Sword of Axia (The Arcadian Jihad) (7 page)

The cheering was almost deafening, months, years of pent up anger and agony at last found a voice. Not one man held back, every mouth was open and shouting, every hand was raised. Berg smiled. “Is that answer good enough for you, Constantine?”

Blas nodded. “It’ll do for me.”

They returned to the spaceport of Nabucco I undetected. Blas produced fresh documents for a simple prisoner transfer. Their ship was still secure and they took the released prisoners aboard. A take-off slot was already arranged, minutes after they lifted off Blas’s crew was helping the new men to food, showers and clean uniforms. He had left Isolde with two hundred men, he was going back with a thousand, enough to man the first of the new ships. They had the beginnings of a fleet.

System Standard 2728.1251 Planet Isolde

The briefing broke up with an agreement but it was not the one they’d wanted. Guide Tell looked at Rusal and nodded gravely, they’d made a lot of progress. They had a fleet, a small fleet, to be sure, but it was a fleet. They had a unit of ground troops that had been training hard for the offensive. None of it was enough, neither the ships’ crews nor the ground troops were ready. They needed time, much more time to prepare, yet in order to satisfy the firebrands they would have to mount a raid now or lose their support. He hammered the table for silence.

“Very well, if you think we’re ready we’ll go for it, anything is better than splitting our forces over a disagreement. Admiral, do you have any suggestions?”

Rusal looked at Rafe Glen, the tough fighter who more and more was emerging as a natural leader.

“Rafe, you say you can get your men down onto the surface undetected, is that right? I imagine you’ll go down there on a disguised freighter?”

“That’s right, yes. I estimate we need a thousand men to take out the main defenses and occupy the control rooms. More would be better, but we’ll manage.”

“Wait a minute,” Blas interrupted. “You won’t pack many more than three hundred and fifty men in a freighter. Allowing for the amount of equipment you’ll need to take with you, that’ll mean three trips to get all your men on the ground.”

“Three hundred and fifty?” Rafe snarled. “That’s insane, it’s far too slow, we can do much better than that.”

“You should listen to Captain Blas,” a female voice said.

They looked at Sister Serena. “The Captain is correct when he says that three hundred and fifty is the maximum, he speaks the truth.”

They looked nervously at Serena. Orphexians had so many talents that could inspire many conflicting emotions in men. Passion and bravery, envy or fear were all common reactions to the words of one of the mental adepts. But still, they were rarely wrong, it would be a truly brave man who didn’t listen. If Serena said it was true, so be it. Rafe backed down. “If you say so, we’ll do it in three trips. The first group of three hundred and fifty can start operations while they’re waiting for the rest of the force to land.”

“It’s not so simple, Rafe,” Blas added. “Once the first group starts the attack you’ll need half of them to defend the landing site, otherwise the following groups will run straight into enemy fire, once the Axians know you’re attacking they’ll secure the landing site.”

The room went silent. The mathematics were difficult to refute, Rafe Glen looked angry as he searched for a way around the problem.

“Admiral Rusal, do you have any suggestions?” Tell asked, trying to soothe the savage emotions that swirled around the room.

Quentin Rusal looked thoughtful. “It may be possible, yes, but we’ll need to widen the scope of the operation. I would suggest an assault from two sides, Rafe’s men will go in on the surface and we’ll send in a small fleet to attack and divert their outer defenses and break through from there. If the attacking ships can keep the defenders busy enough, the ground troops will have a better chance to get through. I think it’s the only chance, Sir, I’d like to lead them those ships in.”

“I can’t spare you to lead the naval attack, Admiral, it’s risky enough as it is.”

“I’ll do it.”

They looked at Blas.

“I thought you were opposed to the mission,” Guide Tell said.

“I am, Sir. But if it’s going to have even the slightest chance of success it will need an experienced captain to lead it. I’ll break through their defenses for you.”

“Thank you, Captain. Very well, we’ll schedule the operation for five days time, can we have the ships and ground troops ready by then?”

One of the men spoke up, he was the control room technician for Isolde’s main space dock.

“We have a delivery of twenty new warships, light cruisers, going out in two days, they will be fully operational. We’ll make sure that some of our own people are part of the crew and seize them, they’ll be completely operational. The people on the ground here would have no idea that we’ve taken them and it’ll be a few days before anyone realizes they’ve failed to arrive at their destination.

Tell nodded. “It seems that we have a chance of success, then. Men, if you would make your plans accordingly we leave for Dafne in five days. When the operation to take their munitions planet is successfully achieved we will have the means to finish off what we have started here on Isolde. That will give us their shipyards and their munitions.”

He put up his hand to quiet the cheering men. “Once we have control of the shipyards here on Isolde and their armaments factories on Dafne, we’ll take their food supplies. We’ll send everything we have to Corazon, the hydroponics planet that supplies the whole of the Nine Systems. Then, my friends, when we have Corazon, we’ll be ready for the final killing blow. We begin the assault on Axis Nova.

System Standard 2728.1257 Above Planet Dafne

They emerged from hyperspace less than five thousand miles from the outer defensive ring of the Planet Dafne. Blas was at his normal station on the bridge of his new command ship, the Hunter Class Light Cruiser Capella. Unusually, Sister Serena had insisted on coming with them.

“Or do you think the bridge of a warship is no place for a woman, Captain?”

“It’s not that, no, but in battle we don’t need any distractions.”

“Really, is that so?” she breathed. “You see women as mere distractions?” Her voice was low and husky. In another, less exalted woman he would have described it as sexy. Her perfume certainly was, he could feel it inflaming his senses. She was only three years older than he was, he reminded himself. At that moment he wanted her, more than anything else in the universe. He suddenly looked at her intently, her face wore a knowing smile as if she understood his every thought. Of course, she was an Orphexian.

