by Richard Fox
He double-tapped his gloved thumb and forefinger together, advancing the page of a trashy mystery novel projected across the inside of his canopy. The squadron commander expected alert pilots to engage in “professional reading,” but what would the old man do if he caught Wyman nose deep in the long-ago adventures of some detective in Las Vegas? Assign him to alert sortie duty in the middle of the prism whale festival?
Red lights began spinning around the open bay doors to the Excelsior’s flight deck. Wyman’s head popped up, his eyes darting from one warning light to the next.
“Briar?” Wyman put his helmet on and activated the seal. Air puffed into his helmet as his flight suit locked itself off from the atmosphere in the cockpit. He looked over at the other alert fighter where the pilot sat with her helmet already on.
“Briar!” he yelled into the channel he shared with his wingman. Her head snapped up as if startled.
“I wasn’t sleeping!” Her hands flew around her cockpit, bringing the entire fighter online and ready to launch.
Wyman keyed the vision tracking systems and double-checked the laser cannons beneath his fighter’s nose and missiles mounted on the wings.
“Alert flights, all decks, this is Commander Matthews,” came through Wyman’s helmet and he heard an edge of fear in the woman’s voice. “Some sort of unauthorized slip arrival around the pole. Orbital command and Fort Coronado are off-line. Nothing’s coming off the nets. Admiral Laughlin’s mobilizing the entire Home Fleet. Launch and make for the site of the incursion and get us some goddamn idea of what’s going on. Drummer has in-flight command.”
Wyman activated the Typhoon’s thrusters. He raised both his hands and, with his thumbs pointed out, double-tapped the base of his fists together to signal for a crewman to pull the chocks away from his fighter’s front landing gear.
“Freak, what the hell’s going on?” asked Ensign Betty “Rosy” Ivor.
“Hell if I know, but it looks like we’re going to fly face-first into whatever it is. Engines to power. You ready to burn?”
“Two seconds behind you. Go go go.”
A shudder passed through Wyman’s fighter as thrusters lifted it off the deck. He eased his Typhoon through the force field and gunned his ion engines. The acceleration pulse pressed him against his seat as his body dumped adrenaline into his system and his heart pounded. He couldn’t tell if his body was reacting to the fear in the back of his mind or the excitement of his first combat sortie.
“All ships, tiered wedge formation on my wing,” Drummer said over the radio. A hollow diamond pinged at the edge of Wyman’s vision and he banked his fighter to the side. A half-dozen other fighters were already in echelon around Drummer. Wyman brought his craft a hundred yards behind and below Drummer and became the point of the next wedge forming beneath the first.
“Just keep it together, Rosy,” Ivor said to herself over the private channel to Wyman. “This is a joke. Some crazy training exercise that ass Bancroft came up with because he hasn’t got laid in the last fifty yea—”
“Hot mike, Rosy.” Wyman heard a gasp from his wingman before the channel clicked off.
Wyman linked his fighter’s speed and heading to match Drummer’s, then looked over both shoulders as four more Typhoons joined his formation. Something flashed in the distance, just at the upper edge of the atmosphere.
“To answer what most of you’re thinking,” Drummer said, “I don’t know what’s going on either. Nothing’s coming out of Fort Coronado or New Exeter, not even open-wave radio.”
“Freak, you think it’s the Reich? Maybe some sort of pirate raid out of wild space?” Ivor asked him.
“It would take the Reich ten years to get here without using nexus points. We’d have heard if some massive fleet was bouncing its way toward us through Cathay or Indus space. Pirates have never done anything this bold.” He rubbed his thumb against the switch over his laser cannon trigger.
“Maybe it’s aliens?”
“A thousand years of space exploration and no one’s ever found a trace of intelligent life. You think they’d show up during the prism whale festival?”
“You’re not making this any easier for me, you dick.”
Wyman’s eyes traced up the coastline against the Siar Ocean…and stopped at a bright spot shining within the darkening twilight.
