The Battle of the Void (The Ember War Saga Book 6) (10 page)

Indigo swung the Gustav around and fired. The recoil slammed him against Brannock and sent the doughboy tumbling through space. Brannock’s mag-locked boot dragged against the hull. He got his other foot down and found the attacking drone now nothing but smoldering ashes floating in the void.

“Indigo?” Brannock searched the void. The
Halifax
exploded as its battery stacks went critical. Eagle fighters sparred with drones. Burning rail cannon shells cut across the void, but there was no sign of Indigo…or Cobalt.

Garnet was still attached to the hull, his arms hanging loose at his side. Brannock touched Garnet’s back and the armor collapsed, empty.

“We got more! We got more!” Derringer called to him.

Brannock choked down his emotions and went back to the bunker.

****

Zorro let off a burst, missing the drone he had in his sights. The drones had a nasty habit of dodging just as he fired. He aimed his cannons to the side and fired again and the drone flew right into his attack and broke apart.

“I saw that—pure luck,” his wingman said.

“Skill, Buckets, all skill,” Zorro said. He looped around and let off a wild spray, clipping the drone Bucket pursued. The drone spun end over end before Bucket destroyed it.

“I want an assist on that kill,” Zorro said.

“Fine, I’m still ahead of you by two.”

“Cottonmouths, we’ve got new orders,”
the squadron commander said.
“Clear a path for a bomber wing making a run on that Xaros launcher. Form on my wing.”

“You think we cleared out enough drones?” Buckets asked.

Zorro twisted in his cockpit. The
Warsaw
, where most of the drones had come from, reeled as the fleet turned their rail cannons on the ship. It broke apart under the pounding. No more drones came from the expanding wreckage.

“Jesus, you think anyone was still alive on the
Warsaw
?” Zorro asked.

“Doesn’t matter anymore,” the squadron commander answered. “
Midway
and the
Tarawa
are clearing their flight decks. Makarov ordered everything that can shoot to get into space so we can go and make that launcher a memory.”

Zorro checked his weapons. His gauss cannon had half its rounds left and enough battery charge to fire his rail cannon twice. A waypoint appeared on his canopy pointing him toward the launcher.

“Buckets, you good over there? Thought I saw you get hit,” Zorro said.

“Singed some attitude controls, couple thrusters are off-line. I’ve got a work around,” his wingman said.

“You can’t maneuver, you get back to the
Midway
and hot swap to another fighter.”

“And miss any of this? Check your oxygen levels because you must be losing brain function,” Buckets said.

Eight Eagles formed a V over a half-dozen Condor bombers and entered the dead space between the human fleet and the Xaros launcher. Drones passed by high above the formation, clear of rail cannon shots striking at the frigate and cruiser-sized constructs protecting the launcher.

“Big boss lady know there’re unfriendly ships between us and the launcher?” Zorro asked.

“Stand by,” the squadron commander said. “They’ll clear a path in just a second.”

Silver streaks of quadrium rounds converged with more rail cannon shots on a Xaros cruiser. Point defense lasers destroyed the leading q-shell. It exploded into a brief storm of electricity, creating sympathetic detonations in the flechette rounds. The cruiser lashed out at the incoming q-shells and burned out against the thousands and thousands of otherwise harmless submunitions.

Q-shells slammed into the cruiser. Lightning arced to nearby ships, torching their hulls and knocking them off-line.

“That’s our signal. Punch it!” The squadron commander’s Eagle leaped forward.

Zorro gunned his engines and the Eagle rattled as it tried to catch up to the leader. G-forces pushed Zorro against his chair as his hands strained to keep their hold on the controls. The stricken Xaros cruiser rolled on its axis, snaps of electricity flaring off the surface.

“Cottonmouths, do a point defense sweep as soon as we’re clear of this obstacle. Let the Condor’s torpedoes do the heavy lifting,”
said the squadron commander, call sign Bully. 

“Got to give those trash haulers something to look forward to,” Buckets said.

Zorro rolled his Eagle over the edge of the cruiser. The launcher was there, and a dozen more lances waited in a neat line at the far end. A lance sat inside it, like a bullet waiting to fire.

A red beam slashed from the launcher’s outer edge right past his cockpit.

“Found a point defense node,” Zorro said. He fired off a burst and used his maneuver thrusters to shunt him to the side, narrowly dodging another shot from the Xaros lasers. He raked fire across the node as he flew over the top, sending broken and burning stalks tumbling through the void.

“Torpedoes away!” came from one of the Condors.

Zorro banked around and peppered another nest of stalks.

“Eagles, get clear before—” A blast of energy wider than a cruiser broke through space and swept downward. Zorro flipped around before the blade could annihilate him and his fighter. The Xaros had used a weapon like that before, at the Battle of the Crucible.

Zorro looked to where the flat beam originated and saw a disintegrating Xaros cruiser.

A pair of torpedoes crossed in front of his nose. They continued straight on, missing the launcher. The torpedoes were laser guided, controlled by the bombardier in the Condors.

“Condors, what’s your status?” Zorro asked. No answer.

“They’re all gone,” Buckets said, his breathing fast. “Bully too. We’re down to four ships. Let’s get the hell out of here!”

The launcher glowed as it charged, readying to send another stake into the heart of Eighth Fleet.

“Hold on. I got an idea.” Zorro charged up his rail gun and loaded his only q-shell into the breech. He looped around and flew straight into the mouth of the launcher.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“No point defense batteries in here.” Zorro slowed his fighter, watching as the lance glowed brighter.

He fired his q-shell and hit his afterburners, skirting through the gaps in the ribbon before the quadrium effect could travel up the launcher and fry him.

