“Report!” she almost shouted, as first one explosion rocked the command center and then another. Both the freighters were smoking wrecks on the landing deck. Astrid grabbed the shoulder of the sensor operator and squeezed it hard.
The man winced in pain. “Both freighters destroyed, ma’am,” he said, his voice pained, but Astrid didn’t let up. “What is that flotilla doing?”
He gasped and hammered a few keys on his console, and gave his shoulder a shake, and thankfully the Vice Chairwoman let go. “They’re dealing with the last of the fighters, ma’am,” the operator replied, his face going pale. “Only two of the F-322s are left.”
“Who?” she demanded and then she grimaced. “Don’t tell me.”
“Leader Matthews and Flight Officer Marvalles,” the comms specialist reported, giving her a look out of the corner of one eye.
“That bastard doesn’t have the decency to kill the enemy and then die for the cause,” Astrid stated bitterly, her voice a bit lower than normal, but it still carried. She didn’t care. As she watched, both of the remaining F-322s launched a pair of missiles at the cruiser’s unshielded flank. The corvette covering the bigger ship fired all of its broadside weapons, managing to take down two of the missiles, but the other two slipped by and exploded against the hull of the light cruiser. Astrid grunted in satisfaction at seeing a plume, no a pair of plumes, of burning atmo surge out from their hull, but quickly cut off. Must have closed an emergency bulkhead, she thought to herself.
The command center was buried under several dozen meters of lead-infused rock, well protected from the star’s radiation but against a protracted assault and bombardment; they had only minimal protection. And now that the enemy knew the base was here and had chewed up the defenses, destroyed the flagship, picked off the fighter squadrons and managed to evade the mines, there was nothing more Alpha had for defense. Even the armed freighters were caught out unprepared and unaware and were now smoldering craters on the landing deck. The base is lost. The shipbuilding facility is lost. The cause here in this system is lost. Only thing left to hope for is that some of those bug bastards die out there in cold space.
There was nothing more to do now. She had no more weapons, no more tricks and as she watched, one of the F-322s was blown apart by fire from the corvette. She wasn’t sure which one, though a dim part of her mind hoped it was Matthews. Not sure I’ll be that lucky before the end.
((--[][]--))
Leader Matthews didn’t have time to celebrate the hit on the cruiser. One of those damned enemy starfighters, the last one in fact, had managed to get himself in behind his F-322 and was attempting to catch Matthews in a missile lock. Matthews yanked the stick over to the left and back, putting the ship into a barrel roll, then snapped out of it, and down.
The foreign and yet surprisingly nimble fighter managed to stay with him. It didn’t bother with a barrel roll, just carried through the turn and when Matthews did the snap roll to pull clear, the other pilot simply turned and followed. All the while, laser blasts from the enemy cannons peppered his tail. Aft shields were starting to weaken; it wouldn’t be long before they failed.
Gotta turn the tables on this guy, Matthews thought to himself. He could feel himself starting to get warm, and he desperately fought the urge to check the radiation gauges. The shields were still up and despite the few hits from the enemy attacker, there was no way that radiation had penetrated. He was just getting nervous. He banked hard around to the right, and sure enough the fighter stayed with him. He was impressed at the other’s skill. Clearly this one was a well-experienced pilot.
Looping around one of the corvettes maneuvering slightly near the aft end of the light cruiser, jinking to the right and left, he kept away from their point defense fire long enough to make his move. Matthews killed his acceleration, dropped the nose of the F-322 in a full dive, bringing himself into a full 180-degree turn. Once on that vector, he kicked in the thrust, braking his now backward momentum and he depressed his triggers. A stream of energy bolts traced back along his path, right along the vector his sensors were showing the enemy fighter was following.
He had the satisfaction of watching his strike batter down the forward shields of the enemy starfighter and punch through the nose of the ship. The enemy starfighter tumbled off into space, then halted when a tractoring beam from the nearby corvette grabbed hold of the stricken vehicle and started reeling it in.
Matthews’s smile was feral, as he nudged the nose of the F-322 around for a kill shot. His fingers never found the trigger. His fighter moved out from behind the bulk of the corvette’s hull, and he was for a brief moment completely vulnerable to the light cruiser’s aft weapons. A heavy laser shot pierced his canopy, tore through the shields like they were tissue paper, and then continued out the other side. The man experienced a split second of boiling agony as his whole body vaporized under the onslaught. And then nothing.
((--[][]--))
“Damage report,” V’ka’sith ordered. He could see the information on the display in front of him, but he needed clarification. There was simply too much information on all of his displays: tactical, local sensors, radiation meters, and now damage control. He had others to break some of the information down for him.
“Starboard shields are still down, Kapitan,” the male zheen, Kikx, reported, his voice grim. “We’ve got hull breaches on decks 3, 4, and 5. Plasma leaks in conduits throughout that area and radiation is still flooding in.”
“We’re being shielded by a lot of it from the moon, Kapitan,” Djarok said. “But there’s still a lot that we’re taking. It’d be a lot worse if we didn’t have this moon here, though.”
“We’ve sealed off the affected areas and withdrawn the crews from there. I’ve got sixteen people already showing signs of early onset radiation sickness though.”
