“Oh…blast,” Oleander leaned toward the shattered window so he could see what they had magnetized to. “Not good,” he muttered—the understatement of the year—as he reached down to grab a survival kit from underneath his console.
“You’re telling me,” the CPO stared alongside him at the ‘metal’ they had magnetized to—it was one of the Imperial turbo-laser mounts!
Oleander started for the hatch set in the side of the cockpit.
“Abandon ship! Get out of here, you blighters,” roared the CPO storming back into the cargo hold, “I don’t care if you have broken bones or compromised suits—get out of this hold before we’re all blown to smithereens or crushed when they retract the gun and close the blast windows!”
Not waiting to see the response, Oleander forced open the hatch, magnetized his boots, and stepped out of the shuttle and moved away from it as fast as he could manage.
Chapter Seventy-six: The Tide Turns
“We’ve got multiple landers—and several shuttles—breaking through, Admiral Montagne!” cried an operator down in the sensor pit and the bridge broke out into cheers.
“Scratch one fighter!” crowed another operator.
“Use the plasma cannons to cover as many of those landers and shuttles as you can, Gunnery,” Hart shouted into his microphone, “we have to get as many through as we can!”
The ship shuddered.
“We just took heavy damage to our port secondary engine,” reported Damage Control watch stander Adrienne Blythe.
“The ship can compensate for it but we can’t afford to keep losing engines, Admiral,” reported Hammer.
“Enemy fighters are still going after the shuttles!” shouted the Assistant Tactical Officer.
There was a massive explosion off the port side of us. “Scratch one Cruiser!” an operator gleefully reported.
“We’ve still got four more of the beasts,” reported a tech at tactical.
“The Armor Prince is requesting permission to break off and engage the Cruisers at point blank range, Sir!” reported Lieutenant Steiner.
“Enemy Cruisers are changing formation,” cried the XO right before they slammed another broadside into our port side in response to the loss of their brethren.
“Admiral,” shouted Captain Hammer, “the landers are getting in—we have to move before we’re destroyed.” “Roll the ship and move us behind the Metal Titan; tell Rampage to move up to cover us,” I made a snap decision and the whipped my head over to the com-section, “tell Commodore Druid he has the green light to engage those Cruisers.”
“Yes, Sir!” said the Lieutenant.
“Rotate!” shouted Hammer. “And pull us back helmsman.”
“Cover those landers,” shouted Hart as another storm of point defense fire from the Command Carrier knocked out more than half of the wave of small craft nearest the Imperial ship.
Chapter Seventy-seven: Chaos on the Gun Deck
A man ran screaming from his post, flapping his arms as he was covered in boiling hot hydraulic fluid which continued to spray from his damaged gun-mount. Slipping and sliding, he fell to the floor flopping and writhing like some kind of demonic snow-angel-maker before a seizure wracked his body and he stopped moving entirely.
“The blast doors haven’t closed. She’s still repairable!” Lesner shouted, waving his hand forward and raising a large sheet metal shield over his head.
Behind him, a small army of grease monkey in heavy, reinforced work suits holding wrenches, mops and shields of their own charged behind him.
“Shut off that valve!” he shouted holding his shield over his head to protect himself from the ‘rain’ while pointing with a heavily-gauntleted hand.
A team of four immediately set to work, with one man bending down with a wrench to shut off the valve while the other three raised their shields up over their heads and linked them to protect the one working the wrench.
“Grease monkey!” he yelled.
“Yes, Chief?” a crewman asked, hurrying up as the flow of fluid slowly started to peter off—a sign that the monkey with the wrench was starting to close off the valve.
“Clean off the gunner’s seat!” he ordered.
“Chief!” the grease monkey with the mop nodded his head up and down like a bobble doll and then, heedless of the danger, jumped forward—only to take a face full of burning hydraulic fluid as the spray changed its arc with the closing of the valve. Even with his goggles and face mask, the boy screamed and fell into the puddle of fluid on the floor, screeching and flailing.
