First contact, p.27
First Contact, page 27
Harold rolled to his side, then to his knees, while the three drones flew back to the bracer she wore on her wrist.
“You okay, Doc?” Tempest asked.
Dr Griffin gave a brusque wave before rushing towards the door.
“You’re welcome,” Serene said.
A face appeared in the corner of Harold’s glasses, and a voice was broadcast through their arms. “Why are you three still on the platform?” Sean asked.
“What’s going on?” Serene said.
“We’re under attack,” Sean said. “Why aren’t you on the shuttle?”
“We wanted to show Harold the view,” Serene said.
“Yep, and I saw way more of it than I want,” Harold said.
“There were only three mercenaries at Lenham House,” Sean said. “We knew more would come. Once they accept a commission, they won’t abandon it. So get to the shuttle, and get back to Earth.”
“You were expecting an attack?” Serene asked, but Sean had ended the call. “He and I are going to have serious words when this is over,” Serene said.
“Me, too,” Tempest said. “But for now, let’s do what he says.”
Chapter 35 - Earth Force One
“They nearly killed our kids,” Sean said as he pulled the needle from his arm, spilling a viscous orange fluid to the floor.
“Your treatment isn’t complete,” Celeste said. She sat at the end of the medical bed, reading a well-thumbed copy of Fuzzy Nation.
“The rest can wait. We’re under attack,” Sean said.
“Speaking with certainty doesn’t make you correct,” Celeste said.
“You heard the alarm, you saw the external feeds,” Sean said.
“I heard the alarm, but I am not integrated into this battle-station’s systems.”
“Then take it from me, we’re under attack,” Sean said. He rolled down his sleeve. He swung himself up, stood, and almost collapsed. Celeste dropped the book as she caught Sean’s arm. “Humans are too eager to become heroes,” she said.
“Says the woman who armed King Arthur.”
“Arthur was never a king,” she said, taking a long cylinder from a drawer beneath the medical bed. “Ask, and I will act.”
“Not now. Too much is at stake. This has to be us and us alone,” Sean said. “It looks like a Qu-Zee scout ship slipped in behind Jupiter’s gravity well. This is barely serious.”
“And yet serious enough for you to skip the rest of your treatment,” she said. “This will hurt.”
“No change there,” Sean said.
She pressed the trigger. As the stimulant burned through his veins, it felt as if every nerve ending was dragged across glass. The sensation lasted an eternity as he was wrung out, crushed, powdered, then re-cemented into his own skin.
“Don’t be a hero,” she said, as he walked to the med-bay door. “Be a victor.”
Unsteadily, Sean made his way down to the fighter bay, summoning data on the attack while also undressing. Tie, waistcoat, and shirt were dropped as he reviewed the long-range sensors. One ship had attacked them. Just one. An old imperial scout ship, designed to jump into a system and rain fire and fear on a rebellious outpost before the alarm could be raised. The first barrage had only been a success because it was unexpected, and because it was targeting the platform’s one structural weak spot, but the peace-platform was no Death Star.
He kicked off a shoe, and then the other as he brought up a projected damage report. Even if the entire enemy barrage had got through, they would only have lost eight labs, three dormitories, twelve storerooms, the cafe, and anyone inside that section of the battle-station. No critical systems would have been damaged since, during the retrofit, they knew full well that window represented a weakness.
The attack had been timed for that moment the platform had left Jupiter’s orbit, when their motion and Jupiter’s mass created a blindspot in their sensors. That not only suggested planning, but co-ordination, just like with those drones in Lincolnshire.
He dropped his trousers outside the hangar. As he entered the crew area, he belatedly remembered that they had already scrambled both fighter wings, sending most either to the Kuiper Belt, or to lunar orbit. The much-reduced combat space-patrol had been deployed, leaving no ships, and no flight suits, behind.
Except there were flight suits. One hundred which, like the amphitheatre, had been designed for when Earth’s leaders were invited aboard. The suits were for any scientist who wished to undertake a space walk, lunar landing, or a fly-by of the peace-platform. They’d never been used. As he waited for them to be brought up from storage, and as a distraction from the lingering pain in every bone, he brought up footage of the attack.
