“OK, so what is your real job? It’s certainly not giving tours.”
“Intelligence.” They entered the hospital tent. “Several of our ships crashed on landing. We have hundreds of injured.”
Wendy saw each member of her crew working in the hospital. Her fire control officer was helping a nurse change a dressing on an elderly patient who was screaming in pain. Wendy greeted her and Lt. Mancini cut them off. “Sorry, time to talk later.” He held up the cuffed hand to show them that Wendy was only minimally restrained. Her navigator was trying to feed a small child who had both of her arms covered with bandages. Her flight engineer was assisting in the construction of a rudimentary operating suite.
Mimi sat on a crate with her leg in a cast. A cable like the one she had used to tie Jethro was embedded in the cast. Wendy stopped. Jethro! She had forgotten about him. “Lieutenant Mancini, I left one of your soldiers tied to a tree.”
“Private Jethro Flatt?”
“Yes.”
“We found him. Would have been a shame to lose him. He’s not a great soldier, but he’s one hell of a musician. He plays a couple of different kinds of guitars. Most of us would have really hated you if you had killed him.”
“As if you don’t already.”
“Some do and some don’t. It depends on whose father died in which battle. My father was one of the Marines you parked on that desert island for six months. He kept telling me that you could have killed every one of them and no one would have said a word, but you didn’t. You let your enemy live. He didn’t understand it. See, but I do. I’m not your enemy. You let my dad live. I’m not your friend either, but at least I won’t try to kill you on sight like that worthless hunk of shit Homer.”
Mimi was holding a sleeping baby. An empty baby bottle sat on a crate next to her. A nurse brought her a crying baby and a full bottle. They swapped and Mimi fed the crying baby.
After Wendy and Mimi had silently acknowledged each other, Lt. Mancini picked up where he had left off. “Killing Homer, now that was some fancy shooting. Where’d you learn to do that?”
“My parents taught me.”
“Is it true that you and your sister have been piloting warships since you were babies?”
“Yes.”
“Do you still have that knife in the back of your suit?”
“Yes.”
“I should take it, but I won’t. You may still need it.”
“Why are you being so nice to me? Swordsmen are not known for being nice to prisoners, especially female prisoners.”
“Other places, yeah, you’d be lying naked in a cold jail cell. I would be demanding answers from you and not accepting anything less than the truth. We can’t do that here because we need you.”
“Need me?”
“And your sister’s ship. I’ll level with you. Our Admiral was a renegade.”
He acknowledged her surprised expression. “Yes, even we have them. We were mounting the mission to come here when we heard about your mission to rescue your cousins. He rushed us here with the intent of capturing you and your ship as a bargaining chip to get some of the provisions of the secession treaty changed. He’s dead now, so it doesn’t matter what he wanted. We knew the P A F were coming to get revenge on you for killing their newest ship and we tried to beat them. The Admiral thought if we beat you and the P A F we could take the spaceport and lure you in. Then we could fend off the P A F. His timing was off. You got here first and left as we arrived. The P A F arrived before we could establish our defenses. They landed a colony a thousand kilometers from here.” He paused and shook his head slowly. “Their casualties have to be a bad as ours.”
They returned to the tent where the Colonel was nursing a cup of coffee. “Lieutenant Cohen, can you call your ship on your suit’s comm?”
“No, sir, it was damaged when I hid under the water.”
“Unfortunate.” He sipped from the cup. “Let’s talk about negotiations. We are prepared to offer you and your associates your freedom in return for your protection.”
Wendy was confused. “I don’t understand.”
“You will call your ships. We expect another convoy of P A F shortly. We have no way to communicate our situation to the home fleet and do not expect to see reinforcements for six months at best. We need your hospital ship to tend to our injured and your warships to help defend us. Under the terms of the secession treaty if either a Federation or Swordsman settlement comes under attack by a third party of sufficient strength to overwhelm the settlement’s defenses whatever military resources belonging to either party may be available must be used to defend the settlement. We are in a jam here and we need your help.”
A Corporal ran into the tent. Breathlessly, between gasps, he said, “Colonel sir, begging your pardon sir, but sir, you have to come see, sir, sir there’s three Federation MMARV’s coming across the flight line, sir.” The Corporal fairly trembled with fear.
“By the Sword, you Jew women are tough!” He paused as he thought of something. “Corporal, which direction is the turret’s barrel pointed?”
“Back, sir.”
The Colonel closed his eyes for a moment. “By the Sword.” He murmured. He heaved a large sigh. “Lieutenant Mancini, take Lieutenant Cohen and go to talk to it.”
“Me sir? Talk to a machine?”
The Colonel huffed in exasperation. “You’re not talking to the machine! You’re talking to its operator. Lieutenant Cohen, you can explain it on the way out. Comm back to me what it wants. Tell it we need its help.”
“Yes, sir!”
“Now! GO!”
DEPLOYMENT - CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN
J T WATCHED THROUGH the MMARV’s camera as the lead unit rolled up out of the gully at the edge of the base. The Swordsmen’s hastily established sensor arrays had been focused elsewhere and had not spotted the track mounted machines as they rolled along the river bed at the bottom of the gully. The MMARV’s had driven a long way to get here. They would need recharging soon. They could recharge from Daisy’s reactor if someone could manually make the connections. Otherwise they would have to wait for daylight again.
