Star Force 12 Demon Star (21 page)

“Valiant, status of repairs?” I asked.

“All systems restored to eighty percent effectiveness.”

“What about
Stalker
?”

“The same.”

“Marvin did a good job.”

“The robot is efficient.”

“When he wants to be.”

“He’s always efficient, even if his priorities are misguided.”

I glanced upward at one of Valiant’s cameras. “You’re getting argumentative in your old age.”

“That may be true.”

Shaking my head, I turned the holotank to watch the opening of the battle. The Elladan relief fleet of over one hundred heavy ships was decelerating toward its homeworld and toward the Demons occupying the surrounding space. The Elladan forces had just launched several hundred-strong spreads of missiles along with about a hundred fighters to back them up.

This meant that their missiles were leaping ahead as the firing vessels continued to slow down, and the fighters were advancing as well by merely coasting with their initial velocity.

As intended, we were ten minutes behind and decelerating along with them.

The Demons weren’t stationary, though. They had taken up various orbits with squadrons of ten to fifteen ships, seemingly uncoordinated. If the Elladans were sharp, they would be able to crush each smaller group one by one. Defeat in detail, the military theorists would call it.

Whoever was in charge of the Elladan fleet was doing a good job, I thought. The missiles closed in on their targets just as the ships behind them came within long beam range and began firing through the spreads.

This was easier than it sounded as space was much more vast than people realized. It was hard enough to target a missile you wanted to hit. Accidentally shooting down one of your own was very unlikely.

As a missile salvo closed in on the closest Demon squadron, the targets turned to run. Other enemy groups turned to support, and soon massed lasers began clawing Elladan weapons out of space.

Friendly fighters raced to support, stinging the Demon ships with their small lasers and launching more, smaller missiles.

Enemy ships began to fall, smashed by multi-missile strikes or slagged by long-range beam fire from the decelerating Elladans, but not as many as I’d hoped. Our allies didn’t seem to be concentrating their weaponry to destroy individual ships, but instead were spreading out the damage.

This made little sense to me. The Elladans had shown themselves to be effective tacticians and strategists up until now, despite being caught out of position. Why would they suddenly do something so inefficient?

“Ten minutes until insertion, boss,” Kwon said over the com-link.

I grunted in reply, my mind still chewing on the situation before me. The Elladans should have been smashing each enemy with focused fire rather than merely damaging them all. The Demons on the other hand were not trying to defend themselves against missiles and fighters but were concentrating fire. Each Demon squadron fired together on a single Elladan ship until it was destroyed. Several Elladan ships already tumbled through space, their vulnerable drives incapacitated, creating a barrier of wreckage as both sides converged. I could see now the advantages of having an engine on each end like the Demon ships did.

And then something weird happened. One damaged Demon cruiser abruptly turned and blasted a sister ship with a full salvo of beams at point-blank range. Immediately, its fellows fired full broadsides to hammer the attacker to death. They took a moment to recharge then destroyed the other ship—the one that had been targeted by the first rogue.

Some kind of mutiny within the Demon ranks? I could hardly conceive of that. The bugs were hive beings, presumably bred to follow orders and die for their side. Why the hell would they turn on each other?

As I watched, the mystery grew. Here and there among the Demon fleet, individual ships began to rebel, shooting at their fellows. In each case, loyal Demons quickly crushed the mutineers so fast that it seemed to me they must have been expecting something like this. It smacked of a standard protocol and showed me that I still didn’t understand what was going on here.

This strange turn of events helped the Elladan cause tremendously, turning what looked to be a bloodbath for our allies into a more even fight, though I thought that the Demons were still winning.

“What’s going on out there, Bradley?” I demanded. “Why are they shooting at their own ships?”

“No idea, sir,” Bradley answered. He didn’t even sound interested.

I stared at him as he tapped at his screen. “Are there any contacts in the region? Anything that might have affected those ships?”

“I don’t see anything like that, sir.”

Frowning, I walked to his station and tapped on his board. He just stood there.

“Look at this,” I said. “Just a small adjustment,…there, unknown small contacts. They look like mines attaching themselves to the Demon ships.”

