Star Carrier (Lost Colonies Trilogy Book 3) (32 page)

-57-

We cut it close. Very close.

When Morris piped his helmet feed to me, I displayed it on the command deck for all to see. It was quite possibly his final, brave hour in my service, and I thought everyone should share the moment.

We watched as they found their way into
Iron Duke
quickly. There was a large hole in the hull, after all. The blackened opening yawned a hundred meters wide. It bled smoke and debris.

The natural reaction of anyone climbing into a dark hole full of smoke and hazards was to move slowly, but that wasn’t acceptable today—there was no time for caution. My marines used their jet packs, expending air and fuel liberally to scud along into the ship.

Morris’ helmet was struck countless times by chips of the hull, dust particles and larger objects that came twirling up to meet him. Every time he was struck, he cursed and ordered his men to move faster.

The variants, for their part, moved like spiders over jagged stone. They made rapid progress without complaint. They didn’t seem to be afraid or even concerned about their chances.

“Q-161 take point,” I ordered, “Morris, fall back.”

Morris grumbled, but he stopped flying deeper into the passages and let the variants get ahead of him.

The variant troops were imposing. After I’d gotten help from Vogel and his team, we’d come up with some improvements on their weaponry. Instead of cutting torches, metal snips and grippers, as dangerous as these things were, my variants carried heavy weapons.

They were the same weapons my marines used, but instead of being mounted on the body-shell chest plates, they were rigged up high to fire over the shoulder. The variants looked menacing, their guns traveling ceaselessly in search of a target to lock onto.

“Captain,” Morris asked, “can you let me run my own op?”

“Negative,” I said. “I need you to come back alive.”

He shut up after that, but I knew he wasn’t happy. Every remote-channeled ground officer felt the way he did. Under different circumstances I might have let him do as he wished, but I felt I had to maintain some strategic control. Still, I had sympathy for his position.

“When the bolts start to fly,” I said, “feel free to ignore me.”

“Outstanding, Captain!” he replied happily.

The team made it so deeply into the wrecked passages without meeting resistance, we’d all begun to wonder if the ship was dead from bow to stern.

It turned out she wasn’t. Firing erupted as the invasion team reached the ship’s spine—which was unfortunate, because that’s where they were supposed to plant the charges.

Q-161’s squad met the enemy first. A vicious multi-pronged attack ensued without warning. It was clearly coordinated.

The variant crew hadn’t been caught napping after all. They’d waited patiently until our invading troops were deep into their territory before they lunged to box them in. They attacked from the front and rear simultaneously.

Gunfire broke out. The scene was confused. It was all I could do to sit in my seat without demanding a report.

But I contained myself. It was obvious that Morris and Q-161 had no room for distractions.

Rumbold bared his yellow teeth, pulling back his cheeks into a broad grimace. Yamada watched through her laced fingers.

Durris just stared. He was glum, resigned.

The first two of our variants were dragged away and torn apart. They fired their guns, point-blank, destroying several of the enemy each.

But it wasn’t enough. The enemy crew was just too numerous. There had been thousands of variants inside the big ship, and today it seemed like most of them were all in one passage with my small assault team.

The back of our group seemed to fare better at first. Morris knew how to use gunfire in concentration, taking out variant after variant as they rushed in. The marines used concentrated fire with targets called out and marked by Morris. He had only one casualty—a man who got too close, losing a leg and a mortal amount of blood seconds later.

“Fall back! Fall back!” Morris shouted, shuffling away from a throng of variants that followed seemingly in an endless mass. They were like ants. They rushed in fearlessly, crawling on their own dead as well as the walls, ceiling and floor.

After her first two losses, Q-161 marshaled her troops. Like the marines, they began firing in concentration. I was very glad the variant crews had never been trained as ground fighters. They were worker units only, mechanics, power-specialists and welders—not trained assault troops.

Q-161’s group blasted the enemy one after another. Fragments of metal, bio-mass and connective tissue flew everywhere—but still the variants kept on coming.

“We’re losing this, Captain!” Morris said, his voice punctuated by ragged gasps. I could see by his vitals on the readout that he’d been injured somehow, but there wasn’t time to inquire about it.

“You have four minutes left to set the charge,” I said. “After that, I’ll have to pull out to save
Defiant
.”

I knew it was a cold thing to tell my dying troops, but it was the truth.

