by Richard Fox
“What the hell?” said a Chinese accented voice.
“Regroup on me, hurry,” Durand ordered. She flipped her Eagle over and got a look at the orbital, which had ceased firing. The surface shook like the surface of a sand dune struck by a sudden gale.
“Did we kill it?” Choi asked.
“That’s not what happens when they die,” Durand said.
The orbital came apart, its single mass transforming into a swarm of single drones racing toward the fleet.
Durand opened a channel to Valdar.
“Breitenfeld, you’ve got incoming.”
****
Valdar’s tactical plot became a mass of red target icons as Bravo orbital morphed from a single grave threat into thousands and thousands of new problems.
His hands flew through his display, plotting new positions for his flotilla.
“Get our destroyer escorts in between us and the drones. Tell the frigates to get into this fight now. We need their anti-aircraft batteries,” Valdar said.
“Sir, that will leave the civilian ships defenseless,” Ericson said.
“They’ll be damned useless if enough of those drones get past us. Hurry!” He slammed a fist into an intercom button. “Gunnery, fire the Q-round we have loaded into the rail gun into the coordinates I send you. Stand by to fire.”
Valdar watched as one of his rail batteries slewed toward the approaching mass of drones.
“Fire!”
The Breitenfeld shook as the rail gun fired. Drones veered away from the incoming projectile and tendrils of massed drones flew toward other capital ships on the line. The Q-round erupted and bright white electricity arced from one drone to another, snaring hundreds in a web of coherent power.
Some drones burned away but most of the affected continued on, their pre-blast angular velocity guiding their disabled bodies through space.
“Destroyers Ogden, Vancouver and Milan in place. They’ve linked their batteries through IR and are engaging,” Ericson said. Approaching drones withered under the destroyers’ gauss cannons but their leading edge of their advance kept coming.
“Gunnery, get effective fire on those disabled drones. They’re unpowered and the more we can kill now the more—”
A sunburst of red light flared from Charlie, a wide-angled blast that cut through space like a curtain. The sheath of light sliced through the Tarawa, the Breitenfeld’s sister ship at the far end of the line. The fore section tumbled into space like a popped cork.
The wall of light hinged on Charlie and swept through the line. A pair of destroyers flared into puffs of flame as the beam caught them.
“Evasive maneuvers! Get us out of its path,” Valdar said.
His ship lurched downward, the wide beam approaching them with the assurance of death itself.
****
Elias felt a wave of relief as the energy wall vanished, but his respite was short-lived as warnings and cries came over the IR.
He looked up. Dozens of drones glinted in the sun’s rays.
Elias aimed the Q-round launcher mounted on his forearm and fired. With only five rounds, each shot had to count. The Q-round struck a drone and tendrils of light shot out but failed to reach any of the other drones.
“They’re learning. Wait until they’re bunched up before using your Q-rounds,” Elias said. His dual gauss cannons flashed and destroyed the disabled drone. Part of him longed for this battle to be in atmosphere. The sound of explosions, the thrum of his heavy sabatons against the Earth and the comfort of hearing his fellow soldiers and Marines firing alongside him were absent in a void battle.
A red beam struck the hull in front of him and he twisted to the side and launched himself into the void. He drew down and pelted a drone with shots, the force of the recoil pushing him back against the hull. The drone cracked in half and dissipated.
A scream in the IR cut out. He looked to a firing position that had been manned by three sailors. Two sailors floated listlessly away from the hull while a third fired useless low-powered gauss shots into the drone towering over him.
Elias snapped off a pair of shots, winging the drone. He ran toward the threatened sailor and hit the drone again. The drone dangled from a stalk embedded in the hull, stunned by the blows. Elias retracted the hand on his left arm and grabbed the drone’s stalk with his right.
He swung his left arm at the drone and activated the pneumatic pump within.
The spike impaled the drone and stabbed through its back. Elias shoved it away, the gold pyrite within crackling with reddish energy. The drone blew apart with a blast from Elias’ gauss cannons.
