by Rick Shelley
“It was my fighter that was leaking, Doc, not my head.”
“You’ll have to take that up with Commander Bosworth. I have no desire to get in the middle of that discussion.”
“Just get me out of here as fast as possible.”
“We always get our patients out of here as quickly as possible, and not one second sooner.”
Josef still got out sooner than he expected.
When “Call to Quarters” sounded, Josef didn’t wait for orders. He got out of bed and started pulling on the clothes he had been wearing when he was brought to the hospital. Everything but his flight suit was in the cupboard by his bed. The flight suit had been taken back to the squadron. Josef was slapping down the clamps on his boots when Dr. Jupa came in.
“What is it?” Josef asked.
“Federation ships,” Jupa said. “You still feel fit?”
“Ready to go,” Josef assured him.
“Then get back to your squadron in a hurry. We’re going to need every pilot we have in the next few hours, I think.”
Josef didn’t wait to be told twice. “Thanks, Doc.” He was already out the door, hurrying along the passageways toward the squadron’s section of the ship, a mile away. During long straightaways, he even ran, exulting in the fact he didn’t feel the slightest dizziness or pain. Gastight bulkheads slowed him since he had to stop to open the hatches and then shut them again after him. Under general quarters, each section of the ship was sealed off from the rest to localize damage. With the frequent stops, Josef needed fifteen minutes to reach fourth squadron’s ready room.
“The flight surgeon release you?” Commander Bosworth demanded.
“Yes.” Josef sucked in a deep breath. “He said we’re under attack.”
“We are. Get into your flight gear. I’ll notify your crew chief. We’re the only squadron left aboard, and we’ve just been placed on ready alert. Hurry it up.”
Kate and another pilot helped him suit up and asked how he felt.
“Brand new,” Josef assured them, particularly Kate. She smiled and gave his arm a squeeze. “What’s the opposition look like?”
Kate gave him a quick rundown. “We launched the other squadrons, then jumped to Qspace. We’re jumping every ninety seconds. The whole fleet is.”
“What’s the rest of the wing doing?”
“Harassing two Feddie escort ships operating low.”
“Any sign of transports?”
“Not yet.”
The pilots kept their eyes on the complink monitors, watching the battle as best they could, cheering when a Federation ship appeared to be damaged, clutching the arms of their chairs nervously when one of their own ships came under fire. Sheffield remained untouched through several passes.
Then the Federation transports arrived and started disgorging shuttles. It took less than a minute for orders to arrive for fourth squadron.
“Listen up,” Commander Bosworth called out. “We’re going to our fighters, ready for launch. Our mission is to splash as many shuttles as we can. It looks as if the Feddies want to land a regiment of their own.
Let’s keep the odds down for our Marines.”
“Gang launch?” someone asked.
“With only ninety seconds in normalspace at a time?”
Bosworth said. “Of course we’re going out in a gang launch.”
“You feeling right, sir?” Andy Mynott asked as he helped Josef into the cockpit of Red Three.
“Right as rain, Andy.”
“You mind yourself out there, sir. This time it’s a proper fair.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. You mind yourself as well. Skipper’s using Sheffield like a Spacehawk.”
“I know. I’ve been worrying about that.”
Locked into his fighter, Josef turned his attention to the battle again. Sheffield made another Qspace transit. When she returned to normalspace, she was coming in on the Federation transports while the frigates continued to engage the enemy’s main battle line. The LRCs were extended and the Spacehawk pilots were hurled out into space. Sheffield vanished almost before Josef had time to adjust to the tactical situation.
The transports tried to take the Spacehawks under fire, but it was uncoordinated, and limited by the need to avoid endangering their own shuttles. The shuttles themselves were defenseless, and so much slower than the Spacehawks that they were virtually standing targets. The first thirty seconds it was a duck shoot.
Then one of the Federation escort ships came close enough to bring its weapons to bear and the Spacehawks had to divide their time between shooting down shuttles and gyrating through random evasive maneuvers. For ninety seconds, the only ships visible over Buchanan were Federation. During that interval, Sheffield’s Spacehawks took the brunt of all the enemy’s weapons.
