Aneka Jansen 5: The Greatest Heights of Honour

by Niall Teasdale

  ‘This is not going fast enough,’ Farmer growled. ‘I want those gunships disabled.’

  ‘The Herosians have tightened their defensive grid,’ Henderson replied. ‘The frigates can’t get in without getting themselves blown to Hell. Missiles haven’t a chance of getting past the point defences.’

  ‘I don’t want excuses, I want results!’

  Henderson turned and glared at the man. ‘They can’t perform miracles, Admiral, and they can’t fly through solid metal.’

  ‘You’re relieved, Commander,’ Farmer snapped. He looked at the nearest ranking officer. ‘You, take over the Commander’s position.’

  Without a word, Henderson got to her feet and headed for the door of the operations room. Even if they court-martialled her she was going to be happier out of sight of the fool they had running the battle.

  Yorkbridge Mid-town.

  The subway station was full of people. The trains had been stopped, the lines shut down, and even the track space was occupied by people hiding from the coming Herosian invasion.

  Dillon found a space a few yards down the tunnel, under part of the platform structure which extended down there for service personnel. He laid out their sleeping bag and sat on it beside Katelyn, his arm around her shoulders.

  ‘Do you think it’s safe down here?’ Katelyn asked. ‘I mean, it’s not that deep…’

  ‘It won’t stand a direct hit, but it’ll protect us if they hit other areas.’

  ‘You really think they’ll hit the city?’

  ‘I think they’ll hit the spaceport. The Navy has its command bunker there. I think they’ll use planetary bombardment weapons on it from orbit, like they did at Obati.’

  ‘Nukes?’

  ‘No need. They throw a big, heavy projectile from orbit. It’s got the force of a nuke without the fallout. They can roll in after and not have to clean up the mess.’

  ‘Oh.’

  There was silence aside from the mutter of conversation at low volume. No one was saying anything loudly, as though the Herosians might hear them and drop a projectile on them.

  ‘I’m cold,’ Katelyn said after a few minutes.

  There was a cold draft flowing down the tunnel. One of the reasons Dillon had moved out of the main station area was that the heat in there had been oppressive with so many Jenlay crammed together.

  ‘We’ll get into the bag,’ he said, ‘cuddle up.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Katelyn replied softly. ‘I could use a cuddle about now.’

  FSA Submarine.

  Truelove scanned the displays, finishing on a timer she had set up in one corner of a screen. It was the estimate of how long they had before the Herosians would be in range to start firing on the planet. There was not a lot of time left.

  ‘Agent Truelove?’ Pierce’s voice was calm, almost too calm, but then he was not anywhere likely to come under fire in the immediate future.

  Truelove turned and stepped into the office. ‘Sir?’

  ‘Do we have backup systems in place in case of the loss of Naval Command?’

  ‘The Argus will take over. Their strategist, Norden, will take command of operations.’

  Pierce frowned as though he had not been expecting that. ‘Under direction from here, of course.’

  ‘No, sir. This facility doesn’t have the bandwidth to run that kind of operation and, if you’ll pardon my candour, you are head of the FSA, not the Navy.’

  There was a flicker of anger on his face, and then he was calm again. ‘Of course. Dismissed, Agent.’

  Truelove turned and walked back to her displays.

  ‘Old soldier wanting his chance at glory?’ Janine’s voice said inside her mind.

  ‘Yeah, I think so. He didn’t like being told he wouldn’t get it.’

  ‘Elroy and I have your back, girl. Don’t worry about him.’

  ‘I’m more worried about what’s going on up there. This is getting bad. I don’t see how we can turn this around.’

  ‘Huh. About the best thing that could happen now is losing Naval Command. If anyone can pull our fat out of the fire, it’s Norden.’

  ‘Let’s hope so.’

  BC-101 Hand of God.

  ‘Midsection batteries to point defence mode,’ Tasker ordered silently. ‘I want those bombs stopped.’

  ‘We’ve got nine gunships firing on the planet,’ her XO reported. ‘We can’t stop all of them.’

