Oliver did not flinch from Bucky’s verbal assault. “If you’re so hot, why are you here?”
“We were the victims of a failed genetic experiment. We were being trained by the Swordsmen to attack Federation Colonies. They did not understand that we were not sheep to be led and killed at their whim. Many of my brothers died in training. Their bodies were thrown on the trash heap. We fought them and killed them, but we had no leadership so we fought amongst ourselves. Many more of my brothers died. When these people came, they found they could defeat us without killing us. They let us live. It would have been easier and safer to kill us, but they chose to let us live. Would you have done that? No. Not only that, they treated our wounded and healed our sick. They made us work, but there is no shame in hard work. They took us into their families and gave us new lives. Would you have done that? No. You wanted to put us in cages like animals and send us to strange places to experiment on us. You would have been no better than the Swordsmen who would have thrown us into battles to be killed. I give you a choice. If you step out of line, you will die.”
Bucky turned and led the group down the well worn path to the settlement. At the bottom of the ridge, they turned onto a dirt road that lead from the port to the residential area. The sun was touching the horizon when two teen aged girls came running out of the settlement. They were followed by a couple dozen girls and young women. The first raced toward Bucky and jumped into his arms. He grabbed her and held her. The second girl wrapped her arms around him so hard he almost tripped. “I told you to wait for me at home!” Bucky said sternly.
The girls looked at each other and said together, “We forgot.”
Madison laughed and the girls smiled at her.
“I am not going to keep your mother from punishing you!” Bucky scolded.
“That would be because I am not going to punish them,” a woman said from the gathering crowd. She stood on the tips of her toes and kissed Bucky lightly on the lips.
The girls detached themselves from Bucky and descended on Madison peppering her with questions about the crash and the walk through the dangerous forest faster than she could answer them. More girls met them on the road and soon there were boys identical to Bucky and his men except for their size who came out to greet them and escort them the last little distance to the settlement gate.
“Why do you need such a high fence?” Tsarevich asked.
“All of the large predators have been hunted to extinction, but there are smaller animals the size of an earth raccoon that get into everything. The fence helps keep them out,” Lt. Rattigan answered.
“Does it work?”
“It slows them down some,” Bucky answered.
Boris and Anatole greeted the party at the gate. “You are on report!” Tsarevich shouted as soon as he saw them.
“Oh my! Are you going to tell my mommy, too?” Anatole teased.
Newton drew back his fist to strike Anatole, but one of Bucky’s men snagged it from behind. The grin on the man’s face challenged Newton to do something about the insult he had just been given. Newton backed down. The man smiled and whispered, “Good doggie.”
Boris turned to Lt. Rattigan and Bucky, “Gentlemen, your presence is requested in the main hall for a war conference.”
“War conference? Why?”
“Eye requested that I allow him to tell you. He also asked that the Marines and men over the age of eighteen come to the conference. The boys can see the guests to their quarters unless they would like to participate in the conference.”
Newton answered for the others. “We will come to the conference.”
Bucky and Lt. Rattigan entered the hall. A table like the type set for panel discussions had been set on the stage. There were two empty places at the table. The chairs were for them. Faye Anne stood at a podium off to one side to the stage uncomfortable in a room where she was the only woman.
Eye, so named because of a prominent scar over his left eye, stood as Bucky and Lt. Rattigan entered. “Come, my brothers, take your places. We have waited long enough. We must vote quickly.”
They had barely taken their places when Eye turned to Faye Anne, “Lieutenant! Tell them what you told us.”
Eye had been trained for service in the Swordsman military and had difficulty with the idea of women officers. The fact that he could address Faye Anne by her rank was a major concession.
Understanding her audience, Faye Anne came straight to the point. “The Swordsmen are bringing a fleet to attack this planet. They will be here in two weeks.”
She explained as best she could what they knew about the approaching force and asked for their assistance in combating them.
With no time for discussion, Eye called for the vote. “Do we join forces with the Swordsmen who put us here and trained us or do we join forces with the Federation? Do we defend the Swordsmen who trained us to kill every man woman and child even to the beasts in the field or do we fight alongside the Federation that has people like Lt. Rattigan here and like that piece of garbage who even now dirties our planet with his presence?”
He pointed at Tsarevich. The crowd erupted in hisses and rude noises until Bucky stood up.
“Eye! You knew what I would say. Why did you delay the vote?” Bucky shouted over the din.
“Because knowing what you say and hearing you say it are not the same!” Eye shouted back.
“I vote we fight in support of the people on the Queen Elizabeth and the families they have brought us! I say we fight for them because the Swordsmen would kill innocent women and children. I say we fight because even if we did not they would kill us for stealing their women!”
Eye grinned. That was the answer he had expected. “They have asked that we support their Marines in the defense against the ground forces!”
Bucky smashed his fist on the table. “To that I say NO!” The room was deathly silent. Bucky raised his fist in the air. “We will fight them on the ground. We will fight them in the air! We will fight them in space! We will not wait until they drop fire bombs on us from their airplanes! We will take the battle to them!”
Eye stepped back. This was not the answer he had expected. “Our ships are old and damaged. We were defeated the last time we tried to use them.”
