“Fifteen minutes till arrival, sir,” the sensor operator said.
Husher stood, turning to his father. “You have the ship. I’m going down there with Piper, to lead a team to secure the platform’s control center. From there, Piper should be able to access information about how far along every ship is in the construction process, as well as the locations of viable targets. Caine will lead a team to retake the Providence, since she knows its layout a lot better than I do.”
His father stared at him for a moment, mouth slightly open, as though he wanted to say something. Then he shut it again. “Yes, sir.”
“Execute your plan to launch Condors from the shuttle bay, simultaneous to the shuttles’ departure. Back up the Condors in neutralizing as many turrets as possible. Do it exactly as you described it to me.” He turned to Piper. “Let’s go.”
To keep up with Husher’s long strides on the way to the shuttle bay, the alien had to adopt a rapid waddle that was far from dignified. Piper didn’t seem to care, though.
Husher decided that what many humans had interpreted as condescension from the Tumbra was actually just an extraordinary frankness. He also liked their total lack of concern for appearances. In fact, the more time Husher spent around Piper, the more the alien endeared himself to him.
As soon as Husher had donned his pressure suit’s helmet, he tapped the transponder to patch him through to Fesky. “How are you doing, Madcap? Ready to rock?”
“Don’t get too excited. This is going to be a tough mission, and you’re not the one who has to go out there.”
Husher chuckled, careful not to activate his transponder as he did. Now that she outranked him, Fesky was getting feistier by the day. “Actually, I’m taking a shuttle down to the shipyards. I’ll be in every bit as much danger as you. And so will the crew aboard the Contest, for that matter. Don’t let that Condor fool you into thinking you’re the only piece of this operation that matters, Madcap. Everyone matters. And that’s coming from a fellow pilot.”
“Haven’t seen you in a Condor much lately,” Fesky snapped. Then she moderated her tone. “You’re right, Husher. Sorry. I’m a little on edge lately.”
“Understandably so. Just stay frosty out there, all right?”
“All right.”
The Contest arrived at the military shipyards, and turret fire started hitting her right away. The sound of it didn’t travel through the vacuum, of course; Husher knew because of the way the ship shuddered.
“Now,” he said over a wide channel, and the shuttle bay door split open. Twenty Condors took wing. Not even enough to make two squadrons. But he trusted Fesky’s ability.
The shuttles leapt for the exit seconds later, and carnage enveloped them right away, with the platform’s turrets flashing as they fired, at the Condors, at the shuttles.
From the Contest, his father fired back, and on his shuttle’s viewscreen, Husher saw a turret battery explode.
Their craft bucked, and Husher opened a two-way channel between him and the pilot. “That was a hit, wasn’t it, Ozone? What kind of damage did it do?”
“Fairly negligible, sir. It—”
Another round hit them, birthing a tremendous sucking sound from the rear of the passenger cabin. Several of the marines clutched the straps holding them into their crash seats.
“That one took out our engines,” Ozone said, and switched to a wide channel. “Brace for impact, everybody. We’re coming in hot.”
Chapter 64
Eviscerate
Wingleader Korbyn studied the tactical display for a moment, but he quickly gave up in frustration. There were too many icons approaching, with the cursed abbreviations the Interplanetary Defense Force assigned to the various classes of enemy ships. He never had been good at processing information visually, and the confusing display didn’t help.
He clacked his beak. “Sensors adjutant, give me the composition of the approaching battle group.”
His officers were accustomed to Korbyn’s strengths and shortcomings. “The battle group coming to confront us consists of three destroyers, seven missile cruisers, nine corvettes, and five frigates, Captain.”
“Essentially two battle groups mashed together, then.” Way too large to take on by ourselves. He became aware that his feathers stood at attention with the tension of the decision he now had to make. That annoyed him. He hated how easily his body betrayed his emotions, but he’d never been able to curb the tendency. Few Wingers could, to be fair.
Bytan could. But Bytan was gone.
“All right,” he said. “It’s time. Communications, put me in touch with Blackwing.”
Over the years, many had called Korbyn overconfident, but he knew he couldn’t possibly be anywhere near as cocky as the former pirate. “Korbyn, I take it you need me?”
“That’s Wingleader Korbyn to you.”
“Not really. I haven’t been part of the IDF for almost a decade. Why don’t you tell me what you want?”
“You know what I want. Haven’t you glanced at your tactical display lately?”
“I just wanted to hear you say you need me.”
“If that’s what it’ll take for you to stop wasting the precious few moments we have before engaging to back up the last surviving Fin, then fine. I need you. Satisfied? Are you ready, you cursed pirate?”
“I’ve been ready since you were still pecking at your mother’s flight feathers for second helpings.”
Korbyn clacked his beak, but he refused to take the pirate’s bait. They didn’t have the time for a wingspan measuring contest. “Just stick to the plan, Blackwing. Korbyn out.”
When Blackwing had first contacted Korbyn about abandoning his revenge against the Gok in order to help fight the UHF, he’d refused. Only the Fins mattered, and the Fins were gone, so Korbyn had intended to continue avenging them until he no longer could.
