by Rod Carstens
“Yeah, but I need to do a little magic before we do.”
“Make it quick, Marga, the leak is getting worse. Have you checked your atmosphere reading lately?”
Marga glanced at the reading. It was rapidly heading toward what was called the death zone, when there wasn’t enough oxygen to survive. She had to move quickly.
“Where is the rest of my shift? I need to know,” Jakob mumbled.
“They’re being taken care of by my partners. Now relax and let me do my magic again.”
“Is that you, Marga?”
“It sure is, Jakob. We are going to have to stop meeting this way.”
Marga laid out the equipment and supplies she thought she would need. It looked like one of his legs was badly crushed from the knee down. She didn’t have enough time to do a full exam. She would have to go with a quick, cursory physical exam. She put her hands on his chest and felt for a symmetric chest movement as he breathed. While both sides of his chest moved, but she didn’t like the feel of his right side. She would have to assume he had a chest injury too. He was moving his arms, so she knew if they were injured it wasn’t serious, and he was alert to his surroundings and oriented. Not bad, considering he’d been in a collapse.
“Hey Marga, what do you need?”
“I’m going to foam his leg. Then we can get this slab off of him. It looks like it's the only thing holding him down. Once he’s free I’m going to nanostretcher him and we’re out of here.”
“Sounds good. Let us know when you’re ready.”
“Marga, my leg hurts. It hurts really bad,” Jakob mumbled.
“Okay, I’m going to take care of that right now. Remember my special mixture? Well, you’re going to get it now.”
Marga injected Jakob. He closed his eyes and was soon breathing normally. She grabbed her foamer out of her pack and, starting at his knee, emptied the bottle. She watched as the foam moved down his leg and enclosed it and hardened in an instant.
“Okay, guys. Let’s do this.”
Marga stood with the other two troopers and, using their combined armor’s strength, easily lifted the slab off and set it carefully down. Marga pulled the nanostretcher out and spread it behind Jakob’s head then snapped it on. It quickly followed the contours of his body until he was enclosed in a protective hardened coating of nanoplastic.
“Let’s get out of here,” Marga said.
The three troopers picked up Jakob and moved through the rubble toward the hangar bay. It was still intact. In fact, it was the only part of the facility that remained undamaged. The other search teams were filtering back into the hangar from their different areas of the facility. There were only a few survivors and they all were injured. A swift-boat pilot walked up to them.
“Is that all of the survivors?”
“Yeah, afraid so,” Marga said.
“That’s good and bad news. I wish there were more but we can take them all out of here.”
“Should we stay? The bombardment has stopped,” Marga asked.
“No, the boat’s networked with what’s left of the facility’s systems and this place is headed for a complete breach soon. So we leave now or we won’t survive. Besides, the bombardment may have stopped but I have no idea why or if the aliens are still coming. We need to leave any way you cut it.”
“Where can we go?”
The pilot hesitated before he said, “I can get us to Ceres. As long as we don’t run into the Xotoli.”
“Great. I always did want to die on a crummy little swift boat trying to dodge asteroids and aliens,” Marga said.
The pilot smirked. “Yeah, me too. Let’s get going.”
Marga and the other DAT team members loaded four swift boats with the survivors and then climbed aboard. The hangar-bay doors opened and they slipped into space on a course for Ceres. The pilot banked the ship, weaving through the asteroids.
“That Xotoli battleship is still under power and picking up speed.”
“They spot us?”
“Don’t think so, or we wouldn’t be here.”
“Anything between it and Mars?”
“Nope.”
Chapter 13
Sol System
Earth
City-State of New York
Operations Center of the Secretary General
Usiche leaned back in her chair as she imagined what the battle must have looked like for those men and women fighting it. Rail rounds striking the asteroids, blowing large chunks of rock into space. Scrams turning ships and asteroids into molten debris. Compartments losing atmosphere, forcing men and women to desperately don evacuation suits before all the air in the compartment leaked into space. She shook herself out of her reverie she could not let herself be drawn down into the experiences of those fighting this battle that would be for later. Those men and women had just fought bravely against a much larger force and damaged it badly the best way to honor them was to continue the fight. .
“Situational report,” Usiche snapped.
“Ma’am, the battleship will make it through the belt and is moving on a course straight for Mars.”
“Do we have anything between it and Mars?”
“Negative.”
A battleship, albeit a badly damaged one, loose in the system, and she had no assets nearby. The damage it could do before she could put ships on it was frightening.
“Admiral, I don’t think it’s going to attack Mars,” Netis said.
“Why not?”
“The Xotoli don’t just throw away assets without a very specific objective in mind.”
“What about those mindless frontal assaults they are famous for? They lose more troops than if they used tactics.”
“Possibly. But using hybrids to put pressure on a position so more hybrids can overrun it makes sense to them. It’s an unsophisticated tactic, but it is a useful one when you don’t care about losses. The Xotoli want the final kills. The hybrids are not important.”
“Then what are they up to?”
