by Marko Kloos
When the refueling queue is finally serviced, the supply ships break formation and take up position in front of the task group and slightly above. I don’t see Indy on the optical feed at all—it’s difficult to spot the stealth ship unless you know exactly where to point the lens, even at short range—but I know she’s out there right now, swinging around the task group to gather speed for the transition. I feel guilty for not being in her CIC right now, even though there’s absolutely no good I can do over there on this mission. All nonessential personnel have been transferred off Indy, which would have included me anyway, but it doesn’t ease the feeling of letting Colonel Campbell and Major Renner down, irrational as it is.
“Combat stations, combat stations. All hands, combat stations. This is not a drill. I repeat: combat stations, combat stations.”
The combat-stations alert sounds a lot louder in the cavernous flight deck than it did in Indy’s CIC. We will be on alert for the entire Alcubierre transition back, because we know that as soon as we come out on the solar system side, we will be fighting and running for our lives.
Then the 1MC comes to life again.
“Attention all hands: This is the CO. We are cleared for transition in T-minus twenty-one. Stand to and man your stations. Regulus goes to battle.”
Out in the distance toward the transition point, a set of position lights glows briefly, as if in salute.
“Indianapolis, you are cleared for transition in one minute. Good luck, and Godspeed.”
I listen to the radio chatter on the ship-to-ship channels as all the ships in the task force send their own salutes to Indy.
If you don’t make it through, I hope you make a bright comet, I think.
“Transition in thirty. Beam lock confirmed. See you on the other side. Indianapolis out,” Major Renner’s voice comes over the speakers. She doesn’t sound anxious in the least.
“Twenty seconds,” Regulus’s tactical control says. “Ten seconds. Five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one. Indy has transitioned out.”
“T-minus seven for Flight Two. Flight Two, advance to your transit positions.”
Time ticks away as we wait for the supply ships to maneuver into position. Indy went through the node at slow speed, to maximize her stealth when she came through on the other side. The supply ships, going through exactly seven minutes after Indy, are transitioning while going at full acceleration. When they are through, they will shoot out of the Alcubierre node at five hundred meters per second, to play the hares that give the foxes something to chase. The supply ships swing wide around the task force and accelerate toward the node. Then they are gone in a blink, off at superluminal speed and away to a point twenty-seven light-years in the distance.
“T-minus seven for Flight Three. Flight Three, advance formation to transit positions and keep queue order.”
The three-carrier formation and its escort spread out and line up for the transition. Then we are under way at maximum acceleration, which we will keep for seven minutes. By the time we hit the node, we will be going almost as fast as the supply ships that went before us.
Regulus is the fastest of the carriers, so she gets to take the lead in the queue. The knot in my stomach grows bigger with every minute we accelerate toward the Alcubierre node. Once we are engaged, there’s no putting on the brakes or turning back.
“One minute to transition . . . Thirty seconds to transition . . . Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six . . .”
Next to me, Sergeant Fallon takes the ration bar out of her pocket again and sticks out her tongue. “You know what? If this ends up being the last thing I get to eat before we all buy the farm, I’m going to be really fucking pissed.”
CHAPTER 22
“All hands, prepare for transition. In ten. In five, four, three, two, one. Transition.”
Regulus’s hundred thousand tons and three thousand souls blink back into normal space with barely a hull vibration, the smoothest Alcubierre transition I have ever experienced in any fleet ship.
“Oh, fuck me,” Sergeant Fallon says next to me when the display on the bulkhead comes back to life. Her voice is a little muffled by the battle-armor helmet she’s wearing with raised visor.
“All units, all units. Execute Battle Plan Romeo.”
We are back in normal space. Ahead of us and above our trajectory, there’s the unmistakable bulk of a Lanky seed ship, but it’s in the distance and heading away from us at a thirty-degree angle. I can’t quite get a grip on the situation as well as I would if I had a three-dimensional tactical display in front of me instead of overlapping camera feeds, but I can see that the plan has worked at least partially—the Lanky is moving away from the Alcubierre node, and we have at least fifty kilometers of open space between us and him.
