Guerrilla (The Invasion of Miraval Book 2)

by Justin Bohardt

  “Gangplank retracted and locked down,” he reported. “The ship is secure.”

  “Very well,” Dag said loudly as quick glances from his eyes sent the Miravallian militiamen spreading out around the forty assembled Dominion crewmen. “I apologize for the surprising nature of this operation, but we have an imperative mission to undertake. Unfortunately, you will not be able to participate in this mission, because all of you will be placed in the brig.”

  This drew looks of incredulity from the crew, who were looking to their captain for answers.

  “As of this moment, I am placing all of you under arrest by the authority of the Miravallian militia,” Dag continued. “You are being held for war crimes for your violation of the Treaty of Verona.”

  The crewmen were laughing now and Captain Klitchko said, “Major, this is hardly the place for a joke.”

  Dag stared at him darkly and bellowed, “Militia!”

  All of the Miravallians raised their machine guns and racked rounds into their chambers. Most of the crewmen were unarmed, but there were a few marines still carrying sidearms, who looked around wildly, wondering if they should go for their weapons.

  “You bloody fool,” Klitchko spat. “There are one hundred Dominion shock troopers out there and two additional corvettes. What do you hope to accomplish by this little display?”

  “I’m going to kick you bastards out of my home,” Dag said, but Klitchko was not listening.

  The captain went for his sidearm, but he was old and slow, fumbling with his weapon as he pulled it out of the holster. Dag was faster on the draw anyway and fired three quick rounds into the captain’s chest from the Dominion issue .38 he had confiscated. Klitchko collapsed down to the deck, awash in his own blood.

  “For those of you carrying weapons, I would recommend dropping them now,” Dag said. “Any more of you make a move and we kill everyone.”

  There was a small clattering of weapons hitting the deck and the Dominion crew and marines placed their hands on their heads. Moving quickly, Dag had his forces get the Dommies in a line and march them to the brig. Thankfully, the new airships had apparently been designed with war in mind and there were plenty of places for prisoners of war in the Intrepid’s brigs. Either that or the Skyfleet crews were overly raucous, Dag thought to himself once the last prisoner had been shoved into a cell and the doors locked.

  He left one man on guard duty, all that he could spare, and marched from the brig to a lift with the rest of his squad, which now numbered ten. Markov had been sent up to the command and control center of the ship to start familiarizing himself with the controls. If he could not get the Intrepid into the air, everything they had just done would be for naught.

  The lift doors opened and the Miravallians strode out into a room lit by a type of flickering electric white light that Dag had never seen before. Of course, almost everything about the ship fell into the category of what he had never seen before. The command and control center looked like something out of a science-fiction film. In the very center of the room was a large column rising to chest level and a second descending from the ceiling, both ending in a pair of what looked like binoculars. The devices had multiple metallic handles on the sides and there was a compass set just under the binoculars. A series of stations spread out around the central column including one that looked like a large steering wheel for a car, multiple stations with a series of toggles, switches and lights, a map table with a stop watch and grease pencils, a radio station, and a station that looked it had a yellow-tinged television set built into it.

  Aria whistled. “What the hell is all this?” she demanded.

  “Something I never would have thought I would see,” Markov responded excitedly as he slid down a ladder that led to the ship’s bridge and dropped into the center of the conn.

  “It’s all very impressive,” Dag said. “What do we need to do to get out of here?”

  “I just press a few buttons, the turbines start up and we’re airborne,” Markov said. “I assume you want me to drive this beauty.”

  “I don’t even have a driver’s license,” Dag muttered in response. “What about the weapons?”

  “Sir?” Markov asked.

  “This is a warship, isn’t it?” Dag demanded.

  “Bombard gun deck is two levels down, sir,” Markov responded. “Ship-to-ship weapons are one deck above. Cannon and missile firing can be controlled from a central station there or from the weapons station her, but the reloading needs to be done manually from the weapon decks. The phalanx turrets and interceptors need to be manned individually as well.” He paused and said, “But, sir. Our plan is working. We can lift off and be off the scope before they realize we’re not headed to Highskye.”

