Fleet ops box set, p.69
Fleet Ops Box Set, page 69
Chapter 33
Combat Information Center
UHC Providence
Calder’s spider-like frame didn’t fit into anything like a chair on the CIC. It was too long and sinewy, for one, but also the power in his lower limbs concerned the marines. In the end, a makeshift restraining device was put into use. Calder’s head-like appendage stuck out from a sturdy harness that covered most of his body, designed to protect him from impacts to the ship and also to deny him freedom of movement. His head looked more like an enormous thumb sticking out of the top than anything else—a thumb with bulbous eyes, a tiny nose, and a wide-open mouth.
It was a little comical, but it would have to do. The marines wouldn’t allow him on the CIC without restraints of some kind. Frankly, Husher would have requested it if they hadn’t.
“Are you sure we’re getting close?” Iver asked.
“No,” Calder answered, his voice translating through a device nestled inside the harness.
“No?” Iver said.
“No,” Calder repeated. “I don’t have access to your equipment. I can’t see what your navigator has plotted or your helmsman has executed. In short, I know nothing since you have me locked inside this…thing.”
“We’ve followed your directions precisely,” Daniels said. He was once again the third wheel in his own CIC, or was it fourth now with the Yin here? Iver was in the captain’s seat, and Husher in the first officer’s seat.
The alien whistled. “If you did, then you should know better than me if we are getting close or not.”
Iver glanced at Lieutenant Fisher at navigation. She nodded back. “Half a minute, sir.”
The admiral grunted and sat back, his demeanor indicating that it would have been easier if the creature had just told him that, even though Husher was sure the Yin was right. Who knew what he saw when he looked at the big display in the CIC?
“Is there anything else in-system that could help us even the odds?” Husher asked.
Calder turned his cold eyes on him. “Other than a shipyard where you can effect repairs on all your ships using our superior technology?”
The shipyard in question was where Calder was directing them. He claimed it would give them everything they needed and more. They were about to find out.
“We’re here, sir,” said Lieutenant Bosh as the helmsman dropped the Providence down in speed.
“Let’s see it,” Iver said.
The main screen showed a complex of large floating platforms. There were dozens of them. All were more or less the same shape: long, flat, and rectangular, with a few protrusions along opposite sides. They orbited in extremely close proximity to each other, with the corner of one platform only a short distance from the corner of the next.
Along a handful of the platforms were ships. Husher knew instantly they were Yin ships from the shape and size of them. They had the characteristic round styling that he associated with Yin designs. He wondered if, inside, they had the same strange variations of gravity that he’d encountered previously.
On that note, he wondered if that same gravity-inducing power was the reason the platforms appeared to be staying so uniformly in formation, even though there was no obvious mooring between them and he couldn’t see anything like thrusters that would be used to move them.
“What am I looking at?” Iver asked.
“The shipyards,” Calder said. “The biggest in the system.”
“Sir, these platforms….” The sensor officer turned. “We could dock half the battle group next to just one of them.”
Husher looked again at the screen. Now that the sensor officer had given him that sense of scale, he realized the docked Yin ships were enormous. Larger than any single structure he’d ever seen, outside of a space station.
“You asked if there was anything else here that could help you even the odds?” Calder said to Husher. “Well, there you go.” His thumb-like head swayed forward, indicating that he could indeed see what they did on the viewscreen.
“What?” Husher asked, confused.
“Do you see the largest ship docked?”
“Yes.” The mammoth vessel had an entire platform to itself, and in fact, it dwarfed that platform. Which meant that the ship—a single ship—was larger than half the entire battle group. “What is that?” Husher breathed.
“That is the Tunderall,” Calder said. “The most advanced battle cruiser ever devised by my people. It boasts not only rail cannons but also the most powerful forward plasma cannon we ever put on a ship. At close enough range, it can destroy planets.”
“It’s not finished, though, is it?” Iver said. He’d stood and moved closer to the video screen, even though he could’ve asked the sensor operator to magnify it.
“It is mostly completed,” Calder said. “It was due for a maiden voyage in just a few weeks.” He sighed. “It was to be our finest instrument of war, meant to strike a fatal blow against the Brood.”
“Too little, too late,” Husher remarked.
“Indeed.”
“It’s the story of a lot of wars,” Husher said. “In our history, too.”
“It’s the story of my entire race’s destruction.”
Iver glanced at Husher, then at Calder. “Maybe we can finish what you started.”
Calder shook his head. “In all honestly, I don’t care anymore. There is little left for me to care about. My family is gone. My friends are gone. My…everything is gone. If you want to try to turn the tide on the Brood, I will do everything I can to help you.” He hesitated. “But please don’t try to pretend that you’re here to honor the memory of my people or anything that we achieved.”
The rebuke seemed to take some of the energy out of the CIC.
“Very well,” Iver said. “We will simply do what must be done to stop the Brood.”
“And in that, you have my blessing.”
“Will you be able to help us activate the vessel?” Husher asked. “I doubt that it will be an easy task.”
