“The Space Tactics Division isn’t planning a raid on the warship?”
“No, Captain. They are planning a raid on those who are your enemy. I believe the enemy planned to destroy two bilks with one rock.”
“Come again?” asked Jon.
“I have discovered the tip of something momentous. The detective only knew a little. I can give you three clues and a time limit.”
“What limit is that?” Jon asked.
“Three days,” Bast said.
“Then what happens?”
“A momentous event,” the Sacerdote said. “In this instance, I am certain that event involves the Nathan Graham.”
-6-
The first two clues cost seven good operatives in Nirvana City. The last of the seven radioed a gnat patrol boat flying in Saturn’s upper atmosphere. The woman in the back seat passed the message on to the Nathan Graham.
Nine minutes later, Captain Hawkins spoke to them. “Take it out.”
“Do you mean the laser system, sir?”
“No. The city. You’re the only ones in position and you lack the hardware for a surgical strike. Destroy Nirvana City. You’re doing it on my authority.”
The woman in the two-seater gnat acknowledged the grim order. She controlled three drones, each of them with a nuclear payload. The drones cruised through the gas giant’s upper atmosphere. The woman worked swiftly, tapping orders onto the remote-controlling unit on her lap.
The three drones changed their circular loop pattern, heading for the cloud city.
During this time, the conspirators in Nirvana City had unlimbered a giant focusing system. They believed their cover was blown. Because they had an open window—a straight line-of-sight—for only a few hours, they decided to take it now. The conspirators worked furiously, targeting the Nathan Graham in space. Giant turbines whirred, pumping the gas cylinders with power.
“How long?” the chief conspirator shouted.
A tech checked his watch, pointed at another man and turned to the chief. “Now, comrade. It’s firing now.”
The gas cylinders unleashed their power into coils. The coils pumped the targeting lens. A giant beam reached up out of Saturn’s highest atmosphere. The beam traveled the 150,000 kilometers in the blink of an eye. It struck the giant scaffolding surrounding the Nathan Graham. The beam melted girders, sending globules of metal wobbling away and then burnt-free sections of scaffolding followed.
In Saturn’s upper atmosphere, the first of the three drones approached the cloud city. The GSB conspirators had worked hard, however. On the main platform, anti-missile guns targeted the approaching drone. They began to chug powerful proximity shells.
Two direct hits caused a massive detonation. The drone blew apart, the sections dropping harmlessly into the deeper atmosphere.
The second drone had circled and dipped. Now, it swept upward toward the cloud city.
Nirvana City, like the other atmospheric platforms, maintained its place because it had buoyancy. The city literally floated in the thick atmosphere. The buoyancy was due to giant steel-sheathed balloons under the main city platform.
“You’re going to need the third drone,” the gnat pilot said. “If these last two fail, the captain will likely order us to sacrifice our lives to take out Nirvana.”
The drone-controller skillfully manipulated her pad.
As Nirvana’s antimissile-guns took out the second drone, the third accelerated flat out toward the under-balloons.
In space, the Nirvana City laser burned through the first layer of scaffolding. The giant laser began heating the Nathan Graham’s outer hull armor.
The gnat pilot swore as he listened to his comm. He kicked in the gnat’s afterburners, heading toward the cloud city. “I’m locking onto the main guns,” he said. “Get ready.”
“Abort, abort,” the drone-controller said. “I think I have them.”
“What if you’re wrong?”
“I’ll tell you in five seconds.”
As the drone-controller spoke, a proximity shell ignited nearby. A piece of shrapnel bounced off the gnat’s canopy. Spider-line cracking marred the clear material. The blast from a second proximity shell proved too much for the weakened canopy. A piece tore away. A second later, the entire canopy blew outward. The gnat spun out-of-control. The woman had already donned breathing gear, but it didn’t matter. Two more proximity shells struck the gnat and exploded, killing the two operators.
Two seconds later, the third drone struck a steel-sheathed buoyancy balloon. Its thermonuclear warhead exploded, causing all the balloons in that section to pop in quick succession.
Nirvana City tipped sideways. The focusing mirror no longer targeted the giant cybership in space. The cloud city began sliding sideways deeper into Saturn’s increasingly thick atmosphere. As the platform did so, the gravities increased.
More buoyancy balloons began to pop, increasing the rate of descent. In minutes, there was no one left alive in the cloud city. No focusing mirror worked. Everything crumbled. Nirvana City was gone, devoured by the conflict between the Nathan Graham and the Solar League.
***
The first two clues ripped from the SSP detective had led to a premature Nirvana laser-beam assault against the Space Dock scaffolding. The third clue led to something completely different.
The Space Tactics Division of the SSP began their various assaults on selected Neptune orbital stations and on a few domes on Titan. The SSP chief did not know it, but that cleared the way for the main GSB-directed attack on the Nathan Graham.
Two thousand, three hundred and eighty-nine workers and space-welders began donning their equipment. Today, some of them carried breach-bombs instead of welding equipment. Others had jetpacks with armor plates hidden under their spacesuits. They would use those once they made it inside the Nathan Graham. Those people had military-grade rifles and grenades in their possession.
