Legion Of The Damned - 02 - The Final Battle

by William C. Dietz

  Dalo Tukla-Ka

  The Guiding Hand

  Standard year 1312

  Planet Algeron, the Confederacy of Sentient Beings

  The command center was empty except for the brooding figure of Sector Marshal Niman Poseen-Ka. The wall niche was comforting but offered little protection against the dangers ahead. His mind was absorbed by the never-ending need to balance objectives with risk. And there were plenty of risks, not the least of which was the possibility that two or more of his ships would exit hyperspace at the same time and destroy each other.

  Common sense argued that if vessels entered hyperspace separately they should emerge the same way, but this was not always the case, as one commander had learned eighty years earlier, when he ordered 106 vessels to make a simultaneous jump, and lost three to collisions, an outcome that put an end to more than 400 lives and an otherwise promising career.

  So, given the fact that Poseen-Ka planned to emerge from hyperspace with thousands of warships, the chances that something would go wrong were fairly high. Still, the Hudathan was convinced that the loss of a dozen ships, or even twice that number, would be outweighed by the advantages gained. Experience had shown that the best way to defeat the mostly human enemy was to take them by surprise, carpet-bomb their civilian population centers, and engage their military after the most important part of the battle had already been won.

  But Algeron was a special case. The enemy knew he was coming, there were no civilian targets to speak of, and the Confederacy had assembled a fleet only slightly smaller than his own. Which explained why he had decided to gamble on the vagaries of hyperspace. It was critical to emerge from hyperspace with overwhelming force, to subject the Confederate navy to an attack so violent that they would be forced onto the defensive, and to seize the psychological advantage.

  The potential impact on his career didn’t matter to Poseen-Ka, and the possibility that his ship might be destroyed hadn’t even occurred to him. After all, he had survived twenty years on a prison planet, and had every right to die in bed. He checked the harness that held him in place, watched time tick away on the readout over his head, and gritted his teeth. Five . . . four. . . three . . . two . . .

  The ship jerked as it made the transition from hyper to normal space, the holo display blossomed like a high-tech flower, and a steady stream of reports came in. The voices were anonymous and nearly empty of emotion.

  “There are one thousand seven hundred and sixty-four Confederate ships in-system. Unit actions have begun.”

  “Seven ships were lost exiting hyperspace; they include the Highland Spear, the Arm of Hudatha, the Spirit of War, the One True Race, the Glorious Purpose, the Enemy Finder, and the Defender of Truth.”

  Poseen-Ka winced as the list was read, glad that no one could see his weakness, sickened by the waste. Thousands of Hudathans had died and the battle was barely under way. Still, he had more than two thousand ships left, and they deserved every bit of his attention. The voices droned on. “Consistent with command directive three-four-two intelligence has identified the enemy vessel most likely to carry the Confederate command. Execute attack plan 342, or hold?”

  “Execute,” Poseen-Ka said grimly, his eyes playing over the holo display in front of him. After all, the best way to kill a monster is to chop off its head, and even more so with this particular beast. The human military included some excellent leaders, General Norwood being a prime example, and he wanted them eliminated as quickly as possible. Orders went out, were acknowledged, and acted upon. A force of 243 ships separated from the main formation and went after the battlewagon Invictor. The voices continued and so did the dying.

  The bridge crew looked strange in their unsealed battle suits, ready in case the hull was breached, but clumsy in the meantime. Chien-Chu was impressed by their obvious professionalism but concerned by what he heard via his com set. “Fire control to bridge. There are two hundred plus bogies coming this way . . . contact twenty-three from now.”

  Naval Captain “Bloody” Mary McGuire frowned, looked down into the holo tank, and spotted the vessels in question. “Confirm target.”

  “Target confirmed. There are no other high-priority targets in our vicinity.”

  McGuire nodded. “Make sure the escorts have them, too. Standard checks on all systems. Delegate secondary armament to local control. Stand by to engage.”

  The naval officer turned to Chien-Chu. “Well, Admiral, it looks like the Hudathans want you and anyone else that might be aboard this ship. Can’t say as I blame ’em . . . we have a task force working on the same objective.”

