Ep.#13 - Return of the Corinari (The Frontiers Saga - Part 2: Rogue Castes)

by Ryk Brown

  “Keep pounding them!” Nathan urged. “Loki, ready an escape jump. Fifteen light seconds.”

  “Two missiles down,” Jessica updated. “Three…”

  “Fifteen light seconds, aye!” Loki replied.

  “Five seconds to missile impacts!” Kaylah warned.

  “…Four! Brace for impacts!” Jessica warned.

  “Secondaries on Battleship Three!” Kaylah reported. “She’s coming apart!”

  “Snap jump!” Nathan barked.

  Loki’s finger was already on the jump button, pressing it the moment Nathan said the word ‘snap’.

  “Ready four jump missiles with nukes,” Nathan instructed. “Helm, hard about and down ten.”

  “Loading nukes on the rails,” Jessica replied.

  “Hard about, ten down,” Josh acknowledged.

  “Two destroyers are down!” Kaylah reported from the sensor station. “Battleship Three is dead in space! Battleship Two is still missing. Three more destroyers have jumped as well! Only one target remains, and the Gunyoki are attacking it.”

  “We could use a few minutes of shield recharge time,” Jessica suggested.

  “Jump flashes!” Kaylah reported urgently. “Four inbound!” Kaylah tapped a button on her console, tying the ship’s all-call system into her own comm-set. There was no time. “BRACE! BRACE! BRACE!”

  Two Dusahn missiles slammed into the Aurora’s port midship shields, their nuclear warheads detonating in a pair of simultaneous blinding, white flashes. The force was more than their already weakened shields could handle, and shield emitters all along the port midship portion of the Aurora’s hull exploded in showers of sparks.

  Two seconds later, the other two missiles reached the Aurora’s unprotected hull, piercing its surface. Their delayed fuses detonated a second later, blowing open the port aft landing bay and ripping half the landing deck off the ship, sending it tumbling into space, along with a considerable amount of debris.

  “The Corinari have made it past our exterior defense perimeter,” the Dusahn officer reported. “They are at our doors!”

  “We must hold,” General Dontekay insisted. “Send all available personnel to reinforce our troops at the doors.”

  “No disrespect, but they will not be enough,” the major objected.

  The general looked crossly at the young major. “Then recall all forces to fall back to this facility. We will attack them from behind and crush them.”

  “Their tanks will prevent our troops from doing so.”

  General Dontekay looked even more annoyed. “They number less than a thousand!” he raged. “How is this possible?”

  “Their weapons are very accurate,” the major explained, hoping he would not be punished for speaking his mind too openly. “Their forces are well motivated. Their initial strikes hit us in just the right locations, greatly reducing our ability to respond from the start. They had inside information.”

  “A spy?” the general realized, looking at the major with disbelief. “Impossible!”

  “It may not be within our own ranks,” the major pointed out. “If they had contact with the resistance…”

  “The resistance was destroyed months ago,” the general reminded him, dismissing the idea with a wave of his hand.

  “Or so we believed…” The major paused a moment, summoning up the courage to make a suggestion. “General, we need help. We need to call in another ship.”

  “Nonsense!” the general disagreed vehemently.

  “The Aurora has been absent for nearly twenty minutes,” the major continued, determined to make the general see his logic. “There are only two ships in orbit above us. If we could surprise them and destroy them, we might be able to launch a strike against their tanks, thus allowing our troops to attack the Corinari from the rear as you desire.”

  “We can use octos,” the general suggested, hoping to avoid the embarrassment of having to call in a warship to help him secure his command against ground forces.

  “Their tanks have very good defenses,” the major replied, tiring of the elder officer’s pride. “They will make it difficult for the octos, if not impossible.”

  “And earn the wrath of our lord,” the general reminded the junior officer, muttering under his breath so the others around him would not hear.

  “If we lose this world, our lord’s wrath will be the least of our worries,” the major replied in similarly hushed tones.

