Legion Of The Damned - 06 - For Those Who Fell

by William C. Dietz

  Then, in a voice that only she could hear, the naval officer said, And may God be with us.

  4

  * * *

  It is upon the navy, under the good Providence of God, that the wealth, safety and strength of the kingdom do chiefly depend.

  —Charles II

  Preamble to the Articles of War

  Standard year 1670

  * * *

  ABOARD THE RAMANTHIAN DESTROYER STAR RAVAGER, OFF THE PLANET SAVAS

  Ramanthian Naval Commander Jos Satto made use of a single-tined fork to spear one of the large, sauce-drenched grubs inching around at the bottom of his bowl, watched it wiggle for a moment, and shoved it in under his beak. Then, having flipped a large white napkin up over his head, the officer bit down. The wormlike creature was delectably ripe. There was an audible pop as the Ramanthian bit through the grub’s tightly stretched skin followed by the usual spray of blood and intestinal matter. The warm liquid hit the napkin and formed a large round stain. Though ship-grown, and therefore less flavorful than its wild cousins, the taste was excellent.

  Satto was still savoring the rich, mellow taste, when the destroyer’s battle alarm sounded, and he felt the ship start to accelerate. A less-seasoned officer might have abandoned his meal at that point, or placed a call to the bridge, but Satto did neither. To interrupt his midmeal would be unseemly, his executive officer was competent, and the Savas system amounted to an interplanetary backwater, which made it highly unlikely that an actual threat was in the offing.

  Of course there was the possibility that Olthobo had located the human blockade runner—which would be good news indeed. The alien ship had dropped in-system three standard days before, given one of Satto’s patrol boats the slip, and promptly disappeared. A gun smuggler most likely, intent on selling weapons to the indigenes on Savas, which ran counter to Ramanthian interests. Especially if the guns wound up in the wrong hands.

  The blockade runner theory made sense, and Satto had so much faith in it, that he was still eating when he heard a staccato popping noise and replied in kind. Olthobo shuffled into the compartment. The fact that he had chosen to leave his duty station rather than use the intercom indicated that whatever the situation was, the junior officer had it under control. Like all his kind, the naval officer had multifaceted eyes, a parrotlike beak, tool legs rather than arms, and a pair of narrow, seldom-used wings. He bowed his head to the exact point consistent with Satto’s status and raised it again. “What appears to be a human destroyer escort dropped in-system, sir. We are moving to intercept.”

  The older officer was surprised but took pains to conceal it. “Time to contact?”

  “Three-plus units at extreme range, sir. The patrol boats are closing in on the target as well.”

  Satto ingested a sip of water and brought a clean napkin up to his beak. All manner of thoughts swirled through his mind. “Extreme range” was defined as the point at which a torpedo would run out of fuel. Only a fool would fire that early—which meant he had plenty of time.

  The decision to tackle the invading ship head-on was consistent with standard doctrine, which called for defending units to confront an enemy ship as quickly as possible, thereby taking advantage of the brief period during which its systems and crew were orienting themselves to a new system. The whole idea was to seize the initiative, put the newcomers on the defensive, and prevent them from reaching their objective.

  All of which was fine so long as the defenders had equal or superior throw weight. But what if the destroyer escort was little more than the tip of a spear? Backed by a shaft consisting of more powerful vessels? It was a sobering thought, and Satto reacted accordingly. “Reduce speed by 50 percent—and order the patrol vessels to do likewise. Let’s see what sort of gift we have before we rush to accept it.”

  Olthobo understood the nature of Satto’s concern, knew that some of the crew might interpret the change as a sign that the commanding officer didn’t trust his judgment, and felt a twinge of resentment. His head jerked forward, then back. “I understand and will comply.”

  Olthobo left, Satto felt the ship decelerate and rose from his table. Five of the grubs remained uneaten. Unaware that death had already passed them by, they continued to struggle.

