by Elliott Kay
“Guess that settles it, admiral?” asked Branch.
“I’m afraid so,” said Khatri.
“There’s more,” Santos continued breathlessly. “She says Tanner Malone is on the planet and he’s organizing a decapitation strike.”
“…huh,” said Branch.
“Admiral, did I hear Mister Santos correctly?” asked Khatri.
“Yes, ma’am.” Branch turned to face her. “Admiral, I should advise you this situation will most definitely escalate.”
* * *
“Phoenix, this is Beowulf. Request to speak with your captain on point-to-point.”
Lynette nodded to Elise to confirm. No one would be able to break in on the short and direct beam with any tech she knew of. “Beowulf, this is Captain Lynette Kelly of the Phoenix. What can we do for you?”
A face appeared on the screen: young, male, East Asian, tense. He wore an Archangel Navy vac suit and helmet, but he contradicted the message it sent with his introduction. “Captain, I’m Lieutenant Commander Han of the Union Fleet. This formation is under command of Fleet Admiral Khatri here on Beowulf. You’re placing yourself under this chain of command and the Fleet legal code for the duration of this action. Are you clear on everything this means?”
“Yes we are, Commander Han. We’re all aware,” she replied.
“Then you are hereby under Fleet command and jurisdiction for the duration.” Han’s eyes turned to something right beside his communications screen. “Can you confirm the stats and crew you sent us? Does anything in here need updating or correction? Anything in need of repair?”
“No corrections. We’re up to date and in good shape. What do you need?”
“We need you to escort our shuttles through that line of enemy ships and on down through the atmosphere for a troop deployment into ground combat,” said Han. “There’s a high chance of losing all communication once you’re in the atmosphere. We’ll cover you on the way in, but past that cloud layer you’ll be the one covering the landers. And if you can’t reach us, you’ll have to react to conditions in the air and on the ground on your own.” He turned back from his other screen to give her his full attention. “All due respect, we wouldn’t normally consider asking this of a civilian vessel, but I’ve got three Archangel Navy officers here telling me to put you to work. Can you handle this?”
“Send us a course and patch us through to our shuttles. We’re good to go.”
“Understood. Direction incoming. Be aware we have reason to believe broadcast encryption won’t stand up to the enemy. Be careful what you put out. Stand by for the go order. Your group designation is Union Recon. Look to Recon One as your lead. They will give the order, but you’ll know your cue when you see it. Good luck.” His screen blinked out.
More than one mouth on the bridge let out a tense breath. “Guess it’s nice to be appreciated,” said Veronica. Like the rest, she looked at the course sent from Beowulf as Sanjay brought them in line with the other shuttles. Connections happened fast, leaning more on wordless signals than voice communication. St. Catherine would lead Beowulf’s contingent. Phoenix would be with a collection of others. “Notice how they said they’ll cover us like they know this will work against whatever tech these aliens have?”
“We can’t know until we try,” said Lynette. She had her finger on the key for the ship’s internal net when a broadcast from Beowulf cut her short.
“Minoan vessels, this is Admiral Khatri of the Union Fleet. We want only peace and friendly relations, but we must first assure the safety of our citizens on the planet. These conditions require us to land several vessels on the surface. Any attempt to block or intercept our vessels will be considered an act of war and we will respond appropriately. This is not negotiable.”
Veronica shrugged. “At least she’s direct.”
Rays of yellow and gold burst from every Minoan ship. Beowulf and others took hits, with some vessels enduring the attacks better than others. At least one frigate on the tactical screen winked from blue to grey signifying a complete loss. More rays came from below the clouds surrounding the planet.
“Evasive!” Lynette snapped. Sanjay was already on it, dropping Phoenix from her position and tilting hard to port. The move saved them from a blast intended for the yacht. More enemy fire concentrated on the bigger ships, also now moving in evasive patterns, but the blast made clear the Minoans hadn’t overlooked the smaller targets.
