Trail of Evil - eARC (31 page)

“Aye, sir!”

The beam slewed back into the damaged area and chunks of the armor began to crack and bulge. Then missiles tracked into the same spot. Several of the spires spewing the plasma balls looked as if they had been stopped up and began to bulge at the center. One of them exploded, sending the top half of the stalagmite careening into an adjacent one. Another missile exploded in the vicinity. The exploding missile set off several secondary explosions and the DEGs then had a serious soft spot to hammer.

The red beams tore deeper and deeper into the interior. More of the spires bulged and exploded. A large crack began to form across the hull of the enemy ship that looked like earth cracking during an earthquake with a volcanic eruption pouring out from the crack at the same time. The crack glowed red as the surface on either side separated from each other. Sparks, fire, debris, and atmosphere poured from the crack.

“Keep hammering that son of a bitch!” Moore growled. Then the
Madira
was hit so hard that he was nearly knocked unconscious as his head pounded against the helmet seal of his armored suit. Had he been wearing his helmet that wouldn’t have happened. His ears rang and his head hurt badly.

“Nav! Get us the hell out of here!” he shouted. The ship didn’t move. “Nav!”

Alexander tied to shake his head but it hurt too much. He blinked several times to clear the stars in his eyes and to keep from tunneling in from the pain in his back and neck. There were sparks flying from consoles and as he turned to the navigation officer’s station he could see her suit sitting upright while her head was twisted sideways. Her neck was broken. Commander Penny Swain was dead, and from the looks of it so was the COB.

He grabbed his helmet box from his right shoulder and instinctively slapped the patch against his neck. The box unfolded and wrapped around his neck connecting to the seal as it deployed the head cover and then the visor. The helmet was fully deployed in seconds. He instinctively bit at the water tube and triggered stimulants and pain meds to be filtered in. Moore believed he could stand. His neck was likely fractured but the suit would administer some immunoboost if he needed it and he’d be fine.

Sir! The shields are down!
Abigail warned him.

Abby! Sound the order to the fleet and QMT us out of here now!

Roger that!
The AIC said.
Sir! General Moore! General Alexander Moore?!

Just as the QMT lights flashed and the sizzling began Alexander could see the Chiata ship crack completely in two. Explosions followed one after the other in a chain reaction from the center of the ship toward the bow and the stern. He could hear Abigail shouting at him in his mind but he couldn’t respond. He felt as if his mind was suddenly forced to lose focus. Then he lost control of his suit and he fell hard backwards into his chair. He could see Firestorm out of the corner of his eye leaning over her console. He couldn’t tell if she was still alive or not. Fire started to engulf the bridge on the forward port side right up until the viewport on the same side cracked all over like a spider web and then gave way. Atmosphere rushed into space, pulling anything that wasn’t tied down with it. At least it blew out the flames. Moore tried one more time to stand but his body didn’t respond. He could see the Oort Cloud out the broken window as he passed out.

Chapter 46

June 13, 2407 AD

Alpha Lyncis

203 Light-years from the Sol System

Tuesday, 9:43 AM, Expeditionary Mission Standard Time

“Is Dee okay!” Moore started awake. His vision was blurred and there was a bright light shining in his face that was annoying as hell. The worst of it was that he couldn’t move anything.

Your daughter is fine, sir
, Abigail said into his mind.
She was safely restrained in her mecha when we were hit. I’m very happy to hear your voice.

Abby? What the hell is going on? Why can’t I move?

Your neck was fractured, sir. Medics are here now. Stay calm, sir.

Where is Sehera?

She is here.

“Sehera?”

“Alexander. I’m here.”

Moore could see his wife lean in over him briefly, but he couldn’t turn toward her. He felt no pain anywhere in his body. He figured the suit was taking care of that.

“Sehera, what is wrong with me?”

“Alexander, your neck is broken. You have to give the immunoboost time to fix it.” His wife told him. “You had extensive spinal-cord damage. It may take a day or two after the repairs before you will walk again.”

“Where am I?” Moore couldn’t see anything but his wife’s face and motion of doctors in his peripheral view.

“You are in the med bay. We are safe at the outer system muster point,” Sehera assured him. “You need to stay calm and heal.”

“How bad was it?” He almost whispered. “How many dead?”

“I don’t know. But you were the only one alive on the bridge when they got there. The air had vented to space and you and Firestorm were the only crew with your helmets on. Sally was revived. I think she’s going to make it.” Sehera said.

Abby, DTM me a casualty list.

Sir, are you sure you want to do that right now?
the AIC sounded reluctant.

Abby! Now.

Yes sir.

“How are you okay? Were you wearing your helmet?” he asked his wife.

“I was, but I was here in the med bay helping. The most damage was on the bridge spire. They knew where to hit us,” Sehera told him. Moore was scrolling the casualty list. There were more than one hundred neck injuries. More than seventy of them were dead and couldn’t be revived. He’d have to implement a new order for either the suit neck brace to be deployed or the helmets to be on. Not including that in the original order was a stupid mistake on his part. Those lives were on his head.

“Sehera, I’m sorry.”

