"June, your weapons are released. Anita, Jerome, maneuver according to June's instructions. Don't wait on my orders. I want those rail guns taken out as quickly as possible. And remember, we don't know that there aren't more of them than the underground reported."
That was made apparent a few moments later as the ship moved over the city.
"Incoming! Three sources!" Master Chief Thomas Berry said loudly. He had taken over the screen monitoring slot himself.
Seconds later, the ship rang and shook from multiple projectiles hitting it at speeds way beyond supersonic. The slugs were white hot when they penetrated the meteor shield, having been fired at a speed obviously calculated to be just short of what would have vaporized the pieces of metal. They blasted at the overlapping plates but were prevented from bursting through the shell of the ship by the new super-alloy. Other sections were not so lucky.
"Senior officer's quarters, multiple hits. Damage control fire team one, away!" Lieutenant Lan Nguyen, the environmental officer ordered. His secondary duty was always damage control. Up until then, he had not been needed. "Mess hall bay one, single hit, open to space. Repair team one, away! Hanger bay one demolished, open to space. Repair team two, away!"
Keane exchanged glances with the COB and nodded his thanks for getting the marines off the ship. He turned his gaze to Nguyen's screen as the ship shook from more hits. The damage control monitor screen brightened with a multitude of red lights.
"Return fire, first rail gun battery destroyed," Mundahan announced calmly. "Maneuver to zero point niner, zero point six. Fire. Again. Again. Second rail gun battery destroyed."
Every screen in the control room turned to white noise as a massive laser began a pulsing fire against the ship's screen. The COB had no time to warn against a light speed weapon. The ship shuddered as its rail guns fired again and again under June Mundahan's calm direction.
"Maneuver to zero point one one, and four point niner. Laser cannon, fire! Again! Again!"
She has to be firing blind now, Keane thought.
The screens came back to life. The ship shuddered from another hit by a rail gun slug but June was using their own rail guns to fire down behind the laser cannon against the city's more powerful one. The ship's screen could take its destructive fire for a time but it wasn't invulnerable.
"Rail gun two inactive. Compartment open to space. Backup weapons team to rail gun two, away! Repair team one to rail gun two compartment, away. Enlisted ratings quarters, open to space! Repair team four, away!" Nguyen ordered. "Collateral damage to sickbay one! Fire team three, away! Fire team one, report! Fire team one?"
There was no answer. "Fire team two, report progress." Nguyen listened for a moment. "Away to storeroom seven! Quickly!"
It looked to Keane that as quickly as one red light on Nguyen's screen went out another lit up. The ship shook again. The city's remaining rail gun was still active, as was the pulsing laser cannon. Mundahan was concentrating the ship's fire against it, calling out precise movements to Chavez and Manheimer to align the ship, but they were taking still more hits. The vessel shuddered and bucked as laser pulses impacted the shield again and again, drawing it down to dangerously low levels, and all the while it was being pounded by rail gun slugs. Most were deflected by the overlapping melded alloy but even hits on those shook the ship. The ones that punctured the shell were worse, savaging the interior of Doc Travis as if a raging monster was loose inside it.
"Fire all lasers!" Mundahan ordered. "Now, now, now!"
"Hit! Laser cannon site destroyed!" Master Chief Berry whooped loudly.
"Maneuver," Mundahan said. "Six point three and two point one. Fire! Again! Again! Again! Die, you fucking gun!" She momentarily lost her composure but quickly regained it as the COB announced the destruction of the city's last rail gun site. A strange quiet descended, with the ship no longer shaking from hits and deflected shots.
"Captain, we're not taking any more enemy fire," Mundahan said. Sweat was beading her forehead but her voice was calm again. She wiped her face with the sleeve of her tunic.
"COB, take control of personnel allotment. Suggest drawing half the weapons crew to help with repairs."
"Already on it, sir," the Master Chief grinned.
Keane grinned back at him. There weren't many occasions when a Captain was in front of the Bosun. "All right! Anita, let's make a couple of circles over the city and check for damage and concentrations of Worms or robots. Com, get me Rambling."
"Aye, aye, sir," Bogarty said. "Searching ...searching ...got it! I'm patching him through to you, sir."
"Rambling here."
"Steel, this is Keane. We've neutralized Xanadu's defensive fire but we took some heavy damage and need time for repairs. We have only one rail gun in service and both laser cannons are down. One is destroyed completely. I'm waiting on damage control for a report on the other."
"Captain, we're going to need that air cover. I sent Cindy up in her shuttle for a quick look and we're already seeing Worm concentrations."
"How about robots?"
"Not so many, but it was just a quick scan. I didn't want to risk her yet."
"I'll feed you some more intelligence in a few minutes. Give me your location."
"We've landed Company A. Coordinates L7 by C4 from grid three. I'm holding Company B for the moment. I've sent scouts over the wall."
"Got it. Hold one ...okay, Steel, just got more reports from damage control. We got one of the laser cannons back up. It just needed a bulkhead patch, a power node and a new crew. One of the other rail guns will probably be back up in less than an hour but the other is completely destroyed. We salvaged all the slugs from it, though so there won't be any shortage of ammo. We'll be ready when you need us."
