At twice the safe acceleration, the strain showed on Indomitable and Leviathan. The stress of pulling such a large and unwieldy load was too much for Tizer’s clever system of force shifters. Fragments of the harness snapped. Insecure pods drifted aft, battering the cargo array as they passed through. Unaware of the chaos their pods were causing, the Marines inside slept on. And still Indomitable and Leviathan accelerated even further beyond their safe limit.
Leviathan’s suffering worsened, outer fragments of her cargo array stripping away like layers of heat shield in a single-use dropship plunging through an atmosphere.
“Engineering, will Leviathan make it?”
“Impossible to say, Captain.”
“Odds of survival?”
CPO Plating paused. Loobie knew she could rely on the chief for a straight and considered answer. “Fifty-fifty.”
Merde! “Phuong, reduce your rate of burn increase.”
“Acknowledged.”
“But not too slow or you’ll be left behind and on the wrong vector.”
“Lengthening acceleration profile by another two minutes.”
The Sensor officer interrupted. “Two of our shuttles are deviating from their course.”
“On screen.”
Loobie cursed, when she saw the pilot IDs. Who else could it have been but Nhlappo’s orphans?
She established a link to the perpetual offender. “Flight Private Romulus, why are you deviating from your assignment?”
“That’s lucky,” replied Romulus. “I was just about to contact you. I’ve an idea about how to prevent the Leviathan from shedding her load.”
“This is not time for your theatrics, Romulus. All shuttle craft are ordered to retrieve personnel on EVA. Has the CAG not assigned you orders?”
Remus came on. “Sorry, Captain, but my brother is right for once, and CAG’s busy suiting up.”
Loobie nearly slapped Remus down. Genetically the two were Marines, but their attitude had all the ill-discipline of the Wolves. Just what she didn’t need in a time of crisis. Then she softened. Romulus was impulsive, charismatic, unreliable, and brilliant. Remus was the exact opposite in every way except brilliance. If anyone had a solution…
“This had better be worth my time,” Loobie warned.
“Order the captain of the Leviathan to release the outer harness levels. We’ll tow them up to speed using our Storks.”
The main screen showed Leviathan’s harness was failing at an ever-increasing rate.
“Probability of Leviathan’s destruction now 65%,” said the Engineering chief.
Loobie could think of a hundred problems with Romulus’s plan. How would the shuttles accelerate without burning the pods to slag and ripping the hulls of their craft to shreds? How would they reconnect to the Leviathan later?
But the display showing Leviathan ripping itself apart told her she currently had no viable options.
“Proceed!” she ordered the orphans, before ordering Phuong to release the outer layer of his load.
The transport’s captain must have had that option ready because a second later, explosive charges separated the upper and lower layers of the harness, each holding around a quarter of a million sleeping soldiers.
In the main screen’s view, the abandoned cryo pods appeared to be moving backwards at a walking pace that swiftly broke into a run as Leviathan boosted her acceleration.
Soon all three ships were pulling out of Tranquility’s orbit at a constant acceleration of 0.015g. With the acceleration steady, the stresses on the cargo arrays stabilized. The ships were safe for now.
The Storks flown by Romulus and Remus were configured for a ground attack role, but still had aft cargo grapples. They moved beneath two of the main attachment points for the abandoned upper section of the cargo array, hooked themselves up, and pulled.
It worked!
Cheers rang out around both CIC decks when they saw the abandoned sleeper pods beginning to overtake the mass carried by the larger ships.
The Storks detached themselves and went back for the other quarter of a million soldiers.
Romulus and Remus were such lucky chodders!
The situation was a frakked-up mess, all right, but if the two Storks repeated their success the squadron could get a safe distance away from Tranquility before figuring out how to reattach the outer cargo layers.
When Nhlappo’s boys started pulling the second load without incident, Loobie finally allowed her muscles to relax. They were over the worst.
“Marquez here, Captain. All personnel on EVA have been safely retrieved except for those stranded on the orbital elevator.”
