by Rob Dearsley
“I know I’m asking more than anyone has asked before. More than I have any right to. But know that if we fall now, humanity dies with us. But if we hold, if even one of those colony ships makes jump, it will be worth it. Don’t fight for me, or for the Imperium, fight for yourselves and your families. Angels be with you all.”
Dannage stayed frozen for a moment, the words, the tone, sinking in. The final Terran Emperor had been a good orator. But there was something more to the speech. It felt more than an address, or less somehow. Just a commander, ready to lay down his life, and asking his men to follow his example.
By the time the colony ships jumped it had been too late.
Dannage nodded. In the same situation, he wasn’t sure he would have done anything different.
We need to deploy the weapons. Now. Before the darkness grows too strong. Your friends will have time.
Loki was clear of the ship-yard and he could see an SDF shuttle and the Folly heading for the planet at break-neck speed.
“What about the com?” he asked, stalling for time. Wanting to give them as much time as possible. “I want to speak to my friends. Warn them.” And say goodbye.
I will do what I can, but we cannot tarry. Loki’s tone was a mixture of annoyed and pleading.
The overhead speakers clicked to life again and this time Arland’s voice came on. “Captain? Dannage is that you?”
The sound of her voice was enough to undo his resolve. He slumped forward bracing against the console. “It’s me, Arland. Are you okay?”
“I’m good, sir. We’ve got a plan to get out of here. We can retake the ship. We can all go home.”
Images of Arland falling into darkness flashed through his mind. No, Stars damn-it. She was safe. She was getting out of here.
If the Entropic Force isn’t stopped here, it will not matter.
Dannage clenched his jaw in frustration. A slight shift in awareness and he knew the missiles would take no more than ninety minutes to reach the sun. A couple of minutes after that, it would all be over.
“Arland, I’m pushing my luck here. You’ve got ninety minutes. Can you do it in time?”
“What about you?”
“I need you to be safe. I need you all to be safe. Please, Arland. Can you do it in time?”
“We’ll make it work. We always do. But I’m not leaving without you.”
“Arland, please. Listen to me. I don’t want to get stuck here. Stars, I’m doing everything I can. But I need you to protect the others. Look after them for me.”
“No. You are not doing this. Not now. After everything you’ve bloody done, everything we’ve been through, you are not leaving me. Not now.”
Dannage turned around, sitting against the side of the console and closed his eyes. He could almost see her here with him. The small scars on her knuckles, the scent of apples from her hair. Her honey coloured eyes bored into his.
“Arland, please. Promise me.”
“Damn-it, Michael. Yes. Anything for you. But this isn’t the end for us. Not now I’ve found you. I love you and I’m not letting that go. You damn well get over here before we jump.”
She loved him, the words caught in his mind, memories of their night together, before the jump, filled his senses.
“I love you too. Always. Now go, be awesome.”
With a thought, he cut the com-link, tears running down his cheeks. He didn’t bother to wipe them away as he pulled himself up and turned back to the weapons’ station. He sighed. It was do-or-die, for all of them. He touched the weapons console, scrolling through to the heavy fusion missiles. His hand hovered over the release control.
A single touch. It felt wildly disproportionate to scale of destruction he was about to unleash.
His fingers brushed over the control. The missile status indicator turning green.
Thank you. Missiles away.
Dannage already knew. He could feel the missiles streaking from their tubes to begin their journey across the darkness of space.
Twenty-Eight
(SDF Transport)
Arland punched the armrest of her chair. Damn him. Dannage always had to be the bloody martyr. How could he? And now. This was supposed to be about getting him back, not losing him again. Stars damn-it all.
“I’m sorry,” Johannsen said without looking up from her consoles.
Arland focused on the heads-up and the view beyond. The camp expanded to fill the view, the other shuttles were already climbing into the night sky, leaving a small group huddled in the lights from Lloyd’s fighter. Off to their right, the Folly matched their reckless descent.
They didn’t have time to waste. Ninety minutes to get the Feynman back and get out of here. It would be tight, but she’d promised Dannage. The damn muppet.
They set down with a thunder of engines and Arland leapt from her seat and into the rear compartment. Bringing her rifle around, she slapped the rear hatch control.
The ramp dropped, letting in the earthy scent of the forest, underscored with ozone from shuttle engines and the buzz of scared chatter. Off to the right, the most injured were being helped into the Folly.
Arland hopped to one side, as a group of SDF troopers rushed up the ramp into the light of the shuttle’s crew compartment.
From beside the Folly, Lloyd gave her a quick wave and jumped into his fighter.
Arland backed into the shuttle, her weapon still up. “Everyone on board?”
“Yes, sir,” an enlisted engineer said.
She hit the control to close the ramp and pushed her way to the cockpit. The shuttle’s crew compartment was packed.
With a roar of thrusters, they were up and heading back to space again.
“So, guys,” Lloyd’s voice came over the shared com-link. “How do we close with the Feynman?”
Valentine replied, “Approach directly from the rear. The defences are weakest there.”
“Shame we don’t have a cruiser to screen us,” Lloyd said.
