Earth Defiant (The Ember War Saga Book 4)

by Richard Fox

  “Here we go!” Cortaro shouted. Hale swung around and saw a Toth slide into the trench, knocking the Marine sergeant off her feet. The warrior’s tail swept across the trench and dented the armored walls right in front of Hale’s face. The warrior lashed out at his Marines. One hand wrapped around Standish and lifted him into the air.

  With the warrior between Hale and the rest of his Marines, any shots from their gauss rifles ran a significant risk of friendly fire. Hale snapped his rifle onto his back and slapped a hand against a catch on his right gauntlet. A Ka-Bar blade snapped out of the housing and over his hand.

  Hale leaped onto the warrior’s back and punched the blade into the Toth. The blade careened off the armor with a shower of sparks. Hale grabbed the edge of a crystalline plates just as the warrior tried to buck him off. He held on by the tips of his fingers and jammed the tip of his blade between the plates and rammed it home.

  The warrior let off a bark of pain and tried to swing a fist at Hale, but the Marine had become a painful itch that the warrior couldn’t scratch. The warrior launched itself against the trench wall, slamming Hale against the armored walls. His armor took the brunt of the blow and his blade stayed embedded in the warrior.

  Hale twisted the knife and a spray of yellow spattered across his visor.

  Cortaro, his own Ka-Bar unsheathed, ran up to the Toth and rammed his blade into the warrior’s belly. A low moan came from the warrior. It lashed out at Cortaro and knocked him aside.

  A doughboy leaped onto the warrior’s upper shoulders and rained bare-knuckle punches against the Toth’s helm. The Toth twisted aside and tried to climb out of the trench. Hale tried to yank his blade free, but it was stuck fast against the armor plates. The Toth got halfway over before the doughboy grabbed it by the arm and pulled it back into the trench. The dirt-covered Marine jammed a gauss pistol into the cracked helm and fired twice.

  The warrior collapsed, its six limbs twitching.

  Hale twisted his blade to the side and pulled it out with a wet slurp.

  “Thanks for the assist,” the dirty Marine said. “Did you…Ken?”

  “Jared?” Hale snapped the blade back into the sheath and finally recognized his brother.

  “We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” Jared said.

  “Where’s Standish?” Cortaro called out. Hale looked around the trench, but didn’t see the Marine anywhere.

  There. An armored glove stuck out from beneath the dead warrior, fingers grasping at dirt.

  “Help me.” Hale’s hands slipped against the bloody body before finding a firm handhold. He got the corpse up a few inches, then it rose easily. Indigo, his lips broken and bloody, smiled at Hale. The doughboy was missing several teeth.

  Cortaro and Orozco grabbed Standish by the arms and pulled him free from the Toth. The Marine’s helmet had compressed slightly, popping a visor pane from its grooves.

  “To hell with these things,” Standish said. “They’re worse than banshees!”

  Yarrow grabbed Standish by the chin and turned his head to look at him.

  “Are you alright?” Yarrow asked.

  “Do you know what that smelled like?” Standish asked, pointing an accusatory finger at the body. “Ugh, I think I got some of its blood in my mouth.” He lifted his visor and spat into the dirt.

  “He’s fine,” Yarrow said.

  Jared grabbed a rifle from a dead Marine and jumped onto the firing stoop.

  “There’s still plenty more where that came from,” Jared said. He looked over the top and did a double take. “They’re retreating?”

  The boom boom boom of gauss cannons echoed through the trench. The three Iron Hearts rolled up to the edge of the trench, their legs folded and treads extended. The double-barrel cannons on their forearms sent death into the fleeing warriors.

  Overhead, dozens of Dotok fighter craft filled the air, strafing the Toth as they tried to retreat to the safety of the ocean.

  Elias leaned to the side and transformed his treads back into legs. He glanced down at Hale.

  “You just going to stand there or are you going to help me win this fight?” Elias asked. He stepped over the trench and charged the Toth, cannons blasting.

  CHAPTER 18

  Ibarra watched a holo tank showing the Toth and Eighth Fleets closing on each other, prow to prow. A few Toth fighters emerged from each ship, their course plots taking them straight to the Midway.

