The Lost Swarm

by Vaughn Heppner

  Ural glanced at the sensor officer, who showed him the attack saucers near the second planet. Those saucers were accelerating, no doubt trying to catch up with the second line of the Star Watch ships.

  “Oh, clever, clever Drakos,” Ural said to himself. “This is more to his style. If I’m not careful, he will demand my Sunburst Star from me.” Ural faced the other four captains on the screen. “We have a decision, gentlemen. Do we turn to face the bugs or leave the battle to the submen?”

  “Would leaving not be cowardice in the face of battle,” one captain asked.

  “Some could construe it that way,” Ural said. “I worry about our seventeen ships.”

  “If the submen are slaughtered, would the Joint Fleet turn against the Throne World next?”

  “A grim possibility,” Ural said. “It appears we are staying as long as the submen can fight coherently. It is time I contacted Byron. Let’s see if the subman’s balls have shriveled or if he still has some fight left in him.”

  Three of the captains chuckled in appreciation of the joke and the always-questionable courage of submen leaders.

  “Sir,” the Boreas com officer said. “Admiral Byron is hailing you.”

  “Give me a moment, please,” Ural said to his council members. He nodded to the com officer.

  Admiral Byron appeared on the main screen. “The force that came out of Laumer Point Two is fake. I don’t know how Drakos managed—”

  “I’m interrupting you, Admiral. I know that fleet is false. They’re phantom ships. Are you giving new orders to your Patrol Fleet?”

  “What do you mean?” Byron asked.

  “Are you turning to fight the real enemy?”

  “If you mean am I giving the second line of cruisers such orders, no.”

  “I deem that a mistake, Admiral. They must turn and fight. Running is wrong now. We have fixed the enemy force. It is behind us. We must get as much mass into the fray as possible. Drakos wants to destroy those ships before the rest of us get into killing range.”

  “I know that very well. Don’t try to tell me my job, Ural.”

  The tall superior stiffened and his eyes glittered dangerously.

  “Are you joining us?” Byron asked.

  “In attacking the bug saucers?” asked Ural.

  Byron nodded curtly.

  “Of course,” Ural said. “The Emperor sent his ships here to fight. Let’s do some fighting, and destroying, shall we?”

  “Yes,” Byron said thickly. “Let us fight. I will speak with the second line commander. If we time this right, maybe we can still win.”

  “You surprise me, sir. We have better ships. Of course, we will win. We must remember, though, that Drakos has stealth ships. He will still—”

  “I’m done talking to you,” Byron said, interrupting. “I have other matters to attend to. Goodbye.”

  Ural glanced at the officers on the bridge. “Rude and arrogant submen,” he said. “It is distasteful speaking to them. But perhaps after today we won’t have to bother. Now, let us make our choices and hope these submen fight as hard as they talk.”

  -19-

  Behind the second planet, aboard the Agamemnon, Drakos learned one bitter lesson. The fold-fighters hadn’t targeted his star cruisers, but the three Juggernauts that had dropped out of star-drive jump with them. The three antimatter explosions had torn the gigantic, twenty-kilometer-diameter Juggernauts into great wrecked hulks. That was a virulent loss indeed. The Juggernauts had been their ace cards, their super-ships. That left the last Juggernaut carrying the alien duplicating machine. Surprisingly, the phantom fleet yet existed, which meant the last Juggernaut did too.

  Drakos needed to send it new orders. At the moment, electronic interference made that impossible.

  Thrax’s attack saucers were accelerating at high speed at the enemy.

  Now, Drakos had to make a decision. Did he order the twelve star cruisers to cloak and maneuver slowly into a key position, or did he maneuver openly in order to help Thrax win a great victory?

  Without the majestic weight of the three Juggernauts and their heavy lasers—

  Drakos made his decision. He had come here to win, to smash the enemy fleet. He needed a resounding victory in order to pull everyone on the Throne World to his side. That entailed risk. It was time to throw everything he had into the battle and finish this as quickly as he could.

