Beyond Mars Crimson Fleet (49 page)

For a moment, there was no
reply from Boussard’s wingman. But then a faithful answer suddenly
crackled over her headphones. “Boosy—we’re in this together! I’m
right with you, Boss!”

Boosy gave a faint smile,
“Let’s do it, then!”

Abruptly,
the two fighters did a lag turn, which transformed into a spiral
dive. They then started their attack run against the
Ruthann
.

* * * * *

Just
after the
Crazy Horse
had finished off the Earth frigate
Barak
, Wakinyan spotted the
Ruthann
atomizing another
Martian destroyer some distance away. Skimming the very top of the
asteroid field, the huge ship was utilizing the big meteoroids not
only as cover, but to break-up any Martian attacks by funneling
them into planned kill zones. There was no doubt that its command
office was a veteran and a real pro that would savage any Martian
who dared to attack him.

It was
then that Wakinyan noticed the two Martian fighters assaulting
the
Ruthann
using a
Thatch Weave Pattern. The
Crazy
Horse’s
scanners quickly identified the two
Martian fighters bent on suicide.

“BOOSY, NO!” yelled
Richard. “WARN THEM OFF! WARN THEM OFF!” he shouted at
Randall.

“I’M TRYING!” Jim bellowed
back. “BUT THERE’S TOO MUCH INTERFERENCE!”

Once
again, Wakinyan jumped out of his command chair and dashed to the
helm controls. “OUT! NOW!” he ordered the helm’s man. A moment
later, the
Crazy Horse
went to full thrust, as it turned sharply towards the
Ruthann
.

* * * * *

For a moment, Colette
thought they would be in and out before they were spotted, but a
second later, the space around her craft was filled with intense
pulse laser and plasma fire. She hoped that the weave maneuver
would counter any laser tracking, but the Earthers were firing
methodically in blanket patterns. The tracers lit up full sections
of space and it became a question of time.

“BOOSY!” screamed Collings.
“I’M HIT!”

Colette twisted her head
just in time to see her wingman’s fighter become a
fireball.

“BILL!” her voice called to
a man who was already dead.

Turning
back to her intended target, Colette’s teary eyes were filled with
rage as she gritted her teeth in anger. Pushing her throttle to
full power, the Martian squadron leader plunged her fighter
straight for the
Ruthann
. As she closed in, her cannons heated up the void, while her
missile canisters emptied. The rockets flash brightly as they
struck the huge ship upon its superstructure. A small portion of
the battleship erupted in explosive fire, but still the behemoth
continued on.

“Damn you!” Colette cursed
as she pulled her fighter up and away. But suddenly, her right wing
dissolved in a blinding burst. “GOD, NO!” she screamed as her craft
went out of control and spun into the asteroid field. A second
later, the brave woman died in a fiery instant among the cold
reaches of ice and stone.

* * * * *

O’Donald
sneered as he watched Boosy die. He cursed the dead female pilot
with a stream of profanities since she had inflicted the most
damage upon the
Ruthann
than any other opponent. Her missiles had demolished
the
Ruthann’s
secondary bridge and control center, denying the dreadnought
of any redundancy of command should the main bridge be damaged or
destroyed. For this, killing her still was not enough for him, he
wished he could have roasted her slowly alive in her
cockpit.

However, she made O’Donald realized that his ship
was now alone—and very vulnerable. And from the desperate orders
and pleas of communications coming over the PA from his surviving
ships, it was all too apparent that the battle was lost. From this,
a fear of Martian forces mounting a coordinated attack against him
drew great apprehension. O’Donald then reluctantly decided to
vector his ship away from the battle, abandoning Selena’s fleet to
their fate. This was to be excused by her incompetence of the mass
loss of ships. But before he could give the order, the huge vessel
shook from a hit on amidships.

“ENEMY SHIP APPROACHING
RAPIDLY FROM ASTERN!” the computer informed. “NUMBER TWO ENGINE
DISABLED AND ON FIRE! MANEUVERABILITY AND THRUST DOWN 25
PERCENT!”

“IDENTIFY ENEMY VESSEL!”
O’Donald ordered the machine.

“MARTIAN
WARSHIP,
DOLPHIN
CLASS DESTROYER, NUMBER 2-9-1-1, ID:
CRAZY HORSE
!” the computer
edified.

* * * * *

At seeing
the death of Colette, Wakinyan went berserk! He pushed the
Crazy Horse
to beyond its
limits as he charged in. Nothing else mattered to him now—except
sending the
Ruthann
straight to hell!

“NUMBER THREE ENGINE
TARGETED!” Randall shouted out.

“MAIN GUN, FIRE!”
Wakinyan’s mouth exploded in merciless wrath.

The
Crazy Horse’s
up-gunned laser cannon split the night in a long continuous
burst. With absolute precision, the laser bolt penetrated and
smashed the number-three engine pod of the
Ruthann
. The engine blew apart in an
explosion of energy, shooting ion particles in every direction and
causing a small nearby cold fusion reactor to detonate. This in
turn fueled a series of more clamorous ignition. The behemoth
trembled in incendiary quakes, as more explosions rocked the big
ship and ripped away parts of its hull. And Wakinyan had just
started his onslaught.

“SYNCRONIZE SECONDARIES TO TRACK TO SAME TARGETED POINT!”
Wakinyan ordered as he slowed the
Crazy
Horse
to make an attack
run.

“AYE, COMMANDER!” Jim
responded without hesitation.

The
Crazy Horse
then change course as it headed in.

“SECONDARIES, FIRE!” spit
Wakinyan in savage fury.