Grabbing him by the collar, Lesner hauled him out of the puddle and sent him sliding away from the damaged gun mount.
“Medic!” he shouted, grabbing another monkey with a mop and pointing him toward the gunner’s chair.
“Yes, Chief!” shouted the monkey eagerly, hopping right back into the very same situation that had just sent his buddy to the infirmary for third degree burns to his face.
Seeing the hydraulic fluid under control, he waved over a repair team and hurried toward the next brush fire: sparks were flying off a heavy laser mount and the crew was ducking for cover.
“You idiots! You have to pull the breaker switch first,” he cried as he ran toward them. Pushing the assistant gunner aside when the other man tried to stop him, he threw himself at the gun. Dodging an energy discharge—or possibly just reacting to it after it had flared into existence beside him—he grabbed the handle of the main breaker and pulled it down. “Get a repair team over here,” he screamed at the remains of the gun team.
“Chief,” exclaimed the Assistant Gunner, his face ashen, “the surge fried our gunner!”
Lesner looked the other—shaking—man in the eye. He looked like a new transfer. “Time to step up,” he slapped the other man on the shoulder and then, when he hesitated, Lesner physically shoved him toward the still-smoking corpse of his former team leader. “You’ll probably have to pull a new console out of the maintenance locker,” he said, giving the man a kick in the ass to hurry him along.
Seeing another problem further down the deck, he set off running.
Then a massive explosion blew out the side of the hull ten feet ahead and sent him flying into the air. An instant later, the vacuum started to pull him back toward the breach and the blast barrier came down with a clang.
Lesner breathed a sigh of relief. If those doors had come down a moment later, he would have been sucked out into the hull. He felt a pinching sensation in his legs but ignored it.
Levering himself up by his elbows, he saw that the blast doors were too close for comfort. His arms felt shaky and his elbow slipped.
“Chief Lesner!” screamed a man running up to him.
“Help me up,” he coughed, grabbing the other man’s arm and trying to right himself.
“Stay down, Chief. Just stay down,” cried the other man, pushing him back down his eyes increasingly wild as he turned. “Medic! I need a stretcher over here!”
“I just need help up,” Lesner grumbled, grabbing hold of the other man and trying to lever himself back up to his feet. He felt a wave of dizziness but ignored it, knowing he’d feel much better just as soon as he could get his legs under him.
Then his grip slipped and he fell back to the floor. He gasped for air in surprise. He just needed to catch his breath and then he’d get back into it. The men needed his leadership now more than ever—he couldn’t slack off.
A large Tracto-an man jumped down from his gun mount and came running over.
“What are you doing away from your post?” Lesner barked, and then he gasped weakly as the air seemed increasingly hard to find.
“You’ll be fine, you old rhino,” grunted Heirophant, pulling out an auto tourniquet and slamming it down onto his right leg. Those things tightened automatically whether or not there was a perfectly good leg down there.
“You bastard!” Lesner shouted grabbing the Tracto-an by the collar and dragging himself back up. “It was just a flesh—” he tr
ailed off his eyes on the pair of stumps pressed right up against the blast doors and the giant pool of blood spreading around his thighs—or what used to be his thighs, “wound…” he finished with a sigh, feeling the rest of his strength flow out of him in a sudden rush. There was no way he was getting back up on his feet after this one.
Strength gone, his head lolled to the side as the recent urgency of the situation seemed to slip away.
Hierophant whipped off his belt and applied it to the other leg, holding Lesner’s thigh with one hand and cinching it down with the strength only a Tracto-an man had. The pain was almost unbearable. Unlike the auto-tourniquet, it had no auto-injected local anesthetic.
“You blighter—not so rough!” bellowed Lesner, snapping back into focus for a moment.
“Do not cry like a child—the men can see you,” said Hierophant.
“Cover the shuttles,” he snapped.
