Polity 2 - Hilldiggers (52 page)

“How long will it take you to prepare a liner for launch?” asked Gneiss.

Glass peered at him carefully, his expression amused. “Very little time at all. Guessing that this idea might be mooted, I started fuelling the liner and warming up its reactors some while ago.” He checked something to one side. “In fact a small command crew is boarding right now.”

Gneiss found himself annoyed at his own assumptions. Of course there was no way he could tell if Glass really had voted against rescue. Maybe Rishinda's votes had been the two opposing ones. He shut down the connection with Glass and leaned back. Then, observing that Dalepan was trying to contact him, he opened that connection next.

“We've had a problem with our visitors,” announced the OCT.

“Problem?”

Dalepan was looking decidedly uncomfortable. “Internal security has been very tight. We could not afford any attempts at sabotage.”

“What are you trying to tell me, Dalepan?”

In a flat monotone, Dalepan imparted the bad news.

After Fleet's hilldiggers had finished pounding Brumal, ground forces were landed and hand-to-hand fighting ensued. Fleet marines and GDS troops had already fought their enemy in this way aboard ships and stations, often when the objective had been to obtain intelligence, capturing prisoners to interrogate or technology to study. Initially the groundside fighting was savage, especially against the surviving units of the quofarl, but the Brumallians had been demoralised by the blows struck against them, and that firm consensus that had maintained them for a century was breaking down. Gradually they just abandoned their effort, and the Sudorian forces, still fiercely keen to exact vengeance for a century of war, ceased to be units of soldiers and instead became extermination squads. I have no doubt that the intention of many serving in Fleet was genocide, but luckily the Admiral and a majority of his Captains became appalled by the atrocities committed on the planet below them, and were also sensitive to the growing revulsion felt by those back at home to what the media managed to broadcast of their 'Sudorian Victory'. The killing then ceased, fortunately before the discovery of three surviving Brumallian cities. We won the War, it was finally over, but few felt the inclination to celebrate victory, seeing it rather as a timely ending to something sordid and demeaning.

—Uskaron

Harald

Wildfire's bombardment was not sufficient to keep Corisanthe III nailed down, but then his original plan had been for more than just one hilldigger to deal with that major station. He rubbed at the line of hardened glue on his head. The ache seemed to have now travelled down to seat itself in his eye-socket, which was making him increasingly irritable, so those abrupt surges of anger were occurring more often. He guessed this was as much due to the pressure he was under as his injuries. How much easier it would have been if he could depend totally on those around him.

As his own ship Ironfist, accompanied by Desert Wind, now approached the next Defence Platform, Harald studied Corisanthe III on one of his screens. He instantly noted a deal of activity to one side of the point where the resupply ships had been departing. Combine assault ships were now gathering there, and he wondered if this was the beginning of some attack planned on Wildfire. Then he observed a line cutting down the surface of the nearest section of station. This line grew wider and wider and after a moment he realised he was watching a massive set of space doors opening. They finally slid back to their limit, then something huge began to nose out. In shape it was like the bow of an ocean-going ship, the glint of wide inset windows along its sides.

Some new weapon, perhaps?

His eye-socket throbbed as if in response to this thought and, folding aside his eye-screen, he ground the heel of his hand into his eye. It seemed this discomfort was the price he must pay, since to remain alert he must continue with the stimulants, and they tended to negate part of the analgesic's effect. Nevertheless, he took another of the pills and, while it dissolved in his mouth, returned his attention to the screens.

While it was always possible that this was some new weapon, Fleet intelligence had long ago identified Corisanthe III as the final assembly point for Orbital Combine's newly constructed space liners. So it now seemed rather likely that one of these passenger vessels was being brought into the fray. What they hoped to achieve with a civilian-format vessel, he had no idea, since it would possess no more than anti-meteor defences and certainly could be no match for a hilldigger.

