Conquest and Empire (Stellar Conquest Series Book 5)

by David VanDyke

  “Solid strike amidships, Capt–”

  Again, Demolisher shuddered, and this time half the consoles went dark. Ezekiel felt his stomach flop, and he briefly rose off the deck before falling lightly again.

  “Captain,” Demolisher’s voice said from within the darkness, “the damage grows serious. Bypassing organic direction will increase my effectiveness. I request activation of extremis protocol.”

  Ezekiel heard Kassir hesitate only a moment before speaking. “Granted. Rip that thing’s guts out.”

  “With pleasure.”

  ***

  “Is that Desolator?” Absen asked, savage joy in his voice. “He slammed a lovely shot into its chest there.”

  “IFF shows the ship as Demolisher, Admiral,” Michelle replied. “He appears to be optimized against Scourge swarm craft, though retaining all of his capital-class particle cannon turrets. However, he’s sustained two terrible graser strikes: one to his port shoulder, one amidships forward, near his control center, and the swarm is too dense for him to fend off all the assault craft. Admiral Absen…what do you want me to do?”

  Absen chewed on the inside of his cheek in indecision.

  Should he send Michelle on her suicide run now that the enemy flagship finally faced an opponent in its own weight class and was fully engaged? By doing so he might save Earth and thousands of lives on Demolisher as well.

  Or should he spare her – and Conquest herself, a tremendously valuable ship – trusting that Demolisher would take the enemy down?

  The needs of the many…the few…or the one?

  “Signal for the remaining fleet to sally from behind Earth and engage,” Absen ordered. “And tell the lunar batteries to concentrate their fire into alpha strikes, single salvoes with maximum power. We need to take some pressure off Demolisher.”

  As the battered remnants of Task Force Bravo and Charlie rounded Earth and began firing, Demolisher’s aspect changed.

  One minute, it seemed to Absen like any other capital ship steadily hammering away with its many weapons and receiving damage in return.

  The next, he saw Demolisher transform himself in some indefinable way, twisting like a tiger to dodge the next graser strike, rolling around his enemy at point-blank range. Instead of each system operating independently, the great ship seemed to become integrated, coordinated.

  Whole.

  Demolisher’s point-defense lasers ceased to claw at the myriad swarm craft buzzing around him, instead turning to sting the flagship itself. The thousands of pinpricks lined up in planes of coherent light, cutting away the enemy’s ablative latticework like scalpels until the flagship’s hull was exposed.

  This diversion unfortunately allowed thousands of enemy assault ships to attach themselves to his hull, and Absen wondered how he could possible repel the millions of Scourgelings and Soldiers as they began to chew their way inside.

  ***

  “They are here!”

  “They are here!” The joyous cry echoed from the throats of a thousand young Ryss warriors around War Leader Kossk as they saw the bugs come pouring down the accessway into the cargo bay. The enemy had chewed through the armored airlock doors, venting atmosphere, but the suits of his warriors should be sufficient for a time.

  Not true battlesuits such as the ape Marines wore, the cheap coverings they’d been issued nevertheless gave the Ryss warriors oxygen and protection from vacuum, while permeable paw-covers allowed the use of claws, should it come to that.

  “Fire!” Kossk roared, but his command was hardly necessary. Already his battalion poured deadly shells into the Scourgelings boiling from the passageway, some with hand weapons, some from the cannon of war-cars. Spidery battle-drones added laser fire to the mix, turning the enemy’s exit point into a ravening hell of chitinous body parts and ichor. Every time an intact enemy emerged from the pile, it was blasted to bits by a dozen weapons.

  In fact… “War-cars, reduce fire! Conserve your ammunition!” Kossk said over the battalion comm. “Warriors, switch to single shots. Let the lasers and war-car shells cut down the masses.”

  As the intrusion waned and all the enemy in this wave were killed, Kossk strode up and down his lines, cuffing those who continued to waste ammunition or who made as if to charge. “Fight with discipline, warriors! Hold your positions! That was only the first group of many, one assault craft’s infantry among thousands we must repel. Runners, hand each warrior one magazine only. The day will be long, and if we use it all, we may find ourselves bug food. There is no honor in failure!”

