Battlegroup (StarFight Series Book 2) (13 page)

Three Fighters rose on their wings and sped toward the oncoming Soft Skins.

“Back!” he scent signaled in a flow of aggregation and trail pheromones. “Back to the topside tubeway hole! Let us fight from inside it!”

Seven whirred his wings to take him back to the topside hole that had allowed him and his Fighters to drop down into the tubeway after the Soft Skins passed through. Ground bound as they were, the Soft Skins had not looked up at the hole in the tubeway they passed through. But now, it was the only flight path open to him and his Swarmers.

He stopped just below the hole, aiming his rod at the flying Soft Skins.

But his three Fighters reached them first, dodging with agility the black rocks that shot from their arms.

Four Fighters winged up to Seven, then flew into the topside hole. He followed after them, then winged about to aim his rod down, down toward the hole that opened onto the tubeway. Above him he sensed his Fighters doing the same. Inside, he hoped a Soft Skin in his white hard shell would appear below. Surely, surely the combined bolts of five lightning rods would cut through the metal of the white shells!

♦   ♦   ♦

Richard stopped just short of the crowd of Auggie, the man’s Marines, his Marines and Howard. Jane was passing her unconscious wasp to Howard, who was shoving it into the tube that led through the tubeway wall and out to the side of their Dart. As his Marines moved to hand captives to Howard, Richard fixed on the vidscreen image of Wayne leading Linda and Martha to a flaming rendezvous with the attacking wasps. Who now grabbed hold of the three Marines using their four legs.

“Ram them against the tubeway wall!” yelled Wayne as the man’s hard shell tilted to the right.

Red blood spurted across the field of view of Wayne’s vidcam.

To the left of the team leader, Marines wrestled in midair with yellow flying wasps. The wasps were pushing their tail stingers against the hard shells’ white armor. The Marines angled their legs to turn their flight sideways.

Red blood and yellow body fragments spewed ahead of Wayne’s vidcam as the three Marines smashed the attacking wasps against the tubeway’s walls.

Wayne’s vidcam image went still.

“Where’d they go?” yelled Wayne angrily.

“Up there!” called Martha. “Through that hole in the ceiling!”

“Time to finish this,” said Linda, sounding pissed off.

“No!” Richard called over the comlink connecting him with Wayne and his team. “Marines! Fall back! Grab your disabled and load them into your Dart!”

“Chief!” yelled Wayne. “Maybe we can capture a few! Five of them escaped up that hole!”

“No need! We’ve got four captives,” Richard said hard and loud. “You got bags of tech. So do we. So does Auggie. Marines! Leave this boarding
now
!”

Richard shifted his attention from Wayne as the other team leader moved back to pick up the three fallen Marines whose hard shells had been immobilized by lightning bolts. He looked ahead. Howard stood facing him. As did Auggie. No one else was in the tubeway.

“Jerry, any sign of mobile wasps?” he called to his suit’s AI.

“None detected by infrared, ultraviolet, radar, motion-detectors and other sensors,” the AI said over their private com. “There are four living wasps nearby, on the other side of this tubeway. They are the ones you call captives.”

“Good.” He looked to his fellow Marines. “Damn! That battle happened fast. Everyone’s inside?”

Howard raised his gauntleted hand. His pilot gave him a thumbs-up. “All inside. Either in the Dart or leaving the airlock tube and climbing through the hatch.”

Richard gave his pilot a clenched fist Thank You. “You did great fighting those wasps. And Auggie, I’m really glad your team had some napalm rockets left!”

“Me too,” said the man who was godfather to his granddaughter. His visor went from black to clear. Auggie smiled, lifting his narrow mustache. “Thanks for the ride out.”

“Any time,” Richard said, looking to another of his helmet vidscreens. His drone still hovered 30 meters back, near the pile of crates they had hid behind. “Howard, love that crate wall you built. Gave fine cover.”

“Agreed,” his pilot drawled. The tall, middle-aged Marine turned his visor clear. The man’s brown eyes scanned him, then looked past him. “You gonna call in your drone?”

