Rebellion at Ailon

by T J Mott

  The Army was hopefully completely occupied by Abram’s diversion. Meanwhile, the AFPF probably had less and less to do as the fighters scattered throughout Orent consolidated and joined the attack on the garrison.

  He flinched as a laser beam slashed across his view, right in front of the windshield. The car’s glass was not laser-proof. One good shot would either kill him, or leave him permanently blinded—if he survived crashing afterwards. “I need the comm!” he said. “Ria! In that bag!”

  “But we aren’t at the dorm yet!” she protested.

  He shook his head. Outside, another police cruiser had just joined the convoy. “We’re not going to make it there in time!” A moment later, she had his comm out and held it out for him. He awkwardly wedged the anchor to his prosthetic arm against the steering wheel’s spoke. It wasn’t ideal, but it seemed to work. Reaching over with his right hand, he took the small comm unit from Ria, then pressed the power button and waited for it to power up. Five seconds later, it finished booting, and he held it out in front of him where he could see the screen and the road at the same time.

  It began pinging for comm networks, and the display flooded with a list of encrypted Avennian-related networks. But one entry was a very welcome sight. A comm network with the Lynx. He tapped on it and quickly began talking, hoping to cut off whomever answered before they could say anything too incriminating and blow his cover. “Chad Messier to orbiting merc starships!”

  “Messier?” said a female voice, sounding somewhat confused.

  Now that he had an open channel, he dropped the comm in his lap and returned his good hand to the steering wheel. Bursts of laser fire continued to exchange between his escorts and their pursuit. At some point yet another police cruiser had arrived. He saw a brilliant exchange of laser fire in his mirrors, and a moment later one of his escorts fell out of the formation, its headlights quickly fading into the smoke-filled nighttime behind him. “Situation’s not good,” he said. “I’ve got the only comm on our side down here! We’re taking fire from orbit and we’re being pursued by vehicles on the ground!”

  “Messier, Lieutenant Commander Amanda Poulsen of Ghost Squadron. Tell me what you want and I’ll try to help.”

  Poulsen? The pilot from his former flagship? He felt a huge weight lift from his shoulders. Ghost Squadron was friendly! “Do something about whoever’s lasing the city from space!” he ordered. “And it would be a great help if you could blast our pursuit! ”

  “Chad, we just passed the dorm!” Ria pointed out.

  He ignored her. At this point it didn’t matter. He had contact with his ships.

  “Sir, there’s a surface-to-orbit railgun on your side of the planet, and I’ve already lost one gunship to it. We’ll take some sniping shots and see if we can chase off the Avennian patrol boats, but there’s no way we can get close enough to the planet for targeted ground strikes.”

  “Damn.” He looked outside again. His escort was still doing a commendable job of keeping their pursuit away from him, but now it was a matter of attrition. Soon, their weapons would start running dry. Hopefully their pursuit would be recalled to the garrison. “Chet, what’s going on with Abram’s diversion?”

  “It’s in progress, he’s doing a full-on frontal assault on the garrison! Enemy troops are moving in from all over the city to flank our fighters. But I think they’ve already spotted our comm signal! The AFPF is mobilizing cruisers from all over and they’re headed to this part of the city!”

  “Damn!” he said again. He checked his mirrors. Through the haze he could see an uncomfortable number of headlights in the distance, all rapidly gaining on him. “Poulsen, you said you have gunships?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Bring some down here and give me air support! I’m heading south of the city, if you come in really low from the south I think you can stay out of sight of the gun!”

  “Aye, sir!”

  ***

  Poulsen muted her comm channel with Marcell, switching over to the squadron channel. “All ships, attack whoever’s up there lasing Orent!” she ordered. “Keep your distance so you can dodge railgun shots! As for us, get ready for re-entry, we’re going down there to help!” She unmuted her channel with Marcell on Ailon. “Lynx and most of my squadron will take care of the starships! My gunship is about to re-enter, keep heading south and we’ll be there shortly!”

  “Copy! Thanks, Poulsen!”

