War Against the White Knights (4 page)

They kissed.

The light touch provided an almost chaste form of intimacy, but Romulus liked to build the passion gently, to Janna’s perpetual irritation.

Today things felt different, though. Outside of the old X-Boat’s cockpit was hard vacuum. This was nothing like making love in the bowels of a troop ship where they were protected by frames and bulkheads and an armored hull.

Romulus stretched out his fingers between Janna’s breasts, and traced a line down past the patch of still-human skin beneath, and down over more scales to her harness release.

A few moments of fumbling freefall later and Romulus was beginning to wonder whether he should have set the X-Boat to a micro-g acceleration: sex in a cramped two-seater Mustang cockpit was proving to be a challenge.

“Shush!” Janna pressed a finger to his lips. “You’re about to complain. Don’t. It’s all part of the fun.”

He kissed her hungrily. “I love you, Janna.” He laughed. “In anyone but you, being right so often would be a pain in the butt.”

She slapped his ass. The little skangat, it really stung.

“You want pain in your butt?” she teased. “I can do that.”

Her sudden movement made her bounce off the inside of the cockpit and then ricochet off the flight console. He caught her on the rebound and wrapped his legs around her. They could bounce around as much as they liked, just so long as they did so together.

The flight console screamed an alarm.

“I don’t think it approves,” she joked.

Laughter filled her voice but Romulus couldn’t share her happiness. His gaze was glued to the tactical update on the console.

No! Not now! No, no, no!

“What is it?” Janna demanded.

“Multiple bogies.”

“Shit! How many?”

Romulus swallowed hard. The galaxy had such an evil sense of timing. “I can’t tell, Janna,” he said trying to sound calm. “The Mustang’s tactical system can’t cope with any more than a thousand tracks.”

Romulus resisted the overwhelming need to act
,
to
do something,
while he assessed the tactical situation.

With the
Leviathan
– and her escorts filled with soldiers – safely away in deep space en route to the main theater of combat operations, the Khallini system flagship was the
Beowulf
, commanded by Captain Lubricant. Several troop ships and two new carriers laden with completed X-Boats were under construction in the orbital dockyard, but they had no defending fleet.

The harsh truth was that the advance of the Human Legion relied upon a vigorous offence to seize the initiative and keep their enemies off balance. They didn’t have the resources to siphon off ships and defend every captured system – it would rob their advance of impetus and present targets to be destroyed in detail.

Khallini had not been left undefended, however. A torus of automated gun platforms encircled the dockyard, and the moons of Khallini-4 were bristling with missiles and squadrons of drone craft. The minefield that had caused such trouble to the New Empire’s 3rd Fleet had been repaired and expanded.

On the tac-console, a smudge of red too thick to resolve into individual markers showed the enemy assault. It was advancing on
Beowulf
.

But that’s impossible!
Somehow, the enemy had penetrated the entire sensor network and the minefield without being noticed. Who in the galaxy could possibly field the technology to pull that off?

His course of action was clear. He had to rejoin his patrol defending
Beowulf
and the orbital dockyard.

Training took over and he scrambled into action. Moments later he and Janna were secure inside fast-fit emergency pressure suits, strapped into their couches and speeding to protect
Beowulf
, which had been his home virtually his entire life.

The harnesses were a habit that made little sense in the X-Boat the instant Romulus had activated the momentum absorption system. This was the little fighter craft’s secret. It could accelerate at the limit of its engine’s thrust without crushing its inhabitants, and come to a stop in an instant, because momentum could be channeled into a Klein-Manifold region. Conservation of momentum remained a universal rule, but only if you looked at the big picture. Squint and you could appear to bend even this most rigorous law of nature.

Hell, the details were for science-twonks like his brother, Remus. What mattered to Romulus was that his nimble little fighter had the same kind of engine that could push a battlecruiser across the interstellar gulfs.

With a whoop, Romulus set the Mustang’s engine to maximum thrust.

They didn’t feel a thing.