Richard gave the word to Jerry to do it. “Did it just now. Howard, blow your C4 charges. At both ends. I want to close off this tubeway to any more wasp entries.”

His drone whizzed to a stop above him.

“Done,” the pilot said.

“
Kablam, kablam!
” came over Richard’s external suit ears.

He scanned the rear-looking infrared sensor vidscreen. Large red-glowing piles of metal filled the tubeway behind him and the tubeway on Auggie’s side.

“Lead the way, Howard.”

He waited as his pilot stepped through the tubeway entry hole, followed by Auggie’s white hard shell. Richard followed after the man who had lost his own pilot and Dart. As he waited for Howard to unlock the exit hatch into the room penetrated by their Dart, he gave thanks they had only one dead Marine. The hard shells knocked out by the lightning bolts still kept his other Marines alive, thanks to the backup batteries that moved air to the helmet of each Marine. Once they got back to the
Philippine Sea
, they could pull those Marines out of their hard shells and move the four wasps to the low gee holding cell Lieutenant Jefferson had set up on the
Sea
. He hoped the damaged hard shells could be repaired. If not, there had to be spare hard shells at Billy O’Sullivan’s star base. Along with ammo reloads for their backpacks. It was work he looked forward to doing, while the
Lepanto
took its turn at orbital repairs to the deep hull breaches on the nose, belly and top rear of the ship. And to the large areas on the hull where bolts had blasted the adaptive optics mirrors. Looking up, he jumped through the midbody airlock hatch of the Dart. As soon as he stepped inside, it closed behind him. His boots felt a vibration.

“Just blew the two mag mines by the entry hole!” called Howard over the comlink. “Chief, I figured we could let the wasps suck on some vacuum after we pull out!”

Richard grinned to himself. Howard was the kind of Mississippian who believed in adding extra thumpings to any man who crossed his path. Or any wasp, in this case. Course the alien ship had to have tubeway hatches that closed on pressure loss, just like every Earth ship. But surely the loss of pressure at two spots on the enemy ship, plus the loss of dozens of fighters, was going to make this wasp ship spend the next few weeks licking its wounds as it worked to recover normal functioning.

“Just right!” he called. Richard stepped through the inner airlock hatch and saw how crowded the cargohold interior was. He could barely see the hard shell form of Howard, up front at the wall panels that let him control the retro rockets that would push them out and away from the wasp ship. He noticed how Auggie was standing in the narrow aisle between the seats that locked each hard shell into position before a Dart impacted the ship it was boarding. Well, lock-in was not needed on this departure. And the Dart’s inertial damper field would protect his Marines from being knocked over by the retros and main thruster. “Get us the hell out of here! And fire our laser at that the bastard’s rear weapons ring as we pull out! Wayne, you do the same! I’m sure Jefferson will give us covering fire as we exit.”

“Our lasers are covering you!” called the sharp soprano of the woman who commanded the destroyer that had brought them this far. “Move to hide behind the ice comet! It will give you some shelter from the wasp lasers! We’ll keep its attention on us until we can rendezvous with your Darts.”

Richard knew the lanky woman who loved a fight would do just what she promised. Escaping from an armed enemy was never easy. But at least two of the three weapons rings were dead. And maybe the departure of the two surviving Darts would cause enough air loss to distract the wasp ship’s commander from trying to kill his Darts. He hoped so. At least the long plasma flame from their single fusion pulse thruster would disperse any bolt and laser beams hitting at that end of each Dart.

♦   ♦   ♦

Daisy felt relief as the wallscreen images showed the two Darts firing their thrusters to put them behind the nearby giant comet. The wasp ship’s tail ring of lasers and lightning tubes fired a few beams at the fleeing Marines, but the two green beams that came close to the two Darts were dispersed by the yellow-white plasma flare of their thruster exhausts. Even lightning bolts could not stay coherent in the midst of the plasma from a fusion pulse thruster. That fact was also protecting Lieutenant Jefferson’s destroyer as it swung wide to one side, out of range of the wasp weapons, then dived for the comet, its two thrusters putting a stream of plasma between it and the outgoing wasp ship. The enemy ship did not make any attempt to follow the
Philippine Sea
or the fleeing Darts. The wallscreen image of the wasp ship, conveyed by a spysat launched earlier by Jefferson, showed two holes in the ship’s six-sided hull, and a massive gash near its rear. That was where Dart Three had self-destructed. While the light from the local star was pale this far out, sensors on the spysat showed the gaping hole went down several deck levels. The wasp ship still had power in one thruster, but clearly it was in bad shape after this encounter with the Darts and the
Sea
.

