Enemies on All Sides (Maraukian War Book 4)

by Michael Chatfield

  “I sent off a number of satellites to look over this system. That was actually partially a lie. I was sending out some of them, but I didn’t need them to be massive. Instead, I was sending out an AI with what it needed to set up a settlement, an Ark. They landed on the planet below us and they started to build a base.

  “Right now, the complex has grown rather large. There are multiple fabbers working around the clock, from class one to three. There is also an ongoing mining operation, shipyard, Pluto armor building effort. Energy is generated by the planet’s high temperature as well as the thunderstorms hitting nodes.

  “It can generate anti-matter and has five anti-matter generators accumulating energy constantly. It has completed two battleships and one carrier. It can produce one carrier in two months and one battleship every three at its current rate, with no need for assistance. The manufacturing capabilities are all military and they will be added to the capabilities of the Yard. There is also a lot of premade missile and Praetor defense cannons that were premade. I wanted to make sure that Emarl was secure from any information leaking out before I released information on the Ark.

  “It is another strength that we can use in the upcoming battle. We will have to deal with a fleet of twenty-three ships that Luyten want to throw at us. I am sorry for keeping this information from you all but I feel that you all understand why I did so,” Mark said.

  “Damn, you always got backup plans?” Ortiz asked.

  “Always good to be ready.” Mark smiled. “It is my aim to take down the crates from the fallen and place them in the headquarters located on the Ark with the other mergers as it will serve as a base of operations for the mergers. The other military groups are welcome to join as well.”

  “Might be a good command center. The troopers are better suited for around the station and Tricticus to get on-the-ground training and deployment training from space to the ground,” Ortiz said.

  “When it is possible, I want to build up a navy shipyard, but right now, being based around the Yard and having roving patrols is probably the best,” Hall said.

  All the different arms had different needs for the training and forces so it made sense that they didn’t pick the same headquarters but instead used places better suited for training and honing their people.

  They were all adults; they knew that Mark had his reasons.

  “Is there anyone with any more updates?” Mark asked.

  “Nope, but it’s time we got a damn drink!” Hall stood.

  “Says the guy not on some ship in the middle of nowhere,” Moretti complained.

  “Eh, been there, got the badge, pretty boring. Stations are more fun.” Hall grinned.

  Ortiz laughed and clapped the man on the shoulder as everyone stood and stretched.

  “Urgh, when did I get old enough that I needed to stretch after meetings,” Jerome complained.

  “You’ve always been that old,” Mark said. “In spirit at least.”

  “And who blew up that reactor again?”

  “One fuckin’ time!” Mark raised his hands, hitting the ceiling. He had a frown on his face as his shoulder drooped. “Can’t friggin’ win.”

  The others laughed and Ava patted Mark on the arm, shaking her head with a bemused smile.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  VCF Moby

  Ark Orbit, Emarl System

  11/3556

  “We’re going where?” Carla looked to Chen in confusion.

  “Right about…there.” Chen pointed at the conference table that showed the Ark rotating below, a soup of thunderstorms and powerful natural forces.

  Carla and Travestki looked at each other, clearly not looking forward to a journey like that. In contrast, Taelyon was practically doing a jig, an excited smile on her face.

  Chen was thankful that he could control his stomach now as his body had gone through the full transition and he was now a complete merging-capable person.

  Carla and Travestki looked to Taelyon and then slid their eyes to Chen with accusatory stares.

  “Well, at least one of us is happy,” Carla muttered.

  “Fucking awesome!” Taelyon let out a shout and held her “rock on” hands up.

  “Why?” Travestki asked.

  “Because it’s a base, underneath that soup of flying hazards. Our goal is to make it there. We will be taking down supplies and flight crews for a number of ships that have been built down there, as well as engineering crews to look over the different facilities and some people from the navy and ground forces to check out the facilities.” Chen sent information packages to them all. Their eyes flashed as they merged and integrated the information, looking at the planet with new eyes.

  “Well, it looks like there’s at least a path in where different lightning rods can draw the lightning away from us. Might be good to rig up some kind of system to bleed off any static energy we build up,” Carla said.

  “Going to be a bitch to thread that needle,” Francis said, a look of concentration on his face. It would be his job to make sure to warn Taelyon of any dangers. In the planet’s atmosphere, there were more than one could count.

  “There’s a system in place in the base; we get down and it’ll discharge into the clamps to be turned into energy,” Chen said.

  “That’s a lot of energy,” Taelyon said. Even excited to push her flying skills, she wasn’t blind to the dangers.

  “The place makes anti-matter—I think the power from a lightning strike won’t be that hard to deal with,” Chen said dryly.

  “Too bad we don’t get to shoot anything.” Travestki sighed. He wanted to put the new weapon systems and missiles to use. Not only were they the most advanced weapon systems in known existence, they were actually made with nanites and when an upgrade was available and tested properly, then it only took uploading the programming into the new weapons to have them upgrade themselves internally, no longer needing to strip out weapons and replace them completely.

