Admiral's Gambit (A Spineward Sectors Novel:)

by Luke Sky Wachter

  Then it was our turn. Under my feet, I could feel the deck shake and the ship heave, but all I could focus on was the air spilling out of the hull of the Imperial ship.

  The heavy lasers might be old, outdated and clearly less powerful than the newer turbo-lasers and turbo-batteries, but there were a lot more of them, and what they lacked in range and power, they made up for in sheer, suffocating volume.

  I could hear the Tactical Officer instructing the heavy laser gunners to focus on taking out the enemy weapon systems and turret placements, because they weren’t strong enough to penetrate the hull without a concentrated barrage on a relatively small area.

  “We don’t have the training and proficiency for that kind of operation yet. We’ll do a lot better stripping her of her ability to do us further damage,” the man said, lecturing his trainees, even in the heart of battle.

  There was an explosion that felt like something massive had snapped toward the front of our ship.

  “What was that,” yelped Tremblay.

  “Forward shields are down,” said the shield operator.

  “They just completely destroyed our forward shield generator,” reported Damage Control. The crewman listened to something in his ear, “Report is: there’s nothing left but the mount. We’re going to need a brand new assembly when this is all over.”

  “We’ll worry about that after we survive the battle,” rebuked the First Officer.

  “Helmsman, rotate the ship so our least damaged side is facing them and take us in. Right down their throats,” I ordered, stealing a line from one of the more bombastic naval holo-vids.

  The damaged Corvette had recovered enough to limp away from the battle, but the other one was still harrying the Strike Cruiser from its rear, swooping in and out. There was less defensive weaponry there, and the Corvette couldn't afford to gamble anywhere else.

  Despite their best efforts, the Imperials kept receiving hits landing on and around their engines from that pesky little Corvette.

  The Corvette seemed able to nimbly dodge or absorb the relatively low powered defensive fire on the rear facing. There was a lot of it, but it wasn’t very powerful compared to the Cruiser’s main weaponry, and the Corvette was a relatively small target.

  Shrugging off blow after blow, the Dreadnaught class Battleship lived up to its namesake, and pounded its way right next to the Strike Cruiser.

  The Strike Cruiser started to rotate, but it was moving much slower than before. It seemed the Corvette was having some kind of effect back there after all. Clearly, not all those shots had missed or been absorbed by armor.

  “We’ve just about knocked out all her weapons on that side, while they’ve only killed about a third of ours,” the Tactical Officer reported with enthusiasm.

  Then the Strike Cruiser was rocked by a series of small explosions and lost power once again. It was only for a few seconds, but the Imperial ship came back online with even less power than before.

  Her gunnery seemed less coordinated as well.

  That’s when I knew it was time. The Imperial was slower and less coordinated than ever before. The hits she’d taken were causing her more distress than the equivalent damage to the Clover. They’d already shown that if we gave them time, Imperial damage control teams could restore most of the lost function.

  I wasn’t going to give them that time.

  I turned to Lieutenant Tremblay. “Instruct the Lancers to suit up, if they aren’t already, and to get themselves out on the starboard hull and be ready to jump,” I said.

  Then I turned to the Helmsman. “I don’t care how you do it, just get us in close to that damaged side of theirs, where our gunnery team has nearly knocked out their weaponry,” I ordered.

  “There’s no way we can match ship velocity and spins in time to board. They'll be able to move away with plenty of time to spare. Any bucking cables or grappling hooks will be useless,” protested the Helmsman while doing as he’d been ordered.

  “Didn’t you hear,” I said with a vicious grin, “we’re not going to board her. The Lancers are.” I knew I gave the helmsman a rictus of a smile, but I couldn’t help it. I was sending a bunch of untrained and overeager (but in the case of the natives, bloodthirsty as well) young men to take down an Imperial Strike Cruiser.

  For a moment, I was struck with the knowledge that it was too much to ask of them. That was when I knew what I had to do.

  “Tremblay, you have Con,” I declared, jumping out of the Admiral’s Throne and then pointed at the Tactical Officer, “he’s your new second in command until I come back,” I ordered.

  “Where are you going,” exclaimed the First Officer, completely blindsided.

  “Just let the Helmsman do his duty and pull away from that ship as soon as we’re across. There’s no need to wreck the ship once the Lancers are onboard,” I said, breaking into a jog toward the lift.

  Activating my wrist com, I contacted Gants and instructed him to bring an extra suit to the nearest starboard airlock.

  Chapter 8: Boarding Action

  After meeting up with Gants (who was all enthusiasm, as usual), I slammed my way into the suit. I did manage to hurt my recently dismembered hand when I jostled it awkwardly in my rush, but before I knew it, I was cycling through the airlock and out onto the hull.

  I was just as untrained as any of them, when it came to jumping from ship to ship. Thankfully, someone other than myself had been thinking of things, because I noticed that each small squad of men had been issued a portable thruster pack. It looked like the plan was for one man to hold the thruster while the other men dangled behind him, holding onto a safety line.

  I hunched down and my visor automatically darkened as turbo-bolts lashed the hull of the Lucky Clover. Quickly, the other side of the Strike Cruiser was visible. There were only a few active turrets working, the rest were nothing more than blackened craters on their hull.

