Star Force 12 Demon Star (28 page)

The Raptor that carried the grenade was vaporized instantly, along with the searching Demons.

The ground shock also tossed one Raptor off the base, but he was able to use suit repellers to come back.

I realized Kwon had been right. Sometimes you just had to get up-close and personal to get the job done.

The Demon battleship immediately deployed its own ground fighters, which spread out in a ring about sixty yards out. “Hold in place, Kwon. You got company. They’re guarding the other ship with bugs.”

“Roger.”

Checking the two floating damaged ships, I noticed they seemed to be sniping at us with their remaining lasers, but were ineffective due to the dust and debris.

“We haven’t got much time before they can get a good shot at us,” I said, turning my attention back to the remaining battleship. The big hulk continued to bore deeply into our station. The shaft was less than half an hour from us now. If we couldn’t stop them from drilling, we’d have to evacuate to a different part of the base. Putting the control center in the exact middle for security might make sense, but in this case it made us easy to locate. They didn’t even have to see us.

“There’s a force of thirty to forty Demons moving out in your direction, Kwon. It doesn’t look like they can see us yet. They’re spread out in an arc and moving slow and blind, but they’ll run into you in a minute or two.”

Kwon laughed. “No problem. I got this.” I saw him and his Raptors backing up, still crawling, until they were around the curve of the station. “Can we get up now, boss?”

“Yes. The Demons can’t see you right now.”

Kwon then began skimming over the surface on repellers, heading directly away from the enemy, his troops following. Since the battle station was roughly spherical, they were approaching the enemy from the opposite side within minutes.

“The bugs searching for you are out of position,” I told Kwon. “Send in a couple guys now, before they come back. I might be able to guide them between guards to get close to the battleship.”

I detonated one of our planted grenades near the searching force when they went by, catching a dozen of them in the blast. After that, I focused on giving the two Raptors with grenades point-by-point directions as they crawled ever closer to the battleship.

One got caught by a patrolling scorpion and was killed after a brief but vicious hand-to-hand battle. The other Raptor crept closer and closer, expertly using what cover there was to stay low and in the clutter.

If I’d been the Demon commander, I’d have paused in the drilling every couple of minutes and let the area clear to check it, but fortunately he didn’t. The Raptor got all the way to the edge of the battleship and dropped his grenade in a divot next to one of the struts that held it on the surface. Then he began sneaking out of there.

It was agonizing to watch him slink away. The bomb was set, but we had to wait until our man was clear. The rocks were crawling with scorpions. At any moment, I expected them to discover the nuke, in which case the plan would fail.

“Captain, the laser has broken into the interior of the base and is now drilling through improved areas,” Galen said in my ear. “We have perhaps five minutes before it strikes the armor of the command center.”

“Hang on for a few more seconds,” I muttered, watching the Raptor crawl through another brief gap in the enemy lines.

They found him then. Two scorpions fell on the marine, and our troops hugging the rocks took pot-shots at them to help.

“Kwon, I’m going to have to blow the grenade. Our guy should be outside the blast radius, but the explosion will probably leave the area clear of dust and gasses, and then you’ll have to deal with whatever survived.”

“Okay, boss. Everybody hunker down!”

I bit the bullet and sent the code. “Come on, marine, make it,” I muttered as the huge Demon battleship shuddered and broke free on the end where the grenade exploded. It hung on its moorings at the other end like a giant air tank on a hose.

The shockwave touched the Raptor, but he held on, after having been warned. Most of the Demons around him didn’t, they were blasted off into space.

“Watch the sky, Kwon! Some of them are coming back.”

Kwon and the Raptors fired as they spotted targets, some out in space but unhurt, some on the ground. Getting organized far faster than human troops who’d just had a nuke detonated among them, the Demons who were left formed up and charged at my force.

“Kwon, turn around and haul ass along the surface.” That would take them at an oblique angle to the two forces trying to catch them in a pincer move.

Lasers popped and sizzled through space, crisscrossing the dispersing gases. Like football players converging on the guy with the ball, the Demons angled inward, moving faster than my troops in a desperate effort to catch them.

