“We’re still alive, aren’t we?” demanded Glenda Baldwin. Spalding jumped, not realizing she’d come back on the bridge. “Unless of course you’re just trying to convince yourself,” she continued and then rolled her eyes, “and the AI’s were only ever ‘reputed’ to have had functional antimatter generators.”
“Now, now, woman; it’s well documented the AI’s used antimatter—we got a number of generator designs from their space stations,” Spalding said.
“I meant them having functional ‘space ship’ antimatter generators. Even we had space station based antimatter generators for testing purposes before they were classified as a weapon of mass destruction and banned,” she said, giving him a sharp look.
“No! No! And three times no!” Spalding declared, “I looked up the pertinent treaties before construction. The weaponization of antimatter was banned—not the research and development of generators.”
“Then may I assume you have a permit for those generators—one issued by the Imperial Senate or Grand Assembly?” she asked facetiously.
“Don’t have to,” he smirked.
“I don’t believe you,” Glenda said.
“Tracto’s not a signatory of any of those treaties,” he said smugly. “And so long as she doesn’t weaponize the stuff, it’s not technically a violation of the galactic ban.”
“She was built by Confederation personnel in a Confederation ship yard!” Baldwin said angrily. “She’s not a Tracto-an ship—besides, all provincial powers are confined by treaty to control of one star system.
“Again, Tracto hasn’t signed anything of the sort. Until she does, Gambit System—and everything inside it—belongs to it, including the shipyard and space station forwarded to Confederation control—as well as all the warships she’s built, borrowed or repaired,” he said with a twinkle in his eye.
“This is outrageous. It’s an attempted power grab by a delusional old coot is what it is,” Baldwin snapped.
The Confederation hasn’t been paying any wages, last time I checked. Everything’s been funded out of donations or outright gifts from Tracto and the Border Alliance,” he said and then grinned, switching gears, “or maybe I’m the King of Gambit and I built this ship with my own two hands? In the end it doesn’t really matter. We’ve got antimatter generators that work and no one’s even thinking of weaponizing them.”
“You’re playing with fire,” Baldwin warned.
Spalding rolled his eyes, “I’m a military engineer, lass—playin’ with fire is my job.”
Chapter One hundred: Hold! Push!
“The 12th Ordinary are falling back, General,” reported Wainwright’s operations officer, “two companies of Jacks are advancing into their area.”
“Send two platoons from the ready reserve to stiffen them,” instructed General Wainwright.
“The 37th and the 49th Caprian Marine platoons are both available unless you object, Sir,” said the Ops Officer.
“At least we know they’re fully trained and motivated, unlike the grab bag we’ve been seeing out here lately,” he replied curtly.
“The 12th Ordinary has been doing a fine job until now,” objected the Ops Officer.
“I’m not so much upset with any particular unit…in truth, that’s partly a lie,” Wainwright said grimly. “But it’s been bad enough the holes we’ve had to fill because of drop losses getting here. Far too many of the Border Alliance planets sent us green soldiers with only a cadre of veterans. The results have been…predictable.”
“The Tracto-ans, MSP Lancers, and our own Marines are trained, General. I’m sure we will overcome,” the other man said stoutly.
In the distance a grenade exploded above the hull, showering the Amalgamated boarding troops with plasma.
An alarm went off in both officers’ HUD’s simultaneously: a pair of enemy battalions was advancing into their position.
“Send another full company of Marines from our expeditionary forces and back them up with another company of Border Alliance Space Commandoes,” Wainwright instructed his ops officer as he took in the steadily-advancing enemy. His forces were scattered around this side of the hull, with the largest pocket consolidated around him. But the enemy were coming out and the battle was getting more and more difficult.
“No Lancers?” asked the Ops Officer.
“They do best when advancing into the enemy. No, it’s either we get inside this hull or we push forward to the mouth of that main cannon and every unit that’s gone inside has been chopped up or chopped apart. We have to reach the cannon and disable it!” Wainwright growled, silently wishing he could just send a unit on grav-boards and finish it quickly. Unfortunately, the last time he’d tried that he’d lost a full company to strike fighters and point defense fire. They couldn’t risk leaving the hull. Although…“If any of the Tracto-ans want to ‘volunteer,’ they can take fifty of our remaining grav-boards and try a nape-of-the-hull advance.”
“They’d have to break out, there’s a full enemy battalion between us and that cannon,” said the other Officer.
“We’ll have to order an advance,” the General grunted. There was a chime as General Wainwright received a priority transmission. “What is it?” he demanded irritably.
“Sir! This is Comm. Officer Hopps! You instructed me to notify you as soon as I made contact with any of the units inside the ship,” Hopps said, speaking rapidly. “One of our repeaters left by a platoon that got destroyed just picked up an automated update from a Lancer suit.”
“What have we got and how close are they to their objective?” asked Wainwright.
“Company strength—it looks like a combined Lancer/Commando force, the survivors of two companies. They just broke out of an enemy encirclement. They’re still in the outer region of the ship but indicate they’re going in to try for the objective,” said Officer Hopps.
