Any moment now and I’ll live up to my call sign.
She came to a near stop and released her bombs. She didn’t wait to see the effect. Gradually reallocating the K-Space energy pump from kinetic shields to momentum absorption, she jinked away to rejoin the rest of 3rd Squadron’s survivors.
— Chapter 53 —
Wing Commander Puja Narciso released her Phantom’s control to her AI while she watched a recording of the first Swordfish attack run. She saw simulated, slow-motion images of Firegirl bringing in her fighter-bomber and releasing her payload, bang on target.
The bomber crews called their bombs umbrellas, which was a bit dumb, but not as dull as the official name of ‘X-ray cone projectors’. Unlike Puja’s sleek, almost aerodynamic Phantom fighter, the Swordfish were modified stork shuttles, with four wings attached to the hull. The wings were not for lift, but were the best way to deploy the spinning disks that they hoped would take out the enemy capital ships. The disks did look like upturned umbrellas with an offset handle aimed at the target. As the discs spun, an X-ray laser cut a cone-shaped burst of destruction into the target for about a second before being exhausted.
Hundreds of these umbrellas had been deployed, to no visible effect on the Blunt Arrow. According to the plan, the target’s energy shields would be working hard, shifting the energy from the X-ray lasers into a connected region of K-Space. Whatever the hell the Klein-Manifold Region really was, it was getting frakking hot.
If 2nd Wing got in enough hits on the Arrow, K-Space would get so hot that the flagship’s shields would fail. But would Puja’s wing run out of pilots first? Between drone attacks, point defenses, and catastrophic equipment failure, she’d already lost a quarter of her X-Boats.
“Incoming!”
Puja didn’t wait for the verbal description of the bogies’ location. She closed her eyes and let her AI update the tactical map in her head. Unable to shoot the nimble X-Boats at long range, the bulk of the enemy fleet was pulling back to protect its flagship and flinging what she hoped were their final drone reserves.
“Fifth Squadron, keep those drones off our backs,” she ordered. “We’re not done here yet.”
— Chapter 54 —
Caccamo flung his Phantom through space, just out of range of the Arrow’s point defenses. However hard he tried, no amount of jinking could escape the volume of fire coming from the enemy warboats that were tearing chunks out of his squadron.
Frakkheads!
The enemy wasn’t stupid. Their first X-Boat counter-strategy was already in place.
To defend the Arrow, the enemy had deployed four squadrons equipped with porcupine warboats, so called because of their tough defenses and hulls bristling with weapons. Each porcupine squadron had formed a rotating ring a short distance from the Arrow. They still couldn’t track a hard-maneuvering X-Boat, but they could lay down withering fire at their likely positions, and as the Swordfish fighter-bombers slowed to release their spinning bombs the porcupines were slaughtering them.
The Legion’s X-Boat wing could either soak up the punishment until they had all been destroyed, or withdraw to safety. But they’d already paid such a heavy price to heat K-Space around the enemy flagship that they couldn’t let it cool down now. The sacrifices of the dead pilots would be in vain.
Caccamo twisted around and fired a brace of short range missiles at the porcupines. His fighters were killing the porcupines, but not fast enough. So Caccamo did what he always did when cornered, the unpredictable. He pushed his Phantom to maximum acceleration and flew right at the middle of the rotating ring of enemy warboats. Just before he passed through the center, launchers mounted on his hull blew out a cloud of bacteria bombs. With luck the metal-munching, ceramalloy-chewing bugs would burn through the porcupine hulls.
“Eat that, frakkheads! Hope they give you indigestion.”
Caccamo felt momentum returning. It was nothing more than little shoves against his shoulders, but that was enough to make his blood freeze.
He glanced at his heat dial. It was deep into the red. Suddenly, the universe rolled up into a cylinder centered on that dial, and drained of color.
Until now he had only perched on his seat, despite the fearsome acceleration. Now the relentless weight of nature – so long denied by the momentum displacement system – wrapped around his body in a crushing embrace, and squeezed until Caccamo knew no more.