Regulus swings hard to port to clear space for the ships that popped through the node right behind us, and the ship-to-ship channels erupt in terse combat chatter.
“Contact at zero-four-five relative, positive zero-three-zero!”
“Get behind Regulus. Come to new heading three-four-one by negative thirty. Expedite, goddammit.”
“Get me a targeting solution on that huge son of a bitch.”
“Hold all missile fire. Repeat, hold all missile fire. Unmask rail gun batteries and link for barrage fire.”
I try to open up as many camera-feed windows on the display as I can to capture the scope of the action that’s unfolding. Regulus is leading the breakout charge through the node, and all the other ships are behind us in a staggered battle line. We are forming a V with the Lanky ship, with the Alcubierre point at its tip, and the legs of the V slowly diverging as we accelerate away from the seed ship as fast as we can.
“All units, open fire. Weapons free, weapons free.”
We watch the fireworks on the camera feeds in slack-jawed awe. Nine capital warships open fire simultaneously with all their rail gun batteries. Hundreds of tons of kinetic warheads streak toward the Lanky ship, salvo after salvo. They cover the fifty-kilometer distance between the ships in just a few seconds and shatter against the hull of the Lanky ship in spectacular thermal blooms. This concentrated barrage would be enough to take apart any ship ever put into space by us or the SRA, but the Lanky seed ship’s hull shrugs the kinetic rounds off like an animal swatting aside angry wasps.
“Bogey is coming around! Bearing change to zero-four-five relative.”
The seed ship seems annoyed enough with the barrage to break off pursuit of whoever managed to lure it away from the transition point, or maybe whatever entity controls it has decided to pursue the more numerous targets that just popped out of nowhere behind it. But we have a slight speed advantage, and our task group is accelerating as fast as our ships can burn. Whatever cosmic fates have set us on a collision course with this species, at least they’re still beholden to the laws of physics, even if they have ships that can withstand millions of joules of kinetic energy.
The task force ships fire another barrage. The lights on the flight deck dim momentarily as the power output of the ship’s fusion reactors is almost completely eaten up by a propulsion system going at emergency power and a battery of electromagnetic artillery firing from all tubes. We are increasing the distance meter by meter, and trying to slow the Lanky seed ship down by throwing spit wads at their hull, pure defiance and desperation.
Our formation is rapidly pulling apart. Every ship is making its own best acceleration, and some of the older units are falling behind a little. Regulus was leading the charge out of the Alcubierre node, but even with the ten-second head start we had, the frigate Tripoli is pulling ahead of us. The heavy cruiser Avenger, Regulus’s bodyguard unit, could probably outrun us easily, but she is just off our stern and to our starboard, faithfully and doggedly shielding her charge.
“Incoming fire! Vampire, vampire. We have incoming ordnance from the Lanky.”
Overhead, the forceful voice of the Regulus’s CO comes over the 1MC.
“All hands, brace for impact.”<
br />
This time I can actually see the Lanky missiles. One of the cameras is angled just right, and against the backdrop of the rail gun impacts in the distance, there are dart-like objects crossing the space between us in a flurry of movement.
This is it, I think. A hit to propulsion or the reactors, we slow down, and then the Lanky closes in for the kill.
But Regulus must be just outside the reach of the Lanky’s weapons envelope, because there are no impacts on our hull, no holes in the flight deck and screams of panic and anguish. Instead, we keep accelerating away from the Lanky ship, which is still in the middle of its wide and ponderous turn to port.
Behind us, one of the task force ships is not so lucky. There’s a soundless explosion blotting out one of the camera feeds and blinding the optical sensor briefly. When the feed returns, it shows a rapidly expanding field of flame and debris, a ship hull losing integrity at full acceleration, getting torn apart by the same forces it had harnessed just moments ago.