“When they came through with so few ships, I began to wonder. Then I thought about what could be the reason for such a tactic. Then I realized to invade a fortified system they will need as much intelligence as possible about that system before they enter it. Not general information, but information that is militarily useful, which is very specific and can only be gotten by military sensors.”
Netis leaned down and switched the display to the sensor-tracking view. The battleship had more sensors than any Usiche had ever seen, and every one of them was on and at full power with no effort to hide. They were not targeting or defensive systems, but surveying sensors, and they were measuring the system’s planets, moons, ports, defenses, and anything else that might be useful to them.
“Ma’am, they are surveying the system for wormhole placement. They will need that level of detail before they can decide where to place the wormholes, not to mention looking for weaknesses in your defenses.”
Usiche was angry with herself. She should have thought of that.
“If you notice, they are using laser buoys to relay the information back to the rest of their fleet.”
Nettie changed the view and they saw a dozen different laser comm beaming back out of the system with the information the ship was gathering.
“If I had to make a guess, the fleet is just outside the system somewhere, waiting for this information. It’s not that far at light speed for it to reach them.”
“And once they have the information?” Usiche asked.
Netis looked over at Kitmura and their eyes met.
“Once they crunch the numbers, then they make their move,” Kitmura said.
“How long?” Usiche said sharply.
“Unknown. Nor would I hazard a guess, Admiral. We have no idea how long it takes to crunch the numbers then create the energy to construct a wormhole.”
“Guess!” Usiche snapped.
“Soon. If the fleet is just outside of the system, as Netis said, then if I were
the commander the sooner, the better. They know we'll understand by their actions that they are in the neighborhood. So you move as quickly as you can to take advantage of the information.”
Netis looked up from her display.
"Admiral they are focusing on mapping the area around earth. I think they may try and open up a wormhole close to Earth," she said.
Usiche put on her command face and didn’t let what she was really thinking show. If Grogen didn’t get back here soon, they were in real trouble. Now she had even less time than she’d thought.
Chapter 15
CVN Phoenix
Combat Information Center
Task Force 54.1
Admiral Ririsa Grogen leaned back in her chair. Phoenix’s trip from the wormhole had been uneventful and they were about to finally enter the Sol system. As soon as they crossed Pluto’s orbit and could securely communicate with Earth, Admiral Brodsky, the task force commander, would contact naval headquarters. He had asked Ririsa to be in on the call to Raurk to answer any questions he could not.
“We’ve entered secure-communications range, Admiral,” the communication tech said.
“Very good,” Brodsky said.
Admiral Raurk’s face appeared on the display and she said, “Admiral Brodsky, it’s good to see you.”
“The same, Admiral Raurk.”
“How was the trip through the collapsing wormhole?”
“It was not without its moments.”
Usiche laughed, then said, “I need a no-bullshit assessment of your task force’s current battle status.”
Ririsa knew the report all too well so she didn't have to listen to Brodsky to know their status. As the commander of Task Force 54.1, she commanded all of the Confederation’s combat assets within it—the Phoenix, Battleship Task Force 54.12, and Destroyer Task Force 54.13, which was the screening force for the Phoenix.
Admiral Brodsky was in overall charge of her task force in addition to the Planetary Logistical Support Force made up of Von Fleet ships with a screen of Von Fleet destroyers. Admiral Fedele had been in charge of Invasion Force 54.2, with the LSDs Rift, Wolf, and Tarawa.
At least that was how they had left the system for Chika. Now Task Force 54 looked very different. Only the Tarawa had been able to leave Chika. The Rift and Wolf had both stayed to support the Marines and Von Fleet troops left behind, as had Admiral Fedele. Even when given a direct order, he had refused to leave the troops and ships. No one knew when or if those men and women would ever be relieved. With the wormhole gone, the trip would take years even if they left Sol today.
He’d known his fate when he refused to leave them. Ririsa had never really liked him but after that decision her respect for him skyrocketed. He might have been a prick, but he was a brave one. Admiral Brodsky had ordered the destroyers Castor and Pollux, originally assigned as part of Fedele’s task force, to leave with the rest of the task force. Brodsky had known Raurk would need as many fighting ships as she could get her hands on. Even a couple of extra destroyers could make a difference.
Ririsa had lost three of her screening destroyers to system malfunctions when they had raced for the wormhole and been unable to keep up with the rest of the screening force. They had not made it out of the system. The Castor and Pollux had been assigned to the screening force to try and fill in for the loss of three ships. Her battleship task force had escaped largely intact, with only one destroyer left behind. The Von Fleet Support Force had gotten out whole, not losing a single ship. With only their light destroyers as protection, the battleship task force now acted as a screen and as guards, given the Von Fleet situation.
Raurk’s face showed no emotion as she listened to the details of the admiral’s report.
“Very well, Admiral. Now I know what I’ve got to defend the system. Good job in getting this much out of a bad situation. I need a private line. Admiral Grogen, can you give us a moment alone?”