Elias plucked a spinning gauss rifle from the void and handed it back to the sailor.
“High-powered shots only. Everything else is useless,” Elias said.
The sailor, his eyes wide in awe or terror—Elias couldn’t tell which—nodded furiously.
A flash of red to his left caught Elias’ attention. A drone shot the hull in the exact same place three times in quick succession as it flew toward the Breitenfeld. The drone elongated as it approached, narrowing into a cigar shape.
Elias failed to hit the drone as it plunged into the hull through the hole it made.
“Bridge, you’ve got a border. Deck thirty-seven just ahead of the magazines,” Elias said.
“Can you get inside and help?” Ericson said, her voice reedy with panic.
Another trio of blasts hit ahead of Elias. He ran toward the hole and brought his left hand back out of the housing. He saw the approaching drone elongating and ran a projection through his hardwired ballistic computer.
His hand shot out and caught the drone, half into the hull. His iron grip pulled it free and he slammed the drone against his knee. The drone bent from the blow and Elias tossed it away like a boomerang. He blasted it with his gauss cannon and ended its threat.
Laser blasts smashed into the hull next to him, another pair of drones heading right for him.
“Bridge, I’m going to need a minute.”
****
MacDougall ran through the passageway, breathing labored as he struggled with his handhold on the metal box. Three other sailors helped him carry it, each suffering as he did. They ran past the electrical shop, sick bay, the entrance to the crypt; he felt like his destination was getting farther away instead of closer.
“If I’d wanted to run fast and carry heavy things, I’d have joined the Marines and not the navy,” MacDougall groused.
“Security party seven, where are you?” Ericson asked through the IR.
“Deck thirty-six, section 2-B and I don’t see any damn drone,” he answered.
“Thirty-seven! Get to deck thirty-seven now!”
The sound of heavy metal thumps against the ceiling marched toward MacDougall and his team. He tapped the shoulder of a sailor carrying a gauss rifle loaded with Q-rounds. The metal stomps ceased a few yards ahead of them. Muffled shouts and cracks of gauss fire echoed from the corridor above them.
MacDougall tightened his grip on the handle welded to the box. The nearest lift was twenty yards ahead. The entrance to the ship’s magazine stores—and hundreds of missiles and torpedoes—was right next to them. The armor around the magazines was the thickest on the ship; that door was the easiest way in or out.
“Do we go or what?” a sailor asked. Screams mixed with the sound of metal being ripped apart.
“No laddie, we’re right where we need to be,” MacDougall said.
A laser blasted through the ceiling, blackening a swath of deck plating. Fire edged the ragged hole in the ceiling and the stalks of a Xaros drone reached into the corridor with the nimbleness of a spider. The swirling, oblong body of the drone followed a heartbeat later.
“Shoot it! Shoot the damn thing!” MacDougall ordered.
The sailor aimed his gauss rifle. A crimson beam shot from the drone’s stalks and hit the sailor in the center of his chest. The man faded into a puff of red smoke, gone before his face could register the shock and p
ain of the death blow.
His rifle clattered to the deck.
MacDougall lunged for the weapon as another burst of red death passed over his head. He scooped up the weapon, the handle slick with the powdered remnants of the last man to hold it. The drone pointed a stalk at him, a ruby-hued star twinkling at its point.
With no time to aim, MacDougall fired from the hip. The rifle shot snapped with the sound of a great oak breaking in half. The recoil shoved MacDougall back so hard he tripped over his own feet and crashed to the deck.
He pushed himself up and saw the drone lying on the deck, stalks twitching as a line of electricity ran between them like a Jacob’s ladder.
Only one other sailor remained, standing dumbstruck next to the box.
“Bloody tosser! Move yer ass!” MacDougall grabbed each handle on his side of the box and the other sailor followed suit.
Adrenaline-fueled muscles lifted the box off the deck and they ran it toward the helpless drone like it was a battering ram.
“Stunner! Activate!” MacDougall yelled and a light on the box glowed green. The box hit the side of the drone, and the pneumatic spike in the box drove into the alien machine with enough force to crack any armor ever made by mankind.
