Battle Station (40 page)

I watched as seven cruisers blew up in three fast minutes. A cheer went up from those of us surrounding the spherical display tank. By concentrating all our fire on one Macro at a time, we were taking them out quickly.

I was just beginning to grin when the Macros changed tactics. They turned and directed all their firepower at us, ignoring the flittering distraction the Nano ship swarm had become.

“They are launching something different, sir,” the weapons officer said. “Not missiles—they look like mines or something.”

I zoomed in on the scattering release of the nearest ship. Black objects came spinning out of the ports. They looked like flying saw blades—or flying spiders.

“They are fresh assault troops. They are throwing them at us now, just as we’ve done to them on several occasions.”

“Should we launch our own marines?” Sarin asked me.

I looked at her for a moment, considering. “No. I don’t think so. We are winning the gun battle. We don’t have to board their ships. We can blast them all at range. Every minute, we are taking out more of them than they are of us. More importantly, if I send my men near the Macro fleet, the Nanos will probably fire on the marines. The Macro ships aren’t good at hitting a single man in space—but the Nanos are. We can’t risk it yet.”

Inside the sphere, what had been three distinct groups of differently colored ships had turned into a wild mess. All three fleets were mixed up now, flashing past one another. We’d been slowing our charge for quite a while, but were still going too fast to reverse on a dime. Inertia had taken us past one another as both sides were braking, but not enough to stop all forward momentum. Soon, we’d all wheel around and make another run at close range.

I realized this had been the moment the enemy had been waiting for. They’d built jump-troops for this purpose, and now that all three sides were matching velocities and positions, they were releasing every assault robot they had. I could have played the same game, but I had only three hundred marines while they appeared to have thousands.

“What are your orders, sir?” Sarin asked.

I looked at her in surprise. I saw the worried look on her face. I’d let her run the battle for some time now, and she’d been doing fine. But now, she didn’t know what to do. She didn’t have a snappy set of orders to counter the enemy assault troops. It was time to stop daydreaming and assume operational command.

“Alert every ship to the danger. I want every laser we have targeting those assault bots unless they fire more missiles. The gunships should ignore them, and keep firing at the primary targets. As for my marines—all my marines—get them suited up and waiting at the airlocks. Every marine is now assigned to localized ship defense. Some of the invaders are bound to get past the defensive fire and board our ships.”

“Sir,” Jasmine said, quietly. “The gunships don’t have any marines aboard. Just Fleet people. I ordered all the marines onto the destroyers. I thought they would be more effective that way.”

I nodded. It wasn’t how I would have arranged it, but I understood her thinking. In hindsight, it had been a mistake. But I wasn’t going to second-guess her publicly at this point.

“Tell the gunship crews to button up, then. They have thicker hulls than the nanotech ships. It will take the enemy time to burn through.”

The fighting went on. At close quarters now, the ships were all hampered. The forward guns on
Goa
never seemed to stop firing for more than a few seconds—but their rate of fire was slowing down. They were having heat problems and I knew from experience that if you chain-fired one of the bigger cannons for too long, it warped the chamber and caused inaccuracies. Eventually, the system would overheat and quit working altogether. I ordered the ships to slow down their rate of fire to prevent this.

“Sir,” Sarin said, looking up at me. “The first assault bots have reached our ships. They are attacking every unit in the fleet.”

I nodded. I checked the active ship counts. The Nano fleet was down to less than fifty effectives—more than eighty percent of the Blue fleet had been destroyed. It was painful to watch. They were helping, but they could have been doing so much more. On our own side of the ledger, we had lost eleven gunships and two destroyers. Now that the assault bots were landing on every hull, I knew that number would go up.

“Time to get moving,” I said. “I want every ship to fire their primary engines and get underway.”

“But we are right in the middle of the enemy.”

“Exactly. I no longer wish to be here. Hurry, pass on the order. We need to get some speed up.”

The order was passed on, although only after Jasmine cast me a worried glance. What crazy plan did Riggs have now?

