Chapter 29

“Beautifully done,” Tret commented to Dalloch as they watched the Melanoqi attack begin.

“That it was, sir. I doubt this fleet could do it better.”

“Yes, they’ve come a long way since the Raffagee War,” Tret nodded. “Now to business. Advance on the harvesting fleet, weapons free.”

Dodging and weaving, the 4^th Fleet swiftly shook itself out into formation and drove directly for the harvesting fleet, taking advantage of the confusion caused by the Melanoqi charge into the rear of the second alien fleet. The Heavy Fighter squadron led the way, looking for the boarding blisters as well as the ‘liquid’ alien carrying ships. This also appeared to catch the aliens by surprise, as, previously, Imperial fleets had shied away from direct conflict owing to the casualties they had taken. Now, however, the Imperial fleets had a weapon that beat the aliens’ shields and didn’t have to be launched from within easy combatting distance. Although it did not have deep penetration as in a hyperbeam shot, it was easily able to strip away the alien outer armour and close-in defence weapons, enabling boarding actions without fear of the destruction of the boarding pods ... or endangering the Assault Carriers.

We, who had been watching the battle from the AI screening on the Assault Carrier Venzulis, had started cheering like mad when the Melanoqi had come barrelling in. We were now moving to a landing carrier in preparation for the boarding pods to breach an alien ship to allow us access.

“Any idea which type we’re going for?” Torun asked of no one in particular.

“We’re kind of spoilt for choice,” Flinn chuckled. “It’s a classic situation of catching them with their pants down.”

“I doubt their surprise will last much longer, but it’s a nice position to be in,” I grinned.

“You will join the assault team boarding one of the inner core defence ships,” the harsh tones of the AI informed us.

“Medical Team Flinn ready and waiting,” Flinn replied as the restraining bars dropped on the landing craft and the airlock sealed.

There was a slight lurch, barely felt, as the small craft lifted off and raced with several others through the air shield protecting one of the hangars of the Venzulis. Using the AI feed to our helmets, we watched as we joined nearly a hundred landing craft, led by the boarding pods, for once containing the entire Regiment, which headed towards a clearly damaged alien vessel.

“Going to be a new learning experience,” Flinn commented.

“Let’s hope we survive it,” I chuckled.

“Amen to that,” Torun added after me.

‘Our attack fleet is being massacred!’ a lesser intelligence reported to the group mind of the senior intelligences.

‘How are they doing this?’ a senior intelligence asked.

‘The attack fleet is merely armoured and tapered to avoid return fire, not shielded. It also appears as if we erred in constructing them around a large beam weapon in that they can only target whilst moving forwards. We also underestimated the speed that the new prey can move when in combat,’ the intelligence responsible for analysis reported.

‘The masters will be displeased,’ the senior controlling intelligence stated.

‘Assuming we survive this,’ another stated.

‘Yes, that is troubling. Order the support vessels to move up and assist our defensive ships.’

‘As you command,’ the group responded.

‘Free up a monitoring vessel to record this debacle. The masters will surely wish to know,’ the senior advised.

‘It is done.’

The boarding pods went in first, rapidly forcing their way through the alien armour with their beak-like prow and allowing our specialist teams in to hold the newly created opening to enable the landing craft to dock at their rear port and us to charge in to assist them. We were immediately on the defensive as the aliens ‘crewing’ the ship were not the standard type, but heavily armed and armoured. That said we were heavily armoured ourselves and several of our original boarders carried an adapted shield to protect them from beam weapons and had the aliens struggling to get at them. Piling into the fray, Torun and I used our polearms to ease the pressure on the shield holders and enable the rest of their squad to get behind them and begin a push forwards to help clear a space to let other boarders advance in formation in an attempt to build up momentum and penetrate deeper into the ship.

“What the hell have we got into?” I asked no one in particular.

“They appear to be guarding something ... possibly?” Flinn answered from where she was patching up wounded Troopers.

“Never seen anything quite like it,” Torun added. “It was almost fanatical compared to the other ships we took over.”

“You’d best go and give a hand, Kiria,” Flinn ordered. “It will be good experience for you and give the Troopers a morale boost.”

