CHAPTER 6
Vaughan captured Dannet’s orders. The battleship formation began to rotate, just as the individual ships rotated on their respective axes. It only took him a couple of seconds to catch on to why: to reduce the impact of the Ekhat lasers on the ships. He felt good about that realization for, maybe, half a second.
He sobered when he caught a message sent by Vercingetorix. One of their gun decks was open to space and sealed off, damaged by the collision with the last of the Ekhat ships that had attacked them inside the star. He suppressed a shudder, and hoped the crew had managed to evacuate safely. Another note was made; this time about the fact that between the battle off Valeron and this one, in two collisions two different Lexingtons had lost a gun deck, a full spine. Make sure that one gets to the design group.
The Welshman continued to watch and make notes as Dannet stood, hands behind her back, watching the viewscreen, head slightly tilted. He got the feeling she was waiting for something, but he couldn’t tell what.
* * *
“So,” Gabe Tully concluded, looking around at his jinau officers in the assault group, “we only have general guesses as to what the interior of that ship is going to look like. Fortunately, we don’t have specific objectives in mind. It’s just ram the ship, debark, create as much hell and destruction as we can, capture as many Ekhats and slaves as we can, and get out while the getting is good.”
Gabe saw First Sergeant Luff’s mouth quiver for just a moment, before he forced it into a straight line.
“Able Company will lead out,” Gabe continued, looking at Captain Sato Kobayashi, the Japanese-born company commander. “Sato, terminate every Ekhat you see in that space. They’re too dangerous to let get close to us while we’re trying to unship. If we can capture some elsewhere and drag them back to the ship, great. But any of them in the entry space needs to be turned into quivering little pieces of Ekhat meat. Anything that’s not Ekhat but is carrying a weapon also gets hammered. Got it?”
Kobayashi gave a sharp nod, and entered notes on his pad.
Gabe turned to Captain Torg krinnu ava Terra and First Lieutenant Richard Boatright, commanders of companies Baker and Charlie respectively.
“Once the entry area is under control, you guys will debark. Each company will leave one fire team for entry space and ship security, under the command of Major Liang.”
Major Shan Liang, the executive officer of the assault group, looked up from where he was making notes of his own. “And where will you be, Colonel?”
“Probably with Able Company.”
Tully saw identical frowns appear on the faces of both the exec and the first sergeant. He held up a hand in a “stop” signal.
“Don’t start, guys. I’ve seen Ekhat in action; with the exception of Torg, none of you, no matter how experienced you are, can say that. You have no idea—you can’t know—just how insane and crazy it will be to face them.”
“I heard that from some of the troops who were with you at Valeron,” Luff said.
Tully shook his head. “And anything they told you just is nothing compared to the piss-your-pants feeling of seeing a giraffe-sized sort-of-praying mantis with too many arms and legs charging you like a racehorse with the intent desire of turning you into a smorgasbord of cold cuts and a stain on the deck.”
“What he said,” Captain Torg muttered.
“The best I can do to share the experience is for me to be with Able and First Sergeant Luff to be with Charlie; that’s the best I can do,” he repeated. The first sergeant’s frown disappeared at that. “And Shan,” Tully turned to the exec, “that leaves you holding the bag at the ship. If things go well, you’ll just be helping corral the specimens. If things go in the crapper, you’ll be the last-ditch defense of the Ban Chao. Don’t let me down.”
Major Liang’s face set in very determined lines. “You got it, Colonel.”
Tully looked at Luff. “What’s that old Marine motto you like to trot out, Top?”
“You mean ‘Improvise, Adapt, and Overcome,’ sir?” Luff grinned.
“That’s the one.” Tully looked at his officers. “Guys, this isn’t going to be a set-piece battle. Watch your sensors, watch the walls, watch your backs. Don’t trust anything. Drop communication links every time you change directions. Fall back if you have to. Yell for help if you need to. This is about breaking shit and grabbing prisoners, not about heroic last stands or forlorn hopes. Everybody clear on that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Yes.”
