by Dan Worth
‘Where are they headed, Commander?’ she replied.
‘The Jovian moons. We’re think they’re going to take Io.’
‘I’m on my way up. Chen out.’
Chen sat in her command chair, her HUD monocle projecting a tactical map of the system into her field of view. From their projected course, there was little doubt that Cox’s assault force was headed for Io. Chen’s heart sank. The volume around Jupiter and its moons was still busy with civilian traffic attempting to flee the system. Cox’s fleet would be on top of them in moments.
‘We have to do something,’ said Haldane, a pleading look in his eye as he turned to Chen. ‘Those civilians won’t stand a chance against carrier battle groups.’
‘Agreed. Ensign Andrews, relay a message to Galileo Station. Tell them to order all ships to jump away immediately, to activate all defences in the Jovian system and prepare for a full scale assault.’
Haldane turned to Chen.
‘You’re not going to do anything? We’re just going to sit here?’
‘Yes,’ Chen replied abruptly.
‘Those civilians are about to be cut to pieces!’
‘Yes, I’m aware of that, Mr Haldane,’ she replied, her lips compressed into a narrow line.
It was Ensign Andrews’s turn to speak.
‘Admiral, I’ve sent the message as ordered, but I’ve got the Grant and the Dowding on the comm. They’re asking if we’re going to jump to Io and engage the enemy.’
‘Tell them to hold position,’ Chen replied.
‘We have to do something!’ Haldane hissed.
Chen rounded on him.
‘Mr Haldane, I am in command of this ship and of this fleet. I am fully aware of the tactical situation. I am also aware that we cannot detect Shaper vessels in transit through hyperspace. This is likely an attempt to get us to abandon our defence of Earth and engage Cox’s forces in Io space, meanwhile their unseen Shaper accomplices are free to attack Earth.’
‘There are ground and space based defences.’
‘All of them static. Please Commander, you know as well as I do that ground based weaponry is at best a token defence against spacecraft in high orbit.’
‘What do you intend to do?’
‘Draw them in, right where I want them. If they want to take Earth they’ll have to take us on first. I’m banking on them not being aware of the Nemesis class ships. As soon as they jump in, I’m going to fucking annihilate them.’
‘And if they are aware of them and try to take them out?’
‘The crews of those ships will detonate their warheads.’
‘A suicide mission?’
Chen looked him straight in the eye.
‘This whole situation is a suicide mission, Mr Haldane. We’ll be damn lucky if any of us are alive once this is over. We have to defend Earth at all costs. I hope you fully appreciate the meaning of that phrase. No retreat, no surrender! If they come here, they die!’
‘Admiral, sensors detect that the enemy fleet is emerging from their jump,’ said Singh. ‘Jesus, they’re right inside the traffic control zone around Galileo Station! I’m getting a feed from a traffic monitoring camera around Ganymede. It’s a little grainy, putting it through to your HUD.’
The four enemy carrier battle groups emerged from their jumps and ploughed straight into the busy traffic lanes around Galileo Station. Using their superior shielding and armour they rammed through lines of smaller fleeing craft at full speed, smashing flitters and shuttles like children’s toys. Then they begin to fire. Energy and laser fire exploded into surrounding vessels packed with fleeing passengers, extinguishing thousands of innocent lives. Passenger liners, freighters, shuttles. All were gutted by the guns of the renegade fleet. Amidst the panic, some vessels tried to make a run for it as squadrons of fighters from the carriers chased them down. Very few were successful in their desperate escape attempts. An expanding wake of wreckage and vented atmospheric gases began to fill the space recently occupied by hundreds of ships as the renegade fleet pressed onwards towards the orbital station.
Shocked by the sudden assault, the local defence forces took a moment to respond, but in any case the defence platforms around the station and on Galileo Station itself were wholly inadequate to deal with the scale and suddenness of the attack. Sporadic fire also began to come from ground based defences on the surface of Io, but it too was ineffective and was quickly silenced by volleys of kinetic warheads from several tactical missile frigates.
