“What’s he doing?” Batra asked.
Mele shifted her display and saw the answer. “Saber is coming in. It looks like an attack run against the freighter.”
“The freighter would be a perfect target right now, wouldn’t it? Moving so slowly?”
“As far as I know.” Mele watched the curving paths of the warships steadying out and saw the pattern. “The enemy destroyer alone couldn’t stop Saber from getting through to the freighter, so the cruiser is moving to reinforce it. Saber won’t have a chance of reaching the freighter now without taking heavy damage, but I bet it breaks off before engaging the enemy warships.”
“He pulled away the enemy cruiser,” Batra said. “That was a well-timed move.”
“Yeah. I told you we could count on Rob Geary. Now—what the hell is the heavy weapons platoon doing?”
Her armor had alerted her to movement, highlighting the actions of the ground forces heavy weapons platoon as they burst from cover and began setting up to engage the freighter, which was now only about twenty kilometers away and steadily getting closer. “I haven’t ordered them into action! Get them under cover! Immediately!”
“Yes, Major.”
“They’re still up there! Get ’em inside!”
“Major, the platoon sergeant says with the enemy warship thousands of kilometers away and opening the range at a rapid rate—”
“This is space! We’re in a fixed orbit so the fire control solution is easy for a warship, they’re still in firing range, and they can see that part of the facility! Thousands of kilometers is nothing to a particle beam traveling at nearly the speed of light! Get those idiots—”
The particle beams from the light cruiser had spread out somewhat in their long path from the cruiser to their target, but still carried plenty of energy against individual battle armor. The beams clipped the portion of the facility where the heavy weapons platoon had emerged onto the outer surface. Invisible, the beams could be seen only by the havoc they wrought, slicing through soldiers and equipment as well as the outer edges of the facility at that site. But explosions erupted as the particle beams ruptured energy storage cells for some of the heavy weapons, adding to the destruction.
Mele heard her breath going in and out as she stared at the annihilation of the heavy weapons platoon, unable to speak for a moment. Finally getting her voice back, she spoke with forced calm. “Captain Batra, get any survivors back under cover, and let me know if any of their weapons are still usable.”
Batra, for the first time in her experience with him, sounded badly shaken. “Yes, Major. Major, I . . .”
“It’s done. It won’t happen again, will it?”
“No, Major.”
“Make sure all of your soldiers know exactly what happened,” Mele ordered, her tone merciless. “Tell your sergeants that I will shoot them the next time any of them hesitate for even a second in doing what I say. We can’t afford to let overconfidence kill any more of your soldiers.”
“Yes, Major.” Stunned, Batra didn’t try to defend his soldiers this time. “I agree.”
“Major?”
Mele looked over to see Corporal Lamar watching her anxiously.
“Our armor reported some explosions on the facility, ma’am.”
Inhaling slowly, Mele tried to speak normally. “The heavy weapons platoon has been wiped out. They broke cover while the enemy light cruiser could still engage them.” Lamar gazed back at her wordlessly. “Corporal, they were overconfident. I know you’re a combat veteran, but don’t you be overconfident. This isn’t Kosatka. I don’t want to lose a single Marine because you thought you had it solid.”
“Yes, ma’am. I understand. It won’t happen.”
“Good.”
As hard as it was to focus back on the fight, Mele wrenched her mind away from the massacre of the heavy weapons platoon and back to the oncoming freighter.
The freighter carrying the enemy troops came in slowly, ponderously, unable to match the swift, graceful maneuvers of the warships. But given enough time big freighters had no trouble matching vectors with something like the orbital facility. The enemy troops wouldn’t be delivered fast or with flair, but they would be delivered.
The facility’s navigation systems estimated the freighter was ten minutes from docking. She doubted the enemy soldiers would wait for the ship to dock. The first wave, at least, would come sooner than that. “Sergeant Major Savak, disable the power system. Take it down hard.”
“Yes, Major,” Savak said. In the aftermath of the heavy weapons platoon’s destruction, even Savak sounded less like her usual imperturbable self. “Taking down facility power system now. All personnel, the power system is going off-line.”
A few seconds later power loss alerts rippled across the display on Mele’s face shield. The light overhead in the compartment where she was went out, leaving only the dim glow of an emergency lantern in one upper corner. The soft, ever-present background noise of fans circulating air halted.
Her sensor readings stayed steady thanks to battery backups for those systems on the facility. Mele could see in a virtual window on her face shield the freighter sidling closer, growing slowly in size now that it was less than a kilometer from the facility and gently slowing its mass the small remaining amount needed to match orbits. Numerous small objects scattered on the side of the freighter facing her were now easily seen to be enemy soldiers in battle armor. They were clinging to the side of the freighter, preparing to leap across the remaining gap.
“I’m seeing warnings from our facility’s sensors,” Captain Batra said. “They look like weapon alerts.”
“I see the alerts,” Mele replied. “I think they’re preparing to fire a chaff screen.”
“Chaff? Yes. Those tubes match some disposable chaff launchers I’ve seen.”
