Chapter 13

The Imperial 17^th Fleet was patrolling the Conveelt system as part of the various measures the Empire now had in place to try and counter the alien incursion. So far, other than the entrapment of a smuggler’s vessel, it had been quiet and uneventful. The ships themselves were overloaded to a certain extent with double the complement of Ground Force personnel as well as being accompanied by a couple of the new missile carrying ships that would hopefully surprise the aliens, assuming they ran across any.

And then the aliens attacked. As in the past, there was no warning. Suddenly, they were there. In less than one rotation the number of alien vessels went from zero to nearly two thousand.

“Bring us about. Attack plan Vengeance. Launcher ships to the van!” Admiral Toolos ordered as the initial shock wore off. “Heavy Fighter squadrons to launch their ordnance at the landing vessels, then retreat to protect against their boarding pods and vessels.”

“Fleet has been informed. We’re getting reports of nine other incursions in this sector,” Flag Captain Muln reported back amidst the flurry of orders going out.

“Let’s hope we can teach them to think again,” Toolos replied grimly as the first launcher ship came into range of one of the enemy defence ships and let loose a massive salvo of missiles, far in excess of what an Imperial Fleet would normally throw at a single target. The results were highly satisfactory. The alien vessel seemed to just stagger in its course, before coming apart.

Just when the cheers were dying down on the Bridge of the flagship Guldet several other alien vessels charged the launcher ship and several fan shaped beams slashed out to cut the hapless vessel to pieces.

“What the hell was that they used?” Toolos asked.

“Seems to be a variant on our hyperbeam technology,” a Science Officer spoke up. “Apparently it can last longer than our beams and can be used to slash, not punch holes in vessels.”

“Range?”

“Judging by how close they had to get, I’d say limited.”

“Move the destroyer screen in to protect the launcher ships. Destroyers are to use their missiles against those attack ships if they approach.”

“Yes, sir!” Muln replied as other launcher ships, now protected by a destroyer screen, bored in on the larger alien vessels.

It was organised pandemonium time again as the 467^th regiment uplifted to orbit and the Assault Carrier Spitfire for transport to the Conveelt system. The Carrier was mostly loaded and ready to go; the pandemonium part was the additional Troopers we now had attached to the regiment. They weren’t used to how the regiment did things and essentially needed to be led by the hand to their posts or landing craft.

Still, within two hundred rotations of getting the initial boarding orders, the Spitfire broke orbit and headed at best speed to Conveelt.

“Could be a tough one,” Torun said to me as, with an AI, we went over the checklist of equipment assigned to us.

“Why’s that?” I asked.

“Conveelt is the Sector Six administration planet and has a population of almost three billion.”

“They won’t have enough shelters,” I thought aloud with a grimace.

“Not even close, though there are four regiments based on the planet, plus us and whoever else they can scrounge up ... assuming we can drop.”

“Still not going to be easy,” I sighed. “We still don’t have anything really that can take an alien out at a distance ... assuming setting off their nanites won’t work.”

“Yep. No super weapons for us yet,” she grinned.

“And no sign of them either, according to my Dad.”

“It’s not just the weapons, it’s the ammo as well.”

“I know. The Empire just isn’t set up for such low-tech manufacturing.”

“Tell me about it.”

17^th Fleet was in some trouble. The new alien weapons were quite deadly and the alien vessels robust enough to take some serious damage as they closed in. That said, the aliens were also paying a price in using these tactics; it was just they outnumbered the 17^th by quite a margin.

“It’s like all the reports told us,” Toolos said in an aside to Muln. “They just try to chase us out of their way so they can despatch their landing craft.”

“Yes, those beam weapons are deadly,” Muln nodded. “But the only reason I can see them using them is our missile ships have to close to within range, making them vulnerable.”

“True, we’re pretty much all fired out and we’re supposed to be a Superdreadnought, but until we can reload, we’re about as much use as someone throwing rocks at the damned things.”

“One of our engineers did suggest putting a remote controlled grav-drive on a meteor and seeing if we could hit the aliens with that,” Muln chuckled grimly.

“Would take too long, unless we knew in advance where these creatures were going to hit us, rather than just best guesses.”

“I know, but I’m encouraging these discussions, hoping someone will come up with an idea that will work.”

“Works for me,” Toolos assented.

“Assault Carriers inbound,” a Comm Officer informed them.

“Get half of them to drop to the surface; the others we’ll use to storm the approaching landing ships and see if we can force them to retreat.”

“Desperate measure,” Muln frowned.

“Well, there’re too many people on the planet. We might as well at least try to prevent the aliens landing.”

“Point.”

“Word from Commander Hillek is that we’re off to storm a landing ship and prevent it from landing ... somehow,” Senior Healer Flinn informed us.

“OK, how do we get on?” I asked as, for all I’d practiced boarding actions, they’d all been against human built ships. The main thing being that their airlocks were all pretty much standard in size and operation.

