The Marines were advancing one corridor at a time. There were only a handful, and Beretta had sent double that number to hold them at bay first, and then to kill them dead. But the corridor was negating the effect of his superior numbers. It came down to two or three rifles standing abreast. The Fleet Marines’ training and organization was proving more useful than the superior numbers of Beretta’s gang.
But all Beretta could do was send more gangsters, and more weapons. He had to hold the Marines off. As soon as he had the command codes, he could take total control of the Scorpio, and then the handful of Marines wandering the corridors would be of no concern. A few bulkhead blast doors closed here and an airlock opened there and Jack Forge and his squad would be blown out of the Scorpio, left floating among the stars.
Beretta clicked his fingers and called five of his gangsters over. They were dirty, sweaty, and unshaven, and all were carrying military-grade pulse rifles.
“I want you to intercept that group of Marines. Take the long way around and come at them from the side.” Beretta stepped over to the holostage and pointed at a section of the Scorpio’s corridor where he could trap and kill the Marines advancing on his position. “Come at them from this side,” Beretta said, his finger touching the green holoimage. “We are going to catch them in a crossfire in this corridor between the defensive positions here—” Beretta pointed again, his finger jabbing at the image. “—and you guys in this corridor here. Get this done quickly and I will make sure you are set up for life. You will want for nothing. Do you get me?”
The gangsters replied in gruff tones, indicating that they all agreed and approved of Beretta’s plan.
Beretta tapped the holoimage of the squad in the corridor. The red dots indicating their position expanded and showed the holoimage from the Scorpio’s surveillance net. Beretta pointed at Jack Forge.
“Kill him first,” Beretta said.
The gangsters agreed and moved off at a jog, filled with determination and enthusiasm, and an eagerness to kill.
Beretta looked at the image of Jack Forge as he fired at the gangster’s defensive position. Soon, Forge would be dead. Beretta would enjoy standing over the corpse of the Marine he hated more than any other man, dead or alive.
Beretta’s only regret was that he could not kill Jack himself.
He stepped back up to the command chair and continued his attempt to unlock the Scorpio’s systems.
Soon, he would have an interstellar warship under his command.
2
The wreck of the Scepter was still burning as the Skalidion builder drones moved in to begin devouring the enormous carrier. The drive systems were venting huge plumes of plasma fire from the ruptured main reactor, and the Scepter was tumbling through space scattering debris as it turned. Every fragment of matter from the enormous ship was seized upon and consumed by rasping bite by the builder drones. The main carcass of the once proud carrier was now swarming with hundreds of them, grinding away at the hull composite, breaking the material down, and gathering it.
Once fully laden with fresh matter, the drones raced back across Skalidion lines to the nest asteroid that waited far from the battle. Here the builders began to regurgitate the matter gathered from the broken wreck of the Scepter and laid it on the outside shell of the nest asteroid, extruding the captured matter through excretion glands to build the swarm queen’s nest. Every gram went to making the huge nest asteroid even bigger, creating more pods ready to gestate fresh Skalidion drones. Fighters, builders, observers, and nurses, all Skalidion drones hatched fully-formed and ready to take their place in the queen’s million-strong swarm.
Skoldra sat in the central chamber of her nest and watched the battle through the eyes of her forward observer drones scattered outside the battlefield. The huge carrier at the center of the human fleet was destroyed. It had been a powerful ship with powerful weapons that had destroyed many of her fighters in the first wave. Now with the largest ship destroyed, only the smaller fighting ships of the human fleet remained.
And they would be destroyed next.
The two biggest of the remaining fleet, the destroyers, were themselves huge weapons platforms and now were doing most of the damage to her swarm. But powerful as these ships were, they were nothing without the massive carrier vessel. All the human ships were on the run, falling back deeper into the blue giant star system toward a massive terrestrial planet.
Scattered amongst the two human destroyers were smaller craft. They were also powerfully armed and highly maneuverable, but they too were falling back, staying in formation with the two largest ships and laying down a defensive fire pattern to hold her swarm at bay.
