“I've lost two of the freighters from my view, they'll be on us in a few minutes,” Xruz reported.
“Crap.” Felix opened up a channel to everyone on the ship.
“Strap into an acceleration couch, it looks like we're about to be boarded, I think its time for operation run-like-fuck,” he said changing his direction as he ran, he found himself in fighter operations command, usually this was where people managaed all the fighters looking to land, take off or resided inside the carrier at any given time.
Felix was rocked by a damned hellish explosion, his magnetic boots were the only things that kept him standing.
He slammed his butt into his chair and set his HUD to show any breaches as they occurred.
It looked like he was amongst the last to get himself into an acceleration couch.
The seat contorted to his armor and started to encompass his armor, he could move freely and get out of it, for now.
His HUD's view changed as a part of the the hull disappeared to the rear of the ship. The carrier's atmosphere had already been drained so there was no massive rush of air out the back of the ship.
Instead there were humans in powered armor and goddamn HAPA's rushing into the ship.
Use my own tech against me will you?
Another panel blew into the ship, Felix's HUD changed to this now.
They entered through the engine compartments, there were a number of engineers sitting in chairs, being unarmed they rose their hands, the Earth forces fired on them, someone in charge finally got them to stop by then there was only four of the thirteen people that had been sitting in that room left alive, two had suit breaches the third was having Hellfire pumped into her system, her suit made it clear she needed medical attention.
A man that looked to be in charge picked up the uninjured creature with his own powered armor. It was clear that he was yelling questions at the creature, but with it being vaccuum the creature couldn't understand, or reply in any way so they let themselves go limp, their weight and the powered armor's dragging on the leader's arms, he dropped them and kicked at their face. Their boot cracked the visor of the creature's powered armor, opening them up to vaccuum.
They squirmed on the floor, trying to cover their face and hold their oxygen in somehow.
The leader stood back and watched as the creature died of asphyxia at his feet. He moved around the creature, waving his forces through the ship.
“Activating acceleration system,” Felix heard himself say as he went through his remote control features, his eyes staring at his people that lay in that room.
Bombs tumbled out of the rear of the carrier, exploding and pushing the ship forward with massive acceleration.
More and more bombs dropped as the gravitational forces increased accordingly.
Felix's powered armor compensated for the increased gravities on his body, his eyes still focused on the enginer compartment as Earth forces were thrown, and the gravities broke bones with the extra weight and stresses.
Serves you right.
***
Silly looked down on the reports in front of him with grim and angered expressions visible to anyone that could read a Kuruvian’s manipulators.
Entire sections of Nancy were non-operational, the areas being held by the Earth forces he had already written off. The Commandos that had been waiting on their ships being repaired or about to ship off down the corridor had a short way with those that had attacked their friends.
Hachiro was still embroiled in a long fight, Mars was as well.
Earth forces were flooding from the planet’s surface on merchant carriers. It would take them a matter of days until they reached Nancy.
Putting them right in Elshurvum’s path. The carrier had stopped his head-long dash towards Nancy, the crew on her were badly wounded and in rough shape, but it looked like they had control of their ship and that the forces following them were too far behind to catch up with their acceleration systems.
They were now between the forces that had pretended to act like merchants only to turn and head directly towards Hachiro and Mars as soon as the fighting started. If they slowed down then they would be hit by their first group of attackers, if they continued on the forces that were going towards Mars and Hachiro would likely spell their end.
There was no good option for them so they were striking to a pace that would give them the most time out of range of both groups. That gave them four days and little other options.
When they had come out of their wormhole their projectors had been hit, too many of them to be repaired and make a stable wormhole, but Felix’s people were working on it, and their laser cannon which was proving to be one hell of a weapon if slow and dangerous as hell.
Thankfully aid was on the way, but Silly feared it would be too late to make a difference for the carrier.
With the daughter yards Nelly and Ned in AIH and Chaleel it meant that there were a number of ships that had gathered planetary Commandos and were on their way to Sol.
Salchar had set off from Parnmal just a matter of hours after hearing what had happened.
Even with his white hot rage at the att…, he cut that word off. Betrayal, Silly call it what the feckless assholes did by the proper name. Still that anger went cold with the message that he didn’t need to play again to see in his mind.
Salchar’s mask hid all the emotion but his voice was like the hammers in an asteroid processor. Unrelenting, cold, and uncaring.
Yasu was with him, but Silly doubted that she would be looking to calm her husband down much. The entire Free Fleet was angry. The backlash was already starting, traders were getting denied in ports and their ships held in limbo.
The miners of Sol had unilaterally come down on the side of the Free Fleet. They were led by the ex-Commando Marco and his sister Isabelle.
Marco had been in Salchar’s own squad during the recruitment. He and his sister owned one of the largest mining conglomerate’s.
Many of their first miners were Commandos that didn’t want to transition into the Free Fleet but didn’t see Earth as home.
With their support the Free Fleet refiners were stoked and supplied with continuous raw material and offerred any assistance they could provide.
