William Keith Renegades Honor

by Renegade's Honor

  —Extract from Galactic Pilot's Manual, Terran Sector, Edition 36

  Kendric relayed the navigational data to his own console and studied it. The planet Trothas, technically Trothas V, had a diameter of less than ten thousand kilometers and a climate ranging from temperate at the equator to vast, frigid ice caps at the landlocked poles. Much of the mountain terrain was buried beneath glaciers, ice rivers that wound for hundreds of kilometers across bleak and frozen wastelands. The temperate zones were broad and verdant, however, warmed by shallow, equatorial seas. The land mass designated as the East Continent was large and convoluted with deep glacial fjords, with ice-locked mountains to the north, mountain-walled deserts to the interior, and broad, green agricultural lands along the southern coast, which ran close by the equator.

  Commodore Severno had plotted the Gael Warrior's target—a sprawling complex of factories, planetary defense bases, and port facilities along the continent's south coast. Fighters had been observed coming from a spaceport field west of the industrial area, and that spaceport was the battleship's objective. The light cruiser Reannruadh would take the same target, following close on the Warrior's heels. The frigates, destroyers, and corvettes would deploy north and south of the approach path, directing their beams and missiles against surface radar installations and fire control outposts scattered far from the main target, and serving as protection against fighter and missile attacks from the surface.

  Then why deploy our fighters ahead? Kendric wondered, but he was already too busy to give the fighters more than a passing thought. Enemy fighters were converging on the TOG formation, racing in to hurl themselves against the squadron as it bore down on Trothas. Most of the rebel fighters were already damaged as they closed to make their close assault passes, and more were being blasted into glowing fragments now, as Lee Fairfax's gunners lashed out at the swarming targets.

  "Ops," Kendric said. "This is the Captain."

  "MacCandless, sir."

  "Am I imagining things, or are those hostiles all coming from our flanks?" None of the enemy fighters were approaching from the direction of the planet.

  "You're right, Captain. I'm not reading any fighter activity at all ahead of our screen. They're vectoring in from the direction of Five-cee." Trothas V-c. The largest, outermost Trothan moon.

  "From that squadron orbiting there?"

  "Affirmative, sir. They're on the far side of Five-cee now, but the hostiles' trajectory fits an approach from there. Sir, I haven't been able to pin it down, but I'd wager my Commander's bars that the large blip behind Five-cee is a KessRith carrier."

  Kendric nodded to himself. That made sense. A carrier could transport at least a full wing of fighters—360 ships in five groups. A large carrier could hold even more. Fighters had no doubt been sited on the planet's surface with an eye toward hiding them from the Imperials. Most or all would have been launched already, however, to keep them from being caught and destroyed on the ground. Fighters launched from a carrier in orbit did not have to claw their way up out of a planet's gravity well to attack, either.

  That made the Gael Warrior's fighters more useless than ever, deployed out ahead of the squadron.

  Kendric reached for the intraship com switch, then drew his hand back. It was obvious that Commodore Severno could not be argued into changing his position once he'd taken a stand. It was equally impossible for Kendric to send seventy-two men to near-certain death for no purpose at all.

  His hand returned to his console. "Communications. Open a channel to the fighter Group Commander. Include the IFCO on the line."

  "Channel open, sir."

  "Flight Command and Warrior Group Leader, this is Captain Fraser. Break formation. Repeat, break formation. Engage hostiles bearing on Flag from, uh..." He consulted the bridge viewer readout. "From two-eight-oh, minus three-five." He took a deep breath. He could well be ruining his career with the order he was giving. "Move it!"

  There was a moment's hesitation, then the arrowhead of fighters ahead of the Gael Warrior dissolved, the fighters braking hard, applying thrust to bring them onto a vector that would swing them around to a new vector nearly at right angles to the squadron's course.

  "Fraser!" Severno barked into Kendric's earpiece. "What in the hell do you think you are doing!"

  Kendric watched the fighters a moment more. On the main viewer, their drive trails pulsed brilliant blue, their trajectories picked out in vivid green. He wanted to delay until there was no chance that they could be ordered back into line. The lead TOG fighters were closing with the leading elements of the rebel Interceptors now. On the port forward viewer, lines of green and white fire snapped out as Imperial Verutwns engaged with their neutron cannons at long range. Shields flared. Missiles streaked out at 12-G accelerations, seeking enemy radiation sources.

