by A. D. Bloom
"What are they eating?" asked Dice.
Dudley said, "Some kind of rodent maybe. Everything from the forest that didn't burn up is probably running around with nowhere to hide just waiting to get eaten."
"I know how they feel," she said.
The wide and shallow river at the base of the north ridge carried an endless sludge stream of ash and mud that leaped up at their ankles as they crossed. The Shediri in front of her had better footing. She wished she had more legs and feet like they did. It was difficult finding safe purchase on the rocks under the violent, opaque waters. The river-rounded stones were the size of human heads and covered in a slimy algae. She took her eyes off the landscape too long. Whether or not that's why it happened would always be uncertain, but that's how she would remember it when she blamed herself later and asked how she let the Stripeys ambush them like that.
The six Shediri stepped out from the cluster of boulders among which they'd concealed themselves and opened fire at long range with the discharge weapon she'd seen on Taipan.
What Dana saw first was the contrast. The black and white, dazzle camo on the Shediri soldier bugs' armored exosuits actually tricked her eye for the briefest of moments into thinking she'd seen heat distorting the air some fifty meters downstream. Lippmann and Dudley on point were dark, anthropomorphic blurs in her peripheral vision as she spun, lifting her MA-48 from its strap and spinning as she shouldered it. "Ambush! It's a trap!" In the one horrified second of duped alarm before the weapons fire started, Dana had to choose whom to shoot first.
She wouldn't remember consciously making the choice. It all happened in the space between heartbeats. She didn't think, 'Click and Clack led us this way, therefore, betrayed us, therefore, I must kill them.' It wasn't like that. As she raised that rifle and slapped the MA-48's capacitors to RTD mode to disengage the safety, what drove her thoughts and pointed the muzzle of her rifle towards the Shediri that called themselves her friends wasn't any kind of logic at all it was fear - not for herself, but for all the lives depending on them. She couldn't take the chance. There wasn't time to stop herself, only time to crouch and squint at the discharge of the incoming plasma salvo on the mudwater as she pointed her weapon at Click and Clack.
Dana had fought the Shediri in close quarters before, so she thought she already knew how fast they could move. It took her by complete surprise when Clack lowered itself down over the water and then sprung at her, crossing over seven meters in a single bound. Bug arms batted the muzzle of her weapon out of the way as the railgun discharged with a resounding whump and sent a round skyward.
It wrapped itself around her then. There was no way to escape when it coiled and held her with four and then six and then eight limbs. They fell into the knee-high water as the lightning bolts of plasma in discharge cracked the air over them and the river pushed them downstream, bumping over the rocks. A discharge steamed the water close by and the zap made it through the insulation of her suit to give her stabbing pain up one side. Clack must have been hurt too because this time, when she wrenched her body to try and get free, it half-worked.
Clack was already up and moving for the nearest shore and cover with her in its arms before she even felt the shame of her mistake like a bolt in the chest. The Shediri set her down against a boulder too small to provide cover for a bug and then, while she shouted for it to come back, it ran out across the shallow waters again while the plumes of electrified spray shot up around it.
Dice's and Lippmann's MA-48s whumped to the right of her. Clack's friend Click stood its ground. She hadn't even known the engineer bugs were armed. She though they left the fighting to the Stripeys, but Click had one of the batons she recognized from the fight on Taipan. It lased a targeting beam and then sent the lightning cracking like a bullwhip and blew a steaming hole in another bug's armored thorax.
Dana's pilots fired on the Stripeys that exposed themselves too long trying to shoot Clack. By the time the bug got back to Dana's side of the river and handed the astounded Privateer her weapon, Dice and Lippmann had both scored hits with railgun sabot.
Dudley shouted, "the last one is running!" and when she looked down the sights of her rifle then, she saw a total of five, war-painted bugs twitching or motionless in the water. The last was fleeing in astoundingly long leaps that took it up and over the bald hillocks, away from them. Clack sent a single, crackling bolt of lightning that whipped out and caught the fleeing Shediri at the height of its jump and blew it in half.
