by A. D. Bloom
Kamikaze
A.D. Bloom
© 2014
Many thanks to Tom Robidoux for his editorial input.
Thanks to 'Blue Scar' D. for his consulting role.
Thank you to Jimmy Robidoux and the 182nd Airborne.
Cover images and custom models by Whayler.
The author would like to express his appreciation to the New England Air Museum, USS Nautilus (SSN-571), and USS Massachusetts (BB-59), F-15.net, /r/WarshipPorn and her sister subreddit, /r/Warships.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Epilogue
2164
The Squidies came without warning and destroyed the UN's capital ships. Staas Company's Privateer fleet now defends Humanity's home system and prepares to strike the aliens at Procyon.
Chapter One
2165
A month after the first battles of the war, the UN scientists finally opened the hypermass transit to Procyon, and UNS Dauntless went on her historic voyage, carrying humanity out among the stars. The Squidies' blockade gun was waiting at the other end of the transit. It sliced her up like her hull was made of wax. The enemy sent her back in pieces.
When Search and Rescue jetted into the cruiser's debris field looking for survivors, they found them all murdered like their ship. The Squidies used small-bore particle streams to dismember the crew just like they'd done to Dauntless.
It's true that gravity makes the wreckage in a debris cloud glom together, but gravity had nothing to do with what the SAR teams found. Hundreds of heads and legs and torsos and halves of bodies all floated together in a tight cloud. Some said the survivors must have been herded like that in their exosuits before the aliens sliced through the mass of them.
More than one of the crewmen on the junks and longboats tasked with search and rescue reported that when they flew into the clouds of bloody ice crystals to recover the pieces of Dauntless' crew, they heard the massacred sailors' screams over local suit comms. Turned out the Squidies had recorded the survivors' transmissions as they killed them and sent microsats back with the wreckage to rebroadcast their last cries, their prayers and curses.
Chapter Two
Hardway prepared to take some heavy hits. The first officer, Ram Devlin, had already ordered the crew into exosuits and helmets. "All sections, all decks, prepare to vent atmo." He had no intention of letting them get killed by internal shock waves when alien particle beams or warheads hit the carrier and made her atmo into a weapon. "Close all launch bay doors and fix for combat. Damage control teams to action stations."
From the carrier's bridge at the top of her command tower, Ram looked down through the diamond-pane windows, down two hundred meters to the top of the new primary and secondary launch bay modules where the armored bay doors now closed one by one, sealing the junks of the air group inside. Hardway lost too many pilots in the first encounter with the Squidies. Soon, they'd be under fire again.
The Staas Company mining junks had been modular builds like the carriers and they'd been easier to militarize than anyone thought. They'd been fitted with fast-printed gunnery and torpedo modules. Hardway's air group now had the strike capabilities of three capital ships and even without her 44 junks, the kilometer-long carrier packed a big punch. New railgun batteries crowned her bow and midships and point defense guns studded her up and down. The Staas Company's Privateer fleet had ten converted mining carriers like her, but only Hardway and her junks had won a victory.
After the loss of the capital ships Hannibal and Khan at Deimos' Lagrange, the UN fleet wasn't much more than a dozen cruisers and research vessels. The Privateers of the Staas Company fleet were almost all Earth had left to fight this war.
"Is Dr. Noondie sure he's got his numbers right?" Dana Sellis said it from the NAV console without looking up. Cozen didn't see the worry in her eyes, but Ram did.
Harry Cozen sat back in the command chair looking as relaxed as he would be at a summer barbecue. He said, "The good doctor knows we can't afford to lose a carrier." Despite that assurance, Ram still worried just like Dana did. They all worried, but none of them wanted to show it. None of them wanted to look as if they weren't up to their new jobs.
They all had some major adjustments to make. Ram had been bumped up two grades to Commander and been given more responsibility than he wanted. Asa Biko had been the crew's Teamster rep, but Cozen made him the Air Group Commander. That was like making him bloody management.