“The sector one airlock is fifty yards in front of you,” I told Kwon. “Galen—”

“We’ve opened it, Captain.”

“The airlock should be open, Kwon, so dive in. Quit fighting back and run!” Their covering fire wasn’t slowing the Demons down anyway.

We lost seven or eight more Raptors before we had to close the airlock. One of them, wounded but carrying a grenade, played dead until all our guys were inside before blowing the weapon in place, taking himself and half the enemy with him.

“Hell yeah,” I said, standing up and stabbing my pointing finger at the Elladans. “That’s the way you have to fight. If you’re going to die anyway, kill as many of the bastards as you can.”

“They might have merely captured your Raptor,” he replied. “Why die when you don’t need to?”

“Because that’s what wins wars, kid.” It seemed appropriate to call him a kid, even though he looked to be about my age. Right now, I felt ten years older than when I’d first set foot on
Valiant
. “Multiply his sacrifice by a million, and there would be no more Demons.”

“There I must disagree with you, Captain. The Demons are bred and hatched far faster than we can repopulate. Their combat power is limited only by their industry to build ships.”

“You people have the brains to win, but you lack balls.”

Despite me making my point as plainly as I could, Galen remain confused. I guessed that his upbringing and culture made it impossible to see certain things.

Galen was smart and competent, but effete. There was no point in ranting at him. The best I could hope for was that this experience would sink in and change his fundamental thinking about this formerly clean, distant war they were fighting, a war that had finally come to the pretty people of their perfect planet.

Kwon came stomping into the control center. “Not too bad, boss. You think they’ll send more bugs?”

“You sound like you hope they do.”

He bellowed with laughter, releasing tension. “So what?”

I shook my head and turned to Galen. “Any Demon ships moving this way?”

“Our sensors are spotty, but we don’t see any right now.”

I activated my ansible. “Valiant? Any enemy heading for us?”

“Not at this moment, Captain, but they are still busy with similar operations. They appear to be doing their best to take as many prisoners as they can.”

I wondered why. “Thanks. Give me Hansen.”

“Hansen here.”

“Status report.”

“We’re lurking out here, repairing damage as ordered.
Valiant
is near full effectiveness, but
Stalker
is in pretty bad shape. Marvin has disappeared, turned off his transponder and I can’t find him even with active sensors.”

He said this bitterly, and I knew why. The robot could have helped a lot with the repairs.

“Do your best. I’ll set my suit to keep trying Marvin.”

“The Demons are still in action,” Hansen went on. “They’re mopping up everything off the planet’s surface, taking thousands of prisoners, especially from the bases on the moon.”

“Stand by.” I turned to Galen. “Have the Demons ever taken prisoners before?”

“A few now and again, but not in large numbers and always among the lower orders. The truth is that we’ve never lost a battle before, so this is all new to us.”

“Hansen, any ideas about why they’re taking prisoners?” I asked.

“Nope.”

“Are they repairing their ships?”

A pause. “Yes,” he said, “they seem to be concentrating on the assault carriers. That makes no sense…”

“Then it must mean something. How far out are the Whales?”

“Over a day away, still.”

I chewed my lip. “I have an idea. I’ll get back with you. Riggs out.” To Cybele, I said, “Bring up a simulation of the strategic situation showing the Ketan fleet inbound and the Demons here.”

“It won’t be accurate in terms of ship numbers and types.”

“Doesn’t matter. Model it based on what you know of the Ketans, and you can use one assault carrier to represent the Demons.”

A few minutes later, her large screen displayed a graphic of the area and she said, “Ready.”

“Calculate how soon a Demon ship would have to begin fleeing in order to get away clean and curve around to head for home as fast as possible.”

Cybele’s long fingers flickered over her console. It seemed to me these people could move their fingers faster than a human could. The picture changed, lines showing courses. “Here are three solutions. They represent the earliest, latest, and optimal cases.”

“Why three?”

