The Hot Gate - [Troy Rising 03]

by John Ringo

  “I think we could handle that with just our ships, sir,” Commodore Bernardo de los Reyes said. The parasite unit commander, ComBBGSix, was Filipino in extraction but had grown up in Los Angeles before the fires. He had become accustomed to being thought one of the Sud transplants by most people. “The missiles would be unpleasant, however.”

  “Which is why we’re bringing the Therm” the admiral said. “When the missiles are reduced we’ll open up the door and punch your squadron and the Marines. Marine mission will be to recover the diplomats. The point being that they’re going to have to ask the Ogut to have them back. Do not hard board the Ogut transport.”

  “Understood, sir,” Brigadier Richard “Dick” Denny said. Skinny, short and older by a decade than the other senior officers, he had cut his teeth in Afghanistan during the War on Terror as an infantry grunt in the 101st Airborne. Commanding a regiment of Pathan Marines had never been on his bucket list. Possibly that was why he did such a good job. Though normally of the camp that led by example and through encouragement, with the Pathans he just did not give a damn if they liked him. Fortunately, a combination of fear and respect outweighed their hatred. “We don’t want to be at war with the Ogut, too.”

  “System entry is in twenty minutes,” Clemons concluded. “And then we are going to seriously jack up some Horvath.”

  * * * *

  “Three hundred thousand missiles,” Star General Sho’Duphuder said complacently. The commander of Assault Force Eridani had reason to be happy. “Three assault vectors, nine Aggressor squadrons and two brigades of Marines.”

  “And the Horvath,” Colonel To’Jopeviq said.

  “For what good they will be,” General Sho’Duphuder said. “We are sure of the data on the Thermopylae?”

  “Ninety-eight percent,” To’Jopeviq said. “But I remind the General that this is, again, below our suggested minimum requirements. We recommended at least half a million missiles in the swarm with backing of six assault vectors. The Troy class is unbelievably hard to destroy and humans are fiendishly clever fighters. You simply have to trust the models. Alas, once again High Command has trusted their instincts.”

  “We will win,” General Sho’Duphuder said.

  “Gate opening,” the sensor officer said. “Large signature.”

  “And we begin. Accelerate missiles for the gate.”

  * * * *

  “You look uncomfortable,” Beor said as To’Jopeviq walked into the viewing area of the assault vector Ilhodib’s bridge. “Is it because you would rather be in command of an AV than supplying intelligence?”

  “It is because I am reminded of something Star Marshall Lhi’Kasishaj once said to me,” To’Jopeviq said.

  “Which is?” Beor asked. If the Kazi agent was nervous it wasn’t apparent.

  “Sometimes being right is the worst of all possible choices.”

  “You do not think we’ll win?” Beor asked.

  “I am wondering how I can get us both out of this system in more or less one piece.”

  “Both?” Beor said, hissing. “Egilldu, I didn’t know you cared.”

  “I’m hoping you can convince your superiors not to flay me alive. For being right.”

  * * * *

  “Uh... oh.”

  Captain Keith “Razor” Blades was the chief tactical officer for the Thermopylae. As such he was in charge of the force of spacemen and women who ran the Therm’s massive onboard offensive and defensive systems.

  Which one look at his board was telling him might not be enough.

  “Admiral, signatures for... three assault vectors, eight Aggressor squadrons, two Rangora Marine assault ships and... three hundred thousand missiles. Full swarm is inbound.”

  “Max power to shields,” Admiral Clemons said. “Full launch spread on missiles. Set to antimissile defense. Signal to reopen the gate. Set point five percent of missiles for gate entry. Onboard signal to Terra Defense Command...” He paused, his mouth opening and closing.

  “I know, it’s a tough one,” Commodore Guptill said. “But, face it, sir, you’ve got to say the words.”

  “Signal: ‘It’s a trap,’” Admiral Clemons said, grimacing. “Include battle schematics.”

  “That’s more like ‘It’s a Trap!’ sir,” Guptill said in a gurgly voice. “Like a Horvath is saying it. Imagine you have a great big squid—”

  “I know,” Clemons said. “DAMN those movies. Shouldn’t you get ready for damage control?”

  “Oh, yeah. Knew I was forgetting something.”

  * * * *

  “ALL PERSONNEL TO DAMAGE CONTROL STATIONS! INBOUND MISSILE SWARM!”

  “Good thing we’re in here,” Angelito said, shrugging.

  “How big a missile swarm ... ?” Dana said then blanched. “Oh... hell, no!”

  “What?” Angelito asked.

  “You can access the tac screens from here,” Dana said as the Thermopylae started to shudder from missile launch, and a faint hum through the floor indicated that the power plants for the main laser arrays were going to full power.

  “They’re... blotted out?” Angelito said, hesitantly.

  “That big,” Dana said, then laughed.

  “What is funny about this?” Angelito asked. “We’re being hammered.”

  “They’re firing from sunward,” Dana said.

  “So?”