But Skoldra had the numbers, and she had the determination to smash through the defensive fire and destroy the remaining warships. Beyond those warships lay the real prize: the unarmed civilian fleet that was falling back deeper into the system and gathering in orbit around the massive blue planet.
These civilian ships were larger even than the now-destroyed carrier, as large even as Skoldra’s nest asteroid. Some of these vast civilian craft were far ahead of the rest and already landing on the planet, while others were drifting and falling slowly toward it.
Soon, Skoldra would have destroyed the entire fighting fleet and all that would be left would be the civilian craft packed full with their live human cargo. A store of fresh human bodies for her to savor, for her to devour. This was all she craved. This was all she wanted now.
Skoldra quivered at the thought. She had tasted human flesh and craved more. She felt an urge to eat. She reached out and snatched a nurse drone as it scuttled by. The nurse drone chittered and squirmed as Skoldra picked it up, pressing it to her rasping mouth and devouring it. The nurse, like all other nurse drones, was Skoldra’s clone, her twin sister, prevented from growing too large by the queen’s dominant pheromone field. Skoldra felt no remorse at destroying the nurse and drinking in the soft tissue. If Skoldra was ever weakened, the nurse drones would eat her from the inside out and then fight to dominate the swarm. Skalidions were ruthless. That was how they grew their vast empires.
Skoldra wiped the fragments of nurse drone from her mouth. It was a brief fix for the craving she had for a fresh human. She would feast soon.
Skalidion swarm queens were programmed by nature to crave territory more than anything else. They butted up against each other’s space and created the vast Skalidion Empire that was ever expanding and consuming all before them. But Skoldra had tasted human flesh, and she had chased them across the stellar void, taking her far from her original territory and into this new region of the galaxy, all purely in pursuit of this delicacy. This feast.
Human corpses from the smashed Scepter were brought to her whole. All had been killed by the vacuum of space, in the explosion of their ship, or burned by Skalidion green fire. But at least these bodies were fresh. Skoldra snatched one from a builder that brought it into her central chamber and bit deeply. It erupted in flesh and gore as she pressed it to her rasping mouth. She pulled away, drunk on the flavor and on the power. There was nothing greater in the universe than the taste of human flesh.
3
Captain Bob Stuart sat in the command chair of the destroyer Canis. With the Scepter destroyed, the flag fell to him. He took the burden of responsibility without hesitation. There was no time to mourn the loss of the Scepter or its crew. There was no time to think. The fleet was in battle, and someone had to take command. It fell to Bob Stuart, Group Captain. He leaned forward in his command chair and looked at the battle displayed on the main holostage.
To call it a battle was incorrect. It was a rout. The Skalidions were winning.
Stuart opened a channel to the surviving ships of the fleet.
“All ships, form up on the Canis. It looks as if the Skalidions are more interested in the broken wreck of the Scepter than the rest of us right now, so we can take the opportunity to give them some fire. I want a combat drone launch from every ship with any availabl
e. Target the Scepter. The Skalidions are swarming all over it. We can vaporize a hundred thousand of those bastards while they are swarming over their kill. I knew Group Captain Tanaka better than many of you and I promise you, she would rather be turned to vapor than let the Skalidions consume her ship. You have my orders. Wait for the Canis to open fire first. Group Captain out.”
Stuart climbed down from the command chair and walked over to the fire control console. The officer standing there had already queued up a combat drone and loaded it into the Canis’s rear tube. He looked at his captain as Stuart stepped up beside him.
“I’ll take it from here,” Stuart said and stepped in front of the young officer. Stuart’s hand hovered for a fraction of a second over the holographic launch key. He tapped it and the button turned red, indicating the launch tube had fired its combat drone into the burning wreck of the Scepter and the thousands of Skalidion drones hovering around it like flies on a honeypot.
Stuart looked up to the main holostage on his command deck and watched the tracer lines of the combat drones racing away from the fleet towards the stricken wreck of the once-mighty carrier.
