“You don’t think people can change?” Tag asked. “You don’t believe in redemption?”
“I’m not sure,” Lonestar said, “but right now, I’m hoping to change that.”
***
Tag stood at the front of the conference room next to a holo of Meck’ara with Coren, Alpha, Sofia, and the marines watching him. He found it hard to believe this was his entire crew. That this was all the SRE could spare to help the free Mechanics. Of course, he could send a courier drone to alert the SRE, but judging by their luck so far, he expected it would be intercepted.
That wasn’t all. His stomach twisted. There was a darker thought buried in his subconscious. A suspicion that maybe, maybe someone in league with the Drone-masters at the SRE would get the message and do whatever they could to ensure Tag’s mission failed.
But here they were, discussing how they were going to infiltrate a battle-ravaged world and change the direction of an enigmatic war. And only three of them were actually trained for direct combat. Of course, they had Bracken’s forces to complement them, but a few dozen Mechanic warriors escorting a group of scientists and engineers to implement a risky, game-changing experiment in the middle of an active battlefield didn’t even sound like a great idea on paper, much less in reality.
Still, it was the best plan they had. Forcant and Admiral Martix had accumulated at least some data on the Drone-Mech blockade around Meck’ara. The information was dated, but if the Drone-Mechs had only half the fleet Martix believed they might, winning in space was going to be difficult enough. Tag hated thinking about what it would be like if the Drone-Mechs had gathered even more warships since Admiral Martix had last intercepted one of the enemy courier drones. He understood now why the free Mechanic navy didn’t want to wait any longer than they had to.
“Tomorrow, we’ll be in Meck’ara space.” Tag tapped on his wrist terminal, and a blizzard of red dots appeared around the holo of Meck’ara. “This is what the last known fleet around Meck’ara looked like.”
“Holy shit,” Sofia said. “And I suppose you just want me to fly through that like it’s no big deal, huh?”
“For a pilot like you,” Tag said, “it’ll be a piece of cake.”
“You’ve got more confidence than I do.”
“Get us to the ground alive, and try to keep the ship together. I’ll buy you a drink afterward.”
“It better be a drink big enough for an ice god,” Sofia said.
“The good news is that we don’t need to engage with these Drone-Mechs. Our objective is purely to get to the Institute. Bracken and Sharick will storm the gates with us. Since the Institute was more focused on academic research, there was never a formidable security force around it. Hopefully, with the Drone-Mechs in charge, that won’t have changed. There may not be anyone there for all we know.”
“Fat chance with our luck,” Bull said. “Given everything we’ve seen, if the Drone-Mechs aren’t marching around there, I’d expect that to be a goddamn breeding ground for the Dreg.”
“Or an ice god,” Sofia said.
“I’m beginning to think you might actually like the ice gods,” Coren said.
“They’re kind of cute.”
“Ice gods or not,” Tag said, “we’ve got to implement the grav-wave software Bracken’s group is bringing.” The nervous humor shared between the crew members dissipated. “The Mechanics are relying on us. I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say that if we don’t succeed, Admiral Martix isn’t going to stand a chance of overcoming the Drone-Mech navy. You all saw what happened to the Montenegro’s fleet from a single dreadnought and its strike group. We’re going up against a force ten times that in strength.
“This is the Mechanics’ last stand,” he continued. “This is our last stand. Stopping them may be the only way to ensure they don’t mount another attack on the Montenegro or, gods be damned, the rest of the SRE. Earth.”
He let the words hang in the air for several long beats.
“I’m asking you all to give your damnedest out there. We don’t know exactly what we’re going to face. We don’t know what it’s going to be like on the planet’s surface. And we don’t know how long Martix and his fleet can keep the Drone-Mechs off our back. What I do know is that I’ve got the strangest team ever assembled to carry out a mission we never would’ve imagined a few months ago. And goddammit, we’re also the best team to do it.”
“If I may, Captain,” Alpha said, raising a tentative silver hand. “I believe it would be appropriate for me to add something to a briefing like this.”
“And what would that be?”