Dice barked, "Cover the bugs!"
Whether or not Clack knew what that meant and knew not to move, she had no idea. Before she could say anything, the bug landed and jumped again, taking off in that same, low, bounding long jump over the hillocks. "Stay here!" she said as she ran after it and jumped in the .37 gees.
It's not the jumps you worry about - it's the landings. Dana came down in a kind of skipping motion and took off for another jump, but lower and shorter. She saw Clack land near the bisected body of the last Stripey. It immediately went to the top half and began rifling through the wrapped flaps of Shediri pockets around the thorax. By the time she caught up, Clack had produced something the bug thought significant enough to hold up. As she neared within a few meters, the bug threw it at her. The Staas Company made q-comms unit bounced off her chest and thudded to the ashen dirt.
"Human make that."
Staas Company was in on this. Or the Secretary General's Office. But that didn't answer all the questions. "These are Shediri warrior bugs," she said, leveling her rifle at it from her hip. In the visor of her helmet, the red targeting reticule for the railgun made an 'X' over his head.
"Not us," the bug insisted. "Not blood of Hive Kesik. Human observe. Armor differs."
It wasn't a different color or pattern than any of the Shediri armored suits she'd seen until she looked into the compound eyes on the top of Clack's swaying arthropod head and remembered the bugs saw things differently. When Dana cut the bulk of the human, naked-eye-visible spectrum from the display her helmet showed her and viewed the torn and twitching Shediri body at Clack's four feet in the band of infrared she knew the Shediri eye saw in, the difference was apparent.
The Stripeys of the Hive Regent, their Stripeys, like the ones aboard Doxy, had a finish on the white of their armor that reflected the light with a different iridescence and shifted it to appear a longer wavelength. This was a different color of IR, higher in frequency - cooler looking. To human eyes it was subtle. To them, it wasn't. On Clack's own engineer's suit she could now see a pattern of warm and cool white like a barcode plaid.
"These are soldier bugs of Hive Hrt'ee," she said.
"Hrt'ee the Usurper," Clack confirmed, "Not blood of Shediri Hive Regent Kesik. Not blood of Ein Kai Kesik."
"Who?"
"Me."
She'd almost forgot Clack had a real name. The way it looked at her then. Bug or not, ten eyes or not, the way it pressed her gaze back into her skull with a kind of righteous disdain, she knew that it was well aware of how back at the river she'd tried to kill it. Ein Kai Kesik, aka Clack, leaped away on its four legs before she could open her mouth to say anything more.
"Captain Sellis!" Dudley shouted in her ear over local comms.
"Calm down; what is it?"
"Dice spotted more! There's more bugs on the way!"
7
55th and 99th Fighter Squadrons
The 600 meter hulls of the Ekkai battleships could be glimpsed as LiDAR and radar glitches. Well-before they were in range, the anvil shape of their hulls confused her fighter's starfix. What Hellcat 1-1 saw were patches of red-tinted space her flight computer questioned because the stars there appeared a fraction of a degree out of place. As Hardway's Sky Jacks and the Shediri swarm closed on the enemy battleships, similar but more frequent anomalies marked intermittent contacts with their escorts. She couldn't clearly make out the two cruisers and the squadron of HKs accompanying the battleships yet, but they were out there.
Strik
e zoomed in with her helmet to see the Ekkai battleships and their imperfect stealth. The long-reaching fins that cloaked them by bending energy around them couldn't bend it to appear perfectly cloaked from all angles. Watching the enormous, gun-studded hulls steam through space was like watching ripples wave through the blackness behind the stars. Each of them carried twice the fast-tracking defensive batteries of the hunter-killers in addition to the big batteries meant for ripping through capital ships.