  She muted the channel again. Then she grabbed the flight stick and pointed Ghost 1’s nose at the edge of the planet, shoving the throttle levers all the way forward. The reactor’s volume and pitch steadily increased, and her accelerometer slowly climbed. Ghost 1 felt sluggish compared the stock Lancer-class gunships, with its downsized thrusters and the extra mass from the liquid helium tanks for its experimental X-11-type hyperdrive.

  Frustrated, she shook her head and killed the gunship’s acceleration, letting it coast towards Ailon. They were still on the wrong side of the planet, safely away from the railgun but not even close to where Marcell needed her.

  In the view out front, the planet was growing rapidly. She tapped the maneuvering thrusters to slew her vector, precisely pointing it just above the horizon, at the edge of the world where land met space. That vector gave her maximum atmosphere for the very questionable aerobraking maneuver she was about to attempt. Then she double-checked her nav map, making sure they were flying in the direction of Marcell’s blinking comm beacon.

  “The rest of the squadron has engaged the Avennian patrol boats and most are breaking off from ground strikes. But one is reentering above the city! I think it’s tracking the Admiral!”

  She muttered a curse to herself and pushed the throttle forward again, accelerating towards the planet recklessly. It would not look good on her record if she lost Marcell on her squadron’s first mission. The Earth-obsessed man was partially insane, but he was still her employer.

  A few seconds later, she eyed her speed indicator and scowled. She cut the throttle again. I might not have much of a ship left after this, she thought. Just about any starship could perform a controlled reentry at slow speeds, at perhaps a few times the speed of sound. But Ghost 1 was moving at nearly fifty klicks per second—a fairly slow velocity in the clear vacuum of space, but bordering on suicidal in atmosphere.

  She yanked the flight stick to the left, swinging the ship completely around, stopping the turn when her main thrusters pointed directly along the ship’s vector. The gunship continued to coast towards Ailon on inertia alone, but now it was flying backwards. When it was moments away from hitting the upper atmosphere, she pushed full throttle again. The reactor began to whine again as it throttled up to power the main thrusters, which she was now using as brakes.

  Outside, bluish-white flames engulfed her view as compression heating ionized the air around her. She began to sweat as she saw just how wild the sensor view was, and she had to make constant adjustments to the throttle and maneuvering thrusters to keep the ship pointed in the right direction. The Lancer-class gunship was far from aerodynamic when flying backwards like this, and this was by far the most reckless and violent atmospheric reentry she had ever attempted.

  She didn’t feel a thing though. The gunship’s artificial gravity was able to precisely counteract the forces within the confines of the starship and protect its crew, although the reactor whined oddly as it struggled to simultaneously power the thrusters and the highly-dynamic and ever-changing artificial gravity field.

  “Commander, confirmed that the rest of the squadron has engaged the Avennian starships,” reported Ensign Bosel. “They’re exchanging laser fire at a range of point-six light-seconds. No serious hits, but they’re keeping the Avennians occupied, and all ground strikes have stopped. The railgun is firing but our ships are able to evade.”

  “Good for them!” Poulsen retorted, fully concentrating on keeping Ghost 1 under control while burning through the atmosphere at over a hundred thousand kilometers per hour. As the atmosph
ere thickened, her braking efforts reduced. Fusion thrusters were great in the vacuum of space, but their efficacy dropped considerably in air, and her accelerometer was not reading nearly as high as she’d like.

  “Hull temperature is climbing rapidly!” reported Lieutenant Exira, her engineer. “Commander, I think our armor is starting to boil off! Stealth coating is gone by now, for sure!”

  She glanced at the accelerometer. The ship was slowing down relative to the planet, at a rate that slowly grew as the air thickened around them. Then she glanced at the hull temperature readings. The hull sensors were either overloaded, or melted away by the violence of their reentry. The reading just said “NO SIGNAL.”

  She tried to push the throttle forward again, but it was already at the stops. These thrusters are almost worthless in atmosphere! With the ship moving backwards at this speed, the main thruster nozzles collected air like ramscoops. The air pressure at the outlet was so high that it was actually holding in most of the superheated plasma exhaust that needed to blast out at high velocity to propel the ship. “Can you give me any more thruster power?” she asked.

