“Good. What’s our range to target?”
“Four hundred and six thousand klicks, sir.”
“ETA to reach the target at current speed?”
“Still over six minutes to ELR.”
“How long before we pass them?”
“Four hundred and eight seconds.”
“Good. Cardinal—dead-drop all of our laser-armed ordnance along our current trajectory, but hang on to our missiles with payloads for now.”
McAdams eyes flew wide. “I thought you decided to risk a court-martial.”
“I timed that comment so that Captain Vrokovich would overhear it, priming him to believe that we’re actually retreating. Between that, his assumption of superiority, and his assumption that we were bluffing all along, he won’t suspect a double-cross. They’re going to break off and return to their original trajectory, but four hundred seconds is not enough time for either of us to cancel our current momentum, so we’ll still fly by within spitting distance of each other. Perfect for a sneak attack.”
“Remind me never to cross you, sir,” McAdams said.
Alexander smiled grimly. “When facing a stronger opponent, sneakery is the only way to win, Commander.”
“Sneakery… I’ll be sure to add that to my lexicon. What makes you think they won’t spot our missiles before they reach firing range?”
“Because Captain Vroko isn’t looking for them.”
“I hope you’re right, sir.”
“I am, but just in case—Frost, keep our scanners checking for incoming enemy ordnance. We don’t want to be blinded by the same assumptions. If they so much as flushed a toilet in our direction, I want to know about it.”
“I’ll be sure to let you know if I detect any space shit flying our way, sir,” Frost replied.
“We’re about to start an interplanetary war and you’re cracking jokes,” McAdams admonished.
“Black humor isn’t for everyone, Commander, but it does serve to emphasize the absurdity and irony of our situation. Who ends a terrible war and calls it The Last War only to have the same person who ended that war start another even more terrible war thirty years later?”
“All of our laser-armed missiles are away, Admiral,” Cardinal announced.
“Good. Set the clock with the time for the first wave to reach ELR with the enemy ship. Set a second clock with the time for us to reach ELR.”
“Aye, sir,” Cardinal replied.
“Bishop, give me an estimate of how long we’ll spend in laser range of the Crimson Warrior while we pass by each other.”
“Calculating…”
Two glowing green timers appeared at the top of the main holo display, one with the caption—Time to ELR, 1st Wave Ord. Counting down from five minutes and forty-three seconds. The other Time to ELR, ADMT. - C.W. counting down from five minutes and fifty-one seconds. The time discrepancy between the two clocks was exactly eight seconds. That was how long the Adamantine’s laser-armed missiles would have to make an uncontested first strike against the Crimson Warrior. After that, the Adamantine herself would pass into laser range of the enemy dreadnought and they would have to weather the assault for… “Bishop?”
“Done, sir. We’ll spend about thirteen seconds inside ELR with the Crimson Warrior. Add another four seconds for extended ELR for a total of seventeen seconds.”
Alexander winced as he imagined trading blows with the dreadnought for that long.
“They could do a lot of damage to us in that time,” McAdams said. “We might both end up derelict.”
“We’d better make sure that doesn’t happen. We have eight seconds to weaken them with our missiles before they can fire back on us.”
“Hopefully that’s enough time, sir.”
“It will be.”
Chapter 13
“Admiral, our missiles are ten seconds from ELR,” Cardinal announced.
Alexander nodded, keeping his eyes locked on the countdown at the top of the main holo display. “I see it. Bishop, prepare to come about just before that count hits zero, and make sure you keep our engines facing away from the enemy at all times.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Cardinal, use our missiles to target the Crimson Warrior’s engines, and then her fighter launch tubes. We need to cripple them as much as possible with our first volley.”
“Yes, sir.”
