Warpath (20 page)

“I can still fly this
thing with three main thrusters,” Jake said, nodding to Frost.

“Maxjack is working
fine, I don’t think they know we’re planning anything
interesting,” Frost replied.

“This is Alaka,”
announced a warm, low voice over their communicators. “Triton has
given me command of twenty squads. I will lead them with my own. We
are loading into gunships and shuttles now. Thank you.”

“No, thank you!”
Ayan said, excitedly.

“We begin launching
in two minutes,” Alaka said.

“Have you chosen a
ship yet, Jake?” Ronin asked. “We kind of need to know which one
we need to blow open.”

“What looks good to
you?” Jake said as he focused most of his attention on guiding the
Warlord back into the direction of the enemy Order of Eden fleet. He
only had access to basic information. The shapes of each ship with
their major systems and positions relative to his ship were visible.
The Warlord’s sensors weren’t capable of determining more.

“Well,” Ronin mused
nonchalantly. “I think it’s between two. One is called the
Blessed Mission, and it’s sort of off-white, and the other is
called Eternity, and it’s more of a light-grey-ish.” Minh-Chu
waited a moment then burst; “I don’t know! They’re about the
same, with about the same level of damage from the electromagnetic
pulse, their forward sensors are equally dead. Pick left or right?”

“I’ll take the
Blessed Mission,” Jake said, “and I already have a new name
picked out.”

“That’s bad luck,
you know,” Dent said. “Renaming a ship.”

“Luck is for games
and fools,” Jake said. “We’re not playing and if we’re fools,
we’ll be the last to know.” He had the Warlord thrusting towards
the Blessed Mission’s main hangar and was busy making fine
adjustments. “We’ll be on that deck in one minute and twenty four
seconds or we’ll collide with that door in one minute and twenty
two seconds.”

“On it,” Ronin
replied. “We’ll get that open.”

“What do you want me
to do? Grip the deck once we’re down?” Frost asked.

“Yes, we’ll have to
use the maxjack like articulated landing gear,” Jake said. “We’ll
only have three minutes to leave the Warlord once we touch down. I’m
setting the autopilot so it takes off after that time then heads for
the least damaged destroyer, that one there,” Jake said as he
marked the furthest destroyer from them on his comm unit’s small
holographic tactical display. “I need you to set the maxjack to
grip the hull of that ship as soon as it makes contact. I’m linking
the maxjack with the containment systems for our antimatter
reserves.”

“But, the Warlord!”
Finn said.

“It’s always been
more a weapon than a ship,” Jake said. “Today it’ll be a bomb,
and it’s going to save lives.”

“Aye,” Frost said.
“Easy to set up. There it is, done.”

“I’ll finish the
antimatter link,” Ayan said.

Jake saw a large
explosion on the starboard side of the Blessed Mission and realized
that the British Alliance was still firing on it with their largest
munitions. “Oz, can you tell the British to stop shelling my new
ship?” he asked over scrambled communications between the Warlord
and Triton Fleet.

“This is the Triton
Flight Deck, we’re signalling them now and marking your target,”
replied Chief Mendle. “I think they were just trying to keep them
off balance until the last moment.”

“Tell them that
they’re on the hook for any holes I find once we’re aboard,”
Jake shot back.

The last preparations
were completed in silence. Jake could see enough through his sensors
to know that the Clever Dream fired a vicious volley of missiles at
the pair of destroyers defending the carrier central to the Order of
Eden battle group, further delaying their fighter operations. The
ship hadn’t been able to get a single vessel off its deck since
entering the area.

The fighters
accompanying the Clever Dream was split between supporting the large
gunship, which seemed to gleefully skip through the battlefield as it
disappeared and reappeared, cloaking itself between volleys and
targeting the weapons on the battlecruiser the Warlord wasn’t
flying towards and its two accompanying destroyers.

The enemy carrier was
beginning to recharge shields and restore systems to its forward
section, however, and the Order of Eden war machine seemed to invite
the British Alliance carrier groups into closer combat, as many of
their long range munitions were countered before reaching their
targets. Jake could see that they were headed for a close fight, the
battlecruiser they planned to take could not be allowed to join the
fighting, or it would have to be destroyed, regardless of whether he
and his people were aboard.

