by Scott Warren
"Wings Two and Eight, withdraw and regroup, anticipate formation advancement to following coordinates, adjust for an attack run. Wings One and Five cover. Wings—"
Sothcide was cut off as the battlegroup circuit overrode his communication. "Superluminal contact, mark, contact subluminal, Human IFF identified."
Victoria. Damn, but what was she doing? It was clear from the Gavisari positioning that despite the success of their attack, their presence had yet to propagate through the invasion fleet’s command channels. The armada was too large and unwieldy, made up of more armed civilian vessels than warships. Part of that surprise attack’s effectiveness had been dropping compression early enough to prevent photon doppler anomalies. That maneuver was uncharacteristically clumsy of a Privateer, and had probably tripped the superluminal sensor alarms on half the Gavisar ships. She had just . . . .
"Additional superluminal contact. Mark subluminal . . . Human IFF."
Sothcide’s orders fell flat as he adjusted his battle scope to the area in question. Before he could puzzle it out, another Human vessel dropped out of compression, and then two additional vessels, and then four.
What in the stars were they doing?
Chapter 20 – To Fall Among Vultures
Victoria watched the battle unfold as she approached. Arda was already engaged, plowing into the rear line of the missile boats like a starving man at a seafood buffet. That first run had been easy, but even with the defense fleet aware of their presence, the bitch was going to do staggering harm to the Gavisari back-row artillery.
"Huian, take us in closer. UEN Intel is going to want to analyze the Maeyar fighter tactics. Damn that boy is good."
"Aye ma’am, currently one hundred and fifty KK from rendezvous with Arda’s battlegroup.
There was a brief starburst on the screen as something big exploded in the Gavisar line. Victoria cringed and hissed, then grinned. "I bet they’ll be missing that guy soon enough."
"Conn sensors, multiple superluminal contacts bearing one-seven-eight!"
Victoria slid her command repeater around. "Shit! Is it another Gavisari response? We have to warn—"
"Negative, conn, I’m getting human IFF."
"That doesn’t make any sense," said Victoria. Her retinal implants were alerting her to a half-dozen new designations while she looked at her battle grid. More populated as she scanned.
"UEN Missouri, Elbe, Colorado, Mississippi, Thames, Yangtze."
Those were all Union Earth heavy destroyers, with the exception of the Yangtze, a cruiser, and the most advanced ship in the Union Earth Naval Fleet. And they weren’t alone. Five more dropped Alcubierre compression in the middle of the formation, the Zumwalt, Iliad, Trebuchet, Prometheus, and the Longinus.
"Vick, I’ve never heard of any of those five ships," said Dan Avery. Victoria hadn’t either.
"Avery, get me a better visual. Laser link to the Yangtze, I don’t want us getting blown out of space for not broadcasting our transponder."
The main viewscreen zoomed as the optical sensors refocused, bringing the Zumwalt into focus. The ship was the full length of a destroyer, but like one that hadn’t been fed. Frame spars hung down beneath like ribcages, shrouding a series of reactor housings. The forecastle and cylindrical front third of the ship, flanked by two huge ablative plates. It looked like—
"Holy fuck!" shouted Victoria. "That’s one of the Springdawn’s main fucking lasers!"
An open radio broadcast from the Yangtze took over the bottom left quarter of her main screen. Admiral Chadha in full battle dress, three stars blazing on each side of his collar, made an address to the battle at Pedres, and any radio receiver in line of sight on the surface of the planet.
"To all forces in the area. The destruction of the Union Earth Clarke and the Union Earth Yakima at the hands of the Maeyar will not go unanswered. Union Earth stands with Gavisar. Let it be known here today what happens to those who threaten Earth."
"That’s not what goddamn happened!" Victoria screamed, rising to her feet.
Alarms blared across the conn as detected heat and electromagnetic radiation made the computer believe a Dirregaunt battleship was about to fire. Each of the five new ships had been built around a laser pulled from what was left of the Springdawn, that much was obvious. Victoria had seen the front of the dreadnaught torn off by the Malagath’s ramshackle emergency engine, but it hadn’t been ripped to pieces as she had expected. At least not until Union Earth got their hands on it. The Big Three weaponry was far too advanced for humanity to recreate, but all the technology needed to operate was voltage, and control of the firing aperture. The Dirregaunt rare elements and their stimulation process would do all the heavy lifting.
