Earth Song: Etude to War (42 page)

Chapter 43

May 9th, 534 AE

Planet K, Contested Territory, Galactic Frontier

Gregg had watched the virtual battlefield with trepidation as Minu began her assault. It had been disconcerting enough when she’d suddenly appeared in-system. Add the four brand new looking combat suits and it was nothing short of a shock to the system.

There was no time to discuss their appearance or implications of what she'd been up to for the weeks of her private mission. The presence of the combat suits suggested something amazing had happened.

He supervised the loading of the heavy beamcasters aboard their transports as well as the medical teams and the non-ambulatory wounded. The bodies were another issue. It was impossible to take them all. They'd been cremated with high energy an hour ago. He didn't look forward to telling the families.

With Minu's attack under full swing he ordered elements of Third Battalion to mobilize forward in support and Second Battalion to begin pulling out. The enemy was in temporary disarray. It appeared that most of their command elements were in the portal spire, which Minu was kicking the shit out of at that very moment.

He wished he could be there but now he was a commander, and his place was with his Rangers, holding the rear so they could escape this death trap.

“Minu just took out their leader,” Cherise called to him over the tactical channel. She sounded strange for some reason he couldn't identify. “Begin your evacuation.”

“Noted, thanks. All companies, Second and Third Bat, begin your evac to the portal spire. On the double time people, we're going home!”

No sooner had he completed the communication than all hell broke loose. Mok-Tok troops, APCs and tanks appeared from their secured firing position and began an all-out attack.

“Lancers, fire mission!” he yelled as a pair of tanks slammed into his lightly armed rear guards. Lights were turning red on his virtual battlefield.

A second later his surviving Lancers arrived in a scream of gravitic impellers. The tanks didn't even try to avoid. They drove straight into the strafing patterns of the fighters, and were annihilated. The fighters made pass after pass, slaughtering every Mok-Tok element they could target.

There was a little return fire, only a little. Their troops died by the hundred as they made a headlong rush for the portal spire. In horror, Gregg realized his position was about to be overrun.

“Take cover, take cover!” he screamed over the tactical channel.

“Lines are overrun!” cried one platoon commander.

“Enemy behind the lines!” another called out. “We need fire support!”

“Close air support, fire mission!” Gregg ordered and gave the coordinates.

“That will spend the last of our weapons energy,” the squadron leader said in dire tones.

“Noted Lancer leader, make it count!” On his virtual battlefield Gregg watched as the units overrunning the isolated platoon were wiped out, and his men made their escape.

“Heavy infantry!” his headquarters company commander yelled, and a second later a dozen armored Mok-Tok crashed through the windows and into the old store he'd been using as a CP. Then there was no more time to think, only fight… and die.

* * *

Minu looked up from dialing the portal to a random location to see the locators on First Bat start to turn red. Fast as a flash she began to take a survey of what she'd missed in the last minute. The Mok-Tok had gone insane after she'd capped the one in the fancy assault suit.

She cursed and spun around, re-buttoning her suit and calling for Cherise. She had the only other fully operational suit. As she moved towards the exit, something caught her eye.

The Mok-Tok leader she'd shot up was moving and making mewing sounds almost like a cat. It didn't seem to be acting in any sort of an intelligent fashion. But that wasn't what had caught her eye. She stopped in her tracks and let her suit’s sensors do the work. Yep, she'd seen something all right.

Quick as a flash she moved, grabbing what she saw and dropping it into her now empty micro grenade magazine before sealing it up again. Then she was out with Cherise right behind.

“Power levels at thirty-nine percent,” the suit warned her as they both fired jumpjets and cleared an adjacent building. Rangers looked on in wonder as the two Chosen rocketed by where they were marshaling outside the portal spire.

So many
, she thought as they jumped again. Someone was going to pay for this clusterfuck!

It only took a minute to encounter the first elements of the marauding Mok-Tok. Cherise and Minu blasted their way through with little resistance. The shambling mounds didn't seem all that interested in the two combat suits kicking their asses. They were making a suicide charge to help the one she'd wounded. That made her smile a little. Loyalty was a wonderful thing. This was taking it a little too far.

They reached Gregg's CP and found carnage inside. Medics were working on the survivors, but there weren't many. Dozens of dead Rangers covered the floor and a trio of Mok-Tok heavy infantry, all shot to hell. They'd busted into the CP and created havoc before being taken down. Minu looked around with fear burning in her gut until she saw what she was looking for. Gregg was alive.

