Conquest of Earth (Stellar Conquest Series) (29 page)

Something large appeared in the holotank then, and Cheng stared without comprehension. “That’s…that’s
Conquest
. She’s out of space dock!” His controllers cheered. Cheng hadn’t seen the dreadnought approach, and told himself it must be because of its lightspeed drive. It moved faster than anyone could see.

The great ship immediately opened up with all weapons, carving a cone of death through the enemy. Her crystal teardrop shape added firepower to that of the orbital fortress, and then six hundred missiles leaped from her external launchers.

For a moment it seemed as if
Conquest
would beat the Scourges all by herself. Her nuclear detonations vomited like blowtorches through the enemy, backed up by hundreds of lasers more powerful than the ones Cheng’s crew used, but all too soon the missiles had been expended, and unlike the fortresses,
Conquest
could not reload her box launchers in the midst of a fight.

Even so, her direct-fire weapons were awesome to behold as she stood with her back to the fortress like an armored knight at a castle gate. She swung the twin swords of her shipyard-repaired particle beams and railguns with reckless abandon, no doubt burning through energy reserves and overloading fusion reactors. Pride tinged with a liberal dollop of envy surged through Cheng as Hassan cheered and babbled for joy in Arabic.

Another surprise awaited him. Just as the surging Scourges threatened to close on
Conquest
, several yellow contacts appeared in the holotank. “What in the name of Satan are those?” Hassan asked.

“The Meme,” Chen replied. “Mark them friendly. I hope Central figures that out as well.” He watched as the five Meme ships, four grouped around one in the center, slammed into the Scourge swarm at high speed but decelerating at maximum. Five fusion engine plumes, facing forward as the enormous Destroyers slowed, joined hundreds of fusors that belched fire, thermal lances spearing their way through the enemy.

They made one quick pass, still decelerating through Earth’s orbital space even as momentum threw them quickly beyond. A rough calculation showed Cheng that they would be at several hours before they could make it back. The Meme must have hurried to get to the fight, building up velocity that had to now be shed. The physics of space warfare imposed such hard decisions on all combatants not equipped with lightspeed drives: by moving fast to reach the battle in time, they could not slow enough to stay.

At least the Meme had done what they could. Now, if the remaining defenses could hold, perhaps Earth’s new allies could make it back again.

“Coming into point defense range,” Cheng said for his crew’s benefit. Despite the morale boost of the dreadnought’s appearance, already he could see signs of his people cracking. He needed to keep them steady and on track. “Just shoot when your turn comes and let the auto-modules do their work. We’ll be all right.” That last was a hopeful lie.

As the swarm closed the range, ten thousand automated laser modules came to life on the hull of the orbital fortress. Each had a small self-contained fusion generator, a simple brain and a weapon. Once active, they were programmed to shoot anything that didn’t squawk IFF. This type of system had been much easier for Ceres’ PVNs to manufacture in mass quantities, rather than something more sophisticated needing installation and connection to the fortress’s central control room. The modules were simply dropped onto the armored skin, told to attach and wait.

Now the short-ranged beams flickered to life and began spearing enemies, and for a few moments the swarm balked. Unfortunately, a blasted but not obliterated assault boat looked no different from a live one to these simple machines. Like zombies in an old apocalyptic movie, dead Scourge ships absorbed more and more of the point defense fire as they spun and crashed against the orbital fortresses and fortified asteroids. Such impacts often destroyed the unarmored laser modules, and so another tipping point was quickly reached.

The Scourge swarm began to land.

Conquest
started to spin far more rapidly than Cheng’s fortress could, buying herself some time by throwing enemies off or smashing them with her whirling armored skin. Simultaneously reorienting and lighting fusion drives, the big vessel seemed to shoulder enemies aside as she blasted away, heading for Earth’s atmosphere. Cheng figured she would skim the top layers of the air, friction-burning any Scourges still stuck to her skin.

An alarm buzzed, and then Cheng looked to his own fortress.