Bucky turned to face Eye. “They still fly, and they still have lasers. We will position them close to the planet as a final line before we face them on the ground. We have pilots. We have gunners. We have power! Now we have the right people to train us! I say we fight! With all due respect, the tiny fleet above us will not keep us safe. Even with all our ships, we will not keep the Swordsmen from reaching the ground, but every soldier we kill up there is one less we have to kill down here. We will kill them! I would rather kill them there!”
The sound of cheering could be heard far away from the hall. A crowd had gathered outside, and the discussion inside was repeated for them.
Eye raised his hands for order. “All in favor of fighting on the ground, in the air and in space signify by raising your hand!”
A sea of hands lifted above the heads with loud shouts.
“All opposed.” The room fell silent. It was as if no one dared speak out against the rest.
“Motion carries.”
Bucky raised his hand for recognition. “I request that Lt. Rattigan bring all his Marines and their war machines to the surface to support US!”
Lt. Rattigan stood and touched his hand to his ear as if to hear something better. “My Captain has been listening to this meeting. She has given the order to load the transport ships as you have requested. She has requested that your pilots and flight crews be on the flight line when the transports land for immediate transfer to their ships. The engineering staff is making what repairs they can to your ships. Your assistance in the repair of your ships will be appreciated.”
The crowd roared with approval. A woman advanced on the podium and motioned for Faye Anne to step aside. An expectant hush fell over the room. “I speak for the women o
f this colony. We will fight alongside our men. We are not pilots, but we can learn to fire a rifle or stab a man in the back if it comes to that. They will not take us alive.”
When the cheering stopped and the room emptied, Boris turned to Sergei and said, “And you wanted to put them in cages.”
“You will get them all killed,” Sergei growled.
“Do you think the Swordsmen would spare any of their lives?”
COLONY SERVICE - CHAPTER NINE
THE OPENING POSITIONS of opposing forces at the time of engagement can determine the final outcome of a battle. Rachel knew this as well as any military commander in history. She also knew from Faye Anne’s meager intelligence about the Swordsman who commanded this force that he was a renegade. The probability that he would use the traditional Swordsman technique of assembling the force at a remote but visible location was slim. The problem was guessing which assault tactic he would use. Given the limited size of her fleet compared to the Swordsmen, she decided to pull all her assets close to the planet. This put her forces with their backs against the wall but it concentrated her fire power around the only target worth striking.
As the first hours of the engagement demonstrated, there were valid reasons the Swordsmen assembled the force close, but not too close, to the intended battleground before attacking. Having learned from their past encounters with Rachel, the Swordsmen had figured out that they could not successfully mount a traditional single front assault. Although the operation required a level of coordination and cooperation previously unheard of among Swordsman commanders, they opened all fronts at the same time. Within a space of an hour, the entire Swordsman fleet, instead of standing off and playing the psychological game they usually played, jumped directly to their primary targets.
Had the secret of the Swordsman attack not be compromised, the tactic should have worked. In theory, this tactic should have put Rachel’s force at a disadvantage due to their normal patrol patterns which would have put them outside the assaulted area and force them to return to a battleground full of enemy forces. However, the navigational difficulties of dropping that many ships out of hyperspace after a long voyage in that small an area proved to be more challenging than anticipated. Two of the troop transports collided seconds after dropping out of hyperspace. A third appeared so far off target that there was some doubt as to whether the troops it dropped would survive to reach the surface.
With enemy ships materializing all around them, the Vikings attacked immediately with the missiles Rachel had provided them from Elizabeth’s stores. Careful to focus their attacks on the enemy propulsion systems as they had been trained, they quickly eliminated two of the destroyers attempting to take position to protect the troop transports. Four of the Viking ships went after one of the cruisers, but broke off the attempt when the cruiser’s fire power overwhelmed them. Judging by the reactions of the Swordsman pilots monitored by Adele and her team in Elizabeth’s communications center, the presence of the Viking ships was a complete surprise. They apparently expected that Rachel would have killed the local defenders as they would have done. Finding the locals allied with their intended enemies was an ugly surprise indeed.
One of the Swordsman battleships headed directly for the ancient lifeless battleship sitting over the primary targeted area. As the Swordsmen pummeled it with missiles and lasers, Alina and Buddy jumped behind the Swordsman and with a single volley of heat seeking missiles put at least one into the battleship’s propulsion system. Debris from the Swordsman battleship rained down on the targeted ship and pieces from both fell toward the atmosphere.
The escort ships, taking advantage of their longer range missiles, teamed up on one of the cruisers that had materialized in front of them and destroyed it in two massive volleys. The primary missile type that the escort ships carried had a longer range than anything Elizabeth or the P I ships carried. This allowed them to stand off out of range of everyone else and still make their kills.
The Swordsman carrier ships deployed their fleets of small ships unhindered. Leaving the more heavily armed ships for the P I ships and escorts, the Vikings aggressively attacked these small ships who were trying to protect the troop ships that were already dropping soldiers to the planet’s surface.