“Captain,” Aaron called from the right of her seat. “Chief O’Connor has texted me that his and First Sergeant Naranjo’s people are all well. First Sergeant Park has pulled his Marines out of their dead hard shells. And Chief O’Connor reports only Corporal Harrison was injured. His left hand has an electrical burn.”

Her right side holo that carried the ceiling’s look down image of Jacob, Aaron, herself and the nine Bridge crew showed Jacob’s face. His tense expression, which she had been aware of during the entire Dart boarding and interior combat on the wasp ship, now eased to a neutral look. His wide shoulders lowered.

“Very good news,” Jacob said, sounding more calm than Daisy felt. He looked ahead. “Chief Osashi, any word from Lieutenant Jefferson?”

The fiftyish Japanese-American shook his head as he kept his attention focused on several holos in front of his control pillar. “Nothing yet. Just the neutrino vid and com feed from the Marines.”

“XO, I suspect Chief O’Connor will want to take care of gathering up Master Sergeant Lee’s personal effects,” Jacob said. “Will you provide him with the Earth side location of Lee’s parents?”

Daisy took a deep breath. Chao Lee was one of the four Marine pilots who had welcomed her into the Marine community not long after she boarded the
Lepanto
. The tall, slim man had enjoyed playing
Go
with her and Lori, when she and her friend had visited the Marine common room on the Habitation Deck. His death felt . . . unreal. Yet others had already died, both at Kepler 22 and here at Kepler 10. The full crews of the
Britain
and the
Marianas
had become vapor with their ships. And crew people from the
Tsushima Strait
, the
St. Mihiel
and the
Chesapeake
had died in ship to ship combat. They were lucky no one on the
Lepanto
had died during the three deep hull punch throughs by enemy beams. Time to put memories away.

“Captain, yes, I will provide Chief O’Connor and First Sergeant Naranjo with that information.”

“Yes, of course,” Jacob said quickly. “Lee was under the command of Sergeant Naranjo, so he needs that data too. Thank you for the reminder.”

She wondered why Jacob was being so talkative. Was it a side effect of the stress he felt at watching others fight life and death battles against giant yellow wasps? “You’re welcome.”

“Incoming neutrino video signal,” called the voice of Melody from the ceiling speaker. “Sender is Lieutenant Joy Jefferson of the
Philippine Sea
. Do you wish to accept the signal?”

“Yes, dammit!” called Jacob, his irritated tone surprising Daisy. “Put her signal up on the wallscreen. Share it over the All Ship vidcom. And return the wallscreen to imagery of the
Sea
, the wasp ship and sensor imagery of this system.”

“As you wish, my dear captain,” Melody said in a lilting, musical voice.

Daisy could not believe the words spoken by the AI. It had been acting strange ever since the loss of the
Lepanto’s
admiral, captain and XO. Now, it had moved from being argumentative to being . . . personal. Ahead of her the front wallscreen changed imagery. On the right was the true space image of the
Sea
, as viewed from its spysat. On the left was a situational display of all planets, ships and orbital structures in the Kepler 10 system. In the middle was the image of Joy Jefferson and her XO Aelwen Rhydderch. Richard sat next to Joy, looking tired. The woman’s blue eyes fixed on her, Aaron and Jacob.

“Captain, I report a cessation of hostile fire between my ship and the wasp ship. Two of the three Darts used in our boarding have returned and are locked down to my hull.” She bit her lip. “As you’ve heard, we lost Dart Three and pilot Chao Lee. All other Marines have returned safely.”