“Captain,” said Sasalaka, “I am not sure we can retrieve our marines in time. Should we abandon recovery and take a counter-offensive course?”
“The croma are going to be dealing with reeh ships very shortly,” said Erik, juggling twenty variables in his head on approach to station with a particularly hard eye on Makimakala’s hard run, approaching at almost panic-velocity.
“Reeh ships, Captain?” Sasalaka sounded confused.
“Captain,” Jiri cut in, “Makimakala’s shuttles are deviating from recovery positions. I’m reading karasai suits in free space away from station at slingshot speed. Looks like they jumped.”
“Sir, I’m hearing snatches from Makimakala’s karasai.” Lieutenant Shilu sounded alarmed. “They’re fucked up, sir. I’m hearing tavalai panicking.”
“Query Makimakala, ask if they require assistance.” Styx had informed them of the mind-assault weapon. Erik had read several classified reports during the Triumvirate War about one side or another attempting to develop such a thing, but they’d never amounted to anything. If tavalai were panicking, it would be the weapon that did it.
“Sir,” Sasalaka attempted again, “if we are to plot a counter-course to those incoming croma, we must do it immediately or we will not be in a position to…”
“Multiple new contacts!” Geish cut her off. “Heading twenty-three by three-ten, reading three, no four, new vessels, energy high, heading and signature indicate reeh ships! Two more, make that six ships, looks like a formation jump… sir, that’s coming from exactly where those reeh who ran off earlier jumped out.”
“They short-jumped it like we thought,” Erik confirmed, watching the two opposing forces gather size, the croma just coming past the gas giant now, the reeh out further in the deep system. New ships were added all the time, Geish not bothering to call them out now that everyone could see. “They’re going to engage head-on, that should buy us time to get our marines. Arms, defensive plot. Nav, get me the best several courses out of here based on reeh movements, we are presuming reeh remain the primary enemy for now. Coms, hail the croma, inform them we are retrieving marines and will be ready to assist them in combat action immediately following.”
“Aye Captain!” came the unified reply, each post leaping to follow orders. Declaring solidarity with the croma was dangerous. These would be Croma’Rai, the only croma forces allowed by croma law to access this adjacent region of reeh space beyond the wall. Croma’Rai had an obvious interest in making sure that Phoenix did not report what they’d seen here to anyone else. Erik simply did not know enough about croma politics or psychology to know how likely croma would be to fire on them and make sure of it, but he was strategist enough to know that a force of reeh ships this large was going to take some effort, and the croma commander would be stupid to reject his assistance, or Makimakala’s. Croma were a complicated race with many qualities, but stupidity did not appear to be one of them.
“Major, Final Departure is three minutes fourteen, I’m putting that on tac-feed right now.” If Erik was telling her directly, with all else he had to worry about on the bridge, things were serious. She held back from the corner as rounds snapped and sparked off the steel, the corridor beyond the entry-point room filled with vacuum smoke that refused to dissipate in the lack of aircurrents.
“Major copies, Captain,” Trace replied, barely hearing her own voice past her shredded hearing. “We’ll be there.” Tacnet showed her Garudan were already out — being slowest to advance had meant fastest to leave. Alpha were also out and heading to rendezvous. On their up-spin flank, Charlie were in final loading, while Delta were still struggling, having covered Alpha’s departure, but looked good to make it. The problem, suddenly, was Bravo, where activity had intensified, attacks encircling and striking their flanks with the apparent objective of slowing their withdrawal.
Alomaim had several wounded, and manoeuvring them down corridors under fire required enough manpower for covering fire to prevent them getting mown down. That meant holding more marines back from departure than he’d have liked, and several times when he’d pulled people off a defensive position to reinforce those harried with wounded, new attacks hit precisely the spot they’d left. It was a calculated encirclement, and it informed Trace’s judgement utterly as to what they were facing. Calculated to do what, she hadn’t yet figured.
Final Departure meant the time when all the shuttles would leave for rendezvous. Phoenix calculated that from the position of each shuttle, and knowledge of how long it would take to recover each one. Trace did not know what enemy forces were closing on them, but she knew they were numerous and fast. Phoenix was hiding in the fire-shadow of the station and betting that incoming reeh ships would not risk hitting station to get her. But if she waited too long, Phoenix would lose the final window of opportunity to run and accelerate from this moon’s gravity-well before getting overrun and destroyed by reeh vessels still carrying high-V from jump. Anyone not in the shuttle by Final Departure would be left behind.
