Vos came to in his seat, shaking off a headache. He opened his eyes to see a bright cloud of colorful gas spreading around the ship, creating a miniature nebula in front of the bridge windows. It was the residue of the interstellar medium that had been captured inside the superlight manifold prior to the jump, having had its properties altered by its interactions with extra-dimensional space. It was as beautiful as it was mysterious.
He brought up a few external camera views as the rest of the bridge crew were coming around, checking in on the battlegroup. The other three carriers were righting themselves, their flight computers bringing them back into formation, jets of blue flame erupting from the thrusters along their grey hulls. He never got used to their size. They looked like a pod of mechanical whales, the light of an alien star reflecting off their armor plating. Scratch that – two stars. Xi Pegasi was a binary system.
Support ships swarmed them, similarly drifting back into a tight formation. The Doloto-class torpedo frigates were already preparing to unleash their payloads, the square hatches that ran along their hulls between their chisel-shaped prows and their elevated bridge windows starting to flip open.
Slightly behind and above the Rorke was the UNN Mars, a veritable behemoth of a vessel. Battleships were 350 meters long, heavily armored, and equipped with the most powerful ship-mounted weapons humanity had ever created. The craft was shaped like a long spear tip, its massive engine cones situated at the rear, its raised bridge placed just ahead of them for optimal visibility. Its hull was sleek, streamlined, its black coating and harsh angles designed to make it as stealthy as a ship of that size could reasonably be. As well as a staggering 24 torpedo tubes, 24 missile bays, and 20 railguns, it was the only class of ship that could house a super-railgun. These were magnetic accelerators of immense proportions, as large as some of the smaller vessels in the fleet at 55 meters. There were two such turrets mounted on the port and starboard sides of the flat hull, their design hearkening back to the warship turrets of old.
Even those weren’t the most destructive weapons in its arsenal, however. The battleship was split down the middle, creating an opening that ran down more than half its length. It was lined with magnetic rails, and at its mouth was a rotating cylinder, a mechanism that worked like a giant revolver to load projectiles the length of a semi-trailer into the 200-meter barrel. That weapon could eradicate a hive ship in a single shot and even render a planet uninhabitable with sustained fire. That might be Kerguela’s fate if they failed in their mission.
The three Valbaran carriers were off to the starboard, their long, thin profiles bristling with weaponry. There were two fleet carriers, most of their segments made up of blocky hangar modules, their fighters clinging to them like limpets. The solitary troop transport would be hanging back with the UNN assault carriers, where it would be protected by a screen of CIWS boats during the battle.
Five and seven-module support ships surrounded them, their camouflaged hulls bathed in pale light. Their torpedo frigates filled a similar role to their UNN counterparts, two of their five segments equipped with torpedo turrets that were presently rising up from their protective compartments. The weapons were more primitive than their Navy equivalents, little more than long tubes mounted atop a flexible arm, but they would get the job done. Inside those launchers were torpedoes supplied by the UNN, after all. The Vengeance was at the center of their flotilla, its own torpedo turrets slowly rotating towards their targets.
There was one more ship in their ragtag fleet, a blend of organic and mechanical parts, like an armor-plated shrimp with its legs tucked beneath its belly. It was floating off the port side, keeping its distance conspicuously, almost as though afraid to approach. The prominent UNN coloration and markings did little to disguise the Constancy’s origins.
Kerguela was hard to make out at this range, its parent gas giant occupying the entire field of view, streaks of vibrant blue and purple clouds swirling around its equator. How breathtaking it must have been to see it from the ground.
Millions of kilometers away, forming a ring around the planet, the rest of the fleet was making the same preparations. There was no way to contact them directly anymore, as even a tight-beam laser would take too long to bridge the vast distances between them, so he would have to trust that they were all following the plan to the letter.
The crew were all awake and alert now, the other ships reporting their status.
“C-charging the superlight drive for a second jump,” the helmsman announced, still a little groggy from the first one. The process could take weeks when a full charge was expended, but at such short range, only a few minutes would be necessary.
“Launch the torpedoes,” Vos said, the comms officer relaying his order to the rest of the battlegroup.
From hundreds of hatches and launch tubes, swarms of projectiles rose on chemical plumes, brief spurts of hydrogen flame propelling them from their bays. Some were the size of missiles, others more akin to ICBMs. The Doloto-class frigates and the battleship were able to field 100-ton, 30-meter torpedoes. When they cleared their ships, they pivoted, shooting out quick bursts of gas as they angled themselves towards their target. Their rocket boosters flared as they shot off into the darkness, a field of new stars glowing beyond the viewport before slowly fading from sight.
The seconds dragged by, turning to minutes, Vos feeling the tension buzzing in the air as he waited for confirmation that they were nearing their targets.
“Estimate impact in three minutes,” the weapons officer announced.
“Start the countdown,” Fielding ordered, the familiar red warning lights bathing the bridge as a klaxon rang out. The crew had been ordered to remain ready, so they could afford to shave off a couple of minutes. As the jump neared, the helmsman counted down the seconds, blackness enveloping the crew as they were once again plucked from reality.
***
Vos opened his eyes, his bleary vision slowly clearing. In front of the bridge windows, though the spreading cloud of technicolor gas, was a sight to behold. They had jumped in close enough to Kerguela that the brilliant orb occupied his entire field of view, the curve of its horizon rising up before him. Sheets of white cloud drifted through its atmosphere, sweeping over the vast forests that blanketed its surface, their foliage the color of autumn. The suns were behind the fleet, the seas and waterways shimmering under their pale light. At the poles were shining auroras – charged particles from the moon’s parent that had been trapped in its powerful magnetosphere – making the Northern Lights look downright dull in comparison. The ice caps were afire with shifting bands of green and blue, and behind those, the gas giant loomed. Its atmosphere was primarily purple, streaks of lighter blue creating swirling bands, pooling into planet-sized storms.
Hanging above the moon’s atmosphere, directly ahead of the ship, was the Bug station. It was a blend of brown and green hues, silver metal jutting from the organic material haphazardly. It almost looked like a fleshy balloon rising from the forests below on a long string.
The bridge windows dimmed automatically to protect the crew from a series of bright flashes, Vos shielding his eyes reflexively. The torpedoes were impacting the station and the surrounding ships, right on target, blossoms of flame erupting. He keyed in a command on his console, the centermost window switching to a telescopic view, showing the carnage in greater detail. There were more ships than he had anticipated, hundreds of them, a whole fleet of Bug craft hovering around the station. Some of them were the housefly-like fighters he was familiar with, while some were torpedo carriers that resembled armored shrimp, their ordnance clutched in their arms. Others were brand new forms that he had never seen before, their purposes indeterminable.
The missiles with explosive warheads were erupting in proximity to their targets, sending out expanding clouds of lethal shrapnel. With no atmosphere to slow their velocity, they tore through everything in their path like giant nail bombs. Vos watched as a formation of three fighters was caught in a blast, their bulbous, insectoid bodies torn apart as the shards of flying metal penetrated them. They were cast adrift by the force of the impacts, their organic hulls ripped open, their bodily fluids freezing into sparkling clouds of crystals in the vacuum. Armor plating was pocked and shredded, their thrusters petering out, one of them erupting into an explosion of green flame as its fuel tanks were breached.
