War of Alien Aggression 2 Kamikaze
Read War of Alien Aggression 2 Kamikaze Online
Authors: A.D. Bloom
Kamikaze
A.D. Bloom
© 2014
Many thanks to Tom Robidoux for his editorial input.
Thanks to 'Blue Scar' D. for his consulting role.
Thank you to Jimmy Robidoux and the 182nd Airborne.
Cover images and custom models by Whayler.
The author would like to express his appreciation to the New England Air Museum, USS Nautilus (SSN-571), and USS Massachusetts (BB-59), F-15.net, /r/WarshipPorn and her sister subreddit, /r/Warships.
Table of Contents
2164
The Squidies came without warning and destroyed the UN's capital ships. Staas Company's Privateer fleet now defends Humanity's home system and prepares to strike the aliens at Procyon.
Chapter One
2165
A month after the first battles of the war, the UN scientists finally opened the hypermass transit to Procyon, and UNS
Dauntless
went on her historic voyage, carrying humanity out among the stars. The Squidies' blockade gun was waiting at the other end of the transit. It sliced her up like her hull was made of wax. The enemy sent her back in pieces.
When Search and Rescue jetted into the cruiser's debris field looking for survivors, they found them all murdered like their ship. The Squidies used small-bore particle streams to dismember the crew just like they'd done to
Dauntless
.
It's true that gravity makes the wreckage in a debris cloud glom together, but gravity had nothing to do with what the SAR teams found. Hundreds of heads and legs and torsos and halves of bodies all floated together in a tight cloud. Some said the survivors must have been herded like that in their exosuits before the aliens sliced through the mass of them.
More than one of the crewmen on the junks and longboats tasked with search and rescue reported that when they flew into the clouds of bloody ice crystals to recover the pieces of
Dauntless
' crew, they heard the massacred sailors' screams over local suit comms. Turned out the Squidies had recorded the survivors' transmissions as they killed them and sent microsats back with the wreckage to rebroadcast their last cries, their prayers and curses.
Chapter Two
Hardway
prepared to take some heavy hits. The first officer, Ram Devlin, had already ordered the crew into exosuits and helmets. "All sections, all decks, prepare to vent atmo." He had no intention of letting them get killed by internal shock waves when alien particle beams or warheads hit the carrier and made her atmo into a weapon. "Close all launch bay doors and fix for combat. Damage control teams to action stations."
From the carrier's bridge at the top of her command tower, Ram looked down through the diamond-pane windows, down two hundred meters to the top of the new primary and secondary launch bay modules where the armored bay doors now closed one by one, sealing the junks of the air group inside.
Hardway
lost too many pilots in the first encounter with the Squidies. Soon, they'd be under fire again.
The Staas Company mining junks had been modular builds like the carriers and they'd been easier to militarize than anyone thought. They'd been fitted with fast-printed gunnery and torpedo modules.
Hardway
's air group now had the strike capabilities of three capital ships and even without her 44 junks, the kilometer-long carrier packed a big punch. New railgun batteries crowned her bow and midships and point defense guns studded her up and down. The Staas Company's Privateer fleet had ten converted mining carriers like her, but only
Hardway
and her junks had won a victory.
After the loss of the capital ships
Hannibal
and
Khan
at Deimos' Lagrange, the UN fleet wasn't much more than a dozen cruisers and research vessels. The Privateers of the Staas Company fleet were almost all Earth had left to fight this war.
"Is Dr. Noondie sure he's got his numbers right?" Dana Sellis said it from the NAV console without looking up. Cozen didn't see the worry in her eyes, but Ram did.
Harry Cozen sat back in the command chair looking as relaxed as he would be at a summer barbecue. He said, "The good doctor knows we can't afford to lose a carrier." Despite that assurance, Ram still worried just like Dana did. They all worried, but none of them wanted to show it. None of them wanted to look as if they weren't up to their new jobs.
They all had some major adjustments to make. Ram had been bumped up two grades to Commander and been given more responsibility than he wanted. Asa Biko had been the crew's Teamster rep, but Cozen made him the Air Group Commander. That was like making him bloody
management
.
The only one on the ship who appeared truly comfortable was Harry Cozen. Nobody worried about him being up to the job of captaining
Hardway
. Cozen was one of only 25 Staas Company VPs, but he was also a land and space veteran of the War of the Americas and numerous conflicts beyond the pale of public scrutiny. His official war record was almost all the crew knew about him, but it was enough. They knew he had at least one other ship at his disposal and they knew he had power.
Harry Cozen always looked like he knew what he was doing, but he didn't. Just because the enemy could open and ride a hypermass transit from one star system to another and Dr. Banyan Noondie understood
how
didn't mean doing it with
Hardway
was going to go smoothly. There was a good reason the aliens didn't point a gigantic blockade gun at the barely viable interstellar transit Dr. Noondie picked to get
Hardway
to Procyon: the Squidies didn't think the Humans were stupid enough to ride it. Ram had seen the numbers. They'd be lucky if it didn't collapse and leave them stranded in the void of interstellar space.
