by Jake Elwood
I get to be a part of that. History may never know what we do here today, but I'll know. I'm going to keep the Cassandra firing for just a few moments longer.
This will be a good death.
"Hardy," said a voice in his ear, and he felt a cold prickle go dancing across his skin.
"Hardy here."
"Launch," said the voice. "And good luck."
He reached down, grabbed the handle that controlled the grapple holding him to the hull of the corvette, and pulled.
And the Bumblebee launched.
CHAPTER 10 - CARRUTHERS
Here they come," said Chavda. "If they keep braking, they'll be here in five minutes, nineteen seconds."
And if they stop braking, Carruthers thought, they'll whip past at high velocity and slam into the planet. So I think they'll keep braking. He didn't voice the thought. He'd served as a lieutenant under a captain, now mercifully retired, who'd mocked his officers for stating the obvious. The result had been silent, strained hostility, the last thing he wanted on his own bridge. The galaxy didn't need another horse's ass in a command position.
"It looks like eighty-three individual ships," Chavda added. They were formed into nine composite ships at the moment. Sharing their thrust while minimizing their vulnerability to missile strikes, Carruthers thought.
"Thank you, Lieutenant. It should be an interesting scrap."
She glanced back at him, her lips quirking in a strained smile. "Yes, Sir."
"This isn't a planned attack," Carruthers said, addressing the entire bridge. "They didn't decide they were ready to tackle us. The admiral caught them by surprise. He shot up their fleet and blew up their Gate. He stranded them here, and they've panicked." He gestured at the forward bulkhead, in the general direction of the approaching ships. "They don't have anywhere else to go. They don't know what to do. So they're making a last, desperate, ill-advised attack."
He watched the bridge crew exchange glances. They wanted to believe him, but he sensed they figured he was just trying to buck them up.
Which he was, of course.
"If they were thinking," he went on, "they'd throw another rock at the colony. Then we'd have to fly out there, and fight them in deep space. But they're not doing that." He gestured again, this time toward the planet below. "Instead, they're fighting us here. In range of all those thermal cannons." That entirely inadequate, tiny number of thermal cannons. Eight of them, only six of which actually covered this stretch of sky. And that included the satellites. If any of the satellites actually hit an enemy ship, Carruthers would eat his new uniform.
"They're desperate," he repeated, "and we're ready for them." Please, God, let us be ready for them. Eighty-three ships, and us without a single square centimeter of Fourier metal in the entire fleet. "This is what we've been waiting for. They're making a mistake, and we're going to capitalize on it. We're going to destroy the enemy threat, once and for all."
It sounded thin to him—what wouldn't sound thin, with eighty-three ships bearing down?—but there were no more shared glances among the crew.
"Enjoy this moment," he said. "You'll tell your grandchildren about the final battle for Ariadne, when the Hive was finally wiped out in the Naxos system."
That, he thought, had to be too much, but Chavda turned and flashed her teeth in a nasty grin. Then she said, "One of the composite ships has stopped braking."
That was odd. What in space could that mean? "We'll ignore that one for now," he said. "There's more than enough to keep us busy until they get back into the battle."
She nodded, started to fidget, then stilled her hands with an obvious effort. Carruthers smiled. He knew exactly how she felt.
"They're closing," said Chavda a moment later. "The ships are breaking up."
On Carruthers' screen the alien ships seemed to disintegrate, breaking into a cloud of smaller ships. They were forming groups of three, by the looks of it. Just enough to provide a bit of shielding. Well, if they weren't going to fire their EMP weapon, he wasn't going to pass up the opportunity to make use of advanced combat computers.
"Signal the fleet," he said. "I want two ships firing on each target. I want to overwhelm their shields."
In the corner of his eye he saw a flash of movement, gone almost before he could register it. It was the one amalgamated ship, he realized. The one that hadn't braked. "Signal the colony, too," he added. "Tell them they might be under attack."
