by Scott Warren
Victoria had to do what she could to safeguard Earth.
"Take me back to Pedres."
Sothcide grimaced as he listened to the squadrons report in. The Gavisari had grounded another ship from outside their own estimated engagement range. The four high-altitude destroyers were able to engage with relative impunity, and the return missile fire of the Vitacuus and Arda’s other ships having to climb against gravity to deliver their deadly payloads robbed them of their killing power. But the handful of light cruisers that Raksava had left with them had elected to brave the storms of Juna to bring their heaviest arms to bear. Even with the interceptors scouting, the Maeyar ships were being given almost no warning of the impending attacks. Something wasn’t right, and more and more Sothcide was suspecting the interference of Human Jones as Victoria had warned.
Sensors within the electrical storms of Juna were limited at best, though the hot and bulky Gavisari ships burned like candle blossoms on six different sensors. But by the time the Vitacuus or the fighter wing were able to filter the noise into a workable ranging solution the Gavisari were already lined up for an attack run at speed. If not for Victoria’s marines listening in to the strategic communications and risking themselves with periodic broadcasts as their orbit allowed, Sothcide would likely be escorting an empty fleet.
"They’re maneuvering again. North, arrayed like an arrowhead. I think they caught wind of your last course change. Recommend bringing your lead ships to two-two-zero and descending another six thousand feet. That’ll give you a better range and they should cross in front of your bow on their next run."
The human radio was surprisingly clear and crisp through the murk of the storms, much more so than his own fleet internal communications. "Acknowledged, Human Aesop, I’ll pass your recommendation along. How is your gun fighter doing?"
"Poorly. We don’t have any way to patch her up without depressurizing her suit."
Space walkers. Sothcide shuddered at the thought of a thin layer of composite between himself and the void. Many of the cultures they encountered had been mistrustful of the Maeyar’s appearance—the shadowy onyx physique was the subject of many a stellar legend. But the humans wrapped themselves in it, thought nothing of traversing the great black vacuum in little more than silk swaddling. But they were just as frail as any other when it came down to the true horrors of space. "If not for the light cruisers, it is possible one of the frigates might have climbed up to accommodate you. All of our vessels have functioning medical facilities."
"Hell, the Blessing has a fully stocked medbay, we just have no way to pressurize it. We’re passing out of range up here. Good luck Sothcide, and I’ll see you on the next pass."
A quick flip of his radio severed the connection between his interceptor and the marine communication array. Angling the nose of his interceptor down, he dove back into the clouds and pushed west as the tiny fighter descended through the storm. Lightning licked at his hull, as if curious of the battle damage that marred his left wing, but without a ground it was harmless. His altitude plummeted and the clouds began to break as he entered the eye of a Storm where the Vitacuus skimmed the mountaintops of Juna’s northern hemisphere. Arda’s flagship showed damage along its port hull where it had taken laser hits and more than a few concussions from anti-cruiser nuclear missiles exploding within a dozen miles or less.
Sothcide’s radio crackled as he addressed the Vitacuus’ communication hub. "This is primary wing officer seeking Vitacuus wing commander."
"Affirmed, wing officer. Patching you through now."
A brief pause followed, in which Sothcide spotted Jalith’s last missile destroyer, the Slingray, temporarily assigned to Arda’s battlegroup same as himself. It was unusually bulky for a Maeyar vessel with its payload of long-range missiles. Stuck as they were in the storms of Juna, the battlegroup had no way of providing the artillery vessel with the means to accurately target its nuclear and exotic matter weapons.
"Battlegroup commander," said Arda over his radio. He could hear the background chatter of her bridge crew as her face filled his comms monitor. It was clear her attention was focused elsewhere. "Go ahead wing officer."
"Victoria’s marines report the Gavisar moving north across the plains. They recommend turning south southwest to cross behind them."
"Do they now? Ral, did you get all that?" Arda asked, raising her voice to her husband and first officer behind her. Sothcide’s close range sensors showed a spike in EM as the starboard antigravity generators forced the hulking ship to lean into a port turn. The other visible ships followed suit, and Sothcide heard the orders filter down through his fleet-wide circuit.
