“Dropping, mark.” Okuda’s words heralded Conquest’s appearance less than a thousand kilometers from the last Scourge mothership, point-blank range for her heavy weapons and easily close enough for her secondaries. Now the ship had recharged capacitors and could be profligate with firepower.
“Fire when ready,” Captain Scoggins said, and Conquest lashed out with lasers and particle beams. “Don’t hit the core too hard,” she warned.
“Got it, Skipper,” Ford singsonged as he coordinated the firing. “Keeping the primaries away from the core.”
On the displays, Absen could see the enormous lacy structure of the mothership carved away in spiny chunks like melon rind under the knife. His plan was to remove those intervening layers before sending in his assault forces, simplifying their lives enormously.
The enemy returned a weak spray of intermittent laser fire from scattered locations, nothing to present any threat to a capital ship. Probably the Scourges had never envisioned fighting without their swarms. Those lasers were quickly silenced by the overwhelming firepower of the dreadnought.
Once the lattice floated as wreckage and the core was revealed like the pit of an avocado, the display blazed with sudden flashes from the core. “Incoming fire – not sure what it is,” Fletcher said, his voice rising a notch. By the time he finished speaking, Conquest’s hull showed hundreds of impacts from...something.
“Evasive,” Scoggins snapped.
“Captain,” the AI said, “the weapons are concentrated plasma packets contained within magnetic bottles. The Meme Intel data references these as ‘plasma torpedoes.’ They cannot penetrate our armor but they are doing some damage to surface systems, especially the bolt-on point defense lasers.” She referred to the thousands of self-contained modules recently grafted onto Conquest’s outer surface to beef up her capacity to repel assaults.
“Counterfire,” Scoggins ordered. “Move in and take out the launchers.”
“On it,” Ford replied. As he and Michelle coordinated pinpoint takedowns of the enemy plasma launchers, Okuda advanced Conquest on fusion drive.
In moments, the dreadnought had completely stripped the enemy core of weapons. Bereft of its swarms – the untouched half-swarm almost two hours away and the remnants of the one that attacked the Meme more than thirty minutes distant – the exposed core maneuvered frantically but sluggishly, obviously not designed for a ship-to-ship battle.
Absen caught his flag captain’s eye, and then Scoggins said, “Knock out their drive and thrusters. I want that bastard helpless as a hogtied calf in one minute. Then secure from evasive maneuvering and prepare for Bughouse. Come on, people, we’re on the clock!”
Keying his own internal comms, Admiral Absen brought up Vango and Bull. “Gentlemen, Bughouse is a go. I say again, execute Bughouse. Absen out.”
The holotank depicted two enormous sections of armor slowly, ponderously pulling back from Conquest’s stern, nearly in the shadow of her great fusion engines. Over a hundred grabships under AI control lifted off million-ton plates, revealing makeshift launching tunnels leading to the ship’s huge interior cargo bays.
Not made for assault operations, this was the best Absen and his staff could come up with to allow some five hundred assault sleds holding over five thousand newly recruited Marines to quickly egress to space. As soon as they could, the boats streamed outward to assemble in ranks in the shadow of Conquest’s great bulk.
As they did so, four hundred ninety-six StormCrows took off from the standard flight deck under precise AI control, two per second. Once they cleared the ship, the pilots took over and immediately turned toward the mothership core. As Conquest ceased fire from its capital weapons, the fighters moved in to strafe the surface of the enemy.
***
With Crows mounting newer, hotter lasers optimized against the Scourges, Colonel Vango Markis and the rest of his fighter pilots sliced away the remnants of latticework, plasma cannon mounts and every other anomaly on the surface of the flattened sphere. Hopefully that would render the Scourges blind, deaf and dumb, trapping them inside their own armor.
Then they went to work on that armor, probing the damaged portions, looking for easy ways in. The core’s protection was thick, but not in Conquest’s class. The StormCrows did not launch their nukes, but they did keep carving with their lasers.
As Vango fired another bullet of coherent light into a deepening gouge, he called, “Keep digging holes, boys and girls. Looks like this is only about one hundred meters of composite armor, and the jarheads are going to need all the help they can get punching through.”
“Sure, boss,” his wingman Raiderette said. “Sure you don’t want to get out of the way and let the big boys do some digging?” She referred to Conquest’s weapons.
“Not precise enough. We can’t afford to punch through and vaporize the interior if we want to capture the FTL drive system.”
Vango could hear the irony in her voice. “Sounds to me like we’re the lonely fan in this shitstorm again, sir.”
“Shut up and keep blowing, Lieutenant.”
***
Bull ignored the assault sled’s motion as it slammed him from side to side. His Avenger suit was locked down to the interior and wouldn’t release until they landed or he deliberately overrode it. The last thing a boat needed was a dozen thousand-kilo golems flailing around damaging its relatively delicate interior.
Checking his HUD, he saw the half-thousand assault sleds turn in a coordinated wave and accelerate toward the drifting mothership core. Conquest’s reinforced aerospace wing seemed to be having no trouble with the point defense and he’d been assured they had at least twenty minutes until the enemy fighters showed up, retreating from getting their asses kicked by the Meme. Never thought I’d be cheering the slimy blobbos, he thought, but they did good work today.
Dialing up the division channel he said, “All right, First Div Marines, this is Colonel ben Tauros. I’d say shalom but nobody’s gettin’ any peace for the next few hours. We got a short flight and a hard fight, so remember your training, listen to your leaders, and kill every bug you see. Remember, though, if you find some fancy unknown machinery, don’t touch it and don’t blow it up. The whole reason we’re puttin’ our asses on the line here is to get the technology. Good hunting. Ben Tauros out.”
Switching to the lead pilots’ freq, he said, “Bull here. How’s the LZ looking?”
“Jes’ fine, Colonel, sir,” Warrant Officer Krebs came back. “Y’all be shittin’ in tall cotton pretty soon.”
“Shut up, Krebs. Butler, you there?”
The other flight warrant replied, “Yes, sir. LZ looks clear. Don’t think the bugs ever expected to be boarded. With a hundred thousand fighters, who would?”
“Good. That’s why we have to be gone before they show up. Ben Tauros out.”