Unbidden, but according to plan, micro-charges at each attachment point for the hangar doors blew. There was no fire or fury, but rather than clamshell apart, the hangar doors separated and spread out, leaving the hangar open.
More confusion, more questions, more wasted thought cycles to consider this…
And then realization, that the not-quite-empty hangar did not contain a dropship or a spot for their shuttle, but instead contained warhead after warhead, split from their missile busses, with only their hot, ready, powered up divert motors to launch them across the narrow void.
Before either side could react, the Puller’s point-defense cannons lit off, coming to an operational state from a complete power-down instantly, a necessary feature for any quick reaction defense weapon, and one not usually considered when assessing the tactical threat of an opposing vessel. Usually, PDCs would be no threat. Distances between ships were too great, and their multitudes of rounds were too small to ever employ them effectively across such vast battlespaces. But over a mere kilometer? That was point blank range.
Tungsten BBs leaped across the void between the ships, chewing apart Terran Navy hull metal, sensors, antennas, railgun mounts, lenses, and armor. They did to the Mare Crisium and her shuttle what they usually did to railgun rounds and enemy missiles.
The shuttle split apart, flayed by a million and one tiny cuts. LCDR Kortney Kropp, her pilot, and her Marines never knew what struck them, still trying to answer the question of where to dock.
The Terran Navy destroyer, however, was made of sterner stuff. Automated systems might not have reacted instantly, still intent on monitoring the Puller’s offensive weapons for signs of power-up, but their operators were good. Half a second after having their sides chewed by a cheese grater, Mare Crisium’s railguns and lasers poured out their own fire. Almost as an afterthought, her PDCs joined the fight a few seconds later.
Their fire passed through the dead shuttle without care, ripping it and its former occupants apart in the opposite direction. The Terran PDC fire had a more significant effect upon the Puller, given her armor was torn apart already and her pressure hull exposed. Tungsten shot chewed into every exposed element—and a great deal was exposed.
That damage paled, however, in comparison to that inflicted by the point-blank laser and railgun fire. Unitary rounds shot entirely through the Puller, entering one side and exiting the other, carrying a torrent of destruction. UV lasers, usually dedicated to burning through and vaporizing railgun rounds and missiles before they could initiate or hit their targets, now left glowing trails of molten metal in the hull. Where the outer shell had been torn away, they cut through and incinerated whatever fell beneath their beams, whether that be component or flesh. The horror of their damage was second only to that inflicted by a missile’s x-ray laser fire.
There was no maneuver here, no tactical cleverness. There was only an unremitting exchange of fire, as each ship stood still and slugged it out, the flares of their combat apparent to anyone on the planet below. It was a fight the Puller would have been at a disadvantage in on any day, but especially today, when she was so severely damaged before the battle began.
She and Benno only had one possible hope.
By the dozens, individual missile warheads sprang out from the hangar on their diminutive divert engines, which were usually only used for evasive maneuvering during the terminal phase. The warheads were designed to pick up most of their speed from the missile bodies that carried them.
But it was only a kilometer.
* * *
Captain Howard Beam’s eyes bugged out. On the screen, he saw the respective streams of PDC, railgun, and laser fire chew apart the Alliance destroyer and his shuttle. K.K., his XO, was dead. His ship shuddered under the onslaught of surprisingly effective PDC fire at point blank range.
What filled him with dismay, however, was the cloud of fusion warheads zipping toward him. Surely not, his mind screamed. The mutinous bastard can’t be that crazy! We’re only half a mile away! He can’t set off a nuke this close!
Even then, Beam knew he was wrong. He could not. But this jumped up pleb could and had…
“Target the warheads! Target the warheads!” Beam screamed at his crew.
But it was only a kilometer.
Warheads died, too slow, too dumb, too out of their element to do any good. But there were many crowded in the hangar.
A warhead was most effective in three roles: at an outer range, as a driver for a xaser weapon; in close proximity, to explode and irradiate a hull sufficiently to vaporize significant portions; and after penetration of a ship’s hull, to explode within and deliver the final coup de grace. Outside an atmosphere, they were not the awesome weapons of ultimate destruction they were upon a planet—the blasts of radiation lacked any real concussive element—but they were still the lords of the battle.
The first—and last—warhead to survive the gauntlet of two-way fire contacted the battle hull of the Mare Crisium, just forward of the radiator spine, but only penetrated the Swiss-cheese-hole-ridden armor hole halfway.
That seemed to be enough.
The fusion warhead exploded with the equivalent of two kilotons of TNT, or 10 terajoules of energy. This was smaller than the relatively minuscule size of the weapon expended against Hiroshima, but it was still more than 20 times the inundating energy of a standard xaser beam. The energy vaporized space after space of the Terran destroyer, splitting the hull in two. Plasma and thermal transfer energy exploded out from the penetration point, burning, crushing, and shattering all that stood in front of that wave front. The two glowing, outgassing segments of the hull—what remained of half the forward battle hull and the forlorn engineering hull, with only a couple of spars from the radiator spine left—shot away from one another, tumbling uncontrolled, burning even in the absence of oxygen.
