“Commodore,” said the pilot. “We’re out of formation.”
“Then get us back.”
“Yes, sir.”
Pride in Destruction was almost back in the dead center of the formation when she passed unscathed through the plasma cloud Midnight Sun had dumped out its engines. Their target was dead ahead, slowly being reeled in by the superior acceleration of the flotilla.
Hashgesh relaxed.
For a moment, he’d let Captain Blue’s reputation get to him. But she’d only served to prove how Humans deserved to be broken and made to serve the superior races of the Union. Their unconventional behavior was mere posturing. Midnight Sun and her notorious captain presented no real danger.
In every possible regard, Commodore Hashgesh was completely wrong.
* * * * *
Chapter Five
D-Clock 5/1, Running Silent, near Waypoint Gamma
The refit following the heavy damage Midnight Sun had incurred during the Raknar job had sacrificed some of the agility and interior space of the ancient ship for upgraded weaponry. It added a few other surprises too, such as the boarding pods. Until then, the previously hidden Goltar owner of the Midnight Sun Free Company had held the original design of her precious battlecruiser to be sacrosanct, the ultimate collector’s item for the ultra-wealthy. The fact that Gloriana had suggested some of the changes to her own ship spoke as powerfully as anything else that the Goltar were now committed to total war.
After hiding in the shadows of the Union for a thousand years or more, this was their opportunity to break the Veetanho control of the Merc Guild.
Major Sun applied crushing power to the grip of her Mk 8 CASPer, imagining squeezing Gloriana’s bony head crest into white powder.
On a Rakbutu-Tereus beach, surrounded by the slaughtered mercenaries who had fought on both sides of the war against the Merc Guild—and not a few Goltar corpses, too—the shattered survivors of the Midnighters had joined with the Goltar Council of Vengeance and jointly declared war against Peepo.
There had been talk of lifting the siege of Earth. Of immediate military support for the Four Horsemen, the pre-eminent mercenary companies of Earth.
The ancient Raknar that so many had died for had been taken away by Jamie Sinclair for delivery to Jim Cartwright, the kid who possessed the secret of transforming them from oversized curios into ferocious weapons of war.
Since then, nothing.
For months now, the refitted and Goltar-reinforced Midnighters had struck repeatedly at Peepo’s supply lines, turning her occupation of Earth into a weeping ulcer that bled credits and credibility. It wasn’t enough to destroy her supply of mercs, Gloriana had explained, but they would also destroy the other race’s willingness to support Peepo’s plan.
The Midnighters had been fighting so far away from Earth that recruitment of replacement Human mercs had become all but impossible. At such distances, and with the Information Guild considered by the Goltar to be a hostile force, for all she knew, her home world had been destroyed, its death a minor detail in a proxy war for the real conflict raging through the Union: the reckoning of the Goltar against the Veetanho.
No matter how vigorously the Goltar stuffed credits into the accounts of Human Midnighters, it wasn’t enough.
If they survived this latest battle in the Victric system, Sun would demand they team up immediately with the Four Horsemen for the direct liberation of Earth. The Human marines were already with her. She just needed her sister on her side.
Sun had her own reason to head for the Cresht region of the Tolo Arm. Not only did that region of space hold occupied Earth, but also scarcely credible rumors of alien healers who could cure the incurable. The more she chased those tales, the more they solidified, coalescing around an exotic alien from a race she knew little about, a Wrogul by the name of Molina. At the moment, Sun still wasn’t sure if she was chasing a rainbow of wishful thinking, but she knew with cast-iron certainty that those rumors were Branco’s only hope.
She needed to get to Molina even more badly than Earth.
“Wake up call in…fifteen seconds,” warned the pilot through the heavily screened wire plugged into each CASPer mech in the pod.
Instantly, Sun was back in the present.
Her marines needed her.
She eased all the tension from her muscles and waited to fast-boot her CASPer.
* * * * *
Chapter Six
Pride in Destruction, Mercenary Guild flotilla
“Incoming messages from Maratee and Greshil,” Signals reported. “They’re seeing unidentified objects in our path. Very close.”