Bradley stared, bewildered. “Didn’t see them, sir.”

“Apparently you didn’t check. Carry on.”

I left his side shaking my head. What was with these people today?

“Five minutes to contact, boss,” I heard Kwon say, and I tore myself away from the gods-eye view of the battle. From now on, my HUD would have to do.

“Is the pinnace ready, Bradley?” I asked.

“Loaded and prepped,” he replied with a nod.

“It had better be,” I told him. He made no reply. He didn’t even look guilty.

One more minute, I could afford one more minute. Turning back to the holotank, I zoomed in on our own area of operations and watched as
Stalker
and
Valiant
hammered the half-dozen Demon ships nearest the Elladan fortress that was our target. They’d been hovering around it ever since gaining control of the planetary area, and I had to assume they had dropped ground forces, although we were too far to confirm it.

Just then, a flight of two dozen Elladan missiles swept through the area, blowing three Demon ships to junk in a burst of radiation and EMP. I was happy to save our own missiles, and I held our drones back from the fight. Using our heavy guns, our two big ships kept pounding on the remaining Demon ships.

One of those suddenly went rogue, blasting sideways and ramming into another. The two exploded with a spectacular flash leaving only one, which slid around the back of the fortress, out of sight.

“I’ve got this,” Bradley said, and a moment later his drones spread out in a ring. As
Valiant
slowed toward the fortress with
Stalker
covering her, our fighters flew around to the back of the facility and smashed the final Demon ship with massed lasers and a couple more nuke missiles.

“Not much Elladan support, except for the missiles,” I said aloud.

“They’ll be here,” Hansen said, as if he was certain.

“It may not matter. It looks like they’re fully engaged,” Bradley said, and he was right. The Demons and Elladans were now going toe to toe with each other. Fleet tactics had given way to individual and squadron duels.

The handful of Elladan ships that had escaped beneath the ocean had also risen to join the fight, and a few of the fortresses here and there seemed to have gotten some lasers working, One battery on the moon, apparently hidden until now, opened up to support.

“Boss, you need to get down here,” Kwon said in my helmet, and I mumbled epithets as I left
Valiant
in the capable hands of my officers.

“Suit, space tactical on my HUD,” I said as I hurried to the assault airlock. This allowed me to follow the situation for another minute, but once I joined the troops, I had to get my head fully in the game. Eventually, I told my suit to replace the space view with one configured for the assault.

Kwon had lined up the Raptors for a fast exit. He and I stood behind them. We were the only humans going along. I’d made the deliberate decision to leave our own marines aboard
Valiant
to defend her.

“Landing now,” Hansen said in my ear. “Setting down right where we planned. No enemy in sight.”

I felt a shock through my boots, and then the big airlock door of smart metal drew back rapidly. A puff of remaining atmosphere swirled dust and debris out into space, and we moved onto the blasted surface of the quarter-mile-diameter fortress. Behind us the portal shut, and
Valiant
swung away on repellers to rapidly dwindle into the black.

A pinnace set itself down nearby, and its doors opened to the vacuum. Lazar would be controlling it remotely. It was filled with supplies and equipment of all sorts that we might need.

Right now, though, we had to get off the surface.

“Airlock,” I said, pointing at the metal installed in the rock of the shaped asteroid that formed the bones of the facility. I trotted over, using repellers in gravity mode to hold myself down.

One of the Raptors slapped a hacking module onto the control box. Adrienne had prepared it using codes and specs from the Elladans, and a moment later the big round door swung back and the ten-foot-wide entrance yawned in front of us. The same module overrode the inner door, venting a long sigh of atmosphere into space.

A squad of Raptors entered to secure the immediate area. “The rest of you, start unloading supplies.”

While the troops emptied the pinnace, Kwon and I stood guard, scanning the horizon for any bugs trying to sneak up on us. I had to assume they were here somewhere, dropped or escaped from those six ships we’d destroyed. At least one had been an assault carrier, so there could be a lot of them. Once we’d emptied the boat, Lazar brought it back to
Valiant
under remote control. No point in leaving it on the surface as a target.

