The small corvette’s hull stood no chance against the nearly four megatons of force contained within its shield. The blast pushed out as the shield generators were vaporized, smashing the two Alliance drones into atoms.
“Pandora and Porus have taken out tangos charlie-one and -three,” the tactical officer announced. “The Colorado is broken up, looks like she got hammered by nukes.”
“Put two drones on charlie-two and let’s get back to the frigates,” Prouse ordered with a grim look at Harry.
“We have solid decoy contact on tangos foxtrot-three and -six,” the tactical officer called out.
Not only did the decoys distract attention from the boarding sledges, but they also offered the chance of learning the enemy shield frequencies, assuming any of the swarm made it as far as the shields. In theory, they could pass the frequencies to the approaching sledges, allowing a high-speed pass through the shields and ensuring effective penetration of the sledges into the enemy vessel.
No doubt that theory sounded far more sensible to the engineering teams than it did to the Marines hurtling toward an enemy shield at top speed.
Two Midgaard icons pushed out to the flank where tangos foxtrot-five and -seven were turning to move toward the troop ship. As Harry watched, the Midgaard icons overlapped their targets. He vividly remembered the screech of rending metal from an earlier fight in Oaxian orbit.
The term ‘laying alongside’ implied a good deal more awe and danger in the vacuum of space. You gotta admit, he thought, those Midgaard are gutsy bastards.
Both of our sledges are through,” the tactical officer announced, “and they are now deep inside.”
The main batteries roared again as the ship, still slaved to the fire control officer, came to bear on one of the enemy frigates. The rounds streaked toward the large, black ship but her shields were far stronger than those of the corvettes and she continued to move toward the stricken troop ship.
“Looks like they’re taking up defensive positions,” Harry mused. “Maybe they’re going to try taking the men off?”
“Distortion alert,” the sensor coordinator yelled. “Sir, it’s the enemy frigates: they’re creating some kind of group distortion around the troop ship.”
A green icon began to blink below the label on tango foxtrot-seven. Well at least that’s one less frigate for the enemy, Harry thought. And one more for us. That had to be less than five minutes. How the hell did they neutralize her so fast?
Even as he thought it, a similar icon began to blink for tango foxtrot-five. Both Midgaard ships broke away from their prizes and began moving toward the enemy formation, weapons blazing.
“That’s it,” tactical announced. “They’re gone.”
Adams pounded his fist on the trace table. The two ships boarded by his Marines had departed with the enemy. To his credit, he refrained from any complaints. Harry respected him for that. If you were unable to change something, it was no use moaning about it. It would only show your people how powerless you were.
That was never good for morale.
“Distortion alert,” sensor shouted. “Six thousand klicks out.”
Harry fought to keep his shoulders from sagging as he turned to the trace table.
“Papa foxtrot-five is falling into the planet’s gravity well,” tactical called out. “She appears to be suffering an engine failure.” Now that the frigate was in friendly hands, its primary designator had changed from tango for target, to papa for prize. If it was falling into the gravity well, then so was its Midgaard prize crew.
What the hell else could possibly go wrong right now, Harry seethed. He ignored protocol and opened the icon for the Pandora, activating a video link to Captain Shelby without bothering Prouse, who was desperately trying to bring the fleet back to some semblance of order to meet the new inbound threat.
“Captain Shelby, do you think you can lay the Pandora alongside papa foxtrot-five? We need someone to take off that prize crew and nobody else can match your agility.”
Shelby turned from Harry to one of her data screens. “Well, sir,” she answered, “we’ll sure as hell try.” The screen went blank.
Harry closed the window and looked at the trace of the new arrivals. It was a small force. Six frigates, a corvette and…”
“That’s the same force,” Prouse looked up at Harry.
“They’re jumping again,” sensor advised. “Individually, this time. I’m reading distortion building for four frigates and one corvette.”
“Our boarding team…” Adams hissed. Eyes glued to the trace.
