Over the next fifteen minutes Thunderchild backed further away from the four hundred or so ships that guarded Leucing system from further incursions by Thargoids, withdrawing from the battle zone at a steady rate of one kilometre every five seconds. Our stealth pod was still functioning, following us doggedly at close to its maximum speed, maintaining a position between ourselves and the predicted witch-space emergence point that most of the enemy interceptors seemed to be appearing from. Hidden by the umbrella, Thunderchild was slowly becoming a tiny, darkened dot concealed behind the slightly larger but even darker dot of the unfolded light absorbing sails. We were already two hundred kilometres away from Grassman Orbital, which was now guarded by every last ship we had, and drifting further away each second.
Hammer force had been recalled back to Leucing from Acan and stood in the vanguard, eight kilometres starward of Grassman Orbital. Behind them the ships of Shark force were poised, ready to advance, and before the seven carriers that were the last line of defence for the starport lay the scattered cloud of small forlorn hope ships that constituted Main force. Four layers of defence. Well, three layers of defence and some cannon fodder more accurately.
Grassman orbital itself was now fully evacuated, every ship not capable of effective anti-xeno combat busy ferrying the skeleton crew that had been keeping the starport operational to the carriers, whose jump drives were just beginning to spool up. Once their jump sequence was initiated it could be cancelled within five minutes, but after that five minutes the jump was locked in and irreversible. Each of the carriers was therefore going through a cycle of initiate and abort every few minutes, trusting that the rest of the fleet could protect them for the fifteen minutes that they required to successfully complete the hyperdrive charge cycle and jump away.
As it transpired the first of the Thargoid interceptors – twenty of them - arrived in system while twelve minutes remained on the carriers’ countdown timers. That was all the time we needed to hold the system for, and if we weren’t victorious against this fourth assault then we were gone. The Thargoids could have Leucing. Hopefully they would follow their usual pattern of behaviour and content themselves by merely smashing the evacuated starports and abandoned orbital facilities, leaving the settlements and industrial infrastructure on the occupied planets unmolested.
“You’re sure about this?” Max had asked doubtfully when I had consulted him over the plan that Gail and I had concocted.
“It’s gotta be worth a try.” I shrugged resignedly. “Gail’s up for it. Most of this is her plan. Its plan.” I corrected myself over my gender mistake.
“Well it’s your funeral, kid.” He had sighed, offering me a salute before signing off and taking his position with Shark Force. “Good luck, padawan. May the Force be with you.”
“You too, boss.” I replied, wondering as the comms screen went dark which force he meant - Shark, Hammer or Forlorn Hope. Sometimes people baffle me.
Since then Thunderchild had gone dark. Totally. Not just dark behind the stealth pod’s unfolded shield, but also radio silent and under strict emission control. Shields disabled, Engines off. There would be no more orders coming from this ship. Each of the pilots in the three groups had been issued their instructions by Gail and their destinies were now in their hands alone. They were on their own. They could choose to die here or die back in Sol system if the Thargoids broke us at Leucing.
Or, of course, they could run to Colonia with their tails between their legs.
Hammer advanced to engage the interceptors, their one hundred fighters splitting off into twenty separate five-ship hunting groups, one for each interceptor. The enemy Interceptors died, but nowhere near quickly enough, and when a second wave of twenty-five interceptors appeared out of witch-space, those commanders whose ships had lost their shielding and were taking damage simply gave up and high-waked out to Acan as per standing orders. Soon the flashes of hyperspace jumps outnumbered the flashes of exploding interceptors until finally all of Hammer had managed to jump away to safety.
Shark then entered the fray, mixing it up with the nineteen interceptors that had survived Hammer’s attentions. Slowly the quantity of enemy interceptors fell, but their numbers dwindled even more slowly than they had when they had been engaged by Hammer group. Once half of Shark force had jumped away, Main force began to advance to contact with the eight surviving interceptors which were a mixture of Medusa and Hydra variants – the ones that were hardest to kill.
