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Phalkon was still trying to comprehend what she’d been told.
“Invaders. An army, you say.”
“Yes, Councilor.” Steven Roberts was one of her assistants, one who usually didn’t give her any trouble. It would be most unlike him to provide inaccurate information. Still. His portfolio included the transit tubes, so if the rebels had mounted an assault via the tubes it made sense he’d learn about it first.
“Get confirmation.”
“Yes, First Councilor.”
He departed quickly; not running, but the next closest equivalent.
It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Roberts, but it was always best to get the bad news personally. She activated her console and pulled up the recordings of the tunnels.
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
But when she looked at the records from the Artemis City side, she could see the personnel hatches being breached, and the tunnel doors opening wide seconds later, even as the cameras on the opposite side showed all quiet.
“Damn. Sneaky bastards,” she said, almost admiringly. “They hacked our systems.”
She tapped a few more commands, then triggered her comms.
“Get me ground command.”
*
“DIREWOLF 1314, YOU are out of position.”
Kendra repressed her cursing. Dammit, she was right on her bearing; Double Dip was just picking on her!
“Aye, Ma’am,” she said instead. “Brie, correct our course.”
“On it,” the AI said.
“Problem?” said Cass from behind with only a hint of mischief.
“Just Danni paying me back for something,” Kendra replied. “Wish I knew what.”
They were loafing towards Luna at 100 gravities to ease the stress on the Wolves’ passengers. If she was being honest, Kendra found controlling her Direwolf at such a low acceleration more challenging than high-g maneuvers.
“Not too much longer though.”
“No.” Kendra had to agree. Even ‘loafing’, a zero-zero run to Luna was only about 25 minutes; since they were assigned to DivOne for this run, they were even ahead of the other Direwolves.
“Ten minutes to orbit,” Daniela commed. “Systems check. 1314, let us clear the skies before you attempt to land.”
“Understood.”
*
“COLONEL MCKNIGHT, I’M getting an anomalous return,”
McKnight stepped over to Shreve’s station.
“Define anomalous.”
“It’s an intermittent signal. One moment they’re there, next they’re gone.”
“’They’, Mr. Shreve? How many is ‘they’?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know. Diana’s working to refine it, but it’s from an odd direction.”
“You keep bringing up questions but no answers.”
“Sorry. What I have, what I think I have, are a number of small bodies, possibly metallic, moving in-System from the general direction of Mars.”
“Could they be cargo vessels? A convoy of barges, maybe?”
“Possible, Colonel. I’ll have to check through UE’s records, since we don’t have direct communication with Union shipping.”
“Fine. See if you can get a better read on what we’re dealing with.”
“Certainly.”
Two minutes later Shreve’s call to McKnight was urgent.
“Missiles,” he said. “Upwards of a hundred. We’re still getting a better count. Range fourteen million kilometers and closing fast.”
“How fast?”
“Would you believe something more than 5,000 KPS?”
“Oberon’s Balls. Diana, battle stations. Admiral Whitmore to CCIC.”
The alarm klaxons sounded and the personnel hurried back to their duty stations. Whitmore, whose office was connected to the CCIC, was only seconds behind. It didn’t take much more than that to bring her up to speed, aided by Diana’s info dump to her ‘plant.
“Can we hit them with the lasers?” she asked first.
“If they maintain a fixed course and speed, yes,” Diana answered. “But the range is over forty seconds at light speed.”
“Countermissiles?”
“Hundred kiloklick powered range,” McKnight reminded her.
“Titania wept. Very well. Endeavour, D2, this is Admiral Whitmore. We have incoming missiles; I need you to knock them down.”
“Understood, Admiral. Two minutes,” Kiri said.
“Aye, Admiral,” echoed Orloff. She was the junior commander and so would follow Endeavour’s lead.
“If there are missiles, they came from somewhere. Are they powered?”
“Acceleration is increasing,” said Diana by way of an answer.
