Star Clusters: New Arrivals (15 page)

“Decoys won’t do us any good. Five, watch your six! If they self-destructed, how much damage would they do?”

“I suppose we could overload the power cores; it should damage any swarmers within a hundred meters, and will likely start killing at twenty meters.”

“That’ll have to do. Four, Six, take out that gunship!”

“Copy that, we’re on him.”

“More hostiles dropping out of hyperspace!”

“Where are they all coming from?!”

“Stay focused - we’re not done yet.”

“Hostile interdictors are arriving. We are holding them off for the moment, but you should hurry.”

“Drone squadron one is launching! Where do you need them?”

“Just stuff them into the densest swarmer clusters!”

“Understood!”

“RS-7, I do not believe you have enough time for a full evacuation. Take only what you
cannot
leave behind and launch.”

“Give us three minutes to evacuate! Long-range sensors are picking up more hostiles approaching; a massive wave will be here in seven minutes!”

“We’re taking a beating here!” Lanis said.

“All Terran fighters, retreat to the Tarhedia. Other fighters, retreat if your shields are below fifty percent. RS-7, prepare to overload your primary reactor; the resulting detonation should weaken the Xargans significantly.”

“I’ll set the timer; as soon as the Xargans drop out of hyperspace, the station’s going to blow.”

“Hopefully, we will not be there by then…”

“Hatos, I hate to break it to you, but we’re running out of fighters pretty quickly; odds are we’ll all be hiding on the ship by the time the evac shuttles launch!”

“Let me worry about that. As long as our shields hold, that problem can be solved.”

“What are you thinking?”

“The Tarhedia’s shield geometry is rather… flexible. You have already seen that we can open gaps in it.”

“Yeah, why?”

“We should be able to extend the shield outwards and envelop the station’s hangars; it will reduce shield effectiveness, but if timed correctly, it should prove sufficient.”

“Great! Mind if we get out of this dogfight, then?”

“Yes, the Xargans’ numerical advantage is growing with each passing moment… All fighters, return to the ship at once.”

By the time the shuttles were ready to depart, all the Tarhedia’s fighters had managed to return safely to their mothership. “Shuttles loaded and ready to depart. Do your thing, Tarhedia.”

“Helm, get us as close to the station as possible, maximum speed. Adjust shield geometry to match their hull and envelop their hangars until all the shuttles have launched. Divert all remaining power from weapons to shields and transfer power from life support to engines. Commander, power up your shuttles’ engines.”

Slowly but surely, the massive ship slid through the Xargan-filled space around it and the station, its shields maintaining their shape as the officer controlling them waited to see how close they could get to the station without ramming it. After another minute, the shield connected with RS-7’s hangars, dissolving as it came in contact with the installation’s own shields. The transports flew out towards the ship, quickly landing in the safety of the Tarhedia’s launch bay.

“Take us towards the Arcamil meeting point,” Hatos ordered, surprising Lanis - who had reached the control room by then.

“Meeting point?” he asked as the ship jumped into hyperspace, leaving the Xargans behind.

“While you were training, we received instructions from Lossuh. We are to rendezvous with a joint Arcamil-US task force deeper within allied territory, where we will receive further orders.”

“I really hope they’ve figured out something new…”

Chapter 10

Making a Stand

About twelve years ago, when the Xargans last launched an attack even remotely approaching this attack’s level of success, it was met with rather mixed feelings. Naturally, the Terrans were relieved by the fact that the Petrans had someone to worry about. However, a great many Terrans were greatly concerned by the possibility of this being the prelude to something worse.

On the other hand, a lot of the Petrans were quite confident that they would win. Of course, there will always be someone who disagrees with the public opinion for whatever reason. Some of them didn’t believe the war against Earth was worth fighting in the first place, others thought that this new alien threat was too powerful…

That time, the Xargan invasion spawned the Arcamil in addition to bringing some semblance of peace to the region. This time, it seemed that nothing their combined forces could do to stop the Xargans, as the next forty-eight hours - for most, a sleepless forty-eight hours, for there was almost no time to rest between engagements - contained nothing more than battles similar to the failures at Aphis, Vaanle and RS-7. Finally, there was nothing left but a single heavily fortified base in the resource-rich Tanopas system.

Lanis, Jackson, Hatos and around twenty other people - including Fanra, the Arcamil leadership, the leader of the Petran survivors at Tanopas, and multiple high-ranking US officers - met in the facility’s briefing room to discuss their next course of action.

“Alright, I don’t know how you’re all feeling, but I haven’t had any sleep lately and the stims aren’t helping as much as I’d like, so I’ll recap the situation and you can fill in if I forgot something,” Jackson started. “Over the past forty-eight hours, the Xargans have overrun just about every other system out there. Despite our best efforts and the Tarhedians’ help, we simply couldn’t hold them off. We’ve lost contact with Earth - while we do know our end of the Centauri wormhole has been captured, there’s no way of knowing how bad the situation is on that side. In any case, now that they’ve secured the Galge system, they’re in an ideal position to launch their final strike against us and take us out.”

