It was a choice of go now and be the cat jumping amongst the pigeons, or wait and secure this system, letting them wait for what didn’t come immediately. But it wasn’t really a choice, and I knew it.
We jumped again.
Chaos had chosen a vector to come out on which allowed me to shoot at six battleships.
We fooled them for a few seconds, but before the last one died, we were taking heavy fire. We jumped out away, and came back on a different angle. They must have predicted it, as we again took heavy fire before the last four battleships died. A lot of it was coming from the fighters, and while a lot of them vanished as I strafed, the rest were incidental for the moment, and taking advantage of it.
We kept jumping, taking the cruisers next, but I knew we were now being too predictable. Now I was keeping a much closer eye on the shields, and they were dropping alarmingly.
“Friendlies,” announced Chaos yet again.
“Who?” I asked on automatic, pulling the ship left in a hurry while releasing the strafe, causing everyone to lurch in their seats.
“AMS.”
“Who?” asked Alana, through what sounded like gritted teeth.
“Endeavor, Beagle, and Pelican. Apricot Mapping Service. They’re launching drones.”
Another hollo popped up, this one an older man than Hunter was, grey hair and goatee beard, and a wide grin.
“Our turn to have your back, Chaos. Go take the next lot of transports.”
The hollo vanished. John Slice might be a civilian, but he outranked me significantly anyway, certainly in Jon’s eyes, and I took it as an order.
From memory, the AMS ships were straight Scimitar class hulls, modified to carry a lot more drones than Scimitars carried fighters, and launch them significantly faster. So the carriers themselves had less firepower than even Claymore did, but they more than made up for it with what were effectively Excalibur fours, modified to be drones. They quickly diverted the fighters away from us, while the carriers started in on the destroyers.
“Go,” I said.
Chaos jumped insystem, and we did the battleship dance again. The six of them took three attack runs to destroy, and the cruisers took another eight runs, although we took out destroyers at the same time. My gaze was going to the shields more frequently now, as they weren’t getting the chance to recharge properly. They were falling through thirty percent now, as the fighting became more and more conventional. Although this time we’d been lucky enough to find older battleships with no fighters.
A white dot labeled Pelican dropped in nearby, and nailed a destroyer I’d been forced to ignore, and who had us banged to rights, and was hitting us hard. The fire stopped quickly as Eric Nielsen demonstrated he still had his combat skills. But by the time we’d cleaned up the last of the destroyers, and started on the transports, my shields were down to ten percent.
The transports were no problem to finish up, and I blew out a breath as I brought Chaos to a stop. Pelican vanished, reappearing back at the jump point, where the fighting was still going on. In fact, fighting was still going on strung out over a lot of systems.
“Ah,” said Chaos, “you want to see this.”
She had the navmap zoomed in on the planet we were headed towards, and all of our heads went there.
Two white dots were showing, amongst a mass of blue and red ones. Blue were friendly, and there appeared to be a massive fight going on over the planet. Now connected to the comnavsat over the planet itself, Chaos zoomed in.
“What the fuck?” exclaimed BA.
We all had the same thought. But Amanda was the one to voice it.
“Are they dragons?”
Forty
It was well after dark by the time we arrived at Scimitar.
Willow and I had come up with a plan, both leaders listening in but leaving it to us. Willow had first assured me they could take the fight into orbit, and I’d then pressed her on their capabilities. Flame and talons were not going to be a whole lot of good after all. We needed something else, and the tactics to go with it. The discussions and planning had continued while eating. And I was happy to find they had a version of coffee with a good caffeine kick. I was needing it.
I left Gor with the king. We had a brief argument, but it was one I wasn’t going to lose. If the Excalibur was lost, I wasn’t going to have him on board it as well, and lose him as well. Quite apart from the fact Jane would kill me if I lost an AI like that, I wasn’t going to risk a friend. He didn’t take it well, but we did need a liaison with the ground, and after arguing, he accepted it with bad grace.
Sim and I flew back on Willow’s back, with a good hundred of her people flying behind us. Occasional potshots came from orbit, but shields went up in plenty of time.
A moon was providing a moderate amount of light, but the dragons apparently didn’t need it. Willow landed next to the ship, and we walked off down her back, and inside via the only open launch tube. Willow shifted, and followed us in.
There was good news and bad news about the ships.
The Lightning was scrap after all. Sim had ripped out its crystal, and after gutting my bedroom completely, installed it in what was only just enough space. I felt a twinge when I found my bed and all the internal fittings cast out into a heap amongst the other debris. I made her move it all to proper storage. While the destroyed nose of the Scimitar was now patched, I had visions of my Gorilla bed disappearing into space if the front end lost its very light seal. I quite liked that bed, and didn’t want some plant shooting it.
The Excalibur was now combat capable, wasn’t too far behind a mark four for shielding, and Sim had even made a ship suit for it. It was shy some emitters on the mark four though, and I’d need to be careful.
Scimitar on the other hand, still wasn’t powered up. The gutted Lightning had provided its power generators and reserve batteries to start up with, but Sim hadn't been game to do it yet. And only when we had power, would we find out what didn’t work. In theory, most of the launchers were operational, as were the two rings of battleship guns, and the upper turrets. Nothing had survived on the underside, and even if it had, it would have been almost impossible to get to and fix.
