Planetary Assault (Star Force Series) Page 17

  “Here’s part of the why, right here.” Spooky made a come in gesture and another entered the room.

  Repeth realized he must have been waiting for the tension to subside before coming in. “What the hell is he doing here?” She pointed an accusing finger at the nondescript young man of medium height and build, with dark hair and strangely indeterminate racial markers. “I thought this was a human-only mission.”

  “At least you didn’t call me it,” the man replied. “I’m here because it was thought a Blend might be needed.”

  “I hate the way you talk, Ezekiel Denham,” Repeth responded bitterly. “It was thought. Always hiding the responsibility. Who thought? You’d think that a hundred years after the Eden Plague improved humanity we’d at least stop bullshitting our own kind.”

  “Chairman Daniel Markis thought,” Spooky interjected.

  “Is that supposed to impress me, dropping the name of Earth’s ruler?” Repeth snarled. “Remember, I married his best friend’s son, and I’ve poured Scotch with the man. Ezekiel’s one of these half-Meme, and they’ve had their own agenda ever since the first Destroyer came.”

  “One quarter, really. Miss Repeth,” Ezekiel began –

  “Oh, you can call me Reaper,” she hissed at him with cold narrowed eyes. Slowly she slid her sleeves back to expose her tattoos.

  He shrugged, glancing at the death ink. “Very well, Reaper. The part of me that is Meme is no different from your Eden Plague or your nanites or your cybernetics – it extends my capabilities but does not make me unhuman. People must adapt to survive. I am just differently adapted.”

  “How do we know you won’t betray us to the Meme as soon as you can?”

  A shrug again and a sigh. “You want a logical reason besides loyalty? Besides my faithful years of clandestine service? Besides the fact that my father and mother saved humanity at least two distinct times? Here’s one: because they would look down on me with the same bigotry you do. To Meme, Blends are impure, fit only to be confined to planets, to work in their manufactories and hold their territories inside inconvenient gravity wells. The Hippos on Afrana that we are all supposed to hate and kill? Those Blends are second-class citizens of the Meme Empire. The un-Blended indigenous Hippos are nothing but slaves. The Meme run a brutal, hierarchical society where biology determines place.” He leaned forward, spearing Reaper with his eyes. “Is that how you want humans to act too? Should we imitate our enemy? Shall I kowtow to you just because I am different? Am I the new wog, the new darkie here?”

  Her throat turned suddenly dry and her eyes hot with embarrassment. “We become what we hate,” she whispered. “All right, I apologize. If Spooky vouches for you...” Doesn’t mean I won’t watch you close.

  “I do so vouch,” Spooky confidently capped her condition. “I’ve worked with Ezekiel before. In fact, I worked with his human father and his Blended mother. And you’ve worked with Senior Steward Schaeffer,” he went on as another man, slim with a thin red-blonde beard, came through the door as if on cue.

  “Shades!” Repeth’s mood lifted as she clasped hands with the steward.

  “Reap,” he responded warmly, taking off his trademark shooting glasses. “Not sure why I’m here but at least they chose the best.”

  “Not they,” Repeth said. “Him.” She pointed at Spooky.

  “Nguyen? The new steward? He’s coming along?” The other three chuckled, and Shades looked confused. “What am I missing?”

  “Remember that ninja that saved our asses on Orion?”

  “Yeah. Oh…him?”

  “The same.”

  Shades laughed uneasily. “I guess I should thank you, then.”

  Spooky inclined his head and smiled thinly. “You should.”

  Repeth asked, “Spooky, are there any more?”

  “No, just us,” he answered.

  “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers,” Shades quoted suddenly with a rueful smile.

  Ezekiel replied with a flourish, “If we are marked to die, we are enough, to do our country loss; and if to live, the fewer men, the greater share of honor.”

  “God’s will, I pray thee wish not one man more,” continued Shades. “Henry V, act four, scene three.”