“Thank you, XO. Organize a rescue party for the elevator car, and provide any assistance Ensign Dock requires to move scattered pods to the Antilles moonbase.”
“Acknowledged.”
“Comms, any news from the surface?”
“No, sir. We lost contact with the Colonel as she re-entered. A comms blackout is in effect across the planet. I can detect signals are being sent, but there is so much interference, I can’t even tell whether the signals are ours.”
What the hell was going on down there? The Hardits worried her. She’d never met one in person. The Marines who’d been stationed on Tranquility tended to consider the aliens with contempt, but Loobie wasn’t convinced. She’d read reports of the battles when New Empire rebels had risen up and overwhelmed the Old Empire forces on Tranquility. Hardit scientists and engineers had made the rebel victory possible. Human Marines considered Hardits to be inferior soldiers, but there were other ways to win a war than excelling in close quarters combat.
A sudden movement on deck snatched Loobie’s attention.
Something had made Ensign Anunwe, sit up suddenly. “Mader Zagh!” the Sensor officer cursed quietly.
“Ensign, calm yourself.”
“Sorry, Captain. I am detecting multiple nuclear blooms across Legion-held territory down on the planet.”
CIC had been professionally quiet. From quiet it went to utterly silent. No one spoke, moved or breathed until Lieutenant Charge, the Fire Control Officer, voiced the fears of many.
“The vecks have nuked us. A million people down there. Gone.”
Loobie unstrapped herself and marched over to Charge’s station.
“Do I need to relieve you, Mister?”
“No, sir.”
“Then you have five seconds to explain to me and your deck colleagues why your last utterance was without merit.”
“Because… because the nukes could have been ours.”
“Sensor,” snapped Loobie, “give me a yield estimate!”
“Multiple devices, mil-spec fusion warheads. Total yield… one to one-point-five megatons.”
No one else made the slightest sound as Loobie cleared her throat. “So, what we see here are tactical nukes launched by the Legion defenders. If the enemy had nuclear weapons, they would have hurled a chodding lot more than one-point-five megatons. Detroit would be a glassy pit. Your thoughts, XO?”
“I agree with your analysis,” said Marquez. “Our ground forces are hard pressed, but hitting back.”
Loobie leaned over Charge’s shoulder. “Next time, think harder before you panic.”
Charge went white. So he damned well should, frakk him. He was the second most senior officer in CIC.
As she returned to her command station, Loobie addressed her officers. “Your role in the main CIC deck is to summarize the findings of your team in the upper deck, and provide reasoned and timely analysis so that your captain and executive officer can make effective command decisions. Anyone who does not understand their role will be replaced.”
As Loobie was strapping herself back in, a nervous sounding Comms officer piped up. “Captain, Ensign Dock is relaying an incoming communication from Antilles garrison. They are sending an urgent information update.”
The AI controlling the main CIC display shrunk and moved aside the displays showing the status of the squadr
on’s ships, and their cargo, because it had something more important to show, which was… bakri crap! Most of the screen real estate had shifted to tactical display mode.
“Incoming hostiles,” said Anunwe. “Transferring tracks to main screen.”
Loobie felt such a chill run through the back of her neck that she had to steady herself with a burst from her hormonal implants. Where the chodding hell had the Hardits gotten these ships from?
Then she saw the tracks. Her eyes flicked to a summary at the top-left of the display. Active hostile track count… 93.
93!
The Colonel had been right to order the squadron to escape with all haste. The only problem, was that Nhlappo hadn’t hit the panic button early enough.
— Chapter 35 —
The red hostile tracks edged closer to the squadron but Loobie couldn’t bring herself to believe they were anything more than dots of light on a screen.
“Cyber,” she barked, “confirm this is real.”
“No sign of cyber-attack,” said the Cyber Warfare Team leader, Ensign Xindioah. “But we also have no firm explanation for how they got so close without detection. They crept through our outer drone patrols.”
“Hit me with your best guess.”
