by M. D. Cooper
It was empty.
There was a pause, and then it was Tobias’s turn to swear. Jason had forgotten how colorful the Weapon Born could be when he applied himself.
But they’d made it with moments to spare before the lift settled, disgorging its passenger, and then rose once more.
As he reestablished the feed, they saw a lieutenant and two other soldiers open the main door to the office, the wail of a distant alarm coming through the open portal.
SPACE JUNK
STELLAR DATE: 09.14.3246 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: Bridge, Avon Vale
REGION: Galene, Tau Ceti
Back on the Avon Vale, Landon watched as a part of the FSTC picket broke off and split into two formations, half headed toward the GSC vessels in low orbit, and the other half moving toward Ring Galene.
Seems like Berrong got her permission…or she’s planning to get it retroactively….
“The FSTC won’t make it in time, sir,” Scan warned.
“Not if those Galene bastards ignore the warnings Berrong is sending their way,” Landon agreed, pacing slowly back and forth in front of the holotank.
It showed continually-updating icons of the various ships—GSC, FSTC and the Galene fighters under Charley’s control. He gauged that Charley’s thirty-five spacecraft would reach the battlespace in time, weighting things in their favor.
This is my job. Understand the angles, protect my people. I’m not letting the enemy get the better of me this time.
“How’s the intercept plot on our MFRs?” he asked, and the scan officer sent him the telemetry for each of the twenty Elastene-clad packages that had been carefully adhered to pieces of floating detritus.
Landon was counting on the space junk in mid-planetary orbit around Galene being objects that any ship worth its salt would have automatically mapped and listed with their ships’ NSAI for collision avoidance. Having been tagged thusly, they would have then been dismissed as unimportant, eliminated from the holo displays as background noise.
That is exactly what they would remain, so long as the ships left the elevator alone and didn’t pose a threat to the team now in control of the spaceport. But if any ships moved to attack, they would find twenty pieces of debris speeding toward them with unexpected acceleration—for the MFRs adhered to the debris were programmed to boost instantaneously at five hundred gs toward their specified target. Given enough run-up, they’d become relativistic—though the distances weren’t great enough for that, in this case.
Even so, no GSC ship could hope to evade a projectile in such close proximity and headed toward them at that speed. And, although kinetic damage would certainly be imparted by such a collision, the resulting damage when the MFRs’ localized micro plasma cores overheated and their fusion engines went critical would be catastrophic.
“You’re sure they won’t detect our weapons, sir?” Hailey asked from the comm station.
Landon turned his head toward her and gave a small smile. “Oh, they’ll detect them, all right. They see them now, in fact. They just don’t know what they’re looking at.”
At Hailey’s quizzical look, he elaborated. “Those ships are the apex predators here in Galene nearspace, and over the years, they’ve become complacent. Oh, the minefield will have spooked them a bit, and there’s no doubt they’ll be more careful as they approach the elevator, but their focus is on hidden things, things that aren’t there. They’ll completely ignore the things they expect to see, because they know that it’s just so much harmless space junk.”
“Looking forward to their complacency taking them out, then.” Hailey’s tone was grim as she stared at the holotank.
“Boost the tightbeam network’s signal strength,” Landon directed her. “We’re not hiding anything anymore.”
Hailey nodded and bent to her task, while Landon turned to the main holotank, taking a moment to review the strength of the various forces before all hell broke loose.
All told, there were one hundred and twenty-two GSC capital ships arrayed around the planet. Most were close to the ring, in positions to provide support to operations on the ground or in space beyond Galene. Of that number, there were forty-three cruisers, not counting the three that had already been destroyed in the minefield.
The FSTC picket ships had greater numbers than the Galene fleet, but not more tonnage. Moreover, they were not committing their full force to their efforts. Twenty ships were moving toward the ring, while another thirty-two were shifting their vector to pass beyond the ring toward the elevator.
Stars, they’re taking their time, Landon thought.
Still, it seemed to be enough to stay the GSC’s hand—none of their ships were moving to hit Voyager Spaceport.
