by Richard Fox
“No.” Brannock tried to open the ship’s internal defense IR channel and got nothing. “That was enemy fire. Get up, Marine.”
Derringer shook the leg still in Indigo’s grasp. “Let go.”
“Said hold on.” Indigo frowned.
Brannock unlocked the doughboy’s safety line and tapped him on the arm.
“Let him go. We’re going to need him sooner or later,” Brannock said.
****
Eighth Fleet’s guns pounded the leading edge of the Xaros swarm with q-shells and flechette rounds, destroying hundreds of drones with each hit. A cloud of drones pushed forward, oblivious to the losses.
The fleet’s frigates sparred with a pair of Xaros cruisers that had been waiting for them on the far side of Abaddon. The Xaros ships seemed intent on disabling the Midway and had scored a few hits against a single aegis plate on her port side. Captain Randall didn’t think that was an accident and sent additional teams of Marines to secure that part of the ship.
Behind the cloud, drones combined into constructs larger than the Midway. Makarov stopped counting the new ships once she reached triple digits.
The individual drones soak up fire, leaving time for larger ones to form. She wrote down the observation in her tea-stained note pad.
“Guess they don’t want to give us one large target again.” Calum added numerical designations to the battleships with a tap inside the holo table.
“They must think we have more than one ship with the Griffon’s energy cannons…” Makarov swiped her screen to the side. The graviton mines drifting toward the rings were several minutes away from their targets. She opened an IR channel. “Delacroix, status on Task Force Scorpion.”
Delacroix’s picture came up next to the Abdiel, on the opposite side of Abaddon serving as a relay between the fleet and the graviton mines encroaching on the propulsion rings.
“We’re moving at best speed.” His words were laden with static. “We’ll seed…soon as the rings are down…long way home.”
“God’s speed, Scorpion.” The mine layers would leave graviton mines between them and Abaddon, forcing it to burn itself down to a hollow shell before it reached Earth. That plan hinged on the rest of her fleet destroying the propulsion rings. If she failed, the rest of Task Force Scorpion’s ships would be little more than a speed bump.
“We’re not going to stop the swarm.” Kidson shook his head. Thousands of individual drones stayed packed close together, denying a clear shot from the fleet onto the approaching battleships. “If we commit the squadrons, it could clear us a line of fire and buy more time.”
“Send them,” Makarov said. It would take the drone swarm another few minutes to reach her ships. The battleships would close to weapon’s range in less than ten minutes. “Time until the mines are in range?”
“Fifteen minutes.” Blood drained from Calum’s face. “They’re moving slower than we’d planned.”
“Then we’d best last longer than that,” Makarov said.
More and more drones swept over Abaddon’s horizon, all reaching toward her ship.
“Got the drones from the forward hemisphere to come play.” Makarov’s mouth twisted into a half smile. “Better us than Scorpion.”
“Several hits on the rings,” Kidson said. “Abaddon’s propulsion is off-line.”
“Lift fire from the rings and concentrate on the drones. Time until they engage our fighter screen?” Makarov asked.
“Should be…what the hell is that?” Calum reeled back from his station like he’d been shoved.
“Show me,” Makarov said.
A ragged line of light hovered over Abaddon’s surface. Makarov zoomed in. Red-plated armor in a humanoid shape filled the center of the light, the faceplate turning from side to side, arms motioning to the Xaros fleet. Ships maneuvered, reacting to his gestures.
“That’s what the Breitenfeld’s armor encountered,” Makarov said. “Xaros leadership caste.”
“We might have a shot on it,” Kidson said. “Engage?”
“No. The drones will function with or without its presence…but we might learn something.” Makarov opened a channel to her fighter screen.
****
Zorro pitched his Eagle over and let off a snap shot. His cannons clipped the drone headed straight at him and sent it tumbling out of control. He kicked his tail over to flip around and finished off the drone with another burst. He waited until his nose lined up with his momentum then killed his flip with a brief burn of maneuver thrusters.
“Say again, Cougar?” he asked the new wing commander.
