Hoff looked away, his eyes wide and staring. Visions of that convenience store burning danced before his eyes, making him feel sick. At least the storekeeper was free now.
Freedom is overrated, Hoff, Omnius said, slithering through his thoughts.
“Hoff?” Someone was shaking him. “Hoff!” He blinked and noticed Destra staring at him. “Are you okay?”
He shook his head. No. “I think I drifted off. Too little sleep.”
“Then we’re going to bed right after this, and you’re going to take a sedative to make sure you get some rest tonight.”
Hoff nodded stiffly. “Yes, rest would be nice….”
* * *
“Jump successful. All systems green, Captain Hale,” a mechanical voice said.
Farah nodded at 767’s report. She was annoyed with him, but she didn’t allow that to show on her face. Bretton Hale was definitely floating around somewhere inside that shiny casing, but he wasn’t the man he used to be. Now he was a pliant, efficient, emotionless machine. He was a shadow of himself, and a painful reminder of everything she had lost.
When Admiral Therius had first introduced her to 767, she’d wondered why—why get her hopes up, why bother rescuing a man from Avilon who was no longer a man at all? Then she found out that he’d been appointed as the ship’s XO—her own second in command while Therius was off deck. It hadn’t taken long in 767’s company for her to realize that his purpose was to feed her outrage over everything that Omnius had done, to forge her into a deadly weapon of retribution.
Farah gazed out the forward viewports, her hands clasped behind her back, waiting. She heard 767 shuffle up beside her, his footsteps clanking against the deck.
A shimmer of light appeared between the stars, like a shoal of fish changing direction. “There they are,” Farah said. Thousands of warships of all different sizes and strengths had just jumped into the system.
“Report!” Farah called out.
“All battle groups arrived with near-perfect synchrony, ma’am,” the sensor operator replied.
“Are they in formation?”
“They are in a spherical formation with a diameter of 13,500 klicks. That would put them 585 klicks above the surface of Avilon, with a mean variation of 350 klicks.”
Farah shook her head. “If that’s the mean variation, then how close is the nearest ship to the hypothetical surface?”
“We have over six hundred vessels that jumped in just ten clicks above the surface, ma’am.”
“Unacceptable. That would put them inside the atmosphere. The tidal forces of the jump will rip them apart. We can’t afford to lose that many.”
“We could widen our jump parameters, loosen the formation.”
“We need to catch the drone garrison by surprise. To do that we have to be close enough to open fire the instant we arrive.”
“Then we may have to concede some losses, ma’am.”
Farah shook her head. “No. Comms! Have the captains who jumped too close make further refinements to their jump algorithms. We’re going to try again.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Chapter 30
Ethan watched as the simulator’s opaque canopy swung shut over his head. Magnum waved to him from the pod next to his. Then Ethan’s pod sealed, and holoscreens glowed to life all around him. Space dazzled with a million pinpricks of light, and control surfaces shone bright blue all around him. The controls were familiar, but it had been a long time since Ethan had flown a Nova. He had three main displays in front of him, throttle controls on his left, and rudder pedals underfoot to control the maneuvering thrusters—or control surfaces while in atmosphere.
Ethan took a deep breath and flexed his right hand around the flight stick while his left hand gripped the throttle. As he moved the stick, he actually felt the push and pull of his inertia fighting sudden changes in direction. The simulator was so realistic that he had to remind himself it wasn’t real.
“You ready, greeny?”
“That’s commander to you, Lieutenant.”
An affirmative comm click was Magnum’s only reply.
Ethan glanced out the side of his cockpit to see Magnum right there beside him. The simulation was a simple one—the simpler the better to prove who was the best pilot. They were on the same team against a superior number of drone fighters. Ethan had never had a chance to see what a drone fighter could do while he’d been in the Null Zone, but he’d seen a few of them on the news nets, so he had some idea. He guessed that they would be faster and more maneuverable, but he hoped they might be weaker in some other respect—armor and shielding perhaps.
