by Jay Allan
Kit glared sidelong at him. He had finally stopped objecting to the call sign his squad mates had dubbed him with. “Nice flying. I think. Hey, how about not doing that again. Mm-kay?”
Jake grinned, but ignored the request. “Any more contacts?”
The gunner glanced down at the sensor readout. “Yeah, about twenty more bogies between us and Liberty Station. The rest of viper squadron engaged.” All around the fighter the space battle raged, bright blue shafts indicating the ion beam fire from the fleet of Corsican Empire ships, punctuated with staccato bursts of red from the smaller Resistance fighters. But this time the Resistance was not out-numbered. This time they had the advantage.
This time they would win, and kick New Rome with its “Pax Humana” off the planet and back to the cesspool of a world they came from. Jake keyed in a new course and sped the fighter around towards the shipyards to join his squadron.
Leaning into the cockpit window at his right, Lieutenant Mercer peered down at the Earth. Far below, he could make out the Florida peninsula, mottled green and blue with everglades and water. Squinting down to the tip, he tried to make out Miami, searching it for smoke, but he knew they were unlikely to see any from this altitude.
“Did any bogies make it through?” Kit asked.
“Don’t think so. We’d probably have seen some smoke plumes over the base in Miami by now if one had. Either from their bombs, or the base’s ion cannon blasting them out of the sky.”
“Right,” Kit muttered before glancing at his readout. “Contact. Three o-clock and up.” The man pointed above Jake’s head.
“On it.”
The craft veered to the right and away from the Earth, closing like a dart on its next unlucky target. With the help of a few simple maneuvers by Mercer, Kit dispatched the Imperial Corsican fighter with a single burst.
“Yeah, baby!” Kit said, reaching over to slap his friend on the helmet. Jake smiled, and gunned the engine to point back toward the shipyards—their original target that day.
The uprising was only in its second week, but already the Resistance had captured most of the key imperial installations on the surface, with only a few holdouts in Asia, and was now working its way through all the remaining military targets in orbit. Two orbital defense platforms had fallen into Resistance hands the day before, but the lynchpin to the orbital space over the Earth was the shipyards: Liberty Station. Without it, the Empire would suffer a huge strategic loss in the Terran system, leaving them only a few outer solar system outposts—posts which the Resistance would easily take once the major battles were won.
Mars, of course, had fallen back to the Resistance within the first few hours of the uprising. Those hardened colonists had never taken guff from anyone, and Jake supposed the empire boys never knew what hit them there. “What’s the status on the disruptor field, Kit? We’ll never be able to get the landing parties on there if it’s still in place.”
“Scanning,” the other man said. He furrowed his still youthful brow and studied his console before blowing out an exasperated breath. “Still up,” he said, and added, “contact. Right behind us.”
“Roger.” Jake dove the fighter straight down towards the atmosphere, weaving around the falling wreckage of broken ships and debris, trusting that the superior maneuverability of their craft would permit them to outfox their pursuer and then charge it from a more favorable vector.
“He’s still on us.” Kit started to reach for the comm. “He’s good. I’m calling backup.”
“No need,” said Jake, grunting as he flipped the ship around a particularly large piece of debris, probably from one of the larger capital ships that had exploded earlier—he couldn’t tell if it was Terran or Corsican.
The gunner ignored him. “This is viper six requesting assistance. Repeat, viper six requests assistance.”
A garbled voice came over the comm. “Viper six, viper two. Looks like you’ve got yourself a tail, Rooster.”
“Yeah, looks like it, Crash.”
The voice laughed. “I’m there in five. Don’t go nowhere.”
“Roger,” said Kit.
Lieutenant Mercer glanced behind him out the side of the cockpit, and noted the other fighter weaving behind, matching his own flight pattern and closing in. “Crash, where are you, man?”
“He’ll be here in a sec, Shotgun. Hold us on till then.”
Jake grunted again. “Trying…” He weaved this way and that through the cluttered debris field, praying he didn’t slam them into a small piece of junk that doesn’t show up on sensors. At their speed, even a stray bolt would tear through the cabin.