“Yes, Colonel.”
Tully stood. “Good. Now go prep your troops.”
* * *
Vaughan didn’t catch what it was that the fleet commander saw at that exact moment. He’d have to dig it out of the recordings later. But Dannet shifted to a different posture and said almost matter-of-factly, “All battleships, Fire Plan Alpha 3. All subordinate ships, seal the edges of the zone. No one escapes.”
And with those calm orders, the second phase of the battle for the system began.
Fire Plan Alpha 3 called for the battleships to all concentrate their lasers on the same ship. It took a bit of coordination, Vaughan noted. Dannet had to issue some rapid corrections to get the Arjuna to target the desired ship, but before long all the lasers from all four battleships were focused on one of the smaller Ekhat ships. Despite the attempts of the target to evade, the Jao/human laser crews kept the heavy beams from the battleships focused on the Ekhat ship as if they had been glued there. And in truth, a multithousand-ton spaceship just doesn’t dance around like a third-grader playing dodgeball, so it wasn’t that hard.
It only took a few minutes for the heavy lasers to overload the defensive screens of the Ekhat ship, and it was rendered into an expanding cloud of navigational hazards.
A few minutes more saw the second of the lighter Ekhat vessels also destroyed.
* * *
Descant-at-the-Fourth staggered as the dissonance brought by the invaders resurged as the second of her ships disappeared in a flash of light. For just a moment, her voice wavered, and Second-Strong-Cadence and the other Ekhat lost their way altogether. In that moment, the harmony disappeared.
* * *
Kaln krinnu ava Krant stood by Krant-Captain Mallu, since the lasers were the weapons in use in this phase of the battle. She looked up suddenly, and found her eyes locked with his.
“The flow is free again,” she said. The captain nodded.
Kaln’s head twisted in an odd direction. She left the command deck without a word. Mallu let her go without comment. Her sense of flow was stronger than anyone else’s on the ship, and if she needed to be somewhere else, he trusted her.
* * *
Tully watched as his jinau troops, human and Jao alike, stepped into their shock frames. There was no way around the fact that the Ban Chao was going to take one monster of a hit when it rammed into its target, and the frames were designed to keep the troops from flying all around the deck when that happened. This was the first time they would be used in combat, though, and he really hoped they worked as well now as they did in the tests he’d seen.
“Hope those things work as advertised, Colonel,” First Sergeant Luff said as he stepped up beside him, faceplate to his combat suit standing open.
“You and me, both. But five-to-one Murphy shows up somewhere.”
“No takers, here, sir. My momma didn’t raise no fools.” The sergeant’s Jamaican accent got a little stronger. “But we’ll deal with that if we have to.”
“Feel free to ‘Improvise, Adapt and Overcome’ as necessary, Top,” Tully said with a grin.
“Will do, sir, will do.” He looked around. “Looks like we’d best get locked in place ourselves.”
“Yep.” Tully slapped the sergeant’s armored shoulder. “Lead the way. It’s Ekhat killing time.”
Not a few of the troops drew some comfort of the almost identical evil grins on the faces of the two men.
* * *
Vaughan’s head snapped up to the main viewscreen. “Yes!” he exulted. For some unknown reason, the remaining Ekhat ships had lost their cohesion and were simply swarming toward the Terran fleet. The World Harvester was bulling its way through its own fleet in what Flue would have called a reckless charge in another situation, leaving the smaller ships to scatter in disarray and attack as best they could.
The two remaining smaller Ekhat ships were pushed out of the way. Dannet, reacting in that matter-of-fact Jao manner, divided the battleships’ fire between them, and they were being hammered. One of them disintegrated into another fireball when heavy beams from one of the larger Ekhat craft caught it from the rear. Dannet shifted the fire of the Lexington to the fourth smaller craft, and it simply disintegrated, seemingly at the moment those lasers hit its screens.
