Vindication

by Ken Wolfson

  "Torpedo salvo en route. Hoo, boy, we pissed them off," Cage said. No time for misery. Adrian put on some false bravado.

  "Good, they know who we are. Engage at will."

  500 atlatls crested the horizon and into Vindication's firing solution. The survivors were chased down by the Knights well short.

  For precious seconds the battlespace was clear of hostiles. Civilian ships of all sizes poured from the dock. Two agri-domed luxury liners cradling 10,000 souls each took the lead.

  6 Dragoons and a lone battlecruiser for a firebase rolled from deep space, the dragoons not even decelerating on their final approach. Adrian redirected his screen, but Nowitzki Fade clambered above the horizon and opened fire. So low was the angle that her rounds entered Volantis' upper atmosphere and emerged white-hot to strike their targets. A mid-sized liner vaporized, and the cargo ship behind it snapped in half. She wasn't going for Vindication, she was shooting down the refugees.

  "Position us on the dreadnought's firing solution and launch full chaff plus EWAR drones. We can take the punishment," he said. Vindication launched her glittering shield. Now she was a near-physical barrier guarding the children from the sewer rats crawling in the night. "Space group, priority are the Wendago. They'll wipe the civvies in seconds if they get through," Adrian said.

  Cross took point in her shining new Jotunn-III. "Those RRs got a lot of forward-firing big guns, but little flank firepower. Remember your previous fights, stay on their asses, and use the 125s." She led the Knights in. Cara's own fighters; the PDF in their ancient Tyrfings, followed them in.

  The fighting spun across half the battlespace. Interceptors and fighter-bombers raced about the nimble Wendago, strafing them while desperately avoiding the return salvos from their heavy guns. Many weren't fast enough for the coordinated Wendago. They ceased to exist, crushed to dust by a single heavy cannon projectile. Several shuttles making the run to Vindication were caught in the crossfire and instantly disintegrated. Yet the Knights piled on their attack with torpedo and cannon. One after another, the Wendago went down with flaming fuel cells splitting their fragile bodies apart. One dying Dragoon accelerated to 100g and rammed Vindication, dropping her barriers from full to 35% in one impact of gigaton-level kinetic energy, jarring officers from their seats. Another lost both its engines and used its velocity to dive through a commercial liner. 3,000 people spilled writhing into space, and slowly went limp.

  "Tighten up, we're losing civilians. They're watching you, you know!" Amelie barked at the SG over Knights' public frequency.

  "Copy, tightening up," Cross said. Another Dragoon burned for one of the giant luxury liners. "I got this," she said, and red-lined her thrusters. She let off an extended barrage of tracers from all the Jotunn-III's cannons. She smashed the dragoon's portside engine bulge, then walked her tracers to rupture the starboard. The flying wing disintegrated. Its debris field rattled the liner, but didn't puncture her hull. “Nightmare slain.”

  "Good shot, Cross," Adrian said. The battlecruiser retreated hard.

  "Copy, that's the last of them," Cross said. "Casualties are light. Tighten up, Knights. Yes, that means you, Tyrfing jockeys; you're not atmosphere skipping anymore, you're Knights, on a crusade, across the universe to fuck blue-bearing bastards in the ass."

  Nowitzki Fade found range. Vindication's barriers shuddered, but she held fast against the onslaught of fifty-kilo slugs. "Knights, initiate a bombing run on the DNE. Don't go for broke, just drive her off," Adrian said.

  "Yes, sir," Cross said. A new squadron of six RRDs crested the horizon, followed by angry fighter-bombers. The bombers overtook the Wendago and took the lead. Bomber, Wendago, and dreadnought were roughly on the same vector.

  Adrian formed a plan. "Interceptor screen, move to intercept those bombers, and match vectors," he said. Then to Cage: "Fire four salvos of torpedoes. One and two are standard high-ex warheads. Three and four will be thermite. Match vectors with the bombers and our interceptors," he said. He waited until the interceptors had closed to almost firing range. "Interceptors, hard port vector two nine nine delta zero." The interceptors broke and raced off. The enemy fighter-bombers followed.

