“That’ll happen,” he assured them, knowing that stopping them with the frigate’s marauding tactics was never the entire plan, “be ready.”
~
Torres was pale. He sat in his command chair wearing a look of stunned confusion, having learned what had taken place on the Anvil, but his orders to deploy immediately could not be ignored. He had little to no ground forces aboard, no commander or her sub-commanders, and the damage to his ship had yet to be fully repaired. But his cargo holds and shuttle bay were rammed full of the rapidly manufactured Shroud mines loaded from the forge ship as they fixed the holes in his hull. Dassiova had given him his orders, let him in on part of the wider plan, and told him to put recent events out of his mind. Unusually subdued and humbled by what had taken place on his watch, and further wounding his pride was the realization that Amare had got so close to him to further her treasonous endeavors, he was stung into a resolute rage which he planned to unload in full on the approaching Va’alen armada.
The Ichi, jumping in an opposing direction to the returning frigates, shrouded on arrival into real space and began rapidly deploying mines at irregular intervals along the approach vector of their enemy. The irregularity, the wanton randomness of the mine deployment, was intentional, as the Va’alen had proven over and over that they were quick to adapt to any new tactics their human opponents employed.
By the time the Hammer and the Vengeance returned, his holds were emptied and he exchanged a brief handover to the warships before jumping back to the Anvil for the remainder of their stealth mines.
~
“This is easier if you simply tell us what we need to know,” Chief said softly, or at least in a voice that was soft in comparison to his usual aggressive rumble.
“I don’t know anything,” Eze snarled, the welt above her right eye swollen but no longer bleeding after one of her guards had ensured she ‘fell’ walking down the ramp of the dropship she had been brought to the Indomitable on. “if I knew what you were talking about, don’t you think I’d at least have a cover story ready? Think about it,” she explained, “you’ve done the same covert training I have; why would I just play dumb?”
The Chief thought on that as he leaned back in the chair opposite where she was sat restrained, “Perhaps you are using reverse psychology?” Eze groaned and leaned painfully against the restraints around her wrists. “I’ll tell you again,” she said in a hoarse voice, “I haven’t sent a single goddamned communication outside of this fleet since before we set sail to Mars the first time.”
Chief Onyilogwu treated her to his best hard stare and sighed, letting her know that he would be forced to extract the truth from her the hard way and would take no enjoyment from it. Enjoyment or not, that sigh promised, he would do it.
Chapter Twenty-Three –Unnamed Moon Surface
“They’re gaining on us,” Zero warned, “no two ways about it.”
“Dammit,” she answered, “defensive position?”
“Stand by,” Zero replied as he took over control of the drone and scouted ahead, “terrain change in three clicks, rocky ground as the elevation climbs more rapidly. Mountains in the distance and… and what appears to be a larger base with a high-walled perimeter.”
“Crap!” Brandt cursed, “Anywhere we can hole up and take these assholes out?” Zero said nothing as he scanned the ground with his natural hunter’s eye.
“Cave,” he said with a hint of trepidation, “ambush position there.” Brandt looked at the display he was showing her through the drone link and tightened her mouth as she thought.
“Do it,” she ordered. “Perez in the mouth of the cave. Turner, Rogers, inside and further back.” She knew that protecting the medic and pilot would be unpopular with them, but rising fear and adrenaline didn’t allow her to waste time dwelling on it. “Paterson, with them,” she added as an afterthought. “Zero, find yourself a position, and Payne, watch his back. Horne and Specter, with me; ambush position behind the rocky outcrop to the left of the approach.
As far as rapidly made plans went, it was good, but she recalled the adage about plans and their contact with the enemy.
They covered the three kilometers quickly and deployed to their given positions without question. Paterson was in possession of the biological samples that would be vital to their research and ultimately their weapon and armor development programs, but surviving the planetoid they were trapped on was the priority. To that end, recovering the hidden bodies of the Va’alen and the dinosaur-bird-raptor thing was a tertiary goal, given their current danger.
