From Furies Forged (Free Fleet Book 5) (12 page)

              “Not yet, but they could be quickly,” Silly said.

              “Shit,” Dasal looked to the conference rooms table and turned on the holographic projector. “What can we get to them?” He half-muttered to himself as he looked at the map centered on the carrier.

              “We have a Battle-cruiser and two corvettes that were on patrol and are now moving in-system as per their orders,” LaRe said, opening the map up and showing the group as they moved towards the cluster of Free Fleet facilities around Mars.

              “Put me in contact with them,” Dasal said.
Hold on Felix, we're coming for you.

                                                                      ***

              “How hard is it to catch a damned Carrier! We were on top of it when it came through the damned wormhole!” General Davidson barked at the freighter's Ship Commander, oh how he wanted to drive his powered fist through that idiots head!

              They already had momentum, and as soon as they saw us they powered their drives up to maximum, they have less thrust overall, but we're still making up for their initial thrust.

              With our hits to their engines we're now closing with them quickly. Not even their faster drives can keep them ahead of us now,” the Ship Commander reassured the General.

              “You better be damned well sure about that!” Davidson threatened as he moved back down to the bowels of the freighter.

              Alarms pinged in his suit as his HUD updated the plot outside the freighter.

              “How in the hell?” Shock was quickly becoming anger as more alerts went off, a second freighter erupted in explosive atmospheric decompression.

              “Fire everything we have at that damned carrier!”

                                                                      ***

              “Well how's that for a live-fire,” Felix said as the jerry-rigged rear laser cannon fired again. This time it gave one of the freighter's a nice long scar down its flank. Bulkheads blew out where the laser had kissed them. Atmosphere was ripped out into vacuum as was anyone unfortunate enough to be close to the now open sections of hull.

              “The Cooling systems still aren't fully functional, even with the power plant's plasma being redirected through the system to cool it,” Joqua said, one of Felix's chiefs said from his station.

              “You hear that Xruz?” Felix yelled as another 'round' fired.

              “Alright alright, slow down the rate of fire, got it,” Xruz said, trying to sound unhappy with Joqua's warning, but with the damned power of the cannon, it was hard for Felix to blame the Dovark's enthusiasm.

             
Interesting that I am more relieved to get weapons firing on people from my own planet instead of letting them board and get close to the creatures I never knew were up amongst the stars. Can't pick your brothers, but sometimes they're the ones you weren't expecting in the beginning.

              “We've got enough ammo for twelve shots, pace them out, I'm going to see if we can get that damned array back on. If I get my hands on whoever gave them our location…” Felix let that sentence go unfinished as he walked out of the turrets command ring.

              His powered armor thumped through the craft as he jogged to the forward sections.

              There was supposed to be a crew of twenty five thousand on this carrier, instead there was nearly two thousand trying to get the ship fully operational and fighting.

              The engines were not coming back, but they were giving almost everything that they could. If the Earth forces got onboard then they were going to show them what
real
acceleration was.

              Felix's face was grim as he continued to run. The carrier shrugged off the Earth missiles with ease.

              “I've lost two of the freighters from my view, they'll be on us in a few minutes,” Xruz reported.

              “Crap.” Felix opened up a channel to everyone on the ship.

              “Strap into an acceleration couch, it looks like we're about to be boarded, I think its time for operation run-like-fuck,” he said changing his direction as he ran, he found himself in fighter operations command, usually this was where people managaed all the fighters looking to land, take off or resided inside the carrier at any given time.

              Felix was rocked by a damned hellish explosion, his magnetic boots were the only things that kept him standing.

              He slammed his butt into his chair and set his HUD to show any breaches as they occurred.

              It looked like he was amongst the last to get himself into an acceleration couch.

              The seat contorted to his armor and started to encompass his armor, he could move freely and get out of it, for now.

              His HUD's view changed as a part of the the hull disappeared to the rear of the ship. The carrier's atmosphere had already been drained so there was no massive rush of air out the back of the ship.

              Instead there were humans in powered armor and goddamn HAPA's rushing into the ship.

             
Use my own tech against me will you?

              Another panel blew into the ship, Felix's HUD changed to this now.

              They entered through the engine compartments, there were a number of engineers sitting in chairs, being unarmed they rose their hands, the Earth forces fired on them, someone in charge finally got them to stop by then there was only four of the thirteen people that had been sitting in that room left alive, two had suit breaches the third was having Hellfire pumped into her system, her suit made it clear she needed medical attention.

              A man that looked to be in charge picked up the uninjured creature with his own powered armor. It was clear that he was yelling questions at the creature, but with it being vaccuum the creature couldn't understand, or reply in any way so they let themselves go limp, their weight and the powered armor's dragging on the leader's arms, he dropped them and kicked at their face. Their boot cracked the visor of the creature's powered armor, opening them up to vaccuum.

              They squirmed on the floor, trying to cover their face and hold their oxygen in somehow.