“One of the frigates is standing down her jump engines.”
“Do they have her?” Prouse wondered aloud.
“Hails coming in from foxtrots-three and -six,” the comms officer said in surprise. “Requesting permission to join the fleet!”
As the bridge crew cheered themselves hoarse, Harry offered his hand, first to Prouse and then to Adams. Both men were grinning widely. They had lost the Colorado, but they had gained three frigates in the process. For once they had come through a battle stronger than they had begun it.
“Launch shuttles,” Prouse barked. “Have them take off any survivors from the Colorado.”
Harry suddenly turned back to the table, cursing himself as he remembered they still had an emergency on their hands.
Pandora…
A Very Bad Day
Papa foxtrot-five, Oaxian space
Fenris shook his head. I wouldn’t want to lay one of our own ships alongside this frigate now that it’s in the atmosphere. That Human captain is out of her mind – I like her already! He issued a curt command, directing his prize crew to the port lander bay where, if nothing went wrong, they would be taken off by the Pandora.
The remaining Dactari crew could have their ship back – for the few minutes it took to break up. He had to admit a grudging respect for them. When it had become clear that they would lose their ship to the Midgaard boarding party, they had scuttled the engines after aiming the ship straight down at Oaxes.
They knew they were killing themselves, but they had at least denied a frigate to the enemy.
He ran to a vertical shaft and timed his jump so that he entered while falling. His momentum carried him down one deck and into the far corridor where he hit the gravity plate running. Three of his men joined him from a side corridor and he heard another two, at least, hitting the decking behind him.
The lander bay was fifty feet ahead and another of his men came from a side corridor and stood at the door lintel, keeping it open so his approaching comrades wouldn’t have to slow down.
Thorstein, Fenris made a mental note. That was the kind of warrior you wanted on a mission like this. Not someone who boasts about great deeds, but someone who thinks of the little things that make the difference between life and death.
The view outside the bay door was obscured by a shock layer of extremely hot, ionized gas. Fenris knew the blast that had scuttled the engineering section had left the vessel on backup power. When it failed, the shields would fail as well. Dactari design philosophy relied heavily on shields.
Without them, Fenris might as well be standing in a paper bag.
Nine more of his crew entered the bay and he saw Arnleif among them. Forty-seven. He raised an eyebrow.
Arnleif shook her head. “Freylaug and Vidar both died in the explosion.” She looked around, counting silently. “This is all that remain.”
It was maddening. So close to having his own ship. The enemy frigate was shockingly undermanned and her crew had surrendered almost instantly. The explosion in the engine compartment had taken the boarding party completely by surprise.
He threw himself to the deck as a seam opened in the shield, sending a brief blade of superheated gas against the ship before closing again. As he sat up, he could see a jagged edged cut in the fabric of the ship. The gas had cut through hull plating, conduits and stanchions as though they were carved out of styrene foam.
As he st
ared at the damage, his eye caught sight of a darkness in the shock layer. The shielding turned orange with a bright red line at the seam and then the red line split, sliding apart as the shield of the Human vessel forced its way through.
With the ionized gas pushed out of the way, Fenris could clearly see into the forward shuttle bay of the Pandora. Several crewmen in EVA suits and safety harnesses stood near the outer lip of the decking, ready to grab anyone who might lose their footing during the deadly transfer.
A seam opened in the Human shielding and Fenris waved his crew forward. “The Norns aren’t done with us yet!” he yelled as they leaped across the constantly shifting gap.
The frigate was dying. On either side of the shield interface, there was enough of a gap for the shock layer to infiltrate. Jets of superheated gas shot through the hull behind Fenris and roared down the corridor toward the center of the vessel. Time to go.
He looked across at Arnleif, her nod indicating that he was the last one left. A captain should be the last to leave a stricken ship. He grinned. That didn’t include the fornicating Dactari who scuttled her, of course. He waited until Arnleif drifted closer. When she started to drift back again, he knew that the gap was at its narrowest and leaped lightly over to the Human vessel.
