“Bree, you should probably walk me to medical,” she said audibly. “And transmit the key code to the Fleet.”
Done, Bree replied. The suit stood her up and started walking her toward the elevator. I’m checking you in with the medical teams.
Where are Daddy, Davy, Jack, and Nancy? she asked, and then their blue dots appeared with labels in her mindview. Her mother’s dot had already popped up in the med bay. The locations were so strange. She had obviously missed a lot. She zoomed out and looked at the battlescape and studied it as her suit walked her forward.
This is the craziest battle plan I’ve ever seen. Looks like four supercarriers rammed a megaship, Dee thought.
Yes, they did. I have downloaded the battle plan and will play it through for you, Bree explained. Dee, did you note Commander Rackman’s current predicament?
He’s a big boy. He’ll fight his way out. And now he can flash out if he needs to.
Let us hope so.
Chapter 37
February 19, 2407 AD
Alien Megaship
Target Star System
700 Light-years from the Sol System
Tuesday, 1:10 A.M. Ship Standard Time
The combination of all the supercarriers and the alien megaship shook violently as secondary explosions rocked the forward section. The Chiata fleet had turned from the Beta Fleet of supercarriers and focused their attack on their own megaship. DeathRay did his best to fire the blue beams at the Chiata to keep them at bay, but the numbers game was getting the best of them. Admiral Walker’s Beta Fleet were beat up, but they were still mixing it up, and with the QMTs back online they became much more effective at fighting.
There was still the problem of the megaship on a countdown to self-destruction, and the ground team from the Hillenkoetter had yet to push through to the power source for the builder bots. Several teams of Chiata troops and mechas had stayed behind to hold them at bay. Commander Rackman’s team was stalled only two floors beneath the objective, but they were pinned down and the lines were being drawn. The ground team hadn’t moved in over two minutes.
“Rackman, you have got to move forward or we are sunk, do you understand!” Nancy told him over the tac-net.
“Yes, ma’am! We are pushing as hard as we can with the troops we have! We need reinforcements!” Rackman replied. Nancy turned to her blue force tracker and noted that the Demon Dawgs and the Utopian Saviors mecha squadrons on the Madira were sitting in their mechas and waiting to be deployed. She had an idea.
“Hold on, Rackman, I’ll see what we can do.” Nancy turned to her mindview for a moment and tapped open a direct channel to the CO of the Madira. Firestorm answered the call.
“What can I do for you, Captain Penzington?”
“My ground teams are pinned down. Can we QMT one or both of your mecha squadrons into the AO? That would turn the tide I—” Nancy didn’t finish the sentence before the ship shook so violently that it tossed her forward. She grasped for the chair arm so quickly that she couldn’t control the strength in her gauntlet and she bent the metal almost into two pieces.
“Blue beam impact on forward generator section, ma’am,” the clone Air Boss who was her acting XO told her. “Secondary explosions are ongoing and that section is venting to space.”
Nancy brought up her battlescape virtual view of that area of the megaship and there were no blue dots or red dots in that section of the ship.
“No!” Nancy’s hair stood on end and her stomach turned. She clutched the chair’s arm and pulled herself back upright. “Get me eyes in there now!”
“Ma’am,” the XO said calmly, “I’m sorry. There are none. The entire section has been destroyed for three decks vertical and several horizontal.”
“Any signs of survivors that were blown into space?”
“Looking, ma’am, but none yet.” Nancy’s heart sunk. There were over thirty clone AEMs, a handful of tankheads, and Commander Rackman in that part of the megaship. They were all vaporized in an instant.
Davy, Dee, I am so sorry, she thought.
Do I tell Dee?
Alert her AIC.
Done.
“Send the repair bots in to reroute to the power source. There shouldn’t be any resistance there anymore.” Nancy squinted as blue beams burst out from the megaship at the ship that had fired on them. DeathRay was still giving them hell. The beams zigged and zagged and then ripped through the alien ship, sending it in thousands of directions at once in pieces and ionized plasma. Admiral Walker’s Fleet QMTed in just behind the beam and went to full DEGs on the megaship’s wingman, bursting it at the seams just underneath its tuning-fork antennae. Rackman’s blue dot was still not showing up on the tracker.