“Tell Krant-Captain Mallu the World Harvester is his, but he is to coordinate with Ban Chao,” Dannet ordered after bare moments of studying the plot that now occupied the viewscreen. “Uldra, take the north, Arjuna, the south, Vercingetorix the one that lags to the east. Subordinate squadrons; make sure the dead ships are really dead. Go.”
* * *
Caitlin’s knees were back under her chin, and her arms were wrapped around them. She was aware of Captain Miller standing behind her and Tamt standing by the door to the command deck; and she was aware of Lieutenant Vaughan doing his frenetic best to capture everything of note about the battle and Fleet Commander Dannet’s operation of same. But her focus was on the main viewscreen, which was displaying the same data as Dannet’s tactical station. The fleet was moving in obedience to the fleet commander’s orders, and that included the Ban Chao. Be safe, Tully, she thought.
* * *
Tully stood motionless, shock frame gripping his suit. He could have moved slightly if he’d wanted to, but with ramming another ship in the plan and his suit closed up, it was safest to just stay put. He kept one eye on the feed from the command deck’s tactical display that was piped to his helmet’s display, and another on the light bar that ran around the rim of the troop assembly area. The light bar was a reassuring green, so the ram wasn’t imminent—yet.
He spared a thought for his suit.
Humans as a race seemed to specialize in ollnat. That was the Jao word for it, anyway. Sort of.
What the Jao of most of their worlds thought of when they used the word “ollnat” in reference to humans translated as foolishness, or daydreaming, or time-wasting. But to Jao such as the leaders of the Bond, or those who had experienced the conquest of Earth from the “winning” side, or even the newly associated Krant kochan, ollnat, more than anything, meant innovation. And humans were made for innovation, it seemed like. Much more so than the oh-so-stodgy Jao were, at any rate.
The Jao had brought advanced technology with them when they conquered the Earth, and for the most part had made little effort to control it during the occupation years. But the continuing human low-level resistance to the occupation had made it difficult for Jao-tech-based businesses to get started until recently. In the three or so years since Aille krinnu ava Pluthrak (now Aille krinnu ava Terra) had supplanted Oppuk krinnu ava Narvo as governor of Earth, that had changed. There were now easily two dozen or more prosperous companies whose products were based on innovations from the Jao tech-base, with who knows how many startups right behind them. Half of them had the word ollnat as part of their company names.
One of the best was The Ollnat Works. It had started in the Pacific region when a Chinese engineer named Li discovered that the Jao had something they used in their spaceships that made Kevlar look like a paper towel. He teamed up with a couple of friends that he’d met in college in California—a Gujarati business genius named Ghosh from Mumbai, and a marketing savant named MacDonald from Brisbane. The rest was history.
The marketing guy called their product Super-K (over the objections of the engineer) for Super Kevlar. Their first production item was fabric woven from small extruded threads of the compound. It had the weight of heavy canvas, and the bullet stopping power of a centimeter and a half of armor plate.
Tully’s experiences in the boarding action during the Valeron expedition had made him very aware that the standard Jao-designed spacesuit was, to put it mildly, not well suited for any kind of close combat. Tully’s description was considerably blunter than that. And that lack of suitability had been at the top of his list of things to fix when he got back.
He’d had a full-on rant already worked up and rehearsed and ready to deliver to Ed Kralik as soon as he could report to the general, only to discover that Kralik had anticipated him and that The Ollnat Works had teamed up with the spacesuit manufacturers to begin delivering improved combat suits for the fleet troops literally the day Tully’s feet touched down on Earth again.
Tully grinned at the thought. Let the old-school Jao think what they would about humans and ollnat. The Jao grunts who filled many of the ranks in the fleet jinau troops had embraced the new suits with the same fervor with which most of them had joined Terra taif.
The light bar suddenly changed from green to yellow.
“Command deck to assault team,” a human voice said in Tully’s ear-set over the main assault team com channel. “Target has begun deceleration to avoid entering the star. It appears to be focusing its fire on Pool Buntyam. Estimate three minutes to ram. Light will go red at minus fifteen seconds. Acknowledge.”
