by Kal Spriggs
Who knows, maybe we'll even win.
“The Zahler twins have a special assignment,” I told her. “You're relieved here, get all your people, and go help them. Follow their orders, no matter what you may think. It's the right thing, understand?” I asked.
She frowned at me, but she gave a nod.
“Thanks, and good luck,” I climbed up the ladder and dropped into my cockpit. I pulled the canopy closed, strapped myself in, and checked everything over. All my systems were online. Ashiri's fighter was ready to go. “Sand Dragon Flight, One Four Four...” I started. No, hock that, I'm not using their stupid number code. I have a callsign. “This is Biohazard, ready to launch.”
***
Chapter 24: The Biggest Battle I Never Wanted To Fight
After our combat launch, the normal rocket-assisted launch seemed pretty tame. I formed up my depleted squadron, ten fighters, in the building formation, even as I pulled in sensor data on my implant. The culmor attack force had fallen back and they'd taken up a defensive position with the forces of the other battlegroups. I could see what they were doing. They were waiting for us to come at them. They had to know we couldn't maintain this level of readiness, not for long. They wanted us to throw everything we had at them, under conditions that favored them.
Our fighter squadrons had taken the brunt of the casualties, along with the Active Militia forces in orbit during the initial attack. I only saw two surviving destroyers, formed up to either side of our lone cruiser, the Liberty. Another squadron of them were lifting from the planet, but I knew those were from the reserves. They were some of the oldest ships we had. Taking them into this fight was worse than dangerous. It was suicide. Those destroyers would be engaged by dozens of cruisers before they could close the range to fire their rather pathetic laser batteries.
They'd be better off using them to load up civilians or Militia forces for evacuation. But Admiral Drien was in command, and those destroyers formed up with the rest of the attack force.
We had something over eight hundred fighters left, six mostly-full wings of fighter craft. At the start of all this, we'd had over two thousand. The Active component of the Planetary Militia alone should have had over five hundred fighters. Our losses must have been worse than I thought.
Militia corvette squadrons formed up behind them, but I frowned as I saw how they were arrayed. The system defense corvettes, the ones with heavier missile racks and weapon systems were formed up with the fighters. A second formation, made up of Endurance-class corvettes, was formed up with most of the destroyers. The Endurances were designed to fire their warp-drive missiles in pairs, from their launchers, two every thirty seconds. They would have been more useful along the flanks, forcing the enemy formation to guard from multiple angles, rather than in a cluster with the destroyers at the center.
It was hard to see more than that, at the moment. Dozens of civilian ships were breaking away from Century Station, undocking and barely waiting to get clear before they engaged their warp drives. They were fleeing as fast as they could get clearance to leave. I wondered how many of those ships were carrying Admiral Drien's supporters, family, and friends.
A smaller number of vessels took off from the planet below. I tuned my implant into news feeds, and saw that various missionary vessels were loading up thousands of children at different cities across Century. The evacuations seemed to be proceeding with surprising good order, parents forming lines, getting their kids signed in, even getting contact information for the ship's officers in case there was an opportunity for them to escape, so they could get back in contact. Planetary Militia Ground forces were maintaining order at the space ports and other evacuation sites.
Other civilians, the ones too far away from the cities, were moving into bunkers that hadn't been used since the Three Days War. Militia facilities across the planet were getting people out of the open, down into tunnels designed to move war material, and now pressed into service as refuges.
I pray it will be enough. But I knew it wouldn't. We couldn't stop that force. But we could hurt it. And maybe that would be enough to get them to flinch. If it wasn't, then...
I shied away from that thought.
“Strike Force, prepare to receive attack orders,” Flight Control announced.
Here we go. I pulled up my flight vectors on my implant, and then without a moment of hesitation, I dove into the entire attack plan, pulling the data from other fighter squadrons and the corvettes, bypassing their security to gain the big picture of the fight to come.
My lips drew back in a grimace as I saw just how this was going to go. Our fighters were going to go right into the teeth of the enemy. There were specific targets there, targets I couldn't argue with... but this wasn't a strike of brilliance, it was a fight where we were going to bury them in synchronized waves.
Somehow I felt that if the Admiral were here, this would have been a fight we could win. A fight that wouldn't cost us hundreds of pilots and fighters. But she wasn't here. Perhaps that was just as well, since Admiral Drien probably would have had her arrested or killed.
I closed my eyes. I took a deep breath, and then I signaled that my squadron was ready.
***
We got the order to attack within a few minutes of the attack plan going out. I guessed that Admiral Drien didn't want to give most of us time to realize how we were being sacrificed to take out specific targets. A part of me wondered if he really was aboard the Liberty or if he were already fleeing aboard one of the refugee ships.
I didn't really have time to consider that very much. I was adding my own little tricks to our approach pattern, additional evasive maneuvers that kept my squadron inside our attack pattern, but that might buy us a few precious extra seconds of life.
Admiral Drien kept the speed down until we were just over a million kilometers. That was just far enough out that if the culmor counterattacked, we'd have time to see them coming and react. At this range, we could see the drives of individual ships and I started updating my targeting parameters.
