by Terry Mixon
“Did you just tell me not to grandstand?” Elise said with a slight grin. “Compared to you, I think I’m going to be exceptionally well behaved.”
Kelsey wanted to smile but resisted the urge. The situation was just too dire.
“See that you do, because I want you to come back home to Jared and your children. Now, if we’re finished upending all our attack plans, I need to get to Persephone and let Talbot know what’s changed.
“It’s time to end this.”
Jared sat at his console on Invincible’s flag bridge and tried not to allow his nervousness to show. His people needed to see him confident that victory was at hand, no matter what actually happened.
Persephone was still closing with the ring of battle stations around the massive station holding the master AI. She was going to peel away as soon as she released the strike force but before she was in potential detection range. Then she’d join Caduceus and wait out the fight.
He’d altered the fleet’s course to take them far out of the way so that when the defenders finally realized someone was there to attack them, they wouldn’t chance across the marines by accident. In effect, his ships were the distraction.
“We’re getting telemetry from Persephone via tight beam,” Marcus said. “Talbot has the hammer in his possession, since Kelsey will be unable to physically wield it while she’s in her drop capsule. He’s taking lead of the regular marine forces and will provide a perimeter once they’ve penetrated the hull of the main battle station.”
“And how long are we from when they execute?” Jared asked.
“Less than twenty minutes. At the speed they’ll be traveling, it will still be some time before the attack force is within detection range of the guardian ships. By that point, we’ll be in position to accelerate into engagement range.”
As soon as the marines and Raiders ejected from Persephone, they’d all be unalterably committed. There would be no way to retrieve his people at that point.
Kelsey and Talbot had given a rousing speech to the marines. It was time for him to do the same for the rest of the fleet.
“Open a tight-beam channel to every ship except Persephone,” he ordered.
“Channel open, Admiral.”
“People of Fleet, this is it,” he said softly. “This is the moment we’ve been fighting toward since we learned what killed the Old Empire. This is our one and only chance to redeem the failures of our ancestors.
“In just a few minutes, all of our marines and Marine Raiders will launch from Persephone on a life-or-death attack to take out the master AI. It’s our job to make sure that they have every second they can get to make their attack count.
“The only way we’re going to survive today is if they win. To make that happen, a lot of us are going to die. Perhaps all of us.
“I want you to fight for the people back home and for the humans trapped under the heels of the merciless AIs. Our sacrifice today will free them all. If we manage to stop the AIs—even if we all die—it’ll have been worth it.”
He paused for a moment to let that sink in.
“I’ll do everything I can to keep us alive for as long as I can, but our goal has to be keeping the enemy engaged. That means that I’ll drag this fight out, even if it means putting us at a significant disadvantage, just to give Princess Kelsey and Colonel Talbot every second that I can.
“Protect your brothers and sisters. Only by standing back to back can we keep the monsters from pulling us down one at a time. May whatever higher being you believe in be with us. Or, if you don’t have a religious side, let’s just hope that Lady Luck smiles on us today. Admiral Mertz out.”
He had no idea how many of the men and women under his command were religious, but there was an old saying that Kelsey had passed on to him: There are no atheists in foxholes. He’d had to watch a number of movies from prespaceflight Terra to finally understand what that meant, but it fit their situation perfectly.
“What do you think our chances really are?” Marcus asked so softly that Jared didn’t think anyone else could’ve heard him.
“Bad,” Jared admitted. “We’re risking everything on a single roll of the dice. Let’s just hope we get seven instead of snake eyes.”
33
When the timer in his internal chronometer reached zero, Talbot ordered all of the marines festooning Persephone’s hull to release their holds and float away from the strike ship. With so little angular momentum, they moved very slowly, but it was enough to separate them from the vessel that had been boosting them toward the target.
They’d be floating toward the enemy ships and battle stations for many hours yet, but they were unalterably committed now. This was a one-way mission if they failed to achieve victory.
After about ten minutes of separation, Persephone released the drop capsules containing almost all of the Marine Raiders. Their places aboard Persephone had been taken over by their Fleet counterparts with just a bare sprinkling of authorized Raider command personnel left aboard.
One of those was Major Angela Ellis, and he knew that she wasn’t pleased to have been denied the opportunity to go on this mission, but the ship’s computer would only accept commands from a Marine Raider, and that had been the admiral’s decision.
Of all the Raiders, Kelsey was the only one that had actually used a drop capsule before. Back on Harrison’s World, one of the AI sympathizers had seized a nuclear weapon, so she’d used one to come in from orbit to neutralize it… and him.
The drop capsules were designed to protect a Raider as they approached a planet at orbital speeds and to get them to the ground quickly and relatively safely. Ten seconds from orbit to standing on a planet’s surface.
Pure, unadulterated insanity.
Yet she’d done it. She’d landed there in her armor and blown away the enemies determined to kill so many people, along with the nuclear weapon that they’d stolen.
