Battlecruiser Alamo: Tip of the Spear

by Richard Tongue

  "Damn it, Maggie, I'm glad to see you."

  She shook her head, "Likewise, sir." Managing to snap a salute, she continued, "We've just about got the compound secured, Captain. Just finishing up now." She paused for a heartbeat, “My father?”

  "He's upstairs, manning the radio. We had a good view from up there– as soon as your attack began to hit home, they ignored us other than a few sniper shots. Just as well, we haven't got a round of ammunition among us."

  "Plenty around now, sir."

  "Did you secure the shuttle?"

  Her face went blank, "What shuttle?"

  Marshall's eyes widened as he gestured out of the door, "Out in the jungle, cut in a little way, is a silo where they have a shuttle ready for launch."

  Orlova suddenly realized that the only bodies she had seen, the only people she had fought, had been enlisted and fairly junior officers. It was almost as if they had left the bulk of their men to fight a last stand while they were going...somewhere else.

  She turned back to the Captain, "You'd better wait here, sir. With a little luck it won't be too late." Zabek burst in, a heavily-armed squad at her back, "Follow me, Ensign, we've got a job to do yet."

  Without a second glance, Zabek fell in as Orlova unceremoniously raced out of the tower to the far side of the compound. Her soldiers seemed to have everything under control now, and the shooting had trickled down to the occasional burst as some of the legionnaires refused to see sense and surrender – or her troops decided that taking prisoners might be too great a risk. Montgomery, red-faced, had managed to get through the gatehouse and was taking charge inside, so she didn't have that to worry her as she dashed out into the jungle through a recently-blasted gap in the wall.

  The path through the jungle was obvious now she was looking for it, a narrow trail cut into the undergrowth, the path obviously well-used. If anyone was planning any sort of an ambush right now they would have easy pickings; there was no element of stealth or care in what she was doing, her goal was simply to get to the shuttle silo before they could take off.

  Familiar whines began to sound ahead, engines warming up for a launch, and she redoubled her pace, the rest of her squad struggling to keep up. She burst into the clearing and immediately dived for cover as a machine gun began to fire, high over her head; Zabek hurled herself in the other direction and returned a burst while Orlova quickly reloaded her pistol; in all the haste she had forgotten. Too much time using weapons that automatically recharged when not in use.

  Ahead, the shuttle was rising up on its ramp, the rear engines already beginning to glow a dull red. If she'd had a single plasma weapon with her, she might have been able to do enough damage to be meaningful; in a futile gesture, she emptied her recently loaded pistol at the hull, and Zabek followed suit with her rifle, but all they were doing was damaging the paintwork.

  "Heads down! Cover your ears!" she yelled, diving to the ground with her hands clamped down on her ears while the roar of the engines grew, until the clamps of the ramp were released and the shuttle burst into the sky, smoke and flame cascading behind it into the trees. The last remaining legionnaire, wobbling from side to side, threw his gun to the side and raised his hands. Orlova stood up, walking out into the clearing and looking up at the departing shuttle.

  "Damn," she said, to no-one in particular. Turning around, she walked back down the path as Zabek's squad grabbed their prisoner, heading down to the compound. Marshall was waiting for at the far end, looking around at the devastation as the medical teams began to do their work, stretchers taking people down the beach to the hastily-prepared medical bays on the ships out in the bay.

  "Well, we did it," she said.

  Marshall looked up at the sky, nodding, "Yeah. Let's just hope Deadeye makes it two for two."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Alamo continued to close on the strange ship, everyone available studying it for any sign of weakness. Though the design obviously worked, it didn't seem to fit into any known design heritage; nothing ever flown in space seemed to match it. Ortega had finally given up trying to contact them after twenty minutes, clearing the air for signals from the surface – and her seat for Harper; the hacker had managed to commandeer the communications station, and was busy loading up intrusion programs. Looking up at the display, Caine watched the last few minutes ticking off as the ship moved into combat range.

  "Are we still letting them take the first shot, Lieutenant?" Ryder asked from the tactical station.

