Vanguard

by Jack Campbell

  She promoted Riley fast, and what he lacked in experience he made up for in enthusiasm. Mele winnowed out the best one hundred and fifty volunteers from the slightly more than two hundred available, designating those left behind as the city defense garrison so they wouldn’t feel useless. Counting the pulse rifles acquired from Scatha’s soldiers and weapons being manufactured by facilities whose output had hastily changed, she now had more than one hundred rifles and pistols to equip her soldiers. Most of the weapons were slug throwers, but those had the advantage of simplicity and ease of use. And everyone had the light body armor, which was no match for battle armor but better than no armor at all.

  She had twenty more mortars, this time intended for multiple shots, a few dozen chaff packs, and special portable mortars that might be needed.

  Mele weighed her assets against the defenses and shook her head. Ninja had picked up indications of at least a few summary executions among Scatha’s forces, but Scatha still had around seventy soldiers, all equipped with obsolescent but still-effective armor and weapons. Those soldiers had stayed huddled inside their perimeter since Mele’s force had wiped out the patrol, which had prevented further chipping away at their numbers. The mortars that had come out to hit the area behind the hills were once again entrenched inside Scatha’s base, ready to bombard anyone approaching. And work had continued on getting the second Scatha warbird able to fly again.

  Scatha’s base had not responded to any attempt by Glenlyon to negotiate, instead sending out one image, knowing it would be received. Spurlick had clearly taken a while to die. Despite her disdain for Spurlick, Mele had gazed at the image in cold fury at the sort of people who would torture enemies to death. Even though the government tried to censor the image, it still made its way around, generating anger in every part of Glenlyon. If the intent had been to discourage further attacks on Scatha’s base, it had backfired badly.

  It wasn’t that long after the third day had ended, barely after midnight, when Mele’s force began embarking on the WinGs and loading equipment.

  • • •

  Squall would intercept Scatha’s ships around noon of this ship’s day. Rob Geary made sure he looked his best because sailors picked up on that kind of thing when they were looking for reassurance that their officers knew what they were doing. He made sure the galley served the best breakfast that it could. As the crew mustered, Rob ordered final checks on the survival suits that everyone would put on an hour before the intercept. If part of Squall was holed by enemy fire, with atmosphere escaping into space, the only thing the crew in the affected compartments would have to do was seal their head coverings.

  There was all too strong a chance that even the bridge, as well protected as any compartment on the ship, would be pierced by charged particles from the destroyer’s pulse cannon.

  Squall’s single lifeboat, which in theory could get survivors back to the planet, would barely hold everyone on the ship if they were packed in tightly. But everyone knew that if Squall had to be abandoned at least some of her crew would have died already. No one talked about it, but they knew it. Rob looked over the status on the lifeboat, all systems green, comforting himself with the knowledge that if it came to that no one would be barbaric enough to fire on a lifeboat full of survivors. Humanity had left that sort of atrocity behind.

  He stopped by the two weapon stations, encouraging their crews, and went by engineering, where the team seemed more worried about the power core acting up than they did about whatever the enemy would do.

  Rob ended up on the bridge. Everyone was already at battle stations before being called.

  “One hour to intercept,” Danielle Martel said.

  “Thank you.” Rob rubbed his face, inhaling slowly. The feel of the survival suit he wore reminded him with every movement of the worst that might happen. He shrugged off the foreboding, then tapped his controls to speak to everyone on the ship. “You all know that we’re facing a tough fight. You all know how important it is that we stop Scatha. I have no doubt that every single one of you will do their very best. We will defend our homes, we will defeat those who threaten them, and we will be victorious.”

  Maybe it was just denial, or maybe an outright lie to claim that victory was certain, but the reaction of the crew told Rob that they needed to hear it. And, who knew? Belief had changed certain defeat into incredible victory before in history.

  But hopefully luck would be on their side as well.

  • • •

  The biggest WinG and one of the smaller WinGs off-loaded north of Scatha’s base behind the foothills. The other smaller WinG dropped a contingent of Mele’s force to the south, in the open but out of range of Scatha’s mortars. She didn’t want Scatha to be able to focus all of its defenses to the north.

  Mele had run into some problems organizing the smaller movements of people and equipment, but the difficulties seemed to have gone up at a steep rate as the numbers of both grew. Torn by frustration over the seeming inability of supposedly intelligent men and women to follow simple instructions, and haunted by anxiety over the outcome of the looming battle, Mele had to repeatedly restrain herself from giving her volunteers high-volume demonstrations of Marine profanity. She finally began to understand why the officers and senior enlisted she had dealt with in the past often seemed irritable and short-tempered.

  None of which helped get her people into position with the equipment they needed. But eventually she got everything settled despite the sun’s setting and growing darkness.

  Scatha’s base had remained silent throughout the off-loading. Mele’s biggest fear had been that Scatha’s soldiers would sally out to hit her small southern force while she was still trying to organize the northern force, but there had been no movement from the defenders. Having been badly stung twice by Mele’s forces, Scatha’s defenders didn’t appear inclined to take any chances. They were probably worried that the small force to the south was not simply a diversion but bait to lure them out into the open.

