Blind into the Breach (The Hunter Imperium Book 4), page 15
I wondered where Vulture was, and a popup showed me he was in my slot at the front of 266. Which seemed right to me. I’d never felt I should have been there. Here, in a much larger ship felt much better.
While I waited for the cloud of trees to come into range, I checked on what vision I had, and found it even more detailed than I'd had in the Brawler, which made sense since this was a much bigger ship, and presumably had many more cams and sensors. A popup showed me exactly where they were.
"Too much input?" asked Jane.
"Why do you ask?"
"You made a noise. I thought it might be an overload sound."
"No. More like a 'what a rush' sound."
"Are you ready?"
"As I'll ever be."
"Tally-ho," said Eagle. "Corvette flight and leader squadron, let's chop some firewood."
The AI's had us accelerating towards the plant fighters in formations. I noticed Eagle was taking us marginally down, while the leaders were heading slightly up. I grinned. He'd heard my appraisal of the Cobra, and was placing us in an attack vector where the weaker underside shouldn’t be an issue.
Coming towards us was nearly two thousand fighters. They fired almost together, and we juked hard to let the pulses go past us, but each of us caught a few of them. My shields went down twenty percent, but started back up immediately. Eagle began firing FF missiles, and all of us followed suit. Anticipating the need, Jane had loaded a magazine entirely of FF's, and I fired the lot of them before we came into gun range.
"Reload IR's please."
"Confirmed."
IR's were already in the rear launcher, waiting for me to use.
I locked up the tree two to the right of the leader, and waited to pull the trigger. Press, and the tree exploded, throwing soil and debris in all directions. I didn’t bother evading, but went through it, already targeting the next one ahead. Five taps on the torpedo button, and I was ready for the next one. Six IR's to one a little off my heading, and guns on the one in front now. Trees were passed and behind us now, and I locked one of them, sent six IR's after it, locked up another off to one side of Knüppel, and gave it six from the front, while firing the guns at another tree without any form of assistance. Only half the pulses hit, but it came apart anyway.
"Jane, can you fire six IR's every time I press once?"
"Confirmed."
Lock in front, fire, lock and tap, lock and fire back, turn, rinse and repeat. Along the way I called out for both missile and torpedo magazines to be changed, and Jane let me know when they were ready again. I was also calling out break warnings for the rest of the flight.
Somewhere along the way I lost Knüppel, and very soon after Eagle. Their white dots were still visible, but any chance of forming up again was gone.
Several times I took multiple hits from cruiser guns, and was aware my shields were falling steadily. When I ran out of IR missiles, I started firing FF's randomly from both launchers.
I was in the zone as I’d never been in it before.
And suddenly, I was on the other side of the forest. With nothing following me. A few moments later, Eagle popped out as well, and altered course to form up on me. Knüppel was next, and shortly after, Buzzard. None of us had much in the way of shields, but they started rising rapidly now nothing was firing on us.
I could see them in my peripheral vision, but my attention was on what was ahead.
Two lines of battleships were sitting over the planet, but not close enough to cover each other. Each one had two squadrons of mixed cruisers and destroyers flanking them.
I thought about it. They were stopped. They were pointed at us. We still had extra speed to use.
"Where the hell are you going Dreamwalker?" asked Eagle.
"Well…"
"No."
"We're here. I've got some torpedoes and FF's left, and we may as well crack on. Besides, we really should test how effective corvettes can be."
"No." That was the CO. "Definitely not. Return to base."
A big oblong opened up well ahead of me, thirteen ships appeared, and the oblong vanished. Most of them were what the CAG was flying, but the lead ship was much smaller, and about the size of the Cobra.
"Gunbus has the lead. Arrow formation please."
Thirty Five
Jane took over control.
My Cobra moved into position on the right wing of Gunbus, with Knüppel on the left, Eagle to my right, and Buzzard to Knüppel's left. The other corvettes, which all had Japanese sounding names, formed up around us. Seventeen corvettes, well-spaced apart.
Our speed went up to maximum, and the heading shifted. I projected it forward, and nodded. Gunbus was taking us off on an angle, leading to a position where we could turn to an attack vector which put the support squadrons in the wrong place for defending the battleships.
Just before the turn, whoever was flying Gunbus spoke again.
"Divine Wind squadron prepare to target cruisers and destroyers with capital ship missiles."
Capital ship missiles?
"Fire."
Four hundred and eighty missiles fired off, repeated four times, five seconds apart. They carried on ahead for a brief moment, and turned to pass the battleships. The specs showed me the Japanese version of the super-Gunbus had been modified as a bomber, where the two Orion had, hadn't been. The squadron had fired two thousand four hundred missiles in twenty five seconds, which significantly changed the ballgame. The Trixone cruisers and destroyers now had a credible threat to distract them from us.
"All corvettes prepare to turn. Targets are being assigned by Jane."
My target lock came on, fixed on a battleship just off the middle of the formation, which still wasn’t moving, although the cruisers and destroyers were. The battleships did start moving but only to bring them head on, where they presented the smallest target.