“What?” the Tracto-an looked at him strangely and then reached down and scooped him up. “You lost a lot of blood. They’ll get you to sick bay,” he said, dropping him into the hover-stretcher with a thump.
“We’ve got to cover those shuttles,” rasped Lesner, “make sure it happens.”
“I will pass it on, but the assistant deck chief—” started Hierophant.
“You have to get it done—you hear me, you big lump?!” Lesner swore right before a medic stabbed him in the neck with a hypo.
The Tracto-an’s face went from concerned to hard in an instant. Reaching down, he grabbed the Chief Gunner’s arm, “I will. I swear it.” With his other arm, Heirophant dipped his finger into a bit of the blood around the Chief Gunner’s leg and dabbed a bit between his eyebrows.
“Crazy…dumb…oxen-like…” the Chief Gunner trailed off as the sedative finally undid him and he faded away into unconsciousness.
Behind him, a determined-looking gunner turned back to the gun deck—he was a warrior on a mission.
Chapter Seventy-eight: The Imperial Flag unfurled
“What’s the status on those limpets?” Admiral Janeski asked harshly.
“Enemy landers and shuttles…an estimated forty percent survived to get through but that number is starting to go up as the second wave of mixed shuttles and landers is following them in,” reported Tactical.
“Our fighters are taking a beating from enemy point defense and—” started Fighter Operations.
“This is one of the greatest warships in the galaxy—I don’t want excuses, I want results!” roared the Imperial Admiral. “Forty percent is already a disgrace. Break open the small arms lockers, arm the crew, and notify the Marine Jacks to go out there onto the hull. I want these boarders contained before they get inside my ship!”
“Sir, early reports are that small parties have entered the ship already,” Captain Goddard reported stiffly. “General McMann said he’s confident he can contain this threat without too much difficulty. All they have is two-generations-old power armor while our people are armed with cutting edge Predator II battlesuits.”
“Then tell the General I expect his confidence to be well-placed. He is to push them back out into cold space before they reach something critical,” shouted the Admiral.
“On it, Sir.”
“What’s the status on their flagship?” Janeski snapped, turning back to the bridge.
“The enemy are attempting to move their flagship behind one of their more damaged other Battleships, but our Cruisers are continuing to pursue and we’ve heavily degraded the fire on their starboard side gun deck. Counter-fire has hammered a large number of their turbo-laser mounts. The other enemy Battleships have had their shields degraded, and in time I’m confident—” reported the Flag Tactical Officer.
“Enough,” Janeski said, taking a breath now that the attempted boarding action had been responded to and dealt with. He’d heard rumors and seen reports of insane boarding attempts from Governor Montagne in the past, but this was the first time one of his ships had truly experienced it. Apparently he hadn’t given the notion enough weight—a mistake he suspected he would never live down with the Senator. “What’s the status on our main cannon?” he demanded, looking at the enemy Battle Station and the rolling fight where the lesser-numbered enemy Battleships had thrown themselves into the midst of his own much more numerous—and better-armed—Battleships..
“The main cannon will be recharged and ready to fire on your command in another six minutes,” reported the weapons officer in charge of monitoring the cannon.
“Six minutes? The recharge cycle is only fifteen and it’s already been more than twenty,” he growled.
“We’ve been taking heavy fire. Shield regeneration and a liberal use of power from the port and starboard gun decks, not to mention fighter launching and rearming efforts, have—” started the Engineer on the flag bridge
“I want you to fire as soon as the main cannon is recharged,” Janeski ordered, turning to the man at the main cannon’s weapon console.
“On your order, Sir,” said the officer.
“It’s been given,” Janeski snarled.
“If you want me to divert power to increase the cannon’s recharge rate, I can do that,” the Engineer said.
“No…we’ll let the captain fight his ship,” Janeski said baring his teeth, “but I refuse to be thrown off schedule just because the locals are swarming about us like flies. Fire again—and this time make sure to destroy that Starbase,” he instructed.
