Free Space

by Scott Bartlett

  But the marines held firm, some of them dropping their weapons—or stowing them, if they had the space—to draw combat knives and try to plunge them between the sliver-thin cracks between Xanthic carapace plates.

  The unarmed aliens didn’t bother recovering the dropped human weapons. Avery would have said they disdained them, if they seemed to notice them at all.

  The Kibishii marines were every bit as well-trained as Frontier’s, with just as much grit. Almost every shot found an alien, round after round burrowing into their thick armor, till the explosive rounds Avery had requisitioned back in Oasis blew their targets apart.

  Most foes wouldn’t hold together under such a relentless, focused assault. But the Xanthic seemed to relish it, each of them ready to leap forward eagerly to take the place of a fallen comrade.

  Can’t focus on that. Just shoot.

  But he couldn’t help it. A human might sacrifice himself for a worthy cause, but he’d do it with teeth gritted, screaming in death’s face as he went out. The Xanthic’s seeming enjoyment of throwing themselves into the meat grinder his marines had created…it was unsettling, to say the least.

  He’d already lost dozens of fighters to that eagerness, and more were going down every minute. His Command HUD kept a running tally of the fighters he had remaining by constantly pinging the biometrics of every power suited marine in his company. No one else had access to the count Avery saw there, which was a measure meant to preserve morale in dire times.

  But he knew the grim truth. Of the two hundred and eighty-two marines to enter the cavern, two hundred and seven remained.

  Still. Avery commanded the slightly elevated terrain of the island, and his marines held the bridges. The tactical advantage was theirs, and at last, he began to notice that reflected in the battle. Even with their physical edge, the Xanthic were falling in outsized numbers, with every fallen marine accounting for almost two aliens, on average.

  Slowly but surely, the marines’ training and firepower were carrying the day.

  Then, the big one appeared.

  A chittering sound echoed through the vast underground space, sounding like a cross between a cricket and a crazed chimp. Avery turned, suddenly struck by the sensation that his power suit was stuck in thick molasses. Everything had slowed.

  On the edges of his night vision’s range, a giant’s shadow lurked, plodding toward his marines at the bridge.

  Then it emerged into view, like a demon from the mouth of hell. Appendages whipping angrily, great blades held at the ready. It stood at least five times as tall as the others, and its other parts were all proportional.

  Its chittering increased in volume, and the Xanthic parted to clear a path for it—straight for the bridge.

  It charged.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Aboard the New Jersey

  Ucalegon System, Lacuna Region

  Earth Year 2290

  “The Degenerate Empire ships are reversing course, sir.” Candle sat a little stiffly at the Ops station, reminding Thatcher of Guerrero.

  He suppressed a wince, remembering the way his Ops officer had gasped, clutching at her throat.

  The XO adjusted his chair closer to the console and seemed to relax a little. “They’re heading for the jump gate back into the system they came from.”

  Thatcher felt his jaw clench as he gave his next order. “Send them a transmission of distress. Attach the following message: If you want the Dawn Cluster to remain in human hands, you should come provide backup.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Pain shot through Thatcher’s neck, and he forced himself to stop gritting his teeth. It grated at him to ask for help from pirates, but they needed to nip this invasion in the bud if they were to have any hope of keeping the Xanthic at bay. These fifty-one ships had dropped out of nowhere—who knew how many more were on the way?

  We don’t need any more company. The odds are already impossible.

  On the bright side, the Xanthic seemed just as surprised to find Frontier ships in orbit over Recept as he was by their sudden appearance. Their sleek, gleaming ships were hard to look at—a mishmash of geometry, with cubes projecting from pyramids projecting from prisms of all types; layers of shapes piled atop each other, reminding Thatcher of the images he’d seen of buildings after they’d been hit with one of their handheld weapons. But he forced himself to look. They made no move of any kind, just sitting there, continuing their slow trajectory around the planet.

