Overlord (69 page)

Jack shook it.

“No, General, we were ordered to stay with you two and that’s just what we’ll do, but your orders will supersede any previous command we were given.” The sergeant looked at his partner. “And in the heat of battle we, like you, must overcome, adapt, fight from wherever we are at—wherever
you
are at.” The SAS men replaced their helmets and then waited as Collins and Tram did the same. “What are your orders, General?”

“Can you take us to the command bridge?” He gave the helmet a twist to secure it.

“That we can do, sir.” The sergeant gestured for Jack and Tram to get on the six-man tram that was situated against the interior bulkhead. “Right this way, gentlemen.”

For the first time in hours, Tram smiled as he adjusted the old M-14 rifle and the many magazines of 7.62 rounds.

*   *   *

“One hundred and fifty thousand meters and closing. Magnetometers are pegged in the red, the attack saucers are powering their weapons systems,” came the call from the third tier.

“Hold, hold,” Freemantle said into his 1MC communications. The order reverberated off the heavily reinforced hull plates throughout the
Lee.

As they watched the view screen, the saucers maneuvered into a wide
V
formation as they came on. They were using this tactic so the rest of the fleet could get in behind the screen for protection. Freemantle knew the Grays were sacrificing the forward element to protect the power-distribution vessel and the processing ships.

“Main batteries one and three will concentrate long-range fire on the power-distribution ship. Obviously they don’t think we have the power plant. They must assume we will use long-range missiles.”

The commodore turned and saw four men enter the battle bridge. He was about to order the newcomers off when he saw one of them was General Collins. He nodded his head and gestured the men down to his station.

“I would have assumed you had enough of our Gray friends down on the surface, General.” Freemantle kept his eyes on the one-hundred-foot monitor.

“You have my apologies for not knocking more of these bastards out of the sky for you, Commodore.”

Freemantle finally turned and faced Collins. Jack could see that the man had changed in just the past ten hours.

“I think you and your command did an admirable job, my good man. Now let’s see if the navy can accommodate these buggers and give them the fight of their lives, after all.” He smiled for the first time since Collins had met him. “We’re not the Martians, are we?”

“Not at all, Commodore,” he answered as Tram strapped the injured Collins into an upright chair. “Permission to watch you work, Commodore?”

“By all means, sir, by all means.”

On the view screen the attack craft were nearing the point of full impact from the Argon particle systems.

“Turrets two, four, five, and six, target the head of the attacking formation and fire at will at targets of opportunity.”

Inside the six upper and lower sixteen-inch gun turrets, the fifty-six man crews closed their eyes and waited for the order. The last to load were underside turrets five and six. First the men placed the silk-lined particle bag of miniature ball bearings, a thousand pounds’ worth, into the thirty-inch breach. Then a two-inch steel-rounded plate designed to fit snugly against the non-rifled barrel followed the particle sacks. The plate would be used as a simple push-plate for the powerful Argon laser to slam into the particle bag. The resulting collision would jettison the short duration laser beam into the steel, spreading out and slamming it through the twenty-inch-thick barrel of the cannon. Once it hit the muzzle guides, redirected rifling would push the steel shot to form a circle as it passed by the expensively made crystal laser-enhancer developed by the British, tripling the power of the 1.67-second-duration laser, thus producing a blast of twenty million volts of power that would rejoin with the steel particles once outside of the barrel and hurl the shot toward the enemy. It had been tested many times at the cost of several nuclear reactors.

The men and women of the gunnery sections were sweating profusely inside their reinforced suits as they waited for the orders that would send the
Lee
to war.

*   *   *

The attack saucers came on arrogantly and didn’t break formation as they broke six hundred miles.

“Open fire!” Freemantle called, far more loudly than he intended.

On the upper deck, the first to fire was the number one gun turret, followed a split second later by number three mount. The two were separated by a higher and lower platform, just like the battleships of World War II. The blast of all six guns rocked the
Lee
and propelled her on her side by more than two thousand feet just as turrets two and four let loose. The maneuvering jets activated to keep the
Lee
straight and then push her back to her original station keeping. The underside guns let loose their salvos at the closer ships flying in their
V
formation.

