by Ian Douglas
Yeah, add kinetic-kill weaponry to that list. His active matrix outer hull had absorbed most of the impact, but the blow very nearly put him into a tumble. Righting himself, he targeted the gun with his Gatling cannon, sending a stream of high-velocity rounds. White light flared against the artificial landscape, and metallic shrapnel rattled off his hull as he passed through the rising plume of debris.
His AI marked another target just ahead: a HEL. He continued his strafing run and nailed that target as well. Atmosphere spilled from the crater his burst created, water vapor freezing instantly to glittering clouds of ice crystals.
“Enemy fighter on your six.”
His AI’s warning in his mind snapped his attention to his immediate surroundings. A Yastreb fighter had just dropped onto his tail. Continuing to hurtle forward at nearly 100 meters per second, Gregory flipped his Starblade end-for-end, bringing his Gatling into line with the Hawk fighter and triggering a brief burst from the weapon. The Hawk came apart, its vacuum energy taps detonating in a fiery smear of plasma.
“Here come the Gyrines!” Johanson called.
“Okay, people,” Gregory said. “Move in on the bad guys’ bridge—we need to cover those lamps!”
The Russian carrier’s bridge tower, unlike the smoothly curved reverse shark fin on America, was large, squared off, and bulky, a truncated pyramid with steeply sloping faces. As on America, it was set into the carrier’s spine just forward of the centrifuge wheel that provided spin gravity for the crew.
Gun emplacements encircled the tower.
Gregory readied another flight of AMSO rounds.
Strike Force Reaper
Marine Battalion 3/25
N’gai Cluster
1625 hours, FST
The Moskva didn’t spot them coming in, or if they did, they had other things to worry about, like fighters and clouds of AMSO rounds. McDevitt pointed, projecting a graphic-targeting reticule to mark the precise spot. “Right there. Leading face.”
“Aye, aye, Colonel. We’ll have you there in two point five shakes.”
McDevitt decided he wasn’t going to ask about shakes of what, but continued to watch the growing Russian carrier on the MAP’s screens.
The VBSS-Mk. 87 Marine Assault Pod had been dubbed “Lamprey” after an eel-like fish living back on Earth, an ugly creature with a round, jawless, tooth-lined mouth designed for attaching to the sides of other fish and rasping its way in to reach the blood and internal organs. The name, usually shortened to “Lamp” by the Marines, was a gruesome joke, but apt. The nose of the MAP was a flat sheet of nanodisassembler microbots, designed to slap up against an enemy ship’s hull and dissolve their way through. Around the perimeter of nano-D were strips of nanoassemblers programmed to weld the Lamprey’s “mouth” to hull metal in an unbreakable and airtight bond. It allowed a company of 120 armored USNA Marines to enter a target ship in hard vacuum without using an airlock; or rather, the MAP itself became the airlock.
The trick was in determining exactly where on the target vessel you wanted to hit. Some parts of the hull would be massively armored and hard to eat through. Others might sandwich water tanks or the densely packed electronics of shield projectors between outer hull and interior spaces. The idea was to find a thin enough portion of outer hull that the nano-D attachment plate could burn through quickly that wouldn’t, in turn, expose the Marines to a further obstacle. If the enemy knew you were coming through at a given point, they would have time to assemble ship’s marines at that point to catch you coming through.
“Contact in five seconds!” the MAP pilot called over the intraship circuit. “Brace for impact!”
The pilot had a deft touch and the impact was quite gentle, a heavy surge of movement forward as the ship came to a halt. The flight deck was perched high atop the MAP’s nose, and was now a meter from the solid black hull of the Moskva.
“Nano-D engaged!” the MAP’s engineer reported from just behind McDevitt’s position. “Solid seal!”
“I’m going to join my people,” McDevitt said. “Thanks for the ride, boys. Enjoy the view.”
“Our pleasure, Colonel. Good luck!”
He pulled his way down a narrow passageway and turned a corner.
