War of Alien Aggression 5 Cozen's War Page 4

  The NAV console was set to port of the command chair and from Dana’s battlestation there she had a good view of Cozen without appearing to watch him. He didn’t flinch or twinge when the prisoner of war read the statement the Squidies had no doubt written for him. "We offered a treaty, but Harry Cozen chose war." It was all an alien lie, Dana told herself. It had to be.

  Cozen wasn’t troubled with the same questions some of the crew had burdened themselves with since the alien propaganda broadcasts started. He knew the truth. He sat up straight up in that chair with his eyes on the projections of the invasion fleet and the alien ships stretched out along 100 million miles of battlefront.

  The Staas Guards at the main hatches and the lift didn’t have any questions. Dana felt like a traitor even entertaining what she’d heard as anything but propaganda. She’d been there that day on Moriah, too. They’d attacked first. The Squidies had attacked them and they’d defended themselves. No. It wasn’t possible it was all a lie. She was there with Ram and Biko and Cozen when it happened. Asa Biko was right here, in front of her at the Air Traffic console, managing the junks and fighters of the Air Group. He knew the truth. When that alien propaganda played, Biko didn’t question what he knew. Dana told herself she shouldn't either.

  "99th and 38th, you have clearance on request. Good hunting." Biko felt her staring and looked up from the AT console then. "That’s the whole lot," he said to her. "The barn is empty. Not a craft in the bays besides the longboats."

  Harry Cozen leaned forward then. He clapped his hands once, loudly, and rubbed his palms together vigorously before he separated them. "Mr. Bergano, broadcast the signal to all ships in the open. "Geronimo. And good luck." Cozen thumbed the squack, the ship’s internal comms, and spoke into every ear. "This battle we fight today is the last and most important battle of the war. It is only because of your innumerable sacrifices that we are here to fight it the enemy's home system instead of our own. We paid for the victories that brought us here with blood. Let us not waste this opportunity that has been bought with so dear a currency. Humanity expects that each and every one of you will do your duty. As do I."

  It seemed like Harry Cozen was done, and Bergano said, "Battle stations, battle stations. All hands to battle stations. Full suits and helmets are the order of the day. This ship will vent atmo in five minutes. That is all."

  Biko had tried to hide it, but Dana had seen the look on his face as Cozen had delivered Admiral Nelson’s borrowed words. It was disgust she saw there. Biko tried to veil it and the roundness of his face helped hide the movements of the smaller facial muscles, but she still saw the expression there like he'd tasted something he didn't like. "Lt. Commander Sellis." She looked up, and Cozen’s gaze drilled her between the eyes like a spotlight. The pressure of it was palpable.

  "What can I do for you, Mr. Cozen?"

  "Bring this ship about and fall in between SCS Araby and Pont Neuf as they pass us. The Privateer carriers will steam into the mother of all battles together."

  *****

  Ram Devlin had been aboard Arbitrage several times during the planning of what had only been referred to as ‘the mission’. He was most certainly cleared to know more about it than anyone he passed on his way up the decks to that paranoid ship’s bridge, but they still never left him alone in its passageways for even one moment.

  Lt. Murchison was a full head taller than Ram. The ship’s second officer shook the deck behind him as Ram lead just to prove he knew the way through the smooth, composite lined passageways.

  As he stepped out of the lift and set foot on Arbitrage’s bridge, Matilda Witt called out to him. "Mr. Devlin!" She stood at the center of the bridge in front of the command chair. Although Witt was currently on her feet, it was clear immediately that she’d displaced Commander Pai. He stood over at the Ops console, only glancing up as Ram entered with Lt. Murchison lurking behind him. "I’m glad to see you, Mr. Devlin. And I must apologize for the hospitality around here. Harry’s crew is phenomenal at keeping secrets. Not so good with other things. On my ship, on Taipan, I would have had a drink in your hand by now."

  She was in costume. The shiny blue fabric was something from centuries ago and seemed to go on forever. The skirt it covered made her at least a meter wide. It ruffled in places, folding over itself like a Squidy. Ram knew little about historical costumes, but even with its apparent discomforts and impractical inconveniences, this one dripped with undeniable luxury.

