Conquest had dispatched a wing of ninety-six teleoperated Crows from her launch bay over the last several minutes, and now those rode in close formation for point defense. EarthFleet’s only other mobile force, nine surviving frigates and almost four hundred manned StormCrows, had joined Conquest as she swung around Earth in high orbit, but hung back at Absen’s order.
Over the horizon, beneath the dead moon’s blind gaze, waited the descending Scourge swarm.
Every living or automated thing had been scoured from orbit, leaving nothing but bare rock asteroids. Scourgelings, boiling from their landing craft, had even eaten the captured comets, consuming their water and other volatiles. Now they funneled downward, perhaps for the moment forgetting the paltry fleet that still opposed them.
Out of sight, out of mind? Scoggins wondered. Perhaps the Scourges, bereft of their motherships for command and control, didn’t think about the consequences of their maneuvers. She watched Absen pace all the way around the holotank, observing as the million-odd craft ranging in size from fighters to heavy pinnaces descended into the atmosphere.
Never was Scoggins so glad as now that EarthFleet still had plenty of spy drones scattered around to feed intelligence to the ships. Conquest had desperately needed the hour on the other side of Earth for damage control and to link up with the battered little fleet. Most of her modular point defense lasers, unarmored as they were, had been blasted by plasma torpedoes from the gunships or torn to shreds by Scourglings, and many of her integral weapons had been damaged as well. Thankfully, the complement of Marines had managed to contain the many breaches the Scourge had made and exterminate all boarders, and Michelle’s self-repair systems were operating at capacity.
If only the Meme could make it back in time, Scoggins mused uselessly, but they were six hours away at least. By then, the swarm would have mostly landed. Absen had told the Meme to come back when they could, but hold in reserve. She could tell he still didn’t trust them not to suddenly stab EarthFleet in the back at this moment of weakness, seizing the system for the Empire again.
“It looks like they’re all heading down into the atmosphere,” Absen said, still circling the holotank like an impatient shark. “Why would they do that?”
Captain Scoggins got up out of the Chair to join him and grinned. “Because they’re stupid, sir.”
Absen turned to fix her with a flat, haunted stare. “I’m not in the mood for jokes, Captain.”
Scoggins smoothed her face and then replied calmly. “No joke, sir. Without their motherships, they probably have weak command and control. Just look at their tactics. They are just swarming and overrunning the biggest threat or the juiciest feeding grounds. As soon as they couldn’t see us, they started their drop, as if we were of no more concern.”
“Feeding grounds...” Absen rubbed at his eyes, then they stopped as they widened. “Feeding grounds. Captain, you've just given me an idea. Get me Spectre on a private line.” Absen talked briefly with Earth’s military governor, sipping on a cup of Timmons’ special brew as he did so, trying to stay awake. He detested stims.
Scoggins pointedly turned away to give him privacy even as she wondered why. The crew could use some hope right now, even if it was secondhand scuttlebutt confirmation that the admiral was going to pull another rabbit out of his hat. Most of the crew’s relatives were civilians down there on the surface, huddled in hastily dug foxholes or redoubts, assault rifles clutched in barely trained hands.
Maybe Absen’s idea was only a shaky, uncertain hope, and he didn’t want to tempt fate.
“Instead of spreading out over the whole world, they’re going for Asia, especially the heavily populated centers in India and China,” Absen observed. “It’s the largest continent, and is connected to Europe and, functionally, to Africa. Only islands, Australia and the Americas will be problematic for them to reach.”
Scoggins nodded. “And Antarctica, sir.”
“Not enough biomass there to be a target, Captain.”
“Of course. So...they probably figure they’ll take the biggest prize and then load up on their transports again to attack the other continents.”
“Yes.” Absen continued to walk around the holotank with a predatory gleam in his eye like a wolf eyeing a lame fawn. “But as you correctly pointed out, without good leadership they’re just a mob. Note that their fighters and gunships are dropping into atmosphere instead of staying up here in space.”
“Giving up the high ground,” Scoggins replied. “I see.”
“Do you? Do you?” Absen’s eyes burned, and Scoggins could see the admiral consumed from within by a flame – cold rage or lust for vengeance, she wasn’t certain. All she knew for sure was that the man she knew had crossed some line within himself, had gone from ice to fire in the last twenty-four hours.
Everyone had his breaking point, and it made Scoggins’ guts churn to think the rock of a man she’d served with all these years might be showing cracks. She straightened up formally. “Sir, what are your orders?”
Absen licked dry lips. “Signal the fleet to break orbit and hold on this side of the planet.”
“Hold?” Scoggins gaped for a moment and then deliberately shut her jaw.
“Hold. We hold here and watch the Scourges go down and get comfy.”
“But sir – Earth has hardly any antiaircraft weapons, or combat aircraft for that matter. You’re not going to hit them on the way down? You’re going to let them land?”