  ‘We stop what we can. Bring us around to line up the main gun.’

  FNb Admiral Banfry.

  ‘All guns, open fire,’ Ape snapped, his eyes on the display showing the gunships moving into position. ‘Have the destroyers concentrate on point defence.’

  ‘That’s going to leave us open,’ Leeforth commented, even as her fingers shifted over the keyboard to issue the orders.

  ‘We can take a few hits; we need to halt those projectiles.’

  LV-101 Argus.

  Norden scanned the projection data coming through from the computers. The probability of a resolution which benefited the Jenlay was getting smaller the further they went down this line. Farmer was too busy trying to avoid the inevitable to respond correctly. He refused to risk attack because he saw death hanging over him.

  A thought directed the Old Earth frigates in for one more assault on the gunships. They had been designed to operate as anti-piracy vessels and so had been equipped with radar obfuscating hulls. It reduced their exposure to weapons fire and gave them a better chance of hitting their targets while in the midst of enemy shipping.

  Right now, looking at the projections, he had no doubt that things were going to get bad on the planet below.

  Yorkbridge Mid-town.

  Henderson had managed to get onto a courier transport headed into the city. Sitting in the back, she was monitoring the comm-chatter she could pick up on her combat suit’s radio and wondering when the first thing would break through the perimeter above them.

  So far the point defence fire from the warships and ground batteries was stopping everything, but that could not last. It would take one slip, that was all. She prayed that, when that slip happened, she would have enough time to get to cover.

  The vertol was over Mid-town and about to swing north when she heard it. ‘Three incoming! Get them! For fuck’s sake…’

  Henderson bolted forward to the cockpit door. ‘Get us on the ground, now!’

  ‘But…’ the pilot began.

  ‘No buts, do it or we’re dead.’

  The small jet veered violently downward, aiming for a gap between the towers. Henderson clung to the doorframe aware that at any second the sky could fill with light and they would have seconds before the blast hit, assuming the heat from the impact did not take them out.

  ‘Fuck! Break away! Break!’ The voices in her earpiece told her what she had expected; something had got through. She bolted for the rear hatch, jumping out of it before the aircraft had touched down. The glare filter on her visor cut in, almost blinding her to save her from being blinded. She had seen a subway entrance a few metres away as she dropped to the road, and she bolted for that now, desperate to make it to more cover before the blast wave hit.

  She had just dropped into the stairwell when the overpressure smashed into her like a tonne of solid Plascrete.

  FSA Submarine.

  ‘We’ve lost contact with Naval Command,’ Truelove informed Pierce. ‘We also lost the surface buoy. We’re deploying the backup, but we’ll be offline for a few minutes.’

  ‘Do we know where that shot hit?’ Pierce asked.

  ‘The spaceport, just on the edge but it was bad enough to rip the buoy off its cable even out here.’

  ‘Farmer had moved the ground troops in to fend off a surface deployment, am I correct?’

  Truelove swallowed. ‘Yes. We’re probably looking at a near total loss.’

  ‘It’s all down to this Norden then. Do you think Farmer could have survived that?’

  ‘That one, probably, but there were two mor
e on the way in before we lost comms. One of them looked like it would hit the bunker direct.’

  Pierce nodded. ‘See if we can get any information on the situation there once we have a connection.’

  Truelove nodded. She was not expecting the results to be good.

  Naval Command.

  The lights flickered back to life and Farmer looked up at the Plascrete ceiling. The sound of groaning structural members had been loud and he had half expected the roof to fall in, but it looked like they had survived. More or less.

  ‘All contact lost with the surface,’ his assistant reported. ‘No communications, no sensors. We’re dumb and blind. The main entrance is blocked, but it looks like the evacuation tunnel is intact.’

  Farmer opened his mouth, and then stopped as the room shook once more. Dust and small fragments of Plascrete fell from the ceiling. ‘Sound the evacuation,’ Farmer said, getting up from his seat and starting for the door. ‘We’re doing no one any good here, right? We need to… I need to get out of here… To regain command.’

