by Evan Currie
The enhanced displays of the Rogue showed every detail, and many more than the human eye could see besides, as lasers struck the vessel. Atmosphere turned to plasma under the heat, escaping in a stream that looked more like something out of stellar cartography anomalies than real life. It was awesome, but more so because she knew the cost.
And then it was there.
The moment.
Aleska lunged forward in her position. “Now! All ahead flank, full military power to the drives!”
The maneuvering alarm sounded as the drives and counter-mass powered up, but if anyone had been foolish enough to be out of place when she gave the order, the siren would give them no time to correct the mistake.
The Rogue fired its reactors, hard, and darted out of the shadow of its big sister. Using the drive warp to pull them along faster, the craft curved around the Odysseus, spiraling under the laser beams and using the forward drive warp to sling themselves even more quickly and launch themselves into the face of the enemy.
“Ignore the destroyers,” Aleska hissed. “I want the cruisers. Flush the tubes, fire everything.”
Against the backdrop of the Odysseus burning in the black, the Jánošík was the first destroyer of five to unload everything they had against the enemy at point-blank range.
Starting with the pulse torpedoes.
CHAPTER 23
► “Veer to port,” Eric ordered over the cheering as they watched the Rogues make their move. “Interpose our undamaged armor to take any further hits. All stations are weapons-free. Empty the tubes, burn out the capacitors, get someone out on the hull to throw rocks at them if you can find volunteers.”
He paused, considering what he’d just said, then hurriedly cut off Steph, who was turning his head to speak.
“Volunteers other than Marines,” he corrected firmly. “Navy boys shoot at ships, Steph. Marines shoot at people.”
“Yes sir,” the pilot said, sounding a little sullen at having had his smartass crack cut off.
Eric moved on. “Signal the Bell and the Bo. It’s on them now.”
“They already know, Commodore,” Heath said, looking up. “They’ve begun their attack runs.”
Eric glanced over to observe the enhanced telemetry that showed the two big cruisers break on either side of the Odysseus, their tremendous beams cutting swaths through the shield of smaller ships the enemy had thrown up around themselves in a last-ditch maneuver to cover their deceleration to rendezvous with the boarding vessel.
Fires were raging in deep space, something not normally considered possible, but in the muck he was looking at, Eric wouldn’t have been surprised if there was, for a short time, enough atmosphere now leaking around them to hear someone scream.
He couldn’t count how many ships were now burning or breaking up, or some variation of the two. Most impressive, though, was the Jánošík’s action. Apparently, Captain Aleska had a burning score to settle with the cruisers and hadn’t wasted any of her punch on the small fry.
She’d unloaded her ship’s entire compliment of firepower at point-blank range, right into the formation of cruisers to . . . spectacular results.
► Misrem almost screamed as the blinding cores of antimatter tore through her cruiser fleet, ripping huge chunks of her ships into rapidly expanding gasses.
There had been no time to deploy countermeasures against the ships slung around the main cruiser. In the seconds it would have taken to issue the order, the havoc had been wrought.
What infuriated her most of all, however, was that she hadn’t seen it coming.
She should have, she told herself. She really should have. In retrospect, the maneuver was obvious, and the fact that the lead ship was willingly taking the focus without any sign of demanding more cover or attempting to break contact should have made that clear.
Unfortunately, she’d underestimated the enemy commander and his people.
Again.
Now the fight would be even more bloody, though the outcome would still be the same. The only difference was that they would be able to mock her from the other side of life, and that irritated her more than it should have.
“Navarch! Problem from the boarding vessel.”
She viciously suppressed another desire to scream, turning to look at her second with a glare to match the lasers her ship mounted.
“What sort of problem?” she demanded softly.
He apparently caught her tone, which made him somewhat more intelligent than she had come to believe, and paled.
“They have . . . uh, they have been boarded.”
Misrem closed her eyes.
Forget screaming. She wanted to cry.
“They have what?” she asked softly, not believing what she had just heard.
“The commander of the vessel reports enemy forces on his ship.”
“That idiot,” she hissed. “What is the status of the team with the intelligence?”
“Cornered and pinned down just a short distance from the ship.”
Misrem honestly wanted to shoot the imbecile just then, but since he was merely delivering news of stupidity, she forcibly restrained herself. The intelligence she wanted—needed—was sitting out there, just mere steps from her boarding vessel, and they were telling her that they had been boarded?
She took a couple of calming breaths, then issued orders to the defensive line with a few quick gestures to the command computer, hoping that they would not be doing anything stupid . . . er . . . while she was shifting her attention.
“Are we in contact with the boarding team?” she demanded as she strode across the command deck.
Her second swallowed but nodded jerkily. “Half Centure Leif has been in contact. He is attempting to punch a signal through with enough power to upload the captured data.”
“Oh, he is? At least someone in that mess is thinking. Can we help him?”
She looked around when her second didn’t respond quickly enough, eyes falling on the other officers who were doing poor jobs of pretending not to listen.