The men and women of the 3/25’s HQ Company were already lining up behind the massive round hatchway, still sealed shut, that led forward through the business end of the MAP. Mk. V Marine Assault Armor was massively imposing, the surface coated in reactive camo nanomatrix that mirrored surrounding colors, light levels, and shapes. The sight of all those armored suits mirroring one another was disorienting and a little eerie, with parts of that mob fading into the background, not quite invisible . . . but not quite there, either.
It was a sight McDevitt loved.
“Stand ready, people!” Major Hanson, McDevitt’s XO, called. “We’ve got burn-through! Adjusting pressure differential . . .”
Normally, the HQ Company would not be employed in a combat assault, but the ancient adage of every Marine being a rifleman still held true, and McDevitt’s orders were to seize the Moskva’s bridge and begin directing operations from there as soon as possible, and that meant the company would go in with the first wave. Besides, they wouldn’t necessarily be the first on in the VBSS. Alfa and Bravo companies were coming in hot on board their own Lamps; Bravo was already reporting being engaged with the enemy over the battalion command channel.
That meant they needed to get going.
“Hatch open in three!” Hanson yelled, “. . . and two . . . and one . . . go! Go! Go!”
The hatch dilated open, and the armored Marines fell forward, pulling their way in zero-G through the brief, mirror-smooth tunnel left by the nano-D and into the Moskva’s command bridge.
The compartment was large—larger than on board America—but still managed to feel cluttered, dark, and claustrophobic, with dozens of workstations partially walled off from one another by arrays of display screens and chart boards and placed in a broad semicircle in front of a raised dais. That dais was surmounted by the command chair, a kind of elevated throne overlooking the entire compartment. That throne, McDevitt saw as he pulled his way into the compartment, was vacant; the captain had been killed, his body adrift now near the overhead display of surrounding space. Around him, Russian naval officers and technicians were already raising their hands in surrender as members of Bravo Company swarmed in from the portside, and the HQ Company came in from forward.
Laser fire snapped from farther aft, sending one Marine tumbling backward, out of control. Russian marines were on the flag bridge, high up, at least relative to the command bridge deck plan, and aft, just as on board a USNA carrier. They were firing into America’s Marines as the blast doors between command and flag bridges slowly rumbled shut. Half a dozen of McDevitt’s Marines managed to launch themselves through space and grapple with the Russian defenders, as others blew the blast door circuits with fast-repeating bolts from their plasma weapons. The doors jammed, still halfway open. Several Russian defenders were down, the others now surrendering. The air was thick with smoke, and with the screams of injured men.
McDevitt pushed off from the forward bulkhead and sailed through to the flag bridge. “Where’s the admiral?”
“The Captain First Rank is gone,” a Russian marine said. He was bloodied, his arms raised. “You won’t find him. . . .”
McDevitt scowled. It was imperative that they nail this thing down and assume full control of the ship as swiftly and as economically as possible. If the Moskva was anything like American carriers, there would be a secondary bridge located somewhere aft and buried in the ship’s interior, as well as alternate control centers in the Combat Information Center and in Primary Flight Control. These ships were huge, and this one might well have a crew on board of five thousand or more.
And McDevitt had fewer than 400 men and women at his immediate command.
USNA CVS America
CIC
N’gai Cluster
; 1632 hours, FST
Gray was in America’s CIC, aft of his flag bridge, a darkened compartment filled with intense men and women, their faces stage-lit by illuminated screens and data feeds.
“Colonel McDevitt reports both flag and command bridges on board the target are secured, Admiral,” Commander Randall Billingsly reported. Direct in-head communications had been interrupted by the electronic logistics of the engagement, but they were still in contact with Reaper through radio and laser-com links. “The ship has not formally surrendered yet.”
“That means he didn’t catch their admiral,” Gray said. “Not good.”
Several screens in the CIC were showing Marines’-eye views of the action over there, a confused jumble of images, health sensor readouts, and status checklists. This was the battle’s critical moment. If McDevitt couldn’t take control of the Moskva and, by extension, of the Russian squadron, then they were still dangerously deep in excrement.
