Plague Wars 06: Comes the Destroyer (40 page)

Pride swelled in One at the impressive display of force. Avarice, or perhaps lust, filled him as well, thinking about the Humans just waiting helplessly to be captured there. Of course, they would have some of their own close combat troops, such as overwhelmed their old Survey craft so recently, but in fairness, such ships had very little defensive capability. This time would be different.

One wished for a moment that he could accompany the Close Combat force, or that he had been placed in charge of that section. Perhaps in the future, his trium would rise so high. He would have to content himself with watching from a distance. At least they had access to hundreds of individual bioradio feeds. He could not issue commands, but he and the others could listen and watch.

It made for a pleasant diversion.

A certain amount of trepidation entered his mind when the admittedly potent ground weapons ringing the moon’s base fired thousands of kinetic projectiles at the Close Combat force, as well as targeting them with directed energy weapons, but as the grouping of ships aimed at a point tangent to the moon rather than directly at it, and they retained the tremendous speed of the Destroyer itself, only a few craft were lost. The Human fire control systems remained inferior to those of the Empire. Their only advantage was that of numbers.

Even so, One felt relief when the Close Combat force dropped below the moon’s horizon, out of line of sight of the enemy magnetic launchers and energy projectors. Slingshotting around the planetoid and approaching from the other side would allow them time to decelerate, and also reduce any more potential losses.

Close Combat trium is clever, and competent
, One said grudgingly to himself.
If we are fortunate, they will achieve their objectives, then become casualties in the main battle for the Human planet. Fortunately they are less well protected than we, of necessity located nearer the surface, with their Pureling forces.

One could always hope.

Repeth could hear a tinge of disgust at the Fleet gunners’ performance, though she knew it was not likely their fault. Trying to hit small maneuvering targets at high deflection angles was very difficult, like trying to shoot far-off flying birds with rifles.

On her HUD the CO threw up a crude diagram of Callisto, with Grissom Base marked. A line appeared, streaking from the Destroyer to the edge of the moon, and then curving close around it to approach the base from the other side.

“Weapons arrays cannot depress enough to engage targets coming in NOE, and I believe the only reason these craft are using a decelerating orbit is to land and occupy this base, otherwise they would just use their kinetic energy to smash the surface installations. ETA is seventeen minutes until they are visible on the horizon. Expect ground assault shortly after.”

Repeth could hear the Colonel take a deep breath in his helmet that echoed through the net. “Base Command tells me the ground crews are working to get three broken Aardvarks launched in an effort to hit the enemy during their landing.”

I’m sure the pilots would rather die in their birds than in the ground fighting
, Repeth thought
. Time to fulfill the Ultimate Liability Clause on the life insurance.

The CO went on, “But don’t pin your hopes on the zoomies or the squids saving your sorry arses, Marines. We’re going to do that ourselves. I want the heavy weapons section from each company up to the first level and emplaced to target the enemy as he comes over the horizon. Whatever the hell they are, they’ll be most vulnerable as they slow down to land. Delta One, mark us four good firing positions. Everyone seal up and go on internal oxygen in four minutes. I’m going to have the surface complex pressure lowered to almost nothing.”

She wondered again if this would be the time she’d be carried home in a box. In a way, that would be a relief. So many missions, so much death.
At least Rick is back on Orion, where he can do the most good.

“All right, people,” she heard Captain Miller come on, “you heard the man. Everyone seal up and go on internal. Toroda, Kostas, give me another systems check, top to bottom. Chief Massimo,” she addressed the master gunnery warrant in charge of the crew-served weapons, “get your section up top and emplaced. Take direction from Delta, but don’t throw those weapons away. Withdraw to the tunnels if you must. Make them dig us out.”

“Roger,” Repeth heard the chief’s acknowledgement. For a moment it made her think of Roger Muzik, dead these nine years.
He should be with us, kicking ass.

She glided up to Captain Miller, a short fireplug of a woman, and tapped her on the shoulder to let her know she was there. They watched as Massimo and his people loaded up their ground-pounders’ holy trinity of heavy railgun, heavy laser and missile launcher, each with a crew of three. All carried extra ammo and powerpacks on their backracks, but in the low gravity they probably could have held much more.

“You want to send some grunts up to cover them?” Repeth asked. “I don’t trust those Delta goobers to keep the enemy off them, and they may need help when it comes time to pull back.”

Miller turned to look at her, faceplate to faceplate. “You mean someone cool enough to pull them out if they need reminding?” Massimo was known as something of a hothead, not inclined to listen to orders.

“And with enough clout. That means one of the eltees, or you or me. He won’t listen to anyone else.”

“Right.” Miller thought for a moment. “You go, Top. I have to grok the big picture and I’d rather the eltees stayed with their platoons. Take Dasko and his squad. I know you guys get along. We’ll adjust. I’ll tell Kostas.”

“Aye aye, ma’am.” Repeth pulled up Dasko direct and told him to meet her in the central park above. A few bounds took her up one of the cargo ramps and to the surface base, though it looked similar to the tunnels below, except for the fact that instead of twenty meters of rock overhead there was just a few centimeters of structure and a meter of Callisto’s dirt.

Her HUD located the squad leader and she glided over to him and his ten Marines. “Follow me,” she said and led the way across the central space to the east side of the base, where the enemy would approach. Massimo’s icon moved ahead of her, and settled to a stop just a moment before she reached the heavy weapons section.

Those ten Marines busied themselves with their heavy laser, cutting the external wall. Repeth kept Dasko’s squad back as she watched them open three holes, the residual pressure of the atmosphere shoving the external dust and dirt outward, making nice firing ports. She had to hand it to him, the chief knew what he was doing.

