From Furies Forged (Free Fleet Book 5) (28 page)

              “How are we looking for the payloads?” I looked to Rick.

              “We’re sorted, Vort what are the reports from the merchants?” Rick said.

              “They’re ready and waiting,” Vort confirmed.

              “Milra, Ben, I think it’s time that we built up some momentum. Ben I want you and the AI’s and navigators working on our solution. Vort, connect me with Commander Whorst please.”

              “Commander Whorst is on the line,” Vort said a few moments later.

              “Put him on Vort,” I said, Whorst’s bridge on War-station appeared by way of reply.

              “Is Devastahli and the other AI’s and navigators sure they can pull this off?” I asked.

              “Yes commander,” Whorst said, straightening in his chair.

              “Very well, we will keep you updated,” I glanced to my screens that showed various waypoints in the system. “It will be another ten minutes until they are in optimum range,” I said.

              “We’ll make sure their present is on time,” Whorst said with a hardness that made me take his word as already a done thing.

              “I don’t think they’re going to like it one bit,” Rick chimed in. The grin on his face the kind of mischief that ended in making someone pay with their lives.

              “Oh no, they aren’t,” Whorst agreed, a new hunger in his eyes after the way his fleet had been mauled. Clearing out all of the Kalu had taken his Commandos, and people working in powered armor as well as Boot’s forces.

              He had taken forty-percent casualties across all of his ships, but he had done his job, they had made the Kalu pay a hundred times over. Even with those numbers Whorst’s fleet was still in pain from their losses, losses that they had no time to mourn as they worked with the massive Free Merchant fleet organized in the dark between systems with a very nasty surprise for the Kalu.

              The timer counted down as jump fighters came back, less of them each time.

              It hurt my soul to see them going out there again and again, rushing towards the enemy and doing everything they could to blunt the Kalu’s blow.

              “The Kalu are now in range,” Resilient said.

              “Transmit orders to Whorst to fire,” I said. “Milra, full military speed across the fleet, everyone to their acceleration chairs.”

              The fleet’s engines were at full power as our own bomb-pumped acceleration kicked in, pushing us to a rate that inertia compensators strained under.

              It was one of the rare times that I was capable of feeling the acceleration of the ship under my feet.

              “Here comes the mail!” Whorst said, I looked to the main lot as a wormhole appeared in front of the Kalu forces. It was the biggest wormhole I had ever seen.

              I checked my smaller view screens which showed me the area in which the merchant fleet and Whorst’s functional ships were in. They accelerated their asteroid payloads towards the massive wormhole that they’d cobbled together with wormhole projectors and massive capacitors that powered the whole thing.

              Ninety-seven Free merchant ships and seventeen Free Fleet warships released their heavily accelerated cargo. Stabilizers kept the asteroids from being destroyed in the wormhole as they left the small fleet behind and appeared in front of the Kalu.

              “We have good receive of the present,” Walf said, looking over the various sensor inputs.

              The asteroids spread out with the engines that had been slapped on them. They turned to make sure their longest sides were pointed towards the Kalu.

              “Beginning fracturing,” Marleen announced as mining explosive were set off systematically ripping the asteroids into shrapnel.

              The Kalu tried to maneuver out of the way but there was no escaping the wall of asteroid debris that had been accelerated to the speeds of a star-ship.

              The Kalu’s own momentum worked against them, adding power to the asteroids impacts as they raced to their deaths.

              It cleared through the Kalu formations.

              Ships flared in nuclear brilliance, their fire and atmosphere ripped away by the dark of space.

              Star-warriors and Star-Destroyers were just alloys, atmosphere, and creatures to the laws of physics. Tens of thousands of ships were hammered by the debris.

              Eventually the destruction fell away, the momentum of the asteroids breaking them into chunks whenever they came into contact with debris.

              The Kalu used the hulks of their dead clan members as cover until the mayhem had passed. Twenty-five thousand Kalu ships had been destroyed, that number was still just a percentage of those that were already in the system having come through the jump-fighters reaping.

              “How are we looking across the board?” I asked, looking away from the destruction, suppressing the flare of hope that filled me as the destruction fell away and Kalu that hadn’t been in the front ranks of the formation moved past their destroyed clan members and brethren to bring us under contact.

              “Uhh, yeah,” In Sook stumbled as she focused on the information on her boards instead of the destruction happening outside of the main screen. “Everything is looking good,” In Sook said, her voice firming as she went through her various feeds.

              “How long until we’re ready to fire?” I asked, trying to clear my throat and force air into my body, the extra gravities taking their toll as my powered armor forced air into my helmet.

              “Five minutes,” Rick said.

              “Good,” I said, watching my screen in anticipation.

              “Ready to begin transmission of relay two,” Resilient said. A few moments later multiple points in a circular formation lit up like damned Christmas trees, capacitors as big as that which was inside Hic Stamus funneled their raw power into their projectors. A wormhole big enough to take the entire fleet and more in a single go formed, measuring nineteen kilometers big.

              “Releasing payloads, Helm!” Marleen said as Milra used the forward bomb-pumped acceleration system to slow the entire carrier. Towing cables were released with explosive bolts as asteroids whipped past Hic Stamus, the other ships in the fleet were carrying out the same maneuver.

