by Richard Fox
“Took a hit to the upper decks,” Strickland said. “Power nodes to the port rail batteries are off line.”
“What the hell was that?” Lettow jabbed a fingertip against his screens, working to recalibrate the holo tank. The image finally resolved…and several of his ships were blinking amber with damage.
Half the claw ships blinked as the sensors read a massive power surge. Light built at each of the fingertips. Laser beams fired into a single point, then a massive beam lanced down and into the Terran fleet. Every claw ship that attacked exploded or burnt away as the lasers overloaded.
The Ardennes shook again.
The cruiser Sao Paolo went offline, canting to one side as her engines misfired from a direct hit. The Edinburgh went dead in space, and debris trickled from a pierce through the top and bottom of her hull.
“Destroyers, break off and engage the remaining claw ships,” Lettow ordered. He did a double take at the holo field as fighters swarmed out of the Kesaht ships and made straight for the Ardennes.
Chapter 13
Dinkins slapped a hand over a thigh pocket and his face knit with confusion. He wiggled against the straps securing him to the Mule’s bench and pulled out a data slate in a bulky case. He did a double take at the screen, then unbuckled himself.
“Sir! Return to your seat!” a crewman shouted from the fore of the cargo bay.
Dinkins knocked on Roland’s armor.
“Hello? Are you awake in there? I think I’ve found them—the children!” Dinkins knocked again.
“Sir! Please—”
“Kiss my ass!” Dinkins held the data slate over Roland’s optics.
“What am I looking at?” Roland asked.
“The bio trackers came online. We must be in range of the city’s towers. The request went through and-and—just look!” Dinkins tapped on the slate again. “All fifteen children just pinged. See?”
“They’re one hundred fifty yards above ground level and moving at almost two hundred miles an hour,” Roland said. “They must be in a Kesaht aircraft.”
“Then how do we get them—” The Mule bucked, sending Dinkins face-first into Roland’s side, then nosed downward, losing altitude rapidly.
“You should sit down,” Roland said. He tapped into the Mule’s turret feeds. Auburn City was on the horizon; columns of smoke rose around squat apartment high-rises and the sprawling supply parks surrounding the city.
The foreman struggled back into his seat and buckled himself down.
“Couple Kesaht fighters tried to jump us,” Gideon sent over the lance channel. “Eagles made swift work of them. I’m trying to raise Captain Sobieski, but what channels are open are chaos. The Kesaht just launched an assault on the city and the primary comms towers were the first thing they hit.”
“Sir, Dinkins found the missing children. On an enemy craft moving to the northwest,” Roland said.
“Looks like that’s where they’re going.” Cha’ril sent an image of a massive Kesaht ship flying toward the moon, just beyond the atmosphere, its hull partially obscured by high, thin clouds.
“Can the Eagles catch the shuttle with the children?” Roland asked. “Force it down without—” The Mule’s upper turret opened fire, earning shouts of fear and surprise from the colonists.
“We’ve got our own problems here,” Gideon said. “Stand by…I think I’ve got Sobieski.”
“Fight to save the city or go after the children,” Aignar said. “I know which choice the townies will make. It’s their kids.”
“Battlefield math,” Roland said. “Gideon and Sobieski will send us where we’ll do the most good, save the most lives. Emotions won’t be a factor for them.”
“Sometimes I’m glad I’m just a warrant, not an officer with gold or silver bars. I don’t have to ‘what if’ too many decisions at the bottom of the totem pole,” Aignar said.
“Hey!” Dinkins waved the data slate in the air. “They’re breaking for orbit. Do something!”
“That’s a tracking device, right?” Roland popped a data port open on his right forearm, which was folded up next to his helmet. “Give it to me.”
“But you said—” Aignar began.
“You never know.” Roland cut him off as Dinkins unstrapped himself and stumbled against Roland as the Mule banked hard.
“You snap your neck and see if I care!” the crewman yelled at Dinkins.
Dinkins stuffed the tracker into Roland’s forearm and slapped the metal twice.
