Conquest of Earth (Stellar Conquest Series) (27 page)

She wondered how the battle had gone so wrong. Just when it seemed they had been winning, the Scourges had gone berserk. Their surprise suicide charge had proven Napoleon’s maxim that morale was often more important than firepower as some of the Marine units had broken and routed. The only thing that had saved them were the veteran NCOs from
Conquest
sprinkled among the troops and a few surprisingly good transfers like Rostov.

That one would go far, if she lived.

“Where are those damn Destroyers?” Absen asked rhetorically. He could see them plainly on the holotank, coming in hell-for-leather aimed right at
Conquest
.

“Thirty seconds,” the AI reported. “They are decelerating but will overshoot us.”

“Intentionally,” Absen said. “They’ll make a close pass with all weapons blazing but make it hard for the swarm to match speeds, then turn around and do it again. Strafing runs.”

“That won’t be enough.” Michelle appeared at Absen’s elbow, and everything outside of the bridge seemed to freeze as the AI manipulated their time senses. “Admiral, we have to leave. Within minutes we and the mothership core will be covered with Scourgelings ten deep, and I won’t be able to stop them, even with close-in fusion weapons. If we wait too long, they’ll damage the drive. Once they do, we’re done for.”

Absen ignored her. “There has to be a way to get them out,” he said to Captain Scoggins, staring at the holotank and the swarm growing thick around them.

“There is, sir, if it’s worth the cost.”

“What cost?”

“We could pick them up ourselves. Before this gets too ugly.”

“How do we do that?”

Scoggins looked sour. “If you don’t care about damage, we could do a forced docking.”

Absen’s brow furrowed. “Explain.”

Scoggins pointed to the schematic of
Conquest
above COB Timmons, the damage control display. “The only way to do it is to gently ram the mothership core with our prow. We can’t use the stern without wrecking the engine exhausts. There are no ways through our armor at the waist corners. But the main weapons array runs straight from the center of the ship through the nose. So we jam it into the mothership and the Marines climb aboard directly.”

“But that will wreck my railguns and particle beams!” Ford cried.

“Yes, it will,” Scoggins said evenly, not taking her eyes off Absen’s. “But if you want those people extracted, that’s the price.”

Absen thought about it for just a moment. “Michelle, can we clear a path through the wreckage if we do this?”

“Yes, sir. I have plenty of maintenance bots to do the work. I am already disconnecting power and preparing to mitigate the damage by removing key components.”

“All right. Okuda, do it.”

“Aye aye, sir,” the master helmsman said. “Maneuvering now.”

Ford groaned, obviously appalled that his primary weapons were about to be turned into junk.

Okuda moved the dreadnought deftly forward as five Destroyers buzzed past, engines and fusors belching plasma fire in all directions. For a moment the area cleared, and then they were gone.

Next,
Conquest
launched her available missiles in all directions, detonating them close to keep the swarm off for a few more seconds. While she did, Rick Johnstone put out repeated calls to the Marines to warn them of what was about to happen. Absen had no idea if they were getting through or even being heard in the fury of the combat aboard the mothership.

“Come on, baby,” Okuda muttered, his eyes closed and perception deep in the link, steering the ship that seemed to have grown heavier the slower and more precisely he maneuvered it. The dreadnought lined up to the side of the Marine LZ and slowed at the last moment so the two vast ships collided at only a few meters per second with a grinding, wrecking-ball roar.

Absen felt nothing in VR space, but Timmons’ board lit up with damage indications all across the prow as it plowed into the mothership. Red icons marched straight down the tubes that held the Dahlgren rails and the particle beam waveguides as machinery crumpled, finally ending two-thirds of the way to Conquest’s center.

“We’re in,” Scoggins said.

“Please tell them to move fast, sir,” Michelle said to Absen. “If we’re not out of here in about one minute, we may not make it.”

“I got bugs all over the skin,” COB Timmons said, pointing at his board. “We don’t have enough damage control parties to take care of this.” Now the schematic was ringed in yellow as assault craft crash-landed on
Conquest
and disgorged millions of hungry bugs. “They can’t eat the main armor but they’ll eventually get through the weapons ports, airlocks, anything that penetrates the hull.”