  Horns began to sound as he walked purposefully toward the large emergency hatch. It began to grind upward before he got there. Yes, he would get out of here, live to fight another day. That was the important thing now. There was nothing he could do for the people above while he was down here, cut off…

  He stepped into the corridor and started down it, and that was when the entire building lurched violently downward. He managed another step forward before the roof of the passageway collapsed on top of him.

  Yorkbridge Mid-town.

  Katelyn lay in the darkness, her mouth full of sleeping bag fabric. The makeshift gag was there to make sure she did not scream, either from the shudders that ran through the tunnel or the feeling of Dillon sliding inside her.

  She had been terrified, cold, too numb to think, and they had resorted to the one thing that always made them happier, no matter the circumstances: sex. When she had felt Dillon’s big hands sliding under her shirt she had wondered how he could possibly be thinking of that under the circumstances. The more his skilled fingers teased at her nipples, the more she had realised that he was right. Terrified as she was, all she could think of after a minute or two was that if they were going to die, she wanted to feel him inside her one last time.

  So she had pushed her jeans down and he had spooned tighter against her, and their bodies had joined. The danger and the close proximity of their neighbours had added spice. Even when all the lights had died and they were left in the pitch black, they had continued. Katelyn wanted him to come inside her, so that he had done it before the end, and yet she wanted this to last forever because she felt as though when he did finally explode, taking her with him, that would signal the end of everything.

  LV-101 Argus.

  Norden registered the loss of communications with the surface installations as little more than a blip in his data feeds. Everything had been routed through the Argus anyway; the surface systems had provided little in the way of intelligence.

  It did leave him in command of the battle, however, and he was prepared for that. Several processors had been running potential plans and he was left now with a choice of three options which were likely to actually improve things. He selected the riskiest.

  Herosian Flagship.

  Sin’Doffis watched the sudden shift in the flow of battle and frowned. Roughly half of the Jenlay fleet was inactive or dead in space while less than a third of his forces had fallen victim to the defending ships. Now the more advanced Old Earth vessels seemed to be pulling out. He could not believe his luck.

  The New Earth ships were swinging around in lower orbit to come up at the Herosian attackers, a tactically weak position, but they were forced into a position of trying their best to attack a far superior force as their reinforcements shifted out of position with acceleration neither they nor the Herosian ships could match.

  ‘The vectors indicate the Old Earth fleet is scattering,’ his assistant said. ‘They’re pulling out. We’ve won.’

  Sin’Doffis gave a grunt, still not entirely able to believe it. Still… ‘Press the attack,’ he ordered. Whatever the case, they had an advantage right now and they needed to make use of it.

  Norden Forest.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Janna asked. ‘Are they leaving us?’ She was feeling sick to the stomach already and now it looked like their saviours were abandoning them.

  Winter was silent for a moment, watching the dots moving on the screens and the communications traffic flowing through her mind. She smiled.

  ‘It’s risky, but it might work.’

  ‘What?!’

  ‘The Old Earth ships have reactionless drives. They’re capable of acceleration the other ships up there couldn’t match if they tried. See how fast they’re pulling away? Well, they can swing around just as fast…’

  ‘And hit the Herosians from behind while they’re concentrating on the defensive pattern.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Vashma, I hope it works.’

  FNf Delta Brigantia.

  The small vessel twisted and turned as it tried to dodge through a volley of missiles and take aim at the ships in higher orbit. Prentice was doing her best, but Anderson figured it was only a matter of time before one of the nukes got too close.

  They had already lost one of the forward turrets to a beam weapon. Grant was working to get it operational again, but there was a lot of damage and they needed everything they had if they were going to survive this. There were a lot of dead ships out there and Anderson did not want to join them.

  ‘Hold together, girl,’ she whispered to the frigate. ‘You’ve survived worse than this.’

  As though in answer, the main gun let loose a stream of high-energy anti-protons. There was an answering explosion along the surface of their target, a gunship, followed by a larger, interior detonation, and Hughes let out a howl of victory.

