“Let’s do this.”
“Doing it,” said Claymore, and the ship began to power out of orbit.
“Combat speed,” she said shortly after.
“Now.”
The rift appeared in front of us, looking barely big enough for the ship to pass through, and we were immediately through it. It closed behind us. There was nothing popping up to indicate damage anywhere, so we couldn’t have left anything behind accidently.
I looked at Shenaid, and she looked fine, with no signs of fatigue. She smiled at me and nodded.
“Give me control of everything Claymore. Every single gun, turret, torpedo, or missile, which will fire forward, no matter what the size. You keep the reverse turrets, side only turrets, and mosquitos. Fire as you get targets, but everything else is mine.”
“Ready. You want indicators for each type showing what can fire at any time?”
“Yes please.”
A whole set of icons appeared on the HUD. They were all green. I probably wasn’t going to need them, but they were there if I did.
“Good. Are we ready? Shenaid?”
“Ready as I’ll ever be.”
“Claymore?”
“I was born ready.”
“Okay.”
I stepped up to combat mode. We were a good hour away from the planet now, so only empty space was visible around me, but as usual, the cosmos put on a great show. I wasn’t looking though.
“Go.”
A rift appeared in front of us, and Claymore dived through. Another one appeared a second later, and we went though it as well, and another three just as fast.
My sight ahead changed from empty space to the massive bulk of a Trixone battleship only five seconds ahead of us. There was no danger of collision as we’d deliberately come out high. I pressed the strafe button, tilted us down, and pulled the trigger.
This wasn’t point blank range, it was gun to your forehead range, and the battleship disintegrated as we went over it. Claymore did the strafe reset Jane usually did, and we vanished into another rift before the plants had any chance of firing at us.
We came out ten minutes away. The shields hadn't been hit by anything, and the guns only needed seconds to recharge. But I took the time to replay the attack slowly, so I could see what we’d done.
The titan turret and the front battleship turrets on it, with the fixed guns and torpedoes in the nose, had quite literally ripped the guts out of the battleship at where I’d aimed. The side circles of light battleship guns hadn't quite lined up at such a close range, and with the smaller turrets on top and the sides all pointing around the actual target area, the rest of the fire had either hit around the target spot, or missed completely. Missiles had fired seconds later, and the rear turrets a second after them, and the result had been very little left behind.
“It worked.”
Normally I’d have pulled the speed off, flipped us over, and gone back the way we came. Now, I didn’t need to.
“As we discussed?” asked Shenaid.
“Yes, but put us ten seconds out instead of five. Escape rift immediately after the guns fire. There’s no need for us to go over the top of them.”
“You still want us over the top?”
“Yes, or underneath, or to one side. No need to risk a collision. Takes longer to aim, but if we miss for any reason, at least we don’t kamikaze as a result.”
She took a deep breath, and let it out slowly.
“Go when you’re ready. Stop when you need to.”
“Confirmed,” she said, and concentrated.
The rift appeared, we went through it, and the rear of a battleship was ahead and below. Strafe, and fire. Through the next rift to ten minutes away. Two seconds to recharge. One second extra for luck.
Rift, strafe up this time, fire, rift.
Rift, strafe left, fire, rift.
Rift, strafe, fire, rift.
Rift, strafe, fire, rift, and the last battleship was toast. Now straight ahead as I heard Shenaid getting her breath back. The shields were down twenty percent, so the plants had belatedly figured out the attack pattern, and begun to hit us. I’d been peripherally aware of their turrets adjusting so they could fire anywhere with at least something, but there was no indication they’d been able to predict which ship we’d attack next, or from which direction.
The downside of stopping was now apparent. The remaining ships were forming a sphere, with most pointing outward, but enough pointing in to make appearing in the middle dangerous.
“Can you do a double?”
“I can try.”
The rift appeared, we went through it, and came out almost on top of a cruiser. Strafe, fire, rift, destroyer, strafe, fire, rift. Looking back, the destroyer was still there. The battleship guns had cycled, but the titans hadn't. When I say still there, it was in two halves. Or rather, two quarters.
“Good enough. Cruiser first, destroyer second.”
I started losing track of time. The ship moved through space. A target every few seconds, strafe to aim, fire whatever would fire.
I was in the zone. Shenaid must have been as well. I’d no idea what Claymore was doing.
When we came to a stop, I found only five minutes had passed since the first battleship. The Trixone fleet was debris. Our shields were down to fifteen percent, so it hadn't been all one way.
I looked over the battlefield, and shivered.
Stepping down to normal mode, I could see Shenaid was looking tired. Claymore swiveled around to look at us. She was grinning.
“That went well.”
Forty One
We took a breather.
Kat brought us both drinks, and I found I really needed the caffeine hit this time. I knew I’d be paying for it soon, but there was still another fleet out there. The job was only half done.
With white skin, I couldn’t tell much about Shenaid’s condition, other than the obvious tiredness. Pinky white would show going pale. Pure white was already pale, and it never seemed to change.
