by A. D. Bloom
"Disco ball," Cheese insisted. He'd named them that because the batteries of fast-tracking beams on them were as numerous, omnidirectional, and dazzling as the reflections that came off a mirror ball.
"We hit the big one with the warspites first," she said.
"Lotta' small beams. You saw what those gunboats did to the bugs over Shedir-4."
Strike felt the same way, but she wasn't about to say it. "That wasn't us, Cheese. That was the bugs. Shediri raiders are clown-painted 25-meter chitin targets that look like roaches and can't barely outmaneuver a torpedo junk. We, on the other hand, are the 55th Hellcats, aces of death in F-223 Sky Jacks, the pinnacle of human flight engineering - machines made to give no quarter and rain hellfire upon our foes. Ain't no comparison. What happened to them ain't gonna happen to us."
Her canopy glowed with the greenish plasma spat out the engines of the Ekkai gunboat as she brought her squadron in on the enemy formation's six o'clock. It compressed and lit up all along the forward surfaces of her fighter and on the Sky Jacks behind her.
"This is Hellcat 1-1. I just peeked back and you all look like burning green skulls and crossbones. I sure hope they see us coming. I want us flying right up this plasma all the way in. We loose our torpedoes at 10 Ks out and veer away to come back on a parallel line. Do not, under any circumstances, overshoot and fly through the combined fields of fire of the enemy batteries. I'm going in first with Cheese and on our way back out, me and 1-2 are going to see it if you fuck this up."
On the other side of the translucent projections of the enemy ships she saw in her helmet visor, her naked eye picked the actual alien hulls out against the blackness. The fins were barely visible from this angle. "Five seconds to intercept," she said as the Ekkai ships in her cockpit canopy grew to fill the view alarmingly fast. "Hellcats...raise Cain."
The Ekkai opened up from four hulls at once. There was no time to look at them all, but the dazzle of focused beams that hunted her as she jinked were thickest from the gunboat she'd locked in her sights. The next salvo came from six batteries at once. The coordinated fire wove across her path like a net and she had to vector thrust almost sideways to escape. That put her out of line on her attack run.
She was sliding out of the exhaust streams and into the fields of fire of additional batteries. Worse, the single warspite fission torpedo she carried wouldn't have much of a chance to make it to the enemy hull from that angle.
Strike pointed the Sky Jack's nacelles to starboard and shot herself on a new line with more inertia than her fighter's pinch could negate. Her body wanted to keep going to starboard, but her 223 had rocketed to port. The gees crushed her against the side of the canopy until the edges of her vision fuzzed out and her view darkened so that all she could make out were the stabbing, waving beams from the disco ball ship in front of her. She pointed her fighter towards the dark between the beams and leaned even harder on the thrust.
I'm too close, she thought as she stared into the verdant glow of the alien gunboat's engines. There wasn't going to be time to turn. Strike mashed the button set in the stick and as the torpedo launched from the underside of her hull, it's engines blew plasma right in her face and blinded her. When she could see again, the disco ball's beams had focused on her torpedo.
The first part of the detonation flash lit the backside of the fat Ekkai gunboat so bright she thought it would sear through the canopy. Strike ripped close over the dark hull and the domed batteries studding its side. She caught glimpses of them spitting focused gammas at her from unseen apertures. They chased her, but flying so close to the gunboat's hull made her a hard target and the beams of the hunter-killers nearby couldn't get a safe shot.
In a heartbeat that changed. Once she'd flown the 400 meters down the length of the disco ball and out in front of it, the entire compliment of gun batteries up and down the hull and on the three other ships all had line of sight on her. The ghostly rays seemed to stab out from the alien guns slowly then. In that queer, extended moment, she saw where all those beams would meet and crisscross in front of her and how no matter what she did now, there wasn't any time to get out of their way. This was the end.
Either side of her cockpit canopy filled with hundreds of war-painted Shediri raiders veering away as their small missiles impacted on the armored hulls of the Ekkai gunboat and the hunter-killers. Detonations lit the swarm in strobing flashes.