The wait for their hunters was unbearable. Through the team channel, she could hear the rapid, uneven breathing of more than one person as they lay in frightened anticipation of the ambush. A glance at the team’s vitals in a sub-menu opened by her eye controls showed every single one of them, with the exception of Specter, with elevated pulse rates.
The wait ended not in the way they expected, but by their hastily adopted position coming under sudden and unexpected fire by the enemy. Instead of their hunters walking into their trap ready to be sprung, rapid-fire bursts of directed energy bolts poured into them from the tree line. Perez was struck first, taking four or five direct hits to the armored chest of the mech rig below the canopy. He succeeded in firing off three heavy weapon discharges back at the source of his attack, before falling backwards to transmit a strangled cry over the channel as if he was being electrocuted. Fire rained back on them with a toe-to-toe fight ensuing where the two races slugged it out like brawlers. No clever subterfuge, no overwhelming tactics gave either side the upper hand, and it simply came down to a matter of who could do more damage with their weapons the fastest.
With one down already, and that one being in possession of their heaviest weapons, the humans were backed against the wall by the superior firepower of their enemy.
Zero, having only just gained the position he wanted in the high branches of a tree bigger than anything he had ever seen on Earth, lay along a branch wider than a dropship’s loading ramp. He lovingly caressed the safety of his battle rifle and used his HUD to penetrate the layers of thick foliage ahead and below him. The red outline of a Va’alen warrior was unmistakably in a firing position, as though it were on any shooting range anywhere in the galaxy, and Zero lined up a high-powered 12mm shot on a trajectory that would pass straight downwards through the torso from the place where its neck would be, if it was a human enemy.
He squeezed the trigger, seeing the digital outline of his target shudder and convulse with the immediate impact. He didn’t wait to see the effect on target, instead he fired again, three, four, five more rounds pumping the supercharged projectiles through the body until it transitioned from dangerous enemy to falling corpse.
That was when their troubles truly began.
~
Fal K’rath, his senses alive as he finally got to fight the humans in personal combat and not in the black void of space, relished his successful shots as the big mechanical human fell to his fire. He was spraying the position indiscriminately, forcing the humans to keep their heads down in fear of the destructive power of his pulse rifle as he searched for a clear target to annihilate, when the berserker rage came over him.
He had never experienced it, but tales of the Path of Ending came to him from his memory as his mind and body shuddered in response to the death of his mate and the severing of their bond.
Reasonable thought processes were like smoke snatched away by a gust of wind; unable to form for more than a second before the rage snatched it away. He no longer thought, instead he acted on impulse. On instinct. And his instinct made him charge forwards in a suicidal, frenzied attack.
He burst from the trees, his lead followed by the other female as she had yet to learn that K’rath’s mate was dead, and he charged up the rocky incline with terrifying physical ease. He fired upwards at the tree where the fatal shots had originated, seeing wood splinter and debris fall as the gigantic tree was all but cut in hal
f by his shots.
Horne fell, struck in the helmet with three direct shots as he popped up out of cover to aim at the charging alien. The one he hadn’t seen lined him up, stopping her advance temporarily as she fired a burst which decapitated the human on the third impact, after his head was rocked backwards with growing force until the energy transferring into his armor was too great for the resistance offered. His headless body fell in Brandt’s peripheral vision and despite the clear dislike running both ways between them, she felt the loss of another life under her command keenly.
Two more humans fell, hit in their torsos by the onslaught of fire as the Va’alen charged, until Fal K’rath, enraged by the Path of Ending, swung his rifle in a vicious backhand blow to spin one of the smaller humans around twice as his pathetically small weapon flew from his hands. He roared in challenge, dragged the claws of both upper hands across his chest to scratch a weeping X into his torso, and raised a foot to stamp down and crush the visor of his enemy.
K’rath faltered, the rage vanishing in an instant, as if his mind had been dropped into a vacuum to leave him staggering and breathless, as the pain of his self-inflicted injury stabbed at him.
Bring the human to me alive, the voice invading his thoughts ordered. He was powerless to resist as the berserker fury came back to him partially. He was still enraged, but with that retuning anger, caused by the irreplaceable loss of his mate, came a control he had never known; as if something else were making his decisions for him and tricking his mind into believing he was in control.