“Dammit… Roger that, sir!”

Q-161 spoke up then, which surprised me. Up until that point, she’d only followed orders to the best of her ability.

“Requesting permission to break protocol, Captain,” she said.

I hesitated for less than a second. “Permission granted.”

Q-161 had performed admirably in the past, her most impressive action being with the Beta ships. They would have been lost if it wasn’t for this particular variant.

“What’s she doing?” Rumbold asked.

“I have no idea, but I hope it’s brilliant,” I said. “We’re out of time.”

Morris was grunting and moving again. We hadn’t switched away from his helmet feed yet. He was leading his troops in a surge against the back end of the trap the enemy had sprung as the variants seemed thinner there.

The firepower my troops were unleashing was dramatic. If they’d been facing human troops, unarmed, the battle would have been quickly over. But the variants were both fearless and deadly even with only their claws and whipping arms for weapons.

“Sir,” Morris said in a husky voice, “we’re pulling out of this. Q-161 tells me she has a plan, and I’m willing to take that at face-value. We’re fighting our way back to the ship.”

“That carrier must be destroyed, Morris,” I said.

“We can’t do it, Captain. We’re outnumbered and bogged down. We—hey, who’s that?”

Suddenly, from Morris’ point of view, I saw the variants clogging the passage fall away. A group of large humanoids in armor approached.

I knew those uniforms and hulking shapes instantly. They had to be Betas.

“This way,” said the leader, and she turned back the way she’d come.

Morris and the rest of the men followed her. Occasionally, a rush of variants charged out to strike at their flanks, but they fought them off and kept moving.

Locked in my command chair, I was fuming. What was going on? It was difficult to tell even where they were headed. The Beta troops had obviously invaded the ship using the same large breaches in the hull that my own troops had used.

All of this might have been acceptable except for one grim reality: the enemy fighters were closing on
Defiant
and beginning to accelerate. They were going to strafe my ship—several thousand of them.

-58-

“They’re on the way back, Captain!” Yamada called out.

“It’s too late, sir,” Rumbold whispered to me. “We have to pull out now!”

I looked at him, and our eyes met. I knew the truth of his words.

Durris knew it also, perhaps better than any of us. He was looking at me too, but he wasn’t saying anything. It was my choice, mine alone.

“Yamada, connect me to Lieutenant Morris—and Captain Okto too, if she’ll listen.”

“Channel open.”

I hesitated, but only for a half-second. What had to be done was clear—but that didn’t make it any easier to do it.

Rumbold knew. He was an old spacer. A man who’d worked the grim calculus of survival in space a hundred times before I’d been born. He turned away from me and laid in an escape course. He set the acceleration for peak values—at least, the best
Defiant
could manage with one engine gone.

“Morris,” I said, “we’ve run out of time.”

“Shit. Yes sir. Do you have any final words for me?”

“Yes. Reverse course. Land on their hull, and hug it like it’s your mother. With luck, no one will notice you in the flying stew of debris.”

“But sir,” he protested, “Q-161 broke from the team alone. She says she laid the charge. This ship is going up any second.”

I blinked twice, trying to think. We were in real time now, things were moving very fast.

“What’s our window?” I asked Rumbold.

“Fifty seconds,” he said. “It would be longer if we hadn’t lost engine one.”

“Rumbold, their only chance is based on your piloting. I want you to open the shuttle bay doors. Blow them off—now.”

He reached for the panel, fumbling at the unexpected command. I leapt up and did it myself.

“Now, fly directly toward them. Scoop them up in that mouth-like opening we just made.”

“But my course isn’t—”

“You’ve got to do it on full manual,” I said, staring at him. “Can you do that?”

He looked as if he’d eaten something hot and unpleasant. He swallowed hard. “I can sure as hell try, Captain!”

“Go!”

I sat back down.
Defiant
went into motion, slewing around and aiming her nose toward the star carrier. After the assault team had been deployed aboard
Iron Duke
, we’d gotten busy destroying her point-defense weapons. This side of the hull had been stripped clean.

“Hard to control with number one gone,” Rumbold apologized as we all lurched, gripping our armrests with claw-like fingers.

“All hands,” I said, activating the ship-wide broadcast, “prepare for extreme maneuvers.”

“Bunch up, Morris. Tell Okto to join you. A hot pick-up is your only hope. If we don’t scoop you up, you’ll be fried by the fireball when the ship blows up.”