The only one on the ship who appeared truly comfortable was Harry Cozen. Nobody worried about him being up to the job of captaining Hardway. Cozen was one of only 25 Staas Company VPs, but he was also a land and space veteran of the War of the Americas and numerous conflicts beyond the pale of public scrutiny. His official war record was almost all the crew knew about him, but it was enough. They knew he had at least one other ship at his disposal and they knew he had power.
Harry Cozen always looked like he knew what he was doing, but he didn't. Just because the enemy could open and ride a hypermass transit from one star system to another and Dr. Banyan Noondie understood how didn't mean doing it with Hardway was going to go smoothly. There was a good reason the aliens didn't point a gigantic blockade gun at the barely viable interstellar transit Dr. Noondie picked to get Hardway to Procyon: the Squidies didn't think the Humans were stupid enough to ride it. Ram had seen the numbers. They'd be lucky if it didn't collapse and leave them stranded in the void of interstellar space.
"Tipperary is warming up." Dana nodded her head out the starboard windows of the bridge where the half-completed breaching ship, SCS Tipperary hung high over the carrier's starboard bow. Tipperary been hastily constructed at the Staas Company yards to provide exactly the kind of particle beams Noondie said he'd need to breach space and open a hypermass transit like the alien marauders had used to enter and exit the Sol system. It had done it once already.
Most of the technology aboard Tipperary had been reverse engineered from the alien scout, the prize brought back from Moriah. Without the same exotic elements and materials the Squidies had used to build their technology, the human version was bulkier and less powerful. The Squidies could mount what they needed to breach space on even their smallest scout ships, but employing the human-made version required a 350-meter, dedicated and specialized craft packed with ten, fat reactors.
The breaching ship was functional, but there hadn't been time to fit her engines. For safety's sake, the six tugs that brought her kept station a full, three kilometers back, well-clear of the lightning arcing over her wonder-wheel frame. The charge pooled over the outer ring like zero-gee fire and then shot crackling down the conduit-filled spokes towards the reactors and control section at the center of the fragile craft. "That thing makes me nervous," Dana said.
"Imagine being the guy inside it; everything smells burned in here." That voice came from Tipperary, already patched in on comms... "We are building charge and estimate green light in less than 30 seconds. Be ready for our 'go', Hardway."
As Air Group Commander, Asa Biko manned the AT Controller's console. "All junks, all bays, standby," he said. "Maintain alert status. Bays 46-48, prepare to loose the Dingoes."
Harry Cozen patched his suit mic into the shipwide squack and spoke into the ear of every officer, pilot and crewman on Hardway. Already, they knew that voice like a familiar gravel road. "Now hear this: The Squidies mean to keep us in one sy
stem. To achieve that goal, they have constructed a massive blockade gun inside a hollowed-out asteroid and positioned it to destroy any vessel or force group that rides the main Sol-Procyon transit. It is Hardway's job to break the blockade. We have eight days to get the job done. After that, the UN task force and our sister carriers Araby and Vegas will Transit the main passage to Procyon. Admiral Kirby refuses to wait any longer. Unless we destroy the Squidies' blockade gun, the UN task force with Araby and Vegas will enter the system directly in its sights. No matter what happens then, win or lose, it'll be a massacre. Hardway isn't about to let that happen. We will appear in the Procyon system where the Squidies do not expect us. We will engage the enemy and we will destroy their blockade gun before the UN task force comes under fire. That is all."
The lightning arcing over Tipperary's frame flashed on Harry Cozen's face as he gave the air in front of his helmet the back of his hand and cut his suit mic from shipwide comms. He glanced at Ram and said, "You look anxious, Mr. Devlin."
It's an XO's job to worry and there was a very real chance the transit might collapse before they'd completed passage.
Cozen said, "There's no need to be anxious; there's no point. Either we'll end up where we expect, or we won't. It's that simple."
"Tipperary to Hardway, green light, green light. T-minus 30 to full discharge, estimate one minute to breach."
"Roger your last, Tipperary."
