Shadows_In_The_Sky Read online

  “HMS Relentless to HMS Vermillion, prepare for immediate release.”

  I watched the sensor feed from the Relentless; the moment they dropped us the information would cut out and our own would kick in. “Confirmed Relentless, we are locked tight and ready for launch. Fire when ready.”

  “Good luck Vermillion.” Captain Mason’s voice came over the connection.

  “Thanks,” I said. “Happy hunting.”

  In another moment of disorienting gravity shift the Relentless dropped us and all hell broke loose. “I’m tracking three hundred and seventeen bogies!” Suzie shouted. Somehow through all the chaos I noticed the fact that she pronounced bo-gyys.

  “Only target the ones that target us,” I said. “Don’t draw any attention; the Military will take on the rest.”

  “Right!” she yelled.

  “How’re you doing back there?” I asked back at the advisor who was strapped into the compartment just behind the cockpit and looking green. He didn’t puke, so I took that as ‘I’m fine, how are you?’

  There were more ‘Tal ships than I’d expected at the drop point, but then again I’d never really been in a battle against several Juggernaut class warships. It wasn’t the capital ships that were making it hard; it was the support ships and gunship fighters. Validating my thoughts, a small warship shot in front of us, pivoted, and let loose a stream of kinetic weapons. The superheated particles hit the ship’s shields in a brilliant display of blue and red.

  The good news was that they had just put themselves in the path of my main cannons; the bad news was that they were twice our size. “Fire!” I shouted needlessly as Suzie was already squeezing off an endless stream of plasma shells at the attacking ship. I activated the Vermillion’s weapons and after the flare caused the cockpit’s light shield to engage, the holo-display activated instantly, preventing us from going blind in the fight.

  “They’re peeling off,” Suzie said, firing another volley at a portion of the vessel that looked important.

  “Keep on them,” I said. “Take them down if you can. There is no reason to let them live when we don’t have to.”

  The comm. flashed to life. “Proceed to target, Vermillion, we’ll take it from here.” I punched the ship’s accelerators as a flight of peregrine fighters sent several missiles into the crippled Tarin’Tal ship and buzzed us protectively. Peeling back, the fighters distracted two gunships that had decided we looked tasty. They were Ishikawan craft and used their superior maneuverability to devastating advantage. In a brilliant display of special geography, they fired thrusters at odd angles and unleashed streams of gatling fire. The result was a cloud of debris, ships, and weapons from which all the fighters somehow emerged.

  “Wow!” Suzie shouted. “Cool!”

  I let her gawk; I had my hands full avoiding debris and other random dangers of fleeing a battle. It only took a few seconds to clear the killing field but it felt like ages.

  “Uh, oh!” Suzie said. “Two uglies are on our tale.” I waved my hand and the display shifted to switch the small and large screens, showing us the pursuers behind us.

  “Crap,” I grumbled. “And just when I thought we were out of the woods.” Suzie took control of the turrets again and returned fire. I concentrated on reducing the amount of kinetic heat impacting the rear shields; they were wearing thin. “We’re hitting atmo!” I shouted, and both Suzie and the advisor braced themselves against their seat’s restraints.

  The burn only lasted a half second; the Vermillion was built to brake through the burn without as much as a whisper. One of the gunships muscled through behind us and I thanked God for a tiny bit of luck as the other miscalculated and was swept off course by several miles.

  A warning light began to flash and the ship rocked. “What is that?” Suzie asked nervously. “I just lost another shield,” I said, “and the others aren’t compensating.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Is that all?” The kid has guts I reminded myself.

  “We’re not out of the woods yet,” I growled. I felt my teeth lock. Internal gravity never worked as well in a planet’s atmosphere, and we felt every twist and turn I pushed the Vermillion into as we attempted to avoid the downward fire from the Tarin’Tal ship.

  Suddenly there was a massive surge of input from the sensors and something rushed past the ship with enough force to put us into a sidespin. It was only after I’d regained control of our decent when I realized the battle and chase had brought a healthy portion of the Tarin’Tal strike force into range of the anti-orbital batteries on the ground. They were literally opening up a little window of hell on the attacking fleet, which was thrown into enough confusion to allow the Relentless and her Ishikawan escorts to jump back into gravity stream and leave the system.

  The comm system flared to life. “Incoming human form craft, please identify yourself.” I did a quick check to ensure the Tarin’Tal gunship wasn’t on our tail any longer before replying.

  “Ground control, this is Captain Grumman of the Vermillion. Thank you for your assistance.”

  “No, thank you, Captain. You suckered those ‘Tal into our line of fire quite nicely. Please proceed to the gubernatorial landing to the north of the capital at the coordinates we are transmitting now.”

  6

  We touched down and the ship’s gravity shifted to the planet’s 1.4Gs, which I didn’t like. Anything above 1.3 made me feel like I was sick. People don’t realize just how much high gravity can weigh you down. A two hundred pound man at 1 G, or the amount of gravity on Fallen Earth, would way two hundred and twenty pounds at only 1.1Gs. That meant that if you were on a planet with 1.2G he would weigh two hundred and forty pounds. At 1.4 the same man would suddenly weigh two hundred and eighty pounds. Any worse than 1.6 or 1.7 and you risk organ damage from the sudden and prolonged shift in forces on your body. I happened to weigh two hundred and ten pounds, not much more, but it certainly wasn’t pleasant.

  “Welcome to Red Hills and New Croatia. I am Frederick Bernard, attaché to Governor Simmons. The Governor apologizes for not being able to personally welcome you, but he sends his regards.”