Many of the larger projectiles were MASTs, Multi-stage, Anti-capital Spread Torpedoes. They carried a payload of tungsten penetrators – long, pointed pieces of solid metal that relied solely on kinetic energy to damage their targets. They were unguided, released in a spreading swarm of hundreds that traveled at upwards of eight kilometers per second, like a lethal shotgun blast that was almost impervious to all known means of point defense.
Several of the MASTs had targeted the station itself, bright points of light flashing as they pocked its armored hull. Though they carried no explosive payload, they conferred enough energy that anything they came into contact with was usually vaporized, turned to boiling gas. The ships that were in the path of these hypervelocity clouds stood no chance of getting clear, the projectiles passing through them as though they weren’t even there. The smaller fighters were obliterated, smashed like bugs on a windshield. The larger, two-hundred-meter frigates tried to fight back, the plasma turrets mounted on their carapaces attempting to shoot down the incoming threats in glowing streams, but it was of little use. One of them caught a tungsten rod midship, a flash of light blinding the camera for a moment, clearing to show two ruined halves spinning away from one another. A blend of organic guts and mechanical parts spewed out into space, Vos making out glimpses of a metallic, skeletal frame inside the wounds.
The same was happening all across the mile-wide face of the station, dozens of ships turned to burning, bleeding husks. The projectiles buried themselves deep into the structure’s surface, digging craters in its hull, doing untold damage through a combination of kinetic energy and spalling. Like an anti-tank round, they would be weaponizing the very armor that protected the station, shattering its thick layers of metal and chitin into yet more projectiles that would tear through its innards.
It was hard to gauge what kind of damage had been done to the station. It was at least two kilometers across and very well-armored. Without knowing the configuration and density of its interior, it was impossible to say what it was going to take to disable it.
The station was still operational, the magnetic rails of what looked like huge plasma turrets turning towards the fleet. They were spaced at seemingly random intervals all over the hull, mounted on flexible gimbals. They flashed bright green, sending bolts of superheated gas shooting towards the incoming ships, but the battlegroup was still far enough away that they could be easily avoided with a little course correction.
The crew were all awake now, the helmsman already burning at Fielding’s command.
“Standard evasive maneuvers,” the captain ordered. “Start moving us closer so we can engage with railguns. Comms officer, tell Lieutenant Baker to prep his squadrons for launch but to wait until we’re in optimal range before scrambling fighters. I want our CIWS screen protecting the carriers.”
“Aye aye,” he replied.
“The assault carriers need to move into formation behind us,” Vos added. “There are more enemy ships than we anticipated. They might get cut off if they try to hang back. We’ll pool our resources, make sure all of the CIWS guns on all of the ships are protecting the fleet. Tell them to prep their countermeasures and burn to us. Standard combat formation.”
Vos watched the nearby ships on his holographic display, a three-dimensional representation of the vessels in their immediate sphere of space, each one tagged with an IFF beacon. The gunboats were forming a wedge at the front of the fleet with the battleship at their head, while the CIWS frigates were spreading out to create a protective bubble around the other ships, the rest of the craft pulling into the defensive perimeter. The four carriers formed a vertical diamond shape, the assault carriers clustering up behind them, the trailing Jarilan ship joining them. Even though the formation was relatively tight by Naval standards, being close in open space still meant being kilometers apart.
The torpedo frigates at the rear were firing off another salvo, the missiles leaving chemical trails as they arced up and over the fleet, heading towards the station in the distance.
Vos opened up a line to the Vengeance, the Ensi’s grizzled visage greeting him.
“Ensi,” he began. “Pull your carriers behind our point defense screen and have your CIWS frigates join the formation. We’re going to need to stay under cover as we move in. Once we’re inside the effective range of those plasma turrets, we’ll break. It’ll make us harder to track.”
“Understood,” she replied, leaning away for a moment to relay the orders to her crew. “The ships under my command will break formation at two-thousand kilometers and pursue targets. Our cruisers are eager to wet their claws.”
He watched on the display as the Ensi’s ships pulled into the sphere to their starboard, still firing off periodic torpedo strikes that raced out ahead of them. All of the ships matched velocity, a ball of death hurtling towards the station, flashes of torpedo strikes preceding them.
“Sensors are picking up movement on the hull of the enemy structure,” one of the officers called out, Vos and Fielding turning their attention to the center bridge window. It zoomed in to show the station’s pocked surface, leaking gas and fluid crystallizing as they vented into space from the numerous wounds that had been inflicted upon it. From the rows of orifices that ringed its bulbous midsection, fighters were crawling their way out, using their six legs to walk along its uneven surface. They resembled bulbous flies, their hulls covered in overlapping plates of armored chitin, their colorful carapaces patterned with dark stripes. At the prow, they had an insect-like head, covered in protruding antennae and dozens of black, shiny eyes. Those were, in fact, organic cameras and sensors that fed data to the pilot inside. As much as they looked like animals, they were machines, albeit with organic components that blurred the lines.
“Same armament as what we’re used to,” Fielding commented. “Twin-linked plasma repeaters mounted beneath the, uh…head, and a payload of short-range missiles. I guess there’s no point fixing what isn’t broken.”
The fighters pushed off, then their thrusters kicked in, jets of green flame shooting out behind them as they rose into space. Vos kept waiting for the flow of craft to stop, but they just kept coming. Hundreds of them formed long tendrils as they poured out of their hangars, swarming like angry bees. Their formations were so tight that they blotted out the light from the planet behind them, moving as one organism, reaching out towards the incoming ships.
“Okay, that is a lot of interceptors,” Fielding said as he sat up straighter in his chair.
“They’re going to overwhelm our CIWS screen at this rate,” Vos muttered, swiping at one of his displays to measure the distance between the two formations.
“Radar is showing…near fifteen-hundred contacts,” one of the officers said. He turned to glance back at his captain, a worried frown on his face. “And those are just the fighters. We have a hundred larger craft moving in.”
“Show me,” Fielding said, the view switching again. Some of the craft that had been clinging to the skeletal frames that protruded from the station were unhooking their crab-like legs from the structures, the flexible thrusters that ran along their hulls emitting bursts of flame as they turned about. They were loosing their own torpedoes now, long, off-green tubes with guidance systems made up of organic eyes and feelers. The vessels released them from the spindly limbs beneath their segmented bodies, the missiles shooting out on plumes of methane fire. Warning signs began to appear on Vos’s display, little red triangles tracking the incoming projectiles. It seemed as though the Bugs could give as good as they got.
As the cloud of torpedoes raced towards the formation, the fleet’s innumerable CIWS guns came to life, their rotary barrels spinning in anticipation as their radar systems picked out targets. Rows of hatches along the hulls of the frigates flipped open, exposing their launch tubes, ejecting interceptor missiles into space. They pivoted on their axis, their thrusters shooting out puffs of propellant gas as they reoriented themselves, hanging there for a few brief moments while their lenses focused on their targets. Almost in tandem, hundreds of flashes of blue flame lit up the night, the projectiles burning ahead of the fleet.