  He decided that his force would be the first to react. The part of him that cared only for tactics had spun up the moment the Xanthic ships had appeared, even as Guerrero was being taking to med bay. Even as the shock of the aliens’ appearance made his stomach drop while beads of sweat trickled past the small of his back.

  Another part of him screamed that clearly, the Xanthic were gods, capable of appearing from nowhere and attacking, whether they boiled up from below a planet’s surface or sprang from the void itself. You don’t want to make gods angry, it insisted.

  He swept the voice away. Allowing himself to entertain that idea did nothing to bring him closer to victory.

  “XO, continue trying to reestablish contact with Major Avery. And sound general quarters.”

  Candle hesitated for a fraction of a second, his hands hovering over his console. “Aye, sir.”

  The rest of the CIC crew reflected Candle’s tension. Thatcher knew full well how insane it was to go toe-to-toe with fifty-one ships when he had only twelve.

  I won’t abandon Avery and Rose, or any of the marines down there. He became aware that his fists were clenched so tightly they shook. He forced himself to loosen his fingers.

  “Candle, order all ships to ascend to a higher orbit than the Xanthic fleet. We can’t afford a frontal offensive. They’d eat us alive. Instead, we’ll use the planet’s gravity to slingshot past them, with one of our offensive ships falling back one at a time to dump her capacitor charge into a single sniper shot with her primary laser. Both our logistics ships will hang back to keep each attacking ship alive. Then we’ll cycle in a new ship, to allow the others to recharge for the next shot. The Lancer is up first.”

  “Aye, sir. Relaying those orders now.”

  “Patch me through directly to the Swan while you’re at it. I want Captain Sho.”

  Less than two minutes later, his request had been granted. “Commander Thatcher,” Sho said over the tightly focused laser link. “I see we’ve encountered something of a predicament.” The man spoke calmly enough that he might have been commenting on the general tastelessness of the rations found aboard starships.

  I suppose he would be calm, hidden aboard a stealth ship. The Xanthic could wipe the rest of us out without ever noticing the Swan. That said, if they had the ability to appear from nowhere, what might their detection abilities be like?

  Either way, if anything was going to disrupt Sho’s calm, it would be the orders Thatcher had for him. “I need you to approach the Xanthic flank under stealth and prepare to engage them on my order.”

  “I’m afraid that’s impossible, Commander.”

  Thatcher frowned. “I thought Kibishii was here to help with this mission.”

  Sho’s expression grew pained, almost offended. “Indeed we are. My answer has nothing to do with reluctance, but technology. For proprietary reasons, I cannot say why, but it would be impossible to approach the Xanthic without being detected, which would likely render the maneuver suicidal. If you could lead them to us, however…”

  The urge to curse bubbled up, and Thatcher forced it back down. How can I properly engage the enemy when I don’t even know the capabilities of the ships under my command?

  “Very well,” he ground out. “Remain where you are, then. Kindly pass on orders to the Squall to rejoin the main Frontier force as she’s able.”

  “Certainly, Commander.” The Japanese captain’s voice came out a little stiffly, apparently still offended by Thatcher’s implied slight about Kibishii’s ded
ication.

  I shouldn’t have done that. But his nerves were frayed, and he couldn’t afford to dwell on the flub right now.

  He returned his gaze to his holoscreen, where the Lancer had almost moved into position to deliver its laser shot. An idea occurred to him. “XO, have the Redpole and Lively directionally jam the ships surrounding our cruiser’s target. They can get the targeting data from her.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  The respective crews had less than a minute to act on his orders, but Thatcher was confident they would deliver. Since leaving Dupliss, his standing orders to every tactical officer were to anticipate the options Thatcher might want to exercise in a given engagement, and then prepare whatever calculations each maneuver would require to execute.

  Of course, depending on how novel the tactic Thatcher wanted to use, he couldn’t always expect his people to exhibit lightning reaction times. Just most of the time. At any rate, a little directional jamming was far enough inside his standard playbook that they should already have prepared for it.

