The Otherworld Rebellion (War of Alien Aggression #9)

by A. D. Bloom

  "We'll get them back and survive the attack so their bottom line turns red...because the Legion marches on..."

  19

  Otherworld

  Low orbit, night-side

  Ram Devlin launched from the Hive of Auntie Kill in a 27-meter Shediri-built raider along with a dozen of Margo's warrior monks. The bugs had kept the red stripes they'd painted on their armor for the arrival of the Weirdling artifact. They filled the cabin behind Ram, lined up on their mounds with their feet gripping handholds set in the deck. They thumped out a rhythm against their thoraxes and let the sound pour their suit speakers so that the atmo inside the small transport shook with their pre-battle songs. Without his helmet on, Ram wouldn't have been able to hear the updates coming in.

  "New Madras reports the Staas Company Compound there has been isolated," said Chun over a private channel. "They're fleeing in hoppers. No reports of resistance from security forces. They're surrendering. The power stations at New Madras, Barnaby, and Lewis Colony have been seized."

  Dana Sellis said, "The Legion reports their power shift went cleanly. The company officers are being held prisoner for now."

  Ein Kai Kesik, aka Clack, pointed to the tactical projection between the two Shediri pilots and spoke through his translator. "Reported from orbital observers of far side: Ships of Hive Hrt'ee scattering."

  The longboat had launched from the wrong side of the planet and only now, when they rounded its limb did they see how the night clouds were illuminated by all the ships topping out of the atmo and lighting up their mains. Most of them were skiffs and sleds, but from the engine flares it looked like a small armada heading for the orbital station. "104 contacts rising from the planet," she said.

  "104?! I thought we had 14 transports launching from New Madras, Legion boarding craft, and this chitin crate."

  "They said launches were half empty when they left from New Madras."

  Chun said. There just wasn't enough time for them to get everyone to the rendezvous points. They're coming in all kinds of small craft - whatever they can. It shouldn't be a problem if they all remember which of those docked ships they're heading for. All 240 of the sailors on the way up now should know which ship to go to."

  Only half of them had ever served on a UNS destroyer and these twelve ships were a newer class, but there was no point on dwelling on that. They'd make do; they'd have to. "I hope the XOs and captains made it."

  "Which reminds me," Dana said to Ram. "Chun and I have decided you still owe us ships. These minnows don't count. We'll take them, but you're not off the hook."

  "The way I see it, you owe me a battleship."

  "Maybe we'll get lucky and they'll send us one."

  Dana said, "Biko reports three Company Cutters on fire out past the fifth planet's orbit. Another eight are grouping for an attack on our ships. He says they'll hold as per your orders."

  "Goddammit, Hank." Those weren't his orders; they were Hank's. Ram held his tongue. It was far too late to stop the fight now. The only thing to do was use the distraction they'd paid so much for.

  The 104 craft rising from low-orbit all moved at different speeds, but the nine boarding craft carrying the Legion's Heavy Infantry were not the fastest. It took them time to pull to the front of the ragtag armada of sleds and skiffs and rust-bucket rock haulers. They all fired their maneuvering nacelles together and turned in unison, correcting course for Bofor's Station and the shipyards. Ram's eyes wandered over the armored bows and their universal docking rings of the Legion boats. The single, turret-mounted 4x140 cannon on each of them swiveled around the clock, looking for targets.

  "Do the Legion have clear rules of engagement?"

  "All Staas craft and guardsmen are considered hostile, but the Legion won't fire unless fired upon."

  "Let's see how long that lasts," Chun said as he saw the first of the Staas Company patrol boats headed in the direction of the boarding craft. It turned away and then came back on course as if an argument was taking place on its tiny bridge. Its two torpedo doors were closed and its small-bore scattergun pointed away from the approaching boats until it turned back a third time, headed for the closest Legion craft. It opened a channel. "This is SCS Piqador. All craft, including Legion vessels, your current flight vectors are in violation of ascent/descent and lane restrictions. You will come to an immediate stop and await inspection."

  "Do they know our ships in the middle of the system already destroyed three Staas Company Cutters?"