Instead of stamping down, he turned his body and threw out a strong leg to thump into the chest of a fast-moving human, tall and black in the gloom of the cave, to send it flying backwards in a glow of sudden blue, like it was shielded. K’rath fired two more bursts of fire from his rifle, smashing the weapon out of the hands of another enemy to knock it back down as he turned and bellowed a roar of challenge at the others; daring them to come and be killed, as he placed a foot on the chest of the one he had knocked down to signify ownership, just as if he were hunting big game.
Bring it to me! Now! The voice commanded, threatening to take the power from his legs as the mind control fought against the returning wrath. The voice boomed and echoed painfully inside his mind, forcing his will to obey. He snatched up the metallic body of the unconscious human and sprang from the cave to beat down another human as it fled.
~
“Re…” Brandt coughed horribly as her entire body shook. Her HUD flickered as her suit powered up again after the energy of the alien weapon had surged the operating systems and shut it down before an automatic reboot had reconnected her with the world. Even their armor, uprated after their last clash, seemed woefully inefficient against the weapons of the Va’alen. “Report…”
“Commander,” Specter said, leaning in front of her visor and shaking her shoulder gently, “Leslie…”
“I’m alright,” she said as she pushed him off and stood uncertainly, “sound off.”
“Specter.”
“Turner.”
“Paterson,” he groaned, evidently in pain.
“Payne.”
“Sound off!” Brandt snapped again as she tried desperately to reboot the sub menu to see the vitals readouts for her team. She heard Payne calling for Zero, the pain of his silence evident in her words, because she had been responsible for watching his back. Brandt finally rebooted her suit and brought up the bio-readings for her team. She saw Horne had flatlined, as had Perez in the mech, and two others appeared weak. Zero and Rogers, both giving the pulse profile of being unconscious, caused her worry as she pushed aside the losses.
“Zero’s alive,” she said, “find him. And Rogers seems to be unconscious.” She looked down at her empty hands, black scorch marks showing and confusing her, until her brain caught up and told her that her weapon had exploded in her hands when struck by an energy discharge from a Va’alen weapon. She reached down for the pistol on her right thigh and stopped, seeing the discarded pulse rifle of her enemy lying on the rocky ground. She stooped for it, picking it up and finding it to weigh far less than she imagined.
“Who is good to go?” she snapped.
“I am,” Specter answered in an instant as he appeared beside her.
“Got a…” Paterson gasped, “got a power drain in my suit…”
“I saw it take Rogers,” Payne said. “It went that way.” Her HUD flashed a waypoint onto theirs.
“Paterson’s hit bad,” Turner said as Brandt spun to see the medic helping Paterson to the uneven ground. “The shot took some of his armor away at the ribs. He’s bleeding bad.”
“Fix him up,” Brandt ordered. “Payne, find Zero and get him back here. Watch over them.”
“I’ve found him,” Payne answered, “bastard shot him out the tree.”
“Give me his rifle,” Specter said. Payne appeared, dragging the unconscious sniper behind her as she tossed the customized battle rifle to the cyborg. “We going?” he asked Brandt, who nodded and turned as another roar of animalistic challenge tore the thick, humid air around them. She spun, seeing the last of their attackers rear up, injured, to charge them. Without thought, she raised the alien rifle and instinctively nestled it into her shoulder as she sighted down the barrel and saw the unfamiliar targeting holo highlight the beast. She squeezed, rattling off a pulsating burst of automatic fire into it to drop it dead. Its momentum made it slew lifelessly over the dirt towards them to come to a rest a dozen paces from them.
Satisfied, Brandt lowered her new gun and set off at a run after the kidnapped pilot.
Chapter Twenty-Four –Deep Orbit of Proxima Centauri
“ETA two minutes,” the tactical officer called out over the bridge of the Indomitable.
“Twelve minutes to our weapons range or to the gun barges?” Dassiova asked in return.
“The gun barges. Sorry, Admiral.”