  It was time, and in the case of his little Armory squad, Gants activated the portable thruster pack and they were off.

  The Prometheans at least had a good idea of what to do. Not only were they from a high-tech civilization (at least when compared to the natives of Tracto), but they’d recently spent some time floating in space waiting for a rescue from the pirates. So they were motivated, and at least had some theoretical and practical knowledge to go with their lack of experience.

  Unfortunately, not everyone aimed well and just over half my Lancers missed the Imperial Cruiser entirely, at least on the first pass.

  Imperial point defense batteries flared to life as I watched, and my men started to light up like Christmas candles as they were shot down one by one.

  The rest were motivated to get down on the hull anyway they could. Some made it, others weren’t so lucky. I knew the chances were small of being struck by one of those point defense systems, but the sheer, overwhelming terror was almost too much to bear.

  Then, before I knew it, I was down on their hull and it was time to force our way into the Strike Cruiser.

  The Armory crew, having been involved with one previous boarding action, remembered to bring a self-sealing boarding tube along with them.

  I would have made a comment about at least remembering vital equipment the second time around, but looking at the various Lancer squads landing around us, I realized they were probably the only people in my original twelve hundred man boarding party to bring one along.

  That meant our opening had to be successful. There was no choice, because there were no other boarding tubes. Anyone who survived the withering fire when they overshot and landed on the other side of the hull were just going to have to force an airlock or something.

  No pressure, I reminded myself.

  For a moment I just stopped and stared at my hands. Here I was, not three weeks ago a loyal subject of the Confederated Empire and useless to just about everyone, including myself. Now I was boarding an Imperial Warship with the intent of seizing her through bloody force, and all I could think about
was to wonder and worry about how many Marine Jacks they had onboard.

  Then Oleander jostled me so bad I almost lost contact with the hull and had to make a desperate grab at the security line I’d dropped to keep from floating out into space. I glared at the man, who had the grace to look sheepish and mouth a sorry. I had nearly been reduced to a helpless target for the remaining Imperial point defense.

  But I smiled and shrugged at him, then opened a channel to Gants and told him Oleander was going to be the first one into the boarding tube and dropped inside the hull to greet the Imperials.

  Gants gave me a worried look but did as I asked.

  A boarding tube is a collapsible piece of tubing a little over a meter wide, consisting of a cutting end with drills, torches and other methods of cutting quickly through hull-plating, and a telescopic tube which could extend up to seven meters. Inside the collapsible section were two pieces of high-tech, incomprehensible (but fully functional) membranous material which could maintain an air seal, once the interior of the target vessel had been breached. Essentially, all one had to do was place the cutting end of the tube against the hull of the ship, and let the drills cut their way through the metal until it found pressure, at which point the seals would activate and Marines (or, in our case, Lancers) could jump into the tube and come out in whatever compartment had been breached.

  Oleander was through first, as was ordered, followed by several other men and then it was my turn to drop through that tube and into what would prove to be the worst fight of my life yet.

  At first it was easy going, a few unarmed Imperial crewmen who ran away. Then some men with blaster sidearms. I knew that unless they got in a series of lucky shots, there was nothing they could do against a man in power armor, but I ducked behind a door when I moved to return fire anyway. The last thing I needed was a lucky shot that put me and this clunky old suit out of the action.

  I wish my old upgraded power suit had been available, but the helmet and suit attachments at the neck still needed work, and Spalding had been too busy getting a couple thousand of these battle-suits up and running to focus on it.

  The corridor behind me swelled with armored figures. There must have been almost a hundred of us gathered around that insertion point, and I was starting to feel confident that we could do this.

  That’s when the Jacks came out of the wall and showed us what a real Marine in first-rate power armor could do. And when I say come out of the wall, that’s literally what happened.

  The first group burned a hole and took us in the side while the second had stood motionless with their camouflage. We obviously hadn’t even noticed and walked right past them. Gants, Murphy bless him, was the first to recognize the ambush for what it was.

  "They're coming through the walls," he screamed, and dove to the far side of the corridor.

  I later learned our suits had a feature to help us detect such stealthy intruders in our midst, but we didn’t know about it at the time and even if we had, we were dressed in grandpa’s old provincial version. The Jacks were in top of the line, state of the art Imperial fighting equipment. I seriously doubt we would have picked up anything recognizable even if we had known of that particular function. That's my position anyway, and I'm sticking to it.

  Crouching down, first with fear and then with a reasoned desire to survive, I unslung my plasma rifle and looked for the opportunity to return fire. Snapping off a shot, I watched in dismay as a nearly invisible Imperial suit staggered and then shrugged it off.

  "Focus your fire, men," I yelled over the suit's communication system. I really didn't know much about a coordinated boarding action, but keeping everyone focused and together seemed the most important part of any successful plan.

  Looking at the Jacks, the difference between our forces was obvious. Where we had helmets with neck plates that stuck out like you would see on an old-fashioned suit of plate mail from a time when horseback jousting was the premier combat sport, they had a seamless, curved section of reinforced armor running from the edge of their shoulders to the top of their head. Far from being a weak spot, their head area was so heavily reinforced they could use the entire top section of their armor, including their heads, as battering rams.