  A thick blue beam shot out from the Lancer’s broadside, connecting with a Xanthic ship’s bow and melting a hole that had to run several decks deep and multiple sections across.

  That let some of the tension out of his CIC—a slight but perceptible change. Even though the target was still fully operational, the hit meant the Xanthic ships weren’t invincible, just numerous. To top that off, the damaged ship hadn’t put up a shield. That might mean the attack had caught it completely off-guard, but Thatcher doubted the aliens were that stupid. More probably, they simply lacked shields altogether.

  Even with the strain of battle, Thatcher’s voice came out steady. “Our new frigate gets the next shot. Send back the Snowbird.”

  The former pirate warship slowed to the rear of the speeding Frontier formation. This time, the Xanthic met it with lasers of their own—five ships firing on the frigate at once, and with the frigate’s reduced transversal velocity, three of the enemy’s beams connected.

  But the frigate’s heavy shield held firm, bolstered by the two logistics ships behind her. The support ships remained close enough to feed energy via microwave beam to the Snowbird’s receiver array, but far enough to evade enemy fire with ease.

  “Tell the Snowbird to target this ship.” Thatcher designated the bogey he meant with a flick of his forefinger, then sent it to Candle’s console for forwarding. Targeting the already damaged ship would have been too predictable, and the new target’s starboard side was turned fully toward the frigate, offering a nice juicy target.

  Forty seconds later, the Snowbird’s primary burst across the void, melting a deep furrow all along the targeted Xanthic ship’s hull. Once again, there was no shield to intercept the laserfire. Thatcher allowed himself a satisfied nod. Three other enemy vessels moved toward the Snowbird, hitting it with their own beams, but seconds later the damage was done. The enemy Xanthic ship exploded.

  Cheering erupted from the back of the CIC, but Candle cut it short with a cutting gesture. “The entire enemy fleet is moving away from the planet, sir. They’re headed for us.”

  Thatcher drew a deep breath. This was where his analysis would be put to the test: that the aliens were just as concerned about protecting their planetside colony as Thatcher was about saving the marines inside it. “I want Redpole and Lively to step up their jamming of the closest Xanthic ships. Every Frontier ship will bring engines to maximum fleetwide acceleration levels. Then, on my command, all ships will drop to a lower orbit and prepare for a forty-five degree course change toward Recept’s southern pole.”

  The maneuver would threaten the planet’s surface, which would hopefully make the Xanthic fleet more reluctant to leave the lower orbit they’d been occupying till now.

  In the meantime, it was the Jersey’s turn to rotate back for a laser shot. “Helm, bring our own engines down to fifty percent. It’s time to do our part.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  The Jersey’s deceleration pressed Thatcher forward against his restraints for a moment before inertial compensators smoothed out the ride.

  Candle twisted around to face the captain’s chair. “Sir, the jamming isn’t having the effect it should.”

  Thatcher studied his holoscreen’s own tactical display more closely. His XO was right: the enemy ships sailed confidently forward. Then, it hit him. They still hadn’t adopted a formation of any kind, even after he’d made it perfectly clear that he had no intention of resolving this peacefully. Instead, the enemy ships advanced in a formless blob, with every ship traveling along a slightly different course, making their next moves almost impossible to predict.

  They aren’t communicating with each other at all, are they?

  It seemed crazy, but at the same time he felt absolutely certain of it. What did that mean?

  It means they’re less a fleet and more a collection of ships.

  Which was unlike anything he’d encountered before—not in the field, not even in one of the countless simulations his instructors has used to test him at the academy.

  But could that formlessness be turned against them?

  For now, he couldn’t see how. In fact, the fleet’s lack of cohesion was thwarting his plan to bind them to lower orbits. Some of the enemy ships were moving in that direction, yes, but too soon: they would intercept him as he brought his ships around to cut under the Xanthic fleet. Other alien warships trended upward, clearly looking to cut off his escape.

