Talosian Chronicles 2: Star Dancer

by Ben Winston

  “Get the drones working on those shields, we can’t take any more impacts!” Ty said.

  “I’m on it, Sir!” Ramirez said, typing furiously on his keyboard.

  “Sir, three Marines have minor burns, and six more have damaged armor. No other damage to offensive or defensive systems,” Connors reported.

  “Thank you,” Ty said, he filed that away in his mind, and he feared they were going to take a lot more damage this time.

  “Fighters and assault carriers are firing on the shield. Assault carriers are again landing in section twenty-three, outside the front gate. All enemy activity is centered there,” Ramirez reported. “The Marine’s shield is still at full power.”

  Ty had consulted with Petrie and his company commanders and decided that the most likely place for the enemy to attack would be the place they attacked first. It was really the only place they could land their ships that would give them the opportunity to provide covering fire for the other ships.

  Also, it was the place that was the closest to the main compound, which was their primary objective. So, they had developed a strategy that would counter that scenario, while still giving them the flexibility to move if the enemy did, in fact, assault another place on the shield. However, that did not seem to be the case.

  “Marine shield is taking heavy damage,” Ramirez reported. “Enemy will breach in ten minutes.”

  “Send out the skirmishers, let’s try to take some of their attention off the shield. Activate the anti-assault weapons systems,” Ty ordered. “Set them to begin firing as soon as the shield fails.”

  Out on the enemy landing area, the assault carriers didn’t actually land this time, instead, they began ‘dropping’ their payloads of troops and equipment. They hovered a few meters off the ground, and opened the bays that faced away from the incoming fire.

  “These fuckers are a lot smarter than the bunch we fought the first time. Expect the carriers to join the air attack once the troops are off-loaded,” Ty said.

  “Control, this is Petrie,” came a voice over the comm unit.

  “This is Anders, what’s up Colonel?”

  “It looks like these bastards are playing for keeps this time. They’re using the ship’s shields to protect their troops during the offload. Also, we’re seeing our shield glowing where they have their fire concentrated,” Petrie reported.

  “That’s where the breach will be, Colonel. We’re doing everything we can, but it’s going to happen. Once they punch through there, the shield will collapse from the overload, and then it’ll be a shooting gallery,” Ty told him.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Will those ships continue to protect their troops after our shield falls?” Petrie asked.

  “No, once the troops move away from the ships, they’ll be unprotected. After the ships are unloaded, we expect them to lift off again, to hit us from the air, or move back for long distance cover fire,” Ty said.

  “This is what they should have done the first time. I think we’re in for a fight,” Petrie said.

  “Yes we are, keep your head down, Colonel,” Ty replied. “They have air support this time.”

  “Do we have air support?” Petrie asked.

  “Yep, they’ll be up there too, but you can never be too sure,” Ty said.

  “That’s true, Petrie out.”

  Many things began to happen, and all of them seemed to happen at the same time. Star Dancer arrived at Earth and began atmospheric defense operations, the assault carriers finished off-loading their cargo and moved back to land and use their larger weapons as cover fire, and the shield covering the marines collapsed from the overload of energy being dumped into it. Most of the rest of the assault force arrived overhead at that time as well.

  Unknown to Ty, two planetary assault missiles got past Cobalt Squadron in deep space, one was taken out by Star Dancer’s guns, but the last one made it into the atmosphere. Its target was Denver, Colorado.

  Cobalt squadron had followed the missiles all the way in, trying to stop them. But once they hit the atmosphere, the fighters had to slow down or risk overloading their armor because of the friction of the atmosphere.

  After the missile escaped even Star Dancer’s guns, one of the pilots from Cobalt broke formation, and dove for the missile.

  “Falcon, where the hell are you going? You’ll blow up before you ever get close to it!” The flight leader called.

  “Boss, my family lives in Denver. I have to try, if I survive this, you can kick my ass for disobeying.” Falcon replied as he pushed his fighter to maximum speed, and began full automatic firing of all his weapons, and setting his shields to maximum.