— Chapter 55 —
“Got you!”
Arun risked a moment’s satisfaction as the enemy warboat caught fire, its atmosphere ignited by his Mustang’s lasers. He fleetingly considered the plight of the burning crewmembers, but feelings of compassion toward the enemy had been heavily eroded from the Marine geneline generations ago.
His squadron were now following a circular course around the outside of the four enemy porcupine squadrons, turning inward constantly to fire on the enemy warboats that were doing such damage to the Swordfish bombers.
He held fire as one brave X-Boat pilot flew through the middle of a ring of circling porcupines, flinging anti-ship bombs as he passed. Hell, it was Caccamo, the crazy bastard.
Arun watched in horror as Caccamo’s X-Boat emerged from the ring of warboats belching smoke and flames. The squadron leader flew away on a constant vector – a sitting target. Caccamo’s boat must be in a bad way.
“Permission to retrieve squad leader?” He asked his flight commander.
“Negative, FNG. Cacco’s gone. Deal with it.”
“Maybe not. His ship looks intact, and I’m flying a Mark One Mustang.”
“Then you’ve a spare seat… Okay. Go, FNG! Good luck.”
Arun took a deep breath, and tumbled his Mustang out of formation in pursuit of his squadron leader.
For ships to match vectors was a lengthy and complex business. Themistocles and Beowulf had once taken months to achieve this.
With its crass disregard for momentum, an X-Boat was a different matter entirely.
Within five seconds, his Mustang was holding station ten meters away from Caccamo’s Phantom, as they both edged away from the Arrow at 15 klicks per second.
The fire from the ring of warboats had slackened after Caccamo’s run, but Arun still positioned his X-Boat so that its armored belly shielded both him and the Phantom. He evacuated the air from his cockpit and pushed out through the void to inspect Caccamo’s fighter. The Phantom’s nose had retained its sleek lines, but the aft section was stretched, crumpled, and twisted. Inside the cockpit a figure in a motionless battlesuit slumped over a charred, half-melted flight console. Barney reported that the cockpit was already airless. Caccamo’s AI had probably vented the air to extinguish the cockpit fire.
Less than thirty seconds later, Arun was back in his Mustang with Caccamo strapped in the co–pilot’s seat.
As Arun transferred some of the energy selection from shields to maneuvering, his eyes widened when he realized just how much damage his kinetic shields had soaked up during his jaunt. The heat dial was well into the red.
He flew away as fast as he dared, his gaze never leaving that damned dial, expecting at any second for his momentum dump to fail, to be squashed into a puddle of flesh. But the enemy fire lessened, meaning the shields had less energy to deflect. That dial swung back toward safety. He was going to make it.
This time.
“FNG, are you returning to the Lance?” asked the flight leader.
“Negative. Just cooling down.”
“Then I guess this is as good a time as we’ll get. Flight-General McEwan. You flew after your squadron leader and caught him in the middle of a combat zone. There are consequences for such actions.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Henceforth your call sign is Catcher. Congratulations, you’ve earned it.”
Arun looked across at Caccamo. Barney confirmed that he was stable. “You hear that, Squadron Leader? I’m one of you now.”
“Now settle down, Catcher.” The flight leader sounded distracte
d. “Let’s clear those porcupines away so our Swordfish can finish the job.”
— Chapter 56 —
From his science station deep inside Lance of Freedom, Furn judged the turning point of the battle to be imminent. The Swordfish bombers had heated the region of K-Space around the enemy ship until its heat sinks could no longer pump energy there. The sustained fire from hundreds of spinning X-ray lasers had nearly taken their toll. But so few Swordfish bombers had survived, that the X-Boat attack was almost spent.
Victory or defeat? Destiny tottered on a knife edge, about to fall one way or the other.