“Let’s kick some ass.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Plasma dissipated across the viewscreen, and inertial dampeners tugged at Tag’s insides, the mix of anxiety and rapid changes in acceleration churning in his gut. His jaw set to the point that a tension headache was burgeoning behind his eyeballs, and he had to force himself to take deep breaths of recycled air within his EVA suit as his crash couch restraints tightened around his body. Something felt out of place in his trachea, and he coughed. A physical manifestation, maybe, of the worry knotting itself in his brain.
All around him, Martix’s fleet transitioned into existence, rocking into normal space with flashes of light more violent than a thousand lightning strikes. For a moment, as the battlecruisers floated next to the Argo, and as the dreadnought lurked behind them like a foreboding behemoth, Tag felt almost powerful. This was the feeling he had once chased as a young ensign in training. The moment of glory entering a skirmish alongside a navy bristling with advanced technology and a singular monumental battle ahead of them. The adrenaline rush was exhilarating, invigorating. And Tag feared he could find himself becoming addicted to it.
But reality proved to be a formidable antidote.
Klaxon alarms blared across the bridge, and a storm of red dots flashed all over the holomap. The Drone-Mech numbers were so dense that they threatened to blot out the mass of Meck’ara beyond them. Tag’s fingers curled around the edge of his armrests. If it weren’t for his gloves, he knew he would be looking down at his white knuckles right now. At least, thanks to the EVA suits, his crew couldn’t see how frightened he was. They had brought one dreadnought to this battle. And by Tag’s cursory count on the holomap and Alpha’s continuously updated data analysis on the enemy numbers, Tag saw at least a dozen dreadnoughts spread among the Drone-Mech fleet.
“Hostile contacts,” Alpha said.
“No shit,” Sofia said dryly.
Alpha appeared confused for only a second before she continued. “Incoming ordnance. Torpedoes detected.”
“Coren,” Tag said, mustering all the certainty he could in his voice. “You know what to do.”
For the first part of their dive toward the planet, Martix’s fleet would escort them. Their goal was to get within the atmosphere above the Institute at whatever the cost. Martix would break off only when they were certain Tag and Bracken had gotten their forces landside. As Tag’s vision narrowed on the viewscreen, hundreds of glinting Drone-Mech warships speckling the distant view, he prayed for Martix’s sake that it wouldn’t take them long to infiltrate the Institute. He had no illusions that the free Mechanics in space would come out of this unscathed. They would undoubtedly take considerable losses. They were knowingly making an enormous sacrifice, all in faith that Tag and Bracken could disrupt the nanites and effectively turn the Drone-Mechs off.
If that didn’t work, they would make a mad retreat to Garndon-Three. Of course, that was contingent on there being anyone left to retreat.
Sofia guided the Argo in a more or less straight path at the Drone-Mech blockade. They were still out of effective distance of Gauss cannons, energy weapons, and PDCs. That didn’t stop a wall of torpedoes from glittering across the holomap toward them. In answer, outgoing torpedoes flew in volleys from Martix’s fleet. The warheads and ordnance raced past the Argo in waves, rushing to meet the incoming fusillade like two ancient ar
mies charging each other for a ferocious clash of blades against shields. The first few warheads met each other with violent energy. Chains of explosions glared, rippling in the viewscreen, and the number of detected ordnances on Tag’s holoscreen constantly shifted as the two fleets fired wave after wave.
“We are approaching effective targeting range for kinetic slugs,” Alpha reported.
“Coren, tear a hole through these bastards,” Tag said.
Coren’s fingers skipped across his terminal. The reverberations of the thumping Gauss cannons shook through the bulkhead, and slugs flew in straight lines at the enemy forces.
“Approaching PDC and energy weapons range,” Alpha said.
“Shields up,” Tag said. Now things are going to get interesting.
The green glare of the energy shields powering up around the ship shone for a few moments before settling into invisibility. Sofia seemed to lean forward against her restraints, and Tag imagined the sweat coursing down her forehead, through her hair. The clamminess in her palms. More than anyone in that moment, this mission would come down to her. Pearly ropes of incoming PDC fire erupted from several of the Drone-Mech ships, illuminated on the viewscreen. Sofia maneuvered around them as flashes of azure light and beams lanced from the Drone-Mech fleet. The Mechanics returned fire with equal ferocity, and orange streaks tore from the Argo’s energy cannon at the enemies.