  ABOARD THE CONFEDERACY DESTROYER ESCORT DE-10786, THE JAVELIN, OFF THE PLANET SAVAS

  Lieutenant Commander Amy Exton watched the Ramanthian task force begin to slow and knew why. Her opposite number was worried that there might be a destroyer, cruiser, or battle group following along behind her. Had he been aware of the fact that the only vessels about to emerge from hyperspace were a pair of transports the Ramanthian would have hurried to close. “Full flank speed,” Exton ordered grimly. “We need to buy the freighters some time. Order the fighters to engage the patrol vessels.”

  The orders were passed, and the Javelin leaped forward. “We’re in range,” the weapons officer intoned.

  “Prepare to fire launchers one and two,” Exton replied. “Fire.”

  The Javelin was small enough that her crew could actually feel the destroyer escort lurch as the torpedoes left their launchers and sought the enemy. But the Ramanthians had launched as well, and it was only a matter of minutes before their antimissile missiles intercepted the human torpedoes and destroyed them. They blossomed like miniature suns.

  Meanwhile, the Spirit of Natu, and the Mothri Sun dropped in-system. Exton felt a sense of emptiness at the pit of her stomach as she watched the two additional symbols appear on the screens and accelerate toward Savas. All her cards were on the table now—and it looked like a losing hand.

  Lieutenant Commander Stef Anders dispatched Lieutenant Shoshawna McKay and the other two daggers in her flight to deal with the patrol vessel that the Javelin’s C&C computer had arbitrarily tagged as “Bogey Two.” His target, and that of his two wing men, turned to meet them.

  Though not equipped with cloaking technology that the more advanced 190s had, the CF-184 Dagger was a good fighter, and Anders felt his squadron had a slight advantage where the Ramanthian Chak–class patrol boats were concerned. Although the bug vessels were three times larger and heavily armed, they were less maneuverable.

  The real problem, from the squadron leader’s perspective at least, were the twelve fighters the Ramanthian destroyer had launched, and which were now wiping themselves ontohis HUD. Half had turned toward the Confederacy transports—while the rest came to the aid of the patrol boats.

  But there was no time left in which to think as Bogey Three opened fire with its laser cannons, blips of light raced past the dagger’s canopy, and Anders went in for the kill. “Blue Leader to Blue Flight . . . There are more bogeys on the way. Let’s take this bastard on the first pass. Over.”

  “Roger that!” Lieutenant Kai Hoguto replied enthusiastically, and followed Anders in. Like the daggers that were trying to destroy them, the Chak-class patrol boats weren’t large enough to carry the equipment required to generate a defensive screen, which meant that they were forced to rely on their weapons and thick hull armor.

  Knowing that, Anders readied a pair of lancer missiles and picked them off. Hoguto and the third member of the flight did likewise, which meant that the patrol boat had six incoming targets to contend with.

  Bogey Three’s commander ordered his weapons officer to fire defensive missiles, blow chaff, and trigger the ECM generator. Two of the incoming weapons exploded harmlessly, and three were lured away from the actual target, but one was dead on. It struck the Ramanthian vessel in the side, blew a hole through the ship’s armor, and sent a column of superheated gases into the starboard magazine. There was an explosion, followed by a second explosion, followed by a third explosion, which tore the vessel apart.

  Hoguto yelled, “Yahoo!” pulled a high-gee turn, and ran into a burst of cannon fire from a Ramanthian fighter. The dagger exploded, Anders swore, and fought for position. Once he had it, the squadron commander triggered a pair of lancers, saw a flash of orange-red light, and fl
ew through the resulting debris field.

  Anders checked his six to make sure that it was clean, verified that it was, and Anders took a moment to check his HUD. He saw symbols for the Ramanthian destroyer, the surviving patrol boat, the destroyer escort, and two transports, but no sign of the green deltas that represented Shoshawna McKay and her flight. That was when he realized that they were dead, that 80 percent of his squadron had been eliminated, and that the bugs were winning.

  ABOARD THE CONFEDERACY TRANSPORT SPIRIT OF NATU, OFF THE PLANET SAVAS

  Like many transports, the Spirit of Natu had a fairly spacious bridge, which meant that Colonel Kobbi could sit toward the rear of the control room and observe as the ship left the nowhere land of hyperspace for the Savas system. Having made the transition, the battalion commander watched with a growing sense of horror as the Javelin traded torpedoes with a larger vessel, four of the destroyer escort’s fighters were blown to bits, and a swarm of Ramanthian interceptors attacked the transports.

