Brink of Destruction, page 28
Violaire was shaking badly now. Hardly befitting a combat leader, but Draven had already known what she was. Yun knew even better, and while there was a faint hint of disgust on his face, he too seemed utterly unsurprised by her behavior.
Drass, for his part, repeated his two-handed salute with a faint bow. He seemed utterly unfazed by the veiled threats of torture that his master had spoken. He was probably entirely used to the concept. Maybe he had even supervised it among those who were now his followers. Draven found himself looking at their once-prisoner, now-jailer with new eyes, eyes even less friendly than before.
It was entirely possible that Drass had been captured and tortured into becoming the man who had blandly supervised their captivity at the hands of these aliens. That did not make Draven sympathize much.
The vithang emissary had already turned away, part of the dais sinking into the floor to open the way for him to slither toward the opening where the alien honor guard had entered. Drass turned back the way they’d come, beckoning, his own guards already starting to move toward the doorway.
Draven felt Breck’s eyes on him, and he met the captain’s gaze. Breck looked at the nearest guard, then back to Draven, who nodded slightly.
The guards didn’t seem to be worried, even as the strange wailing alarm continued. They were barely looking at the two officers and two senior non-coms, presumably still confident in their weapons and the fact that the Zolarians were unarmored and unarmed.
Draven had seen that same complacency over the many uncounted hours since their surrender. The aliens’ human servants seemed to think there was nothing the Zolarians could or would do, especially being cut off and as far from help and home as they were.
He felt the tension rise as they followed Drass and his escort through the gaping portal in the vast wall. He glanced over his shoulder to see that Rathavas and the alien soldiers had vanished. A glance at Breck only prompted a slight hand signal. Not yet.
The door irised shut behind them, and they were alone in the hallway, turning back toward the chamber where the rest of the surviving Zolarians were imprisoned. At least, Draven thought that was the right direction. He was having some difficulty keeping track in the dark, featureless labyrinth of the vithang base.
Breck was moving closer to the nearest guard, and Draven did the same on the other side of the hallway. They had both fallen back to the very rear of the little formation, and Draven thought he could see what the captain had planned. He glanced over his shoulder again, to see that they were alone in the dark, blue-lit hallway. That wouldn’t necessarily hold for long, as the wailing got more insistent, but for the moment there were only the four Zolarians, six enemy soldiers, and Drass.
He was within arm’s reach of the guard, who ignored him, seemingly more concerned with what was going on elsewhere, his helmeted head lifted toward the overhead, a muffled voice asking something over their comms. Draven couldn’t make out the words, or even the language, but he was fairly certain that the man was asking his fellows if they had any idea what was going on.
They came around a bend, Draven saw that they were still alone, and then Breck moved.
He struck low at first, kicking the guard savagely in the knee. He hit just right to send the joint moving the wrong way, bending sideways with a sickening crunch, just before the captain drove his shoulder into the man and slammed him against the wall, his hands seeking out the bulbous, bell-mouthed energy weapon and clamping down before the brainwashed soldier even had a chance to scream.
Draven was on his own man in the same instant, his attack only slightly less brutal than his commander’s. He targeted a knee, kicking the man’s leg out from under him as he seized the helmet and wrenched it backward with all his strength. He felt something pop and the guard went limp, the weapon slithering from slack fingers. Draven scooped it up just as a dazzlingly bright bolt lit up the dark passageway.
Breck had just shot his own antagonist in the head from point-blank range.
Draven was unconcerned at the moment with the man at his feet, and he quickly put a bright, yellowish energy blast into the first guard ahead of him. The man was turning in shock at the sudden violence, and the bolt punched through his armpit, just inside the carapace. He fell, smoking, to the dark, pebbly floor.
Breck had already dispatched the other two on his side, but as Draven swung his captured weapon toward the last, Yun slammed into the man, getting hands on his weapon as he drove a knee into the unarmored groin. Seeing that Yun had things under control, Draven turned his attention back to the man at his feet, who was starting to recover and come off the floor, and blew his head into steaming fragments with a single bolt.
