Free Fleet #03 No Rest for the Wicked

by Michael Chatfield

  “Exiting horizon,” Wilma said.

  This is it.

  Bregend braced himself as Rebirth slid through the event horizon with barely shake. Bregend hid his nervous sigh as the plot updated with the latest map of the system they’d just entered that Cheerleader had sent weeks ago.

  “No sensor Buoys in the area,” Jamzie announced. Bregend nodded. That was one issue with choosing anywhere in the wormhole limit to enter a system. It gave you the element of surprise, but if you had sensor buoys there you could know where everything was within seconds.

  “Full power for the sensors,” Bregend said, knowing how vulnerable and visible that would make the Rebirth. “Afnar, you may configure your shields,”

  “Sir,” he said as he and his crew began accommodating for the system’s interference with the shield projectors, and equalized it to get full coverage.

  Twenty minutes later Jamzie had something.

  “I have a ship that's jumped into the system,” she said as the contact lit up like a Christmas tree on the plot.

  “Kyle, use communications codes and verify that ship is ours,” Bregend said as the kid got to work.

  More contacts littered the plot as the sensors collected more information.

  “Codes verified it's one of ours,”

  “Send them the message,” Bregend said, referring to the pre-recorded message that contained all of the information on what was going on in Parnmal.

  “Helm take us in, no sense in waiting out here anymore,” Bregend said as Wilma applied thrust, guiding the Battle Cruiser to the fourth planet in the system, a gas giant rich in raw fuel and where Cheerleader said she'd be based while scouting the surrounding systems.

  Chapter - It Always Starts with a Bang

  The syndicate Fleet had been within Parnmal's PRC's range for ten minutes now. They were blasting away at Parnmal's shields, but with little to no effect. The shields were too strong and they hadn't used one missile yet.

  “Cruisers, Battle Cruiser and Dreadnought's first,” I said and Realem grunted in acknowledgement. His eyes were locked on his displays as he passed on my orders to his people in short terse sentences, PRC's aim and missile's priorities changed. I sipped my water tube as I tapped my fingers. “Keep explosions going on over Parnmal. Realem fire at will,”

  “All batteries fire on preselected targets!” Realem said as he personally sent the launch signal to the missile tubes across Parnmal.

  The Syndicate Fleet launched all of their missiles. They fired their engines at full power to slow down before the missiles got there. They knew they'd get one chance to take Parnmal. The missiles charged into the Syndicate's shields, but Parnmal was much bigger than any known ship, and had the capabilities of seven Dreadnought's in the number of missiles it could launch in one go, and it had massive magazines.

  They fired close to six hundred missiles at us as we sent four hundred back. The power directed at one area was enough to shut down a planetary shield generator, but it was quickly covered by other generators of adjoining areas. Thirteen of our missiles made it through the lapse and split off into independent war heads. Our missiles which had already split hit their targets. Half of them had been destroyed by PDS fire, a third missed, and the remaining fifth was spread across the fleet.

  Corvettes disappeared, shields spotted and fell, and two Battle Cruisers were left in sections no bigger than a shoe. Parnmal rocked as five of our thirteen missiles warheads struck home. Parnmal's PDS wasn't as good as the Fleets, but she could take more of a pounding.

  Felix whooped as PRC rounds hit the Fleet.

  “Firing second Barrage,” Realem said as I was surveying the damage caused by the PRC's new rounds.

  Most gunners had gone for the directed shotgun like setting. I watched in shock as I looked to Felix.

  “Up the explosive power much?” I asked, getting a shrug and a smile in response.

  “Plasma's always more effective!” he said. He'd upped the explosive charge in the rounds, added a gaseous core and a high frequency laser. Now the round became a cloud of high speed super dense shards, and a ball of plasma. I heard the syndicate's Plasma cannons fire. I had removed that weapon from the fleet ships. They took a ton of power, and were only good in passing engagements as plasma's energy quickly dissipated. The plasma did little against shields, but the kinetic energy imparted on it caused them to flash with hits. Plasma against armour, cut like a hot knife.

