2166 - FORCE LIBERTY Page 5

  "Just over 1250 missiles still incoming. ETA... sixty-three seconds."

  "That's not going to be enough time for our squadrons," Biko said.

  "Incoming transmission from Taipan. Text only." The comms officer behind him read it without any feeling at all. 'Under fire. Damaged. Cannot ascend. Boarded.'"

  Fear flashed through Ram like a hot wave from inside. "Attempt to reestablish the link to Taipan," he said. "Get them back."

  "Bridge to Lucy Elan," Biko was already forming a rescue party. "I want three Company Marine boarding parties in the primary bays and ready to board junks on the double. Meet me on level one in five minutes."

  "Under 1000 missiles now..." Pardue said it like the junks and fighters would get them all, but there were simply too many missiles appearing too late for the CAP to catch them all.

  "This is Captain Chun aboard UNS Guerrero,"

  "Devlin here."

  "Devlin, tell your AGC to pull her birds away from the incoming missiles now. At this rate, a significant number of Shediri warheads are going to get through your CAP, but if you get those small craft out of the way, Guerrero's point defense guns can handle what's left."

  It seemed like a tall claim, but there was no time to argue. "Pardue, pull the squadrons and the junks out to the fringes where they can still get a few shots in. Captain Chun, it's happening now," he said as his AGC snatched squadrons from the air and repositioned them.

  Moments later, Biko gave the order and Hardway's small batteries opened up on the swarm. They threw up a cloud of high-explosive shells as the cannon sparked down the length of the hull. When Guerrero, that steel glacier of a ship opened up with the point-defense batteries like hog's hairs down its fat sides, it looked like groves of trees on a steel mountainside all caught fire at once.

  The hundreds upon hundreds of cannon stitched the vacuum over the planet, and the shells from the battleship blossomed along the flashing storm front as it came closer. Cherry blossom orchards of detonating shells and baby nukes like a hundred noonday suns all flared into being for a moment only before they snuffed and new blooms and new suns appeared.

  The incoming missile swarm tried to evade the shells coming for it, but Guerrero's salvos stitched red-orange across the blackness to meet them no matter where they flew. The rolling, continual detonation became a looming thunderhead only scant Ks off Guerrero's port side just seconds before the last in that first wave cooked off. The heavy hulls of the missiles sublimed to plasma in the detonations and continued on to slam into the UN battleship's armor, rocking her in space.

  "Biko," Ram said. "You take the bridge. I'm going down to Taipan with Lucy and her Marines."

  Anton Cyning had remained blissfully quiet until that point. "I'm afraid I can't allow you to send a rescue party at this time, Commodore Devlin. I understand all too well that people dear to you are aboard that ship. Do you expect to hold off the entire Shediri fleet while we extract the personnel aboard Taipan?"

  He wanted to try, but they couldn't start another war. No matter how badly he wanted Dana back. "Biko, tell Lucy and those junks to stand down. Pardue, bring your CAP and alert fighters back to cover the task force's rear as we withdraw."

  "Withdraw?" she said.

  "I've got more missiles launching now from the surface," Biko said. "And small craft peeking over the limb of the planet...several thousand intermittent pips on LiDAR."

  Ram said, "Signal UNS Guerrero. Tell them we're running. They take orders from Gilead, but if he's not around, they'll have to decide for themselves. NAV, prepare to break orbit and come about. Take us out the way we came in."

  "You mean we're leaving Taipan... what about Dana?"

  "We're not leaving them," he insisted. "We'll get them back."

  Hardway and Guerrero steamed abreast with the breaching ship Stetson between them. After a swarm of over four thousand small craft chased the task force out of orbit, the junk squadrons settled into formations above and below the great, pale blue engine flares of the big ships and stitched the space behind them while the F-223s thinned the incoming salvos from further out. If the Shediri ships could have accelerated faster, they held back, but they didn't give up the chase.

  "Any guess as to when they'll run out of those missiles?" Pardue said, "I'm going to have to rotate some birds off the line to rearm them soon."

  Cyning said, "Commodore Devlin, I want you to tell your NAV officer to change our course to bring us past the system's gas giant. Bring us through the archipelago of moons around that gas giant."