  “Stacey, get ready,” Ibarra said.

  Stacey, strapped into the halo chair, groaned.

  “It’s hard…” she whispered. “So many mass shadows from the fleet.” Her jaw clenched and Ibarra felt the great thorns of the Crucible shifting against each other. “I don’t think I can do this.” A drop of blood trickled down from her left ear.

  “Focus on the equation. It’s one equation with many parts, remember? The same way you taught yourself quantum mechanics when you were five, remember?” Ibarra asked.

  “That didn’t—nnng—hurt like this!” Stacey shouted.

  The Toth’s long-range guns opened fire on the Eighth Fleet, scoring direct hits against a strike carrier. The Yorktown lit up with damage reports and fell back from the wall of ships.

  Ibarra sent a command through the station. On a separate monitor, repair ships bolted away from the Breitenfeld. Scaffolds spun away into the void, leaving the still-damaged ship bare.

  “Now, my girl,” Ibarra said. Two more ships of the Eighth Fleet blinked red in the holo tank. “Now, Stacey. People are dying.”

  Stacey squeezed her eyes shut. When she opened them again, they glowed white.

  ****

  A jump portal spread from the center of the Crucible and swallowed the Breitenfeld. When reality snapped back into place, the ship found itself in the center of the Toth fleet, pearlescent vessels surrounding it in a giant cone.

  “Flight deck,” Captain Valdar said, “get the missile pods in the void right this second.”

  “Shall I open fire?” Utrecht asked. “We can nail some of the smaller vessels without any risk to the Eighth.”

  “Hold,” Valdar said. “We’re here to break through the wall, not knock on the door. Engineering, ready the jump engines.”

  “Sir, the jump caused an overload in the dark-matter buffers.” Levin’s voice was reedy with panic. “I’ve got to purge them before we can go anywhere. It’ll take time.”

  “The mission goes forward,” Valdar said. “Everyone on this ship has the rest of their lives for you to fix the problem. Valdar out.” He cut the channel and looked at Ensign Geller. “Tell me the moment the jump engines are back online.”

  “Aye-aye, Skipper,” Geller said.

  “Sir, flight deck reports the first pod is in the void,” Ericcson said.

  “Get us clear,” Valdar said. “We don’t want to be in the way.”

  ****

  Four cubes nearly the size of a Destrier transport floated behind the Breitenfeld. Each cube held sixty-four point-detonation missiles. The missiles were meant to fight the Xaros, who’d proved adept at jamming or coopting any kind of computer and guidance system, but the infrared communication system used by the human fleet remained intact. Unwilling to slap sailors into missiles and use them as kamikaze guidance systems, the engineers and planners working for Admiral Garret found a way to guide munitions to a target.

  Starting in the 1940s, air forces had used TV guidance systems attached to bombs to create “smart” weapons. IR guidance systems connected to each missile in the cube linked back to the Breitenfeld and to several dozen sailors sitting in front of holo screens attached to a mouse and keyboard watching the camera feed from each missile.

  Men and women serving in the Atlantic Union navy had played video games since before they could walk. Creating the software allowing the Breitenfeld’s sailors to steer missiles over IR had taken less than an hour.

  Panels popped open on the cubes and missiles slid free. A sailor named Rouen moved his mouse and saw the star field sh
ift as the missile responded to his commands. He turned the missile toward his designated target—a Toth cruiser at the apex of their formation—and hit a key to engage the missile’s engines.

  The game was simple: fly the torpedo into the Toth ship. Sixty-three other sailors played the same game as their missile came free of the pod.

  Rouen steered the missile from side to side, confusing any point-defense system the Toth might have active. The Toth, though, seemed entirely preoccupied with firing on the Eighth, and not shunting any weapons power to the flanks exposed to the incoming missiles.

  Rouen had zoned out while Chief MacDougall said something about how one of those Karigole he’d seen walking around the ship knew that the Toth didn’t manage their power allocation very efficiently. All Rouen cared about was the extra shore-leave chit his section chief promised to whoever scored the most hits on the Toth. Killing the Toth and surviving the battle would be nice, but actual shore leave…Rouen smiled and licked his lips as the cruiser grew larger on his screen.

