by Rick Partlow
* * *
“We’re two minutes from effective range, Captain,” Wolford reported, the glowing light of his holographic display playing over the worry lines in his face. “The enemy ship’s drive field will impact the Decatur in exactly two minutes and forty five seconds.”
Franks hissed involuntarily, watching the two computer-simulated avatars coming closer together on the main screen. That wasn’t a hell of a lot of room for error.
“Even if we can take out the ramship’s field,” he said, “she might still ram right into the Decatur.”
Then he blinked as the fusion flare at the rear of the Decatur abruptly faded and the ship’s acceleration ceased.
“The Decatur has ceased its burn!” Wolford announced, worry in his voice.
“What are they doing?” Bevins muttered.
“I read a lifepod ejecting near the Engineering section,” Wolford said. His head snapped up, looking to Captain Lee. “Whoever was on board has abandoned ship, ma’am!”
“They can’t know we’re going to be able to stop the ramship,” Franks observed. “Why are they ejecting?”
“Hope, perhaps,” Lee murmured a speculation. “Let’s make sure it’s not false hope. Are we in range, Lt. Wolford?”
“Ten seconds, ma’am,” Wolford told her, “assuming Commander Infante’s estimate was correct. I have control of the emitters.”
“It was a rough estimate,” Lee mused. “Bevins, take us down to one gravity. Wolford, open fire now…let’s see what the outer envelope is on this thing.”
“Aye, Captain,” Wolford said with eagerness in his voice---or perhaps it was relief at the extra weight on his chest disappearing. “Activating emitters now, three second burst.”
The sensor display froze as the gravimetic emitters switched function from analysis to offense, and then the images were in motion again…and the blue halo of the ramship’s Eysselink drive field was intact. Franks bit back a curse.
“Their drive field destabilized slightly,” Wolford said, looking at his readouts, “but not critically. We have less than thirty seconds till the drive field intersects the lifepod’s course.”
“Fire again!” Lee snapped. “Longer this time! Get that field down!”
“Ten second burst,” Wolford said, adjusting the controls. “Firing.”
This time the sensor display went completely dark and Franks thought the lighting on the ship flickered and dimmed as well, but that could have been the displays flickering on and off. His hands were clenched on the arms of the acceleration couch and he found himself holding his breath.
“Emitters off,” Wolford said, hitting the control. He shook his head. “It’s going to take a few seconds to get the sensors back up and calibrated.”
Franks forced himself to breath, forced his fingers to relax as the seconds dragged on, interminably long and he saw acting Captain Lee begin to open her mouth, as if she were about to ask how long it was going to take. Then the main viewscreen and the Tactical display both snapped to life and the images of the two ships began to form once again, hazily at first, flitting back and forth like ghosts until they came into sharp relief…and merged in a glowing ball of star-white plasma.
“What just happened?” Franks demanded, leaning forward against his restraints despite the acceleration trying to push him back.
“That was a collision…” Wolford said helplessly, trying to analyze the data that was coming into the newly-activated sensor.
“No kidding,” Bevins muttered.
“Shut the hell up,” Lee hissed at Bevins with venom in her tone and her eye and the young man blanched, swallowing hard. “Where is the ramship, Wolford?”
“I can’t find her…” Wolford admitted, shaking his head. “Ma’am…I think we must have taken down her drive field, then she hit the Decatur and they both went up.” He anxiously grabbed at a section of the Tactical holographic display and pulled it into larger focus. “Yes!” he yelled. “The lifepod is still there, ma’am! We did it, we got the ramship!”
“Thank God,” Franks said softly.
“We’ll come back for the lifepod,” Lee decided. “Set a course for the last ramship: we have to take her out before she can get near the survivors.”
“Aye, Captain,” Bevins said, happy to have an order to follow to take his thoughts off her previous anger. “Setting intercept course.”
“She’s still seven minutes out,” Wolford began, then frowned as he pulled up a section of the sensor display. “Ma’am, I have another Eysselink drive signature coming in, but it’s not coming from the gate in the Belt.” His eyes grew wide. “And it’s a lot bigger… Captain, I think it’s one of our cruisers! I can’t tell which one yet.”
