Inherited War 3: Retaliation (29 page)

“Everyone calm down,” Cole snapped to quiet the nervous chatter that erupted on the ship. The noise died down but Cole felt the tight nerves all around him.
The Resurrection
continued on. She passed ship after ship, undetected on her way to the planet. Finally they were there. Nixa. Sky’s home.

Fires raged on parts of the continent that they could see, but only a small part. Cole had to rely on video feeds to gather intelligence. Any active scanning or probes would be detected by the enemy. He used normal visual and thermal to gauge the situation on the ground. He could zoom down to ground level, getting a picture in very high resolution, as good or better than HD.

Cole didn’t know Nixa that well, so he pulled up current satellite maps of the planet and compared the two images.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, Sky, but the damage isn’t as bad as I would have thought. They don’t appear to be bombarding the planet from orbit. Maybe a few strikes, but the place is crawling with Roche. They seemed to have decided on a ground war, though why is a mystery to me. Doesn’t your planet have shielding?” he asked.

“Yes,” was her response.

“Sabotage?” West said.

“More than likely. They probably had possessed Nixa on the ground in key areas before they struck.” As they settled into a low orbit of the planet, they saw more of the devastation wrought by the invaders. Most of the damage seemed to be confined to the cities. The rural areas showed less damage. But the Roche swarmed all over the place. They saw a brief fight where a surprise attack seemed to come from right underneath the Roche. The Nixa hit hard, causing damage and then disappeared. The Roche started to detonate explosives on the ground.

“What the hell was that?” Cole asked, surprised.

“That means my people made it to the underground. At least some of them,” Sky answered. She continued before Cole asked the obvious question. “After the last war and what we saw happen to the Worlder system, we took measures. Massive underground cities were built and stores were stockpiled. Hidden entrances cover the planet but are extremely hard to find. If any Roche or Esii do find one and attempt to enter it, the entire local system is destroyed. It is our final holdout position.”

“Good that changes things then. We definitely have allies on the ground. West’s mission is vital.” Quiet descended on the ship again as they advanced further around the planet.

“Our capitol,” Sky said as a glowing dome slowly appeared on the horizon. “It’s shielded.” She was right. As they got closer, the details of the area became clear. Most of the city was protected by a shield but the outer few blocks lay in ruins. The city was hemmed in from all side by millions of Roche and their Esii masters. Cole slowed the ship and went into synchronous orbit above the city. As Cole watched the scene below, he saw the shield flicker then fail. As soon as the shield dropped, massed fire poured out of the city and hammered into the Roche front lines. Plasma, rockets, mortars, artillery, you name it and it came roaring out of the city into the lines of the Roche. Tens of thousands, Cole was willing to bet that a million, Roche died in that opening salvo. Sky was right though, it wouldn’t matter in the end. The Roche had millions to throw into the grinder and would have millions left when it was over.

“Thalo is still alive,” Cole stated out loud.

“How you figure that?” West asked.

“Only Thalo would have come up with this defense. He is hurting them but more importantly, he is buying time.” Cole pointed at the city. “I bet when the Roche are about to overrun this block they pull back to the next set of buildings and blow the buildings to their front. I bet the shield snaps up all nice and charged as well.” Cole reoriented his view and zoomed in on a debris cloud just south of the city. “That’s how you get in, West.”

“Umm that’s space junk, Cole,” West replied.

“That’s what’s left of Home Fleet,” Sky whispered.

“And it’s your ticket down to the ground. Watch it’s about to happen again.” They did, all three were focused on the chunks of spaceship floating around the planet. One particularly large piece passed the point of no return and was pulled by the planets gravity into the upper layers of the atmosphere. It ignited in a bright fireball as it fell to the ground below. “It’s cover. Look around, no one is reacting to the debris falling into the planet. Even if your stealth somehow fails, you will just be another piece of junk falling to the ground.”

“Turn me into a meteorite, huh? Okay, I will agree to that,” West said.

“Forty minutes, can you be ready? Oh, and you will probably come down further away than planned so take the Jumpboots,” Cole told his friend.

“Finally some good news. I’ve been wanting to try those out,” West said, then his presence was gone from the ship’s computer. He had been hooked in down in the cargo bay and was now getting his men ready to load the pods. Cole and Sky remained silent as Cole slowly adjusted his heading to take them into the debris field. Forty minutes later, they were in the heart of the carnage.

“You boys ready?” Cole asked in their com channel.

“Chomping at the bit, Sir,” Sgt. Waller replied, and the other two responded with nervous grunts.

Cole saw an alert from a private channel; it was West.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“I need to say something, ask you to do something,” West started to say, but Cole cut him off.

“No, don’t you dare. You will be fine. I will be back in a few days to pick your dumb ass up,” Cole nearly shouted.

“No, you shut up and listen,” West said calmly and seriously. ” You picked me for this, so you get to hear what I have to say. Shit, soldiers have been saying this crap for thousands of years. I’m not the first and I won’t be the last, so just listen. I made a recording for my girls; make sure they get it when they are older. Tell Jess…well, tell her I love her and I’m doing this for her. Trying to make the galaxy safe for my girls.” This was by far the most serious and heartfelt thing he had ever heard come out of West’s mouth.

“That it?” Cole asked quickly, afraid his emotions would choke his voice.

“Yeah, there is one more thing. Thanks. Thanks for saving us all from that death pit. I don’t know if anyone has even said that to you yet, but you deserve it. You’ve done some wild shit this last year and should have died dozens of times over, but you didn’t, and you made it possible for me to have a family. Thanks,” he finished.

