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The Orion hummed as its main beam spoke. Moments later, a Red Fleet battlecruiser faltered and lost power. Just as its backups activated, a flight of Legion destroyers swept in and finished the job in a flurry of missiles. The destroyers escorting the battlecruiser hammered round after round into their attackers, forcing them to retreat.
Johnson opened her mouth to order a pair of cruisers to cover their withdrawal but saw that Oyekan had already sent some ships. The Orion’s battle group veered away from the enemy force, waiting for another chance to inflict damage.
I wish it didn’t take so long to prep the beam for each shot.
“I’m about to recover fighters, so I’d appreciate a few minutes’ pause,” called the CAG.
“OK. I’ll see what I can do.”
Johnson moved their escort into a more protective formation and used the opportunity to study the wider action. The Legion attack had worked perfectly, clearing a path to the orbitals and keeping the Red Fleet distracted.
The combat units in their dropshells had hit atmosphere five minutes previously. Unit 01 and its team would have sent an abort code if they’d run into any real difficulties at the DZ. The remaining transports were just now lining up for final approach, ready to release their dropships crammed with armoured Legionaries.
The Concorde task force finished its braking manoeuvre and dispatched a trio of corvettes that attempted to mount a defence of the station. Fighters launched from the carriers and swept over the station, a wave of tiny explosions preceded them, marking the end of the stations’ point defence. Any moment now, the Concorde ships would disgorge shuttles and flood the target with marines.
Nothing yet from the missions further upwell. It should be over by now, but it’s too early for any signals to have arrived. Still, I’d like to know how it went.
“Clear to manoeuvre,” called the CAG.
Johnson ran through a list of proposed targets from Oyekan and approved his suggestions for who to task with each. A gentle shift in apparent gravity told her the Orion was on the hunt again.
Something in the holographic chart caught her attention. She stared at it for what felt like an eternity, trying to work out what had her hackles up. Standing, she peered from a different angle. It was there, on the edge of her awareness. Something was wrong. The movements in a section of the enemy line didn’t make sense. Through her attention on the map, she became aware of glances from her staff.
I’m unsettling them, but I have to know what’s... there!
She flung herself back in her chair, selecting a group of ships. Before she could transmit the warning, the enemy trap closed. Twelve Legion ships were cut off and surrounded. Eleven. They pumped round after round back at their attackers but were badly outnumbered. Ten.
They’re holding up well. Or the enemy is seriously messing up this ambush.
Oyekan was mustering a rescue force from spare ships. Johnson studied the chart and spotted a secondary trap. “Belay that. They’re using our ships as bait.”
“Ma’am? We have to do something.”
“We can’t throw more ships, more lives, away.”
If only we had the drones. This would be a perfect time to use them.
She caught her breath, realising that she’d been thinking of them as disposable and heard Indie’s voice scolding her for being careless with digital entities.
Snapping herself back to the current situation, she came to a decision. “Make a feint with the ships you’d marked for the rescue party, but make sure they know not to get too close.”
That should buy more time for the remaining ships. Whoever’s put this trap together won’t want to blow it by destroying the bait until it’s hooked the bigger fish.
She hailed the surviving trapped ships and waited until the faces of all nine captains appeared. Behind them, their bridge crews worked with deliberate purpose. In one, a shower of sparks preceded billowing smoke. Someone rushed over with an extinguisher.
“I wanted to tell you this personally. We cannot send reinforcements as they’d be sailing into another ambush.” She felt a hint of pride that their expressions didn’t change at the news. “Right now, the enemy’s toying with you, using you as bait, but that’ll stop the moment they realise I’m not taking it. So, I want to you make a coordinated strike before that happens. I’m sending over a course. I want you to start edging along it. Make it look like a series of uncoordinated movements. On my mark, fire off every missile you have left then close up and burn hard. Make them hurt.”
“We’ll do the Legion proud, Sir,” one of the captains said. The others echoed the sentiment.
Johnson gave them a minute to tell their crews then sent the order. The missile swarm wasn’t as impressive as she’d hoped, they must have expended a large proportion of their stocks already, but it served to cover their move.
Enemy ships adjusted their courses, bringing guns to bear once more. Now the fire was intense and targeted to destroy. One Legion ship after another fell out of formation and was swiftly pummelled into oblivion. Not one surrendered.