"All fighters be advised, fleet coming to two-seven-zero, altitude two-seven thousand feet. Prepare for engagement."
Arda was ordering the battlegroup due west, on a track to intercept and engage, rather than to evade. Sothcide hesitated. "Wing commander?"
"Interesting how your human friends seem to give us just enough to evade, but nothing that furthers our goal of returning to Pedres. Vehl was convinced of their intentions, and now she is dead. Your wingmate trusted them and now he is dead. I do not trust them, and I am alive. Perhaps they are earnest, or perhaps their efforts serve to delay our return to the defense of the planet. Regardless, this finally offers us an opportunity to strike back and swing the numerical advantage to our favor."
Sothcide wanted to argue, but the wing commander was right. Every moment the battlegroup squandered in evasion, Admiral Raksava drew closer to his wife in Pedres’ orbit. "Where would you have my wings, Commander?"
Arda glanced at the monitor, her eye cold and hard, but twitching with excitement. "I need your fighters at the front. Targeting data is going to make or break this maneuver, and we can’t chance the active sensors. I need you close enough to the strike force to develop a solution for the Slingray. This plan is not without risk. Do not make me explain to Jalith why I made a widow of her. Understand?"
It was a risky move, but a bold one. Arda’s career had been hallmarked by fighting from a poor position and emerging successfully. "We will be going in blind," said Sothcide. "Without the humans to alert us, we may miss any changes in the Gavisari attack profile."
"The lapse of the human overwatch is why we’re attacking now, Sothcide. Besides, I’m sure the marines are capable warriors, by the stars I’ve heard the rumors too. But I’ve spent the last ten years coordinating fleet movements. I think I might know better than a gunfighter who can’t perform a targeting calculation without the aid of a computer, don’t you?"
"Yes, wing commander. I’ll rally the wing immediately," said Sothcide. He didn’t add that the human’s deficiency in math and the physical sciences did not equate to a lack of strategic and tactical competence. But again, Arda was right. His own fondness was clouding his judgment, creating a desire to defend the humans from criticism and perhaps ascribing more merit to their skills than was warranted. And to their loyalty. But for the immediate future, the humans were nonfactorial.
Arda was on the hunt.
Chapter 14 - Alternatives
"I’ve been doing some thinking, and the way I see it we have a few options."
Aesop counted off on the fingers of his vacuum suit glove as their stolen Gavisari ship passed over the storms of Juna. The small laser on his shoulder blinked out his words to Maggie Chambers, who leaned against the bulkhead trying not to look like she was in crippling pain. "One, we wait for the old lady and hope she gets back to Pedres in time to stop Mags from bleeding out."
"You ever rely on hope in the Mossad?" asked Singh. "Marine Commandos didn’t. We can’t wait, we need to take action."
"Two," said Aesop, "we radio Jones for an emergency pickup. Whatever else, he’s still a Privateer. Chances are he’d come get us."
"Fuck no," said Vega, slapping a hand against the bulkhead. "He’d probably blast us instead of pulling us out. He’s too far up the ass of the tripods. In any case, I’d rather eat a box of broken glass
than call on that guy for anything. We may got bullshit orders out here, but I ain’t bailing on Marin’s orders and shacking up with that asshole."
Aesop looked at Maggie. "You’re the one hurt. If you say we call, then we call."
Mags shook her head. She’d never ask for help from anyone, let alone Captain Jones of the Howard Phillips. That left one other choice.
"I guess that leaves option three. We take a ship with a functioning medbay and perform the surgery there."
Vega bit back an excited laugh, but Singh was more skeptical. "Take a ship with a functioning medical bay? How exactly do you propose we accomplish that?" she asked.
Vega held out two fingers like a pistol. "We pull up alongside one and knock on the door. Then when they answer it? Boom boom, our ship now. Easy."
"I’ve already checked the Blessing’s doc office. It’s fully stocked with surgical tools and equipment. The Gavisari may not look much like us, but physiologically speaking I don’t think they’re all that dissimilar. Brain, heart, lungs, liver. They’re oxygen breathing and they have an arterial circulatory system. Vega, I think they’ll have whatever you need, including a pressurized suite. There’s a thousand ships floating around this planet, take your pick."