As the
Martian destroyer came within several hundred feet of the
Ruthann’s
stern,
the
Crazy Horse’s
secondary laser cannons fired in unison, hitting the same
point on the hull of the Earth battleship. The
Crazy Horse
then veered off slightly
to port, but still maintaining its bombardment.

The Martian destroyer
continued firing as it speedily flew along side the huge
dreadnought. Separated by no more than twenty yards, the secondary
lasers riddle the hull of the Earth ship like a machinegun, and the
damage it caused became severe. Control cables were cut, equipment
exploded, chambers decompressed, and cyborgs died.

The
Ruthann
rapidly filled with smoke, as fires ignited within. The
dreadnought then began to list as the controls to the docking
thrusters shorted out, energizing several of them at the wrong
time.

“TARGET THAT SHIP!”
O’Donald screamed, choking on the smoke.

“IMPOSSIBLE!” Lunda yelled
to her superior, while the computer attempted to fulfill the order.
“HE’S TOO CLOSE!”

The
Crazy Horse
then pulled away like a fighter from the
Ruthann
in a semicircle. The Martian
destroyer then darted diagonally for the dreadnought’s center
again.

“MAIN GUN, FIRE!” Wakinyan
roared.

In the
heated blast, the
Crazy Horse’s
main battery disintegrated the
Ruthann’s
number four engine pod. The
Martian destroyer then headed straight for the big ship’s stern
with lasers still firing. More laser bolts ripped into the
dreadnought’s hull, and the enormous vessel began to visibly
vibrate as well as leave a trail of what looked like smoke. Finally
after reaching the stern, the Martian destroyer flipped upside-down
and looped around its target in a corkscrew
maneuver.

Holding
his ship in the tightest pattern that he could, Wakinyan steered
the
Crazy Horse
around and around the
Ruthann
. Slowly progressing to the bow
of the battleship, the secondary laser cannons of the Martian
destroyer sieved the hull of the gigantic dreadnought with an
unrelenting barrage. The
Crazy Horse
was literary shredding the
Ruthann
to pieces.

Out of
sheer desperation, O’Donald saw an opportunity and took it.
Noticing that the
Crazy Horse
was passing uncomfortable close to the asteroid
belt each time it flew underneath the
Ruthann
, he sprinted to the weapons
console. The officer then targeted a swarm of meteoroids with
missiles. In quick succession, they were
loosened.

The
missiles arced around the frozen rocks to their unseen side. They
then struck among the asteroids in a horrendous blast, sending a
bombardment of huge shards towards the
Ruthann
and the
Crazy Horse
. However, both the timing
and the aim were perfect, as the
Crazy
Horse
flew straight into
it.

Aboard
the
Crazy Horse
,
Randall was the first to comprehend the threat of the missiles.
Without a moment of indecision, he threw himself at Wakinyan seated
at the ship’s controls. The forceful lunge knocked his friend away
from the instruments and behind a reinforced armored plated
section. Randall then rolled away and waited. He knew there was no
time for anything else.

The
Martian destroyer nearly took the full blunt of the blast and
strangely shielded the big Earth ship from any severe damage. The
rocks slammed into the
Crazy Horse
with tremendous force.

The stones penetrated its
hull, gorging and crushing the ship thoroughly, as the momentum
seemed to stop the destroyer in its tracks. The main power was
instantaneously cut, yet remarkably, she still retained emergency
lighting and artificial gravity. However, she was now adrift and
tumbled gradually away. O’Donald breathed a sigh of
relief.

His
gambit had worked, but the
Ruthann’s
luck had almost run out. These last two
engagements had severely crippled the dreadnought. It had become
only a question of time before more Martians appeared to finish
them off.

They would have to leave
and escape now—or die. However, before the battleship departed, it
would deal a deathblow to this audacious adversary.

“Give us some distance!”
the admiral ordered the computer. “I don’t want to be caught up in
the blast!”

The
Ruthann
then began to slowly turn and make as much steam as she could.
She limped away from the defenseless Martian destroyer, leaving a
wide stream of frozen water vapor particles and debris in her
surviving engine’s ion wash.

Meanwhile
aboard the bridge of the
Crazy
Horse
, a dazed Richard Wakinyan found
himself covered with chunks of conduit, cables, ceramic pieces, and
other wreckage. His right arm was in tremendous pain and worse, he
couldn’t move it. Yet, he summoned enough strength to kicked,
pulled, and pushed the heavy litter off his pinned body. A minute
later, he was clear of the debris.

Wakinyan clutched his right
arm, as he shakily picked himself up from the cluttered deck. As he
looked about the tattered compartment, he did not recognize where
he stood.

Through the buckled ceiling, a huge gaping hole was
torn opened. Debris and bodies lay everywhere. The destruction was
indescribable. And as he continued to gaze about, from the few
surviving instruments mounted on the walls, it was evident that he
was still on what was left of his bridge.

“To any crewmen who can
hear this!” he said painfully over his microphone, “THIS IS
COMANNDER WAKINYAN! ABANDON SHIP! I SAY AGAIN, ABANDON
SHIP!”

Unexpectedly, he heard
wheezing and coughing over his headset. It was close from the
volume level, however the transceiver indicator located within his
helmet only gave a general direction where the sounds emanated
from. Looking about, Wakinyan quickly started searching among the
dead to find its source. He found it to be a grisly chore, and
almost puked in his helmet.

Moving a body by chance, he
found his friend, Jim, gasping for air. His chest and abdomen were
somewhat crushed by a hefty piece of ceramic material, while his
legs were pegged by heavy equipment and plating. Through Jim’s
visor, Richard spied blood oozing from the man’s mouth.