  “Well said,” smiled Spooky, wintry. “So shall we happy few get our arses in gear? We may have only a few hours to prepare. Here’s the brief.” He tapped a control on the console and the inevitable operational order appeared on the screen. Running through the plan overview took less than ten minutes.

  Once they were done Repeth addressed Spooky with a square of her shoulders. “Look,” she said, “I’m flattered you wanted me, and I’ve listened, but I still don’t believe you need me for this plan. You don’t even need Shades. You and Ezekiel could do it – or even him alone.” Her eyes narrowed. “What’s your game here?”

  “Dadirri.”

  “Don’t give me that Zen bullshit, I’m not buying it today.” She leaned close to him to breathe faint words in his ear, too quiet for even the others’ enhanced hearing. “I know about you. I’ve known for a while, and I don’t care. I’ll keep your secrets, but you don’t need me right now. My people do. Give this one up, and don’t get in my way.” She pointedly pulled her sleeves down then stepped back, searching his face for reaction.

  Spooky showed none at all for a moment, gave her a cock-headed nod of accession.

  Knowing he’d get over it, she said, “Thanks again for the invite, and I wish you all good luck and good hunting, but I’m out.” Shouldering her combat pack, Sergeant Major Jill Repeth, EarthFleet Marine Corps, marched back to exactly where she was supposed to be.

  ***

  “Interesting, I see the three orbitals are staying on the other side of the planet,” Absen remarked as Scoggins reordered the main holotank, cleaning up the visuals and moving secondary symbology off to side screens. “Must be using a lot of fuel, fighting gravity.”

  “It’s one way to not get hit by the railgun strikes,” Commander Ford said with his usual grumbling tone. “Computer predicts they’ll unmask about the same time we close in on the planet and moon. The fleet will probably throw whatever hypers they have at us about the same time to take advantage of synergy.”

  “It shouldn’t matter,” objected Commander Scoggins, carrying on their usual disagreements on almost every subject. “We still have them at a disadvantage in combat power.”

  “As long as the ammo holds out, and assuming their fleet doesn’t close,” Ford said darkly. “Why shouldn’t they? It’s their best chance to fight us on even terms.”

  “That’s not the way Meme think,” she argued. “To them, a ship or even a missile is a living thing that they value.”

  “Not like you mean. They can’t value a missile that they gestated yesterday and send off to die tomorrow. You’re anthromorphizing.”

  Scoggins opened her mouth to continue when Absen interjected, “You two bicker like a married couple. Perhaps you should consider making it official when this is done.” That will shut them up.

  “Besides, I think the Meme commander is perfectly willing to sacrifice his ships if,” the admiral shook an emphasizing finger, “if it’s in his interest. In fact, I think he’s more willing to sacrifice life than we are. And don’t forget, he has his back to the wall too. Whatever passes for judgment among the Meme will fall on him like a ton of bricks if he loses this system. From what little we know of them, they don’t reward failure: he might as well die trying to win, I should think. Or at least sacrifice all his troops while escaping in a fast probe.”

  They knew a Meme could survive in a ship as tiny as a hyper for decades, uncatchable as it fled across interstellar space.

  “Back to the matter at hand,” Absen waved at the holotank. “How are we doing for missiles?”

  Ford responded, “About thirty thousand left all told, skipper. The twelve remaining frigates can hold approximately fourteen thousand. Conquest can launch twelve hundred per salvo with a four-minute reload t
ime.”

  “Railgun ammo?”

  “About one point two billion rounds, with a few hundred a minute more being manufactured from asteroidal materials we’re sweeping up in our magnetic scoops. That’s about forty minutes of continuous fire.”

  “Damn. And the longer this takes the more hypers they can gestate. All right, here’s the plan. Keep up the railgun harassing fire on all targets, preserve ammo. We’re going to accelerate at full to close and reduce the enemy’s recovery time. Maintain a defensive missile spread between us and their main body. Scoggins, where’s that last robot drone?”

  “R-25 should be about here, sir, though it’s staying stealthy so I can’t be certain.” She caused a tiny dot to flash in the tank.

