Category: Science Fiction

The ship shook. Three – four – times in rapid succession. “What happened?” a junior officer asked, his dirt-streaked face drawn, eyes wide. “Are they firing on us?” Goldstein laid a hand on the cadet’s shoulder. “Steady, lad. And no, they aren’t. Unless I miss my guess, they hit us with breaching pods. We’ve been boarded.”

The Lefu were well over seven feet tall, though Foraker had no idea how much of that was the armour; Concord heavy power armour made its wearers into giants, too. Whatever else they were, the bastards knew how to fight; they began spraying suppressing fire at the heaviest of the militia’s positions from arm-mounted cannons that were bigger than a man’s leg. Some of the aliens had bulky equipment on their other arms, soon revealed to be miniature shield wall projectors. Others appeared to have sensor and communications gear; the rest had rather large, rather unpleasant looking gauntlets that crackled with energy. One of the Lefu knelt behind a comrade’s shield, taking advantage of the cover to ready his weapon – whatever it was, it was bigger and more unpleasant looking than the tri-barreled monsters his companions carried. Or was it a her? An it? Each helmet was stylized into a skeletal visage, betraying nothing about the species that wore them. The kneeling solider fired and a chunk of the building across the street exploded, along with the soldiers that had been in there, burning rubble and dislodged walls and ceilings cascading down into the rubble-choked roads.

There was a brilliant flash in the distance and Rondell raised one gauntleted hand to his eyes as something fell burning through the night sky, crashing beyond the horizon. Another damn fool trying to run the blockade. The aliens weren’t too happy, and he could guess why. The Commodore had managed to take out one of their battleships as she’d withdrawn and damaged a second, but she’d paid a high price for it. From what he’d heard before the comm-link to TF 111 had gone dead, the Lefu had made their ships tougher than they had any right to be. He’d also confirmed the Code Blacks of three of the Commodore’s battlecruisers and her cruisers. Lewinsky wasn’t a barge-driver, but he knew what losing that many people from one’s command did to a person. He’d fought in the war with the Empties. On Unicorn Set, they’d managed to dig in around the spaceport and his unit had been ordered to take them out. Intel had reported that they hadn’t managed to get their heavy weapons set up. Intel had been wrong. Specialist Kadada tapped him on the shoulder. “We’re getting intel from the capital.” Her face was drawn. “The Lefu have landed troops.”

“Order Wallace to break off immediately. They don’t have a thick enough skin, and we can’t afford to lose them to a fighter strike. They’re also slower than us, so if we cut them loose, we can make sure the enemy SDs won’t catch up.” The woman continued to prowl around the edges of the holo tank, eyes glinting from the shifting gleam of reds, greens and blues. “The HAVOCs will make one pass, then join the carrier for immediate withdrawal to Hyperion Hive. We’ve still got some time before their fighters catch up to us. Let’s put it to productive use and get as close to the people they’re trying so hard to protect as we can. Pass the word to Captain Fung that he is to begin preparations to escort the final refugee convoy out to the hyper limit.” “Commodore…” “We’ve lost this one, James. We were never going to get all of their battleships and now with those dreads and their fighter support incoming, they can batter down Priorii’s OWPs. We’ll do what we can, but if we stand… we’ll be destroyed.” She felt sick. We’re supposed to give our lives for the safety of the civilians, not the other way around. “Continue the advance to the enemy’s formation. We’ll force them to keep their attention on us rather than Wallace. I’m betting that they’ll choose us.”

Radio signals propagated at the speed of light, the one limitation of interstellar communication. Contact with outer-system outposts and ships could take hours for a single message and reply and sensors were equally limited, relaying information progressively more outdated to their viewers the further away one was from the object of interest. Hyperspace sensors were the one exception to this rule, which was all well and good for detecting incoming or outgoing vessels moving at supralight speeds, but less so for picking up station-keeping vessels. In simpler terms, this meant that none of the Lefu ships should have had the capability to detect Commodore Archer’s Red Team before they burst into reality two hundred million kilometers behind the aliens’ battle-wall. Natalya leaned forwards in her chair, a forelock of her blood-red hair falling down her scalp, and her blue-green eyes were intent, almost eager. All right, you bastards. Let’s play.

The Scouting Vessel prowled the edges of the Enemy system, listening to the trickle of data coming from the recon drones it had seeded throughout the orbitals. It had watched the Enemy fleet’s arrival two days ago, watched them cluster about the target planet and ferry thousands of the groundside Enemy to what they doubtless perceived to be safety. The Scouting Vessel could have wreaked severe damage on those transports, particularly the last groups where the Enemy had been calling their warships back together. There was no temptation to do so, however. It was not their function and despite however many casualties they could inflict, they would themselves be hunted down and destroyed. It would not be a military victory so much as pointless butchery, anyways. Delicate sensor vanes almost seemed to quiver in anticipation as the brightspace wave of the approaching Fleet elements drew closer. Wait… what was that?