StarFight 3: Battlecry

by T. Jackson King

  The Chao Lee and Fallujah were heading back to the Lepanto, their green dots moving quickly to cover the kilometers. The Chapultepec and the Tarawa II still had their noses stuck into the hull of the frags. Maybe that meant Tim had graser tech with him. Or some dead bodies. Auggie’s Dart now backed out from its frag, twisting on maneuvering jets to line up for its return to the Lepanto. Which was something she would be doing shortly, once everyone was inside. She twisted in her seat and looked back through the open doorway that framed a view of the cargo hold. Three Marines were inside. Four vacbags were being tied onto the benches that lined either side of the LCA’s interior. The interior airlock door opened. Out of it came the white hard shell of Richard, holding two black bags of something. Yes, trust that Marine to be the last one to safety.

  “Chief O’Connor, are we detached from the frag?”

  “XO, we are detached. I’m storing the collapsed pressure tubes. And the tech we grabbed. Depart when you wish.”

  Daisy turned around, faced the narrow quartz windows that gave a direct view of black space, then tapped in the inertial return nav program. While her Berlin lacked a basic AI like the one inside each Marine hard shell, that was why she was here. Humans were better than any automated program when it came to piloting. Although if she were dead, there was a Go Home button on the nav panel that would allow anyone else on the LCA to tell the ship’s autopilot to return to the Battlestar.

  “Heading home,” she said as the Berlin’s thruster pushed them outward. She felt nothing thanks to the inertial damper field that covered every part of the LCA. One vidscreen showed the four Marines sitting down on the benches and locking in their boots and shoulder pads to the Hold Tight tabs built into the floor and walls. One black bag lay at the boots of Richard’s hard shell.

  “Chief, any luck with finding that graser mount?”

  “Some,” said the man who enjoyed showing her holos of his granddaughter. “Had to blow the archdoor to the graser room. It was deformed from the wasp ship strike. Found the biz end of the graser nozzle. Used my belly laser to cut it loose from its mountings. Could not pull loose the entire thing.”

  “Good news!” she said. “Are the water tank panels in that bag too?”

  “Affirmative,” he said. “Plus we cut loose three of those colored panels that are the entry locks for each archdoor. Maybe our engineers can figure out how the thing works.”

  “Glad all four of you are mobile and in good shape,” Daisy said, recalling stories of real Earth-side combat that Richard had shared with her. “Ooh Rah!”

  “Ooh Rah!” yelled all four of them.

  She looked ahead as they came within live viewing distance of the Lepanto. The Battlestar’s central tube and two outrigger tubes were spotted with yellow, purple and green lights, which served as guides to local airlocks or cautionary warnings to stay away from something. While the kilometer length of her ship did not resemble a Christmas tree, still, its brightly lit form as it floated in the darkness of deep space brought to her mind the memory of Christmases in Chicago. Her Mom had insisted on adorning their live green tree with strings of colorful lights, then tossing silver chaff onto the green branches. Presents went under the branches. Those memories tugged at her heart. The last time she had seen her Mom was during graduation from the Stellar Academy, months before she and others flew up to the orbital shipyard to board their assigned ships. Was she worrying about Daisy? While the details of the wasp attack on her battle group were likely not known to the public, still, the fact of the wasp attack was public, according to what Jacob’s father had shared during a visit with him on the Midway. Her Mom likely worried about her and her safety. Like the parents of the 320 other people on the Lepanto. Well, everyone was still alive and she aimed to do everything in her ability to keep it that way!

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Jacob looked down as Richard and Daisy walked up to their station seats and sat down, both wearing vacsuits as was still the rule on all ships of the fleet. His situational and ship cross-section holos told him the essentials. All four Darts were returned and tied down in the Silo Eight hangar. Four live aliens were being transported by Marines to the Park Room, where they would be deposited in the room’s large pond, with the head placed out of the water and on the beach side of the pond. Four deados were being delivered by Diego to the MEs in the Med Hall. The tech bags from Richard, Harrison and Mendoza were in the hangar awaiting pickup by Engines Deck engineers. Hopefully Billy Chang would fill him in on what the bags held as they all headed out to catch up with the ship of Thirteen. Which would happen soon enough. The twenty-five invader ships were still 18 hours out from his position. But his fleet only had to cover four AU in order to reach the system’s magnetosphere and then disappear into Alcubierre space-time. That meant five more hours in this system. Which made it vital to understand what they all faced.

