Frontier's End: A Seth Donovan Novel

by Jim C. Wilson

  “It’s a little more complicated than that but close enough for a layman. It gets very confusing for me when there are a lot of mixed emotions, but when there is one dominant emotion I can find it overpowering.”

  “So…if I keep an eye on you, I can gauge how everyone else is feeling?”

  “If I’m close to you, you can tell how you are feeling, too. Keep that in mind.”

  The shuddering motion of the ship increased as we skirted the upper reaches of the moon’s gravity. I gripped the command table to steady myself.

  “We should probably get into our seats,” said Hieron, “The inertial stabilisers aren’t as good here as the Dreaming’s. Going to be a bumpy ride.”

  “Rego,” I called, “Relay the command suite’s battle configuration to my chair’s holographics, but keep an eye on the bigger picture. It would be just our luck for the Corporates to have reinforcements on the way.”

  He indicated my seat had the data and started playing with the display. I crab-walked to my seat, keeping one hand on the railing as I did so. When I was seated I checked through the sensor feeds and found which ones I thought would be useful for the coming fight. I began strapping myself in as Glenris returned with my PX-2 and my new lurzak blade. I clipped them to my belt and nodded my thanks. He shimmied over to a vacant chair.

  Before me spread a smaller scale depiction of local space, the Restitution displayed in a central location. As we moved, objects would move relative to us, keeping the ship as the focus. With a thought, I could shift the focus to anything the sensors picked up, such as an incoming ship or missile. I could split the view to show several objects as a focus simultaneously, although I found that more than a few foci were too much information for me to process at once. With practice, though, I knew I could utilise the system more adeptly. For now, I relied on the bridge staff and Martine to notify me of anything important that I might miss. I had similar feeds given to Hieron and Reza’k as well, but only Hieron showed any interest in toying with the system. The Garz’a woman merely stayed on the main view, watching with interest as we orbited the moon.

  As we picked up speed again, I could feel the way the ship vibrated and shuddered. It wasn’t just the stress caused by the gravity we were cutting through, but the Linus Drives burning hard thrust. As we came around the far side of Eovan from the Blade of Xerxes an alert sounded, indicating high-gee manoeuvres were about to commence. I lashed myself into my seat with a crash harness and the alert began to flash an angry red light.

  “All hands,” came a pipe from Martine, “Brace for high-gee.”

  After her warning, the ship ceased accelerating and began to flip end-over-end. The inertial stabilisers nullified most of the effects of the spin, but for a moment my heart was in my throat. Then it was over, we were facing away from the Xerxes.

  This was a crucial stage of the manoeuvre – as we began braking, we were exhibiting just as much thrust as when we were accelerating. The resultant propulsion wake made sensor readings difficult to make out aft of us. Conversely, the enemy would see a very bright, very hot target heading their way. We had to time the next move very carefully. We needed to get ourselves down to a speed where our weapons would be effective, and we needed to do it before we were within range – otherwise we’d be presenting the enemy with our juicy rears.

  Martine’s bridge gurus were working furiously on the math, trying to get it right. Too soon, and we would be going too fast to accurately place our shots. Too late and we open our vulnerable side up to enemy fire. The effects of deceleration were felt by everyone, pressing us into our seats.

  “Eleven minutes to engagement.” called one of the sensor operators, monitoring our position relative to the Xerxes’ last location.

  “Receiving incoming communication, commander!” called the comms station.

  “They’ve decided to surrender?” I asked, hopefully.

  “No, sir, it’s the Dreaming of Atmosphere.”

  No less happy to take this call, I activated a button on my seat. “Max?”

  “Still not following communication protocols?” she said.

  “Where are you? We can’t pick you up, yet.”

  “That’s kind of the point of a stealth module, Donny. We’re passing on your starboard side. All marines accounted for. Kekkin reports mission success.”

  “We saw. That was some move Crege pulled, catching those marines.”

  “Yeah, he thought you’d like that. We’re heading straight to Barris Doon, this is no fight we’re equipped to help out with.”