Someone must have noticed Victoria’s laser, because the screen showing Admiral Chadha flickered, and she found herself in a private comms channel.
"Ah, Victoria, it is good to see you. I did not know if you would be in the immediate area. I am glad you are, these new frames are a direct result of your handiwork with the Springdawn. It is good that you are witness to the first live test of their weapon systems."
"Admiral, there’s been a mistake, the Clarke was shot down by Gavisari forces, and the Yakima was a false-flag attack. I’ve just secured a mutual defense pact with the Maeyar!
Chadha shook his head of gray hair. His Kosso Standard was thickly accented. The admiral was old enough to not have had to learn it in primary school.
"No mistake, I am afraid, Victoria. Jones contacted us through the Bulwark’s onboard FTL channels some days ago, and Director Sampson has been in contact with the Gavisari admiral ever since. The Union Earth declared the Clarke to be an unfortunate misunderstanding, a terrible tragedy by a desperate people. The captain and crew’s sacrifice is to be honored. But the Yakima was a deliberate betrayal, possibly an attempt at piracy, and a direct attack on Union Earth sovereignty. And for the first time, thanks to you, we have a way to answer it. Long range laser artillery, ships each built around a single emitter of the latest Dirregaunt design. Here, let me patch you in, but I must ask that you stay back. This is a military action now, not a Privateer matter."
Chadha’s retinal implants gleamed as he reached out to his own communication display, making the connection with the flick of a finger. Suddenly Victoria’s conn was filled with the battlegroup cross chatter.
"Iliad capacitors at eighty-five percent, number two reactor at reduced output."
"Zumwalt, ready to fire."
"Trebuchet at ninety-five percent."
"Rail mine picket deployed, Admiral. Missouri standing by."
"Excellent. Assignments per battlefield arrangement, screen and provide support for the Zumwalt class artillery. Weapons free. Fire as ready."
"Aye aye, Admiral. Priority targets are carriers and missile cruisers. Deconfliction assignments by Yangtze. Zumwalt firing."
The ablative fans at the forecastle of the Zumwalt flared out, massive servo arms forming a black-mirrored dish to reflect the backwash of the stimulated Dirregaunt lasers away from the human elements of the ship’s construction. Victoria could see a ring of a dozen or more thrusters fine-tuning the heading of the ship by what must have been hundredths, if not thousandths, of a degree to track a distant target.
"Conn sensors. Zumwalt preparing to fire, recommend disabling optical sensors to prevent possible damage."
"No Avery. We need to see this," said Victoria. She wanted to see. She wanted to watch the Union Earth shit all over everything she fought and bled for, everything she risked her ship and her crew for. Ice ran through her veins, curling her lips up in a snarl.
The majority of the light escaping the aperture was outside the visible spectrum. The human adaptation had lost the careful tuning of the Dirregaunt scientists and engineers, and so waste light blazed at the point of emission, dimming the main viewscreen as it forced adaptive contrast to narrow the iris apertures on all sensors. Even so, the bow of the Zumwalt was too bright to look directly at, and
Victoria had to avert her eyes from the screen. Thick layers of ablative plating charred and baked off, shrouding the Zumwalt in a black haze. The intense light clicked off after an eighth of a second, leaving a greenish afterimage in her vision. Almost a hundred thousand kilometers away, and almost a second later, the Slingray exploded.
The Zumwalt had carved a basketball-sized hole through the entirety of her reactor compartment, breaching containment and spilling the contents of the fusion reactor into space and the inner compartments of the ship. The detonation claimed the remaining missiles in the Slingray’s magazines, bright blue spikes of exotic matter striking out and cleaving through two small frigates held in defense of the valuable missile boat. In under two seconds, the ship which had dwarfed the Condor by several orders of magnitude could boast no pieces larger than a fist.
"Five minutes, fifty-two seconds to recharge."
"Longinus preparing to fire. Targeting the holdout carriers above the northern latitudes."