After a delay of a minute or two, the two swarms of missiles met, a sparkling wall of explosions filling the viewport. It was kilometers across, flashes of orange, green, and blue flame illuminating the scene like a fireworks display. In an instant, the number of red triangles on Vos’s display halved, but there were still plenty of projectiles heading their way. As they neared, the point-defense guns on the frigates at the head of the pack began to track, swiveling to face the incoming threats. Every ship in the fleet was equipped with the close-in weapons systems, but the dedicated CIWS frigates had twenty apiece. They unloaded streams of twenty-millimeter HE rounds, painting glowing trails of tracers that stood out starkly against the inky backdrop of space, weaving them back and forth as they saturated the path of the torpedoes with fire. They looked like bright sparks, arcing through the night, terminating in glittering flashes as the rounds exploded at their apex. As more of the fleet came into range, more streams of tracer fire joined them, until the glowing points of light seemed to outnumber the stars.
Emerald-tinted explosions followed as they shot down more of the torpedoes, magnetically-contained plasma warheads and methane fuel igniting into mesmerizing billows of flame. More interceptor missiles joined them, streaking away on chemical plumes, shooting off in every direction. The systems were mostly automated, breaks in the trails indicating where the cannons had stopped firing momentarily to avoid hitting their allies, shooting around the other ships in the formation with computer precision.
The Valbaran frigates were joining the party now, their tracer fire and missile countermeasures indistinguishable from those of the UNN ships, as their weapons were based on the same designs. The aliens had brought a weapon of their own making to the table, however. Vos watched as brilliant beams of green light lanced out from smaller turrets that were mounted on some of the ships, their mirror-like lenses focusing beams of light into deadly weapons. They were solid-state lasers of Valbaran manufacture, a technology that humanity had abandoned in favor of railguns and plasma weapons, but which the reptiles had continued to refine. They held on the Bug torpedoes with unwavering precision, heating their components until they either lost control or exploded.
It was chaotic, and undeniably beautiful.
“The first wave of torpedoes has been neutralized,” one of the officers announced, Vos allowing himself a moment of relief. All that ordnance, and not one projectile had found its mark. “Enemy ships are launching more, and their fighters are inbound.”
“They’ll get through the cordon,” Fielding said, narrowing his eyes at the looming tendrils of swarming craft. “No chance of stopping them all.”
“New bearing,” Vos said, the comms officer preparing to relay his orders to the rest of the fleet. “We’ll bring the formation about to forty degrees, keep our distance from those station guns until the Mars can get to a safe angle of attack. We need to deal with those fighters before we move any closer.”
“They’ll saturate our CIWS with that many craft,” Fielding added. “That’s probably the idea – overwhelm any incoming ships with sheer numbers and damn the losses. They don’t even know what we are yet, but they’re fighting like they’re on the ropes.”
“They are,” Vos chuckled. “Whether they know it or not. A cornered animal doesn’t have to know the extent of the danger it faces to lash out.”
“More ships incoming,” the radar operator called out. A view of them came up on the feed, the lobster-like craft pushing off from the station like a shoal of ugly fish, escorted by smaller ships that were arranged in a more recognizable tactical formation. A dozen or so of the larger ones were burning hard at the center of the group, the flexible thrusters that ran down their flanks flaring. They had a wider, fatter profile than most of the other ships, and their limbs were clutching something beneath their bellies protectively. Their forelimbs were longer and sturdier, sporting large, serrated claws.
“No idea what those are,” Fielding muttered. “They kind of look like the light carriers encountered during the battle of Valbara. Those things would get close and use their claws to tear open the hulls of enemy ships.”
“They’re transporting something, and they’re on an intercept course,” Vos added. “Could it be that they’ve already calculated our new heading and are moving to cut us off? Fast little critters. Redirect some of the torpedo frigates to fire on them. Whatever they’re doing, it won’t be good for us.”
“And, the fighters?” Fielding asked.
“Scramble your air wings, Captain.”
***
Baker sat in the pilot’s seat of his Beewolf, feeling himself sinking into the plush padding through his clinging flight suit. The green glow of instrument panels illuminated the cockpit, the HUD on his full-faced visor displaying information readouts. Above his canopy, he could see the ceiling of the launch tube, which terminated in a pressure door a short distance ahead of his fighter’s pointed nose. It was scarcely wider than his craft’s wingspan.
There were forty such tubes on each carrier, which allowed the craft to launch more than half of their fighter complement in a matter of seconds, depending on what type of aircraft were being used. Right now, there were forty fighters aboard, with a little under half of the hangar space reserved for the dropships and CAS that would be used in the ground assault.
Unfortunately, when you were assigned to a launch tube, all you could do was wait around until your orders came through. He was following the battle as best he could, monitoring the comms channels and watching the ship movements on a window in the top right of his field of view.
“Hey, Scorch,” his wingman chattered in his earpiece. He was out of view, stowed away in an adjacent tube. “Are they gonna tell us to launch, or what? Those Bug fighters are getting a little too close for comfort.”
“Can’t be long now, Charlie,” he replied. “Be ready.”
It was customary for fighter pilots to give each other callsigns, usually with some kind of humorous hidden meaning. Baker had earned the name Scorch when he had failed to retract his radiators during reentry while training at the academy, causing them to melt and overheat his engines. It had taken on a new meaning recently, referring to how he had braved reentry during the battle of Valbara to pursue a hive ship that was descending through the planet’s atmosphere. He and his wingman, Jaeger, had managed to bring it down. His exploits had earned him more than a little acclaim in the fleet, propelling him to the rank of wing commander.
“Those fuckers are gonna overwhelm the CIWS screen if we don’t deal with them soon,” he grumbled.
He tapped at one of his control panels, running a few system checks as he tightened his harness. Jets of propellant gasses spurted from the thrusters that were spaced out along his fighter’s angular hull, the ailerons on his stubby wings and the rudders on his dual tail fins waving up and down. The Beewolf was deadly both in a vacuum and in atmosphere. The vectoring nozzles on his engines flexed, the hatch that protected his twenty-five-millimeter gatling gun flipping open, the rotary cannon spinning. In compartments beneath the craft’s belly was hidden a payload of missiles, and there was a dorsal railgun mounted on a flexible arm that would rise from the hull behind the cockpit to fire on targets independently, fed by a belt of tungsten slugs the size of beer bottles.
All systems showed green, his heart starting to beat faster as he watched the radar contacts near the fleet. Suddenly, a voice crackled on the priority channel, Captain Fielding coming through in his helmet’s earpiece.
“Lieutenant Baker, your orders are to launch all squadrons and intercept the Betelgeusian fighters. Get out there and show our new friends why the Beewolf has a sixty to one kill ratio.”
“Roger that, Captain,” he replied with a grin. He switched channels, addressing all five squadrons under his command. “Chocks away, boys. Form up on your squadron leaders and engage the enemy at will. Watch out for friendly point-defense. It’s going to be a fucking bar fight out there.”
He flipped switches on his consoles, the engines spooling, his HUD clearing to show targeting information. The cockpit around him faded away, his helmet’s visor patching into the innumerable cameras that were mounted all over his fighter, allowing him to see through its fuselage as though it wasn’t even there. Through his unimpeded view, IFF signals popped up, linked to the wireframe profiles of nearby ships. With another button press, the rectangular pressure door ahead of him snapped open, exposing the tube to the vacuum beyond. His fighter slid along its launch rail on a sled that hooked up to its landing gear, flames filling the tunnel behind him as his engines ignited.
