“We don’t stand a chance,” Jack said, his head dropping.
“What the krav is the matter with you, Jack? Of course we don’t stand a chance with an attitude like that! Shape up. You are Marine, so let me see the Marine! If you want to mourn your friend now, we will certainly lose this fight. Pull yourself together, boy!”
“Sir. Yes, sir.” Jack felt his heart beat hard. He felt the pain, but he also felt the pride of being a Marine. He felt guilt at his recurring self-pity, and for allowing it to take control of him and distract him from his duty—his duty to the fleet, his duty to all humans in the blue giant system, humans at the mercy of an unstoppable Skalidion swarm.
“Let me take a look at the laser assembly, sir,” Jack said with a renewed energy. “I think I can get it online. We can’t take the Scorpio into battle without some firepower.” Jack looked at Pretorius. The old captain was bruised and bleeding from a cut above his eye. He was unshaved, his hair was untidy, and his uniform was torn at the collar. Jack knew that if Pretorius could function under the pressure then so could he.
Jack was in the fight.
Pretorius nodded and walked back to the command chair, clutching his ribs in pain. “Do what you can with the laser assembly. Focus on the upper assembly and I’ll try and get all power from the hull stability field concentrated on the upper hull.”
Jack noticed Pretorius’s awkward movements. “Sir, you are injured.”
“I haven’t got time for a trip to the med-bay, so don’t even think of it,” Pretorius said, and he tried to climb up into the command chair
Jack pulled a med-pack off his tactical suit and tore it open. He stepped over to the captain and pulled the captain’s shirt up. Dark bruises, red and purple, covered his abdomen. Jack couldn’t see what area needed treatment through all that bruising.
Pretorius pointed.
“The rib. There. It’s broken, I think.”
Jack pressed the med-pack into place. Fine tendrils moved out from the pack and pierced the captain’s skin, pulling itself in to place.
Pretorius yelled in pain as the pack positioned itself. Then he relaxed. He flexed his arm.
“Good?” Jack asked.
Pretorius nodded. “Back to work,” he said and climbed up into the command chair with a new pain-free vitality.
Jack moved over to the weapons console with a sprightlier step. He tapped away at the controls and accessed the laser assembly systems. The laser assemblies were offline, but the systems had not been sabotaged or burnt out like the hail cannons. Jack knew he could bring the laser assembly up to full power from the command deck. He turned to Pretorius
“I can have upper and lower laser assemblies up to full power in a few moments. How long before we reach the Skalidion swarm?”
Pretorius looked up with a smile. “We are coming up on the fleet and will be back in the line in a moment. The Skalidions will be in weapons range in a few moments more. Let’s give them something to think about. Fire when you are ready, Jack.”
Group Captain Stuart punched the air as he saw the Scorpio slide into the battle line. The frigate and corvettes under the command of Commander Bale were swooping across the front of the swarm that had punched its way through the latest hail curtain. They arced around and came back and fell into formation with the massed fleet. Three destroyers in line. Tac boats and Blade fighters peppered throughout and in between. And on the flanks, dozens of frigates and corvettes.
“Attention all ships. Combat drone launch on my command. I want every tube and every combat drone in the fleet targeting the Skalidions. When this hail curtain has failed, we launch and detonate the drones. I want an antimatter eruption at full spread across their line of advance. That’ll hold them, and then we fall back at best speed and regroup at planet Blue.”
Jack, standing on the command deck of the Scorpio at the laser assembly console, looked at the main holostage and the map of the fleet. All ships were reporting ready to fire the combat drones.
Pretorius called out, “We don’t have the crew to manage the combat drones, but we can at least launch one. You can run fast, Jack. Get down to the nearest launch tube and pack it with a combat drone. We fought hard to get back in the fight, I’d like us to get at least one drone off with the rest of the fleet.”
Jack turned, pushing himself away from the console. He responded as he sprinted past the command chair.
“Yes, Captain. I’ll be back in time to man the guns up here as well.”
Jack ran through the corridors of the Scorpio to the nearest combat drone launch tube. It was on the forward quarter just below hail cannon batteries one and two. He could have picked either port or starboard side, but he knew where the body of his fallen friend was lying and chose to ignore that route. This route led to the port-side tube.
Jack moved quickly and came skidding to a halt outside the tube room. The door was sealed, but he opened it using his Marine command codes. Being a major, he could bypass many security systems that automatically kicked in on the Scorpio.
Inside the room, he saw the racks of combat drones, each one four meters long and a meter in circumference. They were painted white, and each one was designated with the code name for the Scorpio and the drone production number.
Racks on both sides of the tube room had five drones in a stack, two deep. With so many combat drones available, it seemed a terrible waste to only be able to launch one at their attackers. Jack activated the hoist system and grabbed the first drone. He maneuvered it to the tube and loaded it.
Jack hit the communication panel and put himself through to the command deck. He selected the open channel so Pretorius wouldn’t have to interrupt his work to receive the call—it would just simply come out over the main speaker.
“Combat drone ready for launch, sir. Do we have time for me to load a second on the starboard tube?”
“If you are quick. I’ll call you if you run out of time. Move.”