“Kwon, plant a repeater.” Soon, he’d set up a com-link relay with a thin smart-metal antenna that extended out of the airlock and onto the surface.

Within three minutes, everything was inside. We shut the door, leaving only the antenna as a connection to the outside. I detailed one squad to guard the airlock and our line of retreat, and then we advanced into the fortress down the long, darkened tunnel. The entrance we had chosen was an undamaged auxiliary cargo access with at least a hundred yards of nothing opening into a large storage bay.

When my lead troops reached the entrance, scattered fire ensued. “Get in there!” I roared. “Don’t let them bottle us up!”

My Raptors pushed forward, and when Kwon and I reached the arena-sized room, we saw our warriors locked in combat with a dozen Demons.

One Raptor squad had a handful of enemy infantry cornered behind a large bin to the left. Green lasers dueled with orange bolts of plasma, lighting the interior with strobes like a bunch of mad arc-welders. My troops worked their way around to the flanks, systematically cutting the enemy to pieces while taking light casualties of their own.

To the center, another squad fought with several scorpions, some leaping to strike with their blade-armored tails while others sniped with their lasers. These Demons were tricky and fast though, dodging among our troops to get in close, making it hard to shoot them for fear of friendly fire.

I saw one Raptor caught by a scorpion claw while being battered to death by those twin tails, which struck repeatedly at the same spot until his armor gave out. The bird screamed with a harsh cry over the short-range com-link as he died from a massive injection of poisonous acid.

To our right, the remaining Raptor squad swarmed over a beetle. The big bug had caught one trooper in its mandibles and was slowly crushing him, but the bug was being chopped up by leaping, axe-wielding Raptors at the same time. The beetles were fearsome for their strength and size, but they weren’t as dangerous as they seemed…unless one got ahold of you.

I charged the beetle, trusting Kwon to back me up while I fired a long burst with my laser. I let up on the trigger when my faceplate darkened so much I had trouble seeing, and snapped the weapon back into its holder. Then I hefted my axe and, as I reached the bug, brought it around in a heavy blow aimed at one of the blade-like mandibles holding the Raptor.

The sharp edge bit through the chitin of the mouth-part and sliced the heavy tusk off at the root. The Raptor dropped onto the deck and lay there—unconscious or dead—I had no idea. The beetle thrashed in pain, and its horn slammed into my torso, stunning me and tossing me into a slide across the deck.

By the time my vision cleared, Kwon was helping me to my feet. “Come on,” I panted, lifting my laser and firing at the nearest scorpion. We two humans advanced, shooting, letting the Raptors bear the brunt of the close combat. I was very glad I’d had Marvin nanotize them. They’d become pretty much the equal of our marines, one for one, with their armor and their agility.

They still died faster, though as it was in their nature to want to close in and use those tails. I wondered if that was instinctual or if the tendency could be trained out of them. Maybe if their suits didn’t allow their tail spikes to be used, they would stick to fighting with coordinated weapon fire instead of trying to hack their enemies to death.

By the time we finished off the scorpions, my Raptors had secured the big room. Though many of the bins and crates had been damaged in the fighting, others looked as if they had been broken open by the Demons and the contents half eaten. Pools of oily substance, maybe cooking fat or machine lubricant, seeped here and there, not burning only because of the low air pressure in the area. A row of pressurized cylinders, like those that held acetylene for welding, stood with their valves struck off.

“Well done, Pigs,” I said, “but we have two dead and several injured because you’re too eager to go hand to hand.” I pointed at several dropped antitank launchers. “Nobody even used one of these rockets on the beetle.”

The Raptors drooped a bit with my reprimand. One of the squad leaders picked up his tail in both hands, a stance I recognized as preceding ritual suicide in order to expiate shame.

“Stop that!” I barked. “No one has permission to eat his tail, at least not until we’re done here. So listen up! From now on, beetles will be engaged with rockets first and then lasers. Then you can finish them off with axes and tails if you must. Use lasers on the scorpions because they’re too quick to target with rockets. Understand?”