The unidentified enemy came at
Beowulf
in waves, lining up as they materialized into view on the inner rim of the minefield before charging down the distance to the old troop ship. It was bizarrely similar to disciplined cavalry attacks on old Earth.

And just as effective as cavalry against the most advanced military tech in the galaxy.

Romulus kept his thumb on the firing stud and swooped down on the attack wave from above, raking them with fire from the Mustang’s railgun.

Only his years of training allowed Romulus to make any sense of the environment as he jinked around the attackers, accelerating faster than a missile one moment, and then dancing on a pin to fly at them from another bearing. Confusing as it was, he was seeing a sanitized version of reality fabricated by his Mustang’s fight system. The view stuttered and blurred as the display caught up with the furious pace of change.

He threw burst after burst of darts at the enemy, taking out dozens, scores of what he decided were probably drones. The enemy craft were slightly smaller than his Mustang, shaped like an aero engine with a pinched nose and an exhaust nozzle spitting fire.

Jeez! These things are using chemical rockets from the Stone Age, but can slip through our sensors unnoticed.

“Been having fun, Wolf Cub?” asked Dodger, or Flight-Sergeant De Silva when he was in trouble, which was often.

“Good of you to show up,” said Flight-Lieutenant Ormuz, the tension in her voice giving the lie to her banter. “The rest of this wave is ours. Stay out the way while we deal with them. Then form up on my wing until you’ve integrated your museum piece into our tactical net.”

“She’s not a museum piece, sir. She’s still a fighter.”

“I’m counting on it, Wolf Cub. You do realize that’s the same Mustang General McEwan flew at the Second Battle of Khallini?”

“No, sir, I didn’t. Leaving the field to you. Wolf Cub out.”

A premonition told Romulus that Janna was silently laughing at him. “
What?
” he demanded as he pushed the Mustang out from
Beowulf
.

“Wolf Cub!” Janna laughed. “You fliers with your silly names. Yours is so cute.”

“Yeah. Very funny. Now shut your mouth. I’ve a battle to fight.”

Romulus bit his lip. He hadn’t meant to snap, but he also hadn’t realized he had taken the general’s boat out for a sex cruise with the commander-in-chief’s former girlfriend. McEwan was long gone from Khallini, but his shadow was a difficult one to escape.

Then his flight commander saved him by leading her six Phantom 4s in a strafing run that weaved in and out of the lumbering enemy attackers faster than his eyes could track.

For once, Romulus obeyed orders and left his flight to its deadly task. He used the time scanning the area, not trusting his tactical systems to cope with so many enemy objects.

Beowulf
was in high orbit around Khallini, and a safe distance of ten thousand klicks from the vast orbital dockyard and its torus of gun platforms. Safe in navigational terms, but dangerously divided in the tactical situation they found themselves in. The main moon bases, with their missile batteries and X-Boat squadrons, were on the far side of the planet. Only the dockyard with its newly built Phantom 5s were within range to help. Swarms of AI drone craft patrolled the region outside the minefield, but if they were on their way they would take many minutes to get here.

More of the strange little enemy craft lit up their rockets and announced their presence on the inner rim of the minefield. Romulus itched to close and engage them, but Ormuz had said to wait.

Her flight gouged great chunks out of the enemy formation with every swipe. A few had gotten through, only to be blown apart by the wall of high energy beams and darts thrown out by
Beowulf’s
point defenses.

Romulus’s home was safe for now. But the second wave was coming on fast, and already a third wave was forming up inside the minefield.

Ormuz’s flight left the few survivors of the enemy first wave for
Beowulf
to handle and formed up around Romulus. His tactical systems integrated with his comrades’, and an emergency software patch sent from
Beowulf
enabled his tac-display to cope with the huge enemy numbers and clarify the situation.

He immediately saw that Wing Commander Dock was sending a squadron of shiny new Phantom 5s over from the dockyard. 102
nd
Squadron… good guys.

Flight-Lieutenant Ormuz saw something quite different. “Wolf Cub, don’t you ever check your equipment?”

Romulus frowned. Ormuz sounded angry. What was she on about?

