A smaller set of armour appeared in the gloom. Armstrong turned and starting trudging back the way he’d come. In his mind’s eye he sent the last drone and Thresher ahead to the cave entrance. This kept Thresher out from under foot and gave Lincoln forewarning prepare for the Lakedaemians arrival at delta-two.
Given the new guests he was bringing to dinner, Armstrong hoped Doctor Stamp had spent the time during the space battle and since coming up with a really good Blight detector.
The journey back out of the cave, past the wrecked shuttle to the personnel transport went well enough. In the darkness and confined spaces of the cave, he hadn’t realised quite how big the Admiral’s personal guard actually were. They loomed large before, but he’d just assumed that was his mind playing tricks.
Trying to strap everyone in the personnel transport clued him in to how big the Lakedaemian soldier suits really were.
On arrival at delta-two, he drove the remains of the drones and his new passengers up the ramp into the hangar bay and prepared himself for the next argument.
Thresher stood facing off with one of the Admiral’s soldiers “All of you will have to de-suit. There’s no room for you all inside the passenger cabin”. He could see appealing to a Lakedaemian soldier’s reason might be unwise, so tried to appeal to their authority figure “Admiral, please make your soldiers see reason”. He gestured up at the nearest example of a mountain made man.
The metal monster in question turned to him and grabbed him round the waist to lift him over his head. He could see the top of hangar bay in much more detail than he had ever wished.
Armstrong turned and delivered a brutal full force stamp to the left knee joint of the offending soldier. Even with the armour, his leg folded under him, though he kept Thresher aloft. One of his compatriots moved to intervene. A loud burst of interference flooded the shared radio channel. Then the Admiral spoke in a calm icy tone “Put that man down you idiot. Gently. These men are the only way off this moon. Now all of you de-suit and follow their instructions”.
She then took the lead, opening up first her helmet, then removing a heavy torso plate, before undoing the seal running down the middle of the pressure suit below.
She stepped out wearing little more than a jump suit so thin it could have been painted on. She stood tall and willowy, youth belying her rank, with long blond hair falling free of it’s now vanished restrictions. Her face was a mask of iron, giving nothing away, her tone matched “Come on. All of you. Let’s be about it”.
Chapter 9
Armstrong had been on many missions over the years and this one was going far too well. In his gut, he knew trouble was around the corner. He just couldn’t see from where. He stared intently at the display in the delta-two’s cramped cockpit. He wasn’t flying himself. The onboard system was doing the donkey work, with minor inputs from Dreadnought’s CIC. He could give it high level orders through his mind’s eye, like fly home, don’t get shot. He knew better than to intervene at this stage.
In delta-two’s passenger cabin, the staring contest between the Admiral’s bodyguard and the Paras had set in. Out of their oversized armour the Lakedaemians looked much less impressive. With imaginations no longer painting them as nine feet tall and covered in hair, Thresher and Lincoln gave as good as they got.
Neither Para wholly trusted the Admiral’s bodyguards discipline, or the Admiral’s word. Each para ran an unarmed combat program in their mind’s eye, with their responses linked. No guns and in a confined space, the Laurentians had the advantage so long as they worked together.
Half an hour out from Dreadnought, reality caught up with Armstrong’s hunch. The Blight ships timed their appearance from behind Salmis four’s moon for a shot at delta-two perfectly. Now she’d have to run the gauntlet to rendezvous with Dreadnought at the jump point. The assault shuttle was willing and tough for her size, but had no business being anywhere near starship firefight.
Telemetry from Dreadnought showed the remaining ships of the Blight Squadron pop up over the horizon. Except instead of one or two ships Dreadnought had fired on earlier, five undamaged ones appeared. Clearly there were more Blight assets in system than was anyone thought.
A powerful and modern cruiser massing nearly three million tonnes lead two more of the modern frigates. Trailing the lead ships, were two reaction drive destroyers. The Laurentian ship was outnumbered and pinned down defending their own shuttle. The Blight squadron could also be reinforced at any moment through the jump point.
