The Orion Front - A Hard Military Space Opera Adventure (Aeon 14: The Orion War Book 9)
Page 19
In answer, the Lantzer groaned, and a vibration thrummed through the deck.
Having the ship fall apart around them wasn’t going to help with their problems, and the admiral knew she needed to try something different.
She activated one of the ARC’s stasis shields and turned it onto a new course, diving straight for one of the larger Exdali.
“What are you doing?!” Karma exclaimed.
“Seeing what these things are made of,” Jessica replied, then held her breath as the fighter slammed into the creature.
There was a moment when the ship was out of sight, then it came out the other side, smaller bits of writhing Exdali trailing after. The larger creature seemed to break apart, some portions drifting listlessly while others began to move on their own, resuming the chase, albeit at a slower pace.
Exdali nearby shifted, converging on the dead mass, devouring the scraps in moments.
Jessica glanced at the approaching fleet’s markers on the holotank and shook her head in dismay. Carson’s ships had originally been only thirty minutes away, but the Lantzer had been boosting hard. Though ten minutes had passed, the vessels coming to the rescue were still over twenty-seven minutes from intercept.
Jessica continued to slash the three ARCs through the pursuing creatures, breathing a sigh of relief as the Exdali continued to fall back, slowed by the impacts and the act of devouring the pieces of mass left behind.
The Lantzer had put almost a hundred kilometers between it and the leading edge of the creatures when the vibration in the deck ceased. It was followed by an eerie moment of silence, and then an explosion rocked the ship.
Jessica adjusted the port engine’s burn, using what thrusters the ship still had to balance it on the fusion torches. Their new course had the Lantzer angling toward a wheel and spoke habitat, and she fired the midship maneuvering jets to rotate the vessel, turning it in the process.
“They’re closing,” Karma whispered.
The loss of acceleration had already cut the dearly won hundred kilometers of separation down to eighty. Jessica plotted it out, the result of her calculation showing an intercept in four minutes.
“I’m out of ideas,” she whispered, looking at Karma and Lucida with wide eyes.
Neither of the ensigns replied, both staring mutely at her, as though she would somehow manage to summon a miracle out of thin air.
“The pods,” she managed to stammer, gesturing to the back of the bridge. “Get to the pods!”
The two rose and stumbled across the shuddering deck, the expressions on their faces showing the knowledge of how slim their chances were. Jessica turned to join the ensigns, but another explosion rocked the ship. She didn’t need Gil’s announcement to know it was the port engine.
An alert sounded, and her HUD updated with an Exdali intercept time of one minute.
Karma fell against the bulkhead. “It doesn’t matter now. We’ll never make it.”
She sent back an affirmative grunt, unable to form words, the reality that she was about to be shredded by Exdali taking hold in her mind.
She was about to order him to safety when a voice came into her mind, a thundering wave of implacable certainty and determination.
~I’m here.~
DEPARTING AIRTHA
STELLAR DATE: 10.11.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: ISS I2, Airtha
REGION: Huygens System, Transcend Interstellar Alliance
“Stars,” Captain Rachel muttered as she approached Tangel on the bridge of the I2. “Another system, another gate. We have twelve facilities in New Canaan alone manufacturing super-sized gates, and they still can’t keep up.”
“Well,” Tangel replied, looking beyond the gate to the massive Airthan ring and the white dwarf it encircled. “This is probably a good system to leave one in permanently. I have a feeling that I-Class ships will be passing through a lot.”
“True,” Rachel nodded. “Though I can’t believe we’re going back to Praesepe. Seems like we’ve spent half the war with that cluster filling half the starscape.”
“I suppose we’ve been skirting around it for some time,” Tangel replied. “Though not quite half the war.”
“Close enough,” the other woman replied with a laugh. “Gotta admit, I’m a bit nervous about jumping so deep into the cluster itself. Without a gate, it would take almost a century to get out.”
“So much exaggeration,” Tangel laughed. “More like seventy-five years.”
The captain snorted. “Yeah, well, that would certainly feel like a century. I—”
“Admiral, Captain!” The comm officer spun in his seat. “I just got an urgent message over Admiral Carson’s direct QC. He’s asking why we haven’t jumped to Buffalo yet.”
“Buffalo?” Rachel asked. “What for?”
“There have been a few messages on the QuanComm network about a dustup there,” Tangel said. “But they said it was small and that Carson’s Fleet was handling it.”
“Ma’am, Admiral Carson says there are Exdali appearing insystem and chasing the Lantzer.”
