The Dark Defiance

by A. G. Claymore

  The eight weapons burst apart in unison. “Showing forty-one independent targets – only one double from the algorithm.” Ray looked back over his shoulder. “Not bad, for the first combat use of independent swarm.”

  “Are the fourteen concentrated subs still heading for the primary target?”

  Ray turned back to his panels. “Yes, sir. All fourteen headed for the big son of a bitch, and we’re clear to send more sugar their way.”

  “Very well. I want another six-bug independent swarm to follow the first. Let’s try to crack open the seam between the Dactarii and the blue hats; give our boys a bit of breathing room.”

  He scanned his display, touching another ship to activate a red reticle around it. “Concentrate two bugs on the next C&C vessel. I don’t see any other pattern of vessel that looks big enough for a transport so let’s try to weaken their invasion forces as much as possible.”

  The Vulcans spun back to life, spitting a total of one hundred twenty thousand rounds per minute. They shut down as the next volley of weapons left the launch tubes. Just as they streaked past the windows, sub-munitions from the first volley began to explode, but not inside the shields of the enemy vessels.

  “Eight intercepts of the first wave so far; no – nine,” Ray announced as the second wave of missiles burst apart into their individual attack vehicles. “Second wave has three duplicates.”

  “Come on, you little bastards,” Harry said under his breath. At least let me take one ship down before they kill us.

  “Now fourteen intercepted subs from our first wave and three from the second.”

  “Come on.” A little louder this time. Why doesn’t the UN fall back?

  “Twenty-nine from the first wave, twelve from the second.”

  “Get in there,” Harry urged from the edge of his seat.

  “Midgaard vessels are opening fire,” Carol announced. “Dactarii vessels are turning from the UN. We’re going to have a lot of incoming ordinance in a few minutes.”

  “Ray, forget about the sugar, just get the rest of our bugs in the sky. Three each to concentrate on the other three C&C vessels. Disperse the rest.”

  Within a minute, the last of the Mosquitoes were expended.

  “Still eight live bugs from the first wave.” Ray said. “Now down to seven but all seven are in contact with shields. Four on the first C&C vessel.”

  “Yeah!” Carol yelled as the warheads began to detonate. “That’s what you get!”

  “Wally, bring the pitch drive to full bias.” Harry sat back in his seat. Let’s get in there and have some fun.”

  “Heavy damage on the C&C ship, but she still seems to be under her own power.” He laughed. “What do you expect for a lousy four hundred kilotons? Three other ships damaged but moving off the line. Looks like we may at least have given them a full sensor strip.” He looked back at Harry. “I think we blinded all four of ‘em.”

  “With any luck, one of Caul’s ships will give them a pounding before they can fall back. I think the shields on that big one are dead.” Carol was still on the edge of her seat. “She looked over at Harry. “You figure the UN knows something we don’t?”

  “Maybe.” Harry looked out at the battered fleet. At least we bought them a temporary reprieve. “I suppose there’s nowhere for them to run to. They don’t have distortion drives on those old buckets, just fission-fragmentation.” He looked down at his screen as the remnants of the second Mosquito wave closed on the enemy.

  “Better to die facing your enemy than running from him,” Ray offered. “Five bugs from wave two hitting the shields. The rest are dusted.”

  Five out of fifty-six? Harry thought. This isn’t going to last very long for us. He stared intently at the first C&C vessel. That’s one fifth of the ground invasion.

  “Two vessels destroyed, three damaged.” Ray didn’t sound terribly happy. “None hit the second C&C ship. We’ve got one hundred forty-two left from the final wave.”

  “Captain,” Wally called over his shoulder, “where are we going when we get in close?”

  “Take us straight down the throat of that first C&C ship.” Harry could see the question in his navigator’s face.

  Carol provided the explanation before Wally even asked. “Harry’s right,” she said. “That ship represents a major fraction of their ground troops. If they’re taken out…”

  “It could mean the difference between victory and defeat on the ground,” Harry added. “Or at least, it could make occupation a living hell for them.”