  "Do you like it? It’s Regency period. And it’s real. That is to say, it’s 325 years old. It's from the Royal Museum. It was one of my few demands." The corset gave her more of a waist than he’d ever seen.

  "It’s quite something," he admitted.

  "You know I don’t like wearing a uniform, but I do think it matters what one dies in." Witt turned back to the projections of friendly and enemy ships that hung in the air over the deck of the bridge. The fabric of the hoop skirt bounced only slightly with her motion. It looked like she hovered as she strode through the 10cm warships that hung in formation around her like wingless birds frozen in flight.

  He said, "What are the Squidies going to make of that dress?"

  "In my experience, the concept of historical appropriation is entirely alien to them." She laughed after a moment, but only once. "That wasn't meant as a joke."

  Arbitrage’s bridge was only slightly smaller than Hardway’s. Manned NAV, OPS and AT consoles ringed the bulkheads, but most of the space was open to leave more room for broad tactical projections. "Let me take you on a tour of the unfolding battle," she said.

  Through the small, diamond-pane portholes set around the front third of the bridge, one could make out only a tiny portion of the fleet, just the ships immediately surrounding Arbitrage near the rear of the emerging battle formation. One glance at the projected tactical display, however, showed both fleets and the unfolding battle in its entirety.

  Matilda Witt stood between two, ghostly fleets. Each line of warships represented by the floating projections to her left and right stretched 100 million Ks across the mid regions of the Beta Draconis system. Represented at false scale, the alien armada now attempting to hold the humans’ invasion fleet between the orbits of the 6th and 5th planets were a surprisingly macabre sight. There were so many of them that needed to be displayed at once that they’d been projected ranging in size from houseflies to hummingbirds. The shape of the alien hulls made it look like a swarm of flying teeth hung in the air over the starboard side of the bridge. Their particle emitter gun towers bristled like the wiry stub hairs on house flies.

  "They’re an eager lot," she said. "The morphology of our battle lines has been constantly changing. They’ve kept up. Now that they can see us coming at top speed and forming up like this, I should think they know what to expect. They’re already repositioning." Witt nodded to several clusters of alien ships now coming together from the rear and the flanks to meet the invasion fleet a few million Ks from the 5th planet. "It’s bloody obvious what we’re up to," she said.

  On Witt’s left, over the port side of Arbitrage’s bridge, the ships of Earth's invasion fleet all maneuvered at once, each of them falling into position for the thrust into the enemy lines. "The point of the spear, of course, will be the newest capital ships of the UN fleet."

  They moved like mountains, like an alpine range flying in formation. At their center flew the largest, broadest, most armored peak among either fleet: UNS Tamerlane. That ship’s armor had been printed 6 meters thick and railgun batteries populated her slopes in forests so dense they cast half of her hull in shadow. Three smaller battleships and a dozen, heavy-hitting cruisers maneuvered with her, forming the flying wedge at the center of the engagement that would break the enemy lines.

  "Svinfylking," she said. "That’s what the vikings called this formation. The center elements take a hell of a beating, but they stand a good chance of splitting the enemy in half. It’s expensive and risky and if we don’t win this battle quickly through fir
epower, shock, and disruption, then our losses could force us out of the system and back on the defensive."

  The Privateer carriers steamed behind the wedge of capital ships, positioned so they could bring their guns to bear on the same targets. Ram spotted Hardway between Araby and Pont Neuf. They’d maintained only minimal defensive flights for the carriers. Most of the fighter and junk squadrons now buzzed in angry clouds over the capital ships.

  "The fleet’s destroyers and smaller ships will have to hold the flanks. It’s quite a gamble," he said.

  "Agreed. If breakthrough isn’t achieved in a timely fashion, vulnerabilities along the flanks can lead to utter disaster. Luckily for us, we won’t have to worry about that part. You’re going to make sure that doesn’t happen, aren’t you, Mr. Devlin." It wasn't a question.