In a second, he was in open space, peering over his shoulder to watch the Rorke diminish to the size of a minnow behind him. To his left and right, his squadron of eight was forming up on him, more of the jet-black craft getting their bearings as they raced away from the ship.
Baker scanned his immediate surroundings, seeing the wedge of gunboats at the head of the fleet, the massive battleship leading the way. The CIWS frigates had spread out into a sphere to protect the formation, and the rest of the vessels were hanging back. The sole Jarilan ship was near the assault carriers, and the long, thin Valbaran ships were off to the starboard side of the bubble. He was amused to see Jaeger’s ship among them, giving him a quick salute, even if his friend couldn’t see it.
He gripped the stick in his hand and rolled the craft ninety degrees, pulling it back as he began to turn. The thrusters along the fighter’s belly burned to create resistance as he maneuvered, simulating a banking motion that would usually be impossible in space, the safety features ensuring that he couldn’t exceed ten Gs. He felt the legs of his suit tighten, gripping his calves to prevent blood from rushing to his feet.
His squadron mirrored his movements, leveling out again as he aimed his nose at the incoming Bugs. He couldn’t even see them yet, they merely showed up as a dense cloud of red triangles, more than he could count. They were forming strange tendrils, almost like bees from a vintage cartoon.
As he turned his head, he saw that the four other squadrons had matched his velocity, jets of blue flame spewing from their twin engines as they raced towards the enemy. The fighters from the Samar, Darwin, and Taipei were bringing up the rear, swelling their number to 120. He had never seen so many in one place before.
He opened a channel to the other wing commanders, giving them a customary greeting.
“Scorch here. You boys ready for a knife fight?”
“Always did prefer the twenty-five-mill over missiles,” one of them replied, their callsign appearing on Baker’s HUD. It was Boomerang, hailing from the Darwin. “Much more personal.”
Next came a female voice, her thick accent letting him know who it was before her tag had even popped up.
“About time. We cannot fight a war from inside a tube.”
Meimei was the wing commander of the Taipei’s fighter squadrons, and while Baker didn’t speak a lick of Mandarin, he had heard rumors that her callsign meant little sister. Knowing how callsigns were usually earned, it probably had a completely opposite meaning.
Last to report in was Sheriff from the Samar, his Midwestern accent flooding the channel. He was all business, as usual.
“We’ll take the starboard flank. Those CIWS frigates are going to be firing when the swarm gets closer, so watch your six.”
To Baker’s surprise, another voice joined them, this one high-pitched and tinny.
“Room for a few more, Earth’nay?”
He turned his eyes to his radar, seeing another clump of IFF tags coming in from the right. He tapped the touch panel on the side of his helmet, zooming in to see a tight formation of fighters approaching at his five o’clock. They were Valbaran craft, smaller than the Beewolfs. They had an angular design that seemed inspired by UNN stealth tech, their wedge-shaped hulls more like spaceplanes than fighters, with stubby delta wings and small tail fins. They looked like flying guitar picks to Baker. They were colored in the blue and grey ocean camo of the Valbaran Navy, their bellies lined with dark heat tiles to protect them during reentry, their flat noses adorned with color panels. They were clearly a kind of micro-fighter designed to be able to fit on their carriers.
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“This is Motli’chal’noya, squadron leader of the Vengeance. The Ensi sends her regards.”
“The more the merrier,” Boomerang chuckled. “Form up on our right flank.”
Baker checked his readout again. It looked like the two Valbaran fleet carriers had committed all 76 of their fighters to the battle. The Ensi’s flagship had also dispatched its own squadron of 14. That gave them a total of 450 ships. They were still outnumbered three to one, but he’d take those odds…
A few thousand kilometers ahead of them, the tendrils of Bug craft coalesced, recognizing the squadrons as a threat. They moved as one organism, forming a great, shifting mass. Baker had only ever fought against hive ships and light carriers, which couldn’t field a fraction of this force.
“Open your missile bays and extend your railguns,” Baker said over his air wing’s channel. “This is going to get hairy.”
He hit a switch on his console, feeling a vibration rumble through his fuselage. When he looked back over his shoulder, he saw the hatch behind his canopy flip open, the railgun rising from the compartment on its flexible arm. Its long barrel was lined with copper-colored magnetic coils, its belt of tungsten slugs trailing down into the body of the plane. Beneath his feet, more hatches opened up, the racks of missiles descending. The HUD on his visor flared to life, targeting symbols picking out individual ships in the swarm, warning icons letting him know that the system was ready to fire. His thumb hovered over the red button on his flight stick, Baker waiting for his systems to lock on.
“Fire!”
The squadrons under his command released their payloads, dozens of missiles streaking ahead of the formation, their boosters flaring bright blue. The other air wings followed suit, a wall of ordnance racing towards the enemy. Their new allies didn’t seem to have any missiles, but if he knew the Valbarans, they would have devised some clever plan hours ahead of time.
More symbols flashed on his HUD, warning him that he was being locked. The Bugs were launching their own missiles, equipped with plasma warheads. He had lost friends to those damned things before. Each of them was like an animal in its own right, using organic eyes and antennae as its targeting suite, chasing down its victims with a very real hunger.
The two clusters of missiles quickly crossed paths, flashes of explosions lighting up the void as many of them intercepted one another. The alien weapons erupted into spreading balls of crackling plasma, engulfing everything in their vicinity in boiling gas, while the UNN missiles fragmented into clouds of eviscerating shrapnel. A good number survived the maelstrom, speeding on towards their intended targets.
The tendrils of alien craft were peppered with explosions, the missiles arching towards their marks, making quick corrections as they honed in. Without human pilots to worry about, they could make course changes that would have turned a person to mush. The organic fighters were so tightly packed that each missile created visible holes in the formation, blowing multiple targets into sprays of viscera, their ruined carcasses carried on by momentum. Even so, those rifts were filled by more insects just as quickly.
A blinking warning symbol alerted Baker that there were still enough plasma missiles heading for the formation to kill every Beewolf twice over.
“Prep flares,” he warned. “Set your turrets to point-defense mode, and use what interceptor missiles you have left.”
“Let us take point, Earth’nay,” Motli said, her flanging voice chattering in Baker’s ear. “We have a means to help.”
“Roger that,” he replied, switching back to the air wing channel. “Pull back and let the Valbarans take the lead.”
Bursts of gas from the Beewolf’s forward thrusters slowed its velocity enough that the Valbarans could easily overtake them, the other air wings following suit. He glanced up, watching the alien craft soar over his head in a delta formation that put them mere meters apart, their dual engine cones flaring. As they fell into position ahead of him, he saw hatches on their flat hulls open up, objects shaped like upturned bowls rising from internal compartments. Just like the Beewolfs, the Valbaran fighters were packing a secret weapon, probably inspired by the same design.