Only three sooval mercenaries had skipped to the lake in Lincolnshire, but their criminal gang had over five thousand members. When their leadership decided those three had failed, they would send in a second, much larger group to either complete the mission or inflict enough retributory destruction to maintain the stable’s brutal reputation. He’d been banking on that, but it should have taken weeks for the second team to attack, by which time the platform would have been in orbit around Earth. This attack had come far too soon on the heels of the first, and it had come here, rather than being aimed at Earth.
The flight suits arrived. He opened the container, and tugged on blue and green trousers, jacket, boots, helmet, and gloves. The material was stiff but lightweight, and light-years better than anything an Earth astronaut had ever worn. Now he just needed something to fly. With all of the ageing saucers deployed, there was only one ship left. Logging himself in as the pilot, he entered the tubular elevator that took him straight to the ship.
The Ree-Bee Attack Wing had originally been conceived as a post-imperial replacement for the flying saucers. The original commission had been for an in-system defence craft that could fight in orbit and atmosphere, could both hop and skip, had artificial gravity, twice the weaponry of a saucer, and four times the airlift capacity. Over time, and well over budget, the impossibility of the task led to a string of compromises resulting in a starship too small to contain the life support systems for long-range patrols, too lightly armoured to hunt the asteroid belts for stray pirates, but far too big to dock on anything smaller than a battle cruiser. With a thousand hulls already finished, Sean had bought them as a job lot, and ordered ten thousand more. As much as he wanted Earth to have its own defensive fleet, the goodwill and support of the trade union running the shipyard was far more critical to Earth’s long-term survival.
He’d stipulated that the ships be retrofitted for a sapiens pilot, with English-language displays and alphanumeric controls. Even then, he’d had to covertly alter the design of terrestrial cockpits to better match that of the already-designed flying wing. For decades, sapiens pilots had flown overly complex machines so as to ease the transition to star-fighter. Unfortunately, Sean had never learned to fly an aeroplane.
“There’s no time better than the present,” he said, and ordered the flying-wing’s release. The ship dropped into the launch tunnel. With a jolt, it was propelled from the platform. As he left the peace-platform’s gravity, he felt the glorious sensation of weightlessness and momentary relief from his bone-rotting agony.
The enemy ship was maintaining its distance. Though its missiles had been destroyed, it had launched a wave of small drones that were now targeting the flying saucers. Those ships maintained their defensive formation except when performing an evasive spin or an attacking dive to destroy a drone.
“Here we go,” Sean said, and linked into the defensive network. “This is Ree-Bee-One, joining the fight,” he said, speaking in the common Mid-Tow tongue.
“Sean? Are you stealing Earth-Force-One?” Gunther asked, radioing a reply.
“We agreed never to call it that,” Sean said. “What’s the situation?”
“For incorrect radio discipline, I should ground you,” Gunther replied. “One Qu-Zee scout ship skipped into orbit perilously close to Jupiter’s gravitational well. Under cover of the planet, they made their approach, targeting the platform’s structural weak points. They didn’t attack our weapon systems or the engines.”
“But if they knew the weak points, they must have a structural plan,” Sean said. “They could have attacked our weapons or engines, and they would surely have known hitting the window would do no real damage. This is just a distraction.”
“And if you had not arrived late, you would have heard me say just that,” Gunther said.
The enemy ship blinked yellow on his danger-board. “Why haven’t you destroyed the ship?” Sean asked.
“Because I think that is what they want us to do,” Gunther said. “Even with surprise on their side, they did little damage. Based on the size of the barrage, they will have few missiles left. I am preparing for what is next.”
“Aren’t you always telling me that sometimes you have to trigger a trap?” Sean said. “I’ll go after their ship. If I can disable it, we can board and pick up some clues on what’s really going on here.”
“I thought you said you didn’t want to be a general,” Gunther said.