  "There's more Shediri warships hiding in those moons," Ram reminded him.

  "Am I mistaken in thinking that if outnumbered we have the advantage in there? I believe we may need to display some military might to get our people back, but in orbit over their capital facing their whole fleet at once wasn't the place to do it. If I asked you and Captain Chun aboard Guerrero to blast us a path through the Shediri orbital stations around the moons of the gas giant, do you think you could make an effective display of it? We need to show the Hive Regent Kesik the price she'll pay if they don't return our people."

  "That's a more than questionable hostage negotiation strategy," Ram said.

  "I said nothing about negotiating. I plan to lead that fleet of small ships on a merry chase while we destroy Shediri installations. I plan to do this until they call on that diplomatic console and beg us to take our people back."

  Ram said, "What about the UN envoy's mandate that we display our civility?" Cyning didn't answer him. "Cyning?" The company man gestured once in the air near his head as if he were shoeing a fly away. "Attacking those orbital stations might be the worst thing we could possibly do," Ram said. "I want to get our people back safely."

  "I could order this ship to do it without you."

  "That's true," he said. "You could relieve me of command. But you have no legal authority over Captain Chun and that UN battleship."

  Anton Cyning's polished grin said he didn't think that would be a problem.

  6

  SCS Taipan

  Surface of Shedir 4

  Captain Dana Sellis fell through the unconscious limbo in which she'd floated and landed hard, back inside her bruised and aching body. The haze faded away to reveal the exquisite burl hardwood paneling of Taipan's midships ring rising up on one side of her and curving above. The emergency lighting panels running down the center of the passage's vaulted ceiling gave the dim a hellish cast.

  Cold exosuit beams cut the thin smoke above. Voices spoke in her ear over suit comms, but she couldn't see the speakers.

  "I can see 'em. Fuck. They got past the last bulkheads fast. Six more of those bug-fuckers are coming down the passageway towards the hatch. They see me through the window. The one in front is waving all of his arms around."

  "Get the fuck away from there, you stupid bogan. You know they're going to pull that cutter thing out again."

  "I want to see the de-" The detonation lifted Dana off the deck where she lay and bounced her against the bulkhead before she fell and hit the deck again. She tried to lift her head and failed.

  "Whoa... Those anti-personnel grenades got three of 'em bad. Shrapnel tore right through their stripey suits. The others are injured. Oh, there's more now. Lot's more."

  "Someone help me up," Dana said weakly.

  "Hey, the Captain is awake." She felt hands lifting her under her arms, pivoting her on her butt, and helping her sit up against the wood-paneled bulkhead. Stefani looked into her helmet. Greenish spatter covered the redsuit - Shediri blood. Stefani picked up an MA-48 rifle and knelt with it next to Dana. "Easy, Captain Sellis. The extra armor in that suit saved you, but you still got concussed.

  The front of her exosuit was burnt. "How long." She meant how long had she been unconscious.

  "Long enough to worry us," Margo Devlin stepped into view wearing an armored black exosuit smeared with green alien gore. What the hell was she doing here? Ram's new wife gave Dana's crewmen orders then as if she though
t she had some kind of authority. "Ostrow, Terajewicz. get back from the hatch. All of you, form up a firing line on me. If they want entry into the midships ring, it's going to cost them. Ostrow, help Stefani relocate the Captain, please."

  "Yes, ma'am, Mrs. Devlin."

  "Ma'am? They're calling you ma'am? They don't even call me that."

  "You never tried asking them to."

  "What the hell are you doing on my ship, Mrs. Devlin?"

  "My boy wanted to see aliens. He wouldn't take no for an answer."

  "What? The boy is here? On this ship?"

  "Fine. I can't blame the boy," Margo said. "I wanted to see the bloody aliens, too."

  Sergeant Marnes said, "The Commodore's wife was among the first into the bay after the bomb went off. She's the one that dragged you out of there." Marnes had red, human blood on his suit front as he stepped into view. To his right were two more Staas Guards from the other squad, another redsuit, and a trio of reactor engineers in green exosuits. Most of them looked awkward with guns from the ship's armory in their hands.

