War Against the White Knights (5 page)

But they hesitated… What were the chodders doing?

The Hangar Boss’s face appeared in the Mustang’s comm screen. “The XO overheard a rumor that you’re staying, Wolf Cub. Says if the rumor were true, then you shouldn’t waste your time shooting up the incoming troop carriers. Leave them to us. Concentrate on the dirty wixers who get through to reach our hull. You didn’t hear that from me.”

“Roger that.”

“Now, go save our butts.”

The tether released and the Mustang streaked out into space.

The void was awash with troop carriers. They took the form of pods arranged in a ring, towed behind a central tube-shaped section. There was no obvious sign of propulsion but they were coming toward
Beowulf
at speed. Hundreds of them.

Beowulf’s
missiles and laser batteries took a heavy toll out of the attackers, lighting the void with the blooms of their explosive deaths.

Romulus came in for an attack run, approaching the wavefront of attackers at a shallow angle, raking them with controlled bursts from his replenished railgun. He aimed for the central sections of the troop carriers, chewing up five of them until they were reduced to burning debris. He left the towed pods alone to drift onward. He passed one for a closer inspection and noted two features. What he assumed were the noses of the stubby pods ended in a heavily armored dish, the edge of which looked like a ring of Fermi drills. The drilling disks supported the idea that these were boarding pods, but the ring of pods had these nose drills oriented radially out from the center, not aimed at the boarding target.

As Romulus spun about for another attack run, the reason for the pod configuration became clear. The leading boarding craft
came about
.

They didn’t apply delta-vee to gradually change their vector in the manner of conventional spacecraft, nor did they shed their momentum instantly, sweeping it under the rug in the form of Klein-Manifold space as X-Boats did. The boarding craft slowly turned and slowed as if using a fluid medium to deflect its momentum. It came about like an ocean-going ship.

Romulus had seen that once before, on the day he left his mother behind on Tranquility. Even after they had captured one of the enemy ships, the Legion’s best minds still couldn’t work out how the craft had maneuvered. All Romulus did know was that he had only ever encountered one race that could come about in a vacuum.

Hardits!

As the boarding ships turned, the fan of pods rotated. Once up to speed, the pods were released, fired one after the other like slingshots at the target… at
Beowulf
.

While he shot up another wave of boarding craft, the first wave was throwing out clouds of defensive munitions, which grew so dense that Romulus could no longer see the boarding ships or even
Beowulf
herself. The roiling clouds of smoke, reflective strips and decoys lit up constantly with explosions. Romulus could only hope these were the signs of
Beowulf’s
point defenses extracting a high cost of her attackers.

The XO wanted him taking out any boarders who made it through that maelstrom to
Beowulf’s
vulnerable hull, but to fly his Mustang through that sensor-blinding fog filled with defensive fire spat out by
Beowulf
would be suicide.

Without looking away from his tac-display, he placed a hand on Janna’s thigh. Though there could be no heat transfer between their heavily insulated pressure suits, he still felt her warmth filling him through his palm.

It wasn’t just his death warrant he’d be signing if he went in.

But the XO needed him, and Janna would never respect him if he abandoned their home to its fate because he feared for her safety.

Romulus opened his mouth to give Janna one of his trademark quips as he entered the defensive fog, but they had deserted him. This was the most insanely dangerous thing he’d ever done, and that was saying something. As he scoured the area with his eyesight – the sensor systems overwhelmed by the chaos – he had to blink back tears. He still traded off his reputation for pulling dangerous stunts, but he wasn’t a kid with something to prove any longer. He had too much to lose that was precious.

His thumb hovered over the firing stud.

No. Railguns weren’t an area effect weapon, not in space. But there was something else he could use that was.

Romulus flew low and parallel to
Beowulf’s
hull, spinning about and coming to a stop right up against the Hardit Marine unit. His engine exhaust armor actually knocked a Hardit off the hull, sending the dirty monkey spinning into space.
So long, pal.

Then with a waggle of his Mustang’s backside, he applied a little thrust from his main engine, taking maximum care to ensure his engine exhaust was kept just clear of
Beowulf’s
hull.

