Farthest Shore: A Mecha Scifi Epic (The Messenger Book 13) Read online

  That was all Dash had time to take in before defensive batteries opened fire, bathing the Archetype in scintillating glare as the shield absorbed the hits.

  “Burst-cannons,” he muttered. “Not their new weapon, at least.”

  “Not yet,” Sentinel said.

  “Gloomy of you, but I understand. They’re just warming up.”

  Dash threw the Archetype into a tight, climbing turn, at the same time firing the dark-lance at the closest burst-cannon battery, mounted on a rocky promontory overlooking the lake. A magnetic shield enclosed it, which made Dash go hmm. Magnetic shielding made no difference to the dark-lance, which just ignored it and turned the battery to a cloud of vapor and elementary particles. He wheeled up and away, gaining altitude again. Behind him, Leira and Jexin stuck close, pounding out fire from their mechs at anything resembling a Deeper target. He was about to raise the odd magnetic shield when Jexin spoke.

  “Ten o’clock, what’s that?”

  Dash looked to his left. A trail of shattered, scorched trees snaked off toward the horizon and vanished into the mist of distance. It was as though something had torn through the forest on a slightly meandering path, shredding and burning trees as it went.

  “That is a fallen orbital tower,” Tybalt, Leira’s AI, replied.

  Dash nodded. Orbital towers, such as the Deeper Water Hooks, were an efficient, relatively low-energy way of lifting stuff off the planet. The nearby Water Hook sported a bulge every hundred meters or so, which Sentinel had deduced were reservoirs. Rather than trying to lift their stolen water directly to orbit, which would require enormous energy, they lifted it in one-hundred-meter steps. It still ultimately required the same amount of energy to lift the same amount of mass, but doing it a bit at time meant they weren’t ever trying to lift water, which was heavy, more than a hundred meters.

  But orbital towers were also finicky, requiring constant attention to make sure their top ends didn’t drift. If one failed, it would tend to break at its mid-point, with the upper half flying off into space, and the lower half plunging back to the surface. That was apparently exactly what had happened here. Some fifteen thousand klicks of cable had slammed down across the landscape, wreaking havoc across almost half of the planet.

  Sentinel spoke up. “The anchor point for the existing Water Hook had been used previously as the base of the one that has now fallen. There are blast marks and other indications of catastrophic damage to it that have only recently been repaired.”

  “I would add that there are at least two more fallen Water Hooks elsewhere on the planet,” Tybalt put in.

  Dash gave a fierce grin. “That’ll be the work of the N’Teel. Well done, you aggressive little fuzzballs.”

  He wheeled the Archetype over the foothills of a rugged mountain range, clearing the airspace for Lori’s Orions and Perseids to do their own attack run. Once they’d knocked out the defensive batteries around the Water Hook, it would open a path for the ground force’s assault shuttles to make a run into the gaping scar of the Deeper mining complex some hundred klicks to the east.

  The last Perseid cleared the airspace. The Stalwart’s fighter wings raced overhead toward the mining complex, preparing to soften it up for the ground assault. As they did, though, Dash saw a squadron of Denkillers suddenly detach and come racing directly toward him.

  He gaped for a second, then saw why. A swarm of Deeper fighters had come pouring over the nearby mountains, loosing volleys of missiles as they appeared.

  Kicking his drive, Dash settled in to fight. “Here we go.”

  Benzel winced as another missile impacted against the Herald’s shield. The big ship struggled to disperse the blast, but it couldn’t do it fast enough. Another hit, maybe two, and it would have to cycle into full discharge mode, leaving the Herald with only her armor, her speed, and her ability to maneuver to protect her.

  “Tactical, any sign of that Deeper super weapon?” he snapped.

  The reply was immediate. “No, sir. None of the screening ships have encountered it. Either they’re holding it back to use on our capital ships, or they just don’t have it deployed here.”

  “It might be experimental, maybe just a prototype,” the Navigation Officer put in. He sounded unduly hopeful. Benzel had long ago learned that hope was often just delayed disappointment.