“Finally,” Jake
sighed as a third surgical missile strike opened a large hole in the
hangar doors of the Blessed Mission. The Warlord’s upper port
thruster scraped a jagged edge as the ship passed through. Everyone
cringed as the vessel touched down hard and scraped for several
metres.

Finn, Frost, Alice,
Ayan and most of the people gathered in the starboard cargo area
looked to Jake. “I’m rusty!” he announced with a shrug.
“Disembark, quick, cover our exit. We can’t let any of the
Knights leave the Warlord.” He picked up a shield droid with narrow
treads and a one metre tall emitter rod, activated it and handed it
to Alice as she passed. “Drop this ahead of you, before you go
through that hatch,” he told her, pointing at the doors the Big
Surprise passed through only minutes before.

“Okay, hurry up and
get off the ship,” Alice said.

“Don’t worry,”
Jake told her. “Just provide cover for the first group with your
team.”

Jake helped most of the
people with him jump down through the launch doors, Ayan and Frost
were the last through before he dropped through himself.

“Check in,” Jake
said. “My group is out.”

“Alice here, my group
and the Rangers are out.”

“Stephanie here, my
group and about three hundred two skitters are out.”

Jake checked their
lists against the confirmed casualty list Crewcast was keeping and
nodded. One hundred sixty seven people made it off the Warlord, the
dead they left behind would be cremated with the ship. The British
Alliance reported that they’d located all seven of the Warlord’s
escape vessels and rescue operations were under way.

The hangar was
illuminated by the firing thrusters of gunships taking turns dropping
their soldiers off, not taking time to land, they literally walked
off the debarkation ramps and fell to the deck in groups of fourteen,
except for Alaka’s squad of nafali soldiers, who leapt clear of
their gunship. They looked even larger in their specially made
vacsuit armour. The metal plates were painted with snarling faces and
jagged symbols in the Nafalli language.

The deployment was so
quick and practiced that the enemy defending the landing bay, hiding
behind shuttles and taking cover in hatchways, were driven back by
the shock of it. Three automated shield droids dropped from one of
the slim Triton combat shuttles. They rolled towards the Warlord
crewmembers, expanding their protective barriers to join the energy
shields that were already being projected by the bots Jake and his
crew had already activated. All in all, over four hundred crewmembers
and armoured troops filled the main launch bay, crowding the enemy
defenders, blasting them into corners and incinerating them within
minutes. Jake didn’t have the opportunity to fire a shot, stuck in
the middle of the deployment pattern.

A hatch from the
Warlord burst open and an Order Knight emerged, his shield bending
the light around him. The force of every soldier and crewman left
from the Warlord was on him before he could fire a shot. Within three
seconds, the landed boarding crews joined in.

Jake only had a chance
to fire two of his explosive shells before there was nothing left of
the Knight but a narrow crater on the deck. The timer for the
Warlord’s departure continued to count down, and Jake couldn’t
stop glancing at it. “Clear the hangar doors,” he ordered as it
counted down to nine. The boarding crew craft did their best to move
to the side, leave, or hover near the deck.

The Warlord’s thrusters pulsed,
then fired gently, lifting up with a precarious wobble before backing
out through the hole in the launch doors. Jake took a deep breath as
it disappeared from sight. “Give ‘em hell, one last time,” he
said. “Thanks for keeping us alive.”

Alaka dropped down with
one other member of his boarding crew. He’d replaced the fighter
class weapon he once carried with a new two barrel weapon that was
only a little shorter, still nearly as tall as Ayan, who stood beside
Jake. From what he could see, the top portion was some kind of beam
weapon, while the bottom barrel was a rapid fire shrapnel gun, made
to rip through infantry but not through thick hull plates. “Where
do you want us, Captain?” Alaka asked.

“Now that’s a
sight,” Frost muttered wide eyed at the towering pair of Nafali.

“Alice’s squad and
the maintenance crew will clear the ships in this bay. Stephanie’s
people will go with you. How does the main causeway look?”

