Eye of the Storm

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

“Emergence.”

The Posleen tunnel drive was extremely useful, tactically, but enormously expensive energetically. The only really functional fuel for it was antimatter, which was both costly to make and extremely unstable. But there was no way that any ship could have enough fuel space, bunkerage, for fusion bottles to produce the same power with any reasonable range.

Converting ships to use both ley-line transport, which was much cheaper energetically, and tunnel drive meant that something had to go.

In the case of the superdreadnought Lexington IV it had been Ronnie’s pride and joy: the primary mass-driver. However, the Hedren in the Daga Nine system didn’t have any ships really suitable for the main-gun to engage. Would have been cute, mind you. Even their battleships would have come apart like tinker-toys. But they just needed the space.

What filled the space where the enormous mass driver had once been, its fusion bottles and capacitors, its grav drivers and magazines, was nine tunnel drives from Posleen Command Dodecahedrons, C-Decs, and a one of the largest containment vessels of antimatter ever made. Even with that much antimatter, the ship only had the range to go from the nearest star to the Daga system. Going out they’d have to find a ley-line.

And they would be going out. They did not intend to stay. The mission of the Lady Lex was simple: Trash everything in the system then get the fuck out. They’d be back. But they’d have to refuel to do it.

And Ronnie didn’t get to do the fun stuff like run the guns. Indowy crewed most of the ship, doing everything they could that a human wasn’t absolutely critical for. The rest of the crew, mostly gunnery, tactical and sensors, was a mash of Indy crewmen and officers and some Northern European and Japanese ‘old guard.’

But, in truth, they were just filling. The only thing Ronnie needed to run the Lex was floating beside her.

Unlike many of the being’s fellows, the group that was coming to be known as the Daisies, Lex did not choose to have a real body. Each of the Command Cyborg Entities took for his or her personality that most closely associated with the ship they inhabited.

The Lexington had never had a girlie name. No former movie star or pin-up girl for her.

The Lex was called ‘The Blue Ghost.’

“Hedren battle squadron designate BatRon One at one hundred thousand kilometers 135 mark 4,” the entity whispered. She was barely visible, a cloaked and hooded cerulean apparition. “Recommend come to 134 mark 2 to close for engagement.”

“Maneuvering, make it so,” Ronnie said, her arms crossed. “Launch fighters, tell them to go for the heavies.”

Battle Commodore Ularn watched the visual playback in wonder. Six ships had flashed into substance in mid-space. Well inside the normal dimensional warp point so they were using some other means of faster-than-light travel. But he ignored all but one.

“What is that?”

The single ship, alone, outmassed his entire task force. It was clear it was not terribly maneuverable. But if it got into engagement range they were all toast.

“The ship is one that was classed as salvage,” the Marro intelligence officer replied. “One of their superdreadnoughts. The humans used them in a previous war but some were boarded in secret and determined to be unrecoverable.”

“In that case, someone made a very deadly mistake,” Ularn said. “Maneuvering, get us around that thing. Stay out of its range and close with the invasion fleet.”

“Battle Master, that may be impossible,” the Kotha Fleet Maneuvering Officer replied. “The human task force is in a geometry such that we cannot do both.”

Ularn considered that information for a moment then ground his beak.

“Close the invasion fleet.”

“BatRon One maneuvering to close the invasion fleet,” the task force tactical officer said. “If they maintain current trajectory and acceleration, we’re going to cross their T.”

“And all the way back to the surface warfare days, that’s the killer app,” Ronnie said, nodding. The six ships were all that they had had time to refurbish. To the extent they were refurbished. The Lex, two cruisers and three destroyers were all that stood between the Hedren task force and the invasion ships, none of which were capable of duking it out with warships.

On the other hand, of those six one was the Lex.

“Signal task force, close in line ahead, Lex leads the way. Order fighters to close from the rear. We got some destruction to deal out.”

“They are going to cross our front,” the Kotha maneuvering officer said.

“Engage with meson cannons at maximum range,” Ularn replied. It was probably useless, but it was the only choice he had. That or avoiding confrontation which would have equal or worse consequences. At least dying in a space battle was relatively clean compared to what the Imeg would mete out.

The Hedren had the range. Their heavy forward meson cannons had a range of almost five light seconds. Each of the four Hedren battleships in the squadron, long cylinders bristling with secondary weapons, had two of the massive cannons forward. Capable of punching through six meters of homogenous steel, they were brutal devices of war. The ten cruisers and four destroyers each had lesser versions with the same range if not the same power.

And they used it, concentrating the fire of all thirty-six meson cannons on the Lex.

“We’re taking a pounding on the port side,” the Executive Officer said. “Three plasma guns and two mass drivers off-line. Crews are on it.”