The Mustang’s engine was the same model of zero-point drive unit that powered
Beowulf
across interstellar distances. It worked by polarizing quantum fluctuations within the area of its effect cone
,
weaponizing the hidden heartbeat of the universe. To any equipment or personnel caught in the engine effect cone there was no defense.

Romulus set his engine cone to forty meters’ length, firing a single millisecond burst every second. The effect on his Mustang’s velocity was minimal, but the Hardit Marines and the rear of their boarding pod vaporized. More Marines and equipment were spat out the missing rear of the pod, flailing helplessly with limbs and tails. But unlike the mystery tech that allowed their vessels to push against the void, these Hardits pushed against only vacuum. Without even thruster packs they were trapped in an inescapable vector away from
Beowulf
.

That was all Romulus had time to care about.

He took a deep breath and did it all again.

He searched out more boarding parties, accelerating at an insane 30 gees just a few meters off
Beowulf’s
hull, dodging her storage lockers, heat radiators and weapon ports to come up close to the enemy and wipe them off the face of his home with a swipe from his zero-point engine exhaust. The slightest miscalculation and he would scrape against
Beowulf’s
hull or crash into one of the boarding pods. If he fired his engines at the wrong orientation relative to his home ship, his engine would cleave through its hull.

“Rom! Look out!”

Just in time, Romulus swung the Mustang’s nose up and away before colliding with
Beowulf’s
starboard nacelle.

“Need a quick break for coffee,” he quipped. He shut his eyes. Even with the Hardit defensive clouds dissipating he had been concentrating so intensely he could barely see.

Just need a few seconds…

He opened his eyes onto something new. A larger craft racing down toward
Beowulf
. Romulus guessed this was a command vessel, Hardit officers coming in to command the boarding operation.

Co-ordinate this, you furry bastards!

Romulus swung round and poured fire into the Hardit command boat. The target refused to die, protected by some serious armor. It fired back too, but its targeting systems were not up to tracking the random dance of the Mustang with its momentum conversion system allowing its engine to open up without crushing the pilot and his passenger.

The Hardit boat exploded in livid white fire.

“Gotcha!”

His head clear now, Romulus pivoted around for another run sweeping the filth from
Beowulf’s
hull. The space around his home was filled with the wreckage of Hardit attack boats, but the survivors of the boarding assault were over
Beowulf
like a black rash. It was too late. The knowledge pierced his heart that even his best wasn’t going to be good enough this time.

All he could do was limit the number of Hardits the Legion Marines had to fight off in the hand-to-hand combat that must be opening up throughout his home. He glanced out toward the minefield and saw that fresh waves of boarding craft were still incoming.

He gritted his teeth against despair.
Job’s still got to be done.

His comm flickered and buzzed. Probably someone from
Beowulf
but whatever they were telling him was being jammed.

As Romulus began building up to his attack run, a sudden and total flash of light seared into mind, blinding him momentarily.

When some semblance of function returned to his eyes, what they saw turned his blood to ice, locking up his entire body.

His home…
Beowulf
… All that remained was a wave front of debris and a ball of hot, ionized gas.

Captain Lubricant had given up hope. She’d hit the self-destruct…

“Rom!” screamed Janna “Snap out of it!”

Her cry unlocked his muscles and his hand stretched out for the flight control… but his hesitation proved fatal.

The Mustang shuddered under a hail of fire. He burned away at maximum gees until the engine safety limiter cut in and a sudden weight crushed the breath out of his chest. The momentum dump system had failed. He was a sitting target. While jinking as best he could, he assessed the damage.

Still numb from the loss of
Beowulf
, he could barely register what the Mustang’s system status was telling him. They’d been hit by corrosive munitions. His X-Boat’s armor was just about eaten away already, and the internal systems were failing one after another.

Hardits! Frakk them!

