Assault: The Globur Incursion Book 6, page 28
It was only about 300 meters, but it seemed to Voss it was taking a very long time. His suit told him he was out of grenades, and he skidded to a stop near a bulkhead smeared dark purple by a Globur growth. It was the end of the bay.
Voss looked back down the bay. It was a sea of corpses peppered with fallen silver combat suits. His command view showed his company was down to an overstrength platoon.
Voss shook his head, something no one would see outside his suit. “You three, and you three, cover the entrances,” he ordered, tagging two groups of three Marines still standing. “The rest of you make sure all these bastards are dead. Stand by to repel an attack.”
He scanned the remaining Marines. They were all out of grenades just like he was. The downed suits still had some. “Strip the grenades off the damaged suits,” he ordered.
No one was moving. “You OK, Skipper?” asked the nearest Marine.
Voss was a bit confused by the question. He realized that his AI was trying to tell him his suit was heavily damaged. He also realized that somewhere along the way, he had lost his rifle. He linked to the suit of the Marine that had spoken and caught his breath when he saw his suit. The entire chest was a mass of tangled armor still oozing orange sealing foam. One of the legs was still smoking from a Globur beam hit. The entire top of his suit had been scorched by a Globur grenade. His suit was just as bad as the rest.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” replied Voss with what he hoped sounded like confidence. “Everyone, find a rifle. We may have company soon.”
***
Rear Admiral Brown was exhausted. He was still alert, thanks to the augmentation. Under it all, he could feel a great weariness waiting to claim him. He huddled in engineering with the remains of the crew. The Globur had come aboard Wallachia in numbers. He had used the weapons in his augmentation on the way to engineering when they had run into a small group of Globur. He had marveled at how well the weapons worked. All he had to do was look at a target and think.
He looked down at where his left leg suddenly ended. There was no pain, and the armor had sealed over the stump. The same could be said of the gouges on his side. He knew he was badly wounded, but the AI indicated he was being treated, and there was no pain there, either.
The Globur had briefly overrun the barricade outside engineering, and the sheer ferocity of the attack had caught Brown off guard. He had managed to kill the Globur after it had gouged into his side. He had not realized his leg was missing below the knee until the gravity cycled back on, and he had fallen over. If the Marine beside him had not pushed him back, the Globur would have gutted him.
He had seen his first Globur up close, then, and it had made his skin crawl. The narrow heads seemed completely unnatural, and their quickness was terrifying. The shock had quickly worn off as they fought to stem the tide. Now they had withdrawn to engineering, and the Globur were trying to dig their way through the hatch.
Brown had sent out his call for help. Even then, he realized that they would probably not be able to hold the ship. He had no idea if it had been heard. Globur routinely destroyed survival pods.
He did consider that Rear Admiral Pang would see the number of Globur pods that had attacked Wallachia and understand that the situation was dire. They had only just sealed the hatch when a cheer went up. The internal scanner showed Marines streaming in from one of the hangar bays. It had taken Brown a little while to realize they were not headed for engineering, but for the capital missile bay. The scanners in the bay were offline, but other scanners indicated that the Globur were all coming from that location.
The Marines entered the bay, and the nearby scanners also went offline after registering numerous explosions. The effect on the Globur trying to get into engineering was immediate. They all stopped. A stillness came over them.
Brown could not see any Marines moving toward them from the capital missile bay. He looked around engineering and took stock. He had few Marines left. Some of them were walking wounded. A few hundred of the crew remained. They were all using the time to recharge the accumulators in their augmentation so they could use their weapons when the Globur came through.
There were very few Globur in the passageways between engineering and the capital missile bay. Brown watched the Marines converge into a group and run into the area where the internal scanners were offline.
