Birthright: Battle for the Confederation- Reprisal Page 20

  Mithus had noted that sirens wailed throughout the city as Priman ground troops raced to all points of the city in an effort to meet the attackers, wherever they intended to land. He had Von across the walkway hidden behind a different stand with the Senator and Damar, ready to provide some measure of crossfire if it came to that. What with their small weapons, it wouldn’t be much of a fight if they ran across a regular infantry squad, however.

  He heard a series of clicks through the comm unit that was built into the patch by his ear, a transmission from their Marines requesting their status. He spoke quietly, bone conduction in the patch sending out the transmission. “Ready,” he said simply, followed by the password for all clear, “Rocket.”

  A second later, a swarm of grey armor clad troops burst into the park from all directions of the compass. Confed body armor was able to change colors to suit their location, and the trooper’s armor was currently showing the dappled greys of an urban environment. Only the SAR troops knew that, while the regular troopers needed a built in control unit to manage the adaptive camouflage, which was subject to damage and a drained battery, the SAR troops could control the suit using their nanites as an interface. The troops carried the standard Confed assault rifle, sporting the same over/under laser/projectile firing system that their sidearms did. The troops wore lightweight helmets with large, slightly yellowish tinted faceplates to give them maximum visibility, while allowing information such as friendly positions and orders to be projected onto the glass of the faceplates. Mithus himself preferred shooting glasses to a full helmet, which still allowed for data projection and even a holographic sight link with his weapon, but he would make do with what he had unless the Marines had thought to bring extra weapons for him and Von.

  A Marine Captain ran up to him and stopped short, saluting Mithus.

  “I’m Captain Herin,” the helmeted figure said through a small speaker on the chin. From what Mithus could see through the faceplate, the man was human, and his manner was all business. Mithus liked the guy already. “We’re your escort. The boxcars will be picking us up in nine minutes, three blocks North of here down that road.” The Marine pointed out the path. Mithus noticed he used the Marine slang for the dropships, ‘boxcars’, as most of the troops often felt like either livestock or cargo when crammed inside in full battle gear. The analogy to an over-the-surface freight container made sense in a way.

  The Marine then surprised Mithus by motioning over another trooper. In addition to the rifle he had slung over his back, he was carrying two extra of the Confederation’s latest and greatest infantry weapons, the Sentinel Arms HMR-12, which the soldiers had quickly named the Hammer. It was a compact assault rifle design, with the two stacked barrels also seen in the SSK pistol. There was a small handle on top which was part of an integral iron sight, also housing the projector for the holographic sight. The area under the barrel where one would place their hand to steady the weapon was also the port where the energy cell was located, and in front of the trigger assembly was a stubby magazine holding the stacked projectiles for armor piercing use. These were of the same design as the SSK, though the projectiles were larger in diameter and length. The most common variant of ammunition also was ‘smart’, in that the projectiles would pierce armor, but if they impacted something softer like living tissue, they would deform, serving as a dual purpose round.

  Captain Herin indicated the trooper, who held the rifles by their stocks, barrels facing up.

  “You had four in your party, correct?”

  “We did,” stated Mithus soberly. “We’ll just need those two now.”

  Captain Herin simply nodded, not wanting to linger on the issue.

  “Von,” Mithus said into seemingly thin air for the benefit of his comm patch. “We have upgraded weapons. Bring the Senator and Mr. Damar and we’ll get going.”

  Von jogged over, the Senator and Ples Damar following close on his heels. As he arrived, Mithus took the rifles from the soldier and tossed one to Von, who plucked it out of the air. Mithus also tossed him a bandolier containing extra magazines and energy cells. Normally, those items would have been attached at the desired locations to their web gear, but their low profile cover had scratched that idea.

  “Finally, some decent firepower,” Von said approvingly. He expertly thumbed the power cell on and opened the manual case ejection port, used only if one of the magnetically fired bullets would jam or deform. He checked the magazine, then slammed it back in with a satisfying click.

  That was the approximate time all hell broke loose.

  Things had been going well enough for Confed, though Admiral Dant onboard the Galaxy had noted the loss so far of one Confederation class cruiser and two Pulsar class destroyers. The Primans were down two ships, but the current long-range nature of the battle was keeping concentrated fire to a minimum.

  She was currently trying to analyze where to send her small detached attack force when her comm tech virtually yelled.

  “Admiral!”

  “Yes, Lieutenant?” the Admiral replied slowly and with exaggerated calm. The woman’s voice told Dant that something was obviously troubling her, but the Admiral was determined to remain in control.

  “Admiral, our long range probes and a Prowler patrol have pinpointed another Priman element of capital ships coming around Delos. They’re coming around both sides- one will flank us and the other will flank the Ninth Fleet.”

  “Well, reserves were expected,” the Admiral conceded. She had turned to face the Lieutenant’s station, but now turned to the main holo display. “Are they showing on our display?”

  “Yes, Admiral, just coming around the planet now.”

