by Richard Fox
“I just don’t want to spend this whole fight on my ass,” Derringer said.
“Careful what you wish for, boot,” one of the Gustav gunners said. “I was on the Crucible, saw a drone tear five Marines to pieces.”
“Enemies…soon?” Cobalt asked.
“Maybe soon. Watch your sector, big guy,” Brannock said. He tapped a fingertip against his rifle. The anticipation was proving worse than the thought of facing the Xaros.
A point defense battery down the hull opened up and rapid flashes issued forth from gauss cannons.
He caught sight of a drone off the port bow and his heart skipped a beat as it veered straight toward the ship. A flurry of bullets smashed the drone to bits. An Osprey zoomed over the bunker and banked away.
“Why are we out here, again?” Derringer asked.
“Drones! Drones coming in twelve o’clock high!” The transmission was from bunker four, on the opposite side of the rail cannon.
“Up! Up!” Brannock grabbed the handle on a roof firing slit and yanked it aside. He pointed his rifle into space. Derringer opened another firing slit, then screamed in fear. He slammed the slit shut just as a drone landed on the roof.
Stalks waved in the void over Brannock, but he didn’t have a clear shot at the drone’s body.
A patch of red grew on the roof.
“Bunker four, can you get a shot on this thing?” Brannock asked. No answer.
A disintegration beam the width of a pencil stabbed through the roof and swept toward the Gustav. It traced a line across one of the gunner’s chests as he screamed in pain.
Brannock unbolted the door and swung it open. He charged out and twisted around. A drone clung to the top of his bunker, bloodred light from the beam projecting out of stalks splashed against its shifting surface. He fired his gauss rifle and hit the drone in the flank. A spiderweb of cracks broke across the surface.
The drone dragged its disintegration beam away from the hole in the bunker and twisted the stalks toward Brannock. He leaped to the side. The beam cut across his shins and pain exploded from his legs like he’d been branded.
With no gravity to pull him back to the hull, Brannock floated several feet above it. His flailing limbs found no purchase.
He fired his rifle from the hip and severed a stalk off the drone. The momentum from the shot slammed him into the hull and the mag lock in one boot stopped him from bouncing off into the void.
The drone scuttled off the roof toward Brannock. The stalks rose over the drone and Brannock stared into the burning tips.
A massive hand grabbed the stalks and ripped one aside. Indigo swung his pneumatic hammer into the drone and a diamond-tipped spike inside the hammer drove into the drone’s shell. Cobalt and the other doughboys joined the melee, pounding the drone with their hammers.
The drone cracked into hunks and disintegrated.
Indigo looked at his hammer and shook his head.
“Need better!”
“Need more better.” Cobalt nodded his head.
Brannock got both feet secure against the hull. A drone landed on bunker three. He took careful aim and hit the drone across the forward end. Two more shots knocked it clear off the bunker. A third shot shattered it into burning fragments.
“Gun better,” Indigo said, the muzzle of his gauss rifle red-hot.
“Back inside, all of you,” Brannock said.
The rail cannon fired, stinging his eyes again. He stumbled into the bunker and fell against the side. The pain in his shins returned with a vengeance as adrenaline wore away.
“Son of a bitch.” Brannock looked at his legs. The armor bore a thin line of melted armor, bubbles and cracks radiating away from where the beam touched him.
“Your suit good?” Derringer asked.
“Yeah, didn’t spill my air. Just hurts like a mother,” Brannock said.
The doughboys lifted their rifles and fired. Brannock jumped up and shot down a drone before it could reach the rail cannon.
“Two o’clock.” Derringer pointed to a trio of drones coming in fast.
Brannock tripped over something before he could reach the other side of the bunker. Both the Marines who’d manned the Gustav lay next to the access hatch. One, a line seared across his armor, stared vacantly at the ceiling. The other bore a smoldering hole on the shoulder; the armor was flat, empty.
“Joiners! Group forming above bunker two!”
Brannock opened the roof port. A mass of five or six drones twisted together, more joining by the second.
