Interestingly enough, the pilots who kept being shot up badly also tended to lack this instinct. Of course, this came from experience, but also awareness. Rockmonster had little of either, for all she was a good fighter pilot. But the difference in life experience between eighteen, and say twenty five, was enough to have not provided enough basis for instinct. Quite apart from the lack of training time from what those who’d been through a proper cadet program had received.
Rockmonster. I frowned as I thought about her. And put it aside. Her launching while still under medical restraints wasn’t my issue.
After the battles were over, they played again from a different angle. Jane had left two cloaked comnavsats out there, near each plant fleet, and they’d sent her a perfect bird’s eye view of what the plants would have seen.
Two large ships, with smaller ones and fighters arranged around them had burst out of the atmosphere of the gas giant with zero warning and massed fire. It was a sight to behold in its own right, and even those who’d seen it already, paused to view it again. I was amazed to see the fighters had launched before being fully out of the gas giant, which hadn't been obvious from my viewpoint.
It was a classic ‘oh fuck’ moment for the plants, the kind where you know death has arrived, and his scythe is reaching for you, with absolutely nothing you can do about it. Even with the mass and firepower advantage, when you stick your foot into the meat grinder, you know you’re toast. Only in this case, not being mobile, combined with completely ignoring an attack vector which made you vulnerable, added up to the same as blundering into an unexpected meat grinder.
Shenaid wasn’t eating with us, which wasn’t unexpected. When I pinged Jane about her, I was told she was asleep. Which was certainly smarter than the average pilot, who’d in any more normal situation would be drinking alcohol and telling tall tales of the battle to anyone who’d listen.
Except that’s what they were doing, minus the alcohol. Between empty plate and dessert arriving, I listened in while pretending I wasn’t. And alcohol or not, this was what I’d joined up for. The camaraderie of fighting officers. The only problem was, I’d never guessed I’d be leading them at all. I’d had a career planned before I’d even joined the cadets, which would see me reach squadron leader some five to ten years after becoming an officer. Instead, I’d waited seven years in the dark, and done it in a week. In the process, I’d skipped most of this kind of experience.
Vulture pulled me out of the moment.
“Can I have a word when we finish eating sir?”
“Sure. Ready room when you like.”
Kat put my apple crumble down in front of me, cutting off anything else, and I finished my lunch in silence, still watching the endless replay. The two fleets appearing suddenly was a genuine spine shiver moment every time you saw it.
Empty plate noises made me look down, and with a sigh, I nodded to my lunch companions and left. Vulture followed me. He didn’t say anything until we were both seated across my desk in my ready room.
“Rockmonster.”
“How is she?”
“Still pissed she doesn’t get to put a battleship icon on her fighter.” I laughed. “No worse the wear for having another bird shot out from under her, but I told her to spend time in a care unit this afternoon just in case. If it spits her straight out, at least we know she’s ok.”
“Who authorized her launching?”
“No-one. She was in the tube ahead of Hammer, so had to launch. We could probably suspect a certain AI who shall remain nameless, as having arranged it, but no sir, there was no official authorization. What do we do about it?”
“What do you want to do about it?”
“Promote her to Pilot Officer. I mean, she has the worst record for losing birds on the ship, but she’s becoming a fine fighter pilot. She’s nowhere near the bottom of the kill board, and developing better than the other rookies. Ex-rookies.”
“Perhaps you should tell her that?”
“Hell no. She’s got a big enough head as it is.”
We both laughed.
“Rank issue aside, she needs a bollicking out.”
“She’s had that already. Water off a duck’s back. I think the only thing at this point which would dent her ego is a night in the brig. But she hasn’t crossed over that far yet.”
“How’s her studies going?”
“Slowly,” said Jane over room coms. “We keep interrupting her with battles. But she is getting through it. A soon as she’s out of the care unit, I’ll push the grindstone back at her.”
“You do that.”
“Tell you what might help too,” added Vulture.
“What?” asked Jane.
“If you can figure what she’s doing wrong which ends up with her being hit so hard, maybe it can be used in the simulators to train her away from it.”
“I can do that. Want me to do it for everyone?”
He flinched. I can’t say I blamed him.
“No. Just the pilots who keep losing birds, or taking major damage. And make it all subtle. I don’t want fragile egos being destroyed if we can avoid it.”
“Are they that fragile?”
She clearly had no idea about pilots.
Thirty Three
The cleanup was interrupted.
Salvage droids were frantically working to gather the most useful chunks of debris for Unassailable to use fabricating replacement fighters and hull sections, but a lot of the really good pieces of ships were being swallowed up by the gas giant. Where the salvage droids couldn’t go as they didn’t have the shielding.
One of the Lightnings sent to find a habitable planet, found it. It quickly dropped a comnavsat as close as Jane dared to go, and bugged out.
