Starship Tomahawk (The Hive Invasion Book 2)

by Jake Elwood

  Hammett blinked. "You reload manually?"

  "Yep." Ron grinned. "Welcome to the frontier, where even the most sophisticated tool has some kind of human labor bottleneck." He chuckled. "No, we've been stretched to the limit just putting together guns that will actually fire. Machinery to load the ammo automatically?" He waved a dismissive hand. "Forget it. It's not happening, unless you can talk the Hive into giving us a few more months to get ready."

  "Manual loading," said Hammett. "You'll need a sizeable crew, then."

  Ron nodded. "We plan to launch with a crew of thirty."

  Hammett imagined this behemoth lumbering into the sky, ignoring the alien heat weapon and spewing stone and steel missiles in every direction. He imagined the Tomahawk and Achilles accompanying her, and taking a pounding from friendly fire. Mistakes happened in combat, of course. With civilians at the gun controls, firing rounds that massed a thousand kilos or so … "How soon can she be ready to fly?"

  "She's ready now," Christine said. "She's been ready for two days. We added three more turrets while we were waiting, though."

  "This is …" Hammett let his voice trail off. Every instinct he had from a lifetime as a professional military man told him to discourage these enthusiastic amateurs. Amateurs died in combat. It was just that simple.

  But what was the alternative? Could they trust their defence to professionals? The professionals had been ordered away from the Naxos system. Only a combination of stubbornness and mechanical failures had kept even a pair of inadequate corvettes in the system.

  However hopeless a refitted freighter might be, it was infinitely better than nothing. And that was the alternative.

  Nothing.

  He thought of the doomsday rock tumbling through space toward Ariadne. It could arrive in a matter of moments, if the aliens sent it through a wormhole. To put that much mass through a wormhole would be an impressive technological feet, though. If they could do such a thing they wouldn't have launched a risky conventional assault on Earth.

  In the absence of a wormhole, the colony might have anything from eighteen hours to a week before the rock arrived. Every telescope on the planet was trained on the approaching menace, and their estimates of speed and acceleration would improve. It was clear, though, that doom was coming and time was short.

  The people of Ariadne couldn't wait around for the Navy to save them.

  "Very well," he said. "The corvettes should be spaceworthy in another three days. We'll launch them. All three ships together."

  Ron shocked him by shaking his head. "Three days is too late. And, no offense, Captain, but I'm not sure your corvettes will be much help."

  Hammett stared at him, flabbergasted. "Not much help?"

  "You've fought bravely and effectively," he said. "But they've learned from you. They know how to deal with corvettes now, and you have no defence against their heat weapon." When Hammett started to object Ron said, "How did your last battle go?"

  Hammett stared at him, frustrated. "It went badly. But with help from the Theseus-"

  "The Theseus is immune to heat weapons," Ron said. "Your corvettes are not. If you launch with us, you'll die."

  Hammett looked down at his uniform and thought about all that it represented. "If we die, will die doing our duty. We'll be up there with you, doing what we can."

  Ron smiled. "I never doubted it. But I don't need you throwing your lives away any useless gesture. I'd rather you did something a little more effective."

  Hammett stared at Ron, offended, fighting to control his indignation. Ron is your ally, Richard. And Christine is a damned sight smarter than you are. Listening to them will be a lot more useful than yelling at them. He took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and said, "What do you have in mind?"

  "We have a ship," Ron said. "We have guns. We have a crew that knows how to fly, and gun crews who know how to load and fire the guns." He lifted his hands, palms up. "Some of us have learned about ground combat, but we don't know anything about fighting in space."

  Hammett nodded.

  "We need leadership," Ron said. "You could command the Theseus. Your people could help us run her."

  Hammett wanted to suggest replacing the colonists completely with Navy personnel. That would be stupid, though. The colonists knew the ship, knew the guns, and there wasn't time to bring his own people up to speed. "I need to talk to my officers."

  "No you don't," Ron said calmly. "You have all the information you need. Every minute that passes, that rock gains speed. The longer we wait, the longer it will take to match velocities. If we are to have any hope of deflecting it, we need to move quickly. If you spend a day – or even an hour – dithering, you might doom us all."

