Duty, Honor, Planet: The Complete Trilogy

by Rick Partlow

  “Goddammit,” he hissed, feeling hope desert him.

  The tablet was nearly ripped in half by shrapnel and what remained was warped by the heat of the explosion. Their only hope of regaining control of the defense satellites was gone. Without the tablet, it could take weeks to cleanse the system of the virus Dominguez had uploaded, and Shannon needed help now. He paused. Shannon needed help, but so did the Sheridan and the Bradley.

  McKay stood, jogging over to the assault shuttle: it had touched down and the boarding ramp was lowering. Commander Villanueva stood at the top of the ramp, framed in the light from the interior.

  “Commander,” McKay said as he climbed the ramp, “I distinctly recall ordering you to launch that Bunker Buster.”

  “Reception was bad, sir,” she said, spreading her hands. “You were breaking up. I could have sworn you told me to come in low and provide fire support.” He saw her eyes looking past him to where Vinnie was coming up the ramp, and she smiled in a very unprofessional way.

  “I’ll yell at you later,” he promised her, moving past her toward the cockpit. “Get us in the air and get me on the radio.” He glanced back and saw Vinnie grabbing her hand, squeezing it. “Vinnie, get in if you’re coming…tell Jock to call for a transport for Val and Natalia.” He waved a hand impatiently. “Let’s go, people…we still have a war to win!”

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  “He’s not making this easy for us, is he?” Drew Franks commented, watching the enemy cruiser changing course on the Tactical screen.

  “If it was easy,” Captain Minishimi replied quietly, “they wouldn’t be paying us the big bucks, would they?”

  Franks barked a laugh. “But why is he stalling?” the younger officer asked. “Doesn’t he want to try to take us out?”

  “Maybe he’s not as hardened as he thought he was,” Commander Gianeto theorized. “After all, it’s not like he’s ever done this before either.”

  “Then let’s not give him any more time to get ready,” Minishimi said. “Lt. Bevins, accelerate to 1.5 g’s and set a collision course.”

  “Aye, ma’am,” Bevins said, sounding the acceleration alarm. “Thirty seconds to field intersect.”

  “Engineering,” Minishimi called to Commander Infante, “we will be intersecting fields in thirty seconds. Get your people away from the main trunk lines and get them strapped in.”

  “I am way ahead of you, Captain,” Infante said, sounding satisfied with herself. “Engineering is good to go.”

  “Maybe she’s as smart as she thinks she is,” Franks murmured. Minishimi heard it and raised an eyebrow at him, but he could see the smile fighting to emerge on her face.

  “Everyone hold on,” Gianeto said, strain evident in his voice, and not just from the one and a half gravity acceleration. “Here we g…”

  * * *

  Admiral Patel watched with a horrified fascination as the Bradley touched fields with the enemy cruiser. The computer was simulating the two ships, and the enemy ship looked suspiciously like file footage of the Sheridan…but when the field intersection occurred, the simulation was replaced by feeds from the exterior cameras as well as the views from satellites in orbit nearby and Patel saw the globe of light that was the visible manifestation of the burst of raw gravimetic energy that escaped when the fields of warped space-time interacted with each other and the thin ionosphere.

  Left behind in the wake of the collision were the two star cruisers, drifting aimlessly in high orbit, their momentum absorbed by the Eysselink field collapse. The enemy ship was looking a bit the worse for the wear: she had taken several hits from the Brad after the Sheridan had knocked her out of warp previously, and now she had experienced two field collisions in a very short span. The thermal scans showed multiple hotspots on the cruiser’s drive pods and significant fluctuations in its fusion reactor, as well as atmosphere leaks from the hangar bay.

  If the enemy cruiser looked as if it had been in a fight, though, the Bradley had obviously lost one. Her drive pods had been completely sheered away by the gravito-inertial feedback and their mounts were twisted wreckage, coolant spraying white into the vacuum from severed feed lines. Her reactor was cold and inactive and her hangar bay spewed burning atmosphere, set alight, he guessed, by a shuttle explosion. She was helpless and not much more now than a stationary target.