There was a Trixone fleet in orbit, and I stepped up to look it over. Standard fleet, no sign of fighters, and in fact, it looked like these two were older battleships not designed to carry them. They were obviously an escort for the three dozen large transport ships in orbit with them.
I stepped down, left my desk, took my chair on the bridge, and stepped up again. The comnavsat wasn’t close enough to the planet for a good look down there. The sensor popups suggested some sort of civilization had been there, but the life readings were way down on what they should be. Which suggested a dead world.
“Jane?”
“Chris?”
“Can you get a comnavsat in orbit? Or do a very fast atmosphere survey of the planet?”
“Both.”
“Do so please.”
“Confirmed.”
“Let’s get the salvage droids back on board, and put us on course for the planet please.”
“I need another five minutes before I can dock Unannounced, which has been getting its major repair work done. It’s almost completed, as I took our after battle downtime as a good time to do it.”
“Fine. Let’s be moving as soon as we can.”
“Confirmed.”
“On it.”
I opened the ship channel.
“This is Dreamwalker. We’ve discovered a planet capable of supporting life about four hours from here. There is a Trixone fleet in orbit, and probably an army on the planet. We’ll know more shortly, but for now, everyone stand down, and be rested enough for a battle later on this afternoon.”
Channel closed, and I looked at Jane.
“Will you advise the Imperator, or should I?”
“He knows already. No orders. He seems to think you know what you’re doing.”
She wasn’t grinning for once, so maybe she meant it.
“I’m assuming the planet is already dead, unless you find otherwise, so if it is, is he going to want us to clear it? Given we don’t have enough troops to do it at all, let alone quickly enough to move on and find the Keerah planet.”
“He’s waiting for what the Lightning finds, the same as you are. The troops we left behind on Napenga are almost ready for redeployment, but still don’t have enough transport available. Homer a
nd Bonko’s Club have been upgraded, and Fearless is elsewhere, but we put a division of troops down there, and have transport for only a couple of battalions.”
“I hope someone is working on that.”
“Of course. But if you want to use a tree, you first have to get its foliage off, and it’s proving trickier than expected to convert them. The yard is working as fast as possible. If nothing else, we’ll get the two cruisers with everyone possible packed on them, and Unassailable is making combat droids at the moment instead of replacement fighters. By the time we need them, I’ll have another company at least, and maybe two.”
“Keep me updated.”
“Confirmed.”
I took my own advice and went back to bed. There was nothing I could do unless the Trixone broke orbit and came to us, and even if they did, there was plenty of time for me to get some black time before needing to be back on the bridge.
Three hours later, and a good hour out of battle range, I walked back on anyway, and took my seat. Claymore popped up tactical screens, and I saw nothing much had changed.
The Trixone fleet knew we were coming, and had formed a box formation with the two battleships in the middle, behind which the transports were massed. Another set of screens showed me images of the planet, where devastated cities showed me two things.
We’d found the Keerah planet we were looking for.
And they were all dead. Tiger bodies were everywhere, and Trixone were in the process of pulling corpses to wherever they wanted them to decompose.
Except the last image seemed to indicate not all of them. The city was empty, but there were no corpses. When I say empty, it was full of plants, but nothing to indicate they’d slaughtered anyone there.
“Do we have survivors?” I asked.
“Possibly,” answered Jane. “I’m looking for them, but whatever evidence there was of the direction they headed in has been obliterated by plant movement.”
“Or they took a road,” added Claymore, grinning. “Try seeing where they lead to.”
A mere glance passed between them, but I think I’d seen the AI equivalent of an ‘up yours’. I held my grin in.
Half an hour out, the pilots began to mount up. Rockmonster had pleaded to be able to fly, and with the care unit having given her the okay, even though she was still limping, Vulture had given in. Hammer was flying 266’s A flight lead, and she took the number two slot on his right, with one of the more experienced pilots on her right. It made for a strange formation, but we thought it should keep her relatively supported.
Shenaid joined us on the bridge ten minutes out, looking refreshed. We both buckled up, I looked at Claymore and Jane and nodded, both ships slowed, and I gave the launch order.
Within a minute we had a similar box formation to the plant formation, with Claymore and Unassailable going head to head with the battleships, the destroyers with the cruisers, and the corvettes and squadrons with the destroyers.
Claymore fired the first shot as usual, her titan turret firing at our battleship, with all ships firing missiles at the same time. The plants fired back at the same time the battleship turrets and fixed guns fired, and ships began to juke around to avoid being hit. Both Claymore and Unassailable took hits all the same, but we were pumping out more fire than they were, and it really wasn’t a fair fight for once.
Torpedoes this time merely sealed the plant ship’s fate, as by the time we came into point blank range, most of them were dead or dying already. Torps finished them all off, and we screamed past the remains towards the transports.
They were already running. I gave the fighters a break and attack order, and nodded to Jane. Claymore and Unassailable turned away, leaving the transports to the fighters. Together we took up a position over the empty city.