“Find my boys,” Dinkins said. “Ask the Saint to find my boys for me. For my wife.”
“If I can reach them, I’ll bring them back to you. I swear it,” Roland said.
“Here’s the mission,” Gideon said, breaking into the channel. Archive pictures of a massive supply depot to the city’s south came up on Roland’s HUD. “Kesaht broke through the walls and have artillery somewhere in this area. They’re pounding the city center and Sobieski wants us to take it out. The Mules will do a combat cargo drop to get us close to the fight.”
“Sir,” Cha’ril chimed in, “we aren’t palletized nor are we fitted with arresting parachutes.”
“This plan lacks finesse,” Gideon said.
“And once that’s accomplished?” Roland asked. “What about the children?”
“We will reevaluate once Sobieski can regain control of the battlefield. Anytime the defenders try to maneuver, they get hammered. Prep for landing,” Gideon said.
The Mule’s ramp opened and air howled through the cargo bay. A crewman jogged past Roland and unsnapped the pair of bolts at his feet. The crewman shouted at the passengers to press against the wall, promising they would lose any body part that touched the armor on its way out. The crewman went to Roland’s head and placed his hands on the last two bolts securing him to the floor. The outskirts of Auburn passed beneath the ramp and the Mule dipped low and banked to a highway. The thunder of artillery and brrrt of Eagle cannons joined the howling wind.
“Hey in there,” the crewman shouted over the wind, “pilot wants you to know he’ll cut his airspeed as much as he can…just don’t get angry if you get a little banged up.”
“I’ll take it out on the enemy. Fair enough?” Roland asked.
“Here we go. Three…two—” The Mule lurched up as the blast wave from a near miss knocked the ship off course. The crewman pulled Roland’s bolts up and he slid down the cargo bay.
Aignar’s crewman pulled up one bolt by accident, and the corner of his armor slammed into the side of the Mule, almost crushing a colonist’s legs. They got the last bolt up and Aignar slid down at an angle.
Roland fell free from the Mule and found himself ten yards over a highway with idle cargo trucks along his intended landing path. He hit the road so hard it made his earlier torpedo braking maneuver feel like a tap on the shoulder.
His armor bounced up and plowed through a drone-driven hauler. He burst through the cab and landed on top of a smaller truck, splitting it down the middle, then juddered across asphalt and slowed to a stop.
Roland unfolded from his cargo configuration and got to his feet. Ammunition lines connected to his gauss cannons and a line of electricity danced up his rail cannon vanes as his armor became fully operational.
“Aignar?”
There was a crash behind him. Aignar rolled down the highway, spinning like a barrel and wrecking every vehicle in the way. He crashed into a cargo container on a truck bed and came to a stop halfway through the other side. Metal bars poured out of the container and struck the ground, ringing like a giant’s wind chime.
“Aignar!” Roland ran to his friend.
The other armor’s arms unfolded, knocking away the loose bars, and Aignar fell through the other side just as Roland arrived. As Aignar stood up, he stumbled against another truck, mashing the cab and shattering the windshield.
“You all right?” Roland asked.
“Sure. Fine.” Aignar took a step forward, then veered to one side before he bumped against
the cargo container that stopped him. “Just…a little dizzy. Which way do we go?”
The thunder of artillery pulsed from the west.
“Toward the sound of gunfire,” Roland said. He jumped over the guardrails and fell two stories. He landed in the midst of stacked cargo containers. Frozen robots stood in place at half-open doors and in the gaps between rows, many still carrying items.
Aignar dropped in behind Roland and bumped his shoulder against an open container door, ripping a tear across it.
“You sure you’re all right?”
“It’s like sobering up. Got to give it a minute while trying not to barf in your roommate’s shoes.” Aignar said and then ran past Roland.
“You said you were never going to mention that again.” Roland cycled gauss shells into his cannons.
“And you believed me. How adorable,” Aignar said.
“This is Gideon, Dragoons respond,” came over the IR.
“Roland. We made landing and are en route to target location.”
Gideon and Cha’ril’s location came up on his HUD. They were a dozen rows away and moving fast.