  And seven ships were headed straight for the Jersey, accelerating.

  Just as he noticed their advance, they struck. Seven lasers sprang across the battlespace.

  “Shields up!” Thatcher barked, sooner than he’d planned to.

  The forcefield came to life around the cruiser just nine seconds before the enemy beams reached his ship.

  Behind the Jersey, the logistics ships fed her capacitor power without needing to be ordered. But this time, the enemy lasers seemed more powerful than the ones that had hit the Lancer and the Snowbird.

  Were they concealing some of their power? Or are these ships just their heaviest hitters?

  But those questions were far from the most relevant at this particular moment. Much more pressing was the question of whether he would be able to keep his crew alive.

  “Sir…” Candle said, trailing off as he glanced at Thatcher and no doubt saw that his captain already knew what he was about to say.

  The Jersey’s shields were dropping faster than he would have thought possible. And then, almost without warning, they were gone.

  “Deploy repair drones,” he said, his voice coming out in a rasp. “Tell Lightfoot and North Star we’ll need theirs as well.”

  The New Jersey’s hull rumbled with the energy being dumped into her.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Planet Recept

  Ucalegon System, Lacuna Region

  Earth Year 2290

  The ground shook with the alien behemoth’s approach, and Avery loaded round after round into his KS 7.62, getting each shot off as fast as he could.

  This was his second engagement with the Xanthic—third, if you counted New Houston and the colony underneath it as two—and by now he’d learned that they were incredibly taxing.

  Almost every shot required pinpoint aim, whether you were burrowing into a Xanthic’s carapace with round after round or taking careful aim to blow open the paper-thin crevices between the jointed plating that covered them. His HUD’s aim assist lent his shots consistence, as it did all his marines. But if it hadn’t been for the exacting training standards established by the admiral and carried forward by his daughter, they’d be even less equipped to face the Xanthic.

  The giant Xanthic had upset the fragile balance between the two forces.

  Focus, Will. Focus.

  With his marines threatened, he brought all his training and experience to bear. Each round struck home, finding its way into the soft tissue underneath the giant’s carapace and rupturing.

/>   But that didn’t seem to slow the thing at all. Its stampede brought it to the bridge, and for a moment, the image of marines flying like bowling balls filled Avery’s mind.

  That didn’t happen. Instead, the great alien drew up short and brought its blades into play, wreaking havoc on the marines that packed the bridge. Their power armor was made from carbon nanotube smartfibers, designed to withstand immense forces, mostly by distributing them across the wearer’s entire body. But even the suits had their limits, and the Xanthic’s two-meter blades managed to puncture and slice, finding flesh through the epoxy resin matrix.

  On the backswing, the colossus used the dull edge of its blades to simply sweep marines from the bridge, knocking them into the river, which ran deep enough to swallow them whole.

  Avery winced at that. Their AIs were intelligent enough to seal the helmets against a suit water breach, but if they were unconscious and down there long enough…

  We’ll worry about that later. He loaded another round.

  The Xanthic’s writhing mass of gripper tentacles worked in tandem with the blades, lashing out to wrap around whatever they could find, leaving limbs at the wrong angles or plucking its victims from the bridge by the head to toss them into the water.

  Avery cursed as he glanced behind him. The marines on that side were holding firm, even gaining ground. No alien giants had showed up to threaten them, yet.

  But if this went on for much longer, his side would buckle. It would all be over, then.

  Swallowing hard, he gripped his rifle, then leapt onto the sturdy block he’d been firing over, which still glowed scarlet. He leapt onto the next-highest tower, trying not to remember just how far underground they were. How their bodies would likely never be recovered, if they died down here.

  He paused for one more shot, but being so exposed made him hasty, and the round went wild, not even striking carapace. His brother would have given him shit for that one. You can’t hit the broad side of a barn, Willy, he heard him say.