by Richard Fox
Torni stood up and leaned back to work out a nasty kink. The fleet surrounded them in serene silence. Fighter and bomber flights weaved through the hundred ships that contained the last of humanity, from the stubby destroyers to the lance-like bulk of the carrier Charlemagne.
“You’re American, right?” she asked.
“Canadian, eh?”
“When he was a boy, my grandfather lived in Stockholm. He and his family were there when the Muslims declared the city theirs. They were poor, and didn’t have the money to pay the non-believer tax and wouldn’t convert to Islam, so the Muslims enslaved them all. They murdered my great-grandfather. My great-grandmother didn’t last much longer.
“He was in rags, starving, when the crusade came. He told me stories about the American soldiers, how they looked like knights in their body armor and the red Templar cross on their shoulder. They killed the Islamists, sent the rest of them back to their sand dunes in the Middle East. They saved him, fed him and showed him what strength really is. And they were all volunteers, every last one of them.
“No one had to order an American to save the oppressed. It’s part of their nature to see others live free, even at the sacrifice of their own lives. Once the Germans finally followed the Americans’ lead, and the rest of Europe got its act together, we had the Atlantic Union. Separate nations and peoples who would fight for each other. The Chinese didn’t go to war to save Mongolia when the Russians conquered it.”
“Huh,” Standish said. “I never thought about it that way. Save those who’ll sacrifice for the whole.”
“Oye!” Crewman MacDougal shouted through the IR. He took great loping strides toward them over the hull. “Why’re you and that Jessie slacking?”
“Shut ye geggie before I snip yer baws off,” Torni said, flashing a “V” with her fingers at MacDougal.
“Give ’em to the jobby jabber, why don’t you? Get that done and move to the next rack before the torps get here. We ain’t got til morn.” MacDougal bounded past them, sending another invective to the next work crew.
“What was that?” Standish asked.
“He said we’re moving too slow.”
“How do you know what he was saying?”
“We used to date,” she said.
Standish fumbled his welder and caught hold of it before it could tumble into space.
****
Durand lowered her Eagle against the underside of the luxury liner’s hull. Her landing gear found purchase and she powered up the mag locks on the skids. The rest of the Breitenfeld’s air wing was already latched to the ship.
“All pilots send me a life-support check and power down. Get comfy because we’re going to be here for a bit,” she said into the IR net.
This wasn’t her Eagle. The seat was molded to someone much larger and it would take a few acceleration burns before the seat adapted to her frame. The last pilot had died when the Tucson exploded, destroying his Mule and killing most of the Breitenfeld’s Marines.
“Marie? You there?” Hale said.
She saw a single armored figure bounding across the hull toward the Eagles and Condors attached to the ship.
“I’m on your right,” she said to him.
Hale floated over her cockpit. His hand swept over the glass, the grav plating glowing as it gave friction between him and her Eagle to slow him down. He twisted in the void and sat on the fuselage next to her cockpit.
“Cute, you been practicing that?” she asked.
“I was a diver. That just makes it look easy,” he chuckled.
“Where will you be in all this? Hopefully someplace better than this kamikaze rocket.”
Hale looked to Ceres and put his hand on the canopy.
“We’re in the last drop ship, coming in on the tail of the assault wave.”
She nodded, her gaze on the star field above. The diffuse wave of the Milky Way’s center rose into view beyond the liner’s engines. She raised a hand and pressed it against her canopy, separated from Hale’s touch by an inch.
“We never got to see Saturn,” she said.
“It’s still there. Don’t lose hope, Marie.”
She huffed. “‘Hope.’ If Valdar’s plan turns sour, we’ll need a lot more than hope.”
A red light pulsed on Hale’s Ubi.
“That’s me. Time to go,” he said.
“I wish you shit,” she said.
“Wait. What?”
Durand rolled her eyes and waved him off with a flick of her wrist. “That’s how you say good luck in French. Hurry, and try to come back in one piece this time. We’ve got a date in the cemetery when this is all over.”
CHAPTER 10
The flight deck of the America stretched a thousand yards from stem to stern, and every foot was alive with sailors and Marines buzzing around a fleet of Mule drop ships.
Hale, in his battle armor with his helmet tucked under his arm, stood to the flank of the flight deck. The fifty drop ships packed onto the deck was a nightmare come to life for him. He’d been deviled by dreams of needing to be in an exact place at an exact time, but every place in the dream was identical to every other. The Marine colonel in charge of the assault had just reassigned him and his team to drop ship Three-Seven from the Tarawa and Hale didn’t know where it was on the deck.
Every joke he’d ever heard about lost lieutenants played through his mind as he made his way up and down the line of drop ships hoping to see a familiar face in the mélange of naval ratings and Marines prepping for battle.
Tail numbers on the drop ships weren’t helping him as most of the fleet’s drop ships were on the America for this operation. Mule Three-Seven could be from half a dozen different ships.
“Ken!” came a voice from behind him.
His brother, Jared, clad in armor identical to his but for its dark green color and 3rd Marines patch on his shoulder, jogged over and gave Hale a quick hug.
