by Chris Bunch
So all eyes were on the king, who was making endless open ‘casts in all directions about what he was going to do to the rascally Shaoki.
Things looked a little better for von Baldur’s plan.
• • •
Six of Inchcape’s destroyers jumped behind one of Ill’s moons, using it for a mask.
Redon Spada’s patrol boats jumped to just out of range of the fortress’s primary weapons.
The fortresses, regardless, launched at them.
The p-boats counterlaunched and easily destroyed the missiles as they arced beyond range of their controllers.
Inchcape brought the Fletcher and the other five, in an extremely hazardous jump, between the fortresses and III, an action that would’ve produced a court-martial for Inchcape, if this were peacetime and she were still an Alliance officer, for senselessly endangering her ships.
If a navigator had dropped a digit and they’d come out of hyperspace in the middle of III, that ship, as well as a good chunk of the local real estate, would have been obliterated.
But she got away with it.
The fortresses went into panic mode, swiveling TA systems toward III, trying to acquire the destroyers.
Then Spada jumped his p-boats into range and launched heavy shipkillers at the fortresses.
The Shaoki ships covering the fortresses swirled, then counterattacked wildly, some toward the destroyers and others toward Pyrrhus-class boats.
Von Baldur held his battleship just out of range.
He sent a com to the king, aboard his own flagship, asking for backup.
King Saleph hesitated for a ship hour, then found a backbone somewhere and ordered half of the Khelat warships in against III.
Even on the Pride’s bridge screen, space was chaotic, a spinning whirlpool of ships fighting, sometimes alone, sometimes in pairs, sometimes in echelons.
Von Baldur had another real-time, real-view screen holding on the orbital forts.
He realized he wasn’t breathing as the big screen showed friendly blips, darting close to the fortresses.
Spada’s p-boats.
Two of them were hit by missiles almost as big as they were, and simply vanished.
One fortress bulged, reddened, and disappeared.
The com to Spada’s ship came to life.
“I get five points for that one.”
“Com discipline,” Spada’s calm voice came, just as three missiles ripped into another orbital fortress and it sprayed air and its guts into space.
Two destroyers ganged up on the last fortress, volleying missiles at it. A pair of Khelat ships appeared and launched at the damaged fortress. It hung in space, not fighting back, as missiles slammed home.
“It’s dead,” someone ‘cast.
“All Wahfer elements,” another voice said. “Break contact, break contact.”
Now there were more and more Khelat on screen, and Shaoki blips either flared on-screen as being hit, fled into N-space, or drove toward Ill’s surface.
The way was open for invasion.
Grok, however, had already made his.
• • •
Grok had carefully selected and modified his ship.
He’d originally thought of one of Spada’s patrol boats, but was very tired of barely human accommodations, since he might be stuck in one spot for a lengthy period of time.
The speed and maneuverability of the patrol boats was an advantage, but Grok realized if he was caught, there almost certainly wouldn’t be time nor enough room to do any serious running.
He settled on a medium-sized mining ship. Its hold was huge and was quickly converted to work area and, near the bow, a Grok-sized living area.
The half-dozen technicians were quartered where the processing machines had been.
The outer skin of the ship was first given an attractive, nonsymmetric set of bulges, so the craft didn’t look like any sort of spacecraft, then tastefully anodized in a scheme not unlike that of a Gila monster.
Grok loved the ship, but no one else did.
The pilot he’d gotten from Spada had trouble not wincing when he looked at it, as did the technicians.
That didn’t matter.
Grok named it, officially, the Whitehead, after a favorite philosopher, unofficially after his completely unpronounceable, at least by someone without two larynxes, home district.
While the modifications were being made, Grok went over recent aerials of III, selected a promisingly rugged range of hills not too close nor too far from the Maulers’ base.
After the electronics array was loaded, circuited, and double-checked, the Whitehead jumped for the Khelat fleet.
The next two jumps led it behind one of Ill’s moons, and then, once the battle started, the ship crept in-atmosphere and down to hover on antigravity just above the planet’s jagged surface.
Grok could’ve done the piloting, but didn’t see the need to do any more work than necessary.
The Whitehead flew to the mountains Grok had chosen, then maneuvered up a canyon to an abandoned quarry.
It landed next to an open mine shaft that, if utter ruin descended, could provide shelter and lay dead for hours. Everything aboard the ship had been shielded so it should be electronically invisible.
Grok distrusted electronics even more than he did people.
“And here we are,” he said to his pilot. “Snug as a rug in a bug.”
The pilot looked puzzled but didn’t ask, since Grok was growling. He didn’t know that meant moderate happiness to the alien.
A screen showed the battle raging above, around the orbital fortresses, but Grok didn’t pay much attention. He was busy, still growling, putting the last details on his ideas.
• • •
Before the Shaoki could recover from the initial assault, fast transports, heavily escorted, darted down about a kilometer short of the main Shaoki position.
The ships grounded only long enough for troops — almost a thousand of Goodnight’s hard chargers — to pour out. Still, one ship was badly holed, and limped away from III leaking fumes and various fluids.