“We’ll be using a series of boarding pods and then use the airlock on the landing craft to link to them,” Flinn informed me.

“OK...”

“Yeah, I know, asking for trouble, plus no easy way out if they repel us.”

“The Empress commands,” I sighed.

“Doubt she commanded this,” Torun grimaced.

“Even so,” Flinn chided her.

“Yessir!” we both replied and slammed our fists across our chests.

The shipboard AI guided us to our designated landing craft and we strapped in, along with a couple of squads of Assault Troopers. There was the usual banter and insults being thrown around, which the officers mostly ignored as it was, in the main, a release of tension. We all realised that this had the potential of being a suicide mission.

“Boarding pods away,” the Fleet pilot announced over the com net. “Leaving hangar and beginning approach.”

The landing craft lurched as the pilot, assisted by the AI, avoided objects either aimed at us or just happened to be in our way as the craft followed the boarding pods in to our target.

“Big,” I commented to no one in particular.

“Certainly is,” Flinn replied.

“Going in ... now!” the pilot announced as we felt the change in gravity despite the inertial dampeners built into the drive system.

The AI guided the small craft directly onto the airlock of the boarding pod at what, to an outside observer, would have been blindingly fast speed, coming to a dead halt in an instant as well as unlocking the airlock to allow us access through the now empty boarding pod.

The first thing we found were the bodies of several aliens and a Trooper, though he hadn’t been fed upon. Off in the distance we could hear the sounds of fighting, along with the sizzling roar of the aliens.

“This will do as a Healer station,” Flinn announced. “Get it set up and prepare some sort of perimeter as I suspect the aliens might just be able to get past our lines via means other than the corridors.”

“Yessir!” we all replied to her.

Soon enough we had casualties to deal with as a seemingly endless stream of Troopers passed us to board the landing ship. The vast bulk of the casualties seemed to be puncture wounds of some kind, presumably caused by the mandibles of the aliens, though, as, often enough, the Troopers were in no condition to tell us. It was only guesswork on our part.

“How’s it going?” I asked Meditech Ginnon as he brought back more wounded for us to patch up and evacuate or send back to fight.

“They’re fighting us every inch of the way, but it does look like we initially surprised them,” he replied. “Biggest problem the Troopers have is aliens somehow getting in behind them.”

“Yeah, Flinn was worrying about that.”

“She’s right too. Though the polearms work well against them in the narrow corridors.”

“Yeah, never go more than an arm’s length away from mine now,” I grinned as the wand did its work on a wounded Trooper.

“Not the only one. The Troopers now swear by them.”

“Those who don’t prefer swords or axes,” I nodded.

“Most prefer the extra reach.”

“Yep.”

The intelligence controlling the alien ship was becoming irritated with the actions of this food source. It was bad enough having to avoid the missile weapons of the creatures, but now they had disrupted the harvest by actually invading the ‘reaper’ vessels! Nor did the intelligence dare carry out the harvest as it was fairly certain the food source would destroy or at least badly damage the ‘reaper’ internally if they could.

So far it had managed to contain the infestation, but, more were gaining access to the internals of the vessels and probing ever inwards. Still, it could begin to awaken the Reelc and turn them against the invaders and see how they coped against a far more dangerous foe than the ship’s crew, who were only designed to fly the ‘reaper’ and known as Holc.

The Troopers recognised that the battle had changed when one of the harvesting aliens crashed into their line, though it was swiftly despatched. Warnings were sent out via the AIs that the enemy were bringing out their warriors and for all to be ready to fight hard.

Casualties were beginning to mount, but we were fortunate in not being overwhelmed. Mostly we just sorted them for evac or a return to the front. News from the space battle was sketchy, but it did appear that boarding the landing ships, as they were now commonly called, had stopped the invasion itself. What was becoming obvious though was that the aliens, knowing this, were going after the Fleet in an attempt to force them to withdraw. This was coupled with more and more aliens being thrown at us in an attempt, we suspected, to somehow break the stalemate.

“Watch out!” I yelled as a wall opened and several aliens scuttled out and immediately went after the wounded on the ground as easy targets.

Everyone grabbed a weapon, even the walking wounded, as the creatures began to realise they were surrounded themselves and tried their damnedest to kill us as well. I found myself in the thick of it. I was forced to draw my falchion as the aliens were just too close to use the longer weapon. I hadn’t done much work with Aunt Janilla on sword-style weapons, mostly because no one used them. The AIs would stop you in your tracks if you produced one. Still, she had taught me a two-stick style of fighting that involved some slightly shorter wooden sticks that the Kilios people taught as an ancient style known to them as Kallianis. Hence, I dropped into the ‘zone’ and used the falchion as my main weapon and my medical wand as the other. It was pretty hard to damage it, along with the antenna part being able to stab through the aliens’ armour joints.