The weaving target began to stagger backward but disappeared half a second after the impact as a blast originated from his chest. Ground cars on the consulate side of the street were thrown up against the decorated wall, falling back to the pavement in crumpled heaps.
“Are you sure you used a gel round on him?’ the lance corporal tore his eyes away from the carnage to look down at McElroy.
“Come on, Tim…” McElroy rolled his eyes “Even our HE rounds don’t have that kind of power. The gel must have hit a trigger on his vest bomb. That was an Obsidian Knight, sure as hell.”
“Obsidian Knight?” Dwight finally poked his head above the parapet to view the destruction. For someone who’s tired of life, he thought, I sure got my head down in a hurry.
The lance corporal, Tim, nodded as he brought his G20 assault rifle tight into his shoulder. “Dactari bad asses,” he muttered. “Operatives in the Krypteia who volunteer for certain-death missions like this one.” He nodded out at the swath of charred pavement where the mist had already begun to deposit a new, reflective sheen.
“In order to conceal their identity,” McElroy added, “they often have their tails removed. It helps them blend with locals but it screws up their balance. We’ve killed a few honest drunks in the past, so we use the gel rounds now.”
The lance corporal used the optics of his G20 assault rifle to scan the surrounding area. He spared a quick glance at Dwight before activating his earpiece. “Six, this is Six-Two. Looks like he was going to try breaching the perimeter wall. That means there are more of ‘em out there right now, watching us. Probably in those buildings across the street.” He tilted his head slightly, bringing his left hand up to touch the earpiece as he nodded. “Roger, Six-Two out.”
He turned to Dwight as a powerful low-pitched whine began to sound from the consulate roof. “We’re shutting down this gate for a while, Doc. You should go back in and take the east gate if you still want to go sightseeing.”
Dwight threaded his way back into the compound, looking up to see an assault carrier lift off from the roof of the consulate on its way toward the blast area. Rows of feet dangled from the open doors on either side of the forty foot long craft. He looked down at the pathway winding between the reddish trees toward the east gate.
The biologist in him mused on how the trees under the new city had adapted to the particular wavelengths of light that bounced down the canyons of glass above. Though the trees topside were green, just like on Earth, foliage down here was bathed in a different wavelength of light and tended to favor carotenoid pigments.
Without any conscious thought, his feet began taking him toward the east gate.
Throwing Dice
The Salamis, Ten Minutes from Oaxes
“Twenty-eight ships.” Harry gazed at the telemetry being sent over from the Leetayo. It was displayed on a screen in his quarters so that none of the bridge crew would wonder where he was getting such accurate information. There were twenty-eight enemy ships in Oaxian Orbit. Harry and his squadron of thirteen ships were only a ten-minute jump away.
“They’re broadcasting doom and gloom on every local channel,” Mickey Willsen reported. “Streets will flow with blood, heads will roll, that kind of stuff.”
“But no mass drivers,” Harry mused. “If they came for revenge, they wouldn’t leave anything standing.” He nodded to himself. “What we’re seeing, Major Willsen, is the iron fist in the velvet glove. They start off with the threat of retribution and when the Oaxians come to them on bended knee, they put the glove back on and make peace from a position of strength.” He could feel his pulse quickening. “We need to hit them while the glove is still off.”
“Their trace history shows the formation as being relatively dynamic,” Mickey’s face was on another monitor, next to the telemetry feed. “They keep shifting around.”
Harry nodded. “This is a more experienced force than the one at Tauhento. They’re trusted to operate outside of a block formation as long as they maintain a protective envelope for the troopship.” He took a calming breath. “This is going to be a tougher fight.”
“I’d be happier if we could hit ‘em with a good dose of distortion wash,” Mickey said. “Of course, that would blow our advantage. If even one escape pod gets away from us, the game is up.”
Harry was in mid-nod when he realized what an idiot he was allowing himself to be. He grinned, even though he was angry at himself for almost letting an opportunity to slip by. “Leave that to me,” he told her, bringing up a second channel on her screen. A signal NCO’s face peered out at him, eyes growing wide as he recognized his commodore. “Get me your captain,” Harry ordered.
Carol Cernan appeared on the screen. “What can I do for you… Sir?” It wasn’t the first time she’d almost called him Harry by mistake.
“Captain, I’d like you to make the first jump into Oaxian space.” Harry pulled the current locations of the enemy fleet and combined their signals, effectively scrubbing out any ship-specific data. “I’m sending the coordinates that we want you to get eyes on, keep at least five thousand kilometers away. The rest of the fleet will arrive a minute or two after you, but we’ll be jumping in much closer.”
“Sir, is this supposed to make sense to me?”
Harry shook his head with a grin. “Not in the least,” he replied, “but I’m hoping it’ll make some kind of sense to the enemy. Jump in ten minutes from my mark.” He reached forward to the time display in the bottom right corner, touching a green button. “Mark.”
As Carol disappeared, Mickey unmuted her channel. “So the enemy, who possess FTL comms, will assume that the Völund is using similar technology to act as our scout?”
