War of Alien Aggression 5 Cozen's War (14 page)

"Anytime, now, Mr. Devlin," Cozen said, "Anytime you’re ready."

*****

Burn looked for the
Boomslang
through the canopy of her fighter and was glad she couldn't see it. That ship will stay near enough to leverage the chaos and distraction we create, she thought, but not so close as to get entangled in it.

The thirteen, remaining fighters maintained a tight formation, wordless as the Squidies’ moldy pea of a homeworld moon grew larger ahead of them in front of the ruddy gas giant. It was a lurid blemish hanging right over the nose of Burn’s fighter. That's where they evolved, she thought. And that's where they still live, under the surface in nests like some boneless cross between ants and sulfur-stinking squids.

Four F-223s and nine F-151s from the
Hardway
Air Group were all that remained of the 96 that had broken through the lines to make sure
Boomslang
arrived at her target. Their orders said to assault the Command and Control station, but they’d never destroy it. It was just a distraction for
Boomslang
. Pooch and Jordo knew that. Burn knew that. The rest had no idea.
 

Burn flew in next to Lancer 1-1. She couldn’t see his eyes, but she could tell by the angle of his helmet he was staring ahead at the aliens’ moon and the guns that would open up on them in very short order. Paladin and Dirty were still with him. Burn never saw when they lost Holdup and Gusher. She never saw what had happened when they lost most of the 96 they’d set out with.

"
Lancer 1-1," she said "I know this outing is officially your party, but…"
 

"
So don’t start pulling rank," he told her.
 

"
I just want to say something…" The silence on comms beckoned for her to fill it, but she couldn't get the words out. Burn had trained 10 of the 12 other pilots flying around her. Along with the dark responsibility she felt that gave her, there was also pride,
shining
pride. She was proud of them. Other units would have mutinied and demanded to be put up against the bulkhead and shot instead of climbing in those cockpits and going out again and again when they saw what it meant...50% casualties...70%... sometimes worse. But not these pilots.
 

Paladin said. "Don’t you go saying any stupid shit like what I heard you talking about with Jordo."

"And don't say you’re sorry you got us all into this," Pooch said. "Like it was some trick. I’m a goddamn volunteer."

"
And don’t," Dirty said. "Don’t you dare make a big speech like
this
is some special mission...some special day. Every time I climb into the cockpit, I tell myself I’m already dead. The only thing different about today is you’re going with us."
 

"
Burn," Jordo said. "What my pilots are trying to say to you is..."
 

"
Next stop is hell, Burn," Paladin said, "and every one of us is proud to have you flying there with us."
 

*****

Boomslang
held only 20,000Ks off the fighters’ port side, but once the orbital guns around the homeworld moon opened up, even that seemed too close.

The fighters jinked and rolled out of the way easily, dodging the massive, laggard beams at long range. Those guns were made to hull carriers and battleships. From the cockpit of
Boomslang
, it looked easy for the hyper-maneuverable fighters to avoid being hit, but as they closed fast on their path through the inner rings of the Squidies’ defense, smaller batteries opened up, crisscrossing the black.
 

"Good god," Medoc said when he saw a lensed stream wave at them with a 2K-wide plane of hyper-accelerated nuclei that chased them like a ghostly wall. "They’re lensing the orbital guns into fan-shaped streams..trying to swat the fighters…"
 

They were ungodly wide and the five-second burst made them nearly impossible to avoid, but they were faint compared to the dense streams the small batteries stabbed out with. One of the broad, swatting beams caught a pair of Bitzers. Their hulls lit up as they passed through it, sparking and spitting from all the heavy nuclei pitting the hull and kicking up ejecta. The kinetic energy knocked them like houseflies and once their course became a predictable tumble, even for a second, it was easy for the fast-moving, small batteries to pierce them from six sides at once till their reactors cooked off in merciful flashes. They lit the backsides of the remaining fighters, already 1000Ks deeper in on their mad drive through the defenses around the Squidies homeworld moon.

Ram said, "Is a
nyone looking at us...pointing an active array, maybe?"
 

Max in the copilot’s seat shook his head.
"
All eyes are on the last fighters."
 

"
Any
enemy
fighters we have to watch out for?"
 

He shook his head. "They were all at the front...at the battle."

While the Squidies guns wove the skies over their ugly, homeworld moon solid with hateful streams, the last ten fighters of the
Hardway
Air Group drew a line ahead of them through the enemy fire. They left fading plasma trails from their engines that spiraled around the rapier streams and teased the big guns with switchbacks.  

"
There goes another," Medoc said. "And another." A double flash lit up the Squidy battlestation they ripped past when a Sky Jack and a Bitzer got hit. As
Boomslang
slipped through the Squidies' orbital batteries, the enemy gunners finally caught the last interceptors of the
Hardway
Air Group in a web of fire so tight not even a hummingbird could have gotten through.
 

The last living Lancers, Hellcats, Weasels, and the 38th Special Delivery Squadron all sounded off one final time with their reactors. Each of them cooked off brilliant and bright under the enemy fire, lighting up the night side of the Squidies' tiny moon.

Ram whispered his thanks so softly even Medoc didn't hear him.

"We made it," Medoc said. "The Squidies haven't seen us and
Boomslang
is almost in position to drop the bombs. Sixty seconds."

"
Devlin to Meester, standby to drop one, repeat, a single gravity bomb. Standby."
 

"Acknowledged, Mr. Devlin. One bomb." Tig Meester’s voice almost cracked with the stress when he said it. "We’re ready down here."
 

