Battle Station sf-5 Page 20

  “Quite a bit of power in this beast,” Welter said, gripping the control sticks we’d rigged up.

  Unlike Nano ships, these vessels had more direct control systems. There were brainboxes to be sure, but they had less knowledge of how to guide the ship than we did. Part of the purpose of this voyage was to demonstrate to the brainboxes how the controls worked and thus how the craft should be flown.

  “Let’s take a few strafing runs at that mountain range,” I suggested. “When you are satisfied with the weaponry and atmospheric handling, take it up and we’ll do a few orbits.”

  “Won’t that tip our hand to the Macros, sir? They must be watching.”

  I shrugged. “Maybe a new kind of ship showing up will give them a reason to wait. We need time, and when faced with the unknown, the Macros tend to hesitate.”

  Welter didn’t argue further. He was soon flying the ship in hard twists and turns. I could tell he was having fun despite himself. This ship had power, and power was always fun. Like a muscle car, it didn’t steer smoothly. Turning took a wide arc and lots of sickening Gs. The ship trembled when you pushed it, giving the feeling it might heel over and go into a spin. But it didn’t.

  Welter pushed it, but never quite broke it. The first time he fired the gun, however, gave us a surprise. The entire ship bucked up under us. It felt like going over a speed bump in a car with bad shocks. We went over these speed bumps fast, and rhythmically. My teeth clacked each time the cannon fired. But it didn’t flip over, and Welter never lost control.

  “We’ll need to teach the brainbox to give us a goose on the stabilizers every time we fire the main cannon,” he said.

  “I’ll adjust the gain on the learning rate. Take another strafing run on that lake.”

  After Welter tired of bombing the landscape with glowing pellets from the railgun, he took us up into orbit. Things smoothed out above the atmosphere, and I took the respite to finally open my email mailbox.

  I opened the oldest email and read it quickly. It was from Crow, as I had expected. It was worded politely, but firmly. I was to report, and return to base ASAP. I grinned. It was weeks old. The second one was almost as cordial, but by the third email things began to get nasty. Crow used unpleasant words, mixed with Aussie slang. As far as I could determine, I was some kind of Wally with a genetic deformity in the region of my hindquarters. I wasn’t sure what a Wally was, but I assumed it was meant in a derogatory fashion.

  The last email was a shocker, however. It wasn’t from Crow. It was from Jasmine Sarin.

  When I’d left Earth many weeks ago, pursuing the Macro fleet, Jasmine had been a Major and my executive officer. I’d more or less left her in charge of the Star Force Marines in my absence. The first surprise was her new title: she was now calling herself Rear Admiral Sarin.

  I stared at that, opening and closing my mouth repeatedly. Like a gaping fish on the deck of a boat, I didn’t quite know what had happened to my world. Jasmine had gone fleet? Crow had promoted her over me, and brought her under his direct command? I couldn’t believe she’d go along with it.

  Even as I denied the obvious, it began to sink in. Sarin had been bucking for a promotion for a long time. I’d denied her requests. Then, from her point of view, I’d gone AWOL. Perhaps she’d told herself she was helping the cause of all Star Force by going Fleet. There had always been tension between the Marine and Fleet sides of the house, and having a sympathetic commander on the other side could help ease matters. Still, it felt like a betrayal.

  I had to wonder, too, if other forces were at play in her decision. She’d had a personal interest in me, but I’d essentially spurned her after a few flirtations. Perhaps that had caused a rift between us I hadn’t recognized before.

  After doing a bit of rapid thinking, I managed to read the rest of the email. There was another shocker at the bottom. She reported she was on her way out here on a Fleet vessel. She wanted to communicate with me directly, and ascertain if I needed rescuing or was having some kind of difficulty with my electronics.

  “Hmm,” I said aloud.

  “What is it, sir?” Commander Welter asked. He was tooling around in a wide arc, a power-turn that caused every onboard alarm to whoop and flash.

  “I think we’re going to have company, soon,” I said.