A final staging satellite waited for a signal from its location 52,000 kilometers away in the gas giant’s rings. For months now, under the very noses of the SSP, the GSB operators left in the Saturn System had trickled assault boats and space marine suits there. Over the last few days, they had reinforced the retreat massively and dangerously. Once G-hour arrived, five thousand demi-marines would rush the giant alien vessel. The goal was to storm aboard and help the welders and space workers capture the cybership.
The conspirators had solved one of the trickiest problems with a clever expedient. During the past few days, they’d slipped thousands of personnel aboard in shielded cryo units. That minimized the transmission of the wrong kind of sensor signals. The conspirators had also used the vast debris of the rings to shield their doings.
The rings were only a few kilometers thick, containing water-ice and rocky particles covered with water-ice. The particles ranged from a few centimeters to tens of meters in diameter. While the particles were thick enough to create the spectacular rings, there was also plenty of space between most of the debris.
It was to the conspirators’ credit that the plan had gotten this far undetected. There was a problem, though. The same debris that had shielded them from SSP and the Nathan Graham’s sensors, also shielded the company of Black Anvil space marines from the conspirators as the Anvils maneuvered into attack position.
Two hours ago, the Centurion and Gloria Sanchez had confronted the captain.
“Please,” the Centurion said. “Without you, sir…”
“He’s right,” Gloria said. “Why are you risking your life like this?”
“I’m a soldier first,” Jon said. “I’ve been ordering a lot of people to do sacrificial things and to do dirty deeds. It’s time I put my life on the line again. I can’t—”
Jon had stopped explaining, remembering that none of his people wanted to hear his qualms. That didn’t change the fact he was going in on this one.
Maybe he needed to risk his life as a cathartic release of his pent-up pressures. Whatever the reason, he was wearing
a battlesuit again, waiting in a small assault boat. The boat’s pilot slid them past ring debris, maneuvering closer to the hidden satellite.
It was almost time to begin the attack.
-7-
The exoskeleton-powered battlesuits allowed Jon and his marines to wear heavy carbon-composite armor. That let them carry heavy weapons, air-tanks and hydrogen propellants, and to survive in the suits for over a week if needed.
Stark commanded the company of roughly five hundred space marines. Approximately one hundred of these men had survived the cybership-storming in the Neptune System almost two years ago. The rest of the company was composed of new recruits, many from the Neptune System and plenty from around here. They’d trained together for months at least, some of them for longer.
Jon checked his HUD. It was presently hooked into the assault boat’s passive teleoptics. A chair-sized rocky particle slid past as the boat drifted toward a large darkened satellite. According to the specs, the satellite was fifty-two kilometers distant. It was big for such a hidden construct, half a kilometer in size.
How had the enemy kept the satellite hidden all this time?
I’ve been lucky. We’ve been lucky.
Jon wondered why his gut wasn’t churning. It would have been in the past. Was he too tired? Did he hate a few too many of the things he’d had to do lately? He didn’t want to risk his men if he didn’t have the right attitude. He owed them his best.
Jon focused on the dark satellite. Stark had been eager enough for this. The gorilla of a sergeant had told him the company needed blooding.
The colonel would likely have agreed with Stark. Combat troops could sit around too long. A good combat unit was like a knife. It could get rusty. Sharpening wasn’t only about combat training. Sometimes, a unit had to go into action. That helped shake out the bad leaders. It also trained the troops with live-action decisions and with plenty of adrenaline pumping through them.
This isn’t a drill. This isn’t to sharpen the troops. This is so I can repair the cybership. This is so I can face the AIs when they show up again.
“Sir,” Stark said over a short comm. He was on a different assault boat. “We should accelerate the rest of the way. If we try to drift in, they’re going to spot us. That will give them time to get ready.”
That’s when it really hit Jon. He was about to send five hundred space marines against an enemy five thousand strong. His five hundred wore battlesuits, however. The others likely did not, as their go-hour was still some time from now. Five hundred battlesuited marines could butcher five thousand unarmored men.
Still, many things could go wrong. Some things would go wrong. One of the oldest maxims of battle was that no plan survived contact with the enemy.
Fear boiled in Jon’s gut. The fear boiled away the hesitation. It boiled away the self-doubts and worries. This was the real deal.
I feel alive again.
Now, Jon knew why he’d joined the raid. He was a fighter, and he needed to fight.
“Sir—”
“Right,” Jon said. He switched to a wide-message command channel. “Attention,” he said. “Hector did not run away.” That was the code to unleash the assault boats.
It was about to begin.
***
Jon’s assault boat picked up velocity. He felt it, as this little boat did not have any gravity dampeners. It was constructed to do two things and those two things alone.
First, it knifed toward the target. The assault boat had a dark and heavily armored hull. Because the pilot had used the debris in the belt and moved cautiously, they had hopefully slipped to their present position unnoticed.
“I’m getting radar pings,” the pilot said. “They’ve spotted us.”
The tightening in Jon’s belly grew worse. This was the hardest moment. Heading in, when any stray shell could take them out.
“They’re firing,” Jon said, watching his HUD.