"Too many died to get us here," Medoc said. "Those cherries of yours in the ordnance bay better not screw this up."
 

*****

It had been child’s play for Tig and Parker to separate out bomb number 1’s fire control trigger from the rest and put it on its own conceptual circuit. That way, it could be dropped singly, separate from its 87 brothers and sisters. Now, the two cherries sat at the aft launch consoles, strapped in while warnings blinked overhead in the air. The bombs up and down the bay all looked
ready
to fly somehow, he thought, like under that thick, dark hull they knew it was time.

"
Fifteen seconds," Commander Devlin said in their helmets. "Open the hatches."
 

That was Tig’s job, and he reached forward to select hatch 01 only, but Parker’s hand shot out of nowhere and gripped his wrist. He looked at her over the barrels of the gun built into the back of her glove. "I’m sorry, Tig. Don’t make me shoot you."

He didn’t understand, and when he started to reach for the console again, she let go of his hand raised up the gun. "I’ll do it," she said.

"
W...why?" And as he lost half a heartbeat wondering, she reached down to the console and selected the original firing program that would now launch all but one of the bombs. "Parker…why?" Eighty-seven hatches all opened and the atmo rushed out hard and fast making them strain at the straps on the chairs. Then it was like the deck had fallen away in 87 places under the 5-meter bombs, and they could see the surface of the Squidies’ homeworld moon rushing past close, too large below. It was mustard and acid yellow and blue green like the algae that marine had said the Squidies ate. Ugly clouds swirled near volcanoes. He looked from the alien world back to her, pleading with his eyes.
 

"I’ll do it," she said. "Don’t move."
 

Devlin’s voiced boomed in their helmets. "What the hell is going on down there?"

Parker said, "Bombs away. Bombs away."

Eighty-seven gravity bombs launched together, falling out the open hatches and shrinking against the alien landscape below. They still looked like giant idols and Easter Island statues until they fired up their thrusters and hurled themselves screaming at the surface of the tiny moon. Any Squidy down there could have looked up and seen them falling like hateful stars.

Tig realized Ram Devlin was screaming bloody hell in his ear and threatening to shoot them both. He reduced the volume as he turned to Parker. The bay was fully depressurized now. She was unstrapping herself from the chair next to him, not even watching the bombs as they fell.

"Parker...why?"

She stood up. "I’m sorry, Tig."

"
But you…You were on our side…and…the Chief…" The Chief's blood was still all over both of them, frozen now, pink and frosty stains.
 

"Tig...I’m sorry." He looked at her then and saw someone he’d never known until that moment. Surprise and confusion and betrayal twisted his face. He’d always blame himself for letting her see that in his eyes because she misunderstood. It was the last thing she saw before she ran the ten meters to the open hatches before he could stop her.
 

"
Parker! Parker! No!"
 

She fell silently, without a peep on comms, arms out, feet together, light glinting off her crown. Her body shrank over the yellow hills and pthalo valleys of the aliens’ homeworld moon until she was a speck. Then, she was gone.
 

He finally heard Commander Devlin shouting.
"
Close the hatches! Close the goddamn hatches, Meester! Close them! Detonation in ten seconds!"
 

Chapter Nineteen

The eighty-seven gravity bombs entered the atmosphere of the aliens’ homeworld moon at a steep angle. Friction with the thin, upper reaches produced only a pale plasma, but in seconds, their engines had propelled them deeper, down into the oxygen and sulfur rich lower atmo. In the last seconds of their descent, they appeared sheathed in a cold sulfur flame that burned in persistent trails behind them, eighty-seven streaks of hellfire against the cyan lowlands and the yellow, volcanic hills.

Beams of ionizing atmo surrounded the defensive fire that lanced down from orbit and rose from between the bacteria fields and the volcanic ridges where the top levels of the Squidies’ underground nests broke the surface like hematite beads embedded in the sulfur crusted hills.

At an altitude of ten-thousand meters over the particolor moon, the bombs sounded off to determine how many of them had survived the last phase of their journey. The absence of bomb number one and the loss of five others to enemy defensive fire was noted less than .003 seconds before the final sequence initiated, and adjustments were made in the order of detonation.

Five-thousand meters over the surface of the 1700-kilometer-wide moon, the first gravity bomb's two-stage, trigger device fired inside the thick, belt-iron-steel, 15m-tall casing. The first fission reaction initiated the secondary, thermonuclear, hydrogen-helium fusion reaction. That firecracker was puny compared to size of the target against which it detonated, but the point of the weapon wasn't blast damage. The whole point of the thermonuclear reaction was to generate the tremendous bath of x-rays and high-energy emissions needed to power the terminal gravity pinch set at the far end of the bomb casing. Once energized and before the nuclear furnace could turn the field coils to million-degree plasma, the device produced a pulse of artificial gravity powerful enough to momentarily reduce the effective mass of the surface crust below it.

Immediately under and around the first detonation, for a radius of over two-hundred kilometers, the crust of that moldy, alien pea cracked. The combination of induced tidal stresses and internal pressures resulted in catastrophic quakes and increased volcanic eruptions. The aliens' homeworld moon, however, was nearly 5500 kilometers around and the overall effect of one,
single
gravity bomb was negligible. Even if all eighty-seven of the bombs had detonated simultaneously, it still wouldn't have given the geology of the alien moon more than a slight shudder.

The designers of this weapon knew that fact only too well, and knowing the nature of their target, they designed their bombs to allow the volatile geology of the aliens' homeworld moon to do the work for them.