“What’s her heading?” Lee asked, face lighting up with the hope that they might actually get some help.
“Oh shit,” Wolford blurted, “she’s heading straight for the ramship!” He looked from the display to Captain Lee. “She’s coming up broadside on her…only two minutes from field collision!”
“Okay, this is workable,” Lee said, leaning forward, her hands clasped in concentration. “When they have the field intersect, both their fields will be down; we’ll fire a Shipbuster at the ramship…”
“Hold on!” Wolford exclaimed. “There’s something…” He looked back up at Lee. “Captain, the ramship’s drive field just went down! I think that cruiser used a gravimetic emitter on her!”
On the main screen, Franks could see the avatar representing the Republic cruiser, its drive field still intact, move right through the disabled ramship, ripping it into component atoms in its wake.
“I guess,” Franks said as a smile passed over his face, “we have to tell Commander Infante she might not be the only engineer in the Fleet to have that idea after all.”
“The cruiser is dropping out of Eysselink drive,” Wolford said.
“Deactivate our drive field, Mr. Bevins,” Lee said. “Lt. Reno,” she addressed the Communications officer, “try to raise the cruiser, find out who we’re dealing with and let them know about the survivors---we can use the help retrieving the shuttles and lifepods.”
“They’re already contacting us, ma’am,” Reno told her. He looked at Franks. “But Lieutenant…I think it’s for you.”
Franks glanced at him, confused, but then looked at the main screen. Projected there was a full body hologram of Jason McKay, looking---Franks thought---very iconic in his Intell blacks, hands clasped behind his back.
“Franks?” he said, one eyebrow raising in surprise. “What the hell are you doing out here?”
“Saving the planet at least once, sir,” acting Captain Lee interjected and Franks felt a surge of gratitude. “Not to mention all our lives.”
“There’ve been a few changes since you left, sir,” Franks spoke up, trying not to be intimidated. “Oh, by the way, you’re a General now.”
“Well hell,” McKay snorted. “I should have stayed away longer…they woulda’ made me President.”
“Oh no, sir,” Franks told him earnestly. “I think you came back just in time…”
Chapter Forty-One
Ari Shamir ran with breakneck speed fueled by desperation, his legs pumping as he ignored the burning in his lungs and the dragging weight of his armor and weapon. Another APC flew into the air not fifty meters from him, throwing him down to one knee as the ground quaked and a mushroom of dirt and superheated gas climbed into the sky. Clouds of burning metal hung in the air and screams rang in his ears, some coming over the cacophonous roar of the communications channels, some from men and women who had pulled off their helmets in the throes of panic or agony.
Most of the troops had heeded the warnings from Colonel Stark and General Kage and had abandoned their vehicles in time, but here and there were bodies and parts of bodies in scorched black armor. Even those not touched by the constant fall of the tungsten thunderbolts from orbit were huddled in the tall grass, frozen with shock, trying to shut out the explosions and th
e screaming.
When Ari came to an intact vehicle, he leaped onto it, ignoring the shouted warnings of the CeeGee troopers around him, and dropped down through the open roof hatches to grab armfuls of shoulder-fired missile launchers from a rack in the back wall. With a heave that strained his back muscles, he threw the launchers out into the grass, then climbed out behind them, kicking free of the vehicle and taking the fall in a shoulder roll.
Scooping up the anti-armor weapons, he jogged as fast as he could with the heavy load into the tall grass where the vehicle’s crew was lying on their bellies, hands covering their helmeted heads. Coming up on the designated squad leader---he could tell by the chevrons on the back of the man’s helmet---he dumped the launchers right in front of his face, startling the man into a crouch. Ari hesitated as he read the name tape across the man’s breastplate and saw that it was Lieutenant Matienzo.