But for the same reason, when the message from Ek swept across the Larkspur System, Korbyn had gotten back in touch with Blackwing via an encrypted channel. His message had been brief: “I’m ready.”
He turned to his strategic adjutant. “Fire our primary laser at the battle group’s flagship. I want their attention riveted on us. Stand by to launch Talons, but refrain from doing so just yet.”
“Yes, sir.”
Korbyn ordered his sensors adjutant—the same one who’d questioned his tactics against the Gok, who Korbyn had since restored to duty—to put a magnified visual of the destroyer on the bridge’s main viewscreen. It gave him a lot of satisfaction to watch the nose of the UHF ship warp and begin to melt.
The enemy battle group began to pick up speed, training their weapons on Korbyn’s Roostship. “Prepare to take evasive action on my mark,” he told his navigation adjutant. “Mark!”
Just as the Roostship adjusted its attitude upward relative to the ecliptic plane, sixty pirate stealth ships revealed their positions, directly behind the UHF battle group.
They revealed their positions by firing all weapons at the warships’ sterns.
The UHF captains had no time to react, and over a third of their ships were destroyed or rendered inoperative almost instantly.
“Launch Talons!” Korbyn yelled as over half of the remaining ships in the enemy battle group began to come about in order to point their main guns at the pirates. “Send kinetic impactors at the ships still facing us, and follow up with missiles to keep their point defense turrets busy. I want this to be swift.”
His wishes were carried out, and the battle ended almost as quickly as it had begun. Between them, Korbyn’s Roostship and her Talons along with Blackwing’s pirate fleet eviscerated the entire UHF battle group before the main body of Admiral Carrow’s fleet had a chance to react at all.
No doubt Carrow had thought he was playing it safe by sending twenty-four warships to destroy one Roostship. The numbers favored him greatly in his battle against Ek, and so he’d felt he could afford to take zero risk in dealing with Korbyn.
Now he knows h
e was grossly overextending himself.
Chapter 65
Raid
“Is anyone injured?” Husher asked over a wide channel.
Radio silence. Marines shaking their heads was the only response.
“Piper?”
“I’m fine.”
As their shuttle had careened toward the platform, Caine had managed to unstrap the Tumbran and strap him in with her, wrapping her arms tightly around his small frame. Husher didn’t know how well Tumbran skeletons normally held up to crash landings, but they didn’t look very hardy, and he suspected that if Caine hadn’t acted so swiftly they’d have had an injured or dead alien on their hands. That would have been disastrous, given Piper’s importance to their mission.
“Good thinking, Sergeant,” he said over a wide channel, so everyone could hear his praise. “You may have just saved this mission.”
She gave a curt nod. “And sticking around here and gabbing will endanger it again. Ozone, is the airlock still working?”
“Yeah, and you’d better use it. A lot of the atmosphere’s leaked out already, but there’s enough left to eject you pretty forcefully if we open both doors at once.”
“Acknowledged,” Husher said. “Open the interior door, and everyone in Caine’s team get in. My two squads will go next. Ozone, you’d better come with us. I very much doubt we’ll be taking this shuttle anywhere again. If we leave, we leave in the Providence.”
By the time he stood on the surface of the shipyards with Piper, Ozone, Wahlburg, and the rest of his team, Caine and her marines were nowhere to be seen. Good. He knew he could rely on her to liberate the supercarrier as quickly as possible. And that means we’re on her clock. “Let’s move, people.”
As they made their way toward the shipyards’ control center, the Providence loomed in the distance, dwarfing the ships under construction all around it. They encountered no resistance en route, which seemed strange until Husher realized the platform’s defenders probably expected they were only here to recover Keyes’s ship. The defenders didn’t know about Piper’s algorithm.
When they reached the airlock into the control center, they found it barred to them. Husher switched to the radio channel considered the standard for communicating in space when neither party had coordinated to choose another, more private channel.
“If there’s any personnel in that control center, this is your one chance to open this airlock. We brought breaching charges with us, and we will use them to gain entry. Which is fine for us, but it won’t work out very well for anyone inside.”
He only had to wait a few seconds for the airlock to open. Motioning for his marines to crowd in, Husher did too, keeping a close eye on Piper. The Tumbran wasn’t used to battle ops, and if someone didn’t keep an eye on him, he could easily get into trouble. Or get the rest of them into trouble.
Inside the control center, they found shipyard personnel at their various consoles, frozen in place and staring at the marines as they fanned out through the area.
“Search them for sidearms, and corral them in the center of the room,” Husher barked, turning to Piper. “Start checking the consoles to see whether any of the station personnel are still logged into the system. That could make our job a lot easier.”
He assigned a marine to tail the Tumbran as the alien went from console to console. In the meantime, Husher took in their surroundings. The control center was divided into two levels, and the second level seemed inaccessible from where they stood. No doubt that’s a measure against exactly what’s happening. If intruders like him took control of the first level, the shipyards’ defenders could simply use their special access to the second, firing down on the infiltrators from above.
Knowing one of these personnel had almost certainly sounded the alarm already, Husher turned to the nearest Winger under his command. “How easily can your pressure suits come off?”
