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DREADNOUGHT 2165 Page 5
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"All of them."
Dana thumped the side of the NAV console before she knew she'd done it. "What about the boarding parties on the Dreadnought? Ram Devlin and Lucy Elan are expecting close air support from those fighters. The junks can't do it. They can't dodge the Dreadnought's guns. Without that air support the boarding parties can't hold out!"
"More new contacts," Bolo said. "Near the first moon..." He pointed to a lump on the display shaped like a rocky bean orbiting fast around the ringed planet. A handful of new contacts flashed over it like fireflies and disappeared. "Might be a reflection of some kind... LiDAR glitch."
"And it might not be," Cozen said. "The Squidies wouldn't assemble a battle group without some fighters and if there's any chance of alien fighters lurking out there, then the Lancers are staying with Tipperary until she breaches space and transits out of the system."
"What about all of our people on the Dreadnought? We can't just abandon them!" Dana wanted Harry Cozen to run his hands over his face or to knot his brow or sigh or somehow express this was a difficult decision for him, but he didn't. It wasn't a difficult decision – not for him it wasn't. Her face flushed with frustration. Her ears burned. "At least send Ram a single flight of Lancers. We can spare four Bitzers, can't we?"
"Two," Cozen said. "We can spare him two. Our XO and Lucy Elan will have to make due with limited cover for now. I have every confidence in the men and women on the hull of that ship."
"This wasn't the plan," Dana said. "They need that support!" Bolo shot her a glance then. She knew he was trying to shut her up for her own good, but just like Bolo, she wasn't comfortable with an order like that and she didn't want to pretend to be.
Harry Cozen's eyes focused on the empty air in front of him, but when he spoke, his voice went to every corner of Hardway and into the helmet of every man and woman in every junk and fighter and turret. He said, "Now hear this... Hardway has discovered an alien spearhead being assembled in secrecy. It is a dagger pointed at humanity's heart. We will not abandon our forces fighting on the hull of the Dreadnought. But... Fortune has blessed us with an opportunity to halt the alien counter-offensive before it starts and we must now pursue that as our primary mission. Should this alien spearhead arrive in our home system before Earth forces can reposition, then it could break through current defenses and strike at Earth itself. We cannot allow this. If the fleet can be warned of this alien armada forming upon its doorstep, then there is still time to maneuver our forces and trap it. Tipperary will breach space and return through the Altair-Barnard Transit to warn the fleet. Hardway and her air group will remain and delay the Squidies. Prepare to vent atmo for combat. That is all."
*****
By the time the AGC called out to Lancer 3-3 and 3-4, every pilot in the 133rd strained at the leash. Just sitting in their cockpits and looking out at the ringed planet didn't provide enough for their brains to chew on.
The synthetic hormone Dirty made and dosed them with had driven Jordo's brain to a level of hyper-awareness and concentration he'd never experienced before, but all he could do with it sitting in that damn bay was look out at the alien warships rising from the planet's pole. He pictured flying his Bitzer right through the Squidies' armada. He could almost see the perfect path. It twisted through the alien cruisers' fields of fire and looped 'round their long hulls like a ribbon or a thread.
"This is AGC Bolo. Lancer 3-3 and Lancer 3-4 launch for close air support on the Dreadnought."
"What about the rest of us?" Dirty said, "We gotta go!"
"They're serving up the best pilots first." That was Hardy's explanation. He was Lancer 3-3 and he blasted out of the bay with a combat woodie and Lancer 3-4, aka Shotz on his wing. Jordo and the rest of the Lancers watched with envy as the pair turned on their jets and hooked over Hardway's topside and passed out of sight.
"Hardy and Shotz?" Paladin griped on private comms, "Why the hell do they get to go?"
Dirty said, "They shoulda' sent me an' Holdout."
Holdout jiggered her Bitzer from side to side on its maneuvering jets so fast that the maintenance crew pointed at her through the launch bay's viewports. "Stop showing off," Jordo told her. "The redsuits are watching."
"Probably betting how long it's going to take her to slam into my 151," Paladin said.
"I ain't gonna' mess this up," Holdout said. "And you know it."
