War of Alien Aggression 4 Taipan (19 page)

Ram said he'd custom stacked those packets to exploit a weakness in the maintenance subroutines. He'd said that once it uploaded and propagated across the relay net, the packets would reset all the microsats as different networks so they'd no longer act as relays.

Once she'd pushed that virtual button, the job was done, but there was no verification. There was no way for her to know that the packets had been accepted. She knew she'd done her part right, but there was no way to tell if it was working. Ram had said it would take at least a minute to propagate across the network. She didn't think she had a minute.

There was a dull and yielding thud against the hatch behind her....something soft maybe. She only had a second to wonder what it was because when they blew the hatch, the force of the shockwave in the ship's atmo threw her body forward into the terminal. Her brain hit her skull.

She saw a bright light flash, and it faded. As she slipped into blackness, all Dana Sellis could think of was how dying like this just wasn't fair. She'd never even know what happened.

*****

Five Lancers couldn't hope to wax a dozen red bandits, but they could disrupt them, so as the bandits closed on the 55th and pointed their particle beams at the Hellcats, Jordo dove his interceptor through the mass of Squidy fighters with the Lancers behind him, firing off snap shots so the Squidies had to maneuver off their line of attack if they didn't want to get dusted. He spun on his maneuvering jets, flying sideways, almost backwards as he let his Bitzer's autocannon rip across the last alien fighter in the formation. His shells blew the spikes off it and drilled inside its elongated hull.

There was just enough time before its reactor cooked off for Jordo to see he'd screwed up. The two Squidies he'd ripped past before dusting that last one didn't swing back for another pass like he thought they would. Instead, they kept their line of travel and turned on their maneuvering jets to line Jordo up for a shot.

Paladin was only a second behind Jordo and the Lancers' second flight element was following just two seconds behind Paladin. The aliens must have seen the three of them coming. Making Jordo their target and drifting sideways to put a bead on him was a stupid, vengeance-driven move. They were mad. They wanted to kill Jordo more than they wanted to live.

The bandits fired again and herded him with waving particle streams as he jinked to avoid them. They closed across his bow, and Jordo had to rotate his fighter and blast hard out his line of travel. The resultant gees were more than his inertial negation system could compensate for and all Jordo could do was try to keep conscious as the g-forces crushed him.

The Squidies were on his tail, and then their beams crossed right in front of him, too close to avoid. They looked as if they'd scissor him, and he opened his mouth to scream for help, but with the gees crushing him, only a wheeze came out.

Paladin's voice rang in his ear: "Die, mutherfucker, die!" Paladin said as he opened up on the Squidies about to dust Jordo. The particle streams closing on Jordo's 151 veered away and ceased as flashes lit off behind him.

The time it took Paladin to say 'Die, mutherfucker, die!' was the perfect duration for a burst of autocannon fire. He said after that, the six cannon began to rattle in the fighter's frame and the fire sprayed, but when he kept the duration of his burst to the time it took him to repeat his mantra, Paladin's grouping was like a sniper's. He said his mantra twice more and dusted another Squidy before he flew close past the burning wreck and flipped it off.

Jordo knew he had to get back there to cover Paladin because the first flight of three Squidies had now banked around and pointed their guns down his path. Jordo called out, "Lancer 1-2, shake, shake, shake!" Jordo came out of the high-gee maneuver and jinked his fighter around to try and put guns on them, but he couldn't do it fast enough to cover Paladin. "Gush! Cover him! Cover Paladin!"

"I can't get there!"

They were closing in on him. "Dirty!" Jordo shouted to her. "Cover Paladin!" He whipped his head around and looked out every side of the cockpit, but couldn't see her.

She whispered, "Dirty is your angel, baby." Lancer 1-5 held the triggers down as she rolled in on the two Squidies and poured out a hail of shells. They fell in hull-rupturing curtains of fire. The alien interceptors twisted in space under the hammering before the sabot burrowed inside and found their reactors.

Two unbroken flights of alien aces fell in across her rear, from her 4 o'clock to her 8 o'clock and the way they lined up and closed the gaps behind her, even Dirty must have known it was over. She jinked hard and threw her fighter over like it got pimp-slapped, but she couldn't shake them.