  Still, he had a point. They needed to know what they faced.

  He leaned forward. “Helm, plot a course for our squadron to close with the Deeper battleline. Tactical, send orders to the rest of the fleet to hold back. And let the Commander of the Victory know that he’s in command if something happens to us.”

  Benzel’s XO, an exchange officer from the Rimworld League’s fleet named Teegan, raised an eyebrow. “I take it we’re about to do something dangerous,” she said.

  “Depends. Do you consider charging in close to an enemy to find out if they have a devastating super weapon against which we apparently have no defense dangerous?”

  The woman smiled. “I do. But damned if it ain’t exciting.”

  Benzel smiled back. He’d probably once have considered it exciting, too.

  3

  Dash snapped the Archetype through a hard, banking turn, but the Deeper fighter was able to keep inside it, sending out burst-cannon shots that flared against the mech’s shield. He hated to admit it, but the nimble little Deeper fighters had the advantage over the mechs. They could use aerodynamic forces, the effects of their wings and control surfaces, to maneuver in ways that mechs, which relied solely on drive power and thrusters, simply couldn’t.

  He cursed in frustration. The fighter wasn’t doing much harm to him with any given shot, but it was slowly piling up. A guy with a hammer could eventually reduce a boulder to sand, given enough time.

  “Screw this,” Dash snapped, then pulled the Archetype into a vertical climb. The Deeper fighter tried to follow, but in terms of sheer speed and power, it couldn’t hope to keep up with the mech. Dash saw it try, then give up and hammerhead-stall back into a dive and race back into the fight raging below.

  Dash scowled. Okay, he’d managed to break off. But unless he just wanted to sit up here in the cloud bases, watching as the battle unfolded, he’d have to drop back down into the fray. The Deeper fighters were just too small and agile for the targeting scanners to manage reliable locks against the ground clutter. The Archetype really wasn’t meant for this sort of combat, and it showed.

  He dove anyway. As he did, he got a flicker of solid targeting solution on a Deeper fighter that was pulling an Immelmann turn as it tried to dodge rail gun fire from a Denkiller. The Stalwart’s fighters were doing most of the heavy lifting here. But they were outnumbered, and the strain of combat was starting to show.

  He triggered the dark-lance and watched with satisfaction as the Deeper fighter vanished in a flash, debris raining back down into the forest below.

  That was one.

  He swept the Archetype past the Water Hook and tried to line up another attack. He saw Leira and Jexin, still together, duking it out against a quartet of Deeper fighters that danced around them like gnats. Dash rolled the Archetype to help them, but another pair of Deeper ships dropped onto his six and opened up, slamming more energy into the mech’s shield.

  Dash hissed a line of curses, then checked his status. Green, but under the strain of atmospheric combat—and that, he could endure.

  He prepared to pull the Archetype into another power climb and see if he could figure out a different way to do this. Before he could though, a fighter of unknown design whipped past him in a blur. Another, about to pass him on the other side, let loose with a solid, incandescent beam of energy. It wasn’t directed at him, though. It slammed into one of the Deeper fighters and blew it apart. The first unknown fighter scrubbed the other Deeper off his tail.

  “Sentinel, who the hell are these guys?”

  “I would venture they are N’Teel ships coming to our assistance.”

  Dash grinned. “Well, Garcis
s did say she’d help us out inside the atmosphere.” He blinked as more of the solid energy beams lanced out from the N’Teel fighters, each hit blasting their Deeper target from the sky. In just a few seconds, the battle turned, the remaining Deepers either trying suicide runs at both the Realm and N’Teel ships or withdrawing to the east.

  “Okay, Sentinel, what happens if we blast apart the anchor point of this Water Hook? Does it fall the same way the other one did?”

  “More or less. Assuming it breaks at its mid-point, then the unbalanced forces will likely cause it to topple in the opposite direction to the planet’s rotation.”

  “I just don’t want to bring it down on top of any N’Teel.”

  “I’d point out that they were quite happy to destroy the one that was here previously.”