In an instant, Tangel stripped the message the comm officer was reading and located the Lantzer’s last reported coordinates and vector. Her next thought activated the jump gate, adjusting its alignment from the Inner Praesepe Empire to the Albany System on the cluster’s rimward edge.
Rachel had already given Helm its orders, and the ship surged forward, speeding across the hundred kilometers between it and the gate.
Tangel sent a message to Carson asking for updates, and just before the I2 reached the gate, he provided fresh scan data.
“Shit!” she swore aloud, realizing that the Lantzer had slowed considerably and the jump would have seen them collide with the cruiser.
Racing against time, she made one final adjustment. And then space disappeared.
Seven seconds later, it was back. Audible alarms wailed, heralding a near collision with a small ship off the port bow.
“Pinnace out there!” Scan called out. “Engines are dead.”
“Where’s the Lantzer?” Tangel demanded, then spotted it fifty kilometers away and breathed a sigh of relief.
“Instruct the dockmaster to send out tugs,” Rachel replied while scowling at the holotank.
Scan updated a second later, and the tank showed a stream of Exdali stretched out several thousand kilometers behind the severely damaged ISF cruiser.
Tangel tried to reach out to the Lantzer, but the I2’s comm array couldn’t make a Link with the ship. Rather than wait for the comm team to establish a solid connection, she reached out across space and found Jessica’s mind, forcing her thoughts across the distance to reach her friend.
~I’m here.~
~Tangel? Where? And shit, can you turn it down a notch? My eyes almost popped out.~
~I’m aboard the I2. We’re fifty klicks to port. We’re going to handle the Exdali, but where are they coming
from?~
A feeling of shame came from Jessica for a moment before she replied. ~They followed us through a jump. We drew them out to take on the Caretaker ships, and somehow they came after.~
~Caretaker ships?~ Tangel felt a wave of fear strike her. ~At Star City?~
~No…or I hope not. We never made it. Got knocked out of our jump this side of Stillwater.~
A torrent of implications, none of them good, rolled over Tangel, but she pushed them aside.
~OK. Rachel’s sending tugs to get you away from this mess. We’ll shove these things back in the dark layer and put a cork in that gate that’s sending them.~
~Stars…you have no idea how good it feels to know I didn’t destroy a star system.~
Tangel sent a laugh. ~Well, don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched.~
~Or your cocks.~
~What?~ Tangel’s brow furrowed.
~Nothing. Oh! Thanks for saving Trevor too.~
~He in the pinnace?~
~Uh huh, a decoy…sorta.~
Tangel ran a hand over her head, subconsciously tightening her ponytail. ~OK, I want to work on this Exdali problem. You get to safety.~
~And a nap. Stars, I could sleep for a week.~
Tangel sent a supportive feeling into Jessica’s mind, and then turned her full attention to the problem at hand.
“We’re opening a rift,” Rachel said, highlighting a point on the main holo. “Sending ARCs out on remote to draw them toward it.”
“Okay,” Tangel nodded. “Send out as many as it takes to make sure they’re corralled. I don’t want a single one of these things to get away.”
“How are we going to stop them?” Rachel asked, gesturing at the origin point for the stream of Exdali. “There’s no rift there…it’s like they’re just appearing out of thin air.”
Tangel heaved a sigh. “They followed Jessica through a jump.”
Rachel’s eyes widened. “Shit! From Star City?”
“No, they ran into trouble before they got there.”
“We need to know where,” Tangel replied, but before she could speak further, the secondary holotank switched to a view of the Perseus Arm.
“Fun for later,” Tangel said, thankful that the location Jessica had jumped from wasn’t near any stars.
“Right,” Rachel agreed. “I have a team putting mirrors on RMs. Should be ready to fire in thirty minutes.”
Tangel nodded, turning back to the primary holotank, watching as several hundred remote-piloted ARCs began to shepherd the Exdali from their origin point to the rift they were being pushed into.
Carson reached out as she was sending orders to open a second rift closer to the origin point, so the things could be funneled into it with less trouble.
She nodded, glad that the mystery of Jessica’s disappearance was at least partially solved.
“Shit,” Tangel muttered.
Carson sent a long groan, and Tangel shared his sentiment.
he said,
What’s with all the cock references? Tangel wondered.
Twenty minutes later, the deck around her took on a lavender hue, and she turned to see Jessica approaching.
“Stars,” Tangel whispered as they embraced. “I was really starting to worry about you. What happened out there?”
Jessica’s lips quirked up into a smile. “Oh, I dunno. Got knocked out of a jump by Caretakers. I went head to head with one and beat it, we fou—”
“Whoa!” Tangel held up a hand. “You what?”