“What do you think Salchar is going to do when he gets to Sol?” LaRe said, interrupting his thoughts as he stared at the star map that looked over Sol.
“Nothing good. He’s going to be angry and rightly so. He’s just come back from the biggest and bloodiest fight that the Fleet has been in yet. We’re in the middle of a war…” Silly trailed off, it was hard for him to think that they were in a war himself. It seemed that it was so far away, yet he’d seen the video from Heija and Rosho station. The sheer power of the Kalu when they were together was immense.
You’ve seen the numbers, been through the reports on their yards, their planets. There’s trillions more of them out there, with thousands of ships. Enough ships to block out the stars.
“He’s going to make an example of them,” LaRe said, once again pulling Silly from the depths of his dark thoughts.
“Yes, yes he will. He’s already stopped any trade with Earth and said that he will not be part of a Union that has Earth in it. They’ve burned their bridges with him and they didn’t even realize that they were standing on those same bridges,” Silly said, his voice sober and sad, yet with an undeniable hardness to it.
“What do you think that the twenty thousand survivors of Heijia are going to do when they get here?” LaRe asked, concern in his voice.
“Support their Commander as we will. While they will be hungry for vengeance and filled with anger, we’re going to see how to mitigate that. Can you open a channel with AIH’s Armored Marine Commandos Commander, Ursht and his Chaleelian counterpart Delahil? I should get them an update of the situation, record it and send it to Rick.”
“Understood, bringing Commander Ursht online first.”
Chapter Betrayal of blood
Command
er Ursht didn’t need to ask his fellow commanders how his Avarians were feeling. All of them were as angry as the vicious armored Katak they hunted on Avar Interim Hermanti.
He wasn’t as large as his awakened brother Krom, but he wasn’t any shrimp.
He had been in charge of growing Asul City on AIH in Salchar and Yasu’s absence. In his care the city had grown to be the largest of its kind on the planet and had absorbed much of the other cities.
Yet even with the struggles of a city going from barely surviving to thriving a thriving metropolis, one that had the only spaceport on the planet, he had wanted more. His blood called to him and he wanted to serve not as an administrator, but as his Battle-masters man in battle.
Salchar had created the planetary Commando program. He’d also given Ursht his blessing to push his work off to those that had helped him to run the city thus far and test his skills as a Commando.
He had proved worthy and done his battle master proud with his performance. He had been given his permission on merit and by the votes of the other Commandos that lived on AIH.
He was indebted to Salchar for his actions, how he had saved his home and planet, and then gifted them with prosperity.
The other Avarians also felt a deep connection to their battle master.
This betrayal by Earth was personal. Earth had scorned their master, which made them not only betray him as a man, but them as a people.
It helped that Salchar was a good battle-master and a good man. The stories of those that went to Asul on leave from the Free Fleet made the residents of Asul happy and proud.
Some disagreed or resented their battle-master, it was to be expected. Some complained how the old ways had been lost, and they had a point, but the future wasn’t going to let them focus on the past if they wanted to grow.
“Clearing event horizon,” Linda Yousef said, as the Battle Cruiser exited its projected wormhole. Ursht might have bragged about beating the Chaleelians to the battle at one point, but right now he was more concentrated on getting to the battle. All of the ships had been boarded within a few hours of getting word, the Avarians had trained to be the fastest reactionary force they could be and that training had paid off. Two hundred and fifty thousand Avarians had boarded the ships that were capable of wormholing and headed for Earth.
They’d jumped as fast as they could, actually jumping into the dark, the spaces between systems to go to their full jump range. Their generators had been kept at ninety percent to charge the capacitors between uses and supply the wormhole generators with the power they needed to fight physics.
It had taken them nearly four days to reach Earth and the situation had improved only slightly from the initial reports they’d received about the system. Nancy was secure but badly damaged, fighting was still ongoing at Hachiro. Mars was a mass of confusion and fighting. Earth was secured by Earth forces and there was a large group of ships that had reached Hachiro supporting their forces there, with a separate group that had gone onto Mars.
The carrier Elshurvum had escaped capture thus far, but in the next two days the Earth forces would be on them.
“Linda I want to know if we will be able to jump to Elshurvum’s aid. Quasa, inform Commander Silly of our presence and ask for a situational update,” ship commander Zali asked without missing a beat.
Ursht’s opinion of the Battle Cruisers crew was revised upwards as they turned to their tasks with professional detachment. It didn’t take long until the main screen was updating with the newest information on what the Free Fleet and Earth Forces were doing in the area. Ursht used the HUD on his helmet to sift through the information and look specifically at Mars and Hachiro.
He sent the information and a list of questions to his subordinates so he could focus on any developing information on the bridge. They would get back to him with results as they found it, instead of him using his time to try and do more than he was capable of.
