by Doug Hoffman
Pauline nodded as she worked the fire control computer for the main railgun. “Run times are 12.375, 11.25, and 9.56 seconds, respectively.”
Bobby's fingers danced across the control panel causing tags and lines to blossom on the main display. He turned to the Captain.
“The fire maneuver is programed and locked in, Captain.”
“Thank you, Sailing Master. Engineering, reactors to full power; shields to maximum; execute the attack, Bobby.”
The view out the nose of the ship spun in a gut wrenching arc, paused for an instant while the main railgun fired, and swung again. The railgun battery fired three times in the space of two seconds. In space around the Starflake three alien frigates exploded, impacted by 10kg slugs of depleted urainium traveling at thirty-six thousand kilometers per hour. Each delivered as much kinetic energy as the main battery of a WWII battleship.
“Targets destroyed, Sir,” Siku reported from the fire control console.
“Good shooting people. Now let's go take care of the rest of these varmints.”
The Peggy Sue swung again, pointing its bow toward the alien fleet. The gravitonic drives came to full acceleration and the ship lept toward its new targets.
Chapter 37
Bridge, Uxoreeza Flag Ship
Four hundred kilometers from the Starflake the warships of the Uxoreeza fleet hung in space. All seemed to be going to plan, the scouts and fighters encountered no hostile fire on approach and the pathfinders were landed. The first of the large troop carriers was docked and soon the station would be theirs. Then alarms flashed across the tactical display and the bridge erupted with activity.
“Admiral! Three of the frigates just exploded!”
“What?” There was shock and a bit of panic in the Admiral's voice. “Where is the enemy that fired on them?”
“There is a ship headed for us from the direction of the station. It's accelerating at 30 gravities and has an energy profile higher than anything I've ever seen.”
“Captain, signal all ships, shields up and move to attack position. Why didn't we see it before?”
“I don't know, Admiral, it's like it appeared out of the vacuum.”
The communication officer interrupted with more bad news. “Two of the scout ships have been destroyed, blasted to pieces soon after landing. And the ground commander on the first troop transport is reporting fierce resistance.”
What is happening to us? The Admiral stared at the bridge display in disbelief. Everything had been going according to plan. Now there is heavy resistance at the landing sites and an impossible ship hurtling our way. We have been ambushed by a single ship and all is undone? The dark masters will never accept such an excuse. I hope our foe realizes this is to the death—better to die than to fail the Dark Lords.
2nd Squad
The splagg smashed into the party of warriors before they could react. Suited bodies flew in all directions, crashing into walls and the ceiling overhead. A few of the aliens had enough presence of mind to fire on the whirling gray maelstrom that attacked them.
“Somehow this doesn't seem fair, Corporal,” said Ahmed.
“If you ever find yourself in a fair fight it means your tactics suck,” Kato replied, pleased with the outcome of his plan. The aliens finally mounted a coordinated reaction to the splagg's assault, firing their plasma rifles and moving to surround the spinning death that was in their midst. Their fire was taking its toll on the beast, its spinning slowed and instead of trumpeting in rage it now shrieked in pain.
Sgt. Aurora called over the squad channel. “Looks like the splagg is going down, now's the time to hit them while they are concentrating on finishing the beast off. Open fire.”
From a dozen places around the area's perimeter Marines opened fire on the remaining invaders. The few seconds it took them to realize they were under attack from a new threat were enough to be fatal. It was over in less than half a minute.
“Cease fire!” Aurora yelled. “They are all down.”
The splagg was an immobile mound of blackened flesh in the middle of the chamber. Around it lay the bodies of twenty-four attackers, half of them killed by the behemoth, the rest turned into alien tartare by the Marines' concentrated fire. The Sergeant called in to report their status.
“Ice Castle, Squad Two. Over.”
“Go, Squad Two. What's your status.”
“We have just taken out a couple of squads worth of boarders and are securing the area.”
“Be advised that they have been boarding the station in small craft that fasten themselves to the station walls. The landing craft are probably still attached to the spire above you.”
