Deep Space Endeavor 3 Death Match (46 page)

She reached the first attacker and hit him hard in the side of the face. His eyes rolled into the back of his head as he slumped to the floor. The second attacker met her head on while Jesse found a weak spot in the last attacker’s armor. He stabbed the assassin under his arm and into his heart. The big, red Farannsian was dead before he hit the ground. He finished off the wounded one while Kimi dispatched the last one. He stumbled and fell to the ground. He found he was unable to stand under his own power as he lay barely conscious in the comfort of the heated sand. Kimi held him down and said, “Do not try to move yet, Jesse.” He could see the worry in her eyes as she yelled for a medic. A medical shuttle landed about thirty-five meters away, and the medics rushed to him with a hover gurney. By this time, the rest of his team had reached them as well. They all jumped into the shuttle with the mortified outpost mayor, and took off for
Endeavor
. The mayor couldn’t stop apologizing. His guest of honor had almost been assassinated and looked to be in bad shape. Josiah was on comms with an unhappy Suzy who would be meeting them at the ship.

Jesse looked up into Kimi’s worried eyes and said, “Now I really don’t want that city to be named after me.” He smiled and it broke the tension.

His friends began to chuckle as the shuttle raced back to the ship.

“Always the jokes, Jess. How come the bad guys never break that part of you?” There were a few more chuckles as Josiah turned serious and said, “We’re gonna get to the bottom of this, Jess.”

“I know you will, Jo.” He looked up at Kimi and squeezed her hand. “I wasn’t gonna win, Kimi. Thank you.” She just held his hand and smiled. She would indeed be getting to the bottom of this.

______

“Thansar, we are too late. Our worst fear has come to pass. Somehow, the Enclave has managed to ally themselves with Earth. We need to begin attacking Earth’s outer colonies to keep their
Leviathans
and
War Hawks
out of Enclave hands. If they feel they need to defend themselves against us, they will not be giving anymore of their ships to Lucien.”

“We are in position to strike at their frontier defenses with three hundred fifty ships. After we defeat the Coalition’s guardians, we will only need to take three of their poorly protected worlds before we can attack Polisia. If you are threatening their core planets at the same time, we should be able to take Polisia and break their back, Dobar.”

“What is so important about Polisia, Thansar?”

“It is where the leaders of the company that builds their most powerful ships reside. Our network has also picked up that they are constructing another even larger ship building facility there. Stopping that from happening would be key to us having any chance in this war. Their only other facility is on Earth, but they will not be able to produce enough ships quickly enough with just the one.”

“Very good, I knew having Jarlevia on our side would turn the tide. Take a mixed fleet of three hundred fifty ships and put your plan into action. We will threaten the Coalition’s core to prevent reinforcements from arriving.

Nine hours later, three hundred fifty alien vessels dropped out of light space on the Coalition’s first line of defense under Admiral Collingsworth.

“Give me fleet wide.” A clearly rattled Admiral Collingsworth commanded from the bridge of the
Churchill
. When the ensign indicated he was on, he began. “I know the odds look long, but we must hold on long enough for the Coalition to get some more ships to the outer worlds. Pick targets and open fire. We are all that stands between these monsters and millions of innocent lives. Coordinate your efforts and let’s make a good showing of ourselves.” When he was finished addressing his fleet, he sent a message to Earth asking for defenses to be ready at the Stamdall. He was curious as to why he had received no reply, but could not investigate with the battle raging. He had only two
Leviathans
and six
War
Hawks
. The rest were normal standard issue Earth military vessels. Luckily, SSE had sent their best techs to modify weapons and shields to give them more firepower and better defenses, but they were still nowhere near as powerful as the SSE ships.

Hard light shot through space and splashed off Coalition deflectors as the two
Leviathans
and their
War Hawk
contingent began to destroy alien vessels. Collingsworth thought he could pick out five distinctly different types of vessels, which did not bode well for the Coalition. If five alien races had joined together to eliminate them, they were in trouble.
At least we have our new allies; their four hundred ships will come in handy.