Ram moved to the Ops panel. Over the ship-wide squack channel he said, "This is the XO. All decks, initiate emergency venting on my bingo in 5...4...3...2...and...bingo." From inside their helmets and exosuits, they saw no immediate change in the air around them, but as the carrier purged her atmosphere, icy fog blew from Hardway's emergency vents in a hundred, boiling, freezing, snowy jets. Less than a minute later, most of her compartments and tubes were a near vacuum.
Tipperary said, "We need the final command from you, Mr. Cozen."
Harry Cozen ground the words out like a millstone. "Do it. Breach space."
"Point of no return," Tipperary said. "Discharge is imminent."
The accelerated particle streams lanced out from the five emitters on Tipperary's ring at over two-thirds light speed, bent on course and aimed to precision by magnetic fields and vectoring rings the size of a junk. The streams of heavy nuclei collided ten Ks in front of the breaching ship, and the resulting release of energy produced enough radiant heat to make half the outer hull expand. It bathed the ship in X-rays.
At first, the intersection of the streams looked like an infinitesimal point in space gone nova, growing brighter every thousandth of a second until Ram swore he could see the bones of his hand through his exo-suit. Then, it became apparent that the energy of that conflagration must be going somewhere else because the blinding light actually dimmed enough for Ram to make out a swelling sphere of fire, a ball of hell growing where Tipperary's beams collided. That burning thing fed off the energy of the particle streams and expanded like a gargantuan bubble until it was over a kilometer-wide. Thin plasma and zero-gee flames whorled over its taut skin and exotic particles burned up on the membrane, jetting uncanny geometries in unseen currents.
"Critical hypermass in 5...4...3..."
The bubble burst early. The burning sphere tore. It ripped and ruptured, and all points on its surface withdrew from all points simultaneously. What remained when it was gone could only be called a hole in space. Inside it was an immeasurable passage and the beckoning stars as they could only be seen from the Procyon system.
"The Sol-Procyon transit is now open, Hardway. Good hunting."
"Roger that," Ram said. "And thank you, Tipperary."
"I'm getting a NAV error," Dana reported. "The computers are confused. Starfix is fubar."
"Then conn Hardway by dead reckoning," Cozen said. "Take us in."
Chapter Three
11.46 light years from home, Hardway shot into regular space in the Procyon System, streaming plasma and exotic particles like a burning spear.
As planned, Hardway appeared where the Squidies guarding the main Sol-Procyon transit least expected her. That part of the battle plan went off alright, but the element of surprise only saved the carrier for a few seconds because Dr. Banyan Noondie's calculations weren't as accurate as he thought. Although the transit hadn't collapsed and Hardway had arrived at Procyon undamaged, she burst into the system in the wrong place – on the wrong side of the gas giant she'd planned to hide behind and inside the effective range of the blockade gun that killed Dauntless.
The AT Controller's display showed the carrier's position relative to the gas giant and the aliens' blockade gun. "We are at 1.2 million Ks to primary target." Ram Devlin tried to sound calm about it. The asteroid the aliens had excavated and used to build their super-gun stared back at Hardway with one of its three, unblinking eyes, a dark circle, off-center on the mass of the rock. It might have already fired, Ram thought. At 1.2 million Ks away it would take over four seconds for the stream to reach them.
Harry Cozen said, "Ms. Sellis, get us behind that moon – the gas giant's third moon." He pointed to it on the NAV console's projection and then out the window where it hung like a cracked pearl in front of the banded immensity of the planet. "That one. The ice moon. And don't fly a straight line."
Ram said, "NAV... Dana, give us evasive combat maneuvers." She looked at him like he must be joking. Hardway lurched as Dana attempted to actually jink the leviathan ship, but the carrier only slid a few degrees out of line to port.
"That's not going to be enough," Biko said.
She said, "This is a 950-meter ship. It's not a bloody junk."
"We're 1.2 million Ks away from that gun," Ram said. "It takes light 4 seconds to cross that distance. The enemy will have to lead us by at least four, whole seconds, so just make sure we're not where the enemy thought we'd be when he aimed and fired."
"That first shot is already on the way," Biko said. "Guaranteed."
