Battlecruiser Alamo: Aces High

by Richard Tongue

   “We could load it up with extra fuel, put it into tanker configuration. That wouldn’t take long,” Cunningham said.

   “The fuel transfer would take an hour, at least,” Quinn replied.

   Nodding, Marshall said, “That’s too long for us to be out of our orbital position. The station would be defenseless without us to protect it, at least for the moment, and I don’t like the idea of stranding the crew up there with no way to get out.”

   “Pull them out, then?” Cunningham suggested.

   “That would slow down our operations over there by hours,” Quinn said. “They’ve barely got started as it is.”

   “Then we leave them on the station, but in a position where they can evacuate if they have to. Which means we can’t use Shuttle Three for the operation. I don’t like risking another pilot in any case, not unless we can get some sort of solid idea of what’s happening down there.”

   “Damn it, one probe lander would give us what we needed,” Quinn said. He paused, his eyes lit up, and he said, “That’s the answer.”

   “What?”

   “A lander. All we need is a fuel tank, and we’ve got plenty of them in stock. Fit some parachutes, retro-rockets and a heat shield. Flying it from Alamo, I don’t think we’d have any problem getting it within a mile of the shuttles, and they can get that far themselves.”

   “What about the data we need?”

   “Fit an upper stage, to return to orbit and broadcast its information when it gets above the jamming field, or whatever it is,” Quinn said, gesturing with his hands, warming to his topic. “We can launch six of the missiles to accompany it down, all the way. They’ll slam into the planet, and that will be the signal we can use to attract Maggie’s attention!”

   Nodding, Cunningham said, “We can attach a message as well, tell her when Alamo will be overhead to get them back off the planet. I think this is going to work, sir.”

   “How long to get the drop tank ready?”

   “Three hours, sir. I can do it at the same time as the missiles, no problem. And make enough missiles for both operations into the bargain.” He glanced at the door, and Marshall smiled.

   “Go get to work, Jack. Keep me informed. You too, Harper.”

   “Huh?” Harper said, looking up from her datapad. “Sorry, did I miss something?”

   “Dismissed, both of you.”

   “Sure,” she said, walking towards the door, her attention still focused on the device in her hands, Quinn steering her carefully out of the office. Cunningham perched on the edge of Marshall’s desk, shaking his head.

   “That was good to see.”

   “Jack Quinn always reacts well in a crisis. Let’s hope it shakes him out of his fugue.” A light on the desk glowed green, and Marshal tapped a button, “Captain here.”

   “Kibaki, sir. We’re getting a signal from the enemy spacecraft, bounced off the moon. For you, sir.”

   “I’m on my way.” Getting to his feet, Marshall walked out of his office, followed by Cunningham, and walked out onto the bridge. Kibaki rose from the command chair and walked over to his station, allowing Marshall to take his place. “Put him on.”

   The figure reappeared on the screen, and immediately said, “I call upon you once again to evacuate this system.”

   “This system has been claimed by the Triplanetary Confederation,” he replied. “If you have some reason for demanding this evacuation…”

   “This is our territory, not yours. We expect you…”

   “I would be happy to accept independent arbitration by a third party, and to accept this as an open system to both of our governments.” Leaning forward, he said, “Presuming that you accept responsibility for the unprovoked attack of Yeager Station.”

   “If we placed a station around Mars, you’d be quick enough to complain,” he replied. “You have no moral high ground.”

   Frowning, Marshall said, “You are aware that we have people on the surface.”

   “Intruders on our territory.”

   Taking a deep breath, he replied, “Let me make two things clear. Our ships are evenly matched, and I know that you agree with that assessment, else we would not be having this conversation. I will not, under any circumstances, leave any Triplanetary personnel behind when I leave this system.”

   A scowl crossed the other man’s face, and he said, “Recall your people. I will grant you half an hour’s grace.”

   “It will take far longer than that to evacuate the survivors. Why do you want us off that planet? Does it have some special significance to you?”