Just then, Ironfist juddered in the shock wave of a nearby nuclear detonation, and this returned Harald's attention to his ship's present surroundings. At this moment, both hilldiggers were using defensive fire only, and that was mainly directed against Combine assault craft, since the platform itself could not bring much weaponry to bear on them. Though he felt no affinity with such emotions at that moment, it was both sad and amusing that these giant Defence Platforms were so vulnerable to attack from their underside. He recollected that the reason for this was that Parliament did not like the idea of Combine being able to point massive weapons down towards Sudoria, so political wrangling had resulted in certain alterations to the original plans. However, Harald could not allow himself to feel too complacent about that, since Combine had already deployed weapons sufficient to destroy Fleet bases down there.

“Engines to one-sixteenth,” he instructed. “Franorl, go to a sixteenth at 200 miles' separation. No changes to current plan.” The other Captain gave a sloppy salute over his side arm, while keeping his attention focused on his tactical screens.

Desert Wind now quickly pulled away from Ironfist, Ahead, and above them, the Defence Platform hung in a purple-blue firmament in which the stars were just visible. Unlike the other versions of these platforms, like the ones he had already destroyed, this one was not disc-shaped, but a flat square pierced through with a central spindle, its armaments spread over the upper surface and the docking facilities on the surface below. Four ships were currently docked there, two of them obviously some kind of assault craft, the other two being large inter-station shuttles regularly used to transport both personnel and cargo. Even as he watched, one of the latter began to depart. Maybe they were evacuating; Harald decided to let the shuttle go.

“Firing Control, prepare loads for Silos One to Four, then fire on positional confirmation,” said Harald, irked that he still felt the need to speak when already his orders had been given. Checking through the ship's control systems, he found the missiles already loaded and prepped to fire once Ironfist reached a predetermined location. In reality, his presence here on the Bridge was superfluous, or at least until something did not go quite to plan.

Desert Wind passed far below the platform, detonations from intercepted missiles lighting the air above the ship and spreading a laminated haze, the occasional Combine assault craft blazing and going out like a meteor.

Then Ironfist reached its firing point and Harald felt the ship shudder.

Balanced on blades of flame, the four missiles launched and wrote smoky curves in the sky as they accelerated up towards the platform. Outside views then became intermittent and hazy, as beam weapons fired down from the platform at the approaching missiles also impacted on the ship's shields and filled surrounding atmosphere with ionisation. However, there was enough reception for him to see the four missiles throw out a red glow and begin fragmenting, then turn painfully bright and just burn away, their four smoke trails expanding and abruptly petering out.

“Do you have them located, Franorl?” Harald enquired once com came back online.

“I'm sending you the coordinates now,” replied the other Captain.

Harald sat back, clamping down on the urge to take yet another painkiller, for now he most definitely must remain alert.

The first four missiles had actually been duds, but those on the Defence Platform weren't to know that. They most certainly would have employed every weapon they had available, believing that if just one missile got through they were dead. Franorl, with his uninterrupted view, had now located the exact positions of those weapons aboard the platform.

“Let's take out those firing positions and send them the real thing now,” said Harald.

Ironfist seemed to heave under the recoil of multiple launches, coupled with the increased vibration from generators taking load. Coil-accelerated projectiles began impacting on the platform, not as effectively as those that could be fired from Ironfist's main coil-cannon, but hard enough to rattle any shields that could be deployed or otherwise tear off chunks of armour or punch holes through the platform. The two assault ships that had been nested below the platform—raptor-bodied and with short elbowed-back wings—abruptly dropped, fusion engines igniting, and accelerated away. Harald did not for a moment suppose they were running. As expected, their courses began to curve round to bring them back towards Ironfist. They did in fact reach the hilldigger, for Harald heard fragments of them impacting on the hull.

Beam weapons turned metal glowing, sometimes molten. Fired upon from both the widely spaced hilldiggers, the platform ultimately could not sustain the attack. Finally, its defence collapsed, and the attackers could rake the platform's underbelly without hindrance.

