“We just took out one of the destroyer’s main forward engines,” Winterton said. “Their ability to reverse thrust has been cut almost in half.”
Just as the sensor operator said it, the Vesta’s newly superior acceleration saw her closing the gap and nearing her enemy.
Kinetic impactors from the Vesta’s magnetic railguns poured into the wound created by her missiles, and the entire destroyer abruptly ruptured. The CIC burst into cheering.
Watching on visual, Husher saw that one piece of shrapnel from the expanding debris cloud looked bigger and more symmetrical than the others. “Winterton,” he barked. “Is that an escape pod?”
The sensor operator scrutinized the display for a moment. “It certainly looks likely to be, sir.” Just as he spoke the words, the craft vanished.
“That was Teth,” Husher said with certainty, his feeling of satisfaction tempered by the knowledge that he still hadn’t finished his Ixan nemesis. “How are our marines faring?” he asked, almost afraid of the answer.
After a few seconds, Winterton answered: “They’re still alive and fighting!”
“Thank God. Tremaine, let’s refocus on helping them reach that generator. Our Air Group’s still in hot water—if we don’t rejoin them soon, the Gok will pin them against that forcefield and take them apart.”
Chapter 62
Shoot to Kill
By the time the Vesta’s guns came back into play in the fight for the moon’s surface, the marines defending the shuttle were down to Gamble, Roux, Johansen, Tort, and three others—not including Haynes, the pilot.
The shuttle was looking pretty banged up, and the regolith around it was littered with motionless marines. Near Gamble’s left foot, out of the corner of his eye, he could see a young private’s blackened face through his helmet’s cracked faceplate.
It was a grim scene, meaning there was plenty of room for their spirits to be raised. The Vesta’s return certainly did that.
Despite that he’d told the marines they’d been chosen for this mission because of the guns they rated highest on, Gamble wasn’t actually using the weapon he most excelled with. As much as he liked his R-57 for its versatility and its run-and-gun nature, his heart belonged to his Rk-9 sniper rifle, which he’d stashed just inside the airlock.
When the supercarrier’s guns once again started tearing up the moon’s loose terrain, sending plumes of dust shooting upward and shrouding the area around the shuttle in a gray haze, Gamble got on a wide channel. “Roux, you’re closest to the airlock. Toss me my sniper. We’re gonna leave Haynes to continue defending this position while we get this raid rolling.” He pointed to the top of a rise ten meters or so off the shuttle’s aft—one of the few places not currently covered in a dust haze, and also one where they’d had the most success putting down the aliens pressuring the shuttle.
“I’m going up there on overwatch while you six push in that direction,” he said, pointing the way the shuttle’s starboard side was facing. “Wait till the dust settles a bit, so I can actually see enough to be of some help, then rush ‘em. By the time you’re ready, I should be in position.”
Roux passed him his sniper rifle, which he slung across the back of his pressure suit before sprinting toward the rise he’d indicated, assault rifle held at the ready in case any hostiles popped up to contest the hilltop.
Progress was slow in the low gravity, given Gamble had a keen interest in not bouncing too far into the air. Doing so would offer the enemy a nice, clean target. Instead, he inched forward while crossing the distance between shallow craters and low rises as fast as he could manage.
At last, he gained the hilltop without encountering any enemy combatants. Nice. The slope formed a natural sniper hide, with a gentle incline on the far side, perfect for steadying himself against the crest while he lined up his shots.
Just as he’d predicted, the dust was beginning to settle to the ground as he was getting situated, and his battle-weary team was getting ready to act.
“How are we interpreting the ROEs, today, Major?” Johansen asked. An important question for any soldier who didn’t want a run-in with a conga line of lawyers once he got back from deployment.
“We’re on a barren moon with no atmosphere, in the middle of a system that’s supposed to be deserted. I don’t think we’re gonna run into too many civilians,” Gamble said over the wide channel, which brought a couple chuckles. “The only beings here are the ones guarding the generator they’re using to keep that forcefield up, whose sole purpose was to trap us like fishes in the barrel they wanted to shoot us inside. Unless they surrender, which I doubt they will, shoot to kill.”
