Dark Fate, Chapter 235

Hurrah. Heading to DragonCon tomorrow. I wrote ahead, so still should be posts during.

Chapter 235 – Bleeding Out

(Bridge, CRN Invader, Incux Food Resource System 3)

Captain Tara Cox smiled as she looked at the tactical display. They’d launched two more attacks since they’d first let loose with the Tiamat torpedoes. The last of the truehives and swarmships were gone. The hiveships’ numbers had been cut from forty to eighteen. Of the initial two hundred and eight foodseekers, one hundred and seventy-five remained.

That wasn’t all. Between the swarmhips that had survived the first assault and forces stationed on the ground, there had been six hundred fighters in total. Now, there were two hundred and forty. Maybe less. Cinder Squadron’s attacks on one of the alien ‘airfields’ and their other anti-air capabilities destroyed most of the fighters before they could even launch. They had tracked the remaining fighters to two airfields in other parts of the world, but the bugs were keeping some of the fighters in the air at all times, now.

“Captain, we’re coming up on the twenty-minute warning.”

Cox nodded slowly as she turned to regard Lieutenant Markus Kempf. “Thank you, Lieutenant.” Her XO was a fine officer, she’d decided. All of her people had performed brilliantly throughout the course of this campaign, but without a doubt, Kempf had been one of the stand-outs. He’d handled the horror of what they were doing better than she had, at times.

The German werewolf had some clear thoughts about their mission, as one might expect from someone who had grown up in Munich, less than an hour’s drive from Dachau, and the memorial to atrocities past there. The important part, he’d said more than once, was to remember why they were doing this. This wasn’t rounding up undesirables and putting them in camps. It was killing millions, even billions, to save trillions. Was it monstrous, what they were doing? Of course, but the alternative was far worse.

Cox shook her head, clearing those thoughts away. This, at least, was a ‘clean’ battle, so far. Yes, they were using sneak attacks and all sorts of horribly unfair tactics. But the ones they were attacking were omnicidal aliens. They weren’t helpless beings who had been conditioned and bred until they were little more than cattle waiting for the slaughter. They weren’t innocent.

“Everything all right, ma’am?”

Captain Cox took a breath, and said, “Yes, Lieutenant. Just making sure I keep my focus on the right things. Right now, we have a war on. Can’t go thinking about all the things we’d rather do differently, yeah?”

She paused, and said, in a quieter voice, “How’s the crew taking things, Markus?”

Kempf shook his head. “They have a will of iron, I will say that much. But I think these last few days have been good for them. Siciliano, in Engineering, played a prank on one of the other engineers for the first time in weeks.” He held up a hand to stop her question before it was asked. “Nothing damaging to equipment, and nothing malicious. But the whole compartment was laughing, afterward, and even the ones off-shift were looking better when I checked in on them.”

The lieutenant shrugged. “I have Chief Calatos keeping an eye on things. Making sure things stay friendly, and don’t start drifting into any unfortunate directions. I think Siciliano will be fine, provided we get some serious shore leave sometime soon. And, if he keeps as he’s going, the rest of the crew should be all right. Though you’ll probably get reports of less-than-professional conduct at times.”

Cox nodded once. “Pass the word, and let them know that I don’t care, so long as there’s no injuries or damage to the ship. Nothing that impacts readiness or combat. Keep it playful, and don’t make things personal. But if it becomes something that I have to sign off on an incident report about, I’m not going to be happy.”

“As you say, Captain.”

They spent the remaining time watching the plot in comfortable silence. The Incux were trying to use numbers and active scanners to counter their advantages. The remaining Incux forces had retreated to the target planet, instead of spreading out around the system, and they were in constant motion, with their shields up and weapons hot, meaning that there would be no volley shots from the massive railguns or quick strikes and then jumping out before ships could even shoot back. No picking off lone ships and leading the ones that respond into ambushes. Not even a nice bit of crawling up in stealth and then unleashing hell. That was fine, though. Just meant they needed to get creative.

There were four primary targets on the planet, which should cause a great deal of confusion if hit. The two ‘airfields’, the remaining air defense control node, and the primary shipping node. Take out those four sites, and the Incux get another big setback. Fortunately, buildings don’t move. Plotting attack vectors that would miss the probable enemy ship tracks was a pain, since they were moving around, and all data they had was hours out of date, but that was fine. Even if they ‘wasted’ a shot on something less critical than the Incux infrastructure, the point would still be made, and that would ‘pin’ a few ships in place, which would make their next strike even easier.

There were only two ways this ended, really. The first was that the Incux called in enough ships off the front lines to make attacking the planet, and the human cattle it held, too difficult or costly for the CRN to attempt, but giving the Commonwealth Navy time to resupply and possibly go on the offensive. The second was that, eventually, the Navy destroyed the ships and fighters playing guard dog, and then eliminated the third cattle world, putting a serious damper on the bugs’ plans. Either way, Ceres came out a winner, so long as they did not lose too many ships or fighters.

And then, it was time. The rounds should be hitting soon. “All hands, battle stations. Helm, to warp. It is time to shake these bugs up a bit more.”

(Beast Leader, Incux Food Resource System 3)

Squadron Leader Luke ‘Critter’ Carter smiled as his Beast Squadron dropped out of warp right on target, with all the Angels and Cinders and the four corvettes. Only Mercurial wasn’t here right now, but that was what carriers did. They hung back and let their birds do the talking. And since the Incux couldn’t start scouting around for her without either leaving the planet undefended or splitting off nice, bite-sized chunks of foodseekers to do the search, she was safe enough where she was hiding. The Incux weren’t going to giving the Ceres Royal Navy bite-sized anything, after what happened the last time that they tried to find Mercurial.

