Homeworld: A Military Science Fiction Novel (12 page)

Unexpected Delay

As the Harrington’s Null Drive built up the energy to access the Null Point for Earth, Admiral Watkins stood on her bridge with Captain Burman at his side.

Watkins’ hands were clasped behind his back and a smug grin covered his face despite his effort to keep his emotions in check. So far, everything had gone exactly as they had planned, if not better. The only minor setback he had been burdened with was the loss of an unexpected portion of the ground troops at his disposal due to certain, still surviving, armed Earth Republic citizens of Mars hiding in their miserable sewers and attempting to sabotage the Coalition troops now in full control of the planet. The loss was however nothing more than an annoyance and in his opinion did not warrant turning the surface of the planet into molten slag. The minimal ground forces he had left on the surface would deal with the pitiful resistance soon enough and they would have Mars intact and undamaged. “A prize indeed,” thought the admiral.

After his long campaign, he retained the strength necessary to take and occupy Earth which was the home world of all humanity. Once his armada swept the planet’s hastily gathered and inferior forces aside his victory would be complete and his place on the Executive Board of the Coalition would be secured.

At Admiral Watkins’ nod, Captain Burman briskly gave the order to The Harrington and the four other Super Dreadnaughts of the armada to send wave after wave of the one-manned fighters, the Coalition had christened the K-01 Onslaught, into Earth space ahead of the armada through the Null Point that the Harrington would open. Admiral Watkins would not make the same tactical error of allowing his capital ships to be easily disabled or destroyed in the few seconds their crews needed to adjust to their new surroundings after a Null Jump.

Let the Earth Republic fleet waste their Ceramics in attempting to target five hundred of his extremely maneuverable Onslaughts before his capital ships arrived to decimate them. Even if all five hundred of the easily replaceable craft were destroyed, he would still have hundreds more at his disposal to be used in the coming battle. The familiar violet glow of Null Space began to form in front of the armada distorting the background stars and then flickered back into Normal Space.

Captain Burman had nervously glanced sidelong at the Admiral and again he gave the order. Again, there was a distortion of the background stars as Null Space began to open up in front of them and then it had flickered back to normal space.

“Is there a problem, Captain Burman?” the admiral had asked in a voice almost as quiet and cold as the conditions outside the Harrington’s hull.

“Engineering Control!” barked the Captain. “Did you or did you not hear the orders as given?”

A very nervous looking junior grade officer adjusted the stiff collar of his black uniform with silver piping and reported, “Captain Burman, Sir! The order was received twice and to the best of our ability, the order has been attempted to be carried out twice, without delay, Sir!”

Captain Burman could not help noticing the gentle tapping of Admiral Watkins’ left hand against his right even though they were still behind his back.

Captain Burman snapped to textbook attention and bellowed, “Engineering Control! As you are unable to carry out the orders as given, perhaps you would care to inform me as to why?”

Captain Burman was looking directly down the long narrow grey hallway that served as the Harrington’s bridge with command stations on the right and left of him, illuminating the bridge in an eerie green glow, at the junior officer in charge of Engineering Control as he now hopped from one of his subordinates console’s to the next tapping at vids and whispering questions to his staff.

“Captain Burman, Sir! I am attempting to find the malfunction now! Engineering Control requests thirty seconds to perform diagnostics on the Null Drive systems, Sir”

Captain Burman bellowed with all the pent up irritation he felt at having to be made a fool in front of his superior by the incompetence of his crew “Engineering Control, you have your thirty seconds!”

With three seconds to spare, the junior officer from Engineering Control called to his captain. “Captain Burman, Sir! The Null Drive is operating at ninety-nine point nine-nine percent efficiency! According to our readings, the Null Drive window is closing as quickly as it is opening! Reason for this anomaly is unknown at this time, Sir!”

Admiral Watkins’ fists were now clenched behind his back. Helm Control was the next unfortunate bridge station to receive the bellowing roar from Captain Burman who could now feel a cold drop of sweat coursing its way down his back. “Confirm we are at Null Point coordinates!”

“Aye, Sir!” called his Helm Control officer who had already been checking with his subordinates from the moment he saw the first anomaly. “Coordinates triple checked and confirmed with the rest of the armada. These are the proper Null Point coordinates!”

Captain Burman performed a crisp right turn and faced Admiral Watkins looking into the space somewhere behind the admiral’s head. “Admiral Watkins, I regret to inform you that the armada is unable to carry out your orders at this time due to an unknown inter-dimensional anomaly. I request your indulgence to perform a more thorough scan of local space to see if there could be some unknown distortion causing the failure in opening a Null Window,” the captain said in a calm voice with perfect diction.