Captain Beam’s life and his plans ended in an instant, both unfinished.
With only a kilometer separating them, the Puller absorbed a significant amount of energy from the blast. However, it was prepared. All but the most essential personnel had moved to the opposite side of the hull from the one facing the Terran ship. And, it had immediately lit off engines and begun opening the gap as soon as the warheads were away.
That side of the Puller fumed and glowed, its damage as extensive as it could be while remaining relatively intact. And intact it was. Of the two ships, only one survived…battered and broken, but victorious.
The skies over Adelaide were clear.
* * *
Alarms and claxons on the bridge were silenced, and everyone watched the remaining sections of TNV Mare Crisium tumble away from one another. Only half the systems on the bridge worked, and a litany of damage along the Puller’s port side streamed in, almost without end. But they lived.
With the inclusion of half the surviving loyalists, Benno’s cut-down crew had expanded to 85 people. He wondered how many he had lost. How many of them had families on Putnam, New Kiev, or Trinity? How many had families on Adelaide and would never get to see them, after coming so far and getting so close? How much more death, blame, and loss did he have to endure?
Would Mio be able to stand looking at him, knowing that even though he had freed three worlds, he would be hunted as a traitor and a mutineer? Would it turn her heart to know he had lost so many of the people who had put themselves in his charge?
Benno felt a hand close over his own. He looked over. CDR Ashton looked at him through her faceplate with a knowing expression.
She nodded sadly. “It’s over, Benno. You survived for your daughter. You saved her, and you’ll get to see her. But now the pressure’s off, now those sins we talked about before, those finally have a chance to come to roost. And you may be a mutineer, but you’re also a warrior, and I can respect at least part of what you did. Take some advice from your former prisoner. You can’t just focus on the failures. That will drive you mad. You have to focus on what you achieved.”
Benno l
ooked at her and realized that while she might be right, he did not know if he could. For that, only time would—
“Bridge, TAO! Vampire, vampire! Missile alert from the anti-orbit battery below! The battery has fired, and we are within engagement range!”
Benno banished his misery and guilt to the back of his mind. The Puller was wrecked. There was no way they could maneuver in time, no way they could ever hope to shoot the smart, fast, massive missile down before any one of its 100 warheads obliterated them.
They were doomed.
* * * * *
Chapter Twenty: Mio
“I’m going to make this quick,” Garcia said to the assembled resistance fighters. “You’ve all seen the drive flares in orbit. The Terran Navy destroyer overhead has lit off its engines, and it’s moving out. There’s another ship inbound, but it looks a lot smaller, with fewer engines and less thrust. Communications chatter indicates it’s an Alliance warship, but there is something wrong with it. Either way, you can bet there will be a battle. And, regardless of the outcome, we will all soon be dead if we don’t act.”
“What do you mean?” one voice called.
“Why are we going to be dead?” asked another.
“I don’t have a lot of time to talk,” Garcia said, holding up his hands to forestall any further questions. “If the Turds win, they’ll have a chance to act on whatever intel that traitor gave them. They’ll bombard us just like before, then mop up the rest with ground forces. If our ship wins, then we know for a fact the missile system is going to launch nukes, first at the Alliance ship and then at First Landing, and everyone you know—everyone you love—is going to die!”
“That’s crazy!” someone yelled. “The Terrans will be burned up too.”
“No, they won’t,” Harry said. “I used to be a missileer. I can tell you their vehicles will protect them. They’re far enough away that the protection systems in their vehicles won’t let a single rad get to them. They’ll be fine, but we’ll all be dead.”
“We have to stop them!” several people yelled.
“Yes, we have to stop them,” Garcia said. “Everyone here, as well as everyone we find on the way, will attack them as soon as we get there. We must attack, and we must attack now!”
“But that’s suicide!” someone yelled. “There’s no way we can get close to it. They’ll kill us all!”
“Some may die,” Garcia said with a nod, “but that is a sacrifice that must be made so that we hold their attention while a second force sneaks through a back way to hit them from behind. That force will also have a man with it who knows the missile system; that way, if the Terran ship wins, we can shoot it down. If we do this right, we will end the day as free men and women.”
“Who’s going to lead the second group?” a woman asked.
“This girl right here,” Garcia said, pointing to Mio in the front row.
“Her? She’s too young!”
“She might be a traitor!”
“Can we trust her?”
“We can trust her,” Garcia said. “She has brought many things to light that no one else saw, and she has saved the resistance from being undermined by a traitor. She has my complete confidence. She may be young, but she is experienced, and she has been to the missile base at least twice, so she knows the way. We can all trust her to get the job done.”
“What’s all this ‘we’ stuff?” a voice yelled. “Where are you gonna be?”
“I will be right alongside you, leading the first wave,” Garcia replied. “If today is my appointed time, I will die alongside you, but I will die striving to make my planet free! There is no more noble cause than the one on which we embark, and I am proud to lead you into it. Grab your weapons; we leave in five minutes!”
The group broke up as everyone scattered to retrieve their gear, leaving Mio and Harry with the ruling council, who already had their weapons.