“Distribute these to your squad,” Ari told him, using the public-address speakers on the outside of his helmet, not trusting the comm channels that were still jammed by panicked reports from inexperienced officers. “Get them up and get them arrayed there,” he pointed down the road, where he could see several dozen other troopers getting into positions, led by General Kage and Captain Odawale. “If we don’t get into a defensive position, the enemy will run right over us!”
“But, but…” Matienzo stuttered, eyes flicking back and forth.
A tungsten rod sliced into the APC behind them and the explosion slammed Ari into the ground beside the CeeGee trooper, the overpressure flattening the dozen troopers into the hard-packed ground and stealing the breath from their lungs. Ari came up first, gritting his teeth and forcing his brain to work as he got his legs underneath him and pushed himself to his feet.
“For fuck’s sake, you stupid shits!” he screamed at them, his PA speakers turned up to their maximum. “Do you want to stay here by the vehicles and die like bugs? Get your asses out there and die fighting!”
Matienzo grabbed his rifle from where it had fallen and used the buttstock to lever himself to his feet. His eyes were wild through the slit of his faceplate as he looked at Ari, then turned back to face his squad. “Get up, Goddamn you!” he bellowed, half in anger and half in fear. “Grab the missile launchers and move!”
Ari nodded in satisfaction and moved on to the next intact vehicle…
Shannon crouched in the middle of the meadow, ignoring the instincts that screamed at her to take cover, trying to ignore the chaos and panic all around her as she concentrated on the voice coming over her helmet headphones.
“…was Dominguez!” President O’Keefe was telling her. “We’ve just seen the security feed from the Control Center!”
“How the hell did he do it?” she demanded. “I thought we had security measures in place to prevent this?”
“He used them against us, Colonel,” General Rietveld said bitterly. “He didn’t take control of the weapons from the center; instead, he accessed the targeting system remotely, then manually inputted a virus at the center’s physical mainframe that shut out any remote access from that point on.” He paused, and she could hear him taking a breath to try to control his temper. “Then he destroyed the whole place with orbital weapons.”
“Well, where is he now?” Shannon asked. “We have to get his tablet or whatever he’s using for remote access; if we get it, he’ll be shut out just like us.”
“He took his flitter west, then it dropped out of sight near the Canadian border…” Rietveld began.
“Shannon,” O’Keefe interrupted, “he went to Valerie’s lake house in Minnesota! There’s nothing else out there! She’s there, Shannon, with Natalia! Agent Klesko took her there…and he’s not answering his ‘link! Neither is Valerie! He’s got them, Shannon!”
“Oh, Christ…” Shannon moaned, collapsing back to a seated position. “It makes sense…they’re his hostages. He knows we can’t just put a missile strike into wherever he’s hold up now.”
“And if we try to send a team in to free her,” O’Keefe said in a voice filled with rage and impotence, “he can blow them out of the sky or take out any ground vehicle that gets close.”
“We’ll get her back, sir,” Shannon assured the President. We have to, she thought. If we don’t get control of the defense satellites, the biomechs will slice right through us. “We need some sort of fire support though. What about orbital gunships?”
“We can try,” Rietveld said a bit doubtfully. “But Dominguez controls the ground-based laser launch sites too. If he sees them coming, he can shoot them out of space with the lasers. Same thing for missiles, if the ships sit back and launch them from out of laser range. We could try Gauss cannons, but I doubt we can target them accurately enough for fire support from that far out.”
“Dammit, there’s gotta be something out there that can help us!” Shannon said in frustration, flinching as yet another APC was destroyed by an orbital strike.
“Perhaps there is,” another voice came on her communications link, identified on her heads-up display as Fleet Captain Di Ndinge. “Colonel Stark, I have a priority transmission waiting. Someone would like to speak with you.”
When the voice came over her helmet speakers, it hit Shannon like a wave, washing away a fraction of the constant tension that had been resting between her shoulders for months and bringing a smile to her lips despite the circumstances.
“Hi, honey,” Jason McKay said, “I’m home.”