“Acknowledge three minutes to ram, red at minus fifteen. Tully out.”
* * *
Caitlyn waved Wrot over. He moved closer, and she spoke.
“What’s happening now?”
Wrot looked over his shoulder at the main viewscreen. “Dannet has ordered the battleships to englobe the World Harvester, and to destroy the remaining lesser Ekhat ships. This will isolate the World Harvester near the sun for Ban Chao to make their assault attempt on it.”
“So when is Tully going to do that?”
Wrot didn’t miss the reference to the man rather than the ship. He looked at the viewscreen again. “I’d say they’ve already begun.”
* * *
Tully tried to shake his head, but the shock frame was still holding him. “What a hit,” he muttered.
He wasn’t sure what he had been expecting from the impact of the ram, but the actual event proved to be beyond that expectation. The kinetic energy of the Ban Chao’s reinforced bow penetrating the Ekhat ship’s hull had been extreme. None of the designers had been sure how the assault troops would experience it as they were cocooned in their shock frames. Tully decided it was an order of magnitude higher than being in a car wreck, but between the combat suits and the shock frames his troops could deal with it.
The light bar switched to blue, and the human voice from the command deck spoke over the all-unit com channel again as the shock frames released the troops and began to withdraw into the floor and ceiling. “Ram completed. Front assault doors clear to open. Deploy troops immediately. Acknowledge.”
“Acknowledged. Tully out.”
Tully was positioned right behind the leading elements of Sato’s Able Company. He could see most of them were pulling their weapons into position and orienting themselves toward the big blast doors that were sliding apart to open the way into the assault ramp.
“Able Company—report.”
“All up, all ready, all go,” was the reply in the Japanese captain’s slightly accented English.
“Baker Company.”
“All ready,” came the response from Torg.
“Charlie Company.”
“Good to go, Colonel.” Lieutenant Boatright sounded a bit nervous—that was okay, because Tully was more than a bit nervous himself. But he also sounded like he was in control.
“Tully to command: open the front assault doors.”
“Opening doors now,” came the response over the com channel.
Tully felt more than heard the big outer doors opening. “Able Company go!” he heard Sato order.
The leading jinau raced down the ramp into the Ekhat ship. Tully and Sergeant Luff followed. Expecting something like the madhouse of the boarding action in the Valeron campaign, he was surprised to see Able Company faced with very little resistance. No Ekhat were visible, and only a handful of other life-forms, most of which seemed to have been riddled by the shrapnel generated when the Ban Chao had burst through the hull of their ship. Their spacesuits had irregular holes in them, anyway, and they were leaking bodily fluids of various colors.
Tully looked around while Baker and Charlie Companies exited the Ban Chao and pushed the perimeter out further. They were in a relatively large open space. There was no clue why it was there or what it was used for, other than the existence of a lot of flat panels strewn around the deck. But there were what appeared to be doorways scattered around the perimeter. He started marking them on his heads-up display, and as soon as the last jinau hit the deck he sent the diagram to the rest of the troops and started barking orders.
“Able take the red door, Baker the green, Charlie the yellow. Throw sensor packs through the blue doors as you go by them so that the troops who stay back can get a heads-up if something is heading that way. Stay in contact, and yell if you need help. One hour out and back, but keep an ear open for the XO or me to call it quits early. Go!”
* * *
Flue Vaughan’s head came up as the communication officer said, “Fleet Commander, Ban Chao reports successful ram and penetration of World Harvester hull and entrance of jinau into ship. Minimal damage to ram portion of hull, but remaining hull integrity good.”
He checked the data-stream from the Ban Chao. So far, so good. The damned design actually worked! Now, if Colonel Tully and his jinau assault team can just grab a few prisoners and get off again safely.
Vaughan didn’t know it, but his thoughts were being echoed by others in the command deck, notably Caitlin Kralik and Caewithe Miller.