“It’s okay, Son,” Dassiova said soothingly, or at least as soothingly as his gravelly growl of a voice could manage, “you just keep your eyes on that console. Comm, open up a line to the barges.”
The comm officer hit some icons, then turned and nodded to the admiral.
“We have incoming, as I’m sure you’re well aware. The second they come into range, you let rip with everything you’ve got. Unload it all, then fall back to a closer defensive position. Indomitable out.”
“Where do you need us, Admiral?” Halstead’s voice came over the speakers as she spoke for herself and Hayes’ ship.
“Where we discussed, Captain,” Dassiova said, “and wait for my mark, that understood?” Both frigate captains acknowledged his order, despite both feeling uneasy about it. Rank was information, Hayes knew. The higher up you got in rank, the more information you had. He was high up enough to know most things, but the overall battle plan was Dassiova’s to run the plays on, and he knew that the ground-pounder played space battle like infantry ambushes, to the point where very few of their mostly space-faring commanders would be capable of catching him out.
Outside the box, he thought, that’s how he thinks and that’s why he’s in charge.
“Ichi to Indomitable,” Torres’ voice filled the bridge as he hailed them.
“Go for Dassiova,” the admiral replied.
“Admiral, all mines laid, and the enemy has only one direct course safely left open for them. The last mines are detectable as you ordered. Permission to join the fight?”
Dassiova, pleased that Torres had just done as he was asked and not tried anything heroic and ultimately dumb, considered the request.
“Negative, Ichi,” he said, feeling the disappointment in the unspoken words at the other end of the comm, “I need you ready to jump ahead to get your people the moment we’ve dealt with these assholes. Withdraw to the station and protect the rear from anything slipping by. Out.” He cut the comm to prevent any time wasted on his orders being questioned.
“Come on, you sons of bitches,” he said as though speaking
to himself, “show me your faces and let me cure you…” His concentration was broken by a warning message flashing up on his private console.
UNAUTHORIZED SUBSPACE COMMUNICATION.
“Massey?” he said, confused. The flight officer didn’t respond. An overwhelming sense of suspicion washed down his spine like a trickle of cold water in a shower, making him lock eyes with Asha, who seemed to know what he knew in the same instant. He shouted for her again but received only blank looks from his bridge crew. “Mainframe,” he said to the ship’s computer interface, “Locate Flight Officer Massey.”
“Unable to comply,” the computerized voice said annoyingly, “Flight Officer Suranne Massey does not have an active transponder chip.”
“What the hell…?” Dassiova said, before a shout interrupted him.
“Enemy in range! Gun barges opening fire.”
The black void of their sector of space, backlit by the dull, red glow of the red dwarf star, erupted in a huge wave of orange bolts and blue trails of streaking nukes. The barrage, shown on screen on the main bridge of every ship in the fleet, took an eternity to reach the enemy, who had already begun to evade the onslaught. Those ships that left their path to miss the incoming fire and missiles found themselves trapped in a shrouded minefield they had been lured into by the careful harrying of their approach. Bright, electric blue blossoms filled the dark expanse as Va’alen fighters died in droves. But the fight had only just begun.
A returning salvo, equal in size and savagery to the human fleet, streaked back at them. Singularity munitions caught by the energy weapons burst into blooms of darker black tinged with electric arcs, before collapsing and drawing other missiles into their death grip. The threshold of destruction erupted as the first wave of untouched enemy fighters burst through to be engaged by the cannons of the huge flagship; streaks of blue and orange flying out at all angles as the gun pods targeted each enemy vessel at a ratio of three to one. More muted explosions, curious to behold without the human expectation of a blossoming fireball, punctuated the space around the ships as the gun barges steamed back towards their mothership to act as point defense platforms. A few ships, not many, flew past the warships to the vulnerable vessels in the rear, only to be cut down by murderous fire from the new and now fully operational space station. More ships added their guns to the fight; Cortez, Venture, Anvil, Ichi, all unleashing as much personal hell as they could bring to bear and preventing any of the lone pairs from reaching the soft belly of the Ninth Fleet.
Conflict: The Expansion Series Book 3 Page 21