by Tim C Taylor
Hell, the details were for science-twonks like his brother, Remus. What mattered to Romulus was that his nimble little fighter had the same kind of engine that could push a battlecruiser across the interstellar gulfs.
With a whoop, Romulus set the Mustang’s engine to maximum thrust.
They didn’t feel a thing.
— Chapter 05 —
The unidentified enemy came at Beowulf in waves, lining up as they materialized into view on the inner rim of the minefield before charging down the distance to the old troop ship. It was bizarrely similar to disciplined cavalry attacks on old Earth.
And just as effective as cavalry against the most advanced military tech in the galaxy.
Romulus kept his thumb on the firing stud and swooped down on the attack wave from above, raking them with fire from the Mustang’s railgun.
Only his years of training allowed Romulus to make any sense of the environment as he jinked around the attackers, accelerating faster than a missile one moment, and then dancing on a pin to fly at them from another bearing. Confusing as it was, he was seeing a sanitized version of reality fabricated by his Mustang’s fight system. The view stuttered and blurred as the display caught up with the furious pace of change.
He threw burst after burst of darts at the enemy, taking out dozens, scores of what he decided were probably drones. The enemy craft were slightly smaller than his Mustang, shaped like an aero engine with a pinched nose and an exhaust nozzle spitting fire.
Jeez! These things are using chemical rockets from the Stone Age but can slip through our sensors unnoticed.
“Been having fun, Wolf Cub?” asked Dodger, or Flight-Sergeant De Silva when he was in trouble, which was often.
“Good of you to show up,” said Flight-Lieutenant Ormuz, the tension in her voice giving the lie to her banter. “The rest of this wave is ours. Stay out the way while we deal with them. Then form up on my wing until you’ve integrated your museum piece into our tactical net.”
“She’s not a museum piece, sir. She’s still a fighter.”
“I’m counting on it, Wolf Cub. You do realize that’s the same Mustang General McEwan flew at the Second Battle of Khallini?”
“No, sir, I didn’t. Leaving the field to you. Wolf Cub out.”
A premonition told Romulus that Janna was silently laughing at him. “What?” he demanded as he pushed the Mustang out from Beowulf.
“Wolf Cub!” Janna laughed. “You fliers with your silly names. Yours is so cute.”
“Yeah. Very funny. Now shut your mouth. I’ve a battle to fight.”
Romulus bit his lip. He hadn’t meant to snap, but he also hadn’t realized he had taken the general’s boat out for a sex cruise with the commander-in-chief’s former girlfriend. McEwan was long gone from Khallini, but his shadow was a difficult one to escape.
Then his flight commander saved him by leading her six Phantom 4s in a strafing run that weaved in and out of the lumbering enemy attackers faster than his eyes could track.
For once, Romulus obeyed orders and left his flight to its deadly task. He used the time scanning the area, not trusting his tactical systems to cope with so many enemy objects.
Beowulf was in high orbit around Khallini, and a safe distance of ten thousand klicks from the vast orbital dockyard and its torus of gun platforms. Safe in navigational terms, but dangerously divided in the tactical situation they found themselves in. The main moon bases, with their missile batteries and X-Boat squadrons, were on the far side of the planet. Only the dockyard with its newly built Phantom 5s were within range to help. Swarms of AI drone craft patrolled the region outside the minefield, but if they were on their way they would take many minutes to get here.
More of the strange little enemy craft lit up their rockets and announced their presence on the inner rim of the minefield. Romulus itched to close and engage them, but Ormuz had said to wait.
Her flight gouged great chunks out of the enemy formation with every swipe. A few had gotten through, only to be blown apart by the wall of high energy beams and darts thrown out by Beowulf’s point defenses.
Romulus’s home was safe for now. But the second wave was coming on fast, and already a third wave was forming up inside the minefield.