  “These are the forces supplying the force invading the Crest,” Dag said. “The ones that killed our friends. More importantly, they are the enemy, and we have an opportunity to deal a striking blow against them. I won’t let that opportunity pass us by.”

  “Yes, sir,” Markov said.

  “How many people do you need to run the bombard deck?” he demanded.

  “More than we have,” Markov replied. “But we can run the conn with just you and me. Everyone else can work the guns.”

  “Alright, take Aria down there and show her what she needs to know,” he said. “Then double time it back up here. We need to get going.”

  26

  Dag spent what felt like an interminable amount of time waiting for Markov to return, and he wandered from station to station attempting to familiarize himself with the controls. He found the radio and had to resist the temptation to try once more to reach Alex. There was also a telephone in the console labeled for intra-ship communication. He stared through the lower set of binoculars in the column in the center of the conn and saw nothing but darkness. There was a switch on the column that said FLOODS. He clicked it, looked again and this time he saw dimly illuminated water and even a few fish go by.

  “I’ll be,” he muttered to himself.

  “It’s a terrascope,” Markov said as he joined him. “It lets you see what’s underneath the ship.”

  “I imagine this one’s for the sky,” he said.

  Markov nodded.

  “They ready down there?” Dag asked.

  “You could ask them yourself,” Markov said as he nodded toward the phone. Moving past Dag, he sat at a station that said Engine Control. “I’m going to get the turbines turning.”

  Dag walked over to the telephone, picked it up, and rotated a three number code on the rotary dial. A moment later he heard Aria’s voice, “Bombard deck.”

  Pretty impressive, Dag thought to himself, but said only, “What’s your status, Aria?”

  “The weapons were already loaded,” she said. “We’re in position to reload when necessary.”

  “Get ready, it’s about to become necessary,” he said before hanging up.

  There was a shudder through the ship and a loud thrumming sound that started reverberating throughout the steel. “Turbines engaging,” Markov reported. He moved over to another station and punched a few more switches. “Moorings and anchor retracted.” He stepped over to the pilot station and announced, “Achieving lift. Fifty feet.”

  Looking through the terrascope once more, Dag saw the river below him. Using the hand cranks and levers on the side of the column he was able to adjust his view so that the other two airships at anchor and the Dominion camp were in view. Markov began swinging the airship around, showing the broadside of the vessel to the Dominion forces and Dag adjusted the terrascope to compensate.

  “We’re at three hundred feet,” Markov said. “Optimum bombardment altitude, or at least it was on a Galleon-class airship. “Aria needs bearing, angle and distance for the targets.”

  “Right,” Dag said. “How do I do that?”

  “The angle projection is shown in the left peripheral of the scope, the bearing in the right,” Markov said. “The distance… you’ll need to use your eyes.�
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  “Is this magnified?” Dag asked.

  “No,” Markov replied.

  “Alright,” Dag said as he picked up the phone once more. “Aria, I’ve got target one. Bearing zero zero two. Angle forty-four degrees. Distance seven hundred feet.”

  “Roger,” Aria replied.

  He repeated calculations for the second corvette and then for the Dominion camp itself.

  “You do realize that if we miss, we’ll have betrayed our infiltration to the Dommies, and they will counter-attack,” Markov said.

  Dag looked up from the scope and nodded.

  “Here we go,” Aria announced as he heard her punching in a series of commands into her firing station.

  The Intrepid bucked multiple times and even sitting inside the reinforced steel hull, they could hear the roar of the mortar cannons fire and rockets being launched. Quickly, Dag looked down the terrascope and saw a series of explosions near the river and in the Dominion camp. He had to pull his eyes away as the firestorm became too bright, but when he looked back a second time, he was staring down at the burning hulks of the two corvette-class airships that were at anchor. A sense of satisfaction surged through him as he saw the Dominion camp was on fire as well- nothing was left of the enemy. It might not help Alex and it was almost certainly not enough to allow Miraval to liberate the city of Highskye, but it was a good start. More importantly, they were now completely free to make contact with Alex and the forces in the Crest.