Holdout shouted, "Dirty! Go right!" and Jordo didn't know why until she pulled hard to starboard and the Squidies followed her into a bright and beautiful deluge of high-explosive and sabot shells. The hellfire was so thick that before the alien fighters cooked off, Jordo swore the salvo shredded them.

"
Thank you
, Holdout," Paladin said.

"It wasn't me!"

Pooch's sandpaper voice broke in over squadron comms, "Ease off the poor Lancers, Squidy mutherfuckers. Those planes they're flyin' are vintage."

Seventeen Hellcats ripped their fighters through the expanding debris and plasma clouds screaming bloody murder.

"Nice to see you, Hellcats!"

"I copy that, Lancer 1-1. It
is
nice to see us."

The last bandit from that flight of Squidies tried to disengage, but it only got half a K before the Hellcats dusted it with another salvo.

Reactors flashed like fireflies around the other alien ships. Even with the alien fighters tearing into them and the defensive gunners taking a heavy toll, Witt's pilots still followed the arrows projected in their helmets and all of Witt's suicidal orders.

"Hellcat 1-1, this is Lancer 1-1. We've got to break two more squadrons off to handle those bandits."

"Negative, negative, Lancer 1-1. This is just a detour.
Taipan
's orders and vectors are projected in your helmet visor. Next assigned gun target is..." Pooch's voice trailed off.

It was easy to see why she stopped speaking in mid-sentence. Matilda Witt's orders were now gone from Jordo's helmet display. The arrows projected in the visor of his flight helmet telling him and his squadron where to go and what to shoot at had disappeared.

Matilda Witt's command and control relay net was finally down.
Taipan
's signal couldn't cut through the alien jamming and she couldn't give orders anymore. Dana Sellis had done what she said she would.

"Hellcat 1-1, this is Weasel 3-1. Comms with
Taipan
are down."

"
Taipan
command is offline."

"SD 2-1 to
Taipan
, come in
Taipan
." There was no response, of course, just the sound of the alien jamming like ten-thousand summer cicadas. With thirty-million Ks or more between them and the command ship, none of the fighters or
Taipan
could cut through it. They were cut off.

"The Command and Control Relay Net is down." They realized it one by one.

"What do we do?"

This was the most dangerous part, Jordo thought. This was the part where hundreds of pilots found themselves engaged in a large-scale action without orders.
Hardway
was coming, but she wasn't yet close enough to cut through the jamming.

"Hellcat 1-1, what the hell should we do?"

Jordo opened a private channel to Pooch. "Goddamn it, Pooch! Get your people out!" He pulled rank. "I'm a First Lieutenant and I'm ordering you. Get them the hell out of this! Pull them out!"

"I can't! They won't disobey Witt! She'll fucking shoot us! Even if we win the battle, she'll shoot us!"

The alien cruiser below the Hellcats opened up with its smaller, faster beams and took two more of her pilots. 

The new voice on comms was lost in the static at first. Jordo couldn't separate it from the jamming until the approaching, thousand-meter vessel was close enough that the plumes from her engines silhouetted her guns and the command tower rising high above her spine.
Hardway
.

"All fighters, all squadrons, this is
Hardway
Air Group Commander, Asa Biko. I am taking command of all squadrons. Repeat:
I am Honcho
. All fighters disengage immediately.
Hardway
is coming in with the railguns. Lancers, Hellcats, and Wicked Weasels move to newly designated Point Alpha."

Point Alpha blinked in Jordo's helmet with an arrow drawing a path to a point 2000Ks out. Biko said, "Regroup with torpedo junks for assault. All other squadrons, get clear now. Lead the remaining alien fighters to these coordinates." A dimmer arrow appeared in Jordo's visor leading to Point Beta. "This is the
Hardway
AGC. I am in command. All squadron leaders, acknowledge."

Jordo waited to hear acknowledgments from Witt's squadron leaders, but there was nothing but alien fuzz on comms. The fighters continued their suicidal attacks. He thumbed the private channel to Hellcat 1-1. "Pooch. Do it. Do it like we said. Tell them."

Silence on comms.

