Armageddon's Pall
Page 10
She took a moment to look at what remained of As’Tril in the distance. It was the face of the devil that greeted her. A cruel grin of magma had formed across its surface before twin exploding super volcanos illuminated the opposite hemisphere. She regretted looking upon it. The Planet Slicer had all but disappeared inside the shattered world. Only the tips remained visible; horns on a misshapen head. The debris field around As’Tril continued to grow as well, forming an unholy dark halo.
That halo held even more death. Gorvians hidden amongst the debris had ambushed every rescue convoy and less than ten percent of them had returned. All hopes of rescuing the inhabitants of the devastated world were long since dead.
“What’s the status of the recon teams?” the admiral asked before a spirit orb jetted past her, relaying valuable information about her ship.
The intel analyst at his station took a moment to reply. The young goat-faced, four-armed Otlian wore his fatigue like a mask. “Fifteen of the recon craft have made it back. We have confirmed kills of at least ninety of the others.”
Quin Tosh almost fell over. The vanta-black coated recon craft were the height of Confederation stealth tech. Their design allowed them to soar through a system all but undetected before having to vent their ZKEPs to enter hyperspace. To hear that not once, but twice they’d been all but wiped out by the Gorvians defied all logic. “I just can’t believe it,” she allowed to slip out.
“Ma’am, the Giliad,” the captain called, pointing towards the view wall. The dot in the distance expanded to reveal the embattled carrier.
Quin Tosh could only watch, helpless to respond, as the ship broke up onscreen. She hung her head in shame. The Giliad had been her last command before her promotion and she’d insisted that the escort carrier accompany her here. A full light pulse away she didn’t even watch the death throes in real time, but in an agonizing time delay. It was just one more ship destroyed amongst many, and a thousand more souls committed to the darkness. “Scan for survivors. Send in any available rescue craft.”
She all but collapsed in her chair as a Ferine dropship roared past towards the destroyed ship. One look told her that the brave crew could do little to save their comrades. A massive gash ran the length of its central fuselage, the interior exposed to space. Despite that, the tri-hulled craft drove on, the lower bank of plasma engines sputtering. Damage even riddled the outrigger pods, but the crew raced away to save their fellows anyway.
The words in her brain ate at her. They felt like acid on her tongue when she gave them voice. “Fall back.”
Every work station within earshot stopped, even if just for a heartbeat before the Captain turned to her. His face echoed the confusion on those around him. “Ma’am?”
She looked at the dying world in the distance again, shivering at the sight. “I won’t sacrifice anyone else. We take what we’ve learned and we fall back. Order all ships to commence emergency fighter retrieval for any homeless fighters and jump to hyperspace. We will rendezvous at the staging post in the Becklid System.”
The communications officer didn’t even turn from her station but sunk into the seat. “Aye ma’am. Relaying orders.”
Quin Tosh looked out across her fleet as fighters fought their way back to their motherships. There was no way they could recover them all, not if the fleet wanted to maintain an anti-bomber picket. She made a mental note to offer posthumous commendations to those crews, but such honors would mean little.
Monstero Nach 03
The reversion to normal drive almost made Blazer sick to his stomach. The drop itself didn’t cause his discomfort. If anything, it was a slower deceleration than he’d gotten used to. It was the sight that greeted his injured party; the fleet in full retreat. “Where’s the Mercy?” he managed, scanning for his ship amongst the battle-damaged fleet.
“Nav point up,” Arion replied. Blazer found the squid-like ship at the heart of the procession back into hyperspace.
“Six can you make that?” Blazer asked turning towards his wingman. The fighter was in sorry shape. The landing gear link to Chris’ just emphasized that.
“Copy that. Ghost Dancer…”
“You got us here. Get yourselves home.”
“Copy that. Nachs, follow me,” Blazer called and vectored towards the Mercy. Blazer couldn’t believe the sight; the Gorvians were continuing to press their attack on the retreating fleet. He’d never seen such a thing. Victors chased their defeated enemy out of a system; herded, not hunted. The Gorvians followed no such protocol and pounded the fleet. A picket of fighters, bombers and capital ships met them, but even they could only hold out so long.
