Cluster Command: Crisis of Empire II (26 page)

Jessie was all three, or she had been once. Now it was anyone’s guess.

It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, a training accident can be worse than actual combat. In combat, you expect to get creamed. Sure, you think it’ll be the other guy, in fact you pray it’ll be the other guy. But somewhere in the back of your head is the knowledge that it could be you instead. So if you cop one in combat, it’s no surprise. You’re pissed, literally sometimes, and it hurts like hell if you’ve got anything left to hurt with, but you’re not surprised.

Training accidents are almost always a surprise. They’re not supposed to happen. The whole idea is to simulate danger, not create it. It works for the most part, but every once in a while, something goes wrong as it had for Jessie, and then the shock can be worse than the pain. It can rob you of your self-confidence, your speed, and your courage.

That’s why Jessie’s wingman disappeared ten seconds after launch. He matched vectors with the orange element, leaving Blue One—Jessie—on a course of her own. It was against regs, but what the hell. He knew Jessie wouldn’t report him and if someone else did, well, too bad. He could claim he’d lost her in all the confusion.

Or they could court martial his ass if they wanted to, but
he
wasn’t flying alongside a head case. Damn, the brass were throwing everything but the kitchen sink into this one, psychos included.

Jessie couldn’t blame Blue Two. Her hands were shaking, her stomach felt like a bottomless pit, and she wanted to scream. She remembered the impact as Dolf’s interceptor slammed into hers, the sickening spin, and the heavy Gs as her cockpit module blasted away and tumbled through space.

The doctors had managed to repair her broken body, but they couldn’t bring Dolf back to life or restore Jessie’s shattered confidence. She made a fist and the little ship turned out and away from the oncoming ships.

Her visor was filled with blackness now, pierced here and there by pinpoints of light, distant stars to which she could journey. Never mind that her interceptor would run out of fuel long before she got there, or that the trip would take thousands of years; the stars were bright and pure, a worthy destination whether she arrived or not.

But behind her, the battle still raged and even though Jessie couldn’t see it, she could hear it via her radio. “Blue One . . . Blue One . . . where the hell are you going?”

“Forget her, Oscar One . . . the bitch is psycho.”

“Delta Leader to Delta Five . . . break right . . . you’ve got one on your tail.”

“C’mon sucker . . . jus’ a little more . . . gotcha!”

“Alright ladies and gentlemen, by the numbers. Let’s show these Apex assholes how it’s done.”

“Oh shit . . . it hurts! It hurts so bad! Please don’t let me die in here, please!”

“Shut up, Mag . . . you’re on the command frequency.”

Something broke inside Jessie as she listened to Mag die. Tears began to flow down her cheeks and gather around her neck gasket. She hadn’t cried since the accident. Her fingers made a fist; the interceptor changed attitude, accelerated again. Then, as suddenly as they’d come, the tears were gone. They’d killed Mag. Jessie didn’t like Mag,
those
bastards had no right to kill her. No right to make someone suffer like Mag had, like Jessie had. No right at all.

She switched her visor to the plot mode. The larger ships were shooting at each other with everything they had. Light strobed as plasma batteries fired in sequence, explosions blossomed as missiles hit enemy force fields, and the huge hulls performed a slow motion ballet.

The interceptors attacked their flanks rather than run the gauntlet between the two battleships—though the flank approach was no joyride either. As they came in, the interceptors faced everything from missiles to enemy interceptors.

Though badly outnumbered, the Apex interceptors had given a good account of themselves, breaking up the initial Harmony attack wave. But now there were only ten of the defensive screen left, and soon they too would be overwhelmed. Nonetheless, the battleships were only slightly damaged and the cruiser was untouched.

Jessie’s eyes narrowed at the sight of the cruiser. Why should that asshole sit there untouched?

She tumbled her interceptor on both the pitch and yaw axes, then dumped all systems and went inert. Hopefully, the computers on both sides would assume she’d been hit and destroyed.

Seconds passed and then minutes of gut wrenching spins as the interceptor continued off its plotted course. There was no sign that she’d been discovered. She touched the attitude controls, stabilizing her rotation in what she prayed were undetectable increments.