“Then I’ll ask for your permission,” Sean said.
“Today truly is a historic day,” Gunther said.
Sean set his target, letting the ship’s AI pick an evasive approach vector, then nearly lost consciousness as the ship accelerated.
Annoyingly, the figures on his sapiens-friendly display were in metric rather than Valley-standard, or the imperial units he’d been unable to unlearn since his youth. One thousand two hundred and thirty four kilometres per hour, Mach 1, the speed of sound, was passed utterly unheard in the silent expanse. Mach 2, 3, 4, and back to Mach 1 as he evaded the last of the semi-autonomous drones.
As the pain receded, he maximised the three-dimensional plot of the battle space. The platform was shaped like a pentagon, though it was built like a gobstopper. As with the flying saucers, the exterior was a defensive shell to which new layers were added to counter each advance in enemy offensive weaponry. No weapons aboard that small scout ship could do more than scratch the surface, so why were they bothering?
His display flashed yellow. The scout ship had spotted him. A second, though much smaller, wave of semi-autonomous missiles was launched. His ship automatically implemented a defensive flight pattern, rolling and spinning, accelerating into a sharp curve, then flipping into a tighter turn that brought him beyond the missiles, and behind the scout ship.
Each weave, tuck, turn, and twist brought a sensory-overloading wave of pain, but as his craft levelled out, his hand was steady when he pulled the trigger. Three of his own missiles sped towards the enemy’s engines. The scout ship launched counter-measures, but before they could impact, his missiles splintered, launching a hundred small warheads. Half targeted the counter-measures, but that still left more than enough to shred the engines and fracture the hull.
The scout ship lurched as the explosion added a diagonal component to its evasive spin. As the ship tumbled, out of control, Sean’s systems registered that the enemy had lost power. It was no immediate threat. Nor was that last barrage of missiles, having been eliminated either by his own counter-barrage or by a five-ship squad of fighters now on his tail.
“On a scale of one to five, how alive are you?” Gunther asked.
“Ask me again in an hour,” Sean said. “We really need to fix the padding in these helmets. Are there any other threats?”
“Only that spinning scout ship,” Gunther said. “They can’t repair the engines, but they could bring their weapons systems back online.”
“Then we’ll board them before they do,” Sean said.
“Ah, so now you do want to be a general,” Gunther said.
As his systems scanned the enemy ship, Sean checked that Serene, Tempest, and Harold were now aboard the shuttle. The shuttle bay was buried a hundred metres inside the platform, while the shuttle had a fully independent life-support system. They were safer there than anywhere this side of Earth.
His sensors finished their sweep of the scout ship, and estimated four life signs aboard, but scout ships could carry fifty soldiers in the hold, prepared for quick deployment. Either they were all dead, or this ship was under-crewed. Add in the choice of targets on the platform and…
“Gunther, get the fighters back to the platform. You’re right. This is just a distraction.”
His visor blinked yellow. A giant ship flashed into existence, skipping into place on the far side of the platform. This was no warship, but a skeletal transporter with hundreds of blue and red drilling machines slung inside the open-sided frame. At the top of each drilling machine was a one-person control room with barely enough room to sit. Below was an encased grinder, which, after the machine had landed on an asteroid or airless moon, would drill and pulverise the rock in search of in-demand metals. The machines were released, becoming a blue and red swarm speeding towards the platform.
The mining machines were shielded against meteorites and impacts from churned debris, but they weren’t built to withstand missile or cannon blast. One by one, they were obliterated by the five saucers on that side of the platform and by the platform’s own defensive systems.
While the attack failed before it had properly begun, it was still far too elaborate for this particular stable of sooval mercenaries. The piratical band were notorious, having pillaged their way through a dozen remote monasteries before Johann had nominated them as the recipients of the suicidal invitation to Oxfordshire. Usually, once they accepted a commission, they would round up anyone else hanging around the stable, and take, or steal, the first ship available. They never stopped to strategize. Yet, here, the strategy was obvious. They were attempting to cause structural damage to the platform, hence the first strike on the window. Now, with these mining machines, they were aiming to rip into the platform’s hardened hull. No one aboard the platform was in any real danger, but this star system had no space dock in which to conduct repairs, or any planet-side supply chain to provide the parts. The platform would have to return to the Valley, and be replaced by warships currently guarding the border.
