On Silver Wings (23 page)

There was a discrepancy between what the hardware was reporting and what almost every other system in her armor was insisting was true, causing a series of alignment error alerts to show on her HUD.

Damn it.
She hissed, trying to recode the gravity sensor on the fly.

Software coding wasn’t her specialty, obviously, but every armor rated grunt had to be able to talk the talk. Everything she used ran on a finely meshed combination of hardware and software, right down to her rifle. Oh, certainly it would all work with the software disabled, even her armor… after a fashion, but none of it would work
well
by modern military standards.

After a few minutes, however, she gave up and disabled the gravity sensor’s feed to her armor’s controller. It would make her a little less nimble in the field, but with the conflicting messages bouncing between it and her dead reckoning systems, Sorilla felt more comfortable running without it.

She kept the feed running to her HUD, however, opening a small app for it in the lower left corner. She had a feeling she might just be able to use it to locate the enemy installation, if she could work out how to read the damn thing.

That all settled, Sorilla dropped to a crawl and began the long task of approaching the colony site. Just under an hour before Reed kicked off the festivities on his end, she had to recon as quickly as possible before hand.

Preferably without getting herself caught in the process, of course.

Hooyah.

*****

USSV Socrates

On Hayden Approach

“Commander.”

Ashley glanced up to see the Captain drifting over his station, “Sir.”

“Anything?”

“No Sir. All quiet.” The Commander said, nodding to the repeater panel. “No sign of anything out there.”

“Creepy.” Alexi muttered under his breath.

The waiting was killing him. They’d passed the debris from Task Force Two an hour earlier, and Alexi had literally felt the tension scale up exponentially since then. Ships had
died
in this expanse, not by the dangers inherent in space but by violence.

The god forsaken blackness wasn’t supposed to be this quiet after something like that.

Alexi pushed back from the Defense station, drifting away from the Commander and across to Navigation.

“Captain.” Sharon Miles nodded to him as he stopped his motion just behind her. “We’re four hours out, Sir. Formation holding.”

He just nodded. Of course it was, nothing had happened yet.

“Thanks, Sharon.”

He pushed back, knowing that he was starting to make things worse as he made his own tension visible to the crew but unable to help it. Thankfully there was really only so much he could do to make an ass of himself in the cramped space of the control deck, and most of those present knew him too well to hold it against him later.

Alexi sighed, forcing himself back into his own bolster and strapping down. Normally time in space was something he looked forward to, something that relaxed him. This, however, was driving him around the bulkhead.

It wasn’t like he wanted to see combat or anything insane like that, that would be… well, insane. Alexi just wanted to be back on a survey mission where the odds of an alien armada popping out of nowhere were at roughly the same levels as the odds of God popping by for tea.

“We’ve got a Fleet Wide Alert across the Gravity trap array!” Specialist Hawking Tatum spoke up from across the Bridge. “Gravity anomaly has shown up near the north flank of the decoy formation!”

“Commander, confirm the report.” Alexi ordered.

“Confirmed.” Ashley said from his weapons and tactical control station. “Admiral Shepherd is coming online now.”

The Bridge crew of the Socrates turned to the main repeated screen as the Admiral appeared in a centered window and began to speak.

*****

Flag Deck, USS Montana

Admiral Shepherd focused his eyes on the spot he knew the conferencing camera was, rather than the screen where his Captain’s faces were split up into several tiled windows. He hated it when people were talking to him on screen and couldn’t be bothered to look at the camera, it made him feel like they were talking to someone else just behind him.

“Logistics squadron, fall back by the numbers as soon as you’re finished topping off our tanks. Maintain observation and record all events, your orders are to retreat back to Sol Space if at any time it looks like we’re going to lose tactical control of the situation.” He told the commander of the Logistical Support Squadron, eyes firmly on the camera, “Intelligence and Recon, you have your orders. Go silent, take command of the decoy URSVs, and maintain laser comms with each other at all times.”