Or, at least, some of them did. Many simply jumped away, cognizent of the futility of engaging powerful interceptors in small ships that only had limited anti-xeno capabilities if any. Especially when another twenty-five interceptors appeared out of the witch-space distortion. The number of human ships in-system began to rapidly diminish as the shielding on the surviving ships of Shark and Main forces began to drop. In almost no time at all the forces remaining in Leucing dropped to fifty ships. These were the bravest of the brave, the commanders who had made careers out of going head to head with Thargoid interceptors, some for the money, some for the challenge, some for the sheer joy of killing aliens, and some in search of revenge for friends and family already lost to the alien horde. When the number of human ships reached parity with the number of Thargoid interceptors, Thunderchild tracked a Cyclops jumping away through the sensors aboard the stealth pod and brought itself to a full stop, almost three hundred kilometres away from the fight.
Another interceptor exploded in a brilliant fireball, its debris leaving smears of caustic residue over the outer hull of the starport. Three flashes of light from high waking ships lit the surface of Grassman Orbital like strobe lighting as they fled the deadly attentions of an enraged Basilisk as it sent lightning bolts flashing through space in all directions.
Then two hundred and fifty new contacts were registered by the stealth pod. Thirty of them interceptors, the rest were scouts.
All that stood between these and the starport now were the seven carriers, each of which still had just under three minutes to run on their jump timers.
The carriers opened fire first, their long-range defences reaching out to touch the enemy ships, concentrating solely on the interceptors that posed the greatest threat to them. Focussed firepower won out for the carriers, each of them targeting the closest interceptor and pummelling it to shreds with their powerful weapons, every one of which was almost the equal of a capital ship’s defence turrets.
Some enemy ships leaked through the barrage of fire, however. Hits began to play on the shielding of the carriers, deep blue glows emanating from the impact points. Six of the seven carriers held firm as they waited for their jump drives to reach ignition, but the Agamemnon suddenly broke ranks and began to accelerate away from Grassman Orbital. Something had clearly gone wrong, possibly it’s hyperdrive had been knocked offline. Five interceptors chased after it, while the remainder continued to degrade the shielding on the carriers that still stood defiantly between them and the starport.
More interceptors died, then the slower scouts descended upon the carrier group, taking them on one carrier at a time. I watched the timer on the view screen with bated breath as the shields dropped on one of the carriers that the scouts and half the interceptors were attacking, and three seconds after the clock hit zero on the jump timers, the carriers winked out of regular space within seconds of each other, disappearing on their journeys toward Earth. Still alive. Ready to fight again to protect the cradle of mankind.
The Agamemnon, however, seemed doomed. Without main engines and just hastily retrofitted thrusters for in-system manoeuvring, it could not outrun the interceptors that were pursuing it. It fought valiantly, destroying each of the five alien ships that had targeted it, but faced with the rest of the interceptors that had been released with the jumping away of the other carriers, it was only a matter of time before it succumbed to the massed onslaught. The stealth pod’s sensors showed sixteen interceptors and one hundred and ninety-six scouts bathing the Agamemnon in relentless fire.
Twenty-five new ships suddenly appeared in system – Anacondas, Corvettes, Imperial Cutters and Clippers from Hammer force, ships that had the time for their shields to regenerate at Acan and whose pilots had chosen to return to the fight – and these ships dived into the midst of the interceptors with scant regard for their own safety, forcing them to abandon their pursuit of the carrier while it limped further away from Grassman Orbital and deeper into the darkness of Leucing and the temporary safety that distance from the starport offered. Aflame but still firing from the few turrets that hadn’t been knocked out in the fighting, the Agamemnon’s fire reached out and smashed the chasing Thargoid scout ships to pieces, their thin hulls no match for the weaponry of a fleet carrier.
Then, in a witch-space disturbance ten times larger than any I had seen before, thirty more interceptors emerged and made a bee line directly for Grassman Orbital. Behind them came the dreaded hive ship. Gail’s tracking and targeting telescopes locked onto it’s massive form.
I had never seen one before, not even in history books. The only person to get up close and personal with one in the past had been Commander Jameson, and if gun camera tapes had ever been recovered from his crashed Cobra then that footage had never made it out of the ‘Top Secret’ vaults and into the public domain. Dramatisations of the First Thargoid War depicted them in vastly differing forms, ranging from cube like structures to giant wedges, even small moon sized vessels stolen from classic movies of the past. This was something else entirely.
It looked to me like a Thargoid surface site that had been ripped straight out of the ground and launched into space, a giant disk dotted with thorn like protrusions that glistened a glowing, almost luminous green. It’s shape resembled that of a miniature spiral galaxy revolving around an eight-pointed star shaped core that shone even brighter than the jagged protrusions, light from the central column bathing the upper surfaces of the six spiral ‘wings’ an unhealthy yellow-green colour reminiscent of a gangrenous bruise, a hue somewhere between chartreuse yellow and pear.