Ten seconds later, Bolo came back on comms. "All junks, all remaining fighters launch. Scramble, scramble. Torpedo Flight 3 and Gunnery 6 form up with the Lancers. Together, your callsign is now Banjo. Repeat: TF3... G6.., and 133rd, you are now callsign Banjo. Acknowledge."
"Malta and TF3 acknowledge."
"Flippy and GF6 acknowledge."
"Lancer 1-1 acknowledges."
"All Banjo elements will escort the breaching ship, Tipperary, to location Alpha where she will exit the Altair system. From there, Banjo junks will accompany Tipperary and warn the fleet. The 133rd will proceed on the original mission to provide air support for our people on the face of the Dreadnought. Your dedicated channel is six-nine, but don't expect to be able to cut through the Squidies' jamming unless you're right on top of each other. Hardway's going to blast a hole for you to escape. After that, you'll be on your own."
The junk flights chattered in the background as Jordo thumbed squadron comms, "Lancers, we are finally cleared to launch. Turn two hundred meters out and make for Tipperary. Go Go GO!" They blasted out past the 50-meter junks slowly launching from the adjoining bays, and Jordo said, "Hit the big red buttons, Lancers. Put those Bitzers in war-mode."
"I never get used to this part," Paladin said from Jordo's 4 o'clock.
"You're gonna love it today," Dirty said as she swung in next to him. She said something else, too, but Jordo didn't hear it after he hit the button and enabled the pulse-pinch. The inertial negation system energized its coils and when it did, it felt like every cell in his body moved with the pulses of gravity that switched on and off ten-thousand times a second. It wasn't good for him, but he imagined the Squidies would probably kill him long before his plane did. Besides, without the pulse-pinch to throw artificial gravity, the inertial g-forces of exo-atmospheric fighter combat would turn him to a wet, densely-packed mass of cells and bone chips.
Paladin, Dirty, and Holdout stayed close on his wing as he rocketed towards Tipperary with two more flights of Lancers behind him. The spindly, completely unarmored breaching ship with her 375-meter 'wheel and axle' hull looked as if a single burst from even the smallest of alien particle streams could rip her apart.
*****
After Hardway turned to come between the fragile breaching ship and the destroyers making to intercept her, Dana looked up from the NAV console to see the carrier's railgun batteries already pointing at the alien warships that hung up over the starboard bow.
The Squidies tried for a longshot. The alien gunners on all three destroyers reached out for the breaching ship, but Tipperary was well-outside effective range. If she flew any path but a straight line, they were just too far away to hit her.
The breaching ship slid to Hardway's port side and maintained as much distance between her and the Squidies as she could. Any closer, Dana thought, and those beams might catch them no matter how the pilot of that fragile ship jinked it around.
"The alien destroyers have accelerated," Bolo said. "They're trying to do an end run around us and intercept Tipperary."
Cozen thumbed the fire control comms. "All railgun batteries, target the closest enemy destroyer and knock it the hell out of my sky."
Chapter Seven
Jordo spun his Bitzer 151 on its jets to get a good view of the Squidies as Hardway fired. The railguns' osmium-tungsten sabot compressed to hyper-density under nearly 80,000 gees of force before they ripped out of the barrel at over 1/4 the speed of light.
Hardway's main batteries holed the lightly armored, alien destroyer right through. The exit wounds sprayed hot metal and gas out into the vacuum. It leane
d towards the ringed planet and began its descent, trailing smoke and fire behind it.
Tipperary pulled hard to avoid the next alien beams that reached for her, and Hardway's guns put rounds through the second destroyer trying to cut off the breaching ship's escape.
The third Squidy didn't fire on Tipperary first. It reached out for Hardway and raked its guns down the carrier's port side, ripping the doors off three launch bays and gouging a ragged wound down the forward Hab module's side. The shock traveled down Hardway's spine and shook one module after another. The carrier's guns only paused for a second, maybe two, but the third alien destroyer hunting Tipperary used that time to change course again.
Paladin called it out first. "It's going to get a real shot at our breaching ship!"
"Flight One on me!" Jordo said. Paladin and Dirty and Holdout stayed close as he threw his Bitzer over in a hard turn and flew between the destroyer and the breaching ship. Jordo dove right at its main guns. The frame of the Bitzer shook and juddered with the 140mm cannon as Jordo and his flight forced the alien gunners to direct fire at them instead of the breaching ship.