Maggie’s light pulsed. "You Israelis are nuts. I’m in."
Aesop turned to Singh, who was already shaking her head. "I can spoof their comms, send a phony distress call on a narrowband, but this is crazy. You want to board a hostile vessel with three marines? Sorry Mags, but you’re in no condition to fight."
Aesop shrugged. "I’ve taken more with less. This plan involves direct action against xenos though, including against civilians. All their fighting ships have left. We have to hit them hard and fast, before they can get their own distress call out. If anyone here has an issue killing a noncombatant, this is the time to speak up."
"Hell Sarge, there ain’t no noncombatants anymore. A xeno is a xeno, and I just want to blow some shit up." Vega checked his X-87 and cycled a round into the chamber. "Just say the word."
Aesop didn’t bother asking again for Singh. She would kill a thousand xenos to save the life of a marine. A thousand xenos with families, spouses, children, who knew? Her quiet demeanor belied the fact that she’d been in the Indian Marine Commandos during the Indian Exchange, the only nuclear event between major powers since World War II. The aftermath had been some of the grisliest fighting of the last century across burning and irradiated territory between India and Pakistan. Whatever she’d seen, a few dead aliens were a drop in the bucket.
"Alright Singh, get on the horn. Vega, prep whatever we have. I need to talk to Mags."
"Aye bossman. I’ll be ready," said Vega. He tossed an unnecessary salute as he drifted through the broken airlock. Singh launched herself in the opposite direction, headed to the communications deck where she could patch into the fleet comms through the portable transceiver. Once they were gone, Aesop turned to Maggie Chambers.
"How you holding up? Honest truth, Mags."
The light on her shoulder began to tap out a message. "I can still fight, Sarge."
"The hell you can. You can barely move, and don’t think I haven’t spotted you holding the puncture site when you think I’m not looking. You’re going to sit this one out. You can’t be first in this time, Chambers. It’d kill you."
"I won’t have anyone else dying for me instead."
"Then say you want me to call Jones. I can’t order you to flip hulls, but damn it Maggie, that’s the only way I see you realistically walking away from this."
Maggie Chambers’ composite helmet swung back and forth. "No."
Aesop sighed. He didn’t want to call Jones any more than she did, but he wanted to lose a marine even less. Still, regs were clear. Marines calling for rescue effectively abandoned their previous billet to whichever ship picked them up. Their days on the Condor would be numbered, and until the next port they’d be taking orders from the captain working to directly undermine Victoria Marin’s efforts to solidify a formal defense agreement. The Maeyar were a culture within the boundary of advancement. Their technology was close enough to directly reverse engineer for practical applications, not just theoretical ones. Victoria Marin had gone to Gavisar in attempt to secure that technology for Earth, at great risk to herself. Jones had just latched on like a stomach worm to suck on the anticipated success of the invasion fleet, but had no real stake. The old lady knew the easy road and the right road were rarely the same, and her crew always willingly followed her.
Looking around at the battle-worn remnants of the Blessing, Aesop shrugged. "Guess it’s time to trade up to the newer model. I’ve had about enough of this dusty old hulk anyway."
Maggie hesitated before blinking out a reply.
"Thanks."
"Yeah, well, it will all be for nothing if you bleed to death before we hook a drifter. Try and get some rest if you can. I know it’s tough in L-grav."
Maggie nodded, and Aesop left her to check on Singh. The comms room was as cramped as any of the others, ceiling and floor only about four feet apart. Two Gavisari had been viciously stuffed into a tight crevice to make room and Aesop had to drift past them to reach Singh. The callous brutality was not a trait Aesop admired in his fellow humans, but without it humanity didn’t have much of a future in the stars.
"Give me some good news, Singh."
His marine held up a finger, and Aesop arrested his approach. Singh’s other hand was wiggling in the air, typing on her suit computer’s virtual keyboard. Aesop called up his own computer, using his command circuit to listen in on the text-based communication between the Blessing and an ECW scout frigate in too poor a shape to fight, but not quite bad enough to need a tether.