   “It belongs to us. We need no other reason.” The man glanced across at a console, then said, “Why do you want the planet?”

   With a thin smile, Marshall said, “It’s well positioned to defend our territory. If you have similar goals in mind, then it might still be possible to co-operate. Don’t rule that out yet.”

   “Blood has been spilled. So must it be.” The screen flicked out.

   “Transmission dead at the source, sir,” Austin, the new communications technician said. “Should I try to call them back?”

   “No point,” Marshal replied. “I think they’ve told us everything they are going to.”

   “Threat warning!” Fox, at the sensors, said. “Something coming around the curve of the planet, down low. Configuration similar to the laser missiles.”

   “Battle stations,” Marshall said. Cunningham slid into the vacant tactical station, throwing switches and bringing primary systems on-line. “Midshipman Vivendi, I want an intercept course with that object.”

   “Best I can do is within five hundred miles, sir. I think it’s heading for the planet.”

   “Confirmed, sir.”

   “Danny, those laser missiles have megaton loads. If they wanted to knock over the table…,” Cunningham said, urgently.

   “Get me as close as you can. Kibaki, tell Quinn’s team on the hull that Alamo is maneuvering, and they should make for the station on their suit jets. Midshipman, nice and slow until we’re clear, then give it everything you’ve got.”

   “Firing thrusters,” Vivendi said. “Minimum power.”

   “Hull crews are on their way out, sir,” Kibaki said. “Mr. Quinn is less than amused. I think the general idea was ‘I told you so’.”

   Nodding, Marshall looked ahead at the course projection on the screen, watching as Alamo’s trajectory moved down towards that of the missile. The firing window was going to be extremely short, on the order of a few seconds. If they’d had the laser operational, it would have been very different.

   “I have a salvo in the tubes,” Cunningham said, as though reading his mind. “Firing in one hundred and ten seconds. It’s going to be marginal, though. It’ll be pretty close to the atmosphere by the time we get impacts.”

   “Is there any way we can warn our people on the ground?” Kibaki asked. “Any way at all?”

   “Even if we did, there isn’t anything they could do about it. Even if they had the shuttles ready to launch, they’d never clear the blast radius in time. What are your projections?”

   “Try a hundred megatons. That’s what we could put in a missile of that size. On that order, anyway. I suppose if they are better at miniaturization than we are, you might be able to double that.”

   “Enough to devastate an area a hundred miles across, render it untouchable for generations,” Marshall replied. “Damn.”

   “Moving to full acceleration,” Vivendi said. “Taking the spin off the ship.”

   Glancing across, Kibaki tapped a control, and said, “Bridge to crew. Stand by for variable gravity.”

   “Sorry, sir,” Vivendi said. “I guess I got carried away.”

   “Next time remember, Midshipman. People get injured that way. Try and keep focus.”

   Hands gripping the armrests on his chair, Marshall stared at the viewscreen, as th
ough he could will Alamo to move faster, buy them a little more time in the firing window, anything to improve their chances. The door behind him opened, and Caine stepped out, taking a place behind Cunningham. No point switching seats now, not with only a few seconds left to go.

   “All missiles show ready, sir,” she said, looking over the controls.

   “Fire at will, Mr. Cunningham,” Marshall said, trying to maintain his cool, at least outwardly. Inwardly he was no different from the nervous midshipman at the helm.

   “Five seconds. Four. Three. Two. One. Fire.”

   Alamo rocked, and the missiles flew from the tubes, a new salvo immediately dropping into position as the fabricators hastened to build their replacements. Six tracks shot forward, moving towards the target. Just not quickly enough.

   “Pull us up, Midshipman, and return us to the station,” Marshall ordered. “There isn’t much more we can do at this point.”

   “All missiles running true, but I’m worried about the intercept. Going to be in the upper atmosphere. First impact in thirty-nine seconds.”

   “Sir, something strange,” Fox said. “Enemy trajectory changing. I’d say they’re going into a dive.”