“Will you be OK?” I asked after rattling off a fist to chest salute.

“Yes, I’ll book you two down to the Tafta aid station to give you some general healing practice, now off you go.”

Torun and I swiftly moved forwards to where the front line was and I stood next to the Senior Monitor as he observed.

“We have Healer Kiria observing,” he roared. “You lazy shleckers had better not embarrass me or the Regiment!”

This seemed to encourage the Troopers to pick up the pace despite everything the aliens could do to prevent them and our line moved steadily forwards. We soon connected with a second boarding group who were being held back at an intersection due to some powerful beam weapons coupled with a massive increase in gravity over the deck area.

“We can’t even throw a bomblet down there. It just drops to the deck as soon as it hits the zone,” a sub-Monitor explained.

“Don’t worry, I have an idea,” I said calmly as I saw Torun heading towards me, carrying one of the anti-grav lifting packs we used.

“Here you go, sub-Commander,” she stated formally, as we were surrounded by curious Troopers.

“Thank you, Prefect,” I replied just as formally.

I then strapped myself to the frame and lowered myself to the deck, activating the device as I did so. I then ‘borrowed’ Torun’s pellet sprayer and placed it and my own so that they pointed forwards, resting on the frame. I then set the sprayers for single shot, and loaded two stick bomblets into them. After that I used my armour AI to plot a course that took me rapidly around the opening of the intersection and I hoped the aliens weren’t crack shots.

I got lucky. When the frame went over the grav boundary it bobbled slightly and two beams just missed me. It did bring me into line with a group of aliens at the end of the corridor and I fired the two bomblets at them, aiming high in the hope that the extra grav would not affect them too greatly.

It was a beautiful moment as the bomblets flew then dipped accurately into the midst of the alien formation and tore them apart, also causing the grav to drop back to normal. I then had to suffer the indignity of the Troopers charging, including a couple running over my back due to the press to get to the end of the corridor before the aliens recovered.

I was hauled to my feet by Torun, who, though I couldn’t see her, I knew she was laughing silently at me. She helped me free myself and we moved up to check on a couple of wounded Troopers.

“No way to treat a lady,” I groused as I repaired a puncture wound on a downed Trooper.

“What did you expect, after trying to sleep on a mission?” she openly laughed.

“Well, not that,” I giggled as the Senior Monitor came up.

“Apologies for the rush, sir,” he barked.

“I’ll let it go, but was not amused,” I replied dryly.

“I’ll let them know and assign them extra training,” he replied.

“Next time, if there is a next time, they can simply move me out of the way, or grab me and use me as a battering ram,” I chuckled.

“I will so advise, sir,” he chuckled himself.

“Continue the advance. I’ll continue to observe.”

“Sir!” he replied, slamming his arm across his chest.

Torun headed back to where Flinn was, whilst I followed the Senior Monitor, whose name was Danva, to where the Troopers were applying a type of ‘mincer’ action, aided and assisted by other Troopers throwing bomblets over the heads of the aliens.

“Surprised the aliens haven’t come up with a bomblet idea of their own?” Danva observed.

“From what we can tell ... and it isn’t an awful lot, they have a very inflexible mindset. They don’t appear to go outside the box at fleet level, let alone lower, though what their higher ups do is anyone’s guess.” I replied.

“Ah, they stick to the plan or plans even if it’s not working?”

“We think so, and when the plan doesn’t work, they send in another fleet with another plan.”

“I see, they plan, they don’t innovate,” he nodded before yelling at a group of Troopers for ‘slacking’, even though they weren’t really.

“No wonder the Melanoqi caught them out.”

Navarch Untiriol watched in satisfaction as the Amazona Fleet performed like a well-oiled machine, catching the alien fleet from their unguarded sides, even as they tried to turn to hit the Amazona vessels.

“They would have caused us a few problems if they had more than one weapon,” Ploiarch Jeeva observed.

“I believe so, but I still think we could have taken them if they’d hit us head on.”

“Unlike the Imperials who are mounting the wrong sort of weapons,” Jeeva nodded.

“True, but we’d fare even worse against that harvesting fleet.”

“Yes, but it looks like the Imperials will need back up fleets during an incursion or face similar problems.”