Tag: children of heaven

Alarms whined aboard the hive’s CiC and Admiral Foraker gripped the upper mezzanine’s railing so tightly that his fingers ached, watching helplessly as holes were ripped in his defensive formation, more and more Lefu HAVOCs spiraling through those dead zones, towards the shipyards. Their savagery was almost inconceivable; those defences could have stopped dreadnaught squadrons in their tracks, but they might have been made of tissue paper for all the good they did against the alien fighters.

Admiral Alicia Hunt stood on the command deck of UTCNS Warlord, a Kali-class dreadnaught. Imperator was of the same class, but Invictus was an Ares. Thunderer and Conqueror were Camulus-class; missile variants, outfitted with fortress tubes and the warheads that went with them. “Status of April Fools?” “All ECM systems read green, admiral. We know what to look for and even our sensors are having trouble sorting them out; the Lefu should be in for a bit of surprise when they open fire.” “Let’s hope so. Status of their advance?” “They’re ignoring the outer-system colonies, coming right for us.” “Their scouts must have reported in, then. I doubt they would have done so otherwise.” The Lefu targeted military ships and facilities first, then took out any spaceborne civilian vessels or installations. If they didn’t know that Hyperion Hive’s outer-system sites were harmless, they’d have started culling them. As it was, they were planning on dealing with BG 97 first.

The images kept coming; the planet had been bombed ruthlessly. Not with nuclear weapons, but with asteroids. Something had sat above it and hurled rocks – little ones, big ones – at a defenceless world over and over. Analysis put the first strike and the last one 2, maybe 3 days apart. “They wanted it,” Jacob mused. Karen looked up from her readouts. “What?” “They wanted the world. Look at this attack – it was meticulous. Here, this island city – first, all the bridges connecting it to the mainland were taken out with smaller meteors, then the city was blasted with one big one. No one was supposed to get out. But the dams, the nuclear power plants, the oil rigs – they haven’t been touched. There’s been collateral damage from the tsunamis and earthquakes, but whoever did this tried to leave as much of the infrastructure intact as possible.” “Without those pesky inhabitants,” the younger woman replied bitterly. Jacob nodded. The asteroid bombardment had been followed up with the atmospheric dispersal of a bio-weapon. One specifically targeted to the dominant species on this planet. It was unlikely that many of the inhabitants had survived the relentless bombing, but those that did wouldn’t even have had a chance to die from starvation. “How much of their industry survived?” he asked. There’d be time to feel like a grave robber later; right now he had a dying ship to fix and not enough resources to do it.

“Ah, Mrs. LeFay. How kind of you to join us,” Captain Lucas Tankersley quipped. He was a decorated Navy officer, who’d been given the job of ‘herding cats’ aboard the Aurora as an easy way to finish up his career – and keep him away from the front lines. At least, that’s what Alex had heard, but she didn’t know why. She guessed that the perpetual cup in his hand had something to do with it. “Sorry, sir.” “Well, as long as you’re here, take your station. We could use your expertise.” “What’s happened, sir?” Tankersley nodded towards the main viewer. Alexandra followed his gesture and gasped. There, frozen on the screen, was the grainly, black-and-white image of an alien’s face. It looked male, though Alexandra had no way of confirming that without a more extensive examination of its anatomy. It also possessed a sleek pelt and pointed ears on the top of its head. Its features were startlingly similar to human interpretations of anthropomorphic animals. In this case; a cat. “Copernicus detected the first radio transmissions from their world less than a hour ago,” Lucas informed Alexandra. “We have a triangulation on them; only ten light-years away. We’re moving out, immediately.”

The combat golem shook and staggered back, internal systems processing the force of the kick. It determined that it had not received lethal damage and continued the attack, stabbing down at her viciously. She hissed as one of its claws pierced her tunic, withdrawing with traces of blood upon its edge. The golem was not allowed to inflict lethal wounds, but it could injure an unwary opponent all the same. She was slowing down. Sensing weakness, the golem pressed its offensive, jabbing at her with its many limbs. She grabbed its forearms tightly, servos hissing as the unit attempted to pull itself out of her grasp. She brought her knee up into its underside and the golem shuddered, but again it determined this not to be a lethal-level attack. She threw the golem back, buying herself the time to climb to her feet, a single drop of blood slipping down her side from where the unit’s claw had broken her skin. Her arms and legs felt as if they were made of lead and the golem still functioned. Damp with sweat, her outfit clung to her skin. The automaton prepared to a charge, but she held up a hand. The machine froze in its tracks, recognizing the order to abate. It was only a training match; there was nothing on the line, nothing to prove against a simple automaton. But it kept her fit, kept her toned and ready. Another moment was coming, one in which she wouldn’t be pitted against a simple device, but against flesh-and-blood Enemy. In that fight, there would be no surrender, nor could there be. It was what she was, what they all were. There was no creation without destruction, no glory without sacrifice. No survival without murder.

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.