A lot of people just couldn’t see Kelsey as a Marine Raider. Her small stature defied their preconceptions. They didn’t know that she had the steel to do what needed to be done, no matter the personal cost.
Sometimes, she did too much, and it worried him. She was five months pregnant with their little girl. He prayed that his wife remained safe and kept their child from harm too.
A slight movement off to his left captured his eye. It was one of their fighters. Inside the cockpit, Talbot could see a figure raising a thumb toward him.
That had to be Senior Lieutenant Gus Grappin, call sign Raptor. He led the fighters that had been crudely mounted to Persephone when she’d left the carrier Audacious behind with the resistance.
The squadron the man had commanded during the fighting before Terra—Eagle Squadron—had been reduced to just six pilots—including himself—which made him the perfect choice to lead them on this unconventional mission.
They hadn’t had much use for the fighters to this point, other than scouting some of the areas around Terra that were protected by robotic ships, but now they’d be invaluable. Raptor’s job was to ring the gong.
That meant that he and his wingmates would fire their missiles right into the station’s battle screens at point-blank range if the enemy managed to raise them before Kelsey and the rest of them reached its hull.
He didn’t understand how the fighters would escape at that point, but Raptor had breezily waved the question off. Talbot wasn’t so sure. Fighters were hard to detect when they were sneaking in with almost no power, but once they opened fire, that game was over.
Talbot raised a hand to his chest in salute to the pilot. It was very well possible that this was the last time he’d see the man. In a few hours, either or both of them could be dead.
Everything was going to happen quickly once they reached the battle station. It didn’t have its battle screens up now, but with an AI controlling its defenses, that situation could change on a moment’s notice.
The hammer at his waist would be the thing that led the way in. It was like
a bomb riding along with him. A bomb that only his wife or Carl could control.
In this case, it would be Kelsey that took control of it when the time came. She could sense and control it within about a ten-kilometer range. That kind of distance was minuscule in space warfare, but none of the attackers would be very far from the rest.
The hammer would strike first, blasting a hole as deeply into the battle station as possible. Immediately following that, the closely crammed drop capsules would follow it in, penetrating as deeply as they could.
His marines would land on the hull all around that breach and swarm inside like little insects. It was their job to chase down the Raiders and form a core around Elise, Julia, and Carl. They absolutely had to survive.
Raptor and Eagle Squadron would follow them almost all the way in. The moment they detected indications that the battle screens were coming online, they’d fire their missiles. The blasts would be intense, but the marines’ powered armor should protect them.
If the pilots timed everything correctly, they’d catch the battle screens as they were still forming, thus disrupting them long enough for the last of the marines to get past.
The small vessels were modified versions of the test platforms developed by Captain Aaron Black back on Harrison’s World at the Grant Research Institute. That facility had been a clandestine weapons design lab that had survived the Fall and continued working to create weapons that could be used against the AIs.
The fighters they’d eventually built had had the option of swapping out their missiles for short-range beam weapons that could fire twice before their power supplies were expended.
Once Carl had had a little bit of time to devote to adding in his proposed changes, the fighters had grown slightly larger and now boasted both missiles and beam weapons. The restriction on the number of shots they could take was still there, but they wouldn’t be totally unarmed once they fired their missiles.
They were also stealthed, which made them perfect for this kind of mission. They were deadly little hornets, which had led to their class name: Hornets. They were an improvement over the old Imperial versions in so many ways.
Talbot only hoped that would allow some of the suicidally brave pilots to survive the looming fight.
He forced himself to put thoughts about the pilots out of his mind. He needed to link up with the senior commanders, and they’d continue going over their plans until the very last minute.
If anyone came up with an idea that they thought could improve their chances by even one percent, they’d do it. Even such a small difference might be the margin between life and death for all of humanity.
Yet even as they grew closer to the combat zone, no one had much to add. He supposed that wasn’t a surprise. They’d worked this plan over for two weeks, and every idea had been considered, no matter how off-the-wall it had been.
When the assault group finally started edging into the patrol ships’ scanner envelopes, that was when Talbot really started worrying. If one of those ships detected them, they’d undoubtedly die before they reached the battle station, and nothing would save them.
This was one place where skill wasn’t going to help them. They needed a healthy dose of luck right now.
And thankfully, they got it. The gap they exploited wasn’t a large one, but there was enough space between two patrolling destroyers to avoid the most active part of their scanner patterns.
The drop capsules, the marines, and the fighters passed almost directly behind one destroyer at a ludicrously short range. At the speed they were traveling, they were quickly past.
That left the ring of battle stations surrounding the massive orbital that held the master AI. At least he certainly hoped it did, or this attack would spend itself against the wrong target, and they’d all die.
The battle stations were paying closer attention to the space around them, looking for threats. That was a danger, but it also meant they were splitting their attention and their scanner beams.