A heavy cruiser positioned itself to rake the remaining four as they passed. A frigate broke formation, veering off course and accelerating. It slammed into the enemy ship, burying itself deeply in its flank. Moments later, they flashed in silent explosion.
Johnson knew the exact moment an enemy commander realised where she’d directed her ships. Red Fleet vessels scrambled to reinforce the screen around the tankers that must have seemed safely to the rear.
She watched the gaps opening up. “Send in Group Y. Probe and withdraw.”
As the battlecruiser line made its move, another of the ships rushing towards the tankers flared white and disintegrated.
Johnson dipped into the flow of orders going out from her team. Between them, they were directing the nearspace battle and coordinating with the other Commonwealth elements. The Red Fleet was recovering from the initial shock and forming into task forces. Losses were pretty even, with only a few enemy ships striking their colours. Concorde marines were sweeping the orbital dockyard but no sign of Koblensk.
Is he on one of the ships?
The last two remaining of the twelve ships caught in the enemy trap closed on the defensive screen. Each picked a target and lined up to ram. No escape pods launched; at the acceleration they were under, even crawling would have been hard. One was reduced to tumbling debris in time for its target to escape. The other blew just short, the massive shrapnel puncturing the enemy and taking out its power grid. She sent the crews a silent salute, burying the guilt of ordering them to their deaths.
The hammering from the Orion’s railguns intensified. Johnson opened the nearspace view on her console and spotted a cluster of destroyers surrounded by fast attack ships making a run at her group. The destroyers didn’t get too close, but drew fire from the smaller vessels. The attack ships converged on the carrier.
^Ma’am? A word?^ sent Hanke.
^Go on,^ Johnson replied.
^In your ready room?^
She looked across at him, eyebrow raising. ^If you haven’t noticed, we’re in the middle of a battle.^
^Sorry, but it can’t wait. It is directly pertinent to the battle and cannot be sent over comms.^
She cast a glance across the CIC.
^Please, Ma’am. You’ve known me since we came aboard the Repulse together. You know I wouldn’t ask if there wasn’t any other way.^
Johnson stood and studied the holographic map. The battle had descended into a slugfest. No need for fleet-wide orders at this point.
But if an opportunity presented itself, I’d have to be ready to act. But what if Hanke has something that would make the difference?
She reached a decision. She opened a basic battlemap in her EIS, shunting the window to the bottom left corner of her inner vision. It was pushing it, but Indie would never know. “Mister Oyekan, you have the deck. Mister Hanke, a word in my ready room.”
To their credit, only Oyekan looked away from his screen. “I have the floor, Ma’am.”
She led Hanke into her ready room and rounded on him the moment the door hissed shut. “This had better be-”
The boarding alarm sounded.
^Multiple entries, including several small ships that crashed onto my flight deck.^ Orion seemed confused. ^My internal defences are not operable in those areas. Internal hatches won’t seal. Legionaries responding.^
^Do what you can.^
Hanke fixed her with intense, pleading eyes. “Ma’am, I need to-”
An immense bang threw them to the ground. Johnson’s head rang. She could see Hanke’s lips moving but couldn’t make out the words.
^Oyekan, you OK?^
The connection wouldn’t form. She tried the other members of her command team. A few connected, but no response came.
Hanke pulled himself to his feet and staggered over to her weapons locker.
^Orion? What happened?^
^Legate, thank goodness you’re OK. Major internal explosion. I’ve lost all camera and microphone feeds in the area around the CIC.^
Johnson leaned against her desk and studied the buckled hatch. ^I’m in my ready room. I’m going to try to gain access to the CIC. Can you raise anyone in there?^
^Negative.^
Dammit. No-one’s watching the big picture.
She enlarged the battle map in her vision and checked she still had a connection to the secure external comms. A squadron of destroyers were making some progress harrying a section of the enemy’s main mass of ships. With a thought, she sent orders for a group of four battlecruisers to probe the weakness.
^We couldn’t contain the boarders,^ sent Orion. ^They’ve broken out from the flight deck.^
“Ma’am.” The voice was distorted, but at least audible again. Hanke was behind the map so she shrunk it back down.
This is hard going.
He held out a pulse carbine and belt of spare cells. “The boarders will be on their way here.”
She grabbed the weapon. “See what you can do with the door. I don’t want to be stuck in here when they arrive.”