“Good God,” Lieutenant Colonel Kemp says, ashen-faced behind the half-lowered shield of his helmet.
“We just lost the Long Beach,” someone says on the ship-to-ship channel.
The escort cruiser to the Midway must have taken a direct hit to the fusion plant or into a launch-ready nuclear warhead. Ten thousand tons of steel and alloy, and five hundred men and women, cease to exist as a cohesive unit in the blink of an eye, the most rapid catastrophic failure I’ve ever seen. Nobody on that ship had time to get into an escape capsule. Nobody on that ship probably even knew what hit them. Just like that, the cruiser CG-97 Long Beach and her crew are gone.
“Shen Yang is falling out of line,” someone else sends.
Our stern camera feed shows the Chinese destroyer. It’s still intact, but there’s obviously something wrong, because they are slowing down and veering off to starboard. As they turn away from the main body of our task force degree by degree, I can see that they’re trailing debris and frozen air from their stern section.
“Oh, no,” I hear myself saying. “No, no, no, no.”
Shen Yang turns into the trajectory of the Lanky seed ship, which looks massive even at this distance, a streamlined and yet strangely asymmetric matte black shape that has wormed its way into my nightmares years ago. There are only sixty or seventy kilometers between us and the Lanky, and Shen Yang’s speed adds to that of the seed ship as she closes the distance rapidly. I know what the Chinese skipper is about to do, but I can’t avert my eyes, and from the gasps among the 330th grunts in the cargo hold, I know that they are aware of what’s about to happen.
As the Lanky ship rushes out to meet her, the Shen Yang starts launching missiles. The covers for the bow launchers fly open, and ship-to-ship ordnance streaks from the launchers, first singly and then in pairs. The rail gun mount on the dorsal line of the destroyer never stops firing at the Lanky. The missiles stream toward the seed ship and explode against its hull, huge white-hot fireballs that blot out the optical feed momentarily when they hit. There are still missiles coming from her launch tubes when the Chinese destroyer rams the seed ship head-on and instantly disappears in a violently expanding cloud of debris.
So close, I think. They were so close. Already we’re increasing the distance, and it’s clear that the Lanky ship with its millions of tons of mass can’t match our acceleration rate. Twenty seconds more and Shen Yang would have been out of the seed ship’s reach.
All protocols of station-holding and battle-group formation are suspended as every remaining ship in the task force makes maximum acceleration along the same general bearing, away from the Lanky seed ship. We are running for our lives, and we are slowly pulling ahead kilometer by kilometer, but the price we paid is staggering. Between the two ships we lost in the span of three minutes, a thousand sailors, marines, and Spaceborne Infantry troopers are dead, all men and women who had survived the Battle of Mars and the assault on Fomalhaut b.
Thirty minutes later, we are still alive, and still running away. The Lanky seed ship is ten thousand kilometers behind the task force, still pursuing but falling behind more every minute. On the optical feeds, I count only seven other ships of our task force remaining, rushing along at full burn in a procession that stretches for a hundred kilometers.
The infantry soldiers in the cargo hold of the drop ship all seem more than a little shell-shocked by what they just witnessed on the makeshift situational display projected against the bulkhead. Outside, beyond the open cargo ramp, there’s a sort of tense calm among the troops on the flight deck, who know that we are in battle but blissfully unaware of just how close we all came to dying a few minutes ago, and how many people did die.
“All units, proceed to assembly point Alpha at best speed,” Regulus sends over the task force’s tactical channel. One by one, the remaining ships radio in their acknowledgment of the order: Midway. Avenger. Neustrashimyy. Minsk. Gomati. Tripoli. Portsmouth.
Then, after a long delay of maybe ten seconds during which I hold my breath, Major Renner’s voice comes over the channel to acknowledge for her ship.
“Regulus, Indy. Proceeding to assembly point Alpha.”
I let out a long and very shaky breath.