No one could look everywhere at the same time, not even an AI. Not without having a ridiculous number of scanning stations, which would’ve taken away some of their ability to pack in weapons.
Even so, they came damned close to being caught. As he’d worried, the fighters—even with their stealth materials—were bigger targets for the scanners. Their detection threshold was high, but it wasn’t infinite.
The information coming in from Raptor indicated that the scanner strength was brushing right up against those thresholds, and Talbot held his breath, waiting for one of the battle stations to turn its attention to them and begin firing beams or missiles.
But somehow, they managed to avoid detection and slipped past the protective battle stations. That left only the massive battle station that held the master AI.
“I think it’s time to kick this party into high gear,” Kelsey said over the short-range com. “Talbot, release the hammer. All marines, line up behind the drop capsules and be ready to follow us in.
“The master AI is scanning various sections of space around it, and I can’t imagine that we’re going to make it all the way in without it spotting us, so be ready. Raptor, this entire mission hinges on you getting us through those battle screens.”
“Eagle Squadron has you covered, Colonel,” the pilot said grimly. “Count on it.”
Talbot released the hammer, and it flew to the front of the formation. Then he turned his attention to the marines around him. All of his people were positioned to follow the drop capsules in.
He tagged up with Jake Peters to make sure that the man and his makeshift squad of marines were ready to cover Elise, Julia, and Carl. They’d need them all to make it through this, Talbot was confident. He wasn’t going to take any chances with their safety.
As they drifted closer to the battle station, he kept watching for the moment when the master AI spotted them. It wasn’t going to be difficult to tell. At this range, the scanner detectors were going to go crazy the moment the AI even glanced in their direction.
He was reminded of a movie from prespaceflight Terra that Kelsey and he had watched in a series called The Lord of The Rings.
It had been a fantasy extravaganza in which a mystical enemy had a giant flaming eye above a tower that looked over his entire land, ceaselessly searching for a powerful relic that he’d lost. Just like in the vid, when their enemy’s gaze landed on them, they wouldn’t have any doubt that they’d been seen.
And, of course, that was the moment that the scanner detectors went insane. The master AI had them now.
“Hammer away,” Kelsey said. “Raiders, go to full thrust.”
Ahead of them, Mjölnir came to life. Its enlarged battle screen sprang into existence even as its grav drive sent it hurtling toward the station. By the time the master AI had spotted them, they were already dangerously close to it, but it was still possible it could get its damned battle screens up in time to stop them.
It tried, but Eagle Squadron was there, firing their missiles at the screen even as it began forming. Since they weren’t technically trying to penetrate the battle screens, just disrupt their formation, they had something of an advantage. It was a small one, but it might just prove the difference between life and death for all of them.
The missiles slammed into the nascent battle screens and shattered them. The drop capsules that had been about to be crushed hurtled through the gap, and the marines darted after them.
The screens tried to form a second time, but Raptor and his pilots fired their beam weapons twice, draining their entire offensive capability. The newly formed screens wavered behind the drop capsules but didn’t come down.
Talbot cursed. He and all of his people were going to slam into them at a velocity that was hard to imagine. He was about to die.
“Formation Omega,” Raptor ordered in a voice filled with resolve. “Maximum acceleration, Eagle Squadron. Godspeed, my friends.”
Talbot blinked, uncertain what was happening as the six fight
ers raced past the marines and slammed into the forming screens, exploding in an orgy of destructive energy.
Their suicidal charge was enough—just barely—for the marines to make it through the gap. They’d made it because the pilots of Eagle Squadron had traded their lives to give them this one chance. He swore that he wouldn’t allow their deaths to be in vain.
An incredibly bright flash of light from the battle station marked where the hammer struck with incredible force, smashing its way past the reinforced metal and penetrating deeply into its interior before the mini fusion plant lost containment in an energetic blast that probably vaporized several decks around it.
The blast opened the hull like a rotten fruit being dropped from an air car. They’d have no difficulty getting inside now.
“Directly into the breach, marines,” he ordered, aiming his armor at the large hole and kicking his small grav unit to its highest setting.
Even as he did, the drop capsules flew into the inferno. Talbot knew that they’d come to a halt with bone-jarring force so they could insert their passengers into the combat zone.
He and the marines in their powered armor came last, which meant that some of them didn’t make it. Beam weapons meant to gut superdreadnoughts fired at them, extinguishing marines by the dozens, but it was too late. After a moment of sheer terror, the survivors were inside the breach and safe from the weapons.
A quick check confirmed that Elise, Julia, Carl, and Peters were still with them. They still had a chance to pull this off. He just hoped it wasn’t going to be a suicidal tradeoff, as it had been for Raptor and the brave pilots of Eagle Squadron.
Yet even if it was, that was a price they’d gladly pay to free humanity.
34
Carl lost all sense of what was happening as the marines pulled him into the battle station through a massive rip in its hull and into the expanding ball of plasma that was all that remained of Mjölnir.