Lieutenant Commander Spacemage (Imperium Spacemage Book 4) Read online

  “Commander Tapping.”

  “Chaos?” asked Woof.

  “Yes. She suggested the idea while they were getting the jump drive working.”

  “Why do we have it?” I asked.

  “It’s only recently been tested by one of the marine battalions. Ours were the first ships to get it as standard, and others are having them added at the moment.”

  “All combats suits ready,” said Eagle. “Let’s get this done!”

  “Sending in five.”

  Six

  “WAIT!”

  The voice exploded across the bridge with a level of command I’d not experienced before.

  Three new heads popped up on the console, only one of which I knew, and one I remembered from social functions. Sergeant Colonel BA Baracas hadn't been the voice, but was someone we knew from early training. The other two were also youngish looking women. The one on the left was tagged as Colonel Amanda Peck, and the one on the right was tagged as Master Sergeant Caitlin Brown. All three were running hard, and it turned out the colonel had the voice.

  “We want those three docked ships, Captain Bud. Hold for our arrival.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Not my chain of command, but definitely a senior officer.

  “What’s the hold up?” asked Eagle, who’d obviously not heard the wait command.

  “We’re being joined by marines, who want the three docked ships.”

  “Who’s coming?”

  “Colonel Peck, BA, and a Master Sergeant Brown.”

  “Which Peck?”

  “Amanda.”

  “Right. Sounds like three platoons only. They’ll want a precision insertion. Tamsin, connect me in with them, please.”

  “Confirmed.”

  “Amanda, it’s Algy.”

  “Be with you in a minute.”

  “I suggest you go direct to separate destroyers. Be quicker deploying there than from Judge.”

  “Which?”

  “Long Boulder, Carved Boulder, Rolling Boulder. You’re coming through Bud’s squadron living room?”

  “Is that where we’re going? Fine, almost there.”

  They were obviously moving with an arrow, without knowing where it was taking them. I wondered if our living room was going to need a new door. Combat suits with heavy weapons wouldn’t leave much space going through. But I had other things to worry about.

  “Approaching range for Judge’s main guns,” said Leanne. “They’re coming on at what looks like their full speed.”

  “Do they know who we are?” asked Jill.

  “I doubt it,” said Tamsin. “They’ve not seen this design of ship before.”

  “Good,” I interrupted. “We’re pulling a one eighty, and going to run from them at their speed for a bit.”

  “We’re doing what?” demanded Woof.

  “Pretending we feel overmatched to give our troops time to get here.”

  “Oh.”

  “How do you want to do it,” growled Metunga, who was obviously with Woof on the necessity.

  “Tamsin, pull half our speed off, and bring the squadron around in as tight a curve as we can, then match speed.”

  “Confirmed. Executing.”

  We slowed, and came around to a reverse course a lot slower than we normally would. The ships behind us kept coming after us. The three at the station remained where they were.

  “Someone feed the drop rift the locations for all three engineering sections,” said Peck. “Once we go through, the pilots from the same ships go to the bridge of the same Rawtenuga ship.”

  “Done,” said Tamsin. “Local ship AI will coordinate.”

  “On board our Boulders, stand by for deployment on my command.”

  The squadron leaders were all now listening in, as they all acknowledged. A screen popped up showing an outlined area on Judge’s cargo deck, with a dozen combat suits arranged back to back, so all directions were covered. Half of them had arms raised with stunners ready to fire, and the other half had pulse rifles ready.

  “Deploy,” ordered Peck, and the dozen combat suits simply vanished.

  The next squadron practically jumped into the same formation, and they too vanished. The third and fourth squadrons followed them.

  Screens popped up showing squadron leader and platoon leader feeds. A lot of rapid pulses hit a lot of dinosaurs at the same time, and none of them dropped.

  “Stunners failed,” said BA. “Go to pulse rifles.”

  These did better, but it was taking several hits to slow a dino down. I watched BA change weapons again, and this time her meson blast blew a large round hole in the center mass of a dino coming right at her. It went down and stayed there.

  “Go to mesons if you can,” she ordered.