At the synchronized point, all our corvettes opened up with their missiles. Eight warp missiles launched from each of the system defense Terrier-class corvettes, two each from the Endurance-class corvettes, and then two more thirty seconds later... but we didn't wait for that second launch, all the fighters in that vast formation went to their full speed just before that, timed to arrive just behind the first wave of warp missiles.
At full speed, we were coming in too fast to get good reads on the ships we were attacking. A lot of our sensor data was precious seconds out of date. The enemy formations began evasive maneuvers, at the same time as they moved out to engage Admiral Drien's slower ships. The battle plan behind us should have the Liberty closing up with the corvettes, lending it's firepower to theirs and providing some screen to the destroyers, so they might live long enough to make a difference. I couldn't see what was happening behind me, mostly because I was focused on all the firepower coming at us.
There were thirty or more T-Type cruisers. Each of them could engage thirty-six targets a time, with arrays of mass drivers, explosive projectiles, and laser turrets. Thirty of them, spread across that front, laid out overlapping fields of fire in a grid designed to kill any fighter or warp missile that dared come at them.
Just over eight hundred fighters and three hundred missiles dove right into the teeth of that weapons fire.
It happened so quickly that I didn't even process it. My Firebolt kicked through the maneuvers I'd built in my implant. One moment I was looking at a mass of enemy fire and the next I had dropped one of my four bombs as I dove past an enemy ship. Before I even registered that, I was hurtling at my next target, but it had moved, so my Firebolt's flight path updated and spun me the other direction, getting the most of the narrow maneuver cone determined by the warp-envelope.
I barely noticed as I dropped the second antimatter bomb right on top of what my sensors had identified as an enemy transport. I was already past it be
fore even my gestalt with my implant could process it, clearing the blast wave of the hundred megaton explosion at point seven of light speed.
And then, ahead of me, some part of my mind registered the priority targets.
The three enemy driveships had fallen back to the rear of the formation, escorted by several squadrons of corvettes. My brain didn't have time to process that, but I did have time to activate the target update to my squadron and then we all dove at the targets.
The corvettes laid out a spray of defensive fire, but they'd barely had time to register our presence before we were flying between them. I dropped my last two bombs, one close to two of the enemy corvettes and the last one in near-contact with the enemy driveship.
My implant registered that I was out of bombs and kicked in the evasive withdrawal, a zig-zag course away and then a long, curving turn away from the engagement. It all happened fast. It was over in seconds, there and gone.
It took longer than the actual engagement itself for me to make sense of what had happened. Behind me, the detonations of matter-antimatter explosions were still taking place as later waves of missiles and fighters ran into that enemy formation. All too many of them were happening short of the enemy ships.
“Status?” I croaked over my squadron net.
“Three online,” Ashiri answered. “I took a glancing hit and I'm having some issues, but I'm still with you.” That was surprisingly vague of her and I looked at my sensors, noticing her drive envelop flicker. She'd taken more than a glancing hit if that was the case.
“Anyone else?” I asked.
Silence met my question. I knew I could review the fight on my implant, map out where I'd lost the rest of my squadron. Kids that I'd trained, as a Cadet Instructor. Cadets Second Class. Friends. Companions.
Gone.
We continued our turning loop away from the battle. I could see that either our attack run or another had made it through to all three of the driveships. They were simply gone. That will hurt them. Four battlegroups were as much as taken out of the war, stuck here at Century. Let's see them try to invade anyone else. The ships here wouldn't be able to go for help. Unless they had some kind of courier ship, someone would have to come find them. Then they'd have to find an available driveship, one not in use. Even then, it would take weeks, maybe months, for them to get a ship here.
“Okay,” I said, my voice tense, “let's get back to Century.”
As much as I had come to hate Admiral Drien, he'd known how to hurt them.
He'd also known when to press the attack. All our fighters had expended their munitions and as many as a hundred of them were circling away, headed back to Century. The Terrier-class system defense corvettes were going in on their attack runs and I saw the Liberty and her escorting corvettes and destroyers form up, getting ready to press the attack with them. Maybe I'd been wrong about him.
Even as I thought that, all those ships, every one of them equipped with faster than light strategic warp drives, vanished.
“They ran,” I gasped. The moment when they could have pressed the attack, when we might have knocked the culmor force hard enough for them to give up, and they left.
Our system defense corvettes tried to break off, but they were committed. They were outgunned, they'd been abandoned. But they didn't give up. I saw them focus fire on the enemy cruisers, taking out one, then another. They were dying quick, taking multiple hits from the S-Type cruisers. Half of them died. Three quarters of them died. The last pair of them charged the enemy formation, closing quickly and managed to ram, knocking out a cruiser as their antimatter reactors detonated.
In the meantime, our surviving fighters fell back. There was no formation, I wondered if there were even squadrons left at this point. My sensors showed a hundred or so fighters, far more than I had expected to survive, but communications were a mess, no one was in charge. We were a mob, running back to safety... only it wasn't safe.
The culmor ships reformed and then they began their advance. I didn't know how many of them we'd killed, but it wasn't enough. They were coming and we weren't going to have time to rearm to face them. Thanks to Drien, we don't even have any bombs left, even if we did have time. Century Station's weapons weren't nearly enough, either.