"Turn."
I still didn’t have control, and the Cobra turned in formation, which also became line abreast instead of arrow.
Fire started to come from the battleships, and Jane released the controls to me so I could juke us. Every time I did, Jane brought the ship back onto the attack vector. The battleship pulses were slow enough to evade at the speed we were going, but the smaller cruiser and destroyer guns started hitting all of us. Although I noticed a lot of the fire was directed at the missiles.
The front missile magazine had FF's, and I started pumping them out. A few seconds later, so was everyone. When the front magazine was empty, with nothing left to reload, I started pumping out the rear ones, which had to reverse course and go around the ship. But I figured every missile in space was a threat they couldn’t ignore, and so took the pressure off us a little.
One of the Japanese ships took a battleship pulse and staggered, but stayed in formation, its pilot juking even more chaotically than before.
"Eagle, break down," I yelled, and Eagle's corvette dropped at the front immediately, and the rest of the ship followed.
Now I could see the disadvantage the larger ship had, as the battleship pulse heading for him narrowly missed the back of his ship, which took longer to get out of the way. But seconds later, he was back in formation.
The battleships were looming large now, and I honestly couldn’t see how the hell they were missing us. But the speed slider was against the stops, we didn’t stay in the same place for more than a fraction of a second, and nothing was predictable.
"Fire at will," said Gunbus.
By now I had all the turrets which could fire forward linked up with the main guns, and when I pulled the trigger, a wall of pulses headed towards the battleship in my sights. I had no illusions at all they would even take a shield down, but it seemed the thing to do.
Now I started tapping the torpedo button, and kept it up, while at the same time trying to judge when to pull up. Torpedoes slammed into the front of the battleship, and its shields were going down steadily, but they were not going to be down before I slammed into the front of the ship.
"Chris," said Jane in a warning voice.
I ignored her, but seconds later pulled the ship up enough to slide over the top of the battleship, and for those seconds, I stopped firing torpedoes, with half of the last magazine gone.
My finger touched the strafe button, and I angled the front down, and began firing torpedoes again. With another finger, I was also firing FF's out the rear launcher again, which angled over and went straight into the battleship hull behind me.
Its shields went down, and the torpedoes started eating into the hull as I continued to fly straight down its back. FF's from the rear now started exploding inside the hull itself, and behind me a large explosion wiped out most of my rear vision.
The battleships were over one and a half kilometers long, but it was only seconds before I crossed out into clear space again, and realized I’d run out of both torpedoes and missiles before I took my finger off the buttons.
My shields were bad, below twenty percent, and not recovering due to fire now coming from the smaller ships. But more than half them were now gone, including all the battleships and cruisers, and what was left were destroyers.
"CLEAR MY LINE OF FIRE."
"All corvettes dive for the planet," said Gunbus.
I did so immediately, still juking, although my rear vision was still a bit hazy due to light overload from the exploding battleship. All the same, nothing much hit me, and shortly after, all remaining red dots vanished from the navmap. The other three fleets were also gone, and I suspect Admiral Hallington had dealt with them first.
As the fire of planetary entry caused the view to darken, a screen popped up.
"Bloody hell Dreamwalker," said Amanda. "You don't disappoint."
"Do it again!" demanded her sister.
The entire team was sitting there.
All of them were grinning.
And I’d had no idea anyone else but Jane was on board.
Thirty Six
A hollo of Admiral Hallington popped up on the main console.
"Dreamwalker, you're to land marines in the center of the capital city, and fly cover for them. Fearless is on her way to you as well, and will be dropping combat droids elsewhere on the planet. You'll get some high cover from the regular squadrons, but don’t rely on them for ground support. From now on, you are under Team One orders."
"Understood sir."
His hollo vanished, and Amanda popped up instead. She was running down stairs now.
"Chris, Jane will give you a drop zone. We have all five teams on board, and will use all four ramps. You don’t need to kiss ground. A couple of meters up will be fine."
She'd stopped, and her image stepped into the back of a combat suit. It stepped back from the wall, twirled, and went straight to a gun rack. The gun it pulled down was not familiar to me. The hollo ended.
"Divine Wind flights two and three," said Gunbus, "break and form up on Fearless. The rest of us form up on Dreamwalker."
Eight of the Japanese ships vanished abruptly out of my sight range, and the navmap showed them heading upwards. The remaining seven ships changed formation to form up around me, with Gunbus in the lead.
The drop zone appeared on the HUD, and as one, all ships angled towards it. At three thousand meters, they peeled away, leaving me to bring the Cobra down to a kiss grass landing. The ramps went down five hundred meters up, and the one hundred and twelve combat suits leapt off two meters up almost together. They quickly formed a ring around the Cobra, and with the ramps retracting, I took us off towards a concentration of nearby Trixone.
Once more I inverted, and the point defense turrets started mowing. After flying around like that in ever widening circles for about ten minutes, I started feeling disoriented with being upside down so long. The internal gravity still held me in my seat as if I was right side up, but the ground was in the wrong place.
