by Ian Douglas
As for “TJ” Mathers, he’d been a very raw and very green j.g. at Rasalhague, a major in command of a battalion at Hecate, and a colonel in command of a regiment at Sturgis’s World. His military career spanned thirty years, almost the entirety of the Sh’daar Interstellar War.
He’d received command of MSU-17, the battlegroup’s fleet Marines, just before the Defense of Earth. His command now included some twelve thousand men and women embarked on the assault carriers Nassau and Vera Cruz, and he realized now that there was a very good chance that it would be up to him to end the Sh’daar War once and for all, here and now.
That he might lose that war this afternoon had occurred to him as well, but he wasn’t going to focus on that. His Marines, packed like sardines into the battlegroup’s two assault star-carrier transports, had, over the past six months, been dragged from Sol to Eta Boötis to Arcturus to Alphekka to HD 157950 to Texaghu Resch and finally here. They’d seen some action at both Arcturus Station and at the alien manufactory at Alphekka, but most of that time had been spent cooped up in the transport squad bays or in their sleeper tubes, waiting out the watches while the Navy grabbed the credit.
But now they had a definite target.
“All Crocs are ready for boost,” the voice of Colonel John Murcheson said over Mathers’ link. “Just give us the word.”
“Roger that,” Mathers replied. “Stand by.”
The light assault carrier Nassau was slowing as she approached AIS-1. The dwarf planet was clearly visible now ahead, a tiny black disk against the diffuse glare of the Six Suns, and showing a faint cometary tail streaming out away from the blue giants. The ice surface of the world, evidently, was rapidly vaporizing, giving rise to a thin but intensely violent and temporary atmosphere. That could make the final approach interesting.
Two points of blinking light indicated the locations of the two Navy pilots being held on that world . . . or at least the locations of their fighters. Whether either or both were alive or dead was anyone’s guess at this point.
But the assault force wasn’t going in just for them.
“Captain Bradford,” Mathers said. “We are ready for disembarkation. Please cease ship deceleration.”
“Aye, aye, General,” the Nassau’s CO replied. “Nassau is now under free drift.”
“Colonel Riley,” Mathers said. “You may begin your launch.”
“Aye, aye, sir. Nightwings are go. Initiating drop.”
VMA-12, the Nightwings, was the Marine close-support attack squadron embarked on board the Nassau, numbering twelve GGA-20 Nightshade grav-assault gunships. The gunships were essentially two-seater Marine fighters built around massive KK railguns. They were capable only of twelve Gs of acceleration, and so weren’t any good at ship-to-ship combat, but they excelled at ground support operations with their fellow Marines. Every Marine a rifleman first was an ancient adage going back to pre-spaceflight days. Riley and his Nightwings took a great deal of pride in that claim; it just happened that their rifles were a bit larger and more powerful than most. . . .
On his monitors, Mathers watched the oddly buglike, black Nightshades dropping from their launch tubes. As the last fell clear of Nassau’s shield cap and began boosting toward the planet, he re-linked with Colonel Murcheson, the commanding officer of the MSU’s ground-assault Marines. “Okay, Colonel,” Mathers told him. “Coming up on Croc release in twenty seconds.”
“Copy, General.”
“Stick to your oplan, Colonel. Rescue those Navy zorchies if you can, but your priority is to grab both Blue and Gold and establish solid defensive perimeters around them. Everything else down there is fair game.”
“Got it, General. Semper fi!”
“Semper fi, John.”
Crocodiles, Marine combat landing/boarding craft, were bulky, stubby craft designed to get Marine assault teams on board an enemy warship or orbital station, or to insert them onto a landing zone on a hostile planet. Each carried forty fully armed and armored Marines. Nano docking collars mounted forward could meld with enemy pressure hulls and gain entrance without depressurizing the target; for planetside debarkations Crocodiles used ventral thrusters to come down on broadly splayed landing legs. Massive dorsal turrets provided close fire support, and could transform the landing craft into a semimobile fortress or gun platform once the Marines were ashore.
