by John Ringo
The secondary line of defense was composed of the six upgraded Mark 71 turrets, emplaced in lieu of the old twin five-inch mounts. These were actually the first line of defense if, as the Posleen had before, the enemy used landers to attack. The barbettes and magazines below those turrets carried only anti-lander ammunition, solid bolts of depleted uranium. These could be effective against individual tenar, but their rate of fire was just not adequate to a massed tenar attack; though no one had really imagined any of the formerly three-ship flotilla having to stand alone as the Des Moines was now. Moreover, it was a case of almost absurd overkill to use a two-hundred and sixty pound depleted uranium bolt against a single flying sled carrying a single God King.
The third line of defense, the gun tubs, had been intended for 20mm antiaircraft guns. These had been replaced in design by twin three-inch mounts when it was discovered that a 20mm shell was simply too small to stop a determined kamikaze. The three-inch mounts had, in turn, been recently replaced by fully automated turrets housing five-barreled, 30mm Gatlings, stripped from A-10 aircraft that had become useless, having had no possible chance of survival against automated Posleen air defenses.
The fourth line of defense?
“Jesus,” prayed McNair, “I hope it doesn’t come to that.” He then added, half jokingly, “We don’t have a single cutlass aboard.”
Daisy, eyes closed now as if concentrating on her targeting, as in fact she was, answered, “Have Sintarleen pass out the submachine guns I traded for. He knows where they are. Indian built Sterlings. They’re simple enough that anyone can use one after five minutes’ familiarization.”
“Submachine guns?” McNair asked incredulously.
Eyes still closed, Daisy asked, “Would you have actually preferred cutlasses? I was watching Master and Commander and got to thinking…”
Without another word McNair spoke over the shipwide intercom. “Mr. Sinbad, this is the captain. Pass out the small arms… the… Sterlings. And all hands, now hear this: I never expected to say this, boys, but… all hands stand by to repel boarders.”
It was magnificent, Binastarion thought, even while hating the source of that magnificence with every fiber of his being. The ship was wreathed in fire and smoke, fighting furiously to keep the host of the People away.
The God King was puzzled, actually, that the host had not done more damage to the ship than it had. Hundreds of plasma bolts had been fired, along with several dozen hypervelocity missiles. (Those last were pricey and a clan as poor as that of Binastarion could ill afford to waste them.) Some of the HVMs had been intercepted by fire from the ship and destroyed in flight; the ship was putting out a practically solid wall of DU and iron projectiles around itself. Some seemed to have been spoofed by the immaterial holograms the ship projected. Others, though, many others, appeared to have struck home. Yet the firepower of the defenders seemed undiminished.
That sparked a thought. While the ship could spoof HVMs, while it could mimic in safe quadrants the bursts of intense flame that indicated cannon fire, the flame of the actual guns it could not mask.
And those sources cannot be far above the water nor too far from the center of the fire.
Shouting words of encouragement to his sons to press the attack closer Binastarion concentrated carefully on the pattern of flames belching forth from his enemy.
There, he thought, as a steady, measured burst of flames spewed forth from what he thought must be amidships. There is a true source.
The God King marked what he believed to be an actual weapon on his control screen, then tapped it several times to carefully sight his own, superior, HVM at the target. With a whispered prayer that the shit-demons not spoil his aim, he ordered his Artificial Sentience, “Fire.”
McNair and the bridge crew were knocked senseless and thrown from their feet by the blast.
“Oh, God!” Daisy screamed, clutching her side and flickering in and out of apparent existence.
Below and behind the battle bridge an enemy missile had struck the nearest secondary turret, cutting through the armor, incinerating the lone gun crewman on station and, unfortunately, setting off the propellant charge for the gun’s next round even as it was being fed into the breach. The resultant blast was enough to knock the bridge crew to the deck, to blow the turret clean off the ship and to rip a gaping hole, three feet by seven, in the portside hull above the armor deck.