“They’re not Titan’s antimatter missiles, and I don’t think the Martians have come up with anything better than the Huygens. That means something brought them here. Shreve, redirect your sensors so you can concentrate on the approaches from Mars which match those missiles’ paths. Diana can help with the calculations. I’ll bet there are Martian ships stooging around out there.”
Shreve got right to it and in short order was reporting back.
“Probable location. Eighteen sources, inbound at 3,000 KPS, distance eighteen million kilometers.”
“Nice work, Shreve. Endeavour, Whitmore. We’re sending you new coordinates for an incoming Martian fleet. Convince them they ought to be elsewhere.”
“Aye, Admiral,” Kiri answered.
“Admiral.”
“Colonel?”
“You’re leaving Luna uncovered,” she said in a low tone.
“Point. Redeploy the Averroes to a higher orbit, about twelve kiloklicks, to catch leakers and bring the remainder of his squadron to full alert.”
“Right away.”
“Interesting times indeed,” Whitmore muttered. “Coffee. Going to need more coffee.
*
“I THINK WE GOT THEIR attention!” shouted Wulfow before he popped above their improvised barricade to take another shot.
Their initial penetration of Artemis City had been almost resistance-free. Only a few random MinSec agents, whatever they were called today, had stood up against them. They only stood briefly, however, before being rolled over by Nordstrom’s combined force.
Even accounting for the need to search and secure the cubic they moved through they’d made surprising progress, gaining almost a full kilometer of ground before meeting any sort of organized opposition. Those first pockets had crumbled, too, but they’d slowed their advance enough for more troops to be called up. The Marine force had finally been halted and then pushed back.
Now the perimeter was an irregular ellipse, five hundred meters deep into Artemis and two hundred meters across. Both sides were dug in and the pitch of the battle was intensifying.
“You think, Sarge?” said Corporal Layne, taking Wulfow’s place to rip off a few shots of his own, then ducking back. Being on the pointy end well and truly sucked. At least they weren’t fighting in vacuum.
In his improvised command post, fifty meters back from the perimeter, Nordstrom was trying to keep track of the incoming developments and mostly succeeding.
“Second Platoon’s reporting movement on the East perimeter!” said Agarn from his station.
“Rotate in the best available Free Luna company,” he answered after considering his options. They weren’t particularly good. By necessity his Marines, the roughly 160 who hadn’t been seconded for the assault on the Complex, were being used to stiffen the resolve of the Free Luna forces. Unfortunately, it was like trying to stiffen oatmeal with raisins: it took time which they simply didn’t have. The volunteer companies were willing and determined, but their best numbers had already been placed on the perimeters. His reserves, though still numbering about four hundred, were definitely second-best.
“Scott, how long do we have to hold again?” said Oren. He was, theoretically, the XO, but in reality he was more the company mascot.
“Until we’re relieved,” Nordstrom repeated. “Go check on the troops on the West perimeter, and try not to get shot.”
“Sure!” And Truitt was off, with Privates Goodrich and McGee trotting ahead and behind to both keep him out of trouble and ensure he went the right direction.
*
PHALKON HAD PULLED the surviving Councilors to update them on the situation.
“Sorry about not going through you,” she finished to Kreitzer. “But time was of the essence.”
“No, thank you,” he answered. “Does this change anything?”
“No. Most of our plans are locked in and can’t be altered. We need to push forward.”
The terminal closest to Kreitzer buzzed for attention and he answered.
“Councilor Newling.”
“Councilor, Senior Technician Gillaspy-Chang. We have a large number of incoming small craft.”
“Number? Heading?”
“In excess of eighty, and if they stay on course they’ll be over Artemis City in minutes.”
“Keep me informed.” He cut the connection. “We need to launch the fighters.”
If he expected opposition he was disappointed.
“I agree,” Phalkon said. “Use our remaining ships to provide cover for the fighters. Have them engage with the Federation ships; we should outnumber them considerably.”
“I’ll pass the orders.”
*
“KENDRA!”
“What, Brie?”