  Her Shipbuster missiles, however, were still active and now burning towards the enemy cruiser behind flares of fusion fire. Patel urged them on with his fervent hopes, running a quick check with what sensors the Sheridan had left to make sure that the lifepods and shuttles from his ship weren’t going to be too close to the blast, but unlike the Bradley, the enemy cruiser wasn’t powerless. From the weapons pods on either side of the ship shot two identical Shipbusters, moving away from the cruiser before their fusion drives ignited, taking them on intercept courses with the Bradley’s missiles.

  Patel swore softly and looked down at the control board beneath his fingers. The holographic displays weren’t working, but the backup physical controls were folded out and operational. He made a decision and touched the button to activate the fusion drives. The Sheridan lurched forward, shaking violently as the fusion drive came to life fitfully, its electromagnetic bottle taking a moment to stabilize. Then Patel felt a full one gravity of acceleration pressing him back into his command couch as his ship lumbered toward the enemy cruiser.

  Hundreds of kilometers away from the starships, the two pairs of Shipbuster missiles converged and detonated, and all of the Sheridan’s external and satellite feeds whited out at once, leaving only the computer simulation: a huge white globe, a second sun that outshone the real one that was emerging from the Earth’s terminator. Patel worried for a moment about radiation, then had to chuckle to himself as he realized what he was about to do.

  “Try to do anyway,” he mumbled, correcting himself.

  The cameras came back online and he could see the enhanced visual image of the enemy cruiser. They had to have the noticed the Sheridan accelerating by now… As if the captain of the enemy ship were reading Patel’s mind, two more Shipbuster missiles nosed out of the cruiser’s weapons pods and kicked free, their fusion drives igniting.

  “Well damn,” Patel said, shoulders sagging. There was no way the Sheridan would reach the enemy ship before the missiles intercepted him. And once he was gone, there would be nothing left to stop that ship.

  * * *

  Drew Franks had imagined the worst, but somehow it was so much worse than he imagined. It was different both qualitatively and quantitatively than their previous field intersects with the ramships. It seemed like he was hanging forever in a grey limbo where there was no physical sensation and yet he still felt an incredible almost psychic discomfort. He could think, in that he was able to perceive what was happening to him, and yet he was unable to conceive a single coherent thought.

  Then, after a subjective eternity, reality crashed down like a twenty-foot wave into coral and rocks, with him in-between. The pain---nothing localized, just a general, intense soreness everywhere---was breathtaking and blinding, but in moments it retreated into a dull ache and he was able to open his eyes.

  “Medical? Do you read me, medical?” He could hear Captain Minishimi’s voice before he was even able to bring his vision into focus.

  How the hell is she back up and moving around so fast? he wondered enviously.

  Then he saw what she was doing and he no longer felt any envy for her position. Captain Minishimi was out of her seat and hovering in the zero gravity, anchored to the navigation console, where Lt. Bevins was hanging against his restraints, blood pouring from his nose and trickling steadily from an ear. But even in the flickering shadows from the sputtering holographic displays, Franks could tell that Bevins was still breathing…

  “This is Lt. Fields in Medical,” a reply finally came over the intercom.

  “We need a team up here immediately,” Minishimi snapped. “We have one crewmember with a possible b
rain hemorrhage and others that may be injured as well.”

  “Aye, ma’am,” Fields said. “We’ll get someone up there as soon as we can. Things are…bad down here.”

  “I understand, Lieutenant,” Minishimi said with a resigned sigh. “Commander Infante,” she switched to the line to Engineering. “What’s our situation?”

  There was no reply for a moment, and Minishimi glanced around to see that Franks was conscious. “Are you all right, Lt. Franks?”

  “As far as I know, Captain,” he told her. A glance around showed that no one else was awake and coherent yet, although Commander Lee was shaking her head, trying to clear it.

  “This is Commander Infante,” the Chief Engineer’s voice came over the bridge speakers. “Captain, we all seem to be okay here…no casualties. I am trying to get a look into the Engineering compartment now…oh dear.”

  That doesn’t sound good, Franks thought morosely.

