The Black Ships (27 page)

Tharsis Region, Mars

March 12
^th
, 2028

J
ennifer Grayson looked up at the ceiling of the shelter. The deep
rumbling sound was getting louder. “Gus, what’s going on out there?”

Commander Gus Hayes was still the leader of
the expedition even though it had been reduced to only seven colonists. He had
suited up at the first hint of the strange noise and he cautiously approached
the tunnel entrance with his sidearm in his right hand. The 9mm automatic had
been modified to remove the trigger guard and Gus didn’t trust it not to shoot
his foot off, or other body parts that he valued more highly than a foot.

He leaned up against the mouth of the
tunnel and peered out, he saw no ground vehicles or tracks so he looked up. His
right hand lowered, the pistol now pointing at his foot as he stood and stepped
out of the tunnel mouth, staring up into the night sky in amazement. Over a
dozen red streaks were thundering across the sky.
No meteors for two years
and now this?
Suddenly, every muscle in his body stirred with adrenaline
and he felt like yelling in triumph.

Those are ships, using the atmosphere to
bleed off velocity. The aliens didn’t need to do that; they can stop on a dime.
Those have to be human ships!
He started to put the
gun away before stopping with a grimace and slowly releasing the hammer.
It’s
not my foot that’s going to get shot off.
 Holstering the weapon, he
pulled out a camera. “Jen, put the monitor on Wi-Fi; you gotta see this.” He
pointed the camera and framed the shot.

Jennifer switched the screen to pick up the
feed and stood in front of it with the other colonists, staring at it in
silence for several seconds. “Gus, what is that?”

“It’s a fleet. They’re aero-braking in the
atmosphere, maybe thirty or forty clicks up,” he sounded jubilant. “I’d bet you
a day’s water that they came from home. They’re coming in hot and using the
atmosphere for deceleration so they can get into action without a long slow
approach. Folks, we’re going home!” The central room of the shelter broke out
into cheers and crying.

Dan, the miner who had been at Vinland for
a visit when the attack came, threw his arms around Jennifer and lifted her off
the ground, spinning them both around in a clumsy arc. She finally gave up her
disbelief and laughed.

Mars

March 12
^th
, 2028

“W
e’re out,” announced the navigation officer.

“Where’s that contact?” Admiral Towers
demanded calmly.

“Looks like she stayed behind to guard her
crippled sister, though she took some damage herself when she fired on the
Cú
Chulainn
,” the sensor officer replied.

“Thrusters coming online,” reported the
helm operator. “Beginning fleet-wide raising burn in twenty seconds.

The
Cú Chulainn,
though still with
them for the moment, would not join them in orbit. The heavy cruiser had taken
a hit to the stern and had lost almost a quarter of her mass in the resulting
explosion. She still drifted with the fleet but would soon skip out of orbit
and drift out past the remaining two ships of the EW Squadron. The
Yangtze
had suffered a much worse fate.

The smaller frigate had been completely
destroyed, much like the
Morse,
and her debris had burned up in the
atmosphere as it kept pace with the fleet.

There was a commotion in
the hole
and McCutcheon poked his head around the corner from below. “What’s going on in
there, Wes?”

“Come look at this, sir,” Sgt. Davis
pointed at Cpl. Alexander’s monitor. “Andy figured out the short round. The
Willsen
disabled fire correction on the close-in weapons system and just fired almost
straight at the target.”

McCutcheon looked at the vectors displayed
on the screen. “So a ten-dollar hunk of metal saved a frigate from
destruction,” he sounded as if he didn’t believe his own words. He looked down
to where Towers sat strapped to his chair. “Sir,” he called.

The admiral looked up from the operators
and screens in front of him, craning his neck to look up into the analysis
cell. “Anything we can use, Colonel?”

“A couple of things, Sir,” McCutcheon
drifted down to float in front of the fleet commander. “They can’t take a crap
without dropping their pants - if they want to shoot at us, they drop shields
and take severe damage. They also didn’t seem to have a fighter complement
aboard but
they
may still be on the planet’s surface. Their planned
launch date was still a few weeks out.”

He glanced back up into the cell before
continuing. “The
Willsen
got lucky,” he said. “She put a hail of 30 mm
depleted uranium rounds in the path of the incoming projectile and one of them
impacted. We can do the same when we go into combat but I think we have a
problem. The enemy might not fire on us.”

Towers worked that over for a moment before
nodding. “The only way we can hurt them is if we already have a hail of
ordinance heading their way when they drop their shields. That means we need to
fire continuously and we don’t have an unlimited supply of ammunition.”

“Fifteen minutes to contact,” the
navigation officer announced.

“If the signal doesn’t shut them down -”
McCutcheon began.