“Check your sensors, groundside!”
Kendra’s eyes widened in shock.
“Daniela!” she shouted over the comm, even as Cass was trying to ask what was going on. She waved a hand behind her.
“Radio discipline, 1314.”
“Commander, groundside!” Kendra snapped. She didn’t have time for proper protocols at the moment.
“Oh fuck,” Daniela said, a brief moment of weakness. Then she was all business.
“Wolves, dive for the deck, hard. Stay out of this! Nymeria and Red Squadrons, keep these bastards off the Wolves. Averroes, we need covering fire. Njord, we have almost a hundred vessels departing Lunar surface, acceleration 200 g, on intercept course.”
“Dammit, Kendra!”
That brought her back into her own ship.
“Sorry. We’ve got what looks like fighters taking off from Luna.”
“Fighters?” Cass squeaked.
“Yup. Danni’s split the force to get the shuttles out of harm’s way. Brie, any details?”
“They’re bigger than us,” said the AI. “Still analyzing readings and coordinating with the other Direwolf AI’s.”
Kendra had pushed her throttle open and was piling on the accel while running through her weapons checklist.
“Kendra? Babe?” Cass noticed the increased speed as the compensators struggled to keep up. “What are we doing?”
“Helping the rest of the squadron,” she said without flicking her eyes from the scanner.
“1314, Nymeria Actual. What the fuck are you doing?”
“Taking the battle to the enemy, Commander.”
“Negative. You are assigned to escort the Wolves.”
“What?” She couldn’t quite keep the indignation out of her voice.
“You’re not combat-trained, Admiral, and I can’t spare anyone else. Besides, you’re part of the ground force. You need to get down there.”
“Commander! You’re outnumbered two to one!”
“No, Admiral. Court-martial me later, but right now get your ass on the deck and give those Wolves a little cover!” Daniela’s voice softened. “We’ll keep them off your backs as long as we can.”
She bit back a hot retort; she knew that tone. Danni was going to honor her oath, and the least Kendra could do was respect her sacrifice. Her shoulders slumped.
“Give ‘em hell, Danni,” is what she said instead and pulled back on her joystick to join with the Wolves.
“We will, Admiral, and we’ll see you on the ground.”
“I’m buying.” She almost said it without a hitch in her voice.
“Damn right you are. Double Dip, over and out.”
It was a quiet cockpit as their lone Direwolf raced to catch up to the shuttles.
*
“MORE LAUNCHES FROM Lunar surface!” Colona reported.
“What do you have?” McKnight asked.
“So far it’s two of the Copernicus cruisers.”
“We can handle those,” McKnight said.
“Not with those fighters thrown into the mix. Damn, this is turning into a hell of a furball.” The holotank in front of Whitmore was getting more complicated by the second as various elements joined the fray. She saw the Wolves separate away and the icons for the Artemis fighters arrowing for the Direwolves. Her conversions were in position to support but didn’t have the legs to catch the fighters, which had already raced past. The Averroes could intercept the fighters, yes, but they might be needed to support the other conversions.
What a mess.
“Five Copernicus, three Apollos, four Geminis. And we’ve got one Copernicus, one Apollos, two Geminis, and Averroes. Joy.” Whitmore shook her head after Colona gave the final count. “Adverse correlation of forces.”
She shook her head again. It was time to see what she could shake loose. “Defender, status?”
“Working on the missiles,” came the reply from Orloff. The sounds of targeting and commands could be heard in the background; apparently Orloff was allowing Commander Huff to run the evolution. “There’s a crapton of them.”
“One eighty, got that.”
“One fifty-eight now,” Huff said.
“Will you clear them in time?”
“We will if you leave us alone,” Orloff snarled. “Whoops. Sorry, Admiral Whitmore.”
“No problem. I’ll try not to joggle your elbow. Out.”
She glanced at the holotank. “Diana.”
“Admiral?”
“Show me Endeavour.”
The tank shimmered and reformed to show a single blue icon and an expanding cluster of red ones.