Tacnet showed Bravo Heavy Second coming down an adjoining corridor, then several thundered through, ducking across Trace’s corridor, missile tubes scorched, extra-heavy armour cratered in places. Private Webber came last, retreating down his corridor with bursts of his last mini-gun ammo, then a final burst down Trace’s corridor before dashing across, his gun’s forward armour shield looking as though it had been chewed by a dozen giant rodents.
“Bingo ammo!” Webber called from the face of the huge entry hole PH-1’s missile had made on entry.
“Get out!” Alomaim told them from somewhere the next level down. “If you’ve got no ammo you’re just taking up space!”
“Major, we gotta go,” Kono told her through gritted teeth from up the corridor, expending an airburst missile to shred part of the corridor that wasn’t already shredded like some work of modern art.
“Everybody out!” Trace yelled. “Command Squad, get out, I’m right behind you!” As Rael ducked past her, then Rolonde, an arm limp where a detonation had damaged the armour but left her vitals unchanged. Heavy Squad were leaping from the torn steel of the entry hole, then falling out of sight. PH-1 was somewhere below, holding position beneath the rotating hole with a one-G thrust, leaving it up to jumping marines to use their own thrust and hit the dorsal hatch, since the rear entry was hazardous with the main engines active. Several marines with damaged thrusters had not been able to make the manoeuvre, and had followed procedure by heading to stationary rendezvous, decelerating and congregating with others until the last shuttle to leave picked them up. Right now, that would be AT-7, currently recovering Delta Platoon… meaning that Lieutenant Commander Dufresne would have to depart thirty seconds before Final Departure to grab the stragglers before Phoenix came howling in demanding pickup.
“Giddy, pull it back, we’re leaving,” Trace told the Staff Sergeant, firing several of her final remaining rounds into the smoke-haze devastation. Kono pumped out several more of his own, then ducked out and shuffled backward, flattening himself sideways on one knee as rounds somehow streaked his way from the metallic ruin ahead. Trace fired her last grenade, missiles long since gone. “Giddy, you gotta move!”
“Major, watch…!” yelled Zale on her left near where the corridor was severed by the entry hole. A blast blinded her visor, coms dissolving as Zale’s blue tacnet dot vanished. The blast rocked her, visor-vision streaked white… then suddenly her head was spinning once more. Damn coms were damaged, she realised — the shrieking in her ears dimmed, the splitting pain went with it, and now the nausea was back. And looming behind Kono as he picked himself off the floor in mid-corridor was a dark shape, floating as though unfolding from the very walls.
“Giddy!” Trace yelled, advancing with rifle pounding.
Scan looked awful. There were fifteen reeh ships coming at them fast, and the station’s current orbital trajectory was heading straight toward them. It was better than traversing the directly-facing surface of the moon, blocked f
rom retreat by the moon’s mass, but not by much. Coming at them fast the other way were twelve croma warships, each side making an obvious course directly for the other, spreading across the moon’s orbital track.
“PH-3 is aboard,” came the call from Operations, as the third shuttle docked, in addition to PH-4 and GR-1. That left AT-7 and PH-1, AT-7 just now burning toward the four straggler marines without sufficient thrust to reach their shuttles previously.
“PH-1 and AT-7, hit transmitted marks on our outbound track, we’ll pick you up on the way, coordinates on your board.”
“AT-7 copies,” came Dufresne’s cool reply, flying that underpowered shuttle solo in this mess and making it look easy.
A small delay from Hausler. Then, “Phoenix, we have a delay.”
“If I delay we’re all dead,” Erik said with certainty. “If you miss rendezvous I will leave you behind.”
“PH-1 copies.” Scan showed Erik that he was already well inside minimum response parameters by the Fleet manual. It was only Phoenix’s recent upgrades that allowed him to leave this late — with the old Phoenix, he should have left fifty seconds ago. Even this revised Final Departure was pushing it right to the edge, and some of those reeh ships had surely fired already in anticipation of the course he wanted to take. He’d now have no choice but to head directly into that oncoming fire, and hope that Phoenix’s massive new combat computers weren’t slightly off in their calculations.