“Warn them about the internal defenses and tell them to withdraw back onto the hull or advance further into the ship based upon the situation on the ground. Tell them ‘god speed’ and good luck because there’s nothing we can send their way right now,” Wainwright grunted.
“Will do, Sir!” Hopps said eagerly.
****************************************************
Akantha dived for the deck and rolled as an enemy turret dropped down and started spraying the hall with blaster fire. Behind her, a pair of Lancers dropped to their knees and opened fire on the turrets to little effect.
“Fire in the hole!” shouted a Commando over the external speakers before overhand tossing a grenade. The grenade shot toward the turret and managed to get within inches of it before it exploded with incredible sonic force. Now bent and facing the wall, the turret rotated back and forth with an angry whine but, despite repeated attempts, was unable to get a line on Akantha and the rest of the company.
She received a com-ping. “This is Akantha,” she said shortly as she picked herself up, still warily looking at the damaged turret and the warrior beside it that had been taken out with blaster fire.
“Lady Akantha,” Captain Tyr said with relief, “we just managed a sporadic contact with the force on the hull. They report that several other groups that managed to infiltrated deeper into the hull encountered heavy internal defenses—defenses such as blaster turrets, gas, and smoke attacks—before being driven back,” he reported.
“That might have been nice to know two minutes earlier, Captain,” she said icily. “We have already encountered a turret and are continuing our advance. How stands the rear guard?”
“They’re on us like flies on two-day-old meat but we’re holding…for now. There’s no way back to the reinforcements on the hull so if you can keep moving forward faster than we’re fall back that would be nice,” he said.
“Not a problem,” Akantha said with certainty—right before an enemy Marine with a boarding axe appeared four feet away.
“Ya!” she cried, lifting up her sword and barely diverting the axe away from her head and onto
her armored shoulder. The force of the blow and the other warrior’s superior suit almost drove her to her knees. With a cold sweat on her forehead, she knew that if that axe strike had landed it would have split her helmet—and skull—in two. “Demon-cursed chameleons!” she shouted as she realized three more of the enemy had appeared at the same time and struck down two of her Lancers with head strikes.
“Lady Akantha, are you all right!?” yelled the Captain, only able to hear what she said and nothing more.
Then the enemy opened fire with the plasma lines built into their arms and the blaster rifle in her off hand exploded—thankfully not taking out her hand with it—and everything was fire and confusion.
“Just do your job!” she screamed at the Captain, parrying another boarding axe and countering with a strike that damaged the enemy’s elbow joint—damaged, but didn’t destroy—as the other warrior showed by striking her in the side with his axe.
Her suit started screaming alert warnings and she could hear the hissing sound of atmospheric pressure equalization.
“Messene!” she shrieked, reeling away from the force of the axe blow and falling tea kettle over spout onto the floor. She didn’t have time to get up and recover before she was dead. Her mind instantly following the path to life, she snatched a grenade off her belt, activated it, and threw it at the Marine.
The plasma grenade exploded at close range, destroying the top half of the enemy’s suit and revealing burnt flesh and bone beneath. The shockwave sent everyone else in the corridor to their knees.
“Up! Up! Up!” she shouted, grabbing the wall and dragging herself back to her feet by sheer force of will. She quickly focused on one of her Commandos down on the floor—who was missing an arm with a Jack standing over him—and she jumped forward.
Her sword instinctively parried the Marine’s force blades as she shoulder-checked him into the wall.
Facing the wrong way, she whirled around to parry his counter attack—only to find her blade striking empty air as three of the Marines disappeared down the corridor. As they retreated, their suits’ chameleon abilities reactivated.
Looking around, she saw three down on her side—two dead and one missing an arm—compared to only one Jack down on the floor. The one dead Marine was the one she had taken with the plasma grenade, and this was the third ambush in the last ten minutes. Throughout the attacks, her losses had been the harshest.
The enemy was deliberately targeting her best warriors, and they couldn’t keep sustaining these kinds of losses. But they couldn’t pull back either.
“We need a way to be able to see them!” she snapped, pushing forward. “Come on,” she shouted, waving her arm, “we must take that cannon!”
They were halfway down the hall when two quads of Marines appeared with blaster cannons.
Charge,” she cried, breaking out into a run before adding, “before they open fire!”
Chapter One hundred one: Out of Moves?
The bridge shook, then shook again, but thankfully everyone was strapped in—although whiplash remained a definite possibility.
Outside the ship, Messene’s Shield was streaming atmosphere and short-lived fire out of more than a dozen rents in their armor. Metal Titan had lost its engines and only the Royal Rage and the Armor Prince were still in the fight. I’d been worried about Druid after he lost his last ship, but so far he was everything I remembered. Maybe the man just wasn’t set up for independent command, but he sure knew how to fight in fleet battles!
“We can’t take much more of this. We must withdraw, Admiral!” shouted Hammer over the repeated hammer-blows the Royal Rage was taking. We were surrounded and taking fire from all sides.
“Just a little bit longer!” I yelled back.
“Sir!” she protested.
“We’ve got reinforcements on the way—at least one Battleship and a Cruiser,” I said.