Commander Burenda Kidwai knew his head should have been on a spike. Many of the officers he had come to know over the years, including all of his former commanders, were either under arrest or ‘permanently retired.’ Some had been killed in various incidents as the ‘Old Guard’ reestablished control over Fleet.

Recognizing in his new commander, female that she was, a degree of frankness he had summoned the courage to ask why he had not joined them.

“You’re competent,” the bitch had answered. “If you manage to keep you hands out of the till and remain competent, you’ll go far. If you don’t, I’m going to space your ass. End story.”

He had, thus far, carefully ‘kept his hand out of the till’ and worked very hard to get this massive old warhorse into action. Yes, there were problems. Large sections of the old ship were still without environmental controls or even lights. Many of the drive bottles were still inactive, reducing the ship’s already slow acceleration to a crawl. But he had done everything he could in a most ‘competent’ manner to rectify those problems. And all of her guns were working, which was the important part. He did not want to breathe vacuum.

The ship shuddered, ever so slightly, at another barrage from the enemy guns.

“We can engage with mass drivers,” he noted. Breathing vacuum because your ship gets pounded into scrap was no fun either.

“Let ’em shoot,” Ronnie said. “Sorry, Lex.”

“Portions of the metal of the aircraft carrier Lexington, sunk by the Japanese at the battle of the Coral Sea, were infused into this dreadnought in its construction,” the ghost whispered. “More were added from the Lexington II, an aircraft carrier that withstood kamikaze strikes and fought on. In this iteration of my being, I am the survivor of virtual destruction three more times in the Posleen War. I have fought on sea and in space in every worthy battle to be found in this arm of the Galaxy. This is the price of being a warship. I agree that we should close.”

“Fuck yeah,” Ronnie said.

“They are surely in range by now,” the Kotha tactical officer said.

“Yes, they are,” Ularn replied, grinding his beak. “They are waiting until they are in range to utterly destroy us. They are willing to take damage to do so. We must send a message to the communications relays. Tell the High Command that we have seriously underestimated the human’s willingness to fight. And tell them that’s probably the last thing they’ll hear from us.”

The Hedren fleet was arrayed in a stellate pattern, the battleships at the center and the cruisers and destroyers arranged outwards.

The human fleet was in line astern. Which meant the Hedren could get angled shots on the human ships. But they could only hit one side and they were concentrating all their fire on the superdreadnought, trying to take it out.

Then it rolled.

“Starboard batteries coming in range of Hedren targets,” the tactical officer said.

“Shift control to automatic,” Ronnie said. “Concentrate on the heavies. Bring fighters in from the rear. Tell everybody to hold on. Lex, open fire.”

The enormous Globe-breaking mass driver had been removed. But the Lexington had been designed to not only break Globes, but to destroy the huge swarms of lesser Posleen ships. B-decs, a C-dec surrounded by twelve Lampreys, equated nicely to one of the Hedren cruisers. A C-dec to one of the destroyers.

And the Lex was designed to take on thousands of such not a mere handful.

Arrayed along her sides were literally hundreds of lasers, each capable of destroying a Lamprey. Nearly as many heavy plasma cannons capable of gutting a C-dec. But the pride and joy were over two dozen grav-guns per side. Each of the GalTech 200mm mass-drivers accelerated a one hundred and fifty kilogram chunk of refractory heavy metal to ten percent of light-speed. The kinetic impact was equivalent to a sixteen megaton nuclear weapon.

The impacts from the Hedren meson cannons had barely caused the ship to shudder.

The Blue Ghost’s first broadside nearly threw everyone off their feet.

“Report!” Ularn shouted, sealing his suit. The fact that he had to seal his suit in the deeply buried tactical room told him everything he really had to know. He was surprised he was alive to ask the question. “What do we have left?”

“Ondun, Othelululi, Avakog, Baglitua, Rinarint, Savatulaulalo and Elondeg, are all damaged and out of the battle,” the maneuvering officer said. “Bango, Ingona, Lirulimoru, Mirornc and Otha are still in the fight. The rest are… gone.”

“We may be ‘in the fight,’ ” the Ingona’s commander said. “But our meson cannons are out and a good bit of our secondary weapons. We’ve not much to fight with.”

“All remaining ships, skew turn, engage with secondaries,” Ularn said.

“Fighters incoming at kang tai delta eight,” the fleet combat officer said.

“Ships maneuver for fighter engage… ”

The Kotha didn’t manage to get the word ‘engagement’ out before the second barrage hit the task force.

“Their last two battleships just went up, sir,” the Lex’s tactical officer said. “One cruiser’s still limping along and a couple of the others are sort of alive but drifting. One battleship drifting.”