The tactical display blinked, froze then updated. Dreadnought’s icon shook, making a passible impression of a dog shaking off rain water. Little contact icons flew off her by the tens, then the hundreds and formed up around the jump point. In the next instant, the titanic battlecruiser leaped forward at her full hundred gravity acceleration, straight for her shuttle. Armstrong couldn’t help but picture some bizarre cross between an angry mama grizzly and hungry shark.
The Blight ships reacted to the Dreadnought’s protective sprint with a coordinated barrage of missiles from the three modern ships. They weren’t aimed at the battlecruiser though. As they accelerated away from their launch platforms, their course settled on delta-two.
Armstrong’s mind’s eye bounced a tell-tale message chime round his skull. He accepted the transmission with more than a little foreboding, imagining Magnus, his voice strained with regret “Sorry Jack, we can’t get to you in time. I’m jumping out to save the ship”.
It wasn’t Magnus though, it was Heisenberg “Corporal, the Skipper’s busy right now, but he says it’s really important you don’t fuck with the shuttle, no matter what. His exact words. Hold tight, cavalry’s coming”.
A new flying course directly towards the Blight squadron flashed across the tactical display. The shuttle’s engine pitch rose significantly as she accelerated onto the new course. All aboard were pushed back into their seat, para-gravitics maxed out.
He struggled to read the tactical display with the vibrations. He was forced to concentrate on the information using his mind’s eye. Like many Laurentians, Armstrong struggled to focus on too much detail. This time he was motivated to try harder as his fate played out in front of him like a computer game.
Dreadnought picked up even more acceleration. Clearly Cartwright at the engineering post felt confident in her ship and was pulling all the stops out.
Dreadnought was side slipping along her course now, keeping the spinal launcher and heavy gamma cannons facing her foes. She and her shuttle now moved along two sides of a triangle in space, hoping to meet before the Blight could finish them.
The Blight missile barrage began dropping off delta-two’s sensors as their drives shut down through the ballistic phase of their course. Dreadnought’s data link still showed their progress.
Delta-two began launching smart missiles for all she was worth. They didn’t race away towards a target however, they formed up in layers ahead of the shuttle, like a swarm of wasps shielding a queen.
With Dreadnought’s much higher acceleration she was pulling ahead now, finally her spinal launcher sung. Flight after flight of smart missiles bolted down the large barrel and out into space, like Isaac Newton’s own bats out of hell.
As the first missile barrage cleared her bows, Dreadnought’s main gamma cannons hurled forth further torments on the approaching Blight ships. She picked the closest modern frigate and pounded her mercilessly. Frigates were the smallest class interstellar warships, so could not match Dreadnought’s fire power.
Along the line of fire, stray particles and debris illuminated, revealing her beam’s courses. The hapless frigate’s bow erupted like a volcano when struck. Her fellows launched beam absorbing gel clouds ahead of the formation, but their own acceleration ensured their protection was short lived.
The first target’s tortured bow soon breached, taking half the ship with it. The frigate stopped accelerating, her sensor emissions ceased, finally internal explosions wracked the remaining stern and she dissolved into debri
s. Dreadnought’s gamma cannons switched to her next target, the second frigate and continued their frenzied firing.
Armstrong felt his fingers clench on the armrests as tension overwhelmed him. In delta-two’s passenger cabin, Thresher had arranged for a repeat delta-two’s tactical display to show on the large wall, in the eyeline of the Lakedaemians. The huge enemy missile volley looked deadly, even as their intercept course with Dreadnought brought salvation tantalisingly close.
The four remnants of Lycurgus’ crew looked almost overwrought, their rescue turning to ashes before their eyes. The Admiral’s bodyguard to a man looked quietly furious. The Admiral herself radiated the calm of a natural born leader.
The Admiral sat strapped in her acceleration chair aboard delta-two watching the show. The Laurentian Commander flew his battlecruiser with an élan she’d rarely seen. He’d foregone Dreadnought’s defence to offer maximum aggression to the Blight Squadron. It must have been tempting to cut his losses, but as with so many military judgement calls it could be genius, luck or desperation. History’s verdict would be based on result not intent.