As suddenly as they had stopped, the Globur began to tear at the hatch again. It would not hold much longer. It was already deformed and beginning to show indentation on the inside. There was a barricade on their side of the hatch. They hoped it would slow the Globur enough for the last of the grenades to be used for maximum effect. They floated just inside the hatch. When it was breached, one grenade would fly through the breach and detonate. The rest would be held until the Globur were actually inside, and they would be armed and detonated all at once.
The scanners caught movement near the capital missile bay. Marines were en route. “Stand by!” yelled the Marine corporal who commanded what was left of the Marines aboard Wallachia. The Globur were penetrating the hatch.
Several plasma grenades came through the small opening. They sought out Marine suits, and the Marines fired their rifles as the grenades took an evasive route to their targets.
The white-hot flashes of the Globur plasma grenades lit up the engineering space, and the Globur enlarged the breach. The Marine’s grenades sped through the breach, and the angry orange flashes lit up the engineering space like a flickering searchlight.
The deck beneath Brown trembled, and he realized that the Marines from the capital missile bay had arrived. The Globur turned to the new threat, and the Marine corporal sent the rest of the grenades through the breach. “Get at them!” he yelled as he sprang up to the hatch and tried to open it. “The cavalry is here!”
Brown watched over the scanner outside the engineering hatch as the Globur took heavy fire from the advancing Marines. The scanners were taken out by some sort of detonation. He glanced to the hatch. It was so badly warped that the Marine corporal could not force it open, even with the strength of his suit.
Brown’s comm, emergency channel, lit up. “This is Captain Voss of the 14th MEF, from IFC Ryoshi. Stand by.” Brown saw a series of hammer blows hit the hatch from the outside. Suddenly the hatch fell inward, revealing a group of heavily damaged Marine combat suits. Some were wreathed in smoke and electrical discharges. They all oozed sealing foam from various damage. They looked a lot like the remaining Marines from Wallachia.
Brown pushed himself upright as the gravity cycled on. Captain Kallow helped him hop forward. He was damned if he was going to meet the rescue party on his butt. His AI tagged the lead suit with a name. “Captain Voss, good to see you.”
Voss took a step forward, which was not easy since one leg of his suit was so heavily damaged it was mostly hidden by sealing foam. The limp looked painful somehow. “Got your message Rear Admiral Brown, but we were already on our way. Glad we made it in time.”
“The planetary assault?” asked Brown. “Successful?”
“The division was landed, sir,” replied Voss. “We’ve had no contact. Lost a transport and others took damage. Supply drop was scrubbed.”
“Damn,” remarked Brown. “I need to get back to the bridge and get in contact with the task force. I hope the other ships were able to repel the boarders.”
“Most of the 14th MEF is boarding your ships to offer assistance, sir,” replied Voss. “Looks like they are all in for a hell of a fight,” Voss added as he sat down heavily near the hatch. “TF 17 was headed for the planet last we saw before we boarded.”
Brown nodded as he wondered about getting his ship back in the fight with so few crew remaining. Wallachia was really in no shape for a fight. Brown realized that he had been fighting without pause for almost a day. He desperately needed to check on his ships and crews. For the moment, at least, TF16 was out of the fight.
Chapter 31
“Damage report!” yelled Rear Admiral Jones. His face was contorted in fury. “Dammit to hell!” Jones yelled at no one in particular. “Get the communications back up.”
The flag plot showed every ship with at least moderate damage. The Globur orbital defense platforms turned out to be some sort of pod or small warship, virtually undetectable. They had waited, keeping hidden, while the Marine assault transports had made their drops. Now the Marines were trapped on a hostile planet with no supplies and no heavy weapons other than those they carried with their suits.
Another trap, Jones thought furiously. They wanted the Marines to land and trap them on the surface. They’re supposed to be able to hold their own for a day, but… Jones had seen the ferocity of a Globur attack, and he seriously doubted the Marines had that kind of time.
The planet was enveloped in heavy jamming. There had already been jamming, but the really heavy stuff had sprung up when the enemy pods in orbit became active. Contact with the Marines was impossible. Jones pulled up the partial scans they had of the Marines as they came over the horizon, just before they were ambushed.