  And Cross lead the Knights right up the gap. She slid past the Wendago with mutual strafing that produced one downed dragoon and several bomber losses, and continued her attack run. The Wendago arrogantly raced on, and ran facefirst into the torpedoes seconds later. The first salvo raced in undetected. They detonated high-ex warheads on the lead Wendago, blowing out a great cloud of shrapnel. The second salvo raced straight through that. TACNET recorded a series of messy detonations, and more shrapnel spreading like a titanic shotgun blast. Then the third salvo landed. There was so much shrapnel at this point that half of them detonated early, spraying superheated thermite across space. A pair of dragoons retreated out the other way, running hard.

  "Targets eliminated," Adrian said. Nowitzki Fade turned up her plasma drives and climbed into a higher altitude, to aim over Vindication's protection.

  "Hell, yeah," Amelie said. A second dreadnought crested the horizon with a full wing of battlecruiser support and opened fire. Cage dropped more chaff for cover. Adrian threw up some extra EWAR drones. Barriers dropped and rounds began hitting armor.

  “Broadcast for assistance on all channels. Armada command won't leave a supercarrier behind," Amelie said. Adrian concurred; some assets were too valuable.

  "Negative copy. SYSCOM has ordered all units to abandon us, and transferred Serpentia to 1st Burn," Zoey said. Her eyes widened in fear. Adrian exchanged worried looks with Amelie.

  They’d been vented and left out to dry.

  “Cara, Vindication, sitrep now,” Adrian said.

  "Vindication, Cara, we've lifted off the last transport. There's still 5,000 refugees plus my crew aboard and only escape pods for transit. How much time do you have?"

  Adrian checked TACNET and reassured himself that the civilians were free, burning for deep space fast as possible. And the Hullen were closing, more signatures were appearing on TACNET by the second.

  "We've got as much time as you need. Send everyone." He grabbed the intercom. "Quartermaster and medical staff to the hangar bay—we're taking on refugees."

  "Thank you, Vindication. We're launching escape pods." Entire sections of Cara's shoulders broke free and split apart into dozens of pods. They burned on chemical thrusters at a half-g acceleration towards Vindication. "Oh, and I got the last sentry gun back in operation. I'm at the firing controls now."

  The towering sentry guns swiveled to point parallel with the planet's surface, and fired. The Hullen ceased advancing and began evasive maneuvers.

  "Barriers at 20%, we’re taking steady penetrations," Amelie said.

  "More BC are approaching us from the east at 235, and there's a destroyer squad at the west at 23, coming over the horizon. We're going to be flanked on three vectors, sir. I advise we cut and run," Grissom said. Cara's CO aimed true. His shot passed straight through a battlecruiser.

  "Plot in the exit vector and prep the drives for emergency burn." Grissom hopped on the radio with Ravin to coordinate pushing Vindication's legs over her technical limit. Adrian's headset buzzed.

  "Deck chief Merle to bridge, all pods are down. We're heavy 8,000 grateful civvies, and they brought home-cooked rations with them." Good; finally Adrian could bail.

  "Barriers at ten percent," Amelie warned. "Zero percent." Hits clanged into armor plating like rain.

  "We're clear. Cara commander, ready to go?" Adrian said. He knew, inside his heart, what the man's reply would be, before he gave it.

  "Fly, Commander Adrian. Take Vindication and win this war. Remember me when you retake Volantis and plant the rising sun back in Primary where it belongs."

  "We will. Mother Winter protects," Adrian said.

  Vindication laid down hot plasma as she rocketed into space. The blues didn't pursue.

  Volantis shrank once more.

  "Farewell, Mother," Amelie w
hispered. Adrian rubbed her back. "I hope you're wrong about the Hullen planning to raze Volantis. Put her on viewscreen."

  "We'll track Mother Volantis with radar," Adrian said, to spare her.

  "No, visual. I need to see with my own eyes." The main display remained on Volantis' blue ball. The camera drone zoomed until she filled the screen once more. The Hullen ships surrounded the planet. Dozens of missiles raced into orbit from the planet's surface. Nuclear detonations took down a few battlecruisers. A few out of hundreds.

  Volantis surrendered first. The planetary chief raised the white flag over the Hallard needle, stood down the defenses and submitted unconditional surrender. It was a legal decision.

  Emoche gave the Wendago twelve hours to ravage the surface. The cities burned, the snow turned black. Millions were carried screaming into space. Lost forever in the slave markets, their fate was worse than that of their planet.