Return fire erupted. Lasers flashed from every ship in the formation from narrow turret beams to the blasts of heavy cannons. Missiles streaked from the larger vessels, exploding short of the enemy line in broad, bright showers of burning chaff and the accompanying mess of electromagnetic signals.
“That’s our cue,” urged Lynette, already seeing the flash from Recon One. “Go, go!”
Phoenix shot forward in an erratic path, beginning a corkscrew only to suddenly drop under Sanjay’s deft hands at the helm. The shuttles stuck close together. Lynette wondered if anyone in the impromptu squadron had ever practiced as a unit before today. The group plunged into the bright sparkling chaos of chaff clouds.
With only fourteen ships, the enemy couldn’t put together a tight line surrounding the entire planet. The landing party flew in a curve surprisingly close to one larger disc-shaped vessel in hopes of limiting their field of fire. The path offered a second layer of protection by virtue of Phoenix and her Interceptor guns.
Like Sanjay, Val had her finger on the trigger before Lynette had finished saying, “Open fire.” The small turrets were already extended from the junction of each wing to the main hull. Sanjay tilted the ship over to bring them both to bear. Rapid-fire explosive shells meant to shoot down incoming missiles could also create a disruptive mess much like chaff missiles. With the shells set for randomized detonation, the spread of fire created small explosions in the space between Phoenix and her target. More than a few shells made it all the way to the Minoan vessel’s hull.
The ploy seemed to work as they emerged from the shower of chaff at high speed. Nothing came from the closest Minoan vessel. The group covered a short distance past before one of its sister vessels caught on and opened fire. The first blasts suggested a few advantages against the enemy. Their rate of fire did not impress, nor did their accuracy.
Good fortune carried the group to the first sparks of atmospheric entry across their escort’s canopy. As the mild bumps of descent shook through Phoenix, the nearest shuttle exploded after a single hit from one of the Minoan ships.
“Recon Three is gone,” warned Veronica.
“And we still can’t see shit through those clouds,” added Sanjay.
“We’re out of range on the bad guy unless you want me to put the lasers on him,” came Val over the intercom.
“No, keep the Interceptors going to cover the others,” said Lynette. “With any luck they won’t see through those clouds any better than we can.”
“You know it’s apparently their planet, right?” said Veronica.
“We could get lucky,” Lynette replied.
The yacht shook as if struck by a hammer across the top of the hull. Nearly everyone on the bridge crouched and tensed, but none of the internal sensors blared a warning. Veronica made sense of it. “Near miss. That was atmosphere outside the ship. Like thunder. No damage.”
“Tell that to my teeth,” said Elise. “We’re losing the net as predicted.”
The Union Fleet shuttles ahead of Phoenix plunged into the clouds. Another shuttle from one of the Lai Wa ships followed close behind the yacht. Val cut her stream of fire to short bursts to conserve ammunition.
Lynette stole a look at the situation behind Phoenix on another of her tactical screens. While the enemy held mostly to their original positions, evasive action broke up the Union formation. Things didn’t look good. Lai Wa’s cruiser Tianmen listed badly from a tear through her starboard side. The bow of the frigate Donnelly drifted away from the scattered debris of her midsection. Monaco and Dublin looked to
have taken grievous hits that left both destroyers venting gases into space.
Beowulf fought on despite ugly wounds. One enemy beam seemed to have cut a hole straight into her underside, leaving a crater near the hangar bay doors. A long black streak running up and down her starboard side suggested a blow that tore deeply into her reinforced hull. Yet as other ships struggled to avoid enemy fire, Beowulf advanced. While the battleship narrowly escaped another head-on shot from her enemies, Beowulf landed a solid cannon strike on the nearest enemy dreadnought along with hits from her secondary batteries.
The question of accuracy seemed settled. Still, the dreadnought remained intact. Red-hot pieces of the dreadnought’s hull broke away, only for the enemy vessel to turn in place and present an undamaged side armed with the same deadly weapons.
The view lasted seconds. Though Phoenix provided excellent optics and enhancements, her receptors couldn’t see through the clouds. Active scanning and wide-spectrum sensors went blind. Phoenix lost everything as she plummeted into the atmosphere.