Shame they didn’t have a Terran ship. Those things could really take a beating. Unless…
“We could use the Terran ships,” she said. “Get a section of hull, use it as a shield.”
Valentine came on. “That might work. Miss Jax, could we bolt some of the Terran hulls to the shuttles?”
“Not easily,” came Jax’s reply. “You’d need something that could stand up to the stress of manoeuvring, and the weapons impacts, but give out before the shuttle’s hull does. Hang on. Of course. Reverse the pressure. That would work.”
“What would work, Jax?” Luc asked, interrupting the engineer.
“Sorry. If we tether the hull fragments against the shuttles, it should spread the load enough and we can absorb the pressure through the shuttle’s spaceframes.”
“How long would that take?” Niels asked.
“Once we get a suitable piece of hull, not more than twenty minutes.”
It was going to be tight, but how else could they close with the SDF super-ship?
◊◊
Less than fifteen minutes later, Arland watched the distance counter scroll down on the shuttle’s HUD as they moved toward the curved fragment of Terran hull.
“Up a little,” Arland supplied, checking the LIDAR readouts again.
Johannsen’s fingers flickered over the controls giving the thrusters a quick puff, sending the shuttle up.
“Looks good.” Arland’s smile was lost on the pilot. Johansen was too focused bringing the shuttle up against the hull fragment. Off to their right, another shuttle moved into position at the other end of the fragment, their shield.
The HUD counter reached zero, and they bumped the hull, rebounding slightly. An EVA suited figure pushed off from the top of the fragment, shooting down toward the shuttle, a thick tether cable spooling out behind him. A HUD callout popped up, identifying him as Luc. He landed with a thump that resounded through the shuttle.
She couldn’t see him anymore, but Arland could imagine him fastening the tether
in place. Someone in marine armour was attaching another tether to the bottom of the shuttle.
A moment later, Luc climbed down into their field of view. The HUD glitched out, trying to work out where to place the callout on a figure that now filled more than half the screen.
Luc smiled at her and tapped at the side of his helmet.
Arland flicked over the com console and keyed the short range into Luc’s headset.
“Arland, good to see you again,” Luc’s voice filtered through the overhead, slightly out of sync with his lips.
“You too. We done here?”
“You’re good to go. We’ve attached detonators to the tether lines, channel five-one-five, security code, six-one-nine-alpha.”
Arland recited the codes back as she keyed them into the com console. It read as connected.
“Good,” Luc said. “Folly will be acting as coms relay for the fleet. You and the other shuttle will need to fly in formation.”
“Copy that,” Johannsen said.
Arland flicked to a private channel. “Luc, what’s Dannage playing at staying on the Terran ship?”
“Ship promised to fix his brain if he helped it. He just has to stay long enough for it to do the job. Sorry, got to go. Stay safe.” Luc gave them a wave and pushed off toward the blunt triangle of the Folly, her cargo bay doors open, ready to accept him.
“You too.”
Luc’s headset was already out of range.
Arland checked the timer on her screen. Just over an hour to get out of here and back home. Nervous energy permeated the shuttle, thick enough to cut with a knife.
They’d make it. They had to.
Arland took a breath, focusing on keeping her breathing even. She wished there was something physical she could do to burn off the nervous energy.
The crack of the com shattered the tension into a thousand shards of nerves and excitement.
Niels voice filtered through the speakers. “Operation is a go.”
◊◊
Hale leaned forward in her seat, peering through the front windows. The Folly was in the middle of the small fleet. The shuttles and Lloyd’s fighter held a tight formation around them, huddled together behind the cover of their shield. There wasn’t much to see apart from the scarred, pitted curve of the Terran ship’s hull. The ship’s name, TIN-C Sigrun, was still just about visible through the damage of battle.
The corvette’s final charge into battle. Broken and dead, she was still defending the humans. This last vestige of the imperium holding the line between humanity and their foes one last time.
For the first time since she’d climbed into that cryo-pod back on the Heimdall, she felt proud to be an officer of the Terran Imperium.
Niels sat at Luc’s usual station to the right of the pilot’s chair and thumbed the com channel open. “Move off.”
All around them, the shuttles started forward, maintaining their tight formation. The front two shuttles, the ones the shield was fitted to, moved off in perfect synchronicity. That was one heck of a pilot.
Hale glanced down at her console, bringing up the scanner feeds. They’d be clear of the debris field, and into the Feynman’s engagement envelope, in less than a minute. Lloyd’s fighter, or its green callout, dropped back in the formation, running herd on the rearmost shuttles.
“Weapons range in twenty seconds,” she informed the others.
“Once we’re clear of the debris field, we head straight for the engines. Close as fast as we can.” Niels said, his hands flicking over the Folly’s navigation console.
“How do we secure the hull?” Hale asked, her attention shifting between the scanner feedback and the view out the windows.
“Bit of luck on that front,” Hutch dropped into the chair beside her. “We just need to get to the primary substation and we should be able to get the main lighting on. From there we can bypass anything the bridge does for low-level systems like that. After that, we push it through the hull clearing it with floodlights and lock the doors. Given the manpower we have, it’s doable.”