  Damn it, this is not how it's supposed to work. I'm a Spacecom officer. I protect civilians. I don't lead them in battle. That's what this uniform means. It means I stand on the wall, and I do my duty, and I keep people safe.

  "We're launching the Theseus," Ron said. "In thirty minutes. With or without you. I'd rather have you on board, but we'll go without you if we have to. Are you coming, or not?"

  The silence stretched out. Hammett could think of a thousand reasons to say no, but with every passing second the rock came closer. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and let it out. Then he opened his eyes and said, "Yes."

  Chapter 35 – Christine

  The Theseus had been accelerating hard for just over thirteen hours. Christine Goldfarb sat in the galley just below and ahead of the bridge, watching the coffee cup in front of her, waiting for the change. The surface of the coffee had a distinct tilt. The entire ship felt as if the nose was higher than the tail. They were accelerating hard enough to mash everyone against the rear bulkhead if the internal force fields, the same ones that gave the ship artificial gravity, hadn't been compensating. Even with the force fields, though, the acceleration was unmistakeable.

  She would have sworn she couldn't hear the ship's engines, but when main power cut out she was suddenly aware of the absence of a background hum that had been with her since they launched. The surface of the coffee went flat, then rippled as the ship swung around.

  The deck seemed to tilt beneath her, regaining its familiar angle, and the surface of the coffee once again sloped aft. The ship was decelerating now, the engines working just as hard to slow the ship down as they had worked to speed it up. The Theseus was plunging tail-first toward a rendezvous with the approaching rock and the aliens that escorted it.

  They had accelerated for thirteen hours, but they'd decelerate for almost twenty. By the time they met the rock, the Theseus would actually be racing back toward Ariadne at a fantastic speed. The same speed as the rock, which was already moving at a hell of a clip, and still accelerating.

  It was a big rock, and the aliens were applying a comparatively slow acceleration, a fact for which Christine was deeply grateful. It meant they still had time to reach the rock and give it a nudge, at a range where the tiniest movement would cause it to miss Ariadne by a wide margin.

  She hoped.

  She wished, not for the first time, that the Theseus could generate a wormhole. They would have closed with the enemy long since if they could have jumped. Still, you did what you could with what you had.

  They knew much, much more now about the rock's position and speed. The Theseus had a decent set of scanners and a functioning computer. That, combined with the rapidly shrinking distance, had brought them a flood of information. If the aliens didn't pull any last-minute stunts the Theseus would reach the rock with an almost perfectly matching velocity, in just over an Ariadne day.

  That was when things would get interesting.

  Half a dozen weary crew loafed in chairs or fiddled with the galley's primitive cooking facilities. Every face looked drawn and strained. The ship's weapons were all brand-new, which meant no one had any real experience using them. Hammett had everyone running endless drills. They had fired hundreds of rounds of ammunition into space. They had refilled magazines, a
nd hauled ammunition from different bins.

  Lieutenant Nicholson, who had seemed so friendly and nice back on Ariadne, had revealed a whole new side to his personality since launch. He took sadistic delight in springing new exercises on his exhausted recruits, telling them the closest ammo bins were empty and they had to figure out how to get at rounds stored in the farthest corners of the hold. Christine was one of his recruits, and she was bone-weary, with frazzled nerves to boot.

  Despite Nicholson's tyranny, though, she couldn't resent him. She'd overheard much of Hammett's speech to a crowd of Navy volunteers. He'd reminded them that he didn't have permission to leave Ariadne in the Theseus. They could all face arrest when the ship returned. He almost certainly would. He told them it was fine if they decided to stay behind. He said it was just common sense.

  Not a single sailor had broken ranks. A dozen and a half of them were laboring in the hold right now, drilling alongside the colonists, hauling rail gun rounds back and forth and doing it all without complaining.

  Much.