Dana Sellis fired the underside bow and topside stern thrusters, pitching the carrier's nose up sharply as Hardway ripped through space. He made it sound like Dana had a chance to avoid the blockade gun's fire, but he knew they were a huge target.
The alien blockade gun's long-duration, accelerated particle stream reached out with a river of focused heavy nuclei in agonizing, seemingly unending, five-second bursts. It sliced across the carrier's path like the blade of an infinitely long and terrible sword and caught Hardway's forward section. It hit behind a railgun battery on the bow and raked down the port side, tearing the doors off three of the new forward launch bays like they were made of paper. Most of the QF-111 Dingoes in those bays were smashed and burned. If the junks that got hit hadn't been literally blown out the bay, their reactors could have cooked off.
A half-second after the stream hit, the shock of the first impact made it up the long spine of the ship, all the way to the top of the tower and the bridge. Even with the atmo vented, Ram heard the rumble of it come up through his feet on the deck. The bulkheads blurred as they shook.
The blockade gun fired again. Its beam hammered and tore the dense belt-iron bulkheads, cutting deep until the beam shot out the other side of the ship. Ram saw it from the bridge. It looked like the bow was showering sparks for hundreds of meters in all directions, but those were huge globs of molten metal. Before the end of that burning sword's five-second stroke, the blade sliced through bone. It severed the bow guns from the front of the ship.
Dana pitched, rolled, and threw yaw changes at the enormous carrier while vectoring the engines' thrust. The bow guns came away from the molten-edged wound and rolled away to port. You could see the cross-section cut through them. The exposed decks glowed with molten metal. The severed piece of Hardway spun, and the railguns' twisted barrels turned to point at the bridge before they tumbled away to port and fell behind the carrier.
Ram said, "There were at least sixteen crew operating that gun battery."
Dana fired Hardway's five Novalifter engin
es, and they pressed the crew against seat-backs and bulkheads as she made straight for the cover of the gas giant's third moon without any attempt to fly evasively. The further they got from that terrible weapon, the harder it was to hit them, but the enemy still caught Hardway one more time. When the accelerated particle stream reached out again and slashed down her path, it caught the sub-tower. It tore through the armor and the outer and inner hulls. It sliced through bulkheads and decks until the sub-tower shook so hard the optical arrays and antennas ripped loose. The bottom 75 meters fell away and tumbled, molten edged and ragged. Most of the bridge officers' quarters were in that section.
The severed forward railgun batteries and the lost gun crew fell into a slowly decaying orbit around the 2nd moon, but the sub-tower augured right in and impacted on the surface. Lieutenants Blake and Wittgenstein went with it.
*****
From the way Asa Biko looked at the tactical display and the 2nd moon, Ram could tell the AGC had decided that now was the time to get his people back. Biko thumbed comms. "Hardway AT to Mohegan, I'm pulling you off the defensive screen. Prepare for search and rescue. We'll vector you to target."
"Roger that, Hardway AT." Chase Burroughs was flying Farad's rebuilt junk now and Mohegan was as solid as she'd even been.
"Mr. Biko," Cozen asked from the command chair, "Are you sending Mohegan out to the second moon to pick up the gun crew?"
"There's a chance some of them survived."
"Very good, Mr. Biko, but tell your SAR junk to standby."
Biko pushed back. "According to the chain of spysats we deployed behind us, the first waves of long-range, enemy warheads have already launched off an airbase built into that blockade gun's rock. They'll be here any minute. Wait any longer to send the SAR flight and they might get spotted by the enemy."
"That's right," Cozen said. "Now that the Squidies know we're here, the commandos will need the distraction." The original plan called for Hardway to give the men and women of the Special Boat Service a discrete launch on their mission to demolish the blockade gun with hand-placed explosives, but now, plans had to change. "In order to help the commandos slip away cleanly and make it to their destination, I want you to send three junks on that SAR mission. That's where the Squidies will be looking and not at the SBS. Their plan depended on us providing more discretion, but at least this way they'll have a shot at the target."