The launcher buckled. The lance, still charged with energy, shot forward and ripped through the side of the launcher. The lance spun end over end before it struck a Xaros frigate and both shattered like dropped glass.

“Now we can leave,” Zorro said. He found a gap in the wreckage and set a course back to the
Midway.

****

Admiral Makarov breathed a sigh of relief as the Xaros launcher failed, taking out another enemy ship in its death throes.

“Concentrate fire on the drones coming on our flanks.” Makarov touched the mass of drones coming in from above and below Eighth Fleet. “Status on the drones from the
Rome
?”

“We’ve got clear void from every ship but…the
Poltova
,” Calum said. “Sending a flight of Ospreys to assist from the
Tarawa
now.”

“Battery reserves across the fleet are dangerously low, Admiral,” Kidson said. The fusion reactors within each ship would recharge the batteries, but only if the guns stopped firing long enough to let the reactor connect to the capacitors. The capacitors could connect to the guns or the reactors, not both. Trying to shoot and charge at the same time would cause a spectacular explosion. A bar chart came up in her tank; several ships were crossed out with a red
X
, destroyed. The rest had just enough battery charge left for a few more volleys. Except for one, the
Griffin
.

“Lift fire on the Xaros capital ships. Cycle the fleet though a recharge cycle but do not let up on the drones coming at us,” Makarov said.

The Xaros capital ships clustered around the wrecked launcher advanced on her fleet. Their projected course converged on a single point.

“Here it comes,” Makarov said. What few records survived the fall of Earth showed a massive Xaros ship annihilating humanity’s combined space navies, a ship that dwarfed the Toth dreadnought that crashed into the moon. Garret and the rest of his planners could come up with only one term to classify something so massive.

“A leviathan,” she said. The first two Xaros capital ships pressed together, embers scorching the edge of the hulls as they merged.

“
Griffin
, Makarov, this is your time to shine,” she said.

The video of a dark-skinned man with salt-and-pepper hair came up next to the
Griffin
’s icon.

“I know you’re expecting a lot from me and my ship, ma’am, but this might be more than she can handle,” Commander Laskaris said.

“We brought you along for exactly this reason, Commander. Time to earn your keep,” Makarov said. She cut the transmission.

“If this doesn’t work, we’re in trouble,” Calum said.

“It will work,” Makarov said. “I saw the field tests on Charon.”

“Didn’t that test vessel blow up?” Kidson asked.

“Yes, but Lafayette said he fixed the fault.” Makarov waved a dismissive hand in the air.

“I don’t believe Lafayette is on the
Griffin
, or anywhere near this fight,” Calum said.

“You can either worry or pray. The choice is yours, just do it silently,” Makarov said.

The
Griffin
broke from the fleet and burned toward the assembling leviathan. The Toth invasion fleet had been destroyed down to the last ship and dagger fighter. After the last Toth overlord was killed, the warriors manning the remaining ships refused to surrender. Toth ship captains chose to vent their atmosphere and kill the crews to avoid capture, which left a number of intact ships for salvage.

The scientists the
Breitenfeld
rescued from Nibiru possessed a great deal of knowledge regarding Toth ship construction and were eager to help harness what their enslavers left behind. Working with Lafayette, and after more than one “design flaw” wrecked a test bed, the Akkadian scientists produced a weapon system that would either prove valuable against the Xaros, or fail and doom Eighth Fleet to a losing fight.

Armor plates on the
Griffin
slid aside. Energy cannons that had once graced the hull of the
Naga
dreadnought rose from the
Griffin
’s hull and locked into place. The crystals glowed deep blue as power built within.

The final Xaros capital ship fused into the leviathan. The new ship out-massed the entire Eighth Fleet nearly three to one, its shape morphing into a long cone studded with cannons. A divot at the apex of the cone glowed with reddish-yellow light.

“Guns, a volley,” Makarov said.

“Aye.” Each of the fleet’s remaining rail cannons sent a lance round at the leviathan.

Might as well try to tear down a mountain by throwing pebbles at it,
Makarov thought.

Lasers snapped out of the leviathan and erased the incoming rounds from existence.

Fifteen bolts of blue-white energy erupted from the
Griffin
. The bolts closed on the leviathan in seconds. Counter fire from the Xaros ship shot out…and passed through the
Griffin
’s energy weapons. The energy bolts hit by the Xaros shrank in size and intensity, but continued on. They slammed into the underside of the leviathan, cracking its outer hull and sending jagged plates hurtling through the void.

Another volley came off the
Griffin
, hitting the damaged area again.

Makarov ignored the cheers from the bridge and pulled up the telemetry data from the
Griffin
. The ship’s batteries lost nearly ten percent of their total charge with each volley. Commander Laskaris kept up the firing through a fifth and sixth volley...well beyond the weapon’s design tolerance.

Red warning icons popped against the
Griffin
. Two of the cannons were off-line and the third had shattered. The leviathan—a smoldering crater blasted out of its hull, great cliffs of glowing pyrite now exposed to the void—rolled on its axis.

“Guns, open fire on the leviathan. Concentrate on the exposed core.
Griffin
, your systems—”

“I pushed it too hard! Overloaded the heat sinks to kill that damn thing,” Laskaris said, his video full of static. “I’ve got cascading failure across all my batteries and the crystals will explode no matter what I do. Tell Lafayette to double the buffering—”

His image cut out as a final volley came from his ship. The energy bolts gouged deep inside the leviathan, knocking free lumps of crystal the size of skyscrapers. The crystals atop the
Griffin
exploded, ripping the cruiser apart.