  Quinn looked around from the helm, concern etched onto his face, "The first hit could be the last in Alamo's current condition."

  Caine nodded, glancing down at the status boards. Stations that would normally be occupied by damage control teams were open to vacuum at the moment. There'd been no point in recalling the bulk of the crew for this action; Alamo wouldn't have been able to house them in any case, and in what she had to admit was the likely event of an evacuation, it would have just meant more casualties.

  Reluctantly, she shook her head, "We can't be the ones to start an interstellar war. They'll have to take the first shot, and I'm counting on both of you to make sure that it misses. Any sign of a vulnerable spot, Ryder?"

  "Not yet. I'm still trying to work out what half of their equipment does."

  "Weapon status?"

  "I think we've got the laser calibrated," her voice sounded uncertain, "and all missile tubes are loaded and ready to go. We've got four reloads in the armory."

  "Four?" Caine turned to face the sub-lieutenant, who shrugged in response.

  "We don't have crews to work the fabricators under battle conditions. Sixteen missiles is going to have to be enough."

  Tapping a button on her chair, Caine said, "Dixon, is your wing ready?"

  "All three fighters are loaded for bear, Lieutenant. We're just waiting for clearance to launch."

  She looked up at the clock. Two minutes to go; the seconds seemed to be crawling by as she waited for the battle to begin. All she wanted was to get this over with, one way or another, and that was typically the way of space battles. The windows of opportunity for engagement rarely lasted more than a minute or two, after which the best ship and crew would be alive, and the worst would be riding a drifting hulk into eternity.

  "Energy spike from the enemy spacecraft!" Ryder yelled. "Looks like a missile launch!"

  Caine's head turned sharply towards the tactical station, "How many?"

  "My God. Thirty missiles in the first salvo. They had tubes all across the craft."

  "Thirty missiles? How the hell?" Quinn said, looking up from his station.

  Yorkina looked over from the sensor station, "A lot smaller than ours. Much lower yield." A red light flashed on, "Radiological alarm! I'd say low-kiloton yields on each warhead."

  "Low kiloton? They'd have to get a direct hit to be effective." She shook her head, "Countermeasures?"

  "Already on it, nothing seems to be working," Ryder said, frantically tapping out sequences of commands at her station.

  Harper looked up, brushing green hair out of her eyes, "Nothing here either. I can't break in."

  "Fratricide then, get a missile into the air as soon as possible."

  A puzzled frown on her face, Yorkina turned towards Caine, "They aren't heading for us."

  "What?"

  The sensor operator switched her view onto the main screen; it showed a series of trajectories in a conical pattern, slowly fanning away from the incoming vessel. None of them was aimed at Alamo.

  "Could it be some sort of malfunction?" Caine asked.

  "Maybe this is a surrender?" Kibaki volunteered. "They might be showing they have disarmed themselves."

  "Then why have them under power?" said Harper.

  Ryder shook her head, "I don't believe this, second salvo launch. Same as the first one, and following a similar pattern."

  Sitting back in the command chair, Caine rubbed her hand across her face, watching the launch tracks curl around. They were obvious
ly in some sort of planned formation, but she couldn't work out what it might be. The usual practice was to simply fire the missiles directly at the target; these were burning considerable fuel in the wrong direction.

  "Still no luck hacking into them," Harper said, "It's like they don't even have inputs. I can't handshake."

  "Random walk, Mr. Quinn, and I think this counts as a hostile act, so you may fire when ready, Ryder."

  Quinn's fingers began to dance across his helm controls with the skill of a practiced virtuoso, making Alamo dance to his tune. As the ship lurched in random directions, the engines pulsing to throw the approach into an unexpected pattern, Caine kept watching the missiles. Their course didn't change, still arcing away.

  "Third wave!" Ryder yelled. "We now have ninety enemy missiles in the air."

  Frowning, Caine asked, "Could they be heading for the orbital dock?"

  "Or the defense satellites," Kibaki added. "They might be trying to destroy the technology. Maybe we aren't the goal of this at all."