“Sensors!” hissed Hashgesh.
“I…I think something’s there. Refusing to resolve. Estimate six objects. Frigate sized. Range…Entropy! They’re within slithering distance!”
“Fire!” roared Hashgesh as gray smears appeared in his tactical display. “All weapons!”
“Targeting systems unable to lock on,” said Gunnery Control. “Switching to manual.”
“Hashgesh to all flotilla ships, we are surrounded by enemy vessels. Destroy them. Fire at will.”
“I’m seeing energy spikes,” said SensorCon. “Whatever they are, they’re activating.”
In Hashgesh’s tactical display, weapons fire flashed over Pride in Destruction. Point defense lasers and railguns lashed out blindly. Even anti-missile missiles flared out, fired as dumb rockets because they couldn’t lock onto any targets.
The four cruisers in the flotilla directed laser fire at the insubstantial enemy, the beams passing straight through and striking their own flagship, which began to seriously drain the shields that protected Pride in Destruction’s flanks, already weakened by redirecting power to the forward array.
How could powerful laser weapons pass straight through these ghost vessels? What forbidden technology was this?
Goltar tech! This must be why Peepo’s supply lines had been so badly ravaged.
For a moment, Hashgesh’s shell trembled with sheer panic, but then flashes in the dark indicated hits on these insubstantial ships. No, he didn’t face ghosts. They might be cunning, but they were flesh-and-blood enemies that could be annihilated like all the others he had ever faced.
The enemy ships gradually solidified in his display. An explosion flared less than a klick off the starboard beam.
Got one!
According to his display, the explosion occurred well inside the enemy ship.
Realization shook his pseudopods. These entropy-cursed things were mostly false sensor targets. Mice roaring like lions, as the Humans might say. But there was something substantial inside them, and whatever it was had almost reached his ship.
“Sound the boarding alarm,” he commanded. A heartbeat later, the first hull breach alerts came in. “Signal the other ships in the flotilla. Tell them we’ve been boarded and they are to sweep our hull with their marines.”
“Negative.”
Hashgesh heard the words through the translator pendant clamped to his shell. The speaker was a short distance away in her acceleration station, groaning with the effort of speaking above the six Gs crushing her furry, pox-ridden chest. Until this point, the relatively low G-tolerance of the Veetanho had kept his CIC free of her annoying voice.
“Did you make a noise, Commander Tizomho?”
Normally, he wouldn’t have dared to be disrespectful to Peepo’s liaison officer, but fear made Hashgesh aggressive, and he was swollen with dread.
“The flotilla must not break off pursuit,” groaned Tizomho. She could have pinlinked to Hashgesh for much easier communication under thrust. Could have…if Hashgesh had provided the relevant channel codes. The Veetanho groaned with effort but managed to raise her voice. “Destruction of Midnight Sun is of paramount importance. By comparison, our own lives are of no consequence.”
Hashgesh felt the tension descend onto the command deck. Everyone there would have heard Tizomho overrule him.
No one dared c
ontradict the commander of a ship on their own command deck. Ever.
Tizomho wasn’t a no one, though. Unfortunately.
Hashgesh pointed eyestalks in the direction of the Goka marines guarding the deck. Major Zhiflwt’s vicious killers had served the ship loyally since before Pride in Destruction had been subcontracted to the Mercenary Guild’s direct control. Where did their true loyalty lie?
Now wasn’t the time to test that. He took a moment to control the angry tremble in his pseudopods and then opened a channel to his flotilla commanders. “Belay that. All ships to continue pursuit. Destruction of Midnight Sun overrides all other priorities.”
“Boarders,” announced the Situation Controller. “Deck 7, Quadrant 6. Boarders, Deck 9, Quadrant 5. More incoming.”
In Hashgesh’s pinview, ugly red sores marked the boarding points on a wireframe diagram of the ship.
“Colonel Changwah, Victory Scent Company will repulse all boarders.”
“Commodore, it will be difficult for my troopers to operate under these high-G conditions.”
