DREADNOUGHT 2165

by A. D. Bloom

  The last of the Squidies on the top of the hull were shielded from the detonations' radiance, but the shockwave that came up through the hull turned them to spam in their suits. They tumbled and fell, twisting and bending in ways even Squidies aren't supposed to bend – like their suits were full of nothing but liquid.

  When the static faded from comms, the XO shouted: "It's a breach! We're in! All squads... go! Go! Go! Back over the top!"

  Jordo charged over the edge of the hull again, but what he saw 300 meters down the hull, where the Ticks had been, wasn't any hole they'd be boarding through. None of the detonating Ticks had blasted through the Dreadnought's armored hull to the inside. The armor was unbreached, but the way the ringed planet rose off the lip of the hull then told him the alien Dreadnought's engines were out and it was falling into the planet's gravity well. They ran back to the top of the hull as the wounded alien battleship headed into the atmo, skull side down. Lucy shouted. "Everyone to the far side!"

  Jordo ran like he really believed if he just made it across the top of the ship and to the other side he'd be safe. The aliens' battleship was going into the atmo and it didn't matter where they were – they were all going to burn.

  Above, tiny Hardway crossed between them and Altair. She was a half-million Ks out now and there was no way she could reach them with a longboat or a junk. Jordo counted 15 pinkish plasma blooms chasing her – fifteen enemy ships. Hardway had all her engines back and she was moving fast, but when Jordo zoomed in after she'd crossed the face of the star, he saw the forward bays were all on fire. A flash that could only be a detonation against the hull winked on the sub-tower. Fire and gas jetted out a hole big enough to fly through. Hardway was losing this battle.

  "Can they see us you think?" The voice on comms came from a Marine next to Jordo. He had a round and sweaty face. "Can Hardway see us? You think they're looking?"

  "Yeah," Jordo said. "They can see us. They know."

  "Long as they know we got it."

  The Dreadnought hit the outer atmo skull-side first. The survivors stood in the middle of the hull on the other side and rode it in. Plasma licked over the edges of the Dreadnought all around them in 50-meter-high waves, continuous and hypnotic. Where they crashed down and rolled, the hull glowed bright. The waves got bigger the further the behemoth fell and the denser the atmo got. The plasma broke and swirled over a hundred meters in from the edges of the Dreadnought's hull, and the survivors clustered in a shrinking island of safety in the middle of the ship. There was nowhere to go after that and nothing to do but look up into the waves of superheated atmo and ionized gas crashing in from all sides.

  Jordo could barely see far-off Hardway now through a glowing haze, but he swore there were more lights around her than before. And flashes – flashes everywhere around her and across the enemy hulls like Hardway had somehow shot a hundred main guns at the Squidies'.

  He zoomed in and once his helmet filtered out some of the distortion from the veil of fire he spied them through, he saw all the new stars in the sky. Pale blue engines burned in the black behind Hardway – a dozen Staas Company privateers – an attack carrier just like Hardway escorted by fat-hulled freighters turned into armored gunboats. Reinforcements had arrived. In the rear of the battle group was wheel-shaped Tipperary. She'd come back with the reserves.

  The Squidies' fifteen ships found themselves suddenly outnumbered. They turned away from Hardway and the Privateer battlegroup. The line of them came around together and ran. The attack carriers' junks chased them out of orbit, loosing warspite torpedoes after them. There would be no alien task force bursting through at Barnard's Star and pillaging the Sol system today.

  As the Squidies' Dreadnought fell into the ringed planet's grasp, burning up under his feet, the waves of fire crashing in from around the edges of the hull reached closer every second. Soon, they'd wash away the survivors.

  "This is Ram Devlin..." the XO said over the crackle on comms. Jordo actually wanted to hear this speech. He wanted to hear the XO tell them what an honor it had been to command them, but another voice broke in on the same, half-jammed channel, and once it did, Jordo couldn't hear anything on comms but cries of joy.

  "This is Malta of the Hardway Air Group. Looks like we missed some fun. We're coming down hot with five junks. All survivors, prepare for extraction." Jordo looked up high in the waves of plasma. The brightness made his vision blur with tears as he watched the boxy silhouettes of Hardway's junks coming down from above to save them.