“How are you holding up?” I asked her.
“I’m better than I expected to be. The short hops are easier to do, although I don’t like the double hops much. It’s all intent, so as long as I stay focused, we should be fine.”
“Good. We’ll wait until the shields are back up. Claymore, how’s the crystal doing?”
“Our normal power generation is fine, and the new one seems to be holding.”
“How come our shields are so low?”
“The sphere formation allowed them to always have turrets pointed at wherever we appeared, and they stopped trying to target us, and simply fired everything they had as soon as we appeared. We took most of the fire after we’d fired, and before or during rifting out. If I can suggest, we need to change course after rifting, as they were getting shots through the rift after us. Missiles as well, but mosquitoes have kept them off us.”
“Good call. Do that on a random basis every time we leave the formation from now on.”
“Will do.”
“The question now, is how long do we wait before we hit the other fleet.”
“They don’t appear to be aware of what just happened.”
“I vote we go now,” said Shenaid. “The longer we delay, the more tired I’m going to get. I’m holding focus for now, but I’m going to need to crash soon, regardless.”
And she wasn’t the only one. Caffeine and adrenaline were all that were keeping me from crashing.
“And we don’t know,” added Claymore, “when the other fleet will find out what we’ve done here, or even just fail to be able to contact them, and assume the worst.”
“So we go now then. Or at least when our shields are back up.”
They both nodded.
We waited in silence, watching the shield indicators rise steadily. Kat put a bottle of water in my holder, and I slurped it a few times to keep my hands busy. The last few percent seemed to take an age, but it was only minutes. Five minutes of battle,
and fifteen to get your shields back. It seemed wrong somehow, but Claymore confirmed the new crystal was feeding the shields as well now, and speeding up the recharge.
At last, the ship was ready for battle again. I stepped back up. We seemed to skip across the system like a stone across flat water, and narrowly missed the arse end of a battleship.
I strafed and fired, taking the nose end off the target ship, and we skipped away.
“Sorry,” said Shenaid quietly.
“No problem,” I said, as we appeared before a completely different battleship, and this time I had seconds to spare to line it up and fire.
The dance continued, and the plants this time started firing everywhere at the same time right from the word go. We destroyed their ships methodically, but we were taking hits faster than before, and bigger hits until the battleships were gone.
The last cruiser wasn’t lined up as well, and I missed the shot for the first time. It also cost us five percent of shielding in one go, but we kept on rifting and shooting. The cruiser came into my sights five destroyers later, and this time it simply vanished.
By now though I knew Shenaid was tiring rapidly, as our attack rifts became more and more off target and took me a few extra seconds to be able to fire.
And then I missed another shot, and instead of rifting away, Claymore shuddered violently as we clipped the side of the destroyer.
Shields vanished. The entire right front of the ship flashed red on the HUD, and we span out of control violently enough I heard Shenaid vomiting.
I pulled the speed slider back rapidly, and stopped our spin, before pushing speed back in and powering away on a random vector. The Trixone who were left took advantage to hit us hard until the speed came on again.
We continued to take hits until we were out of range, and these one hurt. There was no sign of any shield regeneration happening, so I kept us running for now. The engines seemed fine, but a good chunk of our turrets were showing either not being there, or were non-functional. Below us though, while one battleship turret was out, the titan turret itself was still able to fire.
“Talk to me,” I said, still in combat mode, so not seeing what was happening around me on the bridge.
“I’ll be fine,” croaked Shenaid. “Give me a bit though.”
“That hurt,” said Claymore.
I didn’t doubt it from her point of view. She was the ship.
“Sorry,” said Shenaid quietly, but sounding a bit better now. “I lost focus.”
“I think we found where the safety margins lie.”
“Behind us,” said Claymore. “Let’s not do that again.”
“We still have a half dozen intact destroyers back there. We need to take them, or they might escape, and then what we did will be known.”
“It’s probably known already.”
“True. But I also hate leaving a job mostly done.”
At least the destroyers were not following us. In fact, they were not doing anything at all. Which made no sense to me. I stepped down, and looked at Shenaid. She didn’t look well at all now. Kat was quietly cleaning up the mess in front of her chair.
“Are you up to a few last short range rifts?”
“What did you have in mind?”
“We’ll stop in a few minutes, line up on the destroyers, open rifts to them, but instead of going through, we’ll simply fire through the rift. Should only need one rift each, even if they start to run.”
“I can manage that. But I’ll need a minute between each one.”
“Done.”
I slowed us down to a stop, rotated us to face back the way we’d come, and more or less lined us up with the six remaining destroyers.
One by one we fired at them from a distance, and one shot each was all we needed. The last three had tried to run, but Shenaid put the rifts right behind them, and the first thing to be destroyed was their engines, which left them dead on to the rest of the fire we rained on them.
With the last one in pieces, I sighed. Shenaid seemed to wilt in front of me, but Kat appeared with a hover chair, and she staggered into it, and was pushed off to her quarters.
