by B. V. Larson
“If you want to know suffering, try living among an alien species your whole life.”
“You could have gone back to Ruxin now that it’s liberated.”
“And miss all this? Pish-posh.”
Straker snapped his fingers. “Back to work, squiddly.”
“There’s no need for slurs.” Zaxby turned up the place where his nose would be and shut up—exactly as Straker had hoped he would.
With the main display now updated in realtime, Straker could do nothing but watch as Trinity’s icon crawled across the intervening space and the minutes ticked down. In that time, he tried to make a decision.
Should he order Trinity to attack from long range, darting in and out, drawing many enemy drones away from the main battle? Or should they descend into underspace and emerge among the defenders, to stiffen their defense?
Unfortunately there were no more hack-mines—and it was possible the enemy had already observed the results and had taken countermeasures anyway. Trinity still had plenty of float mine warheads, though, converted from the relatively useless shipkiller missiles she usually carried. No missile would survive the thousands of beams that the swarm employed, and would have to detonate early, killing only a few. Better to drop nukes among them from underspace, if it came to that.
It occurred to Straker that the swarm tactics of the Opters rendered useless nearly one-third of the weaponry of the typical human fleet—the missiles. Railguns were also less effective until point-blank range, as tiny craft dodged them easily. Beams were still effective, but the small size and maneuverability of the targets made up for their lack of armor.
“Zaxby, make a note for the next message you send to your brainiac buddies. We need a new class of ship, or at least a new weapons loadout for escorts, optimized against our new enemy.”
“Do you not mean Opter-mized?” Zaxby laughed, a little too vigorously.
“Now who’s making hideous puns? Just do it, will you? Perform some studies, run some sims, come up with recommendations.”
“It may not matter.”
“Why?”
Zaxby rolled an extra eye around to fix three on Straker. “Because at this rate, we may soon have no shipyards.”
“You’re trying to be a smartass. That’s a good point, but, we have hundreds of small yards, usually for building freighters and local attack ships. Include that in the study. I need some kind of… liberty ship.”
“Liberty ship?”
“Access your historical database from Old Earth, twentieth century, World War Two, United States of America. Their Liberty Ships were freighters, but the principle is the same. A ship that can be built quick and cheap. Something with a small crew, very simple, and effective mainly against these drones. Everything else should be sacrificed for combat effectiveness—crew comfort, unneeded sensors, extended comms. Something like a super attack ship, or specialized corvette. Something we can build by the thousands.”
“I will send it out on the next message drone.” Zaxby tapped at the console. “Admiral Straker, I need to know our tactics. Do we attack from outside, or pass through to help defend?”
Straker stroked his jaw as if thinking, but he’d already decided. If his main role was to inspire his forces, he couldn’t very well snipe and pick at the enemy from the outside. Only by putting himself in with the defenders would he stiffen their spines and, just maybe, this would urge Commodore Gray’s forces on to greater efforts.
“We go in. Get a good reading and set course to emerge somewhere protected, but close to the fight. We’ll need to orient and update, and then help out where we see they need it the most.”
“Aye aye, Liberator.”
“I’m surprised you’re not concerned that we’ll be killed.”
“Given that Opter drones are too small to mount underspace detectors, we maintain the ability to escape at will.”
“We won’t be exercising that option. In fact, make sure you don’t even mention it. Nobody’s going to be inspired by a Liberator who has a backdoor out of the fight.”
“Methinks I could not die anywhere so contented as in the king’s company, his cause being just and his quarrel honorable.”
Straker growled, “Methinks Shakespeare is becoming all the rage. Didn’t he also say something about the king being responsible for all those arms and heads chopped off in battle?”
“So he did… Fortunately, I can regrow arms, though not a head. Well, at least not without assistance. The upgraded rejuvenation bay might be able to do it, if the brain were preserved. In fact, I—”
“Do you mind paying attention to what’s going on around us?”