He ducked his head into the sling of a standard Legionary rifle and slid it round onto his back. As Hanke got to work on the hatch, she studied the battle. The day hung in the balance.
^Orion, be prepared to alert Prefect Ballewa to take control of the fleet if I stop transmitting.^
^Understood.^
The hatch cracked open and Hanke jammed a crowbar from the emergency locker into the gap. Johnson leaned against it with him and together they got the gap wide enough to squeeze through.
A jumble of sparking cables and crumpled panels met her on the other side. As she pushed herself to her feet, a sharp pain pierced her hand. She held it up and found a shard of glass protruding from her palm. She prodded it and it wobbled without too much pain.
Doesn’t look deep.
She pulled it out gently, squeezing the edges of the cut together. A quick spray of wound sealant and she turned her attention to the room.
She’d left the CIC a hive of purposeful activity; now it was a disaster zone. A few barely recognisable body parts showed through the debris. Her eyes fixed on an arm covered in Tupuola’s distinctive tribal tattoos. Johnson switched her EIS to casualty search mode and quickly found her entire team. All their EIS reported no life signs, with a catalogue of traumatic injuries preceding the end of life.
Hanke shook his head, presumably having done his own search. “We need to get out the CIC before the boarders get here.”
A charred black hole smouldered where the main hatch had been. The bodies of the Legionaries who’d been posted outside the CIC lay broken against the far wall, wrapped up in sections of the hatch.
It blew outwards.
Johnson poked her head round the corner and pulled it back quickly. Rounds dinged off the bulkhead. “They’re here already.”
She stuck her pulse carbine out and fired a few unaimed shots, hoping to force the attackers to take cover. Spotting a camera, she patched into the corridor systems and found they were all still working, just isolated from Orion’s central control. She opened a second window in her inner vision and reviewed the scene. Perhaps twenty people in Republic Marine armour crept along the corridor, keeping to the walls.
Her armour activated, flowing across her body. Running through the local ship’s system menus, she found what she wanted. “Get ready to move.”
Hanke nodded and raised his rifle.
Johnson thought the commands to activate the internal defences. A plasma cannon dropped from a hatch in the ceiling and she snapped it round onto the approaching Marines. Hardly had they begun to react when a rapid series of bursts of plasma rounds filled the corridor. “Now!”
She sprinted out the CIC and away from the dying Marines, Hanke thudding after her. Half her attention was on running, the other half on controlling the cannon. Rounding the first corner she almost didn’t see the enemy crouched at a doorway ahead, getting her weapon up and firing just in time. The first fell sideways, two holes fixing in his armour. The second looked up from trying to crack the door’s security and his hand went to his sidearm. Two more shots took him down.
Johnson skidded to a halt at the next intersection and pressed her back against the wall. Hanke slid into place next to her. She switched her camera feed to the next corridor and found two pairs of Marines advancing carefully towards their position. Footsteps pounded behind them. There were no internal defences she could use in this section.
^Four hostiles in the left corridor. You take the two on the left, I’ll take the two on the right.^ A green confirmation from Hanke lit in her vision. ^Go.^
She dashed across the intersection, weapon firing controlled shots. Hanke followed a heartbeat behind, bursts of rounds whining out of his rifle. Taken by surprise, the enemy only got off a few unaimed shots.
Johnson and Hanke ran on to the next intersection. Checking the camera, they were clear. She stepped out and jogged on. An explosion hammered her into the wall, and she slid to the ground. Gasping, she aimed her carbine and fired up into the figures dashing out of the smoke.
Another grenade bounced along the rubberised floor and she scrambled away. She managed to get her body into the shelter of a doorway before it went off, and the moment it did, she was up and charging. She met the first enemy before he saw her, and elbow barged him in the throat. The second fell to a round from her carbine. She dropped to a knee and scanned around, but that was it. Only two of them.
A third body lay face down in the intersection, in Legion uniform.
Hanke!
She shuffled over to him and saw he was still breathing. His back was shredded; he’d obviously taken the brunt of the first grenade, probably saved her from it. Grabbing his shoulders, she dragged him to the relative shelter of the doorway. She propped him up against the wall and crouched beside him, checking both ways along the corridor.
Hanke coughed, blood gurgling out of his mouth and down his chest. “I’m sorry.”