“Speed up,” Gideon said. “We hit them at the same time.”
Roland and Aignar ran faster, passing a section of stacked containers riddled by bullets and leaking brown nutrient paste. An Eagle fighter roared overhead, trailing smoke and fire. Roland kept running as he heard it crash into the cargo yard. Yellow tracer fire stitched across the sky just beyond the edge of the supply yard.
“Air defense emplacements,” Aignar said. He jumped up and grabbed the side of a container, then climbed up the stack.
“Gideon wants us to—”
“You want us to go get those kids? We’re not going to sprout wings and fly into orbit. I’ll catch up.” Aignar got his head and shoulders over the top of the stack and brought his gauss cannons to bear.
Roland cleared the edge of the cargo yard. The Kesaht artillery were massive tracked vehicles. Dozens of vehicles with wide-barreled cannons angled high and crewed by Rakka blasted off another volley. Rakka in powered exo suits carried fresh rounds from ammunition haulers lined up behind the artillery pieces.
Tanks formed a loose perimeter around the artillery. Snub-nose turrets with belt-fed chain guns slewed toward Roland.
“Let’s see what you’ve got.” Roland aimed his gauss cannon where the tank’s turret met the lower hull and fired. The rounds tore through the turret and the tank exploded, hurling the top section into the air.
Roland jumped to one side as another Kesaht tank fired. The shell struck the ground and peppered Roland’s armor with shrapnel and pulverized asphalt. Roland put two rounds down the enemy tank’s cannon and it vanished into a burst of flame and smoke.
“Their ammo storage is poorly armored,” Cha’ril said. “Shoot the rear third of the turrets.”
Roland swung his cannon arm toward a tank aiming at the other two Dragoons and fired a single shot. The magnetically accelerated round struck the turret with a spark and the tank exploded a split second later.
The closest artillery piece’s treads squealed to life. It spun in place to face the oncoming armor and the massive cannon lowered, coming to a stop level with Roland.
Roland let loose with his gauss weapon, but the shells bounced off blue-white shields that flashed with each impact. Rakka crew looked over the top of the artillery piece, pointing at Roland. Even running at full speed, the Rakka would have a hard time missing him with a weapon that size.
He slid to a stop and raised his left foot. The diamond-tipped anchor spike popped out of his heel and he rammed it into the ground, bringing his rail cannon up and over his shoulder.
“You don’t have time for that!” Cha’ril shouted. “Move!”
The Rakka ducked behind the cannon aimed right at him.
“I need ten more seconds.” Roland charged the accelerators at the base of the vanes and fed a lance bolt into the chamber.
The sky split with a crack. Roland winced inside his armor, thinking the alien artillery had beat him to the draw. He opened his eyes and saw a smoking crater where the Kesaht weapon had been a second ago. A shadow passed over him and the forward half of the cannon tube sailed through the air, the base peeled open. The fragment landed behind Roland and bounced into the cargo stacks.
The crash of metal on metal sounded across the battlefield. Then again. And again. A line of cargo stacks fell over, knocking the next row over and then the next. The cargo stacks fell like dominos.
“Aignar?” Roland asked.
“What are you waiting for?” Gideon called out.
Roland turned his attention back to the Kesaht artillery park, where another cannon had lurched forward and was coming to bear on the armor. Roland aimed his primed and ready rail cannon at the artillery, then shifted his aim to the line of ammunition haulers.
He braced himself against the ground and fired. Firing a rail cannon in atmosphere was akin to being in the middle of a sonic boom. The recoil from the shot and overpressure rocked Roland back; only his anchor kept him from going airborne like he’d been slapped by a giant.
He felt impacts against his armor and fell to one knee. He looked up at the Kesaht artillery position…and found nothing but flames and mangled metal. His rail cannon shot had obliterated the ammunition carriers and the subsequent explosions had taken care of the rest of the Kesaht vehicles.
“Roland. Status,” Gideon sent.