  Cruisers had some serious PDS, but that was little use against PRC rounds. There was still more of them than I would like, but there was some serious holes in the syndicate formation, if you could call it a formation.

  “They're flushing magazines,” Realem said as PRC's whuthump's of firing could be heard in the command centre.

  There was little I could do now. I knew people would fight at their stations as long as they possibly could and the syndicate were able to launch their missiles moments before Parnmal's landed.

  “PRC's on PD setting one,” I said as Realem barked the orders to his gunners. “Shields I want that generator back online.”

  “Sir, we have crews working to reset and replace breakers,” Shields replied.

  “Good work.” Having people willing to sort their own shit instead of waiting for me to tell them to do so was always a positive in my mind.

  We traded missiles, ours crashing into the Syndicate ships, theirs coming at our PRC platforms and batteries.

  Syndicate shields blackened with the nuclear tidal wave, many weren't able to stop all of the missiles. Ships were ripped apart, atmosphere and personnel being thrown into vacuum, other ships exploded, or went dead as they flushed their power plants. Yet the ships behind them kept going. They passed their comrades eager to close with our weakened station.

  As the ship's fell PRC's and our own PDS blazed away at incoming missiles.

  There were too many missiles, individual shield generators took a pounding before failing. I gritted my teeth as sections of Parnmal disappeared and holes appeared in our armour. The Syndicate fired at everything and anything that was exposed as they got as close to Parnmal as possible so as to avoid the crossfire of multiple cannons.

  PRC's quickly found themselves under fire as the Syndicate forces took their revenge.

  “Henry, you're up,” I broke into his channel as he greened up and closed the circuit.

  Missile batteries fell silent as hitting the Syndicate ships now would hurt Parnmal too.

  PRC's hit with stage two rounds which penetrated ships, exploding with force like a missile warhead. The majority of these rounds didn't penetrate the larger more armoured ships, but exploded on their armour, leaving openings for following rounds. Corvette's used their speed to their advantage now as they ran around Parnmal's exterior, dropping off their Mecha's and pounding the slow moving PRC's.

  “PDS on those Corvettes,” I said as hundreds of Gatling guns updated with Felix's rounds fired. These weapons weren’t yet on AI but with Resilient’s help we'd created a system that could fire these weapons with enough coordination that no two guns were firing on the same target.

  “Min Hae,” I said, nodding, and as he began typing on his console his dormant virus became active in every communications system it dug its way into. Entire ships were unable to even communicate to different sections of their vessels, let alone others. Companies of Mecha's were left with nothing but their thoughts as the ships they were in landed on Parnmal.

  Grade A cluster fuck. I thought as it was clear the syndicate was having dire issues. Corvettes settled onto the surface as they too were getting pounded.

  “PDS with no ships but mechas in their area are to engage the mechas,” I said coldly, knowing full well the damage that would be wrought by the high powered lasers and the accelerated solid state rounds, especially if they were Mechas.

  ****

  Sergeant Falesh had seen some battles in his time. He'd been on planetary take overs, station battle and ship to ship engagements. Yet the sight
before him was unlike anything he'd seen before. It reminded him of the battles his mentor had told him about during the dying throes of the PDF.

  Whoever these people are, they're good. He thought with cold recognition as he crawled across Parnmal's surface, finding a crater barely large enough for him. Mecha's around him were cut down by a silent hail storm of metal. He activated a plasma grenade and threw it at where his wire overlaid visor said the weapon emplacement was. There was no sound but his grenade registered as having gone off. He peeked over the edge of the crater, finding a weird weapon system pointing right at him. This is it, he though, but the weapon failed to fire and he saw his plasma grenade had melted through the weapons control circuits.