Brannock hit the mass with three shots and swapped out his spent battery. The drones continued to meld together, unaffected.
“Gauss rifles are damn spitballs,” he said into the IR. “Can you get an Osprey or an Eagle over here?”
“Every asset is tied up. Do something, five!”
Brannock snapped his head to the Gustav, but it was gone. The bunker door was open. Indigo charged out carrying the heavy weapon, the other two doughboys right behind him.
“No! Indigo, wait!” Brannock ran after them.
Indigo spread his legs wide and raised the Gustav barrel to the combining drones. Cobalt wrapped his arms around Indigo’s waist and braced himself against the hull. Garnet wrapped his arms around Indigo’s chest.
Indigo fired the Gustav, the massive recoil of each shot sliding the doughboys several inches with each shot. The dead gunners had integrated support and anchor systems built into their armor to keep them stable while firing the cannon. The doughboys had nothing but their mag linings and muscle power.
The third shot from the Gustav sent the combing drone mass spinning out of control.
Brannock drove his shoulder into Indigo’s back and overloaded his mag linings. The burst from the Gustav drove Brannock’s heels into the aegis armor.
“Aim! Aim, damn you!”
Indigo paused, then hit the drone mass dead center and blew it apart. A twisted lump of drones bounced off the armor just in front of them. One broke free, leaving the rest to disintegrate. The surviving drone lashed out, ripping a beam across Garnet’s face and neck. He fell back from his hold on Indigo.
Brannock fumbled for his rifle. A second beam hit Cobalt in the arm. The doughboy twisted away with a grunt of pain over the IR.
Indigo swung the Gustav around and fired. The recoil slammed him against Brannock and sent the doughboy tumbling through space. Brannock’s mag-locked boot dragged against the hull. He got his other foot down and found the attacking drone now nothing but smoldering ashes floating in the void.
“Indigo?” Brannock searched the void. The Halifax exploded as its battery stacks went critical. Eagle fighters sparred with drones. Burning rail cannon shells cut across the void, but there was no sign of Indigo…or Cobalt.
Garnet was still attached to the hull, his arms hanging loose at his side. Brannock touched Garnet’s back and the armor collapsed, empty.
“We got more! We got more!” Derringer called to him.
Brannock choked down his emotions and went back to the bunker.
****
Zorro let off a burst, missing the drone he had in his sights. The drones had a nasty habit of dodging just as he fired. He aimed his cannons to the side and fired again and the drone flew right into his attack and broke apart.
“I saw that—pure luck,” his wingman said.
“Skill, Buckets, all skill,” Zorro said. He looped around and let off a wild spray, clipping the drone Bucket pursued. The drone spun end over end before Bucket destroyed it.
“I want an assist on that kill,” Zorro said.
“Fine, I’m still ahead of you by two.”
“Cottonmouths, we’ve got new orders,” the squadron commander said. “Clear a path for a bomber wing making a run on that Xaros launcher. Form on my wing.”
“You think we cleared out enough drones?” Buckets asked.
Zorro twisted in his cockpit. The Warsaw, where most of the drones had come from, reeled as the fleet turned their ra
il cannons on the ship. It broke apart under the pounding. No more drones came from the expanding wreckage.
“Jesus, you think anyone was still alive on the Warsaw?” Zorro asked.
“Doesn’t matter anymore,” the squadron commander answered. “Midway and the Tarawa are clearing their flight decks. Makarov ordered everything that can shoot to get into space so we can go and make that launcher a memory.”
Zorro checked his weapons. His gauss cannon had half its rounds left and enough battery charge to fire his rail cannon twice. A waypoint appeared on his canopy pointing him toward the launcher.
“Buckets, you good over there? Thought I saw you get hit,” Zorro said.
“Singed some attitude controls, couple thrusters are off-line. I’ve got a work around,” his wingman said.
“You can’t maneuver, you get back to the Midway and hot swap to another fighter.”
“And miss any of this? Check your oxygen levels because you must be losing brain function,” Buckets said.