  He shot me a look. “Are we ready for that, sir?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  Welter chuckled. “Should I fire the big cannon from orbit, sir?”

  “No,” I said. I noticed an immediate look of disappointment on his face. “I don’t want to show the Macros everything. We’ll save that for later.”

  “Okay, Colonel.”

  I contacted Miklos next, as the cruise continued. I checked the time. Another hour had passed. The second gunship would be finished soon. I was impressed at this rate of production, now that I was experiencing it in real time. If they gave us another week, the Macros would find themselves facing a fleet of tough little midget ships.

  Miklos answered on the first hail. “Hello Colonel. I see your ship does fly.”

  “Even pigs can, I hear, when in possession of very large wings.”

  “What can I do for you, sir?”

  “Do you have any new contacts? I mean, around the ring?”

  “Yes sir, as a matter of fact, I wanted to talk to you about that.”

  I heaved a sigh. Jasmine was already here. I didn’t know what I was going to say to her when we met.

  “The Nano ship we had posted as a scout at the ring didn’t return to report this last hour.”

  I frowned and blinked. “What?” I asked. “I’ve got plenty of relayed emails over our little pony-express system. Are you telling me we’ve been disconnected from Earth?”

  “What? No, sir. I’m talking about the other ring. The one that leads to the lobster worlds.”

  “Ah,” I said, catching on. “Do we have another ship out there to go look for the scout?”

  “No sir, every ship we have is orbiting the Centaur homeworld except for a few miners and the scouts at the two rings.”

  I looked at Commander Welter. He looked back at me.

  “You’re going to ask me to fly out there, aren’t you, sir?” he asked.

  “No,” I said. “This ship is too critical. We have too much firepower to remove it from the main front now. The Macros might take the opportunity to attack while we appear out of position. We are going to stay in orbit, and send Socorro. She’s our smallest, fastest, most lightly-armed ship.”

  I’d specially designed Socorro for scouting trips. It bothered me to send her out on a dangerous mission without being at the helm myself, but I wasn’t about to leave my post. There were too many unknowns in the Eden system for my liking today.

  “Colonel?” the command channel asked. Miklos’ East European accent was unmistakable. “This might be premature. The ship is less than an hour overdue.”

  “No,” I said. “Something went wrong. I know that pilot. Jameson is always timely. He’s not going to sit on the far side without a good reason, especially with no orders to do so. The Crustaceans have been gathering on the far side for days, and they haven’t been responding to the queries I’ve relayed to them.”

  “Very good, sir. I will dispatch another scout.”

  “Just one man aboard Socorro. We can’t afford anything more.”

  I rode out the next half-hour of tests without enjoyment. I was tense, and finally ordered the shakedown cruise cut short. “Take me down, Commander. I’ve had enough.”

  He looked at me and misinterpreted my expression. He grinned and lowered us into the clouds again. The ship shivered and heated up forty degrees. I closed my helmet and let the air conditioners dry the sweat from my face.

  I wasn’t sick from his twists and turns, but I didn’t tell Welter that. I was worried. There was new activity from two new directions. I’d been expecting the Macros to make a move, but now it seemed that Star Force and the Crustaceans were in motion instead.

/>   We went straight down to the dome. Together, Welter and I had come up with a score of improvements to the design. They were all minor, however. The craft functioned as is. Even the prototype was viable.

  “Marvin?” I demanded over the general channel once inside the dome. I walked around on the crunching moonscape that was the region under the dome. It was all chunks of ground-down rock, dust and bits of shiny metal.

  “I’m engaged at the moment, Colonel.”

  “Well, unengage yourself,” I said. “I need translations done. I’m reprogramming this facility.”

  “Just speak to it directly.”

  “I don’t speak binary.”

  “There is no need. I’ve affixed a brainbox and taught it appropriate translation engrams. It should do the job as well as I could.”

  “Right,” I said. “Well, that’s excellent.”

  I ordered the changes through the new brainbox, which I found near the output tray. While I did so, I scanned the bleak landscape for the robot. I knew he had to be under the dome with me somewhere.

