War of Alien Aggression 2 Kamikaze (2 page)

"Critical hypermass in 5...4...3..."

The bubble burst early. The burning sphere tore. It ripped and ruptured, and all points on its surface withdrew from all points simultaneously. What remained when it was gone could only be called a hole in space. Inside it was an immeasurable passage and the beckoning stars as they could only be seen from the Procyon system.

"The Sol-Procyon transit is now open,
Hardway
. Good hunting." 

"Roger that," Ram said. "And thank you,
Tipperary
." 

"I'm getting a NAV error," Dana reported. "The computers are confused. Starfix is fubar."

"Then conn
Hardway
by dead reckoning," Cozen said. "Take us in." 

Chapter Three

11.46 light years from home,
Hardway
shot into regular space in the Procyon System, streaming plasma and exotic particles like a burning spear. 

As planned,
Hardway
appeared where the Squidies guarding the main Sol-Procyon transit least expected her. That part of the battle plan went off alright, but the element of surprise only saved the carrier for a few seconds because Dr. Banyan Noondie's calculations weren't as accurate as he thought. Although the transit hadn't collapsed and
Hardway
had arrived at Procyon undamaged, she burst into the system in the wrong place – on the wrong side of the gas giant she'd planned to hide behind and
inside
the effective range of the blockade gun that killed
Dauntless
.  

The AT Controller's display showed the carrier's position relative to the gas giant and the aliens' blockade gun. "We are at 1.2 million Ks to primary target." Ram Devlin tried to sound calm about it. The asteroid the aliens had excavated and used to build their super-gun stared back at
Hardway
with one of its three, unblinking eyes, a dark circle, off-center on the mass of the rock. It might have already fired, Ram thought. At 1.2 million Ks away it would take over four seconds for the stream to reach them. 

Harry Cozen said, "Ms. Sellis, get us behind that moon – the gas giant's third moon." He pointed to it on the NAV console's projection and then out the window where it hung like a cracked pearl in front of the banded immensity of the planet. "
That
one. The ice moon. And don't fly a straight line."

Ram said, "NAV... Dana, give us evasive combat maneuvers." She looked at him like he must be joking.
Hardway
lurched as Dana attempted to actually jink the leviathan ship, but the carrier only slid a few degrees out of line to port.  

"That's not going to be enough," Biko said.

She said, "This is a 950-meter ship. It's not a bloody junk."

"We're 1.2 million Ks away from that gun," Ram said. "It takes light 4 seconds to cross that distance. The enemy will have to lead us by at least four, whole seconds, so just make sure we're not where the enemy
thought
we'd be when he aimed and fired." 

"That first shot is already on the way," Biko said. "Guaranteed."

Dana Sellis fired the underside bow and topside stern thrusters, pitching the carrier's nose up sharply as
Hardway
ripped through space. He made it sound like Dana had a chance to avoid the blockade gun's fire, but he knew they were a huge target.  

The alien blockade gun's long-duration, accelerated particle stream reached out with a river of focused heavy nuclei in agonizing, seemingly unending, five-second bursts. It sliced across the carrier's path like the blade of an infinitely long and terrible sword and caught
Hardway's
forward section. It hit behind a railgun battery on the bow and raked down the port side, tearing the doors off three of the new forward launch bays like they were made of paper. Most of the QF-111 Dingoes in those bays were smashed and burned. If the junks that got hit hadn't been literally blown out the bay, their reactors could have cooked off. 

 A half-second after the stream hit, the shock of the first impact made it up the long spine of the ship, all the way to the top of the tower and the bridge. Even with the atmo vented, Ram heard the rumble of it come up through his feet on the deck. The bulkheads blurred as they shook.

The blockade gun fired again. Its beam hammered and tore the dense belt-iron bulkheads, cutting deep until the beam shot out the other side of the ship. Ram saw it from the bridge. It looked like the bow was showering sparks for hundreds of meters in all directions, but those were huge globs of molten metal. Before the end of that burning sword's five-second stroke, the blade sliced through bone. It severed the bow guns from the front of the ship.  

