The Prisoner of Eldaron: Crimson Worlds Successors II (42 page)

She jumped back instinctively, moving away from the launcher. She snapped her head back, checked to make sure none of her people had been injured. Again, they had been lucky. The heavy rocket launcher could have killed even an armored trooper if it had hit him directly enough. But it had missed them all, and it was buried halfway into the back of the trench.

Kelly heard the explosion as she was staring at the launcher, and her eyes were still moving to the display to assess the shot when Versagio’s voice echoed in her helmet. “Yes!” the non-com shouted, momentarily losing his discipline and celebrating.

Her eyes finally fixed on the display, focusing on the footage from the closest drone. She saw the smoke first, a thick black column, rising slowly above the battlefield. And below it was an inferno, flames licking ten meters into the sky above the skeletal wreckage of the massive tank.

Yes
, she thought, repeating Versagio’s sentiment. But the excitement was short-lived. One dead tank was a good thing…but there were six more heading their way.

“Nice shooting, Emilio. But time’s not our ally. Let’s see if we can get that thing dug out and move our asses…before the others open up on us.

*  *  *  *  *

“Alright Eagles, let’s do this. These tanks are chewing up our people on the ground, and it’s time we do something about it.”

Darryk nudged his throttle forward, bringing his bird down at a sharp angle. The drones were feeding him a constant stream of intel, and he could see the tanks spread all across the field, three large lines of them moving toward the Eagles’ hastily-dug trenches. The first echelon of tanks had been pretty badly chewed up…Falstaff’s Black Regiment was the Eagles’ elite, and they were acquitting themselves with their usual distinction. But there were a lot of tanks, and it was going to be a near run thing by the time it was done…and a bloodbath no matter who won.

That’s without airpower
, he thought grimly.
We might have a few things to say about that…

“Strike teams…begin final attack run. First pass, HVRs…then we come around again with autocannons.” The fighter-mounted HVRs were bigger versions of the semi-portable weapons the Black Regiment was currently employing in its desperate attempt to defeat the enemy tank force, and a solid hit would obliterate even one of the giant vehicles. Autocannons presented a different equation. Enough hits with the smaller projectiles could destroy a tank, but Darryk knew his fighters would have fly much lower…and within range of the vehicles’ AA arrays. His fighters had enjoyed the luxury of virtual impunity to enemy fire, but he knew he’d take losses doing close in strafing runs on the tanks. But the fighter wings were Eagles too, and he had no intention of watching the troops on the ground slaughtered so he could keep his own people safe.

He brought his fighter in straight at one of the enemy behemoths. His AI did the preliminary calculations, displaying the targeting scope on his main display. Against another aircraft, he’d have adjusted the computer’s calculations, inserted the instinct a good pilot had for offsetting his opponent’s evasive maneuvers. But the tanks were big lumbering vehicles, crawling across the broken plain at fifty kilometers per hour. He didn’t change the plot at all…he just pressed the button to fire.

The fighter kicked hard as it loosed one of its two missiles, and Darryk looked down at the scope, watching the tiny yellow icon move closer to the tank. Suddenly, there was a small flash on the screen…and the tank was gone. Direct hit!

He moved the stick to the right, bringing himself around to target another vehicle with his second missile. He spotted a group of six moving forward. They were all identical, but there was something about the way one of them was moving, where it was positioned. It was some kind of command vehicle…he was sure of it.

He banked down and drove right toward the cluster of tanks, locking his targeting systems on the one that had caught his eye. The AI crunched its numbers and almost immediately displayed the firing solution. He tapped the throttle, slowing slightly and moving to the right to match the AI’s plot. His fingers tightened over the firing stud, and with a feral grin on his face he loosed his second missile.

Another hit! Two for two!

He felt the wave of satisfaction, the feeling of a job well done. He knew on one level he’d killed other human beings, that they had probably died horribly in the twisted, burning wreckage of their tank. But those people had been trying to kill his comrades, his friends. And he knew he had probably saved the lives of some Eagles…the ones who would have died fighting those two tanks.