Josef and Kate each logged two solid kills on shuttles. Altogether, the fighters hit half of the three dozen Federation landing craft in the first minute. Then the fighters were deluged by missiles from the enemy ships. For a time, escaping that deadly shower took all of their attention, taking them out of position for continued strikes on the shuttles.
“We might as well get in a few blows against the ships,” Commander Bosworth decided. ‘ ‘We need the altitude anyway.”
The five fighters of red flight took up an intercept course for one of the Federation escorts. They still weren’t in optimum range when the Commonwealth ships returned— Sheffield and Victoria taking the transports under fire while Lancer and Repulse concentrated on the battle line.
Up to a point, Spacehawks could maneuver automatically to evade incoming missiles, but when the fire was too heavy, the pilot had to be ready to take over. Even plugged directly into the fighter’s circuitry, there were limits to his ability as well. Josef saw the missile coming, and he clearly saw that he had no avenue of escape.
“Here I go again,” he said over the radio just before the missile took off his fighter’s left wing and sent him spinning over the other Spacehawks of red flight. The blast stunned him for a moment. Then he blinked, astounded to find that he was still alive.
“I’m going down,” he reported, so calmly that he didn’t believe it himself. “I’ll hold off as long as I can before I eject. I hope there are friendly faces down there to collect me.”
“Roger,” Commander Bosworth said, too occupied to spare more words.
A few seconds passed before Kate managed a quick “Luck, Joe.”
Josef calmly went through his emergency checklist, making sure that his escape pod retained full integrity. He wanted to hold off ejection until he was below twenty five thousand feet.
He just happened to be facing the right direction to see a missile take the nose off Lancer.
The Nilssen generators couldn’t adjust instantly. When the missile struck Lancer, it shifted the ship’s attitude immediately. The propulsion units continued to power the ship, working at an angle to the ship’s momentum as it did a slow backflip. Throughout Lancer, those crew members who weren’t strapped in or firmly hanging on were thrown down or around, adding to the confusion.
“Damage control, what’s our situation?” Arias Rivero shouted. “Navigation, get us stabilized.” He quickly noted that almost a minute remained before they could shift back to Qspace—if they were still able to.
“Engineering. Generator status!”
“We’ve lost the first three compartments forward,” the first officer reported. “That’s the nose off all three hulls. Behind that point, our integrity remains intact. No word on casualties yet.”
The ship’s remaining maneuvering rockets started slowing Lancer’s cartwheel spin. But the ship was finally stabilized not by her own efforts, but by the impact of another missile exploding far aft. That blast put Lancer’s Nilssen generators out of commission. With the Nilssens gone, Lancer lost its artificial gravity as well as the ability to transit Qspace.
“Weapons, keep putting out everything you can,” Rivero said. “Engineering, can we get our Nilss
ens back on line?”
The weapons officer acknowledged immediately. A third of the ship’s weapons systems were out of action, or gone, but everything else was still operating. Engineering didn’t respond. Rivero repeated his question before the first officer gave him the news.
“Main engineering station is gone, Captain.”
“Get the secondary station. I need to know if we have anything left,” Rivero told him. The first officer nodded and went to work.
Rivero put in the call to Sheffield. In four quick sentences, he alerted Admiral Truscott to their condition and immediate prospects.
“Your course is carrying you away from the action,” Alonzo Rinaldi told Rivero. “We’re holding in normalspace for an extra thirty seconds. Repulse will be out and back in on schedule. We’re pulling all of the Spacehawks out to divert the Feddies in the interim. If you can’t get your Nilssens back up, we’ll have Victoria come in to evacuate as soon as you’re clear of the Feddies.”
Rivero’s first officer returned and shook his head. “The Nilssens are gone, completely.”
“It looks as if we’ll need Victoria,”’ Rivero told Sheffield. “Our Nilssens are gone.”
“Right, Lancer. We’ll have Victoria rendezvous with you. Twelve minutes. That will put the Feddies far enough away to let the transfer proceed.”