Back in Dreadnought’s CIC, there was an air of solemn professionalism. The Tor Station misfits had burst from their chrysalis and emerged as Dreadnought’s big damn heroes. Chris Benbow, Hannah Cartwright, Maggie Heisenberg, Harry Bainham and Greg Jones were hunched over their duty posts, minds focussed and fingers flying. Exuding the High Guard Right Stuff.
Magnus, took a brief instant in the middle of the chaos to appreciate his crew’s rebirth. Life could be so stingy with second chances. If they set a court martial upon him, stripped of his rank, his very citizenship and threw him down to the Barbary continent on Albion, the memory of this moment would keep him smiling for the rest of his life.
Dreadnought’s first missile barrage had burned across space. Their tremendous launch velocity and the gravity advantage had let them force an intercept course with the Blight missile volley instead of just their ships. While the battlecruiser had pounded away at the Blight squadron with her gamma cannons, her missiles had spread out like a three-dimensional fan, combing through the Blight missile barrage in the ballistic phase, when they couldn’t evade.
Dreadnought’s heavy smart missiles shattered themselves across their nemesis’ flight paths as each calculated it had the best chance for a kill. The Blight missiles died in their tens. Eight survived the jaws of death and headed on into the very mouth of hell.
Delta-two’s own defensive smart missile flight were the next line of defence. They were fewer, much smaller and less capable. Delta-two’s smart missiles fought hard, but they were a little too close to their mother and the Blight missiles awoke and started to evade. Only two Blight missiles managed to pass through to get to terminal attack range. Delta-two’s maser turrets focussed on the one target, trying to guarantee at least one kill.
The final Blight missile managed to duck and weave past it’s sibling’s death throes.
In Delta-two’s cockpit, Armstrong’s discipline failed him. After ignoring the little ship’s flight controls as ordered what seemed like an eternity ago, his hands jumped to the flight controls as if possessed. In his heart, he knew this was stupid, but he couldn’t die idle. He tried to dive and roll, anything to avoid the last Blight missile’s inevitable ravaging of delta-two.
The shuttle’s tactical display burst into static and rainbows, the cramped cockpit seemed to light up like a super nova, the main drive skipped a beat. He let go of the controls and covered his face as instincts older than his species took control, just for an instant.
Then another instant and another. After a few seconds, he remembered to breath. Then he started wondering why he was still breathing. The drive kicked in again and slammed him roughly back into his seat again. The tactical display cleared and the light in the cockpit returned to normal.
A radiation alarm sounded loudly throughout the shuttle.
As more systems recovered to functionality Armstrong’s mind’s eye showed him the damage assessment, near miss from a gamma strike. Systems across the ship had overloaded and reset.
The passenger cabin and cockpit were right at the heart of the shuttle and had suffered no real damage. However, a significant level of gamma radiation was detected in the less well protected hangar bay. The assault company drones were now heavily irradiated as was the entire forward third of the shuttle.
He received a chime inside his head. This time it was Magnus calling, he sounded enraged, amused and adrenalin hyped all at once “For fuck’s sake, Jack. I told you to leave those bloody controls alone. Benbow nearly gave you the worst sunburn of your life”.
Hours later safe in his bunk, he’d replayed the tactical records of the battle on his wall. Even on the big wall of his cabin, he could only just catch Greg Jones wrestling the Battlecruiser through a gut wrenching turn to give Chris Benbow time to make that saving shot with the port gamma cannon. Backscatter from the beam had burnt the outer skin off his doughty little shuttle. It left behind a badly scarred and irradiated visage. Jones had then rolled back to continue firing on the bows of the final modern Blight ship.
The Blight cruiser was the toughest opponent the Dreadnought crew had faced to date on their scratch mission. It died, but fought hard first. Magnus ordered repeated gamma strikes on her bows to prevent the cruiser launching any more missiles on delta-two. Even red-lined, her remaining escorts couldn’t match her acceleration and dropped out of formation.
Once the cruiser had burst apart, Dreadnought threw one last almighty barrage of missiles at the escorts. They died in nuclear fire.