“Well? Anyone?”
Obviously hesitant, the engineering technician cleared his throat and received her full attention. He quailed slightly but then rallied as he shook his head.
“No, Navarch. We can overpower a signal from us to them, but that would only be useful if we wanted to send significant data to the half centure. I’m afraid that this is currently in his hands and no other.”
Misrem curled her lips. “I was afraid you were going to say that.”
► Centure Leif flinched as a pressure wave blasted over him, likely enough to kill him outright were he not wearing armor. As it was, the shockwave was mildly noticeable, and his flinching was purely instinctive from the brief audio overload that had jolted him before his armor cut out the volume to preserve his hearing.
He ducked down on one knee, grabbing the back of the communications technician and pulling him back up from where he had thrown himself in a similar if somewhat exaggerated version of Leif’s response to the explosion.
“Keep at it,” he shouted at the young man. “I need a high-strength signal relay, and I need it now!”
The technician nodded in his suit, and may even have said something, but Leif had already shifted his focus as he saw four of his men retake their positions and pour more energy into the flight deck beyond their position.
“What is the situation?” he demanded as he made his way over to them, head and body as low as he could without submitting himself to the indignity of crawling.
“Think we lost everyone who went in there, Centure,” the closest man said. “No contact after that explosion.”
Leif was hardly surprised, not when the shockwave on this side of the barrier had been enough to be felt through his armor. The blast must have shredded anyone at its epicenter.
“Hold the breach,” he ordered nonetheless, “and remember to cycle men out after a few pulses. Do not let your weapons overheat, not until things are truly desperate.”
The closest man snorted slightly as Leif turned away, and he just overheard the man’s words.
“What he considers and what I consider to be desperate are two very different things.”
► Conner ducked as another burst of lazed energy slagged a chunk of the Priminae shuttle she was covering behind. The enemy had taken it on the nose in the first moments of the ambush, but their position, combined with some admittedly quick action on their commander’s part, had shifted the balance back to a stalemate.
For the life of her, unfortunately, Conner couldn’t determine who that particular state of affairs would tend to favor, which meant that she couldn’t sit on her ass and try to wait them out.
“Great,” she grumbled to herself. “Should have waited for them to come through a bit more—Sergeant!”
Just as she yelled, the sergeant materialized behind her and nearly gave Conner a heart attack. She refused to give him the satisfaction of actually jumping, and her helmet hid the open-mouthed look of surprise on her face when she turned to him. She made sure to wait long enough that her voice didn’t squawk before she addressed the man.
“What kind of heavy weapons do we have, Sergeant?” Conner asked.
“Not much, ma’am. The mission profile called for rescuing the crew, not hammering them into a pulp.”
“What I wouldn’t give for a couple of twenty-mil thermobarics right now.”
“May as well wish for a tank, ma’am. Those were sure as HELL not on our load out for a rescue op.”
That, she reflected, was the pure truth.
“We have to do something to dislodge them, and I’d rather not order a frontal assault, Sergeant.”
She didn’t need to see his face to know he’d winced at that idea—not that she blamed him.
“Right you are, ma’am, would rather avoid that if we can,” the sergeant said slowly in response.
Any frontal assault was a pain in the ass if the enemy was dug in, but charging into the teeth of the Imperial’s infantry lasers would not make for a fun capper to the day.
“I suppose we could use smoke, ma’am, and soften them up with some of the twenty-mil antipersonnel rounds,” he offered. “I doubt the shrapnel would get through their armor for the most part, but it should shake them up a bit.”
She nodded slowly, considering that.
The armor the enemy had was one of the key problems, of course. A more lightly armored opponent could be eliminated with ranged grenade fire. Just pop frags through the breach set to detonate right on the other side of the hole and end the entire encounter then and there. Unfortunately, fragmentation against real armor was just a metal rain. Annoying to the enemy, perhaps, but nothing more than that.
“Ma’am!”
Conner glanced across her HUD, noticing a corporal flagging for her attention.
“What is it, Corporal?” she asked, switching to the open tactical channel.
“Security guy here just noticed something,” he said. “Sounds like something you’d want to know.”
“Well, spill it then, Corporal.”
“Yes ma’am, sorry ma’am,” he answered nervously. “The man I’m with here, Reid is his name, he’s been monitoring the signals bouncing around, trying to crack the Imperial communication.”
“Did he?” Conner blinked. That would be useful.
“No ma’am, not yet.”
Damn.
“So what did he find that’s so interesting, then?” Conner tried not to sound too terse with the young enlisted man.
“Well, ma’am, he can’t crack their code yet. It’s pretty sophisticated, I guess, but he just found that they opened up a strong link to the boarding ship here. Lot of data being sent.”
“Shit. Sergeant,” Conner hissed, “it would appear we’re out of time. Bring up the twenties and the smokers. We’ll go with your plan.”
“Not sure I want credit for this one, ma’am, but yes ma’am,” the sergeant said in reply before he waved to a couple of the heavier weapon teams to set up and get ready.