The winking lights of emergency tracking transponders on two missing navy spacecraft had identified two targets on the dwarf planet’s surface, code-named Blue and Gold. Located about three hundred kilometers apart, those structures were the biggest things on AIS-1, and had to be important.
Koenig had put it succinctly during their planning earlier for the Bright Thunder option: Grab the enemy by his balls and don’t let go. . . .
“Croc release in five seconds,” Mathers said. “Four . . . and three . . . and two . . . and one . . . go!”
Twelve CL/BC-5 Crocodiles slid from Nassau’s rotating flight decks, dropped into assault formation, and began their ponderous acceleration toward the objective.
“Assault craft are free and under acceleration, Captain,” Mathers told Bradford. “You may resume deceleration.”
And Nassau began slowing once more, sliding down the lines of grav-twisted space behind her death-dealing offspring.
CIC
TC/USNA CVS America
Omega Centauri
1606 hours, TFT
“We seem to have our pick of targets, Captain,” Koenig told Buchanan. “You may fire at your discretion.”
“A target-rich environment, Admiral. Aye, aye.”
America’s CO gave the order, and the twin launch tubes running down the star carrier’s spine and emerging at the center of her shield cap loosed a pair of hivel rounds, high-velocity kinetic-kill impactors that streaked silently into the void. The target was a large and sprawling deep-space facility perhaps four thousand kilometers distant, at which a number of large ships of alien design were moored. The first two rounds were followed by two more, then two more again, a double string of impactors hurtling toward the distant target at 14 kps.
They would reach their target in seven minutes, forty-five seconds.
Enemy ships were beginning to converge on America and her consorts, rising from the three dwarf planets or casting free from nearby orbital facilities and accelerating toward the battlegroup. America’s fighter contingent was rising from the looming white sphere of AIS-1, joined now by incoming fighters from the still-distant United States of North America, the Invincible, and the Jeanne d’Arc, deploying to attack the incoming enemy vessels.
The capital ships accompanying America were deploying as well. The Badger, the Wolverine, the Lunar Bay, and the Frederick der Grosse were all now accelerating toward the two knots of twisted space in the distance—almost certainly the tunnel mouths of two different TRGA-like gateways, designated by the tactical teams as TRGA-2 and TRGA-3. Koenig didn’t want the Sh’daar using those to funnel in large numbers of ships from elsewhere; by posting a frigate and a heavy cruiser at each tunnel mouth, Koenig hoped to create the same sort of bottleneck defense the battlegroup had faced at their entry into Omega Centauri.
The destroyers Fitzgerald and Adams were maintaining station to either side of America, covering the carrier. The railgun cruiser Kinkaid and three more destroyers, Lowe, Rodney, and Clymer, were coming up astern, moving toward orbit around AIS-1.
Particle beams reached out from the dwarf planet’s surface. White fire and lightning splashed from America’s gravitic shields, and the ship shuddered with the impact. No serious damage, but that would be only the first hit of many.
Kinkaid was slamming hi-vel rounds into the planet’s surface from several thousand kilometers out. The surface of AIS-1 was almost completely obscured now by swirling clouds, illuminated by the brilliant starlight on its night side, reflecting the arc-harsh blue-white dazzle of the Six Suns on the other. Each KK round impact lit the swirling clouds from below, and vaporized more tons o
f ice to add to the growing atmosphere.
“Make to Kinkaid,” Koenig told his AI. “Cease fire on the primary objective.” The Marines were getting close, and he didn’t want to score an own goal. Friendly fire, as the ancient aphorism had it, was not.
“Transmitting, Admiral.”
“And link me through to the Agletsch. Are they on-line?”
“As you directed, Admiral. The Agletsch are on-line.”
“We are here, Admiral Koenig,” Dra’ethde’s voice said.
“Are you picking up anything from over there?”
“We have sensed nothing yet, Admiral,” Gru’mulkisch told him. “The Sh’daar Seed is silent, at least so far.”
“If you can raise anyone on the other side,” Koenig said, “do so. This time around, I’d rather talk than fight.”
“We will do what we can,” Dra’ethde said.
