Refusing Excalibur

by Zachary Jones

  “Oh, shit,” Victor said. More missiles than he cared to count swarmed toward the asteroid.

  “Oh, shit? Did I hear you say, ‘Oh, shit’? Was this minefield not part of the plan?” Fara asked.

  “It was. It’s just bigger than I expected,” Victor said.

  “And that’s a problem?” Fara asked.

  “It could be,” Victor said.

  “Great,” Fara said.

  The asteroid's walls were over five hundred meters thick in places. But the minefield had enough warheads to turn the millions of tons of silicate rock, and the ships contained inside, into molten slag.

  As the missiles approached, the seismic sensors embedded in the rock spiked as kinetic rounds impacted the surface of the asteroid, adding fresh craters to its already craggy surface. The starships guarding the jump point were taking potshots at the rock. And why wouldn’t they? They probably had standing orders to shoot at anything that came through.

  The innermost mines reached the asteroid thirty seconds after it jumped into the system. The nuclear warheads detonated, and all exterior sensors went dead save for the seismic and thermal sensors embedded deep in the rock.

  The seismic readings went crazy as the asteroid’s surface was pounded like a drum by weapons fire, and the temperature of the rock rose.

  Harlan Quill’s face appeared on the monitor. “Captain Blackhand, there are a lot more mines out there than we anticipated.”

  “I know,” Victor said.

  “There’s enough firepower out there to destroy this rock,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “Eventually this asteroid will melt and roast us inside it,” Harlan said.

  “I know.”

  “If you know all that, then you’ll understand if I blow the charges early,” Harlan said.

  “Don’t do that!” Victor said.

  “If we don’t get out of this rock before the outer sphere of mines hits us, we’ll get fried,” Harlan said.

  “It will take several minutes for that to happen,” Victor said. “Just give it some time.”

  “For what?”

  “To see what happens,” Victor said.

  “That’s pretty thin reasoning,” Harlan said.

  “Look, if we wait till the last minute to break from this rock, it will be that much less firepower we have to deal with once we’re outside.”

  Thoughts played out on Harlan’s face for a moment before he finally said, “Fine. I’ll hold off on blowing the charges but only for a few more minutes.” He closed the channel.

  Victor let out a long breath, fogging the visor of his helmet. Even if they escaped into space, thirty light and medium warships wouldn’t last long against the enemy fleet outside. Not when the Alliance fleet wasn’t scheduled to attack through the jump point for hours.

  He settled back in his seat and tried to relax while nuclear weapons detonated all around him. He could do little else other than watch the clock run out.

  Yeah, good luck with that, Victor thought. His anticipation from earlier had morphed into full-on anxiety. Like being trapped inside a burning house, only on a much, much larger scale.

  He wondered if this was what it had been like for Gina and Alex in their last moments, futilely hiding inside an underground shelter as their world burned above them.

  The thought almost made Victor break out in tears. He shoved it aside. Now was not the time for that.

  The seismic sensors continued to spike, and the temperature of the rock climbed. The asteroid’s surface was hot enough to glow. It wouldn’t be much longer until the ships within melted. By then, Harlan would have to set off the charges embedded in the rock or risk having them overheat and rendered inoperable.

  Suddenly the seismic sensors flatlined. Victor’s first thought was that the enemy had been destroyed by the detonations, but Victor was still getting other data from outside. The temperature of the asteroid was still rising but much more slowly.

  “Oh,…I think they stopped,” Victor said.

  Fara leaned around her seat to look back at him. “Stopped? Who’s stopped?”

  “They stopped shooting at us!” Victor opened a channel to the Waynesburg. “Captain Quill, don’t set off the charges just yet. They stopped shooting at us!”

  “Yeah, I noticed that. I guess they decided not to waste any more firepower,” Harlan said.

  “What makes you think that?” Victor said.

  “Because, before you hijacked my plan, I intended to send asteroids through to thin out the minefields on the other side. The Mohawkers may have guessed the same thing,” Harlan said.