Ethan thumbed over to Hailfire missiles and primed his triple “Lancer” lasers. He set them to single fire, and waited. The enemy should be appearing any second now…
He had no warning at all, just a faint chirp from his threat detection system, warning him about a suspicious anomaly, and then bright red lasers flashed out toward him.
A handful glanced off his forward shields, hissing like water on a stove top. Ethan stomped on the left rudder pedal and slammed the flight stick to the same side, sending his Nova into a corkscrewing roll to evade enemy fire. The drones flew past him with a thunderous roar.
“They came out of nowhere!” Ethan growled.
Laughter jackhammered through the comms. “They’re cloaked. Our sensors have been upgraded, but the little frekkers still don’t show up ‘till they’re right on top of you. Gets the blood pumpin’ don’t it?” In the background Ethan heard the simulated roar of an explosion, followed by Magnum hooting and roaring with delight. “That’s one!”
Ethan scowled; he killed thrust and pulled up hard to flip his Nova 180 degrees and put its tail where its nose used to be. He bracketed the nearest enemy target and let loose a dazzling stream of fire. Lasers flashed to all sides of him, provoking a screeching roar from the sound in space simulator. Ethan’s first half-dozen shots hit, eliciting bright flares of light from the drone’s shields. Then it exploded with a burst of light and a belated boom that rattled his cockpit’s speakers. Ethan went straight from that target to the next one and switched to Hailfire missiles.
The enemy fighter was too close and coming about fast. Ethan dumb-fired two missiles without a proper target lock, estimating where the enemy would be. The missiles raced out on hot orange contrails and each split into four smaller “shards” just before reaching their target. Then the drone set off their proximity fuses and all of them exploded at once, engulfing the enemy fighter in a firestorm of shrapnel. The drone raced through the explosions, both wings sliced off, but still flying.
Ethan gaped at it even as it opened fire on him in a dazzling crimson stream of energy. He slammed the throttle up past the stops, and jerked the stick in a circle while applying the rudder randomly. One laser hit home, a direct hit on his canopy. His shields flared and blinded him, the hiss of dissipating energy roaring deafeningly loud in his ears. Ethan fired back blindly, shooting another hailfire.
Boom!
It exploded almost immediately after it was released, and Ethan’s Nova rocked in the explosion. A siren screamed, warning that forward shields were in the red. He stabbed a button to equalize them, and then set shields to auto-equalize so he wouldn’t have to micromanage them. The drone raced by in a blur, clocking in on his HUD at 315 KAPS.
That was almost double his Nova’s maximum acceleration. He’d been right, drones fighters were blindingly fast.
Another boom rumbled over the comms. “Whoop whoop!” Magnum crowed. “That’s three!”
Ethan grimaced. He had some catching up to do. Magnum was an excellent pilot, much better than Ethan had expected from a stomper. He glanced at his star map to find the nearest concentration of enemy fighters. He found just three more within range, but another dozen were screaming in toward the engagement in two separate waves. When those waves hit, neither he nor Magnum would last long. He needed to play this smart if he was going to win, but how to outsmart a drone?
<
br /> Ethan heard the warning screech of an enemy laser lock, and he jerked his Nova into a quick dive. A stream of enemy fire streaked by overhead, followed a split second later by the drone fighter that had been burning up his six. The enemy fighter’s thrusters glowed a dazzling red as it roared away. Then, without warning, it flipped 180 degrees and opened fire. More shots went hissing off his shields, but Ethan took advantage of the enemy fighter’s inability to maneuver while under zero thrust and fired back. He managed to score a few hits, but the drone gunned its thrusters and shot away before he could do any damage.
Ethan disabled his own thrusters and flipped his Nova around to track the enemy fighter. He scored two hits back-to-back on the drone’s thrusters. One of those thrusters exploded and ripped the back half of the fighter apart in a fiery cloud of debris that quickly went cold and dark. That’s two, he thought while reengaging thrust.
