Black Legion: 04 - Last Stand (14 page)

“Wait, I thought you said this was Tissaphernes’ ship?”

His expression seemed almost desperate as he asked the question.

“Well, in a certain manner it is his ship. The colours are definitely his, but he would never dare enter battle like this though. I suspect he is in deep-space, waiting for the word to come in and finish the job with his personal squadron of heavy Elamites.”

If Xenophon hadn’t been strapped in, he would have leapt from his seat. Instead, he could do no more than glare at her before saying more.

“You tricked me, why?”

Artemas tried to soften his expression with a gentle smile, but it seemed to infuriate him even more. She sighed before answering him.

“Gods, you Terrans are so tetchy. I was trying to help your cause. This is a flagship, and it has given you and your warriors a common purpose to bring about their destruction. When the battle is over, and if you prevail, you will have the ship and your warriors’ respect.”

“Great,” muttered Roxana, “and if we fail, we will have wasted our efforts on just another command ship.”

They were now just a few seconds from reaching the ship, and the defensive fire had increased exponentially. From the view inside the dromon, they witnessed the destruction of at least three dromons before drifting beneath the warship’s guns and approaching the entry points. On the screen, the coloured shapes of the other dromons showed most had listened to Xenophon and were making for the areas flagged by Artemas.

He trusted her but didn’t for a moment believe the others would feel the same if he told them where the intelligence came from. With a gentle thud, they made contact with the ship and the boarding tube connected to the access points on the vessel.

“Ready?” Xenophon asked.

Without waiting for an order, the airlocks deactivated, and the pressure between the dromon and the battleship quickly normalised. It took only a few seconds and then there was a safe, pressurised entry point to the ship. Xenophon peered through the short tunnel and out past the doorway. He could see the brightly lit interior with pale blue lights casting hard black shadows through the passageway.

“Where does this lead?”

Artemas tapped her tight fitting helmet to check the communication node interface. Her combination of Terran and Medes equipment made her look even more exotic than was normal for her.

“All of the lower entry points lead to the aft evacuation level. It is where the crew head in an emergency. After we make it there, we can spread out through the ship. Apart from the barrack levels in the upper superstructure, the layout is the same as an Elamite...just bigger.”

“What if they try and escape?” asked Tamara.

Roxana looked back over her shoulder and pointed to the display in the crew compartment. The unit showed the position of the other dromons fixed around the ship.

“Our craft are lodge in a dozen places. They can move, but a light speed jump would kill us all.”

Xenophon nodded as he tried to visualise the internal layout of the Elamites. There were long passageways leading front to back on those ships, and based on their recent encounters, the Legion had drawn up basic assault plans depending on which parts of the ship they entered.

“What about the power units, are they separate, like the Elamites?”

Artemas nodded.

“Good.”

Xenophon tapped the communications node to speak with his fellow officers.

“Once you’re clear, use Elamite Plan Beta. The layout is the same. I repeat. Elamite Plan Beta.”

There were six main plans for dealing with a boarding action of an Elamite, and the Beta plan was based upon disabling the offensive capability of a ship first. They would disable the guns before turning on the rest of the crew. Once the guns were out of commission even more troops could be landed, if necessary. He moved to the airlock, but a dozen spatharii had already beaten him to it. One looked back at him.

“Komes, let’s do this.”

He had never seen the man before, but the mixture of terror and excitement on the young man’s face was contagious. Then they rushed off into the interior, and Xenophon followed right behind, and his small entourage were right behind him.

Terran Light Cruiser ‘Drakonis’, Core Worlds

Kentarchos Ezekiel Manus could feel the sweat dripping from his face as the engines fluttered one last time. A loud thudding sound followed, and he knew things were about to get much worse than they already were. A screaming sound moved throughout the ship as the tortured hull of the vessel was stretched and pulled in a dozen directions. The hull’s integrity remained solid, however, even after the strains of the forces upon the ship.

Come on, we’re nearly there!

He looked to the timer and counted down. Every second they spent travelling at this speed increased their safety margin, and more important, it would bring them to the armour, shields, and guns of the Black Legion.

Forty seconds, that’s all we need!

“What’s happening?”

The ship’s chief engineer stumbled from one screen to the next, yet his expression remained the same, one of total shock and fear at the information presented to him. The dull red imagery flickered on his face and exaggerated the lines of worry.

“Kentarchos, our engines. They’re gone!”

The tactical officer turned around to face him with an almost identical expression on his face. He shook his head in an angry fashion.

“It is the same with the shields. Everything is offline!”