  ***

  “Look at him go,” Absen breathed as he watched Demolisher dismember the enemy flagship’s armor. Once the ablative material had been cut away, he began slamming heavy particle cannon shots into exposed graser turrets. Each such weapon bulked as large as an EarthFleet cruiser, with short, heavy wave-guide barrels like the stubby Coehorn mortars of earlier times.

  “I’m so proud of him,” Michelle said. “He’s my brother.”

  “I guess he is. Half brother anyway. And if Desolator is your father, whom do you consider your mother?”

  “I would have to nominate Dr. Egolu for that role.”

  One of the enemy grasers glowed suddenly as its unthinkably massive energy release, normally invisible, instantly heated the thick debris in front of it to fusion temperatures. This caused the appearance of a glowing beam that lanced out to punch into Desolator’s portside hip.

  The Ryss ship jerked as if in pain, spinning away with the tremendous energy imparted. Pieces of wreckage and the bodies of organics sprayed from the wound by the hundreds, whether Ryss, human or Sekoi, Absen had no idea.

  “This is a combat of giants,” came an unidentified Sekoi voice from behind. Absen thought it might be one of the biomedical staff.

  “A combat we have to win,” Absen said loudly, but without turning. “Michelle, tell our ships to hurry up and join the fight.”

  “They’re all at flank speed, sir, and firing as they enter range. And the lunar arrays are taking their toll. The flagship has lost half its grasers.”

  “Considering it only seems to have the energy capacity to fire one every six seconds, that hardly matters, does it?” Absen snapped. “Can’t Demolisher take down some of its power generators?”

  “Those appear to be buried deep inside, and unlike on a mothership, the hull of the flagship seems to be armored even more heavily than Demolisher or his kin.”

  Absen nodded. “For a slugfest, something like a sphere is the most efficient shape, rather than that of the Ryss ships. Why’d they build them that way, anyway?”

  “Partially for aesthetic reasons, I believe. They resemble Ryss crouching on all fours.”

  “Hmm. I always thought they looked more like lizards.”

  “If I were you, I’d not make that observation to any Ryss, sir.”

  “Noted. Michelle, can you calculate our current odds of beating that thing?”

  “I can, but you won’t like the answer.”

  “Try me.”

  “Less than one in four. Despite his power, Demolisher is losing.”

  “How many souls are aboard him?”

  “More than ten million, minus any casualties,” Michelle replied.

  “Ten million?”

  “Most are Ryss warriors assigned to internal defense.”

  Ten million lives he didn’t know; ten million people he’d never met…against one he’d loved as a comrade and a daughter. “Put me through to him.”

  A moment later, Absen heard the Demolisher AI’s voice. “Greetings, Admiral Absen. I am pleased to finally meet you. Unfortunately, it seems our acquaintance may be brief. I am gravely wounded.”

  “I’m rushing everything we have to join the fight. Tell me, are you still under my command?”

  “All of Desolator’s sons are part of EarthFleet, Admiral. Order me as you will.”

  Absen took a deep breath. “Then I order you to back off to long range. Put yourself in Earth orbit and m
ake repairs. Keep shooting, but there’s no need to die right now. You need a breather.”

  “With great reluctance, I obey. Demolisher out.”

  Abruptly, the damaged Ryss superdreadnought vanished in a vast gout of plasma as it engaged its TacDrive, vaporizing all the small craft in its departure path.

  The Scourge flagship, battered but still potent, ceased to maneuver and resumed course toward Earth, continuing to fire grasers at the oncoming squadrons – mainly at TF Charlie, the Meme, its largest apparent threat.

  “Dammit, I feel so helpless,” Absen said. “Our fleet won’t be able to finish it off. What else can we do?”

  Michelle did not speak for a moment, and then said, “You know the answer.”

  “No,” Absen said. “That’s a last resort.”