He shook his head and forgot the galaxy outside his compartment. He had played his part in the X-Boat design, and now the battle outside would be won or lost without him. He had his own fight to win, a contest of logic and persistence, but to Furn’s heart no less vital than the drama played out in space.
— Chapter 57 —
The flight console alert pinged, warning Claudette Peronique that she had exhausted her supply of spinning bombs. Her last umbrellas were out there now, spinning for stability as they blasted the enemy flagship with X-ray lasers.
Firegirl was out of fire power. She set her railguns thudding into the Arrow’s hull, but that would barely scratch the armor.
With every klick she closed with the target, the heat dial edged up. It was so deep into the red that she was surprised she wasn’t already crushed against the aft bulkhead. But there was no point in pulling out of her attack dive now. It was too late; K-Space was too hot for her momentum dump to survive long enough to peel away.
She switched everything she had into kinetic shields and kept on firing at the same point behind the port bow that she’d been hitting since her initial attack run. The Arrow’s armor had to fail soon. Please!
She frowned as the Arrow’s hull suddenly cycled through vibrant colors, switching from orange, through red before settling on a blue-tinged white.
Then the unbearable weight of acceleration snapped her ribcage, spearing her internal organs with the bone shards.
Firegirl was beyond caring now, but her Swordfish slammed into the enemy flagship at 90 klicks per second, mere moments after the Arrow’s defenses finally failed. When the flagship’s shields were no longer able to pump the energy they were absorbing into K-Space, the heat had nowhere else to go. Milliseconds later, the massive power draw of the big ship’s laser batteries and railguns overwhelmed its failing heat sinks.
The most powerful ship in the unbeatable 3rd Fleet began to melt.
Firegirl’s Swordfish plowed through the softened hull and kept going…
— Chapter 58 —
Puja scented victory. “We’ve got her now!” she broadcast. “All squadrons, keep a safe distance and pour everything you have into the hole Firegirl opened up for us. Make her death count. The Arrow’s hurting badly, but that’s not good enough. I want nothing less than her total destruction.”
— Chapter 59 —
Shoal Commander Taverasene waited in the emergency access chamber crammed up against her shoal, trying vainly to calm her twitching tail. They were warriors, all of them. They would face danger and conflict without the slightest quiver of their gills, even certain death. Such was the calling of the warrior caste. But the seemingly endless sequence of moments before combat when nothing happened… waiting was the most exquisite torture.
To her shame, Shoal Commander Taverasene even briefly regretted her elevated status, for it was she who decided when to launch the counter-attack, she who prolonged this tortuous waiting.
Tactical updates showed the Marines who served the White Knight blasphemers had penetrated through three frames of the Goddess-blessed Vengeance of Saesh and were attempting to breach a fourth.
It was beyond any doubt now. The enemy were headed for the Chamber of Decisions where the human admiral was stationed. The so-called New Empire filth had lost their flagship, their superior strength had been bled dry by the Legion’s divine backing, but their Marines had hidden in the blackness of the battlefield, waiting for their moment to strike.
Shoal Commander Taverasene calmed her corrupted thoughts. The Violet One, vessel of the Goddess herself, was aboard and would not die at mortal hands this day. Serene confidence suffused Taverasene, because this was her moment to serve.
It was with almost religious ecstasy that she spoke the words of command: “Blow the hatch!”
Commander Taverasene was sucked out of the hull, still wrapped in ecstasy. She led her shoal out through space to clear the enemy’s main breaching points for a few vital minutes. The fighting was sharp, the position hard won, but the enemy had not expected this. Not even the Jotun officers who fought so hard.
The enemy boarders were concentrating on the interior of the Vengeance, seeking the holy Indiya.
Taverasene pushed a vanguard through the boarding ruptures, back into the Vengeance. She stationed a second force out and away from the hull to guard against enemies still hidden in the void.
She had fifty Littorane warriors left against two regiments of the enemy. But her team resealing the breaches only needed to be protected for approximately two minutes.