“If the signal doesn’t shut them down,
Colonel, we have a tough morning ahead of us,” Towers replied simply.

Home world transmission axis

March 12
^th
, 2028

"W
e have incoming signals,” a lieutenant
sitting next to Mickey announced.

Mickey ran the signal through the emulator.
She and Rob had assembled two systems on each of the three ships, one primary
and one back up. The primary system on the
Willsen
sat in a compartment
just behind her. Rob, promoted to the army rank of second lieutenant, was at
the backup unit, two hundred feet forward in the secondary command center.

“We have the beacon from their home world,”
she announced, sliding the window over and concentrating on the signal from
Mars. “Looks like we have an automated acknowledgement from the mother ship.”
She opened a new window, studying the screen as the translated code slid by.
“Same architecture as their firmware update.” She grinned over at Logan. “Time
to shove a jalapeño up their tailpipes.”

The captain nodded. “It’s your show now,
Major,” he declared  with a note of finality. “Helm, slave your controls
to the major’s terminal.”

“Helm, aye. Controls are now in the hands
of the EW officer.” The young helm officer hunched forward in his seat,
watching the screen like a hawk, not fully trusting Mickey to steer his ship.

This is nuts,
the full weight of responsibility suddenly made itself felt as
Mickey designated the center of the heavily diffused beam from home world. How
they had managed to keep a beam coherent over such an incredible distance was
beyond her experience, but that was a question to ask
after
the fight.

The thrusters began to push the heavy ship
into the center of the path so that the transmission they were about to send
wouldn’t arouse suspicion. If it came from even a few degrees off axis, the
whole thing might fall apart, as the alien system might reject the signal.

Though she had understood the importance of
her role aboard the
Willsen
, it was only now that the full impact had
begun to sink in. If she failed, if her coding was faulty, if the aliens
figured out why they had overshot, the people of Earth might fall into slavery
or worse. Programming work done in leisure back on Mauna Kea might carry the
one small flaw that would undo everything they had planned for.

There was no time to recheck now. Even a
short delay might give the enemy time to think. Sooner or later, someone aboard
those ships would realize that the
Willsen
was positioning herself
directly in the middle of the transmission path from Home world.

They were only seconds away from optimal
positioning and she forced herself to take a calming breath.
We’ve done
everything that can be done,
she told herself.
Forget about nerves. If
I’m about to fail humanity, then it’s because of something that I’ve already
screwed up. There’s no making it worse now.
The braking thrusters were
firing. The orange circle on her screen turned bright green.
Just do your
job.

She reached out and touched the
send
button
in the upper right corner of her interface. “Signal sent.” She sat there,
staring at the screen, feeling as though she had no body.

“Fleet is coming into range of the enemy,”
announced the sensor officer.

UNS
Ares

Mars Orbit

March 12
^th
, 2028

M
ike looked at the screen. “Wes, that ship looks like it’s still
moving.”

Sgt. Davis nodded. “At least one still in
the fight, the other three aren’t turning to face us, though.” He frowned.
"The captain of that ship may have figured out our little trick in time to
save himself but not in time to save the rest?”

“One moving, sir,” McCutcheon called down
to Towers. “Designating live vessel as Zulu Alpha Three.” The first two
designations had gone to the two ships that they had passed on their way into
orbit. Zulu Alpha One had destroyed the
Yangtze
and crippled the
Cú
Chulainn.
Zulu Alpha Two was crippled and drifting into the planet’s
gravity well.

The admiral activated his headset. “Fleet
wide,” he ordered curtly and paused for a few seconds. “Flag to all vessels,
weapons free; concentrate fire on target Zulu Alpha Three. All ships, be
advised that boarding operations are commencing. Adjust firing solutions as
directed by 
Ares
fire control. Flag out.” He turned to the
operations officer. “Launch the boarding craft for all stationary targets.”

The drumbeat of heavy guns reverberated
through the CIC.

~*~

D
own on the hangar deck, Märti sat in the assault shuttle with most
of the men of Alpha Company. His small battalion had been split between three
of the large assault vessels and he had brought his small staff with him aboard
the
Malevolence
as this craft was named. The men all looked up in unison
as dull thuds announced that the ship had started firing. The reaction was
purely instinctive as there were no windows for them to see out of.

A week earlier, they had been shuttled off
the
Hermann
to replace troops dead from the plague and it had been the
Malevolence
that had brought them to their new home. Now the flight officers in the
stern of the small ship touched hands to their helmets as a signal came
through. Red lights came on and Märti could feel a grinding vibration as the
large docking clamps came loose.

“Helmets on,” he called out. During the
long wait in the shuttle, he had allowed his men to remove their helmets,
partly to give them a break but largely because he didn’t want them wasting
their breathable gas while still inside the shuttle. Now was the time to put
them on. The trip to the enemy ship would be short.