Zaxby huffed. “Our mind has sufficient capacity to pay all the attention needed, as we’re cruising in empty space right now. My full focus won’t be necessary until we emerge in the midst of combat.”
“Fine. How long will that be?”
“Approximately fifty-six minutes.”
“I’m going to suit-up.”
Zaxby’s eyes widened and spun with surprise. “You’re going to wear your mechsuit?”
“Why not? I’m no tactician, and I can brainlink in to your sensor feed. Better than sitting here yakking with you.”
“Of course, you feel powerless. The mechsuit will counteract that sensation. However, please take care not to damage the cargo bay with your random flailing.”
“I don’t flail—especially not randomly,” said Straker. “Just make sure I can control the cargo bay functions on command. You don’t want me to have to blast my way out from inside.”
“I shudder to think.”
Redwolf followed Straker as he headed for the cargo bay. “What’s the plan, sir? We gonna drop on somebody?”
“I’m not sure yet, Red. By the way, how’d you like to train as a mechsuiter?”
Redwolf grinned through his open faceplate. “Thought you’d never ask, sir.”
“I can’t guarantee how well you’ll integrate with the mechsuit. It really depends on how you brainlink. Some just can’t. But at least you can run the Sledgehammer on manual, now that Karst turned traitor.”
“I wish I’d killed that scumbag motherfucker when I had the chance.”
“You and me both, Sergeant. In fact, you have my express permission to shoot him on sight, though I’d rather have him in my brig under interrogation. I have the feeling there’s some interesting info in his head.” The door to the cargo bay opened in front of him as the Indy portion of Trinity monitored his movements.
Inside, his mechsuit lay on its back, its clamshell torso hatch open to allow access. Straker stripped off his pressure suit, stored it, and then hopped up onto his fifty-ton combat rig. He rolled into the reclining conformal cockpit and plugged in his brainlink. That plus the manual activation code brought the monster to life.
Soon, his world expanded. He seemed to simultaneously stand inside a shrunken cargo bay, his body and senses now congruent with the man-shaped mechsuit, and also to see beyond, outside Trinity and into the void. He tested the datalink feed and made sure he was able to open and close the external doors and control the air pressure.
Once he was sure Redwolf was sealed and ready in his battlesuit, he lowered the atmo to near vacuum. Then, he waited, watching, until Trinity approached the swarm attacking M-4 and its orbital facilities. A short few minutes in underspace brought them to the battle for the moon, Beta-2.
They emerged into a silent storm of chaos and confusion. Thousands of drones swooped and fired, spinning and dancing in evasive patterns that reminded Straker of flocks of birds or schools of fish, so coordinated that they appeared to share one mind.
Above him loomed a besieged monitor, an enormous local defense ship second in size only to an asteroid fortress, or to Indomitable. Clearly, Trinity had emerged here in order to shield herself with its bulk.
Hundreds of the monitor’s point-defense weapons fired, rippling and lighting up the area with fireworks. Where beams were revealed by the dust they illuminate
d, Opter drones were speared and knocked out. Where railguns fired, the projectile streams, although launched at high velocity, almost never hit anything. The drones slipped aside like fish dodging the teeth of sharks.
“Worse than I thought,” muttered Straker. “Two-thirds of our weapons are useless.”
Trinity added her firepower to the local fight, and soon had opened a bubble that provided welcome relief to the monitor. The drones were obviously targeting its beam emplacements, surgically disarming the big ship piece by piece.
In her former incarnation as the destroyer Gryphon, Trinity had been built for this kind of work—a hunter and killer of anything smaller than herself. Add to that Indy’s AI precision and Zaxby’s years of service at a weapons console, and kilo for kilo she was the deadliest anti-drone ship in human space. She knocked out hundreds of the craft within the first few minutes of the fight, before they drew back to stay out of her most effective range.
From time to time the monitor would launch a missile and detonate it at minimum range. These blasts would catch a handful of drones that couldn’t flee fast enough, but this was a mere desperation measure. There weren’t enough missiles in its inventory to make much difference to this kind of enemy.