It was big, too. Bigger than a capital ship. Bigger than Grassman Orbital, even. I estimated it as being perhaps three kilometres in diameter. Maybe more. It was hard to tell from three hundred kilometres away looking through a targeting telescope whose imagery was projected onto a flat view screen, but in relation to the starport I reckoned three kilometres was a reasonable guesstimate. You could fit a lot of ships in a hull that size, I realised. It’s surface area put it on a par with the size of a large planetside starport, and it’s depth was a good few hundred metres. A kcufload of ships, in fact.
As soon as it arrived the hive ship began disgorging scouts. They rose out of holes dotted across the surfaces of the spiral arms of the hive ship and immediately swarmed towards Grassman Orbital, which was already under attack from the thirty interceptors that had escorted the hive ship into Leucing. The besieged starport, all its personnel evacuated, fired a few shots from its automated defence systems. Two interceptors succumbed to the barrage, but then the guns fell silent as the other twenty-eight alien ships began their bombardment of the starport.
My feelings were mixed. On the one hand the plan had worked. We had managed to entice the enemy mothership into showing itself at Leucing. On the other hand, I knew what had to be done next and while I had mentally psyched myself up for the realities of such a situation, when faced with it an icy lead ball of dread suddenly materialised in my stomach and I was momentarily frozen with indecision over my next command to the AI. You can call it cowardice if you like, I don’t really care, I defy anybody be put in that situation and not feel frightened by the prospect of what was about to come.
“Gail, get the stealth pod moving toward the hive ship, but keep us in it’s shadow. Maximum speed. Hail Hermes. Tight beam directional comms.”
“Go ahead Thunderchild.” Alex’s voice came through loud and clear.
“Status?” I demanded tersely.
“Silent running engaged. Drifting with the escape pods from Dragon as instructed.”
“Jump to Acan. Tell the rest of our ships that Thunderchild is beginning her attack run on the Thargoid hive ship.”
“Wait a second,” Alex objected. “That’s not what we’d planned.”
“The plan’s changed.” I told him. “Jump now. Go. Thunderchild over and out.”
“Time to go, Joe.” Gail informed me.
“Yep. All ahead flank. Let’s nail that mothertrucker.”
“That wasn’t a question, my friend.” Gail replied.
tbc
Hammer force had been recalled back to Leucing from Acan and stood in the vanguard, eight kilometres starward of Grassman Orbital. Behind them the ships of Shark force were poised, ready to advance, and before the seven carriers that were the last line of defence for the starport lay the scattered cloud of small forlorn hope ships that constituted Main force. Four layers of defence. Well, three layers of defence and some cannon fodder more accurately.
Grassman orbital itself was now fully evacuated, every ship not capable of effective anti-xeno combat busy ferrying the skeleton crew that had been keeping the starport operational to the carriers, whose jump drives were just beginning to spool up. Once their jump sequence was initiated it could be cancelled within five minutes, but after that five minutes the jump was locked in and irreversible. Each of the carriers was therefore going through a cycle of initiate and abort every few minutes, trusting that the rest of the fleet could protect them for the fifteen minutes that they required to successfully complete the hyperdrive charge cycle and jump away.
As it transpired the first of the Thargoid interceptors – twenty of them - arrived in system while twelve minutes remained on the carriers’ countdown timers. That was all the time we needed to hold the system for, and if we weren’t victorious against this fourth assault then we were gone. The Thargoids could have Leucing. Hopefully they would follow their usual pattern of behaviour and content themselves by merely smashing the evacuated starports and abandoned orbital facilities, leaving the settlements and industrial infrastructure on the occupied planets unmolested.
“You’re sure about this?” Max had asked doubtfully when I had consulted him over the plan that Gail and I had concocted.
“It’s gotta be worth a try.” I shrugged resignedly. “Gail’s up for it. Most of this is her plan. Its plan.” I corrected myself over my gender mistake.
“Well it’s your funeral, kid.” He had sighed, offering me a salute before signing off and taking his position with Shark Force. “Good luck, padawan. May the Force be with you.”