Hashgesh silently cursed the pathetic, whining Zuul. “Acknowledged, Colonel. It will be difficult for our boarders, too. Major Zhiflwt will provide an independent reserve, and his Goka are far more G tolerant. Now, do your job and keep those invaders away from the vital areas of my ship.”
As he cut the connection, Hashgesh noted the pilot was giving him a funny look with one of his eyes. The officer was looking back at Hashgesh’s Veetanho affliction groaning in her acceleration station. Then the pilot looked inquiringly at his commander, and Hashgesh realized what he was silently trying to convey.
Humans were weakling fleshbags. Put them under hard thrust, and they popped like overripe fruit. Veetanho were only a little more robust.
Hashgesh opened a direct comm link to the pilot. He was about to include his marine forces in his plan but thought better of it. Colonel Changwah would only howl in protest, and Major Zhiflwt didn’t need to know. Of all the merc races, Goka were the most effective across all environments. They’d survive what he planned.
“Prepare to increase thrust to twelve G once the boarders have committed themselves,” he informed the pilot. “Order the flotilla to be ready to do likewise, but do not confirm verbally, and use Command Channel D in all communication.”
Let’s see how those Humans enjoy being crushed inside their damned mech suits.
Crossing all three of his eye stalks, Hashgesh sneaked a look at Tizomho. The Veetanho was lying face down on her acceleration couch, her fat tail squashed flat against the gel between her legs; already it looked bruised. He looked forward to hurting her a whole lot more.
* * * * *
Chapter Seven
D-Clock 5/1, Making Boarding Run
Blue had renamed the Corvus-class boarding pods as Dandelion Clocks—D-Clocks for short. For once, Sun thought her little sister had been spot on the money.
In appearance, the boarding pod resembled a Goltar. An armored tube terminated at one end in a red-painted beak, while from the rear flared a fan of tentacle-like appendages that would whip forward on contact with the target hull and lock on while the beak cut through. More distinctive still were the tufts that sprouted out of the pod after deployment, spreading across a volume fifty times that of the pod itself. The gossamer tufts absorbed any emission from the already tightly sealed pod, whose hull temperature was set to that of background radiation. Most sensor pulses hunting the pod would pass straight through the tufts, and any that would have rebounded off the pod were instead diffused around it by the tuft cocoon.
“Wakey, wakey!” announced the Goltar pilot, name of Washington as far as her squad mates were concerned, though she was Tiribai-Ali on her TO&E.
Sun hit the fast-boot on her mechanized suit. Status lights and fast-start diagnostics told their story in the holographic Tri-V display that wrapped around the inside of her canopy. Mostly, though, her Tri-V showed the other occupants of D-Clock 5/1’s hold readying to board.
Five of them were also inside Mk 8 CASPers, clamped by their backs to the overhead and upper bulkheads. This gave the option of rapid un-assing using their jumpjets, soaring head-first out the beak like heavy metal superheroes.
Sun, meanwhile, was secured in the harness netting on the deck with 5/1’s two non-Human marines, a Zuul named Kenngar and an enormous Tortantula who’d been named Betty by her Flatar partner, a piece of work called Tatterjee. The double-crossing Flatar was no longer on the payroll, having been eaten by Betty, but the impact of the malevolent little alien’s betrayal was still working its way through Betty’s psyche, threatening to shatter it at any moment.
The pod engines flared into violent action, throwing Sun hard against the harness inside her CASPer, and her CASPer against the netting web.
“Call out,” she ordered, when her radio finally came online, and she discovered to her annoyance that the rest of the squad was already registering as fully integrated into the squad net. She was last online due to her fragile suit comms. All the CASPers were desperately in need of an armorer’s loving attention, but most of the onboard armorers had died in the attack on Midnight Sun when they’d had to wake Branco, and the squad hadn’t seen their supply base on Tau-Rietzke for over a year.
“Status green,” barked Kenngar, Sun’s pinplants translating his Zuul chuffs.
“McNeil, green.”
“Ripper, green.”
“Ready for anything,” reported Plunger.