  "Listen to me carefully, Captain." Margo Devlin stepped to the end of the line that had formed up across the narrow passage and assumed a firing stance. Ram's wife hefted the chunky MA-48 to her shoulder. "Internal and external RF comms are down. We are line-of-sight IR suit comms only. We're currently holding the outermost sections of the port-side midships ring. The decks below have been compromised by Shediri in armor. The UN Special Envoy and his aides were all killed either by the det that concussed you or by the alien boarding party that charged up the ramp after the det. We dispatched that first wave," Margo said, "and removed you from the bay along with a party of Staas Guards of whom only brave Sergeant Marnes now remains."

  "Casualties...how many?"

  "We don't know," Marnes said. "It's been chaos and we've got no real comms."

  "My ship. Can it fl-"

  "This ship is grounded, Captain. It needs repair." Ostrow sounded sure about that.

  Margo Devlin said, "We are now a castle under siege, Captain Sellis. And we are partially invaded."

  "Reitz...come in..." Dana called her XO on comms, but he didn't answer. "Skolds... Weiss...come in." She gestured through the frequencies displayed in her helmet visor, all of them jammed with fuzz. "All of you. We're moving out," she told them. "We need to fall back and regroup to hold the choke points we can manage."

  She was shaky as she pushed off the carpeted deck beneath her and stood. She hoped she didn't actually sway the way it felt like she did. The firing line of crewmen between her and the hatch raised their rifles at the same instant a pair of curving lines began to glow across the hatch behind her. Arcs connecting them browned and burned black into the wood panel surrounding it. The paneling burst into flame, drawing a full, 2.5-meter circle across the bulkhead. "Here it comes..." The entire section within the circle blew into the midships ring and fell heavy on the deck in smoking, molten-edged pieces. When they saw the war-painted alien exosuits springing through the hatch, nobody had to order them to open fire.

  The discharging capacitors and magnetics in the top barrel railguns made a sound in atmo that hammered the gut. Whump! Whump-whump! That was the sound as they threw sabot into Shediri soldiers. The simple osmium-tungsten rounds broke the armor plate and caused cavitation shock waves in the wet of their alien bodies. The bugs sprayed as they ripped apart under fire, and more came through the hole after them.

  "Fall back! On me!" Dana had to lean against the bulkhead to walk backwards down the passageway to the next section. They needed to get behind the next emergency bulkhead and round up more crewmen...more rifles... She needed to get to her bridge and find out what the hell was going on. "Fall back!" she cried, but none of them did.

  "Fire! Fire!" Ram's bloody wife shouted as the Shediri kept trying to pour through the hole they'd made. Even springing on those insect legs they couldn't get in and get to melee range before the line cut them down. They charged with those axes held out in front of them, with the long, spiked tips pointed like gun barrels. By the time she'd realized they were projectile weapons, the short-finned spearheads had already launched.

  They whistled in the air; she could hear it through her suit mic. They made the faintest 'snick' when they hit Holman and sliced through his exosuit skin and rebreather panel and lodged in his chest. He dropped his MA-48 and stared at the two short spears buried deep in his sternum. His exosuit wasn't armored and they'd sunk in all the way to the fins. He looked up at the Shediri that had killed him in time to see Margo explode the thing from inside with railgun fire.

  Those little spears took two more of her crew before Marnes threw a grenade into the mass of striped bugs. They were too close to use it. The grenade's blast knocked the firing line down and hurled shrapnel-peppered, concussed Shediri at them with all those legs still jerking.

  "Use the under-barrel lasers and burn 'em. Save your sabot," Ostrow said.

  The x-ray lasers cored the Shediri helmets in heartbeats. What came out the holes along with smoke and steam was like a bubbling pink and greenish bile. After that, there was no movement in the passageway except for swirling smoke.

  "Fall back!" Dana practically shouted the order. This time they did. "Go! Go!" Dana waved them past her until all of them but Devlin's wife were moving down the passageway and around the midships ring towards the next hatch.

