Singularity: Star Carrier: Book Three (39 page)

“I
know
what you’ve been trying to hide from me,” Gray said. “And I’d be willing to bet that my friends out there know it too.”

What do you know?

The words were spoken as a whisper deep within his mind.

“I know that I and those like me have come back through time—maybe as much as a billion of our years—to meet you. And that means that you are in terrible danger.”

Danger
 . . .

“Let me communicate with my people. There’s still time. We can stop this. And you and your people can live. . . .”

No!
. . .

Chapter Twenty-Five

1 July 2405

CIC

TC/USNA ACS
Nassau

Omega Centauri

1604 hours, TFT

G
eneral Thomas Jackson Mathers was an old-breed Marine from an old Marine family. One ancestor had fought at Guadalcanal, and later marched south from the Chosen Reservoir with the 5th Marine Regiment of the 1st Marine Division, the oldest and largest active-duty unit in the old U.S. Marine Corps. Another ancestor had led the 3rd Marine Aerospace Assault Group against the Chinese base at Sinus Lunicus 180 years later, during the second Sino-Western War.

As for “TJ” Mathers, he’d been a very raw and very green j.g. at Rasalhague, a major in command of a battalion at Hecate, and a colonel in command of a regiment at Sturgis’s World. His military career spanned thirty years, almost the entirety of the Sh’daar Interstellar War.

He’d received command of MSU-17, the battlegroup’s fleet Marines, just before the Defense of Earth. His command now included some twelve thousand men and women embarked on the assault carriers
Nassau
and
Vera Cruz
, and he realized now that there was a very good chance that it would be up to him to end the Sh’daar War once and for all, here and now.

That he might
lose
that war this afternoon had occurred to him as well, but he wasn’t going to focus on that. His Marines, packed like sardines into the battlegroup’s two assault star-carrier transports, had, over the past six months, been dragged from Sol to Eta Boötis to Arcturus to Alphekka to HD 157950 to Texaghu Resch and finally here. They’d seen some action at both Arcturus Station and at the alien manufactory at Alphekka, but most of that time had been spent cooped up in the transport squad bays or in their sleeper tubes, waiting out the watches while the Navy grabbed the credit.

But now they had a definite target.

“All Crocs are ready for boost,” the voice of Colonel John Murcheson said over Mathers’ link. “Just give us the word.”

“Roger that,” Mathers replied. “Stand by.”

The light assault carrier
Nassau
was slowing as she approached AIS-1. The dwarf planet was clearly visible now ahead, a tiny black disk against the diffuse glare of the Six Suns, and showing a faint cometary tail streaming out away from the blue giants. The ice surface of the world, evidently, was rapidly vaporizing, giving rise to a thin but intensely violent and temporary atmosphere. That could make the final approach interesting.

Two points of blinking light indicated the locations of the two Navy pilots being held on that world . . . or at least the locations of their fighters. Whether either or both were alive or dead was anyone’s guess at this point.

But the assault force wasn’t going in just for them.

“Captain Bradford,” Mathers said. “We are ready for disembarkation. Please cease ship deceleration.”

“Aye, aye, General,” the
Nassau
’s CO replied. “
Nassau
is now under free drift.”

“Colonel Riley,” Mathers said. “You may begin your launch.”

“Aye, aye, sir. Nightwings are go. Initiating drop.”

VMA-12, the Nightwings, was the Marine close-support attack squadron embarked on board the
Nassau
, numbering twelve GGA-20 Nightshade grav-assault gunships. The gunships were essentially two-seater Marine fighters built around massive KK railguns. They were capable only of twelve Gs of acceleration, and so weren’t any good at ship-to-ship combat, but they excelled at ground support operations with their fellow Marines.
Every Marine a rifleman first
was an ancient adage going back to pre-spaceflight days. Riley and his Nightwings took a great deal of pride in that claim; it just happened that
their
rifles were a bit larger and more powerful than most. . . .

On his monitors, Mathers watched the oddly buglike, black Nightshades dropping from their launch tubes. As the last fell clear of
Nassau
’s shield cap and began boosting toward the planet, he re-linked with Colonel Murcheson, the commanding officer of the MSU’s ground-assault Marines. “Okay, Colonel,” Mathers told him. “Coming up on Croc release in twenty seconds.”

“Copy, General.”

“Stick to your oplan, Colonel. Rescue those Navy zorchies if you can, but your priority is to grab both Blue and Gold and establish solid defensive perimeters around them. Everything else down there is fair game.”

“Got it, General.
Semper fi!
”

“Semper fi, John.”

Crocodiles, Marine combat landing/boarding craft, were bulky, stubby craft designed to get Marine assault teams on board an enemy warship or orbital station, or to insert them onto a landing zone on a hostile planet. Each carried forty fully armed and armored Marines. Nano docking collars mounted forward could meld with enemy pressure hulls and gain entrance without depressurizing the target; for planetside debarkations Crocodiles used ventral thrusters to come down on broadly splayed landing legs. Massive dorsal turrets provided close fire support, and could transform the landing craft into a semimobile fortress or gun platform once the Marines were ashore.

The winking lights of emergency tracking transponders on two missing navy spacecraft had identified two targets on the dwarf planet’s surface, code-named Blue and Gold. Located about three hundred kilometers apart, those structures were the biggest things on AIS-1, and
had
to be important.

Koenig had put it succinctly during their planning earlier for the Bright Thunder option:
Grab the enemy by his balls and don’t let go
. . . .

“Croc release in five seconds,” Mathers said. “Four . . . and three . . . and two . . . and one . . .
go
!”

Twelve CL/BC-5 Crocodiles slid from
Nassau
’s rotating flight decks, dropped into assault formation, and began their ponderous acceleration toward the objective.

