Admiral's Throne

by Luke Sky Wachter

  “It’s been expensive but so far, you’ve kept up your end of the bargain,” he paused, “I take it you’re now off to do what you said you’d do earlier and smash the main Swarm at the source?” he asked carefully.

  I gave him a cheery expression.

  “Pirates for breakfast, droids for lunch and bugs for dinner,” I drawled happily, “the day’s not yet over which is the only reason these bugs haven’t been put paid to yet. But never fear, they’re the next thing on my agenda. We just had to finish helping clear your orbitals first.”

  “For which I and my people would like to once again formally thank you, King Jason,” said the Prime-Lord.

  After I was done glad-handing the Prime-Lord and he thoroughly thanked me for my very expensive pest control services, I cut the channel.

  “It’s a relief that’s over with,” I sighed. I could smile politely and glad-hand with the best of them but there was a reason I vastly preferred the throne on my flagship to the one in the Palace.

  Over the next several hours, the fleet formed up on the flagship and headed out to meet the bug Swarm head on.

  An hour outside of contact with the main Swarm, one of the gunboats sent out ahead of the main body to screen the rest of the fleet sent back an emergency transmission.

  “Sir, I have a transmission from one of the gunboats; you’re going to want to see this,” reported my Chief of Staff.

  Trusting her assessment, I tuned into the live feed.

  “Put it on the main screen,” I said.

  “I can’t shake it!” shouted a Pilot in the uniform of the gunboat service while someone screamed long and loud in the background.

  “Just die already!” bellowed a Tractoan in his native tongue, repeatedly hitting something just outside the pilot’s holo-pickup repeatedly with a space wrench.

  “I didn’t see anything on the sensors and then it was there. It’s on me and I can’t get rid of it,” reported the Pilot, working his manual controls for all they were for.

  There was the sound of a plasma torch activating in the background.

  “I’m trying to cut it free! Check your skin integrity,” yelled the boat’s engineering rating in a rising voice.

  “Die-die-die!” roared the Tractoan Gunner in Tractoan.

  “I can’t—” the Pilot’s urgent voice cut off with a screech of metal and gurgle as a large protrusion of some kind pushed through the wall and through his body. It went in one side and out the other.

  It looked like a bug spike or protrusion, maybe a leg of some kind. Whatever, it didn’t look like duralloy or mono-locsium.

  “Lo-there, do I see my father. Lo-there, do I see my mother. Lo-there, do I see my sisters and my brothers,” yelled the Tractoan as he continued to wail away with his space wrench in a frenzy; the engineering rating used his plasma torch and the Pilot stiffened, spat blood and then slumped forward.

  “Lo-there, do I see the line of my people back to the beginning!” roared the Gunner.

  “Turn it off,” I said. There was nothing I could do from this distance. Their fate, such as it was, was in their own hands now.

  The transmission cut.

  “I take it their boat was boarded by a bug of some kind?” I asked in a clinical voice.

  No one answered for a moment.

  “Let’s stay professional, people. What happened… what’s happening to the crew of that gunboat is terrible. But there’s a reason we sent those boats out to screen the main force. Now look alive and tell me what we’ve got on that boat!” I said.

  “Sorry, Sir,” Steiner said crisply and my flag staff leapt into action.

  “From the boat’s telemetry, it looks like they were in the middle of an arcing turn and were on a course to return to their carrier after a successful patrol. They had just reached the slowest point when what I can only assume was a bug latched onto them,” said the Flight Ops Officer in a shuddering voice, “it looks like whatever it is, was strong enough to punch through the hull of a gunboat at multiple points.”

  “This is not good,” I reiterated for anyone not paying attention the past few minutes.

  “I want all ships to reinforce their forward shields. Put point defense systems on ultra-paranoid, and prepare to follow the flagship as we change course,” I said, instructing pulling up a control system and then dragging my thumb across the screen to plot an arcing course away from the gunboat and even further around the direct line of the oncoming Swarm.

  I fired the rough course plot to Navigator Shepherd and told him to clean it up into something the rest of the fleet could use.

  We must have been going too fast or bugs were light on the ground this far out from the main Swarm, because nothing else latched onto any of our ships or even showed up on our sensors.

  “I don’t like this,” I said to no one in particular and then glared at my sensor team.

  “We have the best sensors in the galaxy and we can’t find a single space bug before it boards one of our ships?” I demanded.

  “Our boats don’t have the same sensor package as a full-on warship, Sir,” the Sensor Officer protested defensively.

  “That’s fine. But why can’t they see any of them now?” I demanded.

  The sensor operator had a long face.

  “You know we had this problem before,” I growled, “the best sensors money could buy but our control programs weren’t up to snuff. I don’t know what the problem is and I honestly don’t care. Anyone who tells me there are not bugs out there, I’m going to call a bald-faced liar. Find them. Now!” I said, thrusting a finger at the black space between the Fleet and the Swarm.

  While sensors worked and I worried, the Fleet swung even wider around the main path between the Swarm and Hot Cross Prime.

  The Sensor Officer returned with a report.

