by B. V. Larson
Straker watched as the soft-launched friendly missile group lit its engines. It raced ahead in a ring on the outside of the cylinder of space between the oncoming enemies, a cylinder that was full of submunitions and beams. Had they flown down the middle, some would have been destroyed to no purpose.
The enemy missile swarm from the moon bases sprang to life as well, a mass off to the side. It curved around from the left in order to avoid the mess in the middle.
Gray diverted some missiles to counter and break up the enemy volley, and Straker watched as she reformed the light fleet to place its smallest ships, the corvettes, in a screen against the missiles. They were the most agile and least likely to be struck, though it would only take one warhead to destroy each vessel.
“Indy…” Straker said as the incoming fire got denser and denser, “we need to—”
“Gryphon inserting into underspace now.”
The familiar chill hit him, and he manually increased the heater setting inside his mechsuit to compensate. At least now the chance of any of the three Archers being destroyed in the firefight above was dramatically reduced. Underspace detectors in the fortresses might be lighting up, but Straker had to hope the enemy would be far too busy to worry about three bogeys among the thousands of ships, missiles, beams and bullets they had to deal with.
Now Gryphon, Revenge and Liberator navigated on prediction alone. Fortresses wouldn’t deviate much, but there were a few attack ships in orbit around Unison, adding to its final defenses. A sharp enemy commander might follow the convergence points of the Archers, waiting in normal space to fire upon emergence.
Straker’s tactical display showed the trio surging ahead, aiming at a point that matched geosynchronous velocity above the capital city of Unity—in essence, coming to a dead stop in orbit so the dropships could fly straight down, with no orbital velocity to bleed off in re-entry. They’d planned for emergence at a gap in the orbital coverage, when the six remaining fortresses were as far out of position as possible. Three were blocked by the planet’s bulk, and the other three should be furiously busy with Gray’s ships.
“Powering up,” said Straker.
“Roger,” said Loco. Both mechsuits came to life, free to move about the flight deck.
Straker felt that familiar sensation, as if he’d taken on a new, godlike body, and everything around him became small. He walked over to a shuttle that now seemed the size of a child’s rideable toy groundcar. He looked down onto its roof. Had he desired, he could have taken a gauntlet and smashed it flat.
“Man, I am so ready for this,” said Loco. “Full brainlink again! Gonna kick some ass!”
“Damn straight. Watch the fratricide, though. We have Benota’s Hok on our side, and our own IFF isn’t too reliable.”
“We knew going in it was gonna be messy. As for the Hok, those freaks can kill each other off for all I care.”
Straker didn’t answer, but he didn’t disagree. Engels had tried to argue the Hok were human and should be treated like any other soldier, but they weren’t. No amount of re-education or training would restore their free will. If they were told to sit on one place and starve, they would do it. They had no reproductive organs, and even if they had, their genetics would have been completely corrupted. In fact, they were just what they’d been designed to be: organic machines, the perfect shock troopers. The sooner they were expended, the better. Their creation and use would be forbidden in the New Earthan Republic.
“Emergence in one minute,” said Zaxby on Straker’s comlink. “When the doors open, jump immediately.”
“Will do. Good to hear your voice, Zaxby. Are you…”
“I am myself, Derek Straker. Just more. When I brainlink with Indy, it’s like when you do so with your mechsuit—if it were alive. I have an idea, if you’d like to try it.”
“What is it?”
“I could brainlink Loco’s suit to yours, and therefore you could be brainlinked to each other. You might be more efficient in combat.”
Straker’s stomach roiled. Brainlinking with another living being, even voluntarily, was forbidden in the Hundred Worlds, a taboo and a crime equivalent to rape. Those caught doing so were mind-wiped and their brainlinks were removed, never to have one installed again. The closest they came was sharing data from mechsuit to mechsuit, providing a double buffer.
“No, Zaxby. Not now, not ever.”
“I could arrange for a link with Carla if you’d rather.”