Twelve minutes.
Two more Federation missiles hit Lancer during the first of those minutes, but only one penetrated the outer hull, damaging two more compartments. Rivero and his crew started preparing to abandon ship.
Wounded crew members were given first aid. It was too soon to start numbering the dead, but Rivero wanted to be absolutely certain that no living crew member was abandoned with the ship.
“Let’s expend all the ordnance we can before we go,” Rivero told his first officer. “We might as well not waste it.”
He closed his eyes then for a minute, overcome by the difficulty of maintaining a calm exterior while he was screaming inside. My ship. My people. • • •
It was an act of rebellion, but Josef took his helmet off before he blasted the escape pod free of his crippled fighter. “I’m not going to go through another implant this soon,” he swore.
He plotted his landing zone and updated the memory modules in his helmet. He would need the radio links in the helmet once he was on the ground. And he could project maps onto the visor to keep track of his location. It brought a chill when he realized that he might have to walk all of the way to the settlements on Buchanan, especially when he realized that he would land 125 miles away from them.
‘ ‘If we lose the battle, I might have to walk all the way back to Buckingham,” he whispered. The thought of being stranded, perhaps permanently, was more frightening than the thought of a dozen replacements of his neural implant.
Braking rockets. First parachutes. And on. Josef held his helmet tightly against his chest. He didn’t want it caroming around the cockpit like a billiard ball when the pod hit the ground.
“I’ve got to be able to walk away from this if I’m going to make it,” he reminded himself.
Then his pod was smashing into the trees, the endless trees.
40
David Spencer and Tory Kepner were still working with the wounded when Lieutenant Ewing brought up the line companies. David’s third and fourth squads had already come across to reinforce their mates.
“Laager up, Bandar,” Ewing told his lead sergeant by radio. “We’ll stay here to take care of everyone, then find a better defensive position.”
“We’ve got four dead and six wounded, Lieutenant,” David reported. “Three of the dead and two of the wounded are from the squad off Sheffield.”
Ewing looked around and was relieved to see that the VIPs appeared uninjured. ‘ ‘How serious are the wounds?’ r
‘ ‘Well, if we get them into trauma tubes right away, none of them are in danger. Sergeant Chou is hurt worst. The others will be able to walk, at least for awhile. Gaffer’s legs are both hit—bad. We had to tourniquet both of them.”
“I don’t think we can count on pickup anytime soon, even for wounded,” Ewing said. “Commander Shrikes, you’re senior serving officer here. I don’t think earlier conditions prevail any longer.”
Ian exchanged glances with the prince. “I’m not a serving officer,” William reminded him softly, and Ian nodded.
“Lieutenant, you know your men far better than I do. For the moment at least, I won’t interfere with your tactical command. I’ll simply play admiral and let you do the skippering.”
“Very well, sir.”
“I’ll contact Sheffield and get what guidance I can,” Ian continued. ‘ ‘That may take some time if Admiral Truscott puts his new tactics into operation. How good is our position here?”
“It’ll do for a bit, sir,” Ewing said. “There’s better to be had.”
“Find us a good spot, Lieutenant, and let me know when we’re ready to move,” Ian told him.
“Aye, sir.” Ewing started talking into his helmet radio, calling for Bandar Jawad to meet him, and unfolding his mapboard as he walked to confer with his lead sergeant.
Ian knelt next to David, who was still working with Gaffer Chou. “Sergeant, you’ve had more opportunity to work with Ewing and his men. How good are they?”
“I’ve known Bandar Jawad forever, and Ewing has had him to bring him along. They’ll do quite well, I’d say.”
“Good. I’ll trust your judgement. I know something about that.”
“Thank you, sir.” David hesitated. “I hope that you and His Highness haven’t completely forgotten what you learned in commando school.”
“So do I,” Ian replied, and Prince William nodded his agreement.
“We may get down to the same fix the Feddies have been in since we arrived,” David said. “That kind of go is rough on everyone.”