  Chien-Chu tried to appear unconcerned. His plasti-flesh face made it easier. “I’m honored. Let’s provide them with a warm reception.”

  McGuire smiled grimly and went about the business she’d been trained for. Her words were terse. “Launch fighters.” The Hudathans were closer now, and she had waited as long as she dared. The trick was to launch the fighters early enough to intercept the enemy, but late enough so they had plenty of fuel. The fighters left the Invictor’s flight deck five at a time, accelerated away, and joined similar craft launched by the battleship’s escorts. Chien-Chu felt a sense of pride as he watched them go. The Viper-class Interceptors had not only been manufactured by Chien-Chu Enterprises, the chances were good that he’d worked on some of them himself, a more significant contribution than any he was likely to make as a play-pretend admiral.

  Both sides had opened fire with long-range missiles and torpedos. Most were intercepted and destroyed hundreds of miles away but a few got through. Chien-Chu felt the deck lurch under his boots as a missile blew a hole in the ship’s screens and a torpedo exploded against the hull. The holo tank flickered and came back on. Damage reports filtered in.

  “Engineering to bridge . . . the ship’s AI reports a pressure loss in sections P-42 through P-46. The port power routers were destroyed, backups on-line.”

  “Medical to bridge ... launcher complex six suffered collateral damage. We have four confirmed KIAs, three missing, and six wounded.”

  “Com center to bridge . . . the carrier Confederate Victory took a hit on the bridge. She’s still operational and Lieutenant Nakamura has assumed command.”

  McGuire had counted on the carrier to screen the flagship from some of the incoming fighters and a friend of hers had been the ship’s XO. She fought to maintain her composure. “Acknowledge message . . . confirm command. Request status.”

  “The Victory reports twenty-five-percent readiness . . . launching now.” And so it went, in a long litany of damage reports, casualty lists, and lost ships, until even a civilian like Chien-Chu knew that the aliens were winning the battle, or battles, since there were at least five or six major conflicts taking place within the system as a whole, with lesser skirmishes being fought in and around the nearby asteroid belt.

  Then the Hudathan task force broke through the fighter screen and forced their way in. The escort ships went out to meet them but were overwhelmed by thousands of enemy attack ships. Chien-Chu’s highly augmented fingers made dents in the armrests of his chair as he watched live video supplied by the fighters.

  A cruiser lost her screens, took a pair of missiles up her stem tubes, and exploded. The light challenged the sun before darkness consumed it.

  A fighter ran through a cloud of metallic debris, staggered, and came apart.

  Two Confederate destroyers, their fighters clustered around them, blasted up towards the incoming task force. They fired in concert. A cruiser replied. Chien-Chu saw the enemy’s defensive screens flare and disappear. Explosions rippled the length of the long black hull as energy beams probed for a weak spot. The fighters went in, fired their torpedos, and strafed the enemy hull. The Hudathan ship absorbed hit after hit. Then, just when it seemed that the alien vessel was impervious to the human weapons, it split in two. There was no explosion, none that Chien-Chu could see anyway, just a parting of the ways as the bow separated from the stern, and drifted away. A cloud of
debris appeared, including pieces of duct work, a power grid, and what might have been bodies.

  The bridge crew cheered, but their happiness was short lived as the battlewagon took multiple hits. During the next thirty minutes the Hudathans destroyed the Confederate Victory, two cruisers, and a troop carrier packed with marines. Chien-Chu wished he could do something, anything, to make a difference.

  The first tendrils of smoke found their way out of a vent and thickened the air. An ensign coughed and sealed her suit. McGuire issued an order to a rating and turned in Chien-Chu’s direction. Her face was tight and drawn. Defeat was written in her eyes. “It’s time to shift your flag, sir . . . I have a scout on standby.”

  “Tell the pilot to load some wounded and get them clear,” Chien-Chu said grimly, “my place is here.”

  McGuire nodded soberly. “Yes, sir . . . sorry, sir, but I have orders to the contrary. Sergeant . . . the admiral is under arrest. Take him to his shuttle. On the double.”