“Launch interceptors!” Baker ordered, the missiles detaching from their racks before igniting their boosters. More chemical trails streaked out ahead of the formation, the projectiles winding away into the darkness, further thinning the numbers of the Bug weapons. “Get ready to break!” he added, switching off the safety function that limited his craft’s maneuverability. He was a seasoned pilot, and he knew what his body could take better than any machine did.
As the plasma missiles raced towards them, bright beams of green light began to lance out from the Valbaran ships, holding on the projectiles. They were laser point-defense weapons, lighting up the darkness like a rave as they moved between the missiles with pinpoint precision. They remained on target until the missiles were rendered inoperable, their guidance systems frying, their payloads exploding prematurely. The missiles were down to a tenth of their original strength, but some would still make it through.
“Here we go!” Baker grunted into his mic, feeling his suit constrict around his limbs as he jerked his stick. G-forces tore at him, darkness creeping at the corners of his vision as he pivoted his craft on its axis, burning away from his original heading at a 90-degree angle. The sudden acceleration pinned him to his seat, his fists white beneath his gloves. His squadron did the same, scattering to make themselves harder to hit, bright flares ejecting from behind them in an attempt to divert the missiles.
For all that buildup, what happened next was over in a second, the relative velocities of the fighters and the missiles making them race past each other in the blink of an eye. He felt his railgun fire as it targeted one of them, its computer tracking a target that he couldn’t even see, letting off a quick burst of gunfire as it shot past. He had no idea if he’d hit it or not, a series of green flashes erupting behind him. Some of the missiles had been destroyed by the lasers, others veering off-target to chase flares. He cursed as he spotted a cloud of slagged, flaming wreckage hurting through space, the remnants of a Beewolf carried along by its momentum.
“We lost one!” Boomerang growled over the comms. “Weapons free! Slag those cunts!”
The Betelgeusian fighters spread into an amorphous mass as they came into range, seeking to engulf their prey. Baker could see them now, their colorful carapaces reflecting the sunlight, their twin-linked plasma cannons beginning to fire. He pulled off another hard maneuver, his engines flaring as he climbed, rolling so that his dorsal railgun had an unimpeded field of fire. There was no atmosphere to slow him down in space – he could move in any direction, pivoting his entire fighter like a gyroscope.
The two clearly divided battle lines merged, flashes of striped shell and emerald flame rushing past Baker’s cockpit. His railgun turret swiveled, tracking the nearest targets, the computer calculating their trajectories as it spewed tungsten. Faster than Baker could even process, one of the Bug fighters disintegrated as it rushed past his Beewolf, a burst of railgun fire perforating it. Its carcass tumbled, its bodily fluids freezing as they spewed from the wounds, its engines dying.
His ears were full of radio chatter, his HUD flashing warnings, but it all melted away as he focused on staying alive.
“-incoming at ten o’clock!-”
“-lost one of my goddamned engines, I’m tumbling-”
“-he’s on you, burn, burn-”
“-solid hits on that fucker!-”
Baker sank into his seat as he fired his main engines, shedding velocity as the swarm of enemy craft came about, their pilots able to withstand higher G’s than he could. Even as he raced backwards, his railgun was firing forwards, the molten slugs leaving trails of glowing slag in their wake. The coils were red-hot, the belt feeding into the weapon’s receiver as it jerked from one target to another, calculating the enemy trajectories. He gripped his flight stick, painting targets, the computer following the movements of his pupils as he picked them out. The last of his missiles streaked from his bays, fighting against the same inertia for a moment before racing off into the dark. Each of them found their mark, shrapnel gutting the Bugs like flies hit by a salt gun. Their iridescent carapaces split open, green flame erupting forth as their methane fuel ignited, fluids and viscera spraying. Another plasma missile raced his way, released from one of the crab-like forelimbs of a fighter, the antennae on its rounded nose following the chemical residue of his engines like a bloodhound.
With another button press, he launched more flares, gritting his teeth against another high-G turn. His suit gripped him like a straightjacket as his HUD screamed warnings at him, alerting him that the safety limits were being exceeded, but he shut them off with a furious gesture.
The missile went for one of the flares, erupting into a ball of plasma, Baker outrunning it by what felt like inches. He pivoted his craft again, lining up his twenty-five-millimeter cannon, the hatch beside his nose popping open. It spun up, spewing shells, the tracers drawing a long line towards his pursuers. They drilled into the one at the front of the pack, a dozen rounds splitting open its head like a melon, the craft careening away as it lost control.
Boiling plasma splashed against the hull of his Beewolf, the heat-resistance plating doing a decent job of spreading it out so that it didn’t burn straight through his wing, but he couldn’t take sustained fire. He rolled, spinning his bird like a top, dodging another incoming stream of superheated bolts. A combination of his rotary cannon and his railgun brought down three more of them, sending their broken carcasses hurtling into space.
Only now could he take a moment to glance at what was happening around him. The four hundred fighters had scattered, their opponents tailing them as they weaved between the tumbling wrecks, chemical residue from missiles and molten slag from railguns crisscrossing the battlefield. The seething mass of aliens was all around them, separating into visible tendrils that reached out in the direction of the Beewolfs like long fingers, as coordinated as a shoal of fish.
The Valbarans had separated into groups of five or six, matching each other’s movements, maintaining their formations with all the skill of an aerobatics team. Their lasers strobed, the glittering beams holding on the Bug fighters, melting holes clean through their armor.
It was hard to tell who had the upper hand, but the swarm was still moving in the direction of the fleet. They had to kill as many as they could before the aliens reached the CIWS frigates. He was out of missiles now – all he had were his wits and his stick.
“Where the hell are you guys?” he demanded over his squadron’s channel. “Form up on me, we gotta turn this around.”
“On you, Scorch,” his wingman replied. Baker spotted his IFF tag incoming as he avoided another salvo of plasma fire. “You got a roach up your arse. I’m on him.”
Baker dodged and weaved, glancing over his shoulder to see the alien craft tailing him, matching his movements. Its myriad of black eyes were expressionless and dead, like those of a shark, the thrusters on its carapace swiveling and twisted to keep pace. His railgun turned to track it, firing between his tail fins, the slugs going wide as its target displayed its alarming maneuverability. The twin-linked plasma repeaters that hung beneath its head fired back at him, a flash of green briefly illuminating his cockpit as a bolt sailed over his canopy close enough that it could have singed his hair.
From behind it, his wingman matched its course, loosing a burst from his nose cannon that caught it by surprise. The craft’s left flank exploded, spewing burning fuel as it lost control, rolling away into the dark. The Beewolf fell into formation with his own, his wingman giving him a thumbs-up.
“You’re always late to the party, Charlie,” he said with a sigh of relief. Two more members of his squadron fell into formation with them, Baker turning them towards one of the roiling tendrils of fighters. “Follow me in,” he grunted, G-forces tugging at him as he lined up for an attack run. He almost jumped out of his skin as fragments of shell and frozen fluids from a dead Bug splattered his canopy, making a sound like someone had hit it with a hammer. There was so much debris – they couldn’t stay here for much longer.