“Break formation with your flight and engage the…leadership target between the battleship analogues,” he said. “You’ll know it when you see it.”
Space around Zorro was a dogfight between drones and Eagles as far as he could see. Lance shells from the fleet shot through the scrum, burning embers crossing paths with massive energy beams from the Xaros. Flack cannons from the ships traced arcs of gauss shells. The drones were already to the fleet.
As much as he wanted to stay and fight, there was no time to argue.
“Roger, Cougar. Red flight, form on me.” Zorro banked hard and made for a cluster of four Xaros battleships, each pounding Eighth Fleet with scarlet beams shooting from their fore. He spotted the tear of light and gunned his engines.
“Zorro, you know there are four battleships over there, right?” Buckets asked. His wingman and two more Eagles joined him, their engines blazing hot.
“They’re busy and we’re not much of a threat to them.” Zorro loaded his last q-shell to his rail gun and charged the weapon. “Buckets, Vichy, load lance munitions to your rail gun, Kimchi, quadrium. Let’s ruin this guy’s day.”
His pilots acknowledged and Zorro felt a chill pass over his body when the General’s red armor came into view. Burning motes of light appeared across the battleships’ hulls.
“Evasive!” Zorro dove and hit his afterburners. Burning beams of light broke around him. He slalomed around the point defense weapons, three seconds of concentrated fire that felt like an eternity before it faded away.
“Back on target.” He pulled up and flew between two battleships. “Ready rail cannons.” He flipped the safety switch off the trigger.
“I’m set,” Buckets said. “We lost the others.”
A laser cut into Zorro’s canopy and slagged a control panel. He tilted into a barrel roll, taking another hit that shook his Eagle. Damage alarms wailed in his ears, but he still had maneuver control, and he still had his rail cannon.
“Take your shot!” Zorro lined up his targeting reticule on the red armor and fired. His control panels sparked and died as the rail cannon sent a q-shell at the General.
The q-shell exploded well short of its target, enveloping a wide shield around the Xaros master with coherent energy. The shield wavered as Bucket’s lance shell struck and shattered into fragments.
The General reached toward the Eagles, and a blast of energy lashed out of his hand. It struck Buckets and annihilated the fighter. Nothing of Zorro’s old friend remained as the energy cut away.
Zorro twisted his control stick from side to side. His Eagle responded sluggishly, but he still had control. He pointed the nose at the General and coaxed life to the engines, accelerating straight for the red armor.
His gauss cannon refused to fire. The burnt hull plating over the rail cannon assured him that was useless as well.
Zorro let out a war cry and closed on the General, intent on ramming him.
The General reached an arm behind his head then swung against the Eagle. His arm stretched into a pillar of blazing light and swatted Zorro away. The Eagle shattered into burning fragments, reduced to nothing more than a stream of dissolving bits of metal and flesh.
****
Eighth Fleet suffered. Every ship in the holo tank flashed with damage icons. Two more destroyers, the Kingston and Mesa, blinked as a Xaros battleship turned its guns to them. The ships lasted thirty sec
onds beneath the concentrated fire before breaking to pieces.
A glaring beam hit the Midway’s prow and knocked her off course. Makarov braced herself against the holo table as the ship lurched beneath her.
“Forward hull plating breached,” Captain Randall called out. “Damage to decks three through twelve and the flight deck.”
“Admiral, guidance crews have linked up with the graviton mines. Two units in place, shall we activate them now?” Calum asked.
“No, it’ll throw off the rest of the mines and give the Xaros a chance to react. How long until—”
A wave of light crashed against the bridge. The hull rang with hundreds of impacts.
“That was the Tarawa,” Kidson said.
Makarov looked to the screens and saw broken and burning pieces of the strike carrier peppering the Midway.
“How long until the rest of the mines are in place?” Makarov asked.
“Each ship had guidance teams for redundancy.” Calum’s hands flit from ship to ship in the tank. “With the ships lost and damage to what’s left…I can’t tell. We have ten workstations still functional on deck seven. That’s all we can count on right now.”