“That’s right, Major,” Harry was unsurprised at how quickly she saw through his scheme. This was the woman, after all, who’d hacked into the Dactari operating systems during the first war. She had used that discovery to infect most of the enemy ships in Mars orbit employing what looked like a firmware update from Dactar.
Because of her, enemy ships had been captured intact so engineers on Earth could then pull them apart and learn their secrets.
Because of her, Humans were in the Republic as invaders, not as prisoners.
“That still leaves a lot of our own people with unanswered questions, sir.”
“It does,” Harry admitted. “But when they get no answers, they’ll speculate. Within days, we’ll be hearing rumors that our engineers finally cracked the FTL comms problem and they’ll believe the Völund was scouting for us.” He shrugged. “The last thing on anybody’s mind will be the Leetayo.”
He reached up and sent the coordinates to Prouse’s address. The consolidated point was still updating in near real time. He opened another channel to the bridge. “Captain Prouse, please be so good as to execute a combat jump to these coordinates. Current intel suggests a force of thirty enemy vessels. Jump-off time is my current mark plus sixty seconds. The Völund will be jumping in a full minute ahead of us.”
It was short notice, but the fleet was already spooled up and waiting for the order. Eleven minutes was just adequate for a coordinated jump into a hostile zone.
“Aye sir,” Prouse replied, setting down the diaphragm-sealed mug that had been at his lips when Harry contacted him. The magnetic base snapped to the ferric-laced glass of the trace table. “Combat jump on those coordinates in just under ten minutes.” He raised an eyebrow just slightly. “We’ve just enough time to pull it off, sir. I’ll get right on it.” The screen went dark again.
Harry turned his attention back to Mickey. “Shut down the feed. We have the data we need. Chances are good for us to hurt them bad on drop-out. After that it’s a slugging match. See you on the other side.” He turned off the screens and headed for the bridge.
His job was essentially done. As the commodore, he had taken what measures he could to protect his command and safeguard the incredibly valuable resource that was currently plugged into the bridge of the Leetayo. Marine boar
ding parties were loaded aboard seven sledges left over from the first war. Mosquitoes had been cannibalized so their shield penetrating arrays could give the sledges a way through enemy shields. Initial testing had proven them to be effective.
“Commodore on deck!” The bridge crew, sensibly, went on about their duties despite the announcement and Harry strode over to the glass-enclosed wing projecting out at the front where the view was best. Adams was there as well and Harry tried to keep just far enough from him to avoid making small talk. He was too keyed up for chit chat.
“Distortion alert!” the sensor coordinator called out. “It’s the Völund. She’s off.”
Many of the operators were looking at each other, Harry noticed. Good, they’ll assume she’s the reason for our accurate jump.
The ensuing sixty seconds lasted far longer than Harry would have expected. He had just sent some of his best friends into enemy territory alone. Carol was the oldest friend he had, though he certainly wouldn’t have worded it that way in her hearing. His hand came to rest on his stomach and he grinned, remembering the last time he had slipped up with the word ‘old’ when referring to her. It had taken a full minute to regain his breath, but it seemed as though the current minute was taking much longer.
“Jumping in: ten, niner, eight, seven, six, fife, fo-wer, three, two, one, jumping.” The propulsion officer suddenly seemed to occupy several places at once, like those old lenticular pictures that shifted when you moved them. Harry fought to keep his lunch down. He’d never had problems with the process until a pack of Caradi pirates knocked the Völund back into regular space with an artificial singularity four years earlier. He’d been able to perceive the distortion ever since.
The bridge gradually resolved itself back into one piece and Harry took a series of shallow breaths as quietly as he could.
“Link shows all vessels have jumped off successfully,” the tactical officer announced. “Spooling up all weapons for combat drop-out.”
Incredibly, the following ten minutes seemed to pass faster than the minute of waiting. At least we’re on the move, Harry thought as he looked up at the chronometer. They should be dropping out right about now.
I Just Work Here
The Völund, Oaxian space
“…three, two, one, dropping out.” Lieutenant Franklin chanted.
Carol leaned toward her monitors as they came back to life. “Son of a bitch,” she muttered. “How the hell did he know they’d be there?”
“Captain?” The weapons officer frowned back at her.
“Never mind, Wally. Just keep everything spun up and ready to fire.”
“Aye ma’am. We’ve got tracks on twenty-eight hostiles. None of ‘em seem to be taking any interest in us beyond the usual medium-range scans.”
“They’re preparing to land ground forces from that big bastard of a troopship.” She opened the icon on her screen, ensuring the accuracy of the data entered by the targeting systems. “They won’t reduce their covering force to send a ship all the way over here.”
“Uh huh.” Wally sounded unconvinced. He made a show of looking out of every window on the bridge. “You did say the rest of the task force was coming, right?”
“Any second now, Wally.” Carol kept her eyes on the tactical display, hoping she was right about the enemy’s need to cover the landing. It’s like we fell into the tiger enclosure at the damned zoo. Any sudden moves and they’ll pounce. “Keep the mains spooled up – just in case.”
The shadow of the window frames fell across her screen and faded quickly. She looked up out of pure instinct but, at five thousand kilometers, there was no chance of seeing ships. She looked back at her screen and let out a breath that she hadn’t even known she was holding.