“And we need people to go outside to make repairs.” V’ka’sith twitched his antennae. “How bad are the shields?”
“Well,” Kikx replied, slowly. “We could extend full coverage around the ship, but strength would be low.” He tipped his head to the side, almost in a canine, or human gesture of confused thought. “Of course, once we have full shield coverage again, I can get a team out on the hull and see about repairing the damaged nodes.”
“Good. Get me full shields again,” the kapitan ordered. He looked over to the tactical station. “Grokk. Target the installation on the moon, bring all available weapons to bear. Comms, order all the ships in the flotilla to do the same. On my mark, wipe that place out.” His voice was full of hissing anger. He waited a full minute for the other ships to be ready. He heard Kikx report that shields were covering the whole ship again, but only at thirty-four percent. He’d take it. He pressed the control to speak with the whole flotilla. “All ships, open fire!”
A seemingly unending rain of death fell upon Committee Base Alpha. Energy weapons, metal projectiles, missiles, all of it raced down from orbit of the moon to crash against the moon surface. V’ka’sith maintained the fire until a massive, rough crater was all that remained of Base Alpha. All transmissions ceased, all power signatures were gone, secondary explosions rocked the moon; the crust of which was cracking four kilometers out from the strike zone. After five long minutes of shots, after the focusing crystals on the ship’s lasers were about to shatter as they overheated, V’ka’sith called a halt. The blizzard suddenly halted.
“Run full scans,” he ordered. “Make sure they’re gone. Recall the fighters and the gunboats. Kikx, make sure you get a team out there and get to work on the hull. We’ll remain in orbit of the moon while you do to give your people the best protection we can. But after that, we’re getting the flikxz out of this bedamned star system and back to Amethyst. Job well done, people! A clean sweep!”
Cheers echoed so loudly through the bridge, down the corridors, and throughout the ship, the officers were almost concerned it might cause another breach. Almost. They were cheering just as loud as the regular crew was.
((--[][]--))
The six assault shuttles of Nemesis’s ground forces contingent raced down into the atmosphere of the Committee’s claimed planet. The heavy cruiser carried eight platoons of soldiers for boarders and ground operations, nearly two hundred strong. All of them were armed with pistols, assault rifles or shotguns, as well as grenades. Most carried blades or other such weapons, since when they were deployed, Warlord Verrikoth had little care for what they actually did to any of the survivors. Oh, the Warlord had rules, and you were advised to stick to them, but those rules typically only applied when the troops were deployed on a friendly planet, or if there was some objective he wanted them to seize, be it person or property. Aside from that, he let them use their own methods.
War Leader Vok, a deep purple zheen covered with nearly as many scars as his Lord Verrikoth, stood before his soldiers in the second shuttle. He was dressed in a ballistic vest over his thorax, with similar armor over his legs and forearms. An assault rifle was slung over one shoulder and a needler was holstered at his hip. He also had a blade sheathed down his back. Vok never took the lead position in the drop order, knowing that the first shuttle would be the one to take the heaviest fire from ground emplacement. He wasn’t disappointed. Ground-based laser cannons opened fire at the incoming shuttles and right on cue, the pilots began evasive maneuvers and he tightened his grip on the strap hanging from the overhead, keeping himself on his feet.
“My Lord has a simple mission for us this time,” he yelled over the sounds of the engines. The platoon of soldiers in the shuttle, all buckled into crash harnesses looked up to him, silent. “We get in there and get rid of all resistance. He doesn’t much care how; he just said to do it.” There were growls and whoops of feral pleasure.
He turned to three enormous Secaarans seated in the front of the shuttle. “Smash Pack,” he said, addressing them, firmly. “You’re going to bust the front door in for us.”
“Just like always, War Leader,” the bigger of the two males answered. The Secaarans were siblings, two males and a female, all of them with the same sort of armored skin indicative of their race. These three, however, were taller and wider by a noticeable amount than many of their fellows, their skin a strange and mottled dull orange and gray color. And they were not simply wearing clothing over that armor, no, the Warlord had convinced the siblings into putting metal armor over their skin, at least in the most vulnerable spots. Chest pieces, breastplates, forearm bracers, and gauntlets. The chest armor pleated out into leather strips, forming a short skirt. No one ever mocked the siblings for their armor, neither in front of them or behind their backs. Not that anyone would. Stryx, Cromm, and Dragga Beryllen were the three meanest members of Verrikoth’s armed forces, with the possible exceptions of Vok and Verrikoth himself and that was only because the two zheen were more vicious and creative. The Beryllen siblings were massive creatures, immensely strong and tough as hell. They thoroughly enjoyed their status as the biggest and the strongest and had no compunctions about hurting people. They had custom weapons, assault rifles, and shotguns (their hands were too big for standard pistols) and while they were well trained and experienced in their use, their true passion weapons were old school.