One way or another, this was going to be over quickly.
► Hadrian swore as the fighting in the cramped corridors of the smaller ship intensified again when the Imperials were reinforced by another group.
How many of them are there on this tin can?
The damn thing wasn’t that big, but there seemed to be a veritable ants’ nest of the enemy here to rile up, and boy were they riled.
“Lieutenant.”
Hadrian almost jumped as the signal from the colonel broke through and shook him from his thoughts. He jumped over to the command channel as quickly as he could and found himself looking at the tense and sweating face of Colonel Conner on his HUD.
“Yes ma’am?”
“We have a problem,” she said. “We’re going to try to plug it from this side, but if we can’t, then it’ll be up to you.”
“Yes ma’am. Lay it out for me.”
“The enemy is close enough to punch through the jamming now,” she said, “and it seems that they’ve done just that. They’re sending a lot of information to the ship you’re on. I would rather that intel not leave. Understood, Marine?”
“Got you, ma’am,” he responded even as he stroked the trigger of his assault carbine, sending a three round burst down the hall and into the soft armor of an Imperial who had gotten too gutsy for his own good. “We’re almost to the command level, if the Priminae security team here is right about the layout.”
“Good. Go for it, Marine.”
“Yes ma’am, going for it, ma’am.”
The colonel’s transparently floating visage vanished from the HUD, and Hadrian took a moment to figure out the lay of the land before he started barking orders.
“Okay, it’s crunch time!” he said. “Buckle up, boys, we need to take command.”
► The commander of the boarding ship was sweating as the data began trickling into his computers. He had a decision to make.
With the enemy on board, he had little doubt that the navarch would order him to transmit to her ships, after which she would likely abandon or, more probably, scuttle his vessel on her way by.
He would prefer to avoid that outcome, of course, but he saw few options at the moment.
“How good a signal can we send back to the navarch’s vessel?” he asked his comm tech.
The man nervously eyed him a bit before answering. “The navarch’s vessel is close enough for a focused beam transmission now.”
Well, that answers that, I suppose.
There would be no covering up, no pretending that the jamming was still in effect. In fact, the navarch either did know, or certainly would know shortly, that he had the information from the team in hand.
The commander hesitated, though he knew the final decision’s outcome already. Finally, he just nodded. “Establish the connection and prepare the data for transmission.”
“Yes Commander.”
► “Navarch!”
“What is it?” Misrem demanded as she crossed the deck to the communication console.
“Data connection from the boarding ship is open. They are receiving data from the team still on the ship.”
“Excellent.”
She didn’t say anything more, primarily because it seemed in bad taste to insult people just when they’d done something right, but she was still in a foul mood over her boarding vessel having been boarded.
Still, if they were able to complete their mission despite that, then so be it.
“Inform me when we have the data in our systems.”
“As you order, Navarch.”
With that said, she turned her focus back to the fight. Her squadron had taken a beating, but they were returning the favor in their own turn. The enemy had an edge in weapons and armor, but not remotely enough to ultimately grant them victory in this fight. She would prefer not to be the last woman standing amid a pile of ashes, however, and the enemy squadron itself simply wasn’t the important part of
her mission.
They needed information, information that would allow the Empire to prepare its final response for this region. They would be brought under the empress’ flag, or they would die as she had commanded. There were other fates possible. The Empire had a mandate from beyond, and the galaxy was within their dominion.
Anyone who objected was in defiance of the gods.
► Conner looked over the limited supplies they had available. A few canisters of smoke remained, enough fragging twenties for a brief sustained exchange, and so forth. She could have wished for more, of that there was no doubt, but she and her Marines would do the job with what they had.
Improvise, adapt, overcome.
Speaking of improvise . . . She turned to the closest security personnel from the Tetanna. “Excuse me. I’m sorry, but I don’t know your name or rank.”
“I am Ithan, Colonel.” The woman responded with her rank first. “Ithan Kolka.”
Ithan, Conner thought. If she remembered correctly that was roughly a lieutenant’s rank in the Navy. Low officer at any rate, though sometimes it was a little difficult to be sure. The rank systems between the Priminae and the Earth didn’t match up perfectly, unsurprisingly.
“Ithan, then,” she said, nodding to the hand laser the woman was carrying. “When we use smoke, you won’t be able to shoot with that. Do you have any of your gravity projection weapons?”
The woman shook her head. “No. Those were built for ground army only, not issued to fleet.”
We’re going to need to see that changed, Conner thought grimly.
“Alright,” she said. “Once we pop smoke, you need to take cover and just hole up. There’s nothing you can do here.”
“It’s our ship. They are on our ship,” the young woman insisted fervently. “Our job. My job.”
“You don’t have the tools for the job, and you’ll get in the way of my Marines. I like the courage, but shitcan the attitude right the hell now, Ithan. If you try to help here, you’ll die. That’s your business, not mine. But if you try, you’ll also get my Marines killed, and that is my business. You and your people sit this one out.”
