War of Alien Aggression 4 Taipan (5 page)

That goon only had it half-right, but Jordo didn't correct him. Who wants to say they've got brain damage? "He's
partly
right about us," Jordo said.

Pooch snorted again. "Speak for yourself. Maybe the Lancers are screwy in the head, but the Hellcats are rock solid."

"I meant he's right when he said we're alike."

That seemed like it pissed her off more than anything else he'd said. "No. No. There's a
big
difference between us. The Hellcats are volunteers.
We
signed up. You're all convicts who took a deal to get out of prison."

"What a sweet deal..." Dirty said as she adjusted herself on the steel slab.

"We're nothing alike." Pooch almost hissed it. She turned away and shook her head and pretended to laugh at the idea.

Jordo said, "Yeah we are. You're another brain-shake zoomie, just like me. Bet you can't go six hours without trying to mix it up. When you don't get some...when you don't get the monster beat out of you...it's like the whole world is all grayed out." She looked away, in denial of it, but her pilots were listening now, looking up through the bars at Jordo because they knew exactly what he was talking about. "That inertial negation can mess you up. I can't go five minutes without being so sure a fight's going to happen that
I make it happen
. And everything's just too pissing slow... All the time. You're the same way. Pulse-pinch shook your brain. Now, you're all shook up just like me...like us. Now, you got a monster inside."

For the briefest moment, the torrent of hate coming from Pooch's eyes had ceased, but less than a second after he spoke those words, it came back hard. "Don't treat us like your nuggets." She practically spat the words. "We were behind the Sirius Line for three months on our own. We didn't need anyone holding our hands then. We don't need it now." Her voice turned ten degrees colder in a flash. "
You're
damaged maybe. We're fine. And besides, nobody needs advice from a squadron leader with only five pilots left in his whole, sad-ass, jailbird squadron."

Jordo was glad he couldn't reach Pooch through the bars because suddenly it was as if his brain broke. It filled with angry static so loud he couldn't think anything besides fractured images of what he wanted to say...images of him making her pay for what she'd said. His vision flashed like someone was playing with the lights and he burned under his skin. If there was a chance he could have gotten his hands around Hellcat 1-1's throat, then the monster inside him would have tried and Jordo wouldn't have been able to stop it.

*****

Ram went through the hatch into the primary launch module's 2nd maintenance bay where preparations for the upcoming assault were already underway. Warspite torpedoes covered most of the deck where Chief Horcheese and her redsuits modified them to the specifications ordered by Matilda Witt. On the far side of the bay,
Hardway
's boarders drew MA-48 rifles and gathered with Lucy Elan's company marines around a detailed projection of alien anatomy.

"Dammit!" Horcheese stepped back and engaged in positional correction to open a stubborn torpedo casing. She kicked the hatch cover near the reluctant latch using the heel of her boot and some hate she'd saved up for the Squidies. When she glanced up and saw Ram coming, it didn't stop her from kicking the torpedo. Ram knew enough to let her work.

Matilda Witt had obviously read
Hardway
's logs and action reports because she'd ordered 56 of the fusion warheads turned into fast neutron fizzlers. The warheads were being intentionally imbalanced so they didn't go off properly and instead traded their fission punch for a reaction producing only copious fast neutron emissions....the kind that penetrate radiation shielding and armor to wreck hell with a ship's systems.

Ram worked his way around the edge of the bay where puddles of condensate had formed. He kept his eyes on Lucy Elan just so that Horcheese's redsuits didn't think he'd come down here to supervise them. Since he'd become the XO, Ram had figured out that sometimes his job was to be everywhere, directing everything and sometimes his job was to not to get in the way of his people by giving orders and micromanaging when they were handling things just fine. Doing that was probably management's #1 failure. Ram had seen plenty of execs screw things up like that. It was usually because they were afraid that if things went well
without
their direct supervision, then it might imply to people without an understanding of leadership that their management hadn't been necessary.