  Wally looked at them both before silently nodding and turning back to his station. Harry knew his navigator had two adult daughters and a grandson on Earth. It was no stretch to imagine where Walter Schirra was drawing his resolve from.

  “Down to fifty live bugs.”

  Less than a quarter of the last wave, Harry supressed an urge to sigh. “There’s just too many enemy ships shooting them down. One-on-one we’d kick their ass six ways from Sunday, but this?” He buckled in. “Secure all weapons and stabilize the shields.”

  “Twenty-three successful impacts!” Ray shouted. Eleven destroyed, one of them is a C&C ship!”

  “Carol, seal the bridge hatch.” Harry activated the ship-wide intercom. “This is Captain Harrison Young. We’ve managed to destroy a large portion of the enemy ground force. We have no further weapons that can harm them except for the ship herself. It is my intention to ram another of those big ships. The Dactarii are a cautious people. If we reduce their ground forces by two fifths before they even start landing, they may think twice before trying a ground assault.”

  He muted for a moment, looking over at his second in command. I’m a merchant captain now, what right do I have to kill my crew?

  “We have to do this.” Her simple statement cleared his mind of doubts.

  He unmuted the intercom. “This is drastic, but it will give our surface troops a fighting chance. I’m…” he dragged his hand across his unshaven cheek. “I’m sorry folks.”

  “Sir, message from the Ares.” Carol frowned. “They say we’re getting too close.”

  “I plan to get a hell of a lot closer before…” Harry raised a hand, shielding his eyes from the brilliant glare that suddenly lit up the bridge from outside the windows. Luckily, he had been looking at Carol when it happened. He pulled a pair of dark glasses from a bin under his console.

  “They’re ours!” Ray yelled. “Those are NATO markings. They dropped out of distortion right on top of the enemy!”

  “Wally, reduce bias and keep us in pace with the Ormen.” Harry activated the intercom. “We won’t be ramming anybody today, folks. The cavalry just showed up.” He could hear faint cheers from behind the bridge hatch. That’s why you seal the bridge before announcing you plan to kill everyone on board. Harry didn’t want to find out who was outside the door. Hell, I’d try to cut my way in here with an axe if our positions were reversed.

  More plumes flared through the enemy ranks, heralding the arrival of more vessels.

  “Oh mama! The Chinese fleet is here as well,” Ray called. “We’re still outnumbered, but that distortion wash took out a quarter of their ships.”

  Harry looked out the front window. From his perspective, two whole fleets of human ships were coming straight down on top of the enemy. The flare from their drops had shot through the fleet without endangering the Earth on their flank. One of the larger enemy ships had lost the entire front half. Small forms spilled out from the ragged mess.

  “Gotta be a troop carrier,” Carol said. “No way you’d have that many personnel just for crew.” She shuddered. Nobody in this line of work relished the idea of losing the protection of their hull.

  “That’s what the UN fleet was doing,” Harry pounded a fist on the arm of his seat. “They were holding the enemy in place so the real fleets could drop out right on top of them.”

  “Can’t tell whether it’s simple or brilliant,” Wally enthused, “but when I find the clever sumbitch who came up wit
h it, I’m giving him a big kiss!”

  “Well, you’d better hope Towers didn’t cook this up,” Harry advised. “You’re likely to lose half your teeth if you try to plant one on him.”

  “Might be some little cutie…” Wally said hopefully.

  “Get our guns back in action, Ray.” Harry ordered. “Go for the flanks so we don’t have to stop when the bugs get close. One Vulcan per enemy. If they drop shields to fire on the bugs, we’ll give ‘em some new holes.” He opened a channel to the Ormen, an image of Deirdre next to a communications officer coming up on one of his screens. Fierce singing could be heard in the background.

  “Miss Kennedy, please advise our good friend Caul that a large swarm of Mosquitoes will soon be heading for the enemy fleet.” He decided that tact would work best on his ally. “Please suggest that his richest kills will come from firing on the flanks. The enemy will have to choose between facing our fire and taking their chances against weapons with a proven ability to beat their shields.”