Technically he supposed that there was no need to give these orders, they all knew their jobs, but there was still a long waiting period before the gravity anomalies would be positively identified and Shepherd wanted to keep people from imagining too much in the meantime if he could.

“Alexi,” He said, eyes flicking from the camera to Petronov’s location on the monitor before flicking back, “I want you to remember, your job is to get in and deliver supplies and relief troops to the people on Hayden. Do not engage the enemy if you can avoid it, make your deliveries, pick up the priority persons of interest as designated, and get the hell out. Clear?”

“Da.” The Russian national said with a wry smile, “Have no worries on that, Admiral. If I can avoid firing the vacuum blasted birds you strapped to my hull, it’ll be a good day for me and my Socrates.”

“A good day for all of us, Alexi.” Shepherd told the man, “A good day for all of us.”

He nodded to them, told them good luck, and closed the channels for the support squadrons. On his screen then were the captains of his Tactical divisions, including the captain of the Montana.

“Ladies, gentlemen.” He nodded to the camera before checking the numbers coming through his repeater. “Long range detection matches the initial readings reported by the Los Angeles and Task Force Two. They’re here, and they’ve noticed us.”

“Aye Sir, Are we following the primary protocols?”

Shepherd nodded, “We are. You are cleared to fire as soon as you have positive tracks on the incoming bandits, as per the briefing maintain a thirty light second gap between each other at all times. Do NOT group together and make it easy on them, Clear?”

“Aye Aye Admiral.” The group said in unison.

He waited a moment to be sure they all understood, then nodded, “Good. Their weapons and speed are beyond impressive, ladies and gentlemen. Do not give up any further advantage to them, they sure as hell don’t need it. Spread out, wait for them to focus on a ship, then converge and hit them from all sides at extreme long range. We can’t win if we go toe to toe, but the Los Angeles and its Task Force showed that they can be made to bleed. Clear?”

“Clear Sir!”

“Good, you have your orders. Break formation and accelerate as per maneuvering plan Alpha. Maintain all possible stealth, we don’t know if they’ve seen us yet, or just the decoys. Please remember, our first priority is getting
useable
intelligence
. At all costs, the reconnaissance ships MUST return with all pertinent data, once that is complete, if it all goes to hell… do everything you can to get yourselves and the relief ships out in one piece.”

Shepherd eyed the screen intently for a long moment, then nodded in satisfaction.

“Godspeed . Shepherd Out.”

The tiled windows blinked out one by one until only the Captain of the Montana was left looking back at him.

“Your orders, Admiral?”

“You have Tactical command, Captain. You know our opening move.”

“Aye Admiral. I have tactical command.” Neal Jackson said in response, keying open several toggles to the ship’s comm center. A moment later his voice echoed through the ship, “All hands, All hands, prepare for full military power. I say again, prepare for full military power. Lock it down, boys and girls, things are about to get a little rocky.”

The general quarters alarm began to blare across the ship and the fleet as Admiral Shepherd shifted his focus to the long range scans coming from deeper in system. He’d made his opening gambit, now he could only hope that the enemy would play into the trap. If they bypassed his decoys things would get stickier, to be sure, but if they did something really crazy like ignored his forward squadrons of Los Angeles Class ships then the entire game could be lost.

Normally he wouldn’t be concerned about that, few were the people who could or would ignore a squadron of eight Los Angeles Class Star Vessels after all. What worried him was the fact that if anyone was going to be able to do it, it would be an alien mind backed by the kind of advanced technology that brought Task Force Two down out of the black sky.

*****

Alexi watched as the battle squadron began to slowly pull away from the main corps, thick refueling hoses popping free as the refueling tankers pulled in their lines. The logistics vessels reversed thrust, dropping back as the destroyers pushed ahead and began to spread their formation.

That left Alexi, his Socrates, and the relief column on their own with Hayden looming off their bows.