  The junks sank down through the crashing waves of plasma and blasted them from all sides with exhaust. The fifty-meter boats landed hard, bouncing Jordo off his feet so he was running in the air in the first seconds he scrambled for them. As the airlock doors closed on the hell outside, it engulfed the junks completely. The hell-storm tried to pry its way in with fiery fingers before the airlock sealed and severed them.

  The flames licked at the porthole and he felt the vibrations in his feet as the hull of the junk expanded around them. It groaned like a tortured beast in the moments before they all fell to the deck from the inertial gees of liftoff.

  They cheered as the junks blasted away from the Dreadnought's hull and escaped with the survivors. They cheered like it was a victory. And it was. But only a few thousand Ks out, when Jordo looked out the porthole, back towards the planet, he saw that cursed ship exit the atmosphere trailing hell behind it. He put his hand over the porthole quick, like he was killing a bug, blocking the sight of it as if obscuring it would stop anyone else from seeing it...seeing the way the human skull painted on its side grinned, mocking them as it broke orbit and escaped.

  Epilogue

  Scuttlebutt said they hid Hardway in a semi-enclosed dock on the far edge of Sagan's yards, guarded by QF-111s so the Squidies couldn't watch the rebuild. Jordo thought they just didn't want to show the press the holes in her hull. They didn't want the cameras to see the metal that had melted and reformed like candle wax where plasma storms had burned through the decks. Hardway would be shooting a lot of coffins off into the sun at the official memorial service.

  There would be no cameras for Hardway, but there would be plenty for her crew and Lucy Elan's Company Marines in a few weeks, when the VIPs would be coming to the service to make speeches and give medals and be seen with the 'heroes of Hardway'.

  "I can't stand those things," Dana said when Jordo asked her what they'd have to do during the event. He'd never been to anything like that and neither had any of his pilots. VIPs didn't come to prisons to honor convicts. In fact, nobody had ever honored any of them before for anything and Jordo had been looking forward to it. Maybe the three people on Earth that still remembered his name would see him up there. "It's hell," Dana said. "You sit up on this platform in a dress uniform and you can't move for hours while politicians and execs blow hot air on the stage in front of you and say things you want to strangle them for."

  "What do you mean, 'you can't move'?"

  "Oh, you can move," she said, "but twitch, sneeze, or scratch your balls and it'll never be forgotten."

  Jordo understood what she didn't like about that, but he was a convict and he already lived with the unfortunate fact that nothing he did would ever be forgotten. At least now, they'd remember something good he'd done.

  The 133rd had even been assigned to show off the new Bitzers. During the arrival ceremony, they'd fly in as a hot-dogging escort for the VIPs' longboats. The cameras would love it. Everyone loved fighter planes and fighter pilots. That's what Paladin said anyway even if it never got him laid.

  It wasn't until a day later, when they flew their 151s into Sagan Yards during a rehearsal that Jordo found out the flyby in their planes was the only part of the ceremony they'd be required to attend.

  Jordo Colt had heard that phrase before. He knew what it meant when you weren't 'required to attend'. It meant nobody wanted you there.

  So Lancer 1-1 took it to the XO, Ram Devlin. He found him off-duty, drinking in Sagan's OC
with Chief Horcheese and Lucy Elan. Something about seeing him relaxed like that pissed Jordo off. He walked up to their table and stood there, waiting while they laughed it up about some joke he didn't want to get.

  "No medals for us, huh, Mr. Devlin?" He said, "The Lancers just aren't as pretty as the other heroes of Hardway, I guess. Not pretty enough for the cameras and the folks back home."

  Devlin's smile left him. Lucy Elan knocked back a shot and said, "What bullshit are you talking about, Lt. Flyboy?"

  "We just did a rehearsal for the part where we fly the Bitzers in as escorts for the arriving VIPs before the memorial service. You know, since we have to land and all after the flyby, on a private channel, I asked the Staas PR coordinator about it. I asked her where we should set down. She told me nowhere. Our job is to fly in with the VIPs' longboats and then disappear. There's no seats for us on the stage. No medal ceremony. I haven't told my pilots yet, Mr. Devlin and I don't want to. I'd rather fix this."