  “We’re already running the reactor at a hundred eighty percent of rated power,” Exira replied, the worry in his voice telling her exactly what he thought about that.

  Then a thought struck her. Ghost 1 was modified, carrying one of the new X-11-style hyperdrives that Gray Fleet had stolen and reverse-engineered. As a result, when full, the ship was nearly forty percent cryogenic helium by mass. The liquid helium supply, chilled to nearly absolute zero, interacted with the hyperdrive in a way that could triple the vessel’s speed in hyperspace.

  But Ghost 1 had traveled to Ailon as part of a larger squadron, and the other ships were equipped with conventional hyperdrives. And so Ghost 1 had not operated its hyperdrive in cryogenic mode…meaning it still had full tanks of helium, whose mass was slowing down her braking efforts. Full tanks of extremely cold liquid helium… “Vent the helium tanks!” she ordered.

  Exira quickly complied. She watched the accelerometer climb a little faster and faster as the ship lost mass. Outside, the flames and ionized gas that completely engulfed her view took on a slight yellowish tint as ionized helium was caught up in their wake.

  “Okay, I’m venting liquid helium at a rate that I think has stabilized our hull temperature. But we’ll be empty in less than a minute.”

  She checked her velocity and double-checked her distance to Marcell’s comm beacon. “That’s all I need.” Almost there, as long as she could finish bleeding off speed and regain control before coming into sight of that surface-to-orbit railgun…

  ***

  “What is that?” exclaimed Ria. There was a large, luminous fireball in the distance, looming just above the horizon. It had a brilliant, bluish-white core surrounded by a reddish-orange envelope that trailed for hundreds of kilometers behind it. At first, it looked like some kind of hellish comet burning through the atmosphere.

  “That would be our help, I hope,” Thad replied, blinking as another laser beam flashed in front of him. And then a worrisome sound erupted from behind him: the bone-crushing boom of the surface-to-orbit gun. A railgun, according to Poulsen.

  He checked his mirrors. More AFPF cruisers had appeared, and now Avennian Army trucks had shown up as well. The trucks were especially worrisome, each one carrying a squad of soldiers which fired through openings in the canvas-covered bed. And if the Army was confident enough in the battle at the garrison to send troops down here…

  They’re tracking my comm and wondering who among the Rebels has one.

  Another one of his escort cars was gone, having just crashed during an exchange of laser fire. Thad edged his car to the right, placing his tires mere centimeters from the edge of the road, driving with white knuckles on his one hand as he concentrated. Even the slightest slip here, and his wheels would leave the pavement, dipping into the soft dirt shoulder at almost two hundred kilometers per hour. Orent was now well behind them, and the convoy now headed down an open highway which occasionally passed a mining complex or factory. But their surroundings were rapidly becoming endless plains of that dreary yellow-grass that grew everywhere.

  The other remaining Rebel cars closely hugged him, acting like a shield. Laser fire streaked from them to the Avennian pursuit vehicles, and vice versa. Directly behind Thad, Chet’s window was down and he was adding his own fire to the maelstrom outside, taking short breaks to listen in on the radio or send an update back to leadership.

  “Heads up!” Poulsen’s voice announced over his comm. “You’ve got more company! There’s an Avennian patrol boat re-entering above you. They’re tracking your comm, and I bet they know you’re coordinating with us!”

  “Shut the comm off!” Ria pleaded, her voice sounding frightened.

  “No, keep the comm active!” Poulsen barked in response. “They’re almost in visual range anyway, they don’t need it to track you anymore and I want an open channel!”

  Thad looked up at the fireball ahead. It was getting much closer, very quickly, but starting to dim. No longer was it a giant white-orange ball with a tail of fire that stretched beyond the horizon. Now it was a bright red blob with a shower of sparks trailing behind it. It was rapidly approaching, and as it resolved he realized that most of the glow was from overheated hull plates and armor.

