Storm Assault (Star Force Series)

by B. V. Larson

  “Anything yet?” I asked, meaning the fighters.

  “Nothing sir, they haven’t had time to turn around.”

  They couldn’t report back via ring transmissions because both the Imperials and we were jamming the ring. Both sides were better at that now, sending a wave of varied static at a dozen different modulations and frequencies that prevented anyone from using the rings in a stealthy manner.

  Part of me wished I was with the boys in those fighters. It would be fun to be the first Star Force pilot to return to our home system. I envied them. They knew they were home again, and that the other side was terrified of them.

  I smiled as I dreamed briefly of glory. But this smile faded slowly. The timer showed there were just ninety-six seconds to go.

  “They should be back by now. Where are they?”

  “Unknown sir.”

  “None of them returned?”

  “Negative.”

  My finger stabbed down onto the big screen. I engaged the fleet-wide com system again.

  “I want everyone on the surface of Phobos to get below. I repeat: everyone. All following ships, divert your courses to the sides. No one is to follow Phobos until we report back what we’ve encountered. Riggs out.”

  The effects were gratifying. The ships trailing us began braking, veering. They were going to make it. I could tell.

  “Sir?” Jasmine asked me. “What are you thinking? What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “There are a dozen things that could be wrong—very wrong.”

  I hadn’t actually wanted to voice my worries, but Miklos jumped right in at this point and began listing them.

  “They might have so many mines or guns that they obliterated our fighters instantly. Or something else could be there that our missiles could not clear out of the way. Our plans have been numerous in ring defense, but we never employed most of them. There are an infinite variety of traps. For example, we considered spreading a mass of sand particles in front of the ring. Such a barrier is difficult to destroy or disperse, and is immune to EMP blasts.”

  I looked at him sidelong, but he didn’t seem to catch my meaning. We were down to less than a minute now.

  Miklos threw up his hands and folded his lips into a speculative, euro-looking expression.

  “It could even be worse than that,” he continued, really getting into the subject. “What if the Imperials have figured out how to control the rings as we have begun experimenting with ourselves? Those fighters might have all flown into the sun, or perhaps the ring only works in one direction now, like—”

  “Okay Professor,” I said loudly, clapping him on the shoulder so hard he grunted. “Let’s man our stations and look sharp. This is it. After all, General Kerr had the balls to come through our ring into our system a few months ago. We’re just returning the favor.”

  Miklos shut up at last. The final seconds crawled by.

  When the moment came I felt a shiver run through the ship and my own body, telling me we’d made the transition to the other side.

  But what was there waiting for us?

  -25-

  “Surface impacts, sir! Too many to count!”

  We’d shuddered while passing through the ring, and now we were still shuddering. I felt the entire ship being battered. But how?

  Then the big screens went dark. I thought for a second it was a power outage, but then realized the circular shape of Phobos’ hull was still on the display. Internal readings were fine. But we couldn’t see anything outside the ship.

  “Report!” I shouted. “Where’s my sensory data? What hit us?”

  “The sensors were knocked out the moment we came through the ring,” Jasmine said. “We’re flying blind.”

  “Hull breach?”

  “Negative, sir. But we’ve lost contact with all our surface personnel and defensive systems.”

  “I ordered those people to go below.”

  She gave me a helpless shrug. “They only had ninety seconds to comply, and one elevator shaft, Colonel.”

  I realized what she was saying. There was no way they could all have escaped.

  “Assume we lost them all. Give me a headcount.”

  She tapped for a few seconds and sent her data to the screens. One hundred seventy one, the counter said. I could have had her add in the fighter squadron, but didn’t bother. The data was already depressing. After destroying their battleship, we were in fact about even. Unfortunately, Crow had a few billion more people to lose than I did.

  I took a deep breath. “Marvin!” I shouted.

  His tentacles jumped. He was manning the control systems that hooked up to the big push-button interfaces on the forward wall of this massive chamber.

  “Yes, Colonel?”

  “Get your alien sensors working. Tell me what the hell happened out there!”

  “At least we know we aren’t ramming the sun,” Miklos said unhelpfully.

  I turned to him. “You’re working with Marvin. Come back here in one minute with some damned data.”

  He moved quickly to his new assignment.

  “Should we slow down the ship, sir?” Jasmine asked me.

  I felt like chewing my lip, but managed to stop myself. I wanted to stop. I wanted to turn around and run screaming back to Alpha Centauri. I had no idea what was going on and the screen was still black. It was like driving through a tunnel at midnight with broken headlights—while doing about a million miles an hour.

  It was time to think fast, so I started doing it. My thoughts came out of my mouth the moment they occurred to me.

  “If they could redirect the ring, they would have put us right into the sun or some other hard obstacle. We have to assume it was Miklos’ sand—something like that.”

  “But that might not be their entire defense.”

  “Of course it isn’t. What would I place behind an obstacle like that?” I thought for a second. “Ships with heavy guns—maybe more of those cyborgs… Captain, are the impacts still incoming on the outer hull?”

  “Negative, sir. All quiet for now.”

  Jasmine looked at me, and I looked back at her. Then I turned to Marvin, who was really flying this ship.