It appeared the Marines were organized, based on the transponder data from their suits. Jones’s crew had been able to get that much as they passed over the Marine division on the surface. Unfortunately, there were signs of massive movement from Ulaan. The Marine division was on a broad plain with nothing that looked like cover for over a hundred klicks in any direction. They would never reach any sort of cover before whatever was moving their way from Ulaan arrived.
Jones studied the flag plot as the damage to his ships became clear. TF17 would be hard pressed to take on a Globur battlegroup in its current state. TF17 had lost two ships outright, and everything else was damaged.
“Tactical. Analysis! Why didn’t we see those damn platforms? Or whatever they were?”
The tactical officer had been furiously communing with the ship's AI and was jolted out of his analysis by Jones. “Sir, it’s the material—the stuff their ships are made of. It’s very good at either dispersing the energy from our scanners or absorbing it. With the things powered down, they aren’t easy to detect. The debris in the upper atmosphere from the Marine landing and the transport that went down—well, that made them even harder to detect since they weren’t maneuvering.”
“They crash-started their reactors—all at once?” Jones had a hard time believing that. Crash-starting a reactor was a risky business at the best of times.
“Well, sir,” the tactical officer began apologetically, “I can’t say. The Globur reactors are fundamentally different from ours, so it may be they can start them more easily. The power signatures are very different from ours.”
“So, can we use that against them? Can we detect if there are any more?” Jones demanded as he eyed the flag plot. The Marine assault transports had veered away from the planet, and were holding a position that would allow for quick orbital insertion.
The tactical officer did not answer right away, and an uncomfortable silence developed. “Uhh, sir, I have been scanning the Khan orbit, and so far, I don’t see anything that might be a Globur installation.”
Jones had almost expected that answer. “That can’t be all of them. There must be more. They couldn’t have known where we would land. They must have seeded a lot of those things in orbit.”
“I agree, sir,” replied the tactical officer quickly.
Jones linked in Valkyrie’s captain. Captain Jamal was still below on the command bridge. Valkyrie remained at battle stations, but damage control was the priority now.
“Yes, Admiral,” she said smoothly, as if she were relaxing on a veranda somewhere. “What can I do for you.”
“Captain Jamal, we have identified that there may be more of those defense pods in Khan orbit. We are trying to understand how we might detect them. It seems the Globur hull material does a good job of defeating our scanners when the pods are powered down.”
“Yeah, we can track them mostly through their power signatures since they are much more pronounced than ours,” Jamal observed. “They must be communicating since the moment the trap was sprung indicates a good degree of coordination.”
“My thoughts as well,” replied Jones. “My tactical officer and the ship's AI still have no way for us to detect the pods if they’re powered down. I think the Marines are about to be in serious trouble, assuming that the Globur plan was to pin our landing forces on the planet and cut them off.”
“We seem secure for now. Perhaps the other captains will have some idea?” suggested Jamal. “There was a small lag between the pods firing up their power and the attack. But I’m not sure how that helps us.”
Jones stood up from his command chair. “Navigation. Hold the task force at this distance. Position for an orbital insertion above the Marines.”
Jones ducked into the conference room and used his augmentation to ping the task force captains for a conference. He commed Rear Admiral Pang. She was close enough for real-time comms. She answered immediately.
“How is your task force?” Pang asked without preamble.
“Not good,” replied Jones sourly. “Those pods or ships in orbit were a surprise. They were waiting for us, and they hurt us. That’s for sure. We’re working on a way to detect them in orbit. I have to believe there are more.”
“I agree,” Pang observed. “It’s unlikely that the Globur would just have a one-shot affair. They must have seeded the entire orbit of Khan with those things. We saw the battle from here. At such close range, those Globur beams just cut right through your shields.”