  General Dontekay looked around the command center. All around him, young Dusahn officers and technical specialists were busy at their jobs, monitoring the battle and relaying data to troops in the field. Comms chatter assaulted his ears from all directions as junior officers on the front lines of battle called for assistance, in fear of being overrun. The general had no choice, his command was about to fall. “Make the call,” he finally ordered the major.

  Without jump flashes, Gunyoki fighters began appearing all around the Dusahn destroyer, pounding the unshielded sections of her older but considerably thicker hull. Each shot of highly charged plasma blew open layers of the ancient ship’s protective skin.

  Gunyoki appeared in groups of four, diving in pairs at the struggling enemy warship, then turning away and jumping before the destroyer’s defenses could land more than a few blows upon them.

  Jenna Hayashi adjusted her course as she came out of her attack jump, only three hundred meters away from the Dusahn warship.

  “Target is preparing to jump!” her weapons officer reported from behind her.

  “Everyone! Keep firing! Don’t jump! We can’t let her get away!” Jenna barked over comms as she opened fire on the struggling warship.

  “They’re jumping!” Delan warned from the fighter’s back seat.

  Jenna looked out the forward window of her cockpit, her finger still on the firing button. As bolts of energy fired from the guns on her port and starboard engine nacelles slammed into the destroyer, pale blue light began to spill out from the warship’s jump emitters, spreading quickly across her hull to form her jump field.

  But something was wrong.

  Jenna’s eyes widened as the incomplete jump fields partially covering the warship’s hull began to shift unpredictably. What usually took half a second took several, the damaged ship trying desperately to jump to safety. Although the forward and aft sections of the ship became completely engulfed in the pale blue jump fields, the midship portion did not. It took several seconds for the forward jump field to finally reach its full charge, no doubt hampered by damaged power conduits on the surface of the hull. The forward jump field of the destroyer flashed, but the aft section did not, at least not at first.

  Three seconds later, after the forward section of the Dusahn destroyer had disappeared, the aft jump field flashed, albeit in an anemic fashion, causing only portions of the destroyer’s main drive section to jump away.

  Her critical systems torn apart in unexpected ways and exposed to space, secondary explosions began igniting within the remaining portions of the warship. Jenna pulled her nose up hard, shoving her engine throttles forward to their stops as she pressed her jump button and transitioned to the other side of the doomed destroyer, about one kilometer away. She yanked her engine throttles back to idle and flipped her nimble fighter over, so that she was facing the warship’s remains, flying backwards away from it.

  The secondary explosions quickly took their toll, finally igniting the main propellant tanks in the aft section. The remains of the old destroyer—one that had been in service ever since the Dusahn had been exiled from Jung space centuries ago—exploded.

  Jenna stared in disbelief as the fireball, fed by the mixture of burning and expanding gases, sent a wave of debris in all directions. Her rate of travel away from the explosion inadequate to prevent the remains of the warship from reaching her, she pressed her jump button, jumping backwards away from the
explosion.

  “You don’t see that at the races!” Delan exclaimed.

  Jenna sighed as she flipped their fighter back over to face in their direction of travel. “You surely do not.”

  Lieutenant Commander Cardi pressed the button on her flight control stick, jumping her Super Eagle fighter ten kilometers ahead. She came out of the jump low over the Answari skyline on a course directly for the palace grounds, home of the Dusahn seat of power, and its command and control complex. As expected, she was immediately greeted with a barrage of energy weapons fire, streaming up to her from handheld weapons and portable defense emplacements all around the ornate campus which had once been the property of the Ta’Akar family.

  “Well, that’s not very welcoming,” her wingman, Ensign Pal Garson declared over comms.

  “At least I don’t have to feel guilty about not bringing any wine,” Sami joked as she jinked her fighter from side to side and up and down to make her harder to target. “I’ve got at least three MAAGs to the left and five more to the right,” she counted, her eyes darting about between her tactical display, her flight dynamics screen, and her heads-up display hovering in front of her canopy’s forward window. “Pali, you and I will go left. Til and Kish go right. Clean up anything I miss, will ya?”