  “So it’s back to my plan then,” Victor said.

  “It seems so, Captain Blackhand. Time to wait for the cavalry,” Harlan said.

  With the external sensors blasted to component atoms, it was impossible to see what was going on outside but not hard to guess.

  With its low velocity leaving the jump point, the asteroid would have been immediately captured by the gravity of Mohawk’s star and pulled in. The asteroid was falling toward the star and, not coincidentally, toward the orbit of the planet Mohawk itself.

  It wouldn’t hit the planet; the jump was timed specifically so it wouldn't. Otherwise the Mohawkers would have no choice but to destroy the asteroid, and Victor didn’t want that.

  What Victor wanted to do was to let the asteroid fall for a few hours and take them outside the defensive sphere of mines and warships surrounding the jump point.

  And so Victor and his crew settled in as the asteroid, and the strike force of warships contained within, fell toward the star, gradually gaining velocity as they moved away from the jump point.

  Fara leaned around her seat again and opened the visor of her helmet, smiling. “Looks like that luck of yours has held out.”

  Bad luck was my luck leading to Gina’s and Alex’s death and the bombardment of my home planet, after my brother was beheaded. Seems I’m due nothing but good luck now. He schooled his face and locked down those memories before facing Fara. “So it seems.” He returned her smile. “And to think, you were so doubtful about this plan.”

  “Well, there’s still plenty of chances for this to go wrong. If we survive this, I’ll make you pay for it later,” Fara said.

  Victor’s smile broadened. “I look forward to it.”

  He called the crew to a lower state of alert to give everyone a chance to relax after the near-death experience at the jump point.

  Three hours after the asteroid jumped into the Mohawk system, the mission timer hit zero. The Alliance fleet would be starting their attack.

  A broadcast came from the Waynesburg. “All ships, in sixty seconds from my mark, the charges will detonate. Mark!”

  The one-minute timer counted down. Victor did a final check of the ship’s systems to make sure weapons, shields, and propulsion all ran optimally.

  When the timer hit zero, hundreds of carefully placed mining charges went off, and a section of the asteroid cracked open and blew outwardly. Alex's shields protected the ship from the backblast and debris. Empty space loomed where once was a wall of rock, along with the tiny bright blue dot of the planet Mohawk.

  “Fara, punch it!” Victor said.

  “Got it,” Fara said as the Alex leapt from its cradle and out into space, along with the other warships contained within.

  Victor’s tactical display came alive with hostile contacts as soon as the Alex burst from the asteroid. The bulk of them were concentrated around the jump point, flashing with weapons fire. The Alliance fleet had jumped in on schedule, much to his relief.

  The planet Mohawk itself was just over one hundred million kilometers away; the operation had been launched to coincide with the planet’s closest approach to the jump point.

  Nearby weapons fire lit up Victor’s tactical screen. Four hostile destroyers were in close range. The way they wildly fired at the Alliance ships suggested they were more than surprised—they were panicking. Victor didn’t intend to g
ive them time to recover.

  Targeting the nearest destroyer, he said, “Fara, put us on an attack vector with my target and shoot it down.”

  “You got it,” she said, turning the Alexander to aim the frigate’s spinal gun on the Mohawker destroyer, firing a burst that punctured the destroyer's shields and perforated the hull, wrecking the starship in seconds.

  The other destroyers were similarly dealt with, though one managed to get a fatal shot off on a Mustanger frigate, the Whirlpool, before it was knocked out by the Waynesburg.

  If there were any survivors in the wreckage of the Whirlpool, they would have to wait. The mission demanded the Alliance fleet move on their objective as fast as possible.

  Fara formed up on the Waynesburg’s left wing as the cruiser led the flotilla straight toward the planet Mohawk.

  The Waynesburg was one of two cruisers in the strike force. Along with the Easton and the eight destroyers in the fleet, they would suppress the planetary defenses from low orbit.

