Talosian Chronicles 6: Armageddon (21 page)

"Kinda busy here, what's up?" Jenny replied distractedly.

"Jen, I need you to do something absolutely insane," Ian said.

"Again?" She asked with amusement.

"Yeah, well we might not survive this one," Ian said. "I need you to cloak the ship, and put us between the battleships designated BS3 and BS5. Once there we have to hammer them with everything we have. They are about to jump to Earth orbit and we have to stop them."

As she opened her mouth to tell him he really was insane, she stopped and considered what would happen if those ships made it to Earth. She sighed. "I understand. I love you, Ian."

He smiled at her sadly. "We're not dead yet, Jen. I love you too." He closed the channel and turned to a pale looking Chloe. "Get the torpedo boats working on softening up the batlleships. Have the
Gr'ishn
move up and engage the mediums that are about to jump. Everyone else try to focus on the units preping to jump. Send a warning to the
Tiamat
and
Dawn's Path
." 

In the background of his orders, Jenny's voice could be heard ordering the ship to prepare for the coming assault. Through the deck plates, Ian felt the vibrations of the powerful engines increase as the ship went to full power.

Once
Star Dancer
opened up on the two larger ships, it didn't take them long to figure out what was going on. The initial strike by Ian's ship had a devastating effect on the two already damaged battleships. The shields were blown away and the missiles and heavy-mount weapons ate into the big ships like a starving man at a feast. Both Battleships took massive damage before they could roll the damaged side away from their attacker.

Even though
Star Dancer
was still moving, Jenny had slowed her down in order to do as much damage as possible in the shortest amount of time. When the Imperial ships rolled to protect the damaged area, they also brought a mostly undamaged broadside to bear on
Star Dancer
. The great ship rocked under the heavy missile barrage from both sides and the shields quickly dropped off, they failed completely on the starboard side. Beta landing bay took a direct hit and was blown almost completely in half.

Star Dancer
's laser and particle weapons began firing sustained beams in an effort to disperse the rapid build-up of energy from the armor absorbing missile and weapons impacts. Three of the mid-ship heavy mount weapons focused on the rear of BS5 and had soon blown completely through the hull and out the other side. As they began cutting down through the ship, secondary explosions began to dot the hull and power in the big ship died completely. It's weapons stopped firing and the shields failed. The big ship was venting atmosphere in hundreds of places. It would soon be completely dead.

The crew of
Star Dancer
did not get the time to celebrate the victory though, because the other battle ship was still very much alive and it wasn't happy. The imperial battleship designated BS3 had not taken as much damage in battle as it's counterpart had, and was in much better shape before
Star Dancer
made it's assault. With the death of the other battleship, it fired every weapons it had into
Star Dancer'
s battered hull.

The last thing Ian remembered was hearing screams and seeing equipment exploding. One young technician was hurled into the air and across the room. Just as Ian was moving to help, he could hear the decompression alarms as something slammed into him from the side, hard. Bright lights exploded before his eyes and everything went dark.

The next thing Ian knew was the pain. His head arm and legs hurt. His chest too, but not as badly as his head. Something really bad had to have happened to him. He began to hear noises and they seemed overly loud to his throbbing head. He groaned but quickly discovered that was a bad idea too.

"Easy Ian, you've been banged up pretty badly," a familiar sounding voice said. He tried to open his eyes, but only one of them seemed to be working.

"What… happened?" he tried to ask. His vision was very blurry and he was having a hard time focusing. It didn't look like he was in MedBay though.

"The Imperial Battleship we were fighting exploded right next to us," the voice replied.

"Beth? I… can't see very well. My head really hurts," Ian croaked out.

"It's Andrea Johnson, Ian. Beth is down in main medical. You've sustained a pretty bad head wound, I'm trying to get you fixed up, but you need to lay still for a bit longer," the woman said.

"How bad is it?" Ian asked.

"You've lost your left eye and ear, there is some damage to your right eye as well, but we should be able to restore that soon. Your left arm was shattered and your left hand is gone. You have four broken ribs, both legs are broken and you've been burned on your upper left side," she said. "We already knitted the bone breaks, but the arm and shoulder are going to need more work."

"Okay, but, where are we?" Ian asked. "How's the crew? Jenny?"

Andrea paused for a moment. "Jenny was taken to main medical. She was in critical condition when they got to her; she is recovering now, but will be out of commission for a couple of days. We don't have an exact count yet, but we've lost around eighty people. Another two hundred are wounded, about fifty or so badly enough to be taken to main medical. Colonel Brighton sustained only minor injuries, but Major Eischens was killed." She paused again. "As for where we are, we are in a hallway near the forward residential areas. It was the closest place that still had atmosphere."

"Doctor, we can get him in now," someone said a few feet away.

"Good! Now Ian; I'm going to sedate you and put you into the autodoc unit in the clinic to try and fix your eye and treat the burns. The rest is going to have to wait until we can get you to main medical," Andrea explained.

"Wait, what about the fight?" Ian asked.

"Ian, this should only take a few minutes, you should probably wait to get caught up on that until after you get out of the AD unit. This shouldn't affect your memory, but like I said, it's a very bad head wound," Andrea said and sedated him before he could object. She knew it wouldn't effect his memory, but felt he simply didn't need the added stress until after his wounds were properly treated.

True to her word, his treatment did only take a few minutes. She put him in a hover chair for two days to let the legs finish healing, put his arm in a sling and a big bandage on his head, were the new skin was still pink and raw looking. The eye and ear would not be replaced until later, after the battle.