Dana pitched, rolled, and threw yaw changes at the enormous carrier while vectoring the engines' thrust. The bow guns came away from the molten-edged wound and rolled away to port. You could see the cross-section cut through them. The exposed decks glowed with molten metal. The severed piece of
Hardway
spun, and the railguns' twisted barrels turned to point at the bridge before they tumbled away to port and fell behind the carrier.  

Ram said, "There were at least sixteen crew operating that gun battery."

Dana fired
Hardway
's five Novalifter engines, and they pressed the crew against seat-backs and bulkheads as she made straight for the cover of the gas giant's third moon without any attempt to fly evasively. The further they got from that terrible weapon, the harder it was to hit them, but the enemy still caught
Hardway
one more time. When the accelerated particle stream reached out again and slashed down her path, it caught the sub-tower. It tore through the armor and the outer and inner hulls. It sliced through bulkheads and decks until the sub-tower shook so hard the optical arrays and antennas ripped loose. The bottom 75 meters fell away and tumbled, molten edged and ragged. Most of the bridge officers' quarters were in that section.  

The severed forward railgun batteries and the lost gun crew fell into a slowly decaying orbit around the 2
nd
moon, but the sub-tower augured right in and impacted on the surface. Lieutenants Blake and Wittgenstein went with it.  

*****

From the way Asa Biko looked at the tactical display and the 2nd moon, Ram could tell the AGC had decided that now was the time to get his people back. Biko thumbed comms. "
Hardway
AT to
Mohegan
, I'm pulling you off the defensive screen. Prepare for search and rescue. We'll vector you to target." 

"Roger that,
Hardway
AT." Chase Burroughs was flying Farad's rebuilt junk now and
Mohegan
was as solid as she'd even been. 

"Mr. Biko," Cozen asked from the command chair, "Are you sending
Mohegan
out to the second moon to pick up the gun crew?" 

"There's a chance some of them survived."

"Very good, Mr. Biko, but tell your SAR junk to standby."

Biko pushed back. "According to the chain of spysats we deployed behind us, the first waves of long-range, enemy warheads have already launched off an airbase built into that blockade gun's rock. They'll be here any minute. Wait any longer to send the SAR flight and they might get spotted by the enemy."

"That's right," Cozen said. "Now that the Squidies know we're here, the commandos will need the distraction." The original plan called for
Hardway
to give the men and women of the Special Boat Service a discrete launch on their mission to demolish the blockade gun with hand-placed explosives, but now, plans had to change. "In order to help the commandos slip away cleanly and make it to their destination, I want you to send three junks on that SAR mission. That's where the Squidies will be looking and not at the SBS. Their plan depended on us providing more discretion, but at least this way they'll have a shot at the target." 

Biko clenched his jaw. It was clear he didn't like the order, but he gave it.

*****

The 323rd Special Boat Squadron launched at the same time as the three junks on the SAR mission, but instead of four craft projected on the AT Controller's display, Ram saw only three contacts leaving
Hardway's
bays. The Royal Navy's SBS team and their boat barely showed up on radar or LiDAR, even at this range. The six-man incursion craft developed by geeks in service to the Crown sported an active stealth skin almost as good as the Squidies'. It was good enough to fool
Hardway's
arrays even close up, but it relied more on radar/LiDAR spoofing than anything else. If a strong, active sweep did happen to catch a return from it, then what it sent back was time and frequency shifted to give a false speed and distance to target.  

The team's mission would be to evade detection and actually land on the asteroid on which the gargantuan blockade gun had been built. Then, they'd creep in and blow the gun to hell with nuclear demolition charges. They said they could do it and
Hardway
was happy to give them a ride.  

Castaway was the SBS team's codename for the mission.

The incursion craft tailed the three junks 500Ks back as they took an obvious line to the second moon. The special forces pilot and the electronic warfare officer worked together and kept just the right distance behind and to starboard of the junks so that from the forward and port position of the incoming enemy craft, the incursion craft's return, if any, would appear to be coming from the junks.

