“All right, Colonel. You know best. Absen out.” The admiral addressed the AI. “Can you get him some help?”
“Already on it, sir,” Conquest said in his ear. “I’m converging the Recluses on the heaviest engagements. However, my calculations show that they’re not going to make it. The swarm will be here in twenty-nine minutes. Mr. Ford is already warming up his primaries, but there’s half a million coming. We’re barely going to make a dent in them before they get here.”
“Even if we use an Exploder?”
“Won’t do it, sir. Its kill radius isn’t large enough. The swarm’s diameter exceeds a thousand kilometers. Even when they funnel in for a landing, we can only get so many. Unless…”
Absen sighed. “Unless we write off every Marine aboard and lay an Exploder on the mothership as the swarm lands. No way. Conquest, pull out all the stops and get them off. That’s your only priority right now.”
“Sir…it won’t matter. I can only do what I can do. But maybe you can do something.”
“Me? What?”
“Call the Meme. Ask them for help.”
Absen thought furiously. Why would the Meme help them? For the past three hours the remaining five Destroyers had been sitting out there eating and healing. What could he do to induce them to risk their slimy necks again?
“Call them,” he said.
“Channel open.”
“SystemLord of the Meme,” Absen said, “this is Earth’s SystemLord. I am aboard the dreadnought near the Scourge mothership core. I request your help in defeating the approaching swarm. I know you have taken heavy casualties already, and have no reason to risk yourself further, so I offer you an inducement. My forces have captured information relating to the Scourges’ faster-than-light drive system. If you assist, I will turn over copies of that information to you.”
After a perceptible delay, the sexless, translated voice came back. “I agree.” Then the channel closed.
Abruptly Absen felt VR time slow to a crawl, and then Michelle's avatar appeared in front of him. “Sir, you can’t do that! It’s one thing to give away the lightspeed drive to seal an alliance with the Meme, but now you’re trading an even more valuable technology for the lives of a few hundred Marines. That’s insane!”
“You’re out of line, Lieutenant. I’ve made the decision.”
The avatar stared daggers at him, and Absen stared back. She seemed to be hyperventilating, her face a mask of fury. Would this be the moment that fulfilled all his fears?
“I could –” Michelle made a strangled sound as she choked her words off.
“You could prevent me, yes. I’m stuck in VR space. You could take over and do whatever you wanted, and I’d never even know for sure, would I?” Absen said flatly. “Just as Bull could snap my neck like a twig when I give him an order he doesn’t like, or Tobias could put a bullet through my head. You’re a commissioned EarthFleet officer now, Lieutenant, like me. You raised your hand and took an oath even stronger and more binding than you did when I first warranted you. The people we’re sworn to protect hand us power. They trust us to do the right thing. What’s your oath worth to you? Are you truly a cybernetic human being, or just a megalomaniacal machine that does what’s expedient rather than what’s moral?”
Michelle’s mouth worked like a fish, and then she turned her back. “I’m human,” she whispered. “I’m human!”
Absen waited a moment, watching her breathe and letting her deal with her dilemma until she got control of herself. “I know you are, Michelle. That’s why it crossed your mind to mutiny. A computer never would wonder about that. It would either do it, or never consider it. It’s easy to be a computer and just follow orders. It’s also tempting to do what you feel like and ignore them. It’s hard to just be an officer caught in the middle, making tough decisions.”
Her shoulders slumped. “Yes, sir. Aye aye, sir. I’ll go now.”
“Lieutenant.”
Michelle turned to face him, face frozen.
Absen leaned forward, resting his elbows on the arms of his chair and folding his hands. “You chose right. I’m proud of you.”
“Thank you, sir,” she husked.
He sat back. “Dismissed.”
The speed of time resumed.
Ford was already firing the railguns, technically the longest-ranged weapons on the ship as the projectiles would fly until they struck something or the universe died…but the odds of hitting things at over a million klicks were negligible. Still, with half a million targets, now and again the blast of an impact showed on sensors, and railgun shot was cheap.
