“I always figured the way to a Marine’s heart was through his gun collection.”
* * *
“Ho, ho, ho,” Russell said, watching the company’s gunnery sergeants and a few trusted souls go scrounging in the Weapon Shop of the Gods.
Watching through his imp, of course. Nobody was about to trust one Corporal Edison in a warehouse stuffed full of exotic alien goodies. Hell, Russell wouldn’t trust himself in there. The temptation to pocket a few souvenirs would have been impossible to resist.
The armory was nothing like the impersonal ferroconcrete bunkers in which Russell had spent a good chunk of his life, mostly waiting in line to pick up or drop off stuff. Amazing how much time you spent waiting in line in the Corps. This room was about the size of a super-freighter’s cargo hold, a few kilometers long in other words, with a ceiling clearance of at least a hundred meters. Rows of stacks ran all the way up, hundreds of them, some big enough to fit a combat shuttle, other filled with weapon racks. It was a gun-bunny’s wet dream come to life.
“Are you in or out?” Gonzo asked him. He and a few other guys from the platoon were about to start a game of Texas Holdem.
“I’m out for now,” he said, surprising everyone, including himself. “I just want to see what we’re getting.”
Being in the company’s weapons platoon meant you got all the heavy stuff that was too good for ordinary grunts. Russell figured a lot of the goodies would end up in their hands. Of course, if the shit kept hitting the fan whenever Third Platoon was around, they would need every bit of special ordnance they got. The doctors had fixed all the damage he’d taken in the last few days, but he was in no hurry to get hurt again. The new armor and weapons might help him stay in one piece for a change. Not to mention some of those fancy guns might end up combat-lossed and turned into a tidy little profit once they got back to the World. He was looking forward to his performance bonus, but he wouldn’t mind supplementing it on the side. There was no such thing as having too much money, at least not in his experience.
Most of the stuff contained in the huge armory couldn’t be used by humans without some heavy modifications, but it looked like a lot was designed for species with opposable thumbs or equivalents. Made sense; just about every Class Two and many Class One species had hands and fingers. Russell watched greedily while the NCOs had their lackeys load up goodies into robotic cargo haulers. Single-shot missile launchers in a variety of flavors, including some sort of anti-personnel warhead that didn’t damage buildings or vehicles while subjecting any organic beings in its area of effect to lethal doses of short-lived radiation. Heavy lasers to replace SAWs and Alsies. Portable graviton cannon that would hole a tank with a single shot, or a cruiser’s hull for that matter. Self-propelled hand grenades with a better blast radius than a 100mm mortar bomb; they better be careful about those babies.
They were going to spend the next several days familiarizing themselves with the new gear instead of enjoying some well-deserved R&R, but at least it was going to be fun work. Even the Corps couldn’t make weapons training suck, at least not out in the field, far away from the remfie assholes who always managed to leech the joy out of every damn thing.
Funny how things turned out sometimes. A couple days ago, he’d been running around with a spear like he was fighting in the Crusades or something, and tomorrow his company would be the best-equipped Marine unit in the universe.
He only hoped they wouldn’t need to use their new toys until they were back with the battalion. This detached duty shit sucked.
Sixteen
His imp woke him up. Priority call.
A quick glance told Fromm how bad the situation was. He ordered General Quarters as he donned his uniform. Everyone could have used more rest, but they’d enjoyed a whole five days to heal and refit. The troops might even be bored by now, if it wasn’t for the new weapons training they’d been getting.
They might have to put those lessons to use, he thought as he rode a conveyor car to the improvised Command Information Center for the newly-renamed Starbase Malta.
They’d picked the new name (pending approval from the government when and if they reestablished contact) because nobody was going to fly a US flag from a Habitat for Unique Diversity. Malta’s historical context as a highly-fortified island standing astride a major trade route fit the current situation rather well.
On the other hand, the historical Malta had been seized numerous times by assorted conquerors. He hoped the name didn’t turn out to be a bad omen.
