The Battle for Eden

by Mark E Burgess

  Borgo Press Books by Mark E. Burgess

  The Battle for Eden: The Human-Knacker War, Book Three

  Dog Daze and Cat Naps: A Vet Student’s Odyssey

  The Human-Knacker War Series

  1. Slaughterhouse World, by Ardath Mayhar

  2. Knack’ Attack, by Robert Reginald

  3. The Battle for Eden, by Mark E. Burgess

  Copyright Information

  Copyright © 2012 by Mark E. Burgess

  Published by Wildside Press LLC

  www.wildsidebooks.com

  Dedication

  To my wife, Denise,

  and my daughters, Anna & Sarah,

  without whom life in

  any universe would be empty;

  And my thanks to the legendary Keith

  Laumer, grand marshal of combat science fiction, whose Bolo story “The Last Command” captured my imagination even as a child.

  Chapter One

  When the Knacker invasion ships materialized out of warp dimension into the Solaris II star system, humanity’s space fleet was waiting for them. The decision had been made: no more running before the enemy, no more conceding system after system to the alien marauders from the galactic rim. Here the prey vowed to turn the tide against their tormentors, or to die trying.

  The human ships floated silently in the inky blackness of near space, their sleek, silver predatory shapes glinting in the unfiltered sunlight. Behind and beneath them shimmered the blue and green orb of planet Eden, one of the most earth-like and heavily populated worlds of the human Federation. Whether SpaceForce’s decision to stand and fight was an act of bravery or desperation was debatable, but no one disputed that the human race was running out of choices, running out of places to hide, of planets to retreat to. Humanity was also being pushed back dangerously close to their core worlds, which had to be protected at all costs.

  Simon Roy reflected on this as he waited in his new Avenger class fighter, focusing his anger to help suppress the gnawing fear at the back of his mind. The glowing heads-up display floated ghost-like in front of his eyes, and he scanned it automatically while controlling his breathing. Inhale, exhale, slow and steady, while the small red blips of the enemy ships moved toward the waiting green icons marking the defenders. The alien armada was 40,000 kilometers out and closing fast. Immediately to his port and starboard floated the other members of Alpha fighter squadron, friends and comrades all, many of whom would not see tomorrow.

  The readouts before him told the harsh truth: the human fleet was badly outnumbered. Alone with his thoughts in the stillness before battle, Simon couldn’t shake a feeling of inevitability. Despite SpaceForce’s best efforts, Eden would likely fall today, just as with every other planet the aliens had set their sights on. If only humanity had had more time to prepare, to build ships, to develop better battle tech, then they might have been able to repel the invaders, push them back, even retake the worlds that held human populations. For truth be told, the outlying planets already overrun by the Crabs (as humans called them) had not been devastated. To the contrary, the habitat of each conquered world was left intact by the aliens, aside from the violence required to subdue the resident populations. The invaders destroyed key defensive installations, and disabled the infrastructure that modern civilization depended on. Each planet’s military was overrun, its communication networks and power grids shattered. After that, the Crabs methodically “harvested” the helpless inhabitants, filling their ships’ holds with living humans to process at facilities on distant worlds. Given enough time, the marauders would reduce a planet’s population by 70% or more before leaving for better hunting elsewhere.

  The destinations of the loaded Knacker freighters were mostly unknown, but humans had discovered a few of the factory-planets used by the aliens, and Simon knew that what they had found was a horror show of unthinkable proportions. The Crabs’ processing centers were nothing less than planet-wide abattoirs that worked day and night skinning, slicing, cooking, and packaging their prey into convenient foods for the Knacker swarm.

  He sighed, his exhale sounding hollow within the helmet of his environment suit, and reached his gloved hand out to touch the photo pasted to the ship’s control panel. The faces of a pretty, dark-haired woman holding a young girl smiled out at him, and a flicker of sadness touched his face. His wife and child were only memories now, part of the multitude of humanity that had been swept away in this thrice-damned war. The thought of them being served as hors d’oeuvres in a Knacker buffet kindled a burn deep inside him that had never extinguished. At this point he had nothing to lose, did not even particularly care if he lived or died, as long as he could take a few of the hated Crabs with him.

