The man looked at him calmly. Almost serene, really. “This station is built to live close to the inherent danger of a gas giant like Jasilaar Nine. As long as our repulsor engines hold, we’ll be fine. And frankly… they wouldn’t do anything to them now. Not while they’re aboard. They’d seal their fate with ours.”
The marine commander thought about this. “And if the repulsor engines were to suddenly… go offline… how long?”
The engineer gave a grim, sour, smile. “Two minutes. Then we make hard contact, and unless you reach the lifeboats in the next five… and they can boost up to escape velocity in time… well then, you’re going to find out what a super giant’s gravity can do to a human body.”
The marine commander dismissed the man. He didn’t like anyone who was so blasé about death. Especially if it was his death.
Five minutes later both companies sent in to flank the task force had been destroyed entirely, taken down by the enemy ship’s fire support capabilities. Now the shock troopers were cutting back into the station and taking the surrounding corridors that led into the main hab.
“Estimated strength?” barked the commander.
“Maybe two platoons. We got this, sir.”
The man was right. The enemy’s two platoons against his five companies did add up as a win for the Republic.
Still, the marine commander wasn’t ready to rest on his laurels. He watched the tactical feeds nervously, glad he wasn’t up front and having to fight for his life. Glad he was back in the headquarters they’d set up in the station control that ran and administered the massive floating city, surrounded by a company of his best marines.
He failed to notice the chief engineer slip through security, telling the beefy marines he needed to get down to engineering and make sure the repulsors were operating at peak.
***
Reez’s two platoons managed to take out much of the five companies that faced them. He was surprised at the enemy’s tactics. It was as though the marines’ commander had expected the task force to move right out into the central mall of the open dome that rose up above the empty skyscrapers and main hab. And get ambushed again. Instead the shock troopers had shifted left and worked their way through the companies one at a time, storming building to building for cover. Blasters and explosives, backed by snipers that shifted positions and took out small unit commanders.
The marines tried to mass along one company’s lines, but instead bunched up and got killed in bulk. This got bad when the anti-armor teams started firing into their barriers, getting three times the casualties they might have gotten if the marines hadn’t gathered so densely.
Eventually one marine company was pulled back to the station’s command and control facilities, apparently to reinforce the company already protecting their CO. Reez recognized this for typical point thinking. He surmised he was facing some point who’d been promoted without regard to past performance or ability. Most likely, the man was right now falling back to his ship and ordering a general retreat.
Forward in the thick of the fighting, working with his men to breach and clear, Reez helped his shock troopers tear through another series of defenses. First using fraggers, then bangers, then assaulting through with blasters on pray and spray, covered by sniper fire. Yes, they’d taken losses, but more than half the company would survive. An hour of this, and what was left was mop-up.
Reez had just knelt behind a blasted barrier when he got the call from the ship’s intel officer.
“Something’s up, sir.”
Reez didn’t like the tone in the man’s voice.
Then the whole station went dark. One minute all was lit by the bright centers of the main hab and the ambient subdued glow of the corners and shops, all of which had somehow managed to remain on during the battle—and the next moment everything was a shadowy blue darkness.
And something was missing.
Some feeling he’d been sensing beneath his feet the entire time.
The constant and near undetectable vibration of the station…
It was gone.
He was beginning to float. Gravity decking was offline.
Or were they…
“You’re falling, sir!” shouted the intel officer over comm. “Someone’s cut the power to the main repulsors. In fact, the whole station’s dead. You’re in free fall. Get back to the ship or find a lifeboat and get off the station now, or you’ll hit atmo!”
The station began to roll over onto its side, sending Reez and the other troopers sliding across the highly polished decking. And even as he was tumbling, Reez was captivated by the surreal sight of this deserted downtown metropolis rapidly tilting over… and then flipping all the way upside down. Above the dome, which had once looked out on the universe, all was now swallowed by the—
“Wolf is disconnecting, sir!” shouted the intel officer frantically over comm. Then he was babbling something about how to survive. Except Reez was already tumbling up off the decking, and above him—below him—the gas giant known as Jasilaar Nine, a red swirling maelstrom of angry gases and titanic storms, was swallowing the top of the dome into its depths.
Reez flailed his arms, reaching for something to grab on to. As his fingers found some jutting bit of glass and impervisteel, his blaster fell from his grip and tumbled off into the chaos of a world gone topsy-turvy. His men were screaming for their lives as they fell past him.
Because there was no getting out of this. That was abundantly clear from the start. This was the long fall into the big crush, as some had called it.
The station began to burn up as more of it entered atmo. The spiny docking arms tore away in tantrums of physics and metal fatigue. The Wolf only barely disconnected and just managed to haul itself up and away before another docking arm that had spun around came loose and almost smashed into her. If it had connected it would have sliced the warship in two.
But it was the loss of the shock trooper company that would be felt the most by the Empire. The loss of a ship would have been just a hard blow on the heels of a catastrophe. At this stage in the game, equipment was replaceable; trained men were not.
The central dome of the mining city shattered, and the station fell more quickly into the gas giant’s well, as though it were being sucked down into a never-ending eternal damnation. Gas swirled about the darkness.