  “Chief, what’s your take on these aliens you faced?”

  The Marine turned in his seat and looked up. Fatigue showed on the man’s face, but his gray eyes were lively. However the lines on the man’s clean-shaven face looked deeper than before. As if the strain of being on this boarding had taken down his energy level. He waved stubby fingers nonchalantly, as if guessing what Jacob saw.

  “Weird critters. Short in height, long in body. Their invisibility was due to their color-changing skin. Perfect camo. But polarized light showed their body outlines.” He paused, resting both gloved hands on his armrests. “The electric charge shot out by two of them was a nasty surprise. But Marines are used to surprises. Nothing we couldn’t handle.”

  “Agreed. Your team and the teams on the four Darts did a fine job of forced entry and boarding. Thanks for grabbing the graser tech.”

  “Sir,” called Daisy. “Sergeant Harrison says his team grabbed the biz end of the graser on their wing frag.”

  Jacob sat back, feeling relief that no Marine had been killed or injured in the five boardings. “Well then, guess it’s time—”

  “Human leader,” chirped the pheromone translator in front of Hunter One. “Is it true that some invaders still live on these nest fragments?”

  He looked right. The giant wasp was hovering above his rest bench, brown wings beating fast. The yellow and black stripes that covered its body looked brighter than usual. Its two black antennae were flexed backward. Its four feet and two thorax arms were all tightly clasped to its body, as if it were ready to fly somewhere.

  “Well, yes, that is likely. Live ones were seen on the two wing fragments and on the fragment boarded by the Fallujah team. The other two fragments were still functional with interior lighting, but power was failing on them.”

  The wasp twisted in midair to face Jacob, the creature’s two black compound eyes and three smaller eyes all looking at him. “Then I must leave and take my rescued Swarmers out to those five fragments,” the wasp said in a flow of pheromones that were so minty Jacob almost sneezed. “No invader who killed our larvae can be allowed to live!”

  Damn. He was counting on Hunter One to be the intermediary between humans and the wasps at Food Enough. Support Hunter Thirteen was likely appreciative of his help in saving his ship, but he had zero knowledge of humans.

  “You wish transport to those fragments?”

  “Yes!” yelled One in a flow of odors that mixed citrus with dry earth with mistiness, a flow that filled the entire Bridge it was so strong.

  He noticed Maggie, Cassandra and Willard holding their noses, while Louise, Joaquin and Rosemary sneezed loudly. Jacob looked to Oliver.

  “Weapons, do we have enough antimatter charges to take out those fragments?”

  “We do,” said the Brazilian.

  “Sir, I have an alternative in mind,” called Richard.

  “Yes chief? What’s your alternative?”

  The man whose white crewcut was trimmed to a burr turned and looked toward the hovering form of Hunter One.

  “Swarm Hunter, do you wish to cause the greatest harm to these invad
ers who destroyed your colony and its larvae?”

  “Yes! Yes, killing as many invaders as possible is the way all Swarmers behave on Nest and throughout our history,” the large wasp said through the pheromone translator block. “If I had my own flying nest I would fly to meet the swarm of these invaders and kill as many as possible before my nest died under their black balls!”

  Richard looked up to Jacob. “Captain, we have plenty of extra thermonuke warheads in inventory on the Weapons Deck. They are the warheads dismounted from the missiles we fired at the black balls, as you recall. Each is a three megaton hydrogen bomb thermonuke. I’m sure Weapons chief Bannister could attach sensors to the detonation controls so each warhead would explode whenever there was a change in the tumbling activity of the fragment to which a warhead was attached. That way, the warhead would vaporize both the fragment and an invader ship as it latched on in order to rescue live walking seal aliens.”