“Mortars,” he muttered as he watched the enemy assault boats landing less than a hundred meters from him. Of course, that distance was composed of thicknesses of tough ferrocrystal armor, but soon the Scourges would find the muzzles of his lasers, and instead of weapons, the crystal wave guides would become soft spots, tunnels through the heavy skin of the fortress.

The mortars fired, the orbital strongpoint’s final defense. Clamshells popped open, expelling short ranged projectiles. Some were shot down by the myriad lasers of the swarm, but others survived the attacks to explode a mere hundred meters away. The small nuclear warheads vaporized spheres of assault craft, temporarily clearing circles of hull like pockmarks. Cheng felt the shockwaves as they shook his control center, and then the laser consoles went red.

“We’re offline, people,” Cheng said as his crews began to stand up, coming out of their concentrating fugues. They had been firing their beams like machines for over an hour, once every twelve seconds per person, and had become nearly hypnotized. “Grab your weapons and fall back to the Alpha redoubt.”

Cheng took one last look at the holotank, giving up his godlike view of the battle. From now on, he would only see what his suit’s viewplate showed him.

“She’s not designed to fight small craft,” Absen snarled. “When I asked for a dreadnought – hell, when Desolator upgraded her – I wanted a Meme-killer. If I had any idea we’d be fighting this kind of war I’d have waited a year and assembled another task force.” Back out of VR space, he paced the bridge like a caged lion.

“If you’d have done that, sir,” she shot back, “the Scourges would have overrun the system.”

“Yeah.” Absen rubbed his jaw, then his face. When he was dumped out of VR space his eyes had been grimy and dry, his bones aching and his mind weary. He could feel himself flagging from twenty solid hours of work and battle. More, really, as his time sense had been played with repeatedly. His skin felt like he could peel it off like old wallpaper, and everything itched.

Humans aren’t made to have chips in their heads,
he thought for the Nth time.
At least, not this human.

“Sir,” Captain Scoggins said, putting her hands behind her back, “we can’t save the fortresses. The shipyard is toast. In fact, everything in orbit is going to get eaten. We can only attrit the enemy a few more percent and then they will land on Earth. I’ll fight this ship wherever and however you want, but I’d like to know your overall plan.”

“My plan?” Absen put his fingertips against his forehead and his voice rose. “I ran out of plan a while back, Captain. I feel like I’m reliving the same nightmare where Earth gets creamed because I failed. I’m tired of swimming upstream, but our troubles are nothing compared to what the folks on the ground are going to go through. What’s with the universe, anyway? Does Earth have a flashing sign on it saying ‘invade me’?” He massaged his temples, and then looked up to see everyone on the bridge staring at him.

Scoggins spoke, concern in her eyes. “Sir –”

“No, Captain, I haven’t cracked. Not yet, anyway.” Absen waved a dismissive hand. “To answer your question: we’re going to go on killing Scourges until we can’t kill any more, and then we’ll pick up the pieces. That’s my plan. That’s it. If anyone has a better one, I’m all ears.”

The bridge crew turned away, exchanging covert glances. Doctor Horton slipped out of her chair and off the bridge, leaving Bannum to man the BioMed station.

The technicians waited, nervously fingering their safeties.

“Bogeys inbound. Third and fourth squads, make grenades ready,” Cheng heard over his comm. As it was set to the Marine NCO in charge of this intersection, he knew that meant the crap was about to fall into the pot.

“Steady, people. Hold this line. The Marines will shred them with grenades first. Don’t fire until I give the order,” Cheng said on his channel. “And Hassan…if anyone runs, shoot them down like dogs.”

“No problem, sir,” the cheerful voice of his sergeant replied. Cheng wasn’t sure if Hassan would do it, but at least the threat might get anyone considering chickening out to think twice.

“There they are,” one of his people gasped, and Cheng saw a wave of skittering, crawling, ravening creatures come around the far bend, filling the corridor from side to side and top to bottom. He slapped down the speaker’s weapon before he could fire. “Wait for the grenades!”

As if on cue, the Marines fired explosive shells from their arm launchers. The weapons made a chug-chug-chug sound as they sent groups of warheads toward the enemy.

