“Send the advice to our carriers, COMOP.”
“Sending.”
“Sir,” said Helm, “we’re breaking cover.”
Betombe watched the clouds thin out, then they broke beneath the ship and the ground was everywhere he looked. Mountains and valleys, the green and yellow of tree canopies, the flat grey of the great lakes. And in amongst it all, the rapid, black puff-puffing of anti-drop batteries, firing their explosive ordnance uselessly into the sky, trying in vain to ward off a swarm of mountainous craft.
“There,” Betombe said. “They’re already at the storage facility.”
“Bandit is descending directly over it,” said Tactical. “Dreadships are in a defensive formation, eleven on a perimeter and three closing the lid. Warning yellow.”
“COMOP, tell the fleet to spread out above them. Give us a ceiling. Have our heavy vessels commence bombardment of the dreadships, and get our carriers’ birds in the air.”
“Aye, Sir.”
“Tracking to targets,” said Tactical. “Firing rails.”
Love Tap released volley after loud volley, slamming ordnance against the dreadship hulls as quickly as he could. The main map showed the other ships of Betombe’s battle group following suit, raining down metal and fire into the enemy ranks.
“All carriers have emptied out,” said COMOP. “Do you want to scramble our own birds, Sir? We won’t add much to what the carriers have put out.”
“Every fighter counts,” Betombe said. “Gunships too.”
“Sir,” said Tactical. “The dreadships are not really responding to our offensive.”
Betombe stretched his view of the enemy ships, examining their movements and point defences. As Tactical had said, while they were firing off a few token shots at the fleet, and shooting down as much imperial ordnance as they could, they could hardly be said to be engaging.
“They know what we’re hoping to do,” Betombe muttered.
“Tactical,” said Laselle. “The Shaeld Hratha know we can’t deal them much damage just with rails. What other options do we have to try and get them moving a bit?”
“Main beam is out of play,” said Tactical. “We need the full output of the reactors to stay aloft. Forward auto-cannon array will only be of any use if we descend to the same plane as them. Missiles will deal some damage, but I’d suggest that tactic will provoke a flak response well before they reach their targets.”
“Do we have any rift-capable ships still in the battle group, COMOP?”
“Negative. I’m not sure if they should even fire within an atmosphere though…?”
“Commander,” said Betombe.
Laselle came to his side, and he held her forearm to pull her closer.
“If need be, I will authorise the use of our nuclear warheads.”
“Sir, it’s an Imperial world—”
“The facility is a long way from the nearest city. Ramm Stallahad may have to take this hit.”
“Sir, there are thousands of tonnes of xtryllium down there. You don’t think the whole place might go up if you start firing off nukes?”
“Commander, we’re likely to lose the xtryllium stockpile anyway. If that looks liable to happen, I would rather the Shaeld Hratha did not get control of it.”
“Admiral,” said Tactical. “First wave of fighters is approaching the formation. Warning red.”
“Weapons free.”
COMOP moved to the battle map and tapped at a holo, patching in the channels for the squadron leaders. The map centred on the unknown ship, now almost finishing its descent. “Weapons free. Brevity please; start jamming.”
“Dreadship defences are hot,” said Tactical. “They’re trying to take down the fighters.”
“Good,” said Betombe. “That means they perceive them as a threat.”
COMOP listened intently to the cross-talk from the squadrons, picking out the important details.
“Guns are proving ineffective. Most fighters switching to missiles already.”
“Gunship wings are taking losses, Admiral,” said Tactical. “They’re too slow.”
“COMOP,” Betombe said. “Recall any gunships which haven’t yet engaged. Tell all our fighters to get inside the dreadship perimeter. The Shaeld will have to risk friendly fire if they miss our birds. And get our pilots marking — that may confuse the enemy targeting sensors.”
“Unknown hostile is about to kiss the deck, Sir.”
Betombe nodded to Tactical, and zoomed in on the bandit. Its blocky, open rear end hovered directly over the xtryllium storage facility, just a few dozen meters away from enclosing it completely.
He watch the thing land, right over the building.
“Send to squadron leaders, COMOP: they’re running out of time.”
Dust billowed around the edge of the unknown ship, as if it were breathing in and out beneath its hull.
“I think it’s some kind of collector,” said Laselle.
Betombe nodded. “That would be my guess.”
“Sir,” said COMOP. “Fighters reporting that the bandit is proving difficult to contact. Missiles won’t lock on. It has some kind of EM flux around it, souring their systems.”
“Tell them to use direct fire if they have to. Go by eye.”
“Do you think all they wanted here was the xtryllium?” Laselle asked.
“That would certainly appear to be the case.”
“But all that manoeuvring beforehand,” she said. “All the carefully positioned attacks on the systems around Herses…”
“Yes,” said Betombe. “I’d had the same thought. It would have been simpler and less expensive for them to launch just the one surprise attack, right here.”
“Admiral, I think this is one huge diversion.”
“You’re probably right,” he said. “But it’s more than that. It’s a message. They’re telling us how feeble we are.”
“We should withdraw.”