  His expression hardened as he turned his attention back to the view outside his craft. Simon knew where the enemy should appear, from almost straight ahead of his current position, but the endless depths of space could swallow a thousand ships and reveal nothing. At least this battle would play out on the day side of the planet, so the sun’s rays would highlight the combatants. Simon disliked engagements fought in deep space or in a planet’s shadow, where you couldn’t see friend or foe except on instrument display, unless a thruster fired or a ship exploded. And if you lost your sensors while battling in that endless black, you were blind, a sitting target. Today he would fight in the light, and he would give the Crabs reason to fear.

  There!

  He caught a flicker of motion in the distance, and the speck grew rapidly even as he watched. Other shapes appeared to both sides of the first ship as the shrinking distance revealed smaller vessels. The helmet speaker crackled and his commander’s voice spoke crisply, “This is Colonel Hastings aboard the destroyer Xerxes. Heads up, everyone. Bogies at one o’clock and closing. Looks like eight or ten destroyers, three carriers, and a whole crapload of fighters. Our task is simple: engage the enemy at will when in range. Alpha and Gamma fighter squadrons, provide fire cover for our carriers and destroyers. Beta and Delta squadrons are free to range wherever you find enemy fighters. Avoid their destroyers; their antispacecraft systems will pick you off. Leave the big boys to us. Good luck, and may the gods of battle favor us this day.”

  Simon’s hands flew over the controls in front of him, bringing his ride to life, and he felt more than heard the deep hum resonating through the ship’s hull as the fighter powered up. Scarcely had he completed the startup routine when the sky around him lit up with a brilliant blue-white flash. To his starboard side the huge bulk of the destroyer Xerxes had unleashed its forward energy cannons. The windows of Simon’s small craft instantly cycled dark to cut the glare, and he was able to see the second salvo clearly. Twin beams of coherent energy, each more than a meter in thickness, lanced from the bow of the human destroyer and leapt across the void separating the two fleets. They appeared to impact one of the largest enemy vessels in the far distance. A brief flash obscured the target, but when the glare faded, the opposing ship was still advancing, with no damage visible to the naked eye.

  The apparent futility of the human barrage was expected, and he wasted not a microsecond of his attention on it. Major Simon Roy was a veteran of five heavy naval engagements with the Crabs. He knew that these initial salvos were simply saber-rattling, as well as a preliminary testing of targeting systems and armament. There was always the chance of a lucky shot knocking out an enemy’s sensor array or maneuvering thrusters, but mostly the ships were getting a feel for each other as they closed to effective striking range. Then things would get serious.

  The other human destroyers, five in all, joined in the assault, and energy beams filled the void as the two forces continued on a collision course. The blunt-nosed Knacker vessels, nearly twice the size of their SpaceForce
counterparts, were now returning fire, and their energy bolts came fast and accurate, each hitting a human ship dead center before winking out a second later. The Crabs possessed the superior military technology. Their energy projection weapons produced a beam more coherent than that of the humans, with less bleed-off over vast distances, therefore packing more punch over a greater range. Simon spared a glance to his right and saw chunks of debris flying into space off the Xerxes. The alien hit had done some damage.

  No sound reached Simon’s ship through the vacuum of space. He had trained in aircraft planetside before joining SpaceForce, and he had never gotten used to the empty quiet of combat outside of the atmosphere. Once engaged in battle, the rumble of his own ship’s engines and weapons would be his only companions outside of the com link. He looked forward to it; anything was better than the tension of sitting and waiting while the silence pressed in on him. No sooner had that thought brushed his mind than a cluster of Knacker fighters streaked by his craft at high speed, causing him to cringe as the nearest ship passed mere meters beyond his window. In that moment his focus shrank, and his universe became very small and very personal.