“Thought that might get your attention,” Jessica said with a tired laugh. “I fought an ascended being and won. I think that makes me the first.”
“Oh?” Jessica looked up at the overhead. “When did you do it? I took my Caretaker out seven days ago.”
“Cary beats you both.” Tangel shot the overhead a cool look. “I think she got hers a few hours before you did, Jessica.”
“Seriously?” Dark purple brows lifted up her lavender forehead. “Cary?”
“Holy shit!” Jessica exclaimed. “I get stuck in the middle of nowhere for a week, and everything goes nuts! And here I was all excited that I managed to capture mine.”
“Hold up.” Tangel placed a hand on Jessica’s shoulder. “Captured? Alive?”
“Uh huh. My Marines are guarding it on my ship. Wasn’t sure if you wanted it brought aboard—part of why I came up here.”
“Part?” Tangel asked.
“Well, I wasn’t just going to sit around doing nothing while you fixed my mistake.”
Captain Rachel approached, shaking her head. “From what I overheard, you had some amazing successes, not mistakes, Admiral.”
“Don’t you call me that.” Jessica grabbed Rachel and pulled her in for an embrace. “Stars, I still remember when you were on your first rotation. The I2 couldn’t ask for a better skipper.”
“Sure, yeah, thanks for reminding my crew that I was knee-high to a grasshopper while you were helping train the first class at the Kap.”
Despite her words, Rachel was grinning, and Tangel favored them both with a smile before turning back to the holotank.
“What I want to know,” she said after staring at it for a minute, “…well, correction. One of the things I want to know is how the rift on the other side is staying open.”
“Shit,” Jessica muttered. “You’re right. At first, I thought it was just because of the ones following us out of the rift before we jumped, but way too many are out now.”
“Were there more ships that you escaped from?” Tangel asked.
“There were three. We captured one, and the Exdali destroyed the other two. We had to abandon our prize ship four days ago. I suppose something aboard it could have repaired, but all that was left were rudimentary automated systems. Not even a decent NSAI.”
“A Caretaker ship?” Tangel shook her head in disbelief. “Talk about a jackpot.”
“Still, it was nowhere near the final engagement,” Jessica said. “There had to be another ship nearby. Maybe one stealthed. Who knows.”
“Well, it’s going to meet a few antimatter warheads if it’s still there,” Tangel said.
“I wonder why they don’t do this all the time,” Rachel mused as the march of Exdali continued on.
“Send Exdali at us through jump gates?” Tangel asked.
“Yeah.”
Jessica shrugged. “Maybe I pissed them off enough to break a rule or something.”
“Maybe we can ask the one you captured,” Tangel said, checking on the Caretaker that Jessica had captured and noting that the Marines had brought it to the containment facility aboard the I2 where the captured remnants were kept.
Jessica shook her head in response, swallowing before she said, “I don’t think I want to talk to it. That’s all on you, Tangel.”
“Noticed that,” Tangel muttered. “I’m looking forward to learning why the Caretakers chose now to use this tactic.”
“And let’s hope that they don’t alter their rules of engagement,” Rachel added.
“Stars,” Jessica whispered. “If they wanted to, they could wipe us all out doing this.”
Tangel clenched her jaw, thinking about what possible defense they could muster against such an attack.
“I can only assume it’s not in their best interest,” Rachel said. “Maybe in doing so, they’d destroy the galaxy…or at least make it unusable for their purposes.”
“Jump gates,” Tangel muttered. “Best and worst thing ever. Right after dark layer FTL.”
The other two women nodded, and none spoke, watching as Carson’s fleet finally arrived and began patrolling nearby space, searching for any Exdali that may have escaped the cordon.
“Fire when ready,” Rachel said after getting a nod from Tangel.
“Stars, this sucks,” Jessica muttered.
“How so?” Tangel asked. “Other than the obvious, of course.”
“We’re going to blow the gate, then have to go back and seal the rift and deploy another gate. Total waste.”
“It’s the Caretakers’ fault, not yours,” Rachel said. “I can’t believe they set up out there waiting for you—I assume that’s what happened.”
Jessica nodded. “That’s what the one I fought indicated.”
On the main holodisplay, the view of local space showed six bright engine flares, temporary stars that shone in the darkness as the RMs sped toward the jump gates.
“We got interrupted before,” Tangel said, turning from the display to Jessica. “How did you defeat an ascended AI? I’ve gone up against three, and the first two times, Bob had to save me.”
“Stop interrupting, Bob,” Tangel admonished, a slight laugh in her tone. “I want to hear from Jessica how she defeated the Caretaker.”
“Bob!” Jessica exclaimed. “How did you guess?”