  ****

  A rare smile spread across Makarov’s face as missile tracks appeared from the pods.

  “Execute maneuver Hornblower,” Makarov said.

  The first wave of missiles sped into the Toth ships at the tip of the cone. The denethrite explosives packed into the cones were considered a “safe” explosive, unlikely to explode if agitated by the normal bumps and hazards of asteroid mining, but when rammed against something at several hundred miles an hour, the explosives would detonate without the need for a fuse.

  The ships of Eighth Fleet accelerated toward their enemy at full engine burn. Rail cannons crackled to life and bombarded the Toth ships just as the first missiles found their targets.

  Confusion, the fog of war, “Murphy” was a constant factor in any battle. Makarov’s plan was to bombard the sole decision maker in the Toth fleet, Olux, with key decisions that only he could make. Would he react to the attack from within his formation by the Breitenfeld and the IR-guided missiles, her Eighth Fleet accelerating into attack range and hitting him hard, or the sudden concentration of fire on his own vessel?

  “Breitenfeld reports eighty percent missile detonation against their targets. They’re launching the second wave now,” her tactical officer said.

  Toth ships blinked red, falling out of formation and bleeding atmosphere as missiles ripped through them. She didn’t need the denethrite missiles to destroy the Toth outright, just knock them out of the fight long enough for her fleet to close the distance and finish the job.

  The Midway lurched as her rail cannons joined the battle.

  Makarov tapped Olux’s flagship; it was pristine.

  “Why aren’t we scoring any hits on this ship?” she asked. Rail-cannon shells zipped toward Olux and vanished before they could strike.

  “The ships around it massed their point-defense systems to protect it,” the tactical officer said. “If we redirect frigate squadron epsilon it might—”

  Makarov held up a hand. The two fleets were in a slugging match, and Toth ships were dying faster than hers. She was winning, but paying a terrible price in blood and ships for it.

  “Have Epsilon make an attack run on the Toth flagship. Get Valdar and Kosciusko on the line,” she said.

  ****

  Kosciusko sent a ripple of fire into a Toth fighter, tearing it into a brief plume of fire and debris.

  “67th Fighter Squadron, follow me back to the Midway. We have a new mission,” the Karigole said. He pulled his Eagle, the cockpit expanded to accommodate his much larger frame, into a loop and skimmed across the surface of a Toth cruiser. He fired a burst of shots into a cannon crystal, shattering it into millions of pieces. He slalomed around point-defense turrets, passing close enough that he could see the menial crews crammed around the base of the energy weapons.

  He pulled away from the ship and fired his afterburners, chased by dozens of bolts of blue-white energy. The flare of an incoming missile’s burning engines blazed ahead of him, heading straight for the Toth ship. Kosciusko swung his fighter to the side, guiding the cruiser’s point-defense turrets away from the incoming missile.

  The missile streaked past in a blur.

  He looked over his shoulder and saw the missile burst just within the cruiser’s hull. The ship exploded like a star gone nova, sending flame and scorched hull plating in every direction. A small core of burning oxygen and wrecked energy banks remained at the center of what remained of the ship.

  He found the Midway at the center of the Eighth Fleet and changed course to intercept.

  “Jaws, the Shiloh’s getting pounded by Toth fighters,” said an aerospace force pilot with the call sign Packer. “Why are we breaking off?”

  Seven Eagles formed up around Kosciusko. The forward landing bay doors on the Midway opened like a great maw.

  “There is only one Toth that matters in this fight,” Kosciusko said, “and it is time for the killing blow.”

  “Bombers from the 663rd are coming out hot off the rails,” Packer said. “Where’s our objective?”

  “A cruiser, I’m sending you the target location now,” Kosciusko said. Condors zipped out of the Midway and angled toward a half-dozen Toth destroyers and battlecruisers bunched together, separated from the Midway by dozens of human and Toth ships locked in combat.

