Declination

by David Derrico

  “In case you are wondering, Corporal,” Dex hastily explained, “what I am wearing is a Legionnaire-class Personal Assault System. It is fitted with four over-under Gatling Cannon capable of firing 42-mm explosive rounds at a rate of 100 shots per second each. Additional armaments include two arm-mounted guided missile launchers, dual silicon-refractor optical-discharge laser turrets, and two over-the-shoulder mortar tubes with a range of slightly over five kilometers. The turboplasma thrust system is capable of propelling me at altitudes of up to three kilometers at over 500 kilometers per hour. Full atmospheric control is provided by the internal oxygen recyclers and an onboard O2 supply. The hydraulic assist system, which generates 17,000 Newton-meters of torque, allows me to run over any terrain at speeds approaching 150 kilometers per hour. The two-centimeter atomic armour plating can withstand over 3,000 kilotons of direct force, and is the protective equivalent of a barrier of pure steel over five meters thick. Sensor arrays, motion detectors, and thermographic vision systems are all state of the art, and the energy supply, a two-ton nucleomagnetic drive coil, can provide enough energy to run the suit well into the next century.”

  The exit hatch folded outward and slammed to the ground with a reverberating thud.

  “W–what does that mean?” stammered the soldier, mouth agape.

  “It means,” Dex replied, “that I’m about to go kick somebody’s ass.”

  * * * * *

  CHAPTER 8

  Alexis ran the remodulation sequence one last time, checking power levels and grid harmonics on the Brigadier’s newly-repaired shields. All status checks showed the shields as reading 100 percent, and finally Alexis was satisfied. She yawned heavily and suddenly realized just how exhausted she was.

  “Are you still here?” came a voice from behind her. Alexis spun around to find Ryan walking toward her. Her yawn must have covered up the muted swish of the doors at his entry.

  “Yeah, well,” she stammered, rubbing her eyes, “I just had to be sure the shields were back up to snuff.”

  Ryan half-smiled, half-frowned at her. “Do you know what time it is? You look exhausted. Go to sleep.”

  Alexis cast her gaze downward. “It’s just that there’s no guarantee the Vr’amil’een won’t be back. And they hardly left anyone here to defend Utopia …”

  “And you’re a perfectionist.”

  “Right,” she granted, “but also there’s—hey, wait a second … what are you doing down here?”

  Ryan opened his mouth in shocked reply, but it quickly turned to a wide grin. “You got me,” he admitted. “I’m a workaholic too.”

  Alexis smiled and stepped closer to him, resting her head on his shoulder. “You’re right, though. I think I will get some sleep.”

  A warm tingle coursed through Alexis’ body as Ryan placed his hands on her slender waist. She moved her hands up his back, gripping him more tightly, and looked up to his face. He gazed back at her with warm, soft eyes and a tender smile creased across his lips. “Alexis,” he whispered, bringing his face a centimeter closer to her own.

  “Oh, wow,” she breathed, and then she was kissing him.

  . . . . .

  There were eight of them—eight ships that rained fire down upon the defenseless world of New Berkeley. Eight ships dropping orbital bombs and firing surface bombardment cannon at civilians.

  There was no way Anastasia could turn away.

  “All ahead full,” ordered the Captain, her fingers tightly gripping the armrests of her chair. “Byron, target the ground bombardment Cruisers first.”

  There was no hesitation as Cody rocketed the ship toward the Vr’amil’een attackers at incredible speed. Byron looked to Anastasia for a moment, but said nothing. He merely nodded slightly to the Captain.

  Anastasia looked to her tactical display, which showed the Cerberus plummeting into the atmosphere in pursuit of the four Vr’amil’een landers. All she could do was hope that Dex’s lone squad was enough to stop them.

  A flash of red on her console refocused the Captain’s attentions on the battle at hand, and, just as her display indicated that they were in range, Byron launched a heavy salvo of missiles at the lead bomber. Cody tore straight at the ship, and the forward gun turrets exploded in a hailstorm of effulgent death. The lasers ripped into the hull of the Vr’amil’een vessel just as the missiles did, rupturing it and sending the ship spinning on a slow death spiral down into the planet’s atmosphere.

