As his body drifted away, there was a sudden sense of calm. Looking about the nightmarish scene—corpses drifting in a fog of blood so thick it was hard to see—she blinked up Ulloa on her command channel as the EMI units deactivated. “Report, Sergeant.”
“All done here, ma’am.”
“Our—people?” The catch between the words was the only external sign of the inevitable heaviness as the adrenaline began to fade—leaden emotions that brought the costs into stark elegiac relief—a feeling that long familiarity did nothing to assuage.
“Sullivan, Reno, Hardesty and Zwick are down,” Ulloa answered, in a voice as precise as it was flat. “Campbell, Maxwell and Bates, scored but mobile.” A telling pause. “Martin—he’s poorly, ma’am.”
“Thank you, Sergeant”—keeping the grim note out of her voice.
Gliding over to Corporal Martin, who was being attended to by his fireteam members, she saw he’d received two deep wounds, one in the abdomen and the other in his lower back. They’d removed the plastron on the back of his armor where the med indicators were. A glance told Min his suit had dumped all the painkillers it had, but his face, visible through the clear visor, showed that it wasn’t enough. She connected her suit umbilical.
“Hello, Erich.”
“Hi, ma’am.” His faced twisted with the effort to speak. “Better get going, ma’am. Don’t waste no more time on me.” His vital signs were up on her visor’s display and she could see he was right.
“We’ll never forget you, Erich. It’s been an honor to fight at your side.”
“‘Preciate that, ma’am. Been good times on your team.”
“Thanks, Corporal. Give my best to the others.”
He blinked and his lips curved slightly as she applied the command override. A trio buttons beside the med indicators lit red. She pressed all three at once. Martin’s eyes closed and his face relaxed as the lethal cocktail hit his bloodstream. Within seconds, his vital signs zeroed out.
As she straightened up from the limp form, Sergeant Ulloa caught her attention.
“Captain? What do we do with these bodies? Leave ‘em here or stow ‘em somewhere?”
“Stow ours. Bring theirs along, Sergeant. They still got some use left in ‘em.”
* * *
“Message from Captain Lewis—hatches blown, sir. They’re in.” PrenTalien acknowledged his flag lieutenant’s announcement and turned to the Captain of the Fleet. “Post our destroyer screen out to Tier-3 positions. Admiral Wallace to close on us.”
Bolton relayed the order and PrenTalien returned his attention to the plot. If Lewis failed take to the monitor out of action, he’d either have to commit his entire force at long odds or abandon the system. And he had no intention of abandoning the system. But if Lewis succeeded, he would be free to concentrate all his firepower on one fleet or the other, which certainly meant the Bannermans. Mauling Center Force would be a setback for Adenauer, to be sure, but hitting the Bannermans, who were already heavily engaged with Belvoir’s force, would destabilize Adenauer’s intact flank, forcing him to withdraw.
So now he had to see how Adenauer felt. An aggressive commander would risk some loss to ensure he retained the monitor and thus the initiative. Abandoning his position to come up would open him to long-range attack by Admiral Belvoir’s fast battlecruisers—attacks to which he would initially have a hard time making an effective reply—but it would allow him to retain control of the engagement. A cautious, prudent commander (Adenauer’s reputation) would join with the Bannermans, forcing Belvoir to pull back and putting him in a good position to retreat if the monitor was taken. That option meant fighting to maintain the status quo. The first option meant fighting to win. The last option—merely holding position and trusting to the monitor’s own defenses, sacrificing the Bannermans if he was wrong—was not really an option at all.
Slow minutes ticked by. His flag lieutenant announced that Wallace was engaged in a running gun battle with Jena and VanScheer while their escort destroyers wrangled overhead, but he would soon be under Ardennes’ defense umbrella and the battleships would be obliged to break off.
Then: “He’s moving, sir.” PrenTalien saw it as well. Adenauer had made his choice—he was fighting to win. And there was no Have Joy from Captain Lewis yet.