  The first thing I saw was the wrecked bunker of steel planks. Many of the planks were missing. Smiling, I then knew where he had to be. I circled to the far side of the production unit and squinted toward the wall of the dome. A structure of scarred metal had appeared there. Marvin had been very busy. He’d built an encircling pen around his pets, and now enclosed them completely. I didn’t even see a door, but I suspected he was inside his little fort, tending to the Microbes.

  I frowned with a new thought. Could he be shocking them in there? Out of sight? Or maybe applying some other form of discipline? I didn’t like the idea, but I didn’t have time to walk out there and check up on him. Right now, he was busy and out of trouble. I wanted him to stay that way.

  I finished my programming edits and witnessed the birth of a new gunship. The fresh hull rolled out into the output tray with a tremendous clang. My construction-duty marines set to work on it immediately, pouring in nanites, adding major systems and cementing fittings into place with caulk-guns full of nanites.

  As it took shape, the second vessel looked about the same as the first, but there had been many adjustments. The central turret and the generator unit had been edged a few feet forward. This squeezed the bridge crew, but provided a more balanced arrangement of mass. The stabilizers wouldn’t have to work so hard when the ship was firing or accelerating to provide a stable platform.

  The big machine began working on the next ship, filling the dome with odd hot smells and a deep, thrumming sound that made my feet tingle in my boots. I wondered how these little ships would hold up in battle. As I exited the dome, I calculated I would learn the truth soon enough.

  — 26

  No one was more surprised than I was when the Crustaceans broke through the Hel ring in an attack formation. I’d talked to them, and they’d seemed reasonable-if a little stuffy. Now, they weren’t talking at all.

  I shook my head. Standing next to me, Miklos clucked his tongue. We were both aboard a destroyer called Actium which hovered in the high atmosphere over the Centaur homeworld. We’d made this ship our new command vessel, after the destruction of Barbarossa.

  I’d reached Actium as quickly as possible after receiving the news from Fleet. Due to the significant distance out to the ring orbiting Hel, we hadn’t been given any time to react to the Crustacean attack. Instead, we could only watch vids of the aftermath and analyze them. In this case, the analysis was simple: the Crustaceans had gotten their collective shell-covered tails kicked.

  They’d sent through a flock of nineteen ships, each of which was identical in appearance. They were all a familiar design of Nano ship. It was strange, seeing these vessels coming at us aggressively. I recognized them so intimately. I’d spent months inside Alamo, a twin to every one of them. I even paused to wonder if Alamo was among these attackers, and if the ship would recognize my voice if I attempted contact. It was a strange thought.

  I didn’t have time to try to talk to them, however. Sixteen of the nineteen ships were destroyed by our mines. They tried to shoot them down, but it was hopeless. I’d laid thousands there, on the off chance the Macros would send a fresh fleet of cruisers at us from that direction. The mines didn’t work as well on the smaller more maneuverable Nano ships as they had on ponderous Macro cruisers-but they did the job. Each contained a tiny nuclear charge at the center of a dark, star-shaped metal object. Any contact, even close proximity to a vessel that didn’t broadcast the correct friend-or-foe code, caused detonation. As we watched the incoming vids we counted ninety-three detonations.

  It was overkill, really. The surviving ships reversed themselves and exited back through the ring. Dozens of my mines followed them, attracted by magnetics and tiny brainboxes.

  “I hate seeing fellow biotics killed,” I said. “Recall Socorro. There’s little point to sending a scout ship out there alone now.”

  “Why are the lobsters attacking us, sir?” Miklos asked me.

  “I don’t know. Have you sent every message you could asking for peace and a meeting?”

  “Of course. But they never got the transmissions. The incursion was brief, and the mines pushed them back before they could have possibly received the messages.”