She leaned on the thrust until she was clear enough to rotate on her nacelles and see what had happened. One hunter-killer drifted now, falling out of line. She saw no hull breaches, but it was clearly disabled. The Ekkai gunboat she'd launched at was missing part of its starboard rear, but continued on one engine towards the Task Force.
The bugs flew close over the Ekkai, swarming them. In the moments those beams weren't detonating the alien missiles aimed at their hulls, they were stabbing and slicing raiders. Where they connected, the gamma beams didn't produce the same atomic decay chain reaction as in chitin as in steel, but the armor on the raiders was so thin that it cracked and exploded under the heat.
Through the chaos, she made out the IFF transponders from her squadron. The Hellcats had flown in and out of that mess just like she'd planned. "This is Hellcat 1-2," the voice said in her ear. "Don't think I don't see you over there on the wrong side of the battle. Whatever you do, she says, don't overshoot."
"At least I got a hit."
"The only good hit," Cheese said. "They picked off the torps we launched from a sane distance."
"Roger that, 1-2," she said. "We got nothing left but cannon. Let's get clear so the railgunners can have their shot."
SCS Hardway, bridge
"I'm pulling our torpedo junks back," Pardue said. "The warspites will never get through if they can't get close enough to fire them."
"Those Ekkai gunboats have too many damn batteries," Dana said.
"We've got to get the Shediri out of the way," Dana said. "The splash from the railguns..."
"Billings, message Ix aboard Doxy again. Two words: 'raiders leave'.
"Message is input. Message is sent."
The Shediri continued to swarm over the remaining three Ekkai warships as they sped nearer. "Why aren't the bugs breaking off the attack?" Billings said.
"Give them a second to pass the message and..." The cloud of Shediri raiders swarming around the warships dissipated into a fog and then found its shape again and flew away, firing a parting salvo of missiles to keep the enemy gunners occupied as they left.
Ram nodded to Asa Biko at the tactical console. Biko thumbed comms. "All railgun batteries target the enemy cruiser and prepare to fire sabot." Out the windows of the bridge the turrets of the midships batteries rotated to starboard. Hundreds of meters ahead, the bow guns above and below turned with them.
The Ekkai began to fly evasively then, hoping to make themselves harder targets. The formation broke up and came together, picking new lines of attack every second. "All batteries," Biko said. "Coordinated fire. Pattern C. Target the gunboat for a full spread."
"This is fire control. We've got them lined up, Mr. Biko."
His XO glanced up to Ram for the order. "Let them have it."
"All batteries fire."
"Impact in 5...4....3..."
Hardway's batteries had fired a preset shotgun pattern ahead of the evading Ekkai and Ram knew one of the sabot had managed to connect when the impact flash lit up on a hunter-killer's hull like a new star. The projection of it over the bridge showed it glowing white hot from the osmium-tungsten sabot that had impacted on its flank. "I can't see any breach," Ram said as it veered off and came back on course.
"All batteries. Pattern C. Fire when ready."
The next salvo scored a hit on the same ship. Dana said "Penetration," and pointed to the hot materials jetting from the hole Hardway put in the Ekkai ship's bow. Seconds later, it came back on line for the attack, but the bow gunnes hit it three more times on the next salvo. If it had reactors, they refused to cook off.
It just kept jetting plumes of burning gas and heavy metals out the hull breaches as it spun away.
Ram never saw Guerrero fire. The mountain-sized shield of her bow plate and all her guns faced the incoming enemy. From Hardway on the battleship's starboard side, the first indication that her sixteen big bore railguns had loosed a salvo was the impact flash and the spectacular eruption of material from an Ekkai hunter-killer as it broke up and the pieces tumbled.
The squadron of railgun monitors scored a hit on the Ekkai gunboat and might have even breached its armor, but in that same instant, it opened fire.
The Ekkai beams seemed to stab and wave almost non-stop as it ripped past the task force with all the speed it had built up on their way in. The small batteries that studded the gunboat's sides weren't enough to damage to the battleship and the alien gunners knew it. They directed the small beams' fire at the UN destroyers and two freighters and chased the last breaching ship behind Guerrero where Cyning's yacht had hidden. They holed the monitor Colt in two places near midships. Rabal's ship drifted out of line with the other four.