In the midst of it all, the Germanicus turned to bring its main gun to bear upon the vast, lazily turning wheel of Galileo Station. The cries of surrender and appeals for mercy being broadcast from the orbital structure went ignored as the carrier aimed itself squarely at the station’s reactor core, and opened fire with its massive plasma cannon.
Chen saw the flash over the remote link, saw Galileo Station vanish inside a blinding, expanding shell of light and energy. When it cleared, the broken pieces of the wheel shaped structure were falling away from one another, trailing streams of debris, tumbling bodies and swirling clouds of rapidly freezing atmosphere. Memories came flooding back. She had once committed a similar crime. She had panicked and made a mistake. Thousands had died. Galileo Station was an enormous structure; it was the centre of commerce and tourism in that part of the system. There must have been tens of thousands of people on board at the very least. She had seen them all murdered at a stroke. She heard sobs and curses from her crew.
‘Oh god, it’s a massacre!’ said Haldane in alarm. ‘All those people!’
‘We have to stand firm,’ Chen replied. ‘I’d use the jump missiles now, but the Shapers haven’t shown themselves. We’d just be wasting them. Cox I can deal with, however.’
‘Are you sure about that?’
‘Let him come. Ensign Andrews, put me through to all ships.’
‘Aye, Admiral.’
‘All ships, this is Admiral Chen. What we have just seen is merely a taste of what the Shapers and their traitor friends are capable of. We must stand firm and defend our home, or this savagery will be visited a thousand fold upon our families and friends on Earth. The Shapers have yet to play their hand, but they’re out there, waiting for the right moment, I know it. Their time will come, soon enough. Chen out.’
She ended the transmission and pounded the armrests of her chair in anger. Her display clearly showed the chaos erupting around Jupiter. Thousands of tracks, each indicating the trajectory of an individual ship, were erupting from all over the Jovian system, from the various moons and from the platforms in the gas giant’s upper atmosphere as those that could, fled. Very few emerged from Io. The enemy fleet was forming up again. Either they were waiting for her to respond, or they had finished their bloody work and were about to jump again.
‘What the hell are you waiting for, you bastards?’ she cursed under her breath. ‘Come and face me.’
‘Admiral, there’s something... something’s wrong with the hypercom system,’ said Andrews.
‘Ensign, give me the facts please,’ Chen snapped.
‘I’m sorry ma’am, but the entire Arkari Sphere has just dropped off the network.’
Chen felt a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.
‘Get me Mentith.’
‘I’m trying, but the system won’t route any messages beyond our borders. Our own network seems fine, but it’s as though the entire Arkari network isn’t there anymore. Traffic just bounces back as destination unreachable.’
‘Contact Command and see if we can raise any ships through an ad-hoc direct connection. Mr Singh will assist if you if need be.’
‘Aye, Admiral. This may take some time.
What the hell had just happened to the Arkari? It had to be the Shapers’ doing, she just knew it. If they couldn’t get word to the Arkari, then they really were on their own.
The minutes ticked by as Andrews and Singh tried desperately to raise any ships in Arkari space. They were not having much success. Still the e
nemy fleet waited amid the debris now in orbit around Io.
‘Ma’am, we’re getting a message from Command. Admiral’s eyes only,’ said Andrews.
‘Put it through to my HUD, Ensign,’ Chen replied.
From: FleetComSolar
To: Admiral Michelle Chen CO CNV Winston S. Churchill. Eyes only.
Auth: BHJXD972681K
Message:
Long range sensors are detecting what we believe to be an all out attack against strategic targets across Arkari space. Weapon detonations in the gigatonne range detected. Use of wormholes as possible means of attack. All hypercom traffic to Arkari systems down. Mass virus infection apparent. Commonwealth hypercom nodes to Arkari space have been closed as preventative measure. We will attempt to contact the Arkari via other means.