But Jack was already running. He sealed the tube room door behind him and sprinted across the ship. The passage to the starboard-side tube room took Jack along a corridor heading back before he could hit a cross-corridor to get there. As he ran, his breathing became heavy. He checked the atmosphere in the Scorpio on his wrist-mounted holostage. The oxygen levels were low. The Scorpio had taken a beating, and the atmosphere was bleeding out from somewhere.
When fully crewed, a small atmosphere leak would be detected and patched within moments. The full maintenance team would be constantly alert for fractures or puncture wounds from micro meteorite impacts or weapons strikes. But the Scorpio had been under-staffed for too long. The leaking air was not hugely dangerous to Jack, and the pressure drop was measured in a few microbars per minute. It would take hours for the oxygen levels to reach a fatally low level. But the thin air made running hard. Jack loved to run. Back on his home world, he had run for hours over the rolling grasslands. Running through the corridors of this warship had never been the same, but Jack had run every one of them. Now he was doing it with less oxygen to power his muscles. But it wasn’t going to stop him from making it to the combat drone room before the fleet group captain gave the order to fire.
Jack turned the last corner that would put him into the corridor for the tube room. His breathing was heavy as his heart pounded, pushing more blood and oxygen to his muscles. He could feel his pulse in his ears as he ran. And then he heard another noise—footsteps in the corridor behind him.
The flicker of a shadow at the far end of the corridor caught Jack’s eye. He turned and took a few cautious steps. And then the shadow moved again, darting around the corner. The figure came into view.
Jack saw the weapon. He saw it being raised and aimed at him. He instinctively knew who it was before he could consciously identify the figure.
It was Beretta.
Jack hit the deck and pressed himself to the corridor wall as the pulse rounds fizzed overhead. Jack grabbed his own pistol off his thigh holster. He rolled to the othe
r side of the corridor as the pulse rounds zeroed in on his position. He aimed with both hands as he rolled across the width of the corridor, firing as he went. The pulse rounds were poorly aimed but came at such a rate and intensity that they caused Beretta to back into cover.
Jack was on his feet. He aimed at the corner around which Beretta had disappeared. He fired one pulse after another as he ran forward. The barrage had the effect of keeping Beretta in cover as Jack closed the distance.
Reaching the end of the corridor, Jack turned and gave fire. The corridor was empty. Jack called up the local surveillance nodes and patched the data through to his wrist-mounted holostage. A figure was running along a corridor not far away.
Jack chased.
“Jack, this is Pretorius. Just had word from the flagship. We will be launching the combat drone salvo into minutes. How’s that second tube looking?”
Jack slowed his run. He was about to tell Pretorius that he was pursuing Beretta. Then he realized he’d been distracted. The old pirate was making Jack lose sight of his priorities. The second tube needed to be loaded. Justice for Beretta could wait. But as Jack turned and ran back toward the starboard-side tube room, he knew it was not justice he was interested in. It was revenge. Revenge had blinded him to his true duty. He ran harder, panting in the thin oxygen of the low-pressure atmosphere. But with thoughts of Beretta and revenge out of his mind, he was able to cover the distance quickly.
Jack ran into the tube room and loaded a combat drone in seconds. He slammed the tube door shut just as Pretorius’s voice came over Jack’s communicator.
“Launching combat drones now. Get up here, Jack. We’re not out of this yet.”
Jack stepped out of the tube room and glanced cautiously along the length of the corridor. He would not put it past Beretta to sneak up on him and be ready to shoot him down the moment he stepped into the corridor. But Beretta was nowhere to be seen. Jack checked the local surveillance feed. There was only one figure moving through the Scorpio. Berretta was running away.
“You can’t hide on the Scorpio for long, Beretta,” Jack said to himself as he set off at a run toward the command deck and slapped his pulse pistol back into his thigh holster. Jack moved quickly and was running down the command deck corridor after a few breathless moments, just in time to see the combat drone salvo racing away from the fleet on the central holostage.
He stepped into the command deck and sealed the security doors on either side of the long, straight command deck corridor, ensuring Beretta could not sneak up on them and again take control of the Scorpio. Even though it was virtually impossible for one person to control the vast destroyer, Jack knew that would not stop Beretta from trying.
The holostage showed the fleet and the red lines marking the salvo of drones. The Scorpio had fired only two of the deadly, high-yield antimatter devices. The Canis and the Aquarius had launched a full salvo each and had followed it up with a second. Red lines streaked away from each of the ships in the frigate arm, over a dozen frigates and corvettes launching from their single launch tube. Altogether, a full spread of dozens of combat drones was streaking across space towards the Skalidion swarm.
The combat drones detonated within a nanosecond of each other across their vast spread, each creating a short-lived micro-star that ballooned out in a raging maelstrom of plasma. The stars burned and merged as they expanded and created a vast swathe of incandescent plasma.
“Put everything into the drive assembly,” Pretorius said as he climbed down from the command chair. He walked over to the navigation console and input the heading. The fleet was falling back to planet Blue. The last stand against the Skalidions would happen there.
Jack diverted all power to the drive system, and the Scorpio was flung across space towards planet Blue. That planet was either going to become the fleet’s new home or their final resting place.