Hale nodded but before she could respond further, her console chirped. They were in weapons range.
◊◊
An alarm shrilled through the shuttle’s cockpit.
“Incoming,” Arland snapped. The thick chunk of metal in front of them was fouling up the sensors, leaving them practically blind.
The force of the blast rocked the shield, sending a groaning and pinging from the tethers that reverberated through the hull.
Johannsen, focused staying in formation with the other shuttle, didn’t even flinch. Her hands continued their dance. Although this time, her movements were a sharp staccato. That and the tension in her face and through her jaw spoke of nerves.
The weapons alert sounded again, and another blast rocked the shield. Hull tension warnings flashed over the console and more pinging and groaning reverberated through the hull.
Stars, that noise was unnerving.
Another shell impacted on the upper edge of the shield.
A loud twang sang through the shuttle. The tethers weren’t going to take another shot like that. Damn it.
Arland tapped the com control. “Lloyd, any chance of stopping some of these? Another few impacts like that and the tethers are going to give out.”
“Copy.”
She watched on the scanner feeds as the Hound moved up through the formation to take station between the two front shuttles. A quick glance out the side windows, showed the bulky fighter as it hovered in place.
The weapon’ alarm shrilled again and Lloyd bounced up to send out a stream of tracer fire. The weapon trace winked out on Arland’s console, only to be replaced with another, and another.
Lloyd popped up again, firing, but more shells kept coming. And inevitably some got through. More booms vibrating through the shield, more groans and pings from the hastily attached tethers.
The console chirped another warning.
“We’re going into CQC range.” Arland tapped the com open. “Lloyd, watch yourself.”
“I see it,” he replied, the Hound falling back a little from the shield.
They could hear, they could practically feel, the pinging and rattling of tracer and flack fire against the shield, transmitted through where the shuttle’s nose was pressed against it.
Nearly there, just a hundred meters to go. Once they were close enough to the engines, they’d be out of the weapon’s firing arcs, then they just had to hug the hull.
More groaning and twanging from the tethers. Eighty meters to go.
Hull stress warnings flashed up on the console. They weren’t quite in the red zone, but they were pushing right up against it.
Sixty meters. A cacophonous rattle filled the shuttle’s cockpit, almost loud enough to drown out the hull and weapon warnings from the console as hull stress redlined. Arland was surprised the tethers had held as long as they had, let alone the hull.
Just a couple more seconds. Arland’s hand hovered over the detonator for the tethers.
Another shell struck the shield at the same time as a peppering of tracer fire. The shield twisted, slewing sideways. The other shuttle spun as the tethers ripped away, tearing the hull apart. Arland looked away not wanting to see the crew spill out across space.
Hull alarms warbled. The pinging of overstressed cables filled the shuttle. No time left. Arland slammed her hand down on the detonator.
Nothing.
The shuttle let out a deep groan of suffering, turning to the squeal of tortured metal. Rivets popped like gunshots.
Stars damn-it. Arland pounded the detonator again. Had Luc given her duff access codes?
She flicked through the controls, checking the link settings. Everything looked good. It had to be. No time for anything else.
Something in the shuttle cracked and the hissing of escaping air filled the cockpit.
“Breach foam. Hatch by your right elbow,” Johannsen said.
Arland pulled out the smal
l can of sealant and sprayed it over the damaged panel. Not that it was going to do any good.
“Hold course,” Lloyd said and a second later the hound swung into view.
A single tracer shot streaked past, briefly illuminating the cockpit, bright as day. Then another, and another. Finally, the shield spun away from them, the broken tethers trailing behind it.
Arland was halfway through a breath of relief when Johannsen spoke.
“Damn, we’re coming in too fast.”
Oh stars, they were. They whipped between the Feynman’s engines. Behind them, the other shuttles bled off speed. Lloyd peeled away sending tracer fire into the nearby weapons pods.
Johannsen hit the thrusters. The already overstressed space-frame groaning again, as the shuttle braked hard and flipped over to mate with the Feynman’s docking port. “Brace for impact. It’s going to be a rough one.”
Arland tightened her harness and white-knuckled the console edge. Maybe this was why they left a lip on these things.
All around them tracer fire spewed into space as the other shuttles and the Folly spread out going for their own docking ports.
The shuttle hit the hull and bounced, jarring Arland. The harness pulled at her shoulders, drawing a sharp cry of pain. The scream of rending metal deafened Arland as she was thrown sideways. The world spun for a moment then the shuttle crashed down again with a heavy thump of magnets engaging. The shuttles lights flickered and went out.
Silence. Only broken by the sounds of ragged breathing. Then the shuffling of troopers climbing out the back.
The light from nearby tracer fire strobed through the cockpit. Johannsen slumped in her seat, unmoving.
Arland fumbled for her flight harness with shaking hands. “Johannsen? Wake up?” Finally, Arland’s fingers found the release and the straps gave her up, bouncing Arland toward the overhead.
She clambered, hand over hand across the overhead to Johannsen. “Hey!” Arland shook her. Still nothing.