  She sighed, sipped her coffee, and shifted the pistol on her hip to a more comfortable position. Everyone on the ship was armed. The Alexander had faced boarding parties, and the Achilles had been penetrated by alien machinery. Hammett wanted everyone on his blended crew to be ready for anything. They'd fired off a dozen rounds each on an improvised firing range at the back of the hold. "You won't need accuracy," Nicholson had assured them as he led the brief lesson. "You'll be firing at close range. Just make sure you know what's behind your target. I don't want friendly fire incidents."

  The gun, like the Navy itself, simultaneously repelled and comforted her. She desperately hoped she wouldn't have to use it. She thought of the Outer Settlements War, which had ended when she was a baby. If the thought of firing on an alien sickened her, how could Navy personnel even think of waging war on fellow human beings?

  A metallic impact echoed through the galley, interrupting her morbid train of though. All around her, people froze in position, listening. Four impacts, a pause, six more impacts, then three more. Squad six was wanted aft. Christine sighed, drained her coffee, and stood. She was training with squad six. In theory she was along on this flight to offer scientific advice if it was needed. In reality, she'd contributed everything she could designing the ship's armaments and defences. Now it was a job for soldiers, not scientists. So she was learning drum signals and magazines, and finding her way around the cargo bay. She'd be able to contribute manual labor, if nothing else.

  The endless drills served another purpose beyond training, she realized as she hurried aft with the rest of the squad. She was too busy, and too tired, to indulge her fear. Had the Navy officers planned it that way? She shrugged inwardly. Planned or not, it was a blessing she would happily accept.

  A sailor with a smear of dirt down the side of his face met them at the bottom of the stairs. "Squad Three has been killed," he told them cheerfully. Even as he said it, Squad Three went hustling past, lugging sacks full of rail gun rounds up the stairs. He ignored them. "In their absence, you're needed to service Turret Eleven. Who can tell me what size of ammunition Turret Eleven uses?"

  Before Christine could coax an answer from her exhausted brain, the woman beside her called out, "Fifteen millimeter!"

  "Is she right?" the sailor asked. "If she's wrong, you'll carry the wrong ammo up there and the aliens will kill us all."

  "She's right," said a man. "I'm certain. Turret Eleven takes fifteen millimeter ammo, and it's on the nose of the ship."

  "Very good," the sailor said. "Where's the closest ammo bin?"

  Several people pointed.

  "Too bad that bin's on fire," the sailor said, shaking his head in mock sorrow. "Where else?"

  "That one's closest to us," someone said. "But there's a bin right beside the turret. That's the smart one to use."

  "It would be," the sailor agreed, "at the start of the fight. We've been fighting for a while, though. That bin might be empty by now."

  "There's a bin amidships," Christine said. "We'd have to go right past it on the way to Turret Eleven."

  "Great," said the sailor. "Let's do it. All the ammunition you can carry. Load up at the bin and carry it forward to Turret Eleven."

  Christine set off with the others at a trot, knowing they would lug all the ammunition right back to the bin when they were done. By the time the battle started, though, they would know the ship backward and forward. They'd be able to load any gun, under any conditions. Smoke, fire, vacuum, hampered by the vac suits they would all be wearing by that time, none of it would matter. They would be ready.

  Telling herself it was necessary, she willed the voice of protest in her muscles to be silent as she hurried to the bin, helped load a dozen rounds onto a stretcher-like carrying rack, then took the handles on the end, grunted, and stood. The man on the front muttered a curse and the two of them set off for Turret Eleven at a fast shuffle.

  The aliens better get here soon, Christine thought as her hands and forearms burned. This is killing me.

  Chapter 36 – Hammett

  Hammett stood behind the captain's chair on the bridge of the Theseus, gazing aft and fighting the urge to fidget. The bridge, designed for a very small crew, felt crowded with Hammett and Sanjari there, along with a couple of colonists named Eddie and Hal. The two of them were usually the entire crew. In fact, Eddie often flew the ship by himself. They sat side by side at the helm consoles. Hammett had wiped a film of dust from the captain's seat before he first sat down. Apparently no one ever used it.