Reez knew they were reaching the end when the hull began to groan about them in deep titanic bellows. The groans were joined by crumpling can noises and monstrous-sounding hollow booms as bulkheads buckled and collapsed in the relentless embrace of gravity.
The shock troopers’ armor was rated for extreme gravity.
This was not a good thing.
What had once been a gift, a mercy, the ability to survive where man should not, now became a curse as the atmosphere of Jasilaar Nine swallowed the station and dragged it down to its innermost depths. Because it only gave the troopers more time to witness the destruction around them—to see their own inevitable fate. To anticipate it.
Buildings imploded with terrific bangs that penetrated armor with their noise and concussion. It was like being in the middle of an artillery storm. Explosions lit up the clutching darkness, igniting the gases in brief yet brilliant fireworks displays. And in those last terrible seconds, as even beneath his armor he began to surrender to the terrific crush of gravity, Reez searched for his men in the dark. Strained to find them.
He found none.
Then the extreme gravity of the gas giant simply crushed him to death in a slow and final instant.
The bodies and the station would continue the long fall for miles, would continue to be pushed down into places where even electrons screamed. And who really knows what goes on down there at the heart of these crushing stellar slow-burning furnaces? For all that is known of the known galaxies, in the end, so much is not known. Because it can’t be. Because… how can it be?
Who could know it all?
***
Aboard the Wolf, a stunn
ed silence had fallen over the bridge. The intel officer glanced at the captain, who stared in horror at the surface of the angry gas giant. Where there had once been a state-of-the-art newly built gas mining facility that would be added to the crown of the Empire… now there was nothing. Where there had been two hundred and eighty trained shock troopers, so dear to an Empire facing manpower shortages… there was now only death. Silence.
All had been lost.
Only one escape pod had managed to break away from the station. But that had been early on. Coming from the engineering decks. It had jumped away to hyperspace seconds later.
05
MCR Fleet
Muratawa System
An old Ravacaggi heavy cruiser dropped out of hyperspace inside Muratawa space. She had thirteen escorts, ranging from heavy freighters that had been Q modified to carry weapons and heavy armor, to actual mass-production corvettes from the latter days of the Savage Wars. Corvettes like these were supposed to have been broken down in the various salvage worlds out along the Dentu Arm, but here they were, fully crewed by the MCR, armed and bearing down on a Republic super-destroyer battle group guarding Muratawa.
MCR fleet admiral Jona Crimm was a newcomer to the old rebellion. No one quite knew what his pre-MCR history was, other than he’d somehow been a part of the Repub Navy. Once, certainly. But so had everyone in the MCR naval forces. Either they’d served in the Repub Navy or some local navy, somewhere you could acquire enough shipboard skills to crew and fight in toe-to-toe combat against any given Republic vessel.
Though that rarely happened.
Crimm had risen rapidly through the byzantine structure of the MCR Navy. He’d led daring convoy raids against overwhelming odds. Overseen tactical insertions and rebel resupplies deep within the most active mid-core worlds. He’d even taken out a Repub corvette in the Battle of Smerst VIII. Or at least, that’s what the MCR called it. The Republic, and mainly the House of Reason, hadn’t bothered to dignify the loss of a single corvette by calling the engagement a battle.
But despite his career successes, Jona Crimm felt he was an average man. Nothing more and nothing less. And the truth was, no one in the MCR cared where he came from any more than they wanted anyone to care where they came from. It just didn’t matter in the MCR’s grand scheme of things. The only thing that mattered in the ongoing rebellion was what you did.
And now was a time for doing.
The truth was, before this Goth Sullus… before this Empire… the House of Reason—via their war dogs of Legion and Navy—had tightened their stranglehold on the galaxy to the point that the even the MCR had to admit that they had become little more than a nuisance. Their rebel organization had seen more losses, more defeats, and more lack of relevance than at any time in their defiant history. The MCR had been defeated, though few admitted it, even to themselves. It was just too hard to realize you were dead when you were dead. Where did you go after that? What was your next act?
But Goth Sullus had disturbed everything for everyone. He’d changed the game. And suddenly the MCR had momentum again. Momentum enough to send an MCR force, a precious and rare commodity, against a Repub super-destroyer battle group.
Five state-of-the-art Republic ships…
The super-destroyer Imminent.
The two destroyers Narganz and Pegasus.
Two corvettes, Antive V and Admiral Kamoda.
And a support frigate, the Sussa.
Against…
The ancient Ravacaggi heavy cruiser Defiant.
Four ships from various local navies that classified as battle frigates: Resistor, Anarchist, Revenge, and Winged Victory.
The super-ore hauler Triumphant, which had been converted into a carrier.
And seven freighters that all might have met heavy to light corvette standards.
Randa’s Gamble.
Dagger.
Lutao Makdama.
Patriot.
Payback.
Dart.
And Skelly’s Last Bullet.
At any other time in the decades-long conflict, an MCR ragtag fleet such as this would have stood no chance against a Republic super-destroyer battle group.
But the MCR was being led by a man who was rapidly proving to be a legend.