“Away boarding forces,” McNair said. “Grab whatever intel and prisoners they can. Tell them to be careful; those ships are right on the edge of being bright flashes in the night sky. Task force break up and move to designated targets. Rendezvous at Karum ley point in no more than twenty hours. Send a message on the Himmit frequency and ask them to report that initial space forces in the Daga system have been reduced. Maneuvering, move us over to cover the retreat of the invasion fleet. And we might need to give the SS a little cover fire.”

“Do we have an ID on those vehicles?”

Group General Gweldund knew to his shame that this planet was lost. He had been left on the planet with little but construction and consolidation forces so given the scale of the attack it was going to be hard to blame him. However, it was his duty to complete the transmitter and then hold it. There was no avoiding that truth.

But there were other forces on the surface as well as those in space. From the size of this task-force that had appeared out of nowhere they were not enough ships to hold the system. Which meant that, eventually, the remaining forces would be reinforced both by the transmitter and from space. So, the more damage he did to the incoming forces the better.

“Sensors do not recognize most of them,” Commander Savanass, the Marro chief of intelligence and sensors said. “Some of them are shuttles. The rest… Ah, I have a visual from Ingia Station.” The Marro considered the image and then shook his head slowly back and forth. “These appear to be ground combat vehicles. But… they are not designed for orbital insertion. They are just… ground combat vehicles on platforms.”

“Some sort of feint?” General Gweldund asked. “We do not have enough power to stop both the bombardment and the vehicles. I’m not sure we have the power to stop either. But if we concentrate on one, we cannot interdict the other.”

“They appear to have some sort of shielding that prevents the worst effects of reentry,” the Marro said, examining the sensor readings closely. “If they also have some way of slowing… they could be a ground threat.”

“Shift fire to the vehicles,” General Gweldund ordered. “There is no way to fully stop the bombardment. The transmitter will be destroyed. But we must make it possible to retake the surface.”

“We will do our best,” the Glandri officer in charge of defenses said. “But with all the metal that thing is throwing out in the way, there is no way we will get most of them.”

“I must contact the Imeg for support,” General Gweldund said, his tentacles wrippling. “They will not be pleased.”

“Mein Gott,” Frederick shouted as a Marder in front of him exploded in fire. He couldn’t even tell what had hit it, just that it was destroyed.

“They’re starting to get through the kinetics,” Harz said, blandly. “This should get interesting.”

He could only see it because the Leopard had, for some reason, turned over on its side and half upside down. There was no way to control the tank. All they could do was fall on the pre-selected routes. Two vehicles, a Leopard and an armored support vehicle, bumped, tangled, exploded into fire and pieces. Their Leopard dropped through the debris, a chunk of armor plating flashed out of the fire, slammed the vehicle and suddenly one of Frederick’s vision blocks blanked. The system quickly spread the load but the view was slightly grainier. He wished he could just turn them off. The tank was now spinning and it was getting very disorienting. They also were starting to build up G forces and he was being pulled forward in his combat harness. He grabbed a sickness bag and was noisy with it.

“Ribbon chute coming out,” Harz said. “Let’s hope it doesn’t tangle.”

There was a thump and the tank swung back and forth for a moment then ended up in a nose down configuration. The KEWs were beginning to slam into the ground below them, bursts like nuclear weapons in a ripple across the ground, growing and swelling, thousands of them.

“We can’t survive that!” Adler shouted.

“Most of it will be gone by the time we land,” Harz said, yawning. “Most of it.”

Sun-bright flashes, roiling mushroom clouds and the panzer dropped straight into the heart of them. Frederick was momentarily glad. The view was, at least, cut off. All he could see was blackness shot with lightning as the clouds rearranged the massive energy released by the orbital kinetic weapons.

“How long until we hit?” Adler shouted.

“Coming up in four… three… two… ”

The sensation of falling abruptly stopped with barely a bump. The Leopard seemed to pause for a moment then dropped downwards, hard, slamming to the ground.

“Blowing bolts,” Harz said to an almost unnoticed additional thump. “Forward, Schutze! Follow the icon on your blocks.”

A karat had appeared, off-center to the right, and Frederick revved the engine of the Leopard then started towards it. He was still driving in utter blackness lit only by occasional flashes of lightning. And the ground was beyond rough, the panzer repeatedly dropping into craters that were, fortunately, easy enough to drive out of.

“Slow, here, Schutze,” Harz said as additional icons started popping up. “We’re reaching the assembly point.”

The karat began to shift to the left and Frederick followed it slavishly. He realized after a moment that it was taking him down some sort of path. The path seemed to have nothing to do with the ground but as the other icons moved it occurred to him that the unit was being arrayed.

He considered the icons for a moment then then shook his head. Several panzers were missing including that of the company commander.

“Stop,” Harz said. “And now, we wait.”

“For what?” Adler asked.

“To see who else made it.”