  The rock was visible to the naked eye now. It loomed like a red-brown apple, slowly growing as it approached. Since the rock was aft of the ship, Hammett felt as if he were fleeing, locked in a deadly race that he was losing. He pushed the thought away, wishing the enemy would hurry up and reach the Theseus. The waiting was fraying his nerves.

  "I've got movement, Captain," Sanjari announced, and Hammett felt a tiny shiver run up his back. Be careful of what you wish for. "I think they finally saw us."

  Hammett circled the captain's chair, sat down, and brought up a navigational display. He could see the rock as a green lump in the projection. A swarm of tiny blips came into focus, sharpening as they moved far enough from the rock for the scanners to differentiate them. As he watched, the smaller blips merged together. One blip after another disappeared, blending with the amalgamated craft, until a single glowing dot remained. The distance between the dot and the rock slowly grew as the alien ship moved toward the Theseus.

  "Sound General Quarters," Hammett said. The crew, after hours of relentless drilling, was resting. Now they would rise and move to their posts. Were they as nervous as he was? It's worse for them, he decided. It's their first time.

  "I said sound General Quarters," Hammett repeated, frowning. The fight hasn't even started and things are already falling apart.

  "I told everyone," Eddie said.

  Hammett, who had been waiting for a drumbeat announcement, scowled. The crew had drilled without using their implants. Every colonist on board still had implants, though, and the Navy personnel among them would realize quickly what was going on. "Fine," he said, and turned his attention back to the nav display.

  The alien craft was closing quickly, and he wondered if he'd be able to see it if he looked over his shoulder. "They'll close with us and try to burn us," he said. "Let's give 'em a taste of the main aft battery."

  "Right-o," Eddie said cheerfully. He wasn't about to adopt military etiquette, and Hammett, a guest on his ship, wasn't about to insist. "Point-blank range?"

  "Point-blank," Hammett confirmed. The last thing he wanted to do was miss with his opening salvo and warn the Hive ship that he had a potent new weapon.

  A young man with a halo of curly dark hair stuck his head through the bridge doorway. "I'm ready with the drum." He held up a thick steel wrench longer than his arm and grinned. His job was to relay Hammett's orders to the rest of the ship by bashing the wrench aga
inst the struts that supported the catwalk outside.

  "Stand by," said Hammett. He was tempted to use the crew's implants instead, but everyone had drilled with drum signals, and Eddie and Hal had enough to concentrate on already. "We'll be firing the main battery aft, on my signal."

  The drummer nodded and rested the wrench on his shoulder.

  Closer and closer the Hive ship came. Hammett twisted around in his seat and saw it sweeping in from behind, a behemoth, a lumpy shape like a deadly potato, growing as it approached. He turned his back, demonstrating a calm indifference he didn't feel, and Sanjari gave him a strained grin. Eddie and Hal didn't notice. They were focused completely on their consoles.

  "It's coming up on our port side," Eddie said, his voice shrill.

  "That's fine," Hammett said. "It can't hurt us. Fourier metal, remember?" He had serious doubts about the untested shielding, but he wanted the crew calm.

  "Turning!" Hal said, and his hands moved on the controls. The stars, which hadn't wavered in hours, slid past the windows as the ship tilted. Hal cried, "Now!"

  "Fire!" said Hammett, and the drummer vanished from the doorway. Three echoing clangs rang out, and Hammett stood, looking through the aft windows.

  The alien ship filled his view. He didn't see the nine huge rounds as they hit, but he saw an eruption of debris. Shrapnel splattered against the steelglass, and a spent round went tumbling past. Another volley slammed into the Hive ship, then another, and suddenly the void was full of individual ships swarming in every direction.

  "Cease fire!" He didn't even hear the drumbeat. He moved to the window, flinched involuntarily as a small Hive ship flashed past just a few meters away, then flinched again as a stream of small rail gun rounds tore the little craft to shreds.

  For a short, terrible time a storm raged around the Theseus. Eddie and Hal didn't touch their controls. They just flew straight, giving the gun crews a stable platform to fire from. Steel canisters filled the space around the Theseus in a lethal storm, while Hive ships dodged and twisted and died.