My Life: An Ex-Quarterback's Adventures in the Galactic Empire (20 page)

Read My Life: An Ex-Quarterback's Adventures in the Galactic Empire Online

Authors: Colin Alexander

Tags: #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Science Fiction, #Adventure, #Space Opera

BOOK: My Life: An Ex-Quarterback's Adventures in the Galactic Empire
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My other headache was the Strike Force. Whatever Vymander’s faults (like conspiracy, mutiny and general untrustworthiness), he had known how to organize the force. The lieutenants he had appointed had also been part of the mutiny, and none had survived. This deprived the force of the only people who knew how to control it. What was left was about three-quarters Thjonarodni natives. The remainder were drifters. The Thjonarodnar were enthusiastic, but had zero experience and skills. And as for the drifters, there wasn’t a spark of initiative in any of them.
Anyone
could learn to use a blaster, but that wasn’t enough to make squad leaders or commanders out of them. Angel would have been my logical choice to run the force and try to whip them into shape, but he was still stuck in Medical waiting for his gut to remember the mechanics of eating and pooping. There are some things no technology can hurry.

Caught in a bind, I settled the command on Sligo. He was a tough with experience in space warfare equal to mine; he had fought in one ship-to-ship battle with a freebooter. Unlike the drifters, Sligo hadn’t come aimlessly to Thjonarodni. He had been a Carrillacki agent, which probably meant assassin, and, with the conflict over, had been most anxious to leave before his role became public knowledge. Carrillacki apparently had cut him loose once his job was done. I appointed him the day two corpses appeared after an argument in the mess. He stopped the squabbling and restored some discipline to the force, but that seemed to be the limit of his talent. He was much too vague for my liking when we talked about the attack on Gar. Some concrete plans, even without x’s and o’s, would have been better than his assurance that he knew how to handle the force in an assault. I would gladly have sacked him, and replaced him with someone else, but there was no one else. With most of my waking hours taken up by emergencies on the bridge, or in the Engine Room, there was nothing to do except grit my teeth and hope that he knew what he was talking about.

Gar was the fourth planet in its system, a little smaller, colder and drier than Earth. The most striking aspect of the system was its lack of activity. Just as Vymander had said, there were no ships, no stations, no orbiting satellites. Although we approached the planet cautiously, there was no sign that we had been noticed.

“What do you make of that?” I asked Cardoni. I indicated the viewscreen where the computer map had picked out the spaceport. There was, apparently, only the one for the entire planet. “If I read this right, there are beam weapon emplacements sited around the port.”

“Yes, but it has been a long time since that port saw scheduled space traffic. Those beams are probably relics.”

“The computer shows those sites as operational.”

Cardoni was undaunted. “From what Vymander said, and what Andrave is picking up, the local politics are unstable. That port is probably important for reasons unrelated to spacecraft and those beams will be used for defense against atmosphere-only craft.”

“Which would still pose a hazard for our landing boats,” I pointed out.

“True.” Cardoni frowned. “But, there is no reason for them to be expecting an attack from space. They won’t be looking.”

I didn’t need a degree from the Imperial Academy to know wishful thinking when I heard it. “Coming from space or not,” I said, “we still have to get down to the ground. Once the boats hit atmosphere, it would be hard to avoid spotting them. Is it realistic to think that they could be on the ground before the locals fire at them?”

“No,” Ruoni answered. “In any case, they would be unable to take off again without being fired upon. However, I think we can take them out.”

“Are you sure?”

“No, but look at the data we have.” Details scrolled down the screen. “The weaponry is low intensity and badly sited. Judging from the specs and the layout, it was probably installed centuries ago when freebooters first became a problem in this region. The most recent update in the computer on Gar dates from that period, which agrees with our information that Gar has had no contact with the empire since then, so I doubt the equipment has been updated since it was installed.”

He went on. “I would prefer space to ground torpedoes for this kind of work, but the beams we have should suffice. Even if we can’t destroy all of the defenses, we should be able to provide adequate covering fire. Here. I think this is a good commentary on the defenses we face.”