* * *
What joy Captain Lewis had was either inhuman or all-too-human, or on another plane altogether, depending on which view you took of the matter. The next objective—the port spline junction—had been taken swiftly and almost without incident. Drake had arrived with his heavy weapons section but, in the event, they were not needed. Min had already set Henderson to blow the hatch, and when he did, she had, in a superbly ghoulish maneuver, activated the suit thrusters of the Halith casualties and sent them charging down the passageway. The defenders responded with a concentrated volley, only to react in stark horror on realizing their bullets were ripping through the corpses of their friends. (This ‘zombie assault’ was the so-called ‘incident’.)
Min’s ten effectives returned fire, but the defenders were already scrambling to exit the junction as fast as possible. Now they were facing their most crucial test so far: the monitor’s central junction. Although she had Drake this time, the locker was bare of clever gambits, the Doms knew where they were, and their position gave them no good approach the hatch. Min’s greatest fear was that the Doms would be able hole up until it was too late.
If the other half of the plan was working, Anders should have the main junction’s defenders isolated at this point, but that might only increase their desire to hunker down. And there was always the possibility—probability—that the Doms would get around to sending a unit down the spline passageway to hit them from behind.
And she was wasting time. They’d have to do this the hard way. “Okay, people. They don’t wanna come out to play, so we gotta kick in that door over there.” She did not mention the likely consequences for whoever signed up to do the kicking. She didn’t have to.
“Lemme, Captain,” spoke up PFC Naomi Thompkins. For a split-second, Min was tempted to say no. Thompkins had been Corporal Martin’s best friend and (as she knew very unofficially) lover. Maybe the private wasn’t quite in her right mind—Min knew how that felt—but as a marine, she also had a right to deal out the payback.
“Draw a charge from Henderson,” Min told her, voice clipped. Then she pointed to Ulloa. “Sergeant, cover fire. Matt, I want stickies on those hinges as soon the hatch opens. Drake, take one section of your people and watch our ass. Masterson, with me.”
The demolition charge, if it could be attached, would certainly blow the hatch, but Min didn’t expect things to get that far. When the Doms detected Thompkins approaching, they’d crack the hatch—not to fire but to toss out an antipersonnel seeker. That’s where the stickies came in: packets of moly-glue that would jam the hatch open long enough for Thompkins to heave the charge through.
As for the seeker, it wouldn’t arm for five meters, so if they could pick it off before that, they’d be home free. That was why she’d called out Corporal Lena ‘Bat’ Masterson (Min had no idea how she got that nickname): Masterson was either the best or the second best pistol shot in the battalion, depending on how generous Min was feeling on any given day. As for today . . .
We’ll see about that.
She checked her people. Ulloa and his marksmen were in position. Henderson had his team ready with the stickies. Thompkins was waiting behind Ulloa. Masterson crouched low against the bulkhead beneath her, sidearm drawn. Min drew her own and braced herself. Her plan required an awful lot to go perfectly in less than a second—
“On the mark, people. Ready, steady—now!”
Thompkins started forward. A short three-count later, the hatch opened, its two leaves parting by a foot, and the expected antipersonnel seeker sailed through. Min fired less than a tenth of second after Masterson—the seeker shattered. “Hah!” the corporal exulted over the net. Four stickies slapped against
the hatch leaves. Two missed the hinge mechanisms but the other two got a grip. Thompkins cocked an arm to lob the demolition charge through the opening as the defenders fought to close it. A burst of rifle fire erupted from the gap, one round clipping her bicep. The charge slipped from her hand. Lunging as it caromed off the bulkhead in the null-gravity, she grabbed it as another volley went off. Bullets struck her in the leg, shoulder and abdomen, spinning her violently and filling the passageway with a fine mist of pink. Righting herself with a heroic effort, she activated her suit thrusters and flew down the passageway, the charge held tight to her body.
