by John Ringo
“Harry, shut up and go get some canapés,” Horst said. “Doctor Velasquez, I’m sorry but I’m afraid repatriation to the Thermopylae is impossible at this time.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
“SET CONDITION ONE! SET CONDITION ONE THROUGHOUT THE SHIP! THIS IS NOT A DRILL! THERE SHALL BE BATTLE UPON THIS MORN!”
Leonidas was obviously excited.
“God,” Parker muttered, clearing her screens. “I knew it was too good to last. Flight Engineering, Twenty-Four. Am not complete on test runs.”
“Any issues?” Thermal replied.
“None my division has found beyond the repairs,” Dana replied. “Looks good from here.”
“Action condition warning coming up. Looks like this an all hands evolution. Cert the bird as flyable. Your cox is on the way.”
“Roger,” Dana said. She could feel the clanging of boats getting into battle readiness. “What’s up?”
“Horvath have decided they don’t like negotiating.”
* * *
“What, exactly, do they think they’re doing?”
Rear Admiral Jack Clemons had had various nicknames over the years. “Tiny.” “Teddy” referring to a stuffed bear. “Vanilla” from his college days when he used to perform in an otherwise black rap group. Six foot six in his stocking feet, blonde and perpetually hitting the edge of the weight requirements he had a remarkably pleasant and placid public face for any naval officer much less the commander of a battle station. When he was a younger bachelor women just wanted to snuggle up to that big, fluffy, funny teddy bear.
People who had any knowledge of his reputation knew that was very much his surface face. His other college job had been as a bouncer in clubs. Where his nickname was “Jack-Up.” More than one drunken fighter had found themselves flying over a crowd and into a wall.
“Troy is down for the rebuild on its Orion Drive, sir,” Commodore Dexter Guptill said, shrugging. “I guess they figured it was a good time to take back the system.”
The Operations Officer of the Thermopylae was tall and heavy bodied with a shock of black hair. Around most people he was considered a large guy. Next to his boss he was more like a moon circling Jupiter.
“Admiral Kinyon, sir.”
“Vice Admiral,” Clemons said, looking at the viewscreen.
“Rear Admiral,” Kinyon said, chuckling. Kinyon had just been promoted and redesignated as “CoFortRonOne” or Commander, Fortress Squadron One. “The Horvath seem to have come into the system in insufficient strength but they also brought through a missile swarm which could mess up our pretty ships. Under the circumstances, I think sending a Fortress to express our displeasure is appropriate. SolDefCom is in concurrence.”
“Mission, sir?” Clemons asked.
“Enter the E Eridani system, reduce Horvath resistance, recover the diplomats, return to Sol System. If you can take out the ships without too much damage, usual “Arh, Salvage me hearties!” But only what you can bring back easily. We’re not going to maintain presence in Eridani. Not until Battle Station Four comes online and is fully certified.”
“Roger, sir,” Clemons said. “Commodore, you heard the man. Make it so.”
“Raise the black flag, aye, sir!” Guptill said. “Maneuvering control, adjust vector for the gate. Avast me hearties! Man the rigging!”
“Seriously, Jack,” Admiral Kinyon said. “Don’t do anything stupid. Boot their ass then get back into Sol. Looks like the war just started again.”
* * *
“We’ll wait until we’ve reduced the majority of the Horvath ships before ejecting parasites,” Clemons said. The briefing was while the Thermopylae was under power so they were having to deal with the acceleration. Battle stations accelerated at a low enough G that they didn’t have inertial compensators. Malta was going to be compensated but the command group of the Thermopylae had to manage by bracing their feet and holding onto the conference table as their rolling chairs tried to slide to port. “The Horvath brought through a missile swarm estimated at fifty thousand missiles. That’s going to smart but the rest is a couple of Aggressor knock-offs and four Cofubof cruisers.”
“I think we could handle that with just our ships, sir,” Commodore Bernardo de los Reyes said. The parasite unit commander, ComBBGSix, was Filipino in extraction but had grown up in Los Angeles before the fires. He had become accustomed to being thought one of the “Sud” transplants by most people. “The missiles would be unpleasant, however.”