Back on Century, someone must have given the bad news to our leadership.
I picked up a transmission, sent in the clear, across all channels, “Attention inbound culmor force. I am Charterer Leo Champion. I am the senior surviving government official on Century, and I am calling to offer you our unconditional surrender.”
Even though I had half expected those words, my chest seemed to constrict. Only moments ago, I had felt we'd had a chance to win. Now, now we were begging them not to wipe out our people.
He repeated his message. Our fighters were still heading back, though I knew those cruisers weren't going to be very far behind us. My sensors could make out more ships leaving the surface of Century. Nothing more came from Century Station,.
Champion started to repeat his message the third time, and it was interrupted by a message coming from the fleet behind us. A pale blue alien appeared. His skin was smooth and nearly translucent, the mottling of his veins visible beneath his skin. He had a flat face, with big, fish-like lips. “Your forces fought with honor, human, yet now you offer surrender?” I wasn't sure if he was having some software translate for him or if he was speaking standard English. As he spoke, I caught a glimpse of the inside of his toothless mouth. Culmor had some kind of chewing pads, if I remembered right.
“We have no further means to resist in a meaningful fashion,” Leo Champion offered. “Ours is a poor world. We had old ships and weapons. You could easily kill our surviving ground forces, scorch our cities from orbit. I want to prevent that.”
I couldn't read emotion on the culmor's face. “Your surviving defense forces will stand down. Your civilians will not resist. I have lost many of my people today. It was a good fight. But I will not lose any to attacks of cowardice or deception. If any of your people attack mine, I will retaliate above and beyond. Kill one of mine, I will gas a neighborhood. Kill ten and I will scorch a city. Do you understand?”
Champion nodded, “I do.”
“Your warriors who survived, where did they flee?” The enemy commander asked.
“I don't know that,” Champion admitted. “We expected them to fight to the end.”
“They would have been destroyed,” the enemy officer dismissed his statement. “Your surviving warriors, should they wish to leave the battlefield, they have earned it. But if they stay, I will take their surrender. Your law enforcement, your military, they will stand down, they will assemble to be processed.”
“What will happen to them?” Champion asked.
“You are not in the position to ask questions,” the commander told him. “Follow my commands, and you will live. You may even earn some position of relative autonomy. Fail to follow my commands and I will execute you. I will delay my approach by six of your human standard hours to allow your people time to comply. After that, any humans bearing weapons in any hostile fashion will be annihilated.”
“I understand,” Champion said.
“Sword Commander, out.”
“That guy is kind of a jerk,” Ashiri noted.
“Tell me about it,” I said. I noticed that the flicker in her warp envelope had picked up. She was falling behind, her total speed dropping. “How are you doing?”
“Oh, you know, holding things together with spit and hope, usual thing,” Ashiri answered, her voice tight.
The other fighters had begun landing, dropping their warp envelopes and reentering the atmosphere. I wondered why none of them had routed to Century Station, but then I saw that the station had a warning that no craft would be allowed to dock. Great... because having them able to recover damaged craft would be way too easy.
I stayed with Ashiri's Firebolt, right up until we dropped our warp envelopes. My thrusters started to fire to correct my
descent path, but hers didn't.
“Ashiri,” I said, “are you trying to emulate a meteorite?”
She didn't respond for a moment, “Uh, I think I've lost my primary thrusters.”
“What do you mean, lost?” I asked. I eased off my my thrusters.
“One of those glancing hits might have blown out some of my aft systems and I rerouted power to keep the drive online. I think I burned out the power node in that area in the process.”
“That's...” I frowned. “We can't land you without your main thrusters. How are you on your suit supplies? You can eject and maybe we can get a shuttle to you?”
“With everything going on?” She asked in derision. There's so many people squawking on the net, no one would ever find me. I'd rather burn up than freeze to death in vacuum.”
“Fine, then,” I snarled. I tapped in commands on my console, adjusting my vector, burning up a lot of my remaining fuel to get in position. Then, ever so slowly, I closed the distance, finally latching onto her with my docking clamp.
“Uh, Jiden,” she noted, “What the hock are you doing?”
“My main thruster is still functional. If I do a controlled burn, then I can put us in a aerobraking orbit. We use the atmosphere to slow us both down enough that you can eject at a safe speed.”
“Or you use up all your thruster fuel and we both die,” Ashiri snapped. “That's a really stupid idea.”
“I ran the calculations, it could work,” I said.
“Could?” Ashiri demanded.
“You just have to use your maneuvering thrusters in synch with me. No problem, right?” I sent her the info and she snarled something rather inappropriate in reply.
“Alright, fine,” she snapped, “but do me a favor, no more crazy stunts after this?”
“Hah,” I snorted. “I promise you, after we get down, I never want to do anything crazy ever again.” We kicked off our thrusters, me on my main thruster and her on her maneuvering jets. They didn't give us much velocity, but my main thruster lasted long enough to build up enough change in velocity, I hoped, to put us on a slower entry path. Ashiri kept it up on her maneuvering thrusters right up until they ran dry. “That's it,” she told me, “That's all I got.”