  By now we had the feeds from everyone, and in many places combat suits now had teeth trying to crush them. Several had drawn swords for close range, and were actively lopping off arms, tails, and sometimes heads.

  All the battles across ships and the station became a melee of close range fighting. Those able were now firing heavy pulses of whatever they had to hand, trying to relieve those fighting too close to get a rifle aimed properly.

  I saw BA smash a dinosaur face in with her fist, and the damned thing just bounced back, shook its head, and came at her again, mouth opened wide and showing long razor sharp teeth. Someone else blew it away with a meson pulse. BA picked up her dropped gun, and started firing again.

  “They’re turning,” said Leanne, bringing me back to what I should have been concentrating on.

  And so they were. Obviously their troops on the station and ships were calling for help. I waited until they were heading directly towards the station again, before nodding to Tamsin.

  Nine of us jumped behind a ship for just a second, and all of us jumped again to a wall formation above the station and pointing down at it. I put a rift in front of the mess we’d created, and eight severely truncated ships, and one complete set of debris, vanished through to the system I was now considering the dinosaur graveyard.

  I turned my attention back to the main fights. Some of the dinos were now firing their own version of heavy weapons, and hand to hand fights had mainly stopped for now. None of them had any sort of armour though.

  “Captain Bud,” said Peck. “I hate to admit it, but we’re pinned down in here. Can you offer some assistance?”

  “Would some unexpectedly opened airlocks help?”

  “Definitely. At the least we’ll find out how good their emergency systems are.”

  “Stand by for vacuum.”

  I shifted my attention to the ship the colonel was on, and located her people in the engine spaces, and the pilots holding the bridge. Both were under constant assault with weapons which they were obviously taking seriously. There appeared to be a considerable amount of damage done in there already.

  The nearest airlock to the engine spaces was not far away, and with a thought, I removed both inner and outer doors at the same time. Bulkheads crashed shut across the ship, trapping dinos and our people where they were. I kept going, around the outside of the ship, ripping out airlock doors wherever I saw them.

  “Gitte, put holes in all the airlocks for BA’s ship. Haynes, you do Brown’s.”

  “Then?” asked Gitte.

  “Work your way through your ship removing the pressure doors.”

  “On it,” said Haynes.

  I did the same thing myself, using my magic sight to move through the ship, and removing any shut doors I found, starting with the door into where the colonel was. Dinos began rushing for breathing gear. The marines emerged from where they’d been pinned down, and started cutting down those not ready for an airless fight.

  I noticed they left a downed combat suit behind them, and I moved it to my cargo deck. Cargo droids rushed over to it, and ripped the back open, pulling out the marine. She picked herself up, screamed an order to be directed to our armoury, and started sprinting towards where her HUD arrow pointed
.

  I stopped doing doors.

  “Show me any disabled or badly damaged combat suits,” I said to Tamsin.

  A new screen popped up, showing me combat suits in the same colouring as for fighters. I moved three red ones straight away, and then four more orange ones. A yellow was limping badly, and I moved that one as well.

  A pilot pulled himself out of his badly mangled combat suit, and stood looking down at it.

  “I didn’t sign up to be a marine.”

  He continued looking down for a moment, and then looked at the others who were also now out of their suits and looking at him.

  “Where do I get a new combat suit?” he demanded, showing his first comment to have just been mouthing off, and the lot of them took off after the marine.

  Of course, we only had four spares. They’d have to decide who got them. It was just as well I wasn’t personally attached to mine.

  “New arrival,” said Leanne.

  “Who?”

  “General Custer. Assault frigate, Lieutenant General Smith in command.”

  The face of an older looking woman popped up on the console.

  “Captain Bud, status please?”

  “All three ships require more troops to take them. I quite frankly don’t know how to report on the station. We have a lot of pilots there, but some of them are obviously pinned down. Sir, I’m out of my depth here.”

  “Continue to offer whatever magical aid you can. We’ve a battalion with us, and there’s another one coming.”

  I saw that white dot appear.

  “More magic, aye, sir.”

  Her face vanished.

  Seven

  Marines relieved pilots.