We regret the loss of Galileo Station. The defence of Earth is to be maintained. Measures are being taken by the Army and Marine Corp to resist any attempted landing but troop numbers are insufficient. The Cabinet has been moved to a secure location.
-Message Ends-
Chen’s heart was in her mouth. She struggled to compose herself and stop her hands from shaking. As she watched, the renegade fleet in the space above Io began to move. They were jumping for Earth. They would be here in a matter of minutes.
Chapter 43
The sky above Keros burned. Those on the surface who looked up fearfully as they scurried to shelters, or to man the planetary defences, saw the sky alive with blossoming spheres of energy, brilliant, retina searing beams and rolling patterns of flashing detonations.
Thousands of hostile vessels were pouring through the multitude of wormholes that had appeared above the planet to be met by withering fire from the badly outnumbered Arkari vessels. The graceful craft cut through the seemingly endless waves of enemy ships. They smashed the primitive vessels with their deadly spatial distortion cannons or duelled one on one with the more sophisticated ships, for amidst the cannon fodder, the deadly craft of the Shapers hunted their prey.
Even the advanced vessels of the Arkari were not invulnerable to such an overwhelming assault. Over two dozen out of the two hundred beautiful craft that had begun the battle lay shattered and dead in space, their gorgeous hulls inert and darkened, and their delicate guts ripped out and mangled. Others still fought on, heavily damaged and scarred by enemy fire.
Yet still the Sword of Reckoning cut a swathe of destruction through the Shaper fleet. The dreadnought’s firepower was unmatched. The Shapers were trying to mob the vessel and bring it down with vast numbers of smaller craft. So far, this tactic was not proving successful. The dreadnought’s guns fired ceaselessly from all angles, surrounding the vessel in a blaze of light, and enemy ships died swiftly amid the criss-crossing beams. Those that strayed into the line of fire of its main cannon resembled the victims of an angry god. They were utterly pulverised by the enormous tidal forces unleashed by a weapon capable of killing stars.
But the Sword of Reckoning was only one ship, it could not be everywhere at once and the battle now extended over two hundred thousand cubic kilometres. Slowly but surely the Shapers and their hordes of slaves were wearing down the Arkari fleet through sheer suicidal persistence.
Beklide stood on the bridge and was viewing the entire battle as a huge holographic projection that hung in the centre of the chamber. Over ten thousand enemy vessels had now entered space between Keros and its moon. They poured from a rough sphere of several dozen wormholes that surrounded the vastly outnumbered Arkari fleet, hurtling towards the beleaguered vessels in great long streams and showing no signs of stopping. Amidst the numerous swarms of enslaved craft, around five hundred Shaper craft had so far been detected and more were arriving all the time. They moved independently or in hunting packs, seeking to isolate Arkari ships from the main fleet and take them down. Beklide’s own fleet moved like a single, amorphous organism or a school of predatory fish, striking out en masse to savage groups of enemy ships with overwhelming firepower before regrouping into defensive postures before the Shapers could react. The Sword of Reckoning spearheaded many of these assaults, driving the enemy back with the weight of its firepower, leaving the destroyers to mop up the survivors. But each assault left her ships more damaged than before and casualties were currently running at over ten per cent. Even the primitive ships of the Shapers’ slave races could damage Arkari vessels when deployed in such large numbers, or if they resorted to kamikaze tactics. At least five Arkari ships had gone down when they had been rammed by large enemy vessels that had detonated their reactor cores.
Currently the Arkari fleet were regrouping for another assault on a large tendril of Shaper destroyers flanked by a force of strange spherical craft.
Ship Master Urkild approached Beklide. His expression was grave.
‘Meritarch, we have managed to make contact outside the system. The ship has constructed a secure connection with a number of other vessels. It’s... it’s not looking good I’m afraid. We have word that attacks are taking place all across the Sphere. It seems that they’re going after strategic systems as we suspected. A number of...’ his voice cracked. He continued with some difficulty. ‘A number of worlds have been attacked from orbit with high yield antimatter weapons. Navy systems, mainly it seems. There have also been reports of a very large Shaper ship or ships that have turned their guns on civilian population centres. Estimates vary but it seems to be continent sized.’