“My God, is that Brighton? Is it on fire?” Wyman pinched his fingers over the spot and pulled his fingers apart to make his canopy zoom in. A carpet of smoke spread to the east of the city, pulled along by evening winds. The neat grid of Brighton laid out on either side of the Sheffield River was aflame. A ripple of explosions stitched along the undamaged neighborhoods. Then another. A diamond-shaped ship the size of a city block hovered over the devastation.
“Drummer,” Wyman said through the squadron’s channel, “Brighton’s being bombed. Permission to take my tier and—”
“Denied,” Drummer snapped. “Home Fleet is vectoring in everything it has toward the capital. We’re to observe and report before we engage any hostiles. I…Christ, my sister lives in Brighton. Prep a half-burn to ion engines. That’ll get us within line of sight to Exeter.”
The Typhoons’ engines carried a fixed amount of charge for acceleration and maneuvers. They could burn them to almost empty and reach Albion’s main city in minutes, but they’d be almost dead in space with nothing but their carried momentum until the engines recharged. Drummer’s order could put him and the rest of the pilots at risk if they ran into the middle of a prolonged dogfight.
“Burn on my mark. Three…two…one…mark.”
Wyman opened the ion throttle. His acceleration suit clenched around his body, preventing his blood from draining away from his organs where he needed it.
More brief pinpricks of light flared and died on the horizon like fireflies on a summer night as the squadron raced toward New Exeter. The engine burn ended, jerking Wyman against his restraints. The squadron, stretched out of formation by the burn, settled back into place.
Wyman’s world almost fell away as he saw the armada massed over the planet’s capital. Dozens on top of dozens of linked diamond ships held high anchor over the massive dome ship hovering over New Exeter. A cloudbank lit with diffuse light from fires on the ground below broke around the mothership.
Hunks of Fort Coronado fell through the atmosphere, leaving comet trails of fire in their wake.
“Oh…kay…” Wyman flipped the safety latch off his cannon trigger.
A dozen of the invader ships angled toward Wyman’s squadron and flew toward them. Hatches on the linked sections slid down and fighters spat into the void, accelerating faster than Wyman could have ever pushed his Typhoon.
“New mission,” said Drummer as he wagged his wings and then pulled his fighter up into a climb. The rest of the alert squadron followed. “We’re to screen Home Fleet. The Excelsior’s on her way. Command wants us to hold them off until she and her escorts are in attack formation. Keep to your wingman and good hunting.”
The squadron angled over and dove toward the incoming swarm of enemy fighters, each an elongated spear tip contrasted against the devastation below.
“Freak Show, you’re awful quiet over there,” Ivor half-whispered as she flew level with his wing.
“They’ll cross the engagement envelope in ninety seconds.” Wyman waited as Drummer and his flight marked their targets on the leading enemy fighters, then singled out his own glinting ship to engage.
“It’s OK to be scared—you can tell me,” Ivor said.
“I’m not scared. I’m terrified.”
“Thank God; me too.”
“Just stay close to me and remember your training. Same as popping pirates in the sims. Wait for Drummer to fire, then light these bastards up.” He shunted more energy from his power plant to weapons. Even at full power, if he missed, the cannon bolts should burn out in the atmosphere or hit the ocean.
A voice waveform from muted channels came up on his HUD. The same
patter repeated itself several times before Wyman added the frequency to his speakers.
“We are the Daegon,” came the words without a hint of accent. “You will be ruled. Surrender or die. We are the Daegon. You will—”
“Briar, you ever heard of a Daegon?” Wyman asked.
“Nope. Their ships don’t look like anything in the targeting database either.”
Why the enemy chose to come in over New Exeter suddenly dawned on Wyman. The city—all those civilians, the royal family—they were all at risk during a battle overhead. The Home Fleet would have to fight with one hand tied behind their back or risk significant collateral damage. Given what he’d already seen on Brighton, he gathered that the enemy didn’t share such a concern.
The sharp edge on an incoming fighter glowed bright blue, then a blast of energy as thick as a missile lanced out of the leading tip. Wyman slid his fighter to the right, losing his aim on his marked target as the blue beam cut through the void just over his cockpit.