The dark satellite was long. Tiny pinpricks showed on the dark object, the point defense guns firing at them.
“Hang on,” the pilot said. “This is going to get rough.”
It always did. It was nearly impossible to go the last distance without the enemy waking up.
“There!” the pilot shouted.
Jon saw it on his HUD. Their own pre-attack missiles had slid into position unnoticed. Explosions over there now created white blots on the screen. Those explosions were small shape-charged neutron bombs igniting. They were clean, in other words. They created local EMP bursts. The blasts should blind the enemy targeting sensors for a few minutes. Maybe the EMPs would create short circuits over there, but maybe not. The enemy had undoubtedly hardened most of their electronics.
“That’s no good,” the pilot said.
“What happened?” Jon asked.
“They’re firing their guns blindly. One of them hit First Platoon’s second boat.”
Jon couldn’t see it on his HUD. “Is it destroyed?”
“Hit,” the pilot said. “Oh-oh, the pods are ejecting. The boat is getting rid of its cargo. Damn. It blew. That scratches First Platoon’s second boat.”
Jon ground his teeth in fury. The enemy had gotten lucky. The neutron bombs were supposed to have blinded those guns’ targeting sensors. Stark’s company had just lost too many space marines before the fight had even started.
“Are they waiting for us?” Jon asked the pilot. “Is this an ambush?”
The pilot didn’t answer.
Jon was jerked back and forth in his seat as the assault boat maneuvered violently.
“Hang on,” the pilot said again.
The ride became more than violent. Jon was jerked back, to the side and back again. He’d have body-length bruises before this was over.
“We’re almost in,” the pilot shouted. “Switching off.”
Jon’s view on the HUD vanished, blotted out by the pilot.
The assault boats converged on the dark satellite. They roared in at speed. Each boat was constructed like a giant needle. Each had an incredibly sharp point, providing the boat's second function, slicing into an outer hull.
On Jon’s boat, side guns hammered the targeted entry point, softening the enemy hull. At that moment, the assault boat smashed against the location. It crashed through the enemy hull, the slender assault boat sliding, sliding, shaking and rattling before coming to a sudden halt.
They were inside.
The assault boat’s hull blasted outward, sending sections of hull spinning into the enemy satellite.
The heavy restraints around Jon’s battlesuit blew off. He staggered. They’d made it. It was time to charge into the satellite and begin killing enemy combatants.
-8-
The first half of the battle went like clockwork. Jon worked with Second Platoon. He fired 100 mm HEAT shells, blowing down bulkheads. After that, he used an electromagnetic grenade launcher.
The grenades slaughtered unarmored men.
The bulkheads of the enemy secret base dripped with blood, gore and pieces of flesh.
Stark’s company took no prisoners at that point.
The sudden death from space surprised the secret base personnel, but not for long. Maybe six hundred of the enemy marines donned their battlesuits.
The problem—for the enemy—was that the GSB operatives had a distinct distrust of military people. They’d kept the battlesuits and weapons separated.
Five hundred of the enemy marines died trying to reach the weapons lockers. They had speed and stamina, but their armor could not resist repeated hits. Stark’s men could shoot freely without worrying about counter fire. That made all the difference.
The last one hundred demi-marines breached a weapons locker.
Now, the fight finally began in earnest.
That was where the superior training of Stark’s company paid off.
Third and part of First Platoon laid down heavy fire. The two sides sent thunderous munitions at each other. Stark worked his teams around the enemy
area until he had the one hundred marines engaged in constant firing.
Jon led Second Platoon. Just like on the cybership almost two years ago, Second Platoon’s engineers planted bulkhead charges.
They blew.
The engineers clanked forward, setting another round of bulkhead charges.
Those blew, too.
Jon led the way, firing the big 100 mm HEAT launcher as he went.
The shells were for taking down big vehicles. These blasted enemy battlesuits, sending them flying, broken and breached in one strike.
Second Platoon roared in behind the heavily-engaged enemy battlesuits. They cut down the enemy fighters until the last ones pleaded for mercy.
“Throw down your weapons,” Stark radioed. “Lay flat on the deck plates. If any of you moves—you’re dead. Comply at once. This is your only chance.”
Most did just that. The few who tried to be tricky died.
After the last enemy combatant shed his suit and walked in restraints to the waiting shuttles, Stark approached Jon. They were still wearing their battlesuits.
“We did it, sir,” the gorilla of a marine said.
“Not yet we haven’t,” Jon said. “We need to get back to the ship.”
“Do you see any problems there, sir?”
“Don’t know. But if I were running the enemy side, this is a golden opportunity. They can try to hit us as we head back for the Nathan Graham.”
“We’d better hurry then,” Stark said.
“Speed is the key,” Jon agreed.
***
As Stark’s company piled into the retrieval shuttles, the leader of the GSB, Saturn System, spread her fingers on her desk.
The polished desk was located in a dome on the farthest moon of the Saturn System, a tiny piece of rock.
She had a spider-web of contacts throughout the system. She was the conduit to Earth, to J.P. Justinian.
She stared white-faced at her screen, reading more reports. This was a disaster.
The A.I. Gene (The A.I. Series Book 2) Page 14