The CIC was the simulated Situation Room the Tah-Leen had made for the American delegation, with a few improvements. The holotank and screens the Snowflakes had used to show off their blood games was now being used as a tactical display. Fromm took a seat after pouring himself a cup of Navy coffee, black, no sugar. Everybody else was drinking the same, smoking cigarettes, or both, except for Sec-State, who was an old-fashioned puritan about such things and contented herself with drinking distilled water while wrinkling her nose at the puffs of smoke rising all around her.
They were going to need all the chemical help they could get. Fromm saw nothing but bad news displayed on the holotank and his own imp projections.
“We have an incoming warp transit due to emerge in three hours,” Heather reported. For the time being, she was the base’s unofficial administrator; God knew nobody else could run the place. “The emergence point is at the maximum allowed distance, two light seconds from the habitat. Given the transit times involved and tentative sensor readings, our best guess is that it’s a Lamprey task force, a minimum of six vessels, maximum twelve, including one capital ship.”
“Why wouldn’t they arrive further out?” General Gage asked. Standard procedure for warships was to emerge into normal space at least several light hours away from the mouths of warp valleys, despite the greater energy costs and risks involved. That was the only way their arrival wouldn’t be detected hours before they completed their transit.
“The Tah-Leen have a way to make warp jumps impossible outside established FTL emergence points,” Heather explained. “We still don’t know how; we don’t even know if the system or gizmo in question is still operating.” There was a clear note of frustration in her voice. “We’re like a bunch of schoolchildren playing around in the bridge of a starship. We haven’t begun to understand where all the controls are, let alone what they do.”
“I know you’re doing your best, Ms. McClintock. Please continue.”
“Thank you, and my apologies for that outburst, Madam Secretary. As things stand, the Lhan Arkh will not attempt a deep space insertion. My guess is that they intend to approach the habitat and demand to speak with their diplomats.”
“At which point they will notice their dreadnought is gone, and will see my ships arrayed around the station,” Captain Benchley said via remote communication. She was on a shuttle headed back to the task force whose destroyers’ ten-inch popguns were the only heavy weapons the stations new owners could field against an invading force.
“The jig, as they used to say, is up,” General Gage said. The words sounded like a death sentence.
“And we haven’t had any luck reactivating the habitat’s weapon systems,” Captain Benchley added. Fromm wasn’t sure if there was a tone of reproach in the officer’s words or if he was just imagining it.
“About the only good news is that we have full shields now,” Heather said. “Three layers, each more powerful than the last, extending a hundred and fifty, fifty and zero-point-one kilometers from the surface of the habitat, respectively.”
“Hope we don’t need them,” Gage said. “We’ll try to bluff our way out of this, but we will prepare for the worst.”
“I’ll do my best, General,” Sec-State told him before turning back to Heather. “Are the VR filters ready?”
“Yes, Madam Secretary. You will look and sound like a Lamprey.”
In the last five days, over a hundred civilian ships had transited through Xanadu, belo
w average traffic for the star system. The orbital docks spinning two light seconds away from the habitat were fully automated. When communications were necessary, the ships had been contacted by computer-generated images matching their species. All in all, Starbase Malta had generated half a billion GCUs of profit and the alien vessels had come and gone without any idea the system had changed hands. That was about to change, unless Sec-State managed to pull off a small miracle.
The next three hours were spent in tense preparations. Fromm monitored the internal defenses: two infantry platoons reinforced by a company of robot guards surrounded the habitat’s only active power plant. Third and Fourth Platoons and another robot company were near the improvised quarters the Americans were using as temporary residences, acting as a mobile reserve. Finally, a platoon of Navy master at arms, thirty men from the Secretary of State’s protective detail and another hundred-and-twenty robots guarded the fabber facility as it kept churning out more ammo and gear. Those three hundred and sixty robots were all they had been able to activate; most of the Tah-Leen machines had been destroyed during the takeover. Unfortunate, but it had been necessary at the time.