“It doesn’t look like a wormhole will be possible with the gravitational disturbances in the area as well as our profile. Jump ships could but we’re no jump ship,” Linda said. There were jump ships being made on Nancy but there were few pilots and the Earth forces had attacked the factory with speed and precision. Silly’s people were still assessing the damage but it would be a while until they had it figured out, fixing it would take a lot longer.
The pilots were on Hachiro, a handful of them had gotten out but they weren’t fully trained. More Jump fighters were with Salchar’s forces that were moving from Parnmal, they had set off after the fleet had made a few jumps so that they were within their resources range of Earth. They would arrive sometime in the next twenty hours, but they would need to refuel at Nancy before they were able to go into combat.
“Commander Ursht, it looks that our choices have thinned somewhat,” Zali said, looking to Ursht.
Slevarans looked very similar to Sarenmenti, but where Sarenmenti had large hips and lower legs, a stub of a tail, four jaws and large scales that didn’t change colors. The Slevarans were thinner with a larger head and eyes that looked sideways instead of forwards, they showed their emotions through their scale color, had only one jaw like the humans and no tail.
They had used to walk on all four limbs but had gone through genetic therapies when the Union was around to change so they stood upright instead of crawling.
“Yes,” Ursht said, his jaw tight as he nodded to the Slevaran, knowing just what Zali was asking.
Mars or Hachiro, which one do we take on?
He glanced over the reports again, looking at the station named after the bravery of his battlemistress father and the people that had joined him in battle against impossible odds. There were millions of people split between Hachiro and Mars, both were worthy targets. Yet Hachiro was in the path of Elshurvum and its position in Mars’ orbit would make it a good launching platform to Mars, if he could get those jump fighter pilots to their ships then maybe, just maybe they could make the small time window Elshurvum had before it was set on by Earth forces.
“Hachiro,” Ursht said, looking to Zali.
Zali’s scales flicked colors to signal agreement.
“You heard the Avarian Commander, prepare battle stations and shuttles. Linda will you be able to jump us to the station?”
“I can get us a few million kilometers closer,” she said.
“Do it,” Zali said, tongue flicking in malice.
“If you don’t mind I will be readying myself for battle with my forces,” Ursht said, grabbing his helmet from the railing it sat on.
“By all means Commander. We’ll do our best to deliver you right down their throats,” Zali didn’t try to hide the anger that filled his eyes and colored his scales.
Ursht grunted his agreement, pleased to be going into battle with a man such as Zali.
He turned and marched out of the bridge, his helmet locking with his powered armor over his bald head.
His skin was a grey-black that looked like the rocks of AIH, he, like the rest of his people were great at making themselves invisible on their planet.
Avarians looked similar to humans but were much larger and had muscle mass that looked more like armor plating than the ridges and bumps humans possessed.
Their joints and muscle had developed similar to the Dovark’s that had been the first race of the Union. While humans’ had first class lifting systems in their bodies, Avarians and Dovark’s had third.
The AI Planner had seen to changing their bodies to make them stronger and capable of living in the harsh environment that AIH hosted. This had allowed them to survive as a race and made them powerful adversaries. He had also taught them to work together and create a system that would allow them to work with others, stopping them from becoming another force like the Kalu.
He felt the power being shunted directly from the ship’s massive capacitors into its wormhole generators whose energy was focused by the wormhole projectors to open a hole through space and time. The ship moved into that wor
mhole, coming out of it just a few million miles away from Hachiro, behind the Earth forces.
“Get me the bastards,” Zali said over his ships comms, the Battle Cruiser Rolfa answered with anger. Her gunners trained Free Fleeters were not in the practice of missing their targets.
Missiles could be heard chasing and then passing their ship’s cannon fire.
“Commander?” Sarenmenti Kashal looked to his commander with only one question on his face.
“Well we’re not going to let the Ship’s crew have all the glory!” He barked over his speaker. Kashal didn’t wince from the volume but bared his four jaws.
Roars, the kind that one might expect from savage warriors filled the shuttle bay as the first sealed up, the others doing the same. Ursht felt his eyes widen as battle hormones filled him.
Today Earth will get their second lesson and learn what happens to oath breakers. He silently promised himself. He could still hear the yells from the others shuttles as he marched onto his own. Warriors moved out of his way as the ramps closed. The cargo master didn’t even try to calm his load as the shuttle rose after a few minutes.
Ursht looked to the questions he had asked his commanders, they had responses now.
He put his anger away, there was a time for it, and it was soon, first he had to make sure that he got his Armored Marine Commandos onto Hachiro.
***
“What in the fuck is this?” The Prime Minister of Russia said, throwing a tablet at Edwards as he entered the combined forces of Earth military command center. Edwards went red and then white with fury as he looked at the Prime Minister of Russia with disgust and anger on his face.
Why did we have to allow this, one of our worst enemies into our midst? Surely the President will allow me to deal with him after this, once and for all. I’ll show him his place like I’m going to show Salchar.
“I only answer to the Pres…”
“Answer him Edwards,” the President snapped, cutting Edward’s anger off.
From Furies Forged (Free Fleet Book 5) Page 9