  Thus, the twelve star cruisers accelerated around the second planet and rushed to join the bug fleet as it raced at the SWS heavy and attack cruisers together with the destroyer and escorts. Likely, the submen elements in the enemy fleet were numb and shocked. Now was the moment to kill as many of them as he could. The enemy no longer had any carriers. He needed to get rid of the cruisers too.

  ***

  Now, began the real Battle for the Gomez System. The initial moves had given Drakos’ Joint Fleet the tactical advantage, but they’d paid heavily with three lost Juggernauts. The three fold-fighter pilots who had made the kills had paid with their lives for their launches. But their sacrifice and intelligent daring had given Star Watch a chance. No other three lost ships would make such a difference to the battle. Hitting the Juggernauts while they were Jump Lagged—it was a piece of luck brought about through courage and commitment.

  Drakos and Ural were correct about the Star Watch crews. They were surprised at this turnaround, and it often took men and women a long time to shake off a surprise and build up new resolve. New Men could recover much more quickly.

  Knowing that, Captain Maddox’s quick decision helped Byron and his battleship captains. It also helped the crews on the monitors, cruisers, destroyers and escorts as they received new and decisive orders. Their confusion was not as deep and did not last as long this way. It cost Maddox a bloody nose, which, all things considered, was a cheap price to pay.

  According to Admiral Byron’s new orders, the front-line monitors rotated and began decelerating, slowing their former advance toward the Phantom Fleet. The second line of ships continued to accelerate. They were the most lightly armored and shielded, and thus the most susceptible to enemy laser fire. Admiral Byron wanted them out of the fight until the heavier ships engaged.

  As the various components of the Patrol Fleet maneuvered for their new positions—the Throne World star cruisers under Ural turned their cone of battle, heading for the monitors—the bug attack saucers were rapidly closing the distance against the second line cruisers.

  Supremacy Thrax was in his Battle Room aboard his flagship. He saw his ally’s star cruisers accelerate from around the second planet. That gave him comfort. The New Man wasn’t deserting the hive. It was ill news about the three Juggernauts—

  “Now,” Thrax said, judging the moment.

  He and his chief controllers had learned hard lessons from the destruction of the Conquering War-Fleet 1,021 during the invasion of Human Space. One of the key lessons was how comparatively weak Swarm heavy lasers were compared to the enemy’s disruptor cannons. To that end, his techs had been studying and testing Rull Juggernaut heavy lasers for years. All his attack saucers had upgrades based on such weapons.

  These cannons extended from the attack saucers and began to fire their beams, using their new, greater range and power. And as per the new attack protocols, five saucers concentrated on one enemy vessel at a time.

  Instead of choosing the biggest and toughest enemy ships, the attack saucers chose the smaller escorts and destroyers. As the second-line warships fled, escorts first and destroyers second began to blow up like so many popcorn kernels.

  The attack saucers slaughtered them. It was sickening.

  Finally, Admiral Byron could no longer bear it. He ordered the heavy cruisers and the attack cruisers to rotate and bring their heaviest cannons to bear. There were twenty-nine of them, facing a host of attack saucers, over four times as many.

  Disrupter and laser beams burned back at the enemy. It was an uneven contest, and the first attack cruisers disintegrated under the
enemy’s laser barrage.

  Star Watch attack cruisers were primarily missile-launching platforms. They launched a few, but the velocities and directions were all wrong. Before the missiles could start accelerating at the enemy, they had to brake to reduce their velocity going in the opposite direction.

  Thrax’s saucers had a field day and inflicted quick losses upon Star Watch. Even so, such use of upgraded weaponry put a heavy burden on the bug laser systems in each ship. None of the saucers had gone into a dry dock or received thorough maintenance after the First Swarm War. Thrax had decided to repair all his vessels to a minimal degree, instead of having a few perfectly fit vessels. They were worn ships and had more breakdowns in the laser coils, the heat bleeders and the cannons themselves. The longer the saucers engaged in hot combat, the more ship systems had trouble or went down altogether. It did not yet affect the overall effectiveness of the back and forth. But if the saucers had to keep fighting, the buildup of problems might plague the overall bug fleet.