“Which is why we’re bringing the Therm,” the Admiral said. “When the missiles are reduced we’ll open up the door and punch your squadron and the Marines. Marine mission will be to recover the diplomats. The point being that they’re going to have to ask the Ogut to have them back. Do not hard board the Ogut transport.”
“Understood, sir,” Brigadier Richard “Dick” Denny said. Skinny, short and older by a decade than the other senior officers, he had cut his teeth in Afghanistan during the War on Terror as an infantry grunt in the 101st Airborne. Commanding a regiment of Pathan Marines had never been on his bucket list. Possibly why he did such a good job. Though normally of the camp that led by example and through encouragement, with the Pathans he just did not give a damn if they liked him. Fortunately, a combination of fear and respect outweighed their hatred. “We don’t want to be at war with the Ogut, too.”
“System entry is in twenty minutes,” Clemons concluded. “And then we are going to seriously jack up some Horvath.”
* * *
“Three hundred thousand missiles,” Star General Sho’Duphuder said, complacently. The commander of Assault Force Eridani had reason to be happy. “Three Assault Vectors, nine Aggressor Squadrons and two brigades of Marines.”
“And the Horvath,” Colonel To’Jopeviq said.
“For what good they will be,” General Sho’Duphuder said. “We are sure of the data on the Thermopylae?”
“Ninety-eight percent,” To’Jopeviq said. “But I remind the General that this is, again, below our suggested minimum requirements. We recommended at least a half a million missiles in the swarm with backing of six Assault Vectors. The Troy class is unbelievably hard to destroy and humans are fiendishly clever fighters. You simply have to trust the models. Alas, once again High Command has trusted their instincts.”
“We will win,” General Sho’Duphuder said.
“Gate opening,” the Sensor Officer said. “Large signature.”
“And we begin. Accelerate missiles for the gate.”
* * *
“You look uncomfortable,” Beor said as To’Jopeviq walked into the viewing area of the Assault Vector Ilhodib’s bridge. “Is it because you would rather be in command of an AV than supplying intelligence?”
“It is because I am reminded of something Star Marshall Lhi’Kasishaj once said to me,” To’Jopeviq said.
“Which is?” Beor asked. If the Kazi agent was nervous it wasn’t apparent.
“Sometimes being right is the worst of all possible choices.”
“You do not think we’ll win?” Beor asked.
“I am wondering how I can get us both out of this system in more or less one piece.”
“Both?” Beor said, hissing. “Egilldu, I didn’t know you cared.”
“I’m hoping you can convince your superiors not to flay me alive. For being right.”
* * *
“Uh...oh.”
Captain Keith “Razor” Blades was the Chief Tactical Officer for the Thermopylae. As such he was in charge of the force of spacemen, and women, who ran the Therm’s massive onboard offensive and defensive systems.
Which one look at his board was telling him might not be enough.
“Admiral, signatures for... Three Assault Vectors, Eight Aggressor Squadrons, two Rangora Marine assault ships and...three hundred thousand missiles. Full swarm is inbound.”
“Max power to shields,” Admiral Clemons said. “Full launch spread on missiles. Set to anti-missile defense. Signal to reopen the ga
te. Set point five percent of missiles for gate entry. Onboard signal to Terra Defense Command...” He paused his mouth opening and closing.
“I know, it’s a tough one,” Commodore Guptill said. “But, face it, sir, you’ve got to say the words.”
“Signal: ‘It’s a trap,’ ” Admiral Clemons said, grimacing. “Include battle schematics.”
“That’s more like ‘It’s a Trap!’ sir,” Guptill said in a gurgly voice. “Like a Horvath is saying it. Imagine you have a great big squid...”
“I know,” Clemons said. “DAMN those movies. Shouldn’t you get ready for damage control?”
“Oh, yeah. Knew I was forgetting something.”
* * *
“ALL PERSONNEL TO DAMAGE CONTROL STATIONS! INBOUND MISSILE SWARM!”
“Good thing we’re in here,” Angelito said, shrugging.
“How big of a missile swarm...” Dana said then blanched. “Oh...hell, no!”