Just as Landon was making that observation, Charley’s fighters began to breach the clouds and move into position around the long strand. The appropriated GSC craft settled into an erratic patrol pattern, and it appeared as though the standoff would continue, when suddenly one of the fighters exploded.
“Beamfire from one of the GSC cruisers!” Scan announced.
Landon sent an affirmative response and then nodded to the weapons officer on the Avon Vale’s bridge. “Chief, target ten of the cruisers with our surprises. Let’s see if we can get them to back off. I’d prefer not to drop too many capital ships onto the planet.”
“Aye!” came the response, and Landon turned his attention to the holotank, watching as ten pieces of previously innocuous debris lurched forward, tearing through space toward the GSC cruisers.
He could only imagine the scenes on the bridges of those ships as they scrambled to maneuver out of the way. Engines were flaring, and the cruisers were moving to new vectors, firing beams at the debris all around as they boosted away from the elevator.
It would do them no good; the GSC vessels were all but stationary relative to the weaponized debris.
The GSC ships were firing point defense weapons at everything around them; they managed to destroy two of the MFR-accelerated chunks of debris, as well as several of Charley’s missiles.
Then the remaining eight improvised MFR missiles—now travelling at over one million kilometers an hour—reached their targets.
Moments before impact, the plasma cores in each MFR overheated, and the fusion engines exploded, adding the force of a nuclear fusion bomb to the kinetic energy they already imparted.
Combined with the shrapnel from the debris, the total energy transference was immense, breaching ES shields and pulverizing hulls.
Five of the eight cruisers were torn apart, adding their own nuclear blooms as engines and weapons detonated. The other three suffered critical damage, their engines dying and leaving them adrift, easy targets for the missiles coming from the surface.
Only two of the cruisers were still operational, along with the seven destroyers escorting them. The destroyers shifted to engage Charley’s fighters, while the remaining two cruisers boosted harder, nearly at their maximum effective firing range for hitting ground targets.
Landon was about to admonish his brother to pick up the pace, when the scan officer called out.
“Sir! A car is boosting down the elevator…make that three!”
With a thought, Landon expanded the view and saw three elevator cars on emergency descent toward the surface, solid boosters on each propelling them down the strand.
Landon gauged the speed the cars were rocketing down the lift and saw that they’d hit atmosphere in forty seconds. Once there, Charley would have mere seconds for his fighter jets to hit the cars.
He was about to wish the AI luck when suddenly every GSC ship on the spaceward side of Ring Galene began to boost toward the Avon Vale.
* * * * *
Terrance gritted his teeth as Eidolon’s holo display showed Charley’s fighters engage the destroyers, both groups taking losses in space a few hundred kilometers above and to the east of the shuttle.
Khela glanced at Terrance and pursed her lips. He could tell she didn’t like speaking over the Link if she could avoid it.
“The pickups will add any audible conversation to the combat net,” he assured her.
“OK.” She gave an appreciative smile. “Each of those elevator cars can hold sixty people. More if you cram them in. We lost Ramon, so I’m down to ten Marines. We’re not going to be able to hold them for long.”
“All teams,” Khela addressed her three fireteams. “Move to Logan’s position and cover him. We’re going to take off and provide what air support we can. We have to get that missile battery online, or the GSC destroyers are going to chew up Charley’s fighters.”
“We’re taking off?” Terrance asked, glancing between Charley and Khela.
“Yes!” the pair shouted in unison, and Khela added, “If we’re on the ground when Henrick’s goons get down here, we’re going to have a really bad day.”
Kodi said as Terrance slid into his cradle and initialized the Eidolon’s flight systems.
The ship came to life, and he gently lifted it off the ground, easing away from the elevator to put more room between the shuttle and whatever was inside those cars.
He was a hundred meters up, boosting away from the spaceport but banking so he could come around and provide support for Logan, when Charley cried out, “Have some missiles, you bastards!”
Through the window to his left, Terrance saw explosions high above, and all three of the elevator’s cables vibrated violently as balls of fire began to fall from the sky.
“Did you hit them?” the exec asked, his voice hoarse with anticipation.
“Two for sure,” Charley said, his tone less certain than his words.
