
“Aye sir. Battle stations. All decks, battle stations.”
► The mood on the Imperial flagship was somewhat less jocular, if no less confused.
“How in the singular abyss did they survive that?” Misrem thundered, though she knew the answer.
They’d survived because no one, not even herself, believed that they were actually going to do what they did until they’d already done it.
Well, that and the laser support of the Oather squadron, which had caught her open flanks and served to throw more hydrogen into the reactor at the last possible moment.
Her squadron was now mauled, though so were the enemy. Most of them at least, Misrem amended. The two remaining cruisers on attack vectors were still undamaged, and she was certain that enemy destroyers were out there somewhere. She wasn’t sure why they hadn’t struck her squadron already. She would have used them to weaken her enemies before even contemplating a suicide run like that idiot had just accomplished.
She’d been rather tense in the moments following the attack as well, wondering if the fool was softening her up for the destroyers, but nothing had happened.
Misrem almost wished something had.
Try as she might, she had no idea what kind of tactics the anomalous forces were using, and that unknown factor was making her nervous.
“Get the ships back in formation,” she ordered. “The remaining cruisers are going to at least come into our engagement zone for a short—”
“Navarch!” the scanner officer yelled.
She snapped around. “What is it?”
“The enemy ship, Navarch. They’re coming around for another pass!”
“They’re what?!”
They were not possibly fit for a fight, Misrem was certain. Even having survived the bizarre assault on her squadron, they were bleeding air at an atrocious rate as they exited the other side, and they had to have taken significant casualties and damage.
She strode over to look at the scanner data firsthand.
They are out of their minds, she thought as she saw the telemetry data the station was processing. What is wrong with these people? You do not do things like this. Combat is no place for abject foolishness.
“The Oather squadron has shifted course to join them,” the nervous scanner tech said, nodding to another section of the screens.
“The insanity has infested even the Oathers,” Misrem whispered, not quite believing it.
This was completely unlike them.
What did we unleash on the galaxy when we set the Drasin on them? The Oathers should never have reacted like this. They should have surrendered long ago, the few who lived. Every profile we compiled said that. How did we calculate so poorly?
She knew Oather psychology forward and backward, and there was nothing that would explain what she was seeing. The Oathers should be fleei
ng, looking to regroup with a more powerful force, not rallying to the attack.
If this is an example of what we’re facing, the Empire may need to direct more than a single fleet to this sector. Much more.
The Oather production capability was something of a mystery, though the Imperial analysts were fairly certain they had the rough numbers locked in. If they were right, Misrem knew that the current Empire forces were potentially in deep trouble based on what she was seeing.
They had more than enough to harry the Oathers to a surrender, based on the available pysch profiles, but those profiles did not include a willingness to throw ship after ship into the fight and slug it out until there was nothing but scrap left drifting in space. If they were going to fight to the last ship, Misrem knew that she didn’t have enough ships.
She checked the timing on the now-divergent targets her squadron would have to deal with, noting that they were going to be hitting her from both sides at roughly similar times. It was difficult to be precise because many of the vessels in question were still settling into their accelerations.
“I have had enough of this,” she said. “These people are complete imbeciles, with far too much power under their control for the comfort of any sane people.”
She still had more than enough ships left to take on the forces she was facing, but it would absolutely gut her forces even if she won. Best case, assuming no surprises going forward (an assumption she was no longer willing to make), she’d lose two-thirds of her ships before the last of the enemy vessels were disabled or destroyed.
Unacceptable.
Withdrawal, however, was an even less tolerable option.
How in the abyss did I get into a death fight over a useless Oather system of absolutely no value to the Empire at all? Ridiculous.
“Do we have word from the soldiers dispatched to the enemy ship yet?” she asked, looking over to the communications position.
“They’ve proceeded through the craft easily and expect to acquire the necessary intelligence in short order.”
Misrem nodded. She needed that intelligence to turn the entire fiasco of operations in this sector around. “Good. Bring the squadron around and head for the enemy vessel. Inform them I want them off that ship, with the intelligence, by the time we get there.”
“Yes Navarch.”
An alarm sounded as the squadron started to shift course, catching everyone by surprise.
“What now?!” Misrem hissed.
“Enemy destroyer detected, Navarch. Inbound along a negative course relative to our own. They will be in engagement range shortly!”
Misrem groaned inwardly, but there was nothing to do about it.
“Stand by countermeasures, all ships! I want cover for our men on the enemy cruiser, but order them to get off that ship as quickly as they can! Retrieve and secure our expeditionary team, and then we are getting out of this insanity.”
CHAPTER 13
► “Ma’am,” the pilot called over his shoulder to the rear of the shuttle as they approached the damaged Tetanna, “you should see this.”
Colonel Conner unstrapped and made her way to the front, then leaned in between the pilot and copilot. “What is it?”
The pilot pointed ahead of them, where the Tetanna was floating in the black, still small but growing quickly now. “See those lights?”
“I see them,” she confirmed.
“Didn’t detect them until we got close, but those are ships, and they don’t scan as Priminae.”
“Shit!”
The SAR group had a Marine contingent, which is why she was on board, but they didn’t have the numbers to deal with a serious boarding action. She’d grabbed a seat primarily because her Marines weren’t going to be doing much otherwise, and this was a chance for her to see them in proper action and evaluate their abilities in a real-world scenario.
