Victory (3 page)

The co-pilot twisted around suddenly in his seat, and pat a bulge under his vest. “I’m not going to ask you again. Sit.”

Lieutenant Rodriguez glanced at the bulge—could be a firearm, but probably just a canister of chew—and swore as the freighter bucked again as the pilot chose another direction.
 

“Look, see these?” He pointed to a a pair of small medals pinned near his flight suit’s shoulder, just under the epaulette. “This one here. Wings on fire. Any idea what that means?” Before the copilot could answer, Rodriguez did it for him. “Fighter combat. And the one next to it, the one with the number fifteen on it? Any guesses?”

A proximity alarm went off as the nearest Swarm fighter closed in. Raf, the pilot, swore and punched it off. “Are you going to go sit down, fly-boy, or do I need to—”

“It means I’ve been in orbital fighter combat bloody fifteen times against the cumrat bastards out there.” He jabbed a finger toward the viewport. The distant Swarm fighter was quickly becoming visible to the naked eye. “So if you want to live, give me the controls.
Now
.”

Avi looked like he was about to jump up and try ripping Rodriguez’s arms off. “Why you little ignorant piece of AWOL shit.” He reached into his vest and pulled out the firearm. Rodriguez grit his teeth—he had been sure the man was bluffing. “I’m giving you to the count of
one
to get the hell—”

“Avi,” began the pilot, “stand up. Give him your seat.” He jabbed his thumb toward the cockpit door. “No, don’t give me that look. You’re half drunk anyway. Go. Get up.” When Avi hesitated, looking from his gun to Rodriguez to the co-pilot controls, Raf repeated himself. “Go. Before you put a hole through the hull.
Now
.”

Avi grumbled as he thrust himself from the seat and stalked out of the cockpit. The pilot glowered at him as he left. “Don’t worry,” he said, watching Rodriguez take Avi’s place, “the gun was empty. He just carries it around for show. Micro-dick compensation, most likely. Now are you going to show me your fancy flying, or what?”

“That’s the idea....” Rodriguez studied the controls. It was similar to his fighter cockpit, but just different enough to give him a moment’s pause. “Time to intercept?”

The pilot glanced at the sensor readout. “That bogey’ll be here in twenty seconds.”

“What’s the maximum acceleration on this thing?”

“Staying within inertia-canceling limits, about two point five—”

“I didn’t ask about inertia-canceling limits. Tell me. Maximum acceleration?”

The pilot considered a moment. “Five g’s. But that’ll give our passengers quite the scare, I don’t know if—”

“They’ll live.” Rodriguez pushed the control stick to maximum and flipped off the acceleration governor. “Maybe.”

The thrust nearly took his breath away. He heard his kids scream behind him as everyone was thrown violently against their restraints and he could swear he heard Avi fly through the air and crash into the bulkhead, but all that mattered now was getting them all to safety. Wherever
that
was.

“They’re still gaining on us, and our trajectory is straight at the planet—” the pilot’s face turned white, “—straight at that plume coming from what used to be New Bangalore....”

“We’ll just skirt through the top. Hold on....”

The billowing debris cloud loomed in the viewport ahead of them. From far away it had looked static, but now that they approached, Rodriguez realized the cloud was expanding at what was probably a supersonic rate. He wondered how good the freighter’s shielding was.

The pilot apparently read his mind. “If there is any debris in there bigger than a grain of sand, we’re goners.”

“We’re goners anyway. Here we go....”

They plunged into the cloud, and the freighter began to lurch violently as the turbulence from the debris plume buffeted the ship. After a few seconds Rodriguez shifted the controls, veering the craft hard to the left, still at maximum acceleration, staying in the turn until he’d nearly completed a full-about.

The pilot nodded his understanding. “Hoping they keep a straight course, and meanwhile we pop out of the cloud right where we entered it?”

“That’s the idea....”

A moment later they cleared the plume and the violent shaking ceased, but Rodriguez maintained the gut-churning acceleration. A quick glance at the sensors told him the gambit had partially worked—the Swarm fighters trailing them were nowhere to be seen. Probably on the other side of the massive debris plume by now.

But ahead of them loomed a new nightmare.