* * *
Joyce Minishimi clenched her hands on her restraint straps and tried not to fidget as the cramped lifepod jerked and shifted in the grasp of the hangar bay’s cargo arm. She’d never been claustrophobic before, but spending the last few hours crammed into one of the tiny Engineering Level lifepods with the corpse of a young Lieutenant had changed that. He’d still been breathing when she’d found him in a corner of the Engineering Bay, and she’d dragged him along to the lifepod, but he’d passed away only an hour after she evacuated the ship.
He was barely twenty-five and she couldn’t even remember his name, but she’d never forget his face. She’d stared at it---or tried not to---for the last three hours, or watched drops of his blood orbiting around the small space, dreading the inevitable moment when they would splash into her. When she’d been pulled on board and the ship had gone back into one g acceleration, they’d spattered on the floor and seats like red rain. She’d endured it, telling herself over and over that this was surely not worse than nearly being killed by a knife to the chest…but now, when she was so close to being free of her prison, she felt a panic attack barreling down on her and she wasn’t sure if she could hold it back this time.
Then the lifepod came to a shuddering halt and a telescoping airlock slid out to attach itself to the hatch with a deep, metallic tone. The atmosphere light on the interior control panel went green and Minishimi fairly lunged out of her seat to slam her palm into the panel that opened the hatch. Her hands shook as the hatch slid aside with painful slowness, teasing her with a glimpse of light and a taste of fresh air, until finally she pushed through the narrow gap, feeling the door scrape painfully against her lower back, squeezing her eyes shut against the pain and panic.
Then someone took her hand and pulled her gently through the opening hatch, drawing her into a powerful hug. She sobbed quietly for a moment into a uniformed shoulder before she pulled herself back to control with deep, shuddering breaths. When she drew back, she realized that the one holding her was Commander Gianeto, and that he was crying as well.
“Sorry, ma’am,” he said, letting her step back as he wiped at his eyes. “I thought you were dead.”
“I was under that impression myself, Commander.” She laughed a bit maniacally, dragging sleeves across her face. “What the hell ship are we on board, anyway?”
“It’s the Bradley, ma’am,” he told her. “But, ma’am…the Sheridan’s back!” His face broke into a smile. “She just showed up during the battle! Colonel McKay sent you a message befor
e the ship went back into the drive field and headed for Earth orbit…”
“It’s actually General McKay now,” a voice said from behind them. Minishimi turned and saw a young-looking, redheaded Intelligence officer stepping into the hangar bay’s utility lock with them, trailed by a pair of medical techs. “Captain, I’m Lieutenant Drew Franks; I’m aid to General McKay and Colonel Stark---yeah, she got promoted too, while you were gone.”
“Damn,” Minishimi said mildly, “I’m going to have to salute him now.”
“Do you need medical attention, Captain?” Franks asked her, eyeing the bloodstains on her clothes.
“No, Lieutenant,” she assured him. “I’m fine.” She caught the attention of the med techs. “There’s the body of an engineering officer in the lifepod,” she told them, gesturing back through the lock. “You should see to him.”
The med techs nodded and moved past her, heading through the airlock back to the lifepod.
“Ma’am,” Franks went on, “we’ve got a situation on Earth…it’s complicated and I’ll explain it later, but basically, the Sheridan had to head for Earth orbit, so it’s going to be up to the Brad to take care of the rest of the Protectorate ships.” Franks hesitated, looking around to make sure there were no crewmembers nearby. “Captain Perez is dead…that’s also complicated but he was out of his harness during a field collision and broke his neck. Commander Lee, his XO, has no combat experience before today. General McKay knows you’ve been through a lot, but if you can, he’d feel more comfortable with you in the command chair.”
Minishimi closed her eyes and took a deep breath, leaning against Gianeto in utter exhaustion for a moment. A few hours ago, she’d been resigned to her own death, at peace with it. Unexpectedly surviving had been ten times as stressful as the acceptance of death, paradoxically. She dug down deep within herself, imagining the last mile of the Hokkaido marathon, then straightened and looked Franks in the eye.