With one final crashing sound, the lights flashed off, and the forward momentum of the vessel collapsed, dropping them down to their normal sub-light speed. A grinding sound gave the impression the ship was being torn in half, and all of the officers were thrown about. Only three remained on their feet because they’d held on at the very last moment. Those strapped in managed to avoid the cuts and cruises that came from such a violent and abrupt change in heading and velocity.

“Jump drive is off-line. We’re on manoeuvring thrusters only.”

“It’s worse than that,” said Kybernetes Maxentius in a slow but certain tone.

“It usually is,” grumbled the Kentarchos.

The Kybernetes pointed to the bank of video monitors as the tactical officer turned in his chair. Most showed technical data and schematics, but nearly half were bonded together to show the entire fontal arc in front of the light cruiser. Where they had been showing slow moving stars, the imagery had completely changed to the almost black shape they had seen earlier.

“It’s the Khanda cruiser. They tracked us down.”

Kybernetes Maxentius didn’t even have to check his orders before speaking. He tapped his communication node to connect to all the command stations on board the ship. Before he opened his mouth, he could see the alerts coming from the tactical computers. The enemy gun ports were opening, and warnings alerted the officers of a potential attack.

“To your stations. We are under attack!”

The light cruiser shook when hit by a sustained volley of plasma charges. If the opponent had been something more substantial, like the Median ships of the line known as Elamite Battleships, then it would have already been over. Luckily, the Khanda class light cruiser was a scout class vessel, and lacked the heavy firepower to end the engagement quickly. Even so, the red alert and warning sounds running through the deck served as a reminder that without shields, the ship would take damage with each and every shot fired. Even the first volley was able to cause death and mutilation to anybody in the damaged sections. The Kybernetes pointed at the vessel and roared.

“Return fire, now!”

The laser blasts from Drakonis raked the
Khanda, and its shield flickered in a bright display of different colours. There were only two cutters fitted to the ship, but as they ran along the length of the ship, it cut down three banks of shields. Several small explosions marked where the beam struck as the shields struggled to manage the strikes.

“Kentarchos, their shields are down to twenty-three percent,” said the tactical officer.

“Good, keep up the fire.”

More gunfire slammed into Drakonis, but it was too little to stop her from knocking down the shields of the Median cruiser. In a matter of seconds, the two ships found themselves in a similar position, with their shields down and their jump-engines offline. As soon as the shields dropped, the following laser blasts cut right through the outer hull plating and deep inside her structure. Six plasma bolts hammered the dorsal gun platforms of Drakonis, and a large part of the topside tore off and drifted into space, carrying a dozen crew and all the fixed weapon units.

“Structural damage to her command centre and engine room.”

Kentarchos Ezekiel Manus started to congratulate him when the threat indicator flickered red. He looked closely at the screen showing the area of space around his ship as well as the enemy cruiser sitting in front of his own vessel. The outline of the cruiser had been joined by another similar warship.

No, Gods no!

“Another Khanda class light cruiser, Kentarchos. They are demanding our surrender.”

The
Kybernetes looked to his Kentarchos, the bitter disappointment clear on his face.

“Your orders, Kentarchos?”

He looked to his officers, but his facial expression had changed in the last minute. It had moved from desperation and worry to one of grim determination. His eyes tightened down a fraction before he spoke.

“We fight, and we don’t stop fighting until none of us remains.”

The Kybernetes looked to the other officers and pointed to the enemy warships.

“I want every ounce of power put to our weapons. We don’t stop while one of us is breathing!”

* * *

Medes’ Battleship ‘Sraosha’, Larissa System, Core Worlds

The light was much brighter than expected inside the cavernous interior of the Median battleship. Strip lights were embedded in the floor, ceiling, and walls so that most shadows were blotted out by even more light. The glyphs and marks on the walls were like nothing seen inside a Terran ship, yet the walkways felt familiar to most of them. Loudspeakers hidden inside the structure echoed with the shouting of Median voices, as the commanders shouted orders to the myriad of automatons that must have filled it. Xenophon pulled a set of thick cabling out of the way and moved ahead. Out in the distance he could see another group of Terrans pushing ahead.

“Keep moving!” he said encouragingly, not that any of them needed it.

As before, they were all armed and equipped as conventional spatharii, the heavy infantry of the Terrans. Each wore a full set of tactical armour that protected them via multiple sections of layered armour. They wore traditional helms, and in their hands they carried the infamous Doru Mk II high-velocity pulse rifle.