“That will not be necessary, Captain Burman.” Watkins said his eyes staring forward, the knuckles clearly white on his clenched fists. “It is apparent to me that, since nothing of this nature has ever been reported in the history of Null Space travel that, the Earth Republic has found a new way to annoy us but that is of no consequence. Please inquire of your Helm Control what best possible speed for the armada will be and recall the K-01s.” The admiral’s tone was calm and controlled but a fire burned in his eyes.

“So close to victory and now this irritation!” Watkins seethed internally as Captain Burman carried out his orders. With the sometimes annoying, formality required aboard Coalition Fleet vessels Captain Burman reported to him what he had heard perfectly well from the Helm Control officer. “K-01s are returning to their berths, Sir, and best speed under conventional drive to Earth is one week, six days and 19 hours, Sir.”

“Then have your Helm Control lay in the course.” The admiral turned and began walking away from the captain. “Best possible speed, Captain Burman. I will be in my ready room.”

Advice

Drake wandered into the tanker bay of the Taylor. The transport was a small one by the standards of much of the Coalition Fleet. Unlike many of the ships in the Coalition armada, she was an older model; she had probably been commissioned about fifty years ago and had been commandeered from its role as a cargo ship and re-commissioned to serve as part of this massive invasion fleet. “It’s funny how the Coalition Fleet never seems to care enough to send us ground pounders the very best. Flesh must be cheaper than metal these days,” thought Drake as he sidestepped a technician.

It looked as if the technicians were using the unexpected two week delay caused by what everyone was calling “The Anomaly” to refit and rearm the seven tanks in the bay. Now the tanks were big enough on their own but the large bay had plenty of room for them. What filled the area around him to near capacity was the small army of orange suited technicians in useless yellow hard hats swarming all over and around the tanks like a bunch of ants on a dead beetle.

Three of the tanks were part of Rachel’s original command and the rest had just been designated to her company along with her promotion. Drake wondered how much time after hitting dirt side Rachel would have to enjoy her new rank. Drake agreed with the choice of the brass to place more firepower at her disposal for the Earth drop. Though she was young for her rank, he had seen with his own eyes her ability to get the job done. As he headed for her personal tank, The Brightside, Drake paused to light up a cigarette.

“Whoa, soldier,” Captain Rachel Keil scowled at him as she climbed out of the Brightside’s hatch and gracefully hopped to the grey metal of the cargo bays floor. “Those things are against regs, ya know? They’ll kill you too.”

Drake exhaled a stream of smoke aimed directly at her face. “Atmosphere purifiers will scrub the smoke out of the air, and if some officer wants to get in my face over it...” He leaned against her tank and smiled while he left the rest unspoken.

“Tell me, what the hell happened to you, Drake?” Rachel asked, frowning. “I have read your file, at least the unclassified bits, which didn't leave me much to work with. In fact, most of your file has more black in it than the space we’re passing through. Rumor has it you were the best of the best and from what I saw on Mars, I believe the rumor. How does a fragging living legend, get chucked down here, as if you were just another piece of meat in infantry armor to get tossed into the grinder?”

Impressed by her directness as not many had the nerve it took to talk to him like this, officer or not, Drake decided, for the moment, not to break her jaw. “It's simple really, I’m a killer. There is no better place in all of known space for me than right here where the action is. No, ma'am, the sharp end is my home. I wasn't born this way, but the years and the mileage have made me this way and this is the way I will die. That's just the way it is.” This was the most he’d told anyone about his life in the past few decades and Drake couldn’t help but wonder why he was telling this freshly made Captain with the three embroidered crosses under the two silver stripes on the sleeve of her crisp new black uniform any of this.

Rachel stared at him as if trying to solve a hard riddle for several seconds before finally offering him a smile. “I meant to say this to you earlier, but thanks for the save back on Mars. I’m not fond of testing new tech on the battlefield and I wasn’t sure the Brightside’s new anti-air systems would have tagged that fighter in time. Apparently, the best new automated electronics that the brains back at Coalition H.Q. can come up with are no match for just you and a rifle. Without you, I may not have lived long enough to enjoy the headache of this promotion. That was some damn fine shooting you did back there.”

“That was nothing but shit-house luck. I was just at the right place at the right time and all that crap,” Drake took a drag from his cigarette. He talked as he exhaled “A bit of advice, captain? And please, trust me on this one. Earth is gonna be a lot rougher than anything you have ever faced before. We won’t be catching the breaks that we did on Mars. They’ll be coming at us hard and fast pulling every trick in the book while writing more tricks on the back cover. You can bet your life on it,” Drake said flicking ash on the deck for emphasis.