  From the ground, millions of people looked up and saw a bright, glowing streak moving rapidly after another streak. None of them actually knew what they were looking at, and for a few of them, it would be the last thing they ever saw.

  Falcon didn’t even try to shoot the missile, he flew his Shadow fighter, as fast as it would go, right into the missile. The impact alone would have been enough to destroy the missile, even if Falcon’s ship hadn’t exploded due to overload. He exploded three hundred meters short of his target, but still accomplished his goal. The concussion triggered the warhead that had armed when it entered the atmosphere. At an altitude of almost a hundred thousand feet, the hundred-plus megaton anti-matter warhead detonated.

  At that altitude, the flash was visible from well out in the Pacific Ocean, all the way to Cincinnati, Ohio. In the high planes and along the west coast of the United States, thousands of people were blinded, and hundreds of people suffered from flash burns. Seventy-three died from burns. Fire departments all over were stretched past their breaking point as hundreds of fires began in an instant.

  Talos, New Mexico

  Earth, Sol Sector

  Combat location: Eden

  Up on the surface, chaos reigned. The Caldarian troops rushed forward en masse. But the Talosian Marines, mixed in with the US Marines, broke the rush. Forcing the troops to advance slowly behind armor.

  Several of the troops paired up and carried a shield with them. It was a thick piece of armor that had a small shield generator mounted on it. When the shield failed, it would automatically reset itself. While it cycled through it’s cool down, the thick armor of the hard shield served to absorb the energy and impacts from the Talosian weapons until the shield generator could reactivate. The system would eventually be over-come, but it bought the enemy troops enough time to move a considerable distance forward.

  “Primary shield failure eminent. Standby to shift power grid to weapons systems,” Ramirez reported.

  “Power system ready, weapons systems ready,” Connors reported. “Weapons deploying.” On the surface, several new ground mounted weapons rose from their underground storage places, and the water tower once again opened up.

  “Switch now!” Ramirez ordered.

  “Switching, weapons systems are hot and locking on, power systems switched. Anti-assault weapons are engaging the enemy assault carriers and heavy armor,” Connors reported.

  “Good, our Marines need the help,” Ty said.

  “Damn! We just lost two anti-air turrets!” Ramirez reported. “Those bombers are accurate as hell.”

  “Set the rest of the bombers as the primary targets for the rest of the AA (anti-aircraft) units. Can we shift any construction drones over to fix the ones we lost?” Ty asked.

  “Sorry Sir, everything I have is busy fighting the fires, or trying to fix the shields. I’ve already had to abandon the labs and assembly areas.” Connors replied.

  The bunker shook and the lights failed but came right back on. “Surface power plant is gone. It took a direct hit.”

  “Fuck, what’s out reactor status?” Ty asked.

  “We’re at one hundred and five percent. Engineering is trying to cut systems out of the loop to ease the load,” Connors replied after some fast typing.

  Ty walked over and turned off the lights in the room. Now the onl
y light came from the walls of monitors the two controllers had. Connors didn’t say anything, but he did chuckle and Ramirez smiled.

  “Hey, every little bit counts,” Ty said. “Ramirez, shift the hovercraft west, it looks like the enemy armor is heavier over there.”

  “Sir, we have detonations to the north, in the mine field. Sensors aren’t registering anything out there!” Ramirez said, confused.

  “Give me a visual,” Ty asked. One of the bigger monitors in the center of the wall switched to a view of the empty desert, with the settling dust from the mines detonating. As he watched, two more mines exploded. In the dust, he thought he saw a geometric form.

  “Connors! Swing guns five and seven around and fire on that spot. Keep shooting until I tell you to stop. Hammer the hell out of it!” Ty ordered.

  “Cloaked ship sir?” Ramirez asked. “Shouldn’t we have detected it?”

  “Not if they were moving really slow, it’s the distortion they make that we can detect. If they didn’t make any, we couldn’t see it,” Ty explained. As he watched, the two guns began firing, and he could see that they were hitting something, but so far, the ship was remaining cloaked. At each impact, he got a flash of the ship that was cloaked.