  Studying the base through multispectrum binoculars, Mele could catch glimpses of defenders in the entrenchments. No trace of the civilians could be seen. She had worried that Scatha might herd the civilians, including children, into the entrenchments to further serve as human shields and prevent her attack, but that hadn’t happened.

  Lowering the binoculars, Mele looked back down the slope. One of her new sergeants, Diego, dropped down beside her, gazing cautiously at the base. “Why aren’t we going to be attacking while it’s dark tonight?” he asked.

  “It’s too easy for things to go wrong in the dark,” Mele explained. “Even with infrared gear, which we don’t have enough of. Look how confusing it was just unloading the WinGs. That’s why our attack will go in during the first traces of morning twilight, when it’s just becoming light enough to see.”

  “Won’t that make us better targets for them?”

  Mele remembered asking questions like that to long-suffering superiors. “Not really,” she half lied. “Scatha’s battle armor helmets have built in infrared, so they’d be able to spot us regardless.” That was true as far as it went, but it took good training to use IR gear well, and so far she had seen few signs of good training among Scatha’s soldiers. The lack of veterans out in the new colonies had hindered Glenlyon, but apparently it had also made things harder for Scatha.

  “Pass the word to try to get some sleep,” Mele told Diego. “We’ll be rousing everyone at 0100 to prepare for the assault.”

  • • •

  Half an hour before Squall intercepted Scatha’s ships, Drake Porter called out to Rob Geary. “You’ve got a message. High priority, personal for you.”

  Rob put on an ear set and tapped the privacy settings to limit the ability of anyone else to see whatever appeared on his display.

  Ninja’s face appeared, rigid with that desperate attempt to look calm in someone who was actually terrified. “Rob,
I know you’re too far off to respond. Not even sure you’ll get this in time. I’ve had no luck getting into Scatha’s ships. I . . . I know how bad this situation is. I’ve run simulations here and . . . I wanted you to know I understand what you’re doing and why, and hope you come back. I’m actually praying to my ancestors for that, can you believe it? But if you don’t, I wanted to be sure you knew that . . . well, that there are going to be people who have you for an ancestor. You and me. And they’ll know what you did and why. I’ll . . . I’ll make sure our kid knows and passes it on. So do your best, and if you don’t make it back, know our child will know who you were, and that I’ll be thinking of you always until I see you again in the light beyond the dark.”

  Rob stared at the screen for a moment after the message ended, unable to process any thoughts, then tore his mind back to the present.

  If he was ever going to see that child, he needed to focus on what was happening here.

  “Was it something important?” Danielle Martel asked as Rob removed the headset.

  “Yeah,” Rob said. “Very important.”

  The two ships from Scatha had not altered their trajectory in response to the approach of Squall. Glenlyon’s sole warship was coming in from slightly below and to one side of Scatha’s. But the destroyer had shifted position so that as Squall came in she would have to first encounter the enemy warship before being able to fire upon Scatha’s freighter. If Squall took the time to reposition and come in from a markedly different vector, the destroyer could easily shift to block that new approach as well.

  “What sort of tactics does Earth Fleet call for in this kind of situation?” Rob asked Danielle Martel.

  “Use two warships in the attack,” she said.

  “What if you don’t have two warships?”

  “The tactics all call for two. That’s the only answer I’ve got,” she said. “Earth Fleet’s answer to the problem of how to do this with one ship is to say you should use two.”

  Twenty minutes to contact. Rob confirmed that all of Squall’s shields were on maximum, both the grapeshot launcher and the pulse particle beam ready. But the shields of the destroyer were strong enough to shrug off the quick blows that the cutter could deal during a lightning-quick firing run, while the destroyer’s weapons had enough additional punch to have a chance of getting through Squall’s shields.

  The freighter would be carrying reinforcements for Scatha’s ground forces and probably new heavy weapons. But the destroyer was capable of bombarding the planet.

  “Lock weapons on the freighter,” Rob directed. “If we can damage it enough, Scatha will either have to withdraw, or the destroyer will have to reduce speed to a crawl to stay with it.”

  Squall was coming in at point one light speed. Warships today could push double that. The destroyer and freighter were coming toward the planet, still a light hour distant, at point zero three light speed. Anything more than point zero six light speed introduced targeting problems that greatly reduced the chances of a hit.

  “Reduce velocity to point zero three light speed,” Rob ordered.

  Squall pivoted as her thrusters pushed her around, then her main propulsion unit lit off to begin cutting her velocity drastically. The inertial dampers whined in protest but did their job of preventing the forces employed from pulping frail human bodies.

  “Revised time to contact, forty minutes,” Danielle Martel reported. She had no sooner said that than an alarm sounded. “The destroyer is accelerating. He must want to hit us before we finish braking our velocity.”

  “Hold it as long as we can,” Rob ordered. The destroyer had been lured away from the freighter, but that still left it a serious threat. “Weapons, shift target to the destroyer, then back to the freighter as soon as we’ve engaged the warship.”

  “We’re not going to maneuver?” Drake Porter asked. “Dodge?”