Strya filled half of Jessie’s main viewscreen. A large yellow globe overlaid with patches of white cloud. The awesome shape of a battleship was silhouetted against the planet. It grew steadily larger until most of the planet was hidden behind it. Light rippled along the battlewagon’s far side as interceptors attacked and plasma batteries fired in response.

It reminded her of distant lightning on Terra, something that you watched in eerie silence as if it were part of someone else’s world and not yours. The other battleship was discernible only by the corona of fire from its far side, a blackness blacker than the black around it.

And straight ahead there was the cruiser.

It lashed out lazily as the occasional interceptor tried her defenses, satisfied to sit back and let others do her work.

Jessie’s interceptor sailed through the heart of the Apex formation. The three ships could’ve fried her a million times over, but to them she was only one more bit of space junk.

It would work or it wouldn’t. She was totally detached, even as she thought of the countless missiles and cannon muzzles pointed her way and ready to fire.

Time. The cruiser was almost on her. Muscles tensed, the heads-up display reappeared on her visor as she powered her systems. Jesse kicked in full thrust and toggled off her payload as her interceptor raced up towards the cruiser’s belly. Four nuclear torpedos, sixteen high-explosive missiles, and thousands of rounds of repulsor fire all hit the cruiser’s force field at once.

The defensive force field overloaded when the four nuclear warheads exploded together. Jessie spiked onward, through the dissipating fireballs.

Mag had been a real bitch. Thinking about it, she was glad that Mag’d bought the farm.

The interceptor had become a three-ton missile, still accelerating as the cruiser’s repulsors chewed vainly out of it.

Jessie hit the cruiser towards the stern. The added velocities were enough to convert part of the mass to plasma, a bright flare that announced the death of the cruiser and everyone aboard her.

###

“Blessed spirits! Did you see that?” Yamaguchi demanded. “Somebody just
rammed
the cruiser! Did you
see
that?”

Merikur had. That single action might throw the battle their way. But it made him cold all over to think of anybody doing
that.
Take a risk, sure . . . But not
that. That
was crazy.

There wasn’t any time to give the matter further thought because a missile hit the
Bremerton’s
bridge and the starboard bulkhead disappeared and with it a full third of the bridge crew. Everything loose was sucked through the hole and out into space. Merikur felt himself pulled towards the hole and then jerked to a stop by his safety strap.

Yamaguchi was likewise saved. Her voice was grim inside his helmet. “Medical party to the bridge. We’ve lost hull integrity and argrav. Estimate thirty percent casualties. The weapons section was hardest hit. If any weapons failed to make the shift to manual control, then shut them down. All stations report.”

“Drive room closed up on manuals. No casualties.”

“Sick bay closed up on manuals. Medical party en route.”

“Fire control closed up and running off back-up computers. No casualties.”

And so it went until all departments had reported in. The bridge had taken the worst of it. A good deal of the ship’s primary weapon control system had been destroyed, along with some long-range sensors. That wasn’t good, but the rest of the ship was functional and, with the exception of the mess deck, still airtight.

It was strange to see a ragged pattern of stars where a section of bulkhead ought to be, although it made little difference to the ship or its ability to fight. Humans needed artificial gravity and bulkheads, but the ship didn’t. Thanks to a multiplicity of back-up systems, the
Bremerton
would continue to function with or without them. As for the bridge crew, their space armor would provide them with life support for six hours, and by that time the battle would be over.

The medical party cycled through the mini-lock separating the bridge from the main corridor. They were systematically searching the wreckage for wounded and doing what they could to clean up the mess. The members of the bridge crew were too busy to notice. Later they would count their dead. Later they would wonder why someone else and not them. Later they would get drunk, tell stories, and cry.

But this was now and the battle was still underway. A cheer went up. It overmodulated the speakers in Merikur’s helmet and forced the volume down.

Yamaguchi’s eyes were bright behind her visor. “Our interceptors report damage to target one, General. They managed to slip a torp into her starboard drive room. Her port drives are untouched but she’s using them to maintain her force field.”