“You’re reading my mind,” he accused her.

“No, I told you I would not do that to you. I’m a woman, Captain, I don’t need to use any special powers to understand what a man is thinking. Neither would I use them in any case, we are not allowed, as I told you.”

He felt his face glowing red with confusion, embarrassment and to his shame, lust. “The answer is no, the bridge of a warship is much too dangerous for you during a battle.”

Serena was a woman, with a female’s almost genetic ability to twist men to their own way of thinking. He knew that it didn’t matter what he thought, she was here. ‘Born to Serve’, that was the rule that they lived by. But to born to serve whom? He almost jumped as the bridge alarm sounded, they were nearing the planet and within enemy range.

“Captain, they’re targeting us for an attack.”

“Thank you, Dirk.”

“Orders, Sir?”

“Wait until they fire, we need to get as near to them as possible before we reply.”

They flew closer, narrowing the distance between them and the defenses. Everyone on board knew what they were facing, the formidable unmanned gun platforms that mounted multiple arrays of pulsed plasma artillery.

“They’ve opened fire, Sir.”

“Signal to the Fleet, maximum power to the shields, hold formation and fire on the platforms, full salvos. I don’t just want to hurt those platforms, I want them destroyed.”

They saw the intense particle beams hurtling towards them as they set their own defensive shields to maximum intensity. Many of the Axian beams struck and broke up on impact, a few got through to smash upon the armored hulls of Blas’ fleet. Two of his ships blew up instantly. But now he had their range and the Axians were still between salvos. It was time to give them more of the pain.

“Mr. Gehlen, signal all ships, hit them again, everything we’ve got, continuous fire. Divert all power to the main batteries and forget about auxiliary weapons systems and shields. We need to punch them hard.”

“Aye, aye, Sir.”

There was a shudder as almost the entire energy of the ship was diverted to the main particle beam cannons. Eighteen ships’ batteries fired in unison, the powerful beams probing forward towards the outer gun platforms. There were ten of them in all, nine took direct hits and exploded instantly. The other fired back and their ship lurched as one of the beams hit their unshielded hull. They were thrown about, Blas made a grab for Serena as she toppled and stopped her before she was flung across the whole width of the bridge. She smiled gratefully at him, but there was no time for niceties, they’d been hit badly. The siren sounded. “Warning, hull integrity breached!”

“For God’s sake, Gehlen, finish off that last platform.”

The First Officer shouted into his microphone, “Fire, all ships, keep hitting that platform!”

The beams shot out again and the platform exploded instantly, hit by a dozen or more withering bursts. The Rescom Fleet surged onward towards the second row of defenses.

“How badly were we damaged with that last hit?”

“The hull is damaged, our speed will be reduced by seventeen percent, shield power is down twenty eight percent, otherwise the ship is functional,” the computer replied promptly.

“Now for the second ring of defenses,” Blas announced grimly.

System Standard 2728.1257 Surface of Dafne

Rafe Glen led his force out of the nondescript freighter that had landed them unnoticed on the planet.

“Hector, keep fifty men back here and guard this port. If the Axians learn where we came in they’ll ring it with troops and heavy weapons, we won’t get the rest of our force down here.”

“We’ll keep the port open for you, Rafe.”

Glen led his three hundred remaining men through the maze of wide tunnels that led through the subterranean workings of Dafne. Like Nabucco I, the planet had a strong gravitational pull, every step was twenty percent more difficult than humans were accustomed to, it was like walking in iron-shod boots. The outer atmosphere was also hostile, too poisonous to be breathable by humans, it contained a low ammonia content that would make it deadly after more than half an hour’s exposure. As a result, the factories that supplied munitions to the Nine Systems were underground. It was no accident that they’d chosen Dafne for their munitions plants. The deep mines of the planet yielded massive quantities of the precious minerals and ores needed to construct weapons, everything from iron and copper to platinum and plutonium. There was even Azomyth, one of the rarest commodities in the universe, the material that made faster than light speed travel possible.

Rafe reached a crossroads and looked carefully in all directions, it looked clear. Pre-programmed robotic vehicles did most of the work in the tunnel system, the likelihood of their being detected was low. He turned to check that his men were keeping pace.

“We make a right turn now, we need to be more careful from here on in, there’s a good chance of our meeting a security patrol. If you see anything that moves, blast it. But quietly.”

He stepped out into the next tunnel and almost ran straight into a uniformed guard. They both stared at each other, but the guard had only three men with him, he saw Rafe’s body of troops and grabbed for his comm unit. A blast from a pistol threw him to the ground, the other men put up their hands. One of the Rescom troopers ran forward and covered them with his blaster.

“How many guards do you have stationed in this sector?” Rafe asked the three surviving guards.

The men hesitated and looked wildly around.

“I want an answer in the next three seconds, otherwise I’ll choose one of you at random and blast him into little pieces. You,” he took hold of the uniform tunic of one guard who seemed a little more nervous than the others. “Quick, tell me how many, where are they?”

His face was pale as he stuttered out the answer. “We’ve been reinforced with a heavy division that’s here to train on the new beam weapons, there are five thousand troops spread amongst the four barracks along the main tunnel.”

There was an audible gasp from the men gathered behind him.

“Five thousand, what the hell are so many men doing here?”

“They came without any warning, some last minute foul-up, I expect. They’re refitting with new weapons, they all have to be programmed and modified to each division’s requirements, you know. It takes time to...”

One of the men interrupted. “What are we going to do, Rafe? We can’t fight that many.”

It was Ari Merx, one of his sergeants. Rafe whirled around.

“Do you want us to surrender, Ari? Damn them all, we can beat them. When the rest of the men arrive on the surface we’ll show these Axian bastards how Rescom soldiers can really fight.”