Ririsa left the admiral’s compartment and walked down the passageway to her quarters. She was puzzled why would Raurk need a private talk with Brodsky. As the commander of the largest part of the task force, there was nothing that she couldn’t say in front of Ririsa.
She opened the hatch and walked into her Spartan quarters. There was little in the compartment that showed who occupied it. The only personal possession was a small plaque on the bulkhead behind her desk. Mounted on it was a scorched piece of metal with an inscription that said “To the best captain in the fleet from her thankful crew.” It was a piece of the Capella that had been removed from one of her crew’s bodies after Rift. The crew had presented it to her in a special ceremony arranged by Admiral Raurk. It was her most prized possession.
The Capella had been her first command, and given what had happened at Rift, the fact that the crew respected her so much was a source of real pride. She sat down at her desk and touched it. There were always reports and requests needing her attention. She had begun to work her way through all of the messages and reports when her personal comm snapped on and Admiral Raurk’s face appeared.
“Grogen, I need a private line,” Admiral Raurk said. “Are you alone?”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m in my quarters.”
“Good. Grogen, I’m giving you command of Task Force 54. I’ve promoted Brodsky to my planning staff.”
Ririsa knew that the promotion allowed Raurk to put her in charge of the task force without ruffling the feathers of Brodsky or the others of the navy’s old guard who saw him as one of their own.
“Yes, Admiral.”
“In addition, I am giving you command of the other vessels in the Sol system. When you arrive I will brief you on what we have and their status.”
Ririsa was stunned. She knew she had risen fast because of her actions on Rift, 703, and now Chika, but this was unprecedented. The responsibility of the command was staggering, given the situation facing the Confederation. Essentially she was in charge of defending Sol at a time when an alien invasion was imminent.
“So as of this moment you are in charge of all Confederation vessels in the Sol system and responsible for the defense of Earth.”
“Yes, Admiral.”
“Ririsa, I’ve chosen you because you have more fighting experience than any other flag officer in the navy. I need a fighting admiral. I also need an admiral who is not afraid to argue with me over tactics. Am I clear?”
“Yes, Admiral.”
“Now you can make any changes in your new command that you feel necessary without running them through me. Build the command structure you want before you reach Earth. I need you to have it up and running when you enter orbit. Any questions?”
“No, Admiral. I think you have been quite clear.”
“Good. Do not hesitate to ask me for anything you need. I will make sure you have it if I can find the resources. Raurk out.”
The comm video snapped off and Ririsa stood there trying to comprehend the weight of the responsibility that had just fallen on her shoulders. As a young girl she had dreamed of commanding a vessel in the Confederation Navy, but never the responsibility that came with saving Earth from an alien invasion with too few ships.
She stood straighter and thought, I can do this. I was born to do this. I will do this. She knew the first change in command that she was going to make. She reached over and touched her comm link. The face of the duty communications officer appeared.
“Get me Commander Temesgen on the Pollux.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Ririsa paced behind her desk as she thought of all the changes she wanted to make to the command structure that Brodsky had established. Everything from officers to some enlisted assignments. But this one was the most important. Temesgen’s face appeared on the screen.
“Admiral, you wanted to speak to me?”
“Yes, Commander. I’ve just been informed by Admiral Raurk that I have been placed in charge of Task Force 54, relieving Admiral Brodsky.”
Temesgen’s face showed real surprise. He
had been her executive officer on the Capella, and she had watched him grow from a hesitant rule follower into a fighting officer in the course of the battle for Rift. He had continued to grow as an officer through 703 and Chika. She wanted him as a more important part of her command.
“Commander, I’m as of this moment placing you in charge of my screening force, and when we can turn over the babysitting of the Von Fleet ships, I want you in command of my battleship task force.”
Temesgen looked a little overwhelmed. That was good, Ririsa thought. It showed he understood the responsibilities she was giving him.
“Close your mouth, Temesgen. You can’t look tough with your mouth open.”
Temesgen finally found his voice and said, “Should I inform Commander Rinne or will you?”
“I will. Commander Rinne is a good officer, but I want you in command because of the Capella. That experience separates us both from the vast majority of other fleet officers. Do you understand?”
She could see Temesgen’s face change at the mention of the Capella. That had been a life- and career-changing experience, and she was glad that he was aware of just how important it was and how it separated them from officers who had not gone through it.
“Yes, Admiral. I appreciate your confidence in me.”
“The knife cuts both ways, Commander. You will probably curse the day you met me before this is over. There are no easy decisions facing us.”
“Yes, Admiral, I know. And I have the feeling that you too will find your new command challenging.”
Ririsa smiled and said, “You and me both, Commander.”
“Thank you, Admiral. Any orders?”
When he said that, Ririsa knew she had picked the right man for the job. He didn’t ask about a promotion. He was focused on what needed to be done and not his career.
“Not at this time, but make any changes to the screening force you deem necessary. I will inform Rinne and give him a new job and a promotion so we don’t lose a good officer. Grogen out.”
Ririsa leaned back in her chair. There was a lot to be done and not much time to do it. She touched her desk. “Comm, get me Commander Rinne.”