  “Good point,” Dash replied, yanking the Archetype through a tight turn and opening fire on the Water Hook’s anchor point at its base. His dark-lance and nova-cannon shots slammed into the structure, blasting chunks of it apart with a ferocity that sent debris whirling through the air. He pulled up and rushed past, just as the entire edifice broke free and began to slowly drag itself across the landscape, water cascading from it, plowing an enormous furrow through the rock, soil, and marshland around it as it did. It was as though some great hand had grabbed the broken water hook somewhere far above the clouds and now pulled it along behind it as it ponderously strode away. After a moment, though, the broken tower rose free of the surface and, trailing dirt and debris, began to lift from the surface, as though heading spaceward.

  “Thought it would just fall over,” Dash said, giving the stray water hook a wide berth as he circled it.

  “It depends upon where else it fails. Some or all of it may crash back to the surface, or enter orbit, or even escape the planet’s gravitational effects completely,” Sentinel replied.

  “Ah.”

  The Swift and Polaris zoomed back into formation behind Dash. “Well, that was fun. Nice little dogfight to start the day,” Leira said.

  “On the other hand, that is not something you see very often,” Jexin added, apparently watching in awe as the severed tower rose into the clouds—faster, now, as the orbital energy of its upper length pulled it spaceward.

  “It isn’t, is it?” Dash said. “Anyway, that’s one of these things down, two to go. Sentinel, send orders to the Stalwart’s fighters to form up on us and then invite our new N’Teel allies to do the same.”

  “Will do. Something tells me they’ll be . . . enthusiasts.”

  Wei-Ping had found herself gritting her teeth so hard during Benzel’s charge at the Deeper guns that her jaw ached. With each passing heartbeat, she dreaded seeing the dim, purplish flicker of their new weapon, lashing out and tearing the Herald to shreds, followed by the rest of her squadron.

  But while the Herald and her consorts took the brunt of fire from the Deeper battleline, the new weapon didn’t put in an appearance. As soon as Benzel’s flagship was engaged, the rest of the fleet pressed in. Wei-Ping still worried that the Deepers might be holding back, waiting for the moment when they could savage the whole fleet with their terrifying beam weapon. But they probably wouldn’t. The Herald and her squadron had already wrought enormous damage in their charge. It wasn’t likely they were that stoical, waiting to the bitter end before unleashing it. At that point, it would just be for dramatic effect.

  Besides, the Stalwart had her own worries, like the three heavy cruisers and four frigates that had detached themselves from the main battleline and now raced headlong toward her. The Stalwart, the heavy cruiser Tsunami, and three destroyers had been tagged to protect the assault carriers in low orbit around the N’Teel planet. The carriers had almost finished launching their assault shuttles, the little craft streaking into the atmosphere like meteorites to their assigned objectives. The assault carriers could fight, but despite their size, only had the main battery weight of a destroyer, backed up by a plethora of point-defense mounts. By themselves, they couldn’t hope to take on a trio of heavy cruisers.

  But they wouldn’t have to.

  “Helm, start raising our orbit but keep us between the Deepers and those carriers. Tactical, I want the destroyers to follow us, standard formation—uh, let’s use alpha-two. The Tsunami is going to stay behind as backstop in case anything gets past us.”

  She got acknowledgements, then turned to Sukovic. “Any ideas?”

  “Besides kicking ass? Nope. Anyway, if you need me, I’ll be in auxiliary.”

  Wei-Ping waved him away. The Stalwart incorporated a new design philosophy, burying not just one but two CICs deep inside the ship. If one were compromised, the other could immediately take over and keep fighting the ship. The bridge, located on the upper hull, was used only for routine navigation and was evacuated and sealed off during combat.

  She glanced once at Sukovic as he departed, heading for his battle station in the auxiliary CIC. She’d rather have had him at her side, but she got it in the same way she got the value of a CIC, where all of the incoming data could be fused and displayed. Long gone were the days of fighting like a privateer, crammed onto an exposed bridge and trying to make sense out of what she could see with her feeble human eyes. This was a sophisticated war, and it needed heightened command and control.