The countdown reached zero, and Alexander watched via the enhanced view on the main holo display as their warheads split into a thousand glittering shards. Each of them lit its thrusters and went evasive. Hot-white contrails appeared behind each missile, illuminating space with bright spirals and zig-zags as the missiles adopted randomly varying approach vectors. A split second later, the missiles opened fire and space came alive with a dazzling flurry of red and blue lasers, all of them vectoring in on the Crimson Warrior’s engines. Abruptly an explosion tore through the aft end of the ship and a giant chunk of it went drifting away. The ghostly green glow from the Crimson’s Warrior’s engines disappeared, and the remainder of the massive ship went on drifting through space, now carried only by its momentum.
“Direct hit!” Cardinal crowed. “Target is derelict!”
“Target enemy laser batteries with our hypervelocity cannons, and use our missiles to take out those fighter launch tubes!”
“Yes, sir.”
“Stone, launch our fighters! See if they can squeeze in a few shots before we fly out of range.”
“Aye.”
Hypervelocity rounds thundered out into the void: thud, thud, thud… and glowing golden lines of tracer fire appeared, tracking ahead of the enemy ship.
Alexander watched the Solarian ship fire back with simulated streaks of green extended-range (ER) and yellow high-intensity (HI) lasers. The two ships were still out of range with each other, so all of those shots went straight for the Adamantine’s missiles. Fiery explosions pock-marked the void, and then the remaining missiles fired for a second time. This time explosions rippled all along the enemy’s hull, each explosion marking one of the dreadnought’s fighter launch tubes.
“Enemy is launching missiles!” Frost announced.
“Intercept that ordnance!”
Another flash of green and yellow lasers took out the remainder of the Adamantine’s missiles before they could fire for a third time. Then the Adamantine’s own extended-range lasers screeched to life, adding sapphire blue to the mix of wavelengths flashing through the vacuum. It was easy to forget that those colors were all simulated. Lasers were invisible in space. Then again, Alexander thought, with him and his crew commanding the ship from within a mindscape, technically everything was being simulated.
All but two of the enemy missiles evaporated under the Adamantine’s barrage, disappearing before they had a chance to split into ten times as many independently-guided fragments. The last two were taken out by hypervelocity cannons.
“Extended ELR reached!” McAdams announced.
Alexander winced away from the main holo display as green streaks of enemy ER lasers vectored in on them from the Crimson Warrior. A loud sizzling reached Alexander’s ears with those impacts, as if he could actually hear the Adamantine’s armor boiling away. Then the deck shuddered with the distant roar of an explosion.
“Hull breach on deck 119!” Rodriguez said.
“Seal it off, and send in the repair bots!” McAdams ordered.
The Adamantine returned fire with a deafening screech as all forty of its laser batteries fired at once. Each shot hit home, two or three to a target, disabling the remainder of the enemy’s fighter launch tubes on that side. Then the Adamantine’s first wave of fighters and drones joined the action, adding their own lasers to the mix. Streams of hypervelocity rounds slammed into the Crimson Warrior’s hull, taking out its remaining laser batteries on that side. Then they raced past the dreadnought and came into range of the batteries on the other side.
Bright green and yellow beams angled in on them from several dozen different wea
pon emplacements. The Adamantine’s fighters fired back on those emplacements, silencing some of the batteries.
Bishop kept the Adamantine’s nose pointed at the enemy as they flew by one another in order to keep their engines safe, but they were still taking heavy damage. The air sizzled and screeched with the simulated noise of enemy lasers impacting and the Adamantine’s own batteries firing back. Alexander squeezed the armrests of his acceleration couch until his knuckles turned white. He winced every time the deck shuddered with a new hull breach. The main holo display vanished and then returned from a slightly different angle as the holocameras on the bow took a hit.
“Breaches on decks 99 through 130!” Rodriguez reported.
McAdams brought up a damage report beside the tactical map already hovering above her control station, and Alexander glanced at it. The Adamantine’s bow had been flayed open to a depth of over thirty decks.
Their fighters went on firing, targeting enemy weapon emplacements and enemy fighter launch tubes, but this time with lasers only. The two ships were now speeding apart with a combined velocity of over 970 kilometers per second. Hypervelocity cannons had a muzzle velocity of just over 100 klicks per second, and missiles would run out of fuel before they could catch up. In just a few seconds the ships would pass out of laser range with each other, and then the engagement would be over.