  “You don’t know history, do you?” Dana said. “‘The arrows of the Persians are so numerous they blot out the sun.’”

  “So?”

  * * * *

  “‘Then we shall fight in the shade.’”

  The Rangora fleet and the missile swarm that was in front of it was inward from the gate, between the Thermopylae and E Eridani’s sun. The distant star couldn’t even be seen behind the cloud of missiles. The ships themselves were only detectable by their emissions.

  As always, the mass of missiles closed through a hail of flak. Laser point defense batteries as well as the Thermopylae’s onboard lasers were destroying them by the tens of thousands. Thermopylae’s own missiles were outbound to engage for that matter.

  But each missile destroyed created a shield against laser fire for those behind it, a wall lasers could not penetrate and even the powerful sensors of the human Thunderbolt missiles had a hard time piercing. Although energy and gases dispersed fast in space, the wall of missiles were as detectable for the massive cloud of gaseous metal they were leaving behind as the fact that the same cloud was obscuring a quarter of the heavens.

  The wave of blazing gas and coruscant destruction moved closer and closer to the Thermopylae until, finally, the hundreds of thousands of Rangora missiles closed upon the embattled fortress.

  Kinetic energy release is a function of velocity on impact and mass of the material. Each of the Rangora “brilliant” missiles had a kinetic impact equivalent to between seven and fifteen megatons, depending on where they were in the swarm when they began acceleration towards the Thermopylae.

  Thermopylae’s Orion drive used twenty-five-megaton pumped-fusion bombs for its acceleration, firing at max acceleration one such bomb every tenth second. As the missiles started to break through the battlestation’s incomplete defenses and struck its still mostly unarmored and unshielded surface, the combined thousands of megatons of energy drove it off vector, spinning away from the gate and outwards towards deep space. Not that anyone really cared much.

  “Very much so, sir,” Commodore Guptill said. “Surface temperature dropped slightly before the impacts started. There were enough missiles we were, literally, in shade. Missile impacts on the missile and laser tubes. Multiple impacts. We’re being closed up. Last tube closed. No more outbound missile or laser fire available.”

  “They’ve reprogrammed for our systems,” Admiral Clemons said. “They know what to fear. You have to like an intelligent enemy. How many of the missiles did we get out before the doors closed?”

  “Sixty thousand, sir,” Captain Blades answered. “Three hundred tried to
make it to the gate. The Rangora were ready for it. They cycled the gate as soon as we were through. None of them made it to Sol.”

  “Then we’re on our own,” Clemons said. “Oh, well. There were only light units available in Sol anyway. And so were the forces at Thermopylae.”

  “They lost, sir,” Blades pointed out.

  “We’ll have to avoid that. Maneuver into a continuous rotation. Those missiles don’t maneuver well at terminal. Let’s make it harder for them to hit the doors. As soon as we’re in a spin, get damage control teams up. Get those doors open. We’re not just going to sit here under our shields and take their pounding.”

  * * * *

  “Clever,” General Sho’Duphuder said, looking up to the viewing area. Major To’Jopeviq just rippled his scales in a shrug. “Suggestions?” he commed.

  “The missile and laser doors are closed, sir,” To’Jopeviq said. “If you close the Marines quickly, you can get them onto the surface before they can get the doors reopened. When they do open them, they’ll be dealing with Marines. Getting Marines into the interior is the optimum action. Hold all remaining missiles for support of the boarding.”

  “The surface of the Thermopylae is now in a negative gravity condition,” Admiral Cirazhesh pointed out. “Marines will have difficulty maneuvering on such a surface. Landing on it will be difficult enough.”

  “Continue the missile bombardment,” General Sho’Duphuder said. “Close the Aggressor squadrons and the other two assault vectors. Let’s soften her up a bit more. Concentrate fire on the Orion drive.”

  * * * *

  “We’re blind,” Captain Blades said, sitting back in his command chair. “We can’t see a thing. No remaining missiles feeding us intel. All surface sensors gone. Last we saw they were still sitting back and pounding us.”

  “They’re not going to keep doing that forever,” Admiral Clemons said. “Those Marine ships are there for a reason. General Denny.”

  “Sir?”

  “Prepare to repel boarders.”

  “Repel boarders, aye.”

  “Captain Blades,” Admiral Clemons said. “During the first battle of Troy the Troy’s SAPL tubes were closed by the Horvath forces. They simply burned through the damage. Do we have enough power to do that?”

  “Yes, sir,” the captain said. “But we’ll be firing blind.”

  “Just clear the tubes,” Clemons said. “Commodore Guptill, make sure the damage control personnel are aware and integrate with tactical. I’d like to get real fire control back as soon as possible.”

  He paused and shook his head. “I need suggestions, people. We need to get back into battle.”

  “We need to get the missile tubes open,” Captain Blades said. “Once we have missiles out they can burn through the jamming at this range and get us some eyes.”

  “Concentrate on that,” Clemons said as the Thermopylae jerked sideways. “What the hell was that?”