* * *
The harmony had been replaced by shrieking fear. Descant-at-the-Fourth picked herself up from the heap of servients she had landed upon when the whole ship had lurched and rung like a colossal tone bar, chittering with rage. The surviving servients scuttled for cover, adding to the cacophony as they ran.
Second-Strong-Cadence was floundering nearby, all his left legs broken from being snapped by the torque applied in the whiplash of his body as it was caught between two pillars. Their mental bond was broken. She completed him with her forehand blade as she stalked by. His distracting noise ceased after that moment.
She gathered herself, but before she began to attempt to establish a new harmony, to attempt to win back her system, one of the immature Ekhat sang out, “Intruders on the ship! Lower hall! Moving through the passages!”
Descant-at-the-Fourth sang a tone so high, so sharp, so savage that it could have cut glass.
“Death!” she intoned. “Complete them all! Let them be silent in the face of the Complete Harmony!”
She launched herself at the nearest door, which dilated just barely in time to allow her to pass, followed by the four surviving immature Ekhat and as many of the Trīkē servients as could keep up.
* * *
By Tully’s suit sensors, Able Company had moved almost half a kilometer. Not in a straight line, of course. They had taken several turns, leaving paint markers and communication links every time. As it turned out, the com links were a necessity, because something in the halls kept the com units from passing the walls.
They had yet to see another living being. It was almost eerie, walking through the oddly proportioned doorways that followed swooping lines and intersected at something other than right angles. Twice they had dropped off fire teams to cover major intersections and provide some coverage of the advancing company’s back.
“Talk to me, Shan,” Tully murmured into his comm.
“Charlie Company has about a half-dozen of some small slave species,” the XO replied. “They don’t want to come quietly, so it’s all the troops can do to keep them controlled even with their limbs tied down.”
“Tell Boatright to pull back,” Tully ordered. “He can leave sensors behind and leave a fire team back up the hall in case something ugly comes that direction, but he needs to get those prisoners back to the ship ASAP.”
The XO passed that order on, then continued his report with, “Baker Company has no prisoners. But Torg reports that they’ve had several attacks by slaves of more than one type, none of which survived. He said, quote, ‘This is starting to remind me of Chicago.’”
That last gave Tully pause. Chicago had been the site of the bitterest battle between Jao and humans during the conquest of Earth. The Jao had learned then to hate humans’ inventiveness and improvisational ability with what passed for passion among the stolid folk. If Torg was feeling that kind of vibe…
He looked at his display—forty-nine minutes since they started. “Tell Baker to return to ship. Same orders as Charlie: leave sensors and a fire team in the hall. I’ll pass the order for Able to reverse direction as well.”
“Understood.”
“Oh, and Shan? Keep everyone on their toes. We ain’t out of the woods yet.”
“Right.”
* * *
Kaln krinnu ava Krant had walked down the gun line in her gun deck and triggered the load process for each of the guns one at a time. They were now loaded, and she was back at her deck commander station. From there she watched the tactical display on her station as the Pool Buntyam engaged the World Harvester. The Krant ship’s lasers were proving to be more powerful than the Ekhat’s, which meant they were doing more damage than they were receiving. Kaln watched the battle, and at one particular point began using her command station to aim the guns.
Once the guns were aimed, she stood loosely, posture neutral, waiting.
There came another point, and she pressed a command button. The twelve guns fired in rapid sequence.
The last gun had no sooner fired than a com signal came through at the station.
“Kaln, what are you doing?” The peremptory demand was from Krant-Captain Mallu, and she had expected it.
“Supporting Ban Chao,” she replied.
“Are you going to do that again?”
“No.”
The captain said nothing in reply.
Kaln leaned toward the tactical display, posture slowly shifting to anticipation.
* * *
The attack came ten minutes after Able Company had begun to retrace its steps through the almost-maze of corridors back to their entry point. They were in sight of the second fire team they had detached, ready to pick them up and continue rolling down their path, when what seemed like a horde of Ekhat and other creatures burst out of three small doorways and overran the detachment. There was a flurry of yells over the com band and a flurry of shots, but it was over in a few seconds. The fire team didn’t sell themselves cheaply, surrounding themselves with dead slaves and even an Ekhat, but they went down. The surviving attackers continued on down the corridor toward the main body.