“As soon as we have everyone we’ll pull out,” Absen said. “Not before. We do this together.”

Timmons replied, “Sure, boss, but then what?”

***

Near the LZ, Bull used his HUD and
Conquest
’s AI assistance to try to salvage what he could from the battle. Whole companies had been wiped out when they lost their cohesion and the Scourgelings had gotten in among them. Like an ancient Greek phalanx, Marines in a firing line with secure flanks could hold against almost any odds, but as soon as the formation disintegrated, they were doomed. In zero G and their own environment, the critters were faster than Marines and they attacked like swarming ants.

Bull’s best response was to use his best, most solid units as fire brigades to slow down the enemy advance, letting the fleeing troops reach the sleds where he shut down their Avengers, turning them into metal statues. He told the medics to trank them and talk to them, try to evaluate who could be rallied from their panic and who had to be tossed onto the extraction craft and locked down for recovery.

He checked his chrono. Two minutes until they were stuck aboard. The original plan B had been to kill everything in the mothership and ride out the swarm, hoping the enemy wouldn’t destroy their own home. Better another hand-to-hand battle than getting picked off in space.

Suddenly his HUD flashed with new symbology. One area off to the side of the LZ lit up with an outline like a blunt knife stabbing into the edge of the mothership. “Colonel,” Michelle’s voice piped into his auditory nerve, “in one minute you will need to shift your extraction location to this area, but not before. I say again, do not move early, but be prepared to fight through to it.”

“What’s happening, Michelle? How are we extracting?”

“Admiral Absen sends his regards, and
Conquest
is picking you up personally, Colonel.”

“Hell if I know what that means, but we’ll be there.” Bull modified what was left of this brigade’s fighting retreat to center it on the new extraction area and told the remaining sleds to launch with whatever they had. This caused the battle’s left flank to abruptly wall back toward him and he found himself providing covering fire as squads leapfrogged back toward him.

When a wave of bugs threatened to overwhelm his rearguard, he held down the trigger on his oversized plasma rifle with one hand while chucking his remaining grenades with the other. For a moment he stood alone against the tide, and then a nearby squad leader stopped her unit, turned them around and pointed with her arm. “That’s the Colonel! Rally to me, Marines!”

The half-organized, chaotic retreat crystallized all around Bull as squad after squad converged. These were blooded troops now, led by veterans, the ones that had not broken. Like tempered steel, they had learned how to bend but not break. Now they took up positions smoothly to the left and right of their leader and laid down a maximum base of fire. “Aim low,” the unnamed squad leader called, and blasts of plasma joined pulse gun projectiles, PRG bullets and slashing laser beams to stagger the oncoming rush.

Closer and closer it came to the firing line, until dead and dying Scourgelings tumbled into the armored defenders, but no one fled, not one broke. Bull heard screams and roars of challenge on his local net, the inarticulate sounds warriors make in the midst of the
berserkergang
of deadly combat, and still not one broke. When Soldiers fired their weapons and scattered Marines fell, not one broke. And when Bull’s plasma rifle ran out of charge and he found himself without a reload – completely empty of ordnance, in fact – he leaped rearward over his own troops. Seeing their commander fall back might have daunted lesser men and women – but not one broke.

Not one broke.

Suddenly the deck and walls shuddered and bucked. Every surface writhed with shockwaves. Without stabilizing jets all of the Marines would have tumbled like dice in a shaker. Bugs bounced off walls, legs flailing as they floundered in the zero gravity, and their swarming advance dissolved into confusion. Bull’s troops kept their cool and nailed them with well-aimed weapons fire, smashing Scourgeling and Soldier alike into gore that splattered the walls and deck.

Abrupt stillness descended onto the scene as the last bug was blown to bits. “Extract!” Bull roared over his suitcomm. “Follow me!” He turned and bounded toward the area his HUD marked as the way out. As he moved, he wondered what in the world this extraction could be.