“Roger that, Ice Castle. Interrogative, how should we proceed?”
“Send a fireteam to find the landing craft and destroy them. Take the rest of the squad and head for the base of the Karf's spire. It looks like a couple of the small craft landed there and may be trying to spring the Karf from containment.”
“I copy, Ice Castle. We are on our way.” The she-bear changed comm channels. “Kato. Take your fire team up into this spire and find the ships these creatures came in. You are to blow them up. The rest of us are headed for the Karf spire to kill some vermin.”
“Aye, aye, Sergeant.”
Four recon drones headed for the opening in the ceiling as Kato's team headed for the base of the elevator shaft. The rest of the squad headed for a moving roadway headed north.
Pond Room, Shopping Mall
The roar of escaping atmosphere abated as the station's hull healed itself. The sailors carefully entered the room, alert for any hostiles that had not perished when Chief Jacobs' grenade blew their landing craft away. All the invaders present were indisputably deceased.
“Where's the rest of this goomer?” Hitch asked, nudging a long severed neck with the toe of his boot. The head and neck were still encased in suit armor but there was no sign of the rest of the carcase they belonged to. “Let's see what one of these critters looks like.”
Pulling his Woodsman's Pal from its sheath, Hitch placed a foot on the severed neck and began whacking away at the seal between the dead alien's helmet and neck-piece. After a few strokes it opened enough for him to insert his armored gauntlets and pry the helmet off.
“Holly shit! Will you look at that?”
“It looks like one of those dinosaur things,” offered Beans.
“But it's covered with feathers,” Hitch retorted.
The creature's head featured a long beak-like snout covered with iridescent black feathers. Serrated teeth lined its upper and lower jaw. A feathered crest topped the narrow skull and a malevolent red eye glared from either side.
“Tam, grab the armor while I remove the head and neck,” ordered Hitch. He pulled the items in question from the neck-piece. As it emerged more feathers unfurled, an unruly ruff like a feather duster. Holding the grisly trophy by the back of the skull, Hitch lifted the head high giving the sailors their first real look at their foe.
“It looks like a rooster,” said Jacobs.
“I tell you it looks like one of those velociraptors,” said Beans. “You know, from Jurassic Park.”
“We're fighting feathered dinosaurs?” Tamera asked.
“Dinosaur hell. This is a Jurassic chicken,” replied Hitch, giving the dead alien a shake.
“Wonderful, Stevie,” Jacobs said. “I can't wait to tell the Lieutenant that we're fighting Jurassic chickens. In fact, I'd better tell him that a couple of them got away.”
Plaza, Shopping Mall
JT just finished speaking with Sgt. Aurora when he got the call from Chief Jacobs. “...copy, three or four of the 'Jurassic chickens' escaped into the shopping mall. And the rest are dead?”
“Roger, Ice Castle. Mostly body parts. Kashi got hit pretty badly, we need to get him to the Doc.”
“Roger, get him to the medical station. I'll handle the escaped hostiles.” JT turned to the SEALs. “Chief, I have something right down your alley. How would you like to go after
three or four boarders that got away from the sailors?”
“Yes, Sir, we're game.”
“Let me check the sensors we spread around... yeah, there they go.”
“Where do you think they are headed?”
“Looks like they're headed for the hub.” JT shared the video feed showing the escaped hostiles. “I count three of them... what have we here?”
“They got off before exiting the spire, what are they up too?”
As the humans watched the aliens made their way to a blank wall on the spire central pillar. A door appeared and they jumped through it. Inside was the familiar glow of a station elevator.
“How did they know where to find that hidden door?” the head SEAL asked.
“Maybe they took notes the last time they were here.”
A synthesized voice joined the conversation—the Tcist. “Earth creatures, there are invaders entering the station core. You must stop them.”
“They just used an elevator we didn't know about and they are now outside our sensor coverage. Can you track them?”
“Yes. I fear they are headed for the antimatter cache.”
Chief Morgan muted the Tcist. “You think they are trying to scuttle the station?”