“Drop the subject, Zaxby. Don’t make me order you back to Ruxin.”
“There’s no need to issue threats. Doors opening in ten seconds. Zaxby out.”
Loco chuckled in Straker’s ear. “That guy gets weirder and weirder every day.”
“Here we go. Head in the game, Commander Paloco.”
“Roger wilco. Assault Admiral Straker sir.”
“Assault Admiral?”
“Your new rank. I made it up.”
As Straker laughed, the doors withdrew to reveal the blue planet below, its atmosphere curving away. “Go,” he said as he leaped out like a skydiver.
Chapter 42
Battleship Indomitable, facing the Mutuality monitors.
Engels watched, stomach clenched with battle stress, as ships of Ellen Gray’s light fleet died throwing themselves against the fortresses. Indomitable couldn’t fire any more salvos into that mess. The monitors would soon enter her particle beam’s effective range. Straker and Gray were beyond her help.
Captain Zholin’s capital ships were racing to get behind the monitors, but they moved at the speed of the slowest, the dreadnoughts, and they had a lot of vector to change in their 180-degree sweep to their left. When the monitors had detected this maneuver, they’d increased their own speed further, directly toward Indomitable.
Evidently, they were intending to do whatever it took to destroy the battleship before they got caught from behind by the heavy fleet. It was textbook, exactly what Engels would have done.
“Entering effective range of our particle beam,” Tixban said.
“Fire at the lead monitor,” Engels ordered, “half power.”
“Half power, ma’am?” asked her senior weapons officer in surprise.
“Do it.”
“Aye aye, ma’am.”
The ship vibrated with the massive energy expenditure that sent untold numbers of particles in a concentrated stream. At nearly lightspeed, when they impacted the molecules in a target, they caused fission or fusion. Either way, the molecular disruption was horrendous. Armor would boil away or vaporize.
That’s where reinforcing fields came in. The electromagnetics deflected and slowed particles. They also stiffened the structures of the layers of armor, making them less susceptible to damage. Finally, the fields energized the embedded thermal superconductors, allowing them to carry dangerous heat away and radiate it into the void almost as fast as it was produced.
“Half power?” Benota murmured to her.
“They’ve never seen what Indomitable can do. I want them to underestimate her.”
“Hit,” Tixban said. “Negligible damage. The monitors are increasing their evasive maneuvers.”
“Keep firing at half power, half rate,” Engels said. “Tixban, can you give me an analysis of their armor and shielding?”
“What do you want to know?”
“I want to know the optimum moment to go full power. Can we take a monitor out with one shot, like we did with the superdreadnoughts?”
“One moment.”
Engels waited for three more shots as Tixban worked the sensors systems, gathering and analyzing data on how much damage the particle beam was doing. Then he spoke.
“While my analysis is preliminary, I believe we will have to be at point-blank range to destroy a monitor with one shot. At short range, it will take two to three shots. At medium range, anywhere between four and seven. Again, these are only rough estimates.”
“How many shots can we get in before they can hit us effec
tively with their beams?”
“Approximately sixteen if we use full power. However, if we divert energy to our own armor, we will recharge more slowly. In any case, they will begin striking us at medium range.”
“Got it.” Engels glanced at Benota. “Observations? Suggestions?”
“Run our impellers to push us to our left. It’s not much, but it will let the heavy fleet line up behind the monitors slightly faster.”
“Helm, do as he says. What else?”
Benota replied, “We have submunitions, right?”
“Yes. The railgun can fire bursts of smaller bullets instead of single big ones.”
“When the time comes, alternate weapon types at the same target. They won’t be able to fully dodge submunition clusters. Kinetic strikes on heat-weakened armor will be doubly effective.”
“Good idea. More?”
Benota shook his head. “It’s a slugfest. Keep slugging.”