  “Squall can’t dodge a destroyer,” Rob said. “We get in our best shot at it and keep going to hit the freighter before the destroyer can come back to hit us again.”

  “The freighter is transmitting,” Drake reported.

  “Probably asking the destroyer why it’s running off and leaving them,” Danielle commented. “Revised time to contact with destroyer is ten minutes. We’ll complete braking maneuver in eight minutes and pivot to face forward for contact.”

  “Good,” Rob said, watching his display. In planetary terms, the destroyer was immensely far away. In space terms, it would be very far away one moment and very close the next before being far away again the moment after, the moment of close approach a tiny fraction of a second. “Input order to accelerate at nine minutes.”

  “To what velocity?” Danielle asked.

  “We’ll hold acceleration for thirty seconds, long enough for Squall to pick up appreciably more velocity, then cut off. If the destroyer reacts wrongly to our changes in speed and vector, that might mess up his ability to hit us. But we’ll still be slow enough to get good hits on that freighter.”

  Squall’s main propulsion cut off, and the ship pivoted once more, bringing her bow to face the oncoming destroyer. “One minute to contact,” Danielle reported as Squall’s main propulsion suddenly cut in again, this time accelerating the ship rather than slowing it. “The destroyer is adjusting vector to compensate.”

  Maneuvering systems had automatic safeguards built in to try to avoid collisions with enemy ships when conducting firing passes close enough for weapons to hit and hit hard. But at the velocities warships traveled that was an imprecise calculation, prone to error if either ship bobbled the slightest off its predicted track. Space battles could be very long as warships made repeated passes at each other with long periods to reposition in between, or very, very short as a pass ended in a collision that reduced both warships and their crews to a cloud of gas and dust.

  Squall and the enemy destroyer tore past each other in far less than the blink of an eye, Squall shuddering from hits as she lined up on the freighter.

  Rob saw damage reports pop up on his display. Bow shields had suffered spot failures as a rain of grapeshot slammed into them, and at least one pulse from the destroyer’s cannon had hit Squall. “Losing atmosphere, compartments sealed off, no critical systems hit, local reports say one dead,” Danielle reported. “No damage noted on the destroyer. His shields held.”

  No damage to the enemy and one dead aboard Squall. Rob couldn’t spend any time wondering who in his crew had already died. “Make sure we get a good shot at that freighter!”

  Squall adjusted course slightly as she came up from just below the freighter, closing the range to the minimum safe distance.

  The freighter came and went, there and past, Squall jolting slightly as her weapons fired again. This time Squall took no damage since the freighter lacked weapons.

  “Up two zero zero degrees, come right zero two degrees,” Rob ordered to bring Squall swinging through a wide arc to hit the freighter again. “Get me a damage report on that ship.”

  “We lost some sensors on that encounter with the destroyer,” Danielle Martel said. “Getting an assessment now. We collapsed his shields on an after quarter. Significant damage. Unable to assess whether propulsion or thrusters were impacted.”

  Far ahead, Scatha’s destroyer was looping about as well, though to the side and up, climbing to meet Squall as she dove back at the freighter. “If we hold planned vector,” Danielle cautioned, “the destroyer will hit us again right after we hit the freighter.”

  “Weapons,” Rob commanded. “Target the freighter again. Try to recharge to hit the destroyer afterward, but only after throwing everything we can at the freighter.”

  The minutes crawled by as the ships shot through space, covering huge distances as they strove to get close enough to each other again to shoot.

  This time Squall went past the freighter from behind, overtaking it and having slightly longer
to shoot. But before they could assess the results of that run, Scatha’s destroyer slashed past Squall from the side, the cutter bucking from more hits. “Come down zero zero three degrees, port two four zero degrees,” Rob ordered.

  “We’ve lost a thruster,” Danielle reported. “Compensating. Coming around.”

  Rob’s display popped up an assessment of the damage to the freighter. “Fifty percent loss of main propulsion, damage to entire stern section,” Rob said.

  “He’s changing vector!” Danielle cried.

  The freighter was lumbering into a turn that made the warships look like gazelles by comparison. “Any guesses?” Rob pressed her.

  “He’s definitely turning off the vector for the planet . . . still coming around. I think he’s running.”

  But he would only keep running as long as Squall kept after him, Rob knew. How long could he keep that up, with the destroyer swinging back for another attack on Squall?

  “Lieutenant?” Sergeant Grant Duncan’s face wasn’t visible on Rob’s display, but his voice held the rigid calm of someone who was holding back fear. “That last shot took out the lifeboat.”

  Rob checked his status screen, seeing the red marker blinking there. “It’s gone?”

  “No, most of it is still there, but there’s a big hole through it. I plugged in and got status on nothing except the escape jet. Every life support system and control system on the pod is showing negative.”

  “I’m showing damage to the lifeboat,” Danielle reported. “A shot from the destroyer went through its bay.”

  Rob fought off the urge to slump in despair. The odds of surviving this fight had been bad to begin with. Even though he had temporarily turned back the freighter, the destroyer was unmarked and coming back again.