Winged Hussars (The Revelations Cycle Book 3)

by Mark Wandrey

  “Why haven’t they determined the enemy ship types yet?” he asked his TacCom. “And why are so many shots missing?”

  “I do not know.”

  Something was seriously wrong. “Send Admiral Omega a message,” he ordered. “We need to warn him he’s in danger.”

  “They are several light-minutes away. The conversation will not be instantaneous.”

  “I know that, fool, but he must be warned!”

  The minutes ticked by as the forces closed on each other.

  “Sir, we just got a reply from Admiral Omega. He wants to know what you’re babbling about. He says that, based on their sensor data, the Humans have nothing larger than a battlecruiser. They are formidable, but not against a prepared foe.”

  “No manned Human vessels are capable of more than 20 gravities,” Geshakooka said. “If that were the Pegasus, wouldn’t they have fired their spinal mount by now?”

  “Enemy ship acceleration just shot to 100 gravities!” Geshakooka’s SitCon said in stunned amazement. “They are performing skew turns in perfect formation.”

  “New heading?” the captain asked.

  “Directly for the Izlian fleet.”

  Geshakooka watched the display, his stomach threatening to turn inside out. It was like watching a spaceship crash—he was horrified, but he couldn’t look away.

  On the Tri-V display, the 10 ships appeared as blazing points of light from their fusion torches, occasionally punctuated with flashes of laser hits. They were moving straight toward the Izlian fleet like missiles homing on their targets. Only missiles didn’t weigh two thousand tons, have dozens of fusion plants, shield generators, fuel tanks, and nominal payloads. Even with all the conflicting sensory data, Geshakooka was horrified to see that only two ships in the entire Izlian fleet were trying to identify the enemy by visual means. One was occluded by the flashing of powerful laser batteries. The other, after his sensor tech enhanced it, clearly showed the enemy.

  “You fools,” Geshakooka said.

  Ten hastily-carved chunks of M-type nickel iron asteroid weighing over two thousand tons each flashed at the Izlian ships at 174,000 feet per second. Their albedos were reduced to nearly zero, and dozens of overlapping shield generators, removed from the Hussar ships, had been skillfully installed to make it appear as a much larger ship to the Izlian weapons sensors. The drone micro-fusion engines were capable of pushing a drone at a thousand gravities for a minute. Combined as they were, they still managed to push their huge improvised craft at 100 gravities.

  The shields were only oriented to the front, but since their albedo was zero, the other fleet’s elements couldn’t tell that. Between the dozens of fusion torch outputs, the energy being radiated by the fusion reactors, and the dense metallic mass of the asteroids, none of it made sense to the Izlian threat assessment specialists.

  Geshakooka got a pretty good look at the enhanced image provided by Admiral Omega’s sensor tech, but it was after the three asteroids slammed into the Izlian battleship. The asteroids were carefully spaced in a line, one after another. Two thousand tons of nickel-iron, reactors, and miscellaneous equipment traveling at 32 miles per second hit with the force of more than six hundred kilotons of energy, each.

  The first one easily overloaded the battleship’s shields, and it was the simplest in design of all the drones—it was nothing more than fusion plants, torches, and shields. Converted almost entirely to energy on impact, what remained after that was turned into lances of high velocity debris which smashed across the hull like a shotgun, tearing into the armor and penetrating the ship in hundreds of places. The second pounded into the bullet shaped battleship’s nose like a rifle through a watermelon. The drone’s computerized brain sensed the impending impact and a picosecond later detonated one of the Hussars infamous squash bombs. The blast nearly doubled the energy transfer, changing what remained into a dozen fiery, pin wheeling pieces of debris weighing tens of thousands of tons each. Admiral Omega never felt a thing and never knew what killed him.

  The third drone didn’t have a squash bomb; it didn’t need one. Close on the heels of the previous asteroid, it spent its fury on an already dead ship. It passed through the debris cloud and out the rear of the battleship in a fantastic fountain of fusion fire, reaction mass, and thousands of tons of ejecta. What was left of the once great Izlian battleship didn’t resemble a starship so much as disassociated junk traveling in a slowly expanding ball of debris.