  Admiral Dant studied the display, then fought the urge to swear like the veteran naval officer she was. Forty ships, twenty headed for each of Confed’s main forces, was not an insignificant number, and it definitely put the initiative with the Primans. It was time to play their own trump card.

  “Communications, get Confed HQ on the line. Tell them to launch the AI Talons. I have a feeling it’s about to get messy here.”

  Confed Naval HQ had led a long and lonely six months until this day. A vast complex of bases, both on the asteroid’s surfaces as well as in orbit above, coupled with a massive shipyard, drydock, mothball vessel storage, R&D facilities, and barracks for everyone, it had still been effectively rendered useless by the Priman’s blockade. While the only entrance to the facility had enough firepower to have kept the Primans from making a determined attack until today, the same sole entrance had also effectively blockaded the facility in return. Lined with laser and torpedo batteries as well as dozens of asteroids ready to be fired down the tunnel’s throat, there was only one way in or out.

  With shipyard facilities, there at first had been high hopes of building several vessels before they tried to break out. While the asteroid field had yielded more than enough metals to complete the basics like superstructure and hull plating, they had been unable to do much more due to a lack of specialized material used in the electronics, shield generators, and most of the other advanced features of a capital ship.

  Their only accomplishment of note in the capital ship field had been to recondition and ready a Confederation class cruiser that had been sent in for a major refit. Knowing it would likely be a suicide mission to send a lone ship out of the facility, they had modified it heavily as a sort of minesweeper. Most everything of value had been stripped and the ship had been jury-rigged with extensive automation. Layers of hull shielding and the few spare shield generators on hand had been added, and weapons control had been centralized to one console in the newly built command bridge deep in the hull. The idea was for the vessel to lead the charge out of the facility, clearing away any mines, booby traps, or vessels blocking the way. The bridge had been built right on top of a series of escape pods that were added just for this purpose. With a small skeleton crew of volunteers, the ships would lead the charge and do what good they could. If the damage became too
great, the bridge crewmembers had only steps to go in order to reach the escape pods. It was risky, but all the positions had been filled by volunteers within the first ten minutes of the announcement.

  Now all that was needed was something to lead out of the facility. That was the pride and joy, the crowning achievement, of the dozens of Confed Navy researchers and scientists in the HQ facility. One thing that HQ had been able to produce was fighters, namely, Talons. Still in production after twenty years, the Talon was one of the icons of the Confederation Navy. Here again, there was a problem. While the HQ facility had been able to produce over two hundred Talons, there were not nearly enough people who could be trained as pilots to fly them.

  The next stroke of genius belonged to Admiral Nodam Bak, one of his first acts after being officially placed on duty under house arrest with Fleet Admiral Privac on his flagship, the Thunderbird. As anyone who had been in the system knew, since the occupation Naval HQ had sent out dozens of raids by small numbers of Talons, ostensibly to test the effectiveness of the Priman’s fighter defenses. They had in fact been met every last time by a contingent of Priman interceptors, who would chase them around and eventually force them back to the safety of HQ. What had really been going on was advanced information gathering. The Talons were recording and cataloging every maneuver the Priman interceptors made, looking for common elements in their flying styles and standard elements that all of their pilots used. Forged into a big enough database, it was enough to allow the next stage of the plan- installing a limited artificial intelligence in each fighter and loading it with every move the Priman ships had made against Confed fighters.

  Artificial Intelligence was a strictly regulated science, highly controlled and in most parts of the galaxy illegal beyond a certain level of awareness. There were tales of more than one world where entire civilizations had been lost when machines and their creators both claimed control, and as a result AI technology was stunted at relatively basic levels. The first proposal had been to operate the Talons remotely, but Priman sensor and jamming technology was advanced enough to rule that option out. Admiral Bak, however, had posited that if there was a large enough database of enemy maneuvers to compare to, and some of Confed’s best pilots were recorded while fighting these Priman ships in the simulators, perhaps a workable model could be created that would allow the limited intelligence of the AIs to look at the Priman’s maneuvers, then select and fly what the Confed pilots in the database had flown to counter. There was also a significant chunk of the fighter force that was packed with explosives and tasked with suicide runs on capital ships, once again using the database to allow the AI to look at a ship, determine if it was Priman and a valid target, and then head for it at full speed. They weren’t hoping to create a squadron of fighter aces, but simple numbers would make for a compelling attack on the Primans.

  In the main Command and Control building in HQ, an abundance of high ranking officers all crowded the space, each wanting to make sure they were a part of the effort so credit could be taken later.

  The man in charge of the base itself, a human with the rank of Captain, felt out of place as he paced what little real estate was reserved for him on the control deck. With so many Admirals and a few Commodores around, there were way too many people who outranked him. Still, he was technically in charge of the facility, and he would stand tall and issue his orders unless somebody felt the need to move him aside and do it themselves, which he half expected. To his surprise, nobody did.

  He straightened his posture, walked to the railing of the deck overlooking the large glass windows that displayed an amazing panorama of the shipyard, and tapped a button on the small control pad on the top of the railing.