At the low angle at which the HVM hit, it was unable to do more than score a long gash in the thick steel of the armor deck. Molten steel blasted off from that armor was sufficient, however, to wound or kill better than thirty crewman standing by for damage control on the port side of Des Moines’ splinter deck. The screams of those who still lived, hideously mangled and burned, echoed through the ship.
Continuing on, the HVM cut through five bulkheads and a passageway before erupting into the lightly armored magazine that fed one of the 30mm Gatling turrets. The heat of its passage was sufficient to set off the 30mm ammunition in its entirety, blowing that turret, too, completely off the ship and hopelessly jamming the one next to it. The explosion of the ammunition, confined to a degree by the ship’s deck and hull, fed inward through the gap torn by the HVM itself.
A dozen of Sintarleen’s Indowy crewman, standing by to participate in damage control, were half crushed and badly surface burned by the explosion leaking in through that gap. Their screams added to those of the humans caught in the path of the enemy missile.
Father Dan Dwyer was first on the scene of the port side misery. His first thought was to go to the aid of the wounded. Yet the priest was an old seaman. That was important, to be sure. But more important was to let the captain know how his ship fared. The priest picked up the intercom and rang the bridge.
It seemed a long moment before anyone answered. When the captain came on he seemed stunned, groggy.
“McNair.”
Dwyer had to shout to make himself heard over the shrieking of torn and burned crewmen. “Jeff, this is Dan. We’re bad hit but not fatally. Number fifty-three secondary turret is out.”
The priest looked upward at the smoky sky through the gaping hole defined by twisted and tortured metal. “I mean really out. She’s gone and you’ve got a hole in your defenses. At least one.”
“Fuck… the… hole,” McNair answered, groggily. “Daisy’s a… brave girl… she… can be… repaired. What about… my crew?”
The corpsmen had arrived on scene while Dwyer spoke with the bridge. They went from body to body, looking for live crew who had a chance of survival. More often than not a medico would make a quick examination and shake his head in resignation. Morphine was being liberally dispensed. In the dosages used it was a sure sign, the Jesuit knew, that the crewman so graced was not expected to survive. Slowly, the shrieks, moans and screams softened as one hopelessly butchered and charred sailor after another was put under.
Dwyer’s eyes came to rest on a charred, disembodied leg. He fought down nausea. “It’s bad, Skipper, as bad as I’ve ever seen. Thirty men down, at least. Might be forty. Hard to tell; some of them are in pieces. They’re… well, they’re just ripped apart… and flash burned. And that’s only on the port side. I’m heading to starboard to check there.”
Binastarion wasn’t sure his HVM had struck home until he saw the odd shaped, multifaceted piece of metal flying high above the deceptive holograms projected by his enemy. Momentarily the holograms flickered out and he saw the ship’s true shape, long and lean and predatory, through the smoke.
How strange, the God King thought, the one thing I have seen on this shitball of a world the aesthetics of which don’t make me want to wretch. My enemy is even, in its way, the more beautiful for being so deadly.
Even very beautiful things, however, must die. And so must that ship.
“Forward, my sons,” the God King chieftain exulted into his communicator. “Forward to victory and glory everlasting.”
The great ship shuddered with the repeated hits of P
osleen HVMs now. Overhead the thick armored deck rang as two- to four-inch-deep gouges were torn out of it. Even through the stout metal, the priest was certain he heard at least two more secondary explosions. Those had to be nothing less than eight-inch or 30mm batteries going up in smoke and flame.
Dimly, the priest sensed the captain desperately ordering that canister and high explosive be brought to the secondary turrets. He hurried the performance of last rites for the fallen, human and Indowy, both. After all, God will know his own.
Dwyer became aware of Sintarleen standing off to one side. The Indowy’s expression was unreadable in any detail to a human not specially trained in the alien culture. Dwyer looked for a sign of disapproval, even so, and found none on the alien’s furry, batlike face.
Sintarleen looked back and shrugged, a bit of body language picked up from the human crew.
“Though we have no such thing as religion, as you would think of it, it couldn’t hurt, Father.”