“For what, Alexander?” Sehera asked him with almost a scolding tone in her voice. “For trying to stop an impending invasion of humanity? For putting soldiers in harm’s way? For tracking this trail of evil we’ve been on for so long with the hopes to once and for all put an end to the wars? We will survive this and keep moving forward.”

“I’m sorry for putting you in the middle of it. You should snap home to safety.” Moore could feel his face at least. There were tears running down his cheeks. Sehera leaned in and kissed him through his open helmet visor. It reminded him of a time she had done that on Mars so long ago. He had been injured badly then too.

“That is a hell of a thing for you to say to me!”

“I love you.”

“Dee is here,” she whispered to him. “I love you too.”

* * *

“In the meantime, sir,” Chief Medical Officer USN Commander Angela Muniz scanned Alexander once again with the handheld quantum imaging device. She frowned almost imperceptibly. “You
are
sidelined until I can release you. You either stay in your suit with the helmet on or you are in a full body exosuit.”

“How long, Doc?” Moore was beginning to get bursts of feeling in his toes and legs. That had to be a good sign.

“At least two days,” the doctor reluctantly told him. “I’m sorry, General. It will take that long for the spinal-cord to heal.”

“I can’t be sidelined here. Not now.” Alexander thought of the attack plan and how he had to be there to implement it. Nobody else would have the wherewithal to see this horrible thing through.

“Sir, you will have to stand down. If I have to, I’ll do a medical override on your suit controls to keep you from moving.”

“Are you telling me I can’t move?”

“No, I’m telling you not to move until we are certain you will not reinjure your spinal-cord. You could possibly make things worse by walking about.” Doctor Muniz explained. Moore had already suspected as much.

“Very well, I will stay put. But I can work from my suit mentally at least. Right?” There was no way Moore wasn’t going to stay on top of the plan even if he couldn’t get up and walk aournd.

“I see no harm in that. I suspect General Rheims will want to do the same. She has regained consciousness and I
did
have to lock her suit out to keep her still.” Muniz said. “Now if you’ll excuse me, General. I have thirty other injuries just like yours to deal with.”

“Understood. Thank you, Doctor.”

Abby, note for the record that I’m putting Captain Jack Boland as acting ship’s captain U.S.S. Sienna Madira II.
With the loss of the Air Boss and the rest of the bridgecrew there was nobody else to choose from. Boland could handle it.

Understood, General. I’ll have him report to you ASAP.

“So, Captain Seeley, I’m sorry that your losses were as severe as mine,” Moore said to the clone captain. Moore sat upright in an oversized wheelchair that was designed for moving downed AEMs.

He had been moved to the captain’s lounge of the
Madira
. It had become his own personal war room over the past couple years. Now that he couldn’t be on the bridge he decided to make it his new place of operations. It had only taken him a couple of hours on the immunoboost before he could feel his lower extremities well enough to control them and for the meds to make the pain of healing bearable enough to go back to work.

The suit wouldn’t let him get hurt as long as he didn’t move around so he had himself wheeled to the lounge and stayed put. Sehera had originally insisted he go to their quarters, but Alexander wouldn’t have it. He needed space to be able to brief with his remaining war planners and the lounge was ideally suited.

“Thank you, General,” Seeley replied. “The Chiata were considerably more effective than we had expected them to be.”

“Considerably,” Moore agreed.

Sehera, Deanna, Lieutenant Commander, Lietenant Colonel Jones, and Gunny Suez sat in chairs against the wall while Captain Boland, Captain Penzington, Captain Seely, General Warboys, and Vice Admiral Walker sat at the table. There was plenty of room for them all to sit at the table but there was protocol to consider and Moore couldn’t turn his head yet as his helmet was locked in place. Therefore, he’d had them all sit at the far end of the table from him and at the end wall. That way he would be able to see all of their faces. It had taken a few minutes to get past the small talk and well wishes until they finally got down to business.

“Sir, we are getting our asses handed to us,” DeathRay said. “From all the data we’ve got from the first two waves simulations show that we are not doing near as much damage as we had hoped and we are taking on many more casualties than expected.”

“After looking at the video from the autotanks and bots, General, there is no way in hell I’d suggest sending in the Warlords or the AEMs.” General Warboys added. “I’m sure Lieutenant Colonel Jones and Top will agree with me.”

“Our losses were ninety three percent greater than we had anticipated in our engagement at the gas giant,” Captain Seely said. The clone captain made almost no facial expression as he said it. “On the upside, General, we did learn how to destroy one of the blue beam guns. From a review of your mission it would appear that you also found a way through their armor.”

“No, Captain Seeley,” Moore replied. “We didn’t. The bastards shot themselves to shoot us. We just seized the opportunity.”

“Yes, General, I did gather that,” he clone said. “However, sir, it does show us that force concentration on weakened structures is the key. We now just must determine how to create such weakend structures.”

“Famous last words,” Nancy said.

“You have something to add, Nancy?” Moore asked.

“Yes sir,” Nancy looked back and forth at the others in the room. Moore guessed she was gauging them all. He noted that Vice Admiral Walker remained expressionless and quiet.

“Well, then, let’s hear it.”