Once they had their firing ports cut, she ordered Dasko to get his people in to clear out everything in the room they were in – some kind of low-priority storage, emergency rations and water, it looked like. The line Marines soon had the spaces cleared for action, with nothing to ignite or turn into flying debris if they got hit.

“Need to get someone out there to emplace sensors,” Massimo said, looking around. Clearly the holes were too small to fit a Marine through, and he didn’t want to widen them. Then he spotted Repeth. “Hello, Top. What are you doing here?”

“The boss wanted us to cover your sorry butts,” she replied cheerfully.

“Well all right, then. Let’s get you some firing ports.” The chief told the laser gunner to punch some more holes in the wall.

“Dasko,” Repeth said, “get everyone on the heavy weapons channel and then send two people with a modicum of brains out the nearest airlock to set up the chief’s sensors.”

“Right.” Dasko sent off two Marines and soon they had exited the base and come around to the firing ports. They began to emplace sensors as the gunners handed them through the firing ports, trailing armored cables.

“Get them as widely spaced as possible,” Massimo roared, as if yelling in a suitcomm helped. “We don’t want one hit to take them all out! Then get back inside.”

“One hit from what?” Dasko muttered.

“From whatever comes. They aren’t super-beings,” Repeth replied for all to hear. “They follow the same laws of physics that we do. We can kill their troops with our weapons. You’ve all seen the video.” She meant the sequences of the less advanced Space Marines of ten years ago assaulting the Meme scout ship, fighting the weird critters inside.

Sensors updated the main display to show the path of the incoming force, arriving tangent to the moon and a thousand kilometers away from the base, then curling behind Callisto in an enormous three-quarter circle, ending just short of Grissom. “Do you think they know we’re here?” he asked.

“No way to say,” Sensors replied, along with murmured negations from the other watchstanders. “They could tweak their courses and rise to hit us or stay low and avoid us.”

Huen stroked his chin in thought. “What if we force their hand? What if we drop down and deliberately place ourselves in the enemy’s path?”

Weapons replied, “Depends on the capabilities of the enemy craft, sir, and we simply don’t know what they can do. If their weapons are short-range and powerful, they could rip us up. If they are long-range, it doesn’t really matter, except we’ll make ourselves easier to hit and harder to ignore. Either way, sir, all we really have are a bunch of point defense lasers.”

“And drive bombs,” Schaeffer said.

Everyone on the bridge turned to look at him in surprise. “That’s true,” Huen said. “A valuable insight.”

Schaeffer shrugged. “I only thought of it because we were talking about Shan.”

“I can drop a bomb, or a series of them, with time delays, like falling mines, to try to catch them as they go under us,” the helmsman said.

“Do so, please,” Huen ordered. “Make sure we stand off far enough not to be damaged. And Weapons, make free with anything at your disposal, but remember they might come after us, so save sufficient power in case they do.” His officers acknowledged his instructions, and they watched as the group of four hundred or so blips descended toward the edge of the moon.

When they reached the point of tangency, in reality just a few kilometers above Callisto’s surface, Huen could see the enemy craft flaring with fusion engines on full power as they forced themselves into brutally decelerating low orbits. “I don’t think they even see us, or perhaps they do not care,” he mused.

“Repositioning to come above them,” the helmsman reported. “Setting up the bomb drop. Weapons, will you give me control?”

“You have control,” the weapons watchstander said after a grudging moment. Huen knew that the helmsman, with his multiplicity of cranial chips and his acute three-dimensional senses, was the best person to try to bomb the enemy as he raced past below.

The moment came, and the helmsman said, “Mark.” Six flashing dots fell away from the ship on the display, the view rotating to allow them to follow the weapons’ progress toward the surface.

“Damn. They’ve seen them.”

On the screen, Huen could see the enemy spread out, flowing around the falling bombs like a river of ants around a rock. Suddenly the icons flared and klaxons sounded on the bridge. “Proximity warning,” Sensors said.

“Got a few of them,” the helmsman reported. “We have inbounds.”

While most of the remaining enemy craft continued on their paths, a dozen or so altered course, zooming upward and heading straight toward
Artemis
. “What are those?” Huen asked.

“Looks like some kind of fighters, pointy-nosed hot ships,” the helmsman said before Sensors could. “The ones ignoring us look like turtles or something.”

“Guns, you are weapons free,” Huen reminded him, and the fire control watchstander nodded, pressing keys. Beside him, his assistant stood ready on her board.

“Firing,” he said tersely, and the two played their boards like concert pianists. Most of the lasers would be on automatic, but they could be guided by human hands and intuition in certain ways should the weapons officers so desire. “Got one! Got two…three…six…seven. They turned away. Driven off, out of range.”

“Good work, gunners. Those are seven that won’t hit the base.”
Not enough, but something.

“If only we had some heavy lasers,” the weapons officer grumbled, then looked at Huen sheepishly.

Huen nodded in understanding. “Unfortunately Fleet cannot give every ship everything it wants, and we were not expected to engage in combat. Helm, follow the enemy around the moon. How long until we are above the base?”

“About fifty-five minutes,” the helmsman answered.

“Admiral,” Schaeffer said quietly, bending down to speak in Huen’s ear, “if Shan detonates that drive bomb…”

“Good point. Helm, make sure we stay above and out of damage range of a theoretical detonation of a drive bomb on the surface of the base.”

The helmsman looked over his shoulder at Huen and blinked once, then nodded.