  "Uh...Sir? Excuse me, could you repeat..."

  "Caesar in heaven, boy, what the hell are you playing at? You have just willfully and deliberately contradicted my orders."

  Kendric closed his eyes, quieting both his fear and his anger. There was no backing out now. How to answer? A misunderstanding might be best.

  "Commodore...what's the matter? I understood that our fighter screen was deployed to protect against enemy Interceptors. We are under attack from port by large numbers of enemy fighters.. .possibly from a KessRith carrier behind that moon. I simply directed them..."

  "You have simply lost your command, mister!"

  Kendric set his jaw, his hands clenched into fists on the arms of his chair. This was going to be worse than he'd thought, but he would not, he could not back down.

  "Very well, Commodore. May I have that confirmed, in writing?" He glanced ahead. The planet filled the viewscreen entirely now. Minutes, perhaps only seconds, remained before the attack run would begin in earnest. "Do you want me off the bridge immediately?"

  "No!" That word was sharp. Those that followed softened, but Kendric could hear a note of triumph in the other man's voice. "No. Remain at your post. But at the end of this run, we will withdraw this ship from the action, and I will personally place you under arrest! You are going to be court-martialed, mister. Court-martialed and broken for insubordination, for failure to obey lawful orders, and for malicious interference in the routine order of command! Caesar help me, if you interfere with my orders again, I'll have you up on charges of mutiny!"

  Kendric let his breath out in a long, slow sigh. To port, fighter trails snarled and tangled among blossoming pinpoints of light.

  Devastation and an exhaustion gripped him body and soul. Somehow, everything had suddenly all gone wrong. Caius Elliot told me to watch out for the wolves. 1 wonder if this is what he meant?

  "Eeeeeeeeeee-hah!" Jaime's yell momentarily blanked communications on Gold Squadron's tactical frequency but gave vent to the battle thrill the entire squadron felt. The six Pilums plunged headlong through a formation of KessRith Fluttering Petals, that had already flipped end-for-end and were decelerating hard to match speed with the Imperial fighters. Jaime's Pilum closed on one KessRith fighter, his velocity very nearly matched to that of the enemy, his lasers and bow-mounted mass drivers pumping mayhem into the Fluttering Petal's hull.

  These KessRith ships had already been in combat—long and savage combat—and most showed signs of hard usage. The Petal Jaime first centered in his sights had long, ragged scars across its belly and a crater nearly punched through its portside wing. Jaime's fire raked across the amber blur of the alien ship's shields, but multiple hits slipped past the shields and smashed into the fighter's hull. A huge chunk of metal blasted free from the Petal s port hull, aft by the three grouped engine nacelles.

  In the instant before he slipped past, Jaime saw his port laser beam blocked by that tumbling chunk of wreckage, which glowed white and melted under the impact. His starboard laser plunged dead center into the crater the chunk had exposed. Wiring and conduit vanished in white plasma, and then a far brighter flash utterly wrecked the KessRith's port engine. Other flash
es followed, arcing across the Fluttering Petal's port and ventral sides, but Jaime was past too quickly for him to see more than a glimpse of the damage his hit had caused. Gold Five and Gold Six, a few kilometers behind him, opened fire on the same alien ship. Jaime heard their yell of triumph as the KessRith vessel began tumbling, shields and attitude control gone. Jaime joined them with a long, keening victory yell, then vectored toward his next target.

  His ID computer three-viewed a KessRith medium fighter, a Ca'kakt Tcha shuk'sha—a gargle that translated as Delicate Blossom of Silver. The alien shape twisted away from his first volley, loosing a deadly salvo of laser fire in return. Jaime took the beams on his shields and bow armor, rode out the shock wave of expanding gases boiling off his starboard wing, and cut loose with both mass driver cannons and both 7.5/3 cm lasers at nearly point-blank range.