Shots pinged off the hull. A laser found her, but she rolled away and hid by diving away from the hull at her attackers. The soldiers of the blasphemers were not fools. They had left a stealthed reserve guarding the boarding points. And inside the ship, the boarders were turning back, trying to recapture their entry points.
Taverasene wasn’t a fool either. Nor did she need to survive. She lowered her head so the launcher strapped to her back did not kill her straight away. Then she activated her weapon.
The weapon system was called a trident net. It was already set to maximum yield. She aimed at the likely position of the enemy reserve and fired. A stream of micro-nukes emerged and then detonated.
It was like looking into a star’s heart. Despite all her battlesuit’s protection, she felt her body burn.
Even with her gills as dry as death, and the need to vomit rising from her throat, Taverasene’s mortal body still functioned well enough to note that the hull seals her team had laid over the boarding breaches were all intact. The Vengeance was now sealed. She was watertight.
“Mission accomplished,” she reported to her commanding officer.
Floating limply through the void, she watched through her ship’s internal cameras as the compartments and passageways infected by the blasphemer boarders were flooded with water.
The sights were almost comical. The enemy was a mix of Jotuns, humans, and Transgoans. They were trained for the void and for the land surfaces of a variety of planets, but not for water.
They floundered, unsure of how to operate in this new environment.
To their credit, they swiftly recovered, but by then it was too late.
Littorane defenders had taken advantage of the confusion to emerge through secret connecting routes with harpoons, torpedoes, and monofilament needle guns.
Many of the ship’s defenders were unarmored, and most were not even warriors, but all were children of the seas.
The outer frames of the Vengeance of Saesh flowed red with blasphemer blood.
Taverasene switched her viewpoint to the void outside of the ship and saw heavily armed medical teams heading her way.
She was pleased that her body might be restored to service, but that was nothing to the joy she felt that Admiral Indiya, the mortal vessel of the Goddess was preserved, and this last-ditch attack by the blasphemers had failed.
— Chapter 60 —
“Got to hand it to you, Boss, you’re doing the fleet proud.”
Petty Officer Simon Coombes, acting Boss for Lance of Freedom’s X-Boat hangar gave a distracted reply. “Yeah, just doing my job, pilot.”
The pilots coming in for their refuel, rearm, and a patch up were heroes, and so deserved a considered answer, but Coombes was a busy man. The logistics projections showed they would run out of attitude adjustor fuel before the next squ
adron came back in. They could steal from the Lance’s own reserves, but that meant authorization from the XO which would take time …
Something about the pilot’s voice made Coombes wrench his head out of his analysis projections and slide his holoscreen focus onto the rundown of flight deck operational status.
No wonder he’d noticed something special. It was only chodding General McEwan out there. Heard he’d earned himself a call sign. Guess that meant McEwan was all right.
Coombes checked the status of McEwan’s Mark1 Mustang. Two coolant pump failures, and three of the twelve exhaust ports were fouled. She needed refueling and rearming – naturally – and the general’s starboard armor was no more than wishful thinking. Looked like a ten minute refit.
“I’m sorry, Catcher,” said Coombes. “I didn’t answer you properly.”
“No dramas, Boss,” McEwan replied. Gods, he sounded exhausted. “I know you’re busy.”
“You misunderstand, sir. I apologized because I should have made clear that if anyone has done the Legion proud here, it is the true Hangar Boss. Master Petty Officer Hortez.” Coombes found himself coming to attention. “He’s not with us anymore, but his training and inspiration mean we know how to do our jobs well. We’re paying the Boss our tribute the only way we know how – by getting you fliers back out into space and giving hell to the enemy.”
“That we are doing, Coombes. The best we can.”
Coombes nodded. The general couldn’t see that, of course, but there were more vital matters to attend to on this hangar than chatting with generals, even if they had earned a call sign.
— Chapter 61 —
For a moment there, Springer could almost believe she was back on Fort Douaumont, the old training hulk that had orbited Tranquility.
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