  "Shuttle coming up from the surface, ma'am," Ortega said, leaning over Harper. "Looks like from the site of the battle." She grinned, "I just had a report from the surface, from Sub-Lieutenant Orlova. Looks like they pulled off a win downstairs."

  "We just need to do the same. How about it, Yorkina?" Caine asked.

  "I've run the figures through five times, I can't see them on a reasonable course to anything within practical range. Hold on, change to target aspect."

  "Are they turning on us?" Caine asked.

  "Twenty seconds to firing range," Ryder volunteered. The seconds were flying by a lot faster now.

  "No." Ortega said, furrows emerging on her forehead. "I don't understand, it's as if they are aiming behind us."

  "Fourth salvo," Ryder said, shaking her head. "Is this a warning shot?"

  Suddenly, Caine realized what the enemy ship was up to. Leaping up from her chair and dashing to the tactical station, weaving about in the variable acceleration, she pushed Ryder's hands away from the controls and began to type in course projections. A new image appeared on the screen – the missiles were going to hit Alamo, all right. After they had formed a sphere around her, one that she couldn't escape from. Projected courses flashed onto the screen as the guidance computer began to calculate probabilities of escape vectors, but all of them meant that Alamo would be hit by at least a few of the incoming warheads.

  Kibaki looked across at Caine, shaking his head, "We could try a full burn, pull out that way?"

  "We can't even abandon ship," Ignatov said from the engineering station. "The missiles would hunt down our escape pods."

  "No survivors," Quinn said.

  Caine sat back in her command chair, looking at the enemy ship in the middle of the tactical display, "Then let's make their victory expensive. Get a salvo in the air. Laser to fire as soon as it is within practical range."

  "Aye, aye, ma'am," Ryder said, setting up the shot.

  "Harper, any luck on the missiles yet? I need one of your miracles right now."

  "No, I...", Harper looked up, then sprinted from her chair over to Ryder's station, reaching under her hands to tap in a revised missile launch sequence. Alamo rocked as a single missile fired from its forward tube, arcing away from the incoming vessel.

  "What the hell?" Ryder yelled, pushing the hacker's hands away.

  "New salvo, Ryder," Caine said. "Harper, get off my bridge."

  "Wait a minute, it's ranging," she said, "There's no point just knocking random chunks from the enemy ship."

  "Where did you send it?" Kibaki said, his voice level.

  Walking over to the screen, tumbling to the wall as Quinn added a new course change, she pointed at the missile track on the screen. "I couldn't handshake because there's nothing there to find. Those things are so damn small that they haven't got room for all that equipment."

  "Sixth salvo!"

  "So?" Caine said.

  "So they aren't autonomous like ours, they're controlled from the mother ship."

  The missile turned and slowed down as it approached the almost completed sphere, braking to take it in between the missile and the control ship. Harper ran back to the sensor station, watching the indicators from the missile as it passed through the net. Everyone else on the bridge was silent.

  "Got it! Tight control laser."

  Yorkina looked up and grinned, "I can project an approximate location for the laser projector on the control ship."

  Punching the air, Caine turned to Ryder, "Get those missiles up."

  "They won't be accurate enough."

  Shaking her head, Caine replied, "They don't have to be." She punched another button, "All fighters, immediate launch. Your objective is to home in as many missiles as we can get into the air on a laser projector." She looked around, "Those missiles are just drifting junk without it, right? Let's take it down."

  "Our first salvo is away," Ryder said.

  "Fighters launched," Kibaki said from his station; all of them could feel the ship shaking as the fighters engaged their engines, curving away from Alamo on their new track.

  Stepping over to the rear of the bridge, Caine put her hand on Ryder's shoulder, "More missiles, now!"

  She looked up, "It's taking longer to get them reloaded. Too many parts of the ship are in pieces."

  "The sphere will be complete in less than a minute," Ortega said. "Enemy vessel beginning random walk."

  "They must be constrained," Kibaki said. "Every time they make a change, they need to update the course of their missiles."

  Turning from the helm, Quinn looked over at Ryder, "Firing solution for a laser pulse in twelve seconds."