He glanced at the strike force display. All his people had launched their missiles.
Sixty shots at a seventy percent hit rate,
he thought to himself.
Over forty of those Godforsaken tanks gone
.

“Nice shooting…all of you,” he yelled into the com. “Now let’s see what we can do with our autocannons. Darryk angled his ship, bringing it into a steep dive toward the surviving tanks. He’d already spotted his first target, and he was going to go right down its throat…

His eyes snapped around to the strike display. One of his birds was gone. He was still trying to figure out what had happened when the com went crazy.

“I’ve got SAMs locked onto me, Major.”

“Me too…I’m picking up multiple launch sites. Looks like something mobile.”

“Yeah, they’re on the move. They’re blanketing the sky with targeting beams.”

Another icon disappeared from his screen…another of his fighters gone.

He felt a wave of frustration, anguish for the crews he’d just lost.

You knew it couldn’t last…sooner or later, they had to get their defense grid back online
.

No…that can’t be it. We blasted their anti-air emplacements to scrap…I’d bet my life on it. So what the hell is this?

He stared down at the enemy tank, feeling an almost irresistible urge to follow through, to rake it with his autocannons. But then he heard the high-pitched whine of a target lock. One of the enemy ground installations had him. If he broke off now, he had a chance…a good one. If he stayed on target, he’d have a cluster of missiles on his ass within half a minute. And he’d never shake them all.

He still hesitated, thinking about taking the risk. But then his training kicked in. Black Eagles were professionals, and they didn’t throw away their lives in pointless displays. Besides, he wouldn’t be making the choice just for him. He had twenty-seven other fighters with him, and they would do whatever he did.

“Break off,” he said, spitting the words out like they tasted bad. “Full evasive maneuvers. Return to base.”

His eyes dropped to the display, to the wave of missiles now rising from the battlefield…and he realized not all of his people were going to make it…

Chapter 29

“The Nest” – Black Eagles Base

Second Moon of Eos, Eta Cassiopeiae VII

Earthdate: 2318 AD (34 Years After the Fall)

John Cranston stared at the display. The Nest’s surface scanners had been swept away by the enemy bombardment, and the control center screens were almost blank. But the seismic detectors were still feeding in data, and the AI had estimated that fifty gigatons of warheads had detonated on the surface.

That means the bays are completely gone, and all the docks too. Caravalla’s people are lost…and our weapons are destroyed. At best, we stand a siege…we hold on down here, resist any enemy attempts to penetrate to the main areas. And then we wait, hoping against hope the general and the strike forces can get back in time.

“Captain, I want the garrison battalion deployed half on duty, at all times. All potential areas of forced ingress are to be fortified and defended at all times. I want regular sweeping patrols covering the entire Nest.” He paused for a few seconds then added, “We’ve got one job now…keeping these bastards out of here.”

“Yes, sir.” Anders stared down at his workstation, punching at the keys to execute Cranston’s orders.

“Vault door status?”

Anders glanced over at the display. “Holding, sir. Exterior temperature is rising, but still within acceptable parameters.”

Cranston grunted. The vault door was a fifty meter thick fortified barrier that closed off the main access tube from the surface. It was about as strong as a door could be, but it was still a physical construction…and that meant the enemy could get through it if they tried hard enough. Even the hyper-steel of the door would vaporize if they dropped a nuke directly on top of it. And then they’d have access to the Nest.

And that will be the end of it all…

Cranston was a Black Eagle, and he had the same confidence the others had, an almost cocksure attitude about what his people could achieve. But he was a realist too. He didn’t doubt his people were vastly superior to the attackers, but he also realized they were trapped, that the enemy had numbers and initiative.

Hell, they don’t even have to come down and fight us…all they need to do it get through the vault door and start dropping nukes down here…

There might not even be a fight in the halls of the Nest…just an extermination. But he couldn’t do anything about that. All he could do was ready his people for a fight.