  “Does it have a view of the back side of Afrana’s moon?”

  “Yes, sir, from long range.”

  “All right. Use it up, we need the data.”

  “Aye aye, sir.” Scoggins sent the coded signal.

  Sixty million kilometers and two hundred seconds away, R-25 took its last look at existence, updated all of its files, and sent its dying data burst. This time there was no need to hide nor run, so it stayed steady, the better to beam every scrap of information to its human masters. It repeated its transmission until, eight minutes later, a small hyper ushered it from the realm of matter into that of dispersed energy.

  “Tell Intel as soon as the data comes in I want to know what they see on that moon, the orbitals and any remaining military installations on the planet. In the meantime, lay two hundred missiles to come in low over the moon’s horizon and target anything artificial – maximum spread, no fratricide. Lead them with a dozen recon drones. What’s our range now?”

  “Just over one point two million klicks to the moon, sir. The planet is another three hundred thousand farther away.” Scoggins brought up a section of the holotank to show how the fleet’s course would take them past the moon, then between it and the planet.”

  Absen stroked his chin, his cagey submariner’s instincts – for he had started out long ago as a sub captain – kicking in. “I don’t like going between the moon and the planet. Look at their main fleet.” He stood up and walked to the edge of the holographic display, to reach inside its projection. “It’s just holding position where a direct path will draw us in. Does it seem to anyone else like they are begging us to go there?” He looked around at his officers. “Come on, honest opinions people. Second-guess me.”

  Ford cleared his throat. “It’s also the best tactical position for them regardless. They can dodge behind the planet or the moon, whip around using their gravity wells, come at us from the side. And as we already know, they could have some surprise on the orbitals, so it strengthens their hand.”

  “And,” broke in Scoggins, “there might be something on the back side of the moon. What if there are heavy weapons there? No starship can mount anything as large as a ground-based installation.”

  “Yes…” Absen paced up and down on the deck, feeling the grav plates straining to compensate for the fleet’s acceleration. Stupid to be standing up when an electrical fluctuation in the artificial gravity generators could kill me, he thought with amusement. But I’m tired of sitting in that damned bio-gel chair. “So is there any advantage to boring straight in?”

  “We maintain a steady stream of railgun rounds going along our path,” Ford replied. “That keeps them dodging. We can hold our defensive missile spread in front of us more easily. Everything is more predictable for our fire-control computers.”

  Absen pounded gently on a rail. “Predictable…yes. We’ve been predictable, when in space combat with an uncertain enemy, to be predictable is to lose. Their commander did something unpredictable and hurt us badly. He took out six ships and forced us to burn up a third of our remaining missiles.”

  He reached inside the holotank to draw a path with his finger. “What if we angled over here – away from the moon, and go past on the other side of the planet. That will allow us to see the back side of the moon as we go past, still well within beam and railgun range, but a lot farther from whatever surprise he has waiting on the other side. We also will have a finite time in their sights, then the planet gets between us.”

  “What if there’s no surprise, sir?” asked Johnstone from CyberComm.

  “Then we call it a recon in force, and come back around.”

  Okuda said doubtfully, “Skipper, we will have a lot of velocity to burn off before we can come back, since we’re accelerating right now. If we don’t head directly toward their main fleet and that Guardian, they can just keep dodging behind the planet or moon. Everything that draws out this fight serves them. In fact,” the Helmsman caused a glowing track to appear in the holotank, “this is our optimum path for what you propose. It would take over four hours to get back even under maximum burn. That’s four more hours for them to gestate missiles, and four more hours of using fuel.”

  “Intel, is that data ready yet? Show me something.”

  “Raw feed is coming in, sir, just a few minutes,” Kris Johnstone replied, distractedly tapping keys. She reached to plug a wire into a socket near her ear, and Absen let her work. Commander Rick Johnstone at CyberComm plugged in as well and soon they were colluding to build a coherent display.

  Five minutes later half the main holotank blanked, then showed Afrana’s moon. It grew rapidly as if they approached at warp speed, then rotated to show the area of interest, the side turned inward toward the planet.