  The next three drones scored perfect hits on the trio of Izlian cruisers on point. Only a twentieth the size of the battleship, with shields proportionately weaker, the cruisers counted on the battleship to provide interlocking shield coverage for the formation. With the center of the formation obliterated, the drone-controlled asteroids annihilated the cruisers with most of their mass still intact, and went on to slam into the battlecruisers directly astern of the vaporized cruisers. Though they’d been fitted with squash bombs as well, none managed to detonate. It didn’t matter; inertia was all they needed. Even after tearing completely through the cruisers, they delivered between two and three hundred kilotons of force to the battlecruisers behind them, knocking out their shields and causing serious damage.

  The three follow-up drone asteroids hit the battlecruiser’s unshielded hulls with their full force. Those three retained enough of their energy to hit the trailing cruisers as well. The impacts were insufficient to destroy the ships, but more than enough to blow their forward shields and hull them, rendering the ships combat ineffective.

  The final attack was supposed to be the cherry on Alexis Cromwell’s cake, and it was targeted on the Izlian drone carrier trailing 100 miles behind the battleship. Unfortunately, an Izlian escort frigate was in the way, and it was converted into a glowing ball of incandescent gas by the impact. The asteroid was deflected a tiny bit as it converted the frigate to disassociated particles, and it only managed a glancing blow against the carrier. The kinetic energy transfer blew out the shields on one side of the ship, and the last squash bomb detonated, wrecking a third of the carrier’s drone launch and recovery systems while the EMP destroyed its computers.

  The entire attack, from the time the first drone asteroid hit the battleship’s forward shields until the drone carrier was wrecked, had lasted less than five seconds. Geshakooka noted the time in his implant-controlled clock. Less than five seconds to destroy seven Izlian capital ships, cripple three, severely damage their carrier, and wipe a single hapless escort from existence like the finger of God.

  “Still a fan of Izlian tactical doctrine?” Geshakooka asked his TacCom. The officer sat glued to the deck, staring in stunned amazement at the carnage. “Asteroids for kinetic weapons,” the captain remarked, “I’ve read about them being used against planets in the Great War, but never ship-to-ship.”

  “Crude, but effective,” the sensor operator remarked.

  “Crude?” the tactical analysist asked. “Look at the coordination, the accuracy, the raw power! Sure, they were blunt weapons, but they cost next to nothing. Drone fusion torches is my guess. Dozens of them on each rock. Weigh the results against the cost.”

  “As I said,” the captain spoke, “the Humans don’t follow any other race’s tactical manual.”

  “No,” the TacCom finally spoke. “Do they write their own? I’d like to read it!”

  * * *

  The remainder of the Izlian fleet, those still capable of maneuvering, did so for all they were worth. Even though the details of what had just happened were available to all the individual ship commanders should they simply access the data stream, none of them wished to risk more Human surprises. Admiral Omega had been a legend among the Union navies. He’d lived during the great war of the First Republic and honed his skills in that legendary conflagration. Alone among the races of the galaxy, the Izlian often lived thousands of years. He’d seen things most could only dream of.

  During his long life, he’d compiled countless books on how to fight and command space s
hips. Sadly, most of his tactics were based on anecdotal evidence and second-hand accounts, because Admiral Omega had never actually fought first-hand in a space battle. Of course, no one alive knew that.

  The HecSha and Maki commanders hadn’t complained when they were put under Omega’s leadership; for them, it was an honor. With the Izlians effectively removed from the tactical equation, a power vacuum formed. In the absence of the supposedly sage leadership of the eminently well-known Izlian, neither the HecSha nor the Maki commanders seemed interested in assuming control. With an adversary like Alexis Cromwell at their throats, that was a poor decision. Neither of the two remaining battleships detected the silently drifting craft in their midst until it was far too late.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 34

  “Pegasus, this is assault craft Alpha,” Paka spoke into the laser communicator. Less than a watt in power, and precisely aimed, the lasercom was impossible to detect or intercept.

  “Pegasus actual speaking,” Alexis replied in kind, “go ahead, Alpha.”