Bright blue flashes illuminated their faces, and Jake swore. The enemy ion beams packed a lot of punch, and could nearly blind the eyes if stared at for too long.
The comm crackled. “Yee-haw!” Red bursts replaced the blue beams around them, and Jake could almost swear he heard an explosion far behind in the blackness of space. An illusion, of course, but it heartened him all the same to look back and see the expanding debris field of their former pursuer.
“Thanks, Crash,” said Jake.
“No problem, Shotgun.”
A whoop from Kit made Jake snap his head around, looking for the next bogey.
“What?”
“It’s down! Disruptor field is down!”
Good. Time to escort the boarding ships, and take back their world once and for all. “Laying in approach vector to the Fury.” He looked out the window and spied a distant gray dot in an even higher orbit, looking more like a flea than a massive capital ship. The boarding parties would be disembarking now, and the enemy fighters would swarm them like angry bees. That is, those that were left, and he grinned at the husks of enemy fighters still falling, blazing through the atmosphere.
He pushed the gravitic accelerator to maximum, and saw the speed indicator shoot up past eleven kps. Nearly escape velocity, he noted.
The comm jolted his attention back to the cabin. “Viper squad, viper leader. Commence escort plan. Pair up. Viper nine on me since viper ten is gone.” Jake swore again. Curt was dead. And his gunner—he couldn’t remember her name, she was so new. Too many friends had left that day. Too many loved ones. But it would all be over soon. Victory was near.
As their craft decelerated, the field of battle snapped into view. The Fury—the rebels’ main capital ship—occupied the center of an angry swarm of enemy fighters. A screen of defensive fire blazed off of the massive vessel, suppressing enemy movement towards the main shuttle bays on the starboard side. An occasional unlucky Corsican ship burst into a brief fireball every now and then, caught between the anvil of a defensive screen and the hammer of a small armada of Resistance fighters now pressuring them.
“Crash, you still with us?”
“Sure am, Shotgun,” the voice responded through the comm.
“On me. Our charge is leaving the Fury now.”
Kit pointed out the front viewport. “There. She’s coming out.” Jake nodded, and glanced all around to ensure no enemy fighters had marked the bloated troop carrier now sailing gracefully out the shuttle bay doors.
“All clear. Troop carrier four, Viper six. You’re clear for approach to Liberty Station. Look sharp,” said Jake into the comm.
The commander of the troop carrier responded. “Roger that, Viper six. You and Rooster just keep the bastards off us for twenty seconds and we’ll do the rest.” The voice over the speaker laughed as someone next to him said something inaudible.
“What was that?” Jake said.
“Nothing. Just Sergeant Warner here making a funny about your gunner. Something about nailing the Corsicans with his giant co—”
“Thank you. Viper six out,” said Kit, cutting off the comm with a scowl on his face.
“What?” Jake grinned, knowing he was about to be chewed out yet again for the moniker: Rooster.
Kit thumbed his trigger anxiously, scanning the space around the troop carrier that they now flanked. “I’m never for
giving you for that callsign.”
“Hey, it’s your fault for getting drunk off your ass in that dingy joint and then whipping it out for all the world to see. You should have seen the look on—”
Kit interrupted him. “Contact. Nine o’clock and z plus seven hundred meters, closing fast.”
“Got it.” Jake pulled up on the controls. “Crash, stay with the carrier.”
“Roger, Shotgun,” said the voice over the comm.
The fighter peeled up, away from the carrier and towards the Fury hovering in space behind them, railguns and laser turrets still blazing away at the swarms of fighters.
“Let it go, Shotgun. He’s trying to draw us away from the carrier. Let hornet squad handle it.”
Jake grumbled, but steered the nose back to the boarding ship and pulled out ahead of her. “Is it coming back?”
“Negative,” said Kit. “New contact, though. Straight ahead.” He leaned forward and peered at his console with a look of disbelief. Holy mother of—”
“What?” Jake yelled.
“It’s closing, way past engagement speed. One kps at least. Jake, it’s on us. It’s going to hit!”