The Ekkai gunboat fired the big guns it had on that pass at Guerrero, testing her armor by scoring trenches in her bowplate that sent up a waterfall spray of molten metal into the vacuum. The alien gunners with a field of fire to the rear took a few potshots at the Doxy as they passed and kept going.
"Should I send Sky Jacks to pursue?" Pardue said, "That gunboat is probably too damaged to get away."
"We can't stay here and let them wear us down," said Dana. "We've got to counterattack now. While we've got the ships for it."
"The UN is in command of this task force," said Ram. "But Captain Chun knows we have to attack now. He'll order us to steam for the inner system any minute."
"Incoming comms from Guerrero..." Billings reported from the communications console behind the command chair. "It reads: All ships prepare to get underway. The task force will steam for the Shedir-Draconis Transit in ten minutes."
"We're leaving the system?! We can't leave," Dana said. "The Ekkai and the Imperium will vaporize the Shediri from orbit. What the hell does Chun Ye Men think he's doing?"
"I'm going to go find out," Ram said. "Pardue, get me a pilot and a longboat in Bay One. I'm going over there."
Longboat Six, thirty meters over UNS Guerrero's hull
The breaching ship nestled between Hardway and Guerrero, at the center of the formation making for the Shedir-Draconis Transit. Ram's longboat held station just thirty meters over the battleship's curving hull, just behind the lip of her bow plate, where she tapered into an armored teardrop.
The repairs at Deimos were supposed to take longer, but half the point defense guns she was waiting for to replace those lost in the first engagement with the Imperium had been delayed. Chun had decided not to wait for them. He knew there was a chance the Imperium could attack at Shedir and because of that, he'd come back in a half-repaired ship just to make sure the system didn't go without Guerrero's protection too long. Those weren't the actions of a UN Captain who would abandon the Shediri in their hour of most dire need.
It made even less sense that whomever was at the OPs console aboard the battleship wouldn't even open the bay doors for him to dock. His pilot said. "Again, request you open your bay doors, Guerrero."
There was no pause before the response. "Negative, Hardway longboat."
"This is Commodore Devlin. Why am I being denied?"
Static from the outermost lines of the gas giant's magnetic field played over the silence on comms. "Standby..."
"Standby?" said Dibbs. "I'm sorry Mr. Devlin. I don't think they're going to let us in."
He thought that he and Captain Chun had come to some kind of understanding, a mutual recognition of the roles the two of them had to play if they were going to keep Staas Company from making diplomatic policy through the Secretary General's Office. He considered the notion that he'd simply been wrong; maybe he only saw in Chun what he'd wanted to see.
The figure in a white exosuit that suddenly appeared and poked its helmet over the bow of their longboat startled him and his pilot both. It they hadn't been strapped in, they might have flown out of their seats in the null gees. No rank, no insignia either. His transponder was off but the lights inside the helmet had been turned on so that Ram could see Chun's face. The UN captain beckoned him outside before he blacked out the lights and jetted himself out ten meters from the longboat and then rode his slim jim belt down to some kind of a service hatch on the hull below.
"Stay here and hold this position," Ram told his pilot.
By the time that Ram got through the airlock and down to the battleship's hull, Chun had already disappeared into the hatch, leaving it open. Shedir's light angled down the shaft. The battleship's artificial gees didn't leak out this far so he used the ladder rungs to pull himself down headfirst on his descent into Guerrero's starboard armor.
Nearly ten meters down, Ram floated out between the mighty battleship's hulls into a belt-iron steel cave that curved away from him on two sides. The backside of the outer hull was above and the inner hull below. This was the damping space, always kept as a vacuum and meant to offer shock waves from warheads and ordnance impacting on the outer hull no easy avenue for propagation into and through the interior of the ship.