  I nodded. Battle at great distances had logistic difficulties. On Earth, you could at least talk to someone on the other side of the world with a few seconds of delay tagging onto the end of each sentence. That was annoying, but it could be dealt with. Without much trouble you could have a comprehensive conversation. At greater distances, it was more like texting each other. There might be hours between transmissions and responses. In this case, the delay was something like four hours. That meant this video was old. Everything could have changed by now. The Lobsters could have broken through, or they might have given up and retreated for good. It was frustrating being fed old information. I wanted to see the battle in real time.

  “This is all we need,” I said. “It’s not enough that the Macros are building up a fleet to push us out of this system, the Crustaceans seem to have the same goal. No one wants us here in the Eden system, do they Captain?”

  Miklos shrugged. “A wise man listens to the winds,” he said.

  I glanced at him sharply. Was he trying to suggest Star Force should retreat? He didn’t meet my gaze, but instead busied himself with the command screen. I frowned down at the debris from the ships and the reduced count of mines. They’d shot down a fair number. Still, there were about seven thousand of them active out there. We’d lost about a thousand, but they’d done their work.

  I slapped my hand on the command table. Fortunately, I’d removed my gauntlets, and the screen didn’t rupture. A few staffers flicked their eyes to me, then back to their work.

  “Maybe we should call on the Worms,” I said. “They might come to support us.”

  “You think these Nano ships are that big of a threat?” Miklos asked.

  “Not really, but I like to operate from a position of strength. Right now, I believe we have the best ground forces in the system. But we can’t use them if we don’t control space. The Crustaceans are a new unknown in the equation. A newly hostile neighbor. They’ve obviously destroyed our scout ship on their side of the ring and just made their first aggressive move into this system. I need allies, not new enemies!”

  Everyone else in the control room stayed quiet. I supposed I had a rep now for temper tantrums. No one wanted to get in my way. Miklos looked like he would have exited the room himself if he could have come up with a good excuse.

  “How did the test flight go on the new gun ship?” he asked.

  “A blatant attempt to change the topic,” I said, then sighed. “Really, the tests went well. They are nowhere near as sleek and maneuverable as these destroyers, but we can produce them twenty times faster-maybe thirty. Pitted against Macro cruisers and these Nano ships…I don’t know. If we have enough of them, we’ll do fine. Let’s talk about our new battle formations and
tactics.”

  Miklos looked relieved. “Yes, let’s do that.”

  After several hours, we’d hammered out a plan. Once we had more gunships than destroyers, we’d implement it. The gunships would lead the fight on the front line. They took more damage, but had a lot less range. They would need to get in close to be effective with their railguns. The Nano destroyers would tag behind, but not too far behind. They would use their lasers to cover the gunships, shooting down incoming missile barrages. Once the formation was in close enough, the railguns and the lasers would be used to target and take out individual targets in coordination.

  Really, it came down to numbers. If the Macro cruisers outnumbered our smaller ships we were doomed. If we outnumbered them two to one, we’d win. In-between those two numbers, it was iffy. It was hard to predict how the battle might go.

  I had a contingency plan, however, in case the battle did play out with us on the losing side. The front line of gunships would take their beating like little bulldogs, but would eventually be taken out by the larger cruisers. If they lasted long enough to intermix with their formation however, they would have done their work. Aboard every destroyer would be a platoon of troops. These men would deploy like tiny independent attackers and swarm the cruisers. We’d done well with those tactics in the past, and I prayed the Macros hadn’t yet come up with an effective defense against marine boarding assaults.

  I recalled that in ancient times, sea battles had really been land battles between ships linked by boarding planks. The slow, wooden galleys of the Greeks, Romans and Carthaginians had missile weapons, but the real fight began when they closed with one another. They rammed, boarded, and set fire to one another. They fought close battles on blood-slicked decks that often involved hundreds of ships and thousands of marines. I reflected that battle tactics had come full-circle over time, once again making marines a significant factor in ship-to-ship combat.

  After hammering out plans for rosters of ships I hadn’t even built yet, I retired when my eyes no longer focused properly. By that time, I had four new gunships, and more were on the way. But I knew I needed forty-or better yet four hundred of them. I wouldn’t feel comfortable until I had a serious fleet.