“This is worse than flying through chaff,” said the helmsman. “It’s like having a sack over my head.”
“Not the time to share your kinks, Sanjay,” replied the captain. “We’ve got coordinates and a planetary map to work with. The rest is dead reckoning.”
“We’re going a little too fast for dead reckoning, Lyn,” said Veronica. “More than a little.”
“I don’t like the ‘dead’ part, either,” added Elise.
“We knew about the atmosphere, but it shouldn’t be this bad,” Veronica pointed out. “It can’t be natural. Not so high up and not over so much of the planet. Wind conditions are crazy, too.”
Both the instruments and the shudder of the hull backed up her point. Though Phoenix had wings, she didn’t rely on them for lift. Like corvettes and some other starships, her aerodynamic shape was more about aesthetics and placement of machinery than a function of her movement. She stayed aloft by virtue of antigrav tech and maneuvering jets. Yet even if Phoenix could power through worse air than this, her crew still felt the difference.
The virtual blackout of sensors and communications presented a bigger worry. Phoenix tore through the clouds while blind and deaf. Lynette found herself worrying the problem might reach all the way to the ground before they broke into clearer air. Sanjay leveled Phoenix off a couple hundred meters below the cloud layer. Veronica spotted the glow of shuttle thrusters up ahead. The ground below lay shrouded in darkness.
“Phoenix, this is Recon One, do you read?” called a voice over an unsteady channel.
“Recon One, Phoenix, we hear you,” said Lynette. “Be advised, Recon Three is lost. I say again, Recon Three confirmed lost.”
“Looks like they weren’t the only ones,” said Sanjay. He pointed to images of the surface on the canopy screen. Recon One and Two passed over the burning wreckage of some winged craft strewn along a rocky hillside. Phoenix quickly followed. No signals or distress beacon came over the communications band.
“Phoenix, Recon One, understood. Drop zone is up ahead. Request you take the lead and stay nearby to cover our drop.”
“Understood. We’re on it. Sanjay,” she said, cutting the mic. “Try not to scare them.”
The young man at the helm gunned the ship’s thrusters, blowing past the remaining shuttles with ease. He tilted Phoenix left and right without a consistent pattern, varying the ship’s speed in small ways that would hopefully throw off a targeting computer. “Should be right past those mountains up ahead, right?” he asked.
“I’m not picking up any signals from the city,” said Elise. “I have a couple of distress calls on civilian channels, but they’re scattered around the region. There should be much more from the city by now.”
Lynette said nothing. She noted a glow behind the mountains up ahead as Phoenix drew near. Wisely, Sanjay put the ship through more erratic changes in altitude and velocity, slowing dramatically to stay on site for the landings. He swept out to one side and tilted sharply as they passed over the mountains.
Beneath clouds of ash and smoke, a city slowly sank in a river of glowing lava.
The image sucked the breath out of everyone on the bridge. Molten rock stretched from one end of the city to the other, gushing from a swollen mound not far from the center of the urban sprawl. A few structures still burned. Others had sunk already, leaving broad gaps in the landscape surrounded by blackened and hollowed-out towers. Everything that still stood was already a ruin.
“Oh my god,” Veronica breathed. “How…how is that possible?”
“Recon Two, this is Recon One, are you seeing this?” asked a voice over the net.
Without waiting for instruction, Sanjay pulled Phoenix through a wide arc around the edges of the glowing lake. Only a handful of suburban structures remained. They spotted lights from ground vehicles here and there, presumably marking the only people far enough from the disaster to survive.
“All those people,” murmured Elise.
“Lynette,” said Veronica.
“Yeah.” She hit the mic. “Recon One, Phoenix. This city is gone. We have some space to pick up survivors but this fight is still going. Recommend we divert to link up with another landing party.”
“Phoenix, Recon One. Agreed. We’re signaling survivors to sit tight. Union Recon, divert to the capital. We’ll send up a comms drone to notify command on the way. Let’s go.”
