Interregnum (Children of Steel Book 2) Page 9

  In the month that followed, no one asked about Josu, or what had happened to him. He obviously wasn't around anymore, so everyone just accepted it and moved on.

  8

  When we dropped out of jump at the rendezvous point, we were a couple of light months out from the target system. The cruiser and the frigate showed up an hour after we did, and the troop transport showed up a day later. The frigate flew up fairly close and took on board the troops they would be landing. Plans were gone over one last time, to make sure everyone had the same plan. Clocks, drives, and navigation was synched, then we moved into formation, accelerated up to speed, and jumped.

  We dropped out of jump four days later. In order to keep formation, which is rather difficult in jump-space, as you can't see or talk to anyone else, we traveled at a fairly low speed while in jump. But it paid off well as we all came out in trail formation, which is with each ship following the one behind it, and at the same time. With the Astra leading, they only saw the Astra's breakout flash, and it was the largest due to the Astra's heavy tonnage, so all of the other breakout flashes were obscured by ours.

  One ship coming in, even if it is a very big one, isn't all that worrisome. The Astra's specifications are well known, so they'd probably guess we were coming in with a decent size attack force, but they would believe that we wouldn't be able to carry enough to win. So they'd believe we had bad intel, and that they had the upper hand.

  Their best bet under such a scenario would be to keep us from landing any troops, so they were expected to commit heavily to an air attack. The ten fighters from the cruiser Natal would be a rather shocking surprise for them. Assuming that they bought the story we were trying to sell them.

  For the next three days we proceeded in system. The Eagle and the Natal had their drives turned rather low, and with the baffling they had, they wouldn't show up until they went to full throttle. Their goal was to get as close to the two orbital platforms and destroy them before the Astra and the J Wayne came into range. After that, they had enough engine power to do whatever they wanted to. The Natal's engines were actually as big as the Astra's, and the Natal massed less than a tenth of us.

  So the separation between us and the two warships increased quite a bit, as the Astra was forced to burn the entire trip in. The J Wayne was in the same situation as we were, though being smaller was able to hide behind us the entire time.

  When the two warships came into firing range of the orbital defenses they weren't detected, as had been hoped. I suspected they had shut everything down the day before, and they just coasted in so close, that when they suddenly powered up and fired the orbital defenses were destroyed on the first salvo.

  Our radio and sensor people didn't pick up any broadcasts, so they didn't know about the extra ships, but they would fairly soon.

  Six hours later the attack started. The Natal and the Eagle opened up on the orbital radar and ground radar sites, four hours later the Astra was close enough to join the bombardment, which had now switched to their headquarters building and any defense installations that were known about.

  Four hours after that started, we checked our shuttles, checked the troops in the back, got inside, sealed it all up and then we launched.

  The ride down was quiet. The ten fighters from the Natal were formed up in two groups of five, to either side of us. When we dropped down to fly the terrain, they stayed up above us, to draw off any attackers.

  Lead flashed his lights as we came down on to the deck and we all spread out into a loose fingertip position, and pulled our throttles back to point six-five mach. Things were quiet for about another five minutes, then I saw a flash up above me in the air.

  "What was that?" I asked Dave.

  "I got the fighters dialed in back here; they've just been engaged by the local's air defense. Sounds like there are a lot of them too."

  "Is Jerry up there with them?"

  "That's who made the first kill," Dave laughed.

  "Figures," I sighed.

  "One minute to drop zone," Dave said over the general intercom, alerting the troops in the back.

  I saw the indicator for the 'prepare to drop light' that was in the back come on as Dave opened the rear door.

  "Prepare to jump, thirty seconds." Dave said then started counting down by fives.

  I looked around, my board was still clear. over to my left I could see lead's rear bay door was open, and when Dave got to zero, I saw the twin drogue chutes pop out into the air stream, from the back of lead's shuttle, immediately followed by ten troops on each of the two lines. Then as soon as they were all clear, all of their speed drogues deployed and then they were lost to my sight as they slowed down drastically and we continued to speed forward on course.