  “We show good strikes on nine of 10 prime targets, I repeat, good strikes on nine of ten!” Everyone in the cramped pod could hear the explosion of cheers in the distant ship’s CIC. “Final target only received a glancing hit. I think it did some damage, but can’t tell how much. Splash the Izlian battleship, three battlecruisers, three cruisers, and partial kills on three more cruisers. We may have gotten an escort in there, too, as a bonus. Hard to tell through visual observations.”

  “Excellent news, thanks. Can you relay positions and movements on any elements in view?” Paka turned and looked at Zit who was operating the pod’s visual scanning system. The boarding craft normally had minimal instrumentation; the improved suite had been cobbled together by Sato in just a few minutes. The Goka held out a hand in a passable imitation of the Human trademark thumbs-up.

  “We’ll have that data for you in a minute, Pegasus,” she told her captain.

  “Very good, Paka. It’s all on you now. Can you make the objective?” The pod was being piloted by T’jto. The MinSha didn’t look up from her controls, but did nod her head before speaking. “Thrashing the gas bags really threw the rest into disarray,” the lieutenant said. “If I had to guess, I’d say the overall commander was in the battleship, and now they don’t know what to do.”

  “Good,” Alexis said. “Let us know when you reach your objective.”

  “Roger that, Pegasus,” Paka said and cut the signal.

  Rick watched the proceedings on the Tri-V projections inside his Mk 8 CASPer. Even though he was locked to the hull in four places, he and the other two Human troopers had the best ride on the small craft. With three armored troopers, a Tortantula with rider, a MinSha, and a Goka, the pod was cramped as hell. Throwing in their Veetanho executive officer made it almost too tight to breath.

  “You two doing alright?” Johansson asked Rick and Lynn over the squadnet. Rick could tell the sergeant was keeping a close eye on them because it was the two privates’ first boarding action.

  “Doing great,” Rick said.

  “No problems,” Lynn said at the same time.

  “Good,” the sergeant replied, “let me know if you have any issues. We’re in the lead here, so I need to know if anything is going wrong before it happens.”

  Rick had to admit it, this was the only way to go. Orbital drops were insane by comparison. They strapped you in a HALD, a high altitude, low deploying rig and shot you out of a spaceship toward the planet. It was the most helpless he’d ever felt, and that was in training. At least here he was in a ship, though a nominal one, and his whole squad was with him. Good times.

  He watched the data feeds Lt. T’jto was using to fly the craft. She was steering solely with chemical thrusters, a feature of the craft’s design. Everything about it screamed stealth. Light and radar absorbing paint, angles to deflect radar, zero EM emissions thanks to a thin (and horribly expensive) F11 shroud inside the hull, and no windows. It was as black as space and as quiet as death. Navigation occurred via a tiny trio of cameras that were only opened to space once a minute. The sensors Zit was using didn’t help navigation; they were as blacked out as the ship itself and only helped in examining the now disorganized enemy fleet’s actions.

  They’d been floating for several minutes with no changes in attitude when suddenly the Lieutenant chittered to herself, too quietly for the translator to pick up, and there was a long series of bumps from the attitude jets. Rick tensed, wondering if he was about to turn into a flash of light. Nothing happened. Then the lieutenant spoke louder.

  “Two minutes,” she said. “Everyone lock down. Here we go.” Around the space, the other marines went about locking belts or other restraints in place. Oort simply put away the slate she’d been reading and used that arm to grab another handhold. Rick had seen the title: ‘On the Freedom of the Will,’ by Arthur Schopenhauer. He’d heard of Nietzsche from school, but this one was a mystery to him. If they lived, he was going to ask the Tortantula what was driving her reading list decisions.

  Rick waited in his CASPer, not feeling anything other than boredom. He could have read or listened to music; a lot of CASPer drivers played tunes during a drop, and some even during combat. In training, he’d found it distracting. This was going to be his first real battle in an armored suit, and he didn’t plan to mess with success. The clock ticked down to zero. They all felt a queasy sensation, and Rick knew they’d just passed through their target’s shields.