  If the Juggernauts were still here—

  Thrax clacked his pincers. Three of the wonderful Juggernauts were gone. His fleet was destroying enemy warships at little damage to his own vessels. Compared to the First Swarm War, these were fantastic ratios. During the war, it had been the opposite: many lost Swarm ships for one destroyed Star Watch vessel. Just as good, Lord Drakos was catching up. If they could annihilate the monitors, too, and then star-drive jump away and recoup…that might be the best outcome possible.

  ***

  Drakos witnessed much of the battle on the main screen of the Agamemnon. The long-range bug lasers were doing brilliantly. The upgrades had helped. Now, if he could send new orders to the remaining Juggernaut and use the Builder Teleportor to good advantage—

  Drakos pressed a button on his command chair. “Nar Falcon?” he said.

  “I am ready, lord. Do you have a target for me?”

  “Most certainly I do,” Drakos said. “Choose the closest battleship.”

  “Not Starship Victory, lord?” Nar Falcon asked.

  “On no account,” Drakos said. “I want Maddox alive. I want the starship. No, no, let us whittle down the number of those ugly battleships. They always were the biggest thorn in our side during the invasion.”

  “At once, lord,” Nar Falcon said.

  Several of Thrax’s saucers succumbed to heavy cruiser beams. The last SWS attack cruiser blew up and now there were only five heavy cruisers left. How many saucers were gone? Drakos did some counting, coming up with a mere six lost bug ships.

  That was good, very good, he decided. The Star Watch battleships, however—

  Drakos scowled and pressed a button. “Nar Falcon, why hasn’t a battleship exploded yet?”

  “Sir, I sent one dominant. The coordinates must have been incorrect, though. The dominant appeared in space instead of inside a battleship. I am making corrections.”

  “The dominant is dead, you mean?”

  “He died in space, yes, lord.”

  “Nar Falcon, I want no more wastage. Those dominants are worthy warriors. They are not like bullets that one doesn’t care expending. Do I need to make myself more specific?”

  “No, lord,” Nar Falcon said. “There will be no more mistakes.”

  “For your sake, Nar Falcon, I hope you are right.”

  ***

  In the hangar bay of the Agamemnon, Nar Falcon wiped sweat from his golden forehead.

  Another conditioned dominant was up there on the Builder Teleportor. Nar Falcon did not approve of the use of their kind like this. But he was not going to challenge Lord Drakos on the subject. There were few, perhaps no, superiors who could beat Drakos in hand-to-hand duels.

  “Ready?” Nar Falcon called.

  The chosen dominant raised his glistening golden arms.

  “Now,” Nar Falcon said, as he tapped the transmit button.

  The shimmering motes encircled the chosen dominant, and in a moment, he teleported away.

  -20-

  The dominant, a certain Sar Cambyses, crossed the distance to Battleship Goeben, appearing in an annex to the main engine room. He moved like a great jungle cat, peering right and left.

  A hatch opened, and an engineer walked in. The subman halted in astonishment.

  Cambyses leapt the distance between them, breaking the man’s neck with a hard karate chop. He tore off the subman’s small garments, tried them on and realized it was futile. He picked up a heavy tool, hefting it in his hand. Then he peered out of the hatch at seven submen working on various panels.

  A voice in his head beat like a battle drum. He needed to attack. Opening his mouth, issuing a silent roar, Cambyses burst out of the annex, his naked fleet padding on the deck.

  One of the nearest submen turned around. Cambyses swung the heavy tool, opening the skull with a terrific blow, causing the subman to flop onto the deck. The others looked to see what happened.

  Now, Cambyses shouted. It was a terrible sound, and it had the planned effect. For a second, maybe two, the submen froze in shock and horror. During that time, Cambyses slaughtered four of them, bashing their heads.

  Two of the remaining submen finally charged him. Cambyses grinned crazily. His expression froze one of the attackers; such was the monstrous countenance of the naked stranger. The other kept attacking, dying as the tool opened his skull. Cambyses swept forward, killing the second-to-last subman.