  “Floor it, Marvin,” I told him. “Take a hard turn in any direction that helps you get some traction with the gravity drive. Apply maximum speed.”

  “Engaging drive, Colonel. Data will be coming through soon. The Blues do not have a fast update time on their sensors, and the data is subject to interpretation. I spent all my time studying drive and weapons controls.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said, “just relay what you have to my screens as you get it.”

  Jasmine caught my eye again and leaned toward me, lowering her voice. “When in doubt, do the unexpected? Is that your plan, Kyle?”

  I smiled at her. She rarely called me Kyle in public, even more rarely in battle.

  “Almost always,” I told her with confidence I didn’t feel.

  I didn’t add that firm action was often better than doing nothing. Doing nothing was predictable, and made it easier for your enemy to get off a headshot while you dithered. That was what I figured was happening right now. They’d blinded us, and were maneuvering for the coup de grâce. I could feel them out there, closing in.

  The deck lurched and the nanite arms sprouting up from the floors gripped us. We were all slipping to the left with about half a G of lateral force. I didn’t know where Marvin was heading, and I didn’t much care. As long as we were going there fast.

  Data finally began coming in. I watched in frustration as the screens crawled. A wire-diagram began to appear.

  “What the hell is that?”

  “I think it’s the ring sir.”

  “Oh yeah. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen graphics this shitty.”

  “I could delay the input until it has gone through interpolation algorithms,” Marvin said.

  “No way. Keep up the raw feed.”

  The picture kept redrawin
g itself. There was something big dead ahead of us. Perspectives shifted, and I realized on the new scale Phobos was a tiny spec.

  “What the hell? What’s that thing we’re heading toward, Marvin?”

  “I do believe its Sol, Colonel. The mass is appropriate. That appears to be the gravity source I’ve utilized to engage the drive.”

  “Right,” I said, thinking hard. “Not much else out here with a strong gravity pull.”

  If we were in the Solar System, which I had every reason to believe was the case, we were far out past Pluto. The two rings in Earth’s star system were farther apart than most. One was on Venus, embedded in the surface of the planet. The second was out here in the Oort Cloud.

  “Get a mass reading, Marvin. Is that Sol? Is the distance right?”

  “It appears to be, sir. The probability is greater than ninety-nine percent.”

  I felt somewhat relieved. Some of the worst scenarios were off the list.

  As I watched more data crawl onto the screen, I lost patience.

  “This sucks,” I announced. “Get me Gaines.”

  Less than five seconds later, Major Gaines was on the line. I had to admit, even if he was a mean drunk, he was on the ball when everything hit the fan.

  “Gaines? I need you, personally, to take a company to the surface and deploy sensory equipment. Both passive and active. Go.”

  “Acknowledged, Gaines out.”

  I went back to the boards. We’d zoomed in again, which removed Sol from the picture. We were flying away from the ring, and the ring—well, it looked funny.

  “What the hell is with the ring?” I demanded. “It looks like it’s grown a beard or something. Is that bullshit real, Marvin?”

  “Assuming you’re referring to the anomalous structures attached to the exterior rim of the ring—yes Colonel, that bullshit is physically present.”

  “Well? What the hell is it?”

  “Unknown, sir.”

  Gaines worked fast. There were existing nanite leads to the surface that led all the way down to our position here. He hooked up his suit cameras the minute he got to the top and relayed the feed to us.

  “Nothing here, sir,” he said, looking around.

  I put the camera feed from his suit onto the tabletop and it whirled with sickening speed. We all watched, glued to our spots.

  “Nothing? What about the surface itself?”

  He’d been panning space nearby, where no ships or incoming fire seemed to be evident. Now he lowered the view to the ground, where it was a different story.

  I frowned at what appeared to be black furrows burned in broad lines across the surface of Phobos. The lines crisscrossed it, and each line was as wide as an L. A. freeway.

  “What the hell are those?”

  “Cratering sir—from whatever hit us. These lines extend as far as we can see in every direction. The entire surface looks like a waffle pattern.”

  I quickly put two and two together. “Do those look like laser burns to you, Gaines? Like something a really big laser would leave behind, doing long burns?”

  “Yeah…” he said, panning around. “Yeah, that could be it.”

  Marvin suddenly loomed over me. I knew because there was a camera over each of my shoulders and one snaking between my legs.

  “Getting a good look, Marvin?”

  “The evidence is not conclusive, but I believe we’ve been hit by multiple powerful lasers which knocked out our surface sensory equipment.”

  “That’s right. Now, give me some breathing room, robot.”

  His tentacles withdrew fractionally.

  I told Gaines to set up the sensors and get back into the shaft ASAP. He didn’t argue.

  I tapped the screens causing the view to return to a middling range, displaying both Phobos and the ring we’d just come through on the screen at once.

  “Very devious,” I said. “It’s a trap. They set up a large number of huge lasers, geared to fire the moment anything came through the ring. Our fighters never had a chance—hell, they probably nailed most of our missiles as well. Those big guns are perched there all over the ring itself, and were set to slice and dice anyone who comes through without the proper ID signal.”