“I feared the worst,” she said as she came closer. A pair of Ranger medics were working on him. His left thigh was slashed to the bone, the result of Mok-Tok claws. He was holding a blood-soaked bandage to his abdomen too, and that worried her.

“He's stable, Chosen,” the medic told her as she got closer.

“They are bad ass close quarter fighters,” Gregg said, his face a barely controlled mask of pain.

“Can't you give him something?”

“He refused.”

“Stubborn asshole,” she said.

“I learned from the best,” Gregg replied. “I'm sorry so many of your men had to die.”

“They're our men, Gregg. You're a better commander than I ever was.”

“Kloth shit,” he said then gasped.

“Get him to the rally point,” she told the medics. “Top priority.”

“Yes Chosen.”

“This conversation isn't over with, boss!” Gregg called after her. Minu smiled as she exited the building.

“Minu, Pip here.”

“Go ahead.”

“I'm in position, standing by.”

“Begin your landing.”

“Understood.”

“Now the fun begins,” Minu told her two friends.

* * *

Having halted the Mok-Tok’s headlong charge to retake the portal spire, they regrouped with the surviving Leesa forces. The humans’ deploying their surprisingly effective combat suits was a surprise, as was the bold taking of the portal spire with key elements of their leadership inside.

However their numbers were too large to effectively evacuate in anything less than an entire day. And while they began their evacuation, their rear would become vulnerable. The Leesa and Mok-Tok commanders were discussing the plan of attack when the first shuttles began to arrive.

They were similar to the shuttles from the Kaatan, only much wider, rather like flattened spearheads, and nearly four times the size. They plummeted through the lower atmosphere amid multiple sonic booms. A few of the surviving Mok-Tok fighters rose to meet them, and were swatted from the sky by energy weapons from orbit.

The Rangers cleared out an area next to the portal spire several hundred meters on a side. It was there the shuttles swooped down to vertically land. As soon as they settled the rear section split and rotated upwards to each allow an entire platoon to board.

Minu and Cherise landed on rooftops within view of the staging area, both using their suit’s sensors to watch the surrounding area. The hundreds of spy bots Minu released were now surrounding the vicinity out to five kilometers. Still mostly too small to be noticed, they’d expanded her virtual battlefield to a degree she’d never seen before. It felt almost… omnipotent.

Two Leesa squads tried to sortie against a retreating heavy weapons platoon of Rangers. Minu instantly tore into them from on high with precise beamcaster fire, forcing them to fall back. When her sensors detected a pair of Mok-Tok tanks working around the far side of the portal spire a single flash of light from orbit turned them into flying debris and a crater.

“Incoming starships identified,” Lilith came on as Minu was pushing back an entire company of Leesa mounted in APC. They left three of their vehicles in smoking ruins but her suit told her power was down to twenty percent.

“What are you facing?”

“I have confirmation of one fleet carrier and three destroyers.”

“That’s not good.”

“No, a less than ideal situation.

“Can you slow them down?”

“Only if I leave orbit.”

Minu watched the virtual battlefield with an eye as she considered. The loss of her orbital fire support would severely impact their ability to cover the retreating Rangers. As she thought, the first two heavy cargo shuttles lifted into the sky. There were a few energy shots at them from extreme distance that flashed harmlessly off the shuttle’s shield. As if to punctuate what she was losing, Lilith obliterated one of the sources of harassing fire with a single APAW beam.

“Go get them, Lilith.”

“Understood, mother.”

“Be careful honey…and good hunting.”

Chapter 44

May 9th, 534 AE

Planet K Star System, Contested Territory, Galactic Frontier

Lilith took a minute to identify a number of the high risk targets she’d been tracking within five kilometers of the portal spire then with one final salvo she vaporized all of them. She hoped the sudden fusillade of precision orbital fire would deter the enemy from making a mass attack until she could get back.

“Leaving so soon?”

She glanced in her virtual battlespace to a slightly lower orbit. The bulk of the Ibeen dwarfed the Kaatan by an order of magnitude, even from fifty kilometers away. “You're plugged into the battlespace, you know what's coming.”

“I do, and unlike you I'm almost unarmed.”

“Only offensively, you can defend yourself.”