  With finely-honed reflexes Simon hit the lateral thrusters and wheeled his fighter 180 degrees. As the retreating alien fighters came into his sights he kicked the main engines into high acceleration. This latest-generation Avenger possessed inertial dampeners, a technology stolen from captured enemy fighters. Even with their assistance in cushioning the blow, the pressure of fifty Earth gravities of thrust pushed him deep into his crash seat and forced the air from his lungs. He struggled to breathe as he began to run down his quarry. Icons of enemy craft were appearing all over his digital display, lighting it up like a cloud of enraged bees. Great Ares, there were so many!

  The nimble craft maneuvered effortlessly, like an extension of his own body, as he banked hard to pursue two Crab fighters which had split off from the pack ahead of him. They appeared to be lining up for a strafing run at the nearest human destroyer, and he closed with them from astern. The ovoid shapes of the alien craft contrasted starkly with the arrowhead contours of his own ship, but their awkward appearance belied their deadly effectiveness. Nearly eighty percent of one-on-one engagements with the Knackers had ended with the human fighter destroyed. At least that was the result of battles utilizing the older Lancer class fighters; these new machines had capabilities that were an order of magnitude superior to their predecessors. The experts hoped that this would give SpaceForce a fighting chance over Eden.

  Simon felt a thrill course through him as the two alien vessels swelled in his sights. For the first time it appeared the human armada had fielded craft capable of running with the enemy even at combat speeds. Now the Knackers noticed his pursuit, and their rear energy weapons began spitting lances of fire back at him as they initiated evasive maneuvers.

  The alien fighters split in opposite directions, and he tracked the one that banked left. The carapace of his ship flashed like a nova as he took a direct hit from the alien’s weapons. Ghost images momentarily filled his eyes and the hull bucked beneath him. But here, too, his fighter served him well. New ablative armor deflected much of the energy of the aliens’ weapons. On first detection of the attack, the navigation computer threw the ship into a jitter and zigzag pattern, jarring him within the restraining flight harness. He retained control of the general direction of flight, but the craft’s trajectory took on a random element that made it difficult for adversaries to focus repeated hits on any one part of his ship. His fighter took two more glancing shots, and then the targeting computer showed “weapons lock” and fired.

  The main forward guns on fighters were heavy fixed weapons; the ship had to be aligned to the target in order to score a hit. The rear weapons, such as those the alien had been peppering him with, were smaller and usually mobile, allowing targeting systems to track an opponent without turning the entire ship’s hull. But the real power was to the front, and once the two ships were properly aligned, his fighter unleashed a full onslaught on the elusive alien.

  The delta-wing Avengers carried port and starboard fusion-powered energy weapons, each capable of producing 50,000 megajoules of projected coherent plasma. Fired at close range and focused to a target spot no larger than the tip of a man’s thumb, the beam heated the impact area to a temperature approximating the surface of the sun within 0.25 seconds. Even with the Knacker’s projected defensive screens, which diffused and absorbed some of the energy of the hit, the majority of the beam punched through. It also didn’t matter that the skin of the alien ship was made of advanced, high-density alloys and refractory materials. There was only one possible reaction that a solid substance could have in the face of that amount of energy. It simply vaporized.

  From Simon’s viewpoint everything happened almost too fast to follow. His guns blazed, and twin gaping holes instantly opened in the alien’s hull. Bits of metal and debris exploded outward from the wounds, gases jetting into space as the ship lost compression and vented its air into vacuum. The Avenger’s guns fired once more, and the vessel ahead of him exploded, the heat of the plasma impact igniting the remaining oxygen within the hull. The fusion reactor containment system remained intact, or the entire ship would have instantly become a miniature sun. The Crabs did know their tech stuff. Their reactors, after which the current human versions were modeled, were marvels of efficiency and reliability, with multiple fail-safes built in to prevent loss of containment. Only a direct hit to the fusion core would usually cause it to blow.