“You too, boss.” I replied, wondering as the comms screen went dark which force he meant - Shark, Hammer or Forlorn Hope. Sometimes people baffle me.
Since then Thunderchild had gone dark. Totally. Not just dark behind the stealth pod’s unfolded shield, but also radio silent and under strict emission control. Shields disabled, Engines off. There would be no more orders coming from this ship. Each of the pilots in the three groups had been issued their instructions by Gail and their destinies were now in their hands alone. They were on their own. They could choose to die here or die back in Sol system if the Thargoids broke us at Leucing.
Or, of course, they could run to Colonia with their tails between their legs.
Hammer advanced to engage the interceptors, their one hundred fighters splitting off into twenty separate five-ship hunting groups, one for each interceptor. The enemy Interceptors died, but nowhere near quickly enough, and when a second wave of twenty-five interceptors appeared out of witch-space, those commanders whose ships had lost their shielding and were taking damage simply gave up and high-waked out to Acan as per standing orders. Soon the flashes of hyperspace jumps outnumbered the flashes of exploding interceptors until finally all of Hammer had managed to jump away to safety.
Shark then entered the fray, mixing it up with the nineteen interceptors that had survived Hammer’s attentions. Slowly the quantity of enemy interceptors fell, but their numbers dwindled even more slowly than they had when they had been engaged by Hammer group. Once half of Shark force had jumped away, Main force began to advance to contact with the eight surviving interceptors which were a mixture of Medusa and Hydra variants – the ones that were hardest to kill.
Or, at least, some of them did. Many simply jumped away, cognizent of the futility of engaging powerful interceptors in small ships that only had limited anti-xeno capabilities if any. Especially when another twenty-five interceptors appeared out of the witch-space distortion. The number of human ships in-system began to rapidly diminish as the shielding on the surviving ships of Shark and Main forces began to drop. In almost no time at all the forces remaining in Leucing dropped to fifty ships. These were the bravest of the brave, the commanders who had made careers out of going head to head with Thargoid interceptors, some for the money, some for the challenge, some for the sheer joy of killing aliens, and some in search of revenge for friends and family already lost to the alien horde. When the number of human ships reached parity with the number of Thargoid interceptors, Thunderchild tracked a Cyclops jumping away through the sensors aboard the stealth pod and brought itself to a full stop, almost three hundred kilometres away from the fight.
Another interceptor exploded in a brilliant fireball, its debris leaving smears of caustic residue over the outer hull of the starport. Three flashes of light from high waking ships lit the surface of Grassman Orbital like strobe lighting as they fled the deadly attentions of an enraged Basilisk as it sent lightning bolts flashing through space in all directions.
Then two hundred and fifty new contacts were registered by the stealth pod. Thirty of them interceptors, the rest were scouts.
All that stood between these and the starport now were the seven carriers, each of which still had just under three minutes to run on their jump timers.
The carriers opened fire first, their long-range defences reaching out to touch the enemy ships, concentrating solely on the interceptors that posed the greatest threat to them. Focussed firepower won out for the carriers, each of them targeting the closest interceptor and pummelling it to shreds with their powerful weapons, every one of which was almost the equal of a capital ship’s defence turrets.
Some enemy ships leaked through the barrage of fire, however. Hits began to play on the shielding of the carriers, deep blue glows emanating from the impact points. Six of the seven carriers held firm as they waited for their jump drives to reach ignition, but the Agamemnon suddenly broke ranks and began to accelerate away from Grassman Orbital. Something had clearly gone wrong, possibly it’s hyperdrive had been knocked offline. Five interceptors chased after it, while the remainder continued to degrade the shielding on the carriers that still stood defiantly between them and the starport.
More interceptors died, then the slower scouts descended upon the carrier group, taking them on one carrier at a time. I watched the timer on the view screen with bated breath as the shields dropped on one of the carriers that the scouts and half the interceptors were attacking, and three seconds after the clock hit zero on the jump timers, the carriers winked out of regular space within seconds of each other, disappearing on their journeys toward Earth. Still alive. Ready to fight again to protect the cradle of mankind.
The Agamemnon, however, seemed doomed. Without main engines and just hastily retrofitted thrusters for in-system manoeuvring, it could not outrun the interceptors that were pursuing it. It fought valiantly, destroying each of the five alien ships that had targeted it, but faced with the rest of the interceptors that had been released with the jumping away of the other carriers, it was only a matter of time before it succumbed to the massed onslaught. The stealth pod’s sensors showed sixteen interceptors and one hundred and ninety-six scouts bathing the Agamemnon in relentless fire.