All around, the dark abyss was illuminated with the almost constant explosion of warheads and the flash of energy rounds being absorbed by shields. Coren whooped when a kinetic slug punctured one of the Drone-Mech cutters he had been targeting. Plumes of blue plasma vented from the wounded ship, and it started to list as the gravity well of Meck’ara pulled it in. The venting plasma and failing impellers propelled the ship into a Drone-Mech battlecruiser, and the two ships ripped apart in a series of explosions that coursed through their hulls. Debris peppered the Drone-Mech ranks.
“Two for the price of one,” Sofia shouted. “Keep at that shit, Coren!”
The Argo flipped and barrel rolled through intersecting lines of PDC fire, bulkheads and decks groaning in agonized protest as Sofia treated it like a bloated fighter. Blue beams speared through the space around them. Several caught the ship, and the energy shields hummed and flashed green as they dissipated the overwhelming incoming energy. Every near miss and absorbed round set Tag on edge, set his heart racing, his nerves twitching.
“Shields at seventy-five percent,” Alpha said before another wave of energy rounds rocked the Argo. “Now at fifty-nine percent!”
Tag wondered how long they would have lasted had Martix’s fleet not been helping to absorb the insane storm of incoming fire pounding around them. The thought passed through his mind right as a nearby free Mechanic cutter took a volley of energy rounds within a period of only a few seconds. Their shields shone bright green and appeared almost like fractured glass as they took the pounding. PDC fire and outgoing rounds from the cutter fired frantically, and Tag watched in horror as a single torpedo slipped through the ropes of defensive fire and past the failed energy shields. The torpedo disappeared, piercing the cutter, and gored the bowels of the ship. A second later, fire and plasma blew out of the shredded hull, and the ship turned to slag, its crew incinerated in one violent moment.
Coren continued firing at the incoming warheads while occasionally returning the favor. Between volleys, he stole a glance at the fractured remains of the downed free Mechanic ship and said, “The machine remembers, brothers and sisters.”
Fighters from the Drone-Mech fleet flew in rolling clouds to meet the fighters that were now streaming from the free Mechanics’ dreadnought. Tag tried to monitor the action unfolding over his holoscreen, but the chaotic dance of fighters separating and re-forming like ravenous flocks of birds was too much to follow. Another billow of blue plasma caught his eye, and he watched as a second free Mechanic ship was cleaved into three separate pieces by the resulting blasts. All around in Martix’s fleet, ships were stalling, impellers destroyed, energy shields failing, or fusion cores jettisoned to prevent catastrophic failure.
The Argo and Stalwart’s escorts were fighting valiantly, but Tag feared it wouldn’t be enough. When another free Mechanic ship was eviscerated, Tag knew it wouldn’t be enough. Punching a hole through the Drone-Mech blockade by sheer force of firepower seemed horribly quixotic now. The crew appeared to feel the same despair Tag did, and he caught Coren watching him, waiting for the command to reverse and attempt a jump into hyperspace. All the sacrifices of the Mechanics, all their best efforts, everything they had fought for had led to this abysmal failure.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Forcant, still serving as Admiral Martix’s comms organizer, appeared on Tag’s holoscreen. Tag waited for the order to come through. The order that would send them all running back into hyperspace, running away from any chance of victory over the Drone-Mechs.
But Forcant surprised him. “Admiral Martix requests the Argo and the Stalwart adjust trajectories. Follow the Fury, Constitution, and Berserker.”
“Understood,” Tag said.
Sofia confirmed she’d heard the order by giving him a brief thumbs up, and she decelerated slightly to let the battlecruisers charge in front of them. Each battlecruiser flew frighteningly close to the next. One wrong move by their pilots, and Tag envisioned a firestorm of exploding reactors and geysers of plasma erupting from their collisions.
“That’s a damn crazy maneuver even for a fighter,” Sofia said.
“Stay as close to their impeller trail as possible,” Forcant continued. “We’re using them like battering rams. No matter what, we’re getting you onto that planet. There will be no retreat, no failure today.”