“Can do,” Roux said.
“Move out,” Gamble said.
The six marines ranged forward with guns at the ready, using the moon’s natural formations as cover whenever possible.
Right away, a Gok popped up from a crater that must have been deeper than it looked. The alien’s position would have let it get the drop on Tort from behind. It would have…and if Gamble hadn’t put two high-powered sniper rounds into the seam where its helmet met its pressure suit, that’s probably exactly what would have happened.
“Thanks,” Tort rumbled. “Owe you beer.”
“Don’t mention it, big guy.”
Gamble continued to scan the moon’s terrain for anything out of the ordinary—anything that moved, in other words. He was glad he’d been able to take down the Gok so handily, but he was far from sure it would be that simple if an Ixan popped up, ready to go. Based on Tyros and on today’s fight, in their new form, the Ixa were harder to put down than even Gok.
Studying them through the Rk-9’s scope, some features of the moon’s terrain pretty clearly weren’t natural. A couple rectangular rises, about five hundred meters off, were obviously artificial, though covered in heaps of dust, probably so they couldn’t easily be spotted from orbit. How the captain had known to deploy them here, Gamble didn’t know, but he also didn’t bother wondering about it. The CIC had their business, and he had his.
Then, his worst fear came true: an Ixan reared up from a hollow, pounding up the slope toward the nearest marine, Johansen.
Gamble got two rounds into the reptile before he made it to the private, but it made no difference. The Ixan seized Johanson by the shoulders and smashed its forehead into his faceplate. The alien’s helmet must have been hardened somehow, because the faceplate cracked.
It didn’t stop there. The Ixan held out Johansen with one hand and produced a pistol with the other, firing it twice into the marine’s neck.
Two more sniper rounds made the Ixan stagger, but it recovered quickly, making its way toward Corporal Roux.
Damn it. Gamble reloaded smoothly, only decades of training keeping his hand steady as he rushed to try and save his marine.
Too late. The Ixan was there, reaching for Roux—
—when Tort crashed into it, both hulking beings hitting the ground in a tangle.
That meant Gamble couldn’t get a clean shot. He silently cursed the Gok as the two struggled on the ground, the Ixan quickly getting the upper hand.
Gamble had noticed a mild hero complex in the big Gok the moment he’d started working with him. Hell, Tort’s involvement with humans had started with saving Captain Husher’s life, during the Second Galactic War. He’d racked up more saved lives since then, but if his inclination drove him to sacrifice himself along with Johansen, it would make a dark day even darker.
I really don’t want to lose that big lout.
The Ixan managed to pin Tort to the regolith, and it swung its pistol toward the Gok’s face. Tort caught his adversary’s wrist, but their difference in strength quickly became clear as the Ixan’s gun progressed steadily toward Tort’s head.
Unfortunately for the Ixan, making it on top had also given Gamble a clear shot. He took one, then he took another.
His third shot sheared through the softer fabric at the Ixan’s armpit, meant to enable range of motion
but also offering a distinct vulnerability for Gamble to target. His shot must have hit something vital, or maybe it was simply enough punishment to put the berserker off its game.
Either way, it keeled over, and Tort pressed the advantage, slamming his ham-like fist into the Ixan again and again. The Gok picked up his heavy machine gun, which had fallen to the regolith nearby, and he sprayed bullets all up the Ixan’s body.
That seemed to do it.
After beating the Ixan, reaching the two structures only involved dispatching a couple more Gok, which seemed like child’s play in comparison.
“Patch me through a visual as you take the bigger structure,” Gamble said.
It took five minutes for a private, who’d been chosen for his hacking as much as for his proficiency with a shotgun, to bypass whatever security was on the entrance.