There was a delay for a few seconds. The Cyber Warfare Team in the upper CIC deck would be collecting their thoughts, taking input from the Sensor Team who were stationed alongside. “Enemy systems are visible now except for propulsion, which is still dark,” said Xindioah. “Best guess is the enemy have a radically new propulsion system we cannot see.”
“We can see them now,” said Loobie. “That means we can hurt them. Lubricant to all ships. Withdraw all drones from outer CSP zones. I want them in a single combat space patrol tight in around the squadron’s ships. Captain Valgerd, your CAG has the most experience. Can he coordinate a single combat space patrol using assets of all three ships?”
“Commander Oleif is more than capable,” replied the Jotun captain of the Indomitable. The image of her huge head was immobile in the screen integrated with Loobie’s station, the thought-to-speech system meaning Valgerd had no need to open her mouth. Humans found the display of Jotun fangs unsettling, and Loobie was no exception.
“Do it,” Loobie ordered. “We must launch all our reserves. Throw everything we’ve got into Oleif’s patrol screen.”
The other two captains acknowledged and cut their links to concentrate on the battle.
The significance of that command exchange distracted Loobie for a moment. She’d just issued combat orders to the Jotun commander of a first-line warship that made Beowulf look like a toy balloon, farting its way through space. Even the Earth-based terminology passed without the slightest baring of fangs – CAGs being the air wing commanders of ancient wet navy aircraft carriers.
Loobie shook her head. Such matters were for historians to consider. She had a battle to win.
“Guns?” she prompted.
“I’ve got nothing,” replied Lieutenant Charge. “They’re approaching from above, using our cargo array as a shield. I can’t get a firing solution without firing through the sleeper pods. I can’t even shoot the hostiles around our sister ships because we’re all orientated the same way.”
Merde! She wouldn’t make that mistake again. Next time ships parked in orbit would prioritize mutual fire support even in supposedly safe zones. She imagined chill contempt for the silly little humans emanating from the Jotun crew of the Indomitable.
“Keep tracking,” she ordered. “Don’t fire on the sleepers unless I give the order.”
Loobie clenched her fists. Reports from the CIC leads continued to come through but there was nothing yet she could do to affect the battle starting up outside. She felt so helpless!
“Detecting second wave of incoming hostiles. Adding tracks to main screen.”
“Ensign Dock is returning to join the fight.”
“Hostiles firing… Weapons configuration unknown. Look like kinetic projectiles.”
“They’re targeting the outer cargo,” said Commander Marquez from his station at the bridge. Loobie could hear her own frustration echoed in the XO’s voice. Marquez was responsible for damage control, but there was nothing his teams could do to repair the giant harness and the quarter of a million people it carried.
Then the fight came back to his voice. “All patrol craft safely away and engaging the enemy.”
The squadron could muster three pinnaces, eight lightly armed shuttles and thirty drones. It was a pitiful armada of small ships, but it was all they had.
The lives of millions depended on what those ships could do.
— Chapter 36 —
“Here they come, bro’. Stay on my six.”
Romulus corkscrewed his Stork toward the onrushing wing of Hardit ships. The big shuttlecraft was configured for a ground-assault role, principle armament a spine-mounted heavy railgun, but it was the best they had.
“A thousand klicks and closing,” he yelled. The adrenaline pumping through him told him this was the best thing he’d ever done with his clothes on. “I’m like an old-school airplane pilot,” he yelled. “Gonna bag me a squadron of Shenyang Sinos,” he yelled.
“No, you’re not,” said Remus, predictably. “Fire missiles!”
The tac-display above Romulus’s control console showed a full spread of six missiles launch from his brother’s Stork and overtake his own.
“Negative, Remus. Keeping mine in reserve.”
“Don’t take risks, Romulus. We haven’t trained for this.”
“Yeah. But neither have they. Look, they aren’t even maneuvering.”
