St. Legier

by Blaze Ward

  She knew d’Maine had gone through more people. The most to date, as a percentage of his overall crew. But Alber’ was also a brutal perfectionist looking for the hardest warriors, the meanest, toughest people he could recruit. And his Goddesses of War.

  The other Hammerhead escort in orbit, quietly hanging in the skies half a world away, would be facing VI Victrix shortly, surprised and alone.

  Jessica had made a private bet with herself that VI Victrix wouldn’t even leave rubble big enough for pieces to survive re-entry.

  This wasn’t a raid. Economic warfare wasn’t her goal. They weren’t even here to put the fear of the night into the people of this sector.

  This was purely vengeance for St. Legier.

  About destroying as much material and personnel as they could reach in one afternoon. Because only two of those ships out there were likely to be controlled by Sentient systems.

  The rest would have to program their JumpDrives by hand in order to escape her wolfpack.

  Best of luck.

  Emergence.

  In the big projection, Jessica watched a target appear. A Hammerhead-style escort. That long, slender hull-type common with Buran, triangular when seen face-on, with a flat dorsal surface and sides angled down to a keel. Instead of the black maw from which the Mag-Shear beam emerged, this class had three small, perpendicular cylinders at the bow, holding sensor arrays and extra beam emitters, elevated from the hull so they could rake fire in all directions as well as scan.

  The mark of a good escort.

  Wouldn’t help him now.

  Vanguard was set to pass close below the craft, like an orca swimming underneath still waters.

  “Boarding teams, launch now,” Nina called over the comm.

  The projection showed all four shuttles and both couriers pouring out of their aft bay. As many marines as could be stuffed into them, with more men and women in EVA armor strapped on outside.

  Everyone who could be thrown into the mix.

  The Reversed Field, Pinch, Plasma Implosion Generator fired. The thing Moirrey had jokingly referred to as a Bubble Gun, unaware at the time that Yan Bedrov would put it into his notes that way, and then forget to clean up all the references before the design was published. Before it became famous.

  Beams moved at light speed. Missiles accelerated from a dead stop relative. The Bubble Gun fired a lozenge-shaped bolt of magnetically-contained plasma that moved at roughly fifteen percent the speed of light. Slow enough to be picked up by the human eye. Too fast to stop, even for a Sentient warship.

  And they caught him asleep, or something. Whatever a Sentience did when it wasn’t paying enough attention to his surroundings.

  The bolt raced out to the perfect range and detonated, flipping the magnetic fields such that the thing turned into a bubble of energy, wrapped around the target vessel.

  Then it imploded into him, fire striking every power absorption panel equally and simultaneously. Nowhere for all the excess to be bled off to, and too fast for the batteries to channel it safely in. For the briefest moment, St. Elmo’s Fire engulfed the tiny ship.

  It faded a moment later as every panel collapsed under the load and the extra energy began thrashing the bare hull.

  And then the Type-3 beams cut loose.

  Nina had tuned most of the forward beams for short-range damage, planning this sort of scenario out ahead of time on the expectation that they would get to do this.

  Some of those pounded on a spot about a third of the way back from the Hammerhead’s snout like an angry woodpecker. According to the best estimates, that was where the control systems and the Capriole drive should be located.

  The rest centered into another spot, well aft, aimed to shatter the JumpDrive arrays on the Energiya module so the ship couldn’t escape. Vanguard rattled a different chord from Brewster’s aft beams striking out at various civilian ships.

  On the screen, the Hammerhead was suddenly shown with a red tint. Best estimate that they had done enough damage to cripple the vessel. Hold him in place. Perhaps set him to tumbling as internal systems failed and damage control parties raced to fix things, against an unforgiving clock.

  The Gunner put another salvo into the ship as Vanguard passed beneath. Jessica could see large pieces shattered off the hull, along with smaller chunks that her imagination showed as crew members suddenly blasted out into space to die the worst death any spacer could imagine.