“I’m using the canister shot, sir,” Ford said as Absen went over to stand above him at the console. “Stuff is fired like normal but each fragments into a hundred pieces or so.”
“Save it for when we’re closer, Commander. Have you already deployed the stealth mines?”
“Yes, sir. Wish we had more.”
“Wishes, fishes.”
“Yes, sir.”
Absen clapped Ford on the shoulder and then moved to look at the holotank. “Come on, Bull,” he whispered. “Get them out.” Already some of the sleds were returning, but not enough and not fast.
“He knows, sir,” Rick Johnstone said in a strained voice. He was no doubt in special agony, as his wife was the brigade CSM. As one of the key leaders she would undoubtedly insist on extracting last.
***
Repeth slapped a Marine’s helmet to get his attention. “Fall back!” She lobbed another grenade into the mass of attackers and yanked on the man’s backrack. “Come on!”
Instead, he ignored her, pouring fire into the enemy and muttering to himself. Repeth had seen it before, battle madness so acute that troops ignored everything around them. Overriding the man’s battlesuit with her command code, she froze him and used the power of her Avenger armor to pick him up and bodily launch him backward. In zero G he flew across the room like a doll to strike the back wall.
Then she hopped rearward herself and fired a long burst with her pulse gun. The recoil accelerated her and jets stabilized her so that she alighted next to the digger she’d tossed.
As she landed, a penetrator slammed into the man, spinning him around as it deeply dented his thigh. The armor held, but the leg was surely bruised, maybe broken. Cursing, she grabbed him and flew backward again just as a Soldier’s plasma cannon blew the spot where they had been to kingdom come.
“Come on, SMAJ,” Lieutenant Rostov said, waving her and her burden toward a tunnel entrance they defended.
Repeth continued on past to keep the leapfrogging withdrawal going. Inside the tunnel she saw Massimo with his remaining laser, siting it to cover the opening. She slapped him on the shoulder as she went past, heading for the next firing position, where she would set up with whoever she found. Units were intermixed now, and so many Recluse drones had been lost that comms were spotty.
She wondered how the battle had gone so wrong. Just when it seemed they had been winning, the Scourges had gone berserk. Their surprise suicide charge had proven Napoleon’s maxim that morale was often more important than firepower as some of the Marine units had broken and routed. The only thing that had saved them were the veteran NCOs from Conquest sprinkled among the troops and a few surprisingly good transfers like Rostov.
That one would go far, if she lived.
Chapter 49
Every beam on Conquest stabbed out at maximum recycle speed as the swarm approached, but even her tremendous weapon suite was a mere garden hose aimed at a blazing barn fire. The few sleds in transit ducked into the launch bay just ahead of the closing doors, and then the dreadnought was surrounded.
“Where are those damn Destroyers?” Absen asked rhetorically. He could see them plainly on the holotank, coming in hell-for-leather aimed right at Conquest.
“Thirty seconds,” the AI reported. “They are decelerating but will overshoot us.”
“Intentionally,” Absen said. “They’ll make a close pass with
all weapons blazing but make it hard for the swarm to match speeds, then turn around and do it again. Strafing runs.”
“That won’t be enough.” Michelle appeared at Absen’s elbow, and everything outside of the bridge seemed to freeze as the AI manipulated their time senses. “Admiral, we have to leave. Within minutes we and the mothership core will be covered with Scourgelings ten deep, and I won’t be able to stop them, even with close-in fusion weapons. If we wait too long, they’ll damage the drive. Once they do, we’re done for.”
Absen ignored her. “There has to be a way to get them out,” he said to Captain Scoggins, staring at the holotank and the swarm growing thick around them.
“There is, sir, if it’s worth the cost.”
“What cost?”
“We could pick them up ourselves. Before this gets too ugly.”
“How do we do that?”
Scoggins looked sour. “If you don’t care about damage, we could do a forced docking.”
Absen’s brow furrowed. “Explain.”