Collingsworth looked out the viewport to the right and saw an Earth battle cruiser go up in a shower of sparks before the explosion destroyed it. Two gunships and a frigate quickly followed suit.
Almost a thousand good men, dead in seconds
, he sadly mused.

He had still received no word from Earth, so he sent transmissions to Stamdall and Geshern and ordered them to begin evacuating everyone they could because help wasn’t going to get to them in time.

The
Churchill
fired its main batteries again and Collingsworth took some comfort at seeing an alien destroyer and a gunship light up the space around them, but his comfort was short lived as he watched four more of his ships obliterated. He angrily realized that they couldn’t win. Three hundred fifty was just too many ships. His SSE ships were availing themselves very well, but the reality was that they could not destroy the enemy fast enough to win the engagement.

The eighty ships there were overmatched, and after almost forty minutes of hard fighting, Collingsworth finally had to call for the fleet to retreat to light space. Forty-seven Coalition vessels remained and they had destroyed only thirty-four of the alien attackers. They had destroyed only one more ship than they had lost, it just wasn’t going to be enough to save the Coalition from losing its two outermost planets. They retreated past the Coalition’s last two worlds, Stamdall and Geshern, continuing to send warnings for anyone who could to get out. They regrouped at Triton and prepared to send refugees on to Polisia. Every ship with defenses both public and private were put in space to await the onslaught. Triton actually had decent planetary defenses as well as a Planetary Defense Force of thirty-six ships. That gave him eighty-three vessels as well as a couple dozen private ships with military upgrades to defend Triton with.
If reinforcements do not arrive from Earth soon, we’ll lose Triton as well. I can’t believe Earth is letting the aliens have two of our world without a fight. If I survive, I’m going to have some strong words for our new president and his allies. I’ll be talking with Admiral Bliney as well. No matter what happens, this is likely the last battle of my career
.

Seventeen hours later, eleven warships limped in to Triton escorting fourteen passenger vessels, nine cargo haulers and almost eighty private vessels. This was all that remained of the Coalition’s two outermost worlds. Admiral Collingsworth asked how many enemy vessels were destroyed and was dismayed when the answer was only five. Both worlds had been subjected to orbital bombarded. The likelihood of there being many survivors was not high. Admiral Collingsworth conscripted the eleven remaining warships to the defense of Triton and sent the rest of the vessels to Polisia. With the Romanovs there, he knew Polisia would put up a heck of a fight. He only hoped to even the odds a bit before they had to.

Collingsworth now had ninety-four military vessels, twenty-eight private vessels and some pretty good planetary defenses. He hoped to give the aliens as much as they could take before falling back to Polisia. He knew that he still wouldn’t have nearly enough to stop three hundred ten ships. He sent a transmission to the Prime Minister of Triton, telling him to evacuate as many of his people as he could. He didn’t think he would be able to hold the planet. He also contacted Earth again, telling them what had happened and asking them to reinforce Polisia. He was surprised when the President said he would not. The bigger surprise was when Admiral Bliney ordered him and his forty-seven ships back to Earth. He asked them why Earth needed so many when their new allies had four hundred ships there. He was told if he didn’t leave that moment, he would be court-martialed.  He ended the transmission and for the first time in his career, disobeyed a direct order. He gave each of his ship’s commanding officers the opportunity to go, but none of them took him up on it. As he awaited the coming battle, he was very angry at Earth’s leaders.
I’ve served this Coalition with honor my whole adult life. I thought I was serving leaders with the same honor. I guess I was wrong. How can they so callously sit back while millions of lives are extinguished? Who exactly is in charge of our Coalition anyway?