  “Let’s get to altitude,” Dag said to Markov. “We’ve got to let Alex know before the Dommies can launch their surprise attack.”

  Markov punched in a new series of commands into the console on the pilot station. “Heading up,” he said and he began announcing their altitude with each hundred feet achieved as Dag went over to the radio console. “At four thousand feet, we should be absolutely clear,” Markov reported.

  “Where are we now?” Dag asked as he picked up the transmitter.

  “Thirty-two hundred,” he replied before he was interrupted by a warbling warning klaxon. He leapt up from the pilot station and raced over to the yellow-tinted screen. There was a strange yellow blob displayed. Markov turned to him and reported nervously, “Lieutenant, new contact on the radar, coming from the north.”

  Dag stalked quickly over to the radar station. “Another airship out of Highskye?” he asked.

  “Aye, sir,” he said and he turned to give Dag an apprehensive look. “My gods, the size of it, sir.”

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “By the gods, it’s a Dreadnought-class,” he replied.

  “I take it that’s bad,” Dag said.

  “Three times our size and even more firepower,” Markov said.

  “That’s bad,” Dag said as he grabbed the phone and dialed in Aria.

  “Beaurigar,” Aria answered.

  “Reload all the weapons!” Dag barked into the handset.

  “What’s wrong?” Aria asked.

  “Just hurry,” Dag ordered as he set the handset down for a moment. Turning to Markov, he demanded, “How long until we can contact Alex?”

  Markov let loose a string of curses and swatted at the radio station with an open hand. “They’re jamming us,” he said.

  “Bring us within firing distance of that ship,” Dag ordered to Markov.

  “What? We’re outclassed, sir,” Markov protested. “But this corvette is far faster than a Dominion dreadnought. We need to run.”

  “Alex and the others don’t have time for us to beat a strategic retreat and get clear of the communications jamming,” Dag pointed out. “Plus, once the Dominion knows that we’ve commandeered this ship, they’ll send the entire Skyfleet after us. Now, bring us into firing range.”

  “Aye, sir,” Markov said, and Dag felt the airship begin to turn under his feet. “Hopefully, we’ll get up on them before they can bring their guns to bear.”

  “We don’t need to kill her, just take out her communications equipment,” Dag said as he sprinted over to the terrascope and turned the device until he could see the massive dreadnought rising to the north of them, but still several hundred feet below them altitudinally.

  Four wings spread out from the massive armored hull of the dreadnaught, each wing possessed of three spinning turbines that pushed the airship into the sky. The top half of the hull was bristling with rocket batteries, mortar cannons, swiveling machine gun mounts, and a large radar dish. Dag assumed the belly of the airship, whose name he could now read as the Imperator, was just as suitably armed. Markov was closing the distance between the two ships, and Dag finally spied what he was looking for- a series of antennae sticking up from the hull, just behind the radar dish.

  “Aria!” Dag bellowed into the phone.

  “Go ahead,” came the reply.

  “New target for you,” he said. “Radio tower on the aft of that beast. I need it taken out immediately. Hold position,” he added to Markov.

  “Hold position?” Markov echoed. “They’ll blast us out of the sky!”

  Despite his protestations, Markov slowed the Intrepid to a hover, and Dag refused to take his eye from the Imperator, which was now twisting into a position to show its broadside to the Intrepid. “Bearing,” Dag reported into the radio. “Three Five Eight Degrees. Z minus three hundred feet.”

  “Weapons ready in all respects,” Aria reported.

  “Fire!” Dag shouted.