J T was amused by how quickly the personnel on the ground scattered in front of the advancing MMARV’s. Daisy had already filed her damage report and had passed on the recording of her conversation with Wendy. Relaying the MMARV commands through Daisy’s communications equipment allowed J T more subtle and smoother control of the MMARV’s actions than would have been possible otherwise from his position circling overhead in the med ship.
Wendy and Lt. Mancini walked out to the flight line to greet the MMARV’s.
“Greetings Earthman!” J T quipped over the MMARV’s speaker.
Lt. Mancini jumped in surprise and Wendy laughed. “J T! It is good to hear your voice.”
“The Captain and the Pirate would like a status report.” J T said through the speaker.
Wendy now knew that both Alina Darwin and Sabrina Mahoney had stayed behind.
“Who are the Captain and the Pirate?” Lt. Mancini asked.
“That verifies what you already know.” Wendy faced the MMARV’s camera and began the explanation of what she had observed and what the Colonel had told her. She had Lt. Mancini repeat for the crew listening on the med ship what he had told her as they toured the encampment.
After the reports were done, Captain Alina Darwin leaned over J T’s shoulder. “Lt. Mancini, this is Captain Alina Darwin, can you patch me through directly to your commanding officer?”
“I can comm him,” Lt. Mancini replied.
“Please do that. I need to talk to him directly,” Captain Darwin said.
Lt. Mancini keyed his comm unit. Daisy’s frequency analyzer picked out the channel and locked on to it.
“Colonel, this is Captain Alina Darwin Federation Space Force Pirate Interdiction Specialist temporarily assigned to the Federation Hospital Battleship Albert Schweitzer. To whom do I have the honor of speaking?”
“This is Co
lonel Arliss Harlingen formerly of the Swordsmen Tenth Space Fleet. The fleet has been destroyed. I am the base commander of this settlement.”
“Colonel, in accordance with your request, we are prepared to assist you in defense of the system against the anticipated attack from space by P A F forces in return for the repatriation of five of our personnel and one ship you have captive. We will shortly be requesting safe passage for one of our unarmed med ships which will transport the captives and bring a repair team to the surface to attempt to return the ship to us. For the record, do you agree?”
“Yes, I agree.”
“Excellent, thank you. However, there is a more immediate problem. A column of mechanized armor departed from the P A F compound three hours ago headed in your direction. This column will arrive at your location in thirty hours. Our sensors do not detect any airborne threats. We will assist your people in defeating the P A F column if you allow us command.”
“Please stand by.”
The Swordsmen defensive sensor arrays had not been focused on a ground assault. The assumption had been that any threat would come from space. Swordsman sensors spun to assess the potential threat. Colonel Harlingen checked with his sensor technicians who verified the existence of the column. “I agree to your conditions.”
Alina started issuing orders. The MMARV’s were plugged into Daisy’s service ports. The Swordsman space craft were deployed over the settlement to scan for any reconnaissance satellites that the P A F might have been able to leave in orbit. The few mechanized units that the Swordsmen had were deployed the near side of a ravine the P A F units would have to cross on their way to attack the settlement. This battle line, weak though it was, would be the first Swordsman units to face any enemy that got past the lines of Federation armament. A second defensive line of manned emplacements was constructed behind the line of mechanized armor.
The helicopters were grounded, refueled and rearmed.
Raphael Rivera and his destroyer’s flight engineer came down on the med ship and tended to Daisy. They repair enough of Daisy’s systems that with J T’s remote navigation assistance they could lift off and return the moon. The MMARV’s were sufficiently charged by the time Daisy left to start their drive to the mountain pass where the advancing P A F forces could be trapped. The MMARV’s would provide the first line of defense. The mountain pass was a mere thirty kilometers away from the Swordsman settlement. That would put the settlement within range of the P A F mobile artillery, but there was no other place where the MMARV units could be deployed to provide the defenders tactical advantage.
One of the helicopters flew out to the narrowest part of the mountain pass. In the center of the pass, in plain sight, the crew left a tall pole with a white flag attached. At the base of the pole they placed comm units so they could talk to the approaching force and determine their intentions.
The advancing P A F column stopped at nightfall and continued the next day. The combined Federation and Swordsman force held their positions. The P A F column reached the flag and rolled over it without stopping. At the same time, unmanned aircraft boiled out of shipping containers dispersed around the P A F camp.
“All units engage! Move the AARV to defend command positions!”
The MMARV’s stationed on the sides of the mountain pass rained fire down on the machines below. The P A F units scattered and several attempted to scale the valley walls to reach the MMARV’s. J T deftly controlled all three MMAARV’s and relentlessly destroyed P A F armor machine after machine. The machines climbing the walls turned out to be the easiest targets and he sent them tumbling down on top of their comrades. The choke point in the pass filled with burning hulks of P A F machinery and the machines kept coming. Relentlessly they climbed over their dead and continued their advance. A few managed to push through J T’s barrage and were engaged by the Swordsmen.