“Fire!”
“I am!” Kit squeezed the trigger and red streaks shot out the bow. Several hit the approaching bogey dead on, and Jake could see debris fly off the vessel, but it was not enough to stop it. He recognized the tactic—the Corsicans didn’t often do suicide runs, at least, not Corsicans from the actual world of Corsica.
They were far too proud.
Too devious.
But several of the client worlds in the Corsican empire boasted cultures that favored the tactic. New Kyoto especially—that world was one of the first to join the empire, sitting just a few light-years from Corsica itself. Its original settlers had shunned violence and devoted itself to building an enlightened agrarian world, but a string of devastating pirate raids over the centuries had convinced them of the need for a more aggressive defense, and when the Corsicans came along with the idea of the Pax Humana, the New Kyotans were the first to climb on board.
“Carrier four, evasive maneuvers! Suicide runner coming in! Evasive man—” Jake shouted into the comm, and Kit pelted the ship with everything their fighter had, but in the three seconds it took him to bark his instructions, he knew it was too late. The smoking craft burst into a fireball, and the expanding debris field just missed their port wing, but it smashed right into the bow of the troop carrier.
“Dammit!’ Jake could see the damage from the impact. Twisted metal and glass and bodies flew from the impact zone which spewed wicked-looking flames fanned by what he could only guess were ruptured oxygen tanks and fuel lines. “Status of the carrier?” he barked to Kit.
“Life support holding. Emergency bulkheads moving into place. Ship is intact, but casualties unknown.”
A deeper voice than before crackled over the comm. “Viper squad, this is Corporal Daniels. Lieutenant Gomez is dead. Warner too. Our approach vector got thrown off and our nav system is down. Please advise, over.”
Kit swore, and keyed open the comm. “Daniels, adjust your approach five degrees to port. Be ready to decelerate in ten seconds and revert to maneuvering thrusters only. Copy?”
“Copy.” An explosion sounded over the comm, followed by yells and garbled voices.
“Daniels, you still with us?” Jake shouted into the microphone.
Only a cacophony of yells, klaxons, and screeching metal answered him. He glanced over at Kit, who shook his head. The nearest construction ring of the shipyard loomed ahead of them, holding the floating skeleton of a half-completed capital ship in the center. Eleven other construction rings held other ships just like it, in various stages of completion.
“Roger. Still here, Viper six. Deceleration in three, two, one…”
Jake smiled as he saw the carrier halt as if it suddenly got caught in thick molasses, and began turning to starboard using its maneuvering thrusters.
“Good work, Daniels. Now, bring your belly right up against the central shaft of that ring and have at her.” He surveyed the construction ring, a massive arc of metal surrounding the newly built capital ship. Hundreds of viewports dotted the surface of the ring, each a home to some workman or mechanic that made his or her living in space, building the future of Earth’s contribution to the Corsican Imperial Fleet. Most of them were probably looking out those windows and cheering them on, he surmised. Welders, electricians, technicians—most blue collar workers tended to be pro-Resistance.
“Viper six, we’ve got a problem,” Daniels’ voice said over the comm. “Cutting crew says our hull penetration system is out. Completely destroyed from that impact. We’re stuck in here, sir.”
“No auxiliary units? Who’s in command there, anyway?”
Garbled crackling answered him, followed by Daniels finishing his sentence. “—destroyed in the blast. I’m afraid I’m it, sir. Command staff is all dead or severely wounded.”
“Roger. Stand by.” Jake glanced over at Kit. “What do you think?”
“Head back to the Fury. They’re useless out here now.”
“Give up?”
“What else can we do? There’s ten other carriers. They’ll have to do without this one.”
Jake shook his head. “No. We can’t just give up. We have no idea how many carriers are making it through. Dammit, Kit, this is the big op. This is it. If we lose this one we lose the war.”
Daniels’ voice crackled over the comm. “Sir, if you’ve got any ideas, I’m all ears. I’ve got a special mission to complete over here, on Admiral Pritchard’s orders himself.”