  The relic ship set up at the North Pole, in Alpha's former point. Kilometers-long debris shattered against its barriers without effect.

  "T-they're transmitting in the clear, from that thing," Zoey said.

  "Intercoms," Adrian said. Static crackled, and then that confident voice flowed through.

  "People of Volantis. I am your prophet, Emoche Hulle. I came to you in peace, with an offer to merely change your allegiance from the corrupt old lords to my god. You took my offer and spat on it. You defied my will, even as l strove to unite humanity under one banner. Your shadow blots out the golden age mankind was been working so hard for, for so long. Therefore, I am removing you from humanity. My righteous soldiers will absolve you of your defiance, and commute your flesh to ash. After, your world will remain a cinder drifting eternally through the void as a warning to all who wish to oppose my Lord Evander and the return of humanity. Do not be afraid. I was told Volantenes believed in justice. If this is true, then you should be glad I have given you this fate, because you deserve it."

  Every dreadnought opened up with their railguns.

  Fire came for them. It came for the prefects fighting for control of the streets. It came for the priestesses and their flocks knelt in their shrines. It came for the Lords and Ladies in their towers, it came for doctors on call in the hospitals, it came for the refugees flooding into every port, it came for the shopkeepers bunkered in their homes, it came for the children in bed after a long night of homework. And it left blackened bones behind.

  Salvo after salvo triggered split the ice caps. Billions of tons dropped hissing into the oceans. Tsunamis thirty meters high scoured the coastal cities. More stikes activated fault lines up and down the planet. Red lines of molten crevice opened up like a dragon's egg. The green belt vanished beneath smoke and steaming water. Earthquakes altered mountain ranges and re-drew the planetary geography. Volantis Primary folded up and was chewed up into digestible bits of masonry, titanium, and human remains. As the water heated up, hypercanes brewed and whipped away whatever remained. Volantis turned black and red.

  Adrian wondered how many more would have lived if the nobility had been behind the evacuation, if he had kept his mouth shut. The question would burn him inside out until the day he breathed his last, it would never fully leave his mind. And he’d never forget the image of a garden world turned to burning coals.

  "Amelie." He hugged her tight as he could. She sighed into his shoulder. "Keep it together, love."

  "I need to go." She pushed him off. Her face was blank, devoid of emotion, and that was the most heart-wrenching part for Adrian. "I must resign my commission, because I've become emotionally compromised. I will be in my quarters if you need me." She slipped out, and the bridge fell silent in her wake.

  Adrian stood to follow her. "Cage, take the conn. Call up Major Winchester to assist you. We should be in the clear, but do regular scans just in case."

  "Sir, there's a single hostile contact one million kilometers aft, red-shifted. Hull profile is a CVS," Grissom said.

  "Molyneux?"

  "No, sir. Righteous."

  Part IV: Dust to Dust

  Chapter Forty-Five: Into the Inferno

  Decevro, 1001 IE

  Wade County, Tyrants' Crescent

  A scrawny boy with freckles and a brown bowl cut flattened himself to the floor as the burning Fleet cruiser howled overhead. A thunderclap silenced his hearing, and the world around him shattered as a giant fist seized his high-rise and shake it like a tree. Books tumbled from his bookcase and thumped on the bedroom floor around him.

  Adrian covered his eyes and waited for his home to crumble about him. It didn't, and eventually the shaking stopped. A hot wind scalded his skin, and forced his eyes open. He saw the apartment tower crackling in flames that rose high into the night sky. Flailing torches plunged screaming from the windows. Adrian crawled away to the far corner and covered his eyes.

  His bedroom door burst open. "Adrian!" His mother’s comforting voice cried out. He’d never heard such terror and it shook him.

  "Mom," Adrian gasped. She lighted on him and cradled him in her arms.

  "Come on, love, we're getting out of here!" she said. The Wendago had come for Wade County during the night.

  "What about Sam and Tully?" he asked of his school friends living in the burning building.

  Two dark shapes glided overhead, shining white spotlights into the streets. A scream burst from speakers on both Dragoons; a girl shrieking in her dying agony and desperation. It made Adrian's blood freeze. His mother threw her body over him and trembled.