  The remaining ships of the enemy convoy forgot their bombardment of the planet and concentrated their firepower on their new attacker. The speedy ship was a difficult target, however, and most of the heavier projectile cannon missed their marks. A smattering of light gunfire assailed the Inferno from all directions as it sped through the midst of the enemy formation, and Lieutenant Matthews spun the ship back around in a painfully sharp turn to make another run.

  “Target at 117, mark 12,” Anastasia ordered, highlighting an enemy on her tactical display. In acknowledgement, Cody veered toward the Corvette, positioned at the starboard edge of the Vr’amil’een battle group. A fresh burst of acceleration flattened the Captain against her seat.

  Several snub fighters had begun to launch from twin Vr’amil’een fighter carriers and swarmed at the Inferno in an angry mass, scoring hits across the bow of the ship as they raced toward them. Commander Zeeman took control of the laser turrets and returned fire at the attackers, while Byron concentrated the heavier weapons on the Corvette, unleashing a savage volley in its direction. As his performance reports had claimed, his aim was true, and his barrage scored a lethal hit on the lightly-armoured enemy vessel.

  Several simultaneous impacts rattled the Inferno as the heavier Vr’amil’een ships began to target her more successfully. The shield grid wavered, but held, and a voice from the engineering deck came over the intercom.

  “Power reserves are down to critical, Captain,” reported Vance. “The SDU sapped our energy banks pretty good, and there’s just not enough left to power our heavy energy weapons and withstand this barrage.”

  “Very well,” the Captain replied. “Just keep the shields up for me. We’ll cut back on offensive usage.”

  Cody rocketed the ship away from the enemy mass, taking a slower turn as he faced the battle group again.

  “Go easy on the plasma burst cannon,” Captain Mason intoned. “Stick to missiles and the mass driver guns. Victor, use the flechette turrets on the snubs.”

  Lieutenant Commander Johnson wavered for a moment, then nodded, focusing his attentions on the weapons inventory. He seemed indecisive as he reinitialized the firing patterns, but appeared to recover as Cody once again accelerated the ship at their targets.

  “Take out the fighter carriers, Lieutenant,” said Anastasia. “Try to get us around below them so that Byron can disable the launch decks.”

  Lieutenant Matthews did as he was told, swooping the nimble ship under the lead fighter carrier and avoiding a vicious barrage of cannon fire. Byron poured heavy shells into the carrier’s belly, tearing gashes across the poorly-shielded fighter bays and stopping the flow of snubs emerging from the ship. The carrier returned fire with her rear guns, however, and shook the Inferno with a direct hit that crumpled the ship’s rear shield grid.

  “Damn it, Captain,” Victor spat. “We’re just too low on energy, and there’s just too many of them.”

  Anastasia grimaced. She knew he was right. They hadn’t even dented the Battlecruiser yet.

  “Captain,” Ariyana reported, staring at her radar. “We have incoming ships from the planet.”

  “On-screen.”

  A fleet of ships could be seen rising through the clouded skies of New Berkeley, a diverse group of unmarked vessels, sizable in number and apparently heavily armed. They streamed toward the Vr’amil’een attackers and began to engage them as soon as they were within range.

  “Those bastards,” Victor grumbled. “What are they doing with all those ships?”

  “I don’t know,
Commander, but all that matters right now is that we’re on the same side.” Anastasia shifted in her seat. “Cody, take us at the flagship. We’ve got to knock out that Battlecruiser.”

  “Aye, Captain,” he replied, rubbing his hands together vigorously and quickly retaking the control stick. The ship surged ahead, and the angular Battlecruiser lumbered into view. “Full weapons, Byron. Vance, all power to the front grid.” More softly, she added, “Here we go.”

  The Inferno screamed toward the giant vessel, preceded by a searing swarm of heavy missiles. The weapons clustered on the mighty ship’s bridge, engulfing it in a cloud of debris as the concussion warheads tore through thick layers of robust neutronium armour. Byron poured salvos of energy weapons into the clouded breach, vaporizing armour and hull and rocking the massive Battlecruiser violently. Still, the ship returned fire, a ruthless shelling that overcame the Inferno’s failing shields and impacted upon the well-armoured hull. The viewscreen sputtered out momentarily as a fiber optic camera was destroyed by the barrage, automatically replaced by a redundant backup an instant later. Cody wrestled with the controls and gained distance from the wounded flagship. Alarms rang out and warning lights blared silent crimson pleas for attention. Anastasia punched at her controls, but the shields would not respond, and her readouts showed the shield capacitors as totally drained.