The passageway lit with a blinding flare of light as the focused-blast explosive detonated, demolishing the hatch, along with the bulkheads for fifteen meters beyond it. Ulloa’s assault section opened fire into the devastation, and then they were all moving, flying towards the wrecked hatch. Bursting through, fireteams cleared the passageways to either side and Henderson sent a batch of antipersonnel charges down the main ladder well.
That’ll keep the bastard’s heads down, she thought as two men raced to a maintenance panel and cut the power leads. The lights went out and the emergency reds came on. “Plasma down in all spaces, ma’am,” one the men—a lance corporal named Tone—reported.
“Very good, Corporal. Fireteams, watch those corners!” She nudged Sergeant Ulloa. “Call up Drake—tell him to come running.” As Ulloa relayed the order, she studied the display on her visor and tried to raise Bellerophon.
“Min!” Kell answered, her face a strange twisted mixture of relief and anguish. “You’ve got CENFOR inbound like Lucifer’s fucking hammer!”
Aw shit—I was just startin’ to feel good about today. “How much time I got?”
“Fifteen—sixteen minutes. Get your wings out fast, sister.”
“Thanks, Kell. I owe you. G’bye, girl.” She killed the link without waiting for her friend’s reaction—Kell would understand—and connected to Anders. “Havin’ fun yet, Troy?”
“Oh hell yeah, ma’am. Just another great day in the Corps!”
“We got the central junction secure; plasma down. Whatcha got?”
“They’ve pulled back to main control—got a bit of crossfire up there.”
“Can you take it now that the plasma’s down?”
“Not until we can cut through these bulkheads and get behind ‘em.” A pause filled with explosions, gunfire, and a section leader’s two-bad-word report. “Hanger deck’s clear though. The kids are holding it and Tallmadge’s got bunch of bad boys pinned back aft. You want I should call up Tallmadge and go all in here? The kids can hold that side.”
Lewis checked her display. As Troy said, the monitor’s crew, except those Tallmadge had pinned down and the turret crews, was organizing their defense forward. She could get to the port-side magazines, but not any of the control spaces without a hard fight and they didn’t have time for a hard fight—not with Adenauer on the way. The monitor’s crew knew that: they’d pulled back because all they had to do was stall things until CENFOR arrived. However, that left only a small detachment in engineering—to her left and down a couple of levels—and they were cut off from the rest of the defenders. And they may not have realized yet how vulnerable their magazines were . . .
“Negative, Troy. We got gatecrashers inbound—”
“Heavy, Ma’am?”
“It’s CENFOR.”
“That would be heavy.”
“Abso-fuckin-lutely. Hold the hanger deck and keep those people pinned down there until you hear Have Joy or Henderson gives you the word. I’m sending Drake to you with his first and third sections at the double. I’m gonna go after engineering. Lewis out.”
“Roger that, Captain. Anders out.”
Ordering Drake off with his two sections, Min motioned over Henderson and Ulloa. “Matt, I’m taking one of your sections and one of Drake’s to hit engineering—we can take out all their power and propulsion there and leave them on batteries. That should give the Old Man the time he needs.”
The two men nodded. Local power would only run the point-defense systems. The missile launchers and huge main turrets needed prime power. No way the Doms got that restored for half a day, at least.
She put a hand on each man’s shoulder. “So keep up damndest the racket you can here as if we’re trying to break through to the weapons control spaces. Matt, plant all the demolition charges we have left as close to the magazines as you can get ‘em—fifteen-minute dead-man fuses. When you hear Have Joy from me, fall back on the hanger with Anders and prepare to withdraw—I’ll follow in five minutes. If I don’t, take our people and go. If you don’t hear Have Joy in ten minutes, start the fuse timers, get our people clear”—she flexed her hands with a grip that could be felt even through combat armor—“and blow those fucking magazines.”
Z-Day +7 (0842)
Recon Flight Viper Echo
Phase Plane Indigo, Gamma Hydras, Hydra Border Zone
Huron and Kris swung their fighters clear of the fray, a pure out-of-plane maneuver their adversaries did not choose to follow. They were both breathing hard but evenly, their birds were scorched a little here and there, but so far their only real worry was their dwindling store of ammunition and Huron’s remaining reaction mass. The Doms appeared to be worried about a lot more than that.