The starfield tilted as the Indefatigable turned, controlled by the ship's computer. On his display he saw colored lines as the corvette's lasers and rail guns fired. Similar lines shot out from every ship in the little fleet. The Indefatigable and the corvette Stiletto concentrated their fire on a cluster of ships almost a hundred kilometers distant. A white circle around the three-ship cluster showed the shields holding for a moment as laser fire burned in. Then twin streams of rail gun fire slammed into the cluster and it vanished from the display.
The battle became frustratingly automated, ships' computers reacting faster than any helm or tactical officer could, pouring coordinated fire into one cluster after another. The Indefatigable helped destroy three composite ships before the enemy was suddenly among the fleet.
Now the enemy clusters clumped together, three clusters joining to form an attack ship nine strong. These raced in close and used their heat weapons on the hulls of the colony ships. Chavda stopped watching, working now in close cooperation with the computer. She targeted a ship as it rushed the hull of the Stiletto, and the Indefatigable opened fire.
It took longer to break through the shields of the larger cluster, but the time was still measured in seconds. The cluster broke apart, and the Indefatigable's lasers, choosing targets with inhuman speed, burned into solitary ships before they could flee.
"We've got one on us!" cried Jarvis, the lieutenant at the helm. He jerked sideways on the main control stick, the ship swung down and to port, and Carruthers saw the gleam of metal as a dark shape covered the front edge of the starboard window. Alarms blared as the alien heat weapon burned into the hull.
Jarvis lifted his hands from the controls, looking as if the effort was all he could endure, and the Indefatigable swung around under computer control. The Marlborough loomed through the starboard window, and Carruthers saw sunlight glitter on a stream of rail gun rounds. The troopship wasn't terribly well armed, but she wasn't entirely toothless either.
Laser light sparkled on the hull of the alien ship. For an instant the laser shone through the steelglass window, leaving a deep scorch mark on the forward bulkhead of the bridge. Then the alien dropped away, smaller ships scattering to flee in every direction.
"Let's return the favor," Carruthers said. "There's a couple of bogeys on the Marlborough." The aliens hovered amidships, far from any critical systems. Empty passenger compartments would be depressurizing, but the ship could survive a few hull breaches. It gave the rest of the fleet a good opportunity to focus their fire on attackers who kept reasonably still.
The Indefatigable swept in low over the hull of the troopship. The angle made it easier to fire on the nearest alien cluster without hitting the Marlborough, and Carruthers watched on his tac screen as the Indefatigable opened up with lasers and rail guns. When the cluster finally broke apart the nose of the corvette tilted up, and several of the individual ships blew apart or went spiraling off into the dark, disabled. Others rose until they were in range of the troopship's guns, and came to a nasty end at the hands of vengeful fire from the Marlborough.
The Indefatigable tilted, and Carruthers glanced through the starboard window. The Marlborough looked terrible, great dark trenches burned into her hull. She'd need a major overhaul after this. The Epee and the Stiletto were ganging up on a cluster on the Marlborough's port side, and Carruthers watched the cluster break apart. By the look of it, not a single component ship escaped.
"Starboard!" cried Chavda. Carruthers' head whipped around. A composite ship dropped toward the starboard window, the heat
weapon on the underside already glowing. It was a scant few meters from the corvette when a flash of white blinded him for an instant. A moment later, scraps of wreckage clattered against the window.
"I guess the death rays are working," Chavda said. She glanced to port. "There's another one."
Carruthers turned, too late to see the white flash lancing up from the surface of the planet. Instead he saw a litter of ship parts as a cluster broke apart. The Marlborough, not the most maneuverable ship in the fleet, managed to swing her nose around in time to pour a volley into the survivors.
"The Balisong is disabled," announced the sailor at the communications station. "They're in a decaying orbit. Captain Jeung says their situation's not urgent."
Rail gun rounds slammed into the starboard window, a quick clatter loud enough to echo through the bridge. Carruthers flinched—the whole bridge crew did—and stepped closer to the window, inspecting the damage. The steelglass was dented, distorting the stars in a line of five evenly spaced depressions the size of his palm. The ship was still airtight, though, despite everything. The faceplate on his helmet was still retracted.