Elsewhere, the USNA fighters had been redirected to engage the four surviving Russian destroyers, but losses so far were heavy. On the Moskva, the Russians would be fortifying themselves in secondary command and control centers all over their ship. It was entirely possible, even probable, that the Moskva would be able to continue fighting even after losing both flag and command bridges.
And Gray wanted to avoid that if at all possible.
CIC
CIS CV Moskva
N’gai Cluster
1642 hours, GMT
The aliens were a lot more bearable inside their combat armor, Oreshkin thought. The sight of those faces he found to be just about unbearable. The Moskva had picked up thirty-six of the creatures at 70 Ophiuchi and was almost home with them when he’d been redirected to intercept the America carrier battlegroup. Nal Tok and its strike group, Oreshkin mused, had likely been surprised at having a 17-light-year jump abruptly changed to one of tens of thousands of light years and extending into the remote past.
But then, it was difficult reading emotions in these militaristic monsters. Who could know what they were thinking? Or feeling.
In battle armor, they looked almost human: three meters tall, headless, with a torso stooped over and level with the ground, and digitigrade legs that gave them the hulking gait of a Tyrannosaurus rex. Though still monstrous, the armor masked the face riding beneath the thing’s shoulders—those independently swiveling stalked eyes and the churning mass of unidentifiable mouthparts. Two arms were three-fingered and massive; the third, upper arm was actually a part of that mouth, a kind of lower lip that could unfold for a meter forward—with crushing force.
“You know what to do, Nal Tok?” Oreshkin asked over the comm channel.
“Of course,” the being replied, its voice a rumble rich in cringe-inducing infrasonics. “We kill humans!”
“Not Russians! Just the Americans!”
“What’s the difference? Humans are all alike to us!”
Oreshkin couldn’t tell if it was joking or not. Did these creatures even understand the concept of humor?
Then, “They are here, Oreshkin. We go. . . .”
Leaving Oreshkin to hope for the best. He’d let the djinn out of its bottle, with no guarantees about the outcome.
Strike Force Reaper
Marine Battalion 3/25
N’gai Cluster
1649 hours, FST
“According to the deck plans we downloaded, this passageway should lead to the CIC,” Hanson told him. He sounded worried.
“We copy you on the right path,” McDevitt told him, checking the schematics. “CIC is down that passageway and ninety degrees to the side.” He didn’t tell him left or right, because such distinctions were meaningless in zero-G.
“Roger that. But . . . shouldn’t we attack?”
“Negative! We’re loading Konstantin-2 up here, and once he’s in place we’re going to try to talk them down. You copy?”
“Copy, Colonel. I just don’t like being a sitting duck in an empty passageway!”
“Protect yourselves if you come under fire. Otherwise, wait until I give you a go.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
McDevitt was still on the flag bridge, which he was converting into a forward combat command center from which he could take over a kilometer and a half of starship. It was not going to be easy by any stretch of the imagination. The ship had myriad cutoffs and secondary systems; you couldn’t just order the ship to blow itself up or to shut down the environmental system, because there were backups and workarounds and plenty of ways of countermanding orders from the bridge. The Russians, even with their relatively inflexible command structure, were paranoid of any one person seizing control of the entire ship, so even the bridge could be cut off from the rest of the vessel.
It should be easier once they had Konstantin loaded into the bridge network.
“Colonel! We’ve got Nungies!”
He swung his full attention back to the command link with Hanson. “Say again last,” he barked.
He heard only static in his in-head, but he was still getting wildly gyrating images of something coming through the bulkheads.
He’d seen those shapes, twenty years before when he’d been a shirttail second lieutenant newly assigned to Osiris—hulking metal tanks, digitigrade legs, like they were standing on their toes. And headless.
“Hanson! Pull back! That’s an order!”
But Hanson’s bio readouts were flatlined. Who was next in the chain of command? Captain Crawford . . . no, flatlined. What the hell was going on?
“This is Sergeant Fitzgerald, Colonel!” a voice broke in through the static. “It’s Nungies! They’re coming through the bulkhead! Heavy plasma weapons! Can’t hold ’em! We’re falling back to the bridge!”