“Making friends already,” Ivor said as she let off a burst from her cannons, her flurry of red bolts joining the weight of fire from the rest of the squadron in a hailstorm of directed energy.
Wyman picked out a fighter that accelerated out of the line of fire and angled toward the Albion fighters. Its maneuver slowed as its edges burned bright. Wyman fired and landed two hits against the gleaming hull. The first slapped the pointed nose down toward the planet, and the second shattered a side and blew out the engine block. The crippled ship spiraled toward the ocean below.
“Splash one bandit!” Wyman locked his cannons on another enemy fighter. “Watch for when they’re about to fire. I think—”
The entire enemy squadron let off a phalanx of solid energy. Three Typhoons exploded as the beams blasted through them while another pair careened into the beams and were ripped apart. Wyman slowed his fighter and tried to steer it away from a burning line. His canopy nicked it, leaving a slash through the composite glass before he pulled away. The HUD on his helmet flickered as it tried to adjust for the loss of data from his damaged fighter.
“Freak! Down!”
Wyman heard Ivor’s warning and slammed his control stick forward. A spear tip flashed overhead. Wyman activated the thrusters on the rear of his fighter and spun it into a backwards roll. A Typhoon came into view, pursued by an enemy fighter, its edges alight. Wyman opened fire, sending out a fan of bolts. The enemy ship blew the Typhoon into burning fragments a half-second before one of Wyman’s shots struck and broke its nose off.
Wyman’s spin took the damaged enemy out of view. He twisted his ship around and sped back toward the dogfight.
“Briar?” Wyman put another shot into the wobbling fighter he’d shot and broke it in half.
“Got one on me.” Ivor’s words strained against g-forces. “To your four.”
Wyman banked hard to the right…and found Ivor barreling right toward him. He brought his left wingtip up and could have sworn the two fighters swapped paint as they passed. He opened up with his cannons and blew her pursuer into bits. Wyman tried to skirt the expanding cloud of wreckage and felt pieces slap off the bottom of his fighter as if he was in a metal shack during a hailstorm.
His fighter chugged forward as his engines malfunctioned. Warning icons popped up in his HUD, all yellow.
“Freak? You OK?” Ivor asked.
“Still kicking.” He pulled into a loop and found Ivor. They accelerated back to the dogfight where only six other Typhoons remained, outnumbered two to one.
“Going for lock.” Wyman slipped his thumb onto the top of his control stick and tagged an enemy fighter. He clicked the trigger on top of the control stick, activated the Shrike missile mounted to his wingtip, and felt a thrill when a lock tone sounded through his earpiece. With another click, he launched the missile. The fighter shuddered as the missile sped away, propelled by a blazing point in its base.
Red icons popped up and his stick went sluggish.
“I’ve got a problem…losing main power.” Wyman tapped at his battery control panel, which flickered on and off.
“Missile away!” Ivor shouted.
Wyman jerked his stick from side to side, bouncing him against the tight confines of his chair. His battery control panel popped off with a brief shower of sparks…but his flight controls returned to normal. He shrugged his shoulders and looked back to the dogfight.
Ivor’s missile streaked toward its target and exploded when a pencil-thin beam struck out from a spear tip.
“Same thing happened to yours,” she said.
“Then we’ll do this with guns.” Wyman increased his speed ever so slightly, unsure what the strain would do to his damaged ship.
“Alert flight, this is Excelsior actual,” came over the radio. “Clear the field.”
Wyman twisted around and saw the Excelsior, two battleships, and a host of cruisers and destroyers cresting over the horizon.
“Roger, Excelsior,” Drummer said. “Don’t think these bogies are about to let us—”
A pale white column of energy struck out from an enemy capital ship, blinding Wyman as it passed.
Wyman felt his restraints cut against his chest and waist as his fighter spun out of control. The afterimage of the monstrous enemy attack burned against his eyes, a solid beam that jumped around each time he blinked.
Shouts filled his ears, a wild panic of voices that Wyman ignored as he struggled to do something—anything—that would get his world back under control.