His wingmen fired the last of their missiles, creating a screen of explosions ahead of them, the Bugs racing towards this new threat like a flock of migrating birds changing direction. The four Beewolfs opened up, tungsten and twenty-five-millimeter shells racing ahead of them, tearing through the alien ships. Only when they were in spitting distance did the squadron break away, Baker cursing as a tumbling Bug zipped past him so close that he could have reached out of his canopy and touched it. The massed firepower cut a swathe through the enemy, the Bugs scattering. One of them scored a lucky hit on Charlie, strafing his Beewolf with glowing plasma, the bolts melting through his hull. The stealth coating peeled away like charred skin, exposing molten metal beneath it, his left wing shearing off.
“Eject! Eject!” Baker yelled into his mic as he watched his friend lose control. There was a puff of gas as the canopy blew off, followed by a burst of flame as Charlie abandoned the doomed craft, the thrusters on his seat propelling him to safety.
“I’m clear,” he panted, breathing heavily into his mic. “Fuck, that was a close one.”
The fleet was in visual range again now, great torrents of tracer fire arcing towards the alien ships from their innumerable CIWS turrets, interceptor missiles streaking out of their bays to hunt down their targets.
“Watch for friendly fire!” Meimei warned over the comms, the strain in her voice suggesting that she was under high Gs. She uttered a string of incomprehensible Mandarin, then switched back to English. “We have done what we can. Pull back to the defensive cordon!”
“Roger that,” Baker replied. “Let’s get behind the frigates. Focus on protecting the fleet!”
“Following you in,” Boomerang added, Sheriff confirming as the squadrons retreated back towards the larger ships.
“The Ensi moves her ships to render aid,” Motli added, Baker turning his head to watch laser beams lance out behind their little fighters as they joined them. He noted the flashing color panels on their noses, mimicking feather displays to communicate at a far faster pace than was possible over the radio. “Their lasers are more accurate than your UNN guns.”
“Anything that’ll stop us getting torn apart along with the Bugs,” Baker replied. “Standard practice is to set up kill boxes, so they’ll let us know what zones to avoid. Make sure you pay attention to your HUDs. Can you receive that data, Motli?”
“We can,” she replied confidently. “Our systems are fully integrated with yours.”
The formation of fighters raced towards the sphere of ships, Baker feeling a lump in his throat. There were three dozen of them aiming right at him, their slim, sloping profiles letting them bring all of their turrets to bear while presenting as small a target as possible. It wasn’t fun to be on the wrong end of those guns.
On his visor, red trails suddenly appeared, warning symbols flashing. They reached out from the frigates, creating three-dimensional wireframes, letting the fighters know where the fire was going to be coming from.
“Here it comes!” Baker warned, yanking his stick to the right. He rolled, the thrusters along the belly of his craft burning to simulate a bank, the rest of his squadron matching the motion. Their dorsal railguns were still firing behind them, pointing their long barrels at the pursuing Bugs, harrying them with molten tungsten. The squadron narrowly avoided one of the red kill boxes as it was filled with glowing tracers, the insectoid craft behind them exploding into fragments under the hail of shells. The frigates had loaded high-explosive rounds, equipped with a proximity sensor that would detonate them like a flak shell, sending jagged metal tearing into the nearby fighters. More missiles intercepted the swarm, forcing them to evade. They lacked any form of point defense, and as nimble as they were, they couldn’t outrun a rocket.
“Looks like we killed enough of the bastards that the fleet can mop up the rest,” Sheriff said. “Hang around all the same, don’t let any of them get through!”
Baker aimed at one of the CIWS frigates, giving the arrowhead-shaped behemoth a wing tilt as he flew within a dozen meters of its bridge windows. He brought his squadron back around, finally able to take a breather, the surrounding space mercifully clear of enemy craft. Ahead of the fleet, the inky blackness was alight with glowing trails, hundreds of individual streaks of orange sparks reaching out towards the Bugs. They lacked the numbers to saturate the defenses now, and any sane creature would have turned back. Even so, they threw themselves against the CIWS ships with suicidal abandon, dying in scores.
As Baker came about, he locked onto a cluster of Bugs that had weaved their way through the CIWS fire, making a beeline for them.
“If they want to die so badly, let’s give them what they want!”
***
“The enemy fighters are thinning,” Vos said, watching the battle on the viewport. He had never seen a dogfight take place in such close quarters, the carnage that was playing out driving home the comparison. The UNN fighters had reduced the enemy numbers substantially, whittling them down to the point that the CIWS guns should be able to handle what was left. The Bugs were crashing against the defensive line like waves now, their missiles and plasma repeaters not much of a threat against the larger, more heavily armored ships. The fleet had lost a good fifty Beewolfs, their burning husks drifting away from the fleet, but they had brought down a remarkable number of enemy craft in return.
“We have rescue dropships ready to launch as soon as the skies are clear enough,” Fielding added. “I’ll assign Beewolfs to escort them out. I’m seeing a lot of beacons out there. Most of them probably ejected in time.”
The incoming cluster of alien ships was the more immediate threat now. The torpedo frigates had been firing at them at range, but the Bug craft that were escorting their larger counterparts to head off the fleet were doing a remarkable job of shooting them down. Point defense weapons that shot out streams of plasma like firehoses jutted from their segmented hulls, filling the space around them with superheated gas that made it next to impossible for the torpedoes to make it through intact. The fight against them would have to be fought at railgun ranges, the equivalent of punching distance in Naval terms. Vos couldn’t help but think that the aliens wanted that very thing.
“The Beewolf squadrons won’t have time to land and rearm before those ships reach us,” Vos warned. “We should keep them out so they’re ready for the next wave.”
“Agreed,” Fielding replied. “I’m keeping the gunships in reserve. We can’t afford to lose any if we’re going to dominate the ground war. We need that CAS.”
“The railgun frigates will be able to deal with them,” Vos said with a nod. “And I’m sure the Mars is itching for a scrap. Comms Officer – tell the Mars that she can fire when ready.”
“Aye aye, Admiral.”
The CIWS cordon was mopping up the last of the fighters now, the Ensi’s ships moving to help, their laser beams bringing down the stragglers. Vos was glad that he had pushed so hard to secure so many ships for the campaign. He had called in favors, argued, even blackmailed to get every last carrier and frigate that could be diverted to Valbara. Had this battlegroup been made up of a single CSG, it would already have been overwhelmed.
He watched the expanding debris field drift past them as the fleet continued on, many of the fighter squadrons forming up with their carriers now that they were short on targets to shoot at. A handful of them were making for the hangars, probably too damaged or too dry on ammo to continue. Dropships were leaving through the shimmering barriers, too, heading off to search for survivors.
Vos turned his attention back to the holographic projection of the fleet’s course. The formation of Bug craft was closing rapidly. It would only be a few more minutes until they came into firing range. He zoomed in on the Mars, seeing that her fifty-five-meter railgun turrets were already turning in the direction of their targets, the trio of protective shrouds on their long barrels opening up. They didn’t have the planet-ending capabilities of the gun that ran down the center of the ship’s hull, but they could still do incalculable damage to most targets. The arrays of smaller railguns mounted on the ship’s sleek hull followed suit, tracking the enemy ships.