“Assault craft are free and under acceleration, Captain,” Mathers told Bradford. “You may resume deceleration.”

And
Nassau
began slowing once more, sliding down the lines of grav-twisted space behind her death-dealing offspring.

CIC

TC/USNA CVS
America

Omega Centauri

1606 hours, TFT

“We seem to have our pick of targets, Captain,” Koenig told Buchanan. “You may fire at your discretion.”

“A target-rich environment, Admiral. Aye, aye.”

America
’s CO gave the order, and the twin launch tubes running down the star carrier’s spine and emerging at the center of her shield cap loosed a pair of hivel rounds, high-velocity kinetic-kill impactors that streaked silently into the void. The target was a large and sprawling deep-space facility perhaps four thousand kilometers distant, at which a number of large ships of alien design were moored. The first two rounds were followed by two more, then two more again, a double string of impactors hurtling toward the distant target at 14 kps.

They would reach their target in seven minutes, forty-five seconds.

Enemy ships were beginning to converge on
America
and her consorts, rising from the three dwarf planets or casting free from nearby orbital facilities and accelerating toward the battlegroup.
America
’s fighter contingent was rising from the looming white sphere of AIS-1, joined now by incoming fighters from the still-distant
United States of North America
, the
Invincible
, and the
Jeanne d’Arc
, deploying to attack the incoming enemy vessels.

The capital ships accompanying
America
were deploying as well. The
Badger
, the
Wolverine
, the
Lunar Bay
, and the
Frederick der Grosse
were all now accelerating toward the two knots of twisted space in the distance—almost certainly the tunnel mouths of two different TRGA-like gateways, designated by the tactical teams as TRGA-2 and TRGA-3. Koenig didn’t want the Sh’daar using those to funnel in large numbers of ships from elsewhere; by posting a frigate and a heavy cruiser at each tunnel mouth, Koenig hoped to create the same sort of bottleneck defense the battlegroup had faced at their entry into Omega Centauri.

The destroyers
Fitzgerald
and
Adams
were maintaining station to either side of
America
, covering the carrier. The railgun cruiser
Kinkaid
and three more destroyers,
Lowe
,
Rodney
, and
Clymer
, were coming up astern, moving toward orbit around AIS-1.

Particle beams reached out from the dwarf planet’s surface. White fire and lightning splashed from
America
’s gravitic shields, and the ship shuddered with the impact. No serious damage, but that would be only the first hit of many.

Kinkaid
was slamming hi-vel rounds into the planet’s surface from several thousand kilometers out. The surface of AIS-1 was almost completely obscured now by swirling clouds, illuminated by the brilliant starlight on its night side, reflecting the arc-harsh blue-white dazzle of the Six Suns on the other. Each KK round impact lit the swirling clouds from below, and vaporized more tons of ice to add to the growing atmosphere.

“Make to
Kinkaid
,” Koenig told his AI. “Cease fire on the primary objective.” The Marines were getting close, and he didn’t want to score an own goal. Friendly fire, as the ancient aphorism had it, was
not
.

“Transmitting, Admiral.”

“And link me through to the Agletsch. Are they on-line?”

“As you directed, Admiral. The Agletsch are on-line.”

“We are here, Admiral Koenig,” Dra’ethde’s voice said.

“Are you picking up anything from over there?”

“We have sensed nothing yet, Admiral,” Gru’mulkisch told him. “The Sh’daar Seed is silent, at least so far.”

“If you can raise anyone on the other side,” Koenig said, “do so. This time around, I’d rather talk than fight.”

“We will do what we can,” Dra’ethde said.

It was a long shot, using the two Agletsch on board as negotiators with the Sh’daar, but the battlegroup had few options. Once the Marines grabbed hold of those facilities on the surface of AIS-1, they would be able to hold them for a time, but sooner or later the full weight of the Sh’daar defenses would come crashing down on the battlegroup, and there would be nothing any of the Confederation forces could do to stave off eventual total and abject defeat.

They
had
to get the Sh’daar to talk. . . .

Commander Marissa Allyn

Over AIS-1

Omega Centauri

1608 hours, TFT

“Break high, Commander! Two on your six! Break high!”

With Colllins’ shrill warning screaming in her head, Allyn urged her Starhawk into a tight vector change, twisting around the ship’s projected singularity so tightly that tidal stresses tore at her body, and the fighter’s nanomatrix hull shuddered and bucked. Two enemy fighters followed the maneuver, closing now to within fifty kilometers. They were complex-looking spacecraft, all angles and jutting parts and flat panels, glittering craft unlike any Allyn had ever seen.

Using the torque from her course change to assist, she spun her Starhawk, facing aft, as she hurtled tail-first above the cloud-wreathed face of AIS-1. They’d been rising above the dwarf world’s day side when a cloud of Sh’daar ships, fighter-sized and swarming like hornets, had emerged from the cloud deck.

“I’m on them,” CAG Wizewski’s voice called. “Fox One!”

“So am I!” Allyn yelled back. Dropping the targeting cursor over the nearest enemy ship, she let her AI lock on target and trigger a pulse from her PBP-2. On her optical feed, the magnified image glowed a dazzling white, then exploded in a sharp, silent flash. Seconds later, Wizewski’s Krait missile detonated alongside the second fighter, the fireball engulfing the craft in an instant and vaporizing it.

“Thanks for the assist, CAG,” Allyn called. She flipped her fighter again and began clawing for more altitude. Detonations across the surface of AIS-1 were beginning to trail off; the Marine assault craft were on their way in. Enemy fighters continued to rise from the clouds, however. Not all of the bases and facilities on the dwarf planet’s frigid surface had been hit in the scant minutes that had passed in the battle so far.