“West,” Cole said.

“Yeah, boss.”

“Get the hell off of my ship.” Those were his last words to his friend. Cole opened the cargo bay hatch and the interior launchers ejected the four pods out of the rear of the ship and into space. Coms had be cut the moment the pods had been activated. The pods vanished from sight and drifted away towards the planet. They would be on the ground in an hour. Cole carefully piloted his way out of the field and back into open space. They waited for one hour, then two. By the third, he finally decided that they had made it to ground undetected.

They orbited the planet twice before turning their attention outward. They mapped the local space as best they could and got a feel for what they were up against. Nearly five thousand ships were in the immediate area and hundreds more were coming and going.

Cole broke his connection with the ship and was back in his body on the bridge. He rose, stretched his inactive muscles, and moved around to get his circulation going again. Sky followed him out.

“It’s hopeless isn’t it?” Sky whispered.

“Hopeless? Not quite. Do you really think I would have sent my best friend down to his certain death if I’d thought it was hopeless?”

“No, I suppose not, but what can we do?” She was on the verge of tears as she spoke.

“We do what we talked about. We fight this war on our terms not theirs. We try our best to make it a war of tactics and not numbers. We put our tech advantage against their numerical one and force them to spend their lives in futility.  We make them pay for their misguided invasion,” he said flatly.

“How do we do that?” she asked.

“Very carefully,” he replied with a smile. “Can a point to point be detected by another ship?” Cole asked the ship.

“No, they are undetectable,” the AI responded.

“Good, get me Home and put it on a screen here. I need a break from the computer,” Cole said, and within seconds the duty officer back at the base was on the other end.

“Now I am going to give you instructions, and I need them carried out as soon as we are done talking. Do you understand?” The Lt. nodded his head affirmative. “Good, first get on the P to P with the Worlder fleet we sent to the rendezvous. Redirect them to meet us at Home and give them our base’s coordinates. The Lt’s mouth dropped open wide at that. Second, have the base manufacturing start cranking out these decoys as fast as it can, and also make as many portable planetary shield generators and power supplies as needed to cover the Nixa homeworld. Lastly, I want you to transmit recall orders to the transports that Split and Hal are in possession of. Use code elevenbravo on P-to-P four. Do you understand your orders, Lieutenant?” Cole asked.

“Yes,” he stammered. “Yes, Sir,” he finished stronger.

“Good. Now hop to it. We should be home soon. Cole out.” Cole cut the connection and sat back in his chair. He looked up at Sky who didn’t look to happy about what she just heard. Cole waved his hands as if to wave her questions away.

“We have to trust someone at some point, and I need the Worlders close. I owe them, and I want them to see that I can be trusted again. Now let’s see how these decoys really work.” Cole reconnected to the ship and prepared to see how fast the enemy reacted to his subterfuge.

CHAPTER 16

Snow awoke suddenly and smashed her face into whatever the hell was only a few inches above her head. The sharp blow only managed to make the grogginess in her head worse. She waited for a few moments for her mind to clear and take stock. Accessing her nanites and seeing what they had been doing to her, caused her head to clear.

Twelve days. She had been unconscious for twelve days while her nanites repaired the damage to her body. She suddenly remembered the hit her room took and the building collapsing. Then the explosives that finished the wrecked building off. Broken bones, internal bleeding, punctured organs—she’d had them all and the little human built robots inside her had kept her alive. More, they had brought her back to nearly one hundred percent. She scrolled through everything and got to the end of the list. She had lost weight, muscle mass, and bone had to be shifted around in her body. She was malnourished, dehydrated, and her suit was almost out of power.

The movement of her chest from breathing had been enough to keep her air filter and water system functioning, but not much else. She needed to recharge and get it going again. Slowly she felt around her immediate area. Not good. She had rubble piled all around her. There was a narrow opening behind her head. It was wider than her body but not very high. She moved around as much as the tight space would allow, and her suit’s systems began to come back online.

It took an hour to get her suit recharged, though not fully. It could no longer hold a full charge and some of the functions were down. Her com system was shot, and water filtration was at fifty percent. Her life support was marginal but the air recycler was good enough that she hadn’t suffocated. Most of her vision modes were active, but she had limited HUD and her radar was out. She had no targeting system, though not that it mattered. There were no weapons in the space with her.

She turned on her night vision and peered around the room as best she could. She was either lucky or unlucky. She hadn’t decided yet. She had survived the buildings collapse, but may now be stuck in the ruble. She craned her head to look behind her at the opening. There was broken steel and building material all around her except this one spot. A support beam had landed on two hunks of broken concrete.  There was a gap about two feet wide by maybe a foot tall that led back into the ruins of the building. Her night vision was picking up light a few feet past the hole on the other side.

She still had her sound amplification on her suit, so she turned it up to max and listened. Something was dripping past the hole, and she could hear the muffled sounds of movement far away. For a brief moment, her nanites let her feel the depths of her thirst before taking it away. It was clear what they felt she needed the most right now. Water. She couldn’t survive much longer without it.

She turned her head to the side to narrow herself as much as possible, then began to scoot herself back towards the hole with her legs. She got far enough into the hole to be stopped by her chest. Even with the suit compressing her breasts, they were still in the way. She backed out and slowly rolled onto her stomach, trying her best not to bump into the ceiling or walls. She reached her hands inside, found the backside of the hole and latched on with her fingers. Pulling with her hands and pushing with her legs, she once again tried to push through the hole. She got to her shoulders before, once again, she hung up.