  The last of them was at a wall com unit, shouting about a naked New Man in the engine area.

  Cambyses flung the heavy tool, and it thudded against the subman’s head, killing him so he slid to the floor.

  A klaxon began to wail.

  Cambyses turned, searching, studying—he bounded like a demon-possessed madman. He slipped through an opened hatch, entering the engine core area. He reached a special emergency panel, his golden-skinned fingers manipulating the board.

  “Self-destruct sequence initiated,” a computer said.

  Cambyses brayed laughter. The submen with their special codes—but they didn’t realize how easy the codes were to overcome.

  “Three, two, one,” the computer said. “Zero. Ignition—”

  Battleship Goeben’s engine core exploded, the annihilating fury blasting outward, consuming core rods, antimatter compartment blocks and then entire engineering sections. The fiery holocaust devoured steel, carbon, flesh, water—it blasted up through decks, knocking down bulkheads and igniting disruptor coils, electromagnetic generators—the sun-like heat made paper and other combustibles roar into flame microseconds before the continuing fury expanded outward until the entire crew perished and the blast roared through the heavy armor, causing the battleship to disappear in a horrible cauldron of destruction.

  The first kill of the Battle of the Gomez System to the Builder Teleportor and its New Man destroyer had occurred.

  ***

  The exploding Goeben shocked Admiral Byron and the battleship captains. It shocked the bridge crews as well. What had caused the startling loss?

  Fortunately, the Goeben had been the front-most battleship, leading at twice the distance as regular battle protocol dictated. That had been at the express orders of the admiral. Byron had come to espouse a doctrine for wider ship dispersal so an exploding neighbor didn’t destroy other vessels in a squadron or flotilla.

  The explosion turned the nearest battleship shields a cherry red. These were upgraded shields, however, using parts made from heavy metal material.

  The new heavy metal made a difference; a huge one, it turned out.

  Then, a second battleship exploded just like the Goeben, again, for no explainable reason.

  It caused Admiral Byron to sag in his command chair on the Kaiser Wilhelm. This was too much. This was unbelievable. This wasn’t how fleet battles were supposed to take place. Why he had ever let the Lord High Admiral talk him into taking the post he would never know.

  “Admiral,” Captain Austin said. “Admiral, what should we do now? Should we conti
nue advancing?”

  Admiral Byron wasn’t responding. This was just too damn much for a man to take.

  -21-

  “I have it, sir,” Galyan said on Victory’s bridge. “I know what is happening.”

  “So do I,” Maddox said. “Drakos got ahold of a teleporting machine. Remember what happened at the—”

  “Yes,” Galyan said, interrupting. “I have also played back the last message from the Goeben. The captain said a New Man was in the engine room. Then, the battleship exploded. We must assume that happened on the second ship as well.”

  Maddox swiveled around. “Lieutenant, send a wide-beam message to the other battleship captains. Tell them to put armed Space Marines in the engine sections. Tell them to expect naked, suicidal New Men appearing.”

  “I can’t send that,” Valerie said.

  “Now,” Maddox said sternly.

  Valerie began speaking, sending the message.

  “That will take too long,” Galyan said. “I must do this myself.” Thereupon, the holoimage disappeared—to appear on one battleship engine room after another. He used the far-ranging power of his holographic imager aboard Victory.

  “Oh,” Galyan said.

  He saw a New Man racing through the engine core section of Battleship Frederick. Engineers lay dead on the deck.

  Galyan reappeared beside the New Man. The half-insane soldier used a tool, swinging it through the holoimage. That caused the New Man to lose his balance for a moment. He recovered, but stumbled through Galyan.

  The little Adok holoimage frowned, and he used a rebuilt feature, one that hadn’t been used for some time. A power source on Victory sent a great surge of energy to the holoimage, which flowed outward, striking the New Man.

  The surge wasn’t as strong as Galyan had used in the past, but was enough to knock the New Man to the deck. The problem was, Galyan’s unit back aboard Victory needed time to recharge. What do to until then?

  Galyan reappeared on the Frederick’s bridge. The bridge crew and captain leaped to their feet, shouting.