  “I’m always cleaning up after you, Chief,” her wingman replied. “It’s what I do.”

  “Port aft flight deck is open to space,” the chief of the boat reported over comms. “Inner doors are holding, but the entire deck, all the way aft, was torn away. There is damage to the cargo deck below, as well. The concussion damaged multiple systems across the port flight deck, including the port forward launch rails. Engineering reports they might be able to get them working again, but it’s going to take at least ten minutes. Damage control is putting out some fires just inboard of the damage, mostly secondary systems that vented inside and caught fire. Flow has been cut off. Interior fires should be under control in a few minutes.”

  “How many injured?” Nathan asked.

  “Fifteen injured, twelve dead, four still unaccounted for. We believe they were sucked out into space.”

  “Understood,” Nathan replied, ending the connection. “Kaylah, any bodies to port?”

  “Port short-range sensor array is down,” Kaylah replied. “I can drop a sensor buoy. It might help.”

  “Negative,” Nathan replied, accepting that they might never determine the location of the missing crewmen.

  “Number one and two forward torpedo tubes are back online,” Jessica reported from the tactical console. “Port midship point-defense turrets are still down. No estimates from engineering on when they’ll be back up. I’m transferring the remaining missiles in the port loading bay to the starboard bay. We’ll only be able to launch two at a time, but we’ll still have access to our entire inventory.”

  “Good thinking,” Nathan agreed.

  “Message from Tekka One,” Naralena announced. “They’ve taken out Destroyer One and are searching for the other ships.”

  “Update our status to command,” Nathan instructed his comms officer. “Let them know we’re still in the fight but with a few teeth missing.”

  “Multiple contacts!” Kaylah warned.

  Her announcement was unnecessary, as the arrival jumps occurred directly ahead of them, filling the bridge with their blue-white flashes. Before them, two ancient Jung destroyers, black and crimson with Dusahn markings, filled their semi-spherical main view screen. The ships were less than a kilometer away, and the Aurora was closing on them at an uncomfortable velocity.

  “Evasive!” Nathan barked instinctively as the two ships opened fire. “All power to forward shields!”

  “New contact to port!” Kaylah added, the ship rocking with the incoming weapons impacts. “Battleship!”

  “Roll to starboard, quickly!” Nathan ordered.

  “Already started!” Josh assured him as the view of the destroyers in front of them began to roll from right to left.

  “They’re turning with us,” Loki warned as the ship rocked again. “They’re trying to block our escape!”

  “Dive under them, Josh!” Nathan ordered.

  “I’m trying!” Josh replied. “One of them is turning to block our lateral axis; the other one is trying to match our changes along the Z axis!”

  “The destroyers have matched our speed,” Kaylah reported. “Josh is right, they’re trying to pen us in so the battleship can tear us open!”

  “Battleship has launched octos!” Jessica reported from tactical. “Looks like they’re circling over us to get to our port side. If they do, I’m not going to be able to target them with all our point-defenses inop on that side.

  The ship rocked violently as the severity of the bombardment suddenly increased.

  “Get me a clear jump line, guys!” Nathan urged.

  “They’re matching us maneuver for maneuver! Josh insisted. “And a few of our port thrusters are operating at half power!”

  “Jess, can you blast them out of the way?” Nathan suggested.

  “If Josh can keep our nose still for three seconds,” Jessica replied.

  “Hey, I’ve got my hands full over here,” Josh defended.

  “Abort your maneuvers and just get our nose on one of them,” Nathan instructed. “But whatever you do, don’t let that battleship see our port side!”

  “You got it!” Josh promised.

  “Give him a hot pickle, Jess,” Nathan added.