"Good deal. If you're sure about the city's defenses I'm going to send Cindy up and start the first assault with Company A."
"With you. Good luck and keep this circuit open."
"Will do. Rambling out."
"Okay, June and Anita, we're going to be supporting marine assaults from now on. Jerome, I think Anita can handle the astrogation now and Boris can take the helm for the assaults." He glanced over to the enlisted helmsman and winked at him, causing the Petty Officer to grin beatifically at the chance to handle the ship while in a combat mode. "Jerome, you help Commander Levy and Lieutenant Nguyen supervise damage control. Bring me back a summary report when you have an overall gestalt of the damage but com me immediately if you find anything affecting the safety of the ship."
"Aye, aye, sir. On it." The big German left the control room to assist the sorely pressed damage control parties. Keane sent him instead of Anita primarily for his muscular strength, if it was needed.
With all his orders being carried out and the ship now on an even keel and no longer being battered this way and that, he felt a need for stimulation and signaled for Mura. "Wanna, would you please bring me some coffee? Then check with the others and see if they want some, too. We may be here a while."
Chapter Twenty-Five: Die, you bastards!
How we deal with death is at least as important as how we deal with life.
-James Kirk, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
"Doug! Oh, Doug!"
Clemmie threw herself at him, practically knocking him off his feet. He hugged her with one arm while his eyes tracked inside the building containing her Wah.
"Sweetheart, I'm glad to see you, too, but this isn't a city defense test. It's the real thing!"
As if to emphasize his words, a series of explosions swept across the city less than a mile from their location. She hugged him with an even fiercer grip. He took his eyes away from their surroundings long enough to give her a long kiss.
It was almost their undoing. When he looked up he found himself staring at two Sinchiks just coming around a curve from the interior of the Welshass. He shoved her away and blasted them both with hardly a thought. He looked around for more but the place was empty, at least temporarily.
&nbs
p; "Are there more of them around, Clemmie? Have any left since the fighting started?"
"I just woke up a little while ago when I heard the first guns fire. But ...how did you get here so quick?"
"Listen, is there a hiding place nearby where we can talk a minute? After that we've got to contact your wing of the underground."
"Come on. I've got a place where I doubt any of the Sinchik will find us for a little while." She ducked under her bed frame and withdrew a peculiar looking cane, then led him into her Wah and on past it, stopping at what appeared to be a blank wall and dead end. She grasped the cane with both hands and began telescoping it into a long handle. With the curve of the cane handle she reached high and hooked it over a barely visible handle. She pulled and a doorway slid into a recess, opening another room.
"Come on in." He did so, wondering how in hell she had ever figured this out. She closed the door behind them and dropped the cane on the floor. "Now give me a proper kiss!"
He did his best, holding her close to his body for long moments while their lips were locked together.
She laid her head on his chest for a moment then stepped back. "Okay, now give. How did you get here so fast and why? I thought the idea was for us to each use our wing of rebels as best we could when the time came. Has that changed?" She grinned mysteriously as she asked the last question.
"Yes, and from the look on your face you've got news, too." He kissed her again quickly and began to explain how he had been washed down into the tunnels. "I had found a robot lab that was experimenting on humans, but you should have gotten a report on that already. It was horrible. I thought at the time there must be something important on the other side of that lab and I still do. The connections went into the wall. Anyway, I went back again and explored some more and found the gravity generators for their tractor beam. A couple of rebels took it out last night." He closed his eyes briefly, remembering Jordan and Helen's nonchalant attitude that concealed the knowledge that they were probably going to die.
"My wing combined all that data, plus what you'd discovered about the rail guns. We sent it and maps describing the tunnel system and their locations as accurately as possible, but you know without an inertial navigator ...well, anyway, I thought we had to do it when the satellite transponder went on after all these years even before consulting with your wing. Then I learned just a while ago that some robots discovered Sue Nakamura, my second in command, broadcasting all that data to the satellite. I don't know whether she got through to them or not, but she was killed, Clemmie. Or more accurately, she suicided. We'd built a dead-man switch into it so that if she were discovered and couldn't get away, the Sinchiks couldn't figure out who we were talking to. And of course that was the only space com we had.
"I guess you know my next step. I thought I had to come here so we could coordinate all the underground movements, so you'd know everything we did. And besides, your wing has the only operable short range com left. We may need it to guide our rescuers when they show up. This is it, Clemmie. We're either going to leave this place or we'll die trying."
She touched him again and again, kissing him at the same time. He knew the feeling. She was hardly daring to believe he was with her.
"Now tell me your secret, Sweetie. I know you have one."
"I do. You're not the only one that made another excursion. I didn't but one of my guys did. Doug, I think he found the central intelligence node for the whole city. It's a huge room. There was this big round dome in the room. It had cables running from it into the walls as if they penetrated and went to other areas. It had what looked like antennas and ten or twelve of the same type of com nodes all the robots have, only a bit larger. They were spotted over its surface. And then ...Doug, there were dozens, maybe even more, of the small robots. They all seemed to be servicing that giant dome in one way or another. And that's not all. At places near all the entrances-and there were lots of them-he saw weapon sites equipped with big guns, what looked like larger versions of their hand weapons."
