Earth Song: Etude to War (43 page)

Chapter 45

May 9th, 534 AE

Planet K Star System, Contested Territory, Galactic Frontier

Minu glanced at the virtual battlefield feed from space and tried not to obsess. Several hundred thousand kilometers away her daughter was in a life and death struggle against other starships for only the second time in her young life.

The first time she'd been only hours old, figuratively speaking. She was immensely more experienced now, and immensely more self-assured. She didn't know if the latter was necessarily a good thing. It wasn't like she was fighting her own life and death battle on the planet surface or anything.

“They're making another run at the landing field,” Cherise whispered in her ear and Minu turned her attention back planetside. Something about her friend’s voice itched in the back of her mind.

Shortly after they had taken the portal spire, organized resistance collapsed. It was now firming up again and the attacks were repeatedly more effective. They'd rebuilt a CP somewhere. She knew that must be dealt with, and quickly, before the enemy command and control elements realized that there was no longer a Kaatan class battlecruiser hovering over their heads like an angel of death.

She accessed the virtual battlefield and all the data coming to her from the hundreds of still functioning microscopic bots she'd released, now spread far and wide around the portal spire. Feeding the data into the suit's AI, she made a direct inquiry: Locate enemy command and control center. It only took a second for the answer to be displayed.

“Cherise, let's go.” There was no reply, but when Minu jumped with jet assist she followed. Power at twenty seven percent, her suit warned her.

They purposely avoided enemy contact, leaping high from the tallest surviving buildings, one to the next as far as their jumpjets would allow. It was burning energy at a furious rate.

As they moved, her virtual battlefield warned of two large groups enemy elements preparing to attack from opposite sides of the portal spire. She had to decide to continue on the AI's estimate, or reverse course. The suits’ firepower was the only guarantee to break the coming attack. More than half the Rangers were on board shuttles heading for orbit, or boarding at that moment. “It always seems to come down to me making a hard decision,” she whispered inside the womb of the combat suit.

“Are we going back?” Cherise asked in her ear. The question sounded almost pleading.

“No,” Minu replied, her decision made.

* * *

It was a deadly game of cat and howler he was playing. The only problem was the Ibeen was a huge fat cat that could barely move and was nearly toothless, while the howlers were nimble killers.

Pip hissed in frustration as he used his close defense lasers to concentrate fire on one of the fighters. After a few seconds it dodged away at several hundred Gs acceleration and he lost his lock. The other five fighters then began slashing at his weakening shields with their particle guns. He'd turn his lasers on one of those fighters and the game would repeat. Seven of his original nine shield arrays were still up, and two were in critical condition.

“This tub was not designed for this,” he complained in the darkened cocoon of the improvised CIC.

The Ibeen was a fleet transport of the People, meant to have escort into any combat zone. Its defenses were entirely of a contingent sort, meant to hold its own as it retreated or waited for backup. Retreat was out of the question. Lilith still dueled with the three destroyers and a fleet carrier. Should he leave the relative protection of orbit, the destroyers would carve him up in seconds. And with the Kaatan engaged, there was no backup.

“At least they only had one ship-killer each,” he mumbled, trying to distract himself from the agony that was his brain. He was stretched to the breaking point already, when his battlespace proximity alarm screamed and the inter-ship communicator came alive at the same time.

“Pip, more fighters!”

“Thanks, Lilith. I need help!” Unfortunately, she did not respond, and he was still on his own. Five more fighters were screaming towards him and it was all but obvious they were making a missile run. He activated the communications with the shuttles currently in route to the planet’s surface or preparing to lift off.

“All shuttles and passengers, I am forced to discontinue control of your craft. It will automatically maintain its current altitude and orbit awaiting further orders. Stand by.”

It only took a couple seconds to send the message and relinquish control of the airborne shuttles, and in that time two of the fighters launched their ship-killers.

With more of his strained brain available, Pip was able to formulate a better strategy. He rolled the Ibeen slightly on her axis and repositioned shields which simultaneously allowed him to bring more of the ship’s defensive lasers into play against the missiles. It worked. One was intercepted almost right away, and the other when it was still a thousand kilometers away. Then he realized his mistake.