“Because the time the Demon ship gains by leaving sooner is closely matched by the advantage it loses by not waiting for the Ketan fleet to slow.”

I saw what she meant. As they decelerated, the Whales were making it harder and harder for themselves to catch up to any Demon ships that decided to flee.

Cybele went on, “The optimum solution is to begin acceleration in approximately ten hours, at an angle to the approaching Ketans, on a course that will dive toward our central stars and use their gravity to slingshot around, returning to Tartarus.”

“Do you have the acceleration parameters for
Valiant
and
Stalker
?”

Cybele gave me an appraising look. “Of course, Captain. We’re intelligence specialists. It’s our job to know everything.”

I ignored her flirtation as best I could. “Work out solutions for those two ships to intercept the Demons’ predicted path—earliest, latest and optimum.”

After a moment, she came up with answers. “The earliest is the optimum, which would mean leaving right away, assuming our predictions are true. Your ships have a decided speed advantage over the Demons, and so can easily catch them, given the long journey back to Tartarus. This does not take into account any damage your ships might still have.”

This eased my mind. “Okay. I think I know what’s going on. Hansen, you listening?”

“Here, sir.”

“The Demons are repairing their assault carriers because they’re the only ones with enough room for thousands of prisoners. They’ll probably use hibernation drugs and stack them like cordwood for transport home. I expect they’ll give those ships all available fuel and any Demon crew they want to save, too.”

“They want the people? Why?”

“Slaves. Breeding stock. Experimentation. Who knows? The Demons just set the Elladans back a decade or more. Their next fleet will be stronger, I’d predict. Their strategy almost worked and they know it.”

“We’ll have to destroy the ships.”

I nodded, even though he couldn’t see me. “At least we have a long window to do it. Three months, Cybele says.”

“Who’s Cybele?”

“The Elladan tech down here,” I said casually.

Hansen snorted. He knew me too well. “Don’t worry, I’ll cover for you.”

“There’s nothing to cover for,” I snapped.

“Hey, no problem. Oh, damn.”

“What?”

“Six Demon ships have broken off. They’re moving toward you.”

-23-

“Crap,” I muttered.

I’d hoped the Demons would leave us alone for a while. But that just wasn’t going to happen. They were sending another six ships to try to dig us out.

“We could launch a missile strike,” Hansen said on the ansible in my helmet.

“How are we set for missiles?”

My XO paused. “Not too well. We’ve only got thirty-three in the stockpile. But we could send in the Daggers along with them on a fast pass, swing them around and recover them later. That would present no risk to
Valiant
.”

“What do the simulations say about likelihood of success?”

I waited while Valiant ran the calculations, and then the ship’s voice replied. “The most probable outcome is three Demon ships destroyed, fourteen Daggers lost and all missiles expended.”

“Forget it,” I said. “That doesn’t buy us much extra time, and given the way we’re buttoned up, it hardly matters whether we have three ships or six on our asses. Even if we did take out three of them, they would send more in. The best strategy is to fight hard right here. How are
Stalker
’s engines?”

“Sixty-eight percent.”

I looked up at Cybele’s screen again. “I think we only have to hold out for about ten hours. That’s when I’m betting the Demons are going to send home their best, least damaged assault carriers full of prisoners. If they don’t have us by then, they won’t ever get us.”

“Yes, but then they’ll just blow your station to fragments. How is that better?” Hansen asked.

“Remember, they have few if any, nuclear warheads left. They might have used all of them in the battle. They’re getting ready to run from the Whales, and they don’t have much time left.”

“They still have their main batteries,” Hansen objected stubbornly.

“Right, but if they’ve failed to dig us out, lasers won’t matter much. They can slag the surface of this base all they want—but I don’t think they’ll bother. Beams take energy, which takes fuel to generate, and they’ll have given every bit of their extra supply to the assault carriers that are running away, leaving just enough to fight a suicidal rearguard action against the Whales in order to cover the escape.”

“That’s a lot of supposition, Captain.”

“But it fits all the facts and past battle simulations that the Whales sent us in their initial intel. Just keep repairing and stand by.”