  “Captain,” Infante reported, “the main trunk lines exploded and the entire compartment is pretty much destroyed. From what I can tell from our remote sensors, the Eysselink drive pods are nonfunctional---to be honest, I’m not even sure they’re there anymore. The antimatter fuel pods have ejected and the fusion reactor has completely flushed. I may be able to get the reactor back up, but it’s going to take hours to re-route the power feeds. Sorry, ma’am, but we’re driftwood.”

  Minishimi was silent for a moment, and in that time, Larry Gianeto had managed to reboot the Tactical station and unfold the backup display screen. “Captain,” he spoke up, “I just picked up multiple fusion explosions about 400 kilometers from us, 600 klicks from the enemy ship.” He frowned. “Ma’am, I think he took out our missiles.”

  “Damn,” the Captain said softly. “Lt. Reno, send a message to Fleet Headquarters. Tell them that we and the Sheridan are both disabled but the enemy cruiser’s field is down, at least temporarily. Tell them they have to launch everything they have at it, before it can start taking out our cities…”

  “Ma’am,” Gianeto interrupted her. “The Sheridan is boosting on her fusion drive.”

  Minishimi’s head snapped around, her eyes wide. Franks knew what she was thinking: the ship’s life pods had already evacuated, along with her remaining landers and shuttles. Whoever had stayed behind was doing exactly what she had intended to do: trying to save the crew.

  “The enemy ship is launching on the Sheridan!” Gianeto announced. “Two Shipbusters, ma’am.”

  “Captain,” Lt. Reno said, “we have an incoming communication.”

  “Is it Fleet HQ?” she asked, feeling numb and helpless.

  “No, ma’am,” Reno told her, shaking his head. “It’s General McKay.”

  * * *

  “Listen to me, Commander Kent,” McKay growled into the cockpit mic, “I don’t give a flying fuck about your procedures or your regulations. There is a Protectorate cruiser in orbit and the only thing that’s going to keep it from bombarding our population is if we can get the defense lasers operational.”

  “Sir, I understand that,” the harried officer replied, “but I can’t target anything without access to the system and we don’t have that!”

  “And I’m telling you that you don’t need to target anything, Mister…I will be giving you the coordinates and you will be firing that damn laser like it was God Himself telling you where to shoot. And if you don’t, and if you are unfortunate enough to survive what happens next, I will find you, Commander George Kent and I will make you wish you’d died in something as painless as a fusion explosion.” Beside McKay, in the lander’s pilot’s seat, Esme Villanueva grinned with appreciation.

  McKay cut the connection without waiting to hear a reply, then switched over to another frequency. “Bradley, this is General McKay, do you read?”

  “McKay, this is Captain Minishimi,” he heard her familiar voice over the cockpit speakers. “Do you have control of the defense system?”

  “No, but neither do they,” he told her. “We have contact with the maintenance crews of the lasers, though---if you can feed me the targeting coordinates, I can get them to the right station and take out that damn cruiser.”

  “McKay,” Minishimi interrupted, “the Sheridan is under power, she’s heading for the cruiser and the enemy ship just launched a pair of Shipbusters at her…you need to target the missiles immediately! I’m sending you a targeting vector now.”

  “Shit,” McKay muttered. Hitting a slow-moving cruiser was one thing; hitting a missile moving at a dozen gravities acceleration was going to be much trickier. “All right, let’s hope we can make this work…”

  * * *

  Arvid Patel hit a control on his ‘link and set it on the console by his right hand.

  “Dad?” The voice sounded so different than the last time he’d heard it, so much deeper and older.

  “Hello, Abshay,” Patel said, trying to keep his voice casual as he stared at the icons of the fusion missiles boosting towards him on the screen. “Are you safe?”

  “Yes, sir,” Abshay assured him. “They have us in a shelter here at the Academy. I…I didn’t know you were back insystem, sir. Is the fighting over, then?”

  “Not quite yet, son. Soon, I think.” Patel cleared his throat to keep from choking up. “So, I have not been able to speak with you for a long time…I just wanted to make sure you are all right. Does school go well?”