“You look lost,” Jared said. Two columns of Marines, Jared’s men and women by their armor and nods they gave to him, passed by. More than one did a double take when they saw the two nearly identical twins in disparate armor speaking to each other.
“My team got stuck in a different bird a few minutes ago.” Hale’s voice lowered to a conspiratorial whisper. “I’m on Tarawa Three-Seven. You know where it is?”
Jared shook his head at his brother and looked at his forearm computer.
“Two up and three deep. The IR net is overloaded. That’s probably why you didn’t get…you’re on VIP duty?”
“Guess so. Where are you going?” Hale asked.
“Node four. We’re going in ahead as a feint, get any defenders away from your beachhead.” Jared looked at his brother, a stream of thoughts and worry behind his eyes. Hale knew he had the same sheen to his countenance.
Jared choked back his emotions and his face went hard. “You’ve fought them. If you can take a few down, then this will be a walk in the park, right?”
Hale slapped his brother on the shoulder and flashed a false grin. “If you can shoot straight for once in your life, this would be the day to do it.”
“Sir!” someone shouted from the ramp of a waiting drop ship.
“That’s me. You…you stay safe,” Jared said.
“You too.”
They clasped forearms, their grip lingering before they parted ways.
Hale didn’t look back as he sidestepped through the scrum of sailors and Marines as he found his assigned drop ship. Cortaro stood on the drop ship’s lowered ramp, his head bear and scanning the crowd. Cortaro caught sight of his lieutenant and helped Hale over the side of the ramp.
“Last-second changes are my favorite kind of changes, especially on a flight deck just before a drop,” Cortaro said, his voice so even the implied irony was unmistakable.
The rest of their team was already buckled into their acceleration mats. Standish had his head against his chest and Hale could have sworn the Marine was sleeping.
“Why’d
we get the switch, sir?” Torni asked.
A motorized cart pulled up to the drop ship and a slight figure in battle armor got off her ride and stutter-stepped up the ramp. Battle armor took some getting used to and the new arrival looked as if this was her first time in it.
“Hey everyone,” Stacey said.
“We’re in for some shit, aren’t we?” Franklin asked.
Stacey shrugged her shoulders in apology and went to an empty acceleration pad.
“Command decided that, given our team’s vast experience in fighting the Xaros, we’d escort Ensign Ibarra to the Crucible and keep her safe until her mission is complete,” Hale said.
“And what is the good ensign’s mission?” Cortaro asked. “We were supposed to breach node two and gain a foothold on the station, and that’s as far as our old orders took us.”
“Node one,” Stacey said. “That’s where the control room is.” She held up her right hand and the probe’s light showed through her armored glove. “I need to get in there and then this will take control of the Crucible.”
Hale checked over Stacey’s straps and started undoing them.
“You did these wrong,” Hale said to her. “Can’t have you smeared against the bulkhead after the first turn. That’ll get me fired.”
Stacey pursed her lips, her chin quivering. Hale fastened a strap over her waist then hooked her helmet into the acceleration pad.
“I’m scared too,” he said. Her eyes went wide and she looked at him, baffled. “It’s good. Keeps you sharp. Courage isn’t the absence of fear—it’s the strength to keep going when you are scared. OK?” He tapped the side of her helmet twice, confirming that she was strapped in correctly.
“You don’t know what’s waiting for me—for us,” she said.
“An alien space station full of genocidal robots?”
“Close enough,” she said. A warning buzzer sounded and the ramp closed with a pneumatic whine.
“I’m proud of you,” Ibarra said to her.
“Don’t be. This isn’t what I want. This is what I must do,” Stacey said under her breath. “And if Hale knew what was coming, I doubt he’d be so frigging heroic.”
****
Valdar looked over the fleet’s course plots again. Breitenfeld’s maneuver wasn’t complicated in and of itself, but trying to thread the same needle as sixty-five other warships didn’t leave much room for error.
He spun his command chair around and sent it to the acceleration lock in the center of the bridge.
“All stations report ready, captain,” Ericson said.
“Security teams have the pneumatic bolts?” Valdar asked.
“Aye aye, fresh from the machine shop.”
“Five minutes to the release point,” the lieutenant at the conn said. The pitted, desolate surface of Ceres rolled toward them on the forward view screens.
“XO, give action stations,” Valdar said. Klaxons blared and lights across the ship went red. Valdar opened his ship-wide address channel.
“Breitenfeld, this is Valdar. In the last…twenty-four hours, everything we know has changed. Everything we knew is gone. This battle is for a future. A future for all of us, all of what’s left. Gott mit uns. Valdar out.”
He closed the channel and pulled up the conn officer’s view.
“Conn, you ready?” Valdar asked. He saw the helmsman’s head bob a few times as a plot track materialized in front of him. The tracks of other vessels crept into the space around the Breitenfeld’s projected path.
“Stand by for burn,” the helmsman said. “Burn in three…two…one...fire all aft thrusters!”
The ship rattled as its engines roared to life. The fusion reactors accelerated the Breitenfeld through the confluence point on the opposite side of Ceres from the Crucible and its defense platforms and shot it around the dwarf planet.
