“I don’t get it,” Wren said.
“The security service lost an entire wing in the battle. The station’s fixed batteries were hit hard enough to lose half their staff. You took fewer losses and killed more enemy than anyone else including your famous grandmother. Together, you and your grandmother destroyed more ships and killed more enemy, than everyone else put together,” Matilda continued.
“Yes, but we have been defeated. My grandmother and her senior crew was captured and tortured by Swordsmen,” Wren said.
“No! Your father, your uncles and aunts and a bunch of teenagers armed with two ancient warships and fewer than a dozen drones rescued them. Saul delivered the most humiliating defeat the Swordsmen have ever suffered and he was a teenager at the time. I know everyone involved still suffers from the experience, but they lived to tell about it. Emerson Winthrop the Third did not. He was publicly executed in front of news reporters. He was killed by a teen. He was killed by a Jewish teen at that. How much more embarrassing can you get? Especially given the Swordsman hatred for Jews?”
“Maybe,” Wren admitted. “But still, Lindsay, Twyla and Tobias and Sunshine Running-Water died under my command while defending this station. We’re not what you think we are.”
“Look at Greg and Avi. They were two of the most powerful Swordsman fighters of their day. They were never defeated in battle. NEVER! Not a lot of people know this, but after Avi lost her mind and the ships were declared unsafe to fly, they committed suicide by flying into the system’s primary. They died undefeated. Undefeated. Can’t you see why I would rather be with you than anywhere else in the galaxy?”
Wren turned to Kim, “How much of this did you know when you came looking for me?”
“All of it, but I wasn’t planning on bringing it up,” Kim said. She shot a sharp glance at Matilda. “You need to not think like you’re some kind of god. There are enough people around here that worship you and you need to keep a level head.”
“I knew it, too,” Wren admitted softly. “I figured it out when I was with my grandparents at a conference on Earth as a teen. It doesn’t change things. The secret, by the way, should be no surprise to anyone who knows any member of the Solomon family. Intense training is the key. Intense physical and mental training is a vital part of everything we do, and I have that on Greg’s authority from his own journals which I retrieved when I was at Eretz. Gabby had them.”
Once the group departed on the mission, Huntress and Tracker ran merciless training simulations with all the combat personnel and the group’s sentient warships to hone their skills. Huntress’ library of simulations and training exercises included some of the most diabolical situations Wren had ever seen. The simulation creation gang at Eretz had outdone themselves. Greg and Avi would have approved of the intensity of the training delivered in the actual combat stations the crews would occupy when the time came. The time in transit passed quickly. When the group arrived at its station, in preparation for the assault on Homestead, Wren declared them ready for battle.
Six glass recon drones, little changed except for Matilda’s software upgrades from the initial production run half a century ago, launched to Homestead to survey the planet and determine how much damage had been done in the recent occupation by the Swordsmen. While the battle group waited for the drones to return, there was still plenty of work to do. Even though the over-wing mount for the Glass-ruptor had survived its test jumps to and from hyper drive, the missiles were not mounted to the ships until the final rendezvous point. Matilda was still not confident that the mount would survive the stress. At the rendezvous point, the PI ships were dismounted from the tender and the Glass-ruptors attached. The mount was tested again and passed the short jump tests.
The Queen Elizabeth arrived after Wren’s group had finished their preparations. The “Federation Intelligence Officer” was securely ensconced in the Queen Elizabeth’s brig. Whether he or any of his staff made it home would depend on the outcome of the next two battles.
The Queen Elizabeth deployed the two convoy escorts that had ridden with her. The convoy escort was the most heavily armed small ship ever built. Its armament was intended more to be a deterrent to pirate attacks than for its real ability to fight an enemy. While it could deliver a tremendous amount of ordinance in a short time, it was clunky and awkward unlike the more nimble PI ship.
Upon arrival, the Queen Elizabeth split into its four component parts. The integral central core contained the battleship’s combat systems and armor. Behind that was the hospital ship that had been grafted to it to support the ship’s original mission as an emergency responder and colony ship for the establishment of new Federation colonies on habitable planets. The cargo bays and hangar deck were behind the hospital module. The hanger deck was packed with small interceptors, known as “picket” ships, that would defend the tenders and capital support ships not directly involved with the attack.
Three self-sustaining hyper-capable cargo ships were attached around the Queen Elizabeth’s central truss structure. In colony service, these modules housed the colonists and materials they would need to establish the colony. On this mission, they housed eighteen thousand mercenaries. A separate cargo ship carried their weapons, drones, aircraft and combat equipment. By separating them from the Queen Elizabeth, they could be deployed when and if necessary. The small picket ships that would guard them departed the hangar deck and established their patrol patterns.
GENERATIONS - CHAPTER FIVE
“DRONES ARE BACK” Faye Anne announced. “Come on over.”
When Wren and Kim arrived at Elizabeth’s conference room, Faye Anne, Rachel, Wendy, Wren’s grandfather, Isaac, his great-uncle, Joshua and three men Wren did not recognize were in the room. The newcomers looked pale and tired as if they had traveled a long distance in a short time.