Yes, all of this was clever, but the only beneficiaries would be the Voytay, who could take advantage of the depleted defences in the borderlands to make a grab for a few more systems. But how had they known that this particular band of sooval were being set up? Who aboard the platform or in the embassy had given them the lead? The answer might lie aboard the stricken scout ship. He checked the surrounding battle-space. The mining machines had all been destroyed. The skeletal transporter was accelerating towards the platform, but even as he watched, it broke into a metallic meteor storm, harmlessly battering the old battle-station’s hull.
Sean turned his attention back to the scout ship, lining up an approach vector when a yellow warning flashed across his display. An emergency shuttle had launched from the platform. His heart sinking, he brought up the log. Of course, it was the vessel carrying Serene and Tempest.
He placed a call.
“What’s going on?” Serene asked. “We just got shot into space.”
“It looks like some wreckage smashed into a sensor,” Sean said. “You were launched by mistake. Sit tight. Someone will come pick you up in a minute.”
And as he said that, his display blinked yellow. Two more skeletal transporters had flashed into existence, at opposite ends of the platform, and one was dangerously near the shuttle.
“Tempi, switch off the auto-pilot, take the controls, and implement an evasive pattern,” Sean said, even as the enemy transporter released its cargo of mining machines.
“What’s happening, Dad?” Serene said.
“Just a minor nuisance,” Sean said, as calmly as he could. “Those mining machines aren’t armed, Tempi, so dodge them, get out of range, and then skip to Earth.”
His screen flashed with an incoming call from Celeste. He ignored it.
Gunther’s voice came over the command channel. “I will provide escort,” he said, as his saucer, and the four others in his squad, sped towards the cloud of mining machines.
Sean was too far away to help, and could do nothing but watch as Tempest, flying solo for the first time, weaved and rolled, dodging the barely controlled drilling machines. As Gunther’s squad neared, they split from a V to a vertical circle, training their fire ahead of the shuttle, clearing a path.
“Not so bad,” Sean said, relaxing enough that he again became aware of the throbbing pain in every limb. The agonising sensation was forgotten when he saw a cylindrical ship undock from the back of the skeletal transporter. That was no mining machine, nor an ancient scout ship, but a hardened raiding skiff, and it was clearly aiming for his children’s shuttle.
“Skip, skip, skip,” Sean murmured. But the shuttle was still too close to the platform.
A saucer overtook the shuttle. The tag on Sean’s display said it was Gunther. The soldier opened fire, but his weapons did as little damage to the raider as those drills had done to the platform.
As the raider shrugged off the shots, it returned fire, tearing a hole through Gunther’s ship. Gunther’s guns went dark, but he still had power. He spun the saucer in a tight circle, accelerating into an intercept course of his own, aiming for the raider’s engines.
Almost at the last moment, a small escape capsule ejected from the centre of the disc, but was then lost amid the silent explosion as the saucer obliterated the engines, and that explosion destroyed the rest of the raider.
“Ha!” Gunther’s voice came through, soft but clear. “They don’t teach that in training.”
“Good flying, Tempi,” Sean said. “Now, skip to Earth. I’ll see you in a couple of days.”
With relief, he watched the shuttle disappear from normal space. He sent a message to Gunther’s squad to pick up their general, and then checked the progress of the battle. It was essentially over. No other vessels had appeared.
The damage to the peace-platform was minimal, though not insubstantial. The enemy’s plan had been cleverly conceived, but poorly executed, because the real enemy, the old enemy, the Voytay, had outsourced soldiering to criminals so as to avoid an implicit declaration of war. But if that told him anything, it was that the attack might be over, but the battle had only just begun.