Goodnight paid no attention. He was the first off his transport, which appeared heroic and leading from the front. In fact, Chas was deathly afraid of getting shot full of holes in a tin can that couldn’t shoot back.
“Go, go, go,” he and his officers were chanting into their coms.
The troops, heavily laden in their suits, stumbled away from the ships. Even with lighter gravity, they were staggering under the weight of personal weapons, air tanks, food, water, and the various crew-served weapons and missiles.
Goodnight had ordered the men not to turn on their small antigravs, for fear that could be picked up on Shaoki sensors and targeted.
Chas saw something flash overhead, went flat, as a missile impacted against a nearby crater.
Those who’d seen the incoming and reacted got up. The others, who’d not seen anything, were just bewildered. If they didn’t learn quickly, they would be unlikely to survive the day.
Warrants were shouting the troops into widely dispersed assault lines. The objectives were half a dozen antiaircraft missile sites on nearby bluffs. The troops moved as fast as they could lurch while, above them, the Shaoki crews scrambled for weapons, having never thought anyone would attack them from the ground.
Soldiers went down, readied crew-served weapons.
The sights of the mortars and heavy blasters had already been adjusted for the gravity, and bolts slashed out as bombs arced overhead.
One site was firing back now, and Goodnight wondered if it might not be manned by Maulers.
Three p-boats shot overhead, and the site exploded in a flash of flames, swallowed by the near-vacuum.
Goodnight wondered who’d brought in Spada’s ships, thought that if this were a normal army, somebody would have just deserved a medal.
The assault troops swept forward and went up the slopes to the sites.
Someone triggered a missile at t
he attackers. It flashed out, hit the ground well back of the assault line, bounced high, spinning, and blew up.
Then troops swept over the missile sites, and the way was clear for the main landing.
• • •
M’chel Riss sucked air frantically. Even if it was fume-heavy, and smelled a little of garbage, it would be the only air she’d breathe beyond that from her suit or from the lifter’s tanks, and she wanted something to remember, even if it was nothing more than ship air from the transport they were sitting in.
Her lifter was vibrating slightly — the power was on, ready to engage the drive at her order.
“Gunners?”
“Ready,” came the two reports.
“Drivers?”
“Ready.”
She checked the heavy blaster in her lifter’s cupola. It was half loaded, a drum securely attached to the weapon’s breech.
Riss felt the ship shudder as it jinked. Someone outside must’ve shot at it…. Or else the Khelat captain was getting a case of nerves.
M’chel closed the faceplate of her helmet, inhaled metallic, dead air as the transport slammed in for a landing.
The nose of the ship lifted up and away to expose the cargo deck, and she saw the desolation of VI/III.
“Lift it,” she ordered, and the lifter came off the greasy deck of the ship.
Come on, come on, let’s get out and doing something, she thought. She ducked down, pulled the cupola’s hatch closed.
The two small lifters, scouts, near the bow were airborne and slipping down the ramp, and the rest of her column was following.
Without needing orders, half of the troop broke left; the others went right. They grounded, waiting for orders.
Riss felt the ground shudder as her ship took off.
Behind it, other ships grounded and infantrymen poured out.
There was incoming fire — she saw men crumple, lie motionless.
She keyed her throat mike.
“All Lanchester units … commanders’ option … take out those damned guns!”
She’d picked her own name for the twenty heavy lifters, their five scouts, and ten support lifters. Her radio jargon wasn’t proper for Alliance armor, but then, she wasn’t proper Alliance anymore.
If she ever had been.
Riss bent to her sight.
She saw movement up ahead, on a low rise, far ahead of the troops on foot.
“Gunner! Target! Gun position, thirteen degrees, five hundred meters. Shrapnel.”
“Target acquired,” the first gunner said.
“On command, shoot. Will correct. Fire.”
“On the way — wait. Splash.”
Dust and smoke lifted as the missile struck, missing by not very much. Riss swore. If there were good gunners up there with anything heavy, she could be one dead marine.
She corrected her aim.
“Fire!”
“On the way — wait. Splash!”
“Hit!” Riss said jubilantly as the missile blew up.
She saw no movement from the position.
“We got them all,” her gunner said.
“Maybe,” she said. “Or maybe they’ve got a trench to run away in.”
It didn’t matter much — that gun wouldn’t fire anymore at the infantry.
She swept her sight across the battlefield, found another, multiple pom-pom position. It churned fire, and a scout lifter spun and blew up.
Another lifter unit swept forward, killed the pompom before Riss could fire.
“Press the attack,” a Khelat voice came.
That was the landing commander.
More and more Khelat soldiers came on line.
Riss saw no signs of anyone breaking, although the infantrymen were a little reluctant to get up and charge.
“Lift it up,” she ordered her driver. “Push them back.”
Riss clicked her com to the unit frequency, gave the same order.
In the far distance, she could see the bulk of the old mine headquarters, supposedly now the headquarters for the Shaoki command and the Maulers.
Just for pure meanness, she sent a pair of rockets over the heads of the defenders at the mine.