The asteroid-derived Gorvian cruisers made suicidal runs on the picket ships. Blazer watched one crash through a once mighty wedge-shaped Cenobite destroyer, obliterating it. The Gorvians threw their lives away with the same abandon that defensive gunners sent shots downrange. As they proceeded through the fleet, Blazer watched countless fighters and bombers make reckless landings on the remaining carriers. It was a grim sight, one he would never forget. The Mercy hoved into view as they rounded a crippled cruiser, shuttles flitting from its hangar.
He’d never felt so relieved to see the ship. Knowing that Marda was aboard it and safe eased his mind, but the hole in one of the secondary hulls froze his heart. Their quarters were within that section of the ship. His pulse raced at the sight and he keyed his link. “Mercy Control, Monstero Nach Zero Three. Flight of Four requesting immediate clearance to dock.”
The featureless jet-black head of a Shinekian appeared on his screen. “Copy that, Monstero Nachs. Glad to see that you made it back.”
“Control. What is the status of Nach Zero Four and One Three?”
“Docked.”
“And their crews?”
Before the controller could reply Tadeh Qudas’ ever cool voice broke into the line. “Get aboard Vaughnt. Where’s your head?”
“On my shoulders,” Blazer replied out of habit and felt his focus return. “Nach Zero Six has taken heavy damage. Priority landing.”
Blazer took one more look at the hull breach before he closed on his hangar; looked back at As’Tril and the Planet Slicer in the distance. The planet had begun to break up around the massive ship revealing its curved profile. His hearts clutched at the sight. A world had died before him, and so had millions of people, but he felt numb to such numbers. He turned back to the Mercy as the grapplers took hold and closed his eyes. Marda’s face filled his vision. Images of her ranging from fine to dead raced through his mind and he snapped his eyes back open. “If they hurt her, I will end every last one of them.”
“Now you know how I feel,” Arion whispered.
UCSB Date 1003.146
Monstero Nach 003, Nimbus System
Blazer took a deep breath and steeled himself for the sight he knew awaited him. The shimmer of trailing hyperspace ether faded as the damaged transport dropped into normal space. It was like the rest; beaten and battered, the armored hull appearing held together with little more than good intentions. Windows dotted one deck of the transport and Blazer spotted the lines of litters within. He counted over a dozen species; all of them in the tattered remains of their uniforms. As Blazer approached the bridge of the ship he caught a sight that he had to check twice to be sure it was what he thought. Where the hull had been breached in one section, a body had formed the atmospheric seal that had likely saved the ship.
The sight sickened Blazer. Looking away, his own damaged wing screamed how close he’d come to being one of those soldiers. At least Marda’s safe, safe as she can be aboard the Mercy.
None of them had come through the last fight unscathed. Blazer’s new wing had been one of the few intact assemblies of Trevis and Telsh’s craft. The Crew Chiefs scavenging what parts they could from what remained of their fighter for the rest of the squadron. Marda’s fighter had proven to be the least d
amaged. But she’d been up almost non-stop since landing five cycles earlier; treating the wounded pouring into their damaged medical frigate.
Blazer looked over at Tadeh Qudas’ fighter in the distance, keyed his link to the tactical frequency. “Lead, Three.”
The icy voice of his squadron commander came back a moment later. “Go ahead Three.”
“Lead. This is the fourth military transport this cycle, where are the civilian evacuees from As’Tril?” he asked, trying to mask the concern he was feeling.
“Colonial survivors are being relocated to safe worlds and stations. The Mercy will only be receiving military personnel for security reasons.”
Arion piped up in reply. “Why aren’t we at the main staging area with the rest of the fleet?”
The pause before Tadeh Qudas replied spoke volumes about his own frustration at hiding away like this. “Command has their reasons.”