Once he had it open, the marines began with a flashbang tossed into the front room, and then they piled inside. Gamble continued scanning the moon for targets, glancing every now and then at the feed in the corner of his vision. His soldiers cleared room after room, confirming exactly what he’d suspected: the Gok and Ixa had sent everything they’d had against the shuttle. Thanks to the Vesta’s guns and the marines’ resilience, it hadn’t quite added up to enough.
The generator, it turned out, was down a long flight of stairs, likely meant as another failsafe, in that it couldn’t be taken out from orbit. It had required a ground assault to accomplish its destruction.
“All right, marines. Set the charges and get out of there,” Gamble said.
Chapter 63
No Such Luck
The forcefield went down just as the Gok ships were nearing it, their intention obvious: to pin the Vesta’s Air Group against the energy barrier and wipe them out, away from the protection of their base ship’s heavy artillery.
No such luck, Husher thought as his supercarrier moved out from the confines of the moon, once more free to go anywhere in the galaxy it wanted.
Here is good, for now. “Coms, tell Commander Ayam that half his Air Group’s on missile defense duty, while the other half is to harry the Gok warships and screw with their lateral mobility. Tremaine, what does our arsenal look like?”
“Two hundred and sixty-five Banshees, thirty-six Gorgons, and as many solid-core kinetic impactors as you’d care to send into space, Captain.”
“Let’s send them into Gok hulls instead. Start with just the closest destroyer for now, but mix in two Gorgons, and send two Gorgons apiece at the nearby Gok cruiser and frigate as well.”
Husher’s hope was that the kinetic impactors would suggest to the Gok that he was following standard IGF doctrine left over from the Gok Wars: focus on mowing down one target then move on to the next. Ideally, that would make his other targets feel safe for the moment, rendering them utterly oblivious to the missiles headed their way.
“Sir, a squadron of Pythons just neutralized a corvette,” Winterton reported.
“That wasn’t what I ordered Ayam to do,” Husher said. “Reprimand him for me, would you?”
That brought a round of chuckles, but Winterton just blinked at Husher, completely impervious to the air of jocularity that had followed breaking free of the forcefield. The man was probably among the most serious people Husher had ever met, which wasn’t a bad thing in a CIC officer, and also not a bad reminder to everyone in the CIC. Restored freedom or no, they were facing down thirteen Gok warships. Despite the might brought by the Vesta to any engagement, especially one waged against warships with comparable technology, war should never be an object of amusement.
Keyes would never have tolerated chuckling inside his CIC.
In contrast with his sober thoughts, the engagement soon came to favor the supercarrier and her Air Group. The cruiser and the frigate were both obliterated by the Gorgons that found their hulls with no resistance, and the destroyer lost half its forward guns.
After that, every last Gok ship turned about and began to flee for the relative safety of the asteroid field.
“Should we pursue, Captain?” Kaboh said, voice neutral.
“Yes,” Husher said. “I believe we should. Tactical, target down those ships.”
Chapter 64
Pieces
Husher sat strapped into a crash seat across from Fesky, inside one of the Vesta’s combat shuttles, but one meant only for mass troop deployments. This shuttle didn’t have anything like the armaments on the craft Chief Haynes had flown down to the surface of Klaxon’s moon.
Thinking of that mission made him wince, and he worried for a moment that his friend would take that the wrong way, until he realized Fesky wasn’t paying him any attention. At the moment, she was deep inside herself, as near as Husher could tell.
Fourteen of our best marines. Gone.
Military commanders spent what capital they had to accomplish vital objectives. Sometimes, that currency took the form of soldiers’ lives. The knowledge of how badly it would hurt him to spend that currency—of how it would haunt his quiet moments until the day he died—that knowledge hadn’t stopped him from spending it.
This was war, and war was a bastard. It left everyone in pieces, including the survivors.
“You all right, Fesky?” he said, as much to distract himself from his thoughts as to check on his friend.
The Winger was trembling violently, and the intrusion of his voice made her start. “What? No, I’m not fine. She’s alive, Husher. She’s alive.”
“That’s a good thing.”