What wasn’t operational, and would take a shipyard to fix, were the shield emitters. The now unused generators had been redirected to supply the remaining guns and launchers, which would allow the cruiser and smaller guns to fire pretty well continuously. No shielding pretty well made Scimitar a non-starter, except for one thing.
There be dragons here.
Sim gave me a leg up into the airlock, and I squeezed past the crystal, and into Gorilla’s cockpit. Willow followed me, and I had her sit in the jump seat behind and to my right. She was fascinated with the technology. Sim left for Scimitar’s bridge.
Gor appeared as a head and shoulders hollo, and Willow jumped in surprise. We both grinned at her.
“Prestart complete, George. I’m running just enough power for me, but we’re ready for a full start.”
I looked at Willow, and she nodded. The plan was to have enough dragons around the top of the ship that if the plants detected Gorilla starting up, there’d be more than enough shielding to last until we’d launched. Although launch was not exactly what we’d be doing. A slow crawl out the only open hole was more like it, and then try hard to miss the trees outside. Her nod told me the dragons were in place.
“Well, let’s get this party started.”
Systems began coming online, and as the HUD formed, Gor popped up the navmap as far as we could see with a single comnavsat.
“That’s odd,” he said.
“What?” Willow and I said together.
“There’s still ten fleets in orbit, not including transports. But they appear to be spooked about something.”
“Spooked how?”
“All the fleet ships are arranged so they can’t be approached from any direction, without whoever is attacking them taking fire immediately they get into range. There’s two thousa
nd fighters, and they’re deployed in groups of fifty, and also covering approach vectors.”
“Afraid of us?” asked Willow.
“I don’t see why.” I gave her a speculative look. “Unless some of your people came into contact with the plants in the past, and they remember the encounter.”
“Not that I recall. Although it is possible some ancestors travelled through their space at some point.”
“I don’t like their state of readiness. Maybe we should postpone until they drop a few levels?”
“You heard our king. I have my orders. And we have a good plan.”
It remained to be seen if it was good or not. We were not going to get any element of surprise, but I think they were going to be surprised anyway.
Clunks started coming through from Scimitar’s top hull. Some of them sounded heavier than others. Now Gorilla was powered up, I’d been waiting for reports of fire from above, but there hadn't been any. While I waited, I entered dragons as a ship class, and designated them friendly. The clunks continued while I studied the fleet formations above us, trying to figure out the best way to hit them. I swapped thoughts with Willow, and she passed instructions on to her people.
Finally, the clunks stopped, and Sim popped up as a hollo on the other side of the console from Gor.
“Ready to fire things up fully,” she said.
I lifted Gorilla off the deck, spun us slowly towards the only way out, and moved us carefully over there. A set of builder droids were waiting to one side, with materials on hand to rapidly seal the inside end of the tube after we went through. I eased us into the tube, and along it, coming out the other end dead slow, and expecting to be fired on immediately. Nothing happened. I pulled us gently up from the ground, narrowly missing the trees, and hovered off to one side out of the way of the dragons milling around Scimitar. Our shields snapped on.
Scimitar’s entire top surface was covered in boulders. The deck underneath was under more than average gravity, enough so what was on the top of the hull, was being held in place.
“And we have engine start,” said Sim. “Erk, that isn’t good. Looks like max speed will be about half of normal, which could be problematic.”
“Hardly surprising. It’s amazing she powered up at all. Weapons?”
“There’s a few not responding. I’m sending repair droids now. Although we’ve got the same basic firepower left as Relentless, maneuvering is going to be total crap, and without heavy turrets, hitting anything is going to be problematical.”
“Are you combat capable?”
“Barely. But what choice do we have? The dragons are going to be exposed to missile fire, and if I’m up there, I can at least offer them some mosquito protection.”
“Okay. When you’re ready.”
“I’m ready.”
I looked at Willow, and she gave more orders.
Dragons began landing on the top hull of Scimitar, pushing any boulders in the way aside. They arranged themselves so most of them were pointing forwards, and they all sank talons into the hull. I noticed they were very careful to make sure they were not in the firing line of the battleship gun circles on the rear wings, and the cruiser guns were able to fire between them.
They all started flapping their wings at the same time, and with an audible groan, Scimitar was pulled out of the ground, and up to about five hundred meters, dirt and rocks dropping from the front end and wherever dirt had managed to settle. The underside thrusters fired up, and Sim gave the order to stop flapping. Willow passed it on, and we held our breath to see if Scimitar was going to plunge down again. She didn’t.
I moved Gorilla up to the same height. More dragons flew underneath Scimitar, inverting themselves and using talons to hold on the same way those on top were.
A mass of shields appeared, interlocking and overlapping, replacing Scimitar’s nonfunctional ones. As far as I could see, there were no gaps.
“Good to go,” said Sim.
“Do it,” I said to Gor.
The view through the HUD vanished, to be replaced by a cam view instead. Gor popped up a screen, showing what Sim was sending him.