“Captain Randall, pull us out of the fight but keep line of sight on the Abdiel at all costs.” Makarov opened a channel to her remaining ships. “This is Makarov. I don’t like this, but close in on the Midway and cover us.”
The frigates Bull Run and Ypres responded immediately, maneuvering themselves between the Midway and a Xaros battleship firing on the carrier. Columns of energy hit the Ypres across her flank, bucking it to the side as if it had been kicked. The Bull Run let off a broadside that cracked the battleship’s hull, knocking black slabs of armor away and exposing amber crystals.
A Xaros drone landed on the Midway next to rail battery four and stuck its stalks into the nearby bunker. The firing ports lit up as the drone killed the defenders. Two more drones landed nearby, followed by a dozen, then even more.
“Midway,” said the captain of the Rome as he came up in the holo tank, “you’ve got a significant number of drones on your hull. I can clear them off with a q-shell.”
“Negative. The guidance teams need more time. We take them off-line with a quadrium hit and we might as well bare our throats. Where are the Ospreys?” Makarov asked.
Calum shook her head.
“Rome, turn your flack cannons on us,” Makarov said. “Shoot them off.”
Gauss rounds slashed through the void around the Midway, tearing gouts out of the aegis armor and destroying dozens of drones.
“We’ve got hull breaches all across the starboard side. Boarders on decks…all decks.” Randall gave Makarov a stern look. “Permission to activate the self-destruct sequence.”
“Denied.” Makarov un-holstered her gauss pistol and activated the weapon. “Send all security teams to the guidance bay. This goes to the last man.”
The ship rocked to the side, pitching Makarov to the deck. A disintegration beam broke through the ceiling and cut her holo table in two. She rolled out of the way and fired on the drone ripping a hole through the deck above her. The oversized rifle carried by one of her doughboy bodyguards blasted the drone to pieces.
The doors to the bridge glowed red hot.
Her human bodyguard tackled her from behind and shielded her as the door exploded. Shrapnel ripped through the bridge, killing Captain Randall instantly. A drone squeezed through the opening and sent pinpoint disintegration beams into each work pod.
Makarov shoved her bodyguard away, her hands and body slick with his blood. Screams of the bridge crew echoed through her helmet as they died. A doughboy charged the drone with hammer high. Stalks stabbed him in the chest and stomach, but the soldier managed to swing his hammer into the drone, cracking the surface.
The drone flicked its stalks and sent the doughboy’s body parts flying in separate directions.
Makarov grabbed her bodyguard’s rifle and hit the drone, knocking it against the ceiling where it broke apart.
The ship’s internal gravity failed and power to the work pods cut out. Red emergency lights cast shades of blood across the bridge.
Deck plating beneath Makarov exploded. Pain ripped into her side. Drops of her blood floated around as she fought to grab onto anything as she tumbled through the bridge.
A doughboy grabbed her and set her onto the deck behind him. He swung his rifle up at the drone that ripped through the deck. The doughboy’s vac suit went limp as a red lance from the drone cut through his suit.
Makarov shoved the empty suit aside and grabbed the rifle.
She wrapped several fingers around the trigger and pulled. The rifle jumped up, smashing across her visor and flying out of her hands. A deep fissure broke across the drone. It went limp and burned away.
Blood poured out of the wound on her side. Air vented through cracks in her visor. A wave of vertigo sent her to the deck.
She jabbed at her forearm screen with trembling fingers and opened a fleet-wide channel.
“Eighth…this is Makarov. Go down fighting. You hear me? You go down fighting!”
A shadow passed over her. A drone with burning stalks came for her.
****
Brannock gripped his rifle tight as the Midway’s power died out. He glanced around a laser-scarred corner and looked down a bullet-marked passageway, praying another drone wasn’t coming for them. He felt gravity seep away and locked his boots to the deck.
“That’s bad,” Derringer said. “Real bad if main power’s out.”
“Nothing we can do about it. Engineering is on the other end of the ship.”