Valdar’s hands struggled against the press of g-forces and tapped against the holo display in front of him. Six stiletto-shaped civilian luxury liners were well ahead of his ship and the rest of the naval vessels. The civilian ships and their cargo would clear the horizon in the next few minutes, all according to plan.
I hope this works, Valdar thought.
****
“103rd squadron, stand by to release,” Durand said. Her finger hovered over the pulsating green button that would free her Eagle from the cruise liner. The longer she waited, the more of a surprise she and her squadron of Eagles and Condors would have, but the longer she waited the more likely she was to get blown to hell with the rest of the doomed ship.
The release button went red and a warning buzzer sounded in her helmet. Her ride was about to maneuver.
“Release!”
She jammed the button and braced herself against her seat. The cable and mag locks holding her Eagle released and she split away from the luxury liner. Her engines came to life and she climbed into space. The rest of her truncated squadron, four Eagles and a pair of Condors, rose into formation around her.
Torpedoes streaked away from the liner and bore down on the nearest Xaros orbital, designated Alpha. Dozens of torpedoes from the other liners, their engines burning like miniature nova, joined in the assault. All the civilian liners, now free of the fighters and bombers that had hitched a ride into the battle on their hulls and their momentum, adjusted course to converge on Alpha.
The yellow beams struck out from the targeted orbital and picked off the torpedoes with an almost contemptuous ease. The Xaros platform rotated toward the closest luxury liner and a magenta blast blew through the spine of the liner, coring it from stem to stern.
The remaining liners kept their acceleration toward the same target as the light at the center of Alpha’s cannon grew in intensity. With the increasing speed of the liners and the recharge time between Alpha’s cannon fire, one or more of the liners would make contact with it—which was probably why the other three liners brought their cannons to bear on the encroaching kamikaze ships.
“103rd, we’ve got our window. Begin our attack run on Alpha, on me,” Durand said.
She gunned her engines and followed the attack vector that would take them into a diving attack on Bravo. They did not want to be in the line of fire for what was about to happen.
Alpha destroyed another liner with its cannon; a second was blown to dust by Bravo.
“Fighter element, this is the Constantine, clearing the horizon. Stand by for broadside,” came over the IR net.
Durand saw the glint of rail guns firing just over the curve of Ceres’ surface. The rail gun slugs ignited a trail of fire through Ceres’ pitifully thin atmosphere, erasing the distance between the rail guns and Alpha so fast it looked as though the Constantine fired lasers.
Yellow point defense beams blew the rail gun slugs out of space. Laser beams whirled like a swarm of fireflies as the fleet’s cruisers cleared the horizon and added their rail guns to the fight. The sparks of destroyed rail gun rounds encroached closer and closer to Alpha’s hull. The orbital jerked from an impact and a liner slammed into it like an uppercut against a boxer’s chin.
The civilian ship broke into splinters of graphene composite steel and spun off into space.
The liner that had been Durand’s ride into the battle bore down on the stricken Xaros orbital. Its point defense lasers morphed from yellow to white and pushed the liner off course. It flew past the orbital and continued unabated into the vast reaches of space.
While the orbital was focused on the liner, the next fusillade of rail guns readied. Half the fleet’s available rail guns fired as one and hit Alpha with the massed power of a shotgun blast. Alpha convulsed as rail slugs perforated it and it burned away to nothing.
Cheers went up through the IR as the first orbital broke apart and burned into cinders.
****
Point defense lasers knocked away incoming rail gun shots screaming toward Bravo. Durand covered her eyes as another blast from the orbital seared through space. The icon for the cruiser Paris flickered and
went deep red—ship destroyed.
“Task force Valkyrie, stand by for Q-rounds. Launch your attack once they’re through,” Admiral Garrett said. The pilot commanding the fighter wave acknowledged and Durand clenched her flight stick, poised to begin her attack run.
The point defense on Bravo flared to life and an electrical storm burst between the orbital and the fleet. Tendrils of lightning struck the leading edge of the orbital and the point defense beams stopped with the suddenness of a flipped switch.
Two squadrons broke from the formation and dove toward the silent orbital. Eagles fired their rail guns, sending sparks and gouts of silver-black material from the Xaros hull like ejecta from a volcano. The Condors loosed their torpedoes and pulled up from their attack runs. The dumb fired torpedoes were released so close to their target that it would be a miracle if they missed.
“103rd, follow me.” Durand inverted her Eagle and dove toward Bravo. The alien construct filled her canopy, blue swirls of electricity quivering where the fighters’ rounds had hit home. Dozens of fighters and bombers flew between her and her target, her chance to finally shoot back at the enemy stifled until the shot was clear.
The torpedoes came within a hundred yards of Bravo and the orbital burst into life. Point defense lasers annihilated the incoming torpedoes and savaged the squadrons that had hurt it.
An errant yellow blast passed Durand close enough that she flinched. Screams filled the IR as pilots and machines died, victims of the orbital’s point defense lasers.
“Pull up! Pull up! Abort the attack.” Durand fought to keep blood in her head as she flipped her rear engines toward the orbital and fired her afterburners, skipping out of the reach of the lasers. An Eagle to her flank erupted in a fireball that lasted for a heartbeat and a wave of static filled her IR channel.