  Prentice yanked the ship into a tight turn, corkscrewing around toward the outer edge of the Herosian front, but she was not quite fast enough. The Brigantia gave a shudder as something exploded port and aft, and the enormous hum of the main engines died away to nothing.

  They were drifting, at speed, but still drifting. They were, in effect, a sitting duck.

  Herosian Flagship.

  ‘We have them,’ Sin’Doffis hissed. His reservations regarding the retreat of the Old Earth forces were gone in the enthusiasm of the moment. ‘Tell the Captain to target that battleship ahead of us. Clear that out and there’s nothing to stop us bringing the main gun to bear on the city.’

  ‘Aye, sir,’ his assistant said just as five of the dots marking their rear guard went red.

  Neither man immediately noticed the loss. It was not until three more ships had gone dead that Sin’Doffis became aware of the attack and the ships causing the damage. The signatures were small, barely recognisable, and the vessels were manoeuvring so fast they could have been fighters, but they clearly had far more firepower. Just as his mind was catching up with the sudden opening of their rear defences, he noticed the far larger blips on the screens moving in at incredible speed.

  ‘Aft! We’re under attack! The Old Earth…’

  He was cut off by the sound of screaming metal as the Helios’ one terrajoule graser carved into the rear of the battleship.

  FNb Admiral Banfry.

  ‘The Herosians have noticed they are getting their ass-end kicked to pulp,’ Leeforth reported. ‘They’re turning toward the Old Earth ships. Looks like Norden was right.’

  Ape allowed himself a second to feel relief. His grand old ship was feeling distinctly creaky around him. There was nothing, so far, that was endangering the crew, but they were down to backup sensors, they could not have gone to warp if they had wanted to, and there was a hull breach leaking highly explosive fuel out of one of the tanks. That was making them significantly less manoeuvrable than he would have liked.

  ‘Target their battleships,’ he ordered.


  ‘Looks like that Xinti one is more or less dead anyway. The Helios ripped its drives out.’

  ‘Pick another one. I’ll let you choose.’

  ‘Thank you, Captain. I think I’ll pick…’ Leeforth tapped her console and then stabbed at a virtual button. ‘That one hasn’t got as nice a colour scheme,’ she said.

  As far as Ape knew, all the Herosian ships had the same paint job, but he was not going to argue with her.

  BC-101 Hand of God.

  Tasker’s orders snapped out across the internal network and the powerful cruiser twisted port and up. They had come in flanking the Helios and now the formation broke, swinging in all directions so that they could brake safely before swinging about to press the attack. She was aware of every other vessel in the fleet, from the stealth frigates which had led the way and broken open the rear defences, to the vast bulk of the Helios which had just ripped the rear of the old Xinti battleship open.

  Requests flowed back to her from gunnery and one of her pilots. They wanted a target to aim for as they swung the ship around for the second pilot to begin the braking manoeuvre, and she scanned her plan of the battle briefly before selecting a battleship she could see the Admiral Banfry firing upon. The combined effect would likely be better than attacking from a single side. As soon as she had elected her target, the ship’s attitude began to change. Minds in unison, working toward a single, destructive goal.

  FSA Submarine.

  Elroy walked out of the office he had been assigned and stood beside Truelove at the battle displays. He was no strategist, but it seemed as though the tide of the conflict above them had turned, markedly.

  ‘Norden pulled off a risky strategy,’ Truelove commented, presumably for his benefit. ‘We were losing, badly. The Herosians have lost nearly a quarter of their remaining ships in barely twenty minutes. How are you holding up, Senator?’

  ‘I’ll be happier when we can find out about the damage to the city,’ he replied. ‘Communications with the Representatives are all down. Do we have any estimates of casualties?’

  ‘The military forces have been wiped out, more or less. The spaceport’s gone. I doubt the island is there. The university has probably taken extensive damage along with most of the rest of the Islands. There are bound to be some casualties on the mainland, but they haven’t directly attacked the city yet. Hopefully they’re minimal, but some of the buildings, especially along the coast, may have structural damage.’