The double beep in his helmet told him someone had just opened a private IR laser comms channel with his suit. An arrow indicated the speaker was behind him. "We'll have to make this fast," Captain Chun said. "A battleship captain can't disappear for more than three minutes without someone asking where he's gone and what he's doing."
"Why are we leaving?"
"I received orders from the Secretary General's Office to remove this task force from the system and withdraw. They were signed by Vikram Hayes himself - not a deputy secretary of anything, but the Secretary General for god's sakes."
"It's the UN's new partnership with Staas Company," he said. "They're not even trying to hide it anymore."
"What the hell do they want? Do they want to destroy the alliance with the Shediri?"
He said, "They want to change its conditions. They want a weaker ally that depends on Earth for protection. The alternative is to allow the bugs to grow stronger - strong enough to protect themselves against the Imperium and maybe even protect us someday, but that's a risk they're not willing to take. This way the Shediri can't ever say no to us. That's what Secretary General's Office and Staas Company wants. They want the Shediri resources and the technology without the potential threat of a developed neighbor."
"You mean they want Shedir to be Earth's colony," Chun said. "Like India was a colony. Or China."
"They want Earth to be an empire."
"I can't disobey my orders no matter how distasteful I find our policies," the UN Captain said.
"The orders say all ships, Chun. Including the Doxy. You know the Shediri aren't about to let the Doxy steam away. Do you plan to force her into the transit at gunpoint? The UN Fleet hired Staas Company Privateer ships and we're supposed to work for you, but we're making the policies and giving the orders, not the UN. The Privateers are the military contracting wing of a profit-driven, publicly-traded corporation. The only thing that keeps us in check are the laws made by people in government. If the Secretary General and the UN are already part of Staas Company's loop, then there's nothing in our way. Technically I work for you, Chun, but that's not the reality of it. It shouldn't be like this. I'm fighting it, but I can't keep the company from exerting their will without your help."
"Secretary General Hayes had the audacity to refer to us as Task Force Liberty in his orders. We're not bringing liberty to anyone. When he came aboard to inspect us at Lunar Lagrange, he said Guerrero was the finest ship mankind could build and she'd free countless alien worlds from tyranny. He actually said that to me. It was all a bloody lie, Devlin."
Ram knew he couldn't understand the disappointment and betrayal Chun must be feeling. Ram had never had any illusions about his e
mployers, but Chun felt differently about the United Nations. "It was a lie what he said to you, Chun, but it doesn't have to be. Fight to protect the Shediri with us. Take the lie the Secretary General fed you and make it into the truth." As Ram spoke, he saw Chun's eyes by his helmet lights, but in them he saw no glint to evidence the words had been taken to heart and no hint of what the man would do, only a blankness that said even Captain Chun Ye Men didn't know.
6
SCS Doxy
Captain Garlan Foet nearly went mad trying to find a way out of the pickle he'd put his crew in. As far as he could see there was only one way out. He had the good taste to hate himself for what he had to do now and that hate seeped out of every pore.
"We got chow!" Bix shouted from outside the bridge hatch. "Goulash."
"Why the hell aren't you back in engineering with Carnaby?"
"I heard they packed our galley so I went to get something to ea-"
"Get back there."
Annie looked up from NAV. Garlan could feel himself glaring at her; he just couldn't stop. "We still on course for the transit?"
"Sure, yeah." She pointed to the projections in front of her over the console showing the task force and its path to the Shedir-Draconis Transit. "Two hours and twelve minutes if we maintain this speed."
Graves finally asked. "What did the Shediri say about us leaving? I mean, their homeworld is under attack."
"I don't know. Devlin talked to them."
"Why are we leaving?" Bix said from behind the chair.
"Get off my bridge, powder monkey. Get back to your station."
"The kid is right," Graves said. "No reason to leave. We've got plenty of firepower - enough to take on that enemy battlegroup."
"Oh, we get a new tactical console and you're some kinda military genius now, Graves?"
"No. I mean..."
"What about the Imperium ship?" Singh pointed at the stabbing shape projected at the center of the enemy battlegroup over Shedir-4. "That thing has an energy shield and a weapon that blows armor and hull off ships like they were made of sand."