“Fire on the Starbase as soon as the energy banks have recharged, aye.”
“Fighter strikes are going in now, Admiral,” reported Fighter Operations.
The Supreme Admiral grunted but turned his attention back toward the main screen, smiling slowly as the first wing of fighters swept through the enemy’s outer defenses.
Gun turrets and orbital defense lasers that had been placed around the Starbase, along with a few ragged survivors of the enemy’s Corvette screen, moved to intercept but there were too many fighters in this strike and they swept through the enemy defenses. They dodged and weaved, slipping through incoming fire fields where a larger ship would have been hit and stopped or at least slowed.
Then they started launching their torpedoes and a wave of destruction rocked the Starbase and its repair slips.
“Have the next strike target the enemy factories,” ordered Janeski.
“You don’t want to take them to use as our own?” questioned his Operations Officer. “In the past we’ve claimed everything that could be repurposed. I know it’s not my place, but I hope you’re not allowing emotion to cloud your judgment.”
“All Confederation fleets, warships, and Starbases are to be destroyed or otherwise permanently removed from the Spine by order of the Reclamation Initiative,” Janeski said humorlessly. “I’m just following the plan—although I can’t say it doesn’t give me a great deal of satisfaction to destroy them. If they surrender I’ll accept it, but otherwise I’ll keep firing until they are destroyed. There’s more than one way to remove this Confederation taint—if they won’t take the easy way I am more than willing to show them the hard way.”
“Aye, Sir,” said the other officer.
Originally he had intended to repurpose the facilities for his fleet’s use—and he might still try—but first they had to win and that meant breaking the enemy’s will to fight. And that meant hitting them and hitting them again until everything was destroyed or they surrendered. It was no great loss if everything was pummeled until it was debris. The important thing was reclaiming these Sectors for the Empire of Man.
Chapter Seventy-nine: Lancers on the Invictus Rising
“Forward!” shouted Darius as he lumbered down the passageway with his company right behind him.
“Surrender—you have ten seconds to comply. Ten-nine-” came a synthesized droid voice that was answered by plasma fire. In response, the countdown was cut short and the sound of a rapid-firing blaster cannon rang out—accompanied by loud, animalistic snarling.
&n
bsp; “I want scouts in the older armor sent forward to clear a path,” commanded Darius. “The new armor stays concentrated in the middle able to crush any resistance to our move.”
“A path, Captain?” one of his veteran warriors, a sergeant now, asked. “Where exactly are we going?”
“Our command from the Protector is clear: we are commanded to shut down this ship’s main cannon at any cost,” Darius said while running down the corridor, amending, “shut down or destroy, but preferably destroy.”
“How are we to find it from inside, Captain?” asked Lieutenant Hector cutting into the command channel. “This ship is massive. We might have been better off staying on the hull and forcing a move to the nose of the ship. At least we know where the head of the cannon sticks out. Either destroy it from there or work our way in.”
“We’ve got explosive satchels but Engineering says the nose is hardened. You could hit it with a turbo-laser and nothing would happen. However, if we could reach the cannon’s main energy coil from inside we can shut it down with a simple place charge in the right place,” said Darius.
The lead scout suddenly stopped, holding up a closed fist and the other three scouts behind him abruptly froze. His head was turning from side to side as he slowly swept his blaster rifle from side to side when a storm of plasma fire erupted from all four walls of the corridor and a dozen foreign-looking battlesuits appeared. They sat up, stepped away from the walls, or dropped from the ceilings like chameleons as their forms shimmered with the sudden movement.
“Ahhh!” the scout screamed over the main channel before
a flashing red icon shown indicating a warrior down.
“Resistance!” cried the leader of the squad as his warriors dropped to their knees and leveled their weapons.
Admiral's War Part Two (A Spineward Sectors Novel: Book 10) Page 30