But Magnum was still beating him with three kills, and there were only two drones left besides the dozen incoming. He was about to lose this contest spectacularly.
Think smart! Drones were computers with limited intelligence—particularly these drones, since Omnius wasn’t actually the one remote-piloting them—so what would defeat their programming?
He had an idea. He wasn’t sure it would work, but it was worth a shot.
Ethan pushed his fighter into overdrive, setting course for the incoming wave of enemy fighters. He thumbed over to Silverstreak torpedoes and set a proximity fuse of one klick. Silverstreaks were no good at tracking fighters, but they packed a much bigger punch than Hailfires, and they could take out several enemy fighters at once if they were flying in close formation—such as the oncoming waves of drones.
Ethan watched on the grid as the drone that had been harassing him came back around for another pass. Perfect, he thought. He nudged his throttle up another notch, pushing it even further into overdrive. The Nova’s thrusters became a deafening roar in his ears. The fighter rattled and shook around him.
Then came Magnum’s voice: “You’re skriffy as a space rat, Commander! You can’t handle two or three at a time, so you thought you’d try a dozen?” An explosion came roaring over the comms. “That’s four! What you at? Two? Damn, I thought you were a good pilot. I guess I—”
Ethan muted the channel. He needed to focus on what he was doing. He saw a drone coming up fast on his six, and dead ahead the first wave of enemy fighters had almost reached firing range. Another minute or two and they’d all open fire on him at once, vaporizing his Nova before he could put his plan into action. He had to time this perfectly. There was no room for error. He toggled through displays on his left holo display until he found the engineering panel. Then he selected all of the Nova’s critical systems.
An alarm sounded from the threat detection system, followed by the hiss of enemy lasers burning up his aft shields. The drone on his six had caught up. Ethan went evasive, but not too evasive. Shots kept getting through. He watched carefully as his shields dropped from blue to green, to yellow, to red, and finally… black.
A siren screamed, warning that shields were depleted. Then Ethan went evasive in earnest. He eyed the enemy fighter on his six, waiting for his plan to go awry as his Nova was vaporized by a lucky shot. Another laser struck the back end of his fighter with a screech of rending alloy that set his teeth on edge. His port wing went tumbling away behind him, cut free of his Nova’s acceleration.
That was it.
Ethan stabbed a button on the engineering display and killed power to all the ship’s critical systems at once—all but one, the missile launchers.
He held his breath, anticipating the killing shot, but long seconds slipped by and nothing happened. The TDS and SISS were deactivated, so there was no way to hear laser lock warnings, or the simulated buzz and crackle of near misses, but the complete absence of strobing red light flashing through his canopy told him that the drone on his six had given him up for dead.
Drones were programmed to pursue live targets, not dead ones, and AIs were nothing if not efficient. They wouldn’t waste time on an enemy that was already a goner—at least not until all the other live targets were neutralized. As far as they were concerned, that last shot had been a fatal one.
Ethan grinned. He could no longer physically see the wave of enemy fighters racing up in front of him, since visual auto-scaling was a powered system, but he knew they were out there, and getting closer by the second. He primed a pair of torpedoes and waited a few more seconds, until he could see a group of glinting specks come swelling out of the star field. They would race past him at any moment. He waited half a second more… and pulled the trigger. Two Silverstreaks shot out on glittering silver contrails. The drones opened fire instantly, but the torpedoes were too close. Torpedoes exploded in a blinding flash of light. Ethan’s cockpit shook violently, and then everything plunged into blackness.
The canopy cracked open with a whirr of hydraulics. Light poured in, and Ethan blinked against the glare. He was surprised to find Magnum waiting for him. The lieutenant had his arms crossed over his chest and a frown pasted on his face. Atta was there, too, smiling and shaking her head.
Somehow Magnum had died before him, but Ethan had been so focused on what he was doing that he hadn’t noticed. Then again, the comms had been muted.
“What was the final score?” Ethan asked, trying to look innocent rather than smug.