  “Easy for you to say—you can turn off the feeling of nausea,” Liang complained. He was the only member of the team who didn’t want to become a merger; the others had applied and had undergone treatment.

  “Well, higher wants us to be ready to move in two hours,” Chen said.

  This wouldn’t be enough planning time before, but now, two hours was like years to the mergers, especially if they were working together.

  “I’ll have a talk with engineering,” Taelyon said.

  “I’m there with you,” Carla said.

  “I’ll leave it in your hands,” Chen said.

  ***

  Two hours later, everyone was strapped into their stations on the bridge.

  “How are we looking, Carla?” Chen asked.

  “Everyone is secured into their positions. We’re ready,” Carla said.

  Chen had ordered everyone to be secured in their seats and to take nanites that would make sure they didn’t throw up or pass out. He didn’t know what craziness Taelyon would subject them to.

  “We’re cleared by the Yard to depart. Sending flight plan over.” Liang’s hands moved over the terminal and then he checked his securing straps.

  Chen smiled ruefully. It seemed that the crew trusted Taelyon a great amount, to throw them through a damn rollercoaster.

  “All right, let’s get this over with,” Chen said, unable to keep the slight sigh from his voice.

  When he saw his command staff, he tacitly avoided their pleading eyes; he focused on the main screen. Taelyon, please be nice! Even his internal thoughts sounded as though he were pleading.

  “Engines are online.” Taelyon’s hands turned on various systems and pushed them away from the Yard on their preset flight plan.

  “Merging,” Taelyon said.

  ***

  Taelyon was in her reclined seat, looking up at her screens. Unseen by others, the nanites that made up her clothes and skin on her back linked up with the nanites in her chair, connecting her to the Moby directly.

  When s
he merged, she didn’t connect with the other mergers in the ship through the net; she merged with the ship itself.

  Where the Vanguard became one with their suit, Taelyon became one with the Moby’s flight systems.

  Information that would have overloaded three people’s minds entered Taelyon’s perfectly. Her body became the Moby; she felt other presences merging, the different mergers across the ship.

  She controlled the thrusters and engines as Francis joined the Moby’s network. Her view expanded as he took in all of the information from the sensors, composed and sent it to her. Carla appeared, connecting to different areas of the ship. Travestki connected to the weapons systems. Although they could all run their stations by themselves, it was nowhere as powerful as when they were working with others.

  With all of the crew working together, their power was increased by orders of magnitude.

  Taelyon flexed her drive systems, getting information back on different checks by the engineering teams as well as feedback from the reactors and the battery storage. All of these different factors affected her flight.

  When Chen came online, it pulled everything together, his personality dominant in the ship. Mergers acted like a hive mind with one another and the people they worked with. It was as if they were all sub-systems ready to be commanded, to be led by Chen.

  “Let’s go.” Chen’s powerful voice carried through the net and the different sub-systems ramped up their work.

  Taelyon poured power into the main engines as they moved into a degrading orbit. She worked with Francis to figure out a path, having to take in minute changes in the environment.

  “We’re going to get severe turbulence there. Lots of air moving around. Seems like a mega tornado is forming. With lightning,” Francis said blandly. “We’ve got a decent entry point here, but sporadic lightning strikes.”

  “We can take a few straight hits but not too many or else the charge will start to interfere with systems,” Carla reminded them.

  “What if we were to make entry here, then stay above the clouds and dive in at this location?” Taelyon fired back at them.

  “Change entry point to here, and we’re going to need to drop like a sack of shit to break through those clouds and get into lightning alley,” Francis said.

  “Lightning alley, that’s what you called the route into the base?” Carla sighed.

  “Sorry, Chief.” Francis laughed.

  “How long does it take those doors to open?” Taelyon asked.

  “One minute,” Mark, who was connected to the net, said.

  “We’re going to have to hit that before we dive through the clouds,” Francis said. A timeline appeared between them all.

  The Moby started to shake as they entered atmosphere.

  Taelyon and Francis worked together, decreasing the shaking to a mild rumble.

  “Well, that’s a first,” Travestki said out loud on the bridge.

  “I’m not betting on it staying that way,” Liang said, checking his straps.

  Taelyon showed an embarrassed smile even while she was merged. She knew how chaotic this next bit of flying would be.

  That embarrassed smile turned into one filled with excitement. Taelyon didn’t see the pale faces around her as she fully immersed herself in the Moby’s systems.

  The key to entering the planet’s atmosphere was the angle. The key to getting through the Ark’s atmosphere was speed: too long in the ever-changing atmosphere and they couldn’t predict what would happen. They needed to strike quick and fast to make it through.

  The rumbling of the ship died down as they pulled out of their dive and soared across the heavens of the Ark.

  “Ready,” Francis said, both out loud and on the net.

  “Ready,” Taelyon said as the mergers in the ship merged with the ship and one another.

  Taelyon felt as if her mind was released from its shackles, the Moby a living and breathing beast for her to guide. This sense of power made her feel alive.

  The engines were sucking atmosphere and everything looked good.