  “We need to make another pass,” she affirmed. “We’re the only ones who can take out that ‘Cruiser.”

  “Captain,” said Byron, “may I remind you that our shields are off-line.”

  “Yes, Byron, you may. Lieutenant Matthews, bring us back around.”

  “Gladly, Captain.”

  The ship surged to speed, and the daunting flagship grew steadily larger in the display. It began spouting deadly shells from its side turrets, but Cody adroitly jinked the ship into a corkscrewing dive, jerking back up and heading straight for the Battlecruiser’s crippled bridge.

  “Now, Byron,” yelled the Captain. “Give it everything we have!”

  Byron obliged, slamming his palm into the firing controls and releasing a full complement of the Inferno’s weapons. The bulky ‘Cruiser was unable to avoid the barrage, and the munitions found their marks, sending great peals of fire and debris shooting from the Vr’amil’een flagship. Heavy artillery battered the streaking Inferno, impacting directly upon the ship’s Quantum Armour, and jarring the crew violently, but abruptly, the larger vessel’s return fire ceased, and it began to drift lifelessly down toward the planet.

  Anastasia scanned the tactical screen as Cody retreated to a safer distance. The firefight was coming to an end, and the forces of New Berkeley were destroying and disabling the last of the Vr’amil’een ships. The hidden force was a heterogeneous but fairly sizeable assortment of ships, and left Anastasia wondering just what else the devious SPACERs had been hiding all along.

  . . . . .

  Dex marched the suit down the hangar’s short exit ramp, his team huddled close behind him. The onboard sensors showed a squad of Vr’amil’een soldiers advancing toward his position, while the remaining two headed for the city.

  Fools, Dex thought with a bitter smile. They think one squad can handle us?

  Dex scanned the terrain as the hatch closed behind them. The savanna offered little place to hide, and, though Dex normally would have his men retreat to the tree line behind them for cover, he had to move quickly. Even if the lone Vr’amil’een squad only slowed them down, they would have accomplished their objective. Once the remaining squads had taken Pax and were entrenched and fortified behind its walls, it would take a lot more than even Dex’s squad to remove them.

  “Fan out in twos and look for cover,” Dex ordered, re-acclimating himself to the suit that he had not used in months. “Find a defensible position and support me with long range fire. Do not advance until ordered.”

  His unit did as they were told, expertly dispersing and disappearing into recesses in the rolling landscape, behind tree stumps, and into shallow bogs. Dex fired up the suit’s jets and hovered into the air, scanning the field ahead through the telescopic sight. The Vr’amil’een unit consisted of mostly heavy infantry, armoured soldiers with mass driver guns capable of doing damage even to a suit as well-armoured as his. The weapons were, needless to say, impressively effective against infantry units.

  In the center of the Vr’amil’een formation was a standard hovertank, its stout turret as wide across as a man’s arm. The vehicle lumbered over the uneven terrain effortlessly, and the remainder of the unit struggled to keep up.

  Dex activated the targeting sights and let loose a pair of mortars, which thunked out their firing tubes and arced gracefully toward the enemy formation. The hovertank altered its path and sped away from the falling missiles, but the massive explosions that marked their impact swallowed several of the slower Vr’amil’een troops.

  Dex swooped toward the advancing hovertank, alighting some distance in front of it and aiming his arm-mounted missile launcher at the machine. The hovertank was faster, however, and its turret swiveled toward Dex and loosed a shell at him at his approach. Dex fired the jets again, and the suit leaped into the air, the ground below erupting into a ball of flame as the suit took off. Dex this time aimed the missile from the air, firing as he rose straight into the sky. The missile snaked toward the tank, which tried to evade it with a surprisingly nimble turn. The guided missile compensated for the movement, however, and struck the hovertank on its right flank, tearing a hole into the thick armour of the machine. There was an almost deafening noise as a heavy shell impacted upon the suit’s thick armour, and Dex momentarily lost control of the suit as it pinwheeled to the ground.