Ormuz’s flight left the few survivors of the enemy first wave for Beowulf to handle and formed up around Romulus. His tactical systems integrated with his comrades’, and an emergency software patch sent from Beowulf enabled his tac-display to cope with the huge enemy numbers and clarify the situation.
He immediately saw that Wing Commander Dock was sending a squadron of shiny new Phantom 5s over from the dockyard. 102nd Squadron… good guys.
Flight-Lieutenant Ormuz saw something quite different. “Wolf Cub, don’t you ever check your equipment?”
Romulus frowned. Ormuz sounded angry. What was she on about?
Oh, crap. The integrated tactical net reported operational status of all call signs in the flight. A separate high-priority pane in his display split away and showed his Mustang glowing red. His ammo was very low. Hell, I’m such an idiot. I bet McEwan never made mistakes like this.
“Stay with us for the next wave, Wolf Cub, then return to Beowulf to rearm.”
“Roger that.”
Then the next wave was upon them and the Mustang and Phantoms together skipped and dove around the incoming craft in an intricately choreographed dance of death that ripped the enemy to shreds.
Romulus was so absorbed by the constant high-speed maneuvering that it took a while to notice that none of the enemy were firing back. Did they even have weapons?
Help arrived in the form of 102nd Squadron, and it was one of the Fives that became the first human casualty when it collided with an enemy craft and was instantly vaporized in a vast green-tinged fireball. That was the answer, then. The enemy weren’t using fighter craft; they were flying bombs at Beowulf.
They were still dealing with the second wave, and the third was already upon them when the Mustang’s reserves of railgun darts were finally exhausted and Romulus ran for Beowulf’s dorsal hangar.
Once safely inside, the hangar rats tethered the Mustang with speed and skill, opening the hull section just aft of the cockpit and hooking up the ammo resupply tube.
The hangar crew were fast and robotically efficient, but not fast enough for Romulus. His kept his hands off the flight controls, and without the connection to his war machine, they shook like leaves in a hurricane.
Then disaster struck. The ammo resupply feed jammed. The crew were well-trained, but not in servicing this museum piece he was flying.
Damn!
Janna kept quiet but placed a hand on his thigh and squeezed gently, not wanting to spoil his concentration. She didn’t hate him, then. The thought loosened his mind a little. He’d apologize later for snapping at her, but he needed the comfort of her love right now, not her words.
While he waited to re-emerge into the fight, he tracked the battle’s progress.
If Janna hadn’t been there, what he saw would have chilled him with horror, but her presence kept him grounded, reminded him what he was fighting for.
More waves of flying bombs were on their way, but now the true attack was revealed. A wave of ships designated by the tactical analysts as troop carriers was headed their way. Worse, they were swarming around the dockyard facility and the orbital defense platforms that defended the planet far below.
Worse still, at the rear of the enemy formation emerged much larger craft, each the size of a heavy carrier but of an unknown configuration.
Romulus borrowed a sensor feed from Beowulf and got a closer look at the new capital ships. They took the form of two cones glued together at their bases. He couldn’t make sense of them. Big warships were normally hollow carriers that disgorged huge quantities of drone craft, and then stayed dark and silent far away from the danger of a combat zone. But no drones flew from these new ships. Their hulls too were odd. Instead of smooth plates of armor punctuated
with weapons ports, Romulus had the impression of a central magnetized shaft that had attracted deep layers of random metal scraps. No weapons were on open display.
Despite the absence of any obvious offensive capability, there was only one class of large warship that would enter an active battlezone.
“Planet killers,” Janna whispered, and he knew she was right.
He counted around fifty, all of them headed for Khallini-4.
A familiar voice came over the comm. “Captain Lubricant to all fighter groups around Beowulf. Attack the enemy capital ships. I repeat. Leave the small fry to us and concentrate on the new craft designated Papa-Kilo one through fifty-one.”
“Roger that, Captain,” said Ormuz over the flight’s comm channel. “Disengaging and heading for the Pee-Kays.”