              A correlating wormhole appeared a few hundred thousand kilometers past the first wormhole that had ejected the first barrage of asteroids.

              Kalu rammed into it, without their projectors attuned to the wormhole it was like watching the universe’s biggest garbage chute.

              Ship after ship disappeared from existence before the asteroids we released entered the wormhole on our side and ripped free of its partner, heading right into the teeth of the Kalu

              The wormhole stayed up, eating Kalu ships as the asteroids did to their fellows before them, turning and exploding, their debris was faster than the first barrage. They went through a ship or two before they were either destroyed or didn’t have the momentum to harm the Kalu ships.

               The Kalu had finally stopped exiting from their wormholes at the jump limit. They continued towards what had become a graveyard of Kalu even as the asteroids ripped through ships like buckshot through paper.

              “Wormhole’s out of power, shutting it down,” Resilient informed us as the wormhole closed and we cruised through where the massive wormhole had been just minutes ago.

              All eyes were looking at the destruction we’d wrought.

              “By the Black,” Rick said, his voice so quiet I barely heard the words.

              I saw more than one person looking to me. It had been my idea to do this, and it had worked, but the cost, well. I looked to the numbers, one-hundred and sixty-three thousand ships were said to be destroyed.

              In less than two hours, I had killed at least seventeen-
million
sentient creatures.

              “That’s what you get for Heija,” someone said, dark anger in their voice. Other voices rose in agreement.

             
Get your shit together James, either you kill them, or they will destroy you and the people that you want to protect.
I thought, my face showing none of my inner turmoil as I looked over my screens.

              I wanted to go in there, railguns and laser cannons blazing as missiles streamed out of their tubes to add to the pain.

             
This must be how some poker players feel when the asshole across for them goes all in and they’ve just won the last two pots.
I thought, my mind remembering the first battle for Heija.

              Not one of my people were cowards, but I needed them alive if we were going to crush the Kalu, we needed to whittle down their numbers, not throw them away on attacks that emotions determined.

              “Alright get that wormhole solution ready, we’re continuing as planned.” I was about to ask Marleen if the gunnery crews were ready, but from the hungry look in her eyes, they were only waiting for the order to fire. “Marleen be ready with those missile volleys tell the gunners they’ll have targets shortly. Milra, make sure that all of the gunneries get some targets, wouldn’t want to leave anyone out of this.”

              “Yes sir!” Milra agreed with a toothy smile, malice in her eyes. Marleen’s chuckle was filled with the nervous energy of someone just waiting for the target to come into their field of view.

              “Commander Heston, let’s secure the jump fighters. I want them all accounted for. I know that they’re going to be the whipping people of the fleet for the near future, make sure the cafeterias have something warm ready for them,” I said, my face brooking no argument, they had done the fleet proud and we were going to honor them.

              “Already done Commander,” Heston said, his eyes meeting with mine, understanding filling them.

              “How long until we are in range?” I asked.

              “About three hours,” Rick said.

              “Rotate our people around, make sure they have something hot in their stomachs. I want them back in their positions in a half-hour,” I said, getting them up and moving, eating, or if their stomach couldn’t handle it and the nerves, drinking something kept them fresh.

              Sitting at a gun, or in their Damage crew ready-areas could make a person’s mind wander. Having them think about something, anything else before the battle, then giving a hundred and ten-percent was a better practice. I had been reading some old sea-going warfare books.

                                                                      ***

              Smith slowly pushed against the pink jelly which filled his cockpit, it sloughed off of his battle suit, covering the roughly motorcycle-looking controls he mounted when he piloted his jump fighter.

              Pilots helped him out onto rubbery legs.

              “I’m like a teenager at prom,” he joked, getting a few laughs as he stumbled a few steps, feeling coming back to his legs, his specialized battle suit making sure his blood was going to all the right places.

              “Got some hot drink and food before we go on with the commander’s insane idea,” one of the techs said.

              “The man might be insane, but he does like to make things interesting,” Smith said, remembering when Salchar had come into the shuttle he and the rest of his ‘boarding party’ had been secured in.

              He hadn’t cared for conventional means since he became Commander of the Free Fleet.
Who else would let Felix make jump fighters, and let me pilot them!
He thought with a tired grin, a pilot helping him across the catwalk as his jump fighter was moved into a maintenance bay. Its top open at the front like an older engine hood so he could get in the rear.

              There was more than one joke about that.

              It didn’t take him long to get his legs back, he waved to the Shafio, Ershue and Falhu races that made up the majority of jump fighter pilots because of their ability to work in three dimensions.

              Shafio looked like two squids put together with something like a face in the middle, they were aquatic creatures and could use multiple interfaces at once, and the bastards could make a fighter
move
.

              Ershue looked like goblins with wings, and like goblins they liked their pranks, well most of them. Those in the Free Fleet had learned the age-old rule of time and place. When their minds got turned onto making someone have a really bad day, well, it was needless to say Smith always enjoyed having them on his side and not coming at him.

              The Falhu were even weirder looking than the Shafio, they looked like ostriches that had their bodies stretched up. Wings lay along their sides. Their feathers were as strong as aluminum when they wanted them to be and as maneuverable as a human’s fingers. Their prey was the Merchertevak a nasty piece of work, and a creature that even Avarians respected as a worthy opponent.