  “We've got a lot more ground to cover,” he barked at his men as none of them did anything. He would need a stiff drink after all this he thought, he stopped his hand shaking by squeezing his railgun harder and standing up.

  “Waiting to die in those holes are you?” he growled as he began running forward, using other craters as cover. A few started following, then more and more until he saw that the remains of his company were either following. Or too useless to.

  Nearly there. He thought as his wire overlay showed an upcoming air lock.

  Shit. He dropped to the ground.

  “PDS up ahead!” he yelled as mechas kept running, straight into the PDS' line of sight and it began raining hell onto them. Some that had gotten too confident, or were being controlled by their fear couldn't stop their motion in microgravity.

  “Get down you idiots!” he said as chaos ensued, some seeing their counterparts dropping and getting into cover, while others kept pushing forward.

  It's like they can't hear me, he growled as his mind cleared and he ran a check on his communications gear.

  “The hell? I didn't put it on that band,” he growled as he reset the comms gear, his ears filled with others yelling and screaming. He was about to speak when it went silent again. He checked his gear again, finding it right back on the previous channel. They got a virus into our gear, he thought as cold fear passed through his body. Not having communications with his people reduced their effectiveness considerably. His people were dying because they didn't know where weapon emplacements were.

  He went to his settings and did a hard reset on his comms.

  “The comms gear is messed up, do a hard reset!” He yelled over the yelling and screaming. He said it a few more times before he put in the channel for his company. His HUD showed who was connected to the channel, as well as those who hadn't survived.

  It's a massacre, he thought.

  “Alright, Reshna company break it down into squads, sit rep,” he said, his people's yelling fading away into nothing as squad leaders started reporting their status.

  “Alright, everyone do a hard reset on yours comms. We need to make sure that we don't lose communications again,” His people did it, a strange thing for those in the mecha corps to actually listen to orders. Surviving makes some listen, he thought as he checked the table of command, seeing that most of his officers had gone and gotten themselves killed.

  “Alright, link up. We need to get into the station still,” he said, but as he put together squads, a Corvette ripped past. The PDS took out its shields as it replied with railguns, and Falesh clamped onto Parnmal as the ground shook.

  “Move to this airlock by squads,” Falesh said, highlighting the closest airlock.

  “Low and slow, these PDS turrets are everywhere,” he said as he took his own advice, keeping low enough that he could drop to the ground in a second.

  He got to the airlock in decent time and when he checked it, it registered as operable. Someone pushed him off. Falesh was sent spinning as he shot a line out to Parnmal.

  “I'm going to rip your head off you little shit,” he growled.

  “What was that sarge?” someone asked on his channel.

  “Nothing,” he growled back, no one had any follow up questions. Falesh was ten meters from the airlock, the bastard was going to pay for almost sending him into the dark. He opened the airlock and was shot back because he hadn't depressurized the interior. The Air erupted from inside the station and spread apart in different directions. The son of a bitch was launched into space, stuck in perpetual free fall.

  Falesh pulled himself slowly back towards the airlock as another mecha stepped into the chamber. Explosives went off and the mecha and three others behind it were ripped apart and blasted into the dark.

  “The airlocks are booby trapped,” he said over his company channel as he used his remote cameras to look into the destroyed remains of the airlock, the inside was solid rock.

  “They blocked off airlocks too,” he said as he turned to the next nearest airlock and set off again.

  “Go to your closest airlock and see if you can find one that isn't booby trapped or fake,” This is going to be a long day.

  Chapter Best Laid Plans

  There were close to three hundred thousand mechas scrambling over Parnmal.

  “Looks like they did at least have some pre-planning,” Henry said.

  “Wish they hadn't,” Bok Soo grunted.

  The conditions on those ships must've sucked but they knew they'd need an overwhelming force to take Parnmal. If they'd landed with their entire force...

  Henry stroked the beard he'd been growing with feeling. His inner Irish had come to the fore because his beard was distinctly red. The regs on facial hair had become lax, Henry let his beard grow out, finally. He was one of the few that could. Facial hair was still one thing that reflected a person’s real age, despite the drugs and supplements the syndicate had filled them with.