  Dex diverted his attention from the spinning horizon visible on the viewscreen and focused on the suit’s gyro, desperately trying to steady himself before it crashed. He used the maneuvering jets to steady the suit, and hovered uncertainly just meters from the ground.

  All at once, a trio of shells slammed into the Commander’s back, now turned to face the Vr’amil’een squad. Alert sirens filled the cockpit as the heavy shells tore into the lightly-shielded thrusters. The impact knocked the suit to its knees, and Dex reached out with the machine’s massive arm to steady himself. He stood and turned to face his enemies, and stared directly down the barrel of the still-functional hovertank.

  Even as he looked, the tank was already firing, and there was no way for Dex to avoid the shell that slammed into the suit’s armoured torso. The impact deafened the Commander, and tossed the suit back like it was no more than a toy. Dex hurtled through the air, slamming into the ground with another painful jolt and sliding across the damp savanna for several hundred meters before finally sagging to a stop.

  Dex shook his head as waves of pain coursed through his body. He struggled to focus his blurred vision and checked the suit’s damage readouts. The shell had impacted directly in the center of his torso, which was actually to his advantage, as that was where the suit’s impressive armour plating was thickest. The Commander looked out the viewscreen, which was black with mud and wet grass. He tried to stand the machine on its feet, wincing with the pain even as the machine groaned in protest. Surprisingly, he was able to steady himself before he was hit again, and he looked to see tube-launched grenades raining down upon the enemy position. The advancing Vr’amil’een horde had finally come within range of his squadron, and their bombardment was buying him much-needed time to regroup.

  Dex willed away his disorientation and searched the savanna for the wounded hovertank. A dark plume of smoke rose from the gaping hole in its side, and Dex leveled the suit’s left arm at the vehicle, launching another missile with a satisfying whoosh. The missile streaked toward the hovertank and caught it directly in the turret, exploding in a ferocious globe of flame that left nothing but charred wreckage.

  Several shells exploded near him as Dex focused on the advancing Vr’amil’een infantry. He turned the suit slightly to his left and activated his quad Gatling cannon, p
eppering the savanna with explosive shells. He turned slowly, sweeping his field of fire across the Vr’amil’een infantry. Wherever he faced, destruction poured into the countryside, leveling the helpless Vr’amil’een troops in an unyielding barrage. When he had completed his sweep, nothing moved, and a black swath had been drawn across the lush countryside as if by a giant torch. Crumpled bodies littered the field and smoke rose from their mangled corpses.

  “Advance to Pax,” Dex ordered over his intercom, and he checked his readouts to find that his jets were no longer functional. He lumbered the L-PAS across the rolling terrain, unable to wait for his squad as he raced to beat the remaining Vr’amil’een troops to the city walls. The land rushed by quickly as the suit gobbled up ground with considerable speed. Dex checked the sensors to find that the other two Vr’amil’een squads were nearly in range, but that they had almost reached the city walls. Each squad had a hovertank as its centerpiece, but they seemed ignorantly oblivious of his presence, focused as they were on the city ahead. In fact, through the telescopic sight, Dex could see that the tanks had already begun bombarding the city walls, and the speed with which Dex has dispatched the squad sent to stop him had clearly surprised the overconfident Vr’amil’een. With a sinister scowl, Dex targeted his remaining two mortar shells and launched them simultaneously at the Vr’amil’een hovertanks. The missiles sailed silently through the air, crashing down upon their targets with furious force and engulfing both tanks in fierce explosions. One tank had its entire turret incinerated by the impact, and the other detonated from within as the mortar’s explosion reached the ammunition stored inside. The ensuing fireball consumed several Vr’amil’een infantry clustered around the vehicle, and the surviving Vr’amil’een scurried haphazardly to face the new threat. Dex’s lasers flashed out again and again, striking down the Vr’amil’een from long range as they scurried for cover in the barren sands at the base of the city walls. With no cover, they were unable to escape Dex’s attack, and within mere seconds he had decimated both squads. A small group of soldiers to his left organized themselves enough to return fire, and a smattering of lighter long-range shells impacted against his suit’s armoured breastplate. Dex concentrated his guns on the pocket of resistance, quickly silencing their fire and convincing the remaining Vr’amil’een soldiers to drop their weapons in surrender.