Ian shook his head. “No, that’s not the way for us. Worse comes to worst, we head back toward the towns. If we can’t act as a cohesive military force with some real hope of holding out, we surrender.”
“Surrender?” David asked.
“What good does it do the Commonwealth to have its best men fight to the death in a hopeless exhibition of bravado?” the prince asked. “In any case, we can cause the Federation more trouble as recalcitrant prisoners of war than we can as a few ragged guerrilla bands if they come out of the battle overhead with the sort of supremacy we’ve had until now.”
“I hope it doesn’t come to that, sir,” David said, getting to his feet. “If I might be so bold, all of our I&R
platoons are on the ground. We’ve got the training and experience that could give us a chance to be effective, even if the Feddies do own the skies after today. It’s part of our training, sir, part of the job description, you might say.”
“Let’s stick with ‘I hope it doesn’t come to that,’ ” Ian said.
“Aye, sir,” David said.
“I’m not about to meekly turn myself over to the Federation in any case,” Doug said. He had been sitting off to the side, unsettled by everything that had happened in the last half hour. ‘ ‘I won’t simply let them take over my world again without every bit of fight I can give them.”
“Let’s not get so far afield,” Prince William suggested. “With the admiral’s new operations book, I don’t think it will come to that pass. And we still haven’t heard from Buckingham.”
Thirty minutes later, the force had moved a mile and was digging into defensive positions on a low, heavily wooded hillside. But even that routine operation was interrupted when Lieutenant Ewing received a call from Sheffield.
“We have a pilot down, twelve miles northwest of your position. Marked by the green cross on your mapboards. Can you pick him up?”
“We’ll try,” Ewing replied.
“There’s another problem. The Feddies have managed to land troops. They have at least a full battalion of fresh troops on the ground and together, nine miles the other
side of the pilot, on a direct line from you through his position.”
“We’ll keep our eyes open,” Ewing said, noting the red blips of Federation helmets appearing on his mapboard. As soon as the link to Sheffield was broken, Ewing turned the information over to David Spencer.
“Your lot is best equipped for this sort of work,” Ewing said, and David nodded.
“Part of the job, sir.” He pointed to the green cross on the mapboard. “With a little luck, we can reach him in well under four hours. Should we come back this way, or wait for you to join us?”
“Neither. We’ll rendezvous here.” Ewing brought his finger down on the mapboard. “That’ll give you another three miles to walk after you get the pilot, and it’ll put us ten miles closer to Sam and Max. Hilly ground. Should give us good defensive positions.” He expanded the mapboard’s scale and called Doug over.
“Do you know this area at all?” Ewing asked, returning the map briefly to its earlier scale then zeroing in again.
“I’ve never been there, if that’s what you mean. You suspect Federation troops are there?”
“No. Unless you know some reason not to, that’s where we’re heading. The I&R folks have a pilot to pick up and we’ll rendezvous there.”
“No reason I know of,” Doug said, turning his attention from Ewing to David. ‘ ‘How far do we have to go to pick up this lad?”
“Twelve miles,” David said. “But this is one march you’d best forgo. Stay with the companies. We’ll be pushing ourselves hard.”
“You’re afraid I’ll slow you down?”
“On this go, yes.” David said. “It’s all speed. Twelve miles of heavy forest in four hours. With Feddies coming in from the other side. They may try to get to our pilot before we can, and they’re three miles closer.”
Doug hesitated for only an instant. “In that case, I’ll stay. I don’t want to be the cause of one of your men being captured.”
Sheffield and Repulse continued to harass the main Federation battle fleet, driving them farther away from the crippled Lancer. A dozen Spacehawks added their stings, while the rest of the wing continued to attack the transports and made occasional dives to fire at the shuttles and troops that had already landed. For the time being, the crippled dreadnought was left to its own problems. Lancer was drifting, but at escape velocity, “so there was no immediate worry that it might crash on Buchanan. Victoria came out of Qspace and matched course and speed with Lancer, moving carefully closer to shorten the time of exposure to enemy weapons as it launched shuttles to rescue the frigate’s survivors.