  “I think we’ve isolated bands we need to be scanning for. The problem is, we’re very reliant on gravimetric sensors for a lot of things and bugs that small are like fighters or even gunboats. They’re just incredibly hard to dope out using gravimetric sensors. We’re working on a fix,” he said.

  “Dope? I hope we can do better than dope things out in our sensor department,” I said crossly.

  “How long until we have a fix?” I asked.

  “We’re already making changes but unless we get a sample, a sensor profile, or a target to run focused scans on, it might take a few days to run through all the possible permutations,” he said.

  “A few days? Unacceptable. I don’t know what the sensor department thinks it’s up to but we’ve known about the upcoming threat for weeks now. You need to do better,” I instructed.

  “We’ll redouble our efforts and pull in off-duty crews to help sift through the data,” reported the Officer.

  “You do that,” I said. I didn’t know how successful they’d be honestly, but if a few people having a couple sleepless nights saved even a handful of lives on another gunboat, to my mind it was worth the effort.

  As it turned out, there were no miracles in the next few minutes but no disasters either and though I hated to do it, we had to turn and begin slowing down.

  I knew the slower we went, the more risk we had of a hostile boarding attempt by angry space bugs. My only hope was we were far enough out of line from the Swarm and our shields would prove strong enough.

  They did.

  “We are coming up on close approach to main Swarm, Sire,” reported DuPont, “do you want me to speed up, slow down or maintain course?”

  I gave him a look.

  “Take the fleet to standard bug engagement speed, Number One,” I instructed.

  Then like the hammer of God, we drove right into the middle of the Swarm.

  Chapter 36

  Hot Cross IV - Smash and Grab

  The bugs were lined up in a giant circular formation with the Mothership in the middle of a big empty circle and all the large harvesters, scouts and scout marauders in a big oute
r perimeter. Or that was how it looked from long distance.

  Now that we were closer and started getting sensor hits, we could tell that the big empty circle around the bug Mothership wasn’t her smaller subordinates giving her space. The big empty was actually filled with thousands upon thousands of individual bugs.

  “I’m reading hundreds of modified boring beetles and boarding bugs, each of them with dozens of smaller warriors and cut wheel workers on them. Focused scans have also revealed a number of sensor-resistant bugs. We’re working on a sensor profile and will promulgate it throughout the fleet as soon as one’s been isolated,” said Sensors.

  “Good,” I said tonelessly.

  I didn’t like seeing thousands of boarding bugs intended for space combat and boring beetles equally at home punching through the hull of a ship or digging into the crust of a planet to set up a new colony.

  That these bugs were listed as modified and were carrying small numbers of worker and warrior bugs on their sides gave me even less feeling of enthusiasm.

  This could get ugly if I wasn’t careful, and my plan to showcase an easy victory could turn around and bite me in the posterior.

  “Take us in, Helm,” I said after passing along all the order I could think of.

  We had marines on the hull. More marines ready to exit onto the hull. Point defense was set to paranoid and squadrons of battleships ready to punch a hole through any opposition.

  More importantly, I had lots of lighter warships and gunboats to alternately take care of the small fry that tried to sneak around behind us and take out our engines or go in there and mix it up with the boarding bugs.

  We were as ready to go as we were likely to get and any more waiting was just going to wear on the crew.

  “Aye-aye, Sir,” DuPont said with the sort of confidence that said he had full faith and trust in his leader. Me.

  Now, if only I was as confident as I’d been upon entering the star system, everything would be perfect.

  Heavy Lasers leading the way, our battleships opened the conflict by firing at long range. There was no need to get in close to the bugs until after we’d softened them up from a distance. Their weapons didn’t range on ours which was why standard bug engagement speeds were so slow.

  Like a hammer, we crushed the first heavy harvester facing with two broadsides and annihilated the scout-ships around it even faster, before the bugs began to respond to us.

  So long as you were far enough away that the individual bugs couldn’t get close and board you, it was basically a rogue’s shooting gallery of fun and games. As soon as one popped up, it got shot down.

  So far so good, at least until some of those nasty boogers snuck up on you, everything changed and people started dying, I thought bitterly. I turned to the Sensor Department.

  “I want focused scans behind, above and below us, not just out front, Sensors,” I ordered.

  “We’re already hard-scanning front and back. We’ll include top and bottom to that and not just continue the routine sweeps, Sire,” said the Officer.

  I scowled.

  “Why weren’t we already doing that?” I asked, voice deceptively light.

  The Sensor Officer stiffened.

  “We just got the sensor profile and added it on top of our current scanning pattern, Sir,” he said carefully, “so far, we’ve been mainly focused on being able to build a profile for these hidden bugs by scanning the ones we know are already there. It lets us build up a detailed scanning base.”

  “Also,” he added after a moment, “running the scanners on 360-degree sweeps, at maximum capacity, for extended periods of time can burn out or degrade our systems.”

  “Then trade off and share the load throughout the fleet. The flagship can’t be the only ship with the new scanners. Use whoever you have, however you have to but make this happen, Sensors,” I instructed.