Eight Eagles formed a V over a half-dozen Condor bombers and entered the dead space between the human fleet and the Xaros launcher. Drones passed by high above the formation, clear of rail cannon shots striking at the frigate and cruiser-sized constructs protecting the launcher.
“Big boss lady know there’re unfriendly ships between us and the launcher?” Zorro asked.
“Stand by,” the squadron commander said. “They’ll clear a path in just a second.”
Silver streaks of quadrium rounds converged with more rail cannon shots on a Xaros cruiser. Point defense lasers destroyed the leading q-shell. It exploded into a brief storm of electricity, creating sympathetic detonations in the flechette rounds. The cruiser lashed out at the incoming q-shells and burned out against the thousands and thousands of otherwise harmless submunitions.
Q-shells slammed into the cruiser. Lightning arced to nearby ships, torching their hulls and knocking them off-line.
“That’s our signal. Punch it!” The squadron commander’s Eagle leaped forward.
Zorro gunned his engines and the Eagle rattled as it tried to catch up to the leader. G-forces pushed Zorro against his chair as his hands strained to keep their hold on the controls. The stricken Xaros cruiser rolled on its axis, snaps of electricity flaring off the surface.
“Cottonmouths, do a point defense sweep as soon as we’re clear of this obstacle. Let the Condor’s torpedoes do the heavy lifting,” said the squadron commander, call sign Bully.
“Got to give those trash haulers something to look forward to,” Buckets said.
Zorro rolled his Eagle over the edge of the cruiser. The launcher was there, and a dozen more lances waited in a neat line at the far end. A lance sat inside it, like a bullet waiting to fire.
A red beam slashed from the launcher’s outer edge right past his cockpit.
“Found a point defense node,” Zorro said. He fired off a burst and used his maneuver thrusters to shunt him to the side, narrowly dodging another shot from the Xaros lasers. He raked fire across the node as he flew over the top, sending broken and burning stalks tumbling through the void.
“Torpedoes away!” came from one of the Condors.
Zorro banked around and peppered another nest of stalks.
“Eagles, get clear before—” A blast of energy wider than a cruiser broke through space and swept downward. Zorro flipped around before the blade could annihilate him and his fighter. The Xaros had used a weapon like that before, at the Battle of the Crucible.
Zorro looked to where the flat beam originated and saw a disintegrating Xaros cruiser.
A pair of torpedoes crossed in front of his nose. They continued straight on, missing the launcher. The torpedoes were laser guided, controlled by the bombardier in the Condors.
“Condors, what’s your status?” Zorro asked. No answer.
“They’re all gone,” Buckets said, his breathing fast. “Bully too. We’re down to four ships. Let’s get the hell out of here!”
The launcher glowed as it charged, readying to send another stake into the heart of Eighth Fleet.
“Hold on. I got an idea.” Zorro charged up his rail gun and loaded his only q-shell into the breech. He looped around and flew straight into the mouth of the launcher.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“No point defense batteries in here.” Zorro slowed his fighter, watching as the lance glowed brighter.
He fired his q-shell and hit his afterburners, skirting through the gaps in the ribbon before the quadrium effect could travel up the launcher and fry him.
The launcher buckled. The lance, still charged with energy, shot forward and ripped through the side of the launcher. The lance spun end over end before it struck a Xaros frigate and both shattered like dropped glass.
“Now we can leave,” Zorro said. He found a gap in the wreckage and set a course back to the Midway.
****
Admiral Makarov breathed a sigh of relief as the Xaros launcher failed, taking out another enemy ship in its death throes.
“Concentrate fire on the drones coming on our flanks.” Makarov touched the mass of drones coming in from above and below Eighth Fleet. “Status on the drones from the Rome?”
“We’ve got clear void from every ship but…the Poltova,” Calum said. “Sending a flight of Ospreys to assist from the Tarawa now.”