“To that end,” Lossuh continued, “they’ll probably gather their most powerful bioforms beyond our perimeter until they are confident that the fleet is powerful enough to break through the defenses and overwhelm us. We have six hours before their vanguard arrives, and there’s no way to tell just how long they’ll wait for reinforcements.”

“Six hours… that’s not a lot of time,” Lanis said.

“Indeed. My people are working on installing and upgrading orbital defense stations; we have managed to construct a few makeshift plasma beam turrets and are in the process of installing them onto this command bunker. Though the atmosphere will slightly reduce their effectiveness, the turrets should prove extremely useful in providing fire support to the orbiting fleet,” Hatos stated.

“Well, they could also be useful in the ground battle - if they get that far, that is,” Barnes suggested. “Turn them on the Xargan landing zones and they’ll wreak havoc.”

“The planet’s volcanic nature will hinder Xargan movements, but the real benefit here is the abundance of geothermal energy. Tapping into the lava streams around us should provide more than enough power to keep the bunker’s shield generator online for quite a while,” Fanra noted. “There’s just one catch.”

“What is it?” Jackson asked.

“The shield’s going to be a bit hard to configure. It’ll definitely keep their drop pods and orbital bombardment in check, but in order to prevent it from being depleted by the lava, I’m going to have to raise the dome a bit above the ground and let them walk in. And then there’s the matter of actually turning it
into
a dome - right now the generators are set up like the ones on your ships, and we
do
need to shield the energy collectors as well as the bunker itself.”

“Take whoever you need, Doctor,” General Keeler, the base commander, said. “I’d take a ground battle over getting bombed into oblivion any day, especially with those Tarhedian beam cannons.”

“Besides, we need another power source for when our fuel supply inevitably runs out,” Jackson added.

“We’ll need to figure out a way to keep the swarmers out, though,” Lanis noted.

“Anti-fighter railguns and seeker missiles have worked in the past with much bigger arcs to cover,” one of the captains suggested.

“And when we run out of ammo, we’re toast. Remember, if they keep up the pressure, which they almost certainly will, we won’t have the time - and we probably won’t have the space - to make more shells or missiles or whatever we need,” Lanis reminded him. “We need something we can count on, like geothermally-powered energy weapons.”

There was a brief silence as nobody could think of anything. Suddenly, Fanra noticed a bolt of lightning hit the ground near the bunker. This was nothing new on this unstable world, but it gave her an idea. “The weather?” she mused. When everyone looked at her, she realized she said that out loud and continued. “We use the weather. All this volcanic activity electrifies the atmosphere a lot.”

“And that electricity wants to ground itself, and odds are the Xargans conduct electricity a lot better than the air,” Lanis finished. “What did you have in mind?”

“We stimulate the storm. If we configure them right, I think the Tarhedian beam turrets could additionally electrify the atmosphere, intensifying the lightning storms. The more lightning we can generate, the more likely we are to hit airborne targets. Who knows, maybe we could even hit some of their ground forces.”

“Will it not affect our forces as well?” Hatos noted.

“Well, we have lightning rods for the buildings, and odds are most of our troops will be hiding in bunkers. Besides, if we can get a few extra shield generators up and running…”

“That settles it, then. We still need to figure out a plan for the space battle, though,” Jackson reminded them.

“The Xargans have a clear advantage in space - out there, we can’t make any choke points or use the environment against them. What’s more, resupplying may be hard here on the ground, but in space it’ll be impossible; it’s only a matter of time before they overrun our position,” Barnes explained. “We should plan accordingly.”

“The Tarhedia may be able to temporarily solve that problem. Your ships can hide in its shield to resupply,” Hatos suggested. “It is not ideal, but it may increase the amount of time before we have to return to the surface.”

“Or at least get us a few extra kills,” Jackson added. “They’ll probably start shooting at you as soon as they figure it out.”

“The Tarhedia’s shields are unlike the ones on your ships - or even most of ours. While your shields start to lose integrity in a prolonged encounter, the Tarhedia’s shield configuration is such that it can remain operational for as long as there is enough power. We may be able to use that to our advantage.”

“Hold on, we have shields like that too,” one of the captains - the same one who suggested railguns and seeker missiles as a counter to the Xargan swarmers - said. “Like the one protecting this base.”

“Not on a ship, we don’t,” Lanis answered. “Shields like that drain more power overall, but Hatos is right - if we can feed power from the planet into the Tarhedia’s shields, we could hold them off a bit longer. Add to that a healthy supply of extra batteries installed before the battle…”

“Precisely. If we use the energy collectors on the surface to power not only the shield dome but also a powerful laser beam directed to a specially installed collector array on the Tarhedia, we may very well become invincible.”

“That could work, but it’ll give away the Tarhedia’s shield configuration if you do that,” Fanra pointed out. “We can randomly change the dome’s configuration and adjust the laser to match, but we can’t keep it in sync with you without basically telling the Xargans how to adapt.”

“We can make a hole in the shield for the beam to go through. If it’s powerful enough, it should vaporize anything the Xargans try to send through the hole.”