While concentrating on the two missiles’ approach, he’d neglected the warning from the battlespace system that the remaining three fighters had dipped into the edge of the planet’s atmosphere before launching their own missiles. They only set off the imminent warning when the missile tracks changed their downward course to lance up and at his now vulnerable side.

“No,” he cried as he frantically brought all the defense lasers around, cycling their fire rate all the way up despite the risk of burning out their emitters. He did the best he could. Reallocating the shields came as the last action, and his mind would never be as nimble in its manipulations of a starship’s control as Lilith’s was.

The lasers scored against one of the missiles, the other two stuck him full on. One detonated amidships, the other nearly penetrated the shields near the stern.

The neural feedback loop made him part of the ship, linking his mind completely with its various systems and sensors. The energy that penetrated the shield and ripped into the after hull ball contorted every muscle in his body and tore a visceral scream from him as though his skin was on fire.

Automated subsystems within the nominal operating environment kept the ship functioning with the last commands he’d given them, but nothing else happened. In those seconds the first five fighters, sensing blood in the water, screamed in and began concentrating their fire all along his now much weakened aft shield array.

Stunned and nearly unconscious, the continued attacks penetrated the weakened shields intermittently to strike the hull in several places, exploding the light hull plates and rupturing internal compartments. To Pip it felt like knives being plunged into side over and over.

“Help,” he cried out incoherently, not knowing if it was his voice or over the radio through the ship communicators. The pain, piped directly into his brain, was far beyond any amount the human brain had been designed to tolerate. Another shield array failed, the boom holding the capacitors flashing with discharged energy. He struggled to move a shield in the way as the second group of three angled to take advantage of the weakness. Then one of the fighters exploded.

The Phoenix shuttle came screaming up out of the atmosphere riding its plasma rocket engines’ ten kilometer long drive plume. The six heavy beamcasters mounted along each wing blazed in constant strafing fire against as Aaron backed off the thrust finally and banked across the nearby enemy formation of five fighters.

Caught completely by surprise, the lead fighter was torn apart as its shields exploded. Two of the others were so confused by the appearance of the new enemy that they banked radically right into each other and merged into a maelstrom of fire and debris. The two survivors split into opposite directions. Aaron killed thrust and spun the shuttle on its access, raking one of the two until it bloomed into fire and death. The last one poured on thrust and raced for higher orbit.

Pip used the valuable time he’d been given and struggled to shake off the effects of multiple traumas to his already tortured brain. He swam through a haze of pain and confusion, understanding hovering at the edge of awareness for long moments as Aaron fought the remaining six Mok-Tok fighters.

The Ibeen was mostly operational, the damage dealt it so far contained and being limited by automated repair bots. There wasn’t much more he could do there, his hope lay elsewhere. In a near panic, he extended tendril of his mind through a communication link, to the Weaver on the Kaatan.

Chapter 46

May 9th, 534 AE

Planet K Star System, Contested Territory, Galactic Frontier

Minu was one block from her objective when Pip relinquished control of the shuttles to their extremely simple on-board computers. Aaron was speaking to her in moments. “He’s cut off control to the shuttles,” he said in hurried tones. “He must be in trouble. I was en route to orbit with a load of Rangers when it happened.”

“Where is Lilith?” Minu asked aloud then called out to her. “Daughter, Pip is in trouble.”

“I know,” was the short reply.

“Can you help him?”

“I am trying.” After that, she wouldn’t reply. She relayed the brief conversation to her husband orbiting a few thousand meters above.

“Oh no,” he breathed. “If we lose the Ibeen…”

“We’re screwed,” she finished. Her mind raced to consider options. The problem was, there weren’t any. What could she do in a powered combat suit thousands of kilometers away on a planet’s surface, under siege by a higher order species? “I – I don’t know what we can do.” It was one of the hardest things she’d ever said. Her life was finding solutions to difficult or impossible problems. For decades there had always been a way out, an answer that saved more lives than it cost.

“Okay,” Aaron said, “I’ll take care of this one.”