"
Tipperary
is warming up." Dana nodded her head out the starboard windows of the bridge where the half-completed breaching ship, SCS
Tipperary
hung high over the carrier's starboard bow.
Tipperary
been hastily constructed at the Staas Company yards to provide exactly the kind of particle beams Noondie said he'd need to breach space and open a hypermass transit like the alien marauders had used to enter and exit the Sol system. It had done it once already.
Most of the technology aboard
Tipperary
had been reverse engineered from the alien scout, the prize brought back from Moriah. Without the same exotic elements and materials the Squidies had used to build their technology, the human version was bulkier and less powerful. The Squidies could mount what they needed to breach space on even their smallest scout ships, but employing the human-made version required a 350-meter, dedicated and specialized craft packed with ten, fat reactors.
The breaching ship was functional, but there hadn't been time to fit her engines. For safety's sake, the six tugs that brought her kept station a full, three kilometers back, well-clear of the lightning arcing over her wonder-wheel frame. The charge pooled over the outer ring like zero-gee fire and then shot crackling down the conduit-filled spokes towards the reactors and control section at the center of the fragile craft. "That thing makes me nervous," Dana said.
"Imagine being the guy inside it; everything smells burned in here." That voice came from
Tipperary
, already patched in on comms... "We are building charge and estimate green light in less than 30 seconds. Be ready for our 'go',
Hardway
."
As Air Group Commander, Asa Biko manned the AT Controller's console. "All junks, all bays, standby," he said. "Maintain alert status. Bays 46-48, prepare to loose the Dingoes."
Harry Cozen patched his suit mic into the shipwide squack and spoke into the ear of every officer, pilot and crewman on
Hardway
. Already, they knew that voice like a familiar gravel road. "Now hear this: The Squidies mean to keep us in one system. To achieve that goal, they have constructed a massive blockade gun inside a hollowed-out asteroid and positioned it to destroy any vessel or force group that rides the main Sol-Procyon transit. It is
Hardway's
job to break the blockade. We have eight days to get the job done. After that, the UN task force and our sister carriers
Araby
and
Vegas
will Transit the main passage to Procyon. Admiral Kirby refuses to wait any longer. Unless we destroy the Squidies' blockade gun, the UN task force with
Araby
and
Vegas
will enter the system directly in its sights. No matter what happens then, win or lose, it'll be a massacre.
Hardway
isn't about to let that happen. We will appear in the Procyon system where the Squidies do not expect us. We will engage the enemy and we will destroy their blockade gun before the UN task force comes under fire. That is all."
The lightning arcing over
Tipperary
's frame flashed on Harry Cozen's face as he gave the air in front of his helmet the back of his hand and cut his suit mic from shipwide comms. He glanced at Ram and said, "You look anxious, Mr. Devlin."
It's an XO's job to worry and there was a very real chance the transit might collapse before they'd completed passage.
Cozen said, "There's no need to be anxious; there's no point. Either we'll end up where we expect, or we won't. It's that simple."
"
Tipperary
to
Hardway
, green light, green light. T-minus 30 to full discharge, estimate one minute to breach."
"Roger your last,
Tipperary.
"
Ram moved to the Ops panel. Over the ship-wide squack channel he said, "This is the XO. All decks, initiate emergency venting on my bingo in 5...4...3...2...and...bingo." From inside their helmets and exosuits, they saw no immediate change in the air around them, but as the carrier purged her atmosphere, icy fog blew from
Hardway's
emergency vents in a hundred, boiling, freezing, snowy jets. Less than a minute later, most of her compartments and tubes were a near vacuum.
Tipperary
said, "We need the final command from you, Mr. Cozen."
Harry Cozen ground the words out like a millstone. "Do it. Breach space."
"Point of no return,"
Tipperary
said. "Discharge is imminent."
The accelerated particle streams lanced out from the five emitters on
Tipperary
's ring at over two-thirds light speed, bent on course and aimed to precision by magnetic fields and vectoring rings the size of a junk. The streams of heavy nuclei collided ten Ks in front of the breaching ship, and the resulting release of energy produced enough radiant heat to make half the outer hull expand. It bathed the ship in X-rays.
At first, the intersection of the streams looked like an infinitesimal point in space gone nova, growing brighter every thousandth of a second until Ram swore he could see the bones of his hand through his exo-suit. Then, it became apparent that the energy of that conflagration must be going somewhere else because the blinding light actually dimmed enough for Ram to make out a swelling sphere of fire, a ball of hell growing where
Tipperary
's beams collided. That burning thing fed off the energy of the particle streams and expanded like a gargantuan bubble until it was over a kilometer-wide. Thin plasma and zero-gee flames whorled over its taut skin and exotic particles burned up on the membrane, jetting uncanny geometries in unseen currents.