  “Attention Confederation Naval Headquarters,” he started, his voice being piped through every channel in the facility. “We have just received the go order from the fleet, and will commence our part in this attack now. Our time has finally come, so let’s make it count, and make sure the Primans feel the hurt.”

  He looked over at his Operations officer and nodded. With just a few taps and keystrokes at his console, the officer gave the order to launch the offensive. Looking out of the huge glass panels over the shipyard, the Captain marveled at the sight. A veritable cloud of Talons slowly powered by, forming up on the tail of the Confederation cruiser that had been renamed Defiance. All around him in the enormous empty space at the center of the asteroid field that was Confederation Navy HQ, he saw the infrastructure that had made this day possible. The view became even more amazing as the ships cleared out and headed down the throat of the only way in and out, and suddenly he felt a little bit more lonely and just a tad defenseless.

  The Captain silently wished them luck, then began locking down the facility and preparing for a counterattack and evacuation if things ended badly.

  Captain Spiron on the Torino was calculating how long it would be before he would be ordering his ship into her next maneuver to head back towards Delos and the departing dropships. He had seen on the datalink that, while at the cost of four ships, the Ninth Fleet had neutralized the Centurion battle station enough to render it as a back-burner threat. Admiral Illam had even ordered a portion of the Ninth Fleet to begin engaging the rear of the Priman’s main fleet.

  Then he simultaneously saw two things that made his heart speed up against his will. He noted that Navy HQ had unleashed a storm of Talons following a Confederation class cruiser out from the HQ facility towards the Priman fleet. He also noticed a total of forty new Priman capital ships coming around from behind Delos. Roughly half were headed for the Third Fleet, and the other half were aimed straight at the Ninth. He looked again at the countdown timer and silently tried to will it into going faster.

  In the plaza, the situation had deteriorated rapidly into bedlam. Priman forces had managed to surround the Confeds on three sides of the large landscaped plaza, and were firing on anything that might have been a Confederation target. The only open avenue was, naturally, facing the wrong direction from where they needed to go.

  Mithus pondered their impending demise as he occasionally poked his rifle up from behind the now-overturned kiosk he and the three others in his party were hiding behind. Using a pair of the shooting glasses he favored, he was able to see what his rifle saw, and fired bursts at any Priman soldier he identified.

  The Primans, for their part, had handled the ambush skillfully. They had approached undetected and launched a coordinated attack at the perfect time. Several Confed troops had gone down in the first barrage of laserfire, and now the rest were pinned down at various structures and obstacles within the plaza.

  “Well, I don’t mind admitting that this is becoming a disappointment,” Von yelled to Mithus over the noise. They each occupied a corner of the kiosk, the Senator and Damar sandwiched between them. So far, there were no Primans in a position to flank them, but Mithus knew that would change sooner than they would prefer.

  “Is this your escape plan?” the Senator complained. “All those speeches and commands, and now you lead us into an ambush?”

  “I do believe I included a disclaimer where I mentioned the possibility of frantic running and getting shot at,” Mithus fired back. He was in no mood for this. “Just lie low and listen to us, and we’ll get you two out of this.”

  Mithus commanded his commlink over to the Marine frequency. “Captain Herin,” he started, “What’s the plan?”

  Mithus and Von, looking at the small map projected on their shooting glasses, saw the tiny blue dot that represented Herin flash as the Captain replied, which also told them where to look to see the man in person. Across a wide stone walkway, the Captain and several men were pinned down behind a chest-high decorative wall that shielded them against fire from two directions.

  “In a few seconds, we’re going to have an all-weapons free-fire on the enemy positions to the North end of the plaza to draw their attention,” Herin replied. “As soon as that starts, a few of us here will provide covering fire s
pecifically for you. Head across the walkway and meet at my position. As soon as we get together, we’ll start a bounding assault towards the North. The Primans can’t know which direction our transport is going to be, so we’ll head North out of here and then a quick turn to the West for a flat out run to the rendezvous point.”

  “Good enough, we’ll be ready.”

  Mithus called out “reloading”, for Von’s benefit, then made it a point to change out his energy cell and solid projectile magazines on both his rifle and SSK. He then motioned for Von to do the same. Then he addressed the Senator.

  “Make sure you know where those blasters of yours are. Once we get going, you don’t stop for anything. As long as there are Confed troops with you, just run for that dropship. You’re the government now, and you need to get off-planet to safety.” Mithus made it a point to eyeball them until they both had their weapons out, if not exactly in a firing stance. It didn’t matter; just having a blaster at the crucial time might make the difference, and he wasn’t going to start a mission without saying he covered all the bases.

  Soon enough, the wave of concentrated blasterfire started. From all over the plaza, a fearsome combined volley of all the Confed blasters that could be fired were raking the North end of the plaza, shredding storefronts, picking fist-sized chips out of building fascias, and generally creating havoc. Mithus and Von got up, dragged the civilians to their feet, and virtually carried the Senator and Damar between them as they ran at full speed across the open walkway. The Primans didn’t lose focus long, and shots started coming their way, to which the Confed troops responded in kind.