   “Unless their hull material is a lot tougher than anything we’ve got, they’ll burn up. Even Orlova didn’t manage that steep a trajectory.”

   “Compensating with missile tracks. First impact now in twenty-two seconds, descending.”

   “Keep them going, John,” Marshall said.

   “New objects on the scope, sir,” Fox said. “Six spheres, emerging from the object. I’m picking up retro-rockets.”

   “Re-target the missiles!”

   “Too late,” Cunningham said. “Impact in five seconds.”

   Marshall watched as all six missiles slammed into position, their target dissolved into its component atoms, to be scattered across most of a continent. The spheres continued to descend, moving into a tight formation, before parachutes opened up.

   “They had the same idea,” Cunningham said. “They can’t be fuel dumps, though. Bombs?”

   “No,” Marshall said, shaking his head. “Why bother fitting retro-rockets and parachutes. Those are boots on the ground, John, and by the looks of it they’ll be coming in within fifty miles of Maggie and her team.” Still staring at the screen, he said, “Tell Quinn to expedite work. We’re running out of time, and down there, they don’t even know it.”

  Chapter 14

   Nelyubov walked back to the shuttle, and Orlova’s radio began to crackle as he approached, a faint voice struggling to make itself heard over the roaring static.

   “...read me?” he said.

   “Just about, right down at Strength One. Getting better as you approach. Where are you now?”

   “About a hundred and ninety meters. Damn it, Maggie, this is going to make it next to impossible.”

   “Up above!” Carpenter’s voice yelled. “Look up, right up.”

   High in the sky, a bright light glowed, an expanding cloud that could only be low-yield nuclear weapons detonating in the upper atmosphere. Orlova glanced at Nelyubov, who shook his head.

   “Should we take cover?” he asked.

   “I’m not picking up any serious radiation, certainly nothing that will affect us in the shuttle or the suits. Not much chance of fallout either, the wind’s blowing well clear of us.”

   Orlova’s heads-up display tracked objects moving through the sky, the zoom leaping forward to make out a billowing parachute descending towards them, a small canister hanging underneath.

   “Susan…”

   “Got them. Six of them, with descent trajectories scattered in an area around sixty miles across. I’d say the nearest might be twenty, twenty-five miles away.”

   “Let’s get on with this, then. Garland, close out Shuttle Two and come with us. We might as well all head out together.”

   “Shouldn’t we leave someone with the shuttles?” Carpenter asked.

   “What’s the point?” Nelyubov replied. “It isn’t as if we can go anywhere for the moment.”

   “Fuel status says that Shuttle Two should make orbit,” Garland replied.

   “We came here to do a job, and interference or no, lack of fuel or no, we’re going to do it,” Orlova said. “The crash site is less than two miles north of here. We can do that in twenty minutes in this gravity.”

   “Then what?” Garland asked.

   “Then we’ll worry about what happens next, Spaceman. First things first.”

   After a moment, the airlocks of both shuttles opened, and Carpenter and Garland joined them outside, each weighed down with a pair of plasma guns. Orlova took hers, strapping the power pack around her waist, plugging it into her suit’s power and computer grid, and waited a second for it to register. A target appeared on her heads-up display, moving as she moved the barrel of the gun around.

   “Everyone ready?” she asked.

   “I hate these things,” Carpenter said.

   “Peace through superior firepower,” Nelyubov replied. “We’ve got six enemy contacts heading our way, and we still don’t know what’s waiting for us over the hill.”

   “Come on,” Orlova said. “Let’s move out. Carpenter, you and Garland take the rear. I’ll take point.” With a smile, she added, “No protests, Frank.”

   “Suits me,” he said. “Waste of time anyway.”

   The group trudged away from the shuttles, initially taking careful steps in the low gravity before settling into a steady bound that saw them rapidly moving over the terrain. The landscape looked bleaker on the ground than it had from orbit, a collection of browns and grays, broken by cracks, some of them meters across. On the horizon, tall, craggy mountains looming high, like the skeleton of some long-dead alien creature.