  Loud beating came from the wings of Hunter One. “Yes! You of the white head are a masterful Fighter Leader! Use each fragment as bait to draw in an invader flying nest.” The wasp twisted in air to focus on Jacob. “Human leader, will you order your Fighters to do this? No wasp on this nest can leave this system without killing more invaders! Either we fly to these fragments, or we send these particle disruption seeds to each fragment with living invaders!”

  Jacob considered the options. Lose the friendly wasps now on his ship, or leave behind covert thermonukes set to blow whenever an invader ship latched onto a fragment, thereby stopping its tumbling. And Richard’s proposal had the benefit that it might reduce the number of invader ships that could attack future wasp or human ships. He looked down.

  “Chief O’Connor, head back to the Dart hangar. Coordinate with Chief Bannister on modifying the thermonukes. Then use some of your Darts and Marines to head out and emplace a warhead on each fragment that still shows infrared hot with power and air.”

  The broad-shouldered man stood up and faced Jacob. “Captain, will do as you order. My guess is there are two other large frags with heat and maybe air on them. That’s a total of seven thermonukes. The Fallujah and the Chao Lee can head out with some Marines and attach warheads to places where the frags ripped away from the ship.” He gave Jacob a gallows smile. “That should prevent easy detection of them.” The man saluted him, turned and headed for the rear exit hatch.

  Jacob saluted him back, then looked over to the hovering wasp. “Hunter One, your larvae will be avenged. Every living invader on the seven fragments with heat and air will die, either when boarded or when the warhead timer reaches twenty hours after emplacement.”

  The wasp’s black stinger tail lifted up. His wings slowed their beating and he came down slowly to rest on the bench. Four black legs reached down to the floor, while his two thorax arms moved free of his chest. Black antennae moved forward.

  “That is a valued decision. Swarmers on Food Enough will learn how well you humans fought the enemies of all Swarmers!”

  Jacob hoped Hunter One would do as promised. Entering a star system colonized by the wasps was his only chance to reach an armistice and to propose a trade of colony worlds for each species to colonize. The MAB plan of his father went further than the current colonies of humans and wasps. It envisaged both species telling the other of newly found worlds with half gee and one gee gravity fields, even if it meant sharing a system with the other species. Pragmatic it was, just as his father intended. But how pragmatic were these wasps? Would they pretend cooperation, as they did in setting the meeting trap that killed the admiral, captains and XOs of the StarFight fleet, then spring a deadly attack on human colonists? Or would they count the ships lost already and realize the threat both species faced from this new species of walking seals? A weird name that, but Richard had it right. The unconscious bodies of the captured aliens indeed resembled seals whose flipper pads had lengthened into short legs able to carry them over dry land. Well, traveling to Food Enough was a risk worth taking if it turned the war between humans and wasps into some kind of alliance against these new, deadly aliens. So his fleet would stay here, at 38 AU out from the star, and spend a few hours placing thermonukes on the warm fragments. Then they would move out at top speed for a rendezvous with Thirteen’s ship, which was now awaiting them at the edge of the magnetosphere. He sat back and twisted his neck, trying to relax the tight muscles. Being on extended Alert Combat Ready was no fun.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Hunter One watched the perception imager that filled the front wall of the human Flight Chamber. On it was a pale image of green dots that showed the small flying nests of the white-headed Fighter Leader flying out to deposit particle disruption seeds on each invader fragment that held living invaders. Every fragment would die, either when an invader ship grabbed onto it, or after enough wing beats passed. He did his best to follow the small details of the image, hampered as he was by the pale yellow light. The human illumination lacked the whiteness of Nest’s home sky glow. Which made for shadowy tubeways whenever he traveled to the Forest chamber that now held the rescued Matron and three other Swarmers from the residue of Seven’s nest. At least the pull-down force in those tubeways, and here in the Flight Chamber, had been adjusted to Swarm-normal level. It allowed him to focus all his energies on achieving some small vengeance against the killers of his larvae. He reached out and tapped the pheromone signaler panel.

  “Support Hunter Thirteen, these humans have agreed to kill all invaders who still live on the fragments of the nest that was smashed by Seven,” he scent-cast in a flow of aggregation, trail, primer and territorial pheromones.