“I’m fine.” Roland drew his anchor back into the housing within his leg. Through the smoke billowing around the destruction, a Rakka in powered armor stumbled out. Its skin was black and blistered, and blood oozed from its ears and mouth. It looked at Roland and managed a grunt, then picked up a jagged hunk of metal and walked toward him, limping on a broken leg.
The Rakka thumped the improvised club against its chest.
Roland blew its head off with a gauss shot, then turned back to the still-falling dominoes in the supply yard. At the top of the nearest fallen stack, a cargo container went tumbling down the slope, breaking against the ground and spilling thousands of small boxes. Aignar sat atop the pile, his anchor stuck through a hunk of loose metal that had once been a cargo container.
“You’re welcome.” Aignar said, sheathing his anchor and made his way down the pile.
“Quick thinking from both of you,” Gideon said as he and Cha’ril ran over, the barrels of their forearm cannons glowing red and smoking.
The sound of collapsing stacks echoed through the supply park.
“You think the colonists will be angry about the mess?” Cha’ril asked.
“Captain Sobieski said destroy the artillery,” Aignar said. “He didn’t say anything about being neat and tidy about it.”
Gideon looked up at the Kesaht battleship over the horizon.
“I’ve got Sobieski on the line,” the lieutenant said. “Roland…go to container Z-A-1138. Bring me what’s inside. The rest of you go to X-X-62211. Bring four units. Hurry.”
Roland looked out across the seemingly never-ending stacks of cargo.
“What am I looking—”
“You’ll know it when you see it. Move!” Gideon looked away from them and toward the city center.
Roland ran to a robot porter at the edge of the stacks and ran data lines into the robot’s access ports. The robot came online and rolled away, attempting to carry out its last command. Roland picked it up and re-tasked it to open container Z-A-1138.
“Please don’t be in that mess,” Roland muttered as he looked at the widening pile of fallen containers.
The robot’s wheels spun furiously and he set it down. It zipped away, heading to the outer edge of the chaos. Roland followed and turned a corner to find it stopped next to a jumble of containers.
“Balls.” Roland looked over the serial numbers etched onto the sides, he saw 1138 and climbed up the pile and ripped open the side of the container. Inside were cube frames with bright yellow boxes bolted inside. He pulled one out
and saw explosive warning symbols on the yellow boxes.
“Denethrite,” Roland said. Mining charges meant to fell mountains. The explosives were somewhat shock-sensitive, but; a hard-enough hit could detonate them with unfortunate results for anyone too close.
Reaching inside, he found a box of the detonators and gently climbed off the pile of containers. While the denethrite was packaged and designed not to explode under anything but the kinetic strike of a missile, he wasn’t one to tempt fate.
Roland met up with the rest of his lance, who’d returned with four cases the size of a normal clothes trunk.
“You know you knocked over enough explosives to crack this moon’s shell,” Roland said to Aignar.
“Oh.” Aignar said, crossing his arms, “guess I should’ve stopped to take a full accounting of everything in here before I used my rail cannon to save your ass. You’re still welcome, by the way.”
Gideon looked away from the city center and over the retrieved items.
“Good,” the lieutenant said. “Roland, you have the tracker?”
Roland tapped his forearm.
“Sobieski’s given us the go for a rescue mission. Two Mules are en route. We haven’t seen the Kesaht use any anti-grav systems. The captain thinks they aren’t at that tech level yet, which means we may have a way to sneak up on their flagship.”
“And if they do have the technology and are scanning for anti-grav fields?” Cha’ril asked.
“Then the operation won’t end well for us,” Gideon said.
Chapter 14
Roland’s Mule broke through the anvil-top of a thunderstorm and wobbled as it passed through the high winds of a jet stream. Roland, mag-locked to the top of the Mule to one side of the upper turret, kept his focus on the two pilots, one of whom looked up at either Roland or Aignar, locked to the other side of the turret, every time the Mule veered with the air currents.
Between the armor, the gunner manning the turret held up a data slate and took a selfie with Roland, then spun the turret and took another picture with Aignar.
“We’re not that aerodynamic, are we?” Aignar asked.