Absen’s smile formed a rictus that reached nowhere near his eyes. “Just for a while. Just for a little while...”
“Admiral, people are dying!”
Absen rounded on her, taking her by the shoulders. “They’re always dying, Captain. The Eden Plague abolished old age, but people still die because war never ends. It just takes a break for a little while, and nobody knows that as well as I do.” His words sputtered to a stop, eyes staring at nothing, hands forgotten on Scoggins’ shoulders.
Scoggins leaned in close to speak quietly. “Admiral, I know you have a plan. If you tell me, I can help you make it happen.” Just because Absen was nearing the end of his rope didn’t mean he hadn’t had an epiphany, and she needed to know what it was.
Just then, Doctor Horton stepped up to Absen with a plastic cup. “Sir, you need to drink this.”
Absen dropped his hands and both he and Scoggins turned to the woman in surprise.
Horton went on, “Admiral, you left this sitting on your desk. Drink it, please.”
“I don’t need that crap,” he replied, pushing the proffered cup away.
The doctor’s expression turned steely. “Sir, you’re suffering from VR withdrawal, and you didn’t drink your brain-balancer. If you don’t take it, I’ll have your Stewards hold you while I pour it down your throat.”
For a long moment the two locked eyes, and then Absen reached out to take the cup, tossing it into his mouth and swallowing it like a shot of Scotch. “There. Happy? Now take your station, Doctor, and stop meddling in command affairs.”
Scoggins nodded gratefully to the doc and waited for the admiral to do or say something, figuring the more she stalled, the more the medicine would take effect.
After a pause, Absen said, “All right, you were saying, Captain? My plan?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You remember during the battle with the Guardian in Gliese 370 when we were hammering it with everything we had?”
“Yes, sir, I do.” Keep him talking...
“You called out that it was targeting us, and as much as I wanted Conquest to take that shot to the face instead of someone else, I had Okuda brake us and York...”
“I remember, sir. They blew York away. That must have been hard, but you had to do it. Conquest had a million colonists aboard packed in the coldsleep tubes.”
Absen scratched his head with both hands as if his scalp itched terribly. “Yes, I had to do it. I had to! I sacrificed a battleship with a thousand crew aboard to save a million. Now we have to do this. The people on the ground are our sacrifice, because, God help me, this ship is the only thing standing between that Swarm and the extinction of humanity. I won’t throw it away. I won’t.”
“I get that, sir,” Scoggins whispered fiercely, “but why don’t we make a fast pass through the top of their formation? Kill some more, take the pressure off the folks on the ground?”
Absen’s eyes sharpened and seemed to clear a bit. “You ever follow boxing, any sort of ring fighting, Captain?” he said in a more normal voice, loud enough for everyone to hear.
“Not really, sir. Do we have time –”
“Captain, we have time because I’m waiting for something.” Absen glanced over at the holotank, and then turned away.
“Okay, ring fighting...so?”
“Ever hear of the rope-a-dope strategy?”
“No, sir.”
“I know it, sir,” Ford spoke up, exchanging glances with Scoggins. “Lean back, cover up, the ropes support you. Conserve your strength and let the other guy wear himself out.”
“Exactly!” Absen spun and jabbed a finger at the holotank. “Or, for you history nuts, like Russia did to the Germans in World War Two. Fall back. Conserve strength. These critters have to be getting low on fuel. Their ships are small and they’ve been accelerating, decelerating or fighting just as long as we have. What’s our fuel status?”
“About forty percent, sir,” Okuda replied.
“So,” Absen said with a finger in the air, “if a big ship like Conquest is down more than half, they have to be running on fumes. If they were smart, at least their fighters should stay up in orbit, looping around and around Earth at no fuel cost, performing combat aerospace patrol. But they’re not!” He slammed a palm onto the rail. “They’re gliding down into the gravity well. Maybe that’s their doctrine, or maybe all of the greedy bastards are trying to get their piece of the pie first. It doesn’t matter, because they just made a fatal mistake.”
Scoggins moved up to examine the holotank. “Ninety percent of them have entered atmosphere. Landing craft have touched down all over Asia.”
“And as soon as the other ten percent are de-orbited, they’ll have given up their mobility. Even if they have enough fuel to come back up, they’ll be slow in the air, their weapons will be attenuated, and we’ll have the high ground, shooting downward. Coming to attack us will be like scaling a cliff.”
Ford crowed, “Fish in a barrel, sir! I like it!”
“That’s fine for us, sir,” Scoggins said, “but what about the defenders on the ground?”
Absen held up his fists as if blocking punches. “Rope-a-dope, Captain. Remember Russia and the Germans.”
“You’re going to sacrifice millions just to wear the enemy out?”
“Not exactly. Spectre is having them all pull back to their redoubts, limiting casualties. I’m not trading people for time, Captain. Just the ecosystem, God help me.”