PI ships are designed for battles in space and not for working inside an atmosphere. They can land and take off from a planet’s surface quickly and easily, but their laser weapons pods must be retracted to do so. They could approach the oncoming P A F aircraft and fire missiles, but the P I ships had too few missiles left for the number of aircraft they needed to attack. The only solution left to them was to circle over the flight path of the oncoming aircraft at an altitude above the atmosphere and fire across the aircraft’s path with their lasers. This perpendicular shot was the toughest of all shots to make. Wendy had done this against helicopters during the battle at Homestead, but they were much slower moving than these fixed wing robots.
Some of the P A F aircraft attempted to attack the two unarmed med ships circling overhead. Rashi fended them off with the AARV. The battle raged unabated for several hours. In the course of the battle, all three of the MMARV’s were lost. Before they were destroyed they had accounted for over a hundred of the enemy. With no weapons left to control, the med ship J T had controlled the MMARV’s from returned to the safety of the post on the moon.
The lone AARV and the P I ships focused their fire power on the aircraft while the Swordsman defenses were left to deal with the remains of the mechanized column still advancing through the pass. The Swordsman helicopters turned out to be the most effective weapons against the approaching enemy. The column was finally stopped and the last of the machines destroyed without having breached the first Swordsman defensive line although that line had suffered significant losses.
The battle appeared to be over when a second column of mechanized armor materialized out of the P A F shipping containers in the original location.
Captain Darwin swore under her breath. “Lt. Rivera! Scan the P A F settlement for signs of life. I want to know if there are any civilians at all or if they’re all military. I’ve never heard of a Q settlement before, but that’s what I think we may have. It’s a huge damn Trojan Horse!”
“Captain! If there were civilians in the camp there would be a lot more construction activity than I am seeing.”
“Damn! I should have done this earlier! There are no civilians in that damn camp!”
“There are six linked together containers. There’s a dozen antenna towers.”
“Lt. Rivera, do you have any of the multiple warheads left?”
“Yes, I have one in my stern tube.”
“Target the containers. Set the multi to separate at 2000 meters and fire on your mark.”
Flight time was both agonizingly long and surprisingly short. The missile performed as Federation missiles generally did and found its target. Secondary explosions in the surrounding containers continued for several hours as the fires expanded to consume the entire camp. The mechanized column suddenly stopped in its tracks. The fires at the P A F base camp would burn for days. All of the Federation personnel and all the ships returned to their station on the moon.
Having common enemies with the Swordsmen did not, however, make them friends.
DEPLOYMENT - CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT
NO ONE IN THE GROUP that assembled in the med ship parked on the moon could remember J T being angry, much less screaming at someone. Normally his stuttering worsened when he was upset, but not this time. The ferocious tirade he launched at Mimi when the battle was over would have blistered paint. Technically the person who should have reprimanded her was Captain Darwin, and she had intended to explain to Mimi exactly how much trouble she had caused, but J T beat her to it, publicly and passionately. As the rant wore on, it became increasingly obvious that the real reason he was so angry with Mimi was that in the few weeks they had spent by themselves in the med ship while he reprogrammed the MMARV’s he had fallen in love with her.
When it became apparent to Captain Darwin that J T was in danger of destroying whatever chance he had with Mimi, she rested her hand on his shoulder. “J T, you made your point. We all need rest. J T, take watch for two hours. I’ll take next watch and after that I’ll post a watch schedule.”
When everyone else had found a corner of the ship to bunk down, Captain Darwin quietly said t
o J T, “If you want to keep her, don’t ever reprimand her in public again.”
“Yes, Captain.”
After relieving J T on watch, Captain Darwin assessed their situation. She had three functional P I ships that had almost exhausted their munitions. She had one damaged P I ship whose munitions could be loaded into the other three if the need arose. She had one destroyer with a quarter of its normal missile load. She had two unarmed med ships and one AARV currently flying recon patrol over what had been the P A F camp.
In terms of personnel, including herself and Lt. Sabrina Mahoney, she had four military P I pilots and four military fire control officers. The destroyer had its full crew of four under Lt. Rivera’s command. The med ships had a pilot and an engineer each, Rashi and Esther Abrams had come in one. Mimi and J T had come in the other. They had picked Wendy and her crew up from the surface. Twenty people and seven ships sat together on a flat spot on the planet’s moon trying to decide their next move. They had enough rations to last for three months and either of the med ships’ life support systems was sufficient to support all twenty people. They had accomplished their mission and they were in no immediate apparent danger.
It would seem that this would be an appropriate time to pick up and leave. There were some obstacles that stood in their way. None of the ships had sufficient power to carry Daisy. They could not leave the ship behind for the P A F to find. They had promised the Swordsmen that they would help defend against the P A F attack they saw coming. Alina worried that the next force to show up might not be P A F, but rather Third Force. There was no way they were surviving a Third Force attack. They had done well against the P A F, but Alina had no delusions about the results of a Third Force encounter. The third concern was what if they did figure out a way to lift Daisy and the Schweitzer arrived to find them gone.
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