Dreadnought moved to recover the irradiated delta-two. Bringing her into the main hangar would have left Dreadnought’s understrength crew badly overworked from decontaminating her. Magnus knew it would be too much to ask.
Delta-two matched course with her mother ship and closed to fifty metres. Her irradiated bow pointing away into space. Her passengers assembled in combat suits at the stern airlock and roped themselves together. Through the outer door’s porthole, Armstrong could see the open Hangar bay beckoning.
Each second of delay increased the risk more Blight forces would fall upon them. Armstrong’s hand slid over the emergency ejection button. The outer door flew off into space, whizzing past Dreadnought’s bulk and out of sight. The small group followed, fast. Straight for the mag catcher on Delta-two’s berth. They crossed the hangar bay threshold like a scolded cat. Then he could feel the catcher exert its influence slowing them all to avoid an impact with the wall.
He hurt all across his body. A bone deep ache. Before he’d come to a rest, the hull armour flowed back across the hangar sealing off the vast emptiness of space. As he stood up on the deck, he felt the tell-tale thrum of the ship’s drive through his feet.
A small party of discretely armed crew under the watchful gaze of Chief Gunner Bryant rushed forward in combat suits, sealed against the dangers of space, radiation and possible violence. The rescuees were gently lead through the decontamination chambers and blasted clean of any radioactive material.
The Admiral, her crew and guards were then all escorted to a hastily arranged diplomatic suite. Fortunately everyone, especially the Lycurgus survivors, had enough violence for one day.
Sadly, in the heat of a space battle, neither Lincoln, nor Thresher had thought to limit the tactical display of Dreadnought’s identity. So now, a Flag Officer from a mostly friendly neighbour’s military had witnessed the Laurentian Kingdom bend and possibly breach the Good Faith Treaty. Mellor’s spite could well be satisfied after all.
Chapter 10
Magnus ordered Dreadnought clear from the site of her hard-fought victory. As soon as the rescue party was secure aboard, he’d turned tail for the jump point at maximum cruising acceleration. Then he’d ordered two smart missiles loaded with disassembler warheads fired at the irradiated assault shuttle. Dreadnought’s luck held. No more Blight ships arrived before she jumped clear of the Salmis system.
&nbs
p; Dreadnought reappeared in interplanetary space three point one seven light years from Salmis. Both Greg Jones and Magnus detested the all too human habit of Officers falling back on round numbers. It was mentally lazy, easily predictable and sometimes fatal.
After the stresses of combat, Magnus felt like Dreadnought’s gravity had been turned up. He leant back in his chair for a brief moment. Off to his side, Athena glanced over him, her face betraying a mixture of professional respect combined with personal dislike. He shrugged mentally. He wasn’t out here to be everyone’s best friend.
He looked down to Chris Benbow at the Tactical post, “Stand the ship down to condition two, resume normal watch”. His mind’s eye opened an address channel to the whole ship’s company “My brothers and sisters in arms, we’ve faced some long odds in the last few hours. I couldn’t have asked you for more. Whatever you’ve done before, whatever you do after, remember this action with pride”.
He unstrapped from his chair, trying to disguise his tired weave through CIC to the Pilot’s post.
“Greg, plot us a course designed to lose pursuers. I want a few random length jumps, at least six and execute it”.
“Aye Skipper, I’ll get on it”.
He turned to the Sensors post “Maggie, I understand you’re Officer of the Watch”.
“Yes Skipper”.
“You have control then. Fly Greg’s course, release all the off-watch crew to rest”.
“I’ll get right on it”.
He looked back over his shoulder “Athena”, he paused “Walk with me”.
She looked imperiously down her seat from the command level, “Very well”.
He walked out the CIC hatch, with her following. He didn’t take her far. He stepped into the nearby Commander’s Office. It was a more formal space than his cabin. It let him keep some of the more frustrating work away from where he slept. The separation was mostly mental, but on long deployments it was invaluable. He didn’t especially like Athena and had no intention of granting her access to his sanctuary on the ship.
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