“Weapons jam,” said Berenice “Turnaround” Chappelle. “Auto cannon won’t cycle. Reckon Plunger’s been borrowing my fuel cell again to power his artificial rack buddies, cause it’s not enough to power my laser rifle.” She snapped twin sword blades out of her CASPer’s arms. “Guess I’ll have to go old school.”
“Radio discipline,” snapped Sun, who was also receiving status reports from the other D-Clocks. Most enemy fire was passing harmlessly through the dandelion clocks, but D-Clock 4/2 was not registering, presumably destroyed. “Turnaround, stick with me. Betty, status?”
“Hungry,” replied the Tortantula. It wasn’t quite what Sun had asked, but it was close enough.
“Jex, green status.” The Midnighters’ newest hire, Sergeant Obadiah Jex, switched from the squad channel to a private link. “Major, I had already performed squad status checks before you came online. As the senior NCO on this little tub, that task falls to me. You hired me to do a job. Let me do it, and you’ll be freed up to do yours.”
Before Sun could blast back a response, there was a blinding flash of light as the single-shot X-ray lasers in the beak fired into the target’s hull, followed a split second later by the slam of hard deceleration.
A sudden six Gs sent her crashing into the starboard bulkhead, her arms flailing inside her haptic suit. This was the consequence of attaching sideways-on to a spacecraft that was under hard thrust.
The metal arms of the CASPer read the haptic feed from her whirling arms and smashed a dent into the bulkhead that forced Kenngar to dodge out of the way and Betty to snap a warning.
Above her and to her right, four other CASPers remained clamped to the overhead while Turnaround de-clamped and fell onto the bulkhead, absorbing the impact by bending through her Mk 8’s knees, unlike Sun’s graceless tumble.
“Jex, secure the breaching point.” Sun was still fuming at the sergeant’s words, but he had a point. In the initial phases of the Raknar job, she had commanded two companies of marines. Now she had just Betty, Kenngar, and eighteen Humans, plus a squad of Goltar made to serve under the Human major as a humiliating punishment for voicing problematic opinions. As the only surviving officer amongst a team now outnumbered 10:1 by Goltar marines, she’d caught herself acting like she was one of the guys, reverting to the opinionated trooper she’d been when she’d started her career, as a CASPer pilot providing security for a smuggler’s ship tramping through the Spine Nebula.
She hoped she wasn’t doing this to feel closer to Branco, because that
would be so weak.
Sun allowed the irritating Englishman to do his job while she checked in with Lieutenant Colonel Batir-Lek, the assault team commander, and the three other pods under her command in D-Clock 5. Out of twelve boarding pods, one had been destroyed by enemy fire, losing the reserve commander, and three were either damaged or simply unable to maneuver into a breaching position.
“Midnight-One, Rage-One. I will lead reserves to Objective Alpha. You are to proceed to Objective Beta with all speed. Over.”
“Copy that, Rage-One. Over.” After he’d lost half the pods of the two Goltar flights, Sun wasn’t surprised that Batir-Lek had decided to unify them in his assault on the CIC.
“Remember, Midnight-One. Maximize morale shock. Our objective is not to conquer the ship so much as to conquer its crew’s willingness to resist. Over.”
“Understood, Rage-One. Over.” The damned squid was telling her to do her job over the general channel again. Sun wondered how much of her anger was being communicated by the Goltar translators. Hopefully, a lot.
“Make sure you do, Midnight-One. Those metal suits you sit inside are so plodding that I fear they encourage a plodding mentality. Prove me wrong. Out.”
“That there pollywiggle’s got it all arsey varsey, ma’am,” Jex pointed out. “We’ll show them how it’s done.”
“If I’d understood half what you just said,” replied Sun while she watched the pod’s beak melt, bite, and melt the hull again, “I suspect I might agree.”
“Midnight-One, Midnight-Two-One,” thundered First Sergeant Albali over the radio. The Top was in command of D-Clock 5/2. “Hull breached. We’re inside. Position clear.”
Endless Night (The Guild Wars Book 3) Page 5