“Most assuredly not,” Calder said. “Your task is much harder than you think.”
Daniels frowned at that. He’d been listening in on the conversation. “We have scientists that can help with the transition.”
Calder shook his head. “It’s not that. I’m sure we can make use of the battle cruiser.”
“So what is it, then?” Husher asked, a hunch already forming.
“The construction site is protected by automated defenses.”
“What kind of defenses?”
“Like I said, this was to be our crown jewel. You have to understand that it had to be protected from outside forces, not least the Brood. The defensive capabilities protecting it are…extensive.”
“They must be good,” McBane noted from Tactical. “The Brood left it alone completely.”
“The Brood probably could have overwhelmed the defenses if they wanted to,” Calder admitted. “But it seems they have no use for starships, at least not ours. So they left it alone.”
“What of the other ships here? Can we use those?”
“All in various states of construction, but none as far along as the Tunderall.”
“Can we tell these automated defenses to stand down?” Iver asked. “Tell it that we’re friendly? Do you have any credentials we can offer?”
Calder scoffed. “Maybe if this were a Scion ship. But I have nothing that can override Yin defenses.”
“Will they stop us from using the rest of the shipyards?”
“No. In fact, the rest of the station will be in perfect working order. As I said, the Brood showed no interest in destroying it.”
“So we can get the rest of our ships as well repaired as we can, then,” Husher said to Iver.
“Agreed. And we can check munitions and see if there’s anything we can use.”
Husher turned to Calder. “Will you join us at the shipyards to help us figure out how to use whatever’s available to repair our ships?”
“As I’ve indicated,” Calder said, sounding slightly annoyed with Husher this time. “I have little else to live for at this point, other than to keep my captors alive and see those that destroyed my people destroyed in turn.”
“For a man after revenge, you sound very level-headed.”
“I’m a Yin,” Calder said, and Husher wondered what ‘man’ got translated as. “This is how we are.”
“Understood,” Husher said. “And when we’ve done all the repairs we can, we’ll have to see about the Tunderall.”
Calder nodded. “Very well.”
“Since we won’t be able to override the defenses, what are our options?” Husher asked.
“I can probably disable them from the ship itself.”
“But that doesn’t help us get there in the first place,” Husher said. “Any ideas for that?”
Calder turned to look at him. For a long moment, he just studied Husher’s face. The pause grew uncomfortable. At last, Calder said, “You’ll have to defeat them.”
Chapter 34
Python Air Group
Battle Group Nearspace
Fesky watched as the last of the battle group ships pulled away from the two platforms they’d been using to enact repairs.
It was still stunning to her that all the ships in the battle group could look so small next to this enormous structure. The worst-damaged of the ships, including a pair of oxygen recyclers and a fuel recycler, were repaired directly on one of the platforms, while the larger ships had their hulls patched and weapons reset to the greatest extent possible.
Yin weapons were mostly useless to the battle group. None of their ammunition could be launched from human ships. But at least there was plenty of material to quickly manufacture impactors for their railguns.
They worked in shifts on repairing ships while at least one destroyer and one cruiser remained on patrol, circling the group so they could make sure they weren’t surprised by the Brood.
So far, so good. But Fesky knew as well as anyone that their luck couldn’t last.
“All right,” O’Malley said to the full air group. “We’ve had a few days to study these things, and our Yin friend has outlined what makes them tick. So we know what’s coming.”
Fesky wasn’t so sure about that. But the Yin had told them the automated weapons would be pulse-energy mounted cannons.
“Blue, Gold, and Red Squadrons, we’re taking the fire and opening up a lane for the Aces. They’re escorting the mechs down along with our Yin friend—and hopefully getting those damn things turned off.”
There were a number of return calls from the various squadron leaders confirming their assignments. Which was little more than a formality at this point. Everyone knew what they were doing. The mission had been planned for days now.
“On my six,” Fesky said over the private channel between her team and Oneiri Team following behind. The mechs had formed up, and were now in formation behind Fesky’s Black Aces squadron.
“Right here,” Jake said. “And ready to do this.”
Directly behind the mechs was the shuttle that carried the Yin. It was imperative that they protect it at all costs. Of course, she didn’t say this over her com. Unlike O’Malley, she didn’t feel the need to repeat the mission to her team. They knew what they were up against.
“Here we go!” Gold leader said as his team dove toward the huge Yin battleship.
Instantly a series of ports on the rectangular shipyard spun around, revealing large extended tubes. They glowed blue for a moment, then discharged pulses of energy that seemed to spear through space like giant shooting stars.
Gold Squadron spread out their formation, opening like a flower with every fighter in the squadron exploding out and away from the platform. They were juicy targets for the weapons, with their bellies exposed and their afterburners firing.
On cue, the Pythons fired Sidewinders. As Calder had predicted, when the big pulse cannons saw those, they went for them, firing a steady stream of their shooting stars.
The Gold Squadron Pythons cut their afterburners and spun away, using their momentum through space to make quick distance between them and the Sidewinders.