  *****

  Tig had never seen security as tight as it was on Arbitrage. The portholes from the C-deck passage into the single, massive launch bay had all been covered over. Nobody could see a thing. At every intersection a pair of guards lurked with MA-48s. Most of them could see each other down the passageways and their eyes were constantly moving as if they expected some kind of Squidy boarding party to attack them here, in the middle of the invasion fleet.

  Lt. Murchison said he’d sent word ahead and they’d be able to get into Arbitrage’s launch bay, but the Staas Guards on the airlocks said different. Not that they opened their mouths. They wouldn’t say a word. The Chief told Tig not to waste his breath reasoning with them.

  "The fuck am I supposed to do?"

  "Wait," Parker said.

  "Shouldn’t we call someone? Let them know...get this sorted so we can get in there?"

  "You really think nobody knows we’re here?" She set her helmet on the deck of the passage against the bulkhead, sat on it, and took a load off. "Learn to take breaks when you get them because management rarely means to give ‘em to you."

  It took fifteen minutes, but someone finally showed up. Tig wasn’t sure she was a woman until she got closer and he thought he smelled her scent rising out the unbuckled collar of her exosuit. The helmet she carried was white and scorched like her suit. Her hair was only a thin, red fuzz, like a coppery blush over her skull. It looked so fragile. "I’m Quinn," she said. "You want to see it?"

  Chief Horcheese shrugged and pretended indifference. Tig and Parker followed suit, but once they were through the locks into the still pressurized bay, that pretension became impossible to maintain. The sight of the stealth incursion ship that would strike the war’s final blow was enough to make them all gasp.

  With their naked eyes, it was like looking at a shadow in the air. Tig looked right through it to the redsuits clearing out on the far side of the bay. He’d seen gravitational lensing before, but this was something else. It was as if the whole, 150m ship was only a quarter there, like from its antenna-spiked bow to its impossibly engine-free stern, it was no more corporeal than a ghost. The deck of the bay sparked every few seconds where her six, claw-footed landing gear made physical contact.

  "I can barely see it," he said. Parker and Horcheese were speechless.

  "The hull is only partially powered up. That’s why you can still see anything at all." Quinn smiled. "May I present, SCS Boomslang," said Quinn. "The deadliest ship mankind ever launched. Cost as much to make her and her payload as the whole invasion fleet."

  For the first time, he noticed his breath, frozen in front of him. The bay was cold like they’d only shut it minutes ago, but he could see the radiant heaters on and he knew it had been closed. The phantasm in front of him shifted and waved like hot air. "It’s sucking the heat out of the room," he said.

  "That’s right," Quinn said.

  "Where’s it going?"

  "Same place our reactor, engine, and exhaust heat goes…" They all waited to hear more. "It’s complicated."

  "Don’t hold back because we’re redsuits," the Chief told her.

  "N-Space."

  "The hell is that?"

  "A sub-dimension, a mathematical assumption of Noondie hypermass physics that has only recently been proved manifest." Tig could feel the blank expression spread over his face. She must have seen it and known she’d lost him because she said, "Think of it like the space between floors of a house. First floor...second floor...those are regular space...regular dimensions. Between the floors and the ceiling there’s space...where joists and wiring and beams are. There’s space there, but it doesn’t count as a floor of the house. A sub-dimension is like that. For all intents and purposes, it’s an extra dimension inseparable from ours. It can’t exist without regular space to determine the morphology of all things there. Right now, the Boomslang here is partially-in and partially-out of N-space. That’s where the heat and the emissions are going, remember. And the light it absorbs instead of reflecting. If that hull were powered up higher, then you’d see nothing but a black hole. When she’s all the way in, you can’t see her at all because there’s literally nothing here to see."

  "You the Staas Company sales rep?" The Chief couldn’t take her eyes off it. Neither could Parker and Tig.

  "I designed the hull," Quinn said. She gestured for comms with the ship. "Boomslang, this is Quinn. Got personnel with me. You mind sliding that hull back to null-shift so we can come aboard?"