“Here we go,” Mele said. No sound of firing carried through the emptiness of space, but she saw objects hurled at very low velocity from the mouths of the tubes, objects that burst into swarms of small bits and pieces that merged into a curtain suspended in space and moving at a steady pace toward the facility. Small strips of metal chaff glittered in the light of the star as they drifted, blocking any active radar or communications, and hindering the firing of any laser-type weapons through it. A moment later the active elements of the chaff field lit off, hundreds of tiny thermite flares whose brilliant light blinded visual sensors and whose intense heat blinded infrared systems. Mele’s vision of the freighter and the attacking soldiers vanished behind that wall of light and heat and tiny metal strips as the sensors viewing it frantically filtered out the glare.
She let out a slow breath to calm herself. The enemy, even if they’d intercepted the faked messages about shaky morale on the facility, were coming in with full preparations. They weren’t giving her any mistakes to exploit. In fact, the only mistake so far had been that of the heavy weapons platoon.
This was going to be as tough a fight as she’d feared. “All units, charge weapons and prepare to fire. The chaff curtain is heading toward us. The first wave of attacking soldiers will be right behind it.”
No one could aim through that mess. But there were surprises embedded in the surface of the facility they were approaching, surprises that had taken into account the possibility of a chaff curtain like this and that didn’t require precise aim.
“Major,” Lieutenant Nasir called, “can we estimate when the flares will burn out?”
“It depends what they’re set for,” Mele said. “They might’ve been set to burn out just before they reach the facility so their thermite won’t eat into the outer skin of this place. But there’s a good chance they’re going to keep burning until they hit the facility so the enemy can use them to knock out sensors and any defenses on the surface facing them.”
“Won’t that set off—?”
“Sure will.”
&nbs
p; Her display predicted the chaff screen would reach the surface of the facility in ten seconds. She switched back to the command circuit. “All units, weapons free. Fire when you have targets. Remain in protected positions.”
Five seconds to contact.
CHAPTER 9
The burning curtain drifted into contact, and Mele felt a faint shudder through the structure of the orbital facility as the burning thermite triggered the mines concealed on the outside of the facility.
The claymore mine was a very old concept, a weapon designed to hurl a blast of projectiles in one direction like a giant shotgun. Very old, but still very effective. The mines the Marines had planted could’ve been set off one by one by remote command or by contact, but the thermite had set them all off at once. The barrage of metal balls from all of the mines filled space between the facility and the freighter, the space where Mele expected the first wave of the enemy assault to be located, concealed just behind the chaff curtain.
The explosions of the mines also scattered the remaining chaff barrier a bit. Using a few surviving pinhole visual sensors, Mele got a look at the aftermath.
Dozens of enemy soldiers in that first wave had been hit as they flew through space toward the facility, the impacts of the balls from the mines knocking them back toward the freighter, or if the soldiers were really unlucky, pitching them outward either toward empty space or down toward the planet. The arms and legs of those killed by the mines dangled motionless or swayed with the rolling of their bodies. Those only wounded were triggering emergency thrusters on their armor to get back to the freighter, or to reach the facility where their luckier uninjured comrades were alighting on the dock and advancing toward the side of the facility. Mele watched the smooth, professional movements of the enemy soldiers, some standing and aiming their weapons to cover their comrades who rushed to breach the bulkheads facing them. The first wave of attackers had lost a lot of soldiers to the mines, but they knew what they were doing, and they were doing it well.
She wanted to be there, to be among the forces concealed a little ways back from the bulkheads that were about to be blown open. She wanted to be able to fight, to let her fears and worries be forgotten in the rush of battle. But that wasn’t her job. She had to stay back from the fight, had to remain functioning and overseeing everyone else as they fought, giving the orders that would allow the defense of the facility to be as coordinated as possible while communications were still easy.
Sensors viewing the outer bulkheads from the inside showed the holes being blown into existence by enemy breaching charges, the atmosphere in the adjacent areas venting into space, the enemy soldiers tossing in EMP grenades to disable automated defenses, then coming through in a rush of battle-armored shapes.
A rush that almost immediately faltered as the enemy soldiers found themselves facing the barriers and blocked passages that the defenders had created in place of the original plans that the enemy had expected to reliably guide them in this attack.
But they found ways ahead and charged into them, ways that had been designed as traps. Mines implanted along the apparently clear routes detonated, dead ends suddenly appeared, and in three places groups of defenders opened fire on enemy soldiers trapped in tight hallways.
The enemy tried to hold their advanced positions, but as their numbers melted away under fire they finally fell back to where the second wave of attackers was arriving on the facility. Reinforced, the enemy attack surged forward again, once more running into the defensive maze, more mines detonating, and in several places defenders adding their fire to that of the booby traps. This time, with greater numbers, the attackers held on, pushing ahead stubbornly despite their losses.
Mele checked the situation on the dock, seeing another wave of attackers landing. Oddly, though, they didn’t surge forward to join the push against the defenders. Why not?
Maybe because of something happening that she hadn’t noticed yet.
