Rick Partlow - Honor Bound

“Will do, sir,” the officer said, refreshingly without argument. “Waiting on target vectors.”

“We’re keeping him busy, sir,” Vinnie commented as McKay sent the information stream, “but what are we keeping him busy for ? A couple of seconds of laser fire isn’t going to destroy that ship, and sooner or later we’re going to run out of lasers.”

“We’re keeping his attention,” Jason McKay said bitterly, not looking up at him, “to give one of my best friends time to commit suicide.”

“Arvid, can you hear me?”

Patel recognized the voice immediately, even with the roaring in his ears from the high-g burn. He smiled thinly and touched the control to transmit. “Hello Jason,” he said, his eyes still fixed on the image of the enemy ship on the screen. “I’m glad you’re still in one piece. I hope Senator O’Keefe and her daughter are safe.”

“They’re fine, Arvid. But we weren’t able to get the controller intact… it was destroyed in the fight.”

“That… was always a longshot,” Patel allowed, grunting with the effort of taking a breath.

“Admiral… it’s not too late to get out of there. Set the controls and get in a lifepod. It’ll still work.” McKay’s voice didn’t sound pleading… the man was too good to allow that. No, it sounded reasonable, like someone giving you good advice.

“Trust me, Jason… I’d love to.” Another deep, pained breath. “But she’s going to try evasive maneuvers… got to be here when she does.”

There was silence for a long moment. The enemy ship was growing larger on the screen. As he watched, another laser pierced the sky, this time striking the cruiser on its armored nose, and a glowing cloud of superhot, vaporized nickel iron surrounded the monolithic ship before its coilguns spoke again, sending massive shells downward at hypersonic speeds. The armor on the ship’s bow was thick, but Patel could see it running off like liquid in the long seconds it took the Gauss artillery to reach their target. Then the laser fire ceased and the cruiser hung there, leaking burning atmosphere, partially blinded by the loss of its forward sensors, but still alive.

“Is there anything I can do?” McKay finally asked.

“Two things, Jason,” Patel replied after a moment’s thought. “First of all, I want you to swear to me that you’ll see this through to the finish, no matter where it takes you or who gets hurt.” A ragged breath. “This went too far and too high and for too long. Something isn’t right and I don’t know how, but we need to discover what.”

“You’ve got it, Admiral.” McKay assured him. “I’ll work that bone like a bulldog. What else?”

“Keep an eye on Abshay. Give him the advice you always gave me.” Patel drew in a gasping, painful breath. “Make sure he has someone to turn to. You’re his hero, you know.”

” You’re his hero, Admiral,” McKay declared, his voice finally breaking. “And that’s one of the first pieces of advice I’m going to give him. But not the last.”

“Ah, he is finally making his move,” Patel noticed. The enemy cruiser’s maneuvering jets were flaring and she was swapping end for end, leaving her less vulnerable fusion drive plates to face the next laser in line, the Long Island laser. Meanwhile, a large missile, the size of a Shipbuster but sleeker and obviously intended for use in a thick atmosphere, moved into the launch rail of the port weapons pod.

“They’re loading a space-to-ground missile,” the Admiral informed him. “Not one of our designs. Too big to be conventional.”

McKay’s grunt sounded as if he’d been punched in the stomach. “Probably a multiple-warhead fusion missile,” he reasoned, his tone hopeless. “With the defense network down, we’ll have no way to stop it.”

“Don’t worry about it, Jason,” Patel said, smiling as he heard the proximity alarms start to sound. “He’s about to be too distracted to fire it.” He saw the cruiser’s fusion drive light as the enemy tried desperately to move to a higher orbit, to get out of his way…

“No, tovarisch ,” he whispered, using his own maneuvering thrusters to stay on target. “It’s far too late for that…”

“Arvid?” McKay asked, pain and sorrow in his voice.

“Goodbye, Jason,” Patel said. “Thank you for being my friend… whether I deserved it or not.”

Two medics treated Lt. Bevins, exchanging information and instructions in quiet mutters, but other than that, the bridge of the Bradley was silent. All other eyes were focused on the small backup Tactical screen, where the Sheridan was roaring toward the enemy cruiser, riding a star-bright plasma flame.

Drew Franks had never met Admiral Arvid Patel, but all he could think, watching with rapt attention as history unfolded before him, was that he wished he could trade places with the man. He wasn’t sure if that was because he wanted to spare a great man and a great leader from this fate… or because he knew that the name Arvid Patel would never be forgotten. He felt like he should be disturbed by that notion, but for some reason he was comfortable with it.

When the two nearly-identical ships merged with atom-shattering finality, shining a new sun over a darkened world, he could hear Captain Minishimi quietly sobbing behind him, but he couldn’t bring himself to mourn. Admiral Patel would live forever.

There should be screaming, Shannon thought numbly. Biomechs were swarming up the ditch over the piled bodies of their fellows, climbing over the fallen corpses of the defenders, young men and women barely out of their teens who would never live to see their second battle. Others were running back to their secondary positions, where the few that remained were taking up as much cover as they could, waiting to sell their lives as expensively as they could.

Bullets and grenade fragments crisscrossed the open field, slicing through natural-born and lab-grown flesh and bone without prejudice, and yet she couldn’t hear a single scream. The helmets held them in, bottled them up, shut them out. The men and women all fell as silently as the biomechs they fought, as if they were all automatons. But there was, Shannon knew, one key difference between them beyond their ability to independently reason: numbers.

Between the CeeGee trainees and the brief orbital bombardment, Shannon estimated they’d killed over half the biomech army. Unfortunately, that meant there were nearly ten thousand of them left, against less than 300 of the CeeGee officer candidates, their trainers and the half a dozen Special Operations troops still standing… or shooting at least, even if they couldn’t stand.

Crouching behind the cover of a low earthen wall, trying to organize what remained, Shannon felt an insane guilt that she was still alive. She shook it off, watching the oncoming horde of inhuman troops and reflecting that soon she’d have nothing at all for which to feel guilty.

“Colonel Stark,” General Kage said from where he was half-crouched, half-sitting a few meters away, his words clear in her helmet’s headphones despite the din of battle. “I do not believe we can hold this time.”

“I believe you’re right, sir,” she said simply, firing off the last few rounds from her magazine into a biomech only thirty meters away. “We have to pull back, save what we can.” She turned to face him, his eyes barely visible through his faceplate in the grey, pre-dawn light. “You lead the retreat, General… I’ll stay here with my people and try to cover you.”

“Shannon,” another transmission interrupted her conversation. It was Jason, and the sound of it flooded her with relief. He’s alive , she thought gratefully. At least one of us will make it through this. “Shannon, do you read?”