Every one of them was well equipped for long-range firepower, but Xenophon still wore the Asgeirr-Carbine on his right hand. It combined a short-ranged pulse carbine with the deadly razor sharp blade. Two of the warriors with them carried mobile shield generators that weighed half as much again as a man. Though cumbersome, they could prove critical in a fight.

“It’s clear!” called out one of the warriors from further inside the ship.

The group of thirty spatharii passed through the passageway and towards the rear gunnery decks. As they made quick progress, Xenophon checked in with the dozens of other dekarchos who were now inside and leading small groups of warriors to different parts of the vessel. He had no idea how the rest of the battle was going. His only interest at that moment was the success or failure of their boarding action.

“How are we doing?” asked Roxana, without taking an eye off the shadows ahead of them.

“Reports so far show the place is pretty quiet. One unit ran right into a repair crew; the rest are moving fast. We will have the stern overrun in minutes.”

Roxana didn’t seem to like that. She stopped and pulled Xenophon to one side. Even as she spoke, she maintained a careful watch down the passageway, ever wary of the signs of the enemy.

“I don’t like this, Xenophon, not one bit. Artemas is holding back, don’t you think? Shouldn’t there be warriors on a ship like this?”

A scream from further inside answered her question.

“Automatons!” shouted a Terran.

Xenophon looked at her, but it was the grinning Glaucon that spoke first.

“Answer your question?”

Two spatharii at the head of the group took a volley of pulse rounds that quickly killed them, sending the rest diving for cover. The body armour of the Terrans was impressive, but there was little it could do against such overwhelming close ranged firepower. The rear of the gunnery deck was a double-width passageway with grab rails on both sides and an open plan room to the right, leading to the gun units. The rear of these guns was the size of a dromon and the power capacitors half the size again. Thick cabling as wide as a man’s head ran up to the ceiling and floors, vanishing into the bowels of the ship.

They’ve automated the guns on this thing.

 
Xenophon tried to speak, but his communication node suddenly filled with the shout of dozens of officers as groups of the Medes foot soldiers appeared.

They left these decks purposefully clear. Is this standard practice, or did they pull back when they spotted our dromons coming this way?

He turned to Artemas, but she was already firing with her Doru pulse rifle. He couldn’t see exactly whom she was firing at, but the return shots came perilously close to her athletic figure. As she ran out of ammunition, she dropped the magazine and slipped in another without moving the gun itself. The movement was fluid and silent; instantly taking him back to their first meeting, where he recalled the beating he’d taken.

Could she have known about it?

He’d known her for some time now, and there were few he would trust more than the Medes woman. Even so, a lingering doubt shook him at the thought they might have been betrayed at such a vulnerable time. As she reloaded, she spotted him looking.

“The gunnery deck is a short distance ahead. We have to keep moving or they will trap us here.”

Xenophon shook his head.

“No, we need to be faster. Is the command centre the same on this ship?”

Artemas shook her head.

“I’ve never been near the command part of the ship.”

Three projectiles crashed nearby, and all of them ducked for cover. Xenophon was the first to get back to his feet.

“Do you know where on the ship we need to go?”

Artemas smiled at this question.

“These command ships have a single open deck near the upper side. Most of the crew are based there. I think the commander of the ship operates from there as well.”

Xenophon and Glaucon looked at each other.

“So whoever controls the deck, controls the ship,” said Glaucon.

“Indeed,” replied Xenophon.

He had no doubt she was right and for now concentrated on what he could affect instead. His training and combat experience kicked in, and he quickly appraised the situation.

“Shields to the front!” he growled.

The two men manhandled the generators to the front of the unit while the remainder returned fire in a massed exchange with the automatons. Though just a hundred metres apart, the combined firepower was deadly. Another spatharii was struck, but this time his armour deflected the shot and sent it crashing to the wall. With a gentle flicker, a faded pink colour shape appeared in front of the two men. Pulse rounds slammed into the units and bounced off to strike the walls instead.

“Good, now push!”

Rather than fight, the two men moved the generators, the other spatharii following right behind. It was slow work and took a full two minutes to move the entire length but finally they made it, and the Terran warriors were able to cut down the guards from the safety of their shielded position.

“What now then, the command deck?” asked Glaucon.

A dozen of the spatharii looked back at Xenophon and shouted out at what they had discovered so far. At the same time, reports came back in from the other units inside the ship. Most had broken through the outer defences and were moving in on the vital sections at the rear. Xenophon lifted himself up tall and pointed to the ceiling.

“The command deck. We will take this fight to their commanders!”