“Can’t imagine they’re gonna feel better seeing us leave,” said Sanjay.
“I hear you, but it’s better than putting them all in the cargo hold while we’re still being shot at,” said Veronica.
Turning hard away from the wreckage below, Phoenix and her charges gunned their thrusters to race across the sky. A rear-view screen appeared on Lynette’s display, offering up more information on the scene behind them. Lynette killed the screen and focused on the way ahead.
Chapter Thirty-Two:
Street by Street
“Growing up on Minos, you learn the police usually make things worse. You learn to lean on your neighbors, because nobody else is coming to save you.”
--The Anchorside Advocate: Banned and Proud of It, August 2280
“Bad guys comin’ up Ninth. Looks like seven of them plus two of those robot things. You’ve got maybe three minutes before they hit the intersection.”
Chen hustled through the dark, empty storefront. The handset stayed safely in his grip, wires trailing in his wake. He couldn’t keep it to his ear while he ran. “Hold up, hold up!” he hissed.
Thankfully, the two men at the broken-down door heard him. One raised an open palm facing the street. The other looked back to Chen curiously. “What’s up?”
“Trouble coming up Ninth,” Chen explained. The street outside the storefront lay nearly as dark and quiet as it was inside. Across a few empty traffic lanes stood mostly apartments and a few office spaces, none more than four or five stories tall. A thin layer of ash coated the pavement in between. More ash fell from a sky, along with embers drifting on the wind.
The street lay dark. Lowlight glasses made up for it. He could see the moving shadows on the other side of the lane.
“How long have we got?” asked the one at the door. “It’s the last batch. We can clear out of this whole neighborhood if we go now.”
“And we’ll leave a huge trail through all that ash,” said Chen. “We might get across the street fast, but everything after that is gonna slow us down. Keep them there.” He put the handset to his ear again long enough to say, “I’m headed up for a look,” then passed it off. “Sit tight. We’ll tell you when to move.”
Frustrated questions followed Chen as he rushed for the stairway door. A loud boom from outside drowned out half of the words. The rest couldn’t keep up with him past the doorway.
A thin black cable dangled between the guardrails of opposing flights of stairs. In any other setting, such a line would carry a vast array of signals and information. Now it connected on
ly two voices. Chen remembered the jokes about primitive technology and banging rocks together when he first proposed his people carry their own cables. Even after their first raid during a sandstorm, with the enemy cut off and blinded and the insurgents in solid coordination thanks to simple wires, the jokes only changed in tone.
He didn’t hear any jokes at all tonight. No one had much of a sense of humor now. Maybe they were all out of breath. The run up the stairs left Chen’s lungs working hard. He wasn’t sure how he’d kept up the pace and the energy he’d expended since the attack began.
Another broad streak of yellow light across the sky and the boom of one of the central towers rendered that question moot. He didn’t have much choice if he wanted to keep people alive.
The lookout nodded from her post at the corner of the rooftop. Huddled in a black overcoat, bandana, and hat, she’d have gone unnoticed if Chen wasn’t looking for her. “Going over to Kristi and Zhi,” Chen explained without slowing down. She hardly gave him a second look, turning her attention back to the street.
The simple boards laid out connecting each rooftop were easy to spot. He tried not to think too hard about their altitude as he ran across one and then the next. Falling was no more of an option than taking a break.
If the view from the street was ominous, the skyline felt nothing short of apocalyptic. The rapid cracks and pops of gunfire echoed all around, suggesting the city’s other defenders had gotten the message about what weapons to use. That, or they’d learned it the hard way. For the first time, Chen found himself wishing the mercenaries and the police good luck. Even now, he dared not coordinate with them. They’d want to take all the best weapons from his people.
That couldn’t be allowed. Not when they had so much to do.
Kristi and Zhi knew to watch for him. Zhi kept his eyes on the streets while Kristi waved Chen over. Tarp-covered storage crates made for a little more camouflage atop the apartment building. A hand signal from Kristi warned him to keep quiet. She pointed downward to warn him of the enemy’s direction.