Very short.

The shuttle shifted upwards and then to the
left, holding there for a moment before suddenly slamming every one forward in
their rear facing seats as the liquid fuel rockets kicked in. The shuttles were
controlled by operators on board the
Ares
, reconciling the target
assignments with whatever data was available about the enemy ships. Colonel
McCutcheon’s team was working frantically, identifying likely soft points in
the ship structures as well as priority target zones such as engineering and
command centers.

The two flight officers at the rear were
simply backup, ready to take over if the signal from the
Ares
should be
lost. If the
Malevolence
succeeded in penetrating the enemy hull, they
would fight along with the rest of the men. If the shields were down.

After half a minute of flight,
Malevolence’s
heavily armored bow slammed into the enemy hull. There was a loud shriek of
metal against metal as they passed through the outer structures of the ship,
jerking left and right as the armored bow slid past structural elements. The
men were pinned against their seats by the deceleration, made survivable only
by the hydraulically-dampened sliding of the assault shuttle’s inner hull.

The motion finally ceased and the flight
crew activated the exit panels. Shaped charges along the sides of the
Malevolence’s
inner hull blew rectangular openings through the outer skin and the men
began to pour out into the enemy vessel. Märti stepped out into a windstorm.
They had penetrated into a large compartment and the atmosphere was now venting
into open space.

He forced his way against the wind,
following First Platoon, and he found that the force against him slowly
diminished as he got farther from the new tunnel that now led directly into the
void. He stopped on a raised catwalk that ran for several hundred feet,
overlooking what had to be a rail gun.

He activated his communications system,
using the channel set aside for this particular boarding mission. “Second
Battalion, report in.” At his feet was a dying alien crew member. The small
creature looked surprisingly human, despite his obvious differences, and his
face showed pure terror as he clutched at his throat. The catwalk across from
him presented a similar scene as several members of the enemy crew asphyxiated.

He felt strange and couldn’t quite put his
finger on it until he saw one of his men climbing up onto a higher catwalk.
They
have gravity on their ships,
he thought in amazement.
I’ve been walking
instead of floating.
The two captains began relaying the status of their
companies. It was a mess. One of the three shuttles carrying his men had
slammed into a water tank and the men were trying to find a way out. The
soldiers from the other shuttle had been channeled in various directions as
they flowed through a warren of corridors. Nobody had reported any serious
resistance yet.

The bridge is most likely on the central
axis so we should move aft,
 he decided as he
stood up and pressed his locator beacon. His other men would have to fend for
themselves. “All troops from the
Malevolence
, concentrate on me,” he
ordered as he moved down the catwalk.

At the far end, he found hatches on either
side of the central axis of the rail gun. By now, he had collected almost a
hundred of his men. He split them into two even groups by the simple expedient
of chopping his hand to mark an imaginary line through the crowd. “Leuzinger,
take your men, open the starboard hatch and start working your way down the
length of the ship. “Fischer, same thing on the port side.”

He paused for a moment as more men came up.
“I’ll bring the rest as a reserve. If you can’t open a hatch, blow it open.
There must be fifty dead enemy in this compartment alone because they didn’t
expect us to get past their shields. We can use that against them. Leave every
door open and depressurize the ship as you go.” He stopped again to make sure
he was thinking clearly. “Stay on this level for now. If we don’t find the
bridge by the time we reach the stern, we’ll go down one deck and work our way
back to the bow. Get going and, remember, we want this ship in one piece – more
or less.”

The men split off, heading for the two
doors. Both opened easily and a new breeze began to flow but it ended quickly
on the port side. The starboard door vented more atmosphere, indicating a
larger space, and
Märti
led his men over to follow Leuzinger’s force as
they passed through.

On the other side, he found himself in a
low corridor that stretched off into the distance. More enemy crew were in
sight attempting to crawl to the closed doors that lined the long hallway.
Silent muzzle flashes glared angrily as the leading soldiers cut them down.
Doors were levered open with breaching bars, exposing enemy crewmen as they
tried to don their suits. More silent flashes and more dead enemy.

They don’t have tails,
Märti realized.
Are they a different species or do they engineer
the genes of their clones depending on the job they were grown for? Perhaps
combat troops have them for balance…

Fischer’s voice crackled in Märti’s ear.
“We’re meeting heavy resistance,” he reported calmly. “Thirty plus enemy,
roughly fifteen meters aft of my position.”