“Currently engaged with the Martian fleet, Admiral. My sensors show one ship has been destroyed and two other crippled. Some of the others are fleeing but the majority are still fighting.”
“No help there.”
She considered, briefly, engaging the Union ships near Luna with Njord’s lasers before dismissing it. There were simply too many ships in and around, moving too quickly for her to be comfortable with a light-speed weapon. Missiles weren’t any better, given their short legs. They’d go ballistic long before they had a chance to engage and would be more of a hazard than benefit.
“Admiral!” Colona interrupted her musing.
“What?”
“We’ve got another group of signals coming from astern!”
“What? How? Confirm them!”
Diana, without being prompted, changed the view in the holotank to include the new source.
“They’re coming from around Earth out of a low orbit,” Colona added. “We have a count of sixty, and some of them are huge bastards.”
“Define huge.”
“Four hundred meters for one, no, two of them.”
“Sweet Maeve, four hundred meters? Diana, do they match anything in the database?”
“No, Admiral; there’s nothing in the current spaceship database which matches the readings.”
Whitmore caught the subtle phrasing in Diana’s answer.
“Do they match any database?”
“Yes, Admiral; they match the Operation Argo database.”
Whitmore tried to recall the information herself first; the name was familiar, after all, but when nothing popped up she checked her ‘plant. What she saw there made her chocolate skin pale.
“Sweet Titania save us.”
*
“OKAY, BOYS AND GIRLS, now’s when we earn our pay,” Daniela said over the squadron frequency. “We’re outnumbered and they’re bigger, but they’re also slower. Split into two-ship formations and stick to your wingman; they’ll cover your six so you can kill those bastards before they kill you. Ashlyn, you and Red Squadron hang back and take on any leakers.”
“Got it, boss.”
“Game faces on.” She closed the channel. “Boomer. Capacitors?”
“One hundred percent.”
She clicked to her wingman.
“Me Up, we’re going to start whittling them down at 10 kiloklicks.”
“How close are you planning to take us in?” asked the Ensign.
“Knife fighting range.”
“Jesus,” he said, echoed by Boomer’s “Lords of Kobol watch over us.”
Then they were into the fray, the first Direwolf to engage.
The first Artemis fighter they tagged staggered but didn’t stop coming. She lined up for another shot, targeting the center of the vaguely plus-shaped ship.
“Tone. Firing.”
This shot had more effect; the accel fell off sharply, down to half it had been pulling before, but still it came on.
“I’m going for an up-the-kilt shot,” she commed to Me Up.
“Got your back.”
She threw her Direwolf into a high-speed turn as she flashed past the fighter, noting in passing the cockpit.
“All ships, the cockpit is forward. Adjust aim accordingly,” she commed as she slewed around, her OAS firing hard, Me Up close behind.
She pulled back on her throttle, cutting her speed advantage down and giving her a more stable platform. As the seconds and kilometers ticked away she pulled every detail from her sensors she could about her opponent. Two engines, stubby sort-of wings, and –
“Missile launch!” Boomer announced.
“Vampire, vampire!” she yelled into the net. “They pack missiles!”
Around her her pilots were dying in silence, their deaths punctuated only by a sudden cessation of signal as the combination of lasers and missiles caught them by surprise. She couldn’t note them, though, staying focused on her target even as the missiles completed their turn to head directly at her.
“Tone. Firing.”
This time there was no doubt of her fire’s effectiveness; the twin lasers bore in through the engines, into the body of the fighter, and through. Her target, dead or crippled it didn’t matter, went tumbling into deep space.
The missiles her now-dead opponent had launched were still picking up speed and had definitely locked onto her ship. She pushed the throttle to full military power and pulled back on the joystick, launching herself away from the threat.
Me Up, following only a few kilometers back, wasn’t as quick on the stick. In a matter of seconds he’d been blotted from the sky.