“Copy that Lead. Do we at least have any official numbers?” For reasons Blazer couldn’t explain even to himself, turning the loss into a numbers game dulled the pain of it.
“Three, have you linked autopilots yet?” Tadeh Qudas asked.
“Good, get us home.”
Blazer couldn’t argue either point and made ready.
Com Room 12, UCSBS Mercy
The Shinekian insistence on levels of system redundancy far outside the bounds of most races was something of a joke to many. To covert operators like Tadeh Qudas, it afforded definite perks. Prior to his insistence on using it, this com room hadn’t seen service in over an annura. That was how he liked it. Little larger than a closet, the dim red lights within served to remind him of his homeworld. The operator sitting at it eclipsed the single active screen. “What have you found?”
Gokhead jumped in response. The lack of a wireless connection or VR link in the disused station forced him to use older methods of intraweave stitching. “As well as I can with this antiquated equipment,” he groused and activated a second monitor. “Sir. I’m covering my tracks as best I can but this gear is…”
“A good soldier never blames the equipment.”
“But you also taught us to never take on a tank with a slingshot.”
Tadeh Qudas stared at the smaller Drashig for a moment, then sat down. “I did at that. But if you’re half as good as you and everyone else says you are…”
“I’m better. No one else I know could stitch around the two dozen security barriers between here and our reserve tach comm array using this gear.”
“Good. Are you sure you don’t want Que Dee’s help with this?”
Gokhead shook his head so hard that this braid snapped loose. “No way. That Synthetic might be smart, but it leaves the most inelegant stitches I’ve ever seen. I can see its virtual marker in every computer it touches, now that I know what to look for.”
“I see - anything else?”
Gokhead activated another screen and pointed to it. “Remember that weird carrier wave we had following us around on the training transports?”
Tadeh Qudas looked at the signal and nodded. “What of it?”
“It’s back. Now from what I can tell, it’s not accessing any of the ship’s main comm feeds, nor is it in the local intraweave. But I’ve isolated it from us as best I can.”
Tadeh Qudas sat upright at that news and looked directly at Gokhead, the young officer releasing a whiff of Drashig fear pheromone out of habit. “Have you found the source?”
Gokhead shook for a moment, but maintained his resolve. “No sir. I’m trying but it’s a tricky bastard. Should I alert security or comms about it?”
Good, he doesn’t let his fears control him. “No, not yet, but I want a list of everyone in the flotilla who was with us back then.”
“Yes sir,” Gokhead replied before an image filled the two screens. “Got it, we’re in.”
A 2-D image of a conference room with multiple high-ranking officers in attendance, in person or holographic form filled the monitors. “I had to piggyback a security feed for this. Anything more and we’d be detected. You’re sure no orbs will bother us here?”
“Marda assured me that the few orbs aboard avoid this part of the ship. Shinekians don’t like them much, so they keep to the medical bays. Now turn up the volume. I want to know why we’re being kept in the dark.”
War Room, UCSBSB-162, Veglid System
Admiral Quin Tosh all but galloped into the conference room. The senior captains and lower admirals of her fleet jumped to their feet. “Be seated,” she called and took her own before activating a hologram of the As’Tril system over the table. She took a moment to control herself and quieten her tail that wanted nothing more than to stand on end in rage. “It should come as no surprise that high command has declared As’Tril a complete loss.” No one looked the least bit surprised. “While we’re reviewing the data, word has come down from Core that we’ll receive additional support to combat this ‘Planet Slicer’”
“Do we have any plans on how to engage that monster?” a holographic admiral asked, bandages covering one eye. “It’s not like any conventional weapon will do any good.”
“High command is focusing on that as we speak; putting their best analysts to the task,” Quin Tosh replied. “In the meantime, our fleet’s been torn apart. We must heave to and make repairs. We need strategies about how to combat the Gorvian ships, and protect our evacuation ships better should the Gorvians attack another world.”