“Croma lead has fired,” Jiri announced, continuing the running chatter the command crew maintained across the bridge, keeping each other informed as much as their Captain.
“Makimakala is leaving,” said Geish, and Erik saw that big friendly dot on his display accelerate away at a bone-crushing ten-Gs. “All shuttles are aboard.” Shilu had said he thought casualties were bad, but at least they’d gotten all their shuttles back. Phoenix had no guarantee of that yet. What the hell are you up to, Hausler?
“PH-1 is moving hard,” Geish added, with evident relief. “ETA to rendezvous line fifteen seconds.”
Ops was on the line again. “Captain, I’m reading some distress on PH-1, I can’t make it out…”
“Get off my line,” Erik said brusquely, and the connection cut — he was matching outbound trajectories with the line PH-1 and AT-7 were burning toward, and had no time for unspecified problems he couldn’t do anything about.
“Definite incoming!” said Jiri, as ordnance flashed red on Erik’s near-screen, coming in plenty fast and adjusting course all the way.
“Arms Two, get on it, here we go.”
“On it, Captain,” said Bree Harris, aligning defensive guns.
The timer hit zero and Erik hit thrust, a fast build up to seven-Gs, then a cut as they came racing up quickly on AT-7. Dufresne matched V in several fast moves and slammed into Phoenix’s grapples. Hausler followed, and Harris was already firing, counter-fire racing out on intercept…
“Captain,” came Hausler’s voice on coms, hard and tense in a way that had little to do with the Gs, “you better go hard Gs as soon as we’re aboard, I got a minor mutiny on board, someone’s trying to smash into the cockpit.”
For a brief moment, Erik’s brain could not process that. What the hell could cause…? And then he realised. Oh no.
“Come in hard, we’re leaving.” PH-1 hit the grapples of Berth One as hard as combat docking procedures allowed, and Erik blasted everyone back in their seats. Past the gasping attempts to breathe, and his laser-focus on the screens, he was dimly aware of heavy-G tears streaking his temples.
Harris’s defensive intercepts erupted across near-screens… damn that was close. High-V incoming rounds couldn’t dodge much, and their inbounds course was predictable, but if Harris missed one at that speed, they wouldn’t even feel pain. Corrig was returning fire at Arms One now, and Erik put them into a slow roll to give all gun batteries a sighting, pumping heavy offensive rounds into the course of those incoming reeh ships.
Ahead, Makimakala was doing the same thing, obstructing one entire side of her space… Erik was now focused on the approaching gravity slope horizon, the minimum distance from this moon where he could engage Phoenix’s new jump engines. At this acceleration it was only going to take him another seventy-three seconds. Makimakala, despite her head start, was going to take another hundred and six.
“Dammit!” snarled Harris, no mean feat on silent uplinks at ten-Gs, and Erik saw her outgoing fire abruptly reorient onto something nearer. “Ghost rounds, hang on!” It meant incoming rounds that near-scan hadn’t seen until the last moment. Erik thought Phoenix’s scanning technology was so advanced now that nothing could evade it. Evidently the reeh thought differently.
A string of explosions lit up scan to one side, defensive rounds detonating and spreading several seconds short of impact, creating a spray of projectiles covering several football fields each. High V incoming rounds were hitting that spray so hard they turned to vapour in microseconds. Further ahead, Makimakala’s side lit up with defensive detonations as the tavalai’s shield caught their own incoming fire alarmingly late.
“I don’t trust what I’m seeing, Captain,” came Harris’s urgent analysis. “We better get out of here.”
“Styx,” Erik formulated, “can you recalibrate Scan to detect those ghost rounds?”
“No, Captain. It is impossible within the time restrictions currently upon us.”
With no time to go through Shilu, Erik blinked on Coms himself and opened a link to Makimakala. “Pramodenium, we have ghost rounds inbound, twenty seconds to V boost.”
“I was hoping your scan would see them better than ours,” came Captain Pram’s reply, somehow managing to sound as though uttered through gritted teeth rather than formulated by brain-implant software. “Do not hold back for us, doubling fire volume will not help us against rounds we can’t see.”