“Not while that xtryllium is still on the surface, Commander.”
• • •
“They’re closing on us,” said Klade. “Just a few minutes until they’re in effective weapons range.”
“Don’t worry,” said Santani. “I doubt they will open fire straight away. I’m sure their goal is to take the shipyard… not that that’s much of an improvement.”
“I hope you’re right, because all we have right now are offensive weapons on manual aim.”
“Let’s hope we don’t need to use them at all. How are we looking?”
“All good,” Klade said. “But we’ve maxed out our acceleration; if we try to go much faster than this we’ll start to break apart.”
“Time on the fortress?”
“Six minutes.”
“So this will be a close-run thing then,” said Santani.
“You can say that again.”
“Klade, if they get aboard the yard…”
“We’ll detach and do whatever we can from there.”
“We can’t detach,” said Santani. “The frame is latched on. It has to be decoupled on Hepira’s side.”
“Then I’ll decouple it, and you can detach.”
“I can’t run a half-built ship on my own. If they do take Hepira, we have to destroy the whole yard and every ship here.”
Klade stopped what he was doing and gawped at her.
“Are you trying to get fired?”
“These frames must not fall into enemy hands. Worlds know the Shaeld have taken enough of our ships by now.”
He went quiet, and she took the opportunity to check the main battle map. The dreadships which had jumped in from the outer planets now fought the First and Third fleets, trying to break the orbital cover those friendlies provided to Betombe’s battle group.
Three Guardian Shields flamed in the black, tilting wildly off-axis and sinking towards the planet. A dreadnaught built up a charge in its rift platform, then exploded in a ball of brilliant white light. Carriers fired off shot after shot from their precision
rail turrets but seemed to make no impact whatsoever. A trio of destroyers shredded two entire wings of tactical fighters; they were destroyers which had formerly belonged to the armada.
Everywhere she looked, the situation seemed desperate.
“I think the gate’s taken a hit,” said Klade. “Interdiction has gone down again.”
“Are we ready to jump? Do you think we should?”
“Academic,” Klade replied. “Someone else is now interdicting instead.”
“Who?”
“No idea. Might be the Fearless, might be one of those Shaeld dreadships.”
“What’s the status of the gate?” Santani tried to locate it herself, but the battle map was just too crowded.
“Totally offline.”
“Then we’re going to lose the system nexus soon. Send a status report to the flagship, while we still can.”
“One moment,” said Klade. He typed frantically. “Sending now.”
“Acknowledgement?”
“Nothing yet.”
They waited.
“Receipt acknowledged. There’s a delay between the message timestamps; the nexus is collapsing.”
“Great,” said Santani. “Add that to the pile of problems.”
She rubbed her chin thoughtfully. Without the gate’s constant stimulation of the nexus, near-instantaneous communication within the system would become impossible. Every message they sent would take time to reach the recipient, every sensor reading they took would carry a time delay. All the data they needed to keep themselves safe, and hurt the enemy, would be out of date by some degree or other.
But then the Shaeld Hratha would presumably have the same problem.
“We’re coming up on the fortress,” said Klade. “One minute to its defensive perimeter.”
“Finally.”
“We’re going to need to make a slight course correction, or we’ll pass across its orbit.”
“Inform Hepira Control. They’ll have to co-ordinate the manoeuvre.”
“Looks like they already saw; engines are switching on and off across the rearmost berths.”
Santani brought up the live sensor view of Fort Herses — delayed, she knew, by a tiny fraction of a second — and watched the huge battle station grow larger and larger. Its bristling point defences and high-energy mass drivers were very reassuring.
“We’re matching their vector… and we’re in. Hepira is firing off engines in the opposing berths.”
“How far out are we?” Santani asked. “Will we get much cover here?”
“Their defence targeting will be about sixty percent effective at this range,” said Klade. “But considering how many guns they have, and how many ships are chasing us, I don’t think that will be a problem.”
Santani checked the battle map.
“Odd,” she said. “I expected the hostiles to fall back. They’re still coming.”
“Straight for the fortress?”
“Yes. They’ve not changed course at all, other than following our motion.”
“Are they insane?”
“Quite possible,” said Santani.
“I’m asking Fort Herses to deal with them,” said Klade.
Santani saw the fortress spin several of its turrets towards the ships chasing Hepira down. The gun emplacements pivoted, tracked ahead of their targets, and pumped off shot after shot.
“One critically damaged, two took glancing blows,” said Klade.
Santani moved her attention back to the stolen vessels.
“What in the worlds are they doing now?”
“They’re… actually trying to broadside with a fortress,” said Klade. “They won’t stand a chance.”
“That’s really, really stupid,” said Santani.
She watched the hostiles flounder in the face of a vastly superior opponent, and could not help but feel that the fight was savagely unfair. It was as if the stolen ships were being commanded by people who had no idea what they were—
And then it hit her.
“It’s the nexus!” She said.
“What is?”
“The nexus,” said Santani. “That’s how the Shaeld Hratha command stolen vessels. They piggyback instructions through the nexus. The crew are probably all Rasas, those ones without the capacity to strategise on their own.”