Just over halfway across the hundred-meter bay, Ram heard Hollis' voice ringing off the deck and bulkheads as he addressed a huddle of company marines and crewmen. "Plenty of you have fought Squidy McJangles here up close and personal." Hollis pointed up at a projection of an alien, a see-through Squidy and its anatomy, 3.5-m-tall in front of them. Even on a diagram, he still had trouble counting all those limbs above and below the main body mass. "If you ever shot a Squidy, you know this diagram
here
is shite." The image projected above the deck from a matchbox computer was from Staas Company Consulting and it was labeled '
ONE SHOT KILL-POINTS ON THE ALIEN ENEMY
'. The illustration highlighted several 'organs' that could be found inside, through the Squidies' tough exosuits and under their leathery 'skin'. These organs had all been labeled with the word '
KILL
'.

"There
are
no one-shot kills on the alien enemy," Hollis said. "Not unless you blow half of it off. And if you think piercing their exosuits so that they lose atmo and decompress is gonna kill 'em fast, then you might get a real nasty surprise. On Moriah, I saw one get holed-through with an x-ray laser right here." He pointed to the middle of its elongated ribbon of a torso, to just above the swollen section with the orifice and ocular elements. "It took a wide-bore discharge from a Honma & Voss hand cannon right here... The beam left a 10cm hole in Squidy and punched through the bulkhead behind it. Two more holes like it, and that Squidy still had fight in it. Didn't go down. Not right off. First, it discharged every cap on its hand-maser and turned the woman who shot it into cinders. Lit her up in her suit."

He's talking about Mickey, Ram thought. Just looking at the ghostly projection of that 3.5-meter-tall, alien monstrosity made Ram sick thinking about it.

"No such thing as a one-shot-kill," Hollis said. "You shoot it and you keep shooting it until it's down and then you fucking shoot it again."

The two Staas Guards that came in through the aft hatches were right on schedule. It was time to let the Lancers and the Hellcats out. Ram didn't enjoy having to confine them, but at least he had the Staas Guards to do it so the Lancers wouldn't hate the
Hardway
crewmen that got assigned the duty.

He'd gone to a lot of trouble to make sure the Lancers and the Hellcats mixed. He knew they'd just end up in the cooler, but he thought when he put them face to face that they'd team up and rampage
together
. He'd put the Staas Guards on alert for a small riot and expected lots of bone fractures for Doc Ibora and the Medicals to fuse out because he'd assumed the Lancers and the Hellcats would be fighting as
allies
and terrorizing the crew, not bashing in each others' skulls.

Ram was the XO and the XO was in charge of discipline, but where the F-151 pilots were concerned, he'd all but given up on bothering. They might not mind going back to prison now that they'd had a taste of war. The only threat he held over them was to put them up against a bulkhead and shoot them, but he needed them alive and in their cockpits and they all knew that.

He understood all too well just what the war had asked of those pilots. He knew about the brain damage from the new pulse-pinch. So did they. They were fast-trained killers flying AI-assisted planes sent to swarm the Squidy aces with numbers. They'd become the grunts of this war, but their life-expectancy was shorter than any rifleman in history. The casualties those fighter pilots had seen in their squadrons made Ram feel like it wasn't them, but rather the people who ran this war who should be put behind bars.

Chapter Five

Fifteen minutes before zero-hour, as Biko spotted the inbound contact, the voice came over comms. "
Hardway
AT,
Hardway
AT, this is
Taipan
longboat requesting you open a bay for us on your topside primary. Our ETA is now."

In the false-scale projection coming from the AT controller console where Biko stood, the incoming longboat flew across the bridge towards
Hardway
like a slow-moving bullet. Eight of Witt's F-151s flew with it as escorts. Incoming traffic from
Taipan
just before they were about to execute Matilda Witt's plan could only mean one thing.

"I know who's on that boat," Ram said.

"
Hardway
AT, acknowledge."

Biko looked up from the AT control console to Harry Cozen in the command chair. "What are you looking at me for?" Cozen said, "She's a Staas VP and a bloody two-star admiral. Let her in."

The muscles in Asa Biko's jaw clenched. He thumbed the comms and replied. "
Hardway
AT to
Taipan
longboat: Bay One doors open, topside primary bays, port side, right in front of the command tower. Welcome aboard."