Violaire had started to scream, but was cut off as Breck shot her through the throat, not even hesitating before he shifted and put a final bolt through Drass’s back as their captors’ intermediary tried to flee. Drass crumpled to the floor, flames licking at the remains of his coat.
Yun succeeded in wresting the weapon from his opponent’s hands, and hesitated no more than Breck before he shot the man through the faceplate.
Then he turned toward Breck and Draven, the captured energy weapon held ready. He wasn’t in the position of a man among friends. He was ready to fight, and after a second, Draven realized that he was ready to fight the Able Company leaders if needed.
“Stand down, First Sergeant.” Captain Breck’s voice was low and deadly.
“As soon as I’m sure you’re not going to kill me like you killed Captain Violaire,” Yun replied.
“She was a traitor, and you know it. She would have sold us out to the vithang and its servants in a heartbeat. You’re every bit as sure of that as I am.” Breck wasn’t pointing his weapon at Yun, but he was ready to shoot him if need be. Draven took a step to the side, closer to the wall, and he was pointing his weapon at his fellow first sergeant.
No one moved for the next few seconds, seconds that felt like hours. Yun’s eyes moved from Breck to Draven, though his muzzle didn’t move. Finally, he took a hand off the captured weapon and raised it in conciliation. “There was no love lost between us, but she was still my commanding officer. Given our current circumstances, I will not try to fight you over it.” He straightened. “But when—or if—we return to Zolah, there will be a reckoning. Summary execution is not our way.”
Breck almost sneered. “The ways of democracy are good for domestic tranquility, but not for war. I was the ranking officer, and I did what needed to be done, before she betrayed us further. Now gather up the rest of the weapons and let’s get back to the bay. We have to move quickly.”
CHAPTER 36
Bannon wiped the sweat from his brow, glad to have his helmet off, if only for a few minutes. The breach was sealed, and the worst of the damage seemed to be repaired, allowing the infantry to move back to their berthing compartments and hopefully get some rest before being needed again.
The spacers were doing most of the technical repairs—the Thunderer had taken a bad hit during the third strike by the ghost ships on the way in toward the alien base—but when a starship was holed, it wasn’t a time for the ground pounders to sit on their hands. With his phalanx berthed closest to the damage, Bannon had led the way to offer what help they could.
The fires had been doused by onboard fire suppression before they’d even really gotten going, but working with emergency hull plating and structural reinforcements under three gees was brutal, no matter how tough the Corvanite warriors were.
He was halfway back to the berthing, following Sergeant Summ, when the alert came over all internal comms. “Stand by for freefall. Secure all equipment and prepare for loss of gravity. Five minutes.”
That was new. As far as he knew, they weren’t due for orbital insertion—if they even were going to risk orbital insertion over the brown dwarf—for almost another day. The task force was in deceleration phase, their drives pointed toward the target, even though the alien base was on the far side of the brown dwarf at the moment.
Summ hesitated, looking back at him, and he waved toward their berthing. Yes, it was far more fatiguing to keep walking under three gees, but he also didn’t want to be out in the passageway when the thrust cut out.
They had just reached the hatch when the overhead lights flashed and the warning sounded again. “Thrust ceasing in five, four, three, two…”
Bannon had already activated his mag boots. They were required aboard ship, for just such emergencies as this. The distant rumble of the drives died away, and he felt a sense of buoyancy as his weight lifted.
It was far easier to reach their berthing in freefall, and they were there in minutes. Commander Fox had moved more quickly, and he was waiting for them, still in his own hardsuit, with his helmet on.
Bannon looked around at the rest of First Squad, which had preceded Summ, and saw that all were in full hardsuits, helmets included. He breathed a sigh of relief. He’d taken his own helmet off to wipe away the sweat, but being without a helmet in a combat situation aboard ship was a violation of operating procedures that could get a man in serious trouble—along with the leaders who were responsible for him.