“That sounds like a poor set-up,” said Klade.
“Think about it. At Woe Tantalum there was no gate, hence no nexus at all — we tore through a whole battle group of theirs when we should have been pulverised. We only had to quit when a dreadship showed up.”
“But at Meccrace Prime, they were really on their game…”
“Exactly,” Santani said. “That system had a very well-established nexus, and the gate was active right up until our fleets retreated.”
“It does seem like a strong connection.”
“Send to Fearless Actual. Tell the Admiral to keep an eye on the movements of stolen vessels. If I’m right, their efforts should start to fall apart depending on how close they are to the gate. The nearest ones will be the last of them to fight well.”
“Sending now.”
“Let’s hope that message arrives with enough time to prove useful.”
• • •
“Ground support has arrived,” said Tactical.
Betombe had not been aware that any reinforcements were on the way, and as much as he appreciated the assistance he was not sure what good it would do.
On the ground far beneath them, he could see what looked like an entire division of MAGA forces. Gorilla ground superiority platforms advanced on the xtryllium storage facility, still a long way off but close enough to take potshots at the dreadships suspended in the air. Mobile artillery units had planted themselves on the ground far behind the advancing lines, and they added their own shells to the offensive.
They aren’t going to do any real good, thought the admiral.
“I’m seeing movement,” said Tactical. “Unknown vessel is lifting.”
“Centre it,” Betombe ordered.
Tactical focused the battle map on the bandit. Betombe watched the gap widen between its aft end and the ground, soil and plants trickling from the edges and falling back to the surface. Where once there had stood a pristine storage facility, there was now only a broken shell of a building.
“It’s an armoured transport?” Laselle said. “Lands over the target to provide cover for the troops inside, then they go about their business.”
“Seems that way,” Betombe said.
“Fighters are still having trouble locking on,” said COMOP. “They can’t get enough of a straight run to fire missiles direct.”
“Commander Laselle,” Betombe said quietly.
She came close.
“Make sure we have nukes on standby.” He saw her expression change, and knew exactly what she wanted to say. “It’s just a precaution.”
“Yes, Admiral.”
“COMOP,” he said. He rose from his chair. “Message all commands. We’re going to target just one of the dreadships, and try to bring it down right on top of that collector.”
“Which one?”
Betombe pointed to one of the three dreadships which hung above the bandit.
“That one. Designate it as target zero. All ships will fire on its atmospheric engines until it drops.”
“Yes Sir. What about the fighters?”
“They can stay until the engines blow. As long as they’re down there, there’s a chance they will bring down that collector.”
“Sending orders.”
“Tactical,” said Betombe. “You know your target. Full salvo.”
“Aye Sir, firing now.”
Love Tap reoriented all of his main guns, and fired a constant stream of ordnance at a single engine housing on the Shaeld Hrathan ship. The dreadship’s defences were driven to a frenzy, spewing out thousands of interceptors and decoys as quickly as they could.
Betombe listened to the banging roar of hi
s ship’s weaponry. It was a terrible, thunderous noise, true, but also not one he often had the opportunity to hear. In the many battles he had fought in space, other than the impacts of enemy fire, the only sounds came from the muffled thumping which the hull and bulkheads transmitted to the internal atmosphere.
“Other ships have now joined in. We’re starting to get shots through.”
“Excellent Tactical. Keep it up. Send them a couple of ship-to-ship missiles to keep them off-balance.”
“Same target?”
“Fire them at different areas of the ship. Force their defences to reorient.”
“Aye Sir. Launching missiles.”
“Admiral,” Laselle said. “The collector is now airborne.”
“I see it, Commander. COMOP: have all commands intensify their fire if they can. We have to drop that thing now.”
“Dreadships in motion,” said Laselle. “They’re all lifting. Slow, but it’s there. They’re holding formation.”
“They’re launching something,” Tactical said. “Something new.”
“Identify,” Betombe barked.
“Some kind of drone. Thousands of them. They’re coming in waves.”
“Get me an analysis.”
“Difficult to get reads, Admiral,” Tactical said. “They’re fast as hell.”
Betombe switched the battle map to a visual view, and centred it on the dreadships. He could see a vague, grey blur around them, but no matter how he adjusted the image he could not isolate any of the individual craft.
“My. They are fast.”
“They’re swarming us. C-MADS responding.”
Tactical’s hands flashed across the holos, and the reassuring clack-clack-thump of the turrets rang throughout the ship. The sound seemed far louder to Betombe than it ever did outside an atmosphere.
“C-MADS turrets are struggling to lock on,” Tactical shouted. “We’re going to take a lot of hits.”
Betombe waited for the inevitable rattle of impacts against the hull, but what came was completely unexpected.
CLANG!
“One of them has attached itself to the hull,” Laselle said. “It’s covering a sensor palette.”
CLANG. CLANG.
“They’re landing right on the ship,” said Tactical. “Interfering with external systems… we just lost a whole turret.”
Books One to Three Omnibus (Armada Wars) Page 93