“Vidlink for you, Liberator,” Straker heard Trinity say in Indy’s machine voice.
“Put it through.”
A realtime picture of a large bridge appeared in his optical cortex, a man in a commodore’s uniform sitting in the flag command chair. “Pearson here, aboard the monitor Rhinoceros. Admiral Straker—Liberator—is that you, sir?”
Straker set his feed to show his face. “It’s me, Pearson. Pardon the view, but I’m suited up right now.”
“You’re a sight for sore eyes, sir, and that ship you’re in is a vicious little thing, but we can’t hold without help. Lots of help.”
“Commodore Gray’s inbound with the biggest fleet we could gather, but she’s fighting her way through her own shit-storm. We have to hold until she gets here.”
“We’ll do our best… but sir, we’ve lost most of our sensors and eighty percent of our beams, and these damned critters already landing on our hull and breaching. It’s only a matter of time before they chew through our armor.”
“Do you have marines aboard?”
“Not enough. They all got stripped for other sectors when… begging your pardon, sir, but when we were fighting against you.”
“Understood. Do you have any other escorts?”
“No, sir. My other monitor Hippopotamus is down and my attack ships didn’t last long. We’re all that’s left. When we go, Beta-2 goes.”
“Hang in there, Pearson. We’ll try to scrape them off you. Straker out.”
Below Trinity and Rhinoceros squatted the main shipyards the monitor was trying to protect. Ground-mounted weapons in armored turrets fired upward into the swarm, but there simply weren’t enough of them. Capital beams designed to cut ships in half vaporized individual drones, but even on their lowest settings and fastest recharge times, this was overkill, swatting flies with sledgehammers—and it was wasteful of energy and time.
Now and then flights of missiles would launch from the moon’s surface, but most of the time they would be picked off long before killing any targets. Railguns fired intermittently, and with some effectiveness, as it appeared the ground installations had access to submunitions, clusters that would burst and catch the dodging drones in spreads.
But as Pearson had said, the cloud of drones was pulling in tighter and tighter, and at the edges of the rocky plain on which the shipyards sat, Opters were already coming in low over the horizon, nap-of-the-surface, in order to avoid the defenses and deploy armored vehicles to assault.
Armored vehicles… finally, something Straker could attack.
“Trinity,” Straker said, “as soon as Red and I jump, orbit Rhinoceros and clean off her hull. Pop in and out of underspace if you need to get out of a jam. Try to keep this monitor functional, because when she dies, the shipyards will die with her.”
“Jump? To the surface?” came Zaxby’s worried tones. “Have you gone mad?”
“Probably. Message all friendlies please not to shoot the ’suiters, okay?” Straker cued the outer doors to open. “Redwolf, you ready?”
“Right behind your mad self, sir.”
“Go.” Straker launched out the opening and began falling slowly in the low gravity—too slowly, a miscalculation. He rotated head-down and used his landing thrusters to speed up—just in time. A hex of six drones dove toward him, blazing with their lasers.
Jinking with bursts of his suit jets, Straker aimed and fired his force cannon. The needle of armor-piercing plasma ripped one drone to shreds. He added his gatling to the mix, but the other five dodged the stream of bullets. They were simply too quick at this range.
Firing the gatling had an unintended consequence, though. Throwing reaction mass upward sped him toward the ground. Impact warnings flashed in his HUD, supplemented by his mechsuiter’s senses and instinct. He somersaulted to put his feet down and opened up his retros just in time, slamming to the rocky, uneven surface of the nearly airless moon.
Beam strikes punched holes in the terrain around him.
Chapter 3
Straker, on the surface of the moon Beta-2
Straker stayed low on the surface in his mechsuit, with Redwolf beside him. He ran in shallow bounds, his stabilization system and his experience keeping him from flying upward in arcs that would eliminate his ability to dodge.