  “We don’t want them shooting down our weapons by mistake, yeah?”

  “Pretty much, but try to word it so it sounds like a helpful tip on killing Dactarii.”

  “I’ll do my best but it’s like herding cats away from a dead fish at this point. They want to kill some Dactarii.”

  “There’s the first swarm from our fleets.” Ray announced. “Close to five thousand warheads, I’d say. As close as our fleets are now, the Dactarii won’t have much time to swat any of ‘em down.”

  Harry closed the channel to the Ormen, looking up to see the orange hazes of the enemy shields. Very few Dactari ships would be able to drop shields and fire on the incoming warheads without being exposed to Vulcan fire. Some ships were managing to put out a hail of intercepting fire, but it was far less than what the Völund had been up against as the only ship launching Mosquitoes.

  And now there were thousands of bugs to intercept.

  “Enemy’s starting to spread out.” Carol was looking at her tactical display. “They’re trying to move up around the edges of our fleets while they still have a numerical advantage.”

  Harry looked down at the display. Sure enough, the Dactarii ships were trying to flank the humans on three sides. The fourth side still had the battered UN fleet holding them in, but the humans in that zone could only fight a holding action.

  “Just like Zama,” Walter muttered.

  “No, Wally, it was Cannae where the Romans got encircled and wiped out.” Harry looked up from his screen. “At Zama, the battle was a stalemate until the Roman cavalry returned and fell on the enemy’s rear.” That thought gave him hope. “The Midgaard seem to be taking us up on our suggestion about the flanks,” he announced. “Let’s get in there with them and add our own guns to the mix.”

  In their eagerness, the Midgaard vessels were spreading around the enemy formation. Each captain wanted a clear shot at the Dactarii vessels and there were a lot of targets pouring up around the flanks of the human fleets.

  The enemy flank was a disorganized mess, and the Midgaard fell among them like wolves.

  “Let’s see what kind of shields that little escort has,” Harry ordered as he selected it on his tactical screen.

  The drumbeat of heavier weapons now added to the tempo throughout the ship. The steady buzzing of the 20mm Vulcans was joined by the deep thumping of the 155mm howitzer turrets. Though Harry had been glad to leave the military, it still stirred his blood, hearing the sound of outgoing ordinance.

  He could see the orange haze around each impact but the shields were still holding. “Ray, concentrate the 20mm on that ship as well. Give ‘em everything that isn’t currently masked for line of sight.”

  The orange haze began to turn yellow.

  “I think we’re starting to burn through.” Ray’s face was inches from one of his displays. “I think we’re pushing more metal than they can keep up with. If we… Ho! Look at that – 155mm depleted uranium – through and through! She’s drifting off the formation.”

  As Harry watched, the small ship continued to take hits. Secondary explosions were coming from the rear of the vessel. “She’s combat ineffective, move onto that frigate next to her.”

  The frigate was taking fire from at least one Midgaard ship. High-velocity rounds from their ally’s main armament seemed to take a heavy toll on the shields. Each impact was hazed yellow at the center, orange further out. A hail of smaller rounds came from the Midgaard defensive batteries. Each battery consisted of three barrels that charged in turn, allowing a high rate of fire for each rail gun.

  “Targeting the edge of the Midgaard firing pattern,” Ray declared. “Don’t want our rounds impacting each other and giving the enemy a break.” The drumbeat started up again.

  The first rounds to hit seemed to have a strange effect. The typical yellow center was there but smaller than that caused by rail launched impacts. What caught Harry’s eye was a long seam in yellow that flashed along the side of the enemy shield. “Ray…”

  “I see it. Concentrating fire on that seam.”

  The yellow spread and went clear in the center. A cloud of silent debris was boiling away from the side of the frigate as thousands of 20mm depleted-uranium rounds slammed home. One of the 155mm high-explosive rounds blasted a large hole in the side and the shields buckled entirely. The Midgaard rounds were now striking the vessel directly, vaporizing large pieces until one of the larger weapons fired, destroying the target utterly.

  “Find us a frigate that isn’t under fire and let’s try that again.” Harry was leaning forward in his excitement, his eyes shining.