  The warning shots came from three boarding craft and once, and the range det shells the Legion gunners had fired detonated less than 300 meters off the patrol craft's bow. It wasn't close enough to do any damage, but it was close enough to scare the pants off you if you flew into the back half of the orange fireball and heard the shrapnel peck at your hull.

  The outnumbered and outgunned patrol boat veered away and zigzagged an evasive course, fleeing as the laughter went up on local comms. The warrior monks thought it was funny enough to keen in the middle of their song.

  Dana pointed at the signatures of the patrol boats grouping a few thousand Ks out to port and starboard. "They'll be back. Hank's battle lured the rest of the Company Cutters away, but most of the patrol boats are still here. If they can't mass quickly enough to attack us before we get to the station, they might try and strafe us on the docks."

  "Patrol boats withdrawin for now," said Ein Kai Kesik, pointing between the pilots at the housefly-sized projections representing the patrol boats. "Rebel force superior. For now."

  As the pilots pulled the transport in parallel to the nine Legion boats and slowly began to close the distance, Dana said, "You're sure they can see our friendly transponder?"

  "Don't worry about them," said Ram. "Worry about our new destroyers." He pointed past the pilots and out the cockpit canopy where the orbital station was growing quickly in front of them.

  The Shediri and Staas-built towers were in darkness as the whole city passed through night. Their lights drew them at the center of the shipyard docks the station wore like a great, floating skirt. All the skeletons of the ships under construction shone with the strangely guttering, vermillion and gold lights. It drew the girders and transoms and pillars and lit the workers running across the gangways to the secondary and primary arms where the lofthouse structures might provide some cover.

  A few seconds later, the antique raider cleared the last of the low towers on the city's edge and had line of sight on the fire-lit destroyers lined up in their construction berths together. The rank of 12 stretched down almost 1.5 Ks of dock.

  "They're right where I left them." Dana gestured in front of her helmet. Ram could see the faint lines of the interface projected backwards in her visor. "We're in range of the proxies I planted. Querying my babies now..." She reached out and drew something back with her fingers and set it to the side of her virtual workspace. "And...we have at least one micro-drone inside each of the 12 ships...we're ready to hit the system cores with the backdoor command codes using full interrupts. We can hit the rewrites after that. Do I have to ask if we're 'go'?"

  "Do it," he said, noting that her hand was already moving to press the button projected in her visor before he actually gave the order. It wasn't supposed to happen like this, but he couldn't stop it now if he'd wanted to.

  "The attack has begun," she said. "Kernel rewrites should start in less than a minute. We've got partial command codes to work with. This should be fast. I'm not replacing the sub-systems' software yet, just what we need to get these beauties out of here. Confirmations coming in now from almost...no...all of them...six minutes. In six minutes there won't be any remote kill signal Staas Company can send to stop us."

  Ram knew enough Shediri to recognize that Ein Kai was asking the pilots how long until they arrived. Twelve and a half was the answer. They counted time in roughly human half-minutes, so a little over six minutes, he thought. We're on schedule.

  The nine black hulls of the Legion boarding craft were
the first to fly over the docks themselves. The Shediri raider carrying Ram and the monks followed close behind. Only thirty seconds later, the ninety-four skiffs, small haulers, tugs, and patchwork shuttles flew across the shipyards skirting the city looking like a pirate armada. "Legion gunners man the station's defensive batteries," Chun said as if he'd heard the worry in Ram's mind. "They won't fire."

  Ein Kai Kesik turned and whacked Ram across the chest to get his attention. Without the armor plate in his exosuit it would have knocked the wind out of him. "Channel 47," the bug said through the translator, "Message for Devlin."

  Ram pulled the frequency into his comms loop. "This is Harbormaster Tyrone Khan to the idiot in charge of that flying clusterfuck over my yards. I demand to know your intentions."

  "Don't piss off the harbor master," said Chun.

  Ram said, "This is the idiot in charge."

  "Is this Governor Ram Devlin?"

  He didn't think it would be smart to say yes.