“Beast Leader to all Beasts. What we have here is a target rich environment. Keep light on your stick and don’t get cocky. Yes, our Angels showed the shields can take a glancing blow or two, but I don’t want you playing chicken with their guns. Time to earn our pay, boys and girls. Lock S-foils in attack position, and weapons free.”

Acknowledgements came over the line as they began their attack run, diving towards a series of foodseekers on the outer edge of the swarm. The only reason there were so many of the things left was because everyone had been concentrating on the big ships first. But they’d proven that interceptors could take down a foodseeker with just cannons. The X-pattern Hunters (definitely legally distinct from anything that the House of Mouse had copyrighted), though? They had torpedoes designed to hit ships just like these.

The first version of the Hunter only had room for two torpedoes, one in each tube. Part of that was because they were using off-the rack torpedoes, and part of it was because they hadn’t worked out all the kinks in the design, yet. There’d been refits and upgrades, same as with the warp engines, and the torpedoes had been improved with new designs. They could carry six, now, each with a similar lead but reduced maneuvering time. Thirty seconds of maneuvering, total, and then the torpedo was dead stick, continuing on the last course until it hit something. Newton was still a bastard like that.

Still, it meant that he and his 23 other Beasts had 144 bundles of joy to hand out to the Incux, plus all the blaster fire they could stomach. And the Angels were in the fray, too. Because Goddess wasn’t one to let Beast Squadron have all the fun.

(Cinder Leader, Incux Food Resource System 3)

Slave-Squadron Leader Lelia ‘Heretic’ Carollo smiled grimly as eight of the hiveships disappeared in antimatter fire, courtesy of twelve Cinders and four Hellspawns. “Cinder Leader to all Cinders! Good shooting! Recharge your torpedoes, stagger charge. I want another torpedo in space from each of you every fifteen minutes, until there are no more Incux to use them on!”

She paused to juke around a concentration of blaster fire that wanted to blot her out of the sky. “Follow the attack plan. Leave the rest of the hiveships to the corvettes. We are going to dart in and out among the foodseekers, blasting where we can. Angel and Beast squadrons are in there, as well, and you can bet they are going to try and steal some of our kills. And that’s before the corvettes stop playing with the last hiveships, and end the battle.”

“Boss,” Puritan called out from next to her. “Another two hiveships just went dark. Demon’s Roar pumped a main gun round through one at less than twenty-thousand meters. It went out the other side and hit the second ship.”

Heretic whistled softly. It took a special kind of crazy to fire what was effectively the ship-to-ship version of an anti-tank rifle at what was basically point-blank range. Especially since, if the shot missed, it was still going to somewhere, and there were friendlies in the sky.

“Cinder Leader to squadron. Gunners, keep track of the corvettes, and stay out of their firing line. The Demon’s Roar just decided to play with the big guns in a knife fight. Don’t make the mistake of being in their line of fire. They just shot a hiveship through another hiveship, so don’t think your shields will do a damn thing to save you from that!”

She glanced over to Puritan, and said, “You know what I need?”

“Already got you, Boss.” As promised, a projection appeared on her track, showing a line in front of each of the four corvettes, and set to highlight a track when one of the ships fired the main gun. It wasn’t perfect, and it was one more thing for her to keep track of while flying in a war zone, but it beat the hell out of just praying that she wasn’t downrange when one of the Hellspawns got feisty with the big gun.

She switched her attention to the sensor reports from the planet below. The four railgun shots from earlier had hit home, as evidenced by the four fireballs thrown up by the massive kinetic impacts. “Looks like a good hit on both air bases. Probably the air defense node. Primary shipping node looks intact. Debris in space suggests that one of the foodseekers caught a round.”

“Oof,” Puritan grunted. “Still, not like they can do any actual shipping without ships. There aren’t any freighters in the system, so the shipping node was a ‘nice to have’ rather than ‘must take’. Any of the fighters survive?”

“Yeah, a few. Probably ones that were already in flight.”

(Angel Leader, Incux Food Resource System 3)

Slave-Squadron Leader Isis ‘Goddess’ Saliba took a breath as she caught the sensor data from Cinder Leader. “Angel Leader to all Angels! Break off your attack runs and form up on me! We have surviving fighters from down below, and they’re pissed as hell. Fifty-one, that is Five One fighters inbound!”

Nine more foodseekers were done for, even in the short time the battle had been going on. Torpedoes, missiles, and blasters were not kind to the foodseekers, that much was obvious. The Demon’s Roar and her sisters would be done with the hiveships momentarily, and then all that would be left is beating what was left of the Incux into the ground, before nuclear fire wiped the world below clean. Well, antimatter annihilation, but that didn’t have the same ring to it.

However, there were fighters on the way, and that meant that the interceptors needed to, well, intercept them. As Angel Squadron formed up around her, she saw that the incoming fighters were flying in two rigidly organized formations, one from each dead airfield. The hits on the ground and in space had probably broken their semi-hivemind, at least temporarily. They were flying on rote memorization, and it showed. Oh, by the book flying was fine, for peacetime, but a rigid formation in a battle just made you a bigger target.

The targeting reticle on her HUD went red. Good tone, missile locked. “Angel Leader to all Angels. Get these bugs out of my sky. Angel One, Fox Three.” And she fired.