“I'm having a hard enough time controlling a dozen shuttles.”

“You will do fine. I will be back as soon as I can.”

Lilith let the parts of her brain that interfaced with the ship's systems take over and in moments, she was completely the ship. Her consciousness expanded to fill its very structure, and the sensors colored all her perceptions creating a multi-textual montage of all the various emanations of the solar system.

The enemy ships were coming around a gas giant forty million kilometers distant as she accelerated away from Planet K at four hundred Gs. Lower computer functions began complicated combat simulations based on recorded capabilities of the Mok-Tok class combat craft most closely resembling her headings. The Kaatan was more than a match for the carrier and its fighters, or the three destroyers, but not the combination. Her leading tactic was obvious.

Planet K shrank to a point in less than a minute. Panels slid open and recesses opened in the sleek hull of the Kaatan as shields strengthened to full power. She had seventy-one percent power in the main batteries, and reserves at one hundred percent. Ship-killer missiles, kinetic weapons, interceptor missiles and other consumables were in acceptable quantities. She felt a deep thrill of excitement as she prepared to do battle.

The Mok-Tok ships sensed her approach the same way she'd sensed theirs. Tachyon propagation caused by the powerful gravitic drives made a wavefront in the direction of the ship’s travel. They picked up the tachyon spike and wave that signaled the approaching ship. Unlike the Kaatan, they did not recognize their adversary.

The enemy ships adopted a standard defensive formation, destroyers creating a leading protective screen while the fleet carrier began launching her fighters. Lilith raced straight at the formation, and through it. The destroyers fired salvos of particle beams and close defense lasers along the anticipated course.

Lilith, though, altered her course along a varying trajectory and unleashed a string of kinetic kill weapons. Two particle beams splashed off the Kaatan's shields. A dozen kinetic projectiles raked the carrier from stem to stern as she flashed by in a microsecond.

The carrier's main shields overloaded with massive discharges of energy from the outrigger pods. Larger ships were protected from the catastrophic failure of shield capacitors, unlike personal shields. The carrier was spared destruction, but now extremely vulnerable.

Lilith pushed her gravitic drive to its theoretic limit, slowing and banking at nearly two thousand gravities. The displacement wave shifted the orbit slightly of one gas giant's moon as she came around hard and let a trio of ship-killer missiles flash away from the rear launchers.

The fleet carrier sported a complement of forty heavy fighters and five scout cutters. It managed to launch just ten fighters before Lilith struck. Launch operations were automatically terminated when the defensive fields failed, heavy armored dualloy blast doors dropping in place to protect the vulnerable flight decks. Its close defense lasers flashed furiously, intercepting all three ship-killer missiles.

Lilith flanked then paralleled their course for several long seconds, her main particle batteries raining fire onto the closest destroyer until its facing shield failed. The ship rolled to present new shields, taking two direct hits amidships before it could complete the maneuver. Secondary explosions rippled across its bulbous superstructure and it began to fall out of formation.

Largely ineffective particle beams lanced out from the carrier at the Kaatan. The few beams that hit were intercepted by rotating shields, allowing her to maintain a rock steady course to keep her own weapons fire deadly accurate. The two undamaged carriers began to coordinate their fire, and Lilith disengaged.

The nimble Kaatan surged away and danced, Lilith maneuvering her ship like a pirouetting ballerina as beams flew around her with few hits. The ship’s amazing arrays of shields easily moved around to absorb individual hits and distribute the energy load. “You'll have to do a lot better than that,” Lilith laughed.

One of the fighter squadrons that had managed to launch moved to encircle her. She picked two to harass with her defensive lasers then released a trio of interceptor missiles. They flashed across the relatively close distance in a microsecond and turned two of the three targets into expanding balls of gas and constituent parts. The third was only grazed by the detonation.

However, the three survivors fell back and released ship-killers of their own. She swatted them from the sky and wasted three shots from her particle cannon in exchange for three more kills.

Lilith was about to turn back to the attack when her battlespace warned her of another threat. The other squadron of fighters hadn't moved to engage, they were racing at a thousand gravities towards Planet K. She cursed herself for a fool and came around hard. But the destroyers deftly moved to interdict her course. As she prepared to counter them, the fleet carrier resumed launching.