“Got them,” said Jane.
“Where?”
She highlighted a mountain range a few hours travel outside the empty city.
“I believe there are a few hundred thousand Keerah packed into a cave system under that mountain range.”
“How can you tell?”
“I count six entrances where I can see tigers mounting a defense, and they’re far enough apart to show a very extensive cave system. Assuming they are linked. But since there is only the one city without dead tigers, it’s safe to assume the population of said city is in those caves. And that city is not small. It’s not huge either, but I’d still call it a city and not a town. So several hundred thousand, plus or minus.”
“How’d they escape being slaughtered?”
“Paranoia? How would I know? But someone was obviously assuming their fleet wasn’t going to stop an invasion fleet, and evacuated while other cities were trying to get defenders together.”
“So. Do we call in and see if they want some help, or just drop in unannounced?”
Jane actually thought about it. Or so I thought.
“Imperator says ask them.”
“You’re in touch?”
“Of course. Short messages only, as he’s in a battle of his own at the moment.”
Which figured. Again, no help coming.
“Get me a channel with whoever is in charge down there, and highlight which position they’re at.”
It took a few moments, during which our position changed, so both ships were covering the mountain range.
Finally a screen popped up.
A very annoyed white tiger looked out of it at me.
Thirty Four
“Human,” he said, almost spitting the word.
“Correct,” I said back, keeping my face neutral.
“You are in violation of our cease fire by entering Keerah space without permission.”
“We had no idea this was Keerah space until we saw images of dead Keerah in every city on this planet, except one. And this was after we removed seven fleets of Trixone from the system. So if you want to get pissy about us being here, I’ll have my repair bots put all those bloody trees back together.”
It wasn’t possible, but I was definitely not letting the tiger dictate things here. Plus he was pressing my buttons, and it’d been a long day already.
“That won’t be necessary. But you better be gone by the time our relief fleet arrives.”
“And that will be?”
He paused, and it was fairly obvious why.
“They are already overdue.”
“You do know there’s a core wide war raging?”
“A what?”
He seemed shocked.
“The Trixone launched a successful assault across the entire ten thousand light years of the core. They penetrated deep into Ralnor and Keerah space, and none of your border fleets survived. The Ralnor asked for our help, and we’re spread very thing giving it to them. Your people have been silent, and we don’t quite know how badly you’ve been hit, but we knew we’d find a Keerah planet around here somewhere, and we expected all of you to be dead. There are a lot of dead planets out there now.”
“How do you not know if you came through Keerah space to get here?”
“We didn’t. We were lucky enough to find an unknown jump point in human space which led us here. The Trixone hit you, and kept going in waves until they met us coming the other way. The Napenga are really angry with you at the moment, because they were hit badly as well, before we found them.”
“So you did know this was our space?”
“It might have been once. But the Napenga no longer have to rely on you for anything, and you just proved you can’t defend them. So for now, they’re in our space, and this system is the beginning of yours. At least it will be until you all die down there. After that, it’ll belong to whoever defends it.”
“You wouldn’t?”
“Wouldn’t what?”
I had a damn good idea, but this was just too much fun to play nice.
“You’d let us die to get our planet?”
“Your people have attacked us with no provocation, forced us to defend our space from you, had the
ir arses kicked, were shown we have the means to go anywhere we like and keep kicking your arses, and instead of making nice and deciding to be peaceful neighbors, you begrudgingly signed a cease fire, and then ignored us. The Ralnor asked for help. We hammered out a non-aggression pact while we fully mobilized, and have been blunting the offensives into their territory ever since.”
He seemed taken aback.
“Your people have done sweet fuck all except die in huge numbers. And since your first words to me were about violations of territory, I don’t see any reason why I should do anything else but sit up here and wait for you all to die. I’ve had a hard day at the end of two hard weeks, and the last thing I need to do is come down there and save your sorry arse from your own stupidity.”
He roared at me. Shenaid had her hand over her mouth. Jane and Claymore were having trouble keeping straight faces. Which for AI’s who always controlled their faces, that said a lot.
“If you come down here human, I’ll shoot you!”
“If you shoot me, I’ll kick your arse!”
He glared at me. I glared at him. He flinched. I guess it had to do with my super mask and the fact the eyes people could see were not actually mine, and they didn’t look normal.
Suddenly he roared again, this time laughing.
“Your help would be appreciated, assuming you have actual warriors on your ship.”
“We have a few. We also have a lot of combat robots the Trixone can’t hurt. And given some time, we can have a division of troops here to clear the planet. For now, we have enough to help you survive. Do you want our help or not?”
He did the tiger equivalent of a sigh.
“At the moment I’d accept help from a Lufafluf.”
“I can arrange that.”
Legend of Dreamwalker (The Hunter Imperium Book 5) Page 16