“Yeah, but—”

They’d been riding the shuttle, hanging onto it like sailors clinging to a raft. As we plunged nearer, I considered ordering Rumbold to slow down. Surely, even if he did catch them with the open shuttle bay, they’d all be killed when they hit the back of the hangar.

But I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. There wasn’t time to micromanage anything. Rumbold would only be distracted and confused. He was either going to pull this off, or he wasn’t.

“Sweet Mary!” Morris called out in the final instant. “You’re going to run us all down, Captain!”

His words ended as we swept over his position. I felt sick. Had we just crushed their bodies to pulp?

We didn’t even hear anything. Not a thump or a thud. Their mass was so tiny compared to
Defiant’s
it was as if we’d hit insects.

“Life signs, Yamada?” I asked.

She paused. We all waited, hearing the roar of our engines invade our helmets, then our skulls. Rumbold was pulling up and pouring on the thrust.

“I’ve got something, Captain. They’re not
all
dead.”

“Emergency crew to the hangar!” I demanded. “Rumbold, can you ease off a little?”

“Can’t do it, Captain. We need every second and more. My port side is dragging its ass as it is.”

“You have the helm,” I told him, freeing him to pilot as he saw fit. I suspected he was going to do so anyway, unless I hauled him out of his chair and replaced him bodily.

We were doing about one and a half gravities of acceleration already. Our real acceleration rate was actually higher, but our stabilizers hid the worst of the crushing effects. The ship struggled to speed up more, but she couldn’t in her wounded state.

Before we could get to a safe distance, the carrier exploded. A silent blue-white flash came first. Then radiation washed over
Defiant
making her hull scintillate with charged particles.

My command deck staffers whooped in celebration, fists raised and smiles all around. We’d been victorious.

We’d done it. We’d killed
Iron Duke
. I allowed myself a small, tight smile. But I couldn’t hold the feeling, and my face turned glum again. This victory had come at great cost.

In addition to our losses so far, there was the mass of fighters closing on our position, screaming after us.

“Durris, what are the numbers?” I asked. “Will they catch us?”

“Depends on how much fuel they have left, Captain,” he said. “They’re gaining, but slowly. If they can burn the way they are now for another hour, they’ll have us.”

I nodded. “Give me your best guess. Do they have the fuel left in their tanks?”

“Well… we’ve been tracking them, and assuming the variants haven’t altered their capacities, this pack should run out before they catch up.”

That made me smile. It was quite possibly the first slice of good news I’d heard all day.

“Excellent. Let’s hope your math holds. I’m going below to check on Morris’ team.”

“Captain?” Yamada asked me, her face full of concern, “has he contacted you? Since he came aboard?”

I shook my head.

She turned back to her station and neither of us spoke.

Hand-over-hand, I climbed out of my seat, made it to the passages and used the handholds to aid me in my progress. The ship shook and slid to one side now and again, due to our unevenly applied thrust. Rumbold was fighting the controls every step of the way.

When I finally made it to the hangar deck, I was greeted by a grim sight. A dozen emergency personnel were crawling over an equal number of soldiers. Three of them were much larger than the rest.

“Okto?” I asked.

She stirred.

“So,” she said, “my murderer comes to make sure the job is complete. Your attempts to slay me have increased in both frequency and violence. What is it that antagonizes you so much about me, Sparhawk?”

“Well, you sound like your usual healthy self.” I glanced at the corpsman working on her battered body. “Is she going to make it?” I asked her.

“If she were human, I’d say no. But these colonist types are much tougher than we are.”

It was a slur to call Okto something other than human, but I let it slide. My crewmen were understandably stressed today.

I found Morris next. His body was broken, but he was breathing raggedly on a ventilator.

“He’s got more than twenty fractures,” one of the medical team marveled. “Shock alone should have killed him. Still might. Word is that the entire team came in too fast. They hit the back of the hangar trying to slow down the shuttle, but they didn’t manage it. There’s a damned big scorch mark on the back wall, and not much left of the shuttle!”

I nodded, watching an old friend struggle for life.

“He’ll make it,” I said, “if only to scream profanity at Rumbold.”

The corpsman gave me a strange look then she went back to working on her charge.

Taking each step with painful force, I worked my way back to the command deck and to my seat. We weren’t free of the enemy yet.