“Do we clean up this mess?” asked Claymore.
“Can you see any survivors?”
“I hadn’t looked.” She was silent for a few seconds. “None I can detect. There might be some in the larger debris sections, but we’d need to send in search and rescue droids to find any. Do we want to spend the time, given our damage, and the fact we’re closer to a hostile jump point than we are to friends?”
“Point.” I sighed again. “No, take us back to the planet. I’m going to flake out. Better send Jane the battle feeds, and see if Unassailable can start fabricating anything we can’t do ourselves to repair the damage. What is our damage? Just the basics.”
“The front right of the ship is open to space. The flight deck can only be accessed from the rear, and most of the maintenance deck is in vacuum. Two launch tubes are just gone. There are holes in the hull elsewhere, but nothing major. We lost turrets and both missile and mosquito launchers, and about two thirds of the nose guns and torpedo launchers, but the accommodation areas are intact.”
“Can we land our birds?”
“Land yes. But a third of the elevators need work. I’ll concentrate on making the maintenance deck habitable again, so by the time we get back, it’ll be safe to land.”
We were a good five hours and change away from the planet at normal cruising speed, so she had time for damage control. It would be after midnight by then, and I knew the pilots would be pissed off having to spend so long in birds which no longer had any decent amenities in them. With the threes, they could have simply found somewhere safe to stop, and gone to sleep. The fours had no such amenities.
“Wake me if I’m needed for anything. I don’t include a bollicking from Jane or any other senior officer as being needed. If Eric sends me a ‘You broke the bloody ship’ message, just say sorry.”
“Will do. Night, night.”
I pulled myself out of my chair, or tried to. Unfastening the restraints worked better, and I shuffled out and down to my bed, where I managed to shift my mask into glasses, pull them off, and place them on the bedside table.
I welcomed the black.
Forty Two
It was late morning when I woke.
I felt like shit, but my bladder had me bounding out of bed anyway. I grabbed my glasses from the bedside table, put them on, shifted to a mask, and ran for the bathroom. Suitably relieved, I shifted the suit to a belt, and spent a good long time under the shower.
When I emerged, now in uniform, I found Kat had laid out a full breakfast in my dining room. I concentrated on eating, figuring if Claymore or Jane hadn't been talking to me already, whatever was going on could wait on me returning to the land of the living fully.
The bridge view showed us to be in orbit, with Unassailable not far away, and a line of salvage droids hanging off our front end, with what looked like hull plates and gun barrels stacked on them. More were coming and going to the super-battleship.
Claymore was back in her normal seat, and said nothing, popping up a damage report instead. The forward flight deck was usable again, but most of the damaged front area was still open to space. The maintenance deck wasn’t though, with temporary walling having been put in to seal the parts not damaged. It gave us flight capability again, albeit with two less launch tubes.
The navmap showed everyone was still down on the planet, but the flights were widely separated now. Claymore caught my eye.
“Did anyone get any sleep?” I asked her.
“The fighters landed as soon as we arrived back, and the pilots got six hours sleep and breakfast. Vulture had them launch again, and they’ve been down there all morning. The pilots of the larger ships slept with their AI’s continuing to shoot at moving plants. It’ll be dark down there soon, so the fighters at least will be back on board by lunch time, and I suspect they’ll all be wanting another eight hours
sleep.”
I thought so too, and I’d probably be catnapping myself.
“Shenaid?”
“Is still asleep.”
I can’t say I was surprised.
“Have Jane put her in for a suitable medal. What she did last night needs recognition.”
“She has already. What we did should get recognition.”
“You and me just did our jobs. She made destroying both fleets possible.”
She flicked a glance at me, but didn’t say anything further.
The threes had done their job already of mapping the system, and we now had comnavsats at the other two jump points on both sides. So most of the system was now live on the navmap, and clear of any threats.
Down on the planet, the city adjacent to the caves had been reclaimed, although for now, the only movement there was troops, and a few tigers checking things out. Troop wise, we looked to have had reinforcements. Unit names were tagged to areas, and there were a lot more of them than I expected, and few of the names were familiar to me. The Lufafluf companies were the only ones I knew, although as well as team six, there was now a team seven and eight as well. None of our assault ships were here though, so they must have come via the station network.
“What troops did we get?”
“Most of ours are still on Napenga. After the Lufaflufs, we got a regiment from the Democratic Union, followed by two regiments from the Naranja. Both came with vehicles, so they’re spread out a long way now.”
A popup reminded me who the Democratic Union was and where they were on the navmap. The same popup also showed me Naranja space, and indelicately pointed out they were the ones with orange skins. Both names were very recently adopted, and I only vaguely remembered hearing about them before. Too much had happened recently.
“We also received a half dozen mage units. Dozen or so mages each.”
“Mixed?”
“Hell no. And they all went in different directions as well.”
Legend of Dreamwalker (The Hunter Imperium Book 5) Page 19