Old school to the level of medieval. The trio had outfitted themselves with powerful melee weapons, which were made from tungsten carbide for maximum stopping power. The hafts of said weapons were made from heavy duty polymers to save on weight. Dragga wielded a warhammer with a head bigger than a cinderblock and as tall as she was, which was impressive seeing as she was the largest of the three in both height and girth. Cromm, only about ten centimeters shorter, loved his two-handed battleaxe, its head made of sculpted and sharpened tungsten. Stryx, the smallest of the group, was armed with a heavy morningstar, a spiked ball with a meter and a half long chain, but unlike his fellows, he carried a large metal shield. The shield was coated with a layer of fullerene mesh, which helped even further against projectile strikes.
Their choice of weapons made sense, as Verrikoth had found and recruited them on one of the moons in a system south of his current sovereignty. The moon was habitable and populated, but the level of technology was little above Iron Age, with everyone fighting using swords and axes, bows and arrows. Verrikoth had brought them into his forces after a platoon of his own soldiers had held off two companies of the locals, and the zheen himself had killed the siblings’ commander. He’d impressed them with his ferocity and spirit, and he promised them whatever they wanted: money, females (or males, in Dragga’s case), comfortable quarters, and the ability to do what he’d just done. He’d also give them better weapons, stronger ones, and much more modern, so long as they would swear themselves to him.
The siblings discussed it. With the death of their commander and most of the army they’d been fighting with, they had little loyalty left to anything resembling a local power or government. This Warlord seemed a trustworthy sort, and with his ability to deal out punishment in such short order, they suspected that he would be a bug of his word. They signed on with him and never had any cause to regret it.
Now, as today, the siblings, or the Smash Pack, as they liked to call themselves, were used on heavy assault missions, any time when strong resistance was expected. They respected Vok and the Warlord, and while they all knew they could tear the zheen apart in a straight fight, they knew what the concepts of honor and loyalty were. War Leader Vok treated them well, pointed them in the direction of the enemy and then let them loose. He didn’t try to control them, just direct their energies. The Warlord, of course, was the one who had lifted them off of that moon and brought them out into the larger universe. The other soldiers in the fight did a lot of the mop-up work, providing covering fire or using the booma-booms when needed. That was one type of weapon the siblings eschewed. Why use explosives when they could create the same effect themselves by just hitting things? Explosives were for lesser beings, excluding War Leader Vok or the Warlord, of course. Leaders had to use every weapon in their arsenal; there was no shame in that for them.
“Good, that’s all we need to hear,” Vok replied. “Just make sure someone down there doesn’t get lucky. I don’t want to have any of you dead.”
The trio exchanged looks, as though they had never fathomed such a possibility existing. How could anyone possibly kill them? They were the biggest and the strongest!
Vok turned back to the rest of the troops in the shuttle. He pressed a control on his wrist comm. “All right, we’re going to have to move quickly once we get down. We don’t know what kind of troops or equipment they have down there, but scanners have indicated that there are some large numbers of personnel down there, upwards of one thousand.” He let that sink in. The landing force had a little under two hundred effectives, though this was a battle-hardened group. “I want you all to watch your backs and each other’s, and then get into that facility, take care of all of them.” More growls of approval. He checked his wrist comm’s display again. “One minute to landing. We hit the dirt; I want everyone out and behind cover.”
More laser shots flew through the air, and the shuttles did their best to evade. Shuttle Six took a hit and lost flight controls. The shuttle rolled down into the atmosphere out of control. The pilot, or perhaps the shuttle’s engineer, managed to regain control and bring the vessel down in a controlled crash. Radio chatter indicated that the ship would need some repairs, but was salvageable. The crew and passengers were banged up and bruised, a broken leg and another with a broken arm, but otherwise all right. And mad as hell, but they were also about four kilometers from the drop zone, so they had a bit of a run ahead of them before they could get to the facility and join in the fun.
Vok didn’t have time to worry about that. “All right! Ready, up!” He unslung his weapon and thumbed the safety. All of the troops unstrapped
their crash harnesses and grabbed weapons. The Secaarans began stomping their wide, heavy feet on the deck of the shuttle, causing the ship to tremble. It was their normal ritual to get themselves psyched up for battle. Very quickly most of the rest of the platoon aboard the shuttle got into it, and the whole vessel was vibrating from the impacts, almost as though it was coming under small arms fire.
“Smash! Smash ‘em! Smash! Smash ‘em!” they chanted, over and over, with each repetition they grew louder and more soldiers aboard joined in.
The shuttle touched down, the forward ramp dropped, and the troops rushed out, weapons held at the ready. The Smash Pack roared a battle cry and charged straight up the middle, Stryx leading the way, his shield raised. His siblings crowded behind him, their firearms up and blasting away.
The compound was blocky, permacrete buildings covered with some sort of camouflage paint schemes to blend in with the rock, dirt, and snow on the surrounding terrain. It was ugly, square and squat but what it lacked in aesthetics it made up for in sheer size. There were a dozen multi-level structures and the shuttles’ ground penetrating sensors, as well as the life signs scanners, showed a large underground cavity below the base, easily capable of housing several hundred more beings.
The landing pad was on the edge of the northern side of the collection of buildings. The blocky constructs were linked by a series of rounded armorglass tunnels, built to keep those moving between them shielded from the cold.
The Warlord's Path Page 12