Sinbad continued, “These were a third, or nearly a third, of all that remained of my clan, Father. Of those great and industrious multitudes now only sixteen males remain on this planet, and another one hundred or so transfer neuters and females held in bondage somewhere by the Elves. We had hoped to buy our sisters and brothers out of that bondage, but now…”
The Indowy bowed its head so deeply its chin rested on its great chest. Sintarleen could not weep, was not built to shed tears, yet his body shook with the overwhelming emotions of seeing so large a percentage of his few remaining kinsmen slaughtered.
Dwyer did not know what to say. Instead of words, therefore, he enfolded the quivering Indowy in a great bear hug, patting the creature’s back to give what comfort it might be worth. As he did so, Dwyer couldn’t help but notice that, despite its small stature, the alien’s body was one big chord of knotted muscle. He had the glimmerings of an idea.
We need to get antipersonnel munitions to the secondary turrets. But the shells are too heavy for one man to carry and a stretcher carried by two has the devil’s own time of it squeezing through the watertight doors. But…
Dwyer stepped back and looked at the alien intently. “Sintarleen, how much weight can you people carry easily?”
The Indowy frowned, puzzled.
“How much weight can you pick up?” the priest demanded urgently.
The Indowy, temporarily distracted from his grief, shrugged and answered, “Maybe five or six hundred of your pounds. A bit more for some of us. Why?”
“Assemble your people, my furry friend. Go to the magazines under the great triple turrets. Get from them rounds of canister, two for each of you. Carry them to the barbettes for the secondary turrets, the singles.
“Maybe you cannot fight, boyo, but — praise the Lord! — you can pass the ammunition!”
Each effective hit of a Posleen HVM or plasma bolt was like a hot knife plunging into Daisy’s vitals. She had grown almost used to the agony, enough so that her avatar barely showed it. Only the occasional wince, and the almost continuous rocking, indicated that the ship knew pain that would have killed a human.
The avatar’s eyes opened up and it seemed to look directly at McNair.
“I have anti-flyer munitions for the four remaining secondaries now,” she said, loudly to make herself heard over McNair’s concussion-induced, and hopefully temporary, partial deafness. “A few anyway. More coming.”
Even as the avatar made this announcement, the Des Moines shuddered under what felt to McNair to be at least three separate impacts amidships.
The captain shook his head for what seemed like the fiftieth time. He was still seeing double from the concussion of the first effective HVM strike. Despite this it was easy to see the smoke pouring upward from Daisy’s sundered deck and bulkheads.
McNair forced himself to think. Holograms or not, the enemy can see we are hurt. They’ll press in. Nothing to do about it. Or…
“Daisy, you can’t hide us anymore, can you?”
The avatar started to shake its head, then realized that with the captain so badly concussed he might not make that out.
“I’m afraid not, sir. The smoke is rising too high, and I have lost some abilities to project false images as well.”
So hard to think. Yet he had to. If we can’t look healthy, maybe we can…
“Daisy, at the next hit… or the one after if it takes you longer to prepare… I want you to drop all the cover… make us look… worse off… helpless. Dead guns… ruined turrets. Fire… smoke. And cease fire until…”
“Until the bastards mass to close in for the kill,” the avatar finished.
“And then you’ll have to pick your own targets, Daisy,” he said. “I can’t see to direct you. But you have authorization to fire.”
Another hit rang throughout the ship.
The price was appalling. Still, Binastarion was certain, it would be worth it if only the damned threshkreen vessel might be sunk.
Smoke was pouring out of the ship now as if from a chain of close set volcanoes, or some single rift in a planet’s skin. Even her main batteries went out of action. As the God King watched a last group of explosive shells detonated in the air, close together, sending a storm of hot jagged metal forward in a series of cones. The agonized cries of his children, faithfully amplified by his AS, shook the Posleen chieftain.