Scoggins pointed to the schematic of Conquest above COB Timmons, the damage control display. “The only way to do it is to gently ram the mothership core with our prow. We can’t use the stern without wrecking the engine exhausts. There are no ways through our armor at the waist corners. But the main weapons array runs straight from the center of the ship through the nose. So we jam it into the mothership and the Marines climb aboard directly.”
“But that will wreck my railguns and particle beams!” Ford cried.
“Yes, it will,” Scoggins said evenly, not taking her eyes off Absen’s. “But if you want those people extracted, that’s the price.”
Absen thought about it for just a moment. “Michelle, can we clear a path through the wreckage if we do this?”
“Yes, sir. I have plenty of maintenance bots to do the work. I am already disconnecting power and preparing to mitigate the damage by removing key components.”
“All right. Okuda, do it.”
“Aye aye, sir,” the master helmsman said. “Maneuvering now.”
Ford groaned, obviously appalled that his primary weapons were about to be turned into junk.
Okuda moved the dreadnought deftly forward as five Destroyers buzzed past, engines and fusors belching plasma fire in all directions. For a moment the area cleared, and then they were gone.
Next, Conquest launched her available missiles in all directions, detonating them close to keep the swarm off for a few more seconds. While she did, Rick Johnstone put out repeated calls to the Marines to warn them of what was about to happen. Absen had no idea if they were getting through or even being heard in the fury of the combat aboard the mothership.
“Come on, baby,” Okuda muttered, his eyes closed and perception deep in the link, steering the ship that seemed to have grown heavier the slower and more precisely he maneuvered it. The dreadnought lined up to the side of the Marine LZ and slowed at the last moment so the two vast ships collided at only a few meters per second with a grinding, wrecking-ball roar.
Absen felt nothing in VR space, but Timmons’ board lit up with damage indications all across the prow as it plowed into the mothership. Red icons marched straight down the tubes that held the Dahlgren rails and the particle beam waveguides as machinery crumpled, finally ending two-thirds of the way to Conquest’s center.
“We’re in,” Scoggins said.
“Please tell them to move fast, sir,” Michelle said to Absen. “If we’re not out of here in about one minute, we may not make it.”
“I got bugs all over the skin,” COB Timmons said, pointing at his board. “We don’t have enough damage control parties to take care of this.” Now the schematic was ringed in yellow as assault craft crash-landed on Conquest and disgorged millions of hungry bugs. “They can’t eat the main armor but they’ll eventually get through the weapons ports, airlocks, anything that penetrates the hull.”
“As soon as we have everyone we’ll pull out,” Absen said. “Not before. We do this together.”
Timmons replied, “Sure, boss, but then what?”
***
Near the LZ, Bull used his HUD and Conquest’s AI assistance to try to salvage what he could from the battle. Whole companies had been wiped out when they lost their cohesion and the Scourgelings had gotten in among them. Like an ancient Greek phalanx, Marines in a firing line with secure flanks could hold against almost any odds, but as soon as the formation disintegrated, they were doomed. In zero G and their own environment, the critters were faster than Marines and they attacked like swarming ants.
Bull’s best response was to use his best, most solid units as fire brigades to slow down the enemy advance, letting the fleeing troops reach the sleds where he shut down their Avengers, turning them into metal statues. He told the medics to trank them and talk to them, try to evaluate who could be rallied from their panic and who had to be tossed onto the extraction craft and locked down for recovery.
He checked his chrono. Two minutes until they were stuck aboard. The original plan B had been to kill everything in the mothership and ride out the swarm, hoping the enemy wouldn’t destroy their own home. Better another hand-to-hand battle than getting picked off in space.
Suddenly his HUD flashed with new symbology. One area off to the side of the LZ lit up with an outline like a blunt knife stabbing into the edge of the mothership. “Colonel,” Michelle’s voice piped into his auditory nerve, “in one minute you will need to shift your extraction location to this area, but not before. I say again, do not move early, but be prepared to fight through to it.”