One of the newcomers, obviously stiff and in pain held his hand out for Wren. “Wren, it is a pleasure to finally talk to you. I’m Reuben, this is my brother Rashi, and our cohort in crime, David. The rest of our gang is still recovering from the trip. You’ll meet them in due time.”
Wren stood in awe. “The original battle group,” he said. “This is my wife, Kim.”
“Pleasure to really meet you,” Reuben said. “We were at your wedding, but I doubt you remember us. Wren, it’s not the whole group. We’ve lost all but one of the Marines in that first battle group along the way. Suwanee is with us, but the rest are gone. They were good people and we still miss them.”
Reuben lifted Kim’s hand and kissed it. She blushed. “Welcome to the family,” he said.
From a seat at the large conference table, Rashi said, “Could we have Matilda and her staff come here? I’m in no shape to go there.”
Reuben nodded, “Yes, what we’ve seen looks good, but sometimes an old hand sees things a youngster misses. Have her bring the data files.”
“Certainly,” Wren said as left the secured room to make the call.
“Sorry, Rachel,” David said. “Gabby’s right. He looks like Isaac, but he has your smile.”
David winked at Kim. “Don’t tell him I said that.”
Kim nodded as the significance of these three men being in this room slowly dawned on her.
“A little overwhelmed?” Isaac asked.
“Yes,” Kim admitted.
“Don’t be,” David said with a chuckle. “We’re just a bunch of geezers who should have retired long ago, but came out for one last hurrah.”
Wren returned and Faye Anne said, “Ladies and Gentlemen, let’s begin. The drone report is in. As we all know, no plan survives contact with the enemy and this one is no exception. The Swordsmen do not use satellites for military communications. Their system is entirely ground based with a series of towers running across the surface and, I assume, undersea cables.”
“Are there no satellites?” Wendy asked.
“Broadcast and weather satellites, and a couple with civilian communications, but that’s it,” Faye Anne repl
ied.
“Are you sure you didn’t miss anything?” Wren asked.
“Nothing, in fact, the biggest surprise is something we found that we did not expect. Remember the diabolical shipping containers with lasers that Greg sprinkled all over the system? A couple dozen are still out there,” Faye Anne said in amazement. “And, based on the readings we took as the drones passed, they still work.”
“How is that possible?” Rachel asked. “It’s been...”
Faye Anne held up her hand. “A very long time, I know. Not only that, but the reactor from the battleship you destroyed is in stable orbit around the gas giant.”
“I would have thought the Advance Pilot School would have cleaned all that up,” Wendy said. “You know, target practice or something.”
“Me, too, but apparently not,” Faye Anne said.
“Are they dangerous?” Wren asked.
“Not to us,” Rachel said. “They were programmed to power down after six months if nothing came their way. They will not power back up until they receive a code and a handshake from a PI ship. Sitting quiet, I’ll bet the solar panels have kept their batteries fully charged. The only problem is I don’t know the code.”
“I do,” Wren said. “It’s in Greg’s journal.”
“What else is in his journal?” David asked.
“Only that he loved Avi very much and was completely afraid of her.” Wren said.
“No surprise there,” Wendy said. “We were terrified of her when we were growing up. We knew what she could do.”
Wren looked at his grandfather and his great-uncle. They felt the same way about their wives. Rachel and Wendy were only slightly more stable than their mother. He looked at Kim who smiled demurely. For Wren’s part it was his absentee father who was the homicidal manic in his family.
Rashi said, “I think we should collect the containers and take them with us. We don’t need them here.”
“Before we begin, we have a formality to observe,” David said. “A declaration of war has been issued by the Federation and by the Swordsmen. Do we have evidence that this planet is controlled by the Swordsmen?”
“Yes,” Faye Anne replied. “We have evidence from their broadcast news programming that this is the case.”
“Then you may proceed with your attack,” David said.
“So how do we attack this planet?” Wren asked knowing that one of the most experienced battle groups ever created clustered around him.
“The good news is the planet has not been resupplied since the Swordsmen attacked it,” Faye Anne said. “There is wreckage strewn all over the planet. There is an installation on the moon and some missile batteries around the major cities, but there are few aircraft or space ships capable of challenging us.”
“We need to expend as few of our resources as possible,” Wren said. “We will need them for the next battle.”
Matilda’s suggestions provided the impetus that brought the plan into form. The result relied as much on technology as on weapons.
The first step of the assault was to take over the planet’s broadcast satellites. Reuben, Rashi and Matilda’s engineering team programmed two of the glass recon drones to locate and overpower the satellites. The message, a video of Rachel warning of the impending attack by Federation forces, was broadcast on every open channel on every satellite for two hours. Recon drones reported the mass exodus from the cities to the countryside. The drones returned to the ship after their missions were complete.