“All support personnel are to arm themselves at once. Engineers, stewards, trainees…everybody. I want backup teams assigned the garrison squads immediately.”

There
was
one thing he was sure of. If the enemy came down to the Nest,
every
Eagle would fight. Every damned one. But he didn’t really expect the enemy to send soldiers into the teeth of desperate resistance. They had other ways to strike at the Nest.

*  *  *  *  *

Christos Caravalla stared out of the cockpit at the rich blackness of space surrounding his tiny craft. He’d been in the control seat of a fighter of one kind or another for half a century, and he understood enough to realize he had reached the end of the road. All his people had.

He could see on his display the pounding the surface of the Nest had taken. The docking stations and landing bays were gone, obliterated in a nuclear holocaust. With the ships of the Eagle fleet away at Eldaron, that meant his people had no place to land. No place to refit or rearm.

He’d ordered his squadrons to regroup on the far side of the moon, away from the enemy fleet. It was a temporary respite, but at least it gave him time to think. He didn’t fool himself that he’d devise some plan that offered his people a chance at survival…but if they were going to die, he was determined they should die well, striking at the enemy any way they could. The fighters had fired all their torpedoes, but they still had some power left for their laser cannons. And enough fuel for one more good attack run. Caravalla had twenty-four fighters left, sixty percent of what he started with…and far too few to take on the enemy fleet alone with any hope of victory. But they might take out a few ships, and since the alternative was waiting to be hunted down and destroyed, any price they could extract was better than none.

“All ships, arm laser cannons. Prepare for attack run.” He stared down at the schematic displayed on his screen. “We’re going to swing around in a tight orbit. The tracking satellites are all down, so we don’t have data on the enemy deployments, but my gut tells me we can come in on the flank of the vessels bombarding the Nest. That’ll give us a chance to do some real damage be…” He cut himself off. Adding, “before we’re destroyed” to his speech wasn’t going to do anything to rally his battered force. They all knew they were on a suicide mission—there was no reason to dwell on it.

“Alright, Eagles…follow on my lead.” He nudged the throttle, working the thrust up to 2g, and he saw that the rest of the fighters fell in behind him. He smiled as he watched, proud of the precision his battered squadrons managed to maintain.

If we’re going to die, let it be with some dignity…and dishing out some hell to our enemies
.

He increased the thrust gradually. Three gees. Four. He eased back slightly. He wanted to build as much velocity as he could without breaking orbit. The moon’s gravity would help his fighters whip around, changing their vector as they progressed.

He knew they wouldn’t have much time. The enemy ships would react immediately…especially after the price his people had extracted in the earlier fighting. So his fighters had to be coming in hard when they swung around into detection range.

He glanced down at his nav controls. Four gees was the maximum acceleration…anything higher would push his ship out of orbit. He knew it would only be another minute before his force would come around, and their last battle would begin. He’d been so focused on the specifics of the attack, he had barely considered the full implications. But now he realized in clear terms…he was leading his people to their deaths. They might take down some of the enemy’s vessels, but now it came to him coldly, harshly. In a matter of minutes, perhaps half an hour, he and his people would all be dead.

Better to die in battle than wait to run out of power and life support…

But the thought was still a stark one, and he had to make an effort to get it out of his mind. It wasn’t so much his own life…he’d been at war for half a century, and he’d known that any one of the hundreds of missions he’d flown could have been his last. But he mourned for his pilots and crews, the men and women he was leading to their deaths.

There’s nothing you can do. They are dead already. This is about how they die…

He took a deep breath, eyes fixed on the scanner.

Almost there…

Suddenly, his screen lit up with icons, ships coming into scanning range. The AI displayed the enemy vessels with small red triangles.

“Okay, Eagles…here we go…”

His eyes dropped to the display again. More red triangles had moved into view. He was about to look away, but then he froze. There was something else, on the very edge of the screen. A row of icons, small yellow circles. He squinted, reading the designation listed next to each of them.