Rachel ducked as a piece of machinery attached to the end of a crane went by over their heads. Drake just stood there as it missed the top of his head by inches. “Yeah? Why do you say that?” Rachel asked him as she reached out and took the cigarette from his hand, then took a big pull before handing it back to him.

Raising an eyebrow at her in surprise, he answered, "Because you don't want to know how hard I would fight to defend Earth if the roles were reversed."

"Why should it be any different than all of the other planets we have stomped across to get here? Those people were fighting for their homes as well," Rachel asked, stepping aside for a technician carrying a piece of equipment she recognized as belonging to a target acquisition system.

"Look, sister, there's a big difference between fighting for your home, and fighting for your home world. Sure, the people on the worlds we’ve been to so far might have crossed half of creation to carve out a meager existence on their barely terraformed planets but Earth is where they come from. Hell, it's where we all come from."

"I guess I never thought of it that way." Rachel nodded slowly wondering what, if anything, she could do to better prepare her tankers for the upcoming scrap.

"Trust me; it won't be long before every Earthling with a weapon will be hiding in a darkened alley waiting to shoot us in the back as we pass by. I’ll bet you a carton of smokes that the Republic government has opened their armories and are handing out all the excess weapons and ammo they have to whoever is willing to pick it up. Remember every single person down there has served in on branch of their Armed Forces for at least four years. Now I’m not saying that makes them hardened veterans but they all had to pass weapons proficiency tests, including anti-tank weapons. Again no different from all the other worlds we’ve put our boot to but there’s a lot more people on earth with a lot more ordinance.

While you don’t have to worry much about small arms fire think about what a construction crew with enough blasting caps and a few crates of explosives could do if they brought a plastisteel building down on one your shiny new tubs.” he said thumping the side of the tank he was leaning against for emphasis. “What do you think would happen if they blew a gas main under a roadway your company was traveling down or intentionally rigged a fusion power substation to overload causing a massive EMP?”

"Is that the type of thing you would do?" Rachel asked mulling over in her head all Drake had said. So far she and her tankers had been fighting conventional warfare and with all the battlefield experience they had recently had the opportunity to pick up they were damn good at it but what Drake was warning her about was the unconventional and that hadn’t been covered in their training.

“You got it, won’t be easy getting them to surrender either,” Drake grunted “They’ll keep coming until the last kid in a Republic uniform strong enough to lift a sidearm is nothing more than a smoking mess of charred flesh.”

“Kid?” Rachel asked.

Drake took a drag on his cigarette and nodded. “Earth is the training center for the bulk of the Republic forces. I wager four out of five folks that we kill wearing a blue uniform will be newbies thrown into the fire.” He could see what he told her bothered Rachel but she tried to stay professional about it.

“Then that’s when the real fun sets in. After we’ve decimated their traditional forces we’ll have to keep the peace down there because the brass certainly isn’t going to level their trophy. People can get real creative when they’re desperate and until we’re sent additional personal keeping the civilian populace pacified will be damn near impossible even with the terror tactics whoever is in charge of this mess has been willing to use thus far.

In fact, killing people in mass might make our job here harder not easier because then we’ll be giving the resistance more to fight for. Never underestimate the motivation vengeance can provide.” Drake noticed Rachel hadn’t said anything in a few minutes but from the expression on her face, she was mulling over what he said. He hoped some of it was sinking in. If she was going to be in charge of the company he was attached to, for now, then he wanted her thinking straight as she made her command decisions.

Drake had time to light and finish another smoke before Rachel finally spoke. “Enemy’s the enemy, right? We didn’t shove weapons into their hands and tell them to come shoot at us. Anyone willing to shoot at me, the least I can do is return the favor, right?” Rachel chewed out the words. As if, they didn’t taste good in her mouth. She didn’t mind killing soldiers and if civilians armed themselves then they weren’t civilians anymore but she’d take a stand up fight against a trained army over massacring a street gang armed with shotguns and hunting rifles any day.

Drake flicked the butt of his smoke onto the metal of the bay floor. “Are your crews ready for this? Your tanks are gonna take some heavy fire being the big, shiny targets that they are. If I was you, I’d make your peace with the creator now...just in case.”

Having said all he could, he turned on his heel and headed across the bay leaving Rachel staring after him as he gracefully weaved around and through the chaos of the bay. She stared down at the still smoldering cigarette butts and the cold feeling in her gut made her wish she had a pack of her own.