  Both ships mounted a dozen laser cannons each, and burped coherent light as the dart-shaped fighters crisscrossed the bulky hulls and pounded the transports with cannon fire. But the freighters had shields, good shields, and as they flared the incoming energy was neutralized.

  But the best way to ensure their survival was to reach Savas as quickly as possible. The planet was enormous by then, a white-striated, mocha-colored marble that hung huge in the sky. If the Javelin could hold, maybe, just maybe, the Natu and the Sun could enter the planet’s atmosphere where the Ramanthian destroyer wouldn’t be able to follow. It was all Kobbi and the others could hope for, and with nothing else to do, the jacker said a silent prayer. God, I know you’re busy, but if you would take a moment to kill the frigging bugs, I would sure as hell appreciate it.

  But God was not so inclined, or that’s the way it seemed, because that was the moment when Lieutenant Commander Anders’s dagger took a Ramanthian missile and blew up. Tor Obbo, the last member of the dagger squadron, died ten seconds later.

  ABOARD THE CONFEDERACY DESTROYER ESCORT DE-10786, THE JAVELIN, OFF THE PLANET SAVAS

  The two warships were relatively close by that time, too close from Lieutenant Commander Exton’s perspective, but the bugs had closed the distance. The destroyer escort shuddered as another missile exploded against her shields. “They’re going to overload!” the XO warned, and his prophecy quickly came true as the energy field that protected the ship flashed incandescent and went down.

  Exton thought about her orders, the phrase “at any cost,” and felt a deep sense of regret for her ship, for her crew, and for herself. Her voice was hoarse. “Pass the con to me, delegate the rest of the systems to the C&C, and abandon ship. That’s an order.”

  ABOARD THE RAMANTHIAN DESTROYER STAR RAVAGER, OFF THE PLANET SAVAS

  Rather than place a large number of critical personnel in one place the way the humans did, Ramanthian naval architects preferred to distribute them throughout the ship, a strategy intended to ensure that a single hit wouldn’t kill all of the senior officers. That was why the Ravager’s control room was relatively small. Commander Jos Satto, the ship’s pilot, and a com tech sat side by side, their compound eyes scanning the screens arrayed in front of them.

  There was a flash of light as the human warship’s screens went down, and Olthobo, who was monitoring the action from a station toward the ship’s stern was the first to comment. “Their screens went down, sir. We have them now!”

  Satto felt a sense of jubilation and was just about to agree, when the enemy ship turned inward and started to accelerate. What looked like sparks, but were actually lifeboats, darted away. “They’re going to ram!”

  The pilot knew what to do. He applied full power and turned the ship to port. But the Ravager was big, which meant less maneuverable, and the destroyer’s bow had just started to turn when the Javelin struck.

  The destroyer escort was little more than a pile of scrap metal by then, having taken an incredible amount of damage during the minutes since her screens had failed. But her starboard in-system drive was still functioning, and Exton made use of it to propel what remained of her ship forward, and whooped into her helmet as metal touched metal.

  The officer was gone after that, her space-armored body having been consumed by the white-hot gases of the resulting explosion, but not in vain. Because even as the human died, a significant chunk of the destroyer’s bow was blown away, the Ravager lost a third of her offensive weaponry and a quarter of her crew.

  The ship shuddered as secondary explosions strobed the blackness of space, fires burned for a matter of seconds before running out of oxygen, and those who had survived fought to save what remained of their ship.

  ABOARD THE CONFEDERACY TRANSPORT SPIRIT OF NATU, OFF THE PLANET SAVAS

  “My God,” the captain of the Natu said, as the explosion lit up the control room’s screens, “Exton rammed the bastard!”

  Colonel Kobbi, still watching from the aft part of the bridge, saw that the other officer was correct, and felt sick to his stomach as the destroyer escort blew up, and the Ramanthian interceptors went after her defenseless lifeboats.

  “Look!” the navigator said, “they’re still under way!”