He checked the battle screen on his tenar. There was hardly anything left in front of the enemy ship to bar its path. The ranks had been badly thinned behind it as well, so much so that he doubted the courage of his pursuing sons. Only on the flanks was the People’s attack holding up and making gains. The volcanolike smoke pouring from the gaping holes in the deck and hull told as much.
The defensive fire on the flanks had been mostly to thank for that. Binastarion was not sure why, but guessed that the secondary weapons carried none of the simple, scatterable or explosive munitions that emptied tenar right and left to the ship’s fore and aft.
“Press in, my children, press in! The foe is weak at the center. Close in and pinch it in two with our claws!”
Slipping and sliding on the crimson blood seeping along the smoky corridors’ decks, the grunting, straining Indowy switched anti-tenar ammunition from the main batteries’ magazines to the secondaries’ as fast as they could fight past the wounded, dead and dying crewmen and those carrying them to sickbay.
Sintarleen hurried from barbette to barbette, directing his kinsmen to where the ammunition was most needed. While the ammunition bearers were too busy and far too strained to give much thought to the purpose or morality of their task, Sinbad had just enough freedom of thought to question his basic philosophy.
We are a peaceful folk. We may not use violence. These are our teachings from earliest age. It is only these teachings that have enabled my people to survive, as so many other species have not, the transition from barbarism to true technology and civilization.
Yet my people even now carry the means of violence to those still capable of it. We make the weapons they use.
What is it that keeps us pure? Distance? The humans of this ship fight at a distance and rarely see the violence they do. How am I or my people here more pure than they? Merely because we will not see the violence? That is absurd.
Must it always be so? Must it always be our best and finest who fall? Curse the demons who have condemned us to this, curse them more even than that threshkreen ship which is, after all, only trying to survive as we try to survive.
Binastarion’s heart was heavy within his chest. Momentarily his head hung with grief. So many fine sons lost. So many brave and noble philosophers, bright beings with full lives ahead of them, cut down and sunk even beyond recovery to feed the host.
But doubts in voice or action fed no one. The God King lifted his head, steeled his heart and his voice. A group of tenar sped by to his right, led by a favored son, Riinistarka. Binastarion raised his hand in salute to the young God King, shouting encouragement over the din of battle. The clan le
ader’s communicator picked up the hearty shout and passed it on to the junior’s.
“We’ll take them, Father. Never fear,” the young philosopher sent back, returning his sire’s salute. “Forward, my brothers. Forward that our clan might live.”
Demons of fire and ice, spare me my son, the father prayed.
“Firing,” Daisy answered coldly. She had come to this fight full of enthusiasm. That enthusiasm was gone, replaced by only cold determination. Now she had felt the fire in her own belly; felt the pain of burning penetration and dismemberment. The avatar had to answer coldly, for every emotion of which she was capable was suppressed to keep the agony at bay.
With two secondary turrets down, and given the specific turrets, Daisy had a choice of adding two to the defense of each side, or three to engage on one side and one on the other. She opted for the latter and six turrets, three of them triples, with a total of eleven guns still working, swiveled to engage on the side from which the nearest Posleen threat came.
Riinistarka was young. His father might have said, “young and foolish.” However that might have been, he was young enough to feel the joy and exhilaration of closing on a worthy foe in company with his brothers. If this was foolishness, so be it. Besides, if he were truly foolish he would not have felt the fear that gnawed at his insides, threatening to break through the joy and exhilaration. He had not known true fear since his dangerous time in the pens as a helpless, cannibalistic nestling. The memory of that made him shudder as present fear could not.
And how can it be foolish, anyway, to fight for my clan to regain its position, he thought, to fight for my clan to survive?
Ahead of Riinistarka the threshkreen warship seemed broken and helpless with jagged-edged metal showing where the smoke and flames did not cover. The covering giant demon that the God King had seen from a distance was gone now. He knew, intellectually, that it was not a real demon, of course. Though the practical difference between a real demon and that ship seemed minimal, at best. He was sure, in his innermost being, that the representation had come from whatever intelligence quickened the ship.