The magnification on the screen increased and the focus shifted slightly. It highlighted an old Imperial city, just to the planetary west of the port and within the covering arc of the defenses. Another jump in magnification gave a close-up aerial view of the city. Now, I could see that the central part of the city had been obliterated by three huge craters. Shattered buildings and rubble surrounded the craters. Whether the strike had come from space or on-planet was impossible to say, but the corpse of the city proved that the nearby defenses were not much good.

Ruoni’s argument was convincing. Still, I wanted to hold our fire until our boats entered the atmosphere. If there were ground forces at the port, it would minimize the time they would have to prepare for the attack. There was no reason to tip our hand any sooner than necessary. Once the computations had been made, I nodded to Andrave. He closed a switch and the alarm hooted overhead.

“This ship is in action,” Andrave’s voice boomed after the siren stopped. “Strike Force to the landing boats.”

“Command, weapon systems are ready for action,” Ruoni reported.

Identical reports came from the other departments, followed by Cardoni’s terse, “Ship is secured for action, Command.”

I acknowledged each one. We might be a ragtag bunch of pirates attacking a worthless whistle-stop in a ship falling apart under us, but once “ship in action” sounded the crew all slipped into Imperial Battle Language as though they were going into action with the Fleet. The Battle Language was a very functional jargon designed to minimize the risk of confusion and misunderstood orders. One of its features was the identification of personnel solely by function, rather than by name or rank. Consequently, I became “Command,” not Captain or Danny. If I were killed, Ruoni, or the senior surviving officer, would be “Command” until the action ended.

The reports I had received told me that the ship was ready to go, but said nothing about the Strike Force. That report should have come from Strike Force Command right after “ship is secured.” Instead, I had to wait. And wait. I could see from the tension on every face on the bridge that such a delay was unexpected.

Finally, after what seemed like an age, I heard, “Command, Strike Force is ready.”

Ruoni cursed softly. “It is too long by threefold. They’d better be quicker on the ground.”

“Helm, you may launch the Strike Force,” I said.

The jolt of the boats’ takeoff shook the Flower violently. The ship had never been built to sustain three simultaneous breakaways at maximum thrust. Soon afterward, the screen showed the boats’ paths, headed planetward.

“Navigation, when can we expect them to reach the atmosphere?”

“Countdown is onscreen, Command.” Large numerals appeared below the flight paths.

The empire runs on base sixteen, which I find a pain, but all countdowns end in zero. “Fire Control, you may fire at the mark,” I said.

Ruoni gave instructions through his headset and made the necessary adjustments on his board. In the depths of the ship, power was channeled from the main engines to the weapons, where it would be used to create the intense beams of charged particles. When the countdown ended, all of Flower’s main beams fired simultaneously. The faint purple beams lashed out, becoming more intensely colored when they went through the atmosphere, targeting the defensive installations around the old port.

The Flower couldn’t hit every site at once, but she could hit them all without having to change her orbit. The defensive beams were poorly shielded to begin with. Even worse for them, atmosphere attenuates the shielding field more than it does the particle beam. It didn’t require too many pulses to burn through a shield, searing the defenders and turning their positions into slag. Say this for the locals, they were quick to respond. From the surface, beams reached up at the Flower, ending in a sparkling cascade against our shielding. It was a one-sided match. The planetary weapons were weak and they suffered from their atmosphere, while our shielding was unaffected. It showed just how hard it was to defend against a spaceship from the surface of a planet, with the beams hampered by the air and any missiles crippled by the gravity well. No wonder any planet worth defending kept its first line of defense in space.

Meanwhile, three streaks of light grew on the screen. Braking hard for a fast descent, the landing boats trailed fire across the sky. There were no beams directed against them. The defenses seemed totally absorbed in their futile counterbattery fire at the Flower. The tension I had felt when we launched began to ease as site after site was neutralized. The operation was going to be about as difficult as mugging a seventy-year-old lady.

Ruoni was still dueling with the remaining ground beamers when the streaks vanished from the screen.

“Landing boats are down,” Andrave announced.

“Thank you. Communications, please link us to the ground.” Clouds over the port prevented us from obtaining a detailed view from the main ship, the Flower not being equipped to conduct ground searches. I’d taken this possibility into account, however. Number one landing boat had a full array of drones and sensors through which we could receive a video feed and maintain a two-way audio link with the Strike Force. This coach had every intention of calling the plays from the sideline.