“Insurance. That's what I would have done if I was planning the attack. Send out several teams of special operators to probe the defenses and be ready to blow the place if the main assault fails.” JT switched the station frequency back on. “Tcist, can you guide my men to the Uxoreeza?”
“Yes, I am holding the door to the service elevator open. Come now.”
“Roger that, they are on their way.”
“Suddenly this ain't so much fun, LT.”
“Look at it this way, Rick. If they do light off all that antimatter we won't even know it, we'll just be gone.”
Chief Morgan called to his men. “Mount up guys, we got some Jurassic chickens to hunt down.”
Kestrel Flight
The two fighters headed toward the station in a twisting spiral, accelerating at nearly two hundred Gs. Inside the pilots wore only skintight pressure suits, their ships were their armor. They were protected from the extreme acceleration by internal gravity compensators. Otherwise they would have been killed by their own acceleration.
Half way there, just over twenty-three seconds after starting their run they stopped accelerating, pivoted, and fired a brace of missiles each at the troop carrier farthest from the Starflake. Then they flipped end over end and continued their erratic, evasive maneuvers as they decelerated.
“When we get close we will drop down among the spires to make it harder to target us. We need to hit the second, undocked transport, then come back and make sure we took out the one we just fired on.”
“Roger, Kestrel One.”
Maneuvering a fighter in space is not the same as flying a fighter plane in a planetary atmosphere, in a planet's gravity well. Fighter plane engagements are basically an energy management problem. A planet bound combatant enters a fight with his forward velocity, gravitational potential energy from his altitude, and the thrust his engines can provide. In zero G you are on your own. You cannot just pull the nose up to slow down or push over to pick up speed and disengage. Neither can you bank into a curve. There are no aerodynamic forces to modify your path through space—all changes in trajectory come from applying thrust.
To make a turn you not only have to apply thrust in the direction you wish to go, you must also use thrust in the opposite direction of your current course to cancel your velocity in that direction. To describe a smooth turn you must constantly apply thrust in a direction normal to the desired trajectory. The Kestrel pilots were about to engage a superior number of enemies in a dogfight among the spires of the station while maneuvering in three dimensions.
They finished their plunge toward the station and threaded their way between the station's multitude of spires. Behind them the troop carrier they fired on was able to shoot down two of the missiles, but the other two found their mark. The vessel disintegrated from the double blow of twin four kiloton explosions. Beth rounded the Karf's spire and spotted a pair of alien fighters moving to attack.
“Two bogies, three o'clock high,” Beth called. “Break left, Kestrel Two. Let's sandwich the buggers between us.”
1st Squad
Inuksuk's roars, amplified by his suit's speakers, echoed throughout the amphitheater. Whether this impressed the charging Uxoreeza was unknown, but the bear's slashing stream of 5mm flechettes had a more immediate and physical impact. As those on the theater floor shrank from the withering fire, their comrades in the balconies opened fire on the polar bear. One of the plasma bolts struck him in the arm, silencing his flechette weapon.
“Give him cover fire!” the Gunny shouted over the squad frequency. Damn undisciplined hairball! If he lives I will skin him alive.
Having lost one of his weapons, Inuksuk switched to the other—the 30mm on his left arm. He began spraying everything in sight with a stream of explosive shells, each the equivalent of an old-fashioned 155mm artillery shell. The balcony tiers came apart, shattered by explosions. Aliens and alien body parts flew through the air as the rampaging bear pounded the attackers. It then became clear why there were no troop hatches on the lowest level.
Shielding panels retracted, revealing a turret and the twin barrels of a pair of heavy plasma cannon. They quickly turned to target the armored giant that was demolishing the docking bay.
“Inuksuk! The ship!” yelled Zippy, trying to warn her team leader.
Inuksuk brought the ship under fire but he was too late. The first salvo from the ship's guns struck him full on. A nimbus of orange fire surrounded the upright bear. The force of the blast spun him around. In that instant, the Gunny could see the plasma had burned through his armor and most of the bear's body cavity. Inuksuk was a dead bear standing. Then came the second salvo.