A tightness gripped Tag’s chest. He wasn’t sure if it was the immense weight of the situation or the delay in the inertial dampeners trying to keep up with Sofia’s flying. The Stalwart appeared nearby, uncomfortably close for Tag’s liking. But he trusted Sofia to handle the Argo even as the proximity alarms wailed all around the bridge.
He watched as green blips on the holomap disappeared. Something seemed disrespectful about a few vanishing dots signifying the deaths of thousands. Each time another disappeared, he felt a knife slip further into his stomach, twisting and cutting at the tenuous bit of hope left that any of them would survive this desperate mission.
But if his crew had noticed his despair, they made no sign to acknowledge it. Martix’s efforts to shift the battle in a new direction had reinvigorated them, and each was focused on their station, losing themselves in the tasks at hand.
“Shields at fifty-three percent,” Alpha chimed as another energy blast rocked the Argo.
Bracken guided the chains of glaring PDC fire into a few incoming warheads. Despite the proximity to the Stalwart, Sofia continuously made small adjustments to the Argo’s trajectory to avoid incoming energy rounds and returning PDC fire. The energy shields of the Fury, Constitution, and Berserker flickered as they absorbed the brunt of the Drone-Mech fire. A spatter of blue PDC fire from a Drone-Mech ship peppered the portside hull of the Fury. Tag’s heart beat faster than the energy rounds bursting from their cannons. For a moment, nothing happened. Then a sudden cobalt eruption sent the Fury listing to port, and it was pushed off its path, creating a void between the Constitution and Berserker.
Renewed incoming fire rained hell on the Stalwart and the Argo. The energy shields buzzed, and the bridge shook. Round after round exploded against the ship, and an alarm barked a new warning across Tag’s holoscreen: Hull breach, forward quarters. Panic filtered through him as the internal redundancies sent hatches locking closed and repair bots flooding to the scene of the breach.
“Bull, you all okay down there?” Tag asked over the comms.
“Never better, Captain,” Bull said, although he was speaking through gritted teeth.
Fighters swarmed at the trio of free Mechanic ships leading the charge. Dozens burst into shards of alloy, but even though more and more
fell to the onslaught of the free Mechanics, the fighters continued to course between them, eating away at the shields and taking strafing runs at the Argo. As the Fury continued to veer off course, escape pods plumed from all sides of the vessel, and it crashed into the first line of Drone-Mech ships, erupting into a swirl of jagged fragments like so many metallic chunks of hail. The Berserker and the Constitution tore into the Drone-Mech ships after it, barreling into fighters, cutters, and battlecruisers alike. The impacts of the free Mechanic ships against the Drone-Mechs’ was so violent Tag could practically feel the shuddering decks and distant explosions himself. More escape pods fired off from the ships before they broke apart in tongues of jutting plasma.
“Gods be damned,” Sofia said. “They’re throwing themselves at the Drone-Mechs like bricks through a window.”
“Make it count,” Tag said. “Take us through that broken window.”
“Aye, Skipper.”
The Argo blasted forward, skimming huge shards of broken hull and snakes of wires and pipes. Pieces of the free Mechanic and Drone-Mechanic ships floated among a sea of corpses. The Stalwart wasn’t far behind them, and the broken ships protected them from some of the scattered energy rounds, warheads, and PDC fire coming at them. Most of the escape pods from the Fury careened back to the free Mechanic fleet, but an aftward cam view showed many of them being picked off by fighters and overwhelming pulsefire.
Coren went wild at the weapons station, lashing out left and right at fighters who dared venture into the debris field, stepping into his overzealous arms.
“Your sacrifice will not be in vain!” he bellowed.
Another blast of rolling plasma and breaking alloy caught Tag’s eye. At first, he feared it was the Stalwart coming undone by the enemy assault. But the Stalwart’s signal still glared brightly across the holomap. Instead, more Drone-Mech ships flickered out. The free Mechanics were using the confusion of the sacrificial ships to regain a foothold in the relentless battle and keep the Drone-Mechs off the Argo and the Stalwart. As far as the Drone-Mechs knew, the Argo and the Stalwart were simply falling down the gravity well toward Meck’ara with the rest of the ruins of battle.
Edge of War (The Eternal Frontier Book 2) Page 24