“What if they try to repeat what happened at Petra?” the Petran leader - Voon Rabalm - asked, remembering the destruction of Petra with a hyperspace bomb.

“Well, we managed to get the Interdictor to safety - we just hold it safely inside the Tarhedia’s shield and they won’t hurt us,” Jackson reminded him. “Sounds like we’ve got a lot of work to do, and not much time to do it, so let’s get to work. We need the storm intensifier, the energy collectors, shield modifications for the base, the Tarhedia’s energy receiver, and the beam emitter. Everything else is secondary. Dismissed.”

Everyone left to do what they could to prepare for the battle, and roughly six hours later, the first Xargans started emerging from hyperspace on the edge of the system.

“Sir,” one of the officers monitoring the bunker’s sensor array reported to Jackson, “the Xargans are here.”

“Well, we knew they’d show up right about now… Get me Doctor Kaa’nt, ASAP.” Soon, Fanra appeared on one of the screens. “You’re running out of time. What’ve you got?”

“We’re almost ready to power up the energy transmitter - all the other vital stuff’s working.”

“You’d better get it done soon - we don’t know how long they’ll wait, and when they come down on us, we’ll need everything we can get.”

“It’ll just take two more minutes!” Something in the background started throwing out a lot of sparks. “... Make that five.”

“Just do what you can. Jackson out.” The screen switched back to displaying a map of the system. “Contact the Petran flagship.” Within a few moments, the viewscreen switched to an image of the Petran ship’s bridge. “Captain Rabalm, I hope your men are ready. You’re in command of the entire fleet except for the Tarhedia and the Interdictor - try to weaken the Xargans if you can, but don’t let them get any of your ships. Every second they spend gathering their forces is one more second we can use to get everything to work.”

“We’ll do what we can, but I don’t think that’ll do us much good in the end. Plert out.” Again, the viewscreen displayed a map of the Tanopas system as the transmission ended.

“Sir, the Plert isn’t moving… Oh,” the sensor officer reported as the fleet’s fastest ships broke formation, taking the larger craft’s fighter squadrons along with them to raid the Xargans.

“Yes, Lieutenant, I can see that. Rabalm knows what he’s doing.”

The raiding party tried to bombard the Xargans from a safe distance, turning away to retreat when their targets finally decided to retaliate. Meanwhile, the bunker’s shield dome activated as a powerful beam was fired from the roof through the center of the dome. After a few seconds of penetrating through the cloud cover, the beam impacted the energy harvester placed on the Tarhedia’s underside. Fanra appeared on the screen again. “Alright, the beam’s working. Power output is nominal, cloud absorption is a bit higher than expected, but the Tarhedia’s still getting enough of it for the plan to work. I’d like to fire a few shots into the storm to see what effect it’ll have on the beam.”

“Do it,” Jackson said.

A few seconds later, one of the Tarhedian beam turrets on the bunker fired at random into the atmosphere. As they had hoped, the frequency of lightning strikes increased considerably. “It’s dampening the beam a bit… We’re still getting enough power to the Tarhedia, but I’d rather keep the storm at this level. Shields are holding, the storm’s not hitting anybody or anything important, and everything is perfectly fine.”

“Excellent.”

Meanwhile, Rabalm’s raiders - the Ivory Eagle being among them - were about to be intercepted by swarmers. “I’m going to drop my bombs - stay off my tail or you might get hit,” Lanis said to the rest of the group.

“Understood, Eagle. Go for it.”

“Bombs away!” The Eagle dumped the contents of its improvised minelayer module - two high-yield nuclear warheads taken from the Orion’s missile launchers. The Xargans kept going, which proved to be a fatal mistake when what they assumed were weak explosives detonated in a multi-megaton explosion that consumed the swarmer formation entirely. “That should buy us enough time.”

“Bit of a waste of ammo, though,” Barnes commented.

“Well, you can’t win them all…”

A few minutes later, the Xargan presence in the system had doubled while the Eagle and the rest of the raiding party returned to their position. It didn’t take long for the Xargans to decide they were powerful enough and attack; ten minutes later, the battle began. Initially, the defenders fought with all their power. The entirety of the fleet - with the exception of the Tarhedia, which had to stay in its position - maneuvered around key targets, and the beam turrets on the surface provided some much needed firepower.

“Wolf, your shields are failing. Pull back,” Jackson commanded from the planet surface after a few minutes.

“Retreating to safety.”

“Altair, Orion, concentrate fire at the leading enemy ship - we’ll use the guns on the ground to back you up.”

“Plert to Frankfurt: Focus fire on our target.”

The Altair, the Orion and the bunker’s beam turrets fired on one of the two largest Xargans in the area; the Plert and the Frankfurt engaged the other. In the meantime, the Tarhedia’s weapons were destroying the smaller Xargans - each beam of plasma that hit its mark pierced the target’s armor and proceeded to obliterate the internal systems closest to the point of impact. Unfortunately, as the battle went on and more Xargan reinforcements arrived, more and more of the defending fleet was forced to hide in the Tarhedia’s shield or be destroyed.