Bravo, Charlie and Delta flights aimed themselves toward the still-surviving Meme bases on Ganymede, Callisto and Europa, while Vango and Alpha flight accelerated to maximum in order to become visible to the enemy first. By the time they came over Jupiter’s horizon, they had achieved high escape velocity and centrifugal force overcame the gas giant’s gravity. The seven StormCrows rose inexorably upward, and as they did, five more orbital weapons platforms came into view.
“Alpha flight, all ships, Fox One.” Long ago, the Fox number, One or Three especially, referred to the type of missile being launched from an air-to-air fighter, but the convention had evolved to simply mean “Fire the missile,” rather like “Fire in the hole” meant something was about to explode.
Seven nuclear missiles released from the StormCrows and, a moment later, seven fusion engines lit, driving the heavy weapons at more than one hundred Gs toward their targets. “Fox Two,” Vango called, and the process repeated. Now his birds were clean, each with two hundred tons less mass to drag around, fit to dogfight.
Two missiles streaked toward each of the five weapons platforms and the other four missiles splayed out toward the positions of unseen targets around Jupiter’s curve. Maybe they would get lucky and surprise the enemy. In any case they would keep the defenders busy.
Vango tried not to think of the humans manning these defense outposts. They would be the most reliable – or the most deluded – of enslaved people, probably young and never knowing freedom, fed propaganda from birth about how wonderful it was to be a part of the Meme Empire. They surely didn’t know it yet, but this was a civil war, a war of liberation.
Vango steeled his heart against the ugliness. “All right, boys and girls, let’s cause some trouble. The other flights should be Fox One in less than thirty seconds.” Vango kicked Weaver around into a screaming turn, burning fuel at a prodigious rate as his fusion engine held him pointed ninety degrees to his changing flight path, rotating continuously. This threw him into a three-dimensional corkscrewing power slide, making engaging him a matter of extreme chance. The rest of his pilots followed.
His HUD gave him innumerable targets as near-Jupiter space filled with the materiel of war. Hypers converged on him by twos and threes, railgun bullets and beams crisscrossed his path, and Meme Sentry drones dropped their stealth and took up attack postures, launching more hypers. Vango cranked up his time sense to maximum, and the universe slowed to a crawl. Now he had all the time in the world to twitch Weaver’s nose left and right, lining up for perfect shots on anything in range. Drones, hypers, and the odd stingship fell to his centerline maser, his strafing run limited only by the molasses-slow buildup of power in his capacitors, stuck in realtime. If ever the Crows could be converted to antimatter powerplants as Commander Ekara wanted, what wonders of combat flying he could perform!
Higher and higher Vango led his flight, even when Lily “Cupcake” Martin vanished in a burst of plasma as something, maybe a lucky railgun bullet, converted her StormCrow into vapor. She’d paid the price as they performed their mission, drawing fire and defenders away from the other flights, giving them that extra few percent chance to get their missiles through. Vango told himself that with fourteen nukes at each Meme base coming in by surprise over Jupiter’s horizon, at least one should make it to strike each.
Vango realized he wouldn’t know the outcome for some time, as the bulk of Jupiter remained between him and the rest. Only Conquest, on her perch over the pole, could see everything at once, and she was sixty light-seconds away. Add that two-minute radio round trip to the time sense compression and he might as well not worry about anything but his own fight. His HUD received periodic updates, but they seemed ages apart.
The waiting ended as stingships, hypers and railgun bullets chased the six survivors out into the black of interplanetary space and Vango was able to let his time sense catch up to reality. He had the grim satisfaction of seeing four of the five orbital platforms explode in atomic fire, mitigated only by the sense of waste. Those were real people manning those satellites, and each one he killed pushed humanity a step closer to extinction.
Chapter 6
Aboard Jupiter’s Empire Sentinel Two, Sergeant Emilio Tama looked up from his console at the lieutenant, aghast. “The traitors have destroyed four more Sentinels, sir. That makes ten so far.”