“You think we’re going to abandon ship?” Derringer’s voice cracked with the question.
Brannock grabbed the younger Marine by the shoulder.
“Indigo’s getting scared. I need you to act hard before he loses it.” He cocked his head to the doughboy standing opposite to them.
“He is?”
“Yeah, you see how the colors in his face are all messed up? That’s what happens when they get scared. Didn’t you read the manual?”
“Huh…hey, big guy. We’ve got your back.” Derringer banged a fist against his chest.
Indigo tore his gaze away from the corridor and grunted.
“Good job, Marine,” Brannock said. He didn’t mind lying, not if it meant Derringer would think about something other than their worsening situation.
Xaros will zap any life pods. They don’t take prisoners, he thought.
He keyed his mic. “Devil Dog command, this is station 3-7. There an update?” Nothing but static greeted him.
Stalks broke through the bulkhead of the connecting passageway. The tips bent over and stabbed into metal walls. A drone ripped opened a hole with ease.
“Contact!” Brannock leaned around the corner and fired. A ruby glow filled the corridor from the drone’s stalk tips. The Marines got off another shot and pulled back. He knew the bulkhead wouldn’t be much protection. He squeezed his eyes shut as a disintegration beam ripped through the corridor.
The deck rattled, but Brannock found he was still alive. Indigo was in the passageway, the muzzle of his oversized rifle glowing red hot. The drone crumbled in the entrance it had made.
A long gash cut across the bay where Stephens and the rest of the control team were working. The gash was wide enough that Brannock could have stuck his head into the bay with ease. The bay was full of wrecked equipment and floating bodies.
“Oh no…” Brannock opened the door. Stephens fell against him, a briefcase in her hand.
“We didn’t get it,” she said. “Almost there…then the power cut out. So damn close.”
“Didn’t get what?” Brannock asked.
“The mines! Two more mines and we could have taken down their propulsion rings. How do you not know about this?”
“No one tells us anything!” Derringer said.
“If I had line of sight to the Abdiel or the mines…” Stephens held up her
briefcase. “So damn close. Now all of this will be for nothing.”
“No, not for nothing.” Brannock pointed at the rip in the bulkhead. Through a mess of damaged pipes and broken deck plating, they saw the void. “Come on.”
Brannock pulled Stephens along and peered into the hole. Sparking electrical wires and empty vac suits filled the next compartment.
“Let’s go, field trip!” Brannock pushed aside an arcing power line with the tip of his rifle and cut across to the next wound in the Midway.
Stephens and the rest followed. He waved Derringer and Indigo into the next compartment.
“Line of sight. I get you to the hull and you can make this work, right?” Brannock asked. “Because there are a lot of drones out there and I’m not one of those armor soldiers that can take on a hundred Xaros and still win.”
“Get me out there,” she said.
The breach in the outer hull was just big enough for Brannock to squeeze through. He locked his boots to the hull and looked around.
Abaddon loomed above. The Bull Run, a few hundred yards away, fired off a broadside and took a dozen hits from energy beams in return. A rail cannon ripped away, flipping end over end like a coin. The next hit broke through the opposite side of the hull, splintering aegis armor outward like a misshapen volcano.
An Eagle, pursued by a pair of drones, streaked overhead so low that Brannock ducked, fearing decapitation.
“Bad idea. Such a bad idea.” He pulled Derringer and Stephens out of the breach. Indigo looked through the gap.
“Too small,” the doughboy said. He was right; his broad shoulders wouldn’t fit.
Brannock pointed to a nearby bunker.
“Can you get to that bunker? Get out through there?” he asked.
Indigo grasped the broken hull with both hands and bent it aside.
“Or that.” Brannock pointed to Stephens, who had her briefcase open. Wires ran from her gauntlet to a screen and touch pad inside the case. “Let’s get to that bunker.”
“No, I need line of sight and I’m not going to get it in that pill box…I’ve got a link! Just give me…why the hell is that over there…two minutes!” Stephens said.