“Captain, the repair bots are rerouting around the damaged portion of the ship. They need approximately two minutes and fifty-three seconds to connect the system,” the STO told her.
Too bad they didn’t blow out the self-destruct system, Nancy thought.
Not a bad idea, Allison replied. Hold that thought for moment.
Allison? Don’t leave me hanging here. What have you got?
We can take that system out. I just ran a multi-sensor cross-correlation on all the data we have on the alien ship from every bot, soldier, and mecha sensor. In order for that ship to self-destruct, they’d have to run a positive feedback loop on the hyperspace projector. We had that happen to us before, if you recall.
Okay, good. How do we stop it?
Simple. We take out the hyperspace projector.
“Penzington to General Moore!”
“Go, Nancy.”
“The self-destruct is the hyperspace projector tube, sir. We need to destroy it!” Nancy told him.
“I’ve got my hands full here, Penzington. You’ll have to get it done!” Moore said it as more of a fact rather than an order or a suggestion.
“Understood, sir. Consider it done.” Nancy replied.
“XO. You have the bridge. Be ready to throw that shield system on as soon as Commander Buckley gives the order.” Nancy didn’t wait for a response. She tapped the controls on her wristband and there was a flash of light and then the sound of bacon frying. She materialized in the hangar bay of the Hillenkoetter just long enough to grab as many grenades as she could stuff in her suit, and then she grabbed a blaster and a rifle. She flashed out just as fast as she had flashed in.
The frying bacon sound subsided as she materialized in reality space deep inside the alien ship. The coordinates Allison had calculated for the alien hyperspace jaunt projection system turned out to be a very large room with massive conduits running from back to front, bottom to top, and left to right. The conduits were at least ten meters in diameter and the room had to be over a hundred meters across in any direction.
Where is my target, Allison? she asked her AIC.
The infrared systems and the QMs both show huge energy readings building up in the centralmost conduit overhead running stern to bow. Allison lit the particular conduit up in her visor.
Roger that. Nancy sized it up and realized that she didn’t bring enough grenades. I don’t think twenty grenades would make a dent in this thing. I need to rethink this.
I think you are right.
Nancy tapped her wristband and snapped back to the hangar bay of the Hillenkoetter. She looked around at the parking deck and picked out an FM-12 that was on the flight line and ready to go. It just needed a pilot. Quickly, she bounced to it and had Allison start handshaking with the mecha’s flight computers. Nancy bounced into the pilot’s couch and cycled her QMT system before the cockpit had completely sealed. The mecha started springing to life as it rematerialized in the belly of the alien megaship. Nancy could feel the ship lurch forward again as if they’d been hit by another blue beam. She didn’t have time to worry about that at the moment.
“Targeting systems, on.” She toggled the fighter over to bot mode and the mecha flipped over and stood upright. The targeting Xs in her mind lit up and she placed o
ne on the central conduit. “Fox Three!”
The missile twisted out from the back launcher deck of the bot-mode mecha, and just before it impacted the conduit, a porcupine blurred in between it and the missile, taking the hit and protecting the self-destruct system. Red targeting Xs lit up in her mindview and Nancy counted four other targets in the room with her.
“Warning! Enemy targeting lock! Warning! Enemy targeting lock!”
“Shit!” Nancy hit the boot thrusters and rocketed upward as she stomped the left lower pedal and slammed the HOTAS full back and to the right. The bot-mode mecha pirouetted like a figure skater as blue beams from the porcupines filled the empty spaces all around it. “Guns, guns, guns!”
Nancy fired her guns at the nearest porcupine, hitting it dead to rights before it had time to move out of the way. The alien mecha’s shields flickered and went out just as she landed shoulders first into it. She drew her cannon upwards, shoved it through the armored torso, and fired again. “Guns, guns, guns!”