“Of course it is. But what am I to say to her? After all this time…after what she’s been through…”
“She’s just another being, Fesky. And she’s your friend. She’ll be happy to see you.”
But Fesky was shaking her head. “You have no idea what the relationship between Fins and Wingers was like, human. You have no idea what they were to us…”
They’d been searching the planet for the better part of a week. The Vesta carried some watercraft, and the marines had been out in them for days, emergency lights on, scouring Klaxon’s oceans. Pythons had performed flyby after flyby, scouring the shores and the seas for signs of Ek.
Husher had begun to consider how he was going to break it to Fesky that they’d have to end their search and return to the Interstellar Union’s core systems. The admiralty would want a full report on what had transpired here, and the bureaucrats would be eager to make Husher face the music for the decisions he’d made.
Wouldn’t want to deny them that.
But just as he’d been about to have the talk with Fesky, Ek had been found. And now, here they were, on their way to speak with her.
The shuttle landed on the shore of a bay, and Husher slowly unclasped his crash seat’s restraints. Fesky was still fumbling with hers, and he suppressed a smile.
“Need a hand, there, Madcap?”
“I’m fine, human,” Fesky grumbled. At last, she ripped them off her with a jerk and stood, storming past, the breeze from her wings wafting against Husher’s face.
He followed her into the airlock, trying to catch her eyes, but she stared steadfastly at the hull while the airlock cycled through the usual processes.
The outer hatch opened, and Fesky took a halting step toward it, then another. At last, seeming to steel herself, she exited the craft.
Just outside, she fell to her knees.
“Honored One,” Fesky said with a sigh.
Meters beyond, Husher spotted Ek, sitting in shallow water up to her neck, just above her gill slits. He hadn’t been there the day her breathing apparatus had been removed, and seeing the Fin without it didn’t square with his memories of her. Her mottled skin continued where her suit had once been—the suit that had kept her body constantly moisturized. And like other Fins before her, she wore no clothes, and Husher had to fight the urge to avert his eyes, reminding himself that this had been considered normal for her species.
“I thought I told you not to call me that, Fesky,” Ek said.
“I—I—”
“If we are to have a conversation at all, it will be as equals, and if you do not start acting like mine, then I will turn around and swim back into this ocean. Now, stand up.”
Still trembling, Fesky stood.
“That is better,” Ek said. “I will not have you groveling the first time you meet my children.”
“C-children?” Fesky said, but Ek didn’t answer.
Instead, she lowered her mouth below the water’s surface, and bubbles rose as she spoke. Presumably she was speaking, though to Husher it just sounded like burbling.
Ek rose her head, then, spreading a finned arm toward the water behind her. Six fully grown Fins broke the surface.
“Children, meet my dear friend, Fesky. And this is Captain Husher, another close friend. “Captain, Fesky—meet Sarl, Ohm, Rah, Mei, Ki, and Zin.”
“How is this possible?” Fesky asked.
“When we parted ways twenty years ago, I told you I was not doomed to live alone in these oceans. Did you not surmise my meaning?”
“I mean—it did occur—but I assumed—”
“I was artificially inseminated during my last days on Spire, Fesky. I have never had a mate, as I never connected with another Fin on that level, but I still carried a desire to procreate. It was an exceptionally foolish thing to do, considering my status as the only spacefaring Fin, and the deterioration of my health at the time. But all has worked out well, and I am not the last Fin after all.”
Fesky’s legs seemed to give out, then, and she hit the grassy bank with a thud. “I’m so happy,” she said.
Husher couldn’t contain himself—he laughed, and the Winger turned to glare at him. But her expression quickly softened, as she no doubt realized that he wasn’t laughing at her. He was laughing because he felt just as much joy as she did, at the resurrection of the Fins, and at how earnest and true his friend Fesky was.
He felt his laughter settle into a smile, which faded as his gaze settled on Ek. “I hope you know I can’t leave you here,” he said.
Capital Starship (Ixan Legacy Book 1) Page 25