  “Alright, red beard. I'm off to make sure my boys and girls are in position,” Bok Soo said tapping Henry's shoulder. Henry's beard twitched in amusement as his eyes sparkling.

  “Alright there, Fu Man Chu,” he said, referring to Bok Soo's wispy attempt at facial hair.

  “Takes time, damnit!” Bok Soo said defensively as they both laughed.

  Henry clapped Bok Soo on the shoulder.

  “See you after,” he said as Bok Soo nodded.

  “I'll buy the first round,” he grinned as Henry looked skeptical.

  “Oh really now?” Henry smiled as they walked out of the armory closest to the largest concentration of Syndicate troops.

  “What? Is it so strange that I'd be offering to get drinks?”

  “I know how hard it is to get food from you!” Henry said as Bok Soo grinned.

  “Well, that's a different story.”

  Henry shook his head in response.

  “I'm going to hold you to that beer Bok Soo,”

  “Wouldn't doubt it. You Irish were always a bit obsessed with it!”

  Henry laughed as he and Bok Soo separated. He was still chuckling as he swung his helmet shut and sealed it. It was a short walk to his people and he checked that his weapons were ready as he got to Santos who was waiting for him.

  “Henry,” the man said by way of greeting.

  “Santos.”

  “We have an axe around here somewhere,” he said, his face completely straight as Henry grinned, pulling his newly made weapon from his back.

  “I was only joking,” Santos laughed as he looked at the plasmid battle axe Henry had had made.

  “Always wanted one,” Henry said as he offered it to Santos who looked it over.

  “Ah, just channelling your inner lumber jack,”

  Henry growled good-naturedly as Santos handed the battle axe back.

  “How are you looking?”

  “We're sealed up tight. I made sure everyone knows their fall back positions and such. It might be our first real defensive action but we'll make them pay for every step,”

  “Good,” Henry said, now serious. They were going to need to inflict some serious casualties. There was twenty five thousand commandos on Parnmal and five thousand personnel of varying responsibilities, not including the syndicate prisoners of course. Ten to one
. God.

  “I'm going to-”

  “Breech!” Amarr, one of Bok Soo's two company commanders said. The alert automatically cutting into Henry’s HUD as his map updated.

  “Looks like it's just begun,” he said to Santos, who conversed with his two company commanders before looking to Henry. His eyes seeming to say, I hate not being on the front lines.

  “Don't worry. The front lines will come to us soon enough,” Henry said mordantly as another real airlock was opened and Mecha's started flooding into Parnmal.

  ***

  I wonder if this is what Jorsht felt like when we rushed into Parnmal, I thought as I sat in my command chair. Everyone had changed over to their secondary roles.

  “We have break-ins across section Blue,” Wast reported as the plot changed to the internal map of Parnmal. Our people were greeted with booby traps, bottle necks and fixed cannons and machine guns. I looked over with a cool gaze as bodies were stacked like proverbial cordwood as rounds smashed into the oncoming Syndicate forces.

  Grenades went off as the incoming forces tried to hit the cannons. Other removed their helmets so they could finally talk. Yet it did little to assert authority as the gunners quickly picked out leaders. Grenades hit cannons as members of the syndicate mecha force got their beachhead and moved into the station.

  “Section blue, four one, prepare to vent atmo and drop gravity,” I said.

  “Ready commander,” Monk said, running the internal weapons systems.

  I waited as the syndicate forces reached an overlaid line.

  “Now. Blue three eight, two one and one five,” I said, moving past the first one as the other halls were filling quickly.

  The corridor labelled blue one four was mayhem as gravity disappeared, a bulkhead dropped from the roof and atmosphere was drained in a matter of seconds. Anyone that had pulled their visor up to issue orders, or to understand what was going on was killed except for a quick few.