Another glass drone, outside the orbit of the nearest planet beamed a warning as well. It also emitted electronic noise mimicking the electronic signatures of a stealthed combat group. The Swordsman military responded as expected. They scrambled from their base on the moon to meet the threat. Hawk squadron waited until the interceptors were clear of their base before going after them with their lasers. Using targeting information provided by two additional recently reprogrammed glass recon drones, Wren’s ships, standing off at a tenth of a light second, pummeled the Swordsman interceptors with their lasers. While the power from a single laser could do little damage, their range was limited only by the ability of the targeting software to converge several of them on a single point. From that range, the targeting would have been impossible except for the precision of the targeting information provided by the glass drones.
Even at maximum acceleration, the interceptors had several hours before they reached missile range of Wren’s group. As the enemy approached, the targeting got easier since Wren’s ships were far enough apart to assist with triangulation on their targets. The Swordsman ships’ furious exhaust plumes made them easy to target as opposed to Wren’s ships who hung in space with their engines off. Each of Wren’s ships targeted a single Swordsman interceptor. With forty-eight lasers impacting each interceptor, none lasted more than half an hour from the time it left the moon to the time it was destroyed.
The decoy drone shut down and returned to the launch point.
Within six hours, the only warships Tracker could detect were Hawk squadron’s. Two cargo ships rested in cradles at the freight yard adjacent to the military base where the interceptors had come from. Tracker’s sensors showed the engines were cold and there was doubt if they were space-worthy.
A dozen of the old winged shuttles remained parked on the moon next to the freighters. Most of their wings had been damaged and Tracker doubted whether more than a few could make the re-entry to the planet’s surface.
There were two runways on the planet, one in the northern hemisphere and one in the southern. There were, however, dozens of small aircraft parked next to waterways all over the planet. Clearly these people did not think much of the restrictions imposed by limited numbers of runways in favor of the freedom to take off and land from any large body of water.
Hawk Squadron parked in a low orbit over the planet. They waited for a counter-attack that never came. The missile batteries that the drones had seen in the first pass lay silent. There was a lot of movement on the surface, but none of it appeared threatening. During the night, flashes of gun and artillery fire could be seen from random points on the surface. Had Wren been able to determine who was fighting whom, he might have joined the fight, but since there was no way to know, Hawk Squadron quietly sat in orbit.
The plan had been to see which of the planet’s defenses had survived the Swordsman attack and could be a threat. Since nothing appeared threatening, the rest of the battle group came closer to the planet and settled into parking orbits.
For two more days some sort of battle raged on the surface. The entire broadcast network, in fact all electronic transmission, shut down. There was some chatter from portable hand-held radios, but the transmissions were too weak to understand from space. The power grid had been shut down although there was no visible damage to any of its components.
On the third day after the attack began, as dawn approached what had been the settlement where Rachel and Wendy grew up, a transmitter hidden in the ruin of what had been the meeting hall and church when Rachel and Wendy had lived there turned on. It was tuned to a distress frequency that had been established long before humans ventured off the surface of the planet. A few minutes after the carrier signal established itself, a test pattern of color bars appeared followed by a 1khz test tone.
As the Queen Elizabeth approached overhead, a face appeared in the camera shot. The woman was elderly with deep lines on her tanned face. Her hair was mostly gray with wispy red streaks. “This is Homestead planetary security. Put me through to your commanding officer.”
Rachel keyed her comm. “Colleen? It’s Rachel.”
“Prove it.” The tone was not hostile, but it was cautious. “What was the nickname I gave you after the arrow incident and describe the incident to me.”
Rachel took a deep breath. “The name was ‘Stupid Cupid’ because I got mad at Sean and shot him in the leg with a bow and arrow.”
Wendy shot a glance at her sister. “I didn’t know she called you that.”
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“Well, now you do,” Rachel said. “Colleen, where were we going when you fell off your horse and got that scar on your neck?”
“I was racing you. We were going to the beach to meet Blondie and Brownie in the shuttle,” Colleen replied.
“So, Colleen, do you need us to come down and help?” Rachel asked.
“No thanks, most of the battle took place in the southern hemisphere. The Advanced Pilot School people fought hard and could have won, but they had traitors who brought them down. There’s nobody left there now. Swordsmen leveled it and moved on leaving only a small garrison here in the north. When you attacked on the moon, we came out of the shelters and retook the planet. We’re in control again. Most of the people you knew moved back to the north about twenty years ago. We were spared the worst of the battle, and we survived by hiding in the caves and shelters we built when you were here. All our hospitals and shelters were hidden underground. The Swordsmen never found them. I think everyone you knew has died. You know Blondie, Brownie, Katherine and Sam all survived the attack when you were here. Blondie and Brownie were attacked by pirates on a supply run and died in the fight. Katherine and Sam misjudged a landing and died in the crash. My parents died in an epidemic about five years ago. Sean was killed in the recent attack.”
“Coleen, you are welcome to come with us,” Rachel said.
Coleen smiled. “No, thanks. This is home. I have kids and grand-kids and a host of orphans to care for. I’m needed here. Look, Rachel, go kill them. They deserve to die. Kill every one of them. What they did to our people, they should not be allowed to live.”
Solomon Family Warriors II Page 148