  Vice Admiral Chien-Chu had no more than seen the marine, and formulated his reply, when the Invictor exploded.

  Captain Cynthia Harmon had never heard Commander Tom Duncan swear. . . but she heard him now. ‘The double-dipped, miserable slime-sucking sonsofbitches killed the Invictor! She exploded!”

  Harmon looked into the Nooni’s holo tank and saw it was true. The double-dipped sonsofbitches had destroyed the Invictor. Which meant Chien-Chu was dead, along with McGuire, and Lord knew how many other senior officers, all of whom were real warriors, and therefore critical to any sort of successful outcome. She thought about the Say’ lynt, how helpless they were, and knew what Valerie would want her to do. “Secure for a hyperspace shift. Enter the coordinates for IH-47-whatever-the-hell-it-is and stand by to break formation.”

  The nearest members of the bridge crew looked surprised and Duncan turned in her direction. He cut himself out of the intercom and addressed Harmon directly. “Run in the face of the enemy? Have you lost your mind? You’ll be shot . . . and rightly so.”

  Harmon had learned enough about the military to know that there should have been a “Captain” or a “ma‘am” somewhere in the last paragraph but really didn’t give a shit. She forced herself to display the same calm exterior that had sustained her in the Pacific. “No, I haven’t lost my mind. Think about the Say’lynt, Tom, think about the fact that we have fifty percent of an entire species on board! What other race has invested half of its gene pool in a single battle? It isn’t fair . . . and we’re taking them home.”

  Duncan searched her eyes, saw the determination there, and shook his head sadly. “Sorry, Captain, but that amounts to an illegal order, and I refuse to follow it. The Say’lynt are members of the Confederate Armed Forces. We’re staying and so are they.”

  Harmon had formed the words “we’ll see about that,” and was just about to say them, when an incredibly bright light exploded within her head. The scientist tried to move but found she couldn’t. Raft One had entered her mind. His thoughts were clear and rather stem. “Commander Duncan is correct. It would be wrong to leave while other sentients fight on. Please do not presume to make decisions for our race, or make us party to a mutiny. Valerie would not want you to violate our sovereignty. Besides, as long as the Hudatha are free to roam the galaxy, there will be no safety for our planet, or yours for that matter.”

  The Nooni shuddered as a flight of missiles exploded against her screens. A klaxon started to beep. The bridge crew looked from Duncan to Harmon and awaited orders. The light that had filled Harmon’s head disappeared. She tried to move and discovered that she could. The biologist blushed and frowned at those around her. It had been a long time since anyone had taken her to task . . . but Raft One was correct and she knew it. “So what the hell are you waiting for? We have a battle to fight. Let’s get on with it.”

  Duncan nodded, grinned, and turned his attention to damage control. It wasn’t especially logical, but he respected Harmon, and was glad she had command.

  Poseen-Ka was secretly pleased. So pleased that he had permitted his steward to bring a simple meal. He kept one eye on the ever-changing holo tank while he ate. The battle had gone better than what even his most optimistic scenarios had projected. His forces had scored more than three hundred confirmed kills while losing only half that number themselves.

  And making a good situation even better was the fact that they had destroyed what had almost certainly been the human flagship, leaving the monster to flail about without benefit of its head. This accomplishment would have been even more notable had it not been for the fact that the humans seemed blessed, or cursed, depending on how you looked at it, with a never-ending supply of leaders. No sooner was one killed than another popped up to take his or her place. A norm that stood in marked contrast to his own culture, in which leaders protected their power, and did everything they could to eliminate potential rivals. A stupid and rather shortsighted tendency, but one he had grown used to. A voice that Poseen-Ka recognized as belonging to an intelligence officer sounded in his ear.

  “The enemy’s forces are fully engaged. The computer progs look good for Phase I of the ground assault.”

  Poseen-Ka felt the ship vibrate slightly as the starboard missile launchers were fired. Phase I of the ground assault plan called for an orbital bombardment of the primary ground targets. He gave the necessary order. “Permission granted. Implement Phase I.”