“They did,” Jones confirmed. “I’m having a conference with my captains. We got a partial scan of the Marines, and the message confirms what we saw. They overshot the landing zone and are on a broad flat plain. No cover anywhere, and we read some large movement coming from Ulaan before the heavy jamming kicked in. I think we need to get into orbit as soon as we can. Any word from Rear Admiral Brown?”
Jones saw the holopresences of his captains popping into existence at the briefing table. He had the conference on hold, so they would not see him until he opened the conversation.
“Nothing from Rear Admiral Brown,” Pang said heavily. “The Globur seemed to concentrate their attack on the capital ships and his carrier, in particular. Initial reports from the Marine company I sent to Wallachia didn’t sound good. Once they boarded, we lost contact. The Globur managed to take out one of Brown’s battleships. TF16’s destroyers and cruisers are secure. We’re still fighting for the carrier and remaining battleships.”
“Did you manage to board the battleship that was lost?” asked Jones.
“A company of my Marines went with it,” Pang said thickly. “So much for light losses,” she added acidly. “Those Marines on the planet are probably about to be in all kinds of trouble.”
Captain Jamal came in the hatch and slid into a seat at the conference table. “I’ll see what my captains and I can come up with. Jones out.” Jones killed the link and activated the conference with his captains.
“I apologize for calling this meeting, but we have a problem we need to solve. You all saw the data on the Marine landing and heard the message sent up by the division commander. The Marines are going to need support, but we suspect there are more of those platforms or pods in orbit just waiting to nail the next warship that happens along. We need to figure out how we can detect these things and destroy them. We cannot risk taking the task force into orbit again.”
One of the battleship captains piped up. “Sir, if we can’t detect the pods, could we find a way to paint them for our scanners? We know the composition of the materials that the Globur use for their hulls.”
Jones nodded. “That would likely be difficult. My sense is we don’t have a lot of time.
“Shields?” Captain Zenke asked tentatively.
The other captains looked puzzled.
“They have shields,” Zenke explained. “That means they are vulnerable to attack unless they use their shields—what isn’t?”
“And that helps us how?” asked Jones, looking over at Jamal, who shrugged.
“If these pods or ships—they really are small ships, but pods will do, I guess—if they are in orbit and powered down, and we could find them to hit them with attack missiles and torpedoes, we’d destroy them.”
“But we can’t detect them,” one of the cruiser captains pointed out.
“We can,” said Zenke, “after they power up. If we detonate some warheads in orbit near the altitude we found the others, then those that risk being damaged would power up so they could use their shields. They’d have the choice of revealing their positions or being destroyed. Either way, it lets us detect them. Then we could paint them before they powered back down.”
“That’s risky,” said the battleship captain who had spoken first.
“What if we sent in the heavy fighters?” asked Jamal. “They could hit a pod with a torpedo fairly quickly after it powered up. They could also engage with their laser cannon.”
Jones began to form an idea. “How long does it take for a BPL warhead to target and fire?” That brought nods and smiles from the captains. “Just over 0.15 seconds,” Jones continued. “We could fire BPL warheads in a salvo, then chase it with some standard attack-missile warheads. Command detonations of the attack missiles would flush out the pods, and then we could target them with a BPL warhead before they were even able to fire or fully power up their shields. Powering up their shields takes them a few seconds. Besides, a BPL warhead will penetrate these shields. They do that on other Globur ships.”
“Missile pods may get their missiles away,” pointed out Captain Jamal. “We’d need to target the pods redundantly. Targeting on the BPL warheads is fine for something like a warship, but these pods are smaller, and the chances of a miss may be much higher.”
“Well, the new sword-class destroyers have the best missile-interdiction systems we have yet produced.” Jones shrugged at the thought. “The heavy fighters could do double duty to take down missiles. They could survive a beam hit from one of the pods, but I don’t think light and medium fighters would stand much of a chance if they were targeted. Not at point-blank range.”