  Kosciusko flew above the lead Condor bomber and matched his speed with it. The rest of the Eagles formed a cordon around the bombers. The Condors, three-person craft loaded with torpedoes against their wings and hulls, fired their afterburners and sped toward Olux’s flagship.

  Kosciusko found the Breitenfeld, a line of burning motes streaking from the missile pods toward Olux’s ship. If everything went as planned, the missiles should arrive seconds before the bombers got within range.

  Point-defense turrets on the ships surrounding Olux massed fire against incoming rail-cannon shells. A flash of distorted energy marked the death of each round as the Toth defenses proved nearly impenetrable.

  “Target the picket ships around the flagship,” Kosciusko said. “Strip away its defenses and clear a shot for the big guns.”

  The last Toth overlord was there, hiding deep within a battlecruiser and using its own kind as a shield against harm. Kosciusko’s hand tightened around the control stick. If only he could get his hands on the overlord. The truest revenge was to see the fear in an enemy’s eyes before they died, but blowing them out of space was a worthy satisfaction.

  “What’re they doing?” Packer asked. The Toth ships near Olux shifted places, forming a sphere of ships centered on the overlord’s battlecruiser.

  “They’re trying to run,” Kosciusko said. The pocket of ships broke out of formation and burned straight for the Breitenfeld. Bolts of energy struck out against the line of missiles snaking toward the flagship. “Bombers, when can you engage?”

  “We’re in range now, but their point defense—”

  “Fire. The cordon will turn a blind eye to everything but a threat to the overlord,” Kosciusko said.

  “Fine by me. Rifle!” the bomber leader said. Missiles released from the bombers and launched toward the closest Toth cruiser.

  “Bandits incoming,” Packer said. Toth fighters spat away from the flagship and accelerated toward the attacking bombers.

  “668th, there is no prize for returning to your ship with unspent missiles,” Kosciusko said. “Shoot everything you’ve got. Eagles, with me.” He fired his afterburners and flew toward the incoming fighters.

  A pair of Toth fighters broke away from the pack and fired at the lead missile. The bombardier controlling it over IR used the missile’s maneuver thrusters to jink it from side to side, like a hummingbird at a feeder. It evaded the fighter’s energy blasts, but not the fighter itself when it crashed into the missile.

  The second fighter suicided into the following missile.

  “Send your next salvo into the uppermost cruiser,” Kosciusko said. “We’ll make this a bit more difficult for them
.”

  His Gatling cannons threw out a barrage of fire, forming a cloud of high-velocity rounds directly in front of the Toth fighters as they angled up to intercept the next round of missiles. The Eagles around him added to the fog of gauss shells. Void fighting held to Newton’s First Law: the gauss rounds would continue on with their same speed and vector until they came into contact with something. At far enough distances, a spray of shells would dissipate to the point where hitting anything would be a miracle, but when the enemy target was close and speeding straight into the fire, the odds of an intersection were much higher.

  The Toth fighters split away from each other. One clipped the outer edge of the gauss rounds and exploded.

  Kosciusko picked out a target and hit it with a snap shot. He rolled away from the oncoming mass of the shattered fighter and looped over. The Toth fighters hadn’t slowed or turned around to dogfight. Half broke for the missiles in space; the other half made straight for the bombers.

  A Toth fighter exposed its belly to the Karigole’s guns as it banked over toward the bombers. Kosciusko blew it apart with ease and spat through the brief ball of fire the dagger ship left behind. A missile streaked just beneath the Toth fighter and accelerated hard down a clear path to its target.

  Three missiles blew past Kosciusko’s nose, a Toth fighter in a futile pursuit. The Toth dagger fighters were fast, but there was still a biological pilot in the cockpit that could take only so much acceleration. The missiles had no such limitation.

  A missile hit home, blowing a burning crater out of the cruiser. The ship cracked on its keel, spilling crew and hunks of metal into space.

  “Help! It’s—”

  The transmission ended when a Toth fighter collided with a Condor.

  “Lost connection with my missile!”

  “Coming right at us!”

  The comms channel descended into chaos as the Toth fighters reached the Condors and the nimble craft pounced onto the hulking bombers.