She pulled out the scale on her display, taking in what could be seen of the situation in space. Saber had been forced to break off her attack run, leaving the light cruiser room to pivot and charge back toward the facility. As the light cruiser once again drew close, Mele saw the enemy soldiers exchanging fire with the defenders begin to fall back, breaking contact. “All units, the light cruiser is returning to provide fire support to the attackers. Lieutenant Killian, Lieutenant Nasir, Gunnery Sergeant Moon, reposition. The enemy knows enough about the location of your forces for the light cruiser to target them.”
No one hesitated carrying out her orders this time. Mele watched her units repositioning, moving to different defensive locations within the deadly maze. The information flowing into her battle armor flickered, symbols and warnings freezing for a moment before suddenly updating.
“They’re hacking into all of the cables and circuits they’ve located,” Sergeant Giddings reported. “I’m blocking, but we might have to sever links soon.”
“If you need to drop a link, do it,” Mele said.
Alerts appeared on the schematic where new holes were appearing in the facility, particle beams from the light cruiser punching through the structure and through the areas where Mele’s defenders had been before they moved. Because the beams had to pass through other parts of the structure, and anything else in the way, they damaged equipment and opened holes, allowing more atmosphere to escape into space.
The barrage over, the enemy forces surged forward again, Mele’s defenders hitting them from new positions.
What odds were they facing? The information flowing in from many sensors offered only fragments of data. How many soldiers were attacking? How many had Mele’s forces already taken out? She couldn’t be sure, couldn’t even come up with a reasonably close estimate, but it seemed the guess that they’d face at least three-to-one odds had been unfortunately accurate. And the enemy had that damned light cruiser to offer fire support, as well as whatever they’d brought on the freighter.
Her data flow hesitated again, for a couple of seconds this time, and when it updated a lot of the current information was gone, replaced by last-known-data markers.
“They’re sending jamming through our lines,” Giddings said. “I’m blocking their malware but the jamming is just noise that keeps any other signals from getting through. All I can do about it is try to hop my own signal frequencies and modulations fast enough to get something through.”
“—status,” Mele heard.
“Say again,” she called in reply.
“—pressure is . . . req . . . ov . . .”
She’d known that this moment would come, but it happened earlier than she’d hoped. “All units, this is Major Darcy. Comms are seriously disrupted. All groups operate independently. I say again, comms are disrupted, all groups operate independently. Darcy, over.”
A few replies came back. “This is Sergeant Major Savak, roger, out.” “This is Lieutenant Paratnam, roger, out.” “This is Gunnery Sergeant Moon, roger, out.”
The rest knew what to do if comms were lost, though. Mele watched her picture of the situation evaporating like a chalk drawing on a sidewalk being hit by heavy rain as sensor links were severed or jammed, and heard wavering blasts of static on the comm frequencies. It was up to the other group commanders now, to keep hitting and keep moving, avoid staying in one place long enough to be trapped by the superior numbers and firepower of the enemy.
“Major,” Sergeant Giddings said, “there’s a chance the enemy localized us based on data flows. I recommend that we shift locations as well.”
“Good idea,” she replied. “Corporal Lamar, head for our first alternate hide hole. I’m sending you the route.”
“Yes, ma’am. On your feet!” Lamar ordered the other enlisted. “Relaying the route to each of you now. Got it? Ford, take point!”
“Which Ford?”
“Sean Ford! Use your heads, people,” Lamar said. �
��Ford Okubo is our medic. I’m not putting him on point. If I say Ford, I mean Private Ford. Got it? Good. Why are you standing around?”
Private Ford went to the access door, darted through in a rush, and headed for an apparently solid barrier. Once there he paused, studying the route information sent to his armor, found the hidden lock that allowed a section of the barrier to open, and led the way through.
As Mele followed in the center of the group, emergency lighting giving a weird cast to the otherwise dark hallway they were in, her armor reported the faint vibrations caused by explosions elsewhere in the facility. She looked in the direction that the fighting was in as the flurry of destruction ended, wanting to head that way and knowing that she couldn’t.
Stay alive. Stay free. For as long as possible, while the other groups tried to wear down the enemy faster than the enemy wore them down, and the enemy sought to gain control of this facility so they could dominate Glenlyon’s inhabited world from orbit.
She had no illusions. They had to survive until the enemy was forced to withdraw. If they couldn’t do that, and nothing else changed, Glenlyon would lose this battle and probably the entire conflict.
So they’d have to keep fighting and hiding as long as they could, and pray that would be long enough.
* * *
• • •
A day and a half later, Mele sat in a long, narrow access tunnel that was barely tall enough for her Marines to sit upright in. The voice of Lieutenant Nasir wavered in volume over the link that Giddings had managed to establish. “Lieutenant Killian is dead, along with most of her group, I think. I was speaking with a group of two survivors when we lost our link to them.”
“Do you have any idea what happened?” Mele said, trying not to think about how much the loss of that group diminished the firepower available to her defenders.
Triumphant (Genesis Fleet, The) Page 18