Twenty-five new ships suddenly appeared in system – Anacondas, Corvettes, Imperial Cutters and Clippers from Hammer force, ships that had the time for their shields to regenerate at Acan and whose pilots had chosen to return to the fight – and these ships dived into the midst of the interceptors with scant regard for their own safety, forcing them to abandon their pursuit of the carrier while it limped further away from Grassman Orbital and deeper into the darkness of Leucing and the temporary safety that distance from the starport offered. Aflame but still firing from the few turrets that hadn’t been knocked out in the fighting, the Agamemnon’s fire reached out and smashed the chasing Thargoid scout ships to pieces, their thin hulls no match for the weaponry of a fleet carrier.
Then, in a witch-space disturbance ten times larger than any I had seen before, thirty more interceptors emerged and made a bee line directly for Grassman Orbital. Behind them came the dreaded hive ship. Gail’s tracking and targeting telescopes locked onto it’s massive form.
I had never seen one before, not even in history books. The only person to get up close and personal with one in the past had been Commander Jameson, and if gun camera tapes had ever been recovered from his crashed Cobra then that footage had never made it out of the ‘Top Secret’ vaults and into the public domain. Dramatisations of the First Thargoid War depicted them in vastly differing forms, ranging from cube like structures to giant wedges, even small moon sized vessels stolen from classic movies of the past. This was something else entirely.
It looked to me like a Thargoid surface site that had been ripped straight out of the ground and launched into space, a giant disk dotted with thorn like protrusions that glistened a glowing, almost luminous green. It’s shape resembled that of a miniature spiral galaxy revolving around an eight-pointed star shaped core that shone even brighter than the jagged protrusions, light from the central column bathing the upper surfaces of the six spiral ‘wings’ an unhealthy yellow-green colour reminiscent of a gangrenous bruise, a hue somewhere between chartreuse yellow and pear.
It was big, too. Bigger than a capital ship. Bigger than Grassman Orbital, even. I estimated it as being perhaps three kilometres in diameter. Maybe more. It was hard to tell from three hundred kilometres away looking through a targeting telescope whose imagery was projected onto a flat view screen, but in relation to the starport I reckoned three kilometres was a reasonable guesstimate. You could fit a lot of ships in a hull that size, I realised. It’s surface area put it on a par with the size of a large planetside starport, and it’s depth was a good few hundred metres. A kcufload of ships, in fact.
As soon as it arrived the hive ship began disgorging scouts. They rose out of holes dotted across the surfaces of the spiral arms of the hive ship and immediately swarmed towards Grassman Orbital, which was already under attack from the thirty interceptors that had escorted the hive ship into Leucing. The besieged starport, all its personnel evacuated, fired a few shots from its automated defence systems. Two interceptors succumbed to the barrage, but then the guns fell silent as the other twenty-eight alien ships began their bombardment of the starport.
My feelings were mixed. On the one hand the plan had worked. We had managed to entice the enemy mothership into showing itself at Leucing. On the other hand, I knew what had to be done next and while I had mentally psyched myself up for the realities of such a situation, when faced with it an icy lead ball of dread suddenly materialised in my stomach and I was momentarily frozen with indecision over my next command to the AI. You can call it cowardice if you like, I don’t really care, I defy anybody be put in that situation and not feel frightened by the prospect of what was about to come.
“Gail, get the stealth pod moving toward the hive ship, but keep us in it’s shadow. Maximum speed. Hail Hermes. Tight beam directional comms.”
“Go ahead Thunderchild.” Alex’s voice came through loud and clear.
“Status?” I demanded tersely.
“Silent running engaged. Drifting with the escape pods from Dragon as instructed.”
“Jump to Acan. Tell the rest of our ships that Thunderchild is beginning her attack run on the Thargoid hive ship.”
“Wait a second,” Alex objected. “That’s not what we’d planned.”
“The plan’s changed.” I told him. “Jump now. Go. Thunderchild over and out.”
“Time to go, Joe.” Gail informed me.
“Yep. All ahead flank. Let’s nail that mothertrucker.”
“That wasn’t a question, my friend.” Gail replied.
tbc