"...ancer ..1.. br... ..ay. Break away!" Hardway said through the jamming, but it was too late for that. Lancer Flight One was already drawing the Squidies fire. The alien guns stabbed past Jordo's canopy. They sliced across his path, but it felt as if he saw them coming before the alien gunners fired. He flew down the particle beams, spiraling around the frustrated Squidies' fire. Autocannon shells lit up the black as they ripped past Jordo on either side. Holdout and Paladin and Dirty shot past him doing barrel rolls, racing him down the beams.
"Target the guns!" Their shells wouldn't penetrate the hull of a warship, but when the streams of fire all walked serpentine up the towers and hosed down the Squidies' big guns, secondary explosions lit off, and pieces of the magnetic vectoring rings hurled themselves up at the Lancers.
Paladin shouted something on comms, but Jordo didn't catch it all before Hardway's next salvo arrived on-target. It impacted the alien destroyer on the side of its tower and the broad of its hull. Jordo was so close that his Bitzer got peppered with bits of molten metal that briefly stuck to his cockpit like mud. "Pull away!" Lancer Flight One all rotated on their jets and grunted with the extreme inertial gees as they blasted themselves on a new course to get as far away from the alien ship as they could.
"Dammit, Hardway!" Paladin shouted over the static. His fighter banked around the Squidy destroyer's now burning hull to come back on course. "Bloody kill hogs. We could have had that destroyer. It was ours."
Hardway came about. With the alien destroyers blocking Tipperary now out of play, the carrier turned hard to engage the twenty-two remaining warships of the Squidies' battlegroup. Bolo's last message told them what already knew. "Hardway to Banjo. You're on your own. Good luck."
As they blasted away from the battle, Jordo spun to look back. The three alien destroyers burned and tumbled slowly together towards the planet's atmo. Above, Hardway's Novalifter engines pointed right at him and filled his vision with starburst. Through the rays, like bluish sunshine, the alien battlegroup was closing. They'd already launched warheads. Hundreds of little, pink stars hurled themselves at Hardway. Jordo rotated back into his line of travel just as the carrier's autonomous QF-111 Dingoes launched in a pack and tore hard turns to intercept the aliens' flying bombs.
*****
A few thousand Ks around the limb of the planet, Jordo caught sight of a burning speck as it passed between him and one of the planet's darker rings. He added x-ray and gamma to the multispectral overlays projected in his helmet, and suddenly, the object below shone like a little sun. It radiated uncontrolled gammas and sparkled with x-ray bursts over the rings below. He zoomed in and saw the blurred image of a small craft with a fusion reactor in slow meltdown. The fighter-shaped lump of molten metal fell in a degrading orbit. He knew what it was. He just didn't know who it was. Jordo said, "Is it Hardy or Shotz?"
Paladin said, "I got eyes on Shotz a couple of Ks out. He doesn't look good." He pitched and tilted and half-rolled to point his cannon at an object in higher orbit. Then, Jordo saw it. It was only half a hull and it had been mostly melted, but it was clearly the wreck of a Bitzer 151.
"Hardy and Shotz," Dirty said. "RIP mutherfuckers."
"And then, there were twelve."
"G'night, Hardy," Holdout said. "G'night, Shotz."
"They were on the way to give Devlin's boarding party air-support," Jordo said.
"And they barely made it out of sight before they got waxed."
"Yeah, but by who?"
"Who do you think?"
It wasn't the Dreadnought that got them. The alien battleship was just rising now above the rings of the planet on the far side and even if it had line of sight to take a shot at a pair of Bitzers, it couldn't have hit Hardy and Shotz from a million Ks out. The Lancers searched the black vacuum around them. They saw nothing but Tipperary and the junks and their own fighters against the planet, the rings, and the misshapen bolus of the planet's first moon.
"Malta to Lancer 1-1. Those wrecks down there from your squadron?"
"Roger that, Malta. Advise Tipperary and keep your eyes open. The Squidies' Dreadnought didn't do this. Neither did any alien warship. We're definitely not alone out here. Watch out for alien aces. Watch out for the red bandits."
Chapter 8
Hollis shouted as the Squidies' fire ripped past his helmet like a mag-lev train. "Where the hell are the Lancers? Where the hell is our air support?" Ram didn't know what to tell him so he told him to kept firing.