  “Gunner,” Nina ordered. “Stage Two complete. Move on to Stage Three targeting. Archer Force, you have the field.”

  Stage Three. Anything that moved. Around them, a number of freighters still hadn’t awoken to the wolf in their midst.

  The station was well aware. It had been shaped like a snowflake, flat and with six arms coming out from the core for ships to dock. The third shot from a port Type-4 had managed to torque a section hard enough that one arm and part of the core itself had separated, bounced off another arm, and was floating away from the station at a fast gallop.

  Afolayan put a fourth shot into the station anyway. It went all the way through the core engineering hub and emerged as a flash of heat and a pulse of explosive decompression on the far side. The station started to break up under the pounding.

  Jessica wasn’t happy to be doing it this way. But this was the only military platform in orbit and she needed to teach Buran a lesson.

  If she had to kill all his minions to do it, that was a price she was going to have to pay.

  Chapter XXXV

  Date of the Republic Jan 11, 402 Buran Hammerhead Aleph, Stanovoy Orbit

  Every second counted.

  Senior Centurion Harun Chong had a count going, both in his head and in the Heads Up Display (HUD) screen inside the Heavy EVA armor that cocooned him. How many seconds since the shuttle had cleared the lockshield. How many seconds since Vanguard had tried to cripple his target with accuracy and beamfire. How quickly the various craft could decelerate, crossing the gap. How soon he could get his men and women aboard the alien craft.

  Today, he really missed Auberon. He could even imagine missing Gaucho, although he would never admit that in public. They were doing this in transport shuttles rather than a pair of DropShips. Rugged, but not the sort of desperately-overpowered chariots that could bring his old team, Auberon’s entire First Battalion, on a single raid, like Cayenne.

  He had settled for strapping every suit of EVA armor possible to the outside of one of the shuttles, until he had run out of space. Then every marine in the lighter armor that he could cram inside as well, stripping out everything that wasn’t welded to a bulkhead in the process.

  “Archer Transports, this is Archer One,” Chong said over the comm. “Cut thrust now. Archer Force, begin your assault.”

  The target, a Buran escort/destroyer, had been sitting still in orbit, hardly moving relative to Vanguard, the dreadnaught crossing the lesser ship’s beam at a slow pace. Still, there had been a lot of delta-V to kill. Clearing the locks, every ship had gone out a different direction, flipped end-for-end, and gone hard on the engines.

  It had worked. At least well enough. They were still closing on the hulk, but at a pace soft enough that the thrusters on his armor could bring him to rest. All shuttle engines shut down. It was up to him and his team now.

  And time was more important than pretty, as Navin the Black always liked to say. The shuttles shed warriors like lice escaping a sheep about to be dipped. Chong lit his thrusters with the team and moved to where he had a better view.

  About a dozen figures in light armor held boarding axes, two-meter-long boarding poles with blades at one end. Perfect for prying things open when the power goes out. Or hitting people who didn’t want to surrender.

  Chong watched that force take the lead. There were a couple of engineering experts over there to help, in case they had to breach the bulkheads inside, and one Command Security Centurion who had no business being out here, except that he still qualified high enough on this sort of thing th
at he could displace a younger marine. Expertise mattered, with these risks.

  And Navin was generally willing to take orders here. Hell, even the Fleet Centurion had come around, once Denis Jež weighed in on the need.

  Fast over pretty.

  The heavy assault team came to rest relative to the ship. The escort was tumbling slowly on the roll axis, but not so much that they would have problems. Enough that time was still of the essence.

  If anybody moved, they could engage it with beams.

  Nobody had ever attempted anything like this before, against a Buran warship. Fribourg, Aquitaine, or a pirate would have considered themselves too deep into the gravity well to risk cooking their JumpSail matrix escaping. Buran could flee just fine with JumpDrives.

  Harun Chong and his team had to convince the bastard otherwise. They would do that by getting aboard and killing all the power systems.

  Prisoners would be nice, but not necessary. Fleet Centurion wanted the technology. She already had a tame-enough prisoner who had briefed them on the expected layout of the corridors and systems that needed to be disabled.