  “Understood. Get on out of here, Max. I’ll catch up with you at Collumus Station, my shout.”

  “Good luck. Dreaming out.”

  “Terminus reached!” came the helmsman’s report from below, “Aligning for combat vectors!”

  Once more, we flipped the ship over, although the forces acting on us were significantly less.

  “Contacts incoming!” called the sensor stations operators, several of them talking over each other.

  True to their word, contacts began appearing on my displays. The smaller merc vessels were forming up into picket formations, probably intending to screen the Xerxes from another lightning raid like before. The space around them was abuzz with hundreds of smaller contacts – drone swarms and inert missile deployments.

  “Scramble the drone wings!” I ordered, “Get that screen up, fast!”

  “Launching all wings!” called the drone squadron leader. A flurry of calls went up among the drone pilots situated below the command deck platform.

  “Look at the Xerxes, lad!” called Hieron.

  I flicked my view over to focus on the organo-ship to find it slightly out of place from where it had been floundered by our marine strike. One of the Destroyers was attempting to pull it out of orbit.

  “What are they trying to do?” I mused.

  “Who cares,” said Hieron, thumping the palm of his hand with a fist, “Take your shot at that Destroyer now, before they uncouple and get free.”

  “All batteries, target Destroyer bravo!” I called. A moment later, the dull thudding of the hardlight batteries could be heard over the din of the engines.

  Firing long range shots such as this was normally an exercise in futility, as even a Destroyer had enough time to accelerate out of the way of hardlight rounds over distance. Uncoupling from the Xerxes was going to take time, however, time the Destroyer didn’t have. As our aspect took us directly toward our target, we could fire both batteries at once – a circumstance I took full advantage of.

  “Enemy drones approaching!” called sensors.

  “Superiority drone wings engaging!” called the drone leader.

  As I watched and waited for the hardlight rounds to find their mark, I watched the two clouds of drone swarms clash. As they merged, our sensors lost track of the individual flyers, unable to accurately depict our drones from theirs. The drone pilots below started calling out to each other, forming tactics to deal with the enemy micro-fighters.

  Even a ship as large as the Restitution couldn’t afford to ignore drones, as an unimpeded swarm could cause significant damage to sensor housings, weapons and even get inside our emissions ports. Enough of them can even disable us. We seemed to be on even footing, matching their drone numbers at least. I only hoped our pilots were better than theirs.

  I began to have second thoughts about what Hieron said. If we took out a number of the smaller ships – surely the controllers of those drones – we could let our drones have free reign over the battle space. Tactically, it made sense. Morally, though, Reza’k was right. I had to play by the books for as long as I could. I just hoped it wouldn’t cost me the battle.

  “Enemy missiles in range!” called sensors, “Drone defences engaging!”

  “Point defences online!” called one of the weapons operators.

  Besides the sound of the hardlight batteries, we could hear nothing of the raging violence outside the ship. The bridge was abuzz with the chatter of
the various console operators and the pilots working together, with the occasional chime or alert sounding from a station or display.

  With satisfaction, I began to see the first of our hardlight rounds strike our target. We hadn’t stopped firing, adding to the carnage we were inflicting upon the hapless ship.

  The last Destroyer hadn’t been idle either. It moved towards us, trying to draw our fire by crossing close to our weapon streams. The smaller ships were scattering, weaving to and fro to avoid the few wings we spared to harass them. So long as they were occupied they would not be a threat to us.

  “Launches detected! Contacts emerging from the Blade of Xerxes!”

  “What are they throwing at us?” I called, “Full sensor spectrum.”

  I remembered all too well the slew of technology the Xerxes had at its disposal. I had to know as soon as possible the threat these new contacts posed.

  “Sir!” called one of the operators, “Reading high-level magnetic fields around the contacts. The AI suggests they’re boarding pods.”

  “Optics confirms! Contacts are KX Talon pods.”

  I swivelled in my chair, turning to face Rego. “What have we got on that model?”