*
THE WOLVES COULD SEE the battle raging overhead but were in no position to intervene, much as it pained them. They’d finally closed to within a handful of kilometers from the surface and were screaming across it towards their target.
Kendra, though, could do something.
“Hopalong,” she commed.
“Go.”
“You’re on your own.”
“Kinda figured. Get some back, Admiral.”
“Will do.”
She changed course yet again and returned to her weapons checklist.
“Kendra, what are you doing?”
“The Wolves are fine, but the Direwolves are getting hammered. I’m going to see if I can cut the odds some.”
“Kendra, this isn’t what I signed up for!”
She felt a pang at the statement. “True. But right now I’m in the best position to do anything to help.”
“Kendra, Admiral Whitmore’s comming,” said Brie.
“Davie, I’m busy.”
“I noticed. So are we. The UE has launched the ships you were renovating for them.”
“You’re kidding!”
“I wish. We have a little time but they’re on an intercept course for Njord.”
“Evacuate –”
“How? Every mobile unit I have is engaged, and Defiant is half torn apart for maintenance. Hecate’s trying to patch her up, but she might hold four hundred, really uncomfortably. We’ve got close to forty thousand people aboard.”
“Averroes.”
“What about him?”
“Let him take out the missiles and redeploy the D2 to take out the threat from astern. They’re just hulls, Davie, nothing more.”
“There’s a whole bunch of them, Kendra.”
“Then stop arguing and redirect Averroes! The Wolves are about two minutes from target. If they can get to the Empress, we can end this thing fast. We just need to hold on until then.”
Kendra could almost see the look of consideration on Davie’s face.
“Right. Don’t get yourself killed, Kendra.”
“Don’t you get dead either.”
“I’ve no plans to. Out.” She turned in her seat to face Cass.
“Sweetheart, we’ve got to do this.”
Her answer was full of bitterness. “I know. I hate it, but it’s because I feel helpless back here.”
“Brie?”
“Kendra.”
“Walk Cass through basic sensor operations.”
“Certainly.”
“Cass, I’ve got a blind spot on my six. Brie and I can’t cover it, but you can.”
Buoyed somewhat by the thought of doing something, Cass said, “I can do that. Pity you don’t have rear-facing weapons, I could do more.”
“Next generation. Now hang on.”
*
“ORDERS FROM ADMIRAL Whitmore,” said Ensign Bonagua from Communications. “’Redeploy to intercept targets’, and she gives us coordinates.”
“Send the coordinates to Glover.”
“Sir.” A brief pause. “Sent.”
“Glover. How far?”
“Twenty million kilometers, plus or minus,” Glover replied.
“Warp it is. Can’t waste time,” Newling said. “Taz, bring the warp drive online.”
“Thirty seconds, Captain,” she said from her station.
“Ensign Glover, when the drive is online, engage and run us up to warp four.”
Good as her word, Taz had the drive primed in under thirty seconds and she passed the information to Glover. He, in turn, triggered the course he’d laid in.
The warp drive received its command and began to spool up to the ordered power. The Averroes had a Carnahan drive, it having been decided impractical to replace it with a newer Roberts-style drive, and so produced a much larger field. More importantly the tachyon radiation produced by the drive spread outward at FTL speeds, priming the satellites Artemis had emplaced.
Their generators primed to spin up.
The Averroes, per Federation procedure, eased into warp and began to accelerate. As it accelerated the field grew larger. When they passed the first satellite the field was nearly two thousand kilometers across, easily engulfing satellites on both sides. The satellites were already primed to react and their generators crackled to life. Massive static warp fields popped into existence, just catching the back edge of the field from the Averroes as it streaked through a trap it didn’t know existed.
That fleeting contact, though, was sufficient.
The warp fields collapsed catastrophically, leaving the accumulated energy in the generators no place to go.
The warp satellites simply vanished.
A fraction of a second later Averroes, Newling, Cantillo, Mickey, Taz, and the rest of the crew were nothing more than the universe’s brightest, and briefest, funeral pyre.
Then nothing.