  “This is war. We’re in the middle of a battle. Now is not the time to be saving on lifetime service capacity. Burn the blasted things out, I don’t care, just so long as they’re finding the things right up until the last bug in Hot Cross Star system is dead,” I said.

  “They’ve already been added. We’ll keep scanning, Sire,” he said, saluting.

  Turning our ships, we skirted around the outer edge of the Swarm blasting the slow helpless bugs like we were shooting fish in a barrel.

  My goal right now was to circle around the Swarm, denude their larger secondary ships until all that was left was the Mothership and the Swarm of smaller bugs around her.

  Then it would be tough decision time.

  As usual, the bugs didn’t have the same plans that I did.

  As soon as they seemed to realize they were under attack, the outer circle of bugs began to move toward their Mothership, seeking to join the dubious safety of their Queen. Well, some of them anyway.

  All of the harvesters and most of the marauders and regular scouts on the far side of the Swarm from us began to move toward the Queen. Conversely, most of the marauders and scouts near us began an immediate burn to initiate an intercept.

  “Maneuver the fleet to stay out of their range and pound those bugs into space debris,” I ordered, relaying my instructions throughout the fleet. I had no intention of courting a boarding action until I was ready. These bugs could spin in cold space while we shot them up with lasers; as far as I was concerned, this was an extermination mission, not a slug-it-out-to-the-death campaign.

  Now, if only the bugs would comply with my desires.

  We shot them down in job lots, until they stopped coming; but by that point, we’d only nailed a trio of harvesters and maybe a third of the scouts and scout marauders.

  After clearing out all the bugs we could reach, I opened up a channel with my top two subordinates, Rear Admirals Laurent and Druid.

  “Ideas?” I asked as soon as the two officers appeared, pointing to a shared map of the local battle-space, one that showed the Mothership, her harvesters and scouts surrounded by the amorphous mass of boarding bugs and boring beetles they’d previously surrounded.

  The two officers shared glances.

  “I guess I’ll start off with the obvious,” said Rear Admiral Druid, “if there’s no easy way to winkle them out, we’re just going to have to go in there and get them.”

  “Opening us up to attacks by those boarding bugs,” I pointed out.

  “That’s a given,” Druid splayed his hands.

  He looked over at Laurent.

  “Thoughts?” he asked his fellow officer.

  “We could drop space mines and wait for the main body to pull up on them,” he suggested after a moment.

  I didn’t like his lack of confidence.

  “And what if the boring beetles find the mines first?” I asked.

  “Less boring beetles?” suggested Laurent.

  My expression flattened.

  “I don’t know what you want to hear, Sir,” Laurent said after a moment.

  “We can try to soften them up with mines and then send in the gunboats. Either the mines clear a path through the bugs and beetles for the boats, or they get straight to the heavies. Either way, the boats are going to have a tough time of it,” he shrugged.

  “We could send destroyers in to follow the gunboats, widening the breech and protecting our larger ships from boarding actions by clearing the path wider,” suggested Druid.

  “Meaning, of course, higher losses among our lighter ships that don’t have strong lancer contingents,” pointed out Laurent.

  “Or we could just hi-diddle-diddle straight up the middle and take it on the chin with our battleships. Then close to range and proceed to punch their lights out,” Druid said with a shrug.

  “This is not everything I was hoping for when I got you two on a conference call together,” I observed, forcing down the irritation I was feeling at no magical answers landing in my lap.

  “The question is just how cute you think we need to tr
y to be,” said Laurent after a moment.

  “This sucks. Your plans, suck,” I said.

  “Illuminate us, oh wise leader,” Laurent retorted.

  “So, soften them up with mines and then go tear their hearts out with the heavies. That’s the best plan you can come up with,” I said.

  Druid splayed his hands while Laurent shrugged.

  “We could always wait until they reach the planet. Something tells me those boarding bugs and boring beetles won’t stick around their Mothership forever. Not once a prime biosphere is calling out to them. Of course, that has other risks,” said Druid.

  “Like potential genocide,” agreed Laurent.

  “Aren’t you a bright bundle of joy today,” I said shortly.

  “Why couldn’t this be easy?” I asked no one in particular. Everything had seemed fine right up until first contact, when the bugs suddenly started acting in ways they never had before.

  “To be honest, between the reports of anti-marine mutations and now this circular, in-depth defense of their Queen, I think it’s safe to say this Hive, it’s faced and fought with humans before,” said Rear Admiral Druid.

  “Agreed,” Laurence nodded his head sharply.

  Then they both looked at me expectantly.

  “I’ll take what you’ve said under advisement,” I grumped, disliking this reminder that in all likelihood, we were facing imperial action.

  I reached down to cut the channel.

  They were supposed to give me answers, not the other way around. I mean, what was I paying them for? I deliberately ignored the fact I just hadn’t liked any of the answers they’d given me.

  Mutated bugs indeed!

  “Montagne out,” I said.

  I thumped the arm of my Throne once, angrily.

  “Sir?” asked Steiner.