  Rego called up a spec sheet and hastily scanned the data. “Synthetic payload, high-velocity boarding pod. They won’t slow down.”

  “Yeah, I think I’ve seen these before. Alex,” I called into my comms mic, “You got synthetic boarders on their way. Expect large mechs and assault synthetics.”

  “Roger, Commander,” came the reply.

  I looked at the engaged swarms of drones, there were too many enemy drones left to disengage and target the pods. The drones we used to harass the smaller ships were also too far away, that left our point defence drones and point defence weapons. If the pods were high velocity, I didn’t like our chances of taking them all out before they reached us. I only hoped that Alex and the remaining marines were up to the task of repelling them.

  I checked our ranges, trying to see how near we were to launching our missile salvos. If we could get our missiles off after enemy defence drones were dealt with, we’d have a greater chance of damaging the Xerxes. I ordered the drone squadron leader to send his attack drones to harass the organo-ship and entice its defending drones to engage, or having failed that, to target any point defence weapons they could destroy near where we planned to strike.

  I flicked back to the damaged Destroyer, it had managed to disengage the tether connecting it to the Xerxes, but the damage was already done. Venting atmosphere was clear on the display, and the ship was listing to one side. It had yet to return fire. When life pods started ejecting from all angles, I clenched my fist in victory. As the last few rounds smashed into its hull, a bright flash told us a reactor had ignited and the ship was truly doomed. A short cheer went up below as the ship’s destruction was announced.

  “Weapon’s release detected! Incoming hardlight fire!”

  “All hands!” I called on the main broadcast, “Brace for impact!”

  A frightened gasp rang out from below as the bridge view screens flashed a brilliant colour when the first of the enemy fire from the remaining Destroyer reached us, striking close to the bridge.

  “Shields holding!” called a systems operator, “Forward screens weakening!”

  I thumbed the control for engineering communications. “Gannerson! Shunt power from the rear to the forward shield arrays! We’ve got no enemies behind us right now.”

  He acknowledged the command and I saw my power levels realign. The systems operator reported an increase to shield recharge rates, but I knew that repetitive hits would cause them to fail. Unlike the Dreaming, the shields on the Restitution were military grade, with multiple projectors for the effect. We could continue to shunt power between the shield emitters, but once one was depleted it would take time to reform the nanite lattice to generate the shielding effect. From then on, it would be only our armoured hull protecting us from the icy depths of space.

  “Helm!” I called out below, “Roll us to port, thirty degrees, let’s give our forward shields time to recover.”

  The ship started to change its aspect relative to the incoming fire, and we began to hear reports of shields taking fire across various parts of the ship.

  A loud bang caused a few people to cry out in alarm, as several red indicators flashed on my chair. A quick check told me that we’d suffered a breach on one of the lower levels. Damage response teams had been dispatched to deal with it.

  “What was that?” I called.

  “Enemy missile got through our screen, sir!” called the drone squadron leader.

  I glanced behind me to see Reza’k gripping the armrest of her chair with white knuckles. She was pale and wild-eyed. If she was feeling fear…

  I raised my voice above the frantic chatter below. “We expected a few of their shots to get through,” I called out, addressing no one in particular, “Have faith in our ship, people. Have faith in each other.”

  Another loud crash reverberated through the hull. I gauged the level of stability the ship was experiencing and stood up from my seat. We were no longer going through high-gee manoeuvres, at least not for a few more minutes until we started to evade more attacks, so I walked carefully over to the rail overlooking the operations deck.

  “Missile control! How close are we to firing?”

  “Thirty seconds, commander!”

  “Batteries! Target all available guns on Destroyer Charlie. Let's reunite it with its sister ships.”

  Hardlight rounds started pouring in the direction of the last Destroyer, but I noticed only port side was doing so. I checked our firing arcs – we’d turned to take fire on our port side, and now starboard was out of arcs.

  “Starboard battery!” I called, “Individual fire, target the Xerxes weapon ports. Drones, get clear of the enemy and engage the last Destroyer!”