  “Not much there,” mused Ford.

  “Some kind of installation, though,” Scoggins replied. “Looks like spaceport facilities – fusion blast pads all look the same after hard use.”

  “Yeah…” Ford agreed, trailing off as his eyes roved over the holo.

  Scoggins looked at him in surprise and suspicion at his agreement, then examined the holo as well. She stepped up next to him, reaching out a hand. “What are these?”

  “Mountains?”

  “Yes, lots of mountains and hills but these look too regular to be natural.”

  “Excavated material, dumped in long mounds?”

  “I bet they are,” commented Absen. “Intel, get Engineering started on analysis. But what about weapons?”

  “No weapons,” Ford stated positively. “At least, nothing I can see that indicates any. They could be well-hidden, but what’s the point of camouflaging something on an airless moon that only looks at the planet? There’s this big flat round space in the middle, covered with dust. And what’s that?” He pointed at three torpedo shapes at the end of the massive mounds.

  “Cruisers. Feeding on that material, I bet,” responded Scoggins. “Probably rotating them down there to fill up on food.”

  “Just one more reason not to divert, sir,” Ford argued, turning toward Absen. “We’d just be letting them replenish.”

  “I understand your arguments, Commander, but we can handle a few more hypers. What we might not be able to handle is some kind of surprise from that moon. Intel, get all the analysts working on this. They have fifteen minutes to load a report, no matter how raw.” Absen stood staring at the moon, stroking his nose with a forefinger.

  Fifteen minutes later the moon’s hemisphere blossomed with hasty markers, circles and arrows, flashing shapes of different colors. They were scattered across the thousands of square kilometers but a cluster in the center drew Absen’s eye. “What’s that?” he asked, turning to the young Intel watchstander.

  “Uh, mostly a bunch of anomalies by the landing pads. Some buried heat sources, marks of surface engineering…and those excavation mounds.”

  “How big are those mounds?”

  A scale grid appeared over the area. “About thirty klicks long, two wide, one high…”

  “That’s a hell of a lot of material to dig out. I don’t like it. There has to be something there, maybe under that circle of dirt. All right, Helm, on my mark bring the fleet to a new course, here,” he traced a line away from the moon, toward the other sid
e of the planet, “and keep our distance from that installation. Once we’re on track, start decelerating to come behind the planet as low as we can, use some of that gravity and whip us around. Maybe we’ll catch them napping, or at least they won’t expect it – and maybe we can use the planet somehow…” Not sure how, yet, but any variables I introduce will discomfit the enemy.

  Absen went on, “Ford, keep those defensive missiles between us and the enemy, and get that offensive sortie going in over the moon’s horizon. I want to see what we can stir up. Once you’ve done that, program a coordinated alpha strike, including our biggest nukes.”

  “Alpha strike, skipper? Everything?”

  “Everything offensive, Ford.”

  “We’ll be down to our final missiles in the tubes. No more reloads.”

  “I know. You can always redirect the missiles you launch, but I want everything we have heading for that moon base on my command.”

  “Got it, sir.”

  “Skipper,” Master Helm Okuda called, “we’re passing the million klick mark. Beginning long-range beam weapon fire.” The remaining six cruisers fired converging shots at the edge of the moon as the back side unmasked, throwing explosions up as the electromagnetic energies flash-heated the dirt. Blasts marched across the surface, destroying every anomaly Intel had identified, reaching slowly toward the unknown installation lurking over the horizon.

  “Helm, maneuver in mark plus ten. Everyone strap in. Mark.” Absen and the rest of the bridge crew threw themselves back into their bio-gel chairs and strapped back in. On the mark, Conquest and the fleet turned smoothly as planned, aiming for an outer tangent of the planet, skating away from the moon. Distance to the moon descended to eight hundred thousand kilometers before slowly creeping upward again.

  “Launch the alpha strike to arrive as soon as the installation unmasks,” Absen called.