  Explosions gutted the KessRith ship, a series of flashes that blew chunks of hull plating and stabilizer spinning into space. Through rents in the alien's hull, Jaime could see white-hot fires raging throughout the interior. Flaming gases blasted outward, to be extinguished at once by the vacuum of space. What was left of the hull crumbled, a cloud of charred and half-molten rubble hurtling past Jaime's Pilum.

  He flipped end-for-end and decelerated sharply. On his scanner screen, he saw the cloud of enemy fighters breaking up, no longer a threat to the Gael Squadron, which was plunging now into the upper atmosphere of Trothas V.

  "Gold Leader to all Golds," he said. "Gather round, children! We've got them on the run!"

  "Gold Three to Gold Leader," a voice said. That would be Galloway, one of Gold Squadron's old hands. "Hey, Lieutenant! Who pulled our tails out of the fire? Someone had us slated as targets in a shooting gallery!"

  "I'm not sure, Three," Jaime replied. "Could be there was some dissention up top. My guess is the Captain vectored in and screened

  us."

  "God! He'll take fire for that!" another voice said. "Maybe. But it looks to me like we've got one tough skipper!" "Amen to that," Galloway said. "Hey! Watch it! I've got four hostiles forming up, two- three-niner, plus seventeen!"

  "I see them. Three Silver Blossoms and a Fluttering Petal. All together now, gang! Let's hit 'em!"

  Kendric watched this part of the battle in silence. The fighters had destroyed or distracted the majority of the enemy fighters vectoring toward the squadron from the direction of Trothas V-c, and there was little to do but watch and wait. There was no response at all from the planet ahead, and the battleship's operation was now in the hands of the Helm crew and Commander Fairfax. The Fire Control Officer was issuing a steady stream of orders, readying the Warrior's weapons to direct them at targets on the planet's surface. For now, Kendric could only sit in the command seat, leaning far forward, his hands clasped before him, his eyes shifting between the main screen, the various groups of bridge officers, and his own console displays. Any further orders or comments on his part would only confuse matters, he knew. He knew that it was best to rely on the training and experience of his people right now, but that didn't make it any easier to sit and do nothing.

  Three KessRith Fluttering Petals swept in toward the squadron from the direction of the major Trothan moon, refugees from the Interceptor battle that still twisted and turned in that direction. The lolaire and Abu concentrated their fire on the lead attacker. For a moment, the approaching fighter was starkly outlined in the green radiance of laser fire engulfing its shields and stabbing into its armor. Then the little ship's port forward shield collapsed, and a torrent of energy swept across the Interceptor's hull. Vaporized metal exploded into space, and a 7.5/5 wingtip laser cannon disintegrated in white fire. Its trio of thrusters flared and went dead, while the crippled ship hurtled on, powerless and harmless.

  The Gael Warrior opened fire with her port secondaries an instant later, concentrating on the next two Petals in line as they accelerated past the wreckage of the first. Mass driver slivers hammered across the fighters' forward shields. About half the projectiles slipped past the fighters' bow shields, gouging ragged, glowing craters in armor already torn by earlier exchanges of fire. The array of heavy electron cannons in the Warrior's H and J forward turrets boiled whole layers of armor plate into space in a dazzling explosion of star-hot plasma. Their cockpits and controls wrecked, both fighters flashed low across the Warrior's hull, lifeless and broken, streaming trails of white-hot debris.

  Kendric felt a small thrill of pride at the expertise with which his bridge crew handled the exchange—then felt that pride turn to a hurt sickness. They aren' t my crew any longer—or soon enough they won' t he. Damn it all.

  The depth of his own feeling took Kendric by surprise. He had not been consciously aware of thinking of his crew as Gaels, and of himself as a TOG Imperial, but the difference had been a kind of gulf nonetheless. The gulf was gone now, just when it mattered most. These were his men.

  His fists clenched, an uncontrollable spasm. At that moment, a bridge officer, a young J.G. assistant to the Helm, happened to glance back at the Captain. What he saw—the eyes open so wide, the anger and bitterness in Kendric's expression—made the younger man recoil in fear.

  Kendric did not notice him, seeing nothing but the swelling of Trothas V ahead. Court-martial or not, he told himself, they won' t get me without a fight!

  War is hell...