The Crimson Warrior fired back with another flurry of lasers, but this time there were barely half a dozen, and all of them were the green, extended-range variety.
“We’ve passed out of laser range,” McAdams announced.
Alexander let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. “The longest seventeen seconds of my life.”
McAdams nodded. “Aye, sir—Rodriguez, damage report.”
“We lost our top thirty three decks to space. Our bow is practically missing. With it we lost our primary comm and sensor relays, but we’ll get by on the auxiliaries for now. Aside from that, we lost a number of weapon emplacements and nearly all of the enlisted crew quarters and living space. We’ll live to fight another day, Commander, but the damage is going to take some time to repair.”
Alexander jerked his chin to indicate the damage report hovering in front of McAdams. “They missed the nukes in our forward launch tubes by a hair.”
“That’s probably what they were aiming for,” Rodriguez replied. “Otherwise why wouldn’t they try to take out our laser batteries the way we were doing with theirs?”
“They were playing the long odds while we played the sure ones. One lucky hit and we’d all be floating through vacuum in a cloud of shrapnel right now. Frost—what kind of damage did we deal to the enemy ship?”
“Their fighter launch tubes are all down except for four, and by last count they had just ten laser batteries out of sixty still firing. That might change by the time we catch up to them, though. Also, they managed to launch a total of sixteen drones and twelve fighters.”
Alexander nodded. The enemy dreadnought carried a complement of 144 drones and 96 fighters, so the majority of her fighter screen had been trapped in the launch tubes.
“Stone, how did our fighter screen fare?”
“Sitting pretty, Admiral. We have fifty drones and sixty fighters deployed.”
Alexander nodded. His plan had worked. They now outnumbered and outgunned the enemy ship. “Bishop, fire up the mains at five Gs. It’s time to give chase.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Stone, have our fighters head out at six Gs and the drones at ten. Let’s see if we can take out the rest of the Crimson Warrior’s defenses without risking any of our lives.”
“Yes, sir.”
Alexander took a deep breath and regarded the distant, glinting speck of the enemy ship.
“It would seem Fleet Command’s faith in you was not misplaced, sir,” McAdams said.
Alexander was about to reply to that when Hayes announced, “Admiral, the Crimson Warrior has issued a surrender, and they have agreed to submit their ship for boarding.”
Alexander’s brow lifted in surprise. “So, Captain Vroko finally came to his senses.”
“How do we know it isn’t a trick?” McAdams asked.
Alexander turned to her. “There’s only one way to find out, Commander.”
McAdams’ blue eyes narrowed. “And that is?”
“We board them.”
Chapter 14
“Admiral, we are in position to board the Crimson Warrior,” Frost reported from sensors.
Alexander nodded. “Range to target?”
“11,000 klicks, just outside extended ELR, sir.”
“Good. Bishop, hold us steady there. Make sure we don’t get any closer than that.”
“Aye, sir.”
“McAdams—you have the conn.”
She turned to him, her brow pinched with suspicion. “Don’t tell me you’re going to join the boarding party.”
“I am,” he said.
“Sir, you cannot afford to risk your life like that.”
Alexander regarded her with amusement. “A good leader leads from the front line not behind the lines.”
“I’m sure Lord Cardigan of the Light Brigade said the same thing,” McAdams replied.
“The who of the what? Never mind. Stone—”
“Sir?”
“Transfer command of one of our VSM drones to my station, and get the rest of our marines hooked up while you’re at it. Launch the shuttles as soon as everyone’s ready.”
“Aye, sir,” Stone replied.
“You could have told me you were planning to board them with drones,” McAdams dead-panned.
Alexander shot her a grin. “You didn’t ask, so I didn’t tell.”
“Ha ha.”
“Going live in five, Admiral,” Stone reported.