The spike cracked the drone and sent it sliding across the deck. The stunner shot back from the impact and out of the sailors’ grip. The spike retracted into its housing with a click-clack sound.
The drone stirred.
“Fuck me runnin’. Again!” They lifted the stunner and ran to the drone.
A stalk speared out and hit the other sailor in the heart, stopping him dead in his tracks. The stunner smashed to the ground and MacDougall stumbled over it. The stalk retracted with a slurp and stabbed into the sailor’s eye.
MacDougall braced his feet against the deck and lifted the stunner, his muscles screaming in protest.
“Get off my ship!” He swung the stunner with a roar and slammed it against the drone. The spike cracked the drone like a dropped egg and it burned away.
MacDougall fell to the deck, his chest heaving. He looked back at the dead sailor, blood pooling around his body.
“Bridge. We got it.” He rolled onto his back and felt a creeping tide of pain in his lower back and shoulders.
****
Durand sent a burst of gauss rounds into a helpless drone, shattering it.
“I’ve got one on me! Help!” came through her IR. She looked up at the sender, one of her last Eagles.
The Eagle corkscrewed wildly, micro bursts of its maneuver thrusters fouling the pursuing drone’s shots.
Durand brought her nose up and blasted toward the chase. Her first shots winged the drone, sending it end over end. Her next squeeze of the trigger blew it to bits.
“Thanks, Gall. I owe you,” the pilot said. She overtook his fighter, slow enough to look it over for damage. The Charlie orbital came into view from behind the other Eagle.
“Get back in the fight and—wait,” she zoomed in on Charlie, its hull scabbing over in red embers. Lumps the size of drones shed from its surface and disintegrated.
“103rd, anyone who can hear me, form up and make an attack run on Charlie, now!” Durand bellied over and hit her afterburners.
“Are you crazy? It will eat us alive,” Choi said. Despite her objections, her Condor raced to Durand’s target.
“It’s burning apart trying to keep up that energy output. It won’t have the power to hit us with point defense,” Durand said.
“If you’re wrong?” Choi asked.
“Then you can tell me ‘I told you so’ in hell.” Durand fired off her rail gun, the recoil rattling her Eagle like she’d tapped the brakes in a speeding ground car. Her round hit home and the energy wall fired from the orbital faltered.
A second rail shot from Durand blew a hole in the orbital.
She banked her Eagle onto its side and pointed her nose at the Xaros mass as she passed across it, keeping her speed as she brought her gauss cannon to bear. She squeezed the trigger on her cannon and didn’t let go. Her rounds stitched across the surface, gouging out lumps of material that burned away within seconds. Another Eagle followed her lead, mimicking her path of destruction.
“Torpedoes…loose!” Choi said. Durand risked a glance and saw the four torpedoes from the Chinese–piloted Condor break from the fuselage and fire their engines. The Condor hit its afterburners and streaked ahead of its ordnance.
The torpedoes slammed into Charlie. One well-placed torpedo could have destroyed the Breitenfeld; the combined payload of four torpedoes ripped through the Xaros like an ax though a log of wood.
Peals of laughter came from the three Chinese pilots as they flew ahead of the destruction.
“Look out!” Choi shouted.
Durand righted her fighter and almost ran into a stalk that had sprung from Charlie’s hull. The stalk stabbed out at her but a barrel roll sent the stalk’s strike wide by a few feet.
“Choi, watch out for that—” Durand looked over her shoulder and saw Choi’s Condor tumbling end over end through space. Charlie burned away to nothing, but it had struck a final blow.
The Condor flopped over and over, air venting from the crew compartment.
“Eject, damn you,” Durand said.
Rapid-fire, incomprehensible Chinese came over the IR. An ejection seat flared from the Chinese bomber, counteracting the bomber’s tumble. The bomber floated through space like a leaf falling from a tree, and two more ejection seats flew from the bomber.
“Get to Ceres. Hole up in a crater until this is over then hit your beacons,” Durand said.