“What’s happening, sir? Why did we cut thrust?”
Fox looked around at the gathered Corvanites, some of them attaching themselves to the bulkheads or overhead to get closer so they could hear.
There was an eagerness in the atmosphere of the compartment, one that might have seemed odd to an outsider. But this was a special tasks phalanx. These warriors were the kind who lived for the fight. Whatever the commander had to say, none were going to miss it, regardless of the fatigue accumulated by working damage control under three gees.
“Change of plans,” Fox rumbled. “The ghost ships appear to be shifting their defensive strategy, and have disappeared behind the brown dwarf. We believe they are massing around the base, concentrating their firepower for our approach. Our velocity and readiness to fight has so far inflicted more damage on them than they have managed to inflict on us, and the Colossus is holding her own better than we could have hoped. They appear to be reassessing, and it is agreed that as soon as we enter orbit and come over the limb, we will likely be met by overwhelming firepower from the base and the ghost ships combined.
“Therefore, we are changing our approach. Having cut thrust, the starships will maintain this vector and conduct a high-velocity pass while the assault shuttles and the starfighters move in low above the brown dwarf’s atmosphere. The starships will brake once they are past and curve around into orbit, but by then we should be aboard the base.”
“‘We,’ sir?” Bannon raised an eyebrow behind his visor. While Corvanite culture ordinarily mandated that a leader actually lead, often the harsh realities of combat required that a commander in Fox’s position stay at a distance and direct the battle, particularly one of this magnitude.
“Yes, we.” Bannon was sure Fox fixed him with a stare, even though the blank visors provided no read on expressions. “Starship combat is not my forte. Ground combat is, and there will be too much delay to direct the fight if I stay aboard the Thunderer. I will join your phalanx and set up the command center in the foothold once it is taken.”
He kept watching Bannon, almost as if daring his subordinate officer to suggest that there was more to his decision than the practicality of communications over interplanetary distances. It did make sense—there was no telling how far out the starships were going to go before they reached aphelion and began to descend toward the brown dwarf again, and the vagaries of orbital dynamics and space warfare might very well put the assault force entirely on its own for a long period of time—but Bannon nevertheless suspected that he knew why Commander Fox had really made this decision.
The commander would not be in his position were he not a veteran and a formidable warrior in his own right. Yet from Zhogalgan to this nameless, dark, cold system in the middle of nowhere, he had been relegated to coordination and command from a distance. As a Corvanite, he had to be itching to get in the fight again, and there had to be some element of chagrin that he had, so far, been more like a Zolarian or one of their other rivals, directing the battle from a position of safety. That was not the Corvanite way, not the way they’d been taught on the agoge field, or since they’d been boys.
Bannon didn’t say that. He probably didn’t need to. Every man in that compartment had served under Fox for a long time. They knew their commander. And Fox knew it as well.
“Launch is in two hours. Make sure everything is prepped.” Bannon could almost hear the wolfish grin in the commander’s voice. “And be ready for some high gees.”
CHAPTER 37
The docking clamps released with a clunk, the thrusters fired with a series of pops, and the assault shuttle was out of the bay and in space.
Bannon was strapped in, but he had the shuttle’s tactical feed piped into his visor. That would change as soon as they docked—provided they survived all the way to the alien base—but for now he could monitor just as well as Commander Fox, who loomed in the acceleration couch next to him.
The Thunderer’s medical staff had decided that the gees were not going to be quite high enough for the fluid cells. Bannon was glad for that—it always felt like drowning, getting prepped with the hyper-oxygenated fluid that was intended to fill the lungs and keep them from collapsing under high acceleration—but he’d seen the thrust plan.
This was going to hurt.