  "If it is you, Devlin, my son served under you on Hardway. You can park those boats of yours anywhere you want. We're happy to see you. Company security forces are already moving on the docks from the central hub. I can see 'em on the monitors. I tripped as many of the emergency bulkheads and locked down as many hull clamps as I could, but I couldn't keep all their patrol boats in the docks. There's more launching from the far side of the station. They're coming your way and they already got clearance to fire on you and my docks."

  The boat began to spin around him as the pilots engaged in evasive maneuvers. The spread of superheated osmium and tungsten shot hurled at them by the patrol boats glowed hot on IR. The pulsed particle fire picked up from far out on the docks, closer to the city where the first of the security forces were getting line of sight on them. "They'll have some heavy weapons," said Chun as stuttering streams from small particle cannons streaked up at the Legion boarding craft on approach.

  The turret gunners in the low-flying Legion craft walked streams of HE shells up the open docks at the security forces between the low sheds and admin buildings. He couldn't actually see if anyone was hit or not. All he could see were the tops of the fireballs expanding in the vacuum, but no more fire rose up from there. He reminded himself they weren't the first and they wouldn't be the last to die today.

  Legion boarding craft following his orders landed on the docks under heavy fire.

  20

  Shipyard docks

  Bofor's Station

  Jurcik's tin-hulled Legion boarding craft shuddered with impacts as it set down across the docks not less than fifty meters from the first of the twelve destroyers. He first saw them when they passed across the small porthole. Their bow plates rose like twelve, belt-iron steel cliff faces and atop each one was an armored castle of a command tower lit hellish under the glowing forges. As the scene spun past the porthole, he saw Shediri and human welders abandon the docks and jet off into the black to avoid the incoming fire now streaking down the docks and sparking off the armor of the warships.

  The doors of the boarding craft opened on landing as engine wash from another one blasted them. "Out, out, out! Go, go, go!" Sarge's voice chanted in his Jurcik's ear as he waved them into the fight. After the boarding craft in front of them pulled out, he saw the line of five from 2nd Squad out in front and went to bolster their firing line now taking streaking MA-50 rounds and heavier stuff from up the docks, closer to the station itself.

  The section the Dragoons could move through easily stretched out like a highway in front of them, but it wasn't more than 30 meters wide with stacks of materials and buildings and rail cranes crowding the side opposite the ships. The display projected in Jurcik's dome showed 3rd squad had taken up an echelon position to the left and behind them. The fifteen armored battlesuits of the 158th's 3rd Dragoons stood only scant meters apart as the ascending boarding craft blasted them with blinding clouds of three thousand degree, glowing exhaust. He forgave the pilot when he saw the turret gunner laying down fire to support the push up the shipyard docks.

  Sarge's voice droned almost lazy in his ear. "Engage, one-five-eight. Targets from eleven to two o'clock."

  The boarding craft rained hell down as it made a strafing run down the thirty-meter-wide spoke leading to the orbital station itself. Only a few hundred yards out, streams of small arms fire surged up before the turret on their boat walked the stream of fire right over the spot it came from. Burning fragments of shrapnel sparked outwards from the impact points, and the projections in his dome wireframed the shapes of the torn, blasted, and burned exosuits that flew away, escaping the artificial gravity of the docks and tumbling out into the black.

  The first shots to actually hit them came from the adjacent dock span, a radial spoke like the one on which they stood, almost half a kilometer out. The under-barrel lasers on the Staas Guard's MA-50s scorched the surface of his armor and vaped out shallow craters, but the fire didn't penetrate. Some of the guards rushing out between the low building on the adjacent span knew what they were up against. They were the figures he saw clearly bracing themselves against the structures so they could fire the MA-50's top barrel railgun in the low gees. The way their bodies jerked gave Jurcik a brief warning of the incoming fire.

  Impacts flashed across all three squads. Two hammered Jurcik's chest plate. They felt like they could have penetrated in more than a few places on his suit because they knocked him back a step, but the suits' jets kicked in to keep him stable. The hits the 158th took weren't enough to disrupt their targeting. The tri-barrel 117 on his right arm kicked as it fired, accelerating a pulsed salvo of heavy nuclei with the magnetic rings. They ripped across the black and impacted with a bright flash. When he could see the target area again, the last of the blown out atmo was burning away while bright discharge arced off the girder-frame remains of the thin-skinned structure. Nothing was left to be seen of the shooter.