  "I'm sure they're fine!" she said. Another blast and trembling canceled his reply. His mother carried him out and down the corridor to the living room. The rest of Adrian's family was grouped by the door. There was his towering, dark father, his big sister Naomi curled in his arms, and his teenage brother, Mathias hugging his waste.

  Naomi reached out a pale hand. Adrian took it, and found it cold and clammy.

  "Come on, we're going to the fifteenth street shelter," his father said, and yanked the door open.

  "We should have been there hours before the attack started!" mother howled. She led the way down the corridor to the stairway.

  "The emergency alert told us to shelter in place. The fleet could handle the Wendago in space and there'd be no need to run," he replied.

  "These are Wendago! The fleet can't do anything against them, you idiot!" she howled. Adrian buried his face in her scratchy woolen blouse while they thumped down twenty flights of stairs and out the lobby. Cold rain clattered over him. It was one of the first, since Wade County’s atmosphere plants had spun up. The building was deserted, the windows cracked. Adrian saw movement in the shadows, towering figures plucking goods from a shop window.

  "Shelter's this way, run!" He lost track of direction and time with the rapid bobbing of his mother's walk and the constant nagging of her pounding heart to remind him that the strongest person in his life was as terrified as he. Voices he didn't recognize cried out, adults screaming and other children bawling in terror. Omnipresent over all was the unending clatter of gunfire, punctuated by the occasional scream projected by the Wendago gunships as they hunted for victims.

  After a timeless crawl, when he was all cold and wet, his father cried out, "Here we are!" The boy raised his head, and saw the local prefect's station rising bold and dark above. The doors were open and the guard booth unmanned. "The shelter's in the basement. There's room for five-hundred and food for a month," his father explained.

  "Where are the prefects?" Ila whimpered.

  "They're out fighting the Wendago," their father said. The family started into the building.

  "Dying horribly," Mathias said.

  "We'll be fine," his father said.

  "Or they're all being kidnapped, and are going to be raped and enslaved, like we will" Mathias added.

  "Shut the fuck up!" father said. There was a thump and Mathias howled in pain. "Now, follow me. I bet they've got the welcome mat rolled out for us." Down the stairs they went, into a short cor
ridor. A glittering double-door of titanium loomed at the end. Adrian's mother ruffled his hair as she approached.

  The door cracked open. "Who's out there?" a gravelly male voice said.

  "My name's Domas. I've got my family with me," Adrian's father said.

  "Go away!" The rebuke cracked through Adrian's ears.

  "What? Are you full?"

  "Nah, just me and my wife. We're not into with strangers, so get out!" Adrian whimpered at the thought of being locked out with the Wendago.

  "You've got to open up!" his mother cried. His father placed Naomi at her feet, walked forwards and grabbed the door. He reached in his belt and drew out a glinting pistol. Adrian remembered it from when he'd dug into his parent's closet for candy. It'd been hung f.ar out of his reach

  "Open the door or I'll blast you out," he said in a shivering voice, and stuck the pistol into the doorway.

  "You'll have to kill us, then, because we're not budging and I've got myself a machete here," the man said.

  "I will," father said. The Wendago shrieked overhead, penetrating meters of maglev roads and nanosteel as loud as if Adrian was in the streets above. Anger flushed through him. He was terrified, and going to die because one greedy old man wouldn't open up the shelter.

  "Dad, shoot him!" he said. His mother shushed him, but he brushed her hand away. "Come on, Dad, we need to get in there!" She clamped a hand over his mouth and kissed his forehead.

  "I...I can't," his father said, and backed away. The vault slammed shut and locked them out. "I'm sorry. I couldn't take a life for us." He pressed his head in his hands.

  Adrian's mother rubbed his shoulder. "Shh, we'll find the next shelter. There's one on thirty-fifth street, right?" Her voice trembled.

  "Yes, it's under the tubeway station," he said. Back outside they hustled. This time Adrian looked about. He saw bodies in the streets as civilians in their pajamas ran past, buildings burning, and yellow-clad disaster crews attacking the blazes heedless of the battle raging overhead. Once, a company of mechanized fleet infantry raced past in their APCs. Adrian reached a hand out to them so they could take him away, make him a trooper so he could fight the Wendago instead of hiding. Instead his mother hauled him away.