The torpedo tubes that ran parallel to the main gun flipped open, their payload of 100-ton missiles rising on jets of bright flame, painting an unbroken arc as they raced away. More soon followed, sailing over the fleet from the frigates at the rear of the formation. Vos watched them hone in on the cluster of insectoid vessels, but once again, they were intercepted. Torrents of plasma spewed forth from fleshy point defense weapons on their hulls, more like ants spraying formic acid than anything technological. It created swirling plumes that spread out into space, rapidly losing their thermal energy but doing enough damage to disable the torpedoes. Most of them slagged, turning into drifting hunks of molten metal, while others exploded prematurely as their warheads overheated.
“The Mars is coming into super-railgun range now, Admiral,” one of the bridge officers announced.
Vos watched intently as the twin turrets rotated slowly, noting that the battleship was rising from its formation, the thrusters on the side opposite the direction its guns were pointing starting to ignite. The recoil was so great that it would have to use its engines to help compensate, lest it be pushed off-course by the kinetic force. It fired tungsten projectiles that were four meters long and weighed in excess of fourteen tons.
One of the turrets rocked back, accompanied by a brighter flare from the ship’s thrusters, the long barrel telescoping backwards into its enormous housing. It slammed into its dampeners, making the 350-meter vessel shudder, its engines struggling to keep it from drifting. In an instant, the slug bridged the distance and found its mark, a flash of light like a miniature sun forcing the bridge windows to dim. When Vos was able to see again, one of the craft that had been defending the Bug ships was gone, practically vaporized. What remained looked like an insect that had been crushed beneath a boot, the cloud of fragments and viscera splattering the ships in its vicinity as it spread out in a rapidly diminishing cone.
The ships began to scatter as the second super-railgun fired, another bright flash blinding Vos as it turned its victim to slag. This second round penetrated the first target, then punched straight through it, cleaving the lobster-like craft directly behind it in two. The ruined halves were sent spinning away, belching burning fuel and spurts of ichor.
“Tell the fleet to engage at will,” Vos ordered, watching the wedge-shaped line of frigates at the head of the formation drift apart as they moved to intercept. The Mars fired once more, killing a fourth target, their evasive maneuvers counting for nothing when the travel time of the projectiles was functionally instant. Its array of twenty conventional railguns began to fire now, creating a mesmerizing display as their barrels started to glow red with heat, the rows of missile hatches mounted on the vessel’s prow opening up to release a salvo of rockets. The frigates followed suit, fielding many of the same weapons, albeit in smaller quantities.
The slugs punched through the layers of Bug carapace and armor like a hot knife through butter, carving deep wound channels, bodily fluids freezing into crystals as they oozed forth. No matter how many times Vos saw it, he could never get used to watching a spaceship bleed.
Bolts of green plasma fired back, racing out with near the same velocity as a railgun slug, the Betelgeusian craft coming into effective range now. There wasn’t much that the CIWS guns could do against the onslaught, the frigates evading as best they could, the crackling energy peeling away layers of their armor like an onion where they found their mark. UNN ships were designed to take the punishment, their hulls made to spread the heat over a larger area in an effort to prevent it from melting through. Even so, some of the frigates sported molten, glowing holes now, one of them turning about as it was lanced by one of the alien point-defense weapons. A torrent of plasma scorched its angular hull, panting a burning line right across its length to leave a glowing scar.
“Belly up!” Captain Fielding shouted, Vos feeling inertia start to tug at him as the carrier began to burn. The scene in front of the bridge windows descended out of view as the behemoth went nose-up relative to the action, exposing its belly to the enemy. The AG field kept everyone’s feet safely rooted to the floor, but it was still a disorienting maneuver. The bridge windows flickered, then switched to show camera views from below the craft, Vos checking the holographic display on his chair to see that the other three carriers were performing the same maneuver.
One of the primary roles of a jump carrier was ground support, where they would hang around in orbit, firing down on targets on the planet’s surface. This meant that the majority of their railguns, along with a secondary bridge, were mounted beneath the vessel. In this position, they could bring more of their guns to bear.
The carriers joined the frigates, the forests of railguns beneath their bellies firing on targets in salvos, peppering the enemy craft with slugs. The squadrons of fighters were breaking away now, harrying some of the smaller enemy vessels with strafing runs, their missiles erupting into blooms of flame along their organic hulls. The Mars was in the center of the melee, its railguns firing in all directions, burning trails decorating its thick armor as the surrounding vessels tried in vain to stop its relentless march.
From the starboard came the Valbaran ships, the Vengeance leading the charge as her support fleet flanked her. Missiles and torpedoes raced ahead of them, the railguns mounted on their rounded hulls tracking targets, their CIWS strafing the enemy. Bright flashes from their laser point defense turrets dazzled the onlookers, Vos settling in as he prepared to watch their performance.
***
Xipa stood on the bridge of the Vengeance, her legs locked, watching the battle play out beyond the rows of windows. Her bridge crew were seated in circular booths that were slightly recessed into the matte-white deck, ringed by display panels, their helmeted heads darting back and forth as they processed the incoming data.
She had always commanded ships in microgravity, and the addition of AG fields threw her off-kilter, even if it made the job undeniably easier. She had never been very good at adapting to change.
The Earth’nay and Bug ships were brawling now, the chaos spreading, the battle lines quickly becoming blurred. There was no up or down, each ship rolling and turning in different directions, the void around them filled with tracer fire and missile trails.
“Move in the Gawler-class frigates to cover the cruisers,” Xipa said, tracking the positions of the ships on the holographic display that was hovering beside her. The five-module frigates were bristling with missile launchers, CIWS guns, and lasers, designed to shield the rest of the fleet with their point-defense weapons. They floated alongside the missile cruisers, larger, seven-module craft equipped with torpedo launchers, missiles, and extra radar arrays to ensure the best possible lock on their targets. They were already firing streams of missiles at the enemy ships, moving to cut off the bulk of the alien fleet, which seemed to be heading straight for the UNN jump carriers.
“Have the battlecruisers form up on us,” she added. “I think it’s time to show the Earth’nay what these new ships can do. Gunner, prepare to fire the ion cannon.”
“Charging the weapon,” she replied, tapping frantically at one of her touch panels. The lights in the bridge dimmed noticeably, the ship diverting power from its non-essential systems. The weapon was a kind of linear plasma accelerator, which was fed by the ship’s fusion reactor, sending a beam of electrons shooting down the entire length of the ship. Its function had something to do with oscillating plasma and electrical fields, but Xipa was no particle physicist. All she cared about was that the resulting beam could be directed through the conical nozzle mounted on the prow of the ship, accelerating charged electrons to near light-speed, where they would transfer their kinetic energy to the target. The weapon could rend both armor and DNA at the atomic level.
On her display, she saw the ships in her fleet that were equipped with the weapons taking up formation to either side of the Vengeance, not quite flying straight as they picked out their own targets in the melee.
“Transfer command of the weapon to my personal computer,” Xipa snarled, the weapons officer briefly glancing at one of her colleagues before doing as her Ensi asked. With a few taps, she bypassed the fire controls, Xipa glancing down at the device mounted on the wrist of her suit.
“It awaits your command, Ensi,” the officer said.
“Good. Tell the other ships to fire on my signal. Target that large ship there, right in the middle of their formation. Let’s see their point-defense ships stop this from getting through…”
“All captains awaiting your signal,” the comms officer announced.
