Jack Campbell - Perilous Shield

“And the battle cruiser would shoot back,” Gaiene said. “We don’t want this pretty new ship of yours banged up. Your President wouldn’t like that, and I am endeavoring to stay on her good side.”

“President Iceni is a great leader,” Kontos replied.

He really believes that. Perhaps he’s right. What he doesn’t realize, because he lacks the experience, is that even great leaders can lead people into great disasters. Hopefully, this won’t be one of them. Iceni is a damned fine woman, though. Too bad she’s never made a pass at me. I wouldn’t dare make a pass at her. If she didn’t kill me, General Drakon would. “She is impressive,” Gaiene said out loud.

“Yes.” Kontos sounded almost reverent.

He worships the woman. Poor boy. I hope the impact when he encounters reality won’t leave too big a crater inside him.

“I have received another transmission from the battle cruiser,” Kontos said, his tone returning to a businesslike cadence.

“Your own offer of wealth, promotion, etc.?”

“No. I have received no such offer, possibly because the enemy commander knows that I would never betray our President.”

Or possibly because the enemy commander doesn’t see the need to offer you anything, believing that this battleship is fruit ripe for an easy plucking. “What are they saying?” Gaiene asked.

“They demand that I acknowledge their last demand to surrender.”

“Tell them no. Tell them that you’ll defend this ship to your dying breath.”

The image of Kontos squinted at Gaiene, puzzled. “I want them to expect strong resistance?”

“What you want,” Gaiene explained patiently, “is to make them expect you to resist as hard as you can. Which shouldn’t be very hard, of course, given how few people they think you have aboard this battleship. But the prospect of determined resistance by your small contingent will cause them to put together a boarding party large enough to quickly overwhelm your skeleton crew. Then, when that boarding party gets here, my soldiers will destroy it and face correspondingly fewer crew members on the battle cruiser itself.”

“Ah. I see. I should act desperate and determined.”

“Absolutely.” Gaiene managed to muster another smile for the young Kapitan-Leytenant.

“I can do that,” Kontos said in a quieter voice. “I know how it feels. At Kane. On this battleship, on this bridge, waiting for the snakes to break through, day after day.”

Gaiene regarded Kontos with a different gaze. The boy has been through a lot. It’s easy to forget. He doesn’t let the scars show very often. But they are there, aren’t they, lad? Sometimes, they fade with time. If you’re lucky. “That was an exceptional job you did at Kane, Kapitan-Leytenant Kontos. After that, this little operation should be easy. It either works very quickly, and we all celebrate, or it fails miserably, and we all very quickly die.”

Kontos smiled in turn and nodded, his eyes on Gaiene. “That is so. I will keep the battle cruiser’s commander entertained and his attention occupied. Let me know if there is anything I can do to assist your actions.”

“Just keep your citadels locked tight. We’ll take care of everything else this time.”

Kontos saluted with formal dignity, then the scene changed to an outside view.

“Just under an hour,” Gaiene told the soldiers of his brigade over the command circuit. “I want full-combat readiness in half an hour.”

Over the next forty-five minutes, Gaiene watched the battle cruiser swooping in, starting out as a flaring spot of light marked by the propulsion units straining to bring it to a halt relative to the battleship, then growing dramatically in size as it reduced speed, creating the illusion that the massive warship was expanding at an ever-slowing rate as it got closer.

“I never liked these boarding operations,” Lieutenant Colonel Safir commented from her location elsewhere in the battleship. The nearly one thousand soldiers they had brought with them were dispersed among four large loading docks spaced along the battleship’s hull. Fitting almost two hundred and fifty armored soldiers into each of those docks in such a way that almost all could engage attackers had taken some careful arranging despite the size of the compartments. “I’ve only done the one, and I don’t have fond memories.”

“We’ll enjoy this one more than they will,” Gaiene replied. The universe had long been a drab thing for him, illuminated only by the highs brought on by combat or alcohol or women. Memories could have provided more light and color, but along with the light and color came pain, so he did his best to block them out.

The ring on his left hand was concealed under the gauntlet of his battle armor, but he always knew it was there. Nothing else remained, but the ring did.

His spirit felt the lift that imminent battle carried before it, and for a moment, Gaiene could forget the emptiness he fought every day and the memories he fought to avoid every minute of every day.

The link to the battleship’s external sensors showed the battle cruiser looming very close now. “Five minutes,” the voice of Kapitan-Leytenant Kontos warned over the battleship’s announcing system. “Both Gryphon and Basilisk have broadcast acceptance of the offer from Haris and are altering vectors to join up with the battle cruiser!”

“They betrayed us?” Lieutenant Colonel Safir asked Gaiene.

“I doubt it.” Gaiene hoped he was right about that and about his evaluation of Kapitan Stein. When it came to judging women, or men for that matter, he wasn’t always successful.

Five minutes and four seconds later, the battle cruiser came to a stop relative to the battleship, only about fifty meters separating the sides of the two massive vessels. Openings suddenly gaped in the hull facing the battleship as the battle cruiser opened all four of its cargo hatches on this side, openings five meters high and ten meters wide, which were almost immediately obscured by a flurry of shapes coming out on trajectories aimed at where similar still-sealed hatches could be found on the outer hull of the battleship.

Gaiene and part of his brigade waited patiently behind one such hatch, other portions of his brigade behind other hatches, close to a thousand soldiers in full battle armor with weapons at ready. He would have liked to have more, but one freighter could only carry so many (life support had been almost overloaded on their way to the gas giant as it was), and a thousand should be enough.

“All scouts launch,” Gaiene ordered.

Clinging to the outside of the battleship’s hull where they had taken position half an hour ago were scouts in stealth armor, invisible to the attackers. At Gaiene’s command, those scouts pushed themselves toward the battleship, passing unseen through the oncoming ranks of the Ulindi boarding party and toward the big hatches on the battle cruiser from which the attackers had come.

Spotting and counting objects was one of the things automated sensors were very good at. Within seconds, the battleship’s sensors reported the result. Seven hundred and twenty. “Almost half the crew of the battle cruiser,” Safir commented.

“Excellent,” Gaiene agreed.

The impacts of a bit more than seven hundred attackers coming to a halt on the battleship’s hull couldn’t be felt by humans in armor, but once again the battleship’s sensors reported the arrival of the boarding party, pinpointing the positions of all of them and passing that information on to the combat systems in the soldiers’ armor. Gaiene watched, feeling his excitement ramp up, enjoying what he knew would be brief sensations of being truly alive.