Behind him, the frigate began to tear apart as the Pandora’s shields closed up and she withdrew from contact. The gap in the Dactari shields must have stayed open, allowing even greater access for the deadly atmospheric enemy.
He feigned complete indifference. Acting as though he did this sort of thing every day. No need to let the Humans know how terrified I was, he thought, pleased with the impression he was making on his rescuers. He retracted his helmet, but before he could speak, the sound of a whistle assaulted his ears and the Human crew came to attention.
He had been among Humans enough to understand the compliment, even if he’d only been a captain for a matter of minutes. The captain of this ship had an eye for the little things. Things that made big differences.
A young man approached. “Welcome aboard the Pandora, Captain.” He stepped to the side and extended a hand toward the door at the rear of the shuttle bay. “Captain Shelby’s compliments, sir, and she’s currently occupied with getting us back into space. I’m to escort you to the bridge.”
The top of the grav-free shaft opened on the bridge. The black of space was already coalescing as he looked out to starboard at the orange fireball that represented his first command.
A young woman unstrapped from her chair – he still couldn’t bring himself to approve of sitting on the bridge of a warship – and walked toward him. Even for a Human, she looks young. At just over three hundred, Fenris was considered something of a youngster himself, but this woman seemed very young to be in command of her own ship.
Then she smiled, and Fenris forgot his own name for half a heartbeat.
Loose Ends
The Salamis, Oaxian space
Harry forced himself to remain still at the trace table. Prouse was facing away from him, looking out at the two Dactari ships left behind by their comrades. The fleet captain had his hands clasped together behind his back and the fingers of his right hand were white from the tight grip.
No doubt the captain was wishing the troop ship had escaped, but the two frigates captured by the Marines had dropped out of distortion, collapsing the radically-conceived cooperative distortion envelope that was conveying the crippled ship to safety.
Now there were at least a hundred thousand enemy souls over there and his commodore had just ordered him to kill them all in cold blood.
Both men realized that this was the kind of moment that would be judged by history. It was also the kind of moment that put a squadron commander’s position on the razor’s edge. If Prouse should refuse the order, then Harry would likely be finished.
They had no way of managing that many prisoners, even if they were willing to surrender. Even now, they were venting atmosphere in a vain attempt to rotate the ship and bring their pitiful array of close in weapon systems to bear on the Humans. The small-caliber CIWS could fire until doomsday and never put a dent in the powerful shields of the Salamis.
Prouse’s chin dropped a fraction. “Weapons officer,” he spoke quietly. “Target tango tango-sierra-one and engage with a three-bug spread. Go deep.”
“Aye sir,” the lieutenant replied. “Targeting tango tango-sierra-one, three-bug spread, set for internal detonations… firing.”
Three lines of fire and vapor streaked past the bow of the Salamis, arcing toward the ragged stern of the doomed enemy. At the halfway point, the three missiles burst apart to become twenty-one sub-munitions, jinking erratically to avoid defensive fire that never came.
They poured in through the gaping wound caused earlier by the Xi, and through the open shuttle bays. When their onboard processors, each estimating the position needed to cause maximum damage, reached a consensus, they group-detonated.
The lightly-constructed troop carrier was gone in a heartbeat, along with the even more lightly-constructed Dactari aboard her.
That left one crippled enemy frigate. A shot from one of the Marine-captured frigates had hit her engines, knocking the fleeing enemy out of their group distortion. No longer having enough ships to re-create the innovative escape strategy, they had left the troop ship to its own fate.
“Board that frigate,” Harry ordered. “And signal the Leetayo – she’s to head back to the fleet at Weirfall.” He longed to return to his quarters, to escape the glances being darted his way. He had just ordered the death of tens of thousands of people who had no real chance of fighting back. No matter how much his Oaxian experiences might make him hate the enemy, that kind of slaughter took a piece of your soul.