The possibility of ground assault was very real. Installations on fixed orbits were one of the few targets Starfarers occasionally attacked via boarding actions. The treasure-trove the Tah-Leen facility represented was too tempting a target to merely destroy. He and Heather had laughed about it because the idea of a short battalion defending a habitat of that size was ridiculous. On the other hand, most of the station was empty. The Lampreys were welcome to wander around what were mostly lifeless ruins.
Everybody was in position by the time a series of warp emergences were detected. The Lamprey task force came out singly and spread out; that was the best way to prevent accidents during the several minutes of incapacitation that followed a lengthy transition. Eight ships, including a dreadnought.
Eventually, the aliens hailed the habitat. The tooth-filled maw of a Lhan Arkh Second-Class Spacer Representative – their equivalent of a Rear Admiral – appeared in the holotank.
“In the name of the Lhan Arkh Congress and People, I request to speak with Syndic Boosha,” the Spacer Rep said in what was fairly polite language for the Lampreys.
“Syndic Boosha is unable to come to the comm,” Sec-State said pleasantly, letting the base’s translation and visual filter system render her words in the proper Lhan Arkh forms. “The delegation left Xanadu several days ago.”
“That is a patent falsehood. None of their vessels arrived at Shoorash System.”
“Accidents do happen, unfortunately. Perhaps their vessels were lost during transit, in which case we offer our sincere condolences.”
“I ask again. Where is Boosha?”
“I cannot answer that question.”
“More easily discerned lies. You have seventeen minutes to produce Syndic Boosha or we will board your station, using force if necessary.”
“Please stand by,” Secretary Goftalu said before shutting off the channel. “Well, that doesn’t give us a lot of time.”
“They sound much too sure of themselves, considering Xanadu’s reputation,” General Gage said. “They know bigger fleets than theirs, by which I mean not just that flotilla but their entire navy, have been destroyed by the Tah-Leen. They know something is going on.”
“One of the civilian freighters passing through might have noticed something was amiss,” Heather suggested. Her face was twisted in concentration while she tried to do multiple things at once. “They could have picked up some comm chatter during the takeover.”
“In which case this is probably a reconnaissance in force, to find out if the Tah-Leen are still in charge.”
“That’s a big gamble, putting a second dreadnought in harm’s way.”
“Not that big,” Captain Benchley explained. “That’s an old Communal Property-class. Positively ancient: one of the first capital ships they built after achieving Starfarer status, and barely deserving of the classification. The escorts are equally outdated. This is a throwaway formation.”
“Well, let’s see if we can bluff a little while longer. Wait until the time is almost up, then open a channel.”
Soon enough, the ET’s none-too-pretty pseudo-head reappeared in the holotank, its shoulder-mounted eye stalks swiveling in every direction like a pair of angry snakes.
“Where is Boosha? I will not ask again.”
“Boosha is not here. The Lampreys are no longer welcome in Xanadu System,” Sec-State said, deliberately using the slang term for the aliens. “You have seventeen minutes to leave peacefully. Stay and be destroyed.”
“You will be dead in seventeen minutes, American scum!”
Guess the jig is well and truly up, Fromm thought.
Things were about to get interesting again.
* * *
“Enemy order of battle as follows,” the Tactical Officer of the USS Ataturk said. “One dreadnought, Communal Property-class; three Lynch Mob light cruisers; and four Class Consciousness destroyers, configured for point-defense.
“That’s a pretty pathetic lineup,” Captain Naomi Benchley said in a confident tone that was about sixty percent feigned. At age seventy-nine, a grandmother of thirteen strapping boys and girls, she’d seen a lot, both in and out of the Navy, and she was utterly unimpressed with what she saw on the tactical screen. The only problem was that she was even less impressed by her own squadron. “We could probably take them even if we didn’t have the mother of all space fortresses watching our backs.”