The main bridge and CIC were open to space. About the only thing still working in the forward section of the ship was Star's AI core in it's protected vault, although she had lost the ability to project her hologram.

The ship itself had been towed clear of the battle area by a Croanian cruiser, and was currently surrounded by a repair ship while they made their way slowly back towards Earth.

Ian rejoined a haggard looking Chloe Brighton in the much smaller control center near the secondary bridge. "I'm sorry about Ike, Chloe. I know you two were close friends."

"Thanks Ian. I think the worst part of it is that his son was killed on the bridge at the same time. His wife had to be sedated and their daughter is taking care of her in their quarters," she replied. "We lost a lot of good people today."

Ian could only nod. "I know that attack was insane, Chloe, but it had to be done."

She smiled at him sadly. "I know that; Earth would have been leveled if we had allowed them to make the jump. As it was, several of the smaller ships did make it. I hope you don't mind, but I used a hologram of you to warn the Earth defenders."

"That's fine, but why would you need to use a hologram of me?" Ian asked. "You could have done just as well."

"Morale. The entire fleet knows we were beat-up pretty badly, and most of them know you were gravely injured," She explained. "I spoke to Doctor Johnson and she assured me you would be fine, so I used your image, your current image, to help kinda reassure them. Like it or not, you're a symbol not only to our troops, but to the Alliance forces as well." She snorted. "The Croanians think you're some kind of bloody god for pulling off that attack on the battleships. The rest are beginning to believe you have more lives than a cat, and any battle you lead will succeed." She shrugged. "Truth or not, they needed to see you were still in alive."

Ian nodded. "I understand; I don't like it, but I can understand it. So, how are we doing, and what's happened while I was taking a break?"

Chloe nodded. "The Caldarians are gone. In true Caldarian fashion, they fought to the last ship. It's caused some issues on Earth since most of the attacking forces self-destructed. There are still some that are fighting, but we're starting to think they either didn't get the order, or are ignoring it thinking they can establish their own little kingdoms. Either way, it's only a matter of time before they're all gone.

"The second wave of Imperial ships began arriving about ten minutes ago. The fleet is deployed roughly according to the battle plan. They got closer to Mars than we had anticipated and they managed to destroy the civilian space dock before we could push them back. The facilities there took some damage, but are still intact and functional.

"Phoenix Base is holding their own since the Imps don't seem to be too concerned with it. So far, they've only sent a few fighters and bombers and one troops transport," she finished.

"What's happening on Earth? What are those cruisers up too?" Ian asked, looking into the smaller holotank. "If they're carrying those chemical weapons…"

"We don't think they are. For some reason, they hit Earth with fighters and bombers in an attempt to take out the defenses. Right now, the light cruisers seem to be trying to destabilize the tectonic plates in various locations. Our people down there are working very hard to keep that from happening, but might need some help, I just don't know where to find it. I have just sent in a request to have Raptors go to each of the fighter bases so the AI can help with controlling extra drones for repairs and so the teams can help with the defenses. Raptor Command said they would handle it.

"Two medium cruisers and one heavy cruiser also made the jump. The heavy didn't go until after the battleships had been destroyed.
Dawn's Path
moved out and engaged the heavy cruiser while the
Tiamat
took on the mediums.
Dawn's Path
has all but won the fight, but has taken moderate damage.
Tiamat
will also win eventually, but the fight is slower there."

Ian nodded and moved the image display to the Martian theater. What he saw startled him. "What the… Is that a dreadnought?"

"Confirmed. An Imperial dreadnought is leading an assault against the Martian forces. The Guards have engaged and the
Terra
is in a slugging match with the dreadnought," She looked back at her data. "Sir, the dreadnought is losing quickly!"

As the two officers watched the icon for the Terra turned and headed straight into the larger icon for the dreadnought. Just before they crossed, the icon for the dreadnought split into two pieced and turned red. As the Terra sped away from it's victim, the holotank showed the two separate pieces either exploding or breaking up.

Ian entered a command into the computer opening a channel to the commander of the ship. When the image took form over the tank Ian grinned at him. "Argyle, you are one crazy bastard, you know that? How badly damaged are you?"

"Dirty blighters messed up our paint Admiral! We couldn't let that stand!" the man replied grinning. "Singed armor is all, Sir. She's a hell of a ship sir, but I don't think we'd fair as well again fighters and smaller ships. They move to fast for the weapons system to target effectively. She'll stand toe to toe with any of the larger ships except a carrier. We'd be in a hurt right quickly against that many fighters without support,"  the Aussie Commander reported.

Ian nodded and made a note in the computer to record his words for later review. Alex would normally do that for him, but she was still in medical. "Commander, I need you to jump to Earth; several light cruisers got through and are attempting to destabilize the tectonic plates. I need you to go ruin their day. The rest of the Guards can catch up when their done, but I need you in Earth orbit ten minutes ago."

"You heard the man lads! Get us to Earth and step on it!" the man said and looked back at his commander. "It looks like you've seen better days Sir; are you sure you should be up and about?"

Before Ian could reply the image blinked, then stabilized, indicating the Terra had jumped. "Probably not, but someone has to keep control of you crazy Aussies! There's no telling what kind of trouble we'd have if we just let you run amok out here!"

"To bloody right! We're here, time to go back to work. If there is nothing else, Sir?" Argyle asked.

Defense Command Bunker

Site NY-4, New York City

Earth, Sol System

Colonel Adam Wells, Commanding