  The XO's eyes stayed on the shots of liquor in front of him. He reached forward and pushed two at Jordo without looking up and it took every measure of restraint Jordo could muster not to smack them off the table with the back of his hand. "No medals for us – no seat on stage behind the VIPs – none of that crap. They're hiding us, aren't they."

  Chief Horcheese sat up. "That's crazy. It must be a screw-up. Why the hell would they do that?"

  "So nobody asks Harry too many questions about them," Lucy said. "Questions like: how come there's only five left? And why use convicts for test pilots? Mostly, Harry probably doesn't want anyone to hear about the other thing. You know exactly what thing I'm talking about, Lt. Flyboy. So do you, Devlin." She took the shots Jordo passed on.

  The XO said, "I didn't know."

  "Well," The muscles clenched in Jordo's jaw. "Who do I talk to about it, Mr. Devlin?"

  "Him," Lucy Elan pointed her thumb at the XO. She had a collection of shot glasses in front of her now. Most of them were empty. She held up the last full one for Jordo, and he took it.

  *****

  The Lancers were in Sagan Yards' shittiest tin shack bar when Jordo told them the bad news. Paladin threw the table into the Staas logo painted on the external bulkhead so hard that he must have triggered some defect or stress fracture in the belt-iron steel because the pressure variance alarms went off.

  The table landed on a crew of redsuits from SCS Venture. It all went downhill from there. It wasn't the grease-monkeys' fault, but once it started, the Lancers pounded on that maintenance crew like there was a chance someone might give them a medal for it.

  *****

  Three weeks later, two days before the memorial ceremony with the VIPs, Ram Devlin brought up the Lancers with Harry Cozen. He found him in his quarters, the same luxury quarters Sagan had given him before, in the separate tower overlooking the yards, set on the far side of the station. He stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling, diamond-pane window with his back to the door, watching the rebuild outside in the yards. Only 3Ks off, across the black, the station's crews were fitting new launch bay modules on the carrier. What could be seen of her flashed up and down with welding. "Is there a problem of some kind with Hardway?"

  "The work is on-schedule. I came about the Lancers," Ram said.

  "What about them?"

  "It has come to my attention that the Lancers will not be seated on stage with the VIPs during the memorial service in two days nor are they to receive the medals and promotions that Asa Bolo, Hardway's AGC, recommended in his reports."

  "And?"

  "The Lancers deserve the same recognition as the rest of the crew."

  Cozen's back was still turned, but his shoulders rose and fell like he'd silently laughed. "Giving people what they deserve isn't always possible, Mr. Devlin. You know that."

  That's right, Ram thought. If everyone got what they deserved, then someone would have killed you by now.

  When it comes to dealing with Harry Cozen, knowledge concealed is more dangerous than knowledge flaunted, but Ram still told Cozen everything he knew. Ram told him he'd heard about the last push at the Battle of the Amazon Crater and Cozen's troops that could run between the bullets and the 'magic minute' compound he gave them that had such tragic side-effects.

  And Ram let Cozen know that it was no mystery to him who had put the blueprints for a highly dangerous, experimental compound derived from 'magic minute' in the Lancers' path. "Only you could have made this happen, Mr. Cozen. Only you could have changed the ship's mainframe permissions to give the Lancers access to both the recipe and Doc Ibora's molecular assembler."

  "Actually, either of us could have done it. We both have the authority required. And since the command-sanctioned use of a compound like the one you described is defined as a war crime under the Hamburg Treaty, it would probably be in both our best interests if nobody knew about the whole affair. Of course, there's no orders on record from either of us because no crime was committed. Nobody ordered them to make it and take it. Fabricating this compound and using it was a choice the Lancers made for themselves."

  "No, Mr. Cozen. You just made it look like that. You created conditions where doing what you wanted them to do was their best path to survival so they took it. You manipulated them like you manipulate all of us. You made the Lancers your test subjects." Cozen didn’t deny it. Ram asked, "Did it pass?"