Looking out through the window was an invitation to nausea. The corvette kept swiveling and twisting, bucking and rolling, as it evaded attacking clusters or, more often, targeted enemy ships. The computer was doing nearly everything, coordinating with other ships, unleashing barrages as part of a volley from multiple ships. One alien cluster after another broke apart, and the surviving ships seldom got far.
We're winning this. He resisted the thought, but it was getting harder to deny. His speech about the aliens being desperate and making a mistake had been largely bravado, but it seemed to be true. The aliens were fighting in a panicked frenzy, as if they knew they were doomed but had nowhere to flee.
A chunk of wreckage, an alien ship sliced in half by a laser, banged against the window and floated away, disappearing when the Indefatigable rolled to meet a new threat. Scraps of alien ships filled the sky. There would be beautiful meteors in the skies over the colony for weeks. Carruthers looked at the wreckage of dozens of ships and felt something almost like sadness. It seemed odd to pity such merciless, savage foes, but this battle reeked of desperation. He was seeing a last stand by warriors with nowhere to go. He had to destroy them, but he could mourn them as he did it.
The corvette turned, and a new shape filled his view, a metallic bulk almost as big as the troopship. Carruthers saw one alien ship after another race in to join the behemoth, and watched a stream of rail gun rounds slow and turn as it neared the alien hull. The rounds bounced harmlessly away, repelled by magnetic shielding.
If the aliens had formed a single massive ship at the start of the battle they might have prevailed. Now, however, not enough ships remained. The Indefatigable turned, and the alien ship disappeared from view. It was dead ahead now, and Carruthers found himself looking at the ravaged side of the Marlborough, with the Epee visible just above her. The colony fleet was gathering, grouping their ships to pool their fire in an overwhelming volley aimed at the center of the alien ship. As far as he knew it was the fleet's ship computers guiding this part of the battle. It seemed like a sound strategy, so he did nothing to override the computer.
He returned to his seat, watching the view from the forward cameras as lasers and rail gun rounds slammed into the alien. At the same time, thermal cannon fire lashed up from the planet below. One white streak after another scorched into the underside of the alien ship, destroying one or two or three of the little composite ships each time.
With every hit the alien's shields weakened. The rail gun rounds pouring in from the fleet flew straighter, and hit with more force. Finally the shield failed entirely and an inferno of destructive energy tore into the alien ship.
The survivors panicked. Ships broke apart and fled, hunted by laser beams and projectiles. The thermal cannons on the surface fired, obliterating the ships they hit. Carruthers watched one ship after another take a fatal hit, and suddenly there were no more targets.
Not a single alien craft had escaped.
He blinked, staring into his tactical display, hardly daring to believe it. Oh, a few ships might have slipped away in the chaos. Half a dozen, at the outside. Not enough to cause much of a problem. And he suspected the number was smaller.
He suspected it was zero.
"It's over," he said. "Merciful God in Heaven, it's over." He looked around the bridge, seeing the same startled relief on the faces of the others. "Jarvis. Plot an intercept course with the Balisong. It would be pretty rude to let them crash." They'd link with the other corvette, pull it up into a stable orbit, probably offload any nonessential crew. He switched the tactical display over to a damage report. He'd verify the status of the Indefatigable before he tried to give support to anyone else.
"Sir?"
He looked up. Chavda met his gaze, and he felt his stomach tighten as he saw the tension in her face. "What is it, Rekha?"
"It's not quite over." When he gave her a blank look she said, "That one big ship. The one that stopped decelerating?"
His relief evaporated. "Oh. Right."
"There's nothing on the tactical display," she said. "I think they're planetside."
He glanced to his right, where the bulk of Ariadne showed as a rusty bar along the bottom of the starboard window. We won this part of the battle. But what's happening down there?