* * *

Four shuttles were landing, four more taking off, the ship’s four hundred gravitic drive arrays needed to be kept in careful balance, dozens of ship systems were still struggling to remain operational after untold eons of inactivity, and Pip had to keep his own body working as well.

He never knew just how many things Lilith did while operating the Kaatan as its combat intelligence. Part coordinating influence, part captain, part navigator, part engineer, part… God? He felt simultaneously stretched to the limit, and expanded far beyond.

When Minu had first pitched the plan he'd considered it ludicrous. Lilith had been literally designed as a fetus to be a ship’s combat intelligence. While he shared some of the computer implants in his brain that she possessed, his were not integrated as deeply, and he hadn't learned to walk (or fly) with them in his brain.

His implants were mainly to facilitate higher brain function and connect his damaged medulla oblongata to the rest of his brain. She'd been certain he was capable though, and as usual, Minu manipulated him into doing what she wanted.

They'd surveyed the ghost fleet and the least damaged Ibeen was selected. Lilith dispatched her crystalline repair bots into a flurry of activity, bringing the long dormant ship back to life and transferring one of the massive ship-sized EPCs on board for power.

Pip found piloting the huge ship no real challenge; it was massive and slow to respond and that actually worked in his favor. It was harder to make mistakes than it would have been trying to fly the small nimble Kaatan. However as he was fully plugged in and took complete control of the kilometer and a half long behemoth, he finally came to understand the enormous task he was being asked to perform.

The initial experience was strangely sexual, and Pip shuddered in surprise as an incredibly intense orgasm ripped through his brain in response to its first interface with the ancient transport. Of all the things he expected, that wasn't one of them.

There had been no time to contemplate the unusual ways his brain was reacting to the interface. After only two hours of feeling his way through the ship's systems, Lilith led him in a crash course of operating the ship. Though the Kaatan and the Ibeen were of hugely disparate sizes and uses, they had been both created by the People in the same era and shared most of the same systems; minus the offensive firepower of course.

The only real challenge Lilith faced was creating a temporary CIC for Pip to operate from. The Ibeen was designed as an autonomous ship, operated by an artificial intelligence. The computers were long shut down and that intelligence likewise long absent. There were facilities to operate the ship manually, but not in the manner they required. There simply wasn't time to design any level of AI that would operate the ship at the level they required. Lilith knew they were out there, those AI programs, only she didn't know where in the vast network of quantum communication links to find them. So Pip had been their only choice.

Less than a day after returning to the ghost fleet, he'd guided the Ibeen away from where it rested for so long and back into faster than light travel. Maximum speed, five thousand times the speed of light. Compared to the Kaatan, it was a slug.

All through the transition to Planet K he'd ran simulations through his brain in every aspect of the Ibeen's operation including piloting the dozen bat-like cargo shuttles.

These weren't the narrow capsule shapes everyone in the Concordia was used to seeing. They were meant for starship to surface transfer. The need to pass through a portal wasn't a consideration. He really began to believe the computer intelligences that ran the Ibeen were nearly supreme beings.

He'd watched Lilith leave orbit with trepidation, then forgot about it entirely as continuing to operate the Ibeen consumed all his attention. That was until his own battlespace came alive for the first time. He spared a fraction of his attention towards Lilith and found her dancing a deadly game with the four enemy capital ships and a growing swarm of fighters. Then he didn't have the time to watch her any more.

The five fighters blazed in towards his orbit far faster than he liked. Running was out of the question, both because he was controlling eight shuttles in the atmosphere of Planet K along with all the other hundreds of the Ibeen's mundane systems, and because the ponderous bulk of his ship stood little to no chance of escaping against the nimble fighters.

But if he expected subtlety from the fighters, he was mistaken. When they were within a hundred thousand kilometers they each launched a sub-fusion ship-killer.

Pip shifted as much attention away from piloting the shuttles as he could manage, and brought the Ibeen's defenses on line. It was just as complex as the first time they used the defensive lasers on the Kaatan, back before Lilith was born as the ship's combat intelligence, only made more so by having to balance all the others jobs as well.

He got one of the ship-killers, then another, and finally a third. Then the other two struck. He threw several reserve shields onto the impact vector at the last second as the missiles detonated like miniature nuclear weapons. The ship shuddered and main power fluctuated for a second before stabilizing. One of the Ibeen’s nine shield arrays was down. And the fighters were maneuvering around for another pass.