“Phoenix copies, Makimakala. Once we have V we will move to cover your boost.”
The threshold approached, then the jump engines gave him a fading, reluctant, then finally a firm green. Erik’s thumbs hit the jump buttons the engines cycled with a lurch deep in his stomach as hyperspace briefly rose up and engulfed them… and then they were out and racing, incoming rounds, Makimakala and the moon and station all racing away behind at tens of thousands of kilometres per hour faster.
Erik cut thrust down to five-Gs to gasps of relief across the bridge. He opened a link to Operations, speaking now with his real voice. “Ops, get me general coms in all PH-1, hold and cockpit.”
“Hold and cockpit… go ahead Captain.”
“This is the Captain. Mutineers will be executed by me personally. Someone take command in there or there will be corpses.” And disconnected. Trace would have liked that, he thought bleakly.
“Makimakala’s hit!” Jiri shouted. “Glancing blow, she’s sideways, thrust’s out!” Behind and beyond that, reeh and croma ships were passing at high-V. Several bright flashes marked detonations, ships vanishing in miniature supernovas.
“Captain,” Kaspowitz growled, just in case he was stupid enough to think of it, “we can’t reverse and help them, we’ll be sitting ducks in the U-turn.”
Erik watched helplessly, heart pounding, as Makimakala’s defensive batteries engulfed yet more incoming rounds, some desperately close, others further away. Scan read them ten seconds from jump threshold at full acceleration… but acceleration was now cut. And ignited once more as Pram desperately got the engine relit, the big carrier wobbling on damaged controls to try and get the nose pointed the right way once more. Nine seconds, eight, seven…
Erik’s coms crackled, broken with static as the tavalai made contact. “Erik,” said Pram, with sadness in his voice. “I’m sorry.” As the tavalai’s scan showed him something that could not be dodged.
A flash, much brighter than anything else. For several seconds, framed by the moon’s grim silhouette, Makimakala burned brighter than any sun, then vanished.
22
Trace dreame
d of restraints, and smothering, suffocating. She dreamed of G forces, and the dark, claustrophobic holds where trapped things died, never again to see the sun. At some point she came to realise that the dreams were not dreams, for she was not asleep, nor entirely awake. Something bad had happened, and somehow it had failed to kill her. Likely it had not severely wounded her either, for despite the haze of half-consciousness she felt neither pain nor the numbness of painkilling drugs.
Recalling exactly what had happened was too hard. Recalling her own name was difficult enough. She only knew that she was locked in some ship’s hold, and it was moving. She had the vague sensation of being watched, and things moving nearby, beyond immediate sight. How that could be, with G-forces pushing her now into an uncomfortable compression, she did not know. She only knew that they were taking her someplace, whoever ‘they’ were, and things would likely get enormously worse once she got there.
Phoenix burst out of hyperspace at a croma frontier system whose name Erik barely registered, accompanied before and aft by croma warships that had swung about after their first run on the reeh ships, and beaten a fast retreat. Their communication to Phoenix had been to the effect of ‘come with us if you want to live’. More reeh ships had continued to jump in behind the first wave, some of them apparently faster and more manoeuvrable than the first group, and Erik had realised that all reeh space would be onto them now. Previously they’d been running ahead of the reeh’s awareness of their presence in reeh space, but now that awareness had finally caught up. Besides which, Croma’Rai ships had been threatening to fire on Phoenix if he declined their invitation, and Erik had no wish to inflame human-croma relations any worse than he already had by firing back.
The remaining corbi Resistance ships had been brought back similarly at gunpoint, emerging some minutes after Phoenix and short two of their number where reeh warheads had proven more mobile. Phoenix’s bridge crew had run through damage assessment (several high-V fragments in the crew-cylinder outer shields for minor breaches only) and analysis of their new location’s defences, which like all croma systems were enormous beyond the point of overkill. Their lead escort then beamed them coordinates for the next jump, on the other end of an inevitable three-day cruise across this large system to the far side before the gravity slope would let them jump again in the required direction.
Croma Venture: (The Spiral Wars Book Five) Page 43