The assault shuttles were falling away from the starships on thrusters, their drives primed but not yet burning, the starfighters already forming up ahead of them with similar bursts of maneuvering thrusters. The entire formation would be well away from the starships before they engaged their drives.
Below, the dull red of the brown dwarf glowed like a sullen coal. The task force had waited until they were within a high orbit’s radius to launch, which put the assault shuttles and their starfighter escorts within a short flight of coming over the limb of the failed star and within line of sight of the alien base. Timing was vital, and even as carefully planned as the operation was, it would take only a few factors—including a sudden attack by the ghost ships—to render the entire plan a disaster.
For the moment, as a passenger, Bannon could only watch as the assault formation fell away from the cluster of starships, their angular shapes dwindling until only the Colossus, in all her massive, lethal glory, was clearly visible, and even then probably not to the naked eye.
There was a chrono in the corner of his visor display, but he didn’t look at it much. He knew it would be moving far too slowly as his heart thudded in his ears.
He just wanted to get through the inevitable wall of enemy fire and somewhere he could fight.
Then the drives lit, burning savagely as the gees stacked up, and it became all he could do just to breathe.
***
The shuttles were in coast phase as they came over the limb of the brown dwarf and within sight of their target.
The ferocious drive burn that had nearly made Bannon black out had put the starfighters and assault shuttles in an extremely low orbit, the shuttles almost skimming the tops of the swirling clouds that floated above the low-grade thermonuclear furnace at the object’s core. The heat was building in the shuttle this close to the dwarf, but it was still bearable.
And now the enemy base loomed ahead, close enough to the brown dwarf that even its dull blackness was lit from below by the red fire from the depths. It looked even more like a malignant spider from this angle, the docking arms seeming to sag toward the brown dwarf’s atmosphere, while more of the ghost ships, almost invisible except where the tactical display outlined them, were thrusting up out of the failed star’s gravity well, trading fire with the starships that were already hundreds of thousands of miles away, moving faster than the aliens had apparently expected.
The shuttle’s pilot rotated the wedge-shaped vessel’s nose toward their target, lining it up with the vector that would be needed to bring them in. It was not going to be as bad as the orbital insertion burn, but it still was going to be high gees with a lot of violent maneuvering before they could get aboard.
If they could get aboard at all.
“Thirty seconds to burn!” Despite the water he’d sucked through his helmet’s sustainment tube, and the brief rest as they’d coasted above the lurid sea of fire and cloud below them, Bannon’s voice was still a harsh croak, and he ached.
Light flashed out in the dark above as energy weapons found clouds of chaff or “smoke,” or evaded the countermeasures and struck armor, either the armored tiles of Corvanite starships or the dark, strangely textured hulls of the ghost ships. The fight was joined, even as the real attack came closer to the target.
Starfighter drives lit, brilliant sparks in the dimness, and the Dragon 27s and Xiphos 40s began their attack runs. Bannon braced himself, taking short, sharp breaths to keep his lungs from fully emptying before the weight got bad enough that he’d have a hard time refilling them.
The press of acceleration wasn’t nearly as bad this time, though it still squashed him down into his acceleration couch. Two of the ghost ships ceased their own acceleration and pivoted toward the base and the brown dwarf, alerted by the lighting of drives that they had been drawn away from their charge.
The starfighters had already split, half of the Dragon 27s pushing higher to cover for the rest as they made their attack run on the station. Now they hit their main drives, expending some precious delta-v but putting themselves on an intercept course with the closing ghost ships. Missiles were already getting kicked out of ordnance bays, going active and racing toward the dark ovoids on brilliant tongues of fire.
More weapons, missiles and beams alike, were targeting spots on the station as it loomed closer. The spiderlike construct was behind the assault shuttles, all but occluded by the flares of their drive plumes, but the collected imagery on the tactical net showed Bannon the flares of impacts and beam strikes on the spreading docking arms, though more of the missiles seemed to be detonating in flight than reaching their targets.