Andrave set up the patch and the scene on the screen shifted to a view of the port from the landing boat. It was depressing, to put it mildly. A three-story rectilinear building, a scaled-down version of the one on Thjonarodni, sat at the edge of the field, maybe a hundred yards from the boat. Three drones launched from the boat and the screen windowed to show all of the views. The field was strewn with junk. Some of it looked like the wreckage of port equipment similar to what I’d seen on Thjonarodni. Some looked more like trash that had simply been dumped. A swath some forty yards wide had been cleared next to the building. At the left edge of the main window, I could see part of the Strike Force disembarking from Landing Boat Three.

The cakewalk ended abruptly then, as purple beams spat from multiple points along the building, sending the troops diving for cover amid the debris. Amidst the other beams were the reddish ones of two heavy blasters coming from a corner position on the upper story. Those were bad news and would have to be neutralized before we could storm the terminal. At that range they would easily burn through the half-armor. In fact, they could probably have taken down troops in half-armor in a sweep. When I saw no move against them, I decided to take a hand.

“Communications, get me Strike Force Command.”

It took all my effort to keep to the Battle Language when Andrave replied, “I’m sorry, Command. It cannot be done.”

“Why not, Communications?”

“I have video feed, Command, but there is no audio link. The onship equipment is functioning, so the problem is either on the boat or at Strike Force Command. Whether it has malfunctioned or been turned off, I can’t say.”

“Great.” I had a terrific view of what was going on, but without the audio link I had as much impact as a fan watching a game on television.

The unseen defenders had waited until the Strike Force had completely disembarked before opening fire. The crew had reacted to this threat by scattering and taking cover in the junk between them and the terminal building. They left behind a half dozen still forms on the open field. It was a stalemate. The Strike Force just hunkered down as though they were waiting for the rain to stop. They were not moving, out of communication and headed for disaster.

“Fire Control,” I asked, “can you use the ship’s beams to take out some of those defenders?”

Ruoni shook his head. “I can hit the building, Command, but with an atmosphere to shoot through, I can’t hit it very precisely. It is quite possible that doing it might damage or destroy the material we’re after.”

I shuddered at that. Ruoni was right and blasting our spare parts to pieces would be as bad as losing the Strike Force itself.

“No, don’t try it,” I said.

“I can free enough beams to interdict the approaches to the port,” Ruoni offered. “At least, that will prevent the defense from being reinforced.”

“Do it,” I ordered. If I wanted to give up and retrieve the crew on the ground, of course, we could slag the terminal, but I wasn’t about to do that. They would have to sit there until they took the target or died.

The latter possibility began to look increasingly likely. Those heavy blasters cut through what looked like adequate cover and the casualties began to mount. Andrave had managed to raise the pilots of the boats only to find that they had no contact with the Strike Force either. Aside from the pilots, the boats were empty. There was no one to use as a messenger. I don’t think I have ever felt so frustrated in my life.

I was once again debating the idea of risking one shot from the ship to take out the heavies, when my eye caught a flapping motion near the cleared area in front of the terminal. Normally, I would never have noticed something that minor in one of the secondary screen windows, but in our static situation it stood out. Someone had worked their way forward. I watched the area where I had seen movement and waited. Shortly, I was rewarded. Someone was indeed moving up, very carefully narrowing the distance between them and the defenses in the building. Then my heart froze. The motion I had seen was the flapping of a cloak, and there was only one someone on the Flower who wore a gray cloak. Jaenna! How in God’s name had she gotten down there?

I put that question aside as I strained to see what was happening. Andrave maneuvered the drones to focus on her and increased the magnification at the cost of losing the view of the rest of the field. It was a small loss, since there was no way to communicate what the screen showed anyway. At the higher magnification, there was no question that it was Jaenna. She kept low, moving from one piece of junk to another, always headed forward. She drew fire, but it hardly slowed her progress. She stopped behind a ground effect vehicle leaning on its side. Beyond it was open pavement the rest of the way to the building entrance.

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