He had to look away from Janna so she wouldn’t see the terror reaching up from his gut to draw his lips into a tight white line. When pressed to talk about the time his Stork shuttle was eaten away around him in the escape from Tranquility, he’d brush it off like it was a joke, but every night since then he could only sleep if Janna was beside him. Without the protective aura of her love, he couldn’t hold at bay the terror that had never fully released him since that day.

He stole a glance at the main status screen. A warning light flashed, telling him that a fatal pressure breach was imminent.

In the last instant, he flicked a final glance at his lover. He and Janna both turned to touch the other, but too late… the automatic ejector system hurled them into space.

They were clad only in an emergency pressure suit. With five hours of air, a distress beacon and only the most rudimentary of comms, the odds of getting out of a combat zone alive were not good.

Janna, please forgive me!

Without the enhancements of the Mustang’s sensors and AI, the battle for Khallini was eerily quiet and surprisingly far off, almost as if the deadly fight had left him behind. It was someone else’s fight now.

He concentrated on finding Janna. He had no means to change his vector but just the sight of her would give him strength. Although she had a distress beacon same as him, he didn’t have any means of detecting it. His viewpoint span as he tumbled, making finding her even more difficult.

Then the battle came to him in the shape of another Hardit command boat passing only a few klicks away.

It came about in that peculiar manner the Hardit craft had.

And then set off on a new bearing.

Directly for him.

The Stork shook as it screamed up through the atmosphere. Unlike the three X-Boats it carried, the shuttle had only energy-emitting hull coatings and an old-fashioned heat sink to absorb the massive heat buildup from punching through into space at such speeds.

Within one of the Stork’s carrier pods, the atmosphere in Remus’s Swordfish fighter-bomber was pleasantly cool, but his link to the Stork’s systems told him the shuttle’s hull had heated well into dangerous territory.

“Ease off on the gas, Pilot,” Remus ordered. “We’re no use to anyone if we burn up in transit.”

“Slowing ascent,” acknowledged the shuttle’s pilot who was well used to Remus’s strange Wolfish sayings.

“Deploy in twenty,” warned the pilot.

“Remember your briefing,” Remus told the two Flight-Marines of his scratch flight. “We’re fitted with some kind of experimental EMP bomb. Hit each planet killer and move to the next target. Don’t worry about finishing them off and keep your eyes on the targets. Wing Commander Dock promises to keep the enemy fighters off our backs.”

“Five seconds…”

Remus shook his head. Talk about making things up on the run. The three X-Boat pilots had been briefed while sprinting nearly half a mile from the mess hall to the Stork waiting for them at the shuttle port.

It was only by chance that it was down here to be fitted with the latest prototype churned out by the fertile collaboration between human and mudsucker engineers.

“Good hunting,” said the shuttle’s pilot, and hit the launch control.

The Stork was carrying a total of four modified quick-deployment modules, each one originally designed to throw two squads of armored Marines out into space. Within a second of the pilot hitting the control, the outer door had retracted and all three Swordfish launched into space.

“Let’s bag us some planet killers,” said Remus.

“You got it,” agreed Cragger, flying the Swordfish on his starboard-rear position.

“What’s keeping you?” laughed Avanti, the third member of the scratch flight as he raced ahead, pushing his momentum dump to its limits as he directed his craft to close with the planet killers.

Wing Commander Dock was en route from the dockyard, as were X-Boats detached from flying Combat Space Patrol around the
Beowulf
. Romulus should be flying in that group. Friendly drones were zipping back from patrolling the region outside of the minefield.

The cavalry was coming, but for now it was down to Remus, Cragger, and Avanti with their untested new weapon.

A sudden thought occurred to Remus. “Do not fire your railguns,” he ordered the other two members of his flight.

“Why?” asked Avanti.

“If I’ve understood right,” replied Remus, working this out as he spoke, “our new weapons are like cyber grappling hooks. Snag them onto the enemy ships and our muddy friends will cyber-board.”

“So?” Avanti’s philosophy centered on his firing stud.

Cragger tended to think a fraction of a second longer than Avanti before firing. She answered his question. “Because there’s no point hooking your grapple onto something you’ve already blasted to drent.”