  The image of Thirteen took form in a panel that was attached to the signaler. The Hunter resembled Seven and himself, as was proper in view of the many specialized genes they all shared.

  “That is news which my Servants and Fighter Leaders will welcome,” Thirteen scent-cast in reply, showing strong aggregation and territorial scents. “Did I scent well the human plan allows invader flying nests to touch wings with these fragments, the better to destroy those nests along with the fragments?”

  “You scented well,” One replied with a strong flow of signal, primer and trail pheromones. “That flight path was proposed by the eldest Fighter Leader of these humans. I scent better why the Swarm led by me and by Hunter Prime failed to overcome these humans. They are deadly adversaries. I begin to scent a pathway that allows us to gain vengeance against these invaders by inviting a human swarm of nests to join with a Swarmer flight of nests when we return to our colony and make dead these invaders.”

  Thirteen’s antennae moved sideways in shock. “Your scent smells so strange! The Swarm has never allowed a strong enemy to exist close to our nests. Have you become affected by some strange human disease?”

  He flared his wings, then bent his antennae forward in command manner. “Scent me true! These humans never attacked our larvae when we dropped Pods on the fourth world of this sky glow. And their eldest leader allows our colony to exist on a world like Nest that lies within a sky glow system occupied by a human colony,” he scent-cast in a flow of strong aggregation, primer, signal and territorial pheromones. “Can the Swarm be less daring than these humans? This proposal makes survival sense for the Swarm. It is what I will scent-cast to the Primes when we arrive at Food Enough.”

  Thirteen’s wings flapped quickly. “As you command, Hunter One. I and my Servants await your arrival on the human flying nest.”

  He relaxed his antennae, sending a signal of approval to the Swarmer who could be a member of his home cohort, based on the color patterns of his outer shell. “Your obedience is appreciated. Together, you, I and your flying nest will lead these humans to Food Enough, there to share the terrible news of these invaders with the Hunters of that colony and with the Primes of Nest! I will scent you when we draw within flight range of your nest.”

  “Until your wings join with ours,” Thirteen said. His image vanished from the panel.

  Hunter One stilled
the flapping of is wings. He cared not that the human leader who rested nearby likely understood the scent-casting of him and Thirteen. The fact that a ground-bound lifeform communicated with acoustic signals still amazed him. How could this thing they called language ever convey the richness of the thousands of pheromones that were part of the natural ability of any Swarmer? Well, it mattered not. What mattered was the fact these humans were both male and female, they cared for their young and they understood the need to utterly destroy any creature who threatened their young ones. So he had learned while abiding inside this strange, yellow-illuminated flying nest with tubeways that lacked roundness, and whose smells never communicated anything. At least not intentionally. He beat his wings faster, rising from the bench. It was time to visit with the Matron. He had need to discuss another vengeance plan with her and with the Servants rescued from the propulsive section of Seven’s flying nest. Surely there were other ways to personally diminish the lives of these terrible invaders!

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Daisy missed Richard. The senior Marine was out on the Fallujah with Aussie pilot Lois Hawker, Corporal José Mendoza and Lance Corporal George Willoughby of Britain. Nearby was the Chao Lee, piloted by Linda Mabry of Texas. Onboard was team leader Sergeant Martha Boxley and two Marines. Richard and Martha would spend the next two hours attaching thermonuke warheads to seven ship frags. Which meant the Lepanto, the Chesapeake, the Aldertag and the Philippine Sea had not changed their vector track and headed for a rendezvous with Thirteen’s ship. Once the Darts and Marines returned, all four ships would change their nav track and head for the wasp ship. Until then, everyone wore vacsuits, did their shift work and kept a wary eye on the moving neutrino source points of the twenty-five invader ships. She looked to the right. At least Alicia was still here, even though her shift had ended ten minutes ago. She admired the stocky woman from Melbourne who had a Ph. D. from the Sorbonne. Her brown hair was shiny, nicely curled and moved lightly in the half gee gravity. And the few lines around her eyes seemed less sharp, perhaps due to the lower grav field. She was a beautiful Anglo woman who did not look 43 chrono years. A flicker from one of her holos drew Daisy’s attention. Interesting.