Simms took something hit high in the chest. He burst. That was the only word for it. He got hit, and his exosuit burst like he was a piece of ripe fruit and the suit was its skin. Pieces of him spun away trailing clouds of boiling, freezing blood-mist and ice.
Ram and his squad pressed themselves down into a shallow blast crater in the Dreadnought's hull near Tick One. It was less than a meter deep.
The Squidies came over the curve of the battleship's hull, 'walking' the way only they can, squidging along on either or both sets of 1.5 meter, boneless appendages that grow at both ends of their ribbon-thin main body mass. They came in exosuits and mechanized suits and they came in firing lines and on the ends of their 'arms', the ones in armored battle suits carried fat hand cannons with rotating cylinders and stub-barrels that flared brilliantly every time they loosed mammoth, blinding rounds. In the pitch black, seen in the infrared glow of the hull, the mechanized Squidies looked like red-orange, Siamese squid ghosts with ten arms apiece, dishing out fire and wrath from all of them.
Unlike the blocky, open-frame knuckledragger mech suits the boarding teams had brought with them from Hardway, the Squidies' mechanized suits were sealed and armored and smooth with graceful lines. Just like the ones Ram had seen on Moriah, the torsos were rigid (unlike the things inside) and the absurdly long and thin 'arms' and 'legs' bent everywhere up and down the appendages. It gave them a freakish gait as they came squidging on the curving arches of all those 'limbs'. It made them look like savages, like animals.
The ones in regular suits managed to crumple and coil their bodies into even the shallowest blast craters for cover. More of them peeked out from behind the bases of the armored gun towers.
"Report in!" Ram called out, "All Ticks report!"
"This is #6. They're still coming from the top of the hull. Lost two more. Drilling depth... 28cm. This hull is some tough shite."
"#4 reporting heavy fire coming from the right side of the skull. They've got some kind of heavy weapons now. We lost two turrets. We're down 26cm into the hull; that's it. I don't know what the hell this hull is made of."
"#2 has lost two turrets. We have heavy casualties. Drill inoperable."
"This is Arroyo in #3. They took out our knuckle-dragger with some kind of anti-armor weapon. It looks like a big pipe. Watch out for it. They hit #5 with it, too. Drill depth 30cm. Squidies in what look like regular exosuits are m
oving up behind the mechanized ones and taking covered positions. They're coming up over the skull's... uh...nose hole...and pushing hard on this side. They're coming up the bottom, too – from down near the teeth. "
"Copy that, Arroyo."
Nobody called in from #5. Ram peeked over the lip of the blast crater and around the side of Tick One. Tick #5 leaked flames out the cracks in its broken bulkheads. It looked like a burning shanty.
Lucy Elan spoke in Ram's ear from her position down in a blast-wale at the forward edge of the defensive perimeter. The icon in his helmet's display told him she'd opened a private channel. "We need to advance," she said. She popped up and burned a hole through a Squidy with her MA-48. The pressurized gas and blue blood that came out the hole propelled its body slowly backwards over the hull. "Look, Ram," she said, "if air-support isn't here now, then it's probably not coming. We can't just sit here while the Ticks get chewed up. If the Ticks fall and the drills fail, we'll never get inside."
"We need more time," Ram said. "At this rate, they'll need a couple more hours to drill through this thing's hull."
"That's why we have to attack."
"Lucy, there's a hundred armored Squidy battle suits advancing on us with a legion of Squidy crew behind them. We're pinned down in vaporization craters and barely holding a defense. Now, you want to attack?"
Lucy said, "We can't hold out like this. We have to push our perimeter outwards. That way we can keep them away from the Ticks. We have to push them back and give the drill teams the time they need to cut their way in."
A half-meter-thick jet of alien fire like the stream from a fire hose shot up from somewhere out of sight and slammed into Tick #4's top turret. In less than a second, it melted its way in and the turret filled with blinding light and flame. The plan was falling apart...
"Ram, we can't hold out like this without air support! We've got to fire and move. Fire and move," she said. "Marines up front, crewmen on the flanks protecting them from enfilade fire. Give the order, Ram," she said. "Give the order and we can do this."