  “Forward shields failing!” came a cry from below.

  I gripped the railing tightly. “Helm! Full evasive manoeuvres! Missile control!”

  “Ten seconds, commander!”

  The drone squadron leader called up, fear in his voice. “Boarding pods are through the defensive screen!”

  Martine yelled into her console comms. “All hands! Brace for impact!”

  The ship shuddered with several distant crashes as the high-velocity pods smashed into our hull. At the speeds they were travelling, even with inertial stabilisers, anything living inside would have been crushed. Synthetics, on the other hand, would be immobilised in solid impact braces. Not all the pods survived the impact, but enough of them did that reports started to filter in of enemy mechs clamouring into compartments.

  “Rego, coordinate with Alex for the repelling action,” I called, “Let me know the moment things look dire.”

  “Aye, Commander!” he called, switching the command suite through various configurations while talking hurriedly on his headset.

  “Missile launchers in range, sir!” called Chief Ensel.

  “Fire all salvos! Helm, roll us to starboard, one twenty degrees!”

  I could see damage markers begin to appear on our hull status, I figured we could turn our undamaged side to face the Destroyer, and maybe get the enemy fire to take care of some of the boarding pods stuck on our hull. Compared to the Restitution, the size of the pods meant this was a slim chance, but maybe we’d get lucky.

  “Starboard battery, target Destroyer Charlie! Port side, focus fire on the Xerxes! Follow the missiles in!”

  By now we were starting to get fairly close to the enemy ships. In moments, we passed through the picket ship positions, taking fire from their Class 2 weapons. Weakened though it was, our rear shields were more than able to take the brunt of the energy weapons, and the drone defence screen handled the rest.

  “Missiles hit!” called the fire controller.

  “Sensors! Damage report!” I called.

  “Optics confirms multiple hits amidships, secondary damage obscuring e
xtent.”

  Our hardlight munitions were hammering away at the already damaged target site, adding to the destruction caused by the missile impacts.

  “Sensor nineteen destroyed!” called one of the sensor operators, “Enemy drones near our hull!”

  “Drones! What’s the status of our defence screen?” I called.

  The drone squadron leader was frantically hopping between pilot stations, trying to get them to coordinate the defence. I could see he was having a hard time, so I didn’t push for a situation report. I had to trust that he knew what he was doing.

  I started to feel overwhelmed. I had reports flashing nearly everywhere I looked – damage reports, enemy contact positions, enemy fire warnings, incoming missile strikes, swarming drones, shield warning indicators. The sheer volume of data was making it difficult to track our progress. I could feel a panic attack starting to grip its icy talons on my throat.

  Hieron, who must have been watching me intently, sent me a line of text on my overlay.

  Delegate, lad. Give me the hardlight batteries, give Reza’k the damage reports to prioritise. Let Rego direct the boarding defence. Your First Officer can handle directing the drone efforts. You just focus on directing the ship.

  I nodded, trying to keep my breathing under control. I knew once I started hyperventilating that a full panic attack would not be far behind.

  Hieron started barking orders into his console’s communicator. Reza’k flicked her display over to the damage control coordination reports and, despite being as wild-eyed as I felt, started talking with teams tasked with mitigating our damage.

  I called to Martine, “You’re on point defence, support the drone screen!”

  Immediately she dashed over to the frantic drone squadron leader, pointing him towards his own console. She sat down in a vacant station, trading orders with the pilots.

  “Helm,” I called, taking in the larger view of the battlefield, “Keep us rotating at fifteen degrees a second. Standby for vectors.”

  I noticed that we had drifted directly into the heart of the enemy formation, they’d surrounded us and spread out to attack us at all angles. We still had a decent amount of speed, so it wouldn’t be long before we would pass through the riskiest area. Our original plan had been to pass aft of the Xerxes’ location, giving the missile system an optimal angle of attack, but the remaining Destroyer had veered wide, placing it on the opposite side from the Xerxes.