Then on a private channel, she said to Romulus. “Wolf Cub. The order was for fighter groups around Beowulf. That doesn’t mean you. You’re inside.”
Romulus couldn’t help but grin. Her flexible interpretation of orders was why he got on so well with his flight commander. “Officially, you’re too far away to rejoin my flight,” she said. “Unofficially, I’m relying on you to ensure I have a home to go back to. Got that?”
“Loud and clear, Flight-Lieutenant.”
“Good luck,” said Ormuz.
Romulus put her from his mind because the jam was cleared, his bird had been re-armed, and the hangar rats were about to release her tether.
But they hesitated… What were the chodders doing?
The Hangar Boss’s face appeared in the Mustang’s comm screen. “The XO overheard a rumor that you’re staying, Wolf Cub. Says if the rumor were true, then you shouldn’t waste your time shooting up the incoming troop carriers. Leave them to us. Concentrate on the dirty wixers who get through to reach our hull. You didn’t hear that from me.”
“Roger that.”
“Now, go save our butts.”
The tether released, and the Mustang streaked out into space.
The void was awash with troop carriers. They took the form of pods arranged in a ring, towed behind a central tube-shaped section. There was no obvious sign of propulsion, but they were coming toward Beowulf at speed. Hundreds of them.
Beowulf’s missiles and laser batteries took a heavy toll out of the attackers, lighting the void with the blooms of their explosive deaths.
Romulus came in for an attack run, approaching the wavefront of attackers at a shallow angle, raking them with controlled bursts from his replenished railgun. He aimed for the central sections of the troop carriers, chewing up five of them until they were reduced to burning debris. He left the towed pods alone to drift onward. He passed one for a closer inspection and noted two features. What he assumed were the noses of the stubby pods ended in a heavily armored dish, the edge of which looked like a ring of Fermi drills. The drilling disks supported the idea that these were boarding pods, but the ring of pods had these nose drills oriented radially out from the center, not aimed at the boarding target.
As Romulus spun about for another attack run, the reason for the pod configuration became clear. The leading boarding craft came about.
They didn’t apply delta-vee to gradually change their vector in the manner of conventional spacecraft, nor did they shed their momentum instantly, sweeping it under the rug in the form of Klein-Manifold space as X-Boats did. The boarding craft slowly turned and slowed as if using a fluid medium to deflect its momentum. It came about like an ocean-going ship.
Romulus had seen that once before, on the day he left his mother behind on Tranquility. Even after they had captured one of the enemy ships, the Legion’s best minds still couldn’t work out how the craft had maneuvered. All Romulus did know was that he had only ever encountered one race that could come about in a vacuum.
Hardits!
As the boarding ships turned, the fan of pods rotated. Once up to speed, the pods were released, fired one after the other like slingshots at the target… at Beowulf.
While he shot up another wave of boarding craft, the first wave was throwing out clouds of defensive munitions, which grew so dense that Romulus could no longer see the boarding ships or even Beowulf herself. The roiling clouds of smoke, reflective strips and decoys lit up constantly with explosions. Romulus could only hope these were the signs of Beowulf’s point defenses extracting a high cost of her attackers.
The XO wanted him taking out any boarders who made it through that maelstrom to Beowulf’s vulnerable hull, but to fly his Mustang through that sensor-blinding fog filled with defensive fire spat out by Beowulf would be suicide.
Without looking away from his tac-display, he placed a hand on Janna’s thigh. Though there could be no heat transfer between their heavily insulated pressure suits, he still felt her warmth filling him through his palm.
It wasn’t just his death warrant he’d be signing if he went in.
But the XO needed him, and Janna would never respect him if he abandoned their home to its fate because he feared for her safety.