  Boomslang slipped into being in front of him and filled the bay so quickly that the sudden sight of its full visual weight was enough to throw Tig off balance and make him lean towards it. Once it came crisp in front of his eyes, it was easy to make out the 88 hatches up and down its mostly featureless, flattened teardrop of a hull. Those hatches looked big enough to launch a Bitzer or a Dingo drone from each one.

  The airlock came down from the hull at the end of a five-meter cylinder that extended to the deck. It rotated and opened for them, and the warm, moist air inside froze in a quick puff. The ice crystals floated away like a specter under the ship as they stepped into the lock.

  "There's three main sections of the ship," she said as the cylinder rotated around them again to open on the dim interior of the ship. Spotlights shone down from above every ten yards or so. "This is the main ordnance bay. I don’t want to insult you redsuits by saying it, but these are, as far as we know, the most powerful weapons known to exist, so please don’t touch them."

  The bombs stood so tall in there, at first he didn’t even see them. Then, once he realized what the towering shapes to either side actually were, it was as if the ordnance bay was less of a bay and more like a cathedral built to hold them. Maybe it was the shape of the 15m-tall casings like elongated, primitive heads or how when you stood right in front of them, the depressions in them meant to help them overcome turbulence in the homeworld moon’s atmo looked like eyes. To Tig, the bombs stood there lined up like expressionless Easter Island Statues, one row up the port side and one row up starboard. 44 on each side, 88 total.

  "What are they doing here?" The voice was grim and tired and when Tig looked behind him, he saw the two figures that came walking slowly out of the dim. They passed through the spotlights shining down between the bombs.

  "That’s Fiske and Totoppolus," Quinn said quietly before she shouted to the approaching crewmen. "This is Chief Horcheese and a couple of her redsuits."

  "We know who the fuck they are."

  "Look more like cherries."

  "Why are they here, Quinn?"

  "We don’t need them. We trained for this for 14 months without ‘em. Didn’t need ‘em then. Don’t need ‘em now. Bad enough we have to compromise opsec to bring Commander Devlin along just so Cozen can make a hero out of his golden boy. Now, we gotta bring his reds along too?"

  Quin said, "What you gotta do is follow your orders and shut the fuck up," she said. "We do what the old man says."

  The silence hung thick until Chief Horcheese said, "Devlin can’t understand anyone else but me when it comes to the nitty-gritty. Calls me his technical adviser. Things get too hardcore and he’s lost." Quinn’s shipmates were c
lose enough now that Tig could see how it didn’t look like they believed her. "No shit," she said. "He's wizard with tactics. Bunk with machines. I’m his secret weapon."

  Fiske said, "And them? Shit, look at the chroma coming off those bright red suits. Those can’t be more than 4 months old. Those two knobs are bloody cherries. Why are they here?" Boomslang's crewmen talked like redsuits themselves, but they wore black.

  "They’re the redsuits that rescued Tipperary," Quinn said.

  "You’re the reds that did that, huh?" It seemed like he'd heard of them. "Still don’t need you." Fiske stepped forward and extended his arm to give Tig a little shove and see if he had cherry-legs and would go down easy in the light gees. Tig didn’t flinch. They played this game all the time on Hardway. He was ready to take that blow and not budge a centimeter, but it never came.

  The Chief's artificial limbs had a muscle fiber that was 10 times faster than any fast-twitch mod. Fiske didn’t see much besides a blur until she caught his forearm with one hand. He couldn’t pry it loose. They froze there like that until the realization visibly dawned on Fiske’s face that the Chief had been heavily augmented with artificial limbs and she was many times stronger than he was. She pivoted and shoved him back with enough force that he was lucky to remain standing after he hit the bulkhead. "Don’t bruise my cherries," she said.

  Fiske went aft with Totoppolus and left them standing there.

  "He’s tense like the rest of us," Quinn said, "but don’t question his commitment to the mission." Tig didn’t. In fact, Tig agreed with him. They didn’t need him or Chief Horcheese or Parker either on this mission. At least not to fix anything. Officially, they were backup crew in case of a casualty, but if this ship got hit, it was all over. All he could figure was that Commander Devlin had brought them along for an entirely different purpose than the one they'd been told.