"This was easier than expected," said Singh. "Even in the midst of invasion, it doesn’t occur to them to be suspicious."
"No concept of opsec for a lot of the xenos."
"No concept of ‘repel boarders’ either. They’ll be in range to dock in a little under an hour."
And the frigate would have clean air and a medical suite. Vega was no surgeon, but he could maybe keep Maggie alive until Doc Whipple could fix her up. Only a dozen dead xenos stood between him and taking his helmet off. His curly stubble itched like hell. A thousand tiny annoyances could drive a vacuum jockey nuts after a day in the deep, and they were pushing hour seventy-two. Aesop had been awake for almost the entirety of them. He’d be relying on stimulants to keep him alert through the boarding acting.
Better stimulants than opiates. He thought of Mags. She wouldn’t be first in this time.
"Positive bearing migration, Wing Officer. Ahead at three-nine thousand meters."
Sothcide checked his own gunner’s ranging solution before transmitting the information back to the Vitacuus. He hesitated as his interceptor vibrated under the turbulence of the storm. It must have been furious for him to be feeling it. His fighter wing spread across an embedded thunderstorm, both to hide their individual signatures and to form a picket that could use shared sensor data to provide a rough estimate as to enemy ranges when the signatures weren’t being masked by Juna’s magnetic interference. They were close enough to the Gavisari formation to distinguish individual ships, or at least tightly packed clusters to within a few kilometers based on passive sensors alone. Not good enough for a kill shot from one of the Slingray’s planetary missiles, and lasers wouldn’t penetrate more than a few kilometers of storm cloud before refraction robbed their strength.
The light for Sothcide’s intercom winked on for the first time since they left the mountain passes through which the Vitacuus maneuvered. His gunner Riz, nominally silent as she performed her targeting and weapons calculations, piped up from the rear cockpit of the interceptor. "Wing officer, engine signature for the invasion fleet is decreasing, the formation appears to be slowing."
Slowing. Perhaps. Such a maneuver would allow Arda’s ships to rake across the underbellies of the formation, an inviting prospect that could tip for
ce parity in favor of the Maeyar remnant fleet if Sothcide was quick to signal the battlegroup. But the overextended Gavisar line had been an inviting temptation too. "Ranging solution?"
"Unchanged, wing officer."
Sothcide’s eye spun to an inverted position, examining the different perspective offered on his tactical display as he puzzled over the Gavisari actions. Thus far the commander of the cruiser leading the formation had been both proactive and reactionary, and the question was whether the decrease in engine signature was an effort to pen in the Maeyar fleet or a reaction to new information. And if it was a response to new intelligence, where had that come from? Sothcide switched to his squad-wide circuit.
"Transmit a cautionary to Wing Commander Arda. Hold on the attack, Gavisari fleet is realigning, battlegroup position may be compromised. Attack risks approaching a defensive formation."
As he was speaking, the bearing rate of the Homeworld Defense Fleet abruptly dropped, and the engine signatures all but disappeared even as active sensor alarms blared across his consoles. The Gavisari were initiating a rapid course change, and it was only thanks to their sturdy design that half of them didn’t fall out of the sky at the stress on their hulls from the maneuver.
"All ships, brace! Position is compromised, incoming HDF attack!"
Sothcide didn’t wait for the response before he signaled his own squad into action. "All wings, climb, climb, clear the interim zone and prepare to engage!"
The powerful engines on the interceptor, kept barely at a level to maintain flight, roared to life, unrestricted by the vanishing need for stealth. Active sensor radiation from the direction of Arda's battlegroup washed over his squadron, and IFF weapon warnings followed behind as the Vitacuus and her sister ships began launching weapons. Even without a complete targeting solution, exotic matter warheads had killing power of more than a dozen kilometers, and Sothcide wanted to be well clear before they arrived. At the same time, active heat emissions from the vectors bearing the Gavisari contacts increased tenfold, as their own initial salvo streaked into the space Sothcide's wing of fighters had just occupied. Even in the thick murk of Juna's clouds he could see the streaks of light pass below him on his climbing ship's rear-facing cameras, shockwaves trailing behind the bursts of the missile propellant.