“Aaron,” she shouted, “what are you—”

“You can’t always be the one to save the day,” he cut her off; the sound of the hybrid engines screaming could be heard over his transmission as the Phoenix shuttle rocketed for orbit. “I’m tired of you hogging all the fun.”

“Aaron,” she spoke quietly.

“Yes love?”

“Good hunting.”

As it turned out, admitting she didn’t know what to do wasn’t the hardest thing she’d ever said after all.

“Is he going to attack those fighters with the shuttle?” Cherise asked, having of course overheard the exchange.

“It’s the only way to help Pip.”

“He’s no match for a squadron of fighters. The Phoenix isn’t even Concordian technology!”

“I know.” She swept the nearby area through her tiny bot drones to be certain the virtual battlefield was clear. Cherise remained silent from that point on.

The virtual battlefield confirmed the last block was clear so Minu set herself and jumped, the suit warning her that she was down to under fifteen percent jump jet fuel as she boosted high over the intervening building to land in a ruble strewn street. A squad of Leesa troops were there unloading equipment from a transport, confirming her tactical estimate of the target.

Minu sprayed the alley with hyper velocity bullets, shredding the Leesa and tearing a huge rent in the transports flank, rendering it useless. Before any other units had time to realize what was happening, she turned to the building the Leesa had been operating from, lowered her suit’s bulky torso, and charged.

More than a ton of hardened dualloy armor met the light ceramic concrete structure with a thunderous crash. Minu bulled her way through, shrugging the suit’s massive shoulders and pushing with the already stressed leg motors to crash into the interior of the building. A five meter section of wall crumbled with her, crushing dozens of Leesa under its weight as Minu performed a somewhat clumsy shoulder roll to come up on one knee. Cherise followed close behind.

The combat suit’s computer analyzed the space in a flash. A small warehouse, approximately twenty thousand square meters, nearly filled with the materials of war and support staff. An area on the far side, about a hundred meters away, was instantly highlighted by sensors as the new CP she’d been looking for.

“Bingo,” she said and sent the data to Cherise. A few small arms started bouncing off her armor and a solitary energy weapons splashed against her shield as she formulated a plan. It was simple and elegant. “Let’s tear this place apart,” she told Cherise, and opened up in all directions with the full complement of her weapons. “Do as much damage as you can while I neutralize the command and control.”

The roof was too low for a good use of the jump jets, and besides she might need them to escape. Instead Minu used the suit’s powerful legs to jump several meters in the air.

She dropped a few of her remaining micro grenades below her as she soared, the detonations killing randomly. Panicking Leesa were either scattering in all directions or scrambling for weapons as they began to realize the magnitude of the death which had landed in their midst.

The defenses never completely reacted to them. The pair landed in the rearward material mustering area completely undetected prior to their forced entry. The warehouse was filled to overflowing with support personnel and war materials. To make matters even worse, a field hospital had been set up in one corner.

As Cherise began moving laterally and firing indiscriminately at anything and everything, and Minu hoped towards the CP, some of the still ambulatory wounded began firing at the heavily armored attackers. Most of their fire was ineffective, but some was deflected into their own personnel, further exacerbating the ensuing panic.

Minu’s movements became a blur as she waded through the throngs of crazed Leesa. As some began to realize where she was going, they became desperate in their attempts to stop her. Dozens of lightly armed soldiers stood their ground and fired everything they had at her, which was mostly light accelerator bullets. They rained off her armor with no effect at all.

Twenty of the reptilian personnel dove on her when she landed, grabbing the suit’s arms and legs. Minu was held for a second until she used both arms to swat aside the enemy. Bones were shattered and flesh torn as she mercilessly removed the obstructions. They weren’t living beings to her at that moment, they were merely an impediment to her mission.

And then the CP was in sight. The Leesa command along with a platoon of their elite soldiers were trying to evacuate but were stopped by their own fleeing support personnel. When they spotted Minu barreling through toward them, they instantly turned on her with everything they had. Minu raised both arms and unleashed all six beamcasters in rapid fire. In two seconds, the entire command of the Leesa were dead.

The survivors of the platoon threw down their weapons and dropped to the ground in surrender. Her virtual battlefield confirmed, the ground forces were standing down, the battle for the surface of Planet K was over.