“Yes, ma’am,” her XO agreed. “The throw weight of that so-called dreadnought, even with upgrades, is about the same as one of our new light cruisers. Eight thirty-centimeter plasma guns and no graviton weapons; their secondaries are all low-yield lasers. The cruisers are even worse off, and the destroyers are only good for catching missiles. They might be useful anti-fighter platforms, too. Except we don’t have any fighters to throw at them.”
“Unless Major Zhang can get that flying skeleton to work, that is.”
“That’s true, ma’am.”
Benchley wasn’t sure she wanted a ship that was made out of a sophont’s bones to join in the fight. The whole concept disgusted and disturbed her. She had to admit they needed all the help they could get, though. Bravado aside, her five destroyers might be able to destroy that antique dreadnought in about half an hour of continuous firing, but only if the target sat there and let them do so. Her missiles were a different story, if only she had enough anti-ship warheads to survive the enemy’s point defense. Unfortunately, her magazines were mostly filled with brand-new Interceptor defensive rockets. This was going to be like trying to kill a bear by stabbing it with icepicks. And the figurative bear was likely to object to the process.
“Range one-point-eight light seconds and closing.”
“Set targeting solutions for the squadron. Target is Sierra-Two.” One of the light cruisers. Killing it would be much easier, and they might as well whittle down the enemy force before tackling the big kahuna. “Engage at one light second.” Pretty long range for her guns, but she wanted to start in early.
The Lampreys were coming in at cruising speed, which meant they would reach that point in fourteen minutes, give or take a minute. The enemy didn’t wait that long, however. About five minutes into their attack run, they began to fire.
“Missile launch. Vampires inbound. Ninety-nine from the dreadnought, sixty each from cruisers, total Two-one-niner inbound.”
“Point defense?” the XO asked. Her squadron could easily pick off that entire volley long before it reached them.
“Negative. We’re behind three layers of shields, counting our ship defenses If they can’t handle a couple hundred missiles, we might as well find out. Shift all available power to the main guns.” That would increase the output of the destroyers’ grav cannons by a good thirty percent. That boost might be enough to punch through Sierra-Two’s force fields and armor, maybe even enough to do the sam
e to the dreadnought. With that advantage, they would do better than icepicks against this particular bear pack.
Traveling at one-hundredth of c, the missiles would cover the distance to her tightly-packed squadron in two and a half minutes. You normally didn’t want a swarm of ‘vampires’ to come your way without thinning out its numbers with your secondary guns, but she decided to risk it and trust the Tah-Leen shields.
“Second missile launch. Flagship only. Nine-nine additional bandits inbound.”
Each missile carried a multi-stage shaped-charge plasma warhead designed to pierce a warship’s force fields and armor before unleashing a heavy dose of hellfire on its interior. If those three hundred vampires reached her destroyer squadron, they’d do quite a bit of damage. She was taking a big leap of faith.
“Activate warp shields,” she ordered when the first volley was thirty seconds away. Not having her passive defenses up was too much of a leap of faith, even if warp shields added a whole extra level of stress to her crews. The view on the tactical screen – destroyers didn’t rate holotanks – flickered a bit as clouds of rippling space-time formed up around her ships. Warp shields protected some seventy percent of her destroyers’ surface area. Most missiles that got that far would be swallowed up by the dimensional tears without inflicting damage. Most but not all.
“Enemy is firing energy weapons.”
Traveling at just a hair under the speed of light, eight plasma packets struck the massive force fields extending some ninety miles ahead of DESRON 91. Blobs of light blossomed up in the distance, bright enough to be seen with the naked eye, if anybody felt like going outside to take a gander.
“No effect. Vampires arriving in ten, nine, eight…”
The lightshow when hundreds of ship-killers struck the invisible dome sheltering her formation was far more impressive. A wall of fire pushed up against the barrier; nearly doubling in size when the follow-up volley struck a handful of seconds later. Plasma flared up furiously for several moments before dissipating like the breath of an exhausted dragon.
Advance to Contact (Warp Marine Corps Book 3) Page 29