  “Firing main engine,” Lt. T’jto said and activated the control. “Brace for impact!” The rear panel shielding the craft’s pair of hydrogen powered thrusters blew away with a pop, and the engines were ignited. Ten gravities of thrust slammed into them.

  The three Humans had it the worst, despite being strapped into their suits and padded on all sides, they were facing backward when the pod fired its engines. Rick gritted his teeth as his head was jerked forward from the thrust, and the special strap fitted around his forehead dug into his skin. He flexed his neck muscles, relieving a little of the pain.

  The boost would be mercifully short, except for what was about to follow right on its heels. Oh fuck, Rick thought. Fuck, fuck, fuck! He felt a tiny sliver of fear. He didn’t know if he should be glad he felt an emotion, or worried it was so intense he could feel it? After just a second they roared to over 300 feet per second. The engine cut out, Rick quickly pushed his head back against the rest, and…Crrruunch!

  The boarding pod slammed into the target ship at over 300 miles per hour. The pod had a nose three times longer than the crew compartment, composed of an armor-piercing shaped charge that detonated on impact, followed by hundreds of layers of honeycombed titanium/carbon fiber alloy, each fit together with a relatively brittle epoxy. As the pod slammed into the ship, the explosive shaped charge punched a hole in the side, and the pod slid through.

  As soon as the pod hit, the nose began to disintegrate layer by layer. Every crushed, collapsed layer slowed the pod a little more as it penetrated deeper into the target. Eventually the momentum would be spent, and the pod would come to a stop. Ideally it would have a little of the absorbent nose left, though probably not much. Ideally. However, if the hull was too thick, and the breaching charge didn’t penetrate it, the pod could be crushed against the hull. Or if the hull was too weak, and the target ship narrow, it could go too deep and impact the armor on the opposite side, or hit a major internal structure and slice the pod in half. The list of things that could go wrong with a breaching pod was longer than what could go right. Regardless of what happened, it would all be over in less than half a second.

  The nose was like a crumple zone on a car, designed to burn off inertial energy by keeping the Gs at survivable levels for the occupants. The book listed that as “less than 50 Gs,” because 50 was fatal to most merc races, even for a fraction of a second. Optimally, the pod kept it below 30. To Rick, if felt like being rear ended by a bus, only slower. In reality, it was more like slamming int
o a brick wall at 35 mph, for almost a second.

  The pod reverberated with the crushing impact, and the rending metal screamed. Or maybe it was someone in the pod. Or maybe the escaping atmosphere of the breached ship. Rick had no idea, only that it was over, and he was still alive. And he fucking hurt!

  “Well that was fun,” Johansson grunted.

  “Call out,” T’jto said. Rick had known the lieutenant would be okay if he was, the MinSha could take more transient Gs than a Human, if properly braced. The interior of the pod was a matrix of carefully erected and self-reinforcing padded walls designed to keep everyone from being crushed into each other. The only one not really braced was Oort, and she was so strong she simply moved her body by herself to prepare for the changes in thrust direction. Jeejee had a special saddle on the Tortantula, and rode it out there. Much of the interior bracing was trashed, but it had done its job.

  “I think I have a cracked rib,” Lynn moaned.

  “Are you combat effective?” Paka asked.

  “I’m taking meds,” she replied, “I’ll be fine.” Lynn was the only one injured; everyone else was fine.

  “Okay, prepare for insertion!” T’jto said. All those not in CASPers had already closed and locked their atmospheric locks. The squad wore the version of combat armor that allowed them to operate in space, albeit for just a few minutes. The CASPers could operate in space for much longer, if necessary. “I’m blowing the nose in five seconds.”

  Rick, Lynn, and Johansson activated the controls on their suits that caused the mechanical latches to release them. Their suits were clamped in place at the front of the pod because they were the most dangerous occupants. If one of the 800-pound steel behemoths broke loose, it could well kill everyone else aboard. Finally released, they carefully turned around and crouched slightly. Behind and around them, the padded panels that had braced and protected the others collapsed to the sides. With as little movement as possible, weapons were readied.