He gasped and fell silent.
She realised she hadn’t reviewed the fleet situation since leaving the CIC. Opening the tactical display, she studied the dispositions of both sides, flagged a few groups of her ships and directed them after a group that had broken away from the Red Fleet.
A burst of gunfire brought her back to her immediate surroundings and she squeezed off a few aimed shots back before ducking across to the opposite doorway.
I can’t keep this up. Unless...
Taking a deep breath, she accessed her enhanced EIS. Thought-clicking to dismiss several warnings, she brought it up to full capacity and spawned new consciousnesses.
Johnson aimed and fired, taking down boarder after boarder as they presented themselves. Her armour absorbed the incoming fire, bits flaking off to be replaced by more flowing black metal.
Another facet of herself pulled up a map of the Orion and overlaid the patchy internal sensor and combat reports, picking a path for her to follow.
Yet another part of her immersed itself in the naval battle, a mote darting around the chart, aware of every ship, every fighter, every missile that was tracked by any ship within the fleet net.
Johnson jogged onwards, heading to somewhere she could link up with a friendly patrol. She directed a squadron of destroyers to get between a trio of Legion battlecruisers and an oncoming missile strike. She found a group of boarders four corridors away and engaged them with a ceiling cannon.
But the enemy were closing on her, drawing in the net. They blocked and fortified junctions, funnelling her. Soon, there was only one corridor left for her. Marines sheltered behind every bulkhead and in every doorway. They’d even placed some metal boxes for extra cover. A strong force was coming up behind her; she had only a minute to think.
She directed some slightly damaged ships to relieve those guarding the captured vessels.
^Orion, where are the Legionaries?^
^We’re almost through to your section. Two minutes.^
^Too long.^ She looked around, reloading her carbine by touch. ^Tell them thanks for trying.^
Her eyes came to rest on a hatch opposite. The pattern painted on it marked it out as a ‘bot recharging station. She found the door controls and thought it open. A repair ‘bot sat, tiny blue lights flickering, showing full charge. She suppressed shudder at the memory that had given her the idea.
Well, it worked for Indie.
She spawned another new consciousness and it took control of the ‘bot. It wheeled out and unfolded to its full height, a fraction taller than herself. Two arms came up, one capped with an angle grinder and the other a welding torch. A spark, and the torch flared, orange quickly turning into a roaring violet flame.
The ‘bot turned and moved towards the corner. She scrolled through the corridor’s systems in her mind and activated the fire suppression. Jets of green vapour gushed out, filling the corridor. She slid a mask across her mouth then walked out behind the ‘bot. Even with optical enhancement, she couldn’t see more than a few metres. To her primary consciousness, the ‘bot was a swirl in the fog. The consciousness driving the ‘bot fed images back to her.
The first Marine ignored the ‘bot until its angle grinder swung at her. She didn’t quite get out of the way in time and it cut a deep gouge through her arm, almost severing it. Johnson stepped up and put a pulse through her visor.
The Marines opened up, rounding ripping into the ‘bot. It made it to the next one, forcing him to move out from shelter and exposing him to Johnson’s fire.
Several ships reported internal explosions. She looked for a pattern but couldn’t find one, letting the squadron commanders deal with the damaged ships.
The ‘bot ground to a halt, metal dripping from the weight of the fire it had attracted, shots that hadn’t been aimed at her. With the metal threat gone, they’d be making things hot for her. At least it had allowed her to cover the dead ground. She switched control of her body to one of her digital consciousnesses, trusting its faster processing to save her.
Watching the corridor cameras and through her own eyes, she saw whenever a hostile was lining up a good shot on her. Reflexes honed through repetitive training still only reached her spinal cord, but anything that made it to her head for decisions routed through her EIS. Her weapon spoke again and again, taking down enemy after enemy.
The Red Fleet formations contracted, consolidating their defence. She pulled back the more depleted Legion units and joined them into a reserve.
Three decks up, a section of Legionaries was pinned down. She gave them a warning then cut the gravity to that section, leaving them to deal with their attackers in their momentary disorientation.
A coordinated barrage forced her to shelter behind a bulkhead, holding her weapon out and aiming through the corridor cameras.
Her pulse carbine ran empty and she let it fall on its sling, drawing her sidearm. A sliver of white-hot metal punched through her armour and lodged in her side. She cut off her primary consciousness, leaving the burning pain behind.