  Ty activated his comm. “Colonel Petrie, we have a cloaked ship in the outfield. So far they’re tangled up in the minefield. But I don’t know how long they’ll be delayed.”

  “Lovely! I was hoping we’d have more playmates!” the colonel replied sarcastically. “Any count on them yet?”

  “No, they’re still cloaked, but I’m hammering the hell out of them with two of the guns. As soon as the cloak fails, I’ll be able to tell you how many there are,” Ty replied.

  “Okay, I hope you can take care of it with the guns. If I pull any troops out right now, it’ll be like opening the flood gates!” Petrie replied. “They brought a lot more troops and equipment this time.”

  “Sir, the engineer reports that he’s done all he can. The reactor is still critical, and threatening shut down,” Connors reported.

  “Tell him to piss on it if he has to, if that reactor fails, we’re all gonna die!” Ty said, “Ramirez, is there still power going to the shields?”

  Ramirez typed a command into his terminal, then swore and shut down the now destroyed shield generators. “Sorry sir, I should have checked that.”

  “You got it now, that all that matters. Check and shut down all power to non-essential surface buildings,” Ty ordered. “Tell the fighter base to shut down the launch tubes, open the doors to the landing area, and shut down all life support systems. If we have any ships down there, try to patch them into the power grid and use them to help supply power. Connors, contact Star Dancer operations and tell them to be ready to assume command if we lose power.”

  The men didn’t acknowledge his orders, but they did act on them. Ty was thinking rapidly on what else could be done to unload the power grid. On the monitor displaying the minefield, Ty saw the smaller assault ship uncloak and try to raise shields. On the ground, forty Caldarian troops and two of their big hover tanks sat, unmoving. Nearby, the smoking wreckage of three tanks was surrounded by the strewn bodies of other Caldarian troops that didn’t survive the mines.

  As he watched, small missiles launched from the ship on a short arc. In midair, they exploded filling the air with smaller, sub-munitions. When those small bomb-lets hit the ground, they detonated, triggering the mines under and around them. The ship was clearing a path for its remaining troops.

  He had just figured out what was going on and was about to call Colonel Petrie when the monitors and computers shut down, plunging the command center into darkness. The main reactor shut down from over-load.

  Chapter 22

  F.S.S. Star Dancer

  Earth Orbit

  Sol Sector.

  Combat location: Dark Palace

  As if the Caldarians had been waiting for it, they threw everything they had at the community once the power failed. Ian was sick when he saw the amount of destruction that was being done to the small community.

  “Operations, drop our Marines in the outfield. They are to eliminate the surprise force, then move to reinforce the rest of our troops. Send Silver squadron down to attack the heavy ground units,” Ian ordered. “E.T.A. on the Super Nova?”

  “Twenty-nine minutes, sir. We’ll be in missile range in five minutes,” Operations reported.

  “Sir! I think we got programming!” Gordon said excitedly. Ian had almost forgotten about them.

  “Execute immediately!” Ian ordered.

  “Aye, sir!” Gordon replied. “Flight, we are ready to resume hyper-missile launch sequence.”

  “’Bout flippin’ time! Gimme a sec, so we can get them back in position. I had to move them for fighter recovery,” John’s voice said over the comm.

  Ian thumbed the comm. “Quickly, John. That beast will be tossing heavy missiles at us in three minutes.”

  “Understood Sir,” John replied. “No! Set them in the cats, dammit!” he said to someone else before his comm shut off.

  Ian could imagine the scene back in the landing bays, deck hands scrambling to push the large missiles around by hand, while others worked to move the damaged and destroyed fighters off the deck. It was a full minute later that John called back. “The birds are loaded, and awake, Navigation. I got my finger on the button.”

  “Understood, Flight, Initiating launch sequence,” Gordon said. “Hyperspace event forming three kilometers aft. Portals are stable, launch when ready!”

  “Launching! Bird one and three away!” a short pause, then he said. “Birds two and four away!”