The sudden relief I am feeling doesn’t last very long. A few moments later, someone else chimes in on the ship-to-ship channel. The voice has a heavy Russian accent.
“Supply ship Ivan Donskoi has been destroyed also. Total loss, none survived.”
Two cruisers and a supply ship gone. One hell of an admission fee to get back into the solar system. But the Minsk made it, which means that Dmitry is still alive.
Battle Plan Romeo was a success, tactically speaking. Most of the task force got past the Lanky guarding the transition node, including all three of the valuable carriers with their flight decks packed full of people. But their escorts have taken a brutal mauling doing the jobs they were designed to do: shielding the carriers. Of the three cruiser escorts, two were destroyed. Only Regulus’s bodyguard cruiser, the Avenger, is still with us. In terms of tonnage, we lost less than a tenth of our task force, but it sure doesn’t feel like we got off lightly. Long Beach was an older design, not as heavily automated as the new cruiser classes, and half a thousand souls went with her when she blew up. We’ve been trading slaps with the SRA for decades, but the casualty counts were small in comparison—an infantry platoon here, a frigate there. Against the Lankies, we lose people at a far more prodigious rate, and in much shorter engagements.
“Are we in the clear?” Lieutenant Colonel Kemp asks.
“For now,” I say. “He can’t keep up with us because we can accelerate just a little faster. Unless there’s another seed ship lurking on Red Route One somewhere, we should have a clear shot home.”
“But we don’t want to stop and smell the flowers,” Sergeant Fallon says.
“No, we don’t. It was a smart idea to fill everyone up before the transition. We won’t have time to slow down for refueling ops. Not if we don’t want to get overtaken. You saw what kind of life span our ships have against theirs.”
Sergeant Fallon takes her helmet off and puts it on the drop-ship deck by her feet. Her forehead is shiny with sweat.
“I used to think we grunts had the dirtiest, most dangerous job in the service,” she says. “After today, I gotta say I’m pretty fucking glad I’m a ground pounder.”
CHAPTER 23
I can already see Earth through Regulus’s high-magnification optics when we encounter the first picket ships. We are less than a million kilometers out from the lunar orbit when we get swept with search radar and pinged with an IFF interrogation.
“Approaching vessels, this is Captain Vigdis Magnusdottir of ICGV Odinn. Identify yourselves, or you will be fired upon.”
“ICGV?” Sergeant Fallon asks.
“Icelandic Coast Guard vessel,” I supply.
“Iceland? I never knew they even had a space-going fleet.”
“They don’t, really. They have two or three or
bital-patrol boats. Nothing that can even make Alcubierre.”
“And she’s threatening us with that little tin can,” Sergeant Fallon says with a wry smile. “I like her pluck.”
“Oh, the Icelanders are hard warriors,” I say. “Vikings to the core. I have no doubt she’ll start shooting if we don’t answer the challenge.”
Luckily, our acting task force commander isn’t taking any unnecessary chances.
“Odinn, this is NACS Regulus, flagship of Task Force Fomalhaut, coming home to Earth with six Commonwealth ships. We have five SRA units with us as well. It’s very good to see you.”
“Affirmative,” Captain Magnusdottir replies. “It is very good to see you, Regulus. Our picket is a bit thin, you see.”
If anything, the Odinn’s captain has understated the defensive situation around Earth. We pass the picket force, which consists of Odinn and one other ship, the South American Union corvette Barroso. Together, the two picket ships have maybe two thousand tons of displacement between them, less than half that of the oldest and smallest frigate in our battle group. But as Task Force Fomalhaut coasts into the space between Luna and Earth a few hours later, there isn’t much else out there. I see even fewer ships than we did when we had our brief pit stop at Independence a month ago. Almost all the military vessels patrolling the Earth defensive perimeter are from smaller nations and coalitions: South American, European Union, African Commonwealth. Only a handful are SRA or NAC fleet units, and none are larger than a corvette or frigate.