"Do it, Pooch!" Jordo shouted now. "Tell them to follow
Hardway'
s orders. They won't do it
unless you tell them to
. They won't do it
unless you take responsibility for it!
You're their leader! Fucking lead!"

Pooch said, "She's going to shoot every one of us!"

"I told you! Harry Cozen promised me his protection! Tell your squadron leaders, goddamn it! Tell them to follow
Hardway's
orders. What the hell are you waiting for?"

Chapter Sixteen

The display projected over the deck of
Hardway's
bridge showed the entire battle. The fighters buzzed the six cruisers like flies, still diving at their guns like Matilda Witt had ordered while the aliens chewed them up. Ram saw a few planes that had the sense to break off and engage the fighters, but they were doing it too close to the cruisers and coming under fire from the aliens' defensive batteries as well.

Cozen said, "Show me the Lancers." Biko pointed to J. 'Jordo' Colt and his squadron. A plane flew close to his – only meters away. It wasn't his wingman; it was Hellcat 1-1. They were almost touching cockpits.

Then, Hellcat 1-1 veered away hard towards the rest of her squadron and they finally heard her voice: "All fighters, all squadrons, all
Taipan
flight elements, this is Hellcat 1-1.
Taipan
is offline. We're taking orders from
Hardway
now." She said, "Harry Cozen has personally guaranteed us his protection."

Hearing that, Cozen raised his eyebrows. Ram knew he'd never met her, of course.

Pooch said, "Repeat: all
Taipan
flight elements, follow
Hardway's
orders. Break away to points Alpha and Beta immediately.
Hardway
is in charge. Repeat:
Hardway
is honcho." They heard plenty of chatter on comms, but none of the fighters changed vector until she barked, "This is Pooch! Do it! Do it now or I'll bloody shoot you down!"

Cozen sat forward. "I
like
that pilot."

"They're doing it," Ram said. "The fighter squadrons are breaking away from the Squidy cruisers."

The ships in
Hardway's
bridge display were all shown out of scale. The Squidies' cruisers were each a meter tall over the deck of the bridge. They still had plenty of main guns left and they were still a significant threat, but the strange craft they escorted now scared Ram more. If it hadn't fired at the fighters yet, then it had probably been designed to hit bigger, less nimble targets like
Hardway.

"The 151s are all clear," Biko said.

"The alien battlegroup is accelerating to escape. They're making a run for it," Ram said. "I'm making to intercept them."

Biko thumbed comms to the bays. "Launch all remaining QF-111 Dingoes."

YY-Geminorum's pale violet light glinted off the Dingoes as the 57 autonomous drones tore out the forward bays and spiraled around the ship, looking for something to kill. Anything without a Staas Company transponder would do. In under two seconds, the Dingoes were clear. Biko said, "Launch all remaining junks. Clear the bays and close the barn doors."

Cozen said, "Bridge to all railgun batteries. Prepare to fire."

"All batteries ready." The gun commander spoke from the midships batteries. They usually lasted longer than the bow guns. Ram eyed the twin turrets of the midships batteries, 250 meters down the ship, just past the primary bays. He saw movement on the back side, in the port turret – light and then dark at the porthole on the rear of the control section. When Ram used his helmet to zoom in, he saw a tiny figure in the diamond porthole waving up to him.

"All batteries, 30 seconds," Ram said. "Damage control teams standby."

"They'll get a couple of shots at us before we're in range," Cozen said. He was right about that.

Hardway
approached from the side of the alien cruisers' formation to limit the number of ships that had line of sight and firing solutions on the carrier. The cruisers on the side facing them had a decent shot and they took it. In the instant after the alien ships opened up and before the blinding flash from the impact, sixteen, painfully straight rays of hyper-accelerated nuclei connected the big guns on the alien ships to
Hardway's
forward launch bays.

The torrent of kinetic energy smashed into the bays and tore at the belt-iron steel, leaving molten-edged gashes. The shock of the impact came down the carrier's spine and up through the deck. It barely faded before the next shots cut across the lacerations left by the first and scarred
Hardway
with a second set of gashes across midships Hab. That one hit closer and shook the bridge more. A third salvo of raking streams hit the engineering module and almost gouged out two meters of armor.