The Swarm super dreadnought, flanked by two regular-sized carriers. Green antimatter beams lanced down toward the planet, raking across towns and smaller cities, even as a half dozen bright points shimmered around the giant ships—growing singularities readying for their imminent launch.

“We’re screwed,” breathed the pilot.

An odd reading on the sensors. Rodriguez studied the anomaly. A large mass approaching at a dizzying speed. No, not one large mass. It was broken up into several discreet pieces, approaching as one large clump. Had one of the Swarm carriers broken apart?

Raf’s eyes widened as he studied the readout. “Is that what I think it is?”

Rodriguez scanned the transponder frequencies. They were IDF ships. Packed together into as tight a formation as he’d ever seen, moving faster than any fleet had a right to.

He grinned. “Yep.”

The Hero of Earth had arrived.

Chapter Four

X-25 Fighter Cockpit

Indira, Britannia Sector

Lieutenant Tyler “Ballsy” Volz gripped his controls. If he wasn’t wearing flight gloves, he imagined his knuckles would be white with tension. With good reason—they’d never practiced the Granger Omega Three maneuver before. Lately, he hadn’t practiced much of anything.

All he could think about was Fishtail. He visited her every day. Or rather, visited what had taken her place. A smug, over-confident Swarm agent—at least, when she wasn’t under full sedation. Gone were Fishtail’s mild-mannered wit and sarcasm. Her easy-going charm. In its place was ... something alien. Utterly foreign.

“All craft, prepare for launch. Watch yourselves, people. None of you have ever launched at this speed before, and you most certainly have not launched all at once like we’re trying today.” The CAG, Commander Pierce, listed off the instructions one final time. Each fighter, in its turn, would launch exactly one third of a second after the one before it. All one hundred and fifty of them. The accelerations would be gut-churning. The distances between fighters uncomfortably small.

There was no room for error on this one.

And the giant osmium brick tied to the undercarriage of each fighter more than doubled each craft’s mass. Maneuvering would be difficult.

The Granger Omega Three maneuver. Omega: an appropriate term. It would most likely be the last thing they ever did.

He glanced to his left, down the line of fighters with their engines idling. Spacechamp. Pew Pew and his brother, Fodder. He’d sure miss them. Commander Pierce’s voice cut through his headset. “Standby ... five seconds ... three, two, one, NOW!”

To his right, the line of fighters started shooting out the giant bay door, one at a time, every point three three seconds. Much of it was computer-controlled, but not the actual maneuvering. When his time came, the engines roared to life automatically, and he barely had time to steer the nose of his fighter out toward the exit and space beyond.

Fifty seconds later, they were all in position, forming a vast halo around the
ISS Warrior
. Thirty-some-odd heavy cruisers bunched up tightly behind the giant tungsten-armored carrier. All of them blazing toward the planet ahead of them. In orbit above that ravaged world stood the largest Swarm ship any of them had ever seen. It was still a tiny dot, but it grew larger.

“All craft,” came Pierce’s voice, “brick launch on my mark.”

Volz checked the computer calculations one more time, ensuring his thrusters were linked appropriately to the targeting computer. All clear.

“Launch.”

He flew back against his seat as the fighter leapt forward and to starboard, and moments later he felt the tell-tale clank as the osmium brick detached. A moment later he reversed thrust, aligning his nose with the edge of the
Warrior
’s bulk and maneuvered his fighter around the ship. There was no time for all of them to land in the fighter bay, and staying out to fight during the flyby was pointless. All they could do was hide in the shadow of the
Warrior
like the rest of the cruisers.

Hide, and pray.

Chapter Five

Star Freighter Lucky Bandit

Low orbit, Indira, Britannia Sector

Something seemed dreadfully wrong. “They’re coming in way too fast. This doesn’t make any sense....” Rodriguez studied the sensor readout even as he pointed the nose of the freighter on a trajectory that would eventually let them break orbit and make their first q-jump.

“Whatever,” said the pilot. “As long as they keep the bastards distracted while we make our getaway. And it’s not just us—there’s thousands of other freighters and colonial transports trying to make a break for—”

Thousands of tiny explosions leapt out from the super dreadnought.