  “It’s fine, Dad,” Abshay told him, his tone sounding a bit puzzled at the train of the conversation. “Expectations are high, of course…it isn’t easy walking in your footsteps.”

  “Oh, don’t do that, Abshay,” Patel couldn’t hold back the tears now, or the crack in his voice. “Make your own path and you will be twice the man I ever was.”

  “Dad?” Abshay said, sounding worried. “Is everything all right?”

  Patel opened his mouth to answer…and let it hang open as he watched a brightly glowing track of superionized atmosphere trace a line up from the ground in less than an eyeblink, disappearing as the air thinned to near vacuum, but still simulated by the ship’s Tactical computer as it intersected the route of the lead Shipbuster and speared directly through its fusion drive. The missile disappeared into a miniature star that swallowed up the second Shipbuster as well for a long moment, until it emerged from the huge ball of superheated gas charred and dead, its drives inactive, its course changed from the explosion.

  “Yes, Abshay.” Admiral Patel smiled as he answered his son’s question. “I think things are all right. I have some work to do, though. I love you, and I am proud of you.”

  “I love you too, Dad.”

  Patel was still smiling as he cut the connection.

  * * *

  “The Shipbusters are gone!” Gianeto announced, excitement in his voice.

  “McKay,” Minishimi called, “they got the missiles! Tell them they need to shift aim to the cruiser!” She motioned to Gianeto and he nodded, sending a transmission from his station to Communications. “The coordinates are on the way.”

  Drew Franks and Commander Lee were both hanging over Gianeto’s shoulder, trying to follow the battle on the small emergency screen at the Tactical station, which was why the younger officer was still looking when Gianeto had turned away to transmit the coordinates. “Captain!” Franks exclaimed. “The cruiser is turning on her axis!”

  Gianeto’s head snapped back to the display and he touched the screen, magnifying the view of the enemy ship. The image showed the massive vessel slowly spinning end for end, the minute flares of her maneuvering thrusters visible at her bow and stern.

  “She’s realigning her weapons pods,” the Tactical officer realized. “Captain, I think she’s…”

  Sunlight twinkled off of a long chain of silvery beads that shot out of the cruiser’s weapons pods, each the size of a groundcar.

  “She’s firing her Gauss cannons!” Gianeto said. “She’s firing at a planetary target…”

  “She’s targeting the lasers,” Franks s
aid, grim certainty in his voice.

  “The optics are all shielded and underground, aren’t they?” Lee asked.

  “They don’t have to destroy the optics,” Minishimi told her, biting back a curse. “All they need to do is block the emitters. It’s an easy fix, but it will still take time. That leaves them free to destroy the Sheridan…and us.”

  “Captain!” Lt. Reno said. “I have Captain Fox from Fleet HQ on the line. He says they’ve launched a Shipbuster at the enemy cruiser, but it’s going to be almost a half hour till it gets there.”

  “One?” Franks blurted, aghast. “Is he saving them for a fucking special occasion?”

  “You know Captain Fox,” Minishimi reminded him, shaking her head, too disgusted to even reprove him for his language. “That station is his baby. He’s saving them for the rest of the Protectorate fleet we left out there. We’re lucky he granted us the one.”

  “If we live through this,” Franks promised with a half-snarl, “I’m going to have to make a concerted effort to see he’s reassigned to a post more in concert with his abilities.”

  You’re just a Lieutenant! Franks reminded himself silently. Then, with a cold amusement, Not if we survive this you won’t be.

  “The Sheridan is still heading for the enemy ship,” Gianeto reminded them, staring intently at the screen, as if afraid to turn away again. “She’s at two g’s acceleration now.”

  “Lt. Reno,” Minishimi instructed, “try to raise the Sheridan. I want to know who’s piloting that ship.”

  * * *

  “The Australia defense laser is down, General,” the voice of Captain De Ndinge came over the cockpit speakers of the lander. “We have reports from the maintenance crew that the damage is not too extensive and it should be repaired in a matter of less than an hour, but…”

  “I understand Captain,” McKay said. “Patch me through to Mojave; that’ll be the next station the ship passes over.”