“We can’t keep up the asymmetric terror approach. I know it was part my idea but it isn’t going to see us through to the end, sir.” Nancy pulled up a DTM battlescape with a numbers projection analysis on it. “Allison has run the numbers based on our first two attack waves. The data back from the recon bots at Kill Box One shows that we only managed to infect thirty percent of the ships with the builder bots. And as soon as they managed to get inside the ships the other Chiata ships turned those blue beams on themselves and destroyed the infected one.”

Moore listened to Nancy’s analysis. She was the expert in the fleet on developing analyses from intelligence and then determining courses of action. She had been trained to do it and had lived her life as a spy doing it for decades. Alexander hoped she’d figured something out—some course of action where they all didn’t end up dead.

“In the first attack wave the only positive was in determining the strength of the Chiata weapons and capabilities of their vessels. The automated mecha managed to hold their own against the fighter-class Chiata longer than any other matchups. You can see this chart here shows that although there were superior numbers of enemy fighters the kill-to-attrition ratio was almost one to one. This graph here shows that the automated ground troops were wiped out quickly—but there is one interesting piece of data.” Nancy paused and zoomed in on the geographic area nearest the surface-to-space weapon of Moore’s engagement.

“Sir, here is where your fleet engaged the surface. The autotanks and buzzsaws were deployed here. They were not doing well except for a few seconds following the DEG attack on the surface-to-space weapon.”

“So, what happened? The DEGs disrupted them somehow?” he asked.

“Uh, no sir, I don’t think so. I think the DEG engagement was likely a coincidence.” Nancy turned to DeathRay. “It comes down to mecha jocks again sir. At this precise moment seven of the autoGnat-Ts went into pukin’ deathblossom maneuvers. DeathRay and Apple1 here can both express to you how difficult these maneuvers are but they can also attest to how effective they can be. What was different here was that the bot-controlled mecha targeted differently than ours do.”

“How so?” Alexander was intrigued.

“They targeted any red force target in range and not just flying ones,” Nancy pointed at one of the autoGnat-Ts and replayed the three-dimensional simulation of its engagement from ten seconds before deathblossom to ten seconds after where it was destroyed. “During the engagement, several ground and aerial targets were taken out and the effectiveness of the ground forces increased as well. It is the only twenty seconds or so where the autotanks were playing offense instead of defense.”

“Twenty seconds!” Warboys gasped. “That is
not
a very long window, Captain Penzington.”

“With all due respect, General,” Nancy turned and gave the legendary tank commander a raised eyebrow. “It might be enough.”

“Enough for what?” Warboys shook his head side to side.

“Major Moore, would you take it from here?” Nancy nodded at Dee. Alexander could see the slight evidence of a smile between the two.

“Yes, Captain. Be glad to.” Dee stood up and stepped a bit forward Moore was certain she moved so he could look her in the eye. “I’ve already been discussing this with the CHENG for some time now and he agrees that he could fix this in a matter of minutes with a simple software fix.”

“The CHENG? Fix what?” Alexander would have shrugged and held his hands up if he could move.

“Time, General is our biggest problem. Most people believe that the pukin’ deathblossom can only last about eighteen seconds because the pilots can’t take anymore of the stress. That isn’t entirely true. I’ve been watching the bot planes and the clone pilots and their deathblossoms are only a few seconds longer. My AIC and the CHENG’s have decided that the targeting algorithm simply cannot keep up much longer than this amount of time. It is like predicting the weather longer than a month. There are just too many variables for the model to continue to track accurately. So, we stop the deathblossom at this point, not just because the pilots can’t take it longer.”

“Okay, so where are we going with this, Major?” Warboys asked her.

“General, the problem is that after the deathblossom maneuver there is a second or two that the computer’s targeting system is sluggish. The pilots are definitely sluggish. So they need a break. I would suspect that the tank drivers on the ground would have been much more effective if they knew when they could go to offense and when to circle the wagons more precisiely,” Deanna explained. Alexander understood what she was saying but didn’t quite see how it could be implemented. There was no way the pilots could be expected to do deathblossom after deathblossom. It would be too physically demanding.

“Major,” Vice Admiral Walker finally spoke up. “You said you have been working with the CHENG on something. I suspect is more than just an understanding of the deathblossom targeting. A software fix, I think you said?”

“Yes, Admiral.” Deanna nodded her head. Her helmet was not deployed but the neckbrace was in place. “It is within the capabilities of the technology already installed on all of our mecha and suits to conduct snap-back and sling-forward teleportations at our individual AIC’s discretion.”

“What? You mean we could teleport right now to wherever we wanted to?” Warboys asked.

“Well, no sir. That isn’t what I said.” Deanna held up her armored hand. “I said the suits and mecha have the capability. They do not have the authority.”

“Don’t have the authority?” Alexander looked at his daughter. “Who does?”

“Right now, according to the CHENG, the safety protocols are controlled by the QMT contingent of the CDC and the medical emergency response software,” Deanna explained. “Sir, it is just a software fix according to the CHENG. The AICs of the mecha pilots and the AEMs could teleport whenever they needed to and to where ever they needed too. Commander Buckley says the protocol can be implemented in minutes following your approval, sir.”