He stepped away from the fire control console and back to his command chair. He opened a channel to the fleet as he climbed up.
“All ships, fall back. Adopt a tight formation around the Canis and the Aquarius so we can concentrate our firepower. All hail cannon, throw up a kinetic hail curtain to protect our retreat.”
Bob watched the fleet fall into a tight formation. In the distance, the Scepter, and the Skalidions swarming all over it, were moments from total annihilation by the salvo of combat drones racing in. Before the drones reached their target, the fleet set up their defensive hail curtain. Huge blasts of kinetic hail shot out from every hail cannon battery, creating a vast curtain that hung between the fleet and the enemy.
As the combat drones closed in less than a meter from their target, their antimatter containment fields collapsed and released the small star-sized detonations. The detonations occurred in a synchronized blast that consumed the Scepter from her forward section to her drive. The Scepter was engulfed in a seething plasma fire that vaporized the hull composite and all the Skalidions around it. Within the massive blast of a dozen combat drones detonating in unison came a secondary explosion. One of the Scepter’s many reactors that had not yet succumbed to the punishment from the Skalidions finally gave way to the mercy kill from its own fleet. The rippling cloud of plasma ballooned out further as the reactor erupted.
Group Captain Bob Stuart watched the image on the holostage. The cloud of plasma cooled quickly in the void of space. And within that cloud, he could see movement. The fleet’s tac boats provided the flagship and the entire fleet with accurate, detailed sensor images of the wider battlefield. Already a fresh wave of Skalidion fighters was pouring forward to replace those destroyed by the blast. They came streaming through the cooling plasma fire where the Scepter once lay, racing toward the retreating fleet
The forwardmost Skalidion fighters slammed recklessly into the hail curtain and were destroyed instantly as they collided with the shimmering shards of the kinetic hail. But their destruction punched holes in the curtain, opening space for their fellows to come streaming through. Within moments, the hail curtain had utterly collapsed and the Skalidion fighters came racing in for the kill, their green fire weapons glowing and building, ready to give fire, the burning green that would vaporize the hulls of the remaining fleet warships.
The small command deck of the frigate was lit with the emergency lights as all power was diverted to battle systems. Commander Gerat Bale leaned forward in the command chair and looked at the small central holostage in front of the bank of command consoles.
The frigate was fully crewed, fully armed, and still had enough firepower and enough fight in her to take down many Skalidion fighters. But with the swarm still so huge, Bale was unsure if he could have any real effect on the outcome of the battle.
Lieutenant Ellen Ripper loaded another combat drone into the launch tube and prepped it to fire. She checked the functionality on the hail cannon and the main laser assembly. The ship was fighting well. But now they were falling back, and she needed to divert power to the main drive systems. The ship was operating well but was nowhere near its peak efficiency. Even so, the little battleship was still faster than the massive destroyers, and it was as maneuverable as the Skalidion fighters even at twice the size.
The holostage showed the massive Skalidion swarm as it came racing toward the retreating fleet. Orders from the Canis came in, instructing all ships to lay down a rolling barrage of kinetic hail. And then they heard the orders from the group captain himself, his voice coming over the main communicator and echoing around the frigate’s command deck.
“As soon as they are in range, lay down fire with all laser weapons,” the group captain said, his message relayed to all ships.
Ripper looked back at the Gerat Bale sitting in the command chair.
“If we hold formation, we are done for,” Ripper said. “I’m telling you, Gerat, inform the group captain. Tell him the small gunships are better used as strike runners. We are maneuverable, and fast. We can hit them on the flanks. We are not using half our capabilities lumbering along with the destroyers.”
“You think the group captain hasn’t thought of that?” Gerat asked, looking at the holoimage. He rubbed his chin, a clear sign of the stress he was feeling.
“He has been a destroyer captain for over ten years. He has been group captain for about ten minutes. He doesn’t know group tactics yet. I’m telling you we are fast, we are powerful, but we are wasted sitting in formation. We need to be released so we can engage them. Open a channel, Gerat, I’m telling you. Inform the group captain the frigates and corvettes need to engage, not fall back. Let the destroyers lay down the hail curtain and let the smaller gunships hit the Skalidions on their flanks.”