The ship's cannon fired twin blasts into the bear's back. That was a mistake. The plasma burned through Inuksuk's back armor as it had in the front. Marine armor was tough but it was never meant to take direct fire from heavy shipboard weapons. After burning its way through the refractive outer armor the hot plasma reached the magazines on the bear's back. The magazine containing unexpended 5mm flechettes, which were inert, and the magazine half filled with 30mm explosive rounds, which were most definitely not.
Inuksuk vanished in a gigantic explosion that shattered the docking structure surrounding the ship. The balcony sections the Marines were firing from were also damaged, sections collapsing, the Marines knocked from their feet by the concussion. Fortunately none of them were severely wounded, just shaken and bruised. Once the impact distributing layers in their suits unstiffened they began moving again.
The amphitheater was a shambles, the nose of the alien ship battered and bent. No invaders came from the still open hatches and none remained alive inside the docking area. Then it became clear that the troop carrier was moving, withdrawing from the docking cradle. Slivers of black space could be seen around the edges of the damaged ship. Through those cracks the local atmosphere was streaming, its escape creating vortices that sucked rubble and dead Uxoreeza out into the vacuum.
Staring out across the desolation, Grits saw a lone figure making its way across the rubble strewn floor. “Hey, what's Zippy doing down there?”
“Ben-Ezra, get your ass back here!” the Gunny ordered, but Zippy ignored her.
As they watched, Ben-Ezra knelt at the bottom of the docking cradle and drew a tubular object from her backpack. It was a Shoulder-launched Multipurpose Assault Weapon, a shoulder-launched rocket whose primary purpose was as a bunker buster. In its warhead was two hundredths of a gram of antimatter, the equivalent of a kiloton of TNT. On this deployment a Marine in each fireteam carried one just in case. In Inuksuk's team Zippy was the designated rocketeer. As she made ready to fire the implication of her actions dawned on the other squad members.
“Everybody get out!” screamed the Gunny.
“Get some solid wall between you and the chamber. Now!” The Marines fled for their lives.
Chapter 38
Bridge, Peggy Sue
“Range to targets one-hundred kilometers, rate of closure is thirteen point three kilometers per second,” called Mizuki from the 3-space sensor console.
“Weapons control, I want a spread of four torpedoes, X-ray warheads. Concentrate fire on the four cruisers.” Four bright dots sped toward the enemy ships—the four that were beginning to move away from the huge freighter.
“Sailing Master, I want a volley of railgun slugs down the throat of that big bogey.”
“Aye, Captain.” The ship's attitude shifted slightly as Bobby sighted the main railgun cannon on the enemy freighter. The ship shuddered perceptibly as the railguns fired.
On the forward display four miniature suns blazed simultaneously and as quickly faded to black. The shields and hulls of the Uxoreeza ships flared under the fearsome light of X-ray laser beams. Beams generated by the annihilation of antimatter in the torpedo warheads, hellish radiation pumping rods of lasing material to unimaginably energetic levels in the instant before they vaporized.
“We have hits on all enemy vessels,” Mizuki reported. “Multiple flares on one of the cruisers. That ship is no longer accelerating. The other three are moving to attack.”
An instant after she finished her report warnings sounded across the bridge, an indication that enemy fire was striking the Peggy Sue's shields. At the same time two ten kilo slugs of depleted uranium struck the alien freighter. A miss would have been embarrassing, since the freighter was a roughly spherical blob, as big in diameter as the Peggy Sue was long. Strangely, the freighter did not explode. The slugs must have missed its antimatter fuel stores.
“Aput, Siku. Target the alien cruisers with the main battery, nearest first. Fire at will. Helm, evasive maneuvers.”
The two bears raced to fire their hyperluminal particle cannon first. It was effectively a tie, twin red lines lancing from port and starboard. The visible lines were computer generated, the actual particle bursts traveling invisibly through the edge of alter-space. The blue-white explosions that announced the end of the two ships were fully visible in 3-space.