A mechsuit wasn’t an aerospace fighter, even if it was of comparable size. He had to stay low and use the terrain, the huge rock formations and the pits, the buildings and mining sites scattered around the complex. In this, the smaller Redwolf actually had the advantage.
The battlesuiter skipped along behind him, and Straker wondered briefly what Redwolf could do in a fight where every combatant vehicle outmassed him by a factor of ten or more. Normally battlesuiters operated in squads or platoons, their numbers, cooperation and ability to hide in cover making up for their size.
But Straker could hardly have refused him coming along. He wasn’t sure Redwolf would have followed such orders anyway.
Straker reached an ore processing facility, layered with pipes and girders and conveyors, and sheltered beneath it. Lasers peppered the area around him, and he returned fire deliberately and precisely, taking out three of the six attackers. Redwolf fired his own beam rifle upward to unknown effect.
The enemy return fire hit the pipes and gas leaked out, creating a cloud that provided concealment. At this, the three remaining drones broke off and retreated. A ground defense beam speared one on the way up. After that, they posed no threat to Straker and his sidekick.
“Why don’t they come down and swarm the surface?” Redwolf asked.
“They will. I think Trinity surprised them. She’s like having a dreadnought in the hull of a destroyer, at least for point defense. I’m guessing they’re concentrating on her and Rhino before they come down in a mass.”
Redwolf pointed. “I think I spoke too soon.”
Straker turned to look where he indicated, toward the horizon. He could see dust kicked up by a line of vehicles advancing toward the shipyard facilities—hundreds of them, he thought. Optical zoom confirmed it: small, six-wheeled combat cars, backed up by light tanks. Just above and behind them hovered fighter drones. “They landed them beyond the horizon for a ground assault. I doubt our defenders are ready for this kind of battle. They don’t have enough troops, and most of the turrets are optimized for anti-space.”
“At least it’s our kind of battle, sir.”
“My kind of battle, Red. You can’t possibly survive in the open against that many. This is my specialty.”
“But sir—”
“I see a pillbox over there,” interrupted Straker. “Run to it and defend. Do what infantry does best—hold your ground. Try to link up with friendlies. They have to have at least a few troops, even if it�
��s just the security forces. You’re better off helping them. Now go! That’s an order.”
“Aye aye, sir.” Redwolf turned to sprint across the broken, rocky terrain.
Straker put Red out of his mind and began to run to his right, for the left end of the approaching enemy line. Standing toe-to-toe with such mass was a fool’s game. He’d hit them from the flank and attempt to roll them up by ones and twos.
This nearest enemy formation, equivalent to a battalion of seventy or so vehicles, had chosen a relatively flat area with a road running down the middle, the best approach possible over the rough ground. Even so, it slowed them down as they tried to keep good formation.
The rough ground would be Straker’s advantage. Staying low, he worked his way to the end of their line and let them go past.
His first kill was their leftmost overwatch fighter drone, and then another which turned to try to sniff him out. He wasn’t sure what their response would be to this, for every military force had its own doctrine. He was hoping it would be the reaction of a natural flying creature, with a dog-bee or wasp pilot—to send in the aerospace forces.
He was right. The other ten close air support drones raced toward him, directing suppressive beam shots that struck rock all around him, sending up clouds of dust and gas from the vaporized stone.
This was exactly as he’d hoped. With his own multi-spectral sensors, he could easily see through the clouds, while the enemies were hindered and their beams were attenuated.
He picked off three before they backed up and diverted the armored vehicles.
Five down, sixty-some to go.
Two platoons of six vehicles each—one of wheeled scout cars and one of tracked light tanks—spread out and moved to surround his position. Rather than let them do so, he scurried to his right and tried his gatling against his lighter opponents.
The penetrators sparked against the material of the scout car, and then dug in as he extended the burst at a single spot. The vehicle slewed and rolled, smoke pouring from its burning carcass.
This was good news. It meant he had two weapons that could kill them instead of only one.