  Harun would have liked to bring Seeker along on this mission, just to make sure this wasn’t a pig in a poke, but the leaders trusted the man. Good enough.

  More bodies began pouring out of the shuttles themselves now. They didn’t have the sort of heavy EVA armor to engage defensive systems, but Harun wanted everybody deboarded, in case the bastard still had a gun handy to kill the transports.

  The airlocks were a close enough fit to standard, but Harun wasn’t planning on using them.

  “Archer Force, this is Archer One,” Harun ordered. “All teams breach soonest.”

  “Archer One, this is Viking One,” Harun heard Navin’s voice call back. “Stand by for breach.”

  Harun counted to three, and a flash of light appeared.

  In a vacuum, you only had to get out of the way of blowback when using a shaped charge on a metal hull. Avoid anything that would hole your suit in death pressure. Navin and his men were through the gap that had been an airlock door previously, and inside the ship.

  Now, the risks began to accelerate.

  How soon until the ship could leap to safety with an infection aboard? How many marines could board and stop the crew from scuttling the vessel? Who might be lost forever or taken prisoner?

  Other flashes of light indicated three more places where teams were blowing airlocks to get inside, as close as possible to their targets. Navin was in basic armor. Good enough, and light enough, for the inside, even if the ship had lost gravplates.

  Harun regretted having to stay outside, but he would have Navin inside, and the EVA armor he was wearing was exactly wrong for a close battle where speed counted. It was slow, and heavy.

  And extremely well-armed.

  “Gunner Force, this is Archer One,” Harun called to his heavy team, grinning as his fun started. “Begin icepicking the hull.”

  Harun picked out a spot where his sensors showed a closed porthole. A weak spot in the metal of the hull. His armor had a shoulder-mounted beam weapon. Heavier than a pulse rifle. More awkward, too. That wasn’t a problem when you were sitting in space.

  He lined up his shot and fired. The first bolt didn’t do the trick, but it did flash the hull dull red for a second. The second shot ruptured something. The hull didn’t fail, but he could see air escaping and turning to an icy mist. Other shooters would be going after sealed airlocks, beam arrays, or whatever looked like it might be dangerous.

  Anyone inside would be suddenly facing death pressure, which ought to do a lovely job of distracting them from the marines pouring through internal corridors behind them.

  Harun puffed his jets enough to move towards the bow of the doomed ship, looking for his next target. Gunner Force was all about sowing chaos at this point. There was no way to capture this ship and take it home, so they didn’t need it in any shape to fly. If it did somehow escape them, his men and women might end up anywhere in the solar system,

  So he needed to make sure the damned thing couldn’t go anywhere.

  Harun picked out another interesting spot on the hull and fired.

  Chapter XXXVI

  Date of the Republic Jan 11, 402 IFV Vanguard, Stanovoy System

  Carnage. Wrought in shattered steel and lost lives. The images in Vanguard’s holoprojector were graphic, if distant.

  Jessica had ordered the attack in cold blood, though she doubted that Aquitaine historians would see that. Certainly both Fribourg and Buran would most likely record today’s events as blood-thirsty, well-deserved, raging vengeance.

  She couldn’t even call today a true battle. Exactly one station had managed to fire two beams and one missile before Hardie Glenraven and VI Ferrata had spiked it with beam fire. The remains looked like a bug that had hit a windshield on the highway, slowly de-orbiting in large pieces.

  No, this had been a slaughter.

  All Aquitaine vessels had finally moved out of close orbit, leaving devastation in their wakes. With just beams, it was extremely difficult, if not impossible to actually kill something as rugged as a freighter, to say nothing of a dedicated warship. You had to stab them to death with icepicks.

  There had still been a lot of death to go around. Every single station hammered far harder than it probably warranted if they didn’t immediately surrender and begin evacuation, but those were the only points of possible armed resistance, once Vanguard disabled the first Hammerhead and VI Victrix annihilated the second.