Sothcide watched helplessly as the Slingray ceased to be. In his mind he replayed the message given by the dark human admiral again and again. "Earth stands with Gavisar."
That laser, that impossible range, nearly a hundred thousand kilometers away and it had only taken a single shot to wipe the missile boat from the stars. The immediate threat of battle and the imposing line of Gavisari artillery was left almost forgotten while Sothcide watched the pieces of the Slingray shine in the light like stardust. The humans, the primitive, sluggish humans, reliant upon computers to breach interstellar space, had just struck his battlegroup’s hardest hitter from the stars at a range matched only by the Malagath, Dirregaunt, and Kossovoldt.
The Maeyar could not answer. They had no answer. Even with the human’s primitive weapon systems, attempting to cross the interim space would be a death sentence. And if they had been capable of this all along, who knew what dirty tricks the rest of those vessels could be hiding?
Sothcide’s radio clicked on in his cockpit, the all-fighters frequency of the Maeyar. "The Senior Wing Admiral has ordered a general retreat. Pedres is untenable. All elements are to make their way starward to—" Sothcide saw the bright flash in the sky of another of the human vessels firing. The Admiral’s command carrier blossomed with fire, then began to drift. Missiles, lasers, and point defense went dead. The Gavisari missiles held barely at bay began to strike home, and without the active defenses to thin the bombardment, the ship was torn completely apart in minutes. Maeyar ships at the periphery of the battle began maneuvering to pull back, and then individuals in the defense picket started to abandon the line. The gaps they left in the defense overlap were holes that Gavisar was more than happy to exploit, the main wedge of the invasion fleet pressing forward.
It wasn’t until Sothcide saw the first dark red cloud of atomic power flaring over the second largest city, that he abandoned the line and released all limiters on his engine.
"Ay, wingboss, where you speeding?" Goya asked from the rear compartment of the interceptor. "They just sounded the retreat. We got to get out of here."
Sothcide growled into his helmet and keyed his transmitter. "All fighter wings, support the retreat and cover the remaining carriers. Direct orders and assignments by Second Wing Officer Allid."
"Acknowledged, Sothcide. I’m assuming control of all fighter elements for Battlegroup Vitacuus. You’re going after her, aren’t you?"
Sothcide didn’t answer. He didn’t have to, there could be only one thing driving him deeper into the hell of battle instead of away to the safety of the stars and a jump closer to Maeyar. One single connection in all the stars that could sever him from his years of service and discipline, and that was the order to leave his starward sky to die in the Gavisari onslaught. No force of terrestrial or cosmic power could deter him from this. His gunner whooped and hollered, taking potshots at everything in range.
Another of the impossible human artillery ships fired, reflected light blinding from a heavy destroyer holding off the line of advance over a hundred kilometers ahead. The laser scored a glowing metal rift from the dorsal dampeners to the undercarriage laser arrays, and the force of the escaping gasses pushed the two halves of the ship away from each other. The hit had been too far forward to rupture reactor containment, and aft of the launcher magazines so its crew would suffer as they either froze or suffocated. Kinder to have killed them outright.
His own cabin was getting hot as he continued his acceleration. Without Yadus’ support, the remaining two carriers were hard-pressed to hold off the advance of the Bulwark, and Jalith was losing ground quickly to the hammering assault of Raksava’s flanking attack against her point defenses. Sothcide wasn’t sure how he intended to intervene, his interceptor was one tiny spacecraft weaving among giants, still alive because the Gavisar ships had dismissed or ignored his wild blaze across Juna’s orbit. But he would find a way. He would disable the point defenses on the Bulwark, or strike at Raksava’s battle-damaged frames, or . . . or . . . .
A sunburst blossomed on the bow of the Twin Sister, as if a bright glowing eye had sprouted in the center of the carrier’s forehead between the deployment rails, red-hot veins snaking out across its outer laminate skin. The light of the cutting laser reflected off the Bulwark and the dozen missiles en route across the interim sky. The port-side point defenses fell silent, as did the maneuvering gravitic thrusters. With no way to correct her left yaw, Jalith’s carrier slowly exposed a broadside profile to Raksava’s ravaging lasers, and they finished the vicious carving that the humans had begun. Metal and composite boiled off the surface of the Twin Sister, scoring holes in the hull that vented gas, and presumably personnel. Several missiles closed to within a kilometer of Jalith’s bow before detonating, and the pressure wave of the expanding exotic matter crushed the weakened and compromised hull like an empty ration can.