“Firing Control, prepare loads for Silos Five to Eight, and fire at your convenience,” Harald ordered. Meanwhile, on one of his larger screens, he called up a closer view of the Defence Platform. Hearing the low sound of these latest missiles launching, he glanced to a side screen and watched them accelerating up from Ironfist. Halfway to the platform he observed one of them impact against a shield and spew glowing debris in every direction. It did not detonate, however, as the missiles were set for positional detonation, since the premature explosion of one missile might throw all the others off course. As he watched, the last interstation shuttle dropped away, accelerating hard. He rather suspected the last of the platform crew was aboard it, and had most recently been operating the platform weapons via remote consoles. The three missiles passed close by the departing shuttle and punched right into the platform's underside. A heartbeat, and then the platform seemed to expand as if the very fabric of space was being stretched. Next came a brief glimpse of its structure parting over an expanding ball of fire, then all was consumed by an inferno that grew painfully bright, before filters cut out the glare.

The shuttle by now lay well clear of the fireball, but even so it could not outrun the shock wave. Abruptly it jerked sideways, then began to fall, rolling along its axis with fragments tearing away from it. It fell for five miles, attitude jets firing to try and straighten its course. Yet, even though they achieved this, it now seemed they were all it possessed to keep it in the air. Harald watched a deliberate hard change of course, and was unsurprised to note the vessel being set to collide with Ironfist. As it hammered down towards the hilldigger, it spat out a sequence of spheres—one-man re-entry pods.

“Firing Control, is someone going to do something about that shuttle?” he enquired tightly.

“Yes, Admiral, I was waiting until the pods were clear,” came the harried and somewhat off-hand reply.

“Well, whoever put it on a collision course with this ship should have thought of that!” he shouted. “Destroy it now!”

“Yes, Admiral! At once, Admiral!”

Harald seethed as he watched a short-range interceptor missile streak up and pierce the shuttle's belly. Thermal load: the shuttle flew apart in another fireball, most of it vaporised or turned molten. Beyond it the pattern of re-entry pods disrupted. The technology of such pods was tough, so Harald reckoned that most of them would be able to deploy their parachutes. Their contents were not so rugged, however, and he estimated that about half of the parachutes would be dangling corpses to the ground.

As abruptly as it came, his anger receded. He could easily have waited a little longer—those had been totally unnecessary deaths. Just like those of the crew aboard Stormfollower ...

“Platform Four has somehow managed to tilt itself to enable the deployment of its main weapons,” Franorl warned him, his image taking over one of Harald's screens, and his words banishing that brief moment of introspection.

“Something like that was not unexpected,” replied Harald. “Anyway, our tactics against this platform would only work once.”

“So you are going to use...the weapon?” enquired Franorl.

Harald felt his suspicions confirmed by Franorl's reserve. From what he could recollect and from what he had scanned in his own records, Franorl was less averse to causing mayhem than Harald himself, yet now this sudden reluctance? He gazed at the Captain and, while giving his orders, carefully gauged the man's reactions.

“Firing Control, bring main weapon capacitance up to full,” Harald ordered. Then on general com he announced, “Shipwide alert, condition Aleph. This is Admiral Harald speaking. Prepare for gravity wave recoil. You know the drill since you have performed it many times. But this time it is for real.”

As he came off general com, one of the officers in charge of internal ship's logistics immediately came on instead. “All back-up reactors to standby mode. Suit for possible breach and run airlock integrity tests. Seal and crash-foam damaged areas. All rail transport and internal lifts will be locking down in twenty-four minutes from now. Engineering, prepare for main engine shutdown ...” and so it continued.

Franorl bowed in acquiescence, and his image winked out.

Firing the main weapon of a hilldigger, its gravity disruptor, was no simple task. Hugely destructive, it was also excessively dangerous for the one wielding it. There were other likely consequences as well. Once Fleet resorted to such weapons, it could well mean that Combine would deploy them too. Franorl's recent reaction was probably indicative of how the other supposedly loyal Captains also felt. Harald now called up access to numerous programs on his screen. He had prepared the means for seizing control of those hilldiggers whose Captains seemed likely to rebel, and as necessary he had already done so. What his remaining 'loyal' Captains did not know was that he possessed similar access to the controls of their ships too.