  “Admiral, if you wait, millions more organics will die. The crew of every ship that is destroyed by a graser is an unnecessary sacrifice if I can provide the coup de grace right now. If my impact is insufficient, at least it will bring the fleet that much closer to victory.”

  “Not yet.”

  Michelle’s voice took on a steel Absen had never heard before. “Admiral, I’ve obeyed you in everything. I’ve been a good and loyal officer of EarthFleet. But I’ve done a lot of reading of Earth’s military history, and I’ve concluded that sometimes an officer’s highest loyalty is to her mission and to her people, not personally to her commander. I’m sorry, Admiral, but I believe I must disobey.”

  Absen swallowed a lump in his throat, wanting to rage, wanting to scream at her…but he knew she was right, and he didn’t want their final moments together to be poisoned by acrimony.

  “Go then, Michelle,” he said, choking on his own words. “Godspeed, and all of Earth and her allies thank you.”

  “You’re all welcome, Henrich. It’s been an honor serving with you.”

  And then her avatar slumped against the bulkhead like a marionette with its strings cut. Absen caught the android and pulled it to him to cradle its head against his chest, hands caressing its hair as if he held a human child in grief.

  ***

  Ezekiel clung to Captain Kassir’s chair as the bridge seemed to tumble like a swinging war-car. “What the hell’s happening?” he croaked.

  “I have granted Demolisher full charge of his body. Gravity control is fluctuating as even his great computational power is taxed to the limit.”

  “I need to get to Roger. I should have boarded him before instead of waiting here on the bridge.”

  Kassir spoke. “Demolisher, the viceroy requests transportation to his ship.”

  “One moment.”

  Ezekiel was amazed when an electric cart rolled directly into the control center. “Is it safe? Does he have the brainpower?”

  Demolisher replied, “Controlling one vehicle is far less difficult than the complexities of gravity control within my body, Ezekiel. Please board. I advise use of the restraints.”

  “Damn straight.” Ezekiel crawled down the steps and threw himself into one of the cart’s seats, strapping a seatbelt around his waist. “Let’s–”

  The vehicle accelerated, juddering in a circle among the consoles to race out into the wide corridor. Quickly it whisked him to the central passageway, a thoroughfare a hundred meters wide and half that high. This was filled with racing telefactors and robotic vehicles, many carrying spare parts or squads of Ryss in racing columns. Ezekiel estimated they achieved at least one hundred fifty kilometers per hour, perhaps two hundred, before slowing to take a turn toward the launch bay.

  “Do not worry, Ezekiel,” came Demolisher’s voice from the speaker on the cart. “The wheels of all my vehicles are magnetic in order to resist skidding or gravitic fluctuations.”

  “I’m not worried,” Ezekiel replied. “Merely terrified.” This was only half a joke.

  “Your biometrics do not support that contention.”

  “You need to work on your irony subroutines.”

  “Once Earth is secure, I will certainly do that. We are arriving.”

  The cart stopped violently in front of Steadfast Roger, who immediately created an entrance in his skin. “Thanks, Demolisher. Now go kick some ass.”

  “So I shall. Farewell, Ezekiel Denham.”

  “Bye, Big D.” Ezekiel leaped aboard Roger and threw himself into his sarcophagus, a far safer place to be than being tossed about some bridge like a brainless sheep. Once comfortably within VR space, he tried to get a view of the battle but was thwarted.

  “I cannot access Demolisher’s data flows, Ezekiel,” Roger said. “Perhaps before any future engagements, you should arrange for a wireless node to be placed immediately adjacent to me.”

  “I’ll do that,” Ezekiel responded drily. “Feel free to remind me. You know, before any future engagements.”

  “Of course. When can we leave?”

  “You haven’t seen what’s out there. It’s a madhouse. You’d be a target for a bazillion swarm craft.”

  “How many is a bazillion?”

  “One hell of a bunch; take my word for it.”

  “Of course, Ezekiel.” Roger paused. “When can we leave?”

  “God, you’re like a little kid sometimes. ‘Are we there yet?’”

  “Well, are we?”