“That was one hell of a drop-out!” Wally enthused. “Took the heart out of their formation, from the looks of it.”
“Franklin, bring us to full bias,” Carol ordered. “Drop us in there before we miss the whole fight.”
Mixed results
The Salamis, Oaxian space
“Reading eight hostile frigates and five corvettes under power,” the sensor coordinator announced as the screens began to populate with data. “Incoming trace from the Völund indicates an original force of fifteen frigates, thirteen corvettes or lesser class, and one troop ship.”
Harry and Colonel Adams joined Prouse at the trace table. Its glass surface was littered with moving icons.
“Launching the drones,” a weapons officer announced. The drones were little more than mobile Mosquito launchers with heavy shielding, and the Alliance was eager to test them in combat.
“Let’s try two ships for boarding,” Harry suggested as he reached out to touch icons for the nearest two enemy frigates. “No sense in getting greedy, especially since we have to let ‘em keep firing at us until our Marines can seize control.”
“Agreed,” Prouse looked at Adams and, having received a nod from the colonel, released an update of the trace, declaring the two ships off limits for fleet gunnery.
Two more icons turned orange as the rumble of weapons fire began to echo through the hull. “Midgaard requesting boarding targets as well.” Prouse looked up at Harry, one eyebrow slightly raised.
Harry nodded. “Their fire doesn’t overlap with the inbound ordinance coming from our targets,” he said. “Let them try.”
Prouse authorized the two icons and released the trace to the fleet a second time. “Looks like the troop ship lost its entire engineering section from the Xi drop wash. She’s drifting.”
“Keep everyone well clear of that ship,” Harry ordered. “Get too close and you’ll find a hundred pods filled with troops burrowing through your hull. We’ll fight the effectives first and then smash her when we hold the orbitals.”
Prouse and Adams shared a glance. “You mean to destroy her with all hands, sir?” The fleet captain asked. “She’s combat non-effective with at least a hundred thousand souls aboard…”
“You’ll find them combat effective if you try to put a boarding party on her,” Harry snapped. “They’re not going to surrender and they’ll try any dirty trick in the book to get aboard our own ships and kill every last one of us.”
“Boarding teams away,” the sensor coordinator announced, breaking the uneasy spell that was hanging over the trace table.
“Fire the decoys,” Prouse commanded.
They watched as the sledges, originally designed to punch through enemy hulls in the first war, made their way to the targets under full acceleration. The hydraulically dampened inner hull would slide forward as the outer hull tore through the fabric of the enemy ship, reducing the impact forces to tolerable levels for the Marines inside.
A complement of twenty dummy Mosquitoes had been allocated to each boarding attempt. The one hundred forty sub-munitions would take some of the heat off each sledge – a nuclear warhead was a bigger threat than soldiers.
“I’m ordering a concentration of fire on the six eligible frigates,” Prouse said as he began dragging vectors from Alliance ships to the enemy. “They’ve got the heaviest guns. Sooner they stop firing the better.”
The entire bridge staff lurched to the side in unison and every surface in the ship vibrated. Prouse missed his grab at the edge of the trace table and went sprawling. Alarms blared and the bridge chatter died for a couple of stunned seconds before returning at a higher intensity.
“Nuclear strike on the starboard beam, ventral surface,” an officer announced, not quite in a yell but close enough for government work. “Damage control parties are en route, but the effects don’t seem to have reached any critical systems. Looks like less than half a megaton.” The Human forces, who relied heavily on nuclear warheads, preferred to build their own ships with that threat in mind.
The best locked door in any town usually belongs to a thief.
“Where the hell did it come from?” Prouse demanded as he pulled himself back to his feet.
“Tango charlie-four, sir.” Th
e young woman replied instantly. If the charlie class corvettes were firing nukes, then the original plan of concentrating on the enemy frigates would need re-evaluation. A half-megaton warhead slipping past the shields was a bigger threat than any linear accelerator projectile.
“Fire control, turn the drones loose on that sumbitch,” he ordered, his lips drawing back from his teeth in an angry snarl. “Bring the main batteries to bear on the nearest charlie and open up on it with everything else while we move. Helm, slave to fire control.”
“Slaving helm to fire control, aye, sir.”
The massive vessel began to turn toward one of the corvettes but the small vessel was accelerating rapidly toward the center of the enemy formation. Before the centerline of the Salamis had quite reached the target, two brilliant plumes of plasma erupted from the bow of the massive carrier barely a tenth of a second apart. One of the five newest carriers in the fleet, the Salamis had four linear accelerators built into her hull.
The first hundred-kilo slug of steel streaked out to slam into the enemy shield, bucking the small ship back several meters and weakening the shield. The second slug hit the shield before it could recover and the corvette, roughly a sixth the size of a Dactari frigate, was turned into a tumbling cloud of parts.
At almost the same instant, two of the Salamis’ drones were in the vicinity of Tango charlie-four and they both fired a three-weapon salvo. The sub-munitions separated almost instantly before continuing their four-second flight to the enemy’s shield. Thirty-eight of the original forty-two warheads made their way inside the shield and group-detonated.
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.
The Orphan Alliance Page 17