“Very easily. We can have them off within seconds. They’re designed that way, to take advantage of flight if needed.”
“I figured.” Husher already knew that Wingers injected themselves with fewer Ocharium nanites than humans did, allowing them to experience simulated gravity equivalent to the gravity on Spire, even while humans experienced one G. He switched to a wide channel. “All Winger marines, strip off your suits as quickly as you can and then use this chamber’s air resistance to fly up to that second level. Once there, take up defensive positions, covering every entrance you can find. I’m expecting company up there soon—company that will want to get the drop on us. I’d like to surprise them by reversing that situation.”
The Wingers complied, shedding their suits with impressive speed. They climbed on top of consoles, heedless of what commands they might be inadvertently entering, and they launched themselves into the air, their powerful torsos rippling as they propelled themselves to the upper level.
As a Winger pushed itself off of the console Piper was currently studying, the Tumbran turned to Husher, wearing what looked a lot like disgruntlement through the tiny faceplate. “The staff here were diligent. They’re clearly following some sort of protocol designed to mitigate the damage from a raid, such as the one we’ve effected.”
“What will we need to log in to the system?”
“Biometrics and a password. Note these sensors here.” Piper brushed a rectangular black panel with the backs of his fingers. “They scan the user’s retinas to determine whether he or she should be granted access to the system.”
Husher contemplated the situation, his eyes wandering over the station personnel gathered in the center of the room.
From above came the hiss of an airlock opening, followed immediately by gunfire. There’s our company. But how much? And how long would the element of surprise keep the single squad of Wingers up there alive?
Opening his mouth to address the woman who looked most likely to be the senior technician, Husher closed it again when Wahlburg stormed across the room without warning, seizing a man by his collar and dragging him over to the console where Piper stood.
Husher grimaced. “Wahlburg, cut it—”
The marine shoved his captive’s face against the scanner by the back of the head.
Piper’s gaze flitted rapidly between Husher and Wahlburg while the console emitted a pleasant beep. “Um…that’s the biometric portion of the login taken care of…”
The sniper yanked his sidearm from its holster and pressed it against the back of the man’s head while holding him in place by his neck. “You’ll want to recite the password now, nice and slow, all right? We don’t want our poor Tumbran here to have to retype it. We really don’t.”
“Wahlburg, release him,” Husher barked.
“Sir, I’m afraid you’ll have to consider me insubordinate until our friend here recites the password we need. Feel free to court martial me afterward, or whatever protocol we’ve settled on for situations like these in this new military organization thingy we appear to have started up.” The marine tapped his sidearm’s barrel against his captive’s skull. “Now, about that password. Yell it out real loud, so Piper can hear you over the gunfire.”
Trembling, the man shouted each character, and Piper entered it in. It was at least twenty characters long, but finally they were done, and the Tumbran nodded. “I’m in.”
Husher breathed a sigh of relief as Wahlburg released the technician, allowing him to return to his colleagues.
The sniper approached, his pistol’s handle extended. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said over a two-way. “I know that was out of line. But the last time we tried negotiating with personnel on an orbital platform, Davies got killed. I just—” Wahlburg’s voice cracked, and his shoulders rose and fell as he took a moment, presumably to compose himself. “I lost it. I know I did. I’ll surrender my firearms, if you want me off the mission.”
Husher shook his head. “We need you on it. You can talk consequences with Captain Keyes, once we have the Providence back, with him in command. Understood?”
> “Yes, sir.”
A light over the airlock on their level turned blue, which Husher took to mean they were about to have some company, too. “Everyone find cover and prepare to answer an incursion from this level’s airlock.” Lowering his faceplate, he addressed the station personnel. “All of you, get behind my marines wherever there’s space and lie down on the floor. If you try to cause trouble, it’ll be a lot more dangerous for you than it will be for my people.”
If he was thinking only of tactics, and not of ethics, he might have tried to leverage the prisoners against the platform security personnel about to enter. But if he behaved like that, then he’d only be proving there was nothing about humanity worth saving. Which is why Wahlburg will have to face consequences for what he did.
In the seconds he had before the airlock finished pressurizing and the inner door opened to admit the enemy, Husher radioed Caine. “Sergeant, we’re holed up here in the control center, with station security pressuring us. I need the Providence up and running as soon as you can make it happen.”
“That might not be as soon as you like, Lieutenant,” Caine said. “I’m meeting heavy resistance, too.”
But there was no time to answer. The inner door was opening, and Husher was raising his assault rifle to sight along the barrel at his first target.
Chapter 66
Sitting Duck
Fesky swung the outer shell of her Condor around its short axis, gunning her engines perpendicular to the firing solution one of the station’s turrets currently had on her. Sensors informed her its kinetic impactors came within a meter of hitting her six.
But my six is always changing.
She changed it now, returning fire with a pair of Sidewinders before rotating all the way around to put some distance between her and the platform.
Her cockpit washed red, alerting her to a missile fired at her by another turret. But if she turned to deal with it, she would slow her progress, leaving herself exposed to a nearby battery that had just finished taking out one of her pilots.
Juggernaut: The Ixan Prophecies Trilogy Book 2 Page 21