Romulus opened his mouth to give Janna one of his trademark quips as he entered the defensive fog, but they had deserted him. This was the most insanely dangerous thing he’d ever done, and that was saying something. As he scoured the area with his eyesight – the sensor systems overwhelmed by the chaos – he had to blink back tears. He still traded off his reputation for pulling dangerous stunts, but he wasn’t a kid with something to prove any longer. He had too much to lose that was precious.
His thumb hovered over the firing stud.
No. Railguns weren’t an area effect weapon, not in space. But there was something else he could use that was.
Romulus flew low and parallel to Beowulf’s hull, spinning about and coming to a stop right up against the Hardit Marine unit. His engine exhaust armor actually knocked a Hardit off the hull, sending the dirty monkey spinning into space. So long, pal.
Then with a waggle of his Mustang’s backside, he applied a little thrust from his main engine, taking maximum care to ensure his engine exhaust was kept just clear of Beowulf’s hull.
The Mustang’s engine was the same model of zero-point drive unit that powered Beowulf across interstellar distances. It worked by polarizing quantum fluctuations within the area of its effect cone, weaponizing the hidden heartbeat of the universe. To any equipment or personnel caught in the engine effect cone there was no defense.
Romulus set his engine cone to forty meters’ length, firing a single millisecond burst every second. The effect on his Mustang’s velocity was minimal, but the Hardit Marines and the rear of their boarding pod vaporized. More Marines and equipment were spat out the missing rear of the pod, flailing helplessly with limbs and tails. But unlike the mystery tech that allowed their vessels to push against the void, these Hardits pushed against only vacuum. Without even thruster packs they were trapped in an inescapable vector away from Beowulf.
That was all Romulus had time to care about.
He took a deep breath and did it all again.
He searched out more boarding parties, accelerating at an insane 30 gees just a few meters off Beowulf’s hull, dodging her storage lockers, heat radiators and weapon ports to come up close to the enemy and wipe them off the face of his home with a swipe from his zero-point engine exhaust. The slightest miscalculation and he would scrape against Beowulf’s hull or crash into one of the boarding pods. If he fired his engines at the wrong orientation relative to his home ship, his engine would cleave through its hull.
“Rom! Look out!”
Just in time, Romulus swung the Mustang’s nose up and away before colliding with Beowulf’s starboard nacelle.
“Need a quick break for coffee,” he quipped. He shut his eyes. Even with the Hardit defensive clouds dissipating he had been concentrating so intensely he could barely see.
Just need a few seconds…
He opened his eyes onto something new. A larger craft racing down toward Beowulf. Romulus guessed this was a command vessel, Har
dit officers coming in to command the boarding operation.
Co-ordinate this, you furry bastards!
Romulus swung round and poured fire into the Hardit command boat. The target refused to die, protected by some serious armor. It fired back too, but its targeting systems were not up to tracking the random dance of the Mustang with its momentum conversion system allowing its engine to open up without crushing the pilot and his passenger.
The Hardit boat exploded in livid white fire.
“Gotcha!”
His head clear now, Romulus pivoted around for another run sweeping the filth from Beowulf’s hull. The space around his home was filled with the wreckage of Hardit attack boats, but the survivors of the boarding assault were over Beowulf like a black rash. It was too late. The knowledge pierced his heart that even his best wasn’t going to be good enough this time.
All he could do was limit the number of Hardits the Legion Marines had to fight off in the hand-to-hand combat that must be opening up throughout his home. He glanced out toward the minefield and saw that fresh waves of boarding craft were still incoming.
He gritted his teeth against despair. Job’s still got to be done.
His comm flickered and buzzed. Probably someone from Beowulf but whatever they were telling him was being jammed.
As Romulus began building up to his attack run, a sudden and total flash of light seared into mind, blinding him momentarily.
When some semblance of function returned to his eyes, what they saw turned his blood to ice, locking up his entire body.
His home… Beowulf… All that remained was a wave front of debris and a ball of hot, ionized gas.
Captain Lubricant had given up hope. She’d hit the self-destruct…
“Rom!” screamed Janna “Snap out of it!”