“Round two!” Red leader said, and the second squadron of Pythons linked up on the same vector.
“That’s our cue,” Fesky said.
Her own squadron followed on her six, and the mechs and shuttle dove toward the big battle cruiser’s main cargo bay. They weren’t sure what they would find inside it, but based on conversations with Calder, it seemed the Tunderall wasn’t fully equipped with the strange gravity they’d encountered inside the Yin science station or on the nearby asteroid cities.
That would be a welcome change, as Fesky had no desire to see how her ships would perform inside the cargo bay of a Yin ship with strange gravity at work. Deeper inside the ship, however, all bets were off. That was Jake’s department.
“Halfway home,” Jake said. The mechs and Pythons were now running down the “stem” of the flower formation of the other squadrons.
Blue Squadron was now drawing the interest of the cannons. Just a little further and—
“What the hell are those?”
It was her wingmate, Pixie, that said it, but Fesky had seen them at the same moment the others had. The forward landing bay of the battle cruiser, the very point that they were now headed for at full throttle, had opened up. And out of it buzzed a cloud of small objects angling straight up at the group.
Fesky thought for a moment that they were projectiles. Then she saw one of them adjust its attitude. A change in its shape told her it was also deploying a weapons assembly
“Nobody said anything about drones,” Eightball said.
“Gold Squadron, weapons hot!” Fesky snapped. “Dive for targets. Oneiri, support and punch through at your discretion.”
With that, the com link to Oneiri died, and Fesky concentrated on the forms coming at her.
“I’ve got a shot on three high,” Eightball said.
“Nine even,” Fesky replied, calling out the sector of space she was firing on a moment before she let loose with a string of kinetic impactors.
The drones, which looked like modified versions of the Yin fighters they’d seen elsewhere on the shipyards, began evasive maneuvers. But the forward ships were much too slow to react. Fesky’s shots ripped through a pair of them, sending shrapnel spinning away.
She glanced out of the corner of her eye and saw her wingmate was having similar success.
“They’re dumb drones,” Syndle said. The Winger was a new addition to the squadron.
“There are lots of them, though,” Damon said. “We can spread out to get more.”
“Don’t leave the mechs,” Fesky snapped.
She watched as the bay of the big battle cruiser loomed larger. Inside, it was empty. It looked like it was still under construction, in fact.
Energy signatures lit up on the sides of the big ship around the bay. Seconds later, it dawned on her what was happening, and why the Yin hadn’t been able to tell her about it. This wasn’t the shipyard’s defenses. This was the mammoth ship’s own defenses.
“Target port-side railguns,” Fesky said.
“On the shipyard?” Pixie asked in confusion.
“On the battle cruiser,” Fesky said quickly. “On the damn ship.”
She began firing frantically on the hull just as the big railguns came around. The rest of her squadron belatedly followed her lead.
Two Pythons were hit. At this close range, the damage was catastrophic. They were instantly ripped open, their critical systems destroyed. One exploded instantly. The other spun, losing control, and smashed into the side of the battle cruiser, ripping a chunk of its hull away with it.
Oh look, we’re even destroying the ships we didn’t arrive in.
“We’re in,” Jake said.
It surprised Fesky. She hadn’t realized they had coms with Oneiri again—or that the mechs had made it through. But now she saw they were nowhere to be found in space. They were all inside the landing bay. “Aces, break and go!”
Fesky pulled up hard, and her Python roared over the face of the ship, then showed her belly to it as she fired her afterburners.
Now she had a taste of how exposed her fellow pilots had felt when they’d flown the same course earlier—even as she lined up her shot on a hull-mounted railgun. “Fire Sidewinders!”
“Firing!” came the answer from several of her pilots.
Missiles arced toward several of the battle cruiser’s hard points as railgun fire zipped through space around her fighter, narrowly missing her.
She waited several beats, then once again engaged her thrusters, this time at half power, and surged away from the ship. She looked back and saw the rest of her team forming up around her, well clear of the ship’s defensive fire.
They still had the shipyard pulse cannons to worry about, but the other squadrons had continued their covering patterns and were keeping them busy.
“God speed, Oneiri,” she said. “And good luck.”
Chapter 35
Oneiri Team
Yin Battle Cruiser Tunderall
“Asset is on the ground,” Jake called out as the shuttle they’d escorted opened to let the strange creature emerge into the even stranger landing bay.
He checked over his mech, and found no damage. Thankfully, while the repair teams had used Yin mechs to work on the warships, Jake and the others had been able to effect repairs on every MIMAS mech that had sustained damage over the last several weeks—which was pretty much every mech in the battle group.
But that didn’t change the fact that he wasn’t piloting the state-of-the-art mech he’d come to this strange universe with. He was now on his third backup mech, and repaired though it might be, it was a reminder that they were working off the scraps they had left.
Calder approached Jake, then nodded silently up at him.
“Do we have any idea how long this is going to take?” Moe asked.