“Atmosphere. Atmosphere,” came through his helmet as his fighter’s on-board computer warned him of the loss of altitude. Wyman flailed around and grabbed onto his control stick with both hands. He swung the stick to the side and felt his momentum shift in response. At least something was working.
“Emergency heat shield active. Orbital return course non-optimal,” his computer said, which was a polite way of saying the fighter—and he—would burn to a crisp if he didn’t get his ship under control immediately.
He squeezed his eyes shut and then opened them to find some peripheral vision had returned. He swung his fighter around, pointing the nose into the direction of his fall as flames licked up the side of his cockpit.
“Freak, you OK over there?” Ivor asked. “I’m just behind you with—”
“Dandy,” a strained man’s voice said. “Drummer, the rest are all off my scope.”
“Heat shields are back to optimal. My feet are a little singed, but it’s not bad,” Wyman said.
“I don’t think we can power out of this descent,” Ivor said. “The Excelsior’s going to need us.”
Wyman looked up. The flagship of Home Fleet charged toward the unnamed enemy. An ugly black scar ran across her port side. Cannon fire traced across the gap between fleets. Attacks from the Albion ships impacted the enemy ships, pounding against energy shields.
A pair of enemy ships fired, their beams converging on an Albion cruiser. Her shields lit up into a cocoon around the ship, struggling to dissipate the assault. A third beam broke through the cruiser’s energy shields and bored into her hull just above the engines. All three beams converged into a single point within the ship and blew it into smoldering fragments.
“Eight hundred people on that ship,” Wyman whispered.
Torpedoes streaked toward the enemy ships, trailing comet tails in their wake. Beams from fighters ravaged the incoming barrage, but three made it to the leading enemy ship. The forward cube exploded into a momentary sun. The explosion rippled up the ship’s keel, peppering the other ships in her formation with a storm of debris.
The shields on another enemy ship failed and the Albion bombardment broke it into three pieces.
Wyman banged his first against his canopy in excitement as the tide seemed to turn. Then he remembered the gash in the glass as wisps of air snaked into his cockpit. He rapped knuckles against flickering control panels, then took a hard look at the black and yellow chevrons over his eject lever.
“Ros
y, Dandy…you remember what we’re supposed to do during an atmo reentry if we don’t have cabin pressure under control?”
“Don’t eject,” Rosy said. “You’ll make it to the ground, but you’ll do it in many burnt pieces.”
“If your suit still has integrity, you’ll be OK,” Dandy said. “Vent your cabin anyway. Less risk of an explosive decompression when you…my God.”
“What?” He looked up and saw the star field over the Albion fleet shimmering.
Enemy ships burst from the nexus point and decelerated to a complete stop. Wyman watched in horror as the ships opened fire on the Excelsior and her battle group, joining their fire from the ships to the flagship’s fore.
Half a dozen beams smashed against the Excelsior’s shields. The forward emitters buckled and a single beam speared through the ship’s bridge and out her belly. The Excelsior canted to the side, then rolled over, succumbing to Albion’s gravity.
Wyman had to look away as two more ships exploded into fireballs.
“Shit, shit, shit,” said Ivor. “What do we do now?”
“There’s…an unmanned landing pad outside Reading.” Wyman swiped a map screen and found a solid icon over the town. “It’s still online. We set down, rearm, and recharge, and then we get back in this fight.”
Brief shadows formed in his cockpit as another ship exploded overhead. He looked toward New Exeter, where the massive dome ship hovered high above the city.
“We’re not out of this fight yet,” Wyman said.
Chapter 11
Thorvald followed Royce through a dank tunnel, marching through the same ankle-deep puddle as the Captain. Gestalt armor trivialized all but the most hazardous of environmental concerns. Royce had no worry about the discomfort of wet socks like Thorvald, but the prisoner kept on as if he was in his armor. He hadn’t complained once as the air shifted from freezing cold to the heat and humidity of a sauna as they passed through the machinery that serviced the castle.
“If the King wishes,” Thorvald said, “I will renounce my oath to him or another of the royal family before I leave. My protocols are still active in the system and if he’s worried that—”