Lieutenant Victor Cheng nodded stiffly from where he stood at Tama’s elbow. “Do not lose heart, Sergeant. The Empire will prevail.” He glanced over at the commander of this Sentinel orbital fortress, Captain O’Rourke, who stood silently staring at the tactical display.
That readout mapped the Jupiter system in exquisite detail, which made the defense’s losses all the more painful. Not only had this sector lost nearly half its Sentinels, but three of the four Empire bases had been vaporized by the forbidden thermonuclear weapons of the rebels, and the main command center on Io was under assault. Cheng’s horror at the loss of Meme and Blend life was only sharpened by the doubt gnawing at his vitals.
Cheng had always been loyal to the Empire. Only the most dedicated Underlings gained such prestigious postings as this, with the awesome responsibility of controlling defensive weapons systems. He’d been well educated on the dark times before the Empire had arrived to bring peace and enlightenment to humanity, putting an end to its fractiousness and strife.
Now, everyone lived in harmony. Everyone knew his place – Meme, Blend, and Underling, fulfilling the natural order. This, Cheng had been raised to take as gospel.
Why then did the doubts gnaw at him?
Cheng patted Tama on the shoulder before walking over to stand next to O’Rourke. “What do you think, sir?” he eventually asked.
“I think we are losing this fight,” O’Rourke said even more quietly. “The rebel’s dreadnought is a ghost, moving from place to place at will, and even the Weapons on Luna failed to destroy it. They have dozens of nuclear missiles and we have none. We have lost half our defensive strength. The Yellows and those of the Pure Race are dead or soon to be. In return, we have destroyed a few fighters, and only because it seems the enemy is being less than ruthless.”
“Less than ruthless?”
O’Rourke turned to Cheng. “With the power they have displayed, the rebels could have taken their time and wiped all twenty-four Sentinels out before starting on the main bases. Instead, they seem to be sparing us unless we threaten them directly.”
“What does that mean, sir?”
O’Rourke stared at Cheng for a long, long moment, searching his eyes before leaning over to speak in his ear. “It means we may be on the wrong side.”
Within Cheng, a lifetime of indoctrination warred against the facts, and against curiosity about the rebel humans, the ones not under the Empire’s rule. He knew Underlings should be happy with their lot, but he also knew he had little chance to ascend. A post like this, or perhaps to become a member of a communal council, was the highest he could expect. Real power was reserved for Blends, and the Pure Race above them. Suddenly, it seemed unfair.
Remembering the history classes and the documentaries of the bad old days, guilty fascination surged again in his mind. Instead of merely disgusting him as the stories of crime and misrule were meant to do, the tales also drew him in with their human drama and passion. Unlike the staid and boring times of today – up until the enemy appeared, anyway – the days when humanity ruled itself seemed to teem with opportunities for advancement and excitement, adventure and romance.
Cheng could see O’Rourke watching him closely, and he realized his commander had revealed himself with his question. Men had been executed for saying less, and now he must decide how to respond.
He thought about Delivery Worker Second Class Brenda Gleeson, and how her calves flexed as she rode her bicycle through the tunnels beneath the rebuilt city of York, England, where he had grown up. He remembered how their pairing had been denied by the Council on Mating and Breeding…and how shortly afterward he had been sent to man th
is orbiting Sentinel, so far from her lovely legs.
Brenda’s memory made Cheng’s decision surprisingly easy, and his heart hammered as he crossed the line. “I believe you are right, sir,” he breathed. “But we must be careful.”
O’Rourke nodded slowly, and took his hand from his jacket pocket. Cheng suddenly realized the captain’s sidearm was not in its holster. It must have been in O’Rourke’s hand, pointed at his belly in case of a wrong answer. Cheng looked around the small command center, thinking of the two dozen humans throughout the Sentinel station, and his guts churned again. Some would join them, but others would stay loyal to the Empire, and would have to be dealt with.
Chapter 7
Absen watched with mixed feelings as the Aerospace missile strikes went home against the orbital weapons platforms. He’d ordered the missile fusing to detonate them farther away than normal in hopes of just knocking them out and sparing at least some survivors. He was less conflicted as weapons struck the three moon-based Meme command centers, vaporizing them in bright expanding balls of stripped ions and particles. Those were manned mostly by Purelings. “Excellent,” he said aloud in relief, and then glanced a question toward Scoggins at Sensors.