“Our scans show
troops regrouping there,” Alaka replied. “They are blocking the
only way to the bridge.”

“We’re going to
take it in one rush, cloaked. Remmy’s Rangers are going to start
heading for engineering, just in case the crew decides to try to
activate a self-destruct. I’d like him to take half the boarding
teams with him.”

“Aye,” Alaka
replied. “There may not be enough room for them to move through the
choke points.”

“Use lesser routes,
clear rooms as best as you can along the way,” Jake said. “Remmy
will be able to direct them in more detail, he’s one of the best
Rangers I’ve seen.”

“Aye, they will
follow his orders,” Alaka said.

“All units, engage
cloaking systems,” Jake ordered. In the space of seven seconds it
appeared as though every crewmember from the Warlord, and every
boarder from the Triton disappeared. Jake knew that the odds that
Regent Galactic technology had caught up to their cloaking systems
were very low. The ship would be theirs if they could avoid any
serious missteps.

Oz could feel the
slightest impression of what was going on between Hausgiest and the
being at the core of the other ship. After all the time he’d spent
mentally connected to Hausgiest, learning about him, asking him
questions about his existence, he’d never considered that the heart
of a Sol Defence ship could hate another of its kind. There it was,
at the edge of Oz’s perception, the awareness that Hausgiest was
trying to calm the Pontos’ living intelligence down, to ease its
hatred of him and the crew Hausgiest’s extended body, the Triton,
was host to.

“Admiral,” Agameg
addressed from his station at tactical. “That last torpedo took out
the Pontos’ main thrusters, they are adrift with minimal thrust
power.”

“Hold fire,” Oz
ordered. “All stations; hold fire. Get me a deep scan of that ship,
I want to know everything now that her shields are down, right down
to the DNA of the captain,” he said. “What is wrong with this
thing?” he said under his breath. “Why are we so significant to
Citadel that they’ve trained their intelligence to hate us?”

Victor only gave him a
momentary glance. He was aware that there was something more going on
in Oz’s head, a discussion that would come up later, Oz was sure.

‘The being in control
of the Pontos was tortured,’ Hausgiest replied telepathically.
‘Another controller, older than me, was in its mind. It is a
believer in Citadel, perhaps a component of its leadership. It
tortured him, it brainwashed the heart of the Pontos into believing
in the Order of Eden, in a destiny that required the success of this
mission, but it took months of torture.’

‘That’s possible?’
Oz asked mentally.

‘Only in the young,’
Hausgeist replied. ‘He wants to show me the conviction of his
belief! He is pushing his reactors past their limit to charge his
shields so he can buy time to prepare another planetary attack
weapon. This time he’s going to detonate it while it’s still
inside the ship! He wants to destroy all the ships in range.’

“Could we break
through its shields?” Oz asked aloud, forgetting that the people
around him could not hear Hausgiest’s last statement.

“They are drawing
power from their last planetary weapon,” Hausgiest replied through
the bridge sound system. “Their shields will be fully charged in
nine seconds.”

“Fire all weapons,
reverse away from the Pontos,” Oz ordered. “Maintain fire while
we retreat behind Kambis’ horizon.” He sat in the command seat
and looked at the tactical display for a moment. The Barricade and
the British Alliance were moving to close on the Order of Eden
carrier group, which was too close to the Pontos. The only segment of
combattants that weren’t already too close to the Pontos, and
drawing closer, were the mid-sized ships in Triton Fleet, who were
returning to Tamber orbit just in case there was a third prong to the
Order’s offensive. “Open a channel to all ships,” Oz said.
“This is Admiral McPatrick. The Pontos is about to self destruct,
get as much distance as you can. Fire on that ship if you can, maybe
we can knock out some of its powered systems.”

“Sir, one of the
Pontos’ gunships is hailing us on an open channel,” announced
communications.

“Let’s hear it,”
Oz said.

“Triton Command, most
of the crew aboard that ship are dead, the intelligence and the first
officer have taken control. They have activated another antimatter
cluster weapon. We surrender and request asylum. Our weapons are
powering down.”

“Is there any way to
shut it down?” Oz asked.