As Terrance continued to circle around the spaceport, gaining altitude, the shape of an elevator car plummeted past, slamming into one of the hangars below.
Seconds later, another elevator car came down through the smoke and ash, one side torn away, and the shapes of a few dozen soldiers visible within.
Time seemed to slow as he stared at them in wonder, but then they were obscured by flares of light, and the Eidolon’s defense systems blared a warning.
“They’re painting us!” Khela shouted.
A dozen missiles streaked out of the elevator car, just as it peeled off the cable and plummeted to the spaceport below.
Terrance barely noticed that as he banked the craft away, praying that its Elastene cladding and point defense systems would make it too hard for the shoulder-fired missiles to lock onto.
With a quick nod, Terrance banked left while Kodi fired the shuttle’s countermeasures. The readout before him showed that all but two of the missiles had lost their lock—but no matter what he tried, those last two stayed on the Eidolon’s tail.
“They only have so much fuel,” Khela said while jerking her finger up. “Climb, they’ll fall behind.”
It seemed desperate, but Terrance followed her directions, and saw with great relief that the missiles were, indeed, falling behind. He was about to thank her when out of the clouds above came the third elevator car.
Part of its side was torn away, but it didn’t stop those inside from sending another six shoulder-mounted missiles their way.
Terrance clenched his teeth, spinning the shuttle into a steep dive, but it was too late.
The ship bucked and twisted as explosions blossomed in the air around them, wrenching Terrance back and forth in his cradle.
Then a terrible rending sound filled the air, and the entire left side of the Eidolon peeled off as they plummeted to the ground.
* * * * *
“Terrance,” Khela ventured as she pulled the impact foam away from the man, more worried that he might be more injured than she expected to be.
“You’ve got a much harder shell than he does…” Khela glanced down at her body, the armor she wore over her phage-infected underlayer now also infected and attached to her. “I guess I do, too, now.”
She pushed her concern for herself out of her mind as she finally reached Terrance, glad to see that he appeared unharmed.
“I don’t need other injuries,” Terrance muttered. “I’m one big injury.”
“C’mon,” Khela offered her hand, and Terrance reached for it, when suddenly, she snatched hers back. “Damn…sorry. I don’t want to infect you.”
“Seriously,” Terrance kept his hand extended. “I’m inoculated, but even if my nano can’t fend yours off, Marta and your dad can fix us all up afterward.”
“You ha
ve a lot of faith,” Khela said with a smile.
“Yeah, and my leg is stuck, so I really do need a hand.”
Charley was on the ground outside the shuttle, and he looked back at them through the hole in the ship. “At this point, bullets are gonna kill us a lot faster than the phage. That third car made it down. We need to get to Logan’s position.”
Khela nodded and once more extended her hand to Terrance, who clasped her wrist firmly, pulling himself forward and out of the impact foam.
A minute later, the three of them were on the ground, and Khela saw that they’d been lucky enough to crash on the military side of the spaceport.
“The surface to air battery is over there,” she gestured in the direction of a row of storage buildings a kilometer way, “in a bunker just beyond those.”
“Let’s get moving, then,” Terrance said, and she was glad to see that he checked his weapons over as they got on the move.
“Have you seen combat?” she asked, curious as to how a corporate executive from another star system ended up in this sort of situation.
Terrance gave her a lopsided grin. “A bit, yeah. Mostly I’m on the sidelines, but every so often, things get so screwed up that the front line finds me—kinda like now.”
As if to emphasize his point, shots chewed into the pavement around them, causing small chunks of plascrete to fly through the air like shrapnel. The sound of weapons fire followed a few seconds later.
The group took off at a run, zig-zagging wildly as they dashed across the open ground between the ruins of the Eidolon and the warehouses.
A shot ricocheted off Khela’s body, and she was startled by the realization that rounds hitting her armor hurt.
Oh that’s just great. Now my armor feels.
Even so, she stayed at the rear of the group, worried more for Charley—who was somehow still maintaining control of the fighters in space above—and Terrance, who wasn’t zigging or zagging nearly enough, as evidenced by the shot that struck his leg and knocked him down.