  Huh. All of a sudden, I’m a soldier, Wei-Ping suddenly thought. From a grubby corridor-rat scrabbling out a bleak, day-to-day existence on Passage, to sitting in this chair, colossal power at her beck and call.

  She should write her memoirs someday.

  But not today. “Tactical, time to engage?”

  “Three minutes.”

  Wei-Ping watched the planet’s surface fall away beneath the Stalwart as she flew straight into the jaws of her enemies.

  Dash watched the third Water Hook start its slow, cumbersome collapse with dark satisfaction. Neither this nor the previous one had been anywhere near as vigorously defended as the first. That had been good, making their job easier, but it also made Dash a little nervous. Were the Deepers holding back? Was their priority actually their mining complexes, the very places to which the ground assault was inbound?

  “Dash, the Stalwart’s fighters are reporting that they’re near the limit of their endurance. They’ve got twenty minutes of atmospheric flight time left, and then they’ll have to break off and return to the Stalwart to refuel and rearm.”

  Dash swept his attention across the tactical display. The ground assault was five minutes out from their first objective, the mining complex to the east of the first Water Hook. Atmospheric drag shortened the endurance of the fighters, and if they had to fight, that would cut in half. So he had to assume they had no more than fifteen minutes left. They were about five minutes flight time from the mining complex themselves—

  Dash compared the rough numbers in his head, then made a decision. “Let’s send the fighters back now. Otherwise, they’re only going to have about five minutes of useful fight time.”

  “Understood,” Sentinel replied.

  “Leira, Jex, Lori, it looks like it’s just us mechs to cover the ground assault. That should still be more—”

  Sentinel cut him off. “Dash, we have a problem.”

  Wei-Ping clenched her jaw, making it ache again. The Stalwart shuddered under another missile impact. It ripped and gouged at her armor but failed to penetrate. X-ray laser beams slashed at her, but it was now that one of her most clever design features came into play. It had been Conover’s idea, which bugged Wei-Ping because he was just the sort of bookish, myopic intellectual sort she found irritating. Or he had been, anyway, but he had proved himself a brave and capable fighter, earning her grudging respect. This latest innovation might just be enough to remove the grudging part.

  One of the side effects of their experiments with Dark Metal Two had been the development of a stunningly effective superconductor. None of their tech really needed it, though. The Unseen already used superconductive materials in their tech that didn’t need the sca
rce DM-Two, and there were just better uses for the stuff. But Conover had figured out that even a small amount of DM-Two could produce a superconductive laminate sufficient to layer over the exterior of a ship. The Stalwart had been their test bed for the experiment.

  An experiment that had thoroughly sold Wei-Ping on the concept. She intended to make that clear when—and if—she got back to the Forge. When the Deepers’ x-ray lasers struck the ship, their effect was almost instantly diffused across the entire surface area of its hull. What should have been a powerful, concentrated beam tearing through the armor was instead an almost gentle warming of the entire hull. It had effectively neutered one of the Deepers’ primary weapons, which would have been great if she hadn’t been so badly outnumbered.

  She studied the situation for a few seconds. “Helm, take us to two o’clock, down pitch thirty-five degrees. That’ll put our less damaged flank toward the bad guys and should also head off the bastard trying to flank—”

  Another heavy blow.

  “—us.”

  Another hit. And another. Each time, the Stalwart shuddered deep in her bones. And each time, Wei-Ping almost yelped, convinced it was the new Deeper weapon, finally coming into play. Whether the new superconductive armor would stop it, she had no idea. But, no, they had been missile impacts. The ship’s point defenses were concentrating on any of the far deadlier torps that were flung their way, so missiles kept getting through.

  The Stalwart was being beaten up the old-fashioned way—one hit at a time. No single hit did a lot of damage, but it was piling up. Still, she was living up to her name, standing firmly in the line of fire and dishing out almost as good as she got. The gamma-ray lasers had been particularly effective for the brief time they’d actually been working, severely damaging one of the Deeper cruisers. But the finicky weapons weren’t quite ready for action yet, both batteries having packed it in after only a few shots.