“We’ll be exposed,” Gerat said as he scratched at his unshaved face. “We’ll be vulnerable. It’s better if we stay with the fleet.”
Ripper pushed herself off her console and turned and faced Bale. She pointed behind at the holostage that was showing the Skalidion swarm blasting through yet another hail curtain.
“We are vulnerable now. We will be destroyed in a matter of moments if we keep just falling back. We can engage the Skalidions and evade their weapons if we are released from formation. And, if we are going to die anyway, I’d rather take some of those bastards with us.”
Ellen Ripper had grown in confidence under enemy fire where many had lost their heads. She was familiar with her frigate commander and although he wore a commander stripe and was her commanding officer, they had crewed together since the fleet first fled from their home world. They had crossed the stellar void together. They had faced battle together. Ripper was simply accustomed to speaking her mind.
“Contact the group captain and tell him. We need to use the frigates and corvettes offensively. It might make them pause in their attack, which might give the fleet a little more time to fall back. It’ll keep them off us for just a little bit longer. And that is all we can hope for at the moment, just a little bit more time. Look at them, Gerat. There are a million of them against a handful of old frigates and a couple of destroyers. We have even got the tac boats in the fight now. We are so kravin’ busted here, what’s the harm in trying to punch these bastards in the nose before they knock us on our ass?”
Bale tapped the controls on his armrest and opened a channel to the flagship. The holoimage of a communications officer aboard the Canis appeared on the main holostage.
“Put me through to the group captain right now,” Bale said.
And just as the communications officer on board the new flagship was about to complain, he was cut off and Group Captain Bob Stuart appeared.
“What is it, Commander Bale? And be quick, please,” Group Captain Stuart said.
“The frigate arm of the fleet is fast, sir,” Bale said, standi
ng and stepping toward the holostage. “My weapons officer tells me we can do more damage and have a greater impact if we are released from formation. I’ve been a frigate commander for a long time now and I’m well aware of the maneuvering abilities of these craft. Let us have a crack at the Skalidions, sir. If nothing else, we can buy you more time to establish an effective defense.”
Before Bale could continue making his case, Stuart held up a hand to silence him. Ripper leaned heavily on her console, shoulders hunched as she prepared to hear her orders from the group captain that they were to continue in formation with the combined fleet even though she knew they could have better effect if they were let off the leash.
Gerat stuck out his chin and prepared to take the refusal from the group captain.
“Agreed,” Stuart said. “I hope you are right. I’ll pass command of the frigate arm to you, Commander Bale. Good luck and good hunting. Go and punch them in the face and buy me some time to set up some sort of defense for the civilian fleet.”
The image of the group captain shrank away on the holostage and was replaced by the image of the fleet in formation and the Skalidion fighters slamming into another defensive hail curtain. A set of orders appeared on a small holofile giving Commander Gerat Bale authority over the entire frigate arm of the fleet, twenty frigates and corvettes under his direct authority.
He immediately climbed up into his command chair and called over to the communications officer to open a channel to all frigates and corvettes.
Bale sat down in the command chair and looked at the main holoimage of the fleet falling away to the blue planet and the Skalidion fighters punching their way through the hail curtain.
He split the frigate arm into two sections and allocated one to the port flank of the retreat and the other, including his own craft, to the starboard flank.
“All ships of the frigate arm, prepare to attack. Ready all weapons, maximum power to hull stability field, reactor output to maximum, and engage on their flank. Move in and hit them hard with all weapons, then drop back before they can get a shot on you. This is a hit-and-run operation. We don’t have the firepower for a toe-to-toe slugging match, but if we keep on our toes and keep those weapons firing, we can make a difference here today. My ship is the lead. Follow my maneuvers, but if you see an opportunity, take it. And do try and stay out of the fleet’s hail curtain. Bale out.”
Last Stand Boxed Set Page 20