Now she was going to get more than she bargained for.
“We’re still going to need to get on that ship,” she said. “Can you do it, through them?”
“We don’t have comms with the crew, but we can deliver teams through the hull breaches,” he confirmed. “Some of them are big enough. You’ll need to use the portable airlocks to get onto the ship.”
“We can do that. Okay, new plan,” she said. “You’re going to do a combat insertion. Try to find us a place where we can get in without being shot. Once my teams are on board, dust off and orbit the ship. Don’t engage the enemy ships if you can avoid it.”
“No worries.”
A shuttle, even a Marine lander, was not particularly adept at fighting. They could hum a few bars if they had to, but they were too small to have significant armor and too focused on delivering men and gear to have much of a weapons load.
“Just get us on the ship,” Conner said. “We’ll handle the rest, but if we need dustoff—”
“We’ll be waiting, Colonel. Don’t you worry about that.”
“Good man.” She clapped his shoulder once and pushed back, drifting in the null gravity to the rear compartment. “Chief!”
“Colonel?” The chief was instantly up and at attention relative to her, which struck her as slightly funny. Being alert was one thing, but knowing exactly how to twist his body to position relative to hers in zero g so quickly was something else.
“Break out the kit,” she ordered. “Someone else beat us to the punch, so odds are looking good that we have hostiles on board.”
“Roger, ma’am,” the chief said, twisting in space before bellowing, “Marines! Kit up!”
► The Marine shuttles dispatched from the Odysseus closed on the Tetanna, flying a ballistic trajectory through the last half of their flight path right up until the last possible moment. They fired their thrusters hard as the big ship loomed in front of them, splitting up and hurtling through space toward the damaged cruiser at near insane speeds.
The lead shuttle hit its CM field just enough as they threaded a breach, slowing the last bit and bringing the big bird around within the massive cavity carved by the enemy weapons. The pilot’s compartment was now sealed and the Marines were in a vacuum as the rear hatch descended and the squad leapt to the burned-out deck, fanning out to secure it.
Others, including corpsmen, started tossing gear out of the back of the shuttle with little care for neatness, then followed suit themselves.
In all, it took a little under three minutes to unload, disembark, and clear the area so the shuttle could fire its rockets and fly back out the breach for the next to fly in and repeat the process.
On the scorched and scarred deck of the Priminae ship, Conner took charge of her Marines and got them moving before the second shuttle had even started its run. They had work to do.
“Get the portable lock over to that section of the bulkhead.” She pointed to a section off to the left that looked relatively unscarred.
With a little luck, it would be clear on the other side, and she could get her Marines moving through the ship more quickly. Until they penetrated deeper into the ship, however, she was well aware that they were likely to run into evacuated sections, making it difficult to navigate at best. Finding a dead end could slow them down fatally if the enemy were close to gaining full control of the vessel.
“Corporal Han.” She grabbed one of her comm specialists by the shoulder. “Get me a patch to the ship’s communications network. I want to know if anyone is still in charge here or if we are looking at a total loss.”
“Yes ma’am.” The corporal tossed off a quick salute before grabbing his computer and transceiver gear and heading for a section of the bulkhead with an access panel.
“Chief,” Conner called, “we have to assume that we’ll need multiple airlocks to gain egress, so get someone to plot out the most likely route to the internal decks. I want a clear path to evacuate the crew, assuming we find them, and ourselves if it comes to that. That means securing the locks as we go, and that’s going to cost us Marines we may need forward.”
“
Yes ma’am. We can rig traps to our IFF signals,” the chief offered hesitantly.
She understood that hesitance. The idea of leaving lethal traps at their rear, relying on IFF transponders to let them pass unharmed, was cringe-worthy to say the least. All it would take was enemy signal jamming at an inopportune time, and they’d fall on their own grenades in the most literal and historical way possible.
Unfortunately, she didn’t have enough Marines for any other option.
“Do it,” Conner ordered. “Directional mines should do the job, Chief.”
“Yes ma’am.”
While her men got to work, she pulled out a computer and started plotting the best course to engineering and the command deck. Those were the two more critical areas of the ship, and it seemed likely the enemy would be focused on them as well. Both were deep inside the hull, heavily protected by deck after deck of armored ceramic bulkheads, but they were on opposite sides of the primary core, and that was a little bit inconvenient.
Not enough men to split my forces. Command first, or engineering?
She opted for engineering with only a slight hesitation. They needed to know just how much the ship was damaged, and that area would most certainly have access to that information. Command would probably have it, but depending on how bad the damage, communication between the two areas might have been cut.
“Colonel!” Corporal Han called over the tac-net. “I’m in. The Tetanna’s internal communications seems mostly intact, but their line discipline has gone to hell. There are panicked calls all over every channel, mostly calling for damage control parties, but there’s a lot of reports of hostiles too.”
“Any near engineering or the command deck?” she asked, linking into his system so she could have a quick look herself.
“Hard to say for sure. It’s a mess, like I said,” Han answered, “but I’m pretty sure this bunch is from the engineering level. Not sure they’re there, though.”
“Probably heading that way, if they’re not,” she decided. “Okay. Keep linked into this, and let me know if anything changes. We’re heading for engineering as soon as we’ve got our teams on deck and the airlock ready.”