   “I know,” Nelyubov said, glancing across at her. “Eerie, isn’t it.”

   “I wouldn’t want to be stranded down here.”

   “Look,” he said, gesturing in the distance at a small object, coming down just on their side of the mountains. “Is that what I think it is?”

   “Maybe twenty, thirty miles away. Let’s hope we have an advantage in small-arms.”

   “Numbers would be nice, as well,” Garland said.

   They continued over a rise, looking down on half a dozen inflated pressure tents, a dozen more spacesuited figures, Triplanetary by the look of them, and about a hundred crates of various sizes. Someone was directing the construction of a barricade, facing in their direction, and Orlova ducked down below the ridge before the others could reach her.

   “Problem?” Nelyubov asked.

   “Say that was you over there, and a strange figure in a spacesuit came up?”

  Nodding, he said, “Especially if they just got through fighting for their lives a few hours ago, with explosions and landing pods all around.”

   “They must have seen the shuttle land,” Carpenter said.

   “Certainly, but they won’t know whose shuttle it was, and we have no means of contacting them.” Looking down, she said, “I’m going down there.”

   “And if they shoot you, what happens then?” Nelyubov said. “I’m going.”

   “Same objection,” Orlova replied.

   While they were arguing, Carpenter moved to the top of the rise, raised her plasma gun, and before anyone could stop her began to fire, three short pulses then a larger one at full power.

   “What the hell?” Nelyubov said, grabbing the gun as the last pulse fired.

   “Smoke signals,” Carpenter said. “Look.” Over the ridge, another gun responded, this time three short pulses, three long, and three short.

   “Even I know that one,” Orlova replied, bounding over the hill. Four of the suited figures were climbing up towards them, two of them with weapons that were the match of hers, and closed into communications range.

   “Identify yourselve
s, or we will fire,” a woman asked.

   “Senior Lieutenant Margaret Orlova, of the Battlecruiser Alamo. We’re here to rescue you.”

   “Alamo? Thank God! We weren’t expecting you for weeks, we were digging in for a long stay. Those were your shuttles?”

   “Yes, but the pods you saw coming down weren’t. We’ve got a bit of time. Who are you?”

   “Midshipman, Acting Sub-Lieutenant, technically, Stephanie Evans. I assumed command of the party after the crash.”

   “Then you did crash land?”

   “Just over the rise. I have to report four wounded, five dead, thirteen able. Can you fit us all in the shuttles?”

   Nelyubov reached the ridge, looked at Orlova, and said, “We should be able to fit you all in, but there is a complication.”

   Her face dropped, and she said, “What? Some problem on Alamo?”

   “No,” Orlova replied. “There’s no problem with Alamo. The problem is that we were intercepted by fighters on our way down as well, and though we managed to evade them, we used up a hell of a lot of fuel getting here. Right now there’s only enough for one of the shuttles to get away. Say twelve of you.”

   Nodding, she replied, “The wounded and four others, drawn by lots.”

   “Hate to break it to you, Sub-Lieutenant, but I’m in command here now, and I’m not going up while anyone stays behind.”

   “I’d better go down and see to the wounded,” said Garland. “Where’s your Medical Officer?”

   “He died in the crash,” Evans replied.

   “Wonderful,” the paramedic said, hefting his medical kit. “Excuse me.”

   “Let’s have this from the top, Sub-Lieutenant,” Orlova said. “From the evacuation. Sub-Lieutenant Delgarde filled us in on what happened before.”

   “He’s alive? Were there any more?”

   Shaking his head, Nelyubov replied, “I’m afraid not.”

   She closed her eyes, looking at the ground, and said, “I shouldn’t have expected it, of course. The ones who stayed behind knew what they were doing. We drew lots.” With a sigh, she continued, “I should have stayed. Delgarde swapped with me at the last minute, said I was needed on the ground. Damn.”