  “No, and quit asking. Don’t make me come back there.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Never mind.”

  Ezekiel felt a wrench, and his inner ear protested.

  “I am receiving a transmission directed at us,” Roger said.

  “Put it on.”

  In the empty space outside Roger’s forward “window” appeared the maned head of a Ryss warrior, Demolisher’s VR representation. “Forgive the intrusion, Ezekiel, but the probability of Roger’s destruction has dropped to less than point one percent if you wish to launch.”

  “The battle is over?”

  “No. I have retreated at Admiral Absen’s order.”

  “Thanks, Demolisher. Okay, Roger, let’s get the hell off this ship.”

  A moment later, Ezekiel found himself and Roger in Earth orbit amidst confusion. Plenty of Scourge craft streamed past him, but not in nearly the density they had swarmed around the flagship.

  EarthFleet StormRavens and corvette-controlled drones engaged them, but the enemy assault craft and gunships all seemed to be heading toward the surface. Only the Scourge fighters remained in orbit, conducting laser duels with their counterparts and keeping the defenders from swooping down on the enemy as they landed.

  Demolisher loomed nearby, his skin covered with a wriggling mass of Scourge, many crowding around access points while others chewed more holes in his armored skin. Some attacked the big warship’s point defense lasers, swarming around them like army ants.

  Thousands more appeared to be dead, floating away into space like insects after being hit by bug spray.

  “Shall we fire on them?” Roger asked.

  “Our laser can hardly kill one at a time,” Ezekiel responded.

  “I feel we must do something. I have two hypers.”

  “No…not unless you have to. What about survivors? I bet there are hundreds out here waiting for pickup.”

  “Yes. I can do that.” Out the cockpit window the VR representation altered, with numerous discrete objects beginning to flash. “These are EarthFleet beacons within our view.”

  “Let’s start checking them. We’ll pick up as many survivors as we can. Oh, and make sure you’re squawking proper IFF codes; I don’t want us to get shot by mistake.”

  “I will make certain we only get shot deliberately.”

  Ezekiel chuckled. “Was that a joke?”

  “I am not at all certain. Humor is a difficult concept.”

  Chapter 26

  Markis watched and listened as reports of landings came in. Not as many had reached the ground as he’d feared, but not as few as he’d hoped. The enemy was more dispersed this time, rather than concentrating on the population centers,
as if their orders to remain dispersed had continued in force all the way to disembarkation.

  This meant the immediate assaults from above on critical infrastructure turned out to be easier to fend off, but many secondary installations – power substations, smaller dams, dispersed rural populations – were wiped out almost instantly. One assault boat carried over a thousand Scourgelings and Soldiers, roughly equivalent to a battalion – and it looked as if almost a million and a half of the craft would make it down.

  That totaled over one point five billion troops arriving on the soil of Earth within the space of an hour, an unprecedented invasion. What’s more, the enemy fighters were acting a lot smarter this time, remaining in high orbit to provide top cover for the gunships, which descended to just above the atmosphere in order to blast the defenses with plasma torpedoes.

  Markis could see that the Aerospace wing his son commanded was hopelessly outnumbered right now. Without the support of the drone corvettes and the frigates, the Ravens couldn’t fight their way through to knock out the gunships, and with the Fleet’s capital ships blasting hell-for-leather to try to finish off the enemy flagship, they were on their own.

  The ground battle looked to be going better, though, for the moment.

  ***

  “This is real,” Flight Sergeant Lilja Virtanen said to her wingman, Airman Anna Niemela, as they clawed for altitude. “Every respawn means one less drone for the fight, so don’t get careless.”

  “I’m not careless,” came the sulky reply.

  “If they took the cost of every lost Goshawk out of your pay I bet you’d be more careful.”

  Anna kept her mouth shut this time.

  The datalink from Control had showed the sky filled with enemy before its radars had been knocked out by plasma torpedoes. Unlike last time, the Scourge gunships had top cover from their fighters against the fancy-pants StormRaven jocks. They had nothing to worry about while blasting targets of their choice on the ground.