“Battery reserves across the fleet are dangerously low, Admiral,” Kidson said. The fusion reactors within each ship would recharge the batteries, but only if the guns stopped firing long enough to let the reactor connect to the capacitors. The capacitors could connect to the guns or the reactors, not both. Trying to shoot and charge at the same time would cause a spectacular explosion. A bar chart came up in her tank; several ships were crossed out with a red X, destroyed. The rest had just enough battery charge left for a few more volleys. Except for one, the Griffin.
“Lift fire on the Xaros capital ships. Cycle the fleet though a recharge cycle but do not let up on the drones coming at us,” Makarov said.
The Xaros capital ships clustered around the wrecked launcher advanced on her fleet. Their projected course converged on a single point.
“Here it comes,” Makarov said. What few records survived the fall of Earth showed a massive Xaros ship annihilating humanity’s combined space navies, a ship that dwarfed the Toth dreadnought that crashed into the moon. Garret and the rest of his planners could come up with only one term to classify something so massive.
“A leviathan,” she said. The first two Xaros capital ships pressed together, embers scorching the edge of the hulls as they merged.
“Griffin, Makarov, this is your time to shine,” she said.
The video of a dark-skinned man with salt-and-pepper hair came up next to the Griffin’s icon.
“I know you’re expecting a lot from me and my ship, ma’am, but this might be more than she can handle,” Commander Laskaris said.
“We brought you along for exactly this reason, Commander. Time to earn your keep,” Makarov said. She cut the transmission.
“If this doesn’t work, we’re in trouble,” Calum said.
“It will work,” Makarov said. “I saw the field tests on Charon.”
“Didn’t that test vessel blow up?” Kidson asked.
“Yes, but Lafayette said he fixed the fault.” Makarov waved a dismissive hand in the air.
“I don’t believe Lafayette is on the Griffin, or anywhere near this fight,” Calum said.
“You can either worry or pray. The choice is yours, just do it silently,” Makarov said.
The Griffin broke from the fleet and burned toward the assembling leviathan. The Toth invasion fleet had been destroyed down to the last ship and dagger fighter. After the last Toth overlord was killed, the warriors manning the remaining ships refused to surrender. Toth ship captains chose to vent their atmosphere and kill the crews to avoid capture, which left a number of intact ships for salvage.
The scientists the Br
eitenfeld rescued from Nibiru possessed a great deal of knowledge regarding Toth ship construction and were eager to help harness what their enslavers left behind. Working with Lafayette, and after more than one “design flaw” wrecked a test bed, the Akkadian scientists produced a weapon system that would either prove valuable against the Xaros, or fail and doom Eighth Fleet to a losing fight.
Armor plates on the Griffin slid aside. Energy cannons that had once graced the hull of the Naga dreadnought rose from the Griffin’s hull and locked into place. The crystals glowed deep blue as power built within.
The final Xaros capital ship fused into the leviathan. The new ship out-massed the entire Eighth Fleet nearly three to one, its shape morphing into a long cone studded with cannons. A divot at the apex of the cone glowed with reddish-yellow light.
“Guns, a volley,” Makarov said.
“Aye.” Each of the fleet’s remaining rail cannons sent a lance round at the leviathan.
Might as well try to tear down a mountain by throwing pebbles at it, Makarov thought.
Lasers snapped out of the leviathan and erased the incoming rounds from existence.
Fifteen bolts of blue-white energy erupted from the Griffin. The bolts closed on the leviathan in seconds. Counter fire from the Xaros ship shot out…and passed through the Griffin’s energy weapons. The energy bolts hit by the Xaros shrank in size and intensity, but continued on. They slammed into the underside of the leviathan, cracking its outer hull and sending jagged plates hurtling through the void.
Another volley came off the Griffin, hitting the damaged area again.
Makarov ignored the cheers from the bridge and pulled up the telemetry data from the Griffin. The ship’s batteries lost nearly ten percent of their total charge with each volley. Commander Laskaris kept up the firing through a fifth and sixth volley...well beyond the weapon’s design tolerance.
Red warning icons popped against the Griffin. Two of the cannons were off-line and the third had shattered. The leviathan—a smoldering crater blasted out of its hull, great cliffs of glowing pyrite now exposed to the void—rolled on its axis.