Märti looked down at the display on his
wrist. Fischer was roughly ten meters closer to the bow than he was. “Reserve,
on me,” he ran aft another ten meters then turned to the port side of the hall,
motioning to the door. Two of the men cleared the room and Märti pointed out
two men who were carrying plastic explosives. “Both of you come in here.” They
followed him inside the room. He pointed to the wall across from the door. “On
the other side are enemy troops holding down Lt. Fischer’s team. I want a door
in this wall.”

The two men rolled their bricks of C-4 into
long strips and stuck them on the wall, roughly approximating the shape of a
door. Sticking detonator tabs over the strips they moved back out into the
hallway, looking at Märti for the order to fire the charge.

He turned to the men of his reserve,
Leuzinger’s team had already moved past them. “Fischer and his team are in
trouble behind that wall,” he announced on the battalion wide circuit for the
benefit of Fischer’s team. “When that charge goes off, we pour through the hole
and hit the enemy hard. Line up.” He turned to the two men by the door as the rest
formed into a rough line.

“Fire it,” he ordered. There was a faint
percussive sound, transmitted through the decking and the air in the EVA suits,
and a silent flurry of debris flew out through the door. “Go, go, go,” he
yelled. The line began to pour through. Märti forced his way into the line and
soon found himself in a similar room, except that it contained four dead enemy,
their weapons laying on the deck. They must have been firing at Fischer’s men
from the cover of the room, never expecting an attack to come through the wall.

Moving out into the hall, he found that his
men had made quick work of the opposing force. Fischer’s team had pulled into
cover and ceased fire when Märti had given the order to fire the charge, not
wanting to hit friendly troops. The aliens had thought they were getting the
upper hand and were pouring out of cover just as the new force appeared behind
them.

Märti saw the lower half of an EVA suit
protruding from one of the side rooms and walked in to investigate. One of his troopers
was still in the suit but he was dead. His helmet had been removed and the
visor was heavily cracked. Evidently the enemy wasn’t happy about how many of
their crewmates were dying from asphyxiation. It looked like they had indulged
in some savage form of revenge.  

“Bastards!” Märti turned to see Sgt. Dreher
standing behind him. “They popped Federer’s helmet off so they could watch him
die,” he snarled. Federer was in Dreher’s squad and the big man wasn’t taking
the loss very well. “Sooner we kill them all, the better,” he declared
vehemently.

A chorus of agreement came over the net.
Everyone in the battalion had heard him.

The ambush proved to be the high-water mark
of enemy resistance. For the next half hour, they pushed their way against
light resistance until they reached a circular catwalk surrounding a two-story
open space. A large glazed box dominated the center of the room where a couple
dozen aliens sat at terminals, glancing nervously out at the humans as they
worked.

More of Märti’s lost soldiers were already
there, surrounding the strange room. One was leaning up against the wall, a
pressure bandage covering a wound in his leg as well as sealing the hole in his
suit. There were men with the British flag on their shoulders as well. One of
them walked over and stopped in front of him, using his wrist pad to change his
radio to proximity mode. “Major Bohren, I’m glad to see you in one piece.” He
grinned. ”It would seem that most of their ground troops are still on the
planet. We met only light resistance.”

“Captain Kennedy,” he nodded. Salutes
during combat tended to be discouraged by the more sensible armies of the
world, unless, of course, you had an unpopular officer you wanted to point out
to enemy snipers. “We met a small group of thirty or so. Probably their
security force. What have we got here?”

A shorter figure shuffled over to join
Kennedy, no doubt suffering from a sprain after so many weeks in zero gravity.

“The bridge, I believe,” Kennedy replied
mildly. “The glass appears to be bulletproof, as your young man over there will
attest.” he waved towards the soldier with the wounded leg.

“Probably blast proof as well,” Märti 
walked over to one of his corporals who was placing a hastily-shaped charge of
C-4 against he glass. “
Gschmöcksch de töff?
” he waved at the man on the
floor. “The glass is too strong, blow the door.”

“Can he smell the motorbike?” Kennedy had
followed Märti over to the glass.

Märti shrugged as the young soldier peeled
the C-4 from the glass. “Old saying,” he explained. “It means
can you see
the problem?
”

The charge blew the door across the room,
narrowly missing one of the aliens, who had put on their EVA suits when they
realized what the humans were up to. A mixed team of Swiss and British poured
into the enemy CIC, pulling them away from the consoles.

Kennedy was frowning down at his wrist pad
as he joined Märti inside the glassed enclosure. “I seem to have lost the
Ares
beacon,” he muttered. “How careless of me.”

Märti looked down at his own display; the
indicator was red. “It can’t be destroyed, all the ships’ beacons are missing.”
He looked up at Kennedy. “They’ve got the shield back up.” Suddenly, he
recalled why Kennedy’s small force of SAS troopers were assigned to this
assault. Their main purpose was to ensure the translator made it to the bridge
in one piece.