The mecha exploded all around her as she pressed through where it had been. She rolled over backwards, hit her down thrusters, and threw the HOTAS forward full throttle. The targeting X for the conduit stayed locked on so she gave it another shot. “Fox Three!”
Just as the missile jumped from the launcher tube on her back, a glowing green tendril wrapped around it. The porcupine it was attached to slung the missile around, using its propulsion to spin them up like a merry-go-round. The alien used the centrifugal force of the missile to redirect it back at Nancy and then it let it go. Nancy barely had time to react. Barely.
With both feet stomping hard against the top pedals, the mecha hovered upright and Nancy turned her body away from the missile. As the missile swung past, she reached out with her mechanized hand and grabbed the tendil holding the missile. She yanked it until it snapped, letting the missile fly free into the bulkhead on the far side of the room, exploding against a non-important target. She held on to the tendril and yanked the alien mecha toward her as she fell over sideways, stomping her mechanized boot through the backside of the porcupine. The shields flickered and several of the spines on the craft were crushed, but the ship managed to squirm free of her grasp.
That didn’t matter. Nancy feinted over just as she’d seen DeathRay and Dee do a million times. As as the mecha toppled over playing dead, she fired again. “Guns, guns, guns! Fox Three!”
The guns took out the alien, creating a thunderous echoing boom in the cavernous engineering room. Orange and green plasma fire lit the room. The missile twisted around the fireball and upwards into the conduit, crashing against it just as Nancy felt something puncture her chest and could see metal twisted out of the way on her dashboard. The conduit exploded throwing purple and white-hot plasma swirling in every direction, and like a chain reaction the other conduits traversing the room ruptured at the seams and gave way. Nancy felt as though something were ripping her body apart. She looked down and saw two alien green glowing tendrils protruding from her suit at the abdomen and chest.
There was no blood. The suit had sealed off around them. Then a third tendril pushed upward through her right thigh. Nancy was too shocked to scream. She reached for her wristband but a fourth tendril wrapped around her hand and tore it cleanly from her arm.
Nancy screamed in pain but did her best to focus her mind on turning the mecha over into fighter mode. As she did so the last of the conduit explosions threw her wildly across the room against the bulkhead, knocking her free of the Chiata porcupine that had grabbed her. The tendrils quickly retracted from her body, but not before a blue beam cut the right wing free and clear from the fighter.
The mecha skittered into a flat spin across the deck of the exploding room, and then the propellantless drive went critical.
Eject, Nancy! Eject!
Nancy cycled the ejection seat and was tossed free as the mecha exploded around her. The ejection seat tossed her upward into the larger fireballs that were consuming the engineering room, on a direct trajectory through one of the white-hot plasma jets spraying from the vortex projector tube.
Oh, God, Allison. I think this is it. Did we at least stop the destruct sequence?
I’m pretty sure we did. It’s been a great ride, Nancy.
Yes, it has. Please upload the file for my family.
Already done . . .
Chapter 38
February 19, 2407 AD
U.S.S. Sienna Madira II
Target Star System
700 Light-years from the Sol System
Tuesday, 1:10 A.M. Ship Standard Time
Alexander flashed into the bridge alongside the COB. The two of them were covered in green and red glowing goo. As the frying bacon sound settled and he got his bearings, he could see the damage reports and casualty lists rolling by in his mind. The attack had gone too long and there was little left of the Beta Fleet. Another solid hit to the megaship, and it would be gone as well.
“CHENG! It’s now or fucking never!” Alexander shouted over the net.
“Twenty seconds, sir!” Buckley responded.
“CO! CDC!”
“I see them, CDC!” Moore responded before they could warn him about the thirty-eight megaships that had just joined them out of hyperspace.
“Buckley!”
“Okay, sir! Now!”
“Engage the weapon!”
There was little to notice at first, but then a flickering blue and white field protruded outwardly from the shield generator at the nose of the Madira. Alexander could see it spreading out before them, and several blue beams bounced off the barrier as it grew.