The first to hit were the guns of two, four, five, and six turrets. The particle beam, which actually looked like a short duration blast instead of the long-lined laser systems of the enemy, tore into the first three saucers, blowing them to bits and slamming their remains back into the widening formation. It was as though the remaining ninety-six attackers didn’t know what had hit them. They kept coming in their suicide alignment instead of breaking apart and scattering. The Earth ship had caught the Grays napping.

After the discharge of the large-bore sixteen-inch guns, a burst of over five hundred kilos of liquid nitrogen burst from the cannon. The steam curled to almost nothing as it hit the vacuum of space. The
Lee
was only momentarily inundated by the nitrogen particles as they rapidly dissipated, sliding by the speedy warship to its rear. The men inside the gun turrets quickly reloaded before the attackers broke formation, and before the enemy knew what was happening twenty more exploded.

The six particle beams of the upper six guns hit one of the processing ships trailing far behind the vanguard of attackers. The shot caught it on the right side and the large craft started spinning crazily until it slammed into six of the surrounding saucers, also knocking them into a fast-decaying orbit over the moon. The seven ships vanished almost immediately. Three particle beams hit the larger power distribution ship but all it did was punch a hole in its forward section; the damage was short lived as the powerful saucer started to heal itself immediately. The scab was clearly visible on the monitors on the
Lee
’s battle bridge. The power-replenishment ship immediately took evasive action and slowed, allowing the bulk of its protectors to front the important vessel.

“Damn,” Freemantle said angrily as he saw the large target fall behind a screen of over seven hundred of the smaller attack ships. Still, it was satisfying seeing the main guns of the
Lee
reload and start pummeling the attackers in front and at a distance. Over a hundred of the attackers were burning in space as the giant battleship continued on.

“Incoming!” one of the techs shouted. Freemantle reminded all to be calm.

Jack Collins and Tram, along with heir SAS escort, saw the bright flashes of over a thousand incoming streaks of laser light. They were also of short duration. The crewmen hung on as the first tendrils of light slammed into the broadside of the
Lee.
The jolt to her was wild. The ship banked hard right as fires erupted in the interior spaces. She rolled as she brought her underside to bear against the enemy fire. This was intentional, to give her main batteries time to reload.

“Defensive measures, now,” Freemantle said.

All along the length of the enormous ship, one hundred and twenty thousand gallons of ionized water was released into space, where it froze instantly into tiny crystal beads. The lasers of the enemy hit these and the powerful light weapons were fractured and defused before they hit the armored underside near turrets five and six. Three of the smaller twenty-millimeter laser cannon were knocked free of their mounts and thrown into the void of space with all twenty men and women inside. Then before the water dissipated the
Lee
rolled back to zero bubble and fired another powerful salvo from all sixteen-inch guns. The fire was devastating to the enemy formation as they finally got the hint and started to disperse in a wide arc.

The
Lee
stayed upright this time as her smoke generators were now assisting the water jets in weakening the Grays’ laser weapons. The beams still contacted the Martian steel but her damage was light compared to what it would have been. The vanguard of enemy saucers was now closing to close range of the
Lee.

“Close-range batteries, open fire!” the commodore shouted purposefully this time.

The twin-barreled rail guns opened up. With the alternating poles of current they hurled a solid steel projectile weighing three hundred pounds straight at the closest saucers. The impact was tremendous as the saucers crumpled from the inside out from the electrically charged kinetic weaponry. Then the twenty-millimeter 1,000-watt laser cannon opened up on the streaking and closest saucers, slicing them into pieces. The rest backed away as they realized the weapons of the Earth ship had been vastly underestimated.

*   *   *

Inside the two attack shuttles, the pilots and crews felt the impact of the enemy weaponry. The bay shook and sparks flew outside the cockpit windows. Admiral Everett looked at the young faces around him in the shuttle’s crew bay. The men had their eyes closed for the most part as they waited for their section of decking to be blasted away. He just prayed that the
Lee
could get them close enough.