  —Major General William Tecumseh Sherman, United States of America, Terra Imperial Interregnum, approximately 400 years after the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire

  The blue-white orb of Trothas V expanded rapidly to fill the forward screen. The continent-sized south polar ice cap was dazzling to look at, its whiteness more intense and brilliant than the softer swirl of clouds. He could make out East Continent, a blurred mix of greens, browns, and glacial whites north of a narrow band of blue sea beyond the ice. The navigational computer threw a flashing red cross-in-circle against the coastline, marking the position of the Warrior's target. The planet swelled in the viewscreen as Kendric watched. Though they had slowed in their approach toward the battle zone, the battleship was still falling planetward at better than 50 kps.

  "You have your target," Kendric told Fairfax. He pushed thoughts of Severno and the loss of his command from his mind, struggling to concentrate on the task at hand. "We'll release missiles on the approach, and the fire control computer will handle the beam attack." At the speed they were traveling, Human gunners would never be able to track, lock, and fire their weapons with any hope of success. They would be hard-pressed to even see their target as it flashed by below them.

  "Yessir. We'll put a full spread of missiles into them, HE and Hell warheads, and we're programming for an attack by all ventral batteries. That'll make them take notice!"

  "There's no way to set up a shot for our main gun?" Kendric asked.

  "Not with the speed and altitude we've plotted, Captain. Now, if you want to cut our speed to next to nothing and drift past..."

  "Understood." Kendric was glad that Fairfax seemed to have settled down, to be better in control of his voice and his manner. It would be better if Kendric didn't have to speak to him later, which could make the young weapons officer more self-conscious than ever. Then Kendric remembered that there would be no later, and the thought brought fresh pain.

  "Communications." He snapped the word, his bitterness breaking through. "Transmit our launch plot to Reannruadh." The cruiser had been assigned the same target and was following the Warrior's approach path fifteen kilometers astern. Without proper coordination, it was possible that the cruiser's beam weapons would destroy some of the Warrior's missiles in the atmosphere before they hit.

  Then the perspective of things changed. Stretching from one corner of the viewscreen to the other, the surface of the planet was a broad, glittering white curve beneath, rather than before, them. Cloud patterns and land masses streamed past, and a faint, distant thunder began to tremble through the hull of the ship as it encountered the first, tenuous wisps of Trothas V's atmo
sphere.

  The Gael Warrior was not a streamlined ship, and high-speed runs such as this were dangerous. Friction heated the outer hull. Kendric was attempting to skim the planet's atmosphere. The Gael Warrior would reach its lowest altitude—105 kilometers—directly over the target. Unless something went wrong first.

  The thunder in the hull had grown to a bucking, thuttering roar that Kendric felt more than heard through the deck plates and the seat of his chair. Planetary atmospheres had no precise, upper boundaries. The ability to make a high-speed skim-and-skip without plunging too deep was more art than science. Forward, the horizon flattened out and rose to meet them. The flashing red targeting circle reappeared on the horizon, moved rapidly down across the screen...

  The screen lit up with a star's brilliance, then blacked out as the computer damped the image to save Human vision. Reports flowed through Kendric's earpiece. Starboard bow shield failing. Power loss in Number Three fusion plan. A ventral laser turret smashed. From the Combat Center, Morganen reported that the planetary defense base had opened fire.

  "Incoming missiles!" someone yelled over the circuit. "Climbing

  from the target!"

  "Anti-missile defense on automatic!" Kendric ordered in reply. "Starboard shields to one-twenty!" The screen flashed as computer-directed lasers reached for the enemy missiles.

  There was a crash, its thunder rippling through the deck. "A hit to ventral battery C and D," Morganen's voice said in his ear. "Heavy laser cannon! Damage to our forward fire control tower. We're losing power to our ventral turrets..."

  "Helm! Roll the ship, ninety to starboard!"

  On the viewscreen, the planet swung dizzily up and to the right as the Helmsman rotated the ship ninety degrees. It looked like a vast, white-mottled wall passing so close alongside the ship that one might reach out and touch it. By laying the ship over, Kendric was bringing the battleship's upper deck turrets to bear on the target, compensating for the loss of power to the turrets along the ship's belly. He could see dorsal D and E turrets forward, along the bottom edge of the screen. They swung to Fairfax's command, seeking their targets.