“Zhen?”
“English, damn it!”
“Yes, roger that, ma’am. Thank you,” Choi said.
Durand turned her fighter around and returned to the fight.
****
Stacey felt her lips and cheeks tug against her face as the drop ship shuddered through another maneuver. Turret fire rattled through the ship, which she knew was not a good sign. If the drones were close enough to shoot at, their ship was close enough to get hit.
The temptation to turn on the drop ship’s IR net nagged at her, but not knowing if a half-dozen drones were about to rip her to pieces struck her as a better option than exposing herself to the fear and knowledge of things she couldn’t control.
Keeping her eyes shut helped too.
The drop ship bucked like an airplane in turbulence.
She opened an eye as a mess of sparks showered down from the dorsal turret.
“That’s not good,” she said. Hale’s Marines unlocked gauss rifles from their acceleration pads and slapped fresh batteries into the weapons.
“Not good at all.” She turned on the IR.
“—on top of you!” Durand’s warning came through the IR. A patch of starlight suddenly appeared on the roof and a pair of stalks wrapped around the rent hull.
Stacey slapped at the gauss pistol on her chest, struggling to remove it from its holster. She shouted a warning and pointed frantically to the drone tearing its way inside.
“Tarawa Three-Seven, hold your course very steady,” Durand said.
Heavy gauss rounds ripped through the top of the drop ship, perforating the bulkhead with a dozen ragged holes. A solid hit launched the drone into space. Durand’s Eagle zipped over the drop ship a moment later.
Stacey got her pistol free and fiddled with the power settings.
“That’s useless,” Ibarra said to her.
“Why don’t you shut up and do something useful?” she muttered.
“Prepare to drop!” Hale shouted. The Marines unsnapped their restraints and stepped onto the deck, their boots locking tight against the metal. Stacey looked down at her harness like it was a Gordian knot.
Torni unbuckled her with practiced ease and yanked her out of the acceleration pad. She snatched the pistol out of Stacey’s hand with the shake of her head and jabbed it back into the holster.
“If that probe knew this was comin
g, he should have sent you into the Marines,” Torni said.
“Should I tell her about the time you fainted when a squirrel snuck into your room?” Ibarra said.
“Shut up,” Stacey hissed.
“What?” Torni asked. The taller woman wrapped her arm around Stacey’s waist and hefted her off her feet. Torni’s arm mag-locked against Stacey’s armor.
“Not you. Wait. What’re you doing?”
Hale stood on the open rear hatch, one hand locked to a pneumatic strut as he looked below the drop ship.
“Drop zone is hot,” Hale said. “We’re jumping in. Follow me!” Hale stepped off the hatch and dove headfirst into the abyss.
Torni ambled forward as Franklin, Cortaro and Standish jumped from the drop ship.
“Wait, can we talk about this?” Stacey said, wiggling against Torni’s iron-clad grasp.
Torni’s pace quickened to a run and Stacey fought against a scream as they skipped into the void.
Warships sparkled in space as their cannons fought against drones swarming through the void. A cruiser exploded, showering Stacey with dirty yellow light.
Torni twisted and the grav linings on her boots sent the pair into a dive.
Stacey’s empty stomach lurched as their speed increased. She looked up and gasped at the Crucible’s interlocked thorns, motes of golden light winking within the basalt black thorns. The Crucible was massive, each thorn a mountain peak against the backdrop of Ceres.
A half-dozen thorns converged into a dome, its shape the only differential from the surrounding basalt spikes.
As she got closer, Stacey made out white armored Marines clustered on the peak of the node. Silver muzzle flashes from gauss rifles fired at a pair of drones swooping toward the landing zone. One drone spiraled into the dome and slid over the horizon while the second danced in space, peppering the Marines with yellow laser blasts.
“Hold on tight,” Torni said as the dome grew larger and larger in front of them.
Stacey’s stomach lurched toward her knees as Torni swung her feet toward the dome and their view inverted. Torni slowed their descent with her gravity lining. They came to a complete stop a few yards above the dome.