There was no time for orders. The leading jinau troopers dropped to one knee and began shooting. Servients began to drop, but the Ekhat—all too many of them—continued hurtling toward the troops.
“Grenades!” Captain Kobayashi yelled, anticipating Tully by a split-second. Several flash-bang and fragmentation grenades flew from the jinau in the rear.
Having had at least a couple of seconds’ warning, the jinau were braced and prepared when they were hammered by successive waves of concussion. The attackers were not so fortunate. Tully watched several of the servients literally blown asunder by grenades that landed under their feet. One of the smaller Ekhat was picked up and slammed against the passageway ceiling by another grenade, and even the largest of the great aliens was staggered by the blasts.
That gave the jinau a few seconds.
“Fall back!” Tully ordered over the com. As the jinau made an orderly retreat past him, Tully reached out and grabbed one particular trooper.
“You locked and loaded, Corporal Johnson?”
“Betcherass, Colonel!”
“Wait for my signal, then let them have it.”
Johnson, who was a very large human, said nothing more; he took his position in the center of the passageway, and waited, weapon in hand, as the last of the jinau trickled by him.
* * *
The last of the Ekhat heavy ships ceased firing and broke apart. Lieutenant Vaughan pumped a fist silently, then flushed as Dannet looked over at him. He quickly scanned his readouts, and opened his mouth to bring something to the fleet commander’s attention when the communications officer beat him to it.
“Vercingetorix reports that they have lost atmosphere on two more of their weapons spines—two of the laser decks.”
Flue shaped a silent whistle. Fifty percent of the battleship’s offensive capability lost in one battle. He started querying the Vercingetorix for more details on their damage.
“Vercingetorix should withdraw to the photosphere transition and take station on the support ships,” Dannet ordered. “Lexington and Arjuna shape course to join Pool Buntyam in supporting Ban Chao. Subordinate squadrons, continue neutralizing the Ekhat debris.”
* * *
“Crazy ass Ekhat,” Tully muttered. None of the attackers, Ekhat or slaves, carried anything other than hand weapons—blades for the most part. No guns, no lasers. It had been that way in the Valeron boarding action as well. He didn’t understand it—maybe it’s against their religion, he thought—but he was thankful for it. It let him wait an additional few seconds before giving the order.
“Now, Johnson!”
The big human was standing three meters in front of the rest of Able Company. He leveled his weapon at waist height, and pulled the trigger.
Johnson was carrying a new weapon, one only recently cleared for jinau use, and only for use in space or in dealing with Ekhat. It was a recognizable descendant of the flamethrower, but it was nastier—much nastier.
Twin streams of clear liquids jetted from the nozzle of his weapon, flying over and past the attackers. An instant later, holocaust arrived.
There was a massive flare. Billows of flame rolled back down the passageway, stopping short of Johnson and the other jinau, although Tully thought he could feel some heat transferred through the faceplate of his suit.
The twin tanks in Johnson’s backpack contained the two components of a hypergolic propellant—aerozine 50 and nitrogen tetroxide—easily storable as liquids at room temperature, yet absolutely guaranteed to explode or flash into flame when combined. Tully had seen them demonstrated in the open. Their effect in the confined space of the passageway was almost indescribable.
Of course, the components were incredibly toxic, and in an onworld situation would undoubtedly create some nasty pollution.
On the other hand, Tully considered, the weapon worked whether in atmosphere or the near-vacuum of space, and the Ekhat had no room to complain about cruel and unusual tactics.
One lone Ekhat came out of the dying cloud, droplets of flame splattering from the joints of its suit. It staggered, but still headed toward the jinau with obvious intent.
Johnson leveled his weapon again, and gave a short burst that landed directly on the Ekhat. When the flash of light cleared, there was only a huddled mass lying on the passageway floor with flames licking up from it.