Just to see if I could, I adjusted my vision to flip around, so even though my head was really pointing at the ground, I was seeing myself flying normally. I quickly lost the disoriented feeling, and found I could fly more accurately this way.
The other corvettes were doing much the same as I was in their own areas of the city. The teams had vanished into the buildings. Large explosions showed where plant troop transports were being hit.
Fearless was now on the ground on another continent, and squadrons were now turning up after rearming and doing strafing runs on towns across the planet.
When my portion of the city was clear of large groups of moving plants, I returned to the drop zone. The teams had not returned, and with no new orders, I landed, with just the forward ramp down. Sprinting down the stairs to the armoury, I found two sets of new guns. One was too large for me to pull down, but the other was a smaller version of the same thing, and I took one down.
It was basically twelve gun barrels in a circle, with the power unit behind them, and a top and rear handle. Left hand held the top, and the right the rear, where the firing trigger also was. It was well balanced, but heavier than the meson guns.
I found the on switch, and quickly moved to, and down the ramp.
At the bottom, I stopped dead.
Dead was the word of the day.
The entire area was covered in decaying bodies and what I assumed was dried blood. I had to quickly bring my medical monitor primary in order to suppress my gag reflex, and block out the smell. They looked humanoid in shape, were wearing some sort of leather clothes, and the plants had simply waded through them. There were the odd chopped up Trixone lying there as well, but in spite of reasonable looking weapons scattered around, the locals appeared to have had no chance at all.
"Colonel?"
"Yes Chris?" answered Amanda.
"I'm down and waiting for you. Nothing more than isolated plants around at this point. Orders?"
As if to prove me wrong, a group of plants burst out of a nearby building, saw me, and started moving towards. I aligned my new gun on them, and pulled the trigger. Single full pulses fired so rapidly the entire group was cut down within seconds. So instead of the last gun firing light pulses, this one was firing full ones a great deal faster.
"What was that?" asked BA.
"Group of about a dozen plants. I like the new gun."
"As do we, but it's been mainly sword action in here."
"Hold your position," said Amanda. "We haven’t found any live locals here, and our sweep is almost complete."
About fifteen minutes later, during which I fired the gun another five times, the teams began to appear. I brought the other ramps down, and combat suits streamed back on board.
Jane had the next drop point on the HUD when I arrived back on the bridge. I'd barely fastened my restraints when Kat dropped a bottle of water in the holder. I nodded thanks, drank half of it in one go, and took us up again.
Here on the planet the sun was sinking towards the horizon. For us though, it wasn’t yet breakfast time. Given the slaughter I’d just seen, I wasn’t sure breakfast was a good idea.
A short hop across the city, and the teams deployed again. And again. And again. When the majority of the city had been covered, we moved to the nearest town.
Six hours later, I was ordered back to Orion. The teams took their seats, and every single face looked grim. All except Jane, who looked her normal self.
Fearless had made a number of trips back to Orion, and each time dropped off thousands of combat droids around the world. They were now in seek, locate, destroy mode, looking for every remaining Trixone which could be found.
Back in space, with Orion in orbit now, I looked at Jane.
"How bad is it?"
"Bad. This was a planet of several billion intelligent beings."
Now her face turned grim.
"All dead."
She sighed.
"In fact, as far as I can tell, there is no longer any animal life on this planet at all."
Thirty Seven
Gunbus and the Japanese corvettes docked ahead of us.
In fact, of the corvette class, I docked last. Where there'd been an almost empty docking bay, there was now a half full one. I let Jane do the final docking, and headed back to the room behind, where team one were rising from their seats. Jane followed me.
The airlock opened a few moments later, and I moved to the side of it.
"Thankyou for flying Air Dreamwalker. I hope you decide to fly with us again soon."
There were a few smiles, and Amanda thumped me on the arm as she went past. I waited there while all the teams filed through, and finally Jane and I left the ship, and the airlock closed behind us.
The travel car took us to the main mess. Once again being the last in, I stood in the doorway. Unlike previous times, the mood was subdued. Yes, we'd won a great victory, but we'd also been way too late for the indigenous population.
I turned to head back to my rooms, intending to stand under the shower for a good long time.
"No you don't," said Jane, and I took her body language seriously.
I could see she'd frog march me in if I didn’t go under my own steam. I sighed, and headed in. As if anticipating my mood, Kat put a bottle of water in my hand well before I reached the bar. I gulped it a few times, and slowed down to sips.
Seeing all the senior officers, which included a second Jane, in a group around the Imperator, I changed course for the nearest meals table, and sat down, now feeling completely done in. Kat appeared beside me again with another bottle of water.
"Would you like to eat, sir?"
"No thanks Kat. Just water for now."
He silently put the new bottle down next to my almost empty one, and left. I pushed both into the middle of the table, crossed my arms in front of me on the table, and laid my forehead down on my hands.
"You okay Chris?" asked Grace, as I felt more than saw her sitting down next to me.