  "That's a kill," said Sarge, but all he could think was how he wasn't sure until he looked up and out and caught a glimpse of the pieces. It wasn't exactly a direct hit, but it looked like the edge of a salvo had got close and turned the shooter into a barely identifiable cloud of ripped, out-gassing pieces of burnt exosuit. "Keep firing, you idiot!"

  1st Squad's fire landed across the front line shooters along with fire from 3rd squad and the spread salvos wiped a whole squad of Staas Guards from existence, cratering the steel of the dock beneath their feet. Discharge leaped from the docks to the blasted buildings as the priority targeting icon blinked high in his display, drawing his attention high above the docks. He adjusted the cannon's spread from the wide anti-personnel spread to a grouping made for penetration.

  The patrol boat had flown up from beneath them, coming through the docks and rolling over into a low strafing run at the Legionnaires. His dome zoomed in on the small boat and adjusted his aim-point reticule with the motion of the craft. It looked more like a tug than a little warship, but the small bore scattergun on its bow had already opened fire.

  Jurcik loosed his salvo at the same moment as the rest of his squad. Their fifteen bursts of hyper-accelerated nuclei passed the incoming shotgun spread of sabot and impacted the patrol boat in 10cm groupings, drilling the bow so that it jetted thin pencils of fire out into the black. He didn't know what they hit, but less than a second later, the patrol boat's crystal pane windows flared up bright from the inside. It rolled and flew over their heads to fall between the dock spans just as the ordnance it had fired slammed into the docks and knocked Loops from 3rd Squad backwards, outgassing from the hole in his chest.

  The bulbous front end of the patrol boat shined like a scarab's shell in the seconds before it impacted the dock in front of them. Sarge screamed "158! Forward jump! 200 now, now, no-"

  They had their backs turned to him as they hit their jump jets, but just before his boots released and he flew off the dock, Jurcik felt the impact of the incoming boarding craft shake him through his 10cm, steel bootsoles.

  They ascended toge
ther with the particulars of their jumps calculated by their suits. 200 meters forward was Jurcik's only input; the power to the jets and which ones and when was all calculated by the software. First squad took off together, but less than a second after they'd blasted off the docks, he and Hojo shot out in front of the other three in their squad, jetting on a lower, longer line that shot them in a flat arc, completely out of control. Fire from three entire squads of Staas Guards taking cover behind the low structures that dotted the docks in front of the destroyers pelted them with glancing sabot hits. One slammed into his right side under the arm joint and knocked the suit towards the edge and out of the line of forward fire for a second, but his suit jetted him back to the center line of the docks with Hojo where the fire was thickest and continued the flight.

  "I can't stop!" Hojo shouted on local comms.

  "It's the new software!"

  They came down 600 meters from their launch point. The enemy fire paused then and he thought maybe it was shock at seeing them jet in and set down 400 meters past the lines. Jurcik was just as shocked. As his dome populated the docks around him with wireframes of over fifty shooters in front, to either side and behind them, Hojo spoke with utter horror. "The fuck did we do?!" Jurcik shouted.

  "I don't know, just shoot! Shoot!"

  He and Hojo unloaded with both cannons while Hojo screamed that rebel yell in his helmet. It was on local suit comms so the Staas Guard heard it too. Jurcik joined in as the vacuum around them was stitched bright with incoming fire from all directions. He staggered with a pair of sabot impacts from the right and spun to target and discharge again and again at the figures in his dome. They vanished in whiteout impacts from his six barrels' burning salvos.

  More fire pelted him from his three o'clock and he spun clockwise a quarter turn, firing with both arms raised, letting off spreads that wiped the docks clean with fire. The impacts continued from the rear and he turned that way, loosing his blasts in fear and anger and rage. When he pointed and dispatched them like death's hand, their suits and their bodies burst. The forges above lit the human blood as it boiled off and sublimed in pink icy clouds.