Gorilla was now a Dragon.
Forty One
A thousand dragons burst out into space.
They were led by a different type of dragon, and two thirds of a battered battlecarrier seemingly being held up by more dragons. Jane had done a dragon suit specification for Gunbus, back when we’d been locked in that alternate reality nonsense. Gor had taken it and changed it as much as he could to look like these dragons, but there was only so much he could do, and allow the ship to fight effectively.
For now, the illusion hopefully kept the plants from targeting me specifically, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep it up for long.
We’d chosen our approach vector very carefully, assembling on the dark side of the planet, and coming up where our first, and only decent punch would do the most good. Or so we thought.
The plants reacted later than I’d expected, which meant whatever had them spooked, had them really spooked. We couldn’t avoid being fired on first, but when a thousand dragons project a shield in one place, nothing gets through it.
What we needed was a clean shot, and their lack of looking our way gave it to us. The formation we’d chosen gave every dragon a clean line of fire, and on a signal from Willow, still sitting off to my right, a hole opened in front of Scimitar, and every dragon not on her hull dropped its shields just long enough to do exactly the same thing.
The dragons on the top of Scimitar leapt clear, the gravity of the top deck was returned to normal, and Sim yanked the speed back to nothing. At the same time, every other dragon seemed to curl over on itself in a roll, and in a precise ballet precision, kicked their feet.
The entire contents of boulders and rocks on Scimitar’s hull shot forward forming a cloud of solid matter.
The boulders each dragon had dragged up from the ground turned a cloud into a small asteroid field.
The asteroids battered the entire fleet of Trixone ships, with every ship being hit multiple times over the course of about five seconds.
The dragons returned to the top hull of Scimitar, and shields went back up. Hits from guns had been shrugged off by any dragon hit, while several solid hits punched holes through Scimitar, but luckily missed anything vital.
The plants began firing missiles. Sim answered with mosquito launches.
I lined up a battleship and sent twenty torpedoes at it from the mouth of my dragon shape, while every dragon opened its mouth and spat at a ship. This wasn’t fire, but something between plasma and lava. Being solid, it impacted shields like a missile would. When the shield was down, the plasma impacted the hull and stuck to it. Willow had been quite sure enough hits on the hull would result in holes being burned through, and decompression of what was behind them. It wasn’t as good as missiles, but it was what they could do, and we’d work with it.
The dragons had been formed into groups in order to coordinate fire, and this was mainly why Willow was with me. The HUD gave her oversight, and she was already issuing orders to groups where to concentrate fire.
The biggest danger for the dragons were plant shields. Like anything else, dragon body parts would simply vaporize if they hit a shield. Which meant keeping some sort of distance. The wonder for me was the speed they managed in space. And it was probably all they had going for them now.
Gorilla didn’t have cap ship missiles, so I was limited to torpedoes having enough punch to batter down shields. I wasn’t looking for kills. I juked around the already broken formations trying using them to punch holes in shields so dragons could get plasma fire onto hulls. At the same time, I was firing off front and rear FF missiles as fast as I could push the buttons.
I didn’t get the chance to remove the dragon image. I zigged when I should have zagged, and took a solid double battleship pulse, which blew down my shields and shredded the suit. But it did its job and we didn’t take any hull damage. Wil
low called in some escorts, and they provided shielding while I headed out of the melee in the hope of getting my shields back up.
The second crystal was speeding up the recharge, but not enough emitters meant what I had still couldn’t take much more than one battleship pulse at a time. The suit had saved serious damage.
A group of fighters peeled off after me, I switched to IR’s, and systematically emptied a magazine of them out the rear launcher. It took six to kill each fighter, but they did the job.
I was trying to keep an eye on the whole battle, and it was as I was about to bring us around to go in again when I saw a dragon spinning off into space, apparently lifeless.
“Willow?”
“The plants are wising up, and coordinating their fire. We’re not as invulnerable as we thought if they get enough hits at the same time. And a few of the missiles have been getting through.”
“Tell me when you want to pull the plug.”
“Not yet.”
We’d discussed this. The one thing we didn’t have was enough hitting power. Scimitar was our only heavy hitter, and with her lousy speed and maneuverability, she was having a hard time delivering killing blows. Her mission was the battleships, but so far, only three of them were destroyed, and less than half the rest damaged. The rest of the plant fleet was slowly losing hull integrity, but it wasn’t slowing them down, and the whole battle was being fought at point blank range.
Another dragon spun off into space, missing most of its tail and hind legs. The HUD was showing more going in other directions, being ballistic away from the fight being a bad sign.
Gorilla was back in the fight now, but this was going badly for us. We simply couldn’t kill fast enough. When I ran out of torpedoes, I started ignoring the capital ships and went after the fighters instead.
“Trixone inbound,” said Sim. “Three more fleets, and more transports.”
“How long?”
“Long enough this will be over before they get here. Willow, you might want to call this off before you lose too many more of your people. As far as my sensors can see, most of them have some level of scale damage. And we’re going to need you all on the ground for the next wave.”
Imperium Knight Chaos Rising (The Hunter Imperium Book 6) Page 18