The color panels on Xipa’s form-fitting suit flushed bright red, contrasting with its Naval camouflage, the damaged feathers on her head erupting in a display of hate. She didn’t care who saw – she had been waiting decades for an opportunity like this. During the battle of Valbara, several Bug ships had been destroyed at her orders, but this was different.
She brought up her wrist, her gloved fingers hovering over the panel, her heart thumping in her chest. As her digit came down on the screen, she turned her one eye to the bridge windows, watching a blue beam cut through space ahead of them. It was so bright that she could scarcely look at it, as thin as the vane of a feather, like a laser in brilliant violet. It was oddly understated, especially compared to the brutish weapons favored by the UNN. It was traveling at near the speed of light, so there was no delay as it impacted its target, Xipa’s eye widening in awe as a bright red circle appeared on its armored shell. The metal plates vaporized almost instantly, the material exploding in a bright flash, the organic matter beneath it boiling away. The craft’s electronic systems were fried, its technological components slagged, its organic material turned to plasma. It erupted in a mesmerizing explosion, the sheer energy splitting its atoms apart, the ship’s sensors showing X-rays and charged particles streaming in every direction as it disintegrated.
The rest of the ships fired in quick succession, Xipa’s scaly lips pulling back in a blend of a snarl and a smile as she watched the enemy craft erupt, half a dozen of them decimated in an instant.
“I hope you’re recording this,” she said, glancing over at one of the bridge crew. “The techs will want to see the fruits of their labor, and it will do wonders for morale.”
“Of course, Ensi,” she replied quickly. “All telemetry and data from the camera feeds is being stored on the ship’s drives.”
“Good, good. I’d like to watch that again later. Fire at will.”
Another salvo of torpedoes reached them from the Bug frigates that were still clustered around their space station some distance away, every ship in the fleet seeming to target the incoming threat. Lasers, tracers, and missiles shot towards them, creating an impenetrable wall. Bursts of plasma indicated where they had been intercepted, Xipa’s feathers fluttering in approval.
The lights dimmed again as the ion cannon reduced another Bug ship to ruin, then the beam petered out, Xipa glancing to her weapons operator with an unspoken question in her headdress.
“The weapon is out of charge, Ensi,” she explained. “It will need some minutes to build up again before we can continue to fire.”
“No matter. Focus our railguns on those point defense ships. Try to clear them out so that our missile cruisers can do their jobs.”
So far, the aliens were getting trounced. The Coalition ships had superior ranged weapons and better point defense, which made them almost untouchable. Now that the Bug ships had closed into range, however, the battle was evening out. The UNN ships had seemed invincible during the battle of Valbara, but she could see a frigate burning now, its arrowhead-shaped hull wreathed in green flame. There were molten holes in its vacuum-black armor, the decks beneath it exposed to space, the blue glow from its engines wavering.
More of the Earth’nay ships were moving to support it, but the Bugs were closer, several of them smelling blood in the water. A large one broke away from its formation, the interlocking plates that covered its back reminding her of some bottom-feeding crustacean, its innumerable legs unfurling from beneath its segmented body as it approached. The metallic glint of its thrusters caught her eye as they moved, belching green fire to push the thing closer. They were attached to its very flesh, grafted like cybernetics, muscles rather than servos changing their direction with minute precision. There were tiny, black eyes and glowing lights all over its hull, clusters of thin antennae jutting out from its armored prow. As it neared the damaged ship, a pair of pincers unfolded from beneath it, reaching out with serrated claws. The frigate’s CIWS guns were still firing, but they seemed to have lost power to their railguns, the smaller cannons doing little against the 200-meter behemoth.
“Fire on that ship,” Xipa snapped, gesturing to the insect as it grappled with the damaged frigate. The Vengeance began to pour railgun slugs into it, the nearby Earth’nay and Valbara’nay ships joining them, but the thing was so large that it was just shrugging them off. That giant battleship of theirs couldn’t fire its preposterously large guns in this soup of ships, not without the risk of obliterating its allies. A gun so powerful that it couldn’t be used was a foolish concept.
“Do any of our battlecruisers have enough charge for another ion cannon shot?” Xipa demanded, turning to her comms operator.
“The Shield of Yilgarn is incoming,” she replied, Xipa returning her eye to the viewport. She swiped at the holographic display beside her, tracking the ship’s progress through the external camera feeds. The vessel was a five-module frigate, commissioned specially for the Earth’nay war hero known as Jaeger. It came barreling into the melee, its engines burning hard, its CIWS guns firing in all directions. It passed close to an enemy ship, rolling onto its side as it drew near, firing its railguns in a broadside when the two vessels were only meters apart. They tore into its carapace, ripping open exit wounds on the other side, blowing out chunks of meat and chitin.
The insectoid craft lost power to some of its engines, starting to drift. Even so, its arrays of plasma cannons swiveled in the frigate’s direction, the magnetic rails crackling with emerald lightning as they charged up. It loosed a barrage of return fire, but the Shield was already moving out of its path, the thrusters on its aft section firing to pivot it out of the way. It continued forward, letting its momentum carry it, nose-up relative to its original position now. With another broadside, the Bug was gutted by an explosion, the slugs igniting its fuel tanks. Like a spinning top, the Shield turned on its vertical axis, then leveled out again. They were flying the damned thing more like a fighter than a ship of the line…
The Shield roared past the Vengeance, the forward-facing railguns on its prow hammering the clawed craft as it peeled away the damaged UNN frigate’s black armor, gripping it with its spindly legs. A bright beam of violet shot out ahead of it, spearing the enemy craft. The tough carapace was vaporized, its biological matter boiling, causing it to erupt in a violent release of gasses. Its slug-pocked shell split along the seams, rupturing to spew its melting guts into space. The thrusters on the underside of the Shield’s hull flared, sending it sailing over the wreckage, its light panels flashing a crimson salute.
“Show-offs,” Xipa muttered to herself, watching it turn on its next target.
“Ensi, the enemy craft at the core of their fleet are pushing through to the Earth’nay carriers,” one of the bridge crew said. The panels on her suit flashed a worried purple as she turned to her superior, waiting for instructions.
“Ensi, the fleet requests orders,” the comms operator added. “They ask if they should pursue.”
“Yes, yes,” Xipa replied impatiently. “Tell them to pursue those ships. They’re important, or they wouldn’t have been so heavily defended.”
She brought up an external camera feed, watching the strange craft burn towards the formation of four carriers. The Earth’nay ships had pointed their noses up now, coasting along as they fired their ventral guns. What an odd tactic.
The enemy weathered their fire, some of the frigate-sized vessels losing power, veering off course as they sustained mortal wounds. A storm of railgun rounds harried the larger ships at the center of the formation, but they pressed on, apparently large and resilient enough to push through it. Their escorts were putting themselves in the way, absorbing some of the fire, shielding their charges with suicidal abandon.
As they neared the UNN ships, they reared up, extending the armored legs that had been protecting their underbellies. While Xipa couldn’t see what lay beneath them from this angle, she recognized what was shooting out of them. Boarding pods – the same that had rained from the skies on Kerguela and Valbara.