  “Punch it,” Chen said.

  The Moby shot forward. She wasn’t some junker relic of history anymore. The power forced everyone back in their seats, sending heartbeats racing and stomachs turning as the Moby’s speed passed through the speed of sound again and again.

  Taelyon was in her element as Francis kept running the information feed to her.

  The ship slid to the right and banked to the left, diving at the same time as they carved through the air and into the thick soup of raging clouds and natural disasters that was the Ark.

  The ship shook and rattled as systems shook and groaned, but the Moby was built stronger than this. Taelyon led and the Moby pushed to meet her needs—beast, man, machine as one.

  “Port twenty degrees.” Taelyon skewed the ship abruptly, tossing people against their straps as a lightning strike as thick as a shuttle illuminated the ship’s hull. All around them, a sea of raging lightning smashed against the barren landscape well below.

  “Ahead forty meters, three seconds!” Taelyon increased power, leveled out and shot through the location as lightning came down behind them, adjusting the flight plan according to the new changes.

  “Starboard forty degrees.” Taelyon turned the ship into a rolling dive to the port side, snapping out of it and shooting across the ground.

  “Lightning rods eighty kilometers; mountain range thirty. Starboard ten degrees.” Francis’s voice was like a rail gun spitting out words.

  Taelyon recognized, updated, and adjusted.

  The mountain range made her tighten her control over the ship. It was filled with metals and attracted a ton of lightning strikes.

  It made what they had passed through look like a light drizzle compared to being under a waterfall.

  Speed was the best answer as they screamed through the skies, the only thing daring to stand up to those natural disasters: swerving, banking, and even having to use her thrusters to dodge lightning as she entered the mountain range.

  “Port seventy, starboard thirteen.” Francis’s voice snapped in her mind, highlighting danger, the strength of the lightning coming down.

  Power surged through the ship; the engineering team looked to bleed it off so that the systems wouldn’t get overloaded. The static electricity on the ship was becoming a problem. Different ship systems were getting fouled up by it.

  “Firing port!” Travestki said. The rail cannons along the port side all fired but didn’t use rounds. The reactors didn’t shunt power into the guns or the battery back-ups as the static energy from the hull was channeled into the guns. Cannons started firing to release the pent-up charge while the anti-matter generator in the engineering section drew in as much power as possible.

  The crew were trying to just bleed off the power as fast as possible.

  Taelyon aimed to take on the smaller lightning hits and avoid the larger ones.

  The ship’s hull started to show glowing areas from the electrical discharge and faint burn marks where the strikes landed.

  Taelyon was running low against the mountains, giving them more time to know where the strikes were coming from above.

  “Brace!” Francis yelled, relaying information to her at the moment that the lightning strike formed from above and charged downward.

  Taelyon brought the nose of the craft upward with her thrusters, the behemoth making the mountains shake as she triggered the sub-light engines, melting and reforming the mountains below.

  The Moby dropped a few hundred feet; items that weren’t secure were thrown around as people were pressed against their harnesses.

  The thrust and whining of the Moby’s engines forced them back into their chairs. Taelyon didn’t have time to focus on what everyone was going through.

  The engines and thrusters pushed directly against the mountain, before they shot forward.

  Taelyon’s actions stopped them from smashing into the ground.

  “Port seventy
degrees.” Francis didn’t miss a beat as Taelyon once again continued to adjust as they were nearing the end of the mountain range.

  She could see the lane of lightning rods running through an unassuming crater toward a section of the ground that was opening to show darkness.

  They cleared the mountain range with a dust cloud behind them. Taelyon had to reduce the ship’s forward momentum with a mix of air flaps and her forward thrusters; she leveled out with her side thrusters and reduced the power to her main engines.

  Strikes continued to rain down as the different systems on the ship continued to try to drain out as much power as possible.

  Taelyon banked away from the lightning rods and she dropped altitude before banking back, missing multiple strikes before she leveled out and brought it in between the lightning rods.

  Looking at them, they were just rock formations—small hills or mountains—but at their peak, a network of metal was laid out to attract and absorb the lightning strikes.

  Mark really didn’t want this place to be found. Taelyon wouldn’t have found this path, even merged, if she hadn’t been told about it.

  Once inside, the strikes from above were redirected toward the lightning rods. The whole flight settled down as she leveled out, her combat chemicals toning down as she relaxed slightly.

  The rest of the flight was easy as she reduced speed.

  Navigation information appeared in front of her as Liang relayed information coming from the base.

  She looked at the pitch-black opening in the ground on the side of a large hill range. She angled down, cutting her engines’ speed as she glided through the opening easily.

  The sensors brought the area inside to life. There were acceleration rails to shoot craft out into the planet’s atmosphere as fast as possible. There were automated tugs moving through the space, as well as rail carts moving materials across the large expanse beyond. The only light came from the different moving items.

  Taelyon guided the ship toward a massive cradle waiting for the Moby.

  The massive doors leading outside started to close as lights turned on inside the large cavern.