“Hot damn!” Rodriguez watched the scene unfold in amazement. Granger, with his fleet coming in close behind, had oriented the
Warrior
so the bottom face of its hull was fully exposed to the super dreadnought and its two smaller companions. But peeking out from the shadow of the
Warrior
were hundreds of mag-rail turrets from the tightly-packed fleet of cruisers, each ship positioned such that its hull was protected by the
Warrior
, but with a clear enough view of the super dreadnought that it could fire several steady streams of ultra-high-velocity mag-rail slugs.

Which they did. Thousands of impacts erupted all over the massive super dreadnought. It, along with the two escort carriers, opened up a devastating volley on the rapidly approaching
Warrior
, raking the underside of its hull with dozens of antimatter beams. Rodriguez could only imagine the destruction on the lower decks.

“Pretty gutsy, but they’re flying past in less than ten seconds. I still don’t see how much good it’ll do,” said Raf, shaking his head.

“Watch. I see it now,” interrupted Rodriguez, pointing at the sensors. They just barely detected over one hundred small projectiles which rocketed away from the
Warrior
. Small, but thousands of times larger than the standard mag-rail slug.

And traveling at fifty kilometers a second.

The incoming IDF fleet, still sheltered by the
Warrior
, continued pummeling the super dreadnought, some ships even turning their attention to the two Swarm carriers, but Rodriguez understood it now—the conventional fire was a ruse. Moments later, his suspicion was confirmed with a violent, eye-piercing explosion.

One hundred and fifty eye-piercing explosions.

“I don’t believe it.” Raf couldn’t take his eyes off the disintegrating super dreadnought. From the hundred and fifty massive, gaping holes erupted a hundred and fifty streams of debris, smoke, and fire, all up and down the hundred kilometers-long spine of the ship. “I don’t believe it,” he repeated breathlessly.

“That’s Granger for you.” Rodriguez pushed hard on the accelerator. Now that the Swarm ships in the immediate vicinity were focused like a laser on the IDF fleet, it was the perfect chance to high-tail it out of there.

“They still can’t win. Even without that super dreadnought there are over twenty Swarm carriers in orbit, and Granger only has thirty-six ships. Plus, he came in so fast that he’ll be flung out toward the outer solar system unless he can miraculously arrest his velocity in the next two minutes.”

Rodriguez shook his head. “He’ll figure something out. He always does.”

The pilot regarded him for a moment in disbelief, like an atheist skeptically eyeing the firm faith of a sincere believer, but he shrugged and began plotting their course toward a point where it would be safe to make the q-jump. Or at least, that was his intention. Instead, he gawked at the sensor readout again. “Yes, but what is he going to do about
that
?”

Rodriguez’s eye followed the pilot’s outstretched finger.
 

The sensor readout had more bad news.

Chapter Six

Bridge, ISS Warrior

Indira, Britannia Sector

Granger was beginning to regret his order—the Granger Omega Three maneuver was wreaking havoc down on the lower decks. The ship trembled and shook violently. The super dreadnought and its two accompanying carriers were unloading everything they had straight into the
Warrior
’s gut, tearing their lower hull to shreds.

But the results spoke for themselves—after twenty seconds of fleet bombardment, the super dreadnought was beginning to show signs of extreme duress, to put it lightly.

“Massive power fluctuations coming from the dreadnought!” Ensign Diamond yelled over his console.

Granger nodded, and inclined his head toward Commander Proctor. “Brick status?”

“Launch in ten.”

He studied the sensor readouts coming from the super dreadnought, then waved over to the comm station. “Send to fleet: retarget accompanying vessels.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” said Ensign Prucha. Moments later, the IDF fleet protected under the shadow of the
Warrior
redirected fire toward the other two Swarm ships hovering near the super dreadnought, which also began to erupt with thousands of small explosions where the mag-rail slugs ripped into their hulls.
These three buggers are toast,
Granger thought.

But he was paying for it. Dearly. The bridge jolted to starboard violently as several of the incoming antimatter beams connected with one of the main inertial cancelers. Those things were embedded at least five decks within the lower hull. Damn—they were cutting deep. The bridge jerked again, and out of the corner of his eye he saw the marines stationed near the bridge entrance sway and struggle to remain on their feet.