It was a long shot, using the two Agletsch on board as negotiators with the Sh’daar, but the battlegroup had few options. Once the Marines grabbed hold of those facilities on the surface of AIS-1, they would be able to hold them for a time, but sooner or later the full weight of the Sh’daar defenses would come crashing down on the battlegroup, and there would be nothing any of the Confederation forces could do to stave off eventual total and abject defeat.
They had to get the Sh’daar to talk. . . .
Commander Marissa Allyn
Over AIS-1
Omega Centauri
1608 hours, TFT
“Break high, Commander! Two on your six! Break high!”
With Colllins’ shrill warning screaming in her head, Allyn urged her Starhawk into a tight vector change, twisting around the ship’s projected singularity so tightly that tidal stresses tore at her body, and the fighter’s nanomatrix hull shuddered and bucked. Two enemy fighters followed the maneuver, closing now to within fifty kilometers. They were complex-looking spacecraft, all angles and jutting parts and flat panels, glittering craft unlike any Allyn had ever seen.
Using the torque from her course change to assist, she spun her Starhawk, facing aft, as she hurtled tail-first above the cloud-wreathed face of AIS-1. They’d been rising above the dwarf world’s day side when a cloud of Sh’daar ships, fighter-sized and swarming like hornets, had emerged from the cloud deck.
“I’m on them,” CAG Wizewski’s voice called. “Fox One!”
“So am I!” Allyn yelled back. Dropping the targeting cursor over the nearest enemy ship, she let her AI lock on target and trigger a pulse from her PBP-2. On her optical feed, the magnified image glowed a dazzling white, then exploded in a sharp, silent flash. Seconds later, Wizewski’s Krait missile detonated alongside the second fighter, the fireball engulfing the craft in an instant and vaporizing it.
“Thanks for the assist, CAG,” Allyn called. She flipped her fighter again and began clawing for more altitude. Detonations across the surface of AIS-1 were beginning to trail off; the Marine assault craft were on their way in. Enemy fighters continued to rise from the clouds, however. Not all of the bases and facilities on the dwarf planet’s frigid surface had been hit in the scant minutes that had passed in the battle so far.
“I’ve got a possible target at coordinates plus seven-five by minus one-one-niner,” Donovan called. “Multiple bogies emerging from an ice mountain!”
A computer-drawn graphic, a sphere marked out in lines of latitude and longitude, rotated in a window in Allyn’s head. “I’ve got it,” she called. She was closest, had the best shot. The target was high in the planet’s northern latitudes, just beyond the suns-set terminator and uncomfortably close to the spot where Lieutenant Gray’s transponder signal was winking. The first Marine Crocodiles were already cutting into the tenuous newborn atmosphere over the nightside.
Her targeting cursor isolated the target area. Radar returns showed a surface facility at the base of a mountain of solid water ice less than a hundred kilometers from the planet’s north pole. Though it was still growing warmer, the surface of AIS-1 was still at around minus 155 Celsius. At those temperatures, water ice was literally as hard and as solid as rock. Target lock . . .
“Pass a heads-up to the jarheads,” Allyn told her AI. Then, “Fox One!”
She thoughtclicked an in-head icon, and a Krait missile tuned for a detonation of one hundred megatons dropped from her Starhawk’s belly and streaked toward the planetary horizon. . . .
Colonel John Murcheson
AIS-1
Omega Centauri
1609 hours, TFT
“Missile incoming, Colonel!” the Crocodile’s pilot called over the in-head comm link. “Brace yourselves back there!”
“You heard him!” Murcheson bellowed. Strapped into the narrow seats to either side of the assault transport’s payload bay, twenty to a side, the Marines of First Platoon, Alfa Company could only brace themselves against one another. The ride down had already been plenty rough. They’d launched three minutes ago, taking advantage of Nassau’s remaining velocity to swiftly close the remaining few thousands of kilometers between assault carrier and planet, planning on using the tenuous atmosphere for aerobraking. The local atmosphere was still vanishingly thin, so the shrieking winds outside, high-pitched and shrill, carried little force, but the Crocs had hit it at high speed and the shock had been a savage jolt transmitted through deck and hull, followed by an ongoing buffeting that had grown steadily more savage as they dumped excess velocity.