The Viking ships took the brunt of the first hours of the attack. Recognizing the trouble their allies were in, the two convoy ships entered the fray against the carriers and their fleets of small ships. Together they were able to eliminate both of the carriers before turning their attention to the remaining troop ships. The troop ships had deployed all their troops and their combat equipment by the time they were attacked, but the Vikings attacked the empty ships and destroyed them without mercy.
Four hours into the battle there were two distinct battles being engaged. One was on the ground, and the other was in space. The Swordsman space force had been reduced to a single battleship, two cruisers, four destroyers and several dozen of the little ships that had been launched from the carriers. All the troop transports, the two carriers, one battleship, two cruisers and two destroyers were gone. Rachel’s forces had expended large amounts of ordinance and had taken some battle damage, but had suffered no losses.
Rachel moved Elizabeth to engage the remaining battleship. A swarm of the carrier launched ships clustered around the Swordsman battleship’s propulsion system so there was no way to get a small ship in to destroy it. The job would have to be a slug fest between the two big ships. Buddy and Daisy moved to cover Elizabeth’s propulsion system. That left Alexander with Aida and Delilah and Valerie with Whitney and Brad and the two escorts to deal with the two cruisers and four destroyers. The Vikings continued to kill the small ships one at a time in spite of their own horrific losses.
Buddy and Daisy had their hands full with the little ships that tried to attack Elizabeth from the rear. In the midst of the chaos Buddy became aware of Alexander and Valerie on what appeared to be a collision course with the two cruisers in hot pursuit.
Buddy began to scream, “Aida! Aida! Look out! Look out! Look out! Look out! Behind you!” He attempted to abandon his post guarding Elizabeth but Alina was able to retain control.
“Alina! They’re going to crash!” Buddy shouted.
“Stay here!” Alina commanded.
“Head on!” Buddy screamed, “Aida! Watch out!”
As the two P I ships passed the point of collision, they each fired a volley of missiles and broke hard to the right. The missiles traveled straight and true impacting the cruisers and destroying them.
A missile from one of the small ships attempting to attack Elizabeth impacted at the end of Buddy’s lower weapons pod and broke it off.
“Buddy! Evasive maneuvers!” Alina shouted.
Elaine, in the back seat, heaved a sigh of relief that she had not just died as a result of the missile strike she had attempted to thwart. She concentrated her remaining lasers on the small ship that had gotten the jump on them while they were distracted by Buddy’s frantic shouting. She killed it with her lasers before Buddy had come around enough to be able to fire a missile at it.
“Dammit Buddy! This is why I don’t want people who are emotionally attached to each other fighting the same battle.”
“But they would have been killed if I had not warned them!” Buddy defended himself.
“That was a maneuver they have been testing in the simulators for a week. They knew what they were doing!”
“Why didn’t I know about it?”
“They couldn’t practice with real ships now could they? The first half dozen times they tried it in the simulator they crashed. PAY ATTENTION so we don’t get killed.” While Alina was distracted reprimanding Buddy, Elaine killed one of the small ships with her lasers and another with a missile.
Alexander and Valerie joined Elizabeth in the assault on the battleship eventually destroying it and sending the debris falling toward the ocean below.
Working together, the escorts killed the two remaining destroyers with
their long range missiles and everyone devoted their attention to the small ships that had been deployed by the carriers. There was some question as to whether that was even necessary. They would quickly run out of fuel and fall to the planet without further interference. Rachel’s orders, however, were clear. There would be no prisoners. There would be no captives. There would be no survivors.
In spite of their losses, the Swordsman troop ships dropped half of their original force to the surface. Thousands of Swordsmen soldiers extricated their weapons from the shipping containers under fire from the AARV’s which had arrived almost immediately. Colony Service helicopters and fixed wing aircraft met the Swordsmen helicopters even as they were being unloaded from their containers. The Swordsman soldiers prepared to attack the location of the original genetics lab where the Vikings had been created.
The Vikings and colonists had reasoned that the Swordsmen had not visited the planet since the “keepers” had been overthrown and there had been only one settlement on the planet at the time. They decided that the Swordsmen would likely direct their initial attack on that facility. They evacuated the few people that had not already abandoned the facility for the new settlement and make an abandoned strategically unimportant location as hazardous as possible to attack. They set land mines and automatic gun positions. The set booby traps in every room. A competition quickly developed over who could devise the most diabolical booby trap.
Assuming, incorrectly, that the colonists would have built on the site of the old facility instead of creating a new settlement as they did, the Swordsman battle plan was focused on the single virtually indefensible location in the middle of a wide heavily forested valley surrounded by foothills. When the Swordsmen began their advance, the defenders quietly disappeared into the woods. Overcoming the automated defenses by force of numbers and incurring heavy losses, the Swordsman ground forces took the vacant facility and set up their operations center.
The colonists counter attacked the newly occupied Swordsman base with a vengeance. The Marine AARV’s spearheaded the assault by attacking Swordsman aircraft and helicopters both in the air and on the ground. Many of the aircraft were destroyed before they could be unpacked from their shipping containers. All of the AARV’s were eventually lost, but not before they destroyed all of the Swordsman fixed wing aircraft including the new VTOL jets and the majority of the helicopters.
Solomon Family Warriors II Page 120