  “Got one,” Ray called. “Commencing operation Gooey Center.”

  This time, it took a little longer, but they still cracked the enemy shield in less than a minute. The mix of depleted-uranium and high-explosive rounds tore into the Dactari ship. Half the crew would probably die from asphyxiation; too many decks had already been ripped open to the emptiness.

  “Lots of secondaries,” Wally offered.

  “Find us a new target, Ray.”

  “Looks like our Midgaard pals are starting to alter their targeting.” Carol activated a tactical data share. The images showed multiple attacks on areas likely to have weak defenses. “Why would these ships have shield seams? The ones from ten years ago didn’t.”

  Harry looked over at her. “Bet you a year’s mortgage they grabbed every ship they could get their hands on to come back here in force. That means taking the old colonial security ships that keep their other territories in line.”

  “Makes sense.” Carol looked back at her display, checking the updated positions. “They send a core of decent ships and a crap load of old scows for cannon fodder. Keep the heat off the good stuff, and give them the extra numbers to simply overwhelm us.”

  “Guys, we got some trouble here,” Ray called over his shoulder. “This new frigate didn’t have a seam and now he’s pissed at us.”

  “New model,” grunted Harry. “Carol, nothing behind us, including Midgaard ships?”

  “Nothing.” She reached up to one of the screens that were mounted on the ceiling. “Shifting shield densities for frontal engagement.”

  “Ray, pour it all on the front of that ship.” Harry had to force himself to sit calmly. South China Sea, Mars, the standoff at Khola and I still have to pretend that I’m not filled with adrenaline. “Soon as they drop shields to fire, I want rounds going up their barrel.” You’d think it would get easier, but it just gets worse every time. “Wally, turn us into the hostile, I want every gun firing on her bow.” He looked down at his hands, unclenching them. Live or die, it’s pretty much a matter of physics at this point. He watched the color flow back into his knuckles.

  “Son of a bitch!” Ray leaned towards his full-zoom monitor. “Some of the rounds are still burning through.”

  Harry maximized the same view that Ray was looking at. Sure enough, new holes were appearing in the bow of the enemy frigate. He placed two fingers on th
e screen and slid them apart, magnifying the area around the main rail gun. “I’m fairly certain that gouge on the inside surface was caused by us. If they…”

  He shielded his eyes against the flash. At first, he thought a wayward human ship had jumped in, late to the battle, but it was a self-inflicted explosion. Perhaps realizing that their shields were failing to protect them, the Dactari frigate had dropped her shields and fired the main gun. Travelling at four times the speed of sound, the outbound armature caught on debris inside the rails and turned downwards, ploughing through the delicate structure of the ship with the same energy as a one-ton block moving at one hundred miles per hour.

  The projectile and its armature broke up, and the various fragments tore through the bow of the vessel, trailing plasma behind them. Travelling in the opposite direction, a hail of high-explosive and kinetic rounds from the Völund burrowed in through the ravaged bow, gouging and detonating, deeper and deeper until a high-explosive round hit the atmospheric plant, detonating the oxygen tanks.

  The blast tore the ship apart even as her shields were coming back up. Harry dropped his hand, turning his head to look out the window at the cloud of debris. Could’ve been us, just as easily.

  “What’re they up to?” Carol slaved a shared terminal on the ceiling and brought up a wide view of the battle. “The smaller ships are acting very odd suddenly.” She made an adjustment to the display and course vectors appeared on each ship. The vectors all converged on the remaining C&C vessels.

  “Getting ready for a last stand?” Wally offered. “The fight’s not going spectacularly well for them, so maybe they’re hoping to impress us with a ram formation.” The ram was the formation that had allowed the expansion of the Dactarii Republic. Their cloned forces tended to fight better when surrounded by comrades and the massive formations had a psychological impact on the enemy.

  Many worlds had fallen to the Dactari Republic because defenders had lost heart upon seeing a long, thick column of ships bearing down upon their thin defenses. Quality mattered less when you had overwhelming numbers on which to fall back.