  Something cracked mightily outside, right as a streak of white-hot something came from behind so quickly he almost thought he’d only imagined it, nearly striking the ship ahead. “Poulsen!” he shouted at the comm in his lap. “You’re in sight of the railgun, you’ve got to lose more altitude!”

  “Dammit, sir, what do you think I’m trying to do!” A pause. “Good news is they aren’t shooting at the Lynx anymore!”

  He glanced at his mirrors to see yet another Army truck joining the chase. “Chet, tell Abram to end his diversion! Doubt it’s effective anymore with all this going on out here! Get our fighters away from that garrison and back into hiding while we still have some fighters left!”

  His car bucked violently as one of the other Rebel cars bumped him from the left. Frowning, he struggled with the wheel to keep the car going straight, bracing the stump of his left arm into the wheel’s spoke for extra leverage. Then he glanced over and stomped on the brake. His escort rapidly flew ahead of him, pushed off the side of the road by an Army truck that had rammed it from the side. The orange-colored sedan spun out and tumbled away from the road, spinning out and rolling into the dark fields at fatal speeds.

  “Poulsen, I could really use some help here!” he urged. Most of his platoon was gone, down to two cars.

  “Hang on!”

  He heard a deafening sonic boom which violently rattled the car. A moment later, a small starship blasted by overhead. It spun around to face him and was suddenly engulfed by a momentary cloud of its own fusion exhaust as it ramped up its thrusters to halt its movement. Then its bottom-facing thrusters ignited, shooting long tongues of violet plasma towards the ground to keep the ship afloat, starting small fires in the yellow-grass beneath it like a giant torch.

  His pursuit backed off. An Army truck in front pulled to the left and slowed down, quickly falling behind Thad’s car. He checked his mirrors and saw most of his pursuit was now slowing down and falling behind…

  “Poulsen!” he warned, feeling panic start to set in. The Avennian patrol boat only needed one shot to vaporize Thad’s lightweight sedan…

  “I’m almost there, just hang on!”

  The patrol boat floated just half a klick ahead of him, hovering menacingly above the ground. But before it could act, Poulsen’s gunship was nearly upon it, and it suddenly had to change priorities. It abruptly swiveled to Thad’s left and throttled up. Just a couple klicks beyond it, he saw Poulsen’s gunship, closely hugging the ground to keep the railgun below its horizon, parts of its hull still glowing reddish-orange like a blacksmith’s work freshly pulled from a forge.

  An intense flash of light washed out
his vision, momentarily blinding him and leaving behind large purple afterimages. A couple seconds later, a loud thunderclap slapped at his car, and he knew one of the starships had just fired its weapons.

  He slammed on his brakes, slowing the sedan down. He couldn’t see much anyway. Each time one of the ships fired, his vision flashed to a painful, all-consuming whiteness. Once the vehicle stopped, he closed his eyes. Even that didn’t seem to help much. Thunderclap after thunderclap rolled over the sedan, each one causing Thad’s ears to ring louder and louder, sounding like a fierce battle between ancient pagan gods.

  And then the thunderclaps stopped. He opened his eyes just in time to watch the small Avennian patrol ship fall from the sky. It had been maybe a hundred meters in the air, but that was more than enough for the fall to destroy it. It slammed into the ground about half a klick ahead and a hundred meters to the left of the highway, and then Thad heard a dull, wet-sounding thud as it smacked into the ground. It crumpled and broke apart, sending giant chunks of torn, twisted hull metal in all directions.

  Now it was eerily quiet.

  He heaved a sigh of relief. “Thanks a ton. Hey, stay close to the ground so the railgun can’t see you. I think we’re clear, we’ll drive to you.”

  “Copy that.” Thad’s eyes were still dazzled, but he could somewhat see the road. He accelerated the car and continued southwards towards the gunship that hovered out there.

  His vision flashed again, and then another thunderclap slapped the car. “Sorry,” said Poulsen. “Now you’re clear. One of those trucks was still trying to follow you. Morons.”

  “Thanks again,” said Thad as he continued driving towards Poulsen’s ship.

  Chapter 36