Nungiirtok. Twenty years ago, a joint Nungiirtok-Turusch force had descended on Osiris and kicked the human colonists off the planet . . . those who hadn’t ended up in concentration camps.
What the hell were they doing on board a Russian star carrier?
“Barnes! Gomez!” he barked at his two company commanders. “We’re gonna have company in a few minutes. Real bad-assery! Get your people ready!”
They already were—Marines didn’t stand down in the middle of a firefight. But the momentum of the battle had just been flipped end-for-end, and the Marines now were going to have one hell of a desperate fight on their hands.
Chapter Ten
12 April, 2429
USNA CVS America
CIC
N’gai Cluster
1650 hours, FST
Gray’s head shot up, his full attention captured, at the first call from the embattled Moskva. Nungiirtok? Who the hell invited them to the party?
Very little was known about those lumbering monsters. They’d been part of the Sh’daar Alliance in Gray’s own epoch, and as such had been responsible for some nasty attacks across the then-Confederation frontier. There was no question that the armored shapes he was watching on the CIC’s repeater screens were Nungiirtok. Their birdlike legs were pulled up and tucked in against the torso to keep them out of the way in zero-G, but the massive, headless bodies were unmistakable.
All that was known about them for sure was that they were ferocious fighters, combining the speed and sheer power of Tyrannosaurus rex with the fierce tenacity of a wolverine and the sheer combativeness of a mantis shrimp. You needed special tactics to defeat them.
He had to bite his tongue to avoid giving McDevitt advice about his troop placement. There was nothing Gray could do to help the Marines, no order he could give that would not be abject micromanagement. And McDevitt was there, with a much better idea of what he was doing than did Gray.
Instead, Gray checked the positions of two more Marine pods, Charlie and Delta companies, approaching the carrier aft of the spin-grav wheel. Again, he wanted to suggest they move farther forward, to add their numbers to the battle McDevitt was waging against the Nungies. Again, he held his peace. All he could do at this point was screw things
up if he interfered. McDevitt was an experienced Marine commander. He knew what he was doing.
“Delta Company has just made contact,” Billingsly told him. “They’ve attached to the carrier’s hull we estimate just eighty meters aft of their CIC.”
“Very well.”
“Charlie Company has now locked on. Both pods are eating their way through armor.”
The very worst part of command, Gray told himself, was standing by helpless and watching while someone else carried out orders you had given.
Strike Force Reaper
Marine Battalion 3/25
N’gai Cluster
1653 hours, FST
“Here they come!” McDevitt yelled. “Remember! Joints and optics!”
The first Nungie rush had been held off—barely—at the vacuum door leading onto the flag bridge itself. There was literally no place else for the embattled Marines to retreat, and now the Nungies had regrouped and launched another assault.
Years of combat with the Nungiirtok had taught the Marines the importance of pinpoint precision in fire control. Weak points in Nungie armor included the major joints at hips, shoulders, and the attachment point for the third arm; and the four tiny, heavily shielded lenses high on the chest that served as their optical feeds when they were buttoned up. Burn through the armor and you could cripple the being inside; burn out the optics and you left it blind, though still not completely helpless. The Nungiirtok possessed other senses besides sight or hearing, not all of them comprehensible to humans.
But it slowed them down, at least.
McDevitt held his Marine-issue M-90 laser rifle steady on the closest Nungie as it arrowed straight for his position crouched in the open pressure door. His AI locked on to the critical third-arm joint, and when an in-head icon winked green he thoughtclicked the weapon. A dazzling point of white light appeared against the black armor and pieces flew off.
The massive, armored torso slammed into McDevitt, tumbling him backward. Blaine and Peterson closed on the thing from either side, using their lasers as torches at point-blank range to burn their way through. A second Nungiirtok warrior grappled with Peterson, its hinged, lower jaw—encased in an armored sleeve—snapping out faster than human vision could perceive it, catching the Marine on the side of his helmet. Blaine turned her laser on this new threat and McDevitt joined in, their combined fire melting into the armor covering what they knew to be the monster’s face.
