War of Alien Aggression 5 Cozen's War (11 page)

"
Take a peek to our 3 o'clock," Burn said.
 

"
Nothin’ there. Not that I can see." But then, the glimmer of an intermittent heat reading 100,005Ks to starboard flashed in his helmet visor. It was gone in an instant, but he knew it was them. All at once he felt relief and fear flash through him. That ship’s stealth wasn’t perfect. If he could see them, even for an instant, then so could Squidy.
 

"Network of planetary defense stations coming up," Burn said. "And then the defense satellites around the homeworld moon itself."
 

The coded message from
Hardway
came as text. Every one of them got it and Jordo was thankful for that. Of the forty-one pilots, only four of the remaining squadron leaders knew the real reason for this extended and suicidal breakaway incursion all the way to the aliens’ homeworld moon. Killing Matilda Witt was just sugar on the pill and not telling his pilots their real mission still felt like a betrayal, but none of them could risk talking about it now.
 

The order from
Hardway
said to bypass the blockade guns and the orbital defense strongholds and use the 38th SD and the remaining warspite torpedoes on the Lancers' Sky Jacks to attack the city-sized alien fleet headquarters in orbit around the homeworld moon. It looked to be three times the size of Sagan Station and the main Staas Yards. They might damage it, maybe, but the real mission was to make a path for SCS
Boomslang
by ensuring that nobody was looking her way while she crept up on the homeworld moon to deliver the war’s final blow. Disruption and distraction was their real mission.
 

"We're going a
ll the way to Squidy Town," Paladin said. "Like
Hardway
could stop us now that we’re through the lines."
 

Dirty said, "We've o
nly got six torps left between us and the 38th. Do they really think that’s enough for a battlestation?"
 

"We’ll hit it in the sweet spot," Burn lied. "Spybirds discovered a critical vulnerability." She made that up and Jordo couldn’t tell if they believed her.
 

The battlestations in orbit around the aliens' sulfur and cyanobacteria covered moon all glittered at once. The exhaust flares looked like a thousand sparks breaking away from the alien defenses and swarming. "They're launching a lot of
something
. Multiple contacts from multiple points. Small," Dirty said, "Fast. Faster than fighters."

"
Here come the warheads," Paladin said.
 

"How many?" It took their flight computers time to count them.

"1323?!" Dirty laughed in disbelief.

In their heads all his pilots were probably asking how 41 fighters were supposed to survive that. "We blast our way through them," he said. "All the way to Squidy Town." He made sure he said it like he believed it himself and glanced once again to starboard. He couldn’t see
Boomslang
now, but they were out there somewhere, riding the chaos the suicidal fighter squadrons created...hiding in it. Hope you bloody appreciate it,
Boomslang
. We’re paying for your passage.

*****

Alien warheads cooked off only a few Ks out, but the way the energy sloughed off
Boomslang
and fell into N-space, the blinding nuclear flashes didn’t even make a glow inside the cockpit. It made the whole scene uncanny and eerie and wrong somehow, as if they were even more detached than spectators.

"Most of those pilots
don’t even know we’re here," the Chief said. "They don’t know the real reason they’re dying."
 

"T
he squadron leaders know." Ram couldn’t tear his eyes from the fighters and the detonations to port, but Medoc and his copilot concentrated on maintaining
Boomslang’s
stealth.
 

"
Not too close," Medoc advised as the flying bombs that made it past the fighters’ first salvos separated and blossomed into multiple missiles. They cooked off under 140mm cannon fire in a rolling front of detonations. "Put a little more distance between us and our escorts." Medoc told his copilot.
 

"
You thinking the fast neutron emissions from those warhead detonations might give us away?"
 

"I'm thinking I think I don’t want some hell-bent zoomie slamming his fighter into our hull because he can't see us. Besides, they’ll be in range of the big guns on the alien battlestations real soon. Don’t want to be too close when one of those things slashes across the sky like a bloody scythe."
 

Ram said, "Give me an updated ETA."

Medoc answered without taking his eyes from his console. "If the remaining fighters fly the path I think they’ll fly to get through the inner defenses and don’t get entangled in any engagements on the way… forty-two minutes. We’ll be in position to deliver our payload seconds after that if we’re not seen."

Forty-two minutes. He would've rather had more time for the redsuits’ sake, but maybe being forced to act quickly would make it easier for them. It would have been easier for Ram if he could have briefed them before they left, but Harry Cozen was always listening. The old man had ears everywhere. "Chief Horcheese," Ram said, "go make sure your cherries are squared and not getting underfoot."

Her eyes flicked down to Medoc, now turning in his seat. "Not so fast, Chief," he said, suddenly speaking even more softly than before. The barrel of the little snub-nosed TUK hand-cannon he held gaped at them. Each of the six chambers in the hexagonal cylinder held a crude shell filled with micro shot that would cut both him and Horcheese in two at this range. It would dissipate into a cloud quickly after that...probably wouldn't do more than dent the bulkhead. "Nobody is going anywhere," Medoc said. "Lock the ship down, Max."

"The ordnance bay is now isolated," the copilot reported. "No comms. No access. They have orders to fire when we get there."

Medoc reached over and lifted the gun out of Ram’s holster. "A Honma & Voss
Itar
. I thought that’s what it was," he said, risking almost a second-long glance at it. "That’s quite a valuable artifact. It’s worth a fortune and it’s an illegal carry to boot. I’m impressed, Mr. Devlin."
 

"I don't want to argue with a man holding a gun, but exactly w
hat do think you’re doing?"
 