  And it was true, because even as the transports closed with Savas, what remained of the enemy destroyer turned toward the transports. Though missing the point of her wedge-shaped bow, there was no air to contend with, which meant that so long as her airtight hatches held she could continue to fight. So, even as the two freighters continued to take fire from the Ramanthian fighters, the destroyer launched torpedoes in their direction.

  The Mothri Sun took two hits in quick succession, lost her shields, and suffered still another blow as she entered the planet’s atmosphere. Like the men and women around her, Captain Beverly Calvo wore full space armor and was strapped into an acceleration couch. The officer couldn’t see anything other than the gray overhead, and wasn’t connected to the ship’s intercom, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out that that transport had been hit. The ship shook like a thing gone mad as the planet’s upper atmosphere tore at her hull, and the crew struggled to keep key systems on-line, as a pair of enemy fighters followed transport down.

  “My mother said that it was a mistake to join the Legion,” a technician named Lars Moy said via the suit-to-suit frequency. “I wonder if this is the kind of thing she had in mind.”

  There was laughter—followed by a barrage of insults. Calvo grinned, gave thanks for Moy, and prayed she wouldn’t pee in her armor.

  ABOARD THE CONFEDERACY TRANSPORT SPIRIT OF NATU, OFF THE PLANET SAVAS

  Such was the captain’s eagerness to escape the clutches of the Ramanthian destroyer that the freighter hit the atmosphere at a steeper angle and higher rate of speed than was either normal or safe. Colonel Kobbi’s teeth rattled, plasma flared around the ship, and a host of audible alarms sounded. Someone said, “Shit! There goes the power dispersal grid . . .” and the freighter started to wobble as the drives fell out of phase.

  “Cut the grid out of the system,” the captain ordered grimly. “Switch to manual.”

  The ship continued to buck its way down through the planet’s atmosphere, but without the computer-controlled system that fed precisely equal amounts of power to the in-system engines, there were discrepancies so subtle that a human brain couldn’t even detect the differentials, much less balance them out. The pilot battled for control and gave thanks as the transport broke through the high cloud cover. Given the fact that their fuel was running low, and they were almost out of ordnance, the Ramanthian fighters had been forced to withdraw by then. That, plus the fact that the destroyer couldn’t enter the atmosphere, meant that the crew could concentrate on putting the freighter down.

  The captain considered his options, decided there weren’t any, and made the only decision that he could. “We’ll never make it to Hagala Nor. Put her down at Savas Prime instead.”

  Kobbi heard the order, summoned
a mental map of the planet’s western hemisphere, and felt a sudden sense of alarm. If the Natu landed near the human population center to the southeast, and the Sun put down near the Ramanthian-held city to the northwest, the battalion would be split in two! Not only that, but the cyborgs would be cut off from their war forms, which would make both groups vulnerable. The battalion commander opened his mouth to object, heard someone scream, and felt the huge ship roll over onto its back.

  ABOARD THE CONFEDERACY TRANSPORT MOTHRI SUN, PLANET SAVAS

  Like all vessels her size, the Mothri Sun had the glide characteristics of a huge rock. That meant that it was nothing short of a miracle when the pilot managed to bring the transport’s bow up and prevent the ship from corkscrewing into the desert below. The surface was tan in color, streaked with iron oxide, and interrupted by occasional rock formations. The pilot thought she saw a large cluster of domed tents at one point, but the ship was still traveling at better than 600 mph, so the surface was a little more than a blur.

  A series of lights morphed from green, to amber, to red as a series of audibles sounded. The ship started to shake as one of the drives cut in and out and fingers flew as the pilot fired the Sun’s retros, deployed the freighter’s air brakes, and felt the transport slow. That was good, especially if they were going to land in one piece, but bad as well. Hagala Nor lay hundreds of miles to the northwest—and they weren’t going to make it. “I’m putting her down, sir. There isn’t any choice.”

  Captain Sahleen Amdo knew the pilot was correct. He nodded. “I concur.”

  With the decision made, the pilot eyed the slightly undulating terrain ahead, spotted a pair of tall rock formations, and aimed the ship for the U-shaped space between them. Slowly, because it would be easy to overcorrect, the pilot pushed the vessel down until the transport was flying fifty feet above the surface of the sand. Then, with the retros still firing, she put the transport down.