  I checked my board and the 'bay clear' light was lit, when the last trooper was pulled out by the drogue chute, his tether pulled a pin that both triggered all of their drogues, and let me know they were clear. I flipped the rear bay door switch to closed, and moved in closer to lead as we started to bank around to the left.

  Dave sent the target info to my helmet display and I armed the bomblets.

  "Still quiet?" I asked Dave surprised.

  "Don't worry, we're about to get company," he said.

  I looked at the countdown on my helmet display; we were five seconds from the target. I waited for zero, then hit the pickle button and two canisters dropped from the wings just as we came over the main compound, and each canister disintegrated into five hundred and twenty-six little anti-personal bombs.

  "Company!" Dave said and all of the threat indicators suddenly went active. Lead broke hard right and I slid under him as I broke right as well. Suddenly my headset came alive with radio calls from the other shuttles as we got jumped.

  "Where are they?" I asked checking my threat indicators.

  "Lots of targeting radar, nothing is sticking yet. It's coming from all around us, I'm making six airborne, and probably twenty ground based, we need to....

  "Launch!" he said surprised and I dumped two flares and broke hard left as lead broke away from me and a missile streaked between us.

  "Manpad, two more coming!"

  I jinked us back to the right, pulled the throttles to idle and punched out more flares. This close they were probably using infrared for terminal guidance. If not, hopefully the jammers would spoof them.

  I saw a bunch of small explosions go off as our bomblets all hit the ground.

  "That'll teach 'em!" Dave growled and I pushed the throttles up to mil power. "Turn left thirty degrees!"

  I did, hard and I saw the indicators for the other two cluster bombs wink out.

  "What was that?" I asked looking around and above us. We had company now alright, there were enemy fighters diving on us from my ten o'clock, and a couple more off to my eight o'clock that were being chased by our guys.

  "No idea, just a large group of people in formation. Probably a marshaling area."

  "Take the radar guided; I'll use the heats and the gun. Time to get busy," I said and picked out my target, one of the guys coming in on us was turning to engage my lead, so I pushed the throttles to max and pulled hard to bring us around.

  "Carol, break left!"

  She broke and I hit the chain gun as I came around, my nose tracking the guy trying to get on her tail, and suddenly there was a bright flash and he disintegrated.

  "Raj, break right!" Someone shouted over the radio and I rolled over and pulled hard, something flashed past me, then a missile came off the rail and a moment later whatever it was exploded a lot closer than I would have preferred.

  The next three minutes were the most intense flying I'd ever done. We were low, almost on the deck, and I'd lit both the burners at this point, as we were energy poor. The guys coming down on us from above were moving fast and trading altitude for airspeed, which made them energy rich. So they were not only moving faster than us, but all that extra speed let them maneuver faster than us.

  At least our fighters w
ere on their tail, so it wasn't just a duck shoot.

  But my only real defense was to stay as low as I could, which meant I was literally flying around buildings and trees, through clearings, and changing course every five seconds as I tried to build more speed so I could pop up there and actually fight. I had switched the radio to channel Air-One so I could hear the Natal's pilots as well as the Astra's and the Eagle's now, as Natal's group dove in on the whole mess. Mostly I was too busy trying not to fly into anything or get tagged by one of the enemy fighters to pay much attention to what they were saying, if it didn't start with my name or my call sign, I just ignored it.

  I was on my second lap around their base when I saw my opening and pulled up hard, and then rolled back over, leveled off, and took off after one of the enemy's fighters. Dave must have been busy in the back, because the remaining three radar guided missiles fired in quick succession and I had no idea at all where they went, I was too busy trying to get a bead on the guy I was following while not getting pasted at the same time.

  He jinked left suddenly and someone crossed between us so fast that I don't know if it was his or ours. But I got a growl from my heat seeker and I fired, then broke hard right myself because I suddenly realized that Dave was screaming at me in the headset.

