She shrank away from a beefy lieutenant who took up too much of the hallway for too long. The sooner they were on the Siyane, the better.
They burst into the lobby for the docking arms and ran smack into a slightly more panicked throng. Civilians, contractors, visitors. Security personnel were trying to impose order, but they seemed to be losing the battle.
“Oh, shit.”
Caleb tightened his grip on her hand. “Now you grab Kennedy’s hand. Noah?”
“We’re ready.”
Caleb plunged into the crowd.
Instantly bodies jostled against her, fighting for vantage or rebounding from others’ shoves. An elbow jabbed into her ribs. She cringed but kept moving as Caleb expertly steered them toward the sector they needed to reach.
Just as it began to look as though they had met an impenetrable wall of people, the crowd shifted. Direct, explicit orders bellowed over the speakers. New doors had been opened, providing new routes of escape.
Taking advantage of the shift in the ebb and flow of bodies, Caleb increased their pace, and they slipped through the last glut of people to reach their goal.
The security officer waved them through; they arrived at the Siyane bruised and scraped, but they all arrived. Alex keyed in the lock code on the airlock and hurried inside.
Valkyrie greeted them. ‘Welcome aboard. Is anyone injured?’
Alex peered behind her while engaging the restraints in the cockpit chair to see Noah fussing over a scrape on Kennedy’s cheek. “Unless someone’s bleeding to death, first aid will have to wait. You’ll want to strap into the jump seats. This could get interesting, and that’s before we get clear of the station.”
Kennedy made a face but did as instructed. “I’m not sure ‘interesting’ is the word you were looking for.”
She chuckled and activated the HUD.
Caleb joined her in the cockpit. “You got this?”
She jerked a firm nod. “I got this.” Her pulse accelerated. This was going to be a rush. She raised her voice, trying not to sound overly excited. “Are you two set?”
“Yep.”
“Valkyrie?”
‘Most definitely.’ She sounded excited, too.
EACV-7A492X to Messis I Traffic Control: Requesting release and departure clearance from Dock E-17.
Messis I Traffic Control to EACV-7A492X: Clearance granted.
They weren’t wasting any time with procedures. A second later the clamps retracted.
Alex edged the impulse engine up to five percent, dipped and arced slowly around to open space.
Chaos that closely resembled panic awaited. Shuttles raced to the presumed safety of the planet below while fighters crisscrossed the perimeter of the station. Platoon-sized formations of frigates and several cruisers formed up and accelerated away. To where the approaching attackers were located?
She didn’t give a damn what her mother said in public. This was a bona fide insurrection.
Kennedy piped up behind her. “Are my ships in combat? I really want to see that.”
“I don’t think there’s any actual combat so far. We can’t make out the battle lines yet.”
“Yet?” Caleb cocked an eyebrow. “We should go to Seneca or Romane. If this is the opening salvo of a war, I don’t feel comfortable being somewhere with inferior firepower.”
She hedged. “Either of those is fine.”
“But?”
“But we’re going to help first.”
“What? Never mind, I don’t need to see my ships in combat that badly.”
“Did you forget? Valkyrie and I helped fight the final battle against the Metigens. We have been here before.”
Caleb sighed. “I was about to point out you weren’t technically piloting a ship at the time, but having been on the receiving end of your piloting skills, I would never question them.” He checked over his shoulder. “If either of you were pretending to be strapped in, I’d strap in for real.”
There was the muffled sound of a strap tightening.
Some of the Volnosti ships—what a fabulous name—had established a perimeter a megameter out from the station. Buying people time to evacuate and the planetary defenses below time to go on alert…assuming the government was on their side. Again she worried about allegiances. Unlike on Earth, where the government and military shared control of the Terrestrial Defense Grid, requiring the agreement of both to use it, for political reasons the Messium government retained complete control over their orbital arrays.
“Valkyrie, can you get us patched into the Volnosti comm system and make certain we’re greenlit?”