Full acceleration was a dramatic spectacle. We disengaged in less than a minute, becoming a separate, distinct mass of contacts that resembled a greenish cloud of fireflies inside the sphere. A few lagged behind. They were quickly caught and destroyed.

The Nano ships stayed with the Macros, of course. They weren’t quitters, I could say that for them at least. Their flickering beams stabbed out, catching missiles and assault bots alike. Thousands were destroyed.

“We’re outrunning their assault troops,” Jasmine said.

“Yes,” I said. “I’ve been out there, trying to jump from ship-to-ship. It’s a tricky job. Ships have vastly more powerful engines than an assault troop’s repellers. You can really only catch them if they let you, or if they are unaware you are coming.”

“All those robots are flying around, with nothing to land on,” Jasmine said, staring at the display globe. She looked at me, and for the first time today, she smiled. “You screwed them.”

“That’s my job,” I said, and smiled in return.

I noticed even Sandra was smiling at both of us. For once, she wasn’t suspicious of Jasmine or complaining about my risky decisions. She was just happy we were all still alive.

I wished I had a camera handy. I would have taken a picture.

-40-

The assault bots had been the enemy’s last best hope. When we dodged them, they didn’t quite know what to do. After reaching a range of about fifty thousand miles, I slowed and wheeled my fleet again to bring my main guns around to bear on the cruisers. The larger, slower-moving ships were taken out one at a time. The Nano ships were all destroyed, even
Alamo
. I transmitted private messages, one after another, calling for her to respond. She never did.

I felt conflicted about that ship. She had ruined my old life—but had given me a new one to replace it. She’d only been following orders laid down by the Blues in any case. She’d killed my kids, but she was a machine. It hadn’t been personal.

If it hadn’t been for
Alamo
, I’d never have become Colonel Riggs of Riggs’ Pigs. There might not have ever been a Star Force. Who knew? Maybe Earth would be a cinder right now.

I brought over Miklos and Sloan to join in a command meeting on
Goa
. Everyone was relieved, but not jubilant. We’d lost a third of our fleet. The Nanos had limped home with less than twenty ships.

“Why didn’t the last Nanos attack us at the end?” Sloan asked.

I turned to him and drew in a breath before explaining my personal opinion. “I’ll give it an educated guess. They destroyed Socorro, the only ship that had crossed their defensive line back at the gas giant. They only engaged the Macros because they were fired upon. I don’t think they ever associated our whole fleet with the rest of the targets. We never got all that close, and so when the last Macro blew up, they called it a win and flew home.”

“Weird,” he said, “but I’ll take it.”

“Agreed. Now, let’s talk about the next phase of the campaign—”

Captain Sarin cleared her throat. “Sir? I’d like to make a suggestion.”

I frowned, but nodded slowly.

“We clearly have the Macros on the run, and taking down their bases one at a time will take time, but is worth doing.”

I nodded, and my face smoothed out. I’d expected her to ask us to abandon the Eden system just as we were poised to capture it once and for all.

“I agree with your assessment, Captain,” I said.

“But I would ask,” Sarin said, pressing ahead quickly. “That you allow me to head for Earth. I’ve already been here longer than I’d anticipated. This ship is a key component of our home defense fleet.”

My gut reaction was to deny the request, but I forced myself to consider the situation. I really liked this ship, and I wanted one for myself. But it wasn’t right to simply commandeer
Goa
when there weren’t any significant threats left in the system. The enemy had built very little ground force, reasoning that with five planets to defend, the fight would be won in space. Now that we’d destroyed their ships, the individual planets were almost helpless.

Moreover, returning the ship might help with relations between Earth and Eden…I paused, considering the thought I’d just had. Was that how it was now? Two separate political entities? Was such a thought exactly how all colonies began to break away?

I shook my head fractionally, rejecting the idea. I was still Star Force—as were Sarin and Crow. We might not be in the same place, but we were all on the same side. The last thing we needed in this war was more bickering amongst ourselves.

“Sir?” Sarin asked. She was still waiting for her answer.