Alexander nodded, his gaze still on McAdams. “Keep an eye on things up here, Commander.”
“Yes, sir,” McAdams said, nodding once.
That was the last thing Alexander saw before being directly connected to the sensor feeds from one of the Adamantine’s VSM (Virtual Space Marine) drones. A glowing blue HUD crowded the edges of his field of view giving him access to a kind of ESP—radar, infrared, 360-degree sight, sonic sensors, and a host of other super-human powers that only drones could have.
Alexander looked left, then right, and counted eleven identical drones lining the sides of the shuttle where he stood. Three fire teams of four marines counting himself. A unit number and call sign floated above each of their matte black heads in bright green text: SHDW-1 MSgt ‘Ram’, SHDW-2 Cpl ‘Balls’, SHDW-3 LCpl ‘Mouth’, and so on. Shadow squad was a part of the 2nd Batallion, 4th Marines, otherwise known as The Magnificent Bastards. It was a battalion with a long, proud history, dating back all the way to World War I. Their motto: Second to None.
Alexander smiled at that. He looked down at his hands and flexed all ten of his articulated fingers, open and shut, open and shut. He could feel those hands as if they were his own, but they didn’t look like his. They were the same matte black as the rest of his hardened alloy body. Early VSM drones had taken various forms, but it turned out that humans were best-suited to remote-controlling bots with two arms and two legs.
McAdams’ voice echoed inside Alexander’s head: “Launching shuttles, sir.”
“ETA?” Alexander asked.
“Just under sixteen minutes.”
“Roger that.”
A jolt went through the shuttle, then Alexander felt his drone being pressed sideways against the docking clamps as the shuttle rocketed out of its launch tube and into space. The effect of the G-force wasn’t as uncomfortable as it would have been for his human body, but rather it helped to keep him oriented—the front of the shuttle was to his left, the engines to the rear.
“Weapons and systems check!” Shadow One called out.
A matching stream of text appeared at the bottom of Alexander’s HUD in case he missed the verbal command. He ran through a check of his VSM.
All systems green. Integrated weapons—.50 caliber anti-personnel cannons—check, mini rocket launchers—check, proximity mines and plasma grenades—check, laser cannons and point defenses—check, tranquilizer darts and active denial systems—check, disc drones—check.
“All systems nominal,” Alexander reported amidst a stream of similar acknowledgments from the rest of Shadow Squad.
The lights in the back of the shuttle dimmed to a muted red glow and Alexander settled his metallic head back against the side of the shuttle. He had no heart to beat, and no lungs to breathe, nothing to disturb the silence—there was just the steady roar of the shuttle’s thrusters shuddering through the bulkheads, and the clicking of robotic fidgeting. Alexander used the silence to collect his thoughts—
Clank-clank-CLANK, Clank-clank-CLANK, Clank-clank-CLANK.
So much for silence. Alexander turned toward the sound and found himself staring at the marine standing immediately to his left. He narrowed his eyes—except that he didn’t have eyes to narrow. The identifying text above the other man’s VSM read, SHDW-5 Cpl “Chesty.”
“Chesty, stop that.”
A featureless black head turned his way. Two small holo cameras glinted where a human’s eyes would be as lenses moved to focus on him. “You say something, Admiral?”
Clank-clank-CLANK, Clank-clank-CLANK…
“That clanking sound. Stop.”
“What clanking sound, sir?”
The sound amplified. Instead of one set of metallic feet striking the deck it sounded like a stampede. Clank-clank-CLANK!
“That one,” Alexander said.
Someone started up a marching cadence to fit the beat and the others joined in.
“We-are, we-are, the mag-ni-ficent BASTARDS!”
Alexander smiled inwardly. After exactly three repetitions Chesty added in a thunderous voice, following the same rhythm: “SE-COND-TO-NONE!”
“All right, enough screwing around, boys!” Ram said. “Welcome to Shadow Squad, Admiral.”
“Thank you, Sergeant.”
Mindscape: Book 2 of the New Frontiers Series Page 11