  Whatever it was, it didn't hit us, and I pulled up hard and looking around, I could see wreckage everywhere, there must have been twenty downed aircraft, and everyone was heading away from the spot. I found one of theirs and gave chase.

  "What's the score, Dave?" I asked and tried to push the throttles forward, they were still in full afterburner.

  "We got ten minutes of fuel left, two heat seekers, no bombs, Carol's out, Charlie is out, Jeb is out. Jerry's guys have them on the run, but I think they lost a couple as well.

  "Check," I said and unplugged the burners. "We hit anywhere?"

  "We're hit everywhere, but minor crap mostly. And oh, look at that, we got thirty minutes of fuel left." Dave growled.

  "Sarcasm does not become you, Dave," I said as we closed on the guy I was chasing. I checked my board, sure enough, only two heat seekers left. I didn't even remember firing the second one.

  I got a good growl, from the missile, and fired.

  "So, did you hear anything I said the back there?"

  I watched the missile streak after the fighter.

  "I recall screaming," I said and counted, it took four seconds, and the missile blew the ass off the fighter I was chasing. I broke hard left and checked our six, then looked around for threats.

  "I was yelling, not screaming. Did you know that we had a fighter on our tail?"

  "Were we jinking back and forth like crazy?"

  "I'll take that as a no," Dave sighed.

  "Did I get the guy I fired the heat seeker at?" I asked still looking around. "And where the hell is everybody?"

  "The enemy is trying to strafe the 1st H.I. They just hit the ground and are kicking serious ass. Our guys are shooting them down. And yes, you got him. The other one missed however."

  "Can we make it back to the Astra to refuel and rearm?"

  "Negative."

  I swore, "Well we have one missile and a hundred rounds of ammo. Ideas?"

  "They're setting up the ground base over here."

  An icon appeared on my helmet display.

  "Well, might as well go there then." I said and headed off that way. "Do you know if the others got out or not?"

  "Carol and Jake are okay; she put it down in the woods someplace. I think Charlie and Malibu ejected, but it looks like Jeb and Rasha got pasted."

  "Sorry, Dave," Rasha was a member of his clan.

  "Well, to be honest, I thought we were going to join them there a few times. Flying on the deck, around buildings, trees, and under a bridge in full afterburner? At point eight mach? Do you have a death wish, Raj? Or are you just fucking crazy?!"

  "I'm surprised you even have to ask!" I laughed. "My threat lights were going crazy up here; I think everybody took a shot at me."

  Dave sighed, "If there is a record for the number of missiles a pilot has broken lock on, I think you just beat it. Also I think all those flares you dumped started fires all over the facility. You were so low they were hitting the ground before they burned out."

  We arrived at the refueling point. They were hauling gear out, but one of them saw me and waved me over to one of the spots being set up, and someone else then guided me in with hand signals. I was impressed, they may not have had half the stuff unloaded from the cargo shuttle, but they started in on us before the engines had even started to spool down.

  I turned the radio to the command channel for the Astra. "Flight ops, Alpha-two. We're re-arming. Request orders, load out." I said keying the microphone.

  "Alpha two, you are assigned to ground support. Contact Captain Aruba on Tac-Six when clear."

  "Roger, Alpha-two out."

  I waved to the crew chief who plugged into the shuttle intercom.

  "Yes?"

  "We need a ground assault load out," I told him.

  "Give us package ground-two," Dave said from the back.

  "You got it!" he said and unplugged, then went over to his crew and set them to work.

  They armed us directly out of the shuttle as they continued to set up, at least they had already offloaded the refueling tanks, I don't know if the hose would have reached that far.

  I got a thumbs-up from the crew chief, and started the engines. As soon as I got them both going I throttled up and got us in the air. The shuttle rocked a little, we were loaded pretty heavy, Dave had called for a lot of ordinance.