He could hardly believe it. If Clemmie's scout had truly discovered the central node of the city, they had to let the ship from home know about it. "Did he get an approximation of the location?'
"Uh huh." She withdrew a crumpled map from her pouch. "In fact, I compared it to the lab you found and they're not too far apart, as near as we can judge. They are pretty deep, but the central node is below both of them. All the ramps leading into it were coming from a higher level. He said that was easy enough to see even from his vantage point."
"We need to let that ship know. Let's get back outside."
"What if we're caught?"
"We have to take a chance. Maybe the robots and Sinchik will all be busy fighting with the ship. Damn, I sure hope they don't manage to shoot it down after all these years." He stepped through the exit and Clemmie closed it behind them.
"They haven't got it yet, Doug," Clemmie said. "I still hear explosions. And they're all centered on where we know the rail guns and laser cannons are. Hey! I bet your message did get through!"
"So long as the ship stays ready to travel the hell away from here. I think we ought to call out your wing and get them organized to help fight when the rescuers come."
"What if they don't? What if this is just a fight between the ship and the city?"
"We've been over that before, Clemmie. Remember, we decided that when a new ship appeared, the underground was going to fight. Let's do it."
"Okay. There's no Sinchiks or robots around right now. Let's head for the gathering point. I'll notify a few friends along the way, if they don't get caught they'll begin spreading the word. We'll head directly to where the radio is hidden and see if we can contact the ship."
"Sounds like a plan to me. Get all your gear. We may not ever be back."
As they traveled away from Clemmie's Wah, the explosions in the city and overhead died away. He had no idea whether the ship had been destroyed or the city's defenses had been neutralized. Hell, he didn't even know if they'd gotten the recorded message sent to the old Wannstead satellite! Their only option was to continue with the original plan of getting to the hidden radio and attempt contact, and hope that the ship was in range.
***
"Ah, shit!" Doug said with pure undiluted exasperation when a shuttle, obviously from the new ship, flew almost directly overhead but apparently either didn't see them or didn't want to land. Probably it couldn't right then, he thought. It circled then flew back out of sight, away from the city. Disheartened but not dispirited, they went on.
Despite it being mid-morning there were few robots about and most of those were the larger ones. On the other hand, Sinchiks were abundant but they were ignoring humans. All appeared to be headed in one direction, toward the edges of the city, as if expecting an invasion. Perhaps they are, Doug thought, but didn't mention it to Clemmie for fear of it not happening and upsetting her. Along the way she met other people she knew. Some she merely greeted but most she stopped and talked to, giving them instructions to pass the word on that the time had come to fight. She specified three different gathering places, all near the edge of the city where they could hide from sight for the time being.
"It's on the other side," Clemmie said. They had come to the wall encircling the city. It was only a meter and a half tall and the only purpose anyone had ever figured out for its existence was simply to delineate the city's boundaries. She climbed over with ease and the others followed.
The radio was hidden inside a cluster of trees that were stubby and spread long arms filled with heavy green fuzzy leaves. The growth was tangled and well suited for concealment. Clemmie led him and several others of the wing they had picked up along a narrow, barely negotiable trail through the trees into a cleared spot. All of her comrades had been dressed in the same kind of rags he and Clemmie wore.
"We always had to be damned careful going over the wall but it makes a good place to meet, and it'll do for broadcasting just as well."
The techni
cian dug up the radio and power source. She unwrapped them from their waterproof cases and hooked them together. Glowing lights came on as she ran it through a series of tests. Finally, she shrugged. "It's ready. I've set it to broadcast on several frequencies at once. Here." She handed the set to Doug. "You've already sent them one message. You talk. Maybe they'll recognize your voice. See this dial here? It'll give you a number if anyone answers. If so, turn this knob until the numbers match. Press here to talk, release it to listen. That's it."
He took the set and began speaking. They had no method for recording so he had to go over the same material again and again. Suddenly the answer light came on. Quickly he twisted the knob to match frequencies and spoke again.
"This is Douglas Trevanne. I am a survivor of the Wannstead ship Jeane Baptiste. Answer on this frequency."
He held his breath for a second in anticipation. Then there was a radio static crackle. "We ...," said someone with the sound dying off. It came back a few seconds later. "Yes, we hear you ...our NavCom had to be set to emulate the old system, we had to switch to the old com signals. We no longer use that one. Can you read me?" Doug thought the voice had to be the most beautiful in the galaxy.
"We read you loud and clear. Did you receive any of my previous messages just now?"
"This is Marine Captain Cindy Cantrell, of the USSS Doc Travis. Mr. Trevanne, please be informed that we have taken out the city's defenses and will shortly be assaulting with marines. The Doc Travis is a Space Navy warship. We appreciate the intelligence and want to meet you soonest."
A Space Navy warship! Thought Doug all excited. We might actually make it home!
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