‘No, I cannot. But Annie can.’
“Good enough.” She suspected Valkyrie was enjoying being back among her own kind.
Satisfied everything was in order, she picked out a course for the front line about the time the comm channel lit up.
Admiral Solovy: “Alexis, get out of here. Messium isn’t safe, but you can go to Romane. Stay out of the crossfire.”
That didn’t take long. “Respectfully, Admiral Solovy, no. I can help. Now stop talking to me and go direct your battle.”
Admiral Solovy: “Chort tzdbya beeree. Fine. But for God’s sake, get far away from Messis I. Immediately.”
She burst out laughing, followed shortly by everyone else in the cabin as their translators kicked in.
Kennedy cackled a bit wildly, so much so Alex suspected she had been injured during their escape and was enjoying some painkillers. “I’ve never heard your mother mouth off so!”
“Neither have I. Guess she was paying attention to Dad’s curses all those years after all.” Another thought distracted her from the undeniable humor of her mother’s response. “I wonder why she said to stay away from the station, instead of the front line? Is something going to happen there?”
Curious, she adjusted course and arced back toward Messis I.
“You’re doing exactly the opposite of what your mother said.”
She didn’t need to look over at him; she could see Caleb’s pained expression perfectly well from the corner of her eye. “Not the first time.”
The flow of shuttles had slowed considerably, and presumably it had been largely evacuated. It didn’t appear to have much in the way of weapons, defensive or otherwise.
As a joint civilian-military initiative, it relies on the planetary defenses for its protection.
Then why is it important? The battle will be elsewhere.
Two Alliance cruisers emerged from superluminal two megameters from Messis I on the opposite side from the gathering fleets. The station’s fighter protection instantly moved toward the ships, but they’d barely begun to close the distance when both cruisers fired.
Not on the fighters.
On Messis I.
Eight separate laser strikes tore into the structure, ripping through the utility shields then multiple layers of metal. Enormous chunks of the station broke off to tumble through space. The lasers next directed the full force of their fire on the lower central portion.
The primary power module is located in the targeted sector.
“Oh….” Alex yanked the ship vertical then another 45° to flee.
The power module ignited and the core of Messis I exploded in a roiling fireball. Its hull disintegrated and spears of metal were hurled outward at accelerating speeds.
The shockwave slammed into the Siyane. She gritted her teeth and concentrated on dodging fragments of the station until her speed exceeded theirs. She wanted to slip into the walls of the ship, but she feared the debris would physically hurt.
Finally they outpaced the leading edge of the explosions and the vicious beating subsided. She breathed out. “Everyone good?”
Caleb reached over and squeezed her hand. “Like I said about your flying….”
Kennedy’s voice rose an octave higher than usual. “They blew up the station! Are they insane?”
5
MESSIUM STELLAR SYSTEM
EAS Churchil
l
* * *
Christopher Rychen shook his head in disgust. He’d hoped they wouldn’t do it. He’d hoped Fullerton would stand up to Winslow and refuse to destroy a major asset, one which could have civilians on board—and almost had. The evacuation had been completed barely two minutes before the attack.
Fullerton had no way to know Messis I was empty, but he’d fired on it nonetheless. The officers under Christopher had always insisted Fullerton was an unprincipled ass. It seemed he should have listened.
“Admiral, sir. We’ve got reports of explosions at HQ, at the Communications and Data Center.”
“Dammit, how many times am I going to have to rebuild that base?” He connected to his second-in-command on the ground. “Brigadier Drechsler, report.”
“Sir, we believe a single stealthed ship penetrated HQ defenses and fired on Comm-Data. We’re not registering any additional attacks—and I’ve got confirmation. We were able to expose the infiltrating ship and bring it down.”
“Good work. Commence rescue ops at Comm-Data and inform me when you’re able to identify the ship and any survivors.”
“Understood, sir.”