  The nineteen remaining frigates, including the Alexander, would fly to the surface toward Mohawk’s capital of Norton. There they would drop troops directly on the royal palace grounds and then provide air support for them. Victor would be a part of the landing force.

  Then they would break into the palace and kill King Marsh.

  “You realize Marsh may not be there,” Fara said.

  “Quintus Marsh weighs 150 kilos, Fara. He’s not the most mobile of people,” Victor said.

  “There’s nothing that says he can’t stuff his fat ass in a sky hopper and move to another part of the planet,” Fara said.

  “He’ll be there, Fara. Marsh is known to rarely leave his palace,” Victor said.

  “I hope you’re right. It would look awfully silly for us to launch a suicide mission to kill him only to find he’s not there,” Fara said.

  “He’ll be there,” Victor said, as if saying it would make it true. With the system locked down, he had no way to gather intelligence on Marsh’s whereabouts beforehand. The entire plan hinged on the hope that the last three years of the war hadn’t changed the man’s habits.

  It was a big risk, but the intended reward was a quick and decisive end to the war.

  It took four and a half hours for the raiding force to reach Mohawk while battles raged at the four jump points leading into the Mohawk system.

  When Mohawk was just a light second away, missiles rose from the surface and arched toward the Alliance warships.

  “Destroyer screen, time to do your work,” Harlan Quill said.

  The eight destroyers, all modified to carry a double load of countermissiles and extra electronic countermeasures, moved ahead of the rest of the fleet in a tight wedge.

  Once in position one thousand kilometers ahead, the destroyers glowed across the electromagnetic spectrum.

  The incoming missiles, which had once been moving with phalanxlike precision, became as disorganized as dust caught in a gust of wind, chasing after false contacts or blinded by laser dazzlers.

  Fewer than half kept on target, and, when those were just a minute from impact, the destroyers blossomed as they fired their countermissiles in an immense volley that was augmented by countermissile fire from the rest of the fleet.

  Missile impacted missile and, just as they were supposed to do, the destroyers blew a hole clear through Mohawk’s defensive missiles.

  “The way is clear. Frigates, dive down to the surface. All other ships, form up with the Waynesburg,” said Harlan Quill.

  “Time to pay King Marsh a visit,” said Victor, getting up from his seat.

  Fara leaned around the seat, worry etched on her pale face. “You be careful down there, Captain.”

  “We’re not in the careful business, but I’ll keep my head down,” Victor said.

  She smiled and said, “Good enough.” She then returned to piloting the Alex. “We reach the drop zone in ten minutes. You better hurry, Captain.”

  Victor nodded and said, “The ship is yours, Fara.” He then departed the bridge.

  Going down one deck and all the way to the back of the pressure hull, Victor arrived in the rear cargo airlock, where Gaz and his boarding specialists waited.

  They all wore the same high-end gray-black combat suits Victor did. Being Holace Quill’s personal go-to man meant he had access to the best military equipment Mustang had to offer.

  Every suit had a light exoskeleton to give the wearer extrastrength to carry the heavy ceramic plates covering them. Only the most powerful of small arms could do any harm.

  Including Gaz, Victor had a full squad of twelve men and women. Like the rest of Victor’s crew, most of them were former Mustang military, looking to earn a lot more money serving their world. The others were former military from one Alliance world or another.

  They were all professionals, and it was a wonder a former pit fighter with no formal military training like Gaz could lead them. He just seemed to have a knack for getting fighters to follow him.

  “You look pensive, Gaz,” Victor said.

  “I was made on Mohawk. Bred in a tank to be the toughest, meanest fucker possible so I could win prizes for my owner.”

  Victor studied Gaz for a moment; the ugly tattooed man had never talked about his past before. “I take it that’s where your metal fists and spiked teeth come from.”

  Gaz smiled his horrific grin. “The fists, yeah. The teeth I filed myself. They never stop growin’, you see.”

  “Well, hell of a way to come home,” Victor said.

  “Yeah. But considerin’ I spent thirty years of my life fighting for the pleasure of those fuckers, I think dropping from the sky to kill their king rather fits.”

