John Ringo: Eye of the Storm

The human fleet was in line astern. Which meant the Hedren could get angled shots on the human ships. But they could only hit one side and they were concentrating all their fire on the superdreadnought, trying to take it out.

Then it rolled.

“Starboard batteries coming in range of Hedren targets,” the tactical officer said.

“Shift control to automatic,” Ronnie said. “Concentrate on the heavies. Bring fighters in from the rear. Tell everybody to hold on. Lex , open fire.”

The enormous Globe-breaking mass driver had been removed. But the Lexington had been designed to not only break Globes, but to destroy the huge swarms of lesser Posleen ships. B-decs, a C-dec surrounded by twelve Lampreys, equated nicely to one of the Hedren cruisers. A C-dec to one of the destroyers.

And the Lex was designed to take on thousands of such not a mere handful.

Arrayed along her sides were literally hundreds of lasers, each capable of destroying a Lamprey. Nearly as many heavy plasma cannons capable of gutting a C-dec. But the pride and joy were over two dozen grav-guns per side. Each of the GalTech 200mm mass-drivers accelerated a one hundred and fifty kilogram chunk of refractory heavy metal to ten percent of light-speed. The kinetic impact was equivalent to a sixteen megaton nuclear weapon.

The impacts from the Hedren meson cannons had barely caused the ship to shudder.

The Blue Ghost’s first broadside nearly threw everyone off their feet.

“Report!” Ularn shouted, sealing his suit. The fact that he had to seal his suit in the deeply buried tactical room told him everything he really had to know. He was surprised he was alive to ask the question. “What do we have left?”

“ Ondun, Othelululi, Avakog, Baglitua, Rinarint, Savatulaulalo and Elondeg , are all damaged and out of the battle,” the maneuvering officer said. “ Bango, Ingona, Lirulimoru, Mirornc and Otha are still in the fight. The rest are… gone.”

“We may be ‘in the fight,’ ” the Ingona’s commander said. “But our meson cannons are out and a good bit of our secondary weapons. We’ve not much to fight with .”

“All remaining ships, skew turn, engage with secondaries,” Ularn said.

“Fighters incoming at kang tai delta eight,” the fleet combat officer said.

“Ships maneuver for fighter engage… ”

The Kotha didn’t manage to get the word ‘engagement’ out before the second barrage hit the task force.

“Their last two battleships just went up, sir,” the Lex’s tactical officer said. “One cruiser’s still limping along and a couple of the others are sort of alive but drifting. One battleship drifting.”

“Away boarding forces,” McNair said. “Grab whatever intel and prisoners they can. Tell them to be careful; those ships are right on the edge of being bright flashes in the night sky. Task force break up and move to designated targets. Rendezvous at Karum ley point in no more than twenty hours. Send a message on the Himmit frequency and ask them to report that initial space forces in the Daga system have been reduced. Maneuvering, move us over to cover the retreat of the invasion fleet. And we might need to give the SS a little cover fire.”

“Do we have an ID on those vehicles?”

Group General Gweldund knew to his shame that this planet was lost. He had been left on the planet with little but construction and consolidation forces so given the scale of the attack it was going to be hard to blame him. However, it was his duty to complete the transmitter and then hold it. There was no avoiding that truth.

But there were other forces on the surface as well as those in space. From the size of this task-force that had appeared out of nowhere they were not enough ships to hold the system. Which meant that, eventually, the remaining forces would be reinforced both by the transmitter and from space. So, the more damage he did to the incoming forces the better.

“Sensors do not recognize most of them,” Commander Savanass, the Marro chief of intelligence and sensors said. “Some of them are shuttles. The rest… Ah, I have a visual from Ingia Station.” The Marro considered the image and then shook his head slowly back and forth. “These appear to be ground combat vehicles. But… they are not designed for orbital insertion. They are just… ground combat vehicles on platforms.”

“Some sort of feint?” General Gweldund asked. “We do not have enough power to stop both the bombardment and the vehicles. I’m not sure we have the power to stop either . But if we concentrate on one, we cannot interdict the other.”

“They appear to have some sort of shielding that prevents the worst effects of reentry,” the Marro said, examining the sensor readings closely. “If they also have some way of slowing… they could be a ground threat.”

“Shift fire to the vehicles,” General Gweldund ordered. “There is no way to fully stop the bombardment. The transmitter will be destroyed. But we must make it possible to retake the surface.”

“We will do our best,” the Glandri officer in charge of defenses said. “But with all the metal that thing is throwing out in the way, there is no way we will get most of them.”

“I must contact the Imeg for support,” General Gweldund said, his tentacles wrippling. “They will not be pleased.”

“Mein Gott,” Frederick shouted as a Marder in front of him exploded in fire. He couldn’t even tell what had hit it, just that it was destroyed.

“They’re starting to get through the kinetics,” Harz said, blandly. “This should get interesting.”

He could only see it because the Leopard had, for some reason, turned over on its side and half upside down. There was no way to control the tank. All they could do was fall on the pre-selected routes. Two vehicles, a Leopard and an armored support vehicle, bumped, tangled, exploded into fire and pieces. Their Leopard dropped through the debris, a chunk of armor plating flashed out of the fire, slammed the vehicle and suddenly one of Frederick’s vision blocks blanked. The system quickly spread the load but the view was slightly grainier. He wished he could just turn them off. The tank was now spinning and it was getting very disorienting. They also were starting to build up G forces and he was being pulled forward in his combat harness. He grabbed a sickness bag and was noisy with it.

“Ribbon chute coming out,” Harz said. “Let’s hope it doesn’t tangle.”

There was a thump and the tank swung back and forth for a moment then ended up in a nose down configuration. The KEWs were beginning to slam into the ground below them, bursts like nuclear weapons in a ripple across the ground, growing and swelling, thousands of them.

“We can’t survive that !” Adler shouted.

“Most of it will be gone by the time we land,” Harz said, yawning. “Most of it.”

Sun-bright flashes, roiling mushroom clouds and the panzer dropped straight into the heart of them. Frederick was momentarily glad. The view was, at least, cut off. All he could see was blackness shot with lightning as the clouds rearranged the massive energy released by the orbital kinetic weapons.

“How long until we hit?” Adler shouted.

“Coming up in four… three… two… ”

The sensation of falling abruptly stopped with barely a bump. The Leopard seemed to pause for a moment then dropped downwards, hard, slamming to the ground.

“Blowing bolts,” Harz said to an almost unnoticed additional thump. “Forward, Schutze! Follow the icon on your blocks.”