“Do you really believe all those things you just said?” Mio asked.
“Absolutely!” Garcia said. “If we can do this, we will be free within a matter of hours.”
“No, I meant do you mean the things you said about me?”
“Yes, little one, although I did not trust you initially, you have proven your worth so many times you have removed all doubt from my mind. Were it not for you, Dan would be getting ready right now to lead an assault that would have ended in all our deaths. Not only do you deserve my trust, you deserve my respect and my thanks. Thank you, Miss Sanchez, for giving us a chance to win today.”
Mio nearly glowed with pride. “Come on,” Harry said, before she could think up a suitable reply; “we have to get going, since we have the farthest to go.”
“You’re right,” Mio said. She started to go, then turned around. “Thanks for your trust, Mr. Garcia. I will do my best.” That would have to do for now.
* * *
In addition to Harry, Mio led Amelia Lopez, Trevor Werner, and three of the other camp’s best fighters, including one with a backpack full of explosives, back to the tunnels in a race against time. When would the ships above start trading fire? How long would the space battle take to end? No one knew, nor could anyone know the outcome of the fight. Even worse than not knowing the outcome was knowing their friends and fellow resistance members were on their way to the missile system and would begin the attack along the timeline they had set…and there was no way to tell them to stop if something caused a delay.
No delays could be permitted.
They ran all the way to the tunnel entrance, leaving Mio and Harry winded.
“How far from here?” Trevor Werner asked as Harry turned on the light.
“About seven miles,” Mio said, “but it’s pretty much a straight line, with no ups or downs.”
The freedom fighter looked at his chrono. “It’s going to be tight. We don’t have much time to stop and rest. Can you do it?”
“Yes, I can,” Mio replied, although every muscle in her body was already fatigued. She hadn’t trained to run distances with her gear and rifle, and it showed. “Let’s go,” she added, setting out at a brisk walk to catch her breath.
The group alternately ran and fast-walked until the lights went out, and then took up a forced march pace. Everyone had flashlights…but no one wanted to run into an ambush. Even though their pace was a “walk” and not a “trot,” it was at a brutal pace, and it wasn’t long until Mio’s shins were hurting.
Consoling herself with the memory that she had hurt worse in the tunnels and had still made it out, she pressed on, biting her lip to deal with the pain. Although not an experience she would want to remember, she knew this was her chance to prove herself, and the group made good time through the dark passageway.
Until the lights came on.
Mio immediately froze, holding up a hand with her fist closed like she had seen Dan do. She shook her head. She wished Dan hadn’t been a traitor; she would feel a lot more comfortable with him at her side than these people she didn’t know. She looked at Harry walking beside her. At least she had him.
“Why’d you stop?” Jason asked. “We need to get there before the attack starts.”
“I know,” Mio replied, “but there’s a problem.”
“What do you mean?”
“This is only the second time I’ve seen the lights on here,” Mio replied, “and the first time, there were Terran soldiers.”
“Want me to lead, then?” Jason asked. “I’ll deal with any troops we come upon.”
“That’s all right,” Mio said. “We need to be quiet, and I know the tunnels. I may be able to avoid them.”
“Okay,” Jason said, “but we don’t have any time to waste.”
“I’m not trying to waste time,” Mio said, fighting the urge to stomp her foot; “I’m trying to do this the way I was told so we can surprise the Turds.”
“All right, press on then. Just let me know if you see anything different.”
Mio continued to lead them down the tunnel, being especially
alert for Terran troopers. The group had almost reached the Terran soldiers’ turnaround when she came to a small rock on the side of the passageway. Not much bigger than a silver dollar, Mio started to walk past it, but then stopped as she came even with it. Aside from the cave-in, she hadn’t seen any rocks in the passageways. Why would there be one here?
She grabbed Harry’s arm as he started to go around her. He paused to glare at her. “What?” he mouthed.
Mio held up a finger to silence him and led the group back the way they had come. “That rock wasn’t there the last time we were here,” she said once they had withdrawn a little way down the passage. “Trevor told me to watch for anything out of the ordinary; that’s different.”
Harry’s glare softened, then his brows knitted together. “Hmm…” he said, looking back up the passage to where the rock lay. “Stay here a sec,” he added a couple of moments later as he came to a decision. He walked up to the rock and looked down on it before coming back to where Mio waited.
“Good job,” he said. “That’s a Terran camera, disguised to look like a rock. The lens faces up the passageway where you can’t see it until you’re past it, and it’s seen you. If we’d gone past, they would have known we were coming.”
“So how do we get past it?” Trevor asked.
“I don’t know…I’m working on it. We can’t move it, or they’ll know someone’s here. We also can’t go by it—the way it’s sitting, there’s no blind spot. It can see the whole passage, from side to side.”
“How about running and jumping over it?”
“That won’t work,” Harry said, shaking his head, “not unless you can fly down the passage; it’ll see you when you come down.”
“We’ve got to hurry; they’re counting on us!”
“I know,” Harry said. “Don’t bug me; I’m thinking…”
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