Cyborg Strike (24 page)

“Yup. Courtesy of the Eden Plague, he’s young
and fit again. Volunteered to lead the attack on the Destroyer.
Couldn’t exactly say no to a legend, could we?”

“Holy crap. Well, who better? I guess I
should be glad Bull Halsey isn’t still around or I’d be out of a
job.” Absen watched as the A-24 came to life, its fusion engines
glowing slightly as Yeager tested them at low power.

“He should do about ten minutes of preflight
before taking her up,” Tyler remarked.

“Well, while we’re waiting, why don’t you
brief us on her specs?” Absen asked this for the benefit of the
others behind him, as he already knew the A-24 pretty
thoroughly.

“All right, in brief. Two Rolls Royce F-1244
fusion engines generating about a million kilos of thrust. Between
those and the new gravity compensating plates, it can accelerate at
about twenty Gs while the pilot only feels five. As its main
armament it carries a  microwave laser, or maser, up front in
that funny-looking nose, optimized against Meme bioplasm. That’s a
general-purpose weapon, mainly to try to fend off any hypers coming
its way, or deal with any small craft the Destroyer might launch.
Kind of like the PT boats carrying a 40mm deck gun.”

“Okay. But how is it going to hurt a ship two
or three thousand meters in diameter?”

“Nukes, obviously. Well, technically, hybrid
thermonuclear fusion bombs. We don’t have anything bigger or
nastier. These are analogous to the torpedoes the PT boats
carried.”

“PT boats only had four to six torpedoes,
though. How many do these carry?”

“Sixteen. Well…seventeen, technically.”

Absen got it immediately. “The last one being
the Final Option bomb.”

“Yes. If the pilot arms it, the computer will
continually compare the Aardvarks’ situation with a set of standard
parameters and will detonate the bomb at the optimum moment.”

“Such as?”

Tyler cleared his throat. “Such as at the
moment of impact against a Meme craft of a certain size or larger.
Just in case the COA where the enemy builds a fleet in the Oort
cloud comes to pass. The other sixteen warheads are on Pilum guided
missiles. We expect the Aardvark to launch a spread, then follow it
in.”

“That’s assuming we can even catch the damn
thing.”

Tyler nodded. “Yes, I’ve seen the Red-Blue
simulations. It’s going to be tricky just to bring them to
battle.”

“What else does your baby carry?” Absen asked
for the benefit of the briefing.

“Nothing more offensive. We’re having to go
for cheap and numerous, so there’s a limit to what we can load
aboard. It has a suite of small lasers and some electronic shotguns
as point-defense weapons, but those are more in hopes they will be
useful against unknowns than out of any belief they can stop an
enemy hyper.”

Absen turned to the rest, production
officials and staff officers lucky enough to come along on this
trip. “Our projections say we will build about ninety thousand of
these attack boats.” He paused to let that sink in. Some of them
knew it already but others gasped. “We’re going to be like the
Zulus attacking rifle-armed troopers at Isandlwana. A shitload will
die, but those that get through will close and kill the enemy.”

“How many?” one civilian asked.

Absen pressed his lips together. “Between a
quarter and ninety percent. Assuming we win. If we lose…all of
them, and all of us.”

“Ninety thousand men…”

“And women. All of them volunteers, all of
them psych tested and willing to use the Final Option. All of them
heroes.”

The onlookers turned in silence to watch out
the window as the prototype’s takeoff thrusters powered up a few
more percent and vectored downward. It didn’t take much in three
percent gravity to lift the jumbo-jet-sized craft off the deck and
send it drifting upward, outward into interplanetary space.

Lockerbie said, “Strap in, people, and we’ll
tag along.” The passengers hastened to do that and she lifted
nonchalantly after the A-24, using easy blasts of her chemical
thrusters. The shuttle was not a high-priority enough craft to rate
one of the valuable fusion engines.

“Can we keep up with it?” Absen asked the
pilot.

“For as long as he is just testing
maneuvering thrusters, sure. If he lights the main engines…not a
chance.”

“Well, let’s just watch history from a safe
distance, shall we?” General Tyler spoke from the rear.

Lockerbie shook her head in amusement.
“Haven’t lost a flag officer yet, sir,” she declared with a
chuckle. “Besides, I’m in line to get one of those babies, and I
wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

End of
Comes The Destroyer
excerpt.

***

Plague Wars Series

The Eden Plague Book 1

Reaper's Run: A Plague Wars Novel

The Demon Plagues Book 2

The Reaper Plague Book 3

The Orion Plague Book 4

Cyborg Strike Book 5
(Summer 2013)

Comes The Destroyer Book 6
(Fall
2013)

Stellar Conquest series:

First Conquest: Book 1
- Contained
within the anthology
Planetary Assault

Desolator: Book 2

Tactics of Conquest: Book 3
(Fall
2013)

Other Works

Unfettered

Low Justice

For more information visit David’s website:
http://www.davidvandykeauthor.com/