  In this case, the reactor’s survival went for naught, as the explosion ripped off a large section of the Crab’s starboard hull. It spun lazily away, trailing debris like confetti stretching out behind it. The main section of the crippled ship slid to Simon’s port side as he shot toward it, fires still sputtering deep within the wreck. Just as he flew past, the body of a Knacker floated out of the gaping wound in the hull. The spider-like form was covered in an environment suit, and its numerous limbs were moving; the damned thing was still alive! Simon twitched his controls to the left, and his fighter swerved just enough to clip the alien with his port wing. At his velocity the blunt leading edge acted like a butcher’s knife, slicing the alien neatly in two. Perhaps neat wasn’t the best description, as limbs and entrails spewed outward in an organic imitation of the alien ship’s disintegration. A thin smile of satisfaction touched Simon’s lips.

  His dogfight with the Crab had carried him close to one of the human destroyers, and he spared a glance as he flashed by. Long blackened furrows marked the huge ship’s armor where the enemy’s weapons had scored it. Fires were visible in several sections of hull, but the ship was still under power, maneuvering and firing back even as he watched. That brief look was all he could spare. He tore his gaze away again to engage another enemy fighter closing in.

  Simon notched four kills that day. The first dogfight was actually the hardest. The second came against a Knacker already engaged with a Delta squadron fighter; that one was easy pickings. His helmet radio relayed a quick “Thanks, friend!” from the other pilot, and then the speaker went silent again and he was off tracking another bogie.

  The communications net was always open during battle, but comments were kept short and simple. Everything happened too fast to maintain any planned actions between fighters. Most of what came through on the com was chatter from the big ships, coordinating their efforts or issuing general direction to fighter squadrons:

  “Delta group, put some distance between you and the Orion; she needs room to maneuver, and her crew is worried about catching you in their big guns.”

  “Alpha squadron, our carriers are under siege; move over to give them cover. Our destroyers will have to take care of themselves.”

  “Gladius and Romeo, this is Xerxes. Those Knacker destroyers have us outgunned; we’ve already lost Hera and the rest of us have sustained damage. Concentrate all your firepower together on the destroyer which I’ve highlighted on your screens. Let’s s
ee if those bastards can take what we’ve got.”

  Simon was too busy to pay much heed to the com. His third and fourth kills came in quick succession, one a fluke really, when a Knacker fighter jetted across his bow and his main weapons, set on automatic, locked and fired instantly. He could hardly take credit for “his” kill, as it was over before he even knew what happened.

  For awhile he continued flying cover for the two human carrier ships, one of which was home to his fighter squadron, until things got too hot and they fled back into hyperspace. He hated to see them go, but they’d return later if things went in favor of the humans. Hell, if the battle ended badly, then there would be no fighters to pick up anyway.

  After they departed, he hit his thrusters and turned, powering back toward the group of destroyers, hoping to provide cover and join any remaining members of his squadron. But before he could close with them, a proximity alarm sounded and his display flashed an angry red icon closing behind him. Damn! He resisted the absurd impulse to turn and look over his shoulder. How had he let that Crab get so close? Well, nuts. There was nothing for it but to cut and run, and run he did.

  His ship served him proud, responding to his touch like a fine musical instrument to a maestro. He was known among his peers as an expert pilot, and he used every trick he knew to shake his pursuer, banking hard to port and starboard, rolling and reversing mid-turn, looping up and over in a high-g climb, abruptly braking with reverse thrusters in hopes the Crab would overshoot him. No matter what he tried, the Knacker fighter stayed on his heels, never quite lined up for a kill shot, but not losing contact with him. He pushed the limits of his ship and his own endurance, exceeding the recommended maximum g-forces for the hull. Several times he neared blackout, despite the inertial dampeners cushioning his fragile body from energies that would surely have crushed him to a pulp against the cabin walls.