He toggled the comm open, “All hands, we are now on final approach to Hayden’s World. Our escorts are pulling away to provide us with the cover we need to deliver relief supplies to the colonists. There are people down there who have been living in an alien jungle for months. That’s months in an environment that produces no edible plants, no wildlife to hunt for food. How they’ve made it this long, I can’t say, but we can put an end to that for them.”

He paused, considering his screens for a long moment, “Leave the fighting to the fleet. That’s what they do. We’re on a relief mission to a colony in distress, we’ve done it before and like as not, we’ll do it again. Let’s do our work, gentlemen, ladies, do our work so we can go home and get ready to do it again another day. Captain Out.”

He turned to Ashley, “Sound general quarters, commander.”

The commander looked in his direction for a moment, face blank, then nodded and turned back to his station to key the alarm.

“Aye Captain. Sounding general quarters.”

The USV Socrates echoed with the blaring alarm while Alexi examined the orbital tracks of the system, focusing mostly on Hayden and the relief column.

“Ahead one third, Mr. Keith.” He said to the helmsman. “We’ll take the lead. Commander Ashley, have the others follow us in.”

“Yes Sir,” Brian Keith said as he adjusted the power settings on the ship’s VASIMIR drive.

“Aye Aye, Captain.” Ashley said as he relayed the orders to the column.

The Socrates rumbled under power, beginning to edge forward as the rest of the relief column drew in behind her.

“Arm weapons, Captain?” Ashley asked tensely.

Alexi looked at his XO with mild annoyance, bordering on distaste. He considered it, however, and sighed in assent. “Arm weapons, then. Keep the safeties on them, for the love of clean air.”

“Yes Sir, safeties engaged.”

And thank mercy for small favors then,
Alexi thought sourly as he, the Socrates, and the relief column drove on toward Hayden.

*****

Colony Site, Hayden’s World

Sorilla pressed her back against what used to be a dry cleaners, judging from the sign that was half blown clear of the building. She’d managed to penetrate the town easily, once again, but this time with her armor’s help she’d located a series of infrasound generators that had been emplaced in an overlapping perimeter.

Circling them as quickly as she dared, she determined that the center of the perimeter wasn’t the center of the colony site, but rather off to the south east. Firmly a believer in the theory that people put their most valuable points at the deepest section of their defense perimeter, Sorilla redirected her motion away from the center of the colony and toward the center of the defenses.

It was time to see just what these people, if that was indeed what they were, were hiding here on Hayden.

Considering her approach, Sorilla reviewed the Colony’s official planning reports as she moved. The colony was technically required to submit any deviations from the original plans, but Sorilla knew better than to expect them to have kept up with the slate work on that. Few enough places on Earth did, why would they bother way the hell out here?

That said, she quickly located access to the utility tunnels dug under the colony and headed for the closest access point. She kicked in the door to the access building and kicked her implants over to full and active night observation mode as she stepped out of the limited starlight of the surface.

She led with her assault rifle, sweeping the stairwell as she moved down into the tunnels below the colony.

Nothing.

She hoped that meant she was in luck, and the tunnels hadn’t been invaded. It seemed unlikely they hadn’t been found, but with luck maybe the opposing force had discounted them. She paused in the tunnels proper, checking for the same infrasonic resonance that had been employed above ground.

The tunnels checked clear.

Sorilla couldn’t help but grimace. She would have almost welcomed it more if the place had been crawling with automated security the way the colony site above ground was. The fact that the tunnels were apparently clear creeped her out more than the infrasonic induced ghost terrors above.

She pushed the feeling back, though, and got her bearings quickly. The tunnels were laid out in a circular grid that mimicked the layout of the colony above, allowing for delivery of power, water, and utilities while permitting the clean removal of wastes. After checking the maps again she headed east, knowing that the tunnel would circle around to the south and into the section she wanted to scout.

Half a kilometer around the perimeter she slowed to a halt, taking a knee while she kept her rifle trained ahead of her. With her left hand she reached down, brushing the floor with her fingertips. Chemical analysis showed on her HUD a few heartbeats later.