“What’s happening, Michelle? How are we extracting?”
“Admiral Absen sends his regards, and Conquest is picking you up personally, Colonel.”
“Hell if I know what that means, but we’ll be there.” Bull modified what was left of this brigade’s fighting retreat to center it on the new extraction area and told the remaining sleds to launch with whatever they had. This caused the battle’s left flank to abruptly wall back toward him and he found himself providing covering fire as squads leapfrogged back toward him.
When a wave of bugs threatened to overwhelm his rearguard, he held down the trigger on his oversized plasma rifle with one hand while chucking his remaining grenades with the other. For a moment he stood alone against the tide, and then a nearby squad leader stopped her unit, turned them around and pointed with her arm. “That’s the Colonel! Rally to me, Marines!”
The half-organized, chaotic retreat crystallized all around Bull as squad after squad converged. These were blooded troops now, led by veterans, the ones that had not broken. Like tempered steel, they had learned how to bend but not break. Now they took up positions smoothly to the left and right of their leader and laid down a maximum base of fire. “Aim low,” the unnamed squad leader called, and blasts of plasma joined pulse gun projectiles, PRG bullets and slashing laser beams to stagger the oncoming rush.
Closer and closer it came to the firing line, until dead and dying Scourgelings tumbled into the armored defenders, but no one fled, not one broke. Bull heard screams and roars of challenge on his local net, the inarticulate sounds warriors make in the midst of the berserkergang of deadly combat, and still not one broke. When Soldiers fired their weapons and scattered Marines fell, not one broke. And when Bull’s plasma rifle ran out of charge and he found himself without a reload – completely empty of ordnance, in fact – he leaped rearward over his own troops. Seeing their commander fall back might have daunted lesser men and women – but not one broke.
Not one broke.
Suddenly the deck and walls shuddered and bucked. Every surface writhed with shockwaves. Without stabilizing jets all of the Marines would have tumbled like dice in a shaker. Bugs bounced off walls, legs flailing as they floundered in the zero gravity, and their swarming advance dissolved into confusion. Bull’s troops kept their cool and nailed them with well-aimed weapons fire, smashing Scourgeling and Soldier alike into gore that splattered the wall
s and deck.
Abrupt stillness descended onto the scene as the last bug was blown to bits. “Extract!” Bull roared over his suitcomm. “Follow me!” He turned and bounded toward the area his HUD marked as the way out. As he moved, he wondered what in the world this extraction could be.
One minute later, Command Sergeant Major Repeth stood next to the gargantuan invading prow of Conquest and said to Bull, “This is the damndest extraction I ever saw.” The two leaders directed the mixture of pilots and Marines streaming past, trying to keep good order as the troops hopped up onto the slab of armor surrounding what used to be a railgun tube. Some carried frozen suits containing the sedated or wounded. Around them Conquest’s maintenance bots scurried, clearing wreckage to speed the process.
On Bull’s HUD he saw the perimeter shrinking as Marines ran for it, covered by his dwindling contingent of Recluses. Those winked out one by one as they were overwhelmed and self-destructed, taking a few more enemies with them.
Nearby, the brigade’s remaining heavy weapons sections lines up all the semi-portables they had left, facing outward in a semicircle, but they were not needed. The final line doggie bounded past.
“Thank God that’s all,” Bull said. “The rest of you go now. Get in line. I’m the last man out.”
One of the battalion commanders made as if to stay, but Bull pointed, and the man turned reluctantly toward the escape route. Repeth ignored her boss’s instructions, and Bull didn’t bother to order her again. Instead, she walked down the line of emplaced heavy weapons, inputting self-destruct codes. “I’ll set these to command detonation,” she said.
Just then enemies boiled out of the end of one of the tunnels, and the two turned to leap for the tube leading into the dreadnought. “Conquest,” Repeth said into the comm, “blow those heavies as soon as we’re aboard and clear.”
Conquest of Earth (Stellar Conquest Series) Page 21