She didn’t know if it did any good, but it didn’t do any harm, and made her feel better.
The Khelat kept pressure up all that day, into the night.
The Shaoki never broke, but they began falling back.
Riss allowed herself to feel a bit of hope. Maybe this idiot idea of the king’s would work, and in a day or two they’d control III, and use that for a jumping off point to —
Her second gunner was the first to spot the hole in the lines.
Somehow, behind them, the infantry had left a gap, in spite of the fairly solid line the lifters kept.
Riss was just reaching for the com to alert the Khelat infantry CO’s when somebody else spotted the hole.
From a draw, a dozen heavy lifters shot out.
They were about twice the size of Riss’s, and two generations more sophisticated.
The Malleus Maulers were on the field.
Riss’s gunner fired a missile at the lead lifter — Riss had a moment to see their ammo reserves were getting very low.
The Mauler’s ECM “reached out” and took command of the missile, and sent it up and around in a series of loops before its self-destruct mechanism cut in and the rocket blew up.
A missile came back at Riss, and the second gunner managed to drop it with a countermissile.
“Zig left! Now!” Riss ordered. She spattered a burst at the oncoming lifter, saw bolts explode harmlessly on its compound armor.
To kill it would take a missile or a hit by Riss’s secondary cannon.
“Back … now! Drop down into that ravine!” she ordered.
They were below ground level, as a second missile blew just above them.
Riss’s com scrambled, went dead.
“Right down it, then back out when it shallows.”
She heard a whimper from someone on her suit com, paid no attention.
Her lifter came out of the ravine, and in the few seconds she’d been blind, four — correction, five — of her unit’s lifters had been hit, smoke coiling or oxygen gouting for an instant.
Then there were two slams against her own craft, and it skewed, grounded.
An instrument panel began smoking, then air hissed out of the lifter, and the smoke stopped.
Another missile hit her, rocking the lifter up, almost on its side.
“Come on,” she shouted, dropped out of the cupola. “They’ve got us!”
She was at the rear of the lifter, smashed a gauntlet against the emergency button. Nothing happened, and M’chel had an instant to think of being trapped in this lifter while it was shot up, then the hatch dropped away.
Her second gunner pushed past her, ran into the open, and was cut down by a chatter of blaster bolts.
The first gunner was pulling at the second driver, who lolled, motionless.
The man’s helmet — and head — came away, and the gunner was staring at the gore. Riss grabbed him, almost threw him toward the escape hatch.
The first driver stumbled up, and Riss saw, through his faceplate, a mask of blood. He sagged, and Riss had him over her shoulder, and had both their antigrav units turned to high. It surely did not matter if they were observed or picked up on some Shaoki screen now.
She made it out of the lifter crouched, still carrying the driver.
The three survivors staggered away from the lifter just as two artillery shells crashed into the ruined vehicle.
They made it to a boulder, let blaster bolts crash around them.
The Maulers forgot about them, switched to other targets, and Riss pushed her men back, away from the battlefield, as other Khelat men and women began retreating.
A few had courage enough to fire, almost blindly, rounds back at the lifters and now visible Shaoki infantry.
There were bodies, smoking lifters, overturned S
P guns, and then a line of soldiers, shaky but still holding, and they had antiarmor missiles.
The Maulers maneuvered around what was now their battlefield, took a couple of hits, then pulled back to cover.
They didn’t have — quite — the firepower or aerial supremacy to drive the invaders back into space.
The Khelat may have held the original landing ground, but not much more.
Riss took her wounded driver to an aide station, reported in to her regimental commander, was told to take command of another lifter and assume command of a lifter battalion.
The battle would go on.
• • •
Riss’s new lifter had only one drawback — it had taken a nice, neat hit through the spray shield that exploded just behind the late commander.
Blood and intestines had sprayed, instantly dried on the deck, bulkheads, and overhead.
Riss’s new crew refused to reenter the lifter. She got her first gunner from her old lifter, and they set to cleaning. By midnight, they had most of the dried, caked mess cleaned up, and the old crew grudgingly moved back in.
• • •
Riss remembered the second day of the invasion because that was when the Shaoki first hit them from the air … or rather vacuum.
They managed to slip in ten — or maybe the number was twenty — patrol craft that swept across the battlefield, missiling everything in sight. Which included a formation of their own lifters, unfortunately not the Maulers.
Riss had cozied her new lifter up next to a very large boulder, and, unlike the Khelat, did not instantly return fire on the Shaoki ships.
They banked, made another sweep across the battleground, then vanished into space.
Fifteen minutes later, the Khelat air support arrived.
Just a little late.
• • •
“How is it going?” Jasmine asked.
The hyperspace com hummed and hissed.
“I assume you are scrambling,” von Baldur said.
“Of course.”
“Lousy,” Friedrich said. “I want you to contact Hal Maffer on Seth V and find out if he can hire, right now, a half dozen or more antiaircraft batteries. We seem to have come a little short.
“Also, anyone who is interested in fighting can get a most attractive contract from us.”