“Just thinking for a moment—um, yes. Take your ship home, Captain. I think that would be best. Tell Admiral Crow about our victory at Eden. Tell him I will be coming home in time as well, when this flank is secure. At that point, I will secure our other flank, keeping enemies out of our home systems from both directions. The rings will be fortified, and we will control who comes in or goes out.”

Captain Sarin seemed surprised, but relieved. I could tell she’d been thinking hard about how to ask me. She’d probably come up with a counter to every argument I might give her—but I hadn’t give her any of them. I’d simply let her go.

The next three days saw the liberation of two more Centaur worlds. The one we were in orbit over was easy and quick. I brought down my gunships from orbit and destroyed the domes by overloading them with railgun fire. By sending in a platoon of charging marines and about a thousand Centaur troops when the dome was fizzling and brown, I was able to capture two more of the gigantic production facilities. The third one, however, blew itself up. More than thirty good men died. I cursed and drank that night as we flew to the next planet.

This time, we proceeded more cautiously. We bombarded the dome until it went down entirely, planning to damage the production facility from the air after it was defenseless. That way, even if it blew up, it wouldn’t take any of my men with it.

It didn’t work out that way. As soon as the dome went down, the factory detonated. It was the same with the rest. The Macros apparently didn’t want to give us any more factories. I didn’t blame them, but I did curse them.

When the last Macro stronghold fell two weeks after the Battle for Eden, as it became known, we’d captured a grand total of three factories that were in working order. Still, I had to count myself lucky. The system was free of the enemy machines at last.

Goa
left the system just before we assaulted the last world. I watched Jasmine go through the ring to the Helios system with conflicted feelings. I wondered when we would meet again, and under what circumstances.

I forced away such thoughts and turned back to the final assault. We’d moved as quickly as we could, not wanting to give the Macros time to build any new ships. I was worried they would imitate our ship designs, producing smaller ships in a shorter amount of time. But apparently, whatever flash of insight had guided them to recent advances was not to be repeated. They put out a few dozen large war machines with anti-air flechette systems on their backs, but that was all. We took them out from orbit then worked the domes down until they committed suicide.

I was only slightly disappointed in the end. We’d managed to save most of the Centaur civilians, and had gained a vastly more powerful infrastructure. Three Macro production units and a matching number of Nano factories represented an astounding level of output.

I had a celebratory beer with Miklos, Kwon and Sloan. Sandra crashed the party at about beer number five. She had a few with us, then began kissing on me. The rest of the guys exchanged amused glances and left.

Sandra immediately left my lap and sat across from me. I looked at her in surprise.

“Did you chase them off on purpose?” I asked.

“I wanted to talk.”

I sighed. I’d been hoping for more than just talk. “Okay, what’s on your mind?”

“I don’t trust Jasmine.”

I shrugged. “I can understand that.”

“She’s going to tell Crow everything. About the factories, the battle, and our new tactics.”

“That’s called a debriefing, Sandra,” I told her. “I’m expecting her to do that. It would be a dereliction of duty not to inform the good Admiral of every detail.”

Sandra pursed her lips. “You never told me about what went on between you two. I mean, how did we end up taking over her ship?”

I took a long draw on my beer, finishing it. I leaned forward with a roar and slammed it down on the table. The can and the table both crumpled a bit at the impact. I wasn’t angry, I was just feeling good.

“I’m withholding that information,” I said. “Let’s just say that we had a difference of opinion, and I straightened her out concerning her command status.”

“Do you think she’ll report that part? About being demoted to a Captain?”

I chuckled. “I’m not sure. Knowing Jasmine, I think she probably will. She’s usually a stickler for the rules.”

“Then why did she turn on you?”

“That was our fault—I mean Crow and I caused it. We’ve never been clear enough with our subordinates about who has the final authority in any given situation. The truth was, I was so surprised by her action I reacted on gut instinct. I probably could have handled it better.”

“There wasn’t time. You had a battle to fight. Jasmine didn’t know what she was doing.”