  “Octos are attacking our port side!” Jessica reported. “I’ve got Aurora trying to target them with our starboard rail guns, but the octos are staying mostly below their field of fire.”

  “Firing forward tubes!” Josh announced, pressing the firing button on his flight control stick.

  “The destroyers are keeping their best shields toward us!” Kaylah reported, grasping her console with both hands to keep from being knocked off her chair. “We’ll never blast our way through before the octos rip open our port side!”

  Nathan tapped his comms console, selecting a direct link to engineering. “Vlad! Can you pump up the dorsal translation thrusters?”

  “Give me a minute!” Vlad replied over comms.

  “We don’t have a minute!” Nathan responded. All he got from his chief engineer was a string of Russian expletives that he was certain were quite profane.

  “Damage control reports new hull breaches,” Naralena reported. “Port side, decks C and D, sections fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen.”

  “Those octos are hitting us with everything they’ve got, and there’s not shit I can do about it!” Jessica exclaimed.

  “New contacts!” Kaylah announced.

  Nathan felt his heart sink.

  “Gunyoki!” Kaylah continued. “Eight of them! They’re going after the octos!”

  “Battleship is translating downward,” Jessica reported. “They’re trying to get under us.”

  “They’re going for our port side,” Nathan said, realizing the battleship had no choice now that the Gunyoki were chasing away their octo fighters.

  “More Gunyoki just jumped in!” Kaylah reported.

  “Josh, get ready to translate up relative to those destroyers with everything you’ve got,” Nathan instructed. “Loki, be ready to jump us two light minutes on my mark.”

  “Battleship is still maneuvering to get under us,” Jessica warned.

  “They’re launching more octos,” Kaylah added as the ship rocked with the incoming weapons impacts.

  “Forward shields are down to forty percent!” Jessica warned.

  “What about the destroyer’s shields?” Nathan asked.

  “Eighty percent!” Kaylah replied. “They are falling but not very quickly.”

  General Telles hid behind the corner of the building as four Super Eagle fighters unleashed hell on the
mobile anti-aircraft guns in the streets ahead of them. Thunderous explosions rocked the streets of Answari, the shock waves threatening to shake the buildings from their foundations. Windows shattered, and vehicles in the street were thrown in the air, crashing down meters from their original positions. More importantly, Dusahn soldiers were torn apart, their separated limbs tossed in the air with the rest of the debris.

  The four fighters ceased their attack, streaking low overhead before pulling up toward the sky.

  “You should be clear all the way to the palace walls!” Lieutenant Commander Cardi reported over comms, just before the four fighters disappeared behind blue-white flashes of light.

  General Telles looked at Corporal Vasya and the other twenty Ghatazhak huddled behind the building with him. “You ready for this, Corporal?” the General asked.

  Corporal Vasya grinned from ear to ear. “You’re kidding, right?”

  General Telles smiled back at the corporal as he tapped the side of his battle helmet. “Telles to all Ghatazhak. Leap Frog, in thirty.”

  “Where the hell did you get that code name?” the corporal wondered.

  “Nash, who else?” the general replied, rising from his position. He glanced at the tactical display on the inside of his visor, noting that there were no enemy soldiers between their position and the palace walls, fifty meters further down the street. “Ready, Capi?” he asked his AI.

  “I am ready, General,” his AI assured him.

  Four thunderous claps followed by a screeching sound announced the arrival of four more Super Eagles, approaching from the east. Again, trails of plasma energy tore up the streets and walked up the walls of the palace, blowing chunks of concrete away. Finally, the red-orange energy bolts topped the walls and peppered the palace grounds, creating havoc in the most heavily defended place in all the Pentaurus sector.

  The general watched his tactical display as dozens of red dots representing Zen-Anor troops inside the palace walls disappeared, falling to the rain of death from above. In a few moments, after the last of the Super Eagle fighters had finished their attack run, a different kind of death would rain down on the Dusahn’s ultimate warriors. It would not be red-orange in color, but flat black.