“What?” Angelito asked.
“You can access the tac screens from here,” Dana said as the Thermopylae started to shudder from missile launch and a faint hum through the floor indicated that the power plants for the main laser arrays were going to full power.
“They’re...blotted out?” Angelito said, hesitantly.
“That big,” Dana said then laughed.
“What is funny about this?” Angelito asked. “We’re being hammered.”
“They’re firing from sunward,” Dana said.
“So?”
“You don’t know history, do you?” Dana said. “ ‘The arrows of the Persians are so numerous they blot out the sun.’ ”
“So?”
* * *
“ ‘Then we shall fight in the shade.’ ”
The Rangora fleet and the missile swarm that was in front of it was inward from the gate, between the Thermopylae and the sun. The distant star couldn’t even be seen behind the cloud of missiles. The ships themselves were only detectable by their emissions.
As always, the mass of missiles closed through a hail of flack. Laser point defense batteries as well as the Thermopylae’s onboard lasers were destroying them by the tens of thousands. Thermopylae’s own missiles were outbound to engage for that matter.
But each missile destroyed created a shield against laser fire for those behind it, a wall lasers could not penetrate and even the powerful sensors of the human Thunderbolt missiles had a hard time piercing. Although energy and gases dispersed fast in space, the wall of missiles were as detectable for the massive cloud of gaseous metal they were leaving behind as the fact that the same cloud was obscuring a quarter of the heavens.
The wave of blazing gas and coruscant destruction moved closer and closer to the Thermopylae until, finally, the hundreds of thousands of Rangora missiles closed upon the embattled fortress.
Kinetic energy release is a function of velocity on impact and mass of the material. Each of the Rangora “brilliant” missiles had a kinetic impact equivalent to between seven and fifteen megatons, depending on where they were in the swarm when they began acceleration towards the Thermopylae.
Thermopylae’s Orion drive used twenty-five megaton pumped fusion bombs for its acceleration, firing at max acceleration one such bomb every tenth second. As the missiles started to break through the Battle Station’s incomplete defenses and struck its still mostly unarmored and unshielded surface, the combined thousands of megatons of energy drove it off vector, spinning away from the gate and outwards towards deep space. Not that anyone really cared much.
“Very much so, sir,” Commodore Guptill said. “Surface temperature dropped slightly before the impacts started. There were enough missiles we were, literally, in shade. Missile impacts on the missile and laser tubes. Multiple impacts. We’re being closed up. Last tube closed. No more outbound missile or laser fire available.”
“They’ve re-programmed for our systems,” Admiral Clemons said. “They know what to fear. You have to like an intelligent enemy. How many of the missiles did we get out before the doors closed?”
“Sixty thousand, sir,” Captain Blades answered. “Three hundred tried to make it to the gate. The Rangora were ready for it. They cycled the gate as soon as we were through. None of them made it to Sol.”
“Then we’re on our own,” Clemons said. “Oh, well. There were only light units available in Sol anyway. And so were the forces at Thermopylae.”
“They lost, sir,” Blades pointed out.
“We’ll have to avoid that. Maneuver into a continuous rotation. Those missiles don’t maneuver well at terminal. Let’s make it harder for them to hit the doors. As soon as we’re in a spin, get damage control teams up. Get those doors open. We’re not just going to sit here under our shields and take their pounding.”
* * *
“Clever,” General Sho’Duphuder said, looking up to the viewing area. Major To’Jopeviq just rippled his scales in a shrug. “Suggestions?” he commed.
“The missile and laser doors are closed, sir,” To’Jopeviq said. “If you close the Marines quickly, you can get them onto the surface before they can get the doors reopened. When they do open them, they’ll be dealing with Marines. Getting Marines into the interior is the optimum action. Hold all remaining missiles for support of the boarding.”
“The surface of the Thermopylae is now in a negative gravity condition,” Admiral Cirazhesh pointed out. “Marines will have difficulty maneuvering on such a surface. Landing on it will be difficult enough.”