______

Admiral Collingsworth was as prepared as he could be for the coming alien armada, but he knew there was little chance of victory. He only hoped to evacuate as many people as possible before falling back to Polisia where the Marcos and Romanov families were bound to have a legitimate shot at victory. Part of him wanted to take his fleet there now and insure that victory, but part of him just couldn’t leave these people to try and fight and flee with no support.
I may have already thrown my career away, but I wouldn’t shirk my duties to preserve my own life. I’ve sworn an oath to protect the Coalition and its citizens, and even if its leaders no longer felt bound to that oath, I do not considered myself released from it. I will hold Triton until every ship that can leave has left, then I’ll make my final stand with the Romanovs on Polisia.

He had sent all of his fleet’s shuttles to the planet to rescue as many people as possible before the aliens struck. He already knew what lie in store for the bulk of Triton’s people and he couldn’t believe the Coalition was unwilling to defend it. Stamdall and Geshern had suffered orbital bombardments, killing almost their entire population, and he knew that the same would happen on Triton. Hundreds of shuttles would rescue thousands of people. Polisia had sent ten luxury space liners to ferry people off of Triton. Each trip each ship could make would save almost fifteen thousand people. Large cargo vessels were leaving full of people and almost every private ship on the planet was already gone.

People began rioting to try and get spots on whatever ships were still available as a panic gripped the people. Other people decided to take as many supplies as they could carry and hide out in the mountains or caves. Collingsworth mused that those people might be the ones that actually survived what was coming, unless the aliens landed troops. His captains all knew to open fire as soon as any ships dropped out of light space. They would not be unprepared. He was expecting just over three hundred ships, and he was hoping to hold on long enough to take that down to two hundred and let whoever was still on the planet safely escape. He would then take whatever ships remained to Polisia to shore up their defenses. He was brought out of his musings by the words “Enemy fleet approaching.” The young officer who had given the warning looked scared, but he continued monitoring his station diligently.

“Open fire,” Collingsworth ordered as hard light shot out from ninety-four vessels and eleven mounted plasma cannons. Their volley took the alien armada by surprise, destroying several ships instantly as all of his people kept firing. Unfortunately, they were facing close to four hundred ships, not three hundred.
They must have picked up reinforcements for their push to Polisia.
He was no longer sure about their chances. By the time almost forty alien vessels had been destroyed, they had their shields up and began dealing out some serious punishment. The SSE Vipers were availing themselves quite well, while the fighters produced by earth’s military were barely holding their own. The bottom line was that there were just too many enemy fighters for them to overcome.

Collingsworth still didn’t know too much about these aliens the Jarlevians had allied themselves with, but he knew one of the groups were called the Barrafoss. Their cruisers were large and intimidating. The shape of the ship couldn’t really be identified. Amorphous was the first word that came to his mind. Weapons were strewn at random throughout the ship and the only way you could tell which side was the back was by the engines. These big ships began dishing out some heavy punishment to Earth’s battle cruisers. The plasma cannons were still taking aliens out at a pretty good rate, and the six remaining SSE ships were also dishing out some serious damage. It wouldn’t be enough, there were just too many of them. The fleet’s other
Leviathan
was surrounded by five ships and took them all out, but sustained some damage. Almost instantly, five more surrounded it and while it did take out three more, it was destroyed. He also saw one of the
War Hawks
go out in a blaze of glory.

His
Leviathan
, the
Churchill,
was soon surrounded by eight ships, but it was a ploy. His three
War Hawks
broke off their other engagements and fired on the ships surrounding their flagship, while the
Churchill
picked the aliens off one by one.
Marcos really knew what he was doing when he designed these fleet groups. A good commanding officer could defend himself against a much larger force in these ships. Unfortunately, the alien force is far too large.
While he was going after a Jarlevian Cruiser, he received word that the last ship from Triton had made it to orbit. He hated to run, and he knew the planet was doomed, but it was doomed either way. As the last of the planetary defenses was destroyed, he gave the order that he knew would haunt him forever and jumped to light space. He had lost fifty-three ships, but he had taken just over one hundred alien ships out. Now he hoped that Polisia had a miracle waiting for them.