“STO, project a full megaship view in here for all of us,” Moore ordered.
“Aye, sir.”
A holo projection of the megaship filled the room over their heads. The alien porcusnail looked like a strange alligator with the four supercarriers jutting out as legs. From the nose of each of the supercarriers projected the blue and white flickering energy barrier. As the shields drew power from within the alien starship, they spread and grew, and the barrier thickened and darkened. It continued to spread, and the multitude of blue beams that zigged and zagged into it had little if no effect.
“Alert the Beta Fleet to QMT the hell out of here ASAP, XO!”
“Already done, sir! The Beta Fleet are free and clear!”
“Good. Now let’s hope Commander Buckley ain’t as crazy as we all think he is.” Alexander smirked.
“Honestly, sir, I hope he’s a helluva lot worse!” Firestorm added.
The field reached an energy level at which the four projected barriers bounced into each other and melded into one giant spheroid. The shield continued to grow until it became a perfect blue and white shimmering sphere around the megaship and the four supercarriers. The Chiata fleet continued to attack and pour blue beams of death from Hell into the barrier to no avail. And then the beam flickered and shimmered and pulsed like a gluonium bomb explosion and a supernova all at the same time. The blast wave left the spherical surface at near the speed of light, washing through the Chiata fleet and vaporizing the megaships on impact. The Chiata had no clue what had happened to them; they had just been killed.
“Hot damn, Buckley!” Alexander shouted. “XO, STO, CDC, I want full reports on any Chiata ships left in this system. Full-up sensors sweeps now. Now that we have QMs back, we ought to be able to find the rest of them if they are hiding out.”
“Yes, sir!”
Sir, you need to check the casualty lists. Both Commander Davy Rackman and Captain Nancy Penzington are listed as KIA, sir.
Hell. Alexander collapsed into his seat with the wind knocked out of him. Nancy, no.
Yes, sir.
Do Dee and DeathRay know?
Yes, sir.
Oh, hell, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean for Penzington to . . .
Yes, sir.
Epilogue
February 28, 2407 AD
Arlington Cemetery
Arlington, Virginia
Earth, the Sol System
Wednesday, 9:30 A.M. Eastern Time
Dee held her jaw clenched as tight as she could; otherwise, her mouth would start quivering and she’d start to cry. She bit the inside of her bottom lip and squeezed her mother’s hand tightly for comfort. There was little comfort to be had for her. Even leaning her head against her father’s wide shoulder, shoulders that had borne the weight of the world, didn’t help. Dee continued to cry.
Jack Boland sat beside Alexander, and a couple that turned out to be Nancy’s real parents sat to his right. Dee could see the tears forming in the corners of Jack’s eyes, and his cheeks were wet where they had been flowing already. The sight of him, her larger-than-life pseudo-big brother, of DeathRay, Captain Jack Boland with tears in his eyes was all it took to push her even farther over the edge.
As the President finished speaking, she turned and faced the seven Marines to their left. The soldiers then raised their guns and fired. They fired again, causing Dee to jump. They fired a third time and the twenty-one guns saluting the ten soldiers being honored there that day rang out across the hillside by Robert E. Lee’s mansion. It had taken Alexander pulling some strings to have burials at Arlington, as it had been closed for almost a century to new funeral locations. But Dee wanted this for Nancy and for Rackman, and for the other members of the Madira, their family, that gave their lives for the greater good and the survival of humanity, and she convinced her father to pull those strings—however many it took. Her father had been happy to oblige his little girl.
The ceremony finished as the flags were folded and given to the next of kin of the ten soldiers. DeathRay accepted the flag, but then handed it to Nancy’s parents with a nod. Dee watched as Rackman’s father accepted the flag, and she broke down into sobs the likes of which she hadn’t known since she’d been a little girl. It was uncontrollable and it hurt and Dee just couldn’t stop the ache in her chest.
Kill Before Dying (Tau Ceti Agenda Book 5) Page 32