              The leader stood back and watched as the creature died of asphyxia at his feet. He moved around the creature, waving his forces through the ship.

              “Activating acceleration system,” Felix heard himself say as he went through his remote control features, his eyes staring at his people that lay in that room.

              Bombs tumbled out of the rear of the carrier, exploding and pushing the ship forward with massive acceleration.

              More and more bombs dropped as the gravitational forces increased accordingly.

              Felix's powered armor compensated for the increased gravities on his body, his eyes still focused on the enginer compartment as Earth forces were thrown, and the gravities broke bones with the extra weight and stresses.

             
Serves you right.

                                                                      ***

              Silly looked down on the reports in front of him with grim and angered expressions visible to anyone that could read a Kuruvian’s manipulators.

              Entire sections of Nancy were non-operational, the areas being held by the Earth forces he had already written off. The Commandos that had been waiting on their ships being repaired or about to ship off down the corridor had a short way with those that had attacked their friends.

              Hachiro was still embroiled in a long fight, Mars was as well.

              Earth forces were flooding from the planet’s surface on merchant carriers. It would take them a matter of days until they reached Nancy.

             
Putting them right in Elshurvum’s path.
The carrier had stopped his head-long dash towards Nancy, the crew on her were badly wounded and in rough shape, but it looked like they had control of their ship and that the forces following them were too far behind to catch up with their acceleration systems.

              They were now between the forces that had pretended to act like merchants only to turn and head directly towards Hachiro and Mars as soon as the fighting started. If they slowed down then they would be hit by their first group of attackers, if they continued on the forces that were going towards Mars and Hachiro would likely spell their end.

              There was no good option for them so they were striking to a pace that would give them the most time out of range of both groups. That gave them four days and little other options.

              When they had come out of their wormhole their projectors had been hit, too many of them to be repaired and make a stable wormhole, but Felix’s people were working on it, and their laser cannon which was proving to be one hell of a weapon if slow and dangerous as hell.

              Thankfully aid was on the way, but Silly feared it would be too late to make a difference for the carrier.

              With the daughter yards Nelly and Ned in AIH and Chaleel it meant that there were a number of ships that had gathered planetary Commandos and were on their way to Sol.

              Salchar had set off from Parnmal just a matter of hours after hearing what had happened.

              Even with his white hot rage at the att…, he cut that word off.
Betrayal, Silly call it what the feckless assholes did by the proper name.
Still that anger went cold with the message that he didn’t need to play again to see in his mind.

              Salchar’s mask hid all the emotion but his voice was like the hammers in an asteroid processor. Unrelenting, cold, and uncaring.

              Yasu was with him, but Silly doubted that she would be looking to calm her husband down much. The entire Free Fleet was angry. The backlash was already starting, traders were getting denied in ports and their ships held in limbo.

              The miners of Sol had unilaterally come down on the side of the Free Fleet. They were led by the ex-Commando Marco and his sister Isabelle.

              Marco had been in Salchar’s own squad during the recruitment. He and his sister owned one of the largest mining conglomerate’s.

              Many of their first miners were Commandos that didn’t want to transition into the Free Fleet but didn’t see Earth as home.

              With their support the Free Fleet refiners were stoked and supplied with continuous raw material and offerred any assistance they could provide.

              “What do you think Salchar is going to do when he gets to Sol?” LaRe said, interrupting his thoughts as he stared at the star map that looked over Sol.

              “Nothing good. He’s going to be angry and rightly so. He’s just come back from the biggest and bloodiest fight that the Fleet has been in yet. We’re in the middle of a war…” Silly trailed off, it was hard for him to think that they were in a war himself. It seemed that it was so far away, yet he’d seen the video from Heija and Rosho station. The sheer power of the Kalu when they were together was immense.

             
You’ve seen the numbers, been through the reports on their yards, their planets. There’s trillions more of them out there, with thousands of ships. Enough ships to block out the stars.

              “He’s going to make an example of them,” LaRe said, once again pulling Silly from the depths of his dark thoughts.

              “Yes, yes he will. He’s already stopped any trade with Earth and said that he will not be part of a Union that has Earth in it. They’ve burned their bridges with him and they didn’t even realize that they were standing on those same bridges,” Silly said, his voice sober and sad, yet with an undeniable hardness to it.

              “What do you think that the twenty thousand survivors of Heijia are going to do when they get here?” LaRe asked, concern in his voice.

              “Support their Commander as we will. While they will be hungry for vengeance and filled with anger, we’re going to see how to mitigate that. Can you open a channel with AIH’s Armored Marine Commandos Commander, Ursht and his Chaleelian counterpart Delahil? I should get them an update of the situation, record it and send it to Rick.”

              “Understood, bringing Commander Ursht online first.”

Chapter Betrayal of blood

              Commander Ursht didn’t need to ask his fellow commanders how his Avarians were feeling. All of them were as angry as the vicious armored Katak they hunted on Avar Interim Hermanti.

              He wasn’t as large as his awakened brother Krom, but he wasn’t any shrimp.