“Sorry, sir,” she said. “I don’t have anything on the assault landing. They should already be down, but the rock and the plasma is blocking the view and cutting off all signals.” She turned toward Rick Johnstone at CyberComm.
Rick shrugged apologetically, worry creasing his face. “She’s right. I got no contact. They’re on their own.”
Absen sat back stoically, wishing he could do something that mattered. Ford continued to take desultory potshots at any target that presented itself, but at this range hits were few and far between. Even the Weapon below would hardly have been able to light a match at twenty million klicks.
“Bring us in on conventional drive to five million, outside of the Weapon’s targeting arc,” Absen said. Maybe the flare of Conquest’s engines would attract some fire away from the Crows, though those should be rapidly running away to rendezvous in deep space with the grabships and the refueling pinnace Conquest had dropped off hours ago.
At least at five million klicks Conquest’s weapons might do a bit more than tickle the enemy. He’d settle for blinding them, disrupting their systems, hopefully leaving humans intact. It wasn’t a body count he wanted: it was hearts and minds. This assault was ultimately more about recruiting reinforcements than it was a military operation.
***
“Ten seconds!” Bull heard Flight Warrant Butler snap over the Marine frequency. “Breach is open and clear, but we got no data on the LZ.” The assault sled shuddered and bucked with hard deceleration.
“Crash protocols,” Sergeant Major Repeth ordered. In response, seventy-eight suits of Avenger battle armor froze in place, clamping down on the bodies of the Marines and Ryss inside them.
“Taking fire,” Butler snarled as he wrenched the assault sled down to a slewing, shuddering slide across the subterranean floor of the enemy base. Something caught the edge of the heavily armored shuttle and it rolled several times, finally coming to rest upside-down and half buried in a bulkhead.
“Everyone out, go go go!” Bull roared into the comm as his suit came under his control again. The rear of the sled opened like a flower with four petals. One petal dropped to the floor while the other three spread wide, allowing easy exit. The front could do the same, but right now it was obstructed.
Bull rolled to his feet and watched as the rest of the command squad did the same. He let Reaper get the people moving as he checked the overall HUD picture.
“Come on, Massimo, get moving,” Reaper grunted as she helped the heavy weapons team leader unbolt his semi-portables from what was now the overhead. In the light gravity, the lack of dexterity from her gauntlets counted more than the mass of the crew-served weapons. “Butler, get that Recluse up.” The big spider-shaped battle drone, folded into its external pod, was the closest thing they had to an armored vehicle.
“We’re upside-down, Reap,” Butler replied. “The sled’s sitting on top of it.”
“Let’s fix that, shall we?” Repeth replied. “You four – yes, you, you, you and you,” she pointed, “and you too, Bull, get out and grab the edge of the sled. We’re going to roll it over.” Like people tipping a ground car, the six lined up and slid their armored hands beneath it. “All together, one, two, three, lift.”
Servos groaned as six tons of powered armor, backed by the Marines’ internal cybernetics and nanotechnology, levered the heavy sled upward. Had Io’s gravity not been approximately that of Luna, about one sixth of a G, this would have been impossible, but they manhandled the vehicle, rolling it crunching over wreckage until it fell with a crash onto its long ferrocrystal skids.
Exposed and free, the armored blister housing the Recluse battle drone burst open as Butler blew its explosive bolts, and the mechanical spider unfolded itself to stand next to the personnel carrier. It lifted one of its two small waldoes to wave, and then unlimbered a heavy pulse cannon and spun it around in a three-sixty as Butler tested out its systems. “Good to go,” the pilot said.
Suddenly an explosion knocked down one of Massimo’s gunners, and Bull dove for cover, his plasma rifle belching sunfire while the rest of the Marines hit the deck. “Reaper, Massimo, get those semis working while I cover you!” Looking through his HUD, Bull fired and moved toward the next sled, where line Marines already blazed away into the haze from kneeling positions. He tried to tell what they were shooting at even as carets appeared in front of his eyes marking the enemy positions, the suit’s systems backtracking the shots. Behind him, the Recluse picked its way over the rubble, its gun swiveling to fire above the big Marine’s head.