  The last Shediri soldier bugs that ventured at the breach were stragglers. The first of them leveled a sort of plain rod at Dana, and a filament of arcing discharge whipped out. It missed her by a meter and found an ill-shielded power conduit behind the panel and bulkhead. The wood exploded in deadly splinters that pecked at her helmet like angry bugs and stabbed at her suit.

  Only Devlin's wife, Margo, was in position to fire. The rifle came on target with a speed and efficiency of motion that only endless practice and muscle memory can deliver. Margo Devlin was supposed to be a civilian, an art collector without any combat experience. It's possible to get good aim shooting targets, but she displayed a coolness in action that no amount of practice on a range will develop. With the hissing, whistling, clacking, and zapping terror of armored, Shediri soldier bugs not more than a few meters in front of her, she didn't lose a millisecond to fear or confusion.

  The first of her sabot drilled the Shediri soldier bug through its opaque, domed helmet. It spun to the side and twitched while fluid sprayed out the hole. The second one leveled a rod at Margo, and the bullwhip of current and crackling plasma reached out, but the woman had already moved off her rear foot with the speed of a fencer's lunge. She went airborne in the .22 gees of gravity.

  While the lightning tore at the paneling behind her, Margo propelled herself upwards and to her right and made contact with the inside bulkhead almost three meters over the deck. While she was in the air, coming down on the Shediri from that unexpected angle, it tried to get off another shot, but Margo didn't give it a chance. She smashed aside the appendage holding the weapon with the butt of her MA-48 and rammed the barrel of the rifle into its main body mass before she discharged the under-barrel laser. The beam of x-rays exited out the back of the alien suit with boiling blood and steam. The Shediri soldier fell at her feet. Its tangle of spasming suit-covered bug legs all whipped and kicked at her shins until she burned another hole through its helmet.

  Margo turned and ran towards Dana then, in the direction she'd been ordered to. Dana's astonishment at Margo's abilities must have been written across her face because Ram's wife looked at Dana as she passed and those thin lips of hers pressed tight and curled into a grin before she winked at Captain Sellis.

  Behind the emergency bulkheads sealing off the last port-side section of the midships ring, they saw familiar exosuit lights in the reddish dim and made contact with a dozen other survivors.

  Lt. Barakat smiled behind his visor. "They told us you were dead." He had the remnants of the other security squad with him and when Sergeant Marnes saw that, he stepped forward and took comman
d of them. "We hold the upper decks," Barakat said. "Only way up is the shaft for the lift."

  "How many do we have?"

  "39 now," he said. They'd started with 57. "We've only got eleven confirmed dead so far, not counting the diplomats. The rest might be prisoners."

  "Comms..."

  "It's all out. RF is jammed-up. Line-of-sight IR suit comms and atmospheric sound is all we've got. We're using runners."

  "I'm going to the bridge," she said. "I've got to access to the Q-linked comms to Hardway. Hold the line, Lieutenant. If they push too hard, I want you to fall back. It'll be easier to defend the shafts for the lifts than these emergency bulkheads."

  Devlin's wife came out the open hatch from the mess. She took off her helmet and sniffed the air. "What are you looking at me like that for, Captain? They haven't breached this section yet. The atmo is just fine." Margo pulled the wrap on a cold steamed bun. "I don't want to die hungry." She took a bite.

  "It's the contamination I'm worried about," Dana said. "You've got their blood on your suit. Now you're breathing it in and maybe even eating it."

  Margo Devlin chewed. "I'll go shore up the port-side defense."

  "No, Mrs. Devlin, you're coming with me to the bridge." Where I can keep an eye on you, she thought.

  She turned to withdraw and saw Ram's son, eight-year-old Hank Devlin, running forward in a little exosuit and helmet. "I found one, I found one!" He held the plasma cutter up for her to see with the 15cm magnetically-focused blade extended and glowing, sparking the atmo around it. "Do you think it will cut through the Shediri chitin armor?"

  "I don't know, Hank." his mother said. "You'll have to try it out and see, won't you?"

  "He shouldn't be here," she said. Then, to the boy, "Your father is coming to get us soon."

  "No, he's not. The task force already blasted out of orbit. He might come back, though. Maybe."