  “Concentrated fire on the Orion,” Maneuvering Control replied. “Fire was counter to spin, thus the jerk. Orion’s out. From our sensors, it’s blown off the surface.”

  “Rotation is high enough,” Clemons said. “Discontinue acceleration. Dexter, get the missile tubes open. I don’t care how”

  “Working that exercise, sir.”

  * * * *

  “Get off, you stupid...!”

  James F. “Butch” Allen had considered, several times, that what with how dangerous his job was anyway, he might as well have joined the Navy. And he was seriously rethinking his decision to transfer to the Thermopylae. It had been a nice bump in pay and a promotion to permanent team leader. But if he was still working on the Troy he’d be in Sol system right now doing an install on the new Orion drive. Not cutting away damage from a Rangora missile while the Thermopylae still rang from more impacts on the surface. Which was, come to think of it, how BFM bought it in the last battle.

  The current “issue” was a missile tube. It wasn’t really “closed” anymore. You could crawl all the way to the surface if you wanted to watch the battle. They’d already cut away the main door that was a problem. But on the other side of the welded-shut door they’d found a mangled mass of half melted nickel iron that had it effectively closed. At which point they whipped out their Grosson Mark Seven Laser Welders. Again.

  When he’d been in Apollo Space Welding School in Melbourne his first welding instructor, Mr. Methvin, had been pretty sarcastic about a welder that could generate a two-meter beam.

  It sort of threw Butch that he now knew more than his teacher. The reason a Grosson had a two-meter cutting beam was so you could saw through two meters of twisted nickel iron blocking a missile tube.

  Unfortunately, when you did a cut that deep and long it tended to do a pretty serious melt on the material. Which meant you got spot welds. Which meant you found yourself bracing yourself against a jaggedy nickel iron bulkhead while kicking with both feet at a half molten chunk of nickel iron that looked like a modern art sculpture. Which was not a good way to avoid a safety investigation. Except by not being around to answer questions cause you were dead.

  “Jinji!” he yelled at his Coptic Egyptian foreman.

  “Yes, Mr. Allen?”

  “Give this sumbitch another shot.”

  “Allen?”

  “Go, Mr. Purcell,” Allen said, grunting as he pushed on the piece of metal. They had the thing cut away but if there wasn’t resistance it would just spot weld. Again.

  “How long on Two-Four-Six?”

  “If the sumbitch would stop spot welding, we’d be done,” Allen said as the chunk of metal the size of a Mack truck finally gave way. Due to its outward spin, he started to slide down the tube after it but corrected with his navpak. The chunk of metal bounced down the tube, slowly, then out into space. They were one of over two hundred crews working on tubes, doing pretty much the same thing. There had to be one hell of a debris trail around the Thermopylae. “Done. It ain’t great but if they walk the missiles down the tube they can probably get them out. Them Thunderbolts are tough. You want us to clean it down to the walls?”

  “Negative,” Purcell commed. “That’s good enough. Get all your men over to Two-Two-Three. It took major damage.”

  “This isn’t major?” Butch said, getting his feet set on the deck. Suddenly the air around him lit up like he was in the main bay. And his suit cooler started running overtime. “What the hell?”

  “Behind you, Mr. Allen,” Jinji said.

  Butch turned around carefully then started to swear luridly.

  “Allen to Mr. Purcell,” Butch said, putting his hands on his hips. “Forget that ‘this tube is open’ thing.”

  “What happened?” Purcell asked.

  “It looks like the Rangora just hit the opening with a heavy laser or something,” Butch said, contemplating the new mess. The whole opening was still filled with gas from the ionized nickel iron. Given that it was toxic as hell to breathe, it was a good thing they were all in space suits. “We’re gonna have to open it back up again. And it’s right at the surface this time so we’re gonna be around if another missile or laser hits.”

  “You’re already on triple time” Purcell pointed out.

  “Got to submit something to Apollo about a ‘welding on the surface in the middle of a battle’ pay bump,” Butch said. “This is not a safety positive environment. We’re on it.”

  * * * *

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  “There have been no emissions or missiles in the last ten minutes, Star General,” Admiral Cirazhesh said in a satisfied tone. “Elhabus reports debris continues to be ejected. They’re bleeding air and water and have no drive. They can spin but they cannot run nor fight nor hide.”

  “What is the status on missiles of assault vectors and Aggressors?” Star General Sho’Duphuder said.

  “All are still in green, General,” Cirazhesh said. “They are firing on the surface with lasers only.”

  “Marines,” General Sho’Duphuder said. “S
end them in.”

  * * * *

  “Heave!” Butch shouted.

  With a last grunt of effort from the four welders, maintenance door Two-Two-Three-Charlie gave way. They’d gone to another corridor leading to Two-Two-Three and welded and welded until they realized it was solid nickel iron on the other side.

  As the chunk of metal spun away in the microgravity, Butch flailed and wished there was something to grab. Door Two-Two-Three-Charlie was supposed to be the third door “inward” from the tube. Instead it opened on a massive crater.