“With a whole bloody fleet trailing along behind them, Jason!” she cried in a rising voice. “Six more Battleships and a slew of Cruisers and Destroyers trailing along behind. Captain Eastwood and the Shield are combat ineffective; Metal Titan can’t move; and we’re almost finished. Both shield generators are down, we only have one damaged secondary engine that’s overheating, and—”
“You honestly think we’re getting out of this with only one engine while being surrounded by Cruisers?” I asked incredulously, surprised she hadn’t seen the writing on the wall by now. Either we won—an increasingly unlikely state of affairs—or we went down the hard way. There were no other choices at this point. Outnumbered, outgunned and, though I hated to admit it, almost certainly out-admiraled.
“No, but at least we can save some of the crew, Sir. If we keep on like this, the ship could explode,” she said with a deathly cast to her features—or maybe that was just my imagination.
“We’re in this to the finish, Captain. Anyone that wants to abandon ship is free to find an escape pod if they think it’ll help,” I said, gesturing to the region of space around us—a region that was filled with a seemingly unending stream of weapons fire.
“Three ships—and one of them half-built or parted out—and none of them squawking MSP IFF,” Hammer said, her shoulders slumping, “with ten times or more behind them I don’t know…”
“One of those Cruisers is the Phoenix; there can’t be another Strike Cruiser in the galaxy with that mix of mono-locsium and duralloy. And when you toss in that half-built leviathan with them, it’s got to be Captain Laurent and Commander Spalding,” I said with complete certainty. “We’ll wait for their arrival and, who knows, maybe the Marines can turn this around before they get here.”
“Maybe,” she said, sounding like she didn’t believe it for a second and I had to admit that one Battleship, one Cruiser and one…whatever it was with them. Maybe more Marines—or maybe just another crazy creation of our Chief Engineer that he couldn’t bear to leave behind—but either way there was no way I was surrendering before they’d even had a chance to get in the fight. No way in Hades.
“Sweet Crying Murphy, we’re fighting for our homes. They’ll have to squeeze every last drop of blood out of my body before I hand our worlds over to a genocidal tyrant like Arnold Janeski,” I said flatly.
Chapter One hundred two: Arnold Janeski
Supreme Admiral Arnold Janeski of the Empire’s Reclamation Fleet watched as the Battleships off the port side of his ship were slowly pounded into submission. Already, the Battleships were down to half their broadsides or less, and all of them were heavily damaged to one degree or another.
All that was needed now was time, and this entire star system would be clenched in his fist—and crushed.
This was the absolute best these frontier Confederals were capable? They put a civilian without any formal military training in charge of a grab bag of odds and sods, even when they knew he was coming? A civilian! Dogs, lickspittles, and incompetents—all of them. This entire group of so-called ‘leaders’ they had here in Sector 25 needed to go. At least in Sector 26 there had at least been a few…
Enough of that, he thought. He turned his attention back to the battle plot where events were slowly, but inexorably, turning in his favor.
Flights of fighters accompanied by bomber wings slashed their way through the former Confederation factories and repair yards. More fighters were slowly blasting the slower, less maneuverable Sector gunboats to pieces.
Outside the Starbase’s increasingly degraded defensive network, the Sector’s Battleships faced off against his Reclamation Fleet Battleships and increasingly found themselves outgunned, outnumbered and outmatched. With many of them already experiencing moderate to heavy damage, it was only a matter of time before they either followed the example of their Praxis brethren’s failed at attempted to surrender or face total annihilation.
Either way suited him right down to the deck plates.
“Ready to fire on your command, Admiral,” stated the Weapon’s Officer.
“Last chance to ch
ange targets, Sir,” warned Goddard.
Admiral Janeski ignored his Flag Captain. The course was already set, “Fire.”
A giant white beam of destruction lanced out of the ship, striking the Starbase one last time. For a handful of seconds it looked like, miraculously, the Starbase would survive this attack too. Then the beam sprang through the other side and the Starbase exploded.
The lower half of the formerly formidable structure slowly and ponderously began to drift deeper into the complex, hitting several communications satellites and defensive weapons while the top section shattered. Several large fragments broke away while a spray of shattered duralloy shoot out its backside.
“Starbase neutralized. Wolf-9 has been destroyed,” reported Flag Tactical in a neutral clinical voice.
“Captain,” Janeski said turning to Goddard, “prepare to bring us about.”
“Now? I mean yes, Sir,” Goddard stumbled, “destination?”
“I think it’s time we prepared a welcome for our new arrivals. Prepare to launch fighters and roll the ship to put our clear side toward the enemy. I want to ensure we have a full broadside up and ready for them,” he ordered, looking at the three small icons rapidly approaching the battle space around the Flagship.
“Aye, Sir,” said the Captain as fighters started streaming out of the ship.
Janeski nodded with satisfaction. Everything was going according to plan. “Begin recharging the cannon,” he instructed.
Chapter One hundred three: Moving into Firing Position
Spalding glowered down at the screen as the Lucky Clover and her two escorts moved toward the Command Carrier. They were almost there.
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