Behind, above and below, to port and starboard, the 223s of the Hardway Air Group stretched out in a loose conical echelon meant to optimize their forward firepower. The way the raw light glinted off them in a system full of stealthed warships made her proud somehow - like they were the bold ones. It was a stupid and romantic thought and she knew it, but she let her heart swell with it until she was afraid they'd hear the choke in her voice. "This is Hellcat 1-1, listen up zoomies. From what the AGC tells me we've got three battleships, two beamship cruisers, aka discoballs, and a single squadron of HKs. Now it would seem logical to send us and the bugs after the little ships, but the battle geniuses up on the bridge have got us attacking the heavy hitters - the enemy battleships. We don't have what it takes to punch holes in those hulls. Our job is just to keep the battleships occupied while Guerrero and the railgun monitors tear through those smaller ships as quickly as possible - as quickly as we did last time. When you hear me call out, you clear out because they're aiming those railguns at the Ekkai battleships next and you don't want to get hit with the splash."
"What about the bugs?" said Pill.
She looked up through the top of the canopy in time to see the raiders of the Shediri swarm lining up with her fighters. The very first of the war painted ships rolled in its line of travel. She returned the salute, and as she rolled her F-223, she answered her wingman. "The Shediri are going in with us. I want you to save the torpedoes unless you've got a sure shot line on the hull and no point defense batteries left to take it out."
The enemy turned off their stealth, and the three enemy battleships seemed to pounce forward at them out of the darkness. Then, they turned in formation and began to close the distance to the task force, hoping to take a bite out of the carriers.
"I still can't see the battleship's escorts."
The starry black to starboard of the formation lit up with impact flashes only a few hundred Ks out as an Ekkai HK flickered into visibility venting plasma out a hole blasted at midships. "Ask and ye shall receive." She saw the streaks from more sabot Guerrero launched, but there was no time for her to ogle the destruction to starboard.
"Hellcats and Kodiaks, follow me in." She'd been told the bugs had orders to stay with her and she was glad to see the hundreds of raiders diving with the air group as she brought them in on an attack line that would allow them to use one battleship as a shield against the other two while they closed.
"They're not maneuvering," Pill said. The first salvo of beams the enemy loosed must have been aimed right at the lead fighters - right at Strike and Pill because as the spread of rays stabbed out at them, all seven glowing paths she counted receded to infinity perfectly as if they'd been one beam and split. "Down the rails!" she said as she rolled and slid to port, barrel rolling down around the beams that tried to chase her. There was no time to look to see if Pill was still alive. There was no way to protect any of her pilots from any of this - no way but to dive forward into those guns and blast the enemy that was trying to kill them. That thought filled her mind at the same moment she heard herself almost growling on comms. As the Ekkai battleships came into line with her gun barrels, she didn't even try to hold back the war cry she screamed into her helmet and into comms and into the ear of every pilot with her.
Strike dove, spiraling down at the battleship's hull dodging the beams and continuing her scream through the moment when when she heard Pill's voice too and Bun's and Huckleberry, 1-4, screaming with all the lungs they had. Hellcats and Kodiaks filled the comms with war cries then, wordless and preverbal. In that cry she heard their shared mind screaming out as if force of will alone would decide the outcome and what they wanted was death, death, death for their enemy.
SCS Colt
Rabal's squadron of railgun monitors and Guerrero cored the smaller enemy ships in only two salvos. The discoball cruisers and HKs broke up under fire or cooked off as the Privateers and the UN battleship spun to point their guns at the three Ekkai heavies, almost within range of the carriers.
The black and white warpaint of the Shediri swarm flashed and flared bright purple when it got hit with an Ekkai beam. Rabal saw that color burning in too many places over the enemy hulls. The thick dazzle of beams from all their combined turrets stabbed and sliced the bugs from the sky. The orange red flashes he saw were F-223 Sky Jacks getting hit and there were too many of those, too.
"My god," said Julian. "They're getting cut to pieces."