He needed a moment away from the judgement.
“That prisoner,” Prouse began, but hesitated for a moment. “Perhaps guest is a better word for the moment. The one from the station at Tauhento – she was transferred here while we were on approach to the troop ship. I didn’t want to throw her in the brig and it’s not like a carrier has a waiting room for visitors…”
“So, where is she?” Harry demanded. It was obvious that Prouse expected him to disapprove of her current whereabouts, but it was simply foolish to compound the situation with this verbal meandering.
The captain nodded to the door at the back of the bridge. “Your quarters, sir.”
Adrift
The Constant Vigil, Xo’Khov Sea, Dactar
Tommy shivered. Accustomed to seeing the void of space from the bridge of the Dark Defiance, he was deeply unsettled by the equally lethal but unaccustomed sight of water. With no gas giant to hide in, the Constant Vigil was sitting at the bottom of the sea, only a few hundred kilometers from the Dactari capital.
A tracery of coral-like growth impeded some of his view. It was far too deep here for any kind of Earth coral, but he supposed the creatures responsible for it must be drawing energy from the shield somehow.
A gigantic translucent creature swam past, massive teeth carried by an undulating, glowing body.
He turned toward the door at the back of the bridge. I’ll go and take a look. He walked to the door and waited for the system to read the coding in his hand. The door slid open.
I think I see the problem, he thought as he looked in at the ceiling. There’s been a collapse.
Don’t stay in there any longer than you need to, Keeva insisted.
Tommy stepped inside and moved around the center console. A massive beam had broken loose from the ceiling. Beneath it lay a heap of bones and dust. He walked back out to the main bridge. Whoever that was, they died a very long time ago.
Then this world has been alone.
Tommy shrugged. They seemed to have done well enough on their own. He kept his gaze from the coral and water. Can you move me to where Gelna and Kale are?
When he opened his eyes, he was on the central interchange. The five hull sections, each ten by forty kilometers, were separated by
ten kilometer gaps. The effect was something like a barrel with every second stave missing. The streets running among the high-rises on the inner surfaces all channelled toward the three sets of spokes that joined the massive sections together. At the center of the forward spokes, a large area, roughly nineteen thousand acres, was mostly parkland.
Tommy found his friends on a large rocky outcrop, high above the broadleaf trees. The view was both magnificent and terrifying. The millions of tons of water beyond the shields were no more lethal than the void of space to which he had become accustomed, but he shivered in dread all the same.
He remarked on it to his friends, expecting them to laugh at his folly.
“Of course it’s more dangerous,” Gelna snapped. “A spaceship has to deal with a one atmosphere difference in pressure.” He nodded out at the shimmering bands of water that pressed against the shields. “At this depth, the pressure is more than a thousand times that amount.”
“What’s his problem?” Tommy asked Kale in surprise.
“If I had to guess,” Kale replied with mild amusement, looking over at the sullen Dactari, “I’d say he’s had false hope dangled in front of him.” He turned to Tommy. “For a few minutes, back in Xo’Khov, he was starting to believe his republic was beating us. Learning it’s the other way around is bound to be a real bitch.”
“Oh, boo hoo.” Tommy rolled his eyes. “So sorry we aren’t loyal subjects of your precious Triumvirs.”
“You would have been better off as citizens of the Republic,” Gelna blurted. “We would have advanced your technology overnight. Most of your diseases would have been wiped out within a handful of years…”
“Yeah, we found all that in the ships we took from you after the fight at Mars,” Kale cut in with a negligent wave. “Win or lose, we’d have got our hands on your technology, so why go your route, and give up on self governance?”
“Self governance?” Gelna shook his head in disgust. “Most Humans get one vote every few years, and then the rest of the decisions are left to the rich elite, because they’re the only ones who can afford to run for office.” He sneered. “And they keep getting richer. Explain that for me.”
The Orphan Alliance (The Black Ships Book 3) Page 18