Johnson let herself dive deeper into the digital flows of the ship around her, feeling the currents in the lighting circuits. Closing her eyes, she diverted power and overloaded them, flashing a bright pulse of light into the corridor before they cut out in showers of glass.
The enemy flinched, their intensifying optics not reacting quickly enough to the sudden flash. She stepped out and walked forward again, raining shots from her sidearm into them while they blinked spots away from their eyes. The emergency lighting flickered on.
Issawi reported that his ground forces were closing on the main base. She spawned another consciousness and piggybacked on a combat unit, watching through its cameras as it scampered from cover to cover.
On the Orion, she tried to blow out the junction box beside where a Marine was crouching, but another one closer to her went, showering white sparks across the corridor. She sidestepped and fired into the still-swirling vapour. She tried again, something making her raise her left hand and point it at the box she wanted. It seemed the gesture helped her channel the power, perhaps some vestige of her animal brain needing to be involved. She waved her hand out and the junction box exploded, frying the enemy beside it.
Two more shots and her sidearm snicked back empty. She knelt in cover behind a box and reached for another clip, but the pouch had been fried. A fusillade from a thermal shotgun slagged the wall beside her, leaving the glowing framework of supports. A rod about a metre long bent outwards, its remaining attachment thin and fractured. She kicked it loose and picked it up, blocking the nerves in her hand against the heat seeping through her glove. And waited.
Another force of enemy attack ships crossed the gap between the fleets. She marshalled all the fighters she could find into a big wing and sent them to intercept.
Enemy Marines crept closer, covering her location. She could sense their comms chatter as dancing radio frequency signals. She killed the lights. Shoving the box into the legs of the nearest, she stood, swinging the red-hot rod down and caving in his helmet. Swiping up and sideways, she connected with another enemy, cracking his wrist and knocking his carbine out of his hand.
Her view of the naval battle swung around as she shifted her focus to another point. A brief glimpse of The Indescribable Joy of Destruction hunting in the melee between the fleets made her heart soar.
Two boarders aimed at her. She isolated the gravity panel they were one and flicked her hand up then down, smashing them into the ceiling then the floor.
A round hit her chest, knocking the wind out of her. She reached out and found the shooter’s EIS, a tiny little spark of electrical current. She clasped her hand into a fist and his EIS shorted out. He slumped to the ground, blood and straw-coloured fluid trickling from his ears.
Her processors ramped up their clock speed. It felt like she knew what every enemy was going to do before they did. She saw fingers squeezing triggers and calculated trajectories, weaving out of the way, sometimes flicking her rod to deflect bullets she couldn’t dodge, sometimes smashing it into an attacker.
In the dull red light cast by the cooling rod, the remaining enemy shifted uneasily. Two at the back turned and ran. A pair of purple flashes and their charred bodies slammed into the side wall.
A combat unit advanced round the corner, firing its plasma cannon into each enemy Marine as they scrabbled to find cover. A section of Legionaries charged down the corridor and surrounded her, bundling her into a corner.
The consciousness watching from her body collapsed.
The one dealing with her surroundings looked down from a camera and saw her body slump to the floor. The combat unit and another section of Legionaries hurried along the corridor, exchanging fire with the boarders who’d been chasing her.
She flew around the fleet, finding The Serendipity of Meeting going toe to toe with a heavy destroyer. Her vision pulsed in and out. The consciousness stuttered and folded in on itself.
A Legionary bent over her body as it convulsed, blood dripping from its nose. Tendrils of smoke rose from where her charred hand still gripped the metal rod.
She tried to pull up her medical diagnostic menu, but it wasn’t there. In front of her, options disappeared from her EIS. The old menus that had been with her since graduating the Academy were collapsing.
Her body lay still. A Legionary ripped a resus pack from his armour while another opened Johnson’s chest armour.
She was vaguely aware of someone trying to connect to her medical routines from outside as they slapped the resus pack against her skin.
The camera feed flickered and went. She was alone inside her head.
A single icon remained, a representation of a lifebuoy.
Even though he couldn’t see, hear or feel anything, she was aware of a growing darkness. Not the familiar darkness of her daemons but an altogether colder and more threatening presence.
The lifebuoy icon had a warm, reassuring smell of tempus. She focussed on it and clicked.