The commodore, as Crimm was officially ranked, brought the fleet out of hyperspace in relatively good formation. Which, even by modern fleet standards, was still a navigational feat. With good position and alignment for attack, the carrier began launch operations. Within minutes it had seven squadrons of various fighter types up and hurtling toward the super-destroyer.
The Repub battle group admiral went to active guns but held back on launching cover squadrons. TACAN AI calculated that the super-destroyer’s Aegis point defense system would easily handle the incoming fighters. The Repub admiral decided that if the MCR felt they were losing and decided to flee, he’d use the fighters to get in among their ramshackle ships and disable their engines to prevent escape.
SOP engagement resolution. Perfectly by the book.
Before a shot had been fired, the admiral in charge of the Repub battle group was already writing his own meritorious action commendation.
PDC guns were hot as the first wave came in over the outer pickets. The Aegis point defense system went live and activated guns. Quietly, in the CIC aboard Imminent, the admiral and his tactical staff waited for the kill count on the TAC displays to spring to life with rising numbers. All across the fleet could be heard the thunderous barrages of point-blank defense fire, but kills were coming in only one and two at a time. This was well below performance estimates.
They’d been assured that an inviolable net of protective fire would vaporize any fighter-based swarm attack within seconds. This was not happening.
“Loose comet,” stated the CIC officer in charge of sensors. He said this off-handedly. Even carelessly. As though this was nothing to be concerned about if one happened to be ensconced within the secure craftsmanship of a Repub super-destroyer. When he called three more “loose comets” within a minute, the admiral in charge of the battle group shifted nervously. This was unexpected.
“Pegasus reports deflectors collapsing.”
The silence that fell over the CIC spoke volumes about the state of uncertainty.
The admiral cleared his throat as the four loose comets streaked in toward the defensive perimeter that ringed the massive super-destroyer.
“Will we—” he began.
“Yes,” interrupted the CIC officer in charge of electronic warfare. The response had been a little too quick. A little too testy. As though he took even the merest suggestion of failure to stop the incoming SSMs as a personal slight. “Of course we’ll have them down.” He added a brief, “sir.”
But they didn’t.
Four loose comets didn’t streak in past the perimeter. Instead they hit the picket destroyer Pegasus over the course of fifteen seconds. It was either mere luck, or an incredible display of naval acquisition targeting and gunnery.
SSMs generally had to dodge heavy volumes of incoming PDC fire as they approached target, especially in the last moments before striking. SSMs were wonderful at violating armor and doing incredible amounts of internal damage, but due to their erratic nature, precision targeting—or targeting, period—had always been something that eluded weapon developers.
But in this instance, the MCR managed to land all four SSMs directly on the aft engine compartments of the Pegasus. The ship blistered internally and exploded, killing sixteen hundred crew instantly.
Every ship in the Republic battle group heeled over and away from the blast as repulsors and engines fought to maintain course and heading. Deflectors surged and even collapsed as what remained of the Pegasus turned into a spreading debris and vapor field inside the defensive perimeter.
With the loss of the Pegasus, the Republic’s newly developed Aegis Mark VII Integrated Point Defense Cannon System failed an integration reorientation and target shift alignment reca
lc as it refused to accept the loss of a major warship. The combined targeting communication collapsed long enough for inbound MCR fighters to concentrate fire on the temporarily defenseless ships.
A hodgepodge of MCR fighters taken from local navies and old surplus fighters from the Republic Navy swarmed the destroyer Narganz. Her deflectors collapsed in moments, but the ship was built to stand up to heavy fire. Once the loss of the Aegis system was fully realized, the commander pulled her from the battle group’s defense grid and switched over to gunnery commander’s discretion. Antive and Admiral Kamoda pulled back to defend the support frigate Sussa, while the main super-destroyer launched all fighters to get cover up.
Three minutes in to the engagement, the Narganz lost motive power. Even as the Repub battle group commander ordered a jump calculation be plotted, a thing he could not possibly have considered a remote possibility in the five minutes prior to the start of the battle, knowing he would have to leave a major warship behind, not to mention having lost another one already, things were going from bad to worse. The metrics of devastation were overwhelming and increasing.
It was under these trying circumstances that the first officer of the Imminent became concerned that the battle group admiral might be having trouble making effective tactical choices. The man had gone pale and was sweating profusely—and instead of shifting forces to meet the incoming threats, he merely stared in horror at the tactical displays, rubbing his left arm as all three Raptor wings of the fighter complement carried by Imminent streaked away to join the chaos of battle enveloping the Narganz. The first officer asked the chief medical officer to report to the bridge for a rapid fitness assessment. The first officer wasn’t just going to mutiny without following the proper guidelines for doing so—even if it cost them lives and the opportunity to flee.
Casualties were mounting on the Narganz. Several decks were holed, and an out-of-control fire raged on hangar deck three. The MCR fighters had shot up engineering, making close passes across the hull and knocking out reactor control. Internal explosions had damaged starboard life support, and several turret batteries had been taken out by ship-to-ship fire. And as the MCR fleet closed to turret and blaster cannon range, they began pounding away at the Narganz’s forward deflectors.
Prisoners of Darkness Page 7