  “Comm, tracking. We’re showing a hyperspace event forming inside the Super Nova! She has come to a dead stop and is showing heavy damage due to gravimetric sheer.”

  “Visual!” Ian ordered.

  Again, an image of the big ship was displayed for him. As he watched, the monstrous ship seemed to shudder, and fold slightly as if it had a tummy ache. The hull along the centerline began to wrinkle and fold up like an accordion, and the huge bay doors on the bottom blew completely off, and went flying away from the ship like they were small hatches instead of three-quarters the size of Star Dancer herself.

  “Missile re-entry in three, two...” Gordon called out, but didn’t reach ‘one’ as the image on the screen blew up so spectacularly that it was seen clearly from Earth. The plasma wave from its destruction, even at the distance the Super Nova had been, still rocked the ship when it washed over her shields.

  Gordon turned around, smiling. She was at attention and saluted Ian. “Sir, target is destroyed.” Beside her, Ensign Eischens was grinning like it was Christmas.

  “Good work, both of you, but we’ve still got a battle to win. Both of you please go see if there is anything you can do in Ops to help out,” Ian ordered, returning the salute.

  The two grinned at each other, and ran for the door into the CIC.

  Star looked up at Ian, and she had a look of utter shock on her face. “Sir! The two drones we lost control of have just launched fighters to intercept the carriers! I am receiving IFF information for the Heavy Cruisers T.D.F Prometheus and the T.D.F Pegasus! Those two ships that jumped in are Talosian!”

  “They’re what?” Ian said looking at her.

  “I can’t explain it Sir, but those two ships are Talosian Heavy Cruisers and they are on their way in system!” Star replied.

  “Sir, we are being hailed. They are asking us if we need assistance!” Star replied excitedly.

  “Accept the hail, on screen please,” Ian replied, stunned.

  An image of an older woman appeared on the main screen, and she bowed her head to Ian. “Greetings Commander. I am Commander Serena of House Aphilian aboard the Prometheus. Do you require assistance?”

  Ian stood in shock for a moment before he remembered how to greet another Commander. He bowed as well and spoke in Talosian. “Greetings Commander Serena, I am Commander Ian Williams of uh
, House Cronos. Yes, we could definitely use your help here,” he paused and blinked a couple of minutes. “No offence, Commander, but why did you wait so long to reveal yourselves?”

  The woman smiled. “No offence taken, Commander. Your ship is not supposed to exist. Our records show her destroyed at the Battle of Darkness. We had no idea what we were getting into when we got here.” Someone off to one side got her attention for a moment. “I apologize, Commander, but more explanation will have to wait until we can meet face to face. We do, after all, have a battle to finish.”

  “I understand, Commander. Could I borrow some of your Marines to assist on the planet? Even after all the fighting, I’m afraid we are still outnumbered two to one,” Ian replied.

  Serena nodded. “They will jump to you immediately, Commander. I’ll have the unit commanders contact your operations officer as soon as they arrive. They are yours to use. We’ll follow as soon as these carriers are taken care of. We will also send our medical and evac shuttles. Do you wish for me to call for colony support?”

  Ian had no idea what that was. “I think I should wait to answer that until I know exactly what colony support entails, Commander. This planet is... well, let’s just say that there are extenuating circumstances here.”

  Again Serena nodded. “I understand. My troops are launching now, we should join you in orbit in about an hour. See you then, and Commander?”

  “Yes?” Ian asked raising his eyebrows.

  “What you’ve done here is remarkable. Many would say it’s impossible. You have done very well,” the woman replied. “Prometheus, out.”

  There was a moment of awed silence on the bridge as they all struggled to adjust to what they had just learned.

  “Operations, prepare to receive reinforcements for the planet. When they get here, send them straight down. There will also be medical and evac shuttles, have them hold position until the fighting gets under control down there.” He changed channels. “Medical, you’re going to be receiving extra help. Make sure your people can speak Talosian. You can launch your shuttles as soon as you’re ready. You can join the rest of the shuttles waiting to go down.”