  The Intrepid bucked wildly as the belly cannons and missile launchers sent a full salvo streaking toward the Imperator. The phalanx cannons on the dreadnought opened up full, sending thousands of yellow streaking projectiles into the oncoming attack, targeting the incoming missiles and shooting them down or detonating them in the air. A few got through and detonated against the Imperator’s armor, but did little more than dent the thick steel.

  “Did we get it?” Markov asked anxiously.

  Dag was about to shake his head when he saw a small flash on the aft of the dreadnought, a bright flame billowing out of the radio tower that suddenly erupted into a full explosion. Dag slapped the sides of the terrascope jubilantly as the fireball rose a hundred feet into the sky.

  “Direct hit!” he exclaimed into the radio and he could hear the cheers coming from Aria and her improvised gunnery crew. “Get us to transmission height.”

  “Lieutenant!” Markov exclaimed, interrupting the celebration as alarm klaxons began to sound and a host of small blobs were showing on the radar screen. “Incoming!”

  “Get us moving!” Dag ordered. “Aria, incoming fire!”

  Dag watched in the scope as he felt the Intrepid’s engine sluggishly come to life and begin to push the airship out of the way of the incoming missiles. Aria’s crew shifted from the mortar and rocket launchers to manning the machine gun turrets, but their fire came too late to do more than knock a few of the rockets out of the sky. The airship was too slow to gain momentum coming out of a full stop, and even though a large portion of the salvo was going to miss to the aft, they were not going to be that lucky.

  “Everyone brace for impact!” he bellowed into the phone as he jumped into the captain’s chair and strapped himself in.

  A series of explosions rocked the Intrepid, throwing him hard against his harness. The reverberation of the blasts hitting the hull echoed down through the airship with such volume that Dag did not even hear the warning alarms immediately signaling the areas of the ship that were damaged.

  “Turbine seven is down!” Markov shouted. “We’re drifting to the starboard.”

  “Can you compensate?” Dag demanded.

  “Trying, but the controls aren’t responding,” he shouted back. Another light on his control panel became illuminated and he reported, “We just lost turbine five. We’re rolling hard!”

  With two turbines down on the starboard side of the airship, the port turbines did not face enough resistance and pushed their wings up into the air, slowly rolling the ship on the axis that ran through the center of the hull.
Loose tools, chairs, and Markov’s hat went flying to the wall of the ship that was now underneath them, and Dag was only kept in his chair by the harness he had strapped on in the last moment.

  “Markov, do something, for the love of the gods!” Dag bellowed.

  Markov was seeing stall warnings flashing now on the port side turbines. Any moment, the turbines would be at a ninety degree angle to the ground, and they would stall, taking away the lift that was barely keeping the Intrepid in the air. There was something he could try, something that he had theorized back in flight school, but that had never been tested as the Dominion Fleet Command had never been happy with the idea of testing one of their few airships on some crazy scheme.

  “Stand-by,” Markov said. “I’m cutting power to the turbines.”

  “You’re going to do what?” Dag demanded just as the radar screen began to flash again and alarm klaxons blared another warning- the Imperator was pulling up alongside of them, preparing for a finishing broadside.

  The loud constant thrumming noise that had been generated by the turbines suddenly vanished and was replaced by the scream of metal plummeting from the sky. Markov punched the throttle forward as hard as he could on the engine and then pushed the button that released the aft fuel reserve. The aura diesel whipped out behind the Intrepid into the heat of the engine wash and immediately ignited. An explosion of blue flame filled the air, and the Intrepid was rocketed forward. Dag saw with some satisfaction on the radar screen that the Imperator had been caught in the blast and was rapidly descending. He also noted with some surprise that their altimeter indicated that the Intrepid’s descent had stabilized.

  “How in the world?” Dag managed as the airship raced about five hundred feet above the ground.

  “I’d always theorized that the wings on these things were designed well enough that the airships could glide through the atmosphere if they could achieve enough speed,” Markov said.

  “Theorized?” Dag repeated.

  “No time like the present to test it out,” he replied.