  I turned to Marvin, who was still looming over me with excited cameras.

  “Back to your post, mister,” I told him.

  He scuttled away obediently, and I followed.

  “Reverse engines, helmsman,” I told Marvin. “Use Sol to repel, rather than to pull us. When we’re in range we’re going to use our wide-area crush weapon. We’re going to wipe out all those lasers at once.”

  I watched as he worked the controls, and the whole ship lurched. It felt like two railroad cars had just bumped into one another. Suddenly, we were decelerating rather than accelerating.

  I’d gotten more used to the gravity drive now, but it wasn’t natural to me yet. Essentially, the drive increased or reversed the tug of gravity upon the ship from a given source. By aiming at the sun, you could make it pull you in that direction, or push you away from it. When I envisioned it, I thought of the ship as a spider with the power to shoot lines of webbing toward any large target. You could shoot out a line then use it to pull yourself in that direction, or to slide down the line away from it. The trick was, the objects were things like the sun and the local planets, and the strings we attached to them were invisible. Things became trickier when you wanted to move in a curving arc. You had to work with several large bodies at once to do that.

  Miklos looked up from Marvin’s station where he’d been working since I assigned him there.

  “We’re going back to the ring?” he asked. “What if the lasers on the ring fire on us?”

  “If they could do that, they would have done so already. Besides, they can’t penetrate a mile of rock. They were built to burn ships, not moons.”

  He nodded and began working with Marvin on the weapons systems.

  Before I could return to my own command station, Jasmine was waving to me urgently. I raced closer to her, upsetting my nanite harness.

  “Sir, Gaines is back on the line!”

  I opened my mouth to speak, but no sound came out. I stared down at the screen where Gaines suit was relaying what he was seeing.

  It was absolute chaos. Shapes were hurtling at his helmet cameras. Dark shapes, with spiny, outstretched claws.

  The marine company I’d sent up there with him was lighting up that dark sky with their beamers. Flaring light chugged, stitching the ground, the enemy and occasionally other marines, with fire.

  A minute or so after that, the feed was cut. We all played with the controls, but there was no way to fix it from here. Gaines was up there getting mauled, and we couldn’t even watch on TV.

  “Crow’s cyborgs,” I said. “They’ve found us.”

  -26-

  “But where’s Crow’s fleet?” Jasmine asked.

  I moved quickly as she spoke to me, donning full battle armor. It was a new suit, with a custom fit. It was a little too snug in spots, but I was sure after it got warmed up in combat I’d like it just fine.

  “I don’t know where that bastard is hiding his ships. He probably had them stationed out here at the border, but they turned around and ran off when they saw Phobos. That would be just like him. He prefers to hoard his ships and never commits them unless the battle is a sure thing. It’s a cowardly—but highly effective—strategy.”

  I turned to Miklos before I left. “I’m putting you in charge while I go check on Gaines.”

  He looked at me in surprise. “I thought I was on some kind of hiatus.”

  “Well, it’s over. At least until you’re dead—or I find someone better.”

  It was a line I’d used before but usually on grunts, not Fleet people. It always let them know where they stood. They were there to serve and die if need be for the Force. If they didn’t like that, they could jump ship right now.

  “Very well sir,” he said. “I’ll keep you up to date on
anything else that comes in our direction.”

  I hurried to the encampment at the base of the shaft that led out to the surface. If these cyborgs were all over the outer hull, they had to be repelled. Just as importantly, we needed to control the exterior of the giant ship in order to defend it.

  When I got there, I found the situation chaotic. Two companies of marines were preparing to enter the shaft in combat gear. Another company was doing rescue ops, carrying wounded out of the open hole and transporting them to the medical bricks.

  I tapped a gunnery sergeant on the shoulder as he raced by, and he whirled on me with a snarl. Then he recognized the bird on my shoulder and did a double-take.

  “Sorry sir—busy sir!” he shouted. He looked like he wanted to run away, but didn’t dare.

  “Yeah, I gathered that. Are you going in or pulling people out?”

  “Going in, sir. We’re moving out any minute.”

  “Good. I’ll join you.”

  I don’t know what the man had expected me to say, but that wasn’t it. I could tell that I hadn’t made his day, either.

  Kwon showed up about a minute later while I grouped up with the gunnery sergeant. His grunts looked at me like I was Dracula, fresh out of the grave.

  “You’re late,” I told Kwon.

  “Late sir? You didn’t even ask for me to follow you.”

  “Yeah, but you always do. Is your suit ready? We’re going down this hole.”

  “I figured out that part. What’s the deal with Gaines? Is he holding on up there?”

  “I don’t know. We lost contact. The nanite chain and all transmissions to the surface have been cut. That’s pretty much why I’m here.”

  I looked at the gunnery sergeant. He took a breath before speaking up.

  “Word is he’s pulled back into the mouth of the tunnel, Colonel. The elevator collapsed and we’ve been left with no choice other than scaling the shaft in our suits.”

  I nodded. “That’s what I figured. Let’s go in. If any of them are alive, they’ll need relief. If not—we’ll need to stop the enemy advance.”