He was shaking visibly. Beklide laid a hand on his shoulder. Urkild continued with some difficulty.
‘I have a list of worlds that we believe have been all but sterilised of life or destroyed entirely and a number of others that have been subjected to severe bombardment. We don’t know the death toll. I wouldn’t even want to speculate but we’re looking at tens if not hundreds of billions dead. The fleet is making a stand where it can but we don’t have enough ships in the right places!’
Beklide felt a roaring in her ears. The world seemed to close in on her. She couldn’t speak. The enormity of what Urkild had told her was too much to bear. She staggered slightly as the deck moved. The ship was powering itself forward for the next attack run.
‘Mentith,’ she heard herself say. ‘Have we... have we heard from him at all?’
‘No,’ Urkild replied. ‘I’m afraid not.’
The Shining Glory danced at the heart of a storm. Six Shaper vessels had come through the wormhole. Though each cruiser sized craft was smaller than the Glory, they had the advantage of numbers and were nonetheless each extremely deadly. Three had peeled away to take on the floating defence batteries around the Black Rock whilst the remaining three were attempting to take down the Arkari warship. The three Shaper vessels were aft of the Glory now. Their alien weapons lashed out at the manta ray shaped craft, striking arcs of energy from its powerful shields. The Glory threw itself into a tight, banking turn, its wings biting deep into the fabric of space time to gain purchase. Now it had the lead Shaper craft in its sights. Its forward batteries of spatial distortion cannons opened up at once, impacting the Shaper craft’s bow section like a sledgehammer through glass. The enemy craft wheeled away, writhing along its length like an animal in pain as the Glory shot through the middle of formation, raking the sides of the Shaper vessels with fire as it passed.
On the bridge, Mentith leaned forward in his command chair as multiple holographic images surrounded him. Each showed a different aspect of the battle along with targeting information and the fire orders fed to the Glory’s guns by her weapons officers. The Shaper vessels were coming about again for another attempt.
‘Ship, go after that vessel we just hit once more. Let’s see if we can take that one down. It should even the odds a little.’
‘Agreed,’ the ship’s cat replied. ‘I am detecting fluctuating energy signatures from that vessel. I’d say it’s in trouble.’
‘Good. Another barrage of concentrated fire should finish it off. What of the other ships, the ones that haven’t engaged us?’
‘They have successfully reduced our static defences by fifty percent whilst suffering no appreciable damage.’
‘Makes you wonder why we bothered with the damn things in the first place.’
‘They have successfully cleared a path between the wormhole and the Black Rock facility.’
‘Maybe they’re going to try and take the facility. You think that this is a rescue mission for that friend of theirs that we have locked up in there?’
‘Doubtful. My guess would be that they want to know what we know about them. They will attempt to take the facility and its archives and interrogate its personnel.’
‘We may have to abandon the facility and destroy it.’
‘Coming about for another attack run on the Shaper ships. All weapons primed.’
‘Take them.’
‘Pardon me for asking, War Marshal’ said Rekkid as the Shaper ships grew large in the displays. ‘But what about all the people on that station?’
‘They know the risks, and they know their duty,’ Mentith replied curtly. ‘The station has jump capable lifeboats, but then they’ll have to take their chances.’
‘That sounds a little...’
‘Cold? Heartless? What choice do we have? In case you hadn’t noticed Professor, we are being engaged by an enemy force that currently outnumbers us six to one and there is every possibility that more enemy ships could emerge from that wormhole. If the Shapers get aboard Black Rock then the scientists on there will wish that they were dead by the time that the Shapers have finished with them.’
‘I agree,’ said Katherine, her voice quavering. ‘We’ve seen and heard enough of what they do to people. They’ll be dissected like lab-rats.’