The big human pointed his weapon nozzle up, and looked back with a large evil grin visible through his faceplate. “Ekhat flambé,” he pronounced.
Tully gave the flames time to die down, and to make sure that nothing was stirring down the passageway. “Move out, Captain Kobayashi,” he finally ordered.
The jinau picked their way through the blackened remains of the attackers with comments like “Crispy critters” and “Hey, Johnson, does flame-broiled Ekhat taste like chicken?” But they dropped the humor when they got to where their fire team had been overwhelmed. Several of the Jao troopers took up the task of carrying the bodies. None of them, Tully included, wanted to leave them there.
* * *
Descant-at-the-Fourth hurtled down her chosen passageway, followed closely by a couple of immature Ekhat and a throng of the Trīkē servients.
Jao! The other group had reported Jao among the invaders!
The greatest mistake ever made by the Complete Harmony faction, deny it though the harmony masters might, was the uplifting of the Jao. And now that mistake was challenging her harmony in her system.
There was no further report, but she knew where the invaders were, where they had to be. She began a new statement of her aria, singing with force. The youngling Ekhat with her picked up on it immediately, and she felt the harmony begin to strengthen again.
She halted her mob before it exited the passageway, waiting for the harmony to crest…
Now!
* * *
Able Company had exited their passageway, carrying their dead, and were halfway across the open space when the XO shouted, “Behind you!”
Tully spun to see a mob of Ekhat and slaves pouring toward them from one of the side passages.
* * *
Twelve depleted-uranium sabot penetrators slammed into the World Harvester ship in quick succession in an extremely tight grouping. The liquefied metal plasma that erupted in the ship’s engine room vaporized all Ekhat and slaves present, and destroyed all of the control equipment in the room.
The ship’s drive shut down.
So did the artificial gravity.
On the gun deck of the Pool Buntyam, Kaln’s posture slid to one of iron-retribution.
* * *
Descant-at-the-Fourth screamed as she felt the harmony crumble. She lunged toward the invaders, but found herself floating in midair. No matter how she struggled, she could not put a foot to a surface. Slowly spinning, overcome by her rage, she screamed again and again, atonally, with no thought to harmony.
* * *
“Recoilless, take out the Ekhat now!” Tully ordered. “Forget trying to save one for the science guys,” he added as an afterthought. “Just nail them.”
Three Jao and three humans moved up with the heavy recoilless rifles, while the rest of the jinau cleared the back blast lanes. Tully watched as they quickly and methodically eliminated the floating Ekhat. Even one of those monsters couldn’t shrug off the impact of an explosive charge.
Tully saw someone move up beside him from the corner of his eye. His display showed the symbol for First Sergeant Luff. They watched the jinau absorb and overwhelm the remnants of the final charge. Many of the slaves were taken out by the explosions that finished off the Ekhat. But capturing those few that remained in one piece turned out to be a bit of a challenge.
“Looks like we need to schedule some zero-gee drills, Colonel,” Luff said finally.
“Yep,” Tully responded. “See to it after we get back, Top.”
“Yes, sir.”
“It’s all over but the reports,” Tully said to the officers. “Major Liang, get us back on board.”
“On it, Colonel.”
* * *
“Ban Chao has separated from the World Harvester, Fleet Commander,” reported Lexington’s sensor officer.
Caitlyn sat up straight at the news she had been waiting to hear. “What success did they have?” she asked. And is Gabe alive? was unspoken for the moment.
“Colonel Tully reports nine Ekhat slaves captured and an estimated thirteen Ekhat and an unknown number of slaves killed in the fighting. Six jinau dead, fifteen injured.”
Caitlyn relaxed, and looked up to see a grin on Caewithe Miller’s face that looked to be a match for the one she felt stretching across her own visage.
She looked around as Dannet gestured. “Finish it,” the fleet commander said.
The three battleships moved in concert like a lion pride, closing on the wounded Ekhat vessel.