"Mr. Devlin," Cozen said, "have the redsuits completed all weapons modifications requested by Matilda Witt?"

"They finished up an hour ago. They had to run three shifts at once, but they managed it."

Cozen grunted acknowledgment. "Tell her it was easy."

"When?"

"Now," Cozen said, "when you go to Bay One and receive her, of course."

She stood in the very center of the airlock doors so they parted to reveal her like stage curtains. She'd brought an aide with her. "Mr. Devlin," she said, "this is Mr. Morrisey." Morrisey wore a single dueling scar like a fat, 20cm keloid caterpillar crawling down his left cheek. His pinched face had grown in around it.

Witt stepped across the airlock's threshold and into the passageway, and Morrisey followed her. Like Matilda Witt, he wore a business suit with a knee-length coat. It hung off his thin frame like he was a wire hangar. "Mr. Morrisey assists with command and control," she said. Morrisey's eyes briefly focused, but Ram could see from his oversized display glasses and how his hands ceaselessly gestured that he was engaged in monitoring or manipulating data at this very moment. He said, "Ma'am, all four carriers report green lights across the board and the breaching ship
Malibu
says they are 'go' to commence operations at any time."

"Thank you, Mr. Morrisey."

"This way," Ram said, "I'll show you to the bridge."

Damage control teams waited in groups at their duty stations up and down the carrier's 950-meter spine. Every six-man team in their exosuits eyeballed Witt and her aide as the visitors passed. They stared at her in a way Ram thought she'd probably have considered insubordinate if she'd actually deigned to notice them. He asked her if she'd ever been aboard any other Staas Company attack carriers.

"Once," Witt said. "SCS
Araby
. Despite the distinguished name, that ship smelled like stale suit-liners and sweat. Like this one."

"I noticed you and your aide aren't wearing any kind of exosuits. Quite often, we'll vent our atmo before combat to prevent shock wave propagation in the event
Hardway
takes a direct hit. I'll have a pair of suits sent u-" Witt pointed the flat of her open palm at Ram's mouth like she planned to stuff the words back in if he said any more.

"Thank you for your concern, Mr. Devlin, but that won't be necessary because we're not going to let the Squidies strike
Hardway's
hull today. Today, the torpedo junks and the interceptors will do the fighting.
Hardway
will remain prudently out of range of the alien guns and bombs as she should have been all along."

When the lift arrived at the bridge and the doors opened, there was no standing at attention, but
Hardway
's Staas Guards stiffened a little. Matilda Witt strode past them without any acknowledgment. "Were you expecting me, Harry?"

He didn't turn around. "Of course I was," he said from the command chair.

"Don't get up." The suit draped her gracefully, but as she stepped to the side of the command chair, Ram still thought she moved like a bulldog. She didn't look at Cozen. Her eyes went to the tactical display hovering over the bridge, projected from the AT controller's console and the NAV.

While Morrisey stepped to the side and lurked by a terminal near the starboard bulkhead, Matilda Witt raised her voice a few decibels and looked at each one of them as she spoke. "I'll be commanding from the deck of
Hardway
today. I'm here to make sure this engagement goes the way it's supposed to. I won every battle I fought behind the Sirius Line and I never had to put in to port for repairs. I couldn't, of course. So I baselined a methodology for assaulting small to medium-sized alien warships using squadrons of Staas Company F-151 fighters as the sole means of delivering destruction to the enemy. This has the obvious advantage of sparing larger ships like
Hardway
damage that has proven costly in lives, downtime, materials and man-hours required for repair."

Those are the costs of battle, Ram thought. She can't make them go away. She just transferred them from the largest ships to the smallest ones.

"And while destruction of enemy materiel no doubt contributes to the war-effort," she said, "the real gains that will propel humanity to victory are to be made in the acquisition of alien technologies. That is why we are here. Today, we will board and seize another alien vessel."

Witt glanced over her shoulder to her aide, and he nodded. She punched at the buttons on the arm of the command chair where Cozen sat. "Excuse me, Harry." He moved his arm but still didn't get up. When she'd given herself a voice on the battlegroup's general comms, she thumbed the button and said, "All vessels, this is Matilda Witt. Begin the operation, please."