  “Thirty years?” Victor said. “How old are you, Gaz?”

  Gaz chuckled. “When I broke from my cage and killed my owner, King Marsh was known as Prince Marsh and weighed less than half what he does now.”

  Victor did some math in his head and came up with a number that suggested Gaz was about the same age as his late father. “Huh, wow.”

  “Yeah, I look good for my age. The perks of being engineered,” Gaz said.

  “Five minutes to drop,” Fara said over the intercom.

  “No more time for chitchat, Cap. It’s time to put on your rig. Would be embarrassing to come all this way only to have you go splat on the ground,” Gaz said.

  Victor nodded. “Good point.” He walked over to it near the bulkhead. The combination AG generator and thruster pack was designed for the kind of high-speed, high-risk insertions Victor was about to do.

  Bolted to the sides were an assault rifle and ammo pack.

  Victor had done such insertions before, in the months training for this particular mission, but even now his heart fluttered as he stood before it. Something about dropping from suborbital altitudes never sat right with him.

  “Having second thoughts, Captain?” Gaz asked.

  “Oh, yeah,” Victor said, turning around to attach the back of his suit into the rig. “But I'm still going down with you.”

  “Good. We’ll need that luck of yours,” Gaz said. The pit fighter inspected Victor’s rig and then rapped twice on his helmet. “You’re secure, Cap. Time to go skydivin’.”

  Victor held out a hand for Gaz to help him stand up with the awkward bulk of the rig.

  “One minute to drop. Get ready,” Fara said.

  After making sure everyone’s suits were sealed, Victor hit the button on the control panel to depressurize the cargo hold, filling the chamber with silence as he emptied it of air. After that, Gaz opened the ramp, revealing the dark curve of Mohawk’s surface. The lights of the planet’s capital glowed against its dark side.

  The ground team formed into two lines, Victor at the head of one, Gaz the other. Victor knelt down into a sprinter’s posture and gathered up the courage he’d need to jump from a perfectly good starship onto a planet full of people waiting to kill him.

  Fara’s voice echoed through his suit speakers. �
��Drop in three…two…one…go!”

  Victor gritted his teeth and sprinted down the ramp, launching himself into the empty sky, one hundred thousand meters above the surface.

  Then the altimeter on his HUD ticked down as Mohawk’s gravity took hold of him and pulled him toward the surface.

  Highlighted by icons on his HUD were Gaz’s people falling around him, along with the 350 Mustanger soldiers dropped by the other frigates.

  Below, another icon marked his landing zone, the courtyard of King Marsh’s royal palace, showing Victor’s range to his target and estimated time until his boots hit the ground.

  Victor’s velocity climbed up the Mach scale as the planet rose to meet him but then decreased when he hit the thicker lower atmosphere.

  After several minutes, his descent speed fell under the speed of sound.

  The lights below resolved into grids of city blocks as Victor’s ballistic arc carried him toward the royal palace.

  At one thousand meters’ altitude, the rig’s AG generator came to life, and its braking thrusters fired, forcing Victor’s stomach to his feet by the sudden deceleration.

  His velocity dropped, but the ground below him still rushed up at an alarming rate. Just as every instinct in Victor screamed he was about to crash into the ground, the thrusters flared with gut-wrenching acceleration until his feet landed gently on the green turf of the palace courtyard.

  His training kicked in before he had time to feel relieved. He hit the release on his rig, dropping it to the ground. He then grabbed his assault rifle and ammo pack off the rig and ran for the nearest piece of cover, a stone planter filled with flowers.

  “This is Captain Blackhand. I’m on the ground!” he announced over the radio. “Gaz, you make it?”

  “Yeah, I’m good, and so are my people,” Gaz said as he raced to Victor’s side, followed by much of his team as they took cover.

  Victor nodded to him and then leaned around the planter to take a look around. Flared descent thrusters glowed in the night sky as the last few Mustanger soldiers landed while others scurried for cover. But, other than that, everything seemed rather quiet.