“Excellent,” Merikur replied. “If target one can’t maneuver, that cuts our problems in half. Keep the pressure on her but shift most of the interceptors to target two.”

Yamaguchi gave the necessary orders while Merikur pondered his next move. Kalbrand was aboard target two and they hadn’t heard a peep out of him so far. He was down to a single battlewagon. What would it take to beat him into submission?

“General! Target two’s turning!”

Looking at the plot tank Merikur saw it was true. The remaining battleship was dropping towards Strya. It’d be suicide to attempt a landing while under attack. The bastards were planning to bomb the planet!

“Order the destroyers to attack,” Merikur said, “and put us alongside the battleship’s main hatch.” By throwing the tin cans into the fray, Merikur was stripping the troop transports of protection, but he couldn’t help it. At least most of the Apex interceptors had been destroyed and the rest were too low on fuel and stores to be a serious threat.

He prayed they were too low on fuel and stores . . .

###

The cruiser picked up speed as Chief Engineer Baines goosed the ship’s drives. Baines was a big man, well over seven feet tall, and the boarding axe looked like a toy in his hands. Word was out that Merikur planned to board the battleship and Baines planned to go along.

The engineer grinned as he checked the weapon’s edge and swung it around his head. Others could have their repulsors and needle guns. Baines believed there was nothing like a bloody great wedge of razor sharp steel to make room in an armored crowd.

###

The next half-hour was a living hell as the
Bremerton
accepted the punishment necessary in order to close with the Apex battleship. Missile after missile penetrated the ship’s force-field, opening huge holes in her hull. Ravening plasma charges lighted the force field into a coruscant globe.

In the background, there was the constant drone of damage and casualty reports which documented each stage of the ship’s slow death.

For Merikur the hardest part was the helpless inactivity while Yamaguchi fought to keep her ship alive. It was Merikur’s role to set strategy, to look at the big picture, to give orders and then stay out of the way. He found it very hard to do. At some point, he wasn’t sure when, Beth had appeared by his side. She didn’t say anything and didn’t need to. They would die together.

But in spite of everything the battleship threw at them, the
Bremerton
survived.

Merikur could see the battleship through the shattered bulkhead: the cooling fins along the top of its hull, the shot-up radiant panels, and the repulsor batteries which still spewed death.

“Baines says he can’t give us much more,” Yamaguchi said calmly. “The drives are going down.”

“Understood,” Merikur replied. “Tell him to give us one last surge of power. Then put us alongside. We’re going aboard. Pass the word for everyone to tie something white around their left arm. There’ll be enough people trying to shoot us without our killing each other.”

Yamaguchi turned with a look of horror.
“What?
I assumed we were going to slide a nuke through a hole in their hull and cast off.”

Merikur gave a quick toss of his head, a gesture which blended acknowledgement with denial. “Kalbrand’s aboard the battlewagon.”

“Yes, of course,” Yamaguchi agreed. “Eliminating him will surely cause the other battleship to surrender.”

“Killing
the Governor of Apex Cluster,” Merikur said harshly, “will surely be treated as rebellion against the Pact—no matter what our justifications. We’ll board.”

“Aye, aye, Sir.” Yamaguchi passed the word.

The
Bremerton
matched velocities—a fraction—with the battlewagon. A moment, later they touched.

With half its control systems shot away, the
Bremerton
was barely under control. The contact was more a collision than a docking maneuver, jerking Merikur and Bethany to the ends of their safety lines.

Merikur grabbed a handhold and chinned the command frequency. It was an order he’d never expected to give. “Boarders away! Go for her drives! I repeat, go for her drives!”

Bethany was right behind him as he left the bridge. Like him, she wore a white bandage around her left arm. She saw his glance and gave him a thumbs up.

He wished he could tell her he loved her, but that would mean telling a thousand other people as well.

He too settled for a thumbs up.

With the argrav gone, the boarders had to swim towards the main hatch using handholds. In spite of the people around him, Merikur knew there weren’t near enough to take a battleship whose crew outnumbered his about three to one.