“I was about to clip the wings on drone number five, but he dropped a shadow mine right on top of me, and I didn’t notice till it was too late.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Ethan said, while climbing out of his simulator pod.
“No you’re not, you smug kakard.”
Ethan came to stand in front of Magnum. He shrugged and allowed the smile he’d been suppressing to blossom. “And my score?”
Magnum’s frown deepened, but he said nothing.
Atta was the one who replied: “You got all six in the second wave, plus those first two kills makes eight.”
“Nine,” Magnum said. “Don’t forget he got himself, too.”
“Actually, that one counts against you, Ethan, so your final score is seven, but that still beats Magnum’s four.”
“Not bad,” Ethan said, nodding.
Magnum snorted. “You exploited a weakness in the simulation. You think Omnius will be that stupid when he’s the one piloting those drones?”
Ethan shook his head. “I’m guessing they weren’t firing missiles at us for a reason. They use quantum launchers, right?” Atta nodded. “And these simulators are programmed for the upcoming battle at Avilon, where we’re going to have the Eclipser jamming quantum fields.”
“Get to the point,” Magnum said.
“The point is, Omnius won’t be the one piloting those drones; the Eclipser will cut him off, and regular comms, assuming drones even have them, are too slow for remote-piloting, so that stunt I pulled will only have to defeat the on-board intelligence of a drone, which means it might just work in a real engagement.”
Atta inclined her head to him. “I’m going to report that tactic to Wing Commander Axel while you two finish your ground simulation.”
Ethan nodded and they left the Nova simulator room together. Atta left them at the door to the mech simulators, and Ethan assumed that meant he would be on his own. So much for Atta’s plan, he thought.
* * *
Magnum led the way to a pair of mech simulators at the back of the room. Ethan noticed the mech simulators were shaped differently from Nova pods, with arms, legs, and head. Ethan watched Magnum place his palm on one of the simulator’s chests, and it opened up like a mechanical flower with an accompanying hiss and whirr of hydraulics. Ethan followed Magnum’s lead and waited as his own simulator peeled open. He stepped inside, lining up his legs and arms with the simulator’s corresponding parts. Ethan kept still for a few seconds, and the simulator automatically sealed around him.
The HUD glowed to life, and Ethan began familiarizing himself with t
he controls while the simulation loaded. He found that all the mech’s systems were either gesture or voice-activated.
Ethan took a moment to study the HUD while the simulation loaded. Of particular interest was the small rear view and peripheral visual feeds at the top of the HUD. That would certainly help with situational awareness. Now all he had to do is figure out how to activate the mech’s weapons…
Then the simulation finished loading, and suddenly he was back on Avilon. Kilometers-high towers soared, colorful glass shining bright in the sun. A cloudless blue sky stretched overhead. Air traffic traced dotted lines against the sky. Vast tracts of green urban parks stretched between the bases of the monolithic towers. Fountains bubbled, trees swayed, and luminous white-robed pedestrians ran in rivers along the footpaths. This was Celesta, the uppermost city of Avilon.
Magnum’s voice growled beside his ears: “This time you won’t be so lucky.”
Then came a ground-shaking boom, followed by people screaming. Ethan turned toward the sound, servos in his suit whirring as his Zephyr-class light assault mech matched and amplified his movements.
A crashing starship had hit the ground nearby, digging a fiery crater in the cityscape. Above and behind the flaming ruins, one of the skyscrapers was also on fire with a chunk bitten out of the side, halfway up. The debris must have nicked it on the way down. As Ethan watched, the tower began leaning precipitously, collapsing on the damaged side. On the ground below, white-robed Celestials ran screaming in all directions.
A torrent of lasers flashed out of the blue sky, booming as they connected with a fuzzy gray shadow overhead, and then that shadow began falling, gushing fire.
Ethan spun around to find Magnum already running away at top speed.
“Get out of there, Ethan!” Atta screamed, proving that she hadn’t left him alone, after all.
Armageddon Page 25