Rychen turned to his left and placed a holocomm. The governor of Messium materialized instantly. “Admiral Rychen, who the hell just blew up my space station?”
Rychen suppressed a groan. It wasn’t the governor’s station as such, but rather a jointly-built-and-operated initiative by the Messium government and Northeast Regional Command. But the man had always been quite proud of it. “Governor, that would be Admiral Fullerton. I have reason to believe he did so on orders from the prime minister.”
“Because of Solovy’s manifesto? Did they believe she was in residence?”
While it would have been a nice side benefit for them, not exactly.
“Possibly, Governor. However, they have also attacked Regional Command Headquarters. Luckily we were able to eliminate the attackers, but not before they destroyed a major structure. There could be more hostile ships we haven’t yet detected, and there is currently a sizeable force twelve megameters distance from the planet and closing.”
“Rychen, are you telling me the Alliance military is attacking its own colony?”
“No, Governor. I’m telling you the Alliance government is attacking its own colony. The Alliance military stands ready to defend you. We only need your permission.”
There was a weighty pause. “You mean you and Admiral Solovy.”
“And all those serving under us.”
“I wasn’t inclined to take a public position on this little spat, but they blew up my space station. And now you tell me they’re on the ground, too? If this is the start of a civil war, God help us all. Admiral Rychen, please rid Messium of this threat. I’m activating my Defense Grid authorization and transferring control to you, so you may use its capabilities as needed.”
“Thank you, Governor. I assure you, it will be deployed solely as a last resort.”
He killed the holocomm and shifted to the open screen to his right. “Admiral Solovy, you are a go.”
Siyane
Alex magnified the radar screen as they neared the conflict zone.
Mark Mom’s ship.
Miriam had named it the Stalwart II. Alex’s chest fluttered as echoes of long-ago memories, delightful and terrible alike, washed over her.
The ways in which her mother honored her father in this cause were as equally wonderful as they were heart wrenching. Volnosti—Russian for the principle of liberty and freedom and one of her father’s most zealously held tenets—marked every ship, uniform, standard and pronouncement of the campaign.
One green dot bloomed larger than the others on the radar, and she pushed the memories into a deep corner while banking toward the dot. It flew near the rear of the formations, as a command ship should be, but not enough near the rear.
What was her mother thinking? She’d said it herself before the final Metigen confrontation: she wasn’t a battlefield commander. She was a strategist.
But it was worse than that. The Volnosti forces were outnumbered. The Earth Alliance military had nearly unlimited vessels to throw at any problem, and they’d done so here. Yep, she needed to be here to help.
The lessons of the critical engagement against the Metigens began to come back to her. Battlefield tactics. Maneuvers and the counters to them.
Valkyrie: You’re remembering because I have prioritized those routines.
Morgan: And because I’m helping.
Alex: Smartasses, the both of you. Thank you.
The Siyane was fully stealthed, so she cracked her neck and moved into position above and to port of her mother’s ship. Objectively, it had plenty of protection. But as noted, their side was outnumbered. On second thought—more battle memories—she moved a bit farther out, into the fray, and began searching for potential incursions.
Ugh, this was all too sluggish. Too slow. Before she’d realized she’d done it, she’d slipped into the walls of the Siyane.
And she could see everything. The deluge of information generated by two fleets threatened to overwhelm her, but she worked to scrutinize a limited, pertinent set of factors. Her goal was to intercept enemy vessels intent on damaging or destroying the Stalwart II.
Within a few seconds she knew what to hunt for. Even the Metigen cloaking technology the ships used, as advanced as it was, could not hide perturbations in the fabric of the space-time manifold. What was invisible in three dimensions became apparent to her elemental perception.
There. An Alliance interdictor had crept past the demarcation line which for now continued to hold. Publicly a standoff was in progress, but privately the enemy would try to eliminate the Volnosti leader nonetheless. Bastards.