  You actually could kill a destroyer, if you put four Type-4 and eight Type-3 beams into it point blank, immediately on the trail of the Bubble Gun knocking all the panels down. Jessica noted that Komal MacInerney, one of Alber’s Goddesses of War, had settled short of breaking the craft into shuttle-sized pieces. It still looked like someone had taken a badly-tuned laser saw to the hull, with three major pieces flying in close formation amidst a cloud of lesser debris.

  Over one hundred and twenty freighters had been hit at least once in the fracas. Few bad enough to be permanently decommissioned, but Jessica’s gunnery officers had been going after the biggest targets first. The most expensive to build. The hardest to actually hurt. The slowest to repair.

  The most psychological damage she could wreak on this system.

  A ping brought Jessica’s eyes down from the projection to a screen in the table in front of her.

  “Dead, fled, or surrendered, Fleet Centurion,” Nina Vanek announced in a voice that mixed professional pride with dread and morbid understanding of what she had done here. Chickens facing a farmer had a better chance. Or sheep about to be culled.

  “Thank you, Nina,” Jessica replied. “I’ll take it from here.”

  She turned to Enej, noted the emotional distance her Flag Centurion had put between himself and the readouts in front of him from the hollowness of his eyes.

  “Put me on a clear channel, Enej,” Jessica said. “I’m talking to everyone.”

  He nodded with a gulp and pressed a switch. After this many years together, he probably could read her mind about the next steps.

  “Stanovoy system, this is Red Admiral Keller of the Fribourg Imperial Fleet,” she said in a dark, angry voice. “I have made my point, I presume. This is now declared a salvage and rescue operation. Anyone who has managed to get away undamaged should consider themselves lucky. Starting now, my fleet will coalesce around their prisoner. All other vessels that keep their distance will be unmolested. If any vessel fires on one of my ships, I will annihilate every vessel in this system and then begin bombing targets on the planetary surface. There will be no second warning. You are otherwise free to conduct any rescue operations that do not get too close to my fleet. I will depart soon and then you will regain control of this system at that time.”

  Jessica nodded to Enej and waited for him to speak.

  “Transmitted,” he said.

  “Put it on a slow loop in the clear,” she ordered. “Pull the corvette
s into a defensive laager around the cruisers and have them keep polite company. Some of the ships out there are likely to drift under our guns because they can’t stop themselves. Command Centurions should behave themselves for now.”

  “Got it,” he nodded grimly, turning to relay her wishes as well as her words to the team.

  Not that most of them needed it. Alber’s folks were likely to be the least trigger-happy now, having made their point the most graphically. Some of the corvettes were still getting used to exercising mercy so soon after battle.

  She focused her mind now on the vessel she had referred to as the prisoner. It was an odd way to look at it, but the ship itself was a Sentient being, even if the crew had turned the cognition way down while resting in orbit. The Hammerhead’s systems had been about as smart as a sheep, at the moment when Vanguard came calling. She didn’t think they had gotten it back up to anything useful before everything went sideways.

  The little shark was quiet now. Surrounded in a tetragon by two cruisers, one carrier, and a heavy dreadnaught, all of whom were locked onto it with some level of destructive firepower, with the rest aimed outwards, just in case some other warship came calling.

  Jessica didn’t think Buran’s Sentient starships would be suicidal, but you never knew. Making a strafing run into this force right now would probably end up with a Mako out of control and going face first into the atmosphere like a javelin.

  “Yeoman Robles, on a secured channel for the Fleet Centurion,” one of the women, Enej’s comm-techs around the outer wall said, looking up from a screen.

  Jessica unbuckled and rose from her chair.

  “I’ll take it from my office,” she said. “Enej, join me. Denis, you have the flag.”

  Enej’s eyebrows tried to climb all the way up to his hairline, but he rose as well. Well, halfway, then unbuckled and tried again. He eventually followed her out the hatch of the flag bridge and into the office that was attached to her suite, the space exactly between their cabins.