They still didn’t seem to comprehend what had hit them, and had kept hitting them, with such swift, brutal efficiency. So nonplussed were the Doms, they’d formed their remaining fighters—still a large number—into a tight globe. The formation went by several names, including the odd term luffberry (for reasons no one knew), but CEF pilots called it a ‘bait ball’. Despite the dismissive name, a bait ball was not easy to crack. It provided excellent missile defense, as the fields of fire of the fighters’ anti-missile chain guns overlapped in close to an ideal manner, and any attack against the formation was perforce head-on, because trying to get on an enemy’s tail meant exposing one’s own to his fellows following behind. So the key to attacking a bait ball was speed: repeated slashing runs that chipped away until enough fighters were damaged that the precise station keeping the formation demanded could no longer be maintained.
It called for a great deal of nerve and even better reflexes, and although he and Kris had a superabundance of both those qualities, Huron had another idea. At these odds, attacking ‘by the book’ was pointless: as soon as the Doms got their shit together, they’d break out and then it was game over. It was necessary to keep them perplexed about who they were tangling with, and baffled as how to react. That meant reducing things to a perfect free-for-all, and the great weakness of a bait ball was that its stringent requirements made the whole thing brittle. So he didn’t intend to chip away at the formation—he meant to shatter it.
Keying up Kris on the burst link, Huron said, “I’m gonna see if I can pop this thing. Stay up here and anyone breaks, hammer ‘em. Careful with your missiles until we have a proper knife fight going on down there.”
“Gotcha. Wilco.”
Huron watched as Kris edged off right, then nosed his fighter over and looked for the opening he needed. He didn’t need much—just a second or two would suffice. Easing into extreme range, he stalked a fighter that was lagging a trifle and—there! The Dom moved to close the gap that was threatening to open and overshot, crowding the next ahead.
Huron went to E-boost and waited an instant to see if his target would react. He did: braking instinctively to evade the charge and go for missile lock. That only made the gap worse. Huron opened up with his neutron guns. He held the trigger down as the range closed at a appalling rate. The target had misjudged: instead of trying for missile lock, he should’ve stuck to his guns and now he had nowhere to go. His shields flared out and a fraction a second later, Huron’s sustained fire vaporized his belly. The fighter exploded in a blue-white blaze shot through with violet.
Banking into the opening, Huron jammed his bird into a skid even before he was through. The one place no
fighter in a bait ball could engage was inside it, and that’s where Huron was, his neutron guns hammering across a wide arc. Now, he opened up with his plasma cannon too. The sweep of his fire was not concentrated enough to kill but it did weaken shields and, more critically, it severely perturbed his opponents. Several of them broke and as he shot out the other side, narrowly avoiding a collision with a pilot that refused to sacrifice himself for a kill (another gamble paying off), Huron saw Kris pounce. She’d timed it perfectly, almost as if she’d known exactly where the break would come. He saw one fighter disappear as her guns tore him apart at the wing roots, and a second spun off trailing glowing slag from a blown drive node.
A third opponent was curling around to get behind her, but that brought him right into Huron’s missile envelope. The lock chime sounded sweetly. He pickled two and watched one go down to chain-gun fire and other detonate right behind the canopy. The fighter broke apart, the pieces pirouetting crazily for an split second before the ruptured fusion bottle reduced them to ions. His wingman jinked and Huron snap-rolled to bring this target into his gun sight. Weakened shields folded under the onslaught and as Kris darted past, the Dom exploded. She had two more Doms zeroed dead ahead of her, and he watched as she put two missiles into one of them. The second rolled and fled, boosting away for all he was worth. But another flight, better organized than the rest, chose this moment to attack.
“Kris, watch the flock in your six.”
Loralynn Kennakris 3: Asylum Page 30