  "Right, I'm on it," the eager-eyed sub-lieutenant replied. "You have the call."

  "Now!"

  A bolt of light raced from Alamo, connecting with the target and leaving an ugly glow forward, well away from the reflector. Alamo's radiations glowed as they hastily dispersed the heat into space, while the capacitors charged for another shot. The fighters were well ahead of the missiles, burning fuel with no regard for the consequences on courses designed to take them as close to the enemy vessel as possible. If they had any more missiles, any more countermeasures, any point-defense devices, those pilots were as good as dead.

  Dixon's pilots were good, though, spilling left and right in a series of random maneuvers to fool any incoming fire. Long cylinders dropped from their hulls, laser range-finders. Each fighter had two small missiles ready to go, but they were unlikely to do the job. The three missiles in their wake, each one tuned to a different fighter, had the edge.

  "Second salvo away!" Caine yelled, triumphantly. Alamo wasn't going to go down without a fight.

  Yorkina looked up from her console, her eyes wide with fear, "Dimensional anomaly! Close aboard!"

  "What?"

  Space rippled nearby; they were close enough to the hendecaspace point now that they could just about sense something, an essential wrongness in the fabric of nearby space-time, something that just shouldn't be. With a bright flash of blue, a ship approached, but this one had far more familiar lines.

  Immediately the flash dispersed, a call crackled from the incoming ship, "This is Lieutenant-Captain Rogers of the Triplanetary Starship Mullane, calling Lieutenant-Captain Marshall on Alamo."

  "Sphere complete in thirty seconds, fighter closest approach in twenty-four, first salvo impact thirty-nine," Ortega called out, reading from her displays.

  "Visual," Caine yelled at Ortega.

  An image of a close-cropped officer wearing a Triplanetary fleet uniform flashed onto the screen, sitting at the heart of a well-ordered bridge, surrounded by officers. His eyes widened as he glanced down at a sensor display.

  "Deadeye, what the hell's going on? What are you doing in the driver's seat?"

  "No time to explain. Get a missile salvo up, target-locked on the range-finders on my fighters."

  He nodded, then looked off-screen, "Mr. Wesley, go to battle stations. Mr
. Singh, get our birds in the air!" He turned back to Caine, "We'll do our part."

  "Alamo out." She looked over at the displays again. The fighters were getting closer and closer to their target, and then a pair of bolts of crimson light ripped from the side of the sphere, tearing away at the rear two fighters. One second they were there, the next they were gone.

  "What happened?"

  "Particle beams," Quinn spat. "Ultra-short-range, probably point-defense."

  "Dixon to Alamo," the fighter pilot called in. Caine could see Quinn relaxing a little. "Pressing attack. Request pick-up of survivors."

  Both of them knew that was pointless. "Will do, Dixon."

  Yorkina was tensed over her controls. They needed the targeting lock from the fighter if they were to have any chance of hitting the target. On the tactical display, Caine saw a pair of missiles racing forward from the Mullane; they were quick off the mark. Course projections had them impacting between Alamo's second and theoretical third salvo. Assuming they had time to fire one.

  "Got it!" Yorkina yelled.

  "Course lock transfered to missile bus," Ryder said. "Readying third salvo."

  "Sphere complete!" The missiles surrounding Alamo – a hundred and eighty of them – turned and burned directly for the vessel at the heart of the sphere. A series of warnings ran down the screen, as if the computer could hardly believe what was happening. A hundred and eighty missiles on converging courses, some of them drifting in and out as Quinn tried to make evasive maneuvers, but the advantages were all with the enemy. Caine felt a hand on the back of her chair and looked up to see Harper, her eyes widening as she looked at the incoming tracks. It was hard to remember that this was her first real battle.

  "First salvo, impacting!"

  Caine looked at the display, the three impacts clear on the spherical ship.

  Yorkina shook her head, "Three misses. That thing rotates too damn fast."

  "Sneak up on it with the next shot, Ryder. Play them around a bit, try and compensate. Bring in the two missiles from the Mullane."