"It's working; those battleships haven't been able to fire effectively on the task force and the carriers are falling back out of effective range again."
Siggy looked up from the NAV squinting and shaking his head. "How the fuck could they send the fighters and the little bug ships in there against the Clams' battleships like that?"
"Fire control, report," said Rabal
Pasty exhaled long and slow into his mic. "Reload in five seconds. I have a target and CFC is good."
The cloud of fighters and raiders buzzing around the Ekkai ships suddenly broke away. The small craft flew in all directions."Looks like they got word to get clear," Rabal said.
"This is Asa Biko, all railguns, open fire."
There were still enough small ships close to those hulls that Pasty turned and looked back at Rabal for confirmation. He nodded. "You heard the man. Let 'em have it."
While the stutter jets fired and the capacitors whined, he heard his XO Julian exclaim before the movement of a hulking mass outside the windows of Colt's bridge drew his eye. Guerrero's great bow plate passed close in profile as her 800-meter length streamed past, heading for the enemy at top speed.
Siggs said, "Look at that great, kill-hungry bastard..."
UNS Guerrero
Deep down in the heart of his battleship, behind a bowplate of belt-iron steel 25 meters thick in its weakest spot, Captain Chun Ye Men tightened his grip on the arms of the command chair. All around him on every side, the ship's gargantuan railguns hummed with the capacitors' charge.
Whip's face lit up with the impacts displayed on the console in front of him. Chun's XO reported, "That's three good hits from the monitors. No hull breaches. They targeted the one farthest from us. Think they were trying to score a kill before we got our licks in?"
"Rabal's smart."
"The other two are firing on us."
The rumble of the Ekkai beams gouging canyons of steel out of the glacial bowplate penetrated through the shock space and the dampeners to rumble like an out of control train across Chun's bridge. His command chair tried to throw him out of it, but he'd strapped in tight. "Helm, don't let them get on our flanks."
"No hits to our railguns," Whip said. "Master Gunner reports eleven barrels ready to fire."
"Target the ship the monitors pecked at. We don't want to lose any of our pirate friends if they decide to fire back."
With Guerrero's jumbo reactors she wasn't starved of power for inertial negation, and Chun barely felt it as the ship's maneuvering thrusters adjust her for targeting. "Fire at will." When those enormous magnetic acceleration coils fired all around them, it felt like the raw power lifted him off the seat of his command chair.
"Sabot away," said Whip. "Impact in three..."
The projections over the tactical display cast shadows on Whip's smiling face as the hits flared on the Ekkai battleship's hull. "Nine hits," Whip said. Where there had been a smooth, curving hull and domed turrets, great gaping holes and the cracks of widening fractures spread and vented flame. "Critical damage."
"Helm, point our nose at the farthest
away of the two remaining Ekkai battleships and give me a hard burn, maximum thrust."
"Aye aye."
On Whip's tactical display the green line projected from Guerrero that represented the battleship's current course and intercepts shifted to cross over the farther of the two Ekkai warships just before the thrust of the Novalifter clusters overcame the inertial negation by just point-one gees and pressed him against the back of the command chair. "Rotate us on this line to target the closest of the two battleships and fire when ready."
He expected to feel the discharging railguns, but instead he heard, "Reloading. Three seconds." Inside, Chun winced. With the course he'd ordered and that hard burn, in his estimation they'd impact on the second Ekkai ship in not much more time than that. The ship rumbled and shook under his chair, and in his mind's eye, he saw the fountains of molten metal bleeding off his ship.
"Charged! Firing! Sabot out!"
"Load up! Helm, spin us back on line - nose at the other Ekkai ship. Hard burn. Do it!"
Chun's helmsman never confirmed his order, but he didn't have to. Chun saw the ship turning in space on his XO's display and felt a kick from the engines.
"Loading..." said Pasty.
"Eight hits to the enemy hull. It's cooking off."
The last one loomed larger and larger in front of them. "Stay on it, helm..."