***
Straker dove out the flight deck door as Gryphon hovered on impellers directly above the Mutuality’s capital city of Unity. His radiation detectors screamed briefly as they picked up the fading traces of the blasts of the float mines the Archers had dropped and detonated before they emerged from underspace. Those explosions should have cleared the area of mines, missiles or lurking attack ships, like an infantryman tossing a grenade into a room before he entered.
Loco came out right after him, and all around them fell the assault lifters that had been attached to the Archers. It had been the only way to convey four thousand troops through the battle zone and get them into drop position.
The lifters pointed nose-down and lit their engines, speeding ahead through the thin atmosphere. They’d been let go at sixty thousand meters altitude, and with no orbital velocity to bleed off, they should be on the ground in five minutes.
Those that survived, anyway.
As intended, Straker and Loco fell more slowly than the lifters, head-down like divers. Surprise limited the initial response from the ground, but flak and missiles began reaching up toward the assault force.
In reply, Revenge and Liberator hammered the air defense sites with all the weaponry at their disposal. Indy refused to shoot to kill, but she used Gryphon’s point-defense suite to pick off rising missiles. She also beamed sophisticated electronic warfare transmissions that disrupted sensors and hacked at linked computer systems.
At least, that’s what she was supposed to be doing. The effects were invisible, but of the sixty lifters, more than fifty made it to landfall intact, so Straker figured whatever she did must have worked. He was grateful.
At least, he was grateful until his link to Liberator cut off abruptly. Simultaneously, a new star blossomed in the sky above him.
“What was that?” Straker snapped. His standby comlinks to Revenge and Liberator dropped as well.
Indy answered. “I regret to inform you that Liberator has been destroyed by a capital beam strike from the nearest fortress. Revenge has inserted into underspace, and we must also do so immediately. Good luck, Admiral Straker.” Then that comlink disappeared too.
Dammit. Liberator gone, with all her crew? He’d known many of those aboard. Some were Breakers from the earliest moments of the Liberation. There was no time to dwell on it now. He had to be grateful the assault lifters had gotten away.
“Derek…?” Loco said.
Straker focused. “Turn and burn.”
“Roger.”
He and Loco popped their canards and used them to alter their steep vertical dives into brief, shallow flights toward their designated drop zones. When the time came, they triggered their jump jets and stalled, to land on their feet among the grounded lifters.
Those lifters were already disgorging their troops. The Hok wore battlesuits in Mutuality red, each modified by the simple addition of a large letter L for Liberation on its back. Combined with modified IFF transmitters, these allied L-Hok should remain identifiable to the Liberation marines even while fooling the enemy into thinking they were friendlies.
The L-Hok lifters landed centrally, an inner ring half a kilometer across surrounding the Committee Citadel. The Liberation marines formed an outer ring to stop any counterattacks or attempts to relieve the Citadel. Benota and DeChang had both agreed that using Hok to seize the government would thoroughly confuse the enemy, probably paralyzing those who were used to seeing the Hok only as their own.
After all, Straker wanted to take the Committee intact. The transfer of power would go smoothest if the citizenry’s familiar leaders, backed by equally familiar Hok, issued the orders. He didn’t care that they’d be doing it under duress.
Whereas the L-Hok lifters were packed to the gills with battlesuiters, the Breaker marine lifters dropped off one armored vehicle each—a light tank or a hover—to reinforce the defense. Then, the lifters moved to the best positions they could find—the tops of buildings or to block narrow streets—in order to use their own turrets and missile launchers as fire support weaponry.
Straker hit the ground and immediately began analyzing the deployment. The L-Hok were spreading with highly trained perfection and advancing toward the Citadel, gunning down every armed defender with brutal efficiency.
This was the moment of Straker’s greatest worry. If Benota had told the L-Hok to betray the Liberation and save the Committee, now was when they would do it. He’d briefed the marines on this possibility, and most of the guns from the armored vehicles were pointed at the backs of L-Hok platoons.