"
I don’t trust you, Mr. Devlin. I have reason to believe you may attempt to interfere with this mission. So I’m taking precautions."
 

Ram didn't hold out much hope of convincing him, but he tried. "We can't kill 70 billion without giving the Squidies a proper chance to surrender."

"
Matilda Witt got to you, didn’t she... How the hell did Harry Cozen not see it?"
 

"Nobody got to me," Ram said. "This is my decision. I made it weeks ago. I can’t let this happen. Too many people died to get humanity to this moment for us to meet it like this...with humanity’s single greatest act of
barbarity
. I’m begging you, Medoc. Let me drop one bomb and give them a chance to surrender first. Before we put the lights out on 70 billion… before we try to exterminate an entire species."
 

Medoc shook his head slowly left and right. "War is the way of the stars. The galaxy isn’t civilized. We’re just pretending to be that way on Earth and we’ve always been pretending, Mr. Devlin. And badly. Civilization has always been hypocrisy with us."

"How can Humanity ever become anything better if we don’t at least try?"

"If we get one chance to end this…one chance to hit Squidy so hard he never gets up again, then we have to take it without hesitation or mercy."

"
And you’d kill all of them. Even if we started it?"
 

Medoc snorted air out his nose. "I don’t know the secrets you know about how this war started, Mr. Devlin, and I don’t want to. In the end, it doesn’t matter who started this war. It only matter which of us lives on after it's over. I’d like it if we could be what you want us to be, Mr. Devlin, but we can't. We’re going ahead with the original mission. There will be no deviations from Mr. Cozen's plan. With any luck, my crew already has your two redsuits stowed safely in a hold."

Chief Horcheese stepped from the rear of the cockpit towards Medoc and the front. "Isn’t it a little dangerous firing that thing in here?"

"Not a step closer, please, Chief. I
will
shoot you."
 

"
Of course you will," she said.
 

Once Ram saw her moving on those artificial limbs, it was as if she changed from a solid to a blurred streak of motion. He tried to get out of the way and push himself against the bulkhead to give her more room, but by the time he even twitched, she’d already covered the distance between her and Medoc and grasped his weapon firmly in the vice of her right hand with her palm right over the TUK’s gaping barrel. Medoc’s face was so surprised in the moment before the gun discharged that Ram wasn’t even sure he’d meant to fire.

The sound was a wet pop and he didn’t see any flash, only the Chief’s arm recoiling as if she was the one that had fired a weapon. The artificial skin exploded bloodlessly off her hand and arm in an instant, exposing surreal pink ‘muscle’ and cable tendons and titanium-alloy bone. The micro shot from Medoc’s weapon couldn’t penetrate the metal out of which the skeletal palm plate of her artificial hand had been made. It blew all of the fake ‘flesh’ off, but the projectiles stopped there, embedded in her palm in a smoking lump. The Chief only winced as she pivoted and snatched the gun from him with her other hand without exclaiming even so much as an ‘ouch’.

"
Thank you," Ram said as he took his sidearm back from a stunned Medoc. "Is it stupid to ask if you’re alright, Chief?"
 

"
It doesn’t hurt," she said, extending her skeletal claw-fingers and flexing them in Medoc’s face.
 

"
This is the most important mission of the war," the pilot pleaded. "Don't...don't do this..." Behind him, out the cockpit canopy to port, the shell-fire hail and the warhead detonations from the Privateer fighters and the thousand alien warheads had finally stopped. He could still see the blue plasma flares of Staas Company fighters out there, but far less of them now.
 

"
You’re right, Medoc." Ram said. "This is the most important mission of the war. So we’re doing it my way. Fly this ship," Ram said. "Get us to the homeworld moon."
 

"
And if I don’t? If Max and I refuse?"
 

"
You won’t refuse. Because if you don’t pilot this ship, then
I’ll
have to do it. That won't help our chances any."
 

Medoc shook his head, but he turned in his seat and went back to piloting Boomslang on her course to the Squidies' homeworld moon.

"
I’m going aft," Chief Horcheese said.
 

"36
minutes to target."
 

"
Redsuits are on it, Mr. Devlin."
 

Chapter Sixteen
 

The Squidies outnumbered the UNS and Privateer ships and there was no way to win in a straight up fight. Cozen ordered the fleet to maneuver away from the alien dreadnought while attempting breakthrough for an effective counterattack that could turn the tide of battle and save them.

The large-bore particle streams that caught
Hardway
cut her from three angles. They gouged her mighty bow plate sending up jets of molten metal from the wounds. Pieces of her forward guns now tumbled end over end down the length of the ship. Dana had to roll the kilometer-long carrier to keep them from impacting on the midships guns or the command tower.
 

"
Only one forward battery left, Mr. Cozen."
 

"
Thank you, Mr. Bergano. Ms. Sellis, continue to steer us away from the aliens' dreadnought, but keep our bow to the enemy cruisers. That's still where we can take the most punishment."
 

From the top of the command tower, she could see the secondary bays on fire. Almost all the topside launch bays jetted flame out of incendiary storms feeding on the metal itself. Clouds of hot plasma glomed onto the ship's artificial gees and hugged it like a thick, luminous fog. The midships’ batteries fired their railguns through it as they unloaded on the trio of Squidy cruisers that had tried to cut the carriers off. There was nowhere to go but through the enemy. It was that, or face the alien dreadnought no ship had ever wounded.

"
Signal
Pont Neuf
to shelter behind us," Cozen said. "We’ve got to hold out."