*   *   *

“We’ve just lost water tanks six, seven, and eight, smoke generators six and nine!”

Freemantle felt the large explosion amidships.

“Helm, hard over one hundred degrees, bring us bow on, all-ahead flank. Let’s close the distance, gentlemen, before we lose anymore countermeasures. Turrets one, two, and five, continue fire, clear us a path straight for the heart of their rear formation. All rail guns and laser cannon take the enemy as they close. Attack shuttles, launch in approximately three minutes—all nonessential crew to their evac stations.”

The
Garrison Lee
fired her aft and starboard maneuvering thrusters, bringing her into a head-on flight toward the largest enemy formation, and centered on the two-mile-wide power distribution saucer.

The 4,000-man crew knew this was the moment of truth for the
Garrison Lee
as she made her way through the densest part of the enemy formation. They were going to take a pounding.

*   *   *

The
Garrison Lee
shot forward with her six powerful blue-flamed ion engines firing full. The enormous warship rammed everything that got in her way as her powerful sixteen-inch guns continued to clear a path of destruction as she charged forward. The small mounts were blasting saucers as they came in to attack the exposed side of the battleship. Saucers were struck at close range by the powerful Argon-based particle cannons and disintegrated as their debris peppered the thick girder lines of the ship. Still she came on at full speed.

A saucer slammed into the lower section of deck fifteen, knocking out number five turret and her fifty-plus-man crew above and below the guns. The men and women passing particle bags were jettisoned as a massive hole burst outward as the destroyed saucer entered the girder protection and exploded deep inside. Fires were now raging out of control, licking against the lower bridge section. Freemantle ordered the lower reserve bridge abandoned as the flames became untenable. Damage control crews had to give up in frustration as they lost all pressure to the foam firefighting equipment. The Halon 1301 gaseous firefighting tanks exploded, taking out three hundred of the lower sections’ precious damage control crew. The lower decks were now awash with flames as they curled into the now exposed lower bridge. Still the number six gun kept up her fire, her gun crew refusing to leave their station.

*   *   *

Jack grimaced as he heard the emergency calls coming in. His frustration was only equaled by Lieutenant Tram as he gripped his safety harness with his gloved hands as he watched the
Lee
coming apart around them. Large cracks formed in the five-foot-thick plastic composite glass of the bridge as Freemantle ordered her steel shutters closed. Jack felt claustrophobic as the outside battle raged on unseen with his real eyes. The view screen at the front of the battle bridge rocked and went askew but held on as the enemy fire increased in effectiveness. Water and smoke discharge was down to 30 percent effectiveness with the loss of more water tanks and kerosene dispensers. The
Lee
rocked as the mixing chambers of maneuvering jets eight, ten, and twenty exploded outward, luckily taking out five saucers as they attempted to get close to the speeding battleship.

Jack frowned as the large power-regeneration saucer looked no closer than it had been when the
Garrison Lee
started her run at full speed one minute earlier.

“Stern section has taken an indirect atomic strike. We’ve lost two of the engines!” The
Lee
seemed to whiplash as the enemy started to play dirty in their fear of the battleship.

“Close-in batteries, I need those damn saucers off my ass for two minutes, don’t let them launch again. AMRAAM stations, fire everything you have.”

All along the centerline of the
Lee,
missile tubes opened wide and fired three hundred specially designed AMRAAM missiles. The American-made long-distance, dry-fueled antiair missiles were specially equipped with fifteen-megaton warheads. They cleared the superstructure and sped to thirty miles’ distance before their small warheads detonated. The resulting explosion rocked the
Lee
and the surrounding void of space. The pressure wave backfired into the girderlike superstructure and started three hundred different fires. But the real damage was done to the attackers. The AMRAAMs caught over a hundred saucers as they maneuvered toward the sides of the
Lee
to come into port and starboard attack profiles. They never stood a chance as the weapons melted their special skins and blew them inward, crushing and burning to death the Grays inside. The debris field was far and wide as the battleship barreled her way through. The giant plow at the far forward section slammed into damaged and burning saucers, knocking them clear.