The first group burst, and the leading edge of the wave of Scourgelings dissolved into a green-tinged mass of broken bodies and severed limbs, reminding Cheng of crab legs at a buffet. Immediately, the living boiled past the dead, and then another round of grenades went off, and then another.

Closer and closer the mass pressed, slowing somewhat with the ichor in its way, but Cheng could see that the spidery four-limbed creatures simply did not care about their casualties. The bugs were mindless; at least, the infant Scourgelings were, caring no more about casualties than did a river of army ants.

“Wait for it…” the Marine sergeant said, and then, “
fire!
”

Cheng didn’t even bother to echo the command, just joined his people in aiming for the mass of bugs coming to eat him. Fifty meters, then forty, then thirty. Someone was screaming with bloodlust and fear, and as his pulse gun ran out of ammo he realized it was himself.

Changing the magazine as he had practiced, he realized return fire was peppering the line of troops huddled behind the barricade. Slapping the helmet of one who seemed to have frozen, he yelled, “Get firing, Hankins!”

“
Ah-ah-ah-
” was all Cheng could hear from the man and, looking in his faceplate, he could see nobody home behind the staring eyes. Cheng left him and turned to add his own fire to the line.

Several of his people were down, but he ignored them for now as Soldiers appeared among the Scourgelings. That was supposed to be a good sign: the better-trained, better-armed adolescents always came in the second wave, letting the infants soak up the brunt of the damage.

The Marines stood like rocks, blazing away with their weapons. One staggered when a Soldier hammered him with some kind of projectile, but quickly brought his pulse gun back on target and blew the bug to bits.

Abruptly, the firing tapered off. Silence fell over the intersection, broken only by the intermittent shots of Marines striding forward and executing fallen enemies. “You. Lieut,” the Marine sergeant said, pointing at Lieutenant Cheng. “Get your people to start gathering up these Soldiers’ weapons and put them in a pile fifty meters out.”

“What?” Cheng replied, adrenaline buzzing in his veins, but he complied, taking his unwounded techs and helping the Marines to gather the guns. He could have tried to pull rank and argue about who was in charge, but somehow, in this situation, he thought he’d better keep his mouth shut. “Why are we doing this?” he asked.

The sergeant ignored Cheng except to wave him back. “Zema,” the man said to one of his Marines, “set three charges on the bottom of this pile of goodies. Command det, my code.”

“Aye aye,” the Marine said, her voice startling Cheng with its high pitch. He didn’t know Marines let females fight. Under the Empire’s rule, most Yellows had forbidden the defense forces to women, the better to breed more slaves. Genderless in her suit, the Marine planted three large explosive rigs and then hastily stacked some of the enemy weapons atop them.

“Back on the line, people,” the sergeant barked. “When they come again and try to pick up their guns, they’ll get a little surprise.”

***

Lieutenant Cheng drifted in a sea of pain. His left arm was gone, somewhere in a pile of similar body parts scattered about the deck. With the stump constricted by his suit and his body sustained by nano and Eden Plague, he knew he would survive the injury if he lived through the fight, but still…it
hurt
.

“Here they come again,” Corporal Zema said. The sergeant, whose name Cheng had never learned, lay back at the Alpha intersection, faceplate shattered by an unlucky shot from one of the Soldiers. Hassan was the only one of Cheng’s techs left. They’d already fallen back and fought at redoubts Bravo and Charlie, gathering other technical crews and surviving Marines as the defense collapsed toward the center of the vast sphere.

In front of the five remaining Marines, another wave of Scourgelings came. Cheng couldn’t help recalling the fact that the things outnumbered the defenders by a hundred thousand to one. A thousand or so crew on the orbital fortress: one hundred million Scourgelings trying to eat him. He was so tired, though. It was hard to care.

“Fire in the hole,” Zema said, and Cheng ducked. A blast blew Scourge parts over his head and then he opened up, pouring projectiles and plasma into the oncoming mass. He no longer screamed, just pulled the trigger and held onto his shuddering pulse gun with his one good hand.