The slit, armored ports down the starboard side of the compartment lit suddenly with a ferocious radiance that grew swiftly brighter, then began to fade. Thirty seconds passed . . . and then the shock wave struck.
The Crocodile rolled and yawed wildly, the concussion ringing through the cabin with a deafening crash.
“Everyone okay?” Murcheson demanded as the thunder died.
A chorus of “okay,” “ooh-rah,” and “no problem” crackled back.
“Two more minutes, Marines!” Murcheson told them.
He wondered if that nuke had been a near-miss by an enemy warhead, or if one of the Navy zorchies had gotten a little too enthusiastic. No matter. They were still flying, and the bad guys hadn’t been able to knock them down yet.
He opened a window in his head, giving a view of the command deck forward and above, looking over the pilot’s shoulder. They were over the dark side of the planet, but rapidly approaching the dawn terminator. Visibility outside was almost nil as they descended through the cloud deck, but the computer painted a graphic outline of the objective ahead.
And then the clouds parted, and Murcheson saw the objective for the first time, a kind of castle with slanted walls and domed turrets, with slender spires and Gothic arches, a mix of architecture at once familiar and utterly alien.
He disconnected from the data feed as the Croc gave a short, sharp burst of deceleration. “Marines!” he shouted. “Go! Go!”
CIC
TC/USNA CVS America
Omega Centauri
1610 hours, TFT
“The first Marines have reached objective Gold,” Commander Sinclair told Koenig. “Nassau has entered orbit and the Choctaws have been released.”
“Good.” The Choctaw Type UC-154 shuttle was a monster orbit-to-surface transport. Far larger than the little Crocodiles, it carried nearly two hundred Marines and their equipment. In this case, four Choctaws off the Nassau were ferrying down the Marines’ heavy artillery—massive proton cannons that would turn their perimeters on the dwarf planet into fortresses.
They would have to hurry. The battle was slowly beginning to turn against the Confederation battlegroup.
It was a simple matter of numbers. Thirty-three capital ships and perhaps ninety-five fighters, all told, with no hope of reinforcements, were squared off against an unknown but very large force of alien warships. Sooner or later, most likely sooner, they would be overwhelmed.
An alien warship half a kilometer long, the mass of a heavy cruiser, was closing on America as the carrier drifted past AIS-1.
Energy beams clawed at the carrier’s shields, burning through at three key points. America returned fire with her midships particle-beam turrets, exchanging fire in deadly, silent, and invisible salvos. Fitzgerald and Adams began to maneuver in an attempt to place themselves between the enemy cruiser and the America. Bright flashes sparkled along Fitzgerald’s flank as screen projectors overloaded and burned out, but the enemy vessel had been hit as well, its blunt, massive prow cratering, then crumpling and peeling back under the concentrated combined fire from all three Confederation ships.
“The United States is coming in astern, Admiral. Range two thousand kilometers.”
“I see her.” With the damaged Abraham Lincoln remaining at the TRGA leading back to Texaghu Resch, the United States of North America was the only other large star carrier in the assault group, very nearly as massive as America herself. Normally, tactical doctrine demanded that carriers be held back out of the thick of ship-to-ship combat, that they be protected behind screens of frigates, destroyers, and cruisers. Their strike fighters were their primary weapons, and those fighters needed someplace to trap and recover at the end of the fight.
Conventional tactical doctrine had gone out the hi-vel launch tube, however, with Koenig’s decision to enter the habitable zone of the Six Suns. They would all stand together, and if they couldn’t force the Sh’daar to negotiate, they would all die together.
Silver-gray leaf ships were streaming out of one of the tunnels, from TRGA-2.
He could see them on a battlespace drone image being transmitted by Badger, which was now a hundred thousand kilometers from the tunnel mouth. The enemy had reacted to the battlegroup’s arrival too quickly, pushing the cloud of small fighters through before Badger and the Frederick der Grosse could close with TRGA-2 and get into a bottleneck position. The aliens were coming through in a seemingly unending stream, swirling together into a cloud that flashed and flared with reflected light from the Six Suns.