The sensor net from the combined fleet showed a glimpse of what was happening on the far side of the plasma fire. The Skalidions had halted their advance. They weren’t going to punch through the plasma fire as easily as they had the hail curtain. But the fire was fading fast. It would only hold the Skalidions off for a short time, enough time for the fleet to form its final defensive formation. A formation that would either succeed or fail. Either way, this was going to be their last fight against the Skalidions.
And then, on the far side of the plasma fire, a new eruption of plasma. Jack knew it was the civilian transport that had fallen out of formation being destroyed.
“A hundred thousand souls,” Jack said.
“The Skalidions didn’t destroy her,” Pretorius said, leaning toward the navigation console. “The Skalidions want to take the civilians alive. The captain must have set the reactor to overload. That’s a drive core collapse.”
“Poor bastards,” Jack said.
“Some things are worse than death,” Pretorius said. “Get on the weapons console, Jack. Make sure that laser assembly is warmed up and ready. I’m going to put as much power as I can spare into the hull stability field and put us at the center of the fleet. We are going to be a sitting duck, so we had better make ourselves as strong as possible. I’m not giving up the Scorpio easily.”
“They’ll know they’ve got a fight on their hands, sir,” Jack said as he brought the laser assembly up to full power.
The Scorpio slid into orbit around planet Blue and took its position amongst the fleet. A message from the group captain came over the Scorpio’s speakers.
“Combat drone plasma field is fading. We bought ourselves as much time as we can, but this is the last stand. Make no mistake, here we stand or here we fall. The civilian fleet is falling to the planet. The civilians are already leaving the transport where they can. There’s not one transport among the civilian fleet that could make it out of the star system. There’s not one ship in the military fleet that could stand alone, but we can do this if we work together. Good luck, everyone. Here they come.”
Pretorius stepped up to the command chair. “I’ll do my best with the targeting, Jack. You make sure the laser assembly has got everything it needs. We are down to the one weapon. Let’s make it count.”
“It’s only one weapon, but I have got a few tricks up my sleeve. We can have an impact on this battle, sir. I still think we can win.”
“I admire your confidence, Jack,” Pretorius said with the briefest of sighs. “Skalidion fighters moving into weapons range. Targeting systems on a rolling pattern. The nearest Skalidion fighter will be automatically selected for you, Jack. Get ready.”
Jack’s fingers hovered over the fire activation controls. He looked at the main holostage and the swarm of Skalidions pouring in towards the fleet.
He activated the laser assembly and destroyed the first fighter to come within weapons range.
Jack moved quickly, focusing on recharging the laser assembly before he activated another lancing beam. Laser beams flickered out from the fleet. The three destroyers, the frigates and corvettes, and the tac boats blasted out rounds of kinetic hail.
And Jack could see it was all futile. The Skalidions punched through the fire from the fleet and closed in.
The message went out from the flagship for the Blades to break formation, advance, and engage the Skalidions in ship-to-ship combat. The green dots on the holoimage scattered throughout the formation were the fighters of the Blade Squadron. They raced headlong into battle, ready to engage the Skalidions. Their forward-mounted laser assemblies blinked on and off as they connected with their targets, tearing chunks through the Skalidion fighters as they danced and avoided the return fire.
Flashes of green fire rolled forward from the Skalidion ships. It slammed into the Blades, destroying them as it evaporated the outer composite and burned down to the Blade reactors. The small ships erupted into balls of fire and debris.
A burst of green fire from a Skalidion fighter that had fought its way past the fleet’s laser fire and the Blades slammed into the Scorpio at the rear
end near the drive assembly.
“Hull stability field at drive assembly holding,” Pretorius said.
“I’m switching laser assembly to short-range laser sheet. I’ll sweep our sectors of fire and clear out any Skalidions who come too close.”
Jack refocused the laser emitter so that instead of a lancing beam that blinked on and off, delivering superb high-energy laser beams to an individual target, it formed a laser sheet that swept across a wide swath. Where the sheet connected with the Skalidions, it delivered heavy damage, sending the Skalidions tumbling off course and disrupting their green fire weapon. Where the laser sheet connected with a Skalidion green fire weapon during its charging cycle, it caused critical damage to the fighter. The laser sheet swept across the Skalidions in a rapid side-to-side maneuver, delivering damage to dozens of Skalidions racing in for the kill.
The image on the holostage flickered off, and the lights on the command deck blinked out momentarily. The ship rocked and nearly knocked Jack off his feet. He clung to the targeting console to keep his balance. The gravity plate on the command deck momentarily deactivated, and Jack felt himself drifting.
“Direct hit to the drive assembly. Just had a power surge through all systems. Recalibrating now,” Jack said as he moved to the power control console.
A few taps and Jack rebalanced the power throughout the ship. He felt the gravity grow and drag him back to the deck. He ran back to the weapons console and checked that the laser sheet was still sweeping its arc across the area in front of the Scorpio.
“Brace yourself, Jack,” Pretorius said. “Skalidion green fire incoming. I’m going to try and angle the blast away.” Jack gripped the console as the green fire slammed into the Scorpio.
Last Stand Boxed Set Page 24