“Continue the missile bombardment,” General Sho’Duphuder said. “Close the Aggressor squadrons and the other two Assault Vectors. Let’s soften her up a bit more. Concentrate fire on the Orion drive.”
* * *
“We’re blind,” Captain Blades said, sitting back in his command chair. “We can’t see a thing. No remaining missiles feeding us intel. All surface sensors gone. Last we saw they were still sitting back and pounding us.”
“They’re not going to keep doing that forever,” Admiral Clemons said. “Those Marine ships are there for a reason. General Denny.”
“Sir?”
“Prepare to repel boarders.”
“Repel boarders, aye.”
“Captain Blades,” Admiral Clemons said. “During the first battle of Troy the Troy’s SAPL tubes were closed by the Horvath forces. They simply burned through the damage. Do we have enough power to do that?”
“Yes, sir,” the captain said. “But we’ll be firing blind.”
“Just clear the tubes,” Clemons said. “Commodore Guptill, make sure the damage control personnel are aware and integrate with tactical. I’d like to get real fire control back as soon as possible.” He paused and shook his head. “I need suggestions, people. We need to get back into battle.”
“We need to get the missile tubes open,” Captain Blades said. “Once we have missiles out they can burn through the jamming at this range and get us some eyes.”
“Concentrate on that,” Clemons said as the Thermopylae jerked sideways. “What the hell was that?”
“Concentrated fire on the Orion,” Maneuvering Control replied. “Fire was counter to spin thus the jerk. Orion’s out. From our sensors, it’s blown off the surface.”
“Rotation is high enough,” Clemons said. “Discontinue acceleration. Dexter, get the missile tubes open. I don’t care how.”
“Working that exercise, sir.”
* * *
“Get off you stupid...!”
James F. “Butch” Allen had considered, several times, that what with how dangerous his job was anyway, he might as well have joined the Navy. And he was seriously rethinking his decision to transfer to the Thermopylae. It had been a nice bump in pay and a promotion to permanent team leader. But if he was still working on the Troy he’d be in Sol system right now doing an install on the new Orion drive. Not cutting away damage from a Rangora missile while the Thermopylae still rang from more impacts on the surface. Which was, come to think of it, how BFM bought it in the last
battle.
The current “issue” was a missile tube. It wasn’t really “closed” anymore. You could crawl all the way to the surface if you wanted to watch the battle. They’d already cut away the main door that was a problem. But on the other side of the welded shut door they’d found a mangled mass of half melted nickel iron that had it effectively closed. At which point they whipped out their Grosson Mark Seven Laser Welders. Again.
When he’d been in Apollo Space Welding School in Melbourne his first welding instructor, Mister Methvin had been pretty sarcastic about a welder that could generate a two meter beam.
It sort of threw Butch that he now knew more than his teacher. The reason a Grosson had a two meter cutting beam was so you could saw through two meters of twisted nickel iron blocking a missile tube.
Unfortunately, when you did a cut that deep and long it tended to do a pretty serious melt on the material. Which meant you got spot welds. Which meant you found yourself bracing yourself against a jaggedy nickel iron bulkhead while kicking with both feet at a half molten chunk of nickel iron that looked like a modern art sculpture. Which was not a good way to avoid a safety investigation. Except by not being around to answer questions cause you was dead.
“Jinji!” he yelled at his Coptic Egyptian foreman.
“Yes, Mister Allen?”
“Give this sumbitch another shot.”
“Allen?”
“Go, Mister Trotman,” Allen said, grunting as he pushed on the piece of metal. They had the thing cut away but if there wasn’t resistance it would just spot weld. Again.
“How long on Two-Four-Six?”
“If the sumbitch would stop spot welding, we’d be done,” Allen said as the chunk of metal the size of a Mack truck finally gave way. Due to the outward spin he started to slide down the tube after it but corrected with his navopak. The chunk of metal bounced down the tube, slowly, then out into space. They were one of over two hundred crews working on tubes doing pretty much the same thing. There had to be one hell of a debris trail around the Thermopylae. “Done. It ain’t great but if they walk the missiles down the tube they can probably get them out. Them Thunderbolts are tough. You want us to clean it down to the walls?”