“That seems like a certainty ma’am. But how to protect the rescue ships? The Gorvians were Sheol bent on their destruction in the last engagement. It was like they wanted us to watch it happen,” a Drashig Captain commented.
A Lodran captain looked particularly distraught as she spoke up. “We had a civilian transport coming in to dock when a Gorvian bomber fired a torpedo into her. I’ve never seen such brutality before.”
“Have we determined how they were able to engage our stealth recon craft yet?” someone asked.
Quin Tosh shook her head. “No, not yet. But even with the number of ships we lost, it seems like the Gorvians wanted us to take a good look at their monsterpiece.” With the tap of a button the hologram shifted to that of a reconstruction of the Planet Slicer itself. The image took a long time to resolve itself before it zoomed in towards the surface and more wire frame bubbles than the system could render without lag appeared across its surface. The camera soon came to focus on a single bubble.
At the core of the bubble a defensive tower pointed out like an alert quill. Shield emitters, weapons, and sensor arrays covered the tower. To the admiral it looked like some kind of cancer-ridden cactus. “One of these towers, or at least one like it, stands at the center of each of these bubbles. The bubbles display their projected effective engagement ranges.”
“How did any of our recon ships even get close then?” a Rimdook captain hissed. “The ship is completely covered in them.”
Quin Tosh took a deep breath, ready for how her commanders would respond. “They let us.” Their shocked silence caught her off-guard but she pressed ahead. “They were bragging; showing us that there’s no way we can engage them directly. As my chief analyst put it, ‘they wanted us to see our doom.’”
The Lodran admiral leaned in towards the image. “They succeeded.”
“They also succeeded in showing us a way in,” Quin Tosh replied and her tail swooshed through the air. The image shifted to reveal what at first appeared to be a docking port for a transport craft. The Gorvian beside it for scale revealed it to be an airlock. “Two recon scouts from Ghost Dancer squadron managed to get this image.”
“What good will a single airlock do us? A ship that size must have millions.”
The image pulled back to reveal the airlock’s location near the largest of the Planet Slicer’s eng
ine banks. A conical corridor of dashed lines appeared a moment later. “That is what good it does us Captain Crail. Thanks to its proximity to the engines and the interference they create; we should be able to slip a corvette up this flight corridor. If the crew doesn’t deviate it will go undetected and unengaged by their mounted defenses.”
“That would be a suicide mission. Any ship with shields strong enough to resist the radiation and wash of those engines would be detected by the picket fleet.”
“True,” an Otlian General replied, a glimmer in his eye even through the hologram. “But, we could implant a strike team there if we created a big enough diversion. An autonomous Special Operations team could wreak all manner of havoc on their internal systems. Or gather needed intel. The question is how? Mounted armor would be too conspicuous and any forces on foot would spend a few cycles just to get to the engines. Then Gods forbid if they have to engage the enemy directly.”
Quin Tosh turned to the holographic form to her right, the head of UCSB R&D. “With these,” he announced and a new hologram coalesced. Two hominid forms appeared beside an old Gorvian image. The first looked like an oversized ACHES, but with more angular armor. A rifle that looked like it would be more at home on a fighter rested in its mechanical hands. Beside it, a shorter, stockier model stood. This one bristled with weapons, from missile launchers in the chest to plaser cannons encircling its fat forearms. “During the last conflict with the Gorvians over two centuries ago, the Confederation developed the Mechanized Ground Combat and Engagement, MeG-CE for ground operations. We are preparing to put them back into service.”
“Is this a joke? Any surviving MeG-CEs have to be in museums somewhere!”
“Actually,” the R&D head corrected him. “Most were put into long-term storage in case the Gorvians reappeared. Due in large part to their raids over the last few annura, we’ve been pulling them out and refitting them with more modern equipment. We’ve also fast-tracked development on newer designs. While we have no solid designs as yet, the requirements are for a far more capable design than the older models. We’ve already begun direct neurointerface integration to replace the old remote manipulator systems. If all goes to plan, we should have the first units fielded before the end of the tridec, and as early as two decles.”