  Although Chien-Chu had never lost consciousness, the explosion, followed by the wild tumble through space, had left him dizzy and disoriented. He looked around. Algeron was a pale disk against which blast-torn hull plates, ruptured solar collectors, mangled consoles, and other, less identifiable debris were silhouetted, drifting in their own individual orbits. Hundreds of lesser items, including hand comps, coffee cups, fire extinguishers, and what looked like a severed hand were visible as well.

  Something bumped Chien-Chu’s shoulder and he turned to find himself peering through a blood-spattered face plate. The technician’s suit had been holed, resulting in a violent decompression. What was left looked like something out of a nightmare. Chien-Chu screamed, heard no sound, and pushed the body away. Wait a minute . . . how could he push the body away? Or do anything else, for that matter? Especially since he was dead?

  Space-suited hands came up, passed through the open face plate, and touched his plastiskin face. That’s when Chien-Chu remembered: cyborgs need some air, but not very much. They can thrive in a vacuum. As he had proved time and time again while welding. In fact, the only reason he had agreed to wear space armor was to set a good example, and appear more human. An excellent decision, since the suit boasted a com set that was superior to the one in his head, and had an on-board propulsion system.

  The industrialist checked the emergency freq, and discovered that hundreds of people were in the same fix that he was. Some of them had been drifting for quite a while, and were running out of air. They had priority for rescue and rightly so. It would be hours before his number came up, assuming the search and rescue crews lived long enough to find him, which looked less and less likely. Lights flared as a ship fired its energy cannons. Chien-Chu turned in that direction, called on the suit comp for instructions, and did what he was told. The result was clumsy but serviceable. He spurted forward. The ship, a huge, awkward-looking affair, grew larger.

  Rebor Raksala-Ba had been dreading the moment when he and his comrades would be scattered over the planet below. The orbital bombardment had lasted for little more than a single planetary rotation before the Regiment of the Living Dead had been ordered into action. As they fell, their ball-bearing-shaped entry capsules glowed pink and the friction wore them thinner.

  The cyborg heard a series of short beeps, followed by a steady tone . . . and knew that the humans had painted his capsule with radar. By now they were firing up into the sky, killing Hudathans as fast as they could, not knowing or caring about his particular fate. Raksala-Ba found the thought both comforting and disturbing as he con
fronted the fact that he, the most important person in the universe, had been reduced to little more than a blip on a screen. He prayed that the computers would select someone else, someone like Assistant Dagger Commander Gudar Kabla-Sa, who was a major pain in the ass and deserved to die.

  The capsule rocked as an antiaircraft missile detonated nearby. Raksala-Ba’s on-board computer informed him that the entry vehicle had started to disintegrate. The warning preceded the event by five seconds. The chute popped open, slowed the cyborg’s fall, and provided sufficient stability for him to deploy his wings. The wings were a recent addition, thought up by some half-wit who would never have to use them, intended to provide the cyborgs with “enhanced battlefield mobility,” which translated to more hang time, and left them exposed to additional ground fire.

  The regiment had experienced technical problems during training, so Raksala-Ba was grateful when the chute was released, and his wings were extended. He banked to the right, vectored onto one of the beacons the Pathfinders had planted, and swung into a ragged-looking formation. Other troopers, those who had survived the antiaircraft fire, did the same. Together they wobbled through the thin mountain air and dropped towards the valley below.

  Raksala-Ba recognized their objective as a surface-to-air missile battery, one of many scattered across the planet, and saw the craters left by the orbital bombardment. The fact that many of the shell holes overlapped each other provided evidence as to the intensity of the attack. The humans would be eager for revenge, but the cyborg took comfort from the fact that ship-class missiles were expensive, and the enemy would be unlikely to spend one on him.

  It didn’t take very long for the thought to generate some bad luck. Four carefully camouflaged gatling guns opened fire along with computer-controlled energy cannons and crew-served automatic weapons. Cyborgs started to die. Kabla-Sa lost a wing, swore, and corkscrewed in. Others met similar fates. Raksala-Ba noticed that some fired all the way down while others screamed in fear. The Hudathan wondered which kind he was but didn’t really want to know.