Cozen was betting the blockade gun wouldn't bother to fire on the little junks at over a million Ks out. They were too small to hit at that distance, but there might be alien destroyers or fast frigates out there. The enemy knew where
Hardway
was and they'd be eager to pounce.  

Two minutes later, after the SAR junks had broken the limb of the planet on their way to the 2nd moon and the lost gun crew, they called in. "
Mohegan
to
Hardway
AT." If they broke silence, it had to be for a good reason. "You have a major salvo of enemy warheads coming your way around the far side of the planet. Estimate over 300 vampires inbound." 

"300?" Biko said. "We've never trained to stop that many."

Ram said, "Are you sure about that count,
Mohegan
?" 

"I've got my eyes on them right now."

Seconds later, the carrier's spysats saw them, and the bridge watched the projections nervously. A storm cloud appeared on the tactical display, coming for them from 'round the limb of the gas giant - hundreds of alien warheads spitting fire out their tails.

Biko didn't wait. "AGC Biko to all junks, all bays, scramble, scramble. Open the doors and let out the 111s. Loose the Dingoes."

The Squidies' flying bombs held their formation and passed to port of the SAR junks by a hundred-thousand Ks. "The warheads are ignoring the junks," Dana said. "Maybe they're only interested in
Hardway
." 

Ram hoped she was right, but six of the alien contacts broke from the swarm of flying bombs and cut a 40-gee, button-hook turn in echelon, clearly maneuvering to intercept the Search and Rescue junks. "Enemy bombs don't fly like that," Harry Cozen said. "Those are some kind of fighter craft."

Biko enlarged them. They were sharp all over with at least eight major spikes protruding from their hulls and minor ones stabbing out at space in twice as many places. Ram was wiling to bet the spikes housed maneuvering jets of some kind after seeing that turn they took together.

A single, wide-mouthed, stubby barrel protruded out in front of their ruddy, reddish hulls. Markings had been painted on them in a faint, bunched-up writing like cursive and cuneiform and Sanskrit packed into boxes. "
Mohegan
to
Hardway
AT. Those aren't alien warheads. We're going evasive." 

"Mr. Biko," Cozen said,"tell those junks to maintain course and heading until the SBS team is clear of the area. The mission is the priority."

"SAR flight, maintain vector to target."

 Burroughs,
Mohegan
's pilot, let the channel hang dead for a second to express his disapproval. "Wilco,
Hardway
AT. Will comply. We are now flying like ducks in a row. The six enemy contacts are still approaching with maximally decreasing range and bearing." 

Less than two minutes later, the flight of alien craft had closed the distance to the SAR junks. The tactical display projected on the bridge couldn't show the burning metal or the black of space stitched lurid and bright with desperately reaching tracers.
Hardway's
radar and LiDAR and optical arrays couldn't see the grit teeth of the gunners in the junks' turrets as they spun and fired and screamed, 'Die, mutherfucker! Die!" Gunners from
Mohegan
and
Bandito
and
Double Down
crossed streams in the path of the leading enemy craft and left it nowhere to go but into the fountain of shells. High-density osmium and tungsten alloy sabot rounds from the junks' 140mm autocannon tore and burrowed into the first alien fighter. It cooked off like a warhead and made the crews of all three junks whoop over comms.  

Those junks each carried 4x140mm autocannon mounted on four, external turrets and they threw hell into the sky, but after that first, lucky shot when the enemy didn't know what to expect, the alien fighters came in jinking hard and changing direction with astounding unpredictability. The alien flight split into two elements. They flew at the junks down corkscrewing paths the gunners couldn't find with their fire. The tenor of the shouts and screams on comms quickly changed from victory to confusion to desperation as they realized their laggard shells couldn't catch the bandits. "It's flying around my fire! I can't get it!"

"It's too fast!"

"We're hit.
Mohegan
is hit. Lost both starboard nacelles. Particle streams cut 'em right the hell off. One turret down." Ram was stunned; particle streams demanded more energy than he thought any ten-meter craft like this alien fighter could produce.