CHAPTER 11 - HARDY
When the Hive ships were close enough that Hardy could make out the component craft with his naked eyes, the first wave of missiles lashed out. Half a dozen missiles streaked forward, trailing lines of vapor, each targeting a different amalgamated ship. Each missile exploded just short of its target, hitting a sacrificial ship sent out as a shield. Hardy glanced over at the Adamant, wondering how many missiles it carried.
Not the several hundred they'd need to actually survive this battle.
"Fighters converge on Bravo," said a voice in his ear. His tactical display showed a label on each amalgamated ship, and a red circle appeared around the one marked 'Bravo'. When he looked up his implants painted a red circle around the corresponding ship. He saw motion in his peripheral vision as three more fighters advanced.
I'm in the EDF fighter comms net, he realized. He glanced back at the Tomahawk. Well, they aren't giving me any contradictory orders. He hit the Bumblebee's thrusters, keeping pace with the EDF fighters as they advanced on target Bravo.
"Missile in five," said the voice in his ear.
The other fighters opened fire about four seconds later, so Hardy joined in. He was close to Bravo, close enough that it terrified him. The massive ship seemed to be hurtling straight at him, engines blazing as it continued to decelerate. Laser beams splashed across the surface of the amalgamated ship, stopping just short of the hull, dissipated by an energy shield. Rail gun rounds poured in, a quadruple torrent from all four fighters, only to slow and turn as they neared the ship. Hardy watched in frustration as his rounds bounced from the alien hull and tumbled away, doing no harm.
"Missile away."
Instantly a smaller ship detached itself from the rest of the alien craft. The other fighters concentrated their fire on the lone ship, and Hardy joined in, seeing their strategy. The little ship, without the others boosting its shielding, took a vicious pounding from the four fighters. The hull began to shred, and the ship tumbled sideways.
An instant later, the missile flashed past. It missed the blocking ship by a handspan, then slammed into the big ship. Hardy squeezed his eyes shut against a flash of light, and opened them to see bits of wreckage rebounding from his cockpit windows.
After that, there were no more coordinated attacks. All the amalgamated alien ships broke apart and surged forward in a chaotic swarm. Hardy opened fire, destroying an advancing ship at a range of less than ten meters. Other ships blew apart around him as the fleet opened up. For a moment Hardy just flew straight, afraid to fly into the path of lasers and rail guns from the fleet.
Then a ship loomed beside him, three alien craft together, the heat weapon on the belly of the amalgamated ship glowing red. Hardy forgot about the danger of friendly fire as he twisted the Bumblebee sideways. No one had quite gotten around to giving him any Fourier shielding, a grievous oversight in his opinion. He had to trust to nimble flying and good luck to keep himself alive.
Something clanged against the nose of the Bumblebee, tearing a furrow in the skin of the fighter. A rail gun round, he decided. Friendly fire, but he was too busy to worry about it. More rounds hit the amalgamated ship chasing him. It must have been a volley from the Theseus, because the hole that appeared in the middle craft was as big as Hardy's head. The other two ships broke away, leaving their crippled companion to float among the wreckage.
For several seconds that felt like hours Hardy twisted and dove in the thick of the swarm. Then he found himself in empty space. He and the other fighters weren't a priority, he saw.
Only the Cassandra mattered.
The aliens closed on the big gunship. A few Hive ships came too close to the top of the tower and were shattered as another rock erupted out.
Hardy turned the Bumblebee and headed for the action. Alien ships coalesced in front of him, darting in close and turning their heat weapons on the tower. He saw an EDF fighter strafe an amalgamated ship, doing little damage.
The Theseus loomed suddenly close, her nose pointed straight at the amalgamated ship as it began to melt the side of the Cassandra. A storm of ballistic rounds erupted from the converted freighter, and the amalgamated ship seemed to fly apart.
"Bloody hell!" A woman swore in Hardy's ear, and he saw an EDF fighter twist away from the barrage, the end of one wing a jagged, splintered mess. "Let's go with the secondary target. We're not doing any good here, and we're not going to live long enough to find a target."