One minute later, Command Sergeant Major Repeth stood next to the gargantuan invading prow of
Conquest
and said to Bull, “This is the damndest extraction I ever saw.” The two leaders directed the mixture of pilots and Marines streaming past, trying to keep good order as the troops hopped up onto the slab of armor surrounding what used to be a railgun tube. Some carried frozen suits containing the sedated or wounded. Around them
Conquest
’s maintenance bots scurried, clearing wreckage to speed the process.

On Bull’s HUD he saw the perimeter shrinking as Marines ran for it, covered by his dwindling contingent of Recluses. Those winked out one by one as they were overwhelmed and self-destructed, taking a few more enemies with them.

Nearby, the brigade’s remaining heavy weapons sections lines up all the semi-portables they had left, facing outward in a semicircle, but they were not needed. The final line doggie bounded past.

“Thank God that’s all,” Bull said. “The rest of you go now. Get in line. I’m the last man out.”

One of the battalion commanders made as if to stay, but Bull pointed, and the man turned reluctantly toward the escape route. Repeth ignored her boss’s instructions, and Bull didn’t bother to order her again. Instead, she walked down the line of emplaced heavy weapons, inputting self-destruct codes. “I’ll set these to command detonation,” she said.

Just then enemies boiled out of the end of one of the tunnels, and the two turned to leap for the tube leading into the dreadnought. “Conquest,” Repeth said into the comm, “blow those heavies as soon as we’re aboard and clear.”

“Will do, Sergeant Major.”

Moments later a shockwave shoved Bull and Repeth forward, and then the bots sealed the tunnel up behind them.

***

“
Okuda, get us the hell out of here,
” Scoggins yelled, and the massive ship jerked backward is it ripped free of the mothership core and twisted to point away. Surging forward, she shoved her way through the swarm like a whale among piranha, but already
Conquest
was crusted three deep as a hundred thousand landing craft touched down. “Dammit, we were a sitting duck there.”

Scoggins didn’t say more, but Absen figured she was wondering whether his decision to extract the last few hundred Marines would end up getting everyone killed. “What happens if we engage TacDrive?” he asked.

“Nothing, sir,” Okuda said. “The field will bring them along if they’re touching us, though it will keep any more from landing.”

“Better do something fast, because they’re burrowing,” Timmons called. “Internal defense emplacements will hold them for a few minutes but not for long.”

“What about Marines and Recluses?” Scoggins asked.

“We lost all of the Recluses on the mothership, and the Marines we picked up are low on ammo and suit power,” Johnstone reported. “But they’re moving to repel boarders.”

Absen snapped his fingers, pointing. “TacDrive! Aim us near the sun. Punch us through some heavy stellar plasma. Pick a course that will burn them off but we’ll survive. Go, go!”

Okuda’s fingers danced over the VR controls. “We’ll lose every emplacement on the skin, and I can’t judge this fine enough to tell you how much armor it’s going to peel off.”

“Just don’t kill us, Master Helm.”

“If I do, you’ll be the first one I’ll tell, sir.”

“Wait!” Michelle interrupted. “I have to block the forward weapons tubes or the plasma will blow right down them into the interior. I need at least one minute.”

“Don’t talk, just do it!” Absen counted down the time, watching as icon after icon on Timmons’ board turned red as Scourgelings ripped into the unarmored parts of the hull, until the AI gave the go-ahead and Okuda activated the drive.

The sun seemed to leap toward them, far more visible as a representation in VR than it would be in real space.
Conquest
skimmed just outside the corona in relativistic seconds, though the maneuver took almost two minutes of real time. The entire outside of Conquest’s damage control schematic was now composed of layers of red telltales. Absen didn’t know whether the systems they represented even existed anymore.

“Dropping and reversing TacDrive,” Okuda said. For just a moment the dreadnought hung in space, and then it shot backward, stopping two million kilometers short of the dead mothership core they’d just left.

“Good
thinking
, Master Helm,” Absen crowed. “I was wondering how we’d scrape them off the back end.”

Timmons’ board now blazed with a sea of crimson. He snarled at the damage done. “I still have reports of boarders,” he said with warning in his voice.