Sothcide’s hands went limp on the controls, and for once Goya seemed to have nothing to say. All of his work, all of his faith placed in the humans, had led to this. The Maeyar fleet in a full rout, Pedres lost. His wife, Jalith, betrayed and murdered by the very people Sothcide endeavored to enlist in their cause. The weight of all that he had distanced from himself fell heavy upon his shoulders. Millions were dying below, and he had abandoned his post only to arrive helpless. There was but one thing left to do. Sothcide cut the acceleration to reasonable levels, and keyed his communications array.
Victoria watched the destruction unfold. Pedres had fallen to the staggered attacks of the Zumwalt, Iliad, Trebuchet, Longinus, and Prometheus. The staggered fire was resulting in a fleet-critical Maeyar ship disabled or destroyed roughly every sixty to seventy seconds. And it was accomplished from a position of complete safety, a hundred thousand kilometers from the battle. It was barely more than a third the range Dirregaunt had squeezed from the lasers, which they had fired in concert. But it was more than almost any armor of the lesser races could withstand.
And she had helped it happen. She had led Jones to this hunting ground, and now that ground was littered with the bones of countless hulls, ripe for salvage while the Gavisari focused on their advanced breeding program in the tunnels and caverns of irradiated Pedres. While pyrocumulus storms would blanket the surface, the Gavisari would repopulate and rebuild their defense fleet with the empty mines and manufacturing facilities the Maeyar left behind. She could see it now; this day would be considered the greatest human victory in space to date. Chadha would add another star to his collar, Sampson would get enough new tech to swim in. All it had cost was the crew of the Yakima and her own integrity.
On the main viewscreen the Longinus’ ablative fans extended, preparing for its second shot. Enormous gyros held the aperture steady while thrusters made micro-adjustments with the aid of the computer’s targeting system. Once it had run sufficient simulations to declare a positive firing solution it triggered the xeno laser hooked into the multiple reactors.
Victoria looked away as the emitter clicked on and off, dispersing another clo
ud of vaporized ablative plating. Without it, even the comparatively miniscule ambient wash from the laser would cause serious damage to the ship firing it, and burn out dozens of sensor modules on the other ships in the formation. Reflected light took almost a second to return from the target, painting a new star in the sky above the north pole of Pedres. Victoria winced as her tactical team confirmed that the target was the Twin Sister. Seconds later the ship disappeared from her tactical repeater entirely. The Bulwark had moved in and finished the job. The Maeyar were in full retreat now, harried by the Gavisari invasion fleet descending on Pedres. Their line was in shambles now, the Zumwalt class artillery breaking the back of Maeyar resistance with its picked shots. Chadha’s interdiction had come at a perfect time to counterplay her deliverance of Arda’s battlegroup and nullify any advantage it might have gained the Maeyar.
A radio signal emerged from the tumult of distress calls, desperate requests for orders, and electronic countermeasures. A signal unique in that it carried the private identifier she used to communicate with the marine detachment sent down to that Gavisari derelict what felt like years ago, though it had only been a few days. The identifier she gave to Sothcide before her expeditionary trek to Gavisar to identify the cause of the interstellar exodus. Victoria reached for her comms panel, then hesitated. There was half a bottle of scotch left in her rack that she would sorely like to pull from before she had this conversation. Her hands were shaking, centimeters from deciding whether to accept or refuse the transmission. She should refuse it. Her duty was to humanity, not any xeno officer. She owed him nothing. And yet . . . .
The cold exterior of Sothcide’s flight helmet appeared on her main viewscreen. Hidden from view was his onyx skin with its monolithic, starscape-patterned eye. The way he moved was subtly different, stiffer, betraying his alien biology. Were it not for that, it could have been a marine or a human fighter pilot under that mask.