  "Excuse me?"

  "Your compound. Did it pass your test? Do you think it's ready to be used by all the hundreds of new fighter pilots from the flight school?"

  "No. No, it didn't. And not hundreds, Mr. Devlin, thousands. After this next class of 300 graduates from my flight school, the program will expand to 1200. We're talking about a whole generation of fighter pilots. With accelerated training, AI assistance and inexpensive craft, they'll be as plentiful and cheap as infantrymen." And, therefore, just as expendable, Ram was sure. Cozen said, "We will launch legions of pilots into battle and overwhelm the alien enemy. And we must do whatever it takes to win. Whatever it takes." Then, his demeanor changed. He stepped away from the window and sat down hard on his couch. He ran his hand through his white hair in a gesture of frustration Ram didn't often see.

  "Is something wrong?"

  "Since you think you know what's going on, Mr. Devlin, you might as well know the truth. Staas Company’s Board of Directors has decided to take the F-151 Bitzer program from me..." His voice almost cracked. "And give it to one of my rivals. Bloody ingrates."

  "Mr. Cozen, regarding the Lancers... It would be better for all concerned, particularly yourse-"

  "Mr. Devlin. Is this your experiment in blackmail? If you're not careful, you're going to end up just like me."

  *****

  After the Lancers sat on stage with the VIPs for two straight hours without twitching or flinching or picking of noses, the speeches were over.

  An hour after they began giving out medals, the Secretary General of the UN spoke J. 'Jordo' Colt's name in front of all the cameras and the crowds and most of Humanity. She said, "Lt. J. 'Jordo' Colt." She said other things, too, but that was all he remembered. After she put the Distinguished Flying Cross around his neck on a blue, velvet ribbon, the CFO of Staas Company himself shook Jordo's hand and gave Jordo a small box like the one Shafter had once given him. Jordo knew what was inside. Paladin and Holdout and Dirty and Gusher had already opened theirs. Once Jordo had his new, 1st Lieutenant's bars, the rest of the Lancers, now all 2nd Lieutenants and officers, pinned their new rank on their collars and stuck their chests out and beamed at the cameras.

  Also by A.D. Bloom

  http://www.amazon.com/A.D.-Bloom/e/B0054RE7TE

  The War of Alien Aggression

  (2164-2165)

  Hardway, Kamikaze, Lancer, Taipan, Cozen's War.

  All five books in a single volume - the war with the Squidies from the first engagement to the final detonations.

  640 pages, 192K words

  Hardway

  Intelligent life reaches out to
Humanity using particle beam weapons and masers. The pilots and crew of the carrier Hardway are first to fight in the conflict that quickly escalates from a bloody first contact to a full-scale, interstellar war. Ram Devlin knows he and the rest of Humanity may have been tricked into engaging in a war that didn't have to happen. The verity of the history being written is in doubt, but the survival of his crew and the very future of mankind is at stake.

  Kamikaze

  The privateer attack carrier Hardway invades Procyon to destroy an alien blockade gun meant to keep the human race confined. Hardway and her pilots meet their match in the Squidies' massive gun and the alien aces that protect it until they discover why the aliens are beating them. Hardway's officers must commit to paying for victory in war's only true currency.

  Lancer

  Privateer Admiral Harry Cozen needs pilots for an experimental fighter squadron, so he offers the inmates of Bailey Prison a deal. Colt is serving 5-7 and he knows the deal is too good to be true, but he still takes it. He and the rest of the C-Block nuggets learn to fly the new F-151 Bitzer and prepare to sortie against alien aces on a mission far more dangerous than anyone's telling them.

  Taipan

  The privateer attack carrier Hardway is drafted into a force group commanded by Harry Cozen's bitter rival from Staas Company. She stole his fighter program and his thousand new pilots. Now, she's determined to use them as cannon fodder. Nobody can argue with her battle record, but the officers and crew of Hardway and the Lancers of the 133rd Fighter Test Squadron may be all that can keep her pilots alive in a knife-fight deep behind enemy lines.