Jake’s eyebrows raised a hair. Admiral Pritchard gave a lowly corporal a special mission?
“Hold on. I’ll ask Mission Command back on the Fury,” said Kit.
Jake stared at the bulkhead of the central shaft of the construction ring, barely listening to Kit talk to the Ops team back on the Fury. He thought of the last few weeks—the uprising had gone well. Extremely well, in fact. They had encountered significant resistance, but all of their targets had fallen in quick succession.
Intel reports said that the main bulk of the Corsican fleet was still occupied putting down the November Clan rebellion in the Titanis sector, and a myriad of other worlds were in other stages of unrest, requiring critical military resources and drawing the Empire’s attention away from potential hotspots.
Hotspots like Earth.
Not to mention the ongoing conquests of the Corsicans. By last count, they had recently conquered their six hundred and twelfth planet out of the thousand or so settled worlds.
And over sixty years ago, Earth was the five hundredth—almost like an anniversary prize for the Corsican Emperor on his golden jubilee. Jake clenched his fist. No. Giving up was the last resort.
“Ops says two more carriers are lost,” Kit said, grimly. “But they say to guard the carrier until the repair crew on board can fix the hull penetration unit.”
“And if they can’t? Sounds like they’re not doing too hot over there. Repair crew could be dead.”
Kit shook his head. “They didn’t say.”
Still eyeing the construction ring’s bulkhead, a thought struck Jake.
“Rooster, fire a quick burst at that bay door over there.”
Kit snapped his head over to the pilot. “You’re kidding, right? Our orders are to take the shipyards undamaged.”
“Mostly undamaged, Rooster, mostly undamaged. Come on. Just a quick burst. I’ll get on the horn to Daniels.” He thumbed on the comm. “Daniels, Viper six. Are you fellas ready for boarding?”
Daniels’ deep voice sounded over the speakers. “Yes, sir. About two hundred grunts locked and loaded. But sir—”
Two hundred? Out of four hundred? Jake shook his head in quiet disbelief. “Just get your helmets on, soldier. Prepare for vacuum—”
Kit’s voice interrupted. “Contact. Two o’clock and down.”
“Crash, you got them?” Jake said.
“On it, Shotgun,” said the voice over the comm, and Jake saw the other fighter sweep past to meet the intruder.
Kit turned to Jake. “Ok, what the hell do you think you’re going to do?”
“We’re going to blast a hole in that bay door and the marines will disembark in vacuum and secure the entryways into that bay.”
“No, we’re not. That bay isn’t even half as big as the carrier. She’ll never fit in there.”
Jacob waved a hand. “The tail will fit in, at least. That’s all they need.”
“And what if it doesn’t work, Jake? That’s two hundred soldiers out there.”
“If it doesn’t work, the empire wins. Dammit, Kit, they know what they signed up for. So do you. This is their best chance to get on that ring. The sooner this thing is secure, the sooner we can move on to Tranquility base, and then out to the Jupiter and Saturn bases. That’s going to take weeks, and by then the empire will have put down the November rebellion and will turn to focus on us. We’re not a prize the emperor will let slip out of his hands lightly.”
Kit threw up his hands. “It’s crazy, Jake, let’s think this through.”
“I have. Now fire! That’s an order.”
Kit glared at him. His friend resented any mention of their disparate ranks; after all, they joined the Resistance Fleet at the same time. “Yes, sir.” His lips curled.
Red streaks shot out from the fighter and punctured the bay door, and they watched as the interior atmosphere steamed out through the gaping hole left behind.
“Again. Take out the whole door.”
“Jake, these guns aren’t meant for cutting. I’ll have to unload our whole battery at that thing to get it off.”
He was right. Jake supposed his gunner felt a little smug for revealing to him the obvious, but his mind was already moving.
Flipping the ship around one-eighty, he brought the tail right up next to the door, five meters off. Locking onto the orbital vector of the shipyards and engaging the gravitic brake—which would ensure no drift in the ship’s position relative to the construction ring—he punched the conventional thrusters to full power. Past full power.