She spun and dove on an intercept course.
Morgan: The smaller Alliance vessels are weakest at the juncture of the impulse engine and the main hull frame. Find a seam in the adiamene there and you might be able to damage it.
Alex: Kindly keep to yourself how you know that.
Valkyrie: Even I know that.
All the talking grated at the edges of her nerves. It interfered with the experience, forced part of her mind out of the elemental realm. She dialed down the volume and embraced the atoms whizzing past her skin as she sneaked up behind the enemy craft.
Fine, it was weakest at the juncture of its impulse engine and the hull.
She lined up and fired.
The target lit up in a silver-white shimmer as her fire washed over its defense shielding. The pilot jerked 23° vertical almost instantly, but she stayed glued to its tail. This far behind enemy lines it had no friends to come to its aid.
The vessel’s presence was exposed by the bath of her laser, and two of the fighters protecting the Stalwart II now fired on it as well. Confident its shields were weakening considerably, she honed the focus of her fire.
She imagined she was the laser itself, and she sought her target. The tiniest little seam existed between the adiamene of the hull and the layer protecting the engine, hardly wider than a few atoms.
But she could see atoms.
She flung herself—the laser—into the gap.
The interdictor didn’t explode; the adiamene was far too strong. Instead its engine was severed from its body and flung away on an opposite trajectory. The momentum carried what remained of the vessel forward on its previous course, but the pilot now had no control. It slammed into the hull of the command ship with a tremendous thud, then bounced off and began falling into the void. Eventually two escape pods were jettisoned to drift behind enemy lines.
She left the cleanup to the support craft and returned her attention to the region surrounding her mother’s ship. Where there had been one, there would be more.
“Alex? Why aren’t you answering me? Caleb, why isn’t she answering? I seriously am in danger of getting sick, inertial dampeners or no.”
Caleb rubbed at his temples and tried to ignore the queasiness in his stomac
h as the least of his concerns. “Alex isn’t here right now.”
“I don’t understand.”
“She didn’t get around to telling you about this new trick, did she? We’re all nothing but spectators now.”
He glanced back to find Kennedy gaping at him wide-eyed and pale. “What new trick? Alex, what didn’t you tell me?”
“She can’t hear you. Well, maybe a little, but even if she can I doubt she cares. She’s, um…her mind is mostly in the walls of the ship right now. She’s not flying it with the controls so much as with…herself. I don’t know, it’s…existential.”
He forced a closed-mouth smile. “And very powerful.”
Kennedy’s brow furrowed, an expressive act on a typically expressive face, but her only verbal response was a soft, “Oh.”
Noah attempted an awkward chuckle. “She’s not going to crash us through one of the enemy hulls, is she? Cause, we’ve already done that.”
“We have. I…probably not.” I don’t have the slightest clue. When she’s in this state she’s completely beyond my reach.
But he conceded her total control of the ship could be the best approach in the current situation, so he didn’t plan on causing a scene. He’d complimented her on her flying skills earlier, but he’d never seen her fly with such skill and finesse as she did now. When she was the ship, perhaps no maneuver was beyond her capabilities.
His stomach lurched as they pinwheeled through space, the effect on the human body of those maneuvers apparently not being a concern for the pilot.
Space was, by and large, empty, but Alex still struggled not to get hypnotized by the molecules being knocked around by all the ship hulls as they played their games of cat and mouse. If she didn’t have a larger purpose, she might have become so.
When she’d tuned out the Noesis chatter, it had the side effect of turning down the Volnosti comm channel as well. But now, as the distance between the two sides narrowed and the formations tightened, she concentrated on listening.
Admiral Fullerton (EAS Jefferson): “To all vessels not under my command: you are in violation of Assembly Directive 2323-427D and BANIA Regulation AAS 38131.499.885b. These violations can be considered acts of war. Stand down and surrender for courts martial proceedings.”
Aurora Renegades Page 68