  “That will be fine,” the advisor said as he walked down the gang plank behind us. I didn’t like his demeanor. Only a few minutes ago he had been a sniveling wreck greener than a child’s finger painting of the Grinch.

  “Please follow me,” the attaché said to us as a whole. He lead us through several long polished metal hallways and finally down to a subterranean transport system that whisked us away to the Governor’s villa. I’ve never been comfortable with civilian officials; there’s nothing to say what is acceptable, what isn’t, or who by fallen earth gave them their authority.

  There were guards and military officers every now and again along our rout and judging by the number of people in the transportation networks most of the civilian populace was laying low. I found it odd that none of the soldiery were sporting AHW uniforms or even the shammy local equivalents. Instead they wore crisp militaristic uniforms reminiscent of Imperial dress ware. “Ah, welcome,” the governor said as we came into the broad hall he was using as a base of operations. Under normal circumstances it could have been used for formal events, state meetings, or even dancing. The massive stone floors swept out in all directions and huge arches supported the over-heavy roof in the planet’s grueling gravity. An entire half of the huge expanse had been converted to a form of command and control center with huge holographic displays and war tables.

  “I’m sorry about the mess,” the governor said. “As you well know, we are currently in the middle of a war, and no thanks to the Alliance government we have almost no forces with which to fight it.”

  “Then it’s a good thing you are close to camp Hadrian.”

  Frederick grunted. “Small favors,” the aid said. “Governor Simmons has managed to rally the local police forces, a few thousand alliance regulars, and a sizable local militia to keep the defenses running at peak capacity.”

  “Anythin
g less,” the governor interrupted, “and we wouldn’t be able to keep all the AA positions operational and still have a large enough ground force operational to keep them from landing. We’re on the edge of oblivion and they know it.”

  “Then it is a good thing I have arrived,” the advisor said, plugging a data cube into a compatible node on one of the tables. “With a certain amount of integration we should be able to maximize your defensive orbital coverage and give your men enough rest to be alert when it matters.”

  “Right,” the governor agreed. “But what about large scale network disturbance? We know that they’ve been able to disable local networks and render everything from radio to cyb-net communications inoperable. We need to keep those stations manned physically.”

  “Have you considered triple reinforced land lines? Our simulations have shown that…” The conversation faded into the background as I turned to follow Frederick to a large table at the other end of the giant room. There was a roaring fire in the massive stone fireplace and there was all kinds of fruit and meat on the table.

  “Wow,” I said as Suzie popped a few grapes into her mouth. “Are you sure it’s wise to eat like this with a siege going on?”

  “Food isn’t the problem,” he said. “We have local farms in the area, and unless they move close enough to exchange fire from our main weapons they should be safe. We also have some developed sub-terrain hydroponics for the more immediate needs of interplanetary trade lanes workers.”

  “Well, at least there’s that,” I said, picking up a large slice of abe steak. It was seasoned with a good coffee rub and for a moment I felt a slice of home.

  “Well, thanks again for that assist. Is there anything I can get you for your stay? We could certainly use another able bodied fighter here and our child care facilities would be at your daughter’s full disposal.” Suzie gave Frederick a nasty glare for that last statement.

  “No, we actually aren’t going to be staying long. We’ve got a launch date set for not too far out.”

  “You can’t be serious?” he said in shock. “I don’t care how fast your ship is, by the time you reach escape velocity, the ‘Tal will be all over your ship like ticks on a swamp hog.”

  “Say what now?” I asked at the odd expression. The man’s eyebrow shot up for a second, not comprehending my unfamiliararity with the statement.

  “Oh, nothing. But I’m serious, its suicide.”

  “We’ve got it worked out. But we will be here for a while. You wouldn’t happen to have an available datapad with cyb-link access would you?”

  Frederick nodded, “Of course.” He whistled and shouted something in a local language to an assistant. “Here,” he said, taking the pad the attendant gave him and handing it to me. My link is embedded, so if you need anything don’t hesitate to give me a ping. I may be busy, but I’ll have someone on the way.” He started to walk back to the mess of war planners and holo-displays but stopped and shouted over his shoulder. “The offer of employ is open if you change your mind. Anyone who can break that blockade has a decent spot in our ranks.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “It’s good to know.”

  “You aren’t actually going to work for him are you?” Suzie asked.

  “Nah,” I reassured her. “But do you really not like him that much?”

  “Well, it’s not that,” she said. “It’s just that…” she paused to find her words. “This place is heavy and we wouldn’t be able to fly everywhere if you were pointing guns at dots in the skies all day.”

  “And you don’t want to start going back to school?” I supplied. Her face turned into a combination of ‘oh no’ and ‘please don’t make me.’

  “But it’s stupid. I’ve learned more already with you than I ever did in a school. Besides! When am I ever going to need to know the names of the twenty head captains of the Allied Fleet when it arrived in new-space?” she asked. “I want to learn to fly, and run, and shoot things, and how to make money.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked. “You’ve seen how long I spend looking over my books to find a few dollars that disappeared.”

  “But that’s fun work.”

  “How is that any different than the names of captains and word problems?” I asked.

  “Those don’t do any good,” she said. “It’s no fun if it’s for no reason.”

  “OK,” I said. “Don’t worry; you won’t have to go to school any time soon. But if I give you some problems to solve, or an AI to teach you something you have to do it. No questions or complaining, OK?”

  “OK!” she answered enthusiastically. “No problem.”

  Thank you for reading!

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