Oh, crap. The integrated tactical net reported operational status of all call signs in the flight. A separate high-priority pane in his display split away and showed his Mustang glowing red. His ammo was very low.
Hell, I’m such an idiot. I bet McEwan never made mistakes like this.

“Stay with us for the next wave, Wolf Cub, then return to
Beowulf
to rearm.”

“Roger that.”

Then the next wave was upon them and the Mustang and Phantoms together skipped and dove around the incoming craft in an intricately choreographed dance of death that ripped the enemy to shreds.

Romulus was so absorbed by the constant high-speed maneuvering that it took a while to notice that none of the enemy were firing back. Did they even have weapons?

Help arrived in the form of 102
nd
Squadron, and it was one of the Fives that became the first human casualty when it collided with an enemy craft and was instantly vaporized in a vast green-tinged fireball. That was the answer, then. The enemy weren’t using fighter craft; they were flying bombs at
Beowulf
.

They were still dealing with the second wave, and the third was already upon them when the Mustang’s reserves of railgun darts were finally exhausted and Romulus ran for
Beowulf’s
dorsal hangar.

Once safely inside, the hangar rats tethered the Mustang with speed and skill, opening the hull section just aft of the cockpit and hooking up the ammo resupply tube.

The hangar crew were fast and robotically efficient, but not fast enough for Romulus. His kept his hands off the flight controls, and without the connection to his war machine, they shook like leaves in a hurricane.

Then disaster struck. The ammo resupply feed jammed. The crew were well-trained, but not in servicing this museum piece he was flying.

Damn!

Janna kept quiet but placed a hand on his thigh and squeezed gently, not wanting to spoil his concentration. She didn’t hate him, then. The thought loosened his mind a little. He’d apologize later for snapping at her, but he needed the comfort of her love right now, not her words.

While he waited to re-emerge into the fight, he tracked the battle’s progress.

If Janna hadn’t been there, what he saw would have chilled him with horror, but her presence kept him grounded, reminded him what he was fighting for.

More waves of flying bombs were on their way, but now the true attack was revealed. A wave of ships designated by the tactical analysts as troop carriers was headed their way. Worse, they were swarming around the dockyard facility and the orbital defense platforms that defended the planet far below.

Worse still, at the rear of the enemy formation emerged much larger craft, each the size of a heavy carrier but of an unknown configuration.

Romulus borrowed a sensor feed from
Beowulf
and got a closer look at the new capital ships. They took the form of two cones glued together at their bases. He couldn’t make sense of them. Big warships were normally hollow carriers that disgorged huge quantities of drone craft, and then stayed dark and silent far away from the danger of a combat zone. But no drones flew from these new ships. Their hulls too were odd. Instead of smooth plates of armor punctuated with weapons ports, Romulus had the impression of a central magnetized shaft that had attracted deep layers of random metal scraps. No weapons were on open display.

Despite the absence of any obvious offensive capability, there was only one class of large warship that would enter an active battlezone.

“Planet killers
,” Janna whispered, and he knew she was right.

He counted around fifty, all of them headed for Khallini-4.

A familiar voice came over the comm. “Captain Lubricant to all fighter groups around
Beowulf
. Attack the enemy capital ships. I repeat. Leave the small fry to us and concentrate on the new craft designated Papa-Kilo one through fifty-one.”

“Roger that, Captain,” said Ormuz over the flight’s comm channel. “Disengaging and heading for the Pee-Kays.”

Then on a private channel, she said to Romulus. “Wolf Cub. The order was for fighter groups
around
Beowulf
. That doesn’t mean you. You’re
inside
.”

Romulus couldn’t help but grin. Her flexible interpretation of orders was why he got on so well with his flight commander. “Officially, you’re too far away to rejoin my flight,” she said. “Unofficially, I’m relying on you to ensure I have a home to go back to. Got that?”

“Loud and clear, Flight-Lieutenant.”

“Good luck,” said Ormuz.

Romulus put her from his mind because the jam was cleared, his bird had been re-armed, and the hangar rats were about to release her tether.