  The amount of firepower they were putting out was devastating and as I saw Lancers staggering and going down, I screamed into my mike and stood up. A lot of people behind me were being burned down or actively seeking cover, and in the confusion I couldn’t always tell which.

  This realization filled me with rage and I pulled on the trigger, unleashing a stream of plasma bolts through the gaps in my men.

  Looking into the main body of our attackers, I caught a good look at one of the exposed Imperials. It appeared where we had to carry blaster or plasma rifles, they had blasters tubes built into one arm and plasma tubes in the other. All they had to do was point and subtly push their wrist down to be rewarded with a kill.

  While we had a motley assortment of carbon nano-steel boarding axes and vibro-blades, they carried force-blades and crystal axes made out of pure mono-Locsium.

  Hits they would shrug off could put our men down, and sometimes we didn’t get up again.

  I think if there had been more of them, they would have overwhelmed us with that first ambush. As it was, fewer than twenty Imperial Jacks killed over half of us, putting down a good fifty of my men, without losing single one of their own before withdrawing.

  I missed the worst of the ambush by virtue of leading from the front. The Jacks hit the middle of our column while our scouts walked by, all fat and happy. I sat there cursing, swearing and taking the occasional pot shot as the Imperials did the damage they intended and then withdrew.

  My battle suit was the same style of antiquated clunker as the rest of my men, so they had no idea there was anything different about me, which is probably why they didn’t actively try to take me out in the initial furor. I later learned the reason we had so many old-style battle suits for my Lancers was because Spalding had snuck them off several other ships that were headed for the breakers. As it was, I was both grateful we had the suits and furious at how poorly they stacked up to the Imperial’s gear.

  A few of our more bloodthirsty natives responded to the attack by raising their vibro-weapons and charging after the Jacks. We found their bodies later. As far as we could tell, of the six men who charged off after the Jacks, only one managed to get his quarry before also dying.

  It was a sad state of affairs when an undisciplined barbaric charge netted us our best win/loss ratio.

  After that, I think my Tracto-an’s started to realize what these suits were capable of. Before, they’d just been treating them like superior versions of their own native armors. Seeing the Jacks in action, bouncing off walls and killing men left and right with bolts from their arms and blades and axes in their hands did not have the same intimidating effect on the Tracto-an’s it had on the rest of us. It actually seemed to inspire them.

  My rambunctious Armory crew and the few Promethean’s amongst us huddled close together and covered our firing lines as we crept through the ship.

  In comparison, the men who called me Warlord tried to do a little wall bouncing of their own and eagerly moved ahead to find combat with the enemy. They had no mercy for any of the unarmed ship’s crew they found. If the person wouldn’t surrender or, after surrendering tried to resist or escape, my Tracto-ans were more than happy to cut his or her head off.

  In return, the Jacks savaged my forces.

  There were a few more ambushes, which finally taught my warrior natives some caution. It seemed there was no honor in tripping an improvised mine and blowing yourself up, and thankfully the savage warriors caught on to that fact quickly enough.

  But leaping into battle to get carved up two to one didn’t faze them in the least, and they were more than happy to replace any lost weapons with captured enemy gear. They even went so far as to hand off vibro-blades in exchange for mono-Locsium boarding axes and force-blades.
They couldn’t figure out how to get the force blades to work (probably because they were genetically coded to one wielder), but they were such fearsome weapons that the natives prized them highly anyway, and made do with the mono-Locsium axes instead.

  I was holding tightly to the Minos Blade, having lost my plasma rifle in one of the engagements. I realize another man might have changed the name of a blade that had been christened just in time to lose a battle for its new owner. But me, I considered the Minos Blade lucky. I had never lost a battle with it. Although, to tell the truth, I had come close twice. So far, any battle in which both the sword and I were involved in was a winner for at least one of us.

  I think the Imperials discounted it as a broken vibro-blade that didn’t vibrate. However, the Minos Blade and I soon taught them differently. Slashing and rending for all I was worth, whenever a Jack came close enough, I managed to take a few of them apart before their certainly smug expressions, hidden by their helmets, changed to horror before they were snuffed out.

  I think it was at this point that they penetrated our internal communications and sorted through enough confusion to realize I was some sort of leader. A team of five burned through the walls on either side of us and went for an ambush. Fortunately, we’d been properly paranoid and with all the natives running around searching for enemies, they couldn’t slip more than a small five man team deep within our lines to get at me.

  As soon as we saw the red color to the walls that preceded an imminent explosion, I used my power armor-enhanced arms to take the Minos Blade and slam it through the duralloy wall beside me. I felt resistance and something tug on the blade, and then they were through the walls.

  Following my lead, a couple of the Armory boys with vibro-blades tried to deal with the intruders hand to hand, while the rest leveled plasma rifles and cut loose.

  Unlike the vibro-blades that were getting cut to pieces, my ‘dark sword of superstitious power’ (otherwise known as the Minos Sword), was standing up just fine to the Jack’s mono-Locsium boarding axes and force blades.