The heads-up display gave Romulus firing solutions in yellow reticles. Romulus calmed his maneuvering and lined up his railgun aim with the nearest target reticle. The rails running through the upper hull charged and released repeatedly, the noise blurring into an angry whine that accompanied the rattle as the ammo chamber lifted each new kinetic bolt into place and formed a sabot on the fly before advancing the round onto the rails.
Man, this felt good.
Automatic stabilization compensators steadied the juddering ship enough for Romulus to stitch together the targeting reticles, spitting a ribbon of metal on a collision course with the Hardit boats.
Yes! Romulus punched the air in triumph. The first ship he’d shot at flared in a moment of flame, before drifting onward at constant velocity. Dead.
The enemy broke away in a blaze of defensive countermeasures, pursued by the six missiles from Remus.
When the enemy emerged into clear sight, the missiles had accounted for another two hostiles. Of the survivors, four broke away to meet Romulus and Remus, the remaining twenty reforming and making for the squadron’s starships and their precious cargo.
The movement of the enemy craft was surprisingly languid, as if they had no need for fast turns and rolls. Guess they have the numbers to take this slow and steady, thought Romulus.
While some of the enemy held back to provide cover, most of them strafed the squadron ships with cannon fire, rolling in a lazy loop around the harness array to avoid the main armament of the Legion ships.
At first the attack run seemed to do little damage. Then Romulus’s heart lurched when he saw great swathes of the precious sleeper pods break away from the damaged cargo harness.
“CAG to all craft. Hardits are tactically divided in two roles that I am designating fighters and bombers.” Tac-display changed icons. “Same craft but different roles. Bombers are concentrating on attacking us, and fighters on protecting them. Red Wing disable fighters. Blue Wing and drones will eliminate bombers.”
God, this is such a thrillfest, thought Romulus as he threw his Stork around to get an advantageous line of attack. Red Wing was the name for their Storks and the other genuinely combat-enabled craft. And the CAG wasn’t that dandy flyboy, Ensign Dock, but an honest-to-goodness alien. A Jotun.
Being capable of both atmospheric and void flight meant Storks had a lot o
f design compromises. They were as slow and cumbersome as the ancient Jotun that for some obscure, frakked-up reason was called the Reserve Captain. Romulus tried baring his fangs like a Jotun. If Storks were bad, the Hardit ships handled even worse.
Romulus finally had the position he wanted. Screaming up from underneath the wing of four hostiles, who didn’t even seem to know he was there, he shot a ribbon of bolts at their bellies.
On a course headed straight for the enemy, Romulus braced for return fire.
If the Hardits had flown a human craft, even a lumbering Stork, they would have pivoted to face their attackers. Having your vessel’s nose pointing one way and your course vector another was commonplace. And if your weapons were mounted on a turret, you could aim your fire independently of both course and orientation.
They didn’t. Instead, they came about slowly as if a maritime ship pushing against the water’s resistance as its only means to change course.
It was like shooting fish in a barrel. Romulus didn’t actually know what a barrel was, nor had he ever seen a fish, but he knew this was good.
Romulus sped through the debris from his kills, checked Remus was still on his six, and arced up, searching for enemy fighters to lash with his railgun.
They found him first.
The hot excitement coursing through his Marine’s body froze instantly. Two dozen hostiles had appeared from nowhere on his tactical display, just off his port beam.
He pulled his nose up in as tight a turn as his wallowing beast of a Stork would allow. Then he saw what the Hardits were doing and knew it wouldn’t be enough. As soon as they had appeared, the enemy fighters started fanning out. However hard he maneuvered, he couldn’t escape their formation’s fire.
Here it comes…
The outline of his Stork shown in the system display flared red as he fled through a hail of fire that chewed through the port armor. Damage reports counted down his odds of survival. Armor integrity 80%… 56%… 38%…
Still climbing above the enemy formation, Romulus span his craft around to present undamaged sides of his Stork.
The enemy fire concentrated on his aft armor. They were trying to take out his engine! And then what… to board him?
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