  I switched my main radio to Tac-Six, and put the secondary on Air-One, though I really didn't have the time to track the air war right now.

  "Captain Aruba, Alpha-Two, ready for support missions," I said, keying the mic.

  "Roger, Alpha-Two. Proceed to grid hotel-five-two, Stone-one is your G.C."

  "Roger, Captain." I said. Dave put the info into the nav, and I flew us off to our ground box and called to our ground controller as soon as we got there.

  We spent the next hour flying close air support, hitting targets and softening up defenses for our troops. We went through munitions so fast in the first half hour that we had to return to re-arm twice. We got buzzed once early on by an enemy aircraft, but one of the fighters from Natal tagged him immediately, and we weren't harassed again.

  It wasn't easy of course. The enemy was dug in pretty heavily, and we took a lot of ground fire. By the end of that hour there were so many bullet scars on the canopy, that I was starting to have trouble seeing out of it, and the hover ducts were so shot up that landing was becoming a real challenge, not to mention that three of our ordinance racks had been rendered useless.

  "When are these people going to rollover?" I grumbled to Dave as we started our second hour of ground ops. "They're beat. They have to know it by now."

  "You'd almost think we were fighting the humanist's again," Dave agreed.

  "Almost makes you think that they're hiding something, doesn't it?"

  "Possibly. Some of the chatter I'm picking up on the ground channels is interesting though."

  "Oh? What?" I knew that Dave monitored a lot more channels that I did. But then I had other things to worry about.

  "That the marksmanship of a lot of the defenders has suddenly gone to shit. They're making a lot of noise, but that's really about it."

  "That sounds... odd."

  "Yeah, command isn't sure what to do, so they're being cautious, so it is slowing down our advance, but casualties have dropped to zero all along both fronts."

  "Alpha-Flight, Colonel Johnson," came over the radio suddenly. "You are all ordered to switch to P-one loads, repeat, Phoenix-One loads."

  I banked us around and headed us to the ground site. "Whoa, that's a surprise!" Dave said and I nodded my head. I could see on my radar that the five of us left in Alpha were breaking off. P-one loads were pacification gas, we didn't have a lot of i
t either, I'd be surprised if we had enough to load out all five aircraft.

  I landed and they quickly scrambled safing and pulling off the unexpended munitions, then putting on the pacification gas bombs.

  Poison gas weapons in war were banned of course, more so than nuclear ones. Nukes got used for several things, as well as defense in space, so corporations had a reason to have them, even if they did pop up in groundside battles occasionally.

  But there were no reasons to use poison gas anywhere and the prohibitions against it were huge, so where the penalties for using it, so when you saw gas it was a safe bet that it was either tear gas, or pacification gas.

  Pacification gas was really just a sleeping gas, and it worked great in enclosed spaces, outside, it didn't work so well. Especially not if there was a breeze. Also it came in bright neon yellow and black canisters, called 'yellow jackets,' so everyone would easily see we weren't slinging any real weapons.

  I took off as soon as they got us loaded up, the other four had all landed by then, and Alpha-three, and Alpha-five took off not long after I did.

  "This is stupid," I complained to Dave as I headed off to the coordinates we were directed to drop our bombs.

  "I'm not so sure about that..." Dave said slowly.

  I released each of the bombs as we passed the drop points; they each disintegrated into hundreds of brightly painted neon canisters that spun as the dispensed gas.

  "What the hell?!" I said looking at the troops as we flew over. They were all collapsing and dropping their weapons, humans and ani's alike. And we weren't even over them yet.

  "What did they put in those things?"

  "A better question," Dave said from the back, "is why didn't they just surrender? Why did they need an excuse?"

  I banked around and did a flyby, going a lot slower this time. All of the enemy troops were down on the ground; our troops were moving in slowly, picking up the weapons and securing the enemy soldiers.

  "I don't follow," I said and flew back to our staging point.