In front of him, one of Bull’s Marines spun and fell, her weapon and the arm holding it blown to bits by some kind of high-velocity shell. The hard suit would tourniquet the limb, pumping her full of drugs and extra nano. In a few minutes, she should be back on her feet, and assuming she survived the next hour or two, in a few months she would have her arm back, courtesy of the Eden Plague.
“Keep low and use your HUDs, diggers,” Bull snarled as he took his own advice, placing his targeting reticle over the caret marking the source of incoming fire. Triggering a long burst, he was rewarded with a secondary explosion as something, probably a powerpack, blew. “Trust your active sensors and keep firing,” he continued.
Conquest’s railgun-plus-particle-beam sledgehammer had ignited everything flammable just as expected, filling the enemy base with thick, oily smoke. Bull’s surroundings continued to clarify as sonar, radar, IR lidar and several other sensors pumped energies into the burning haze. Friendlies flickered like ghosts to his left and right, while squat ugly shapes moved in front of him.
“Reaper, we got some kinda tanks out here,” Bull commed as he fired another long blast of blue plasma. The ravening flame washed over the armored vehicle nosing through the gloom just before it swiveled its turret toward him. Pulse cannon shots from the Recluse hammered at the enemy, but its front glacis shrugged off the fire. Its antipersonnel rounds knocked Marines over, but the new battlesuits seemed tough enough to take it.
“Down!” Bull yelled as the tank’s main gun spoke. Its high-explosive shell struck the ground and threw him several meters to the left. His head rang and he saw double, bruised all along his side. “They’re using HEAT,” he groaned, surprised they would face such low tech as high explosive anti-tank shells. On the other hand, old-fashioned high-velocity tank guns were rugged, much more so than railguns, and a straight-on hit from one would kill just as dead as something fancier.
“Anti-armor teams, engage,” he heard someone order as he struggled to clear his head. As far as he could see on his HUD as he lay there, the enemy tanks had survived the immolating fire, but he saw no enemy infantry, nor even war drones. The sledgehammer had done its work.
Needles stabbed him and his suit pumped a speedball cocktail of
stim, painkiller and nutrient solution into his veins. His head cleared after a moment and his heart hammered as if it would burst, but at least it put him on his feet again.
Several rocket teams fired, striking the enemy tanks but not stopping them. Their guns might be outdated, but the tanks’ armor was thick, much thicker than mere battle suits. Marines had tanks, but there had been no way to bring any of their own along on a fast hot assault like this. The big carrier craft needed would not have made it down. Instead, the Marines relied on the attached heavy weapons team and the Recluses. The battle drone covering Bull sidled to the left, attempting to get a flank shot on the nearest tank.
“Come on, Reaper, we’re about to get massacred,” Bull called as he rolled to his knees and fired. He saw one digger blown apart from a direct HEAT round strike. The tanks must have their own sensors, probably thermal sights, and one had targeted a Marine using his own temperature differential.
Tracers work both ways, the old adage came to mind. Bull was just about to flame the tank in front of him again in hopes of blinding it for a moment when it shook to a tremendous blast that picked it bodily off the ground and tossed it on its side, a smoking ruin.
“How you like that, asshole?” came the gravely voice of Warrant Officer Krebs, one of the sled pilots.
“Was that a breaching missile?” Bull asked him.
“Damn skippy, boss. Didn’t need it to blast our way in, so…”
“Good thinking. Remind me to give you a medal if you live.”
“Always needin’ Aerospace to pull your nuts out of the fire, huh, sir?”
“Shut up, Krebs,” Bull replied. “Reaper –”
“We’re here, Bull,” came Reaper’s voice as she strode up beside him. “Massimo should be opening up right about now. I’ll fill in while you get this mob organized.” Bull realized that he had been getting too involved in the firefight and had lost control of the overall picture.
Conquest of Earth (Stellar Conquest Series) Page 3