But the L-Hok continued inward. When they bounded over the wall into the Citadel, Straker relaxed. “Straker to Breakers. Get into those defensive positions. We don’t know how heavy the counterattack will be, or how long it will take for Commodore Engels to bring us overhead cover. Prepare for the worst.” He switched channels. “Loco, you good?”
“I’m good, boss. Good hunting.”
“Thanks. You too. Straker out.” Loco would command the Breakers in the defensive ring, freeing Straker to head in and play Liberator.
His proximity alarm pinged, and he checked his HUD to see Sergeant Redwolf bound up at the head of a battlesuiter squad, with War Male Dexon and his warriors following. “We’re here to watch your back, sir,” Redwolf said.
“My Foehammer’s all I need,” Straker replied.
“Begging your pardon, sir, but we don’t trust those L-Hok, and a mechsuit’s not invulnerable, especially in urban terrain.”
“All right, come along. Remember, don’t kill any unarmed civilians or surrendered military. I want a coup, not a massacre.”
Straker set out at a run, trusting the others to follow. He hadn’t asked for them to come along, so he wasn’t going to make allowances for them, allowances that would impair his regained combat effectiveness.
As he approached the wall, a tall defense turret swiveled toward him and his HUD shrieked at him that he was being locked up by a targeting system. With hardly a thought he sent a force-cannon bolt into the turret, blowing it to bits. He jinked as he ran, just in case any more of the emplacements were active. The L-Hok’s orders had been to seize the Citadel first, and only concentrate on destroying the enemy second, many of these defenses would still be intact.
He bounded over the wall at the location of the dead turret, hoping that would be where the enemy least expected him. As he cleared the ten-meter barrier, his HUD showed him a Hok squad that lacked Liberation IFF. The firestorm of small arms that erupted from it confirmed these were Mutuality troops, not his.
His gatling slashed them to ribbons, his perfected brainlink allowing him to hose them down with clean precision while simultaneously checking for heavier targets and landing from his jump. Behind him, Redwolf’s squad bounded to the top of the wall, then dropped to the turf behind, while the Ruxin warriors simply climbed over, an easy task with their many arms.
His HUD cued him to a threat to his right. Moving instinctively forward to make himself a moving target, he identified the barrel of a heavy tan
k poking from around the corner of the blocky central Citadel building as the vehicle edged into view. The crew was obviously maintaining as much cover as possible and relying on their heavy front glacis to save them from attack. Usually that would be smart tactics, but not against a mechsuit, where speed and maneuver were paramount.
Straker broke into a run, hugging the building to stay out of sight of the tank’s sensors until he could get close. However, he hadn’t counted on the drone that popped into view overhead.
The tank suddenly reversed itself, withdrawing and no doubt waiting in ambush. Straker slowed and made a quick check for other threats. Armor was most dangerous in teams, but he didn’t see any more vehicles. Maybe this one was in front.
He looked up. The building was ten stories high. He could jump to the top with jet assistance. The problem with this trick was, most roofs weren’t made to hold fifty-ton mechsuits stomping around on them.
“Redwolf,” he barked, “take your men up to the roof and give me a view of that heavy. Dexon, take out that drone.”
As the warriors blasted the observer, the battlesuiters bounded upward on their own jets, landing easily on the rooftop and disappearing out of sight. In Straker’s HUD, an extra window opened showing Redwolf’s helmet view. It peered over the opposite roofline and down on the tank, which was exactly where he expected, aiming its gun for the corner where he’d be if he followed.
“We don’t have any heavy AT rockets,” said Redwolf. “We can try for a mobility kill, but it’s iffy.”
“Don’t bother. I got this.” Straker eyed the building and leaped—for the corner, five stories up. At the top of his arc, he smashed his left gauntlet into the worked stone of the building, gaining purchase for just long enough to swing his right arm and head-sensors around the corner.
The tank spotted him instantly and raised its barrel, but Straker had already fired his force cannon. The downward angle let his perfectly placed shot cut through the top turret armor, and the heavy brewed up, vomiting fire and smoke from every crack.