  Another assault frigate turned up, as well as a support cruiser carrying a load of replacement combat suits, to which I sent anyone wanting to resume the battle after being trashed already, and I gave in and let the rest of the squadron and their AIs suit up and join the fight.

  Only Serena and I refrained from fighting, citing not having combat suits to use, but everyone knowing it was just an excuse. Besides, someone needed to yank people out of fights before they got killed. While no-one was injured, several were down to their last belt suit before I could get them out of there.

  I’d had to warn Gitte and Haynes not to use magic unless absolutely necessary. The Trixone knew we used something they didn’t understand, but there was no reason for demonstrating it to them. And I wanted it kept from the Rawtenuga as long as possible. But having to pull so many out probably negated this, although it’s possible they thought we had the same tech in our suits as we did in our ships for appearing and disappearing.

  By the time we had all three ships captured, and the station secured, it was late afternoon. My captains returned to their ships looking satisfied with themselves.

  The pilots were also back on their ships now, sitting down because most of them were too tired to stand, and drinking heavily, while telling tall tales of the one that didn’t get away, as only pilots can. The original three platoons were still on the station, and now out of their combat suits, but looking like stims were the only thing holding them up. The rest of their three battalions were spread out through the station, double checking there were no live dinosaurs left anywhere.

  The ships were already gone. Once secured, they’d been cut loose from the station, and the three assault frigates had towed them over to a rift I’d opened to Haven. Once they’d delivered their loads and returned, they docked to the station themselves, after which I’d closed the rift.

  Someone somewhere was going to be dissecting dinosaur all night, and I for one was quite happy to miss that. The shipyard people on the other hand would be spending all night checking dinosaur tech. Which for me, was probably worse. Maybe not. Tech didn’t smell. Well, not the way a carcass did.

  The station was a wreck internally in a lot of places where the fighting had devolved into heavy weapons at long range, and even had a few holes in its external hull from errant meson pulses. I’d sealed those as soon as they happened, but there’d been some civilian deaths from explosive decompression.

  The civvies though seemed to be in high spirits now, were thanking every marine they came across, while already cleaning up.

  The dino bodies disappeared very rapidly, and somewhat suspiciously, we were invited for barbeque once the eating areas of the station were ready to serve again. Blood and guts were quickly removed, and I suspected the Trixone were going to be dining well for a while as they walked their dirt in their own part of the station, which some of our marines and pilots had fought through. Rats and other large creatures hacked the dino bodies into manageable pieces, and whatever meat processing facilities were on board were presumably immediately busy.

  I must admit, I had no hankering to taste dinosaur. But as the squadron commander and the one who’d talked to the station the most, I guessed there was no way I’d be saying no to the barbeque invitation.

  The red flower Trixone enquired as to our meal cycle, and what we preferred to eat and didn’t, and dinner time was set. I couldn’t tell them how many would turn up, as a lot of the pilots probably wouldn’t be rising from their lounge chairs now for anything short of an emergency trip to the fresher, or heading for bed.

  The food available on the station seemed to be very varied, which was probably indicative of the different species who lived there, and who they traded with. The rats apparently ate almost anything, and I made it quite clear to the plant we’d not be eating anything rodent like, but we did normally enjoy a thick steak. That didn’t rule out rodent steak of course, and I wasn’t sure how we’d tell.

  Discussing plants to eat with a plant was nothing short of bizarre, but apparently they had no inhibitions about using other plants for fertilizer, and so nothing was off the menu. We agreed they should provide any options they wished, and we’d see what we liked.

  Red also asked about the opportunity to sample our food, and I told them I’d organize something for the following day. I remembered then we had Ralnor food on board as well, but said nothing about it. We could mix it in with ours and see if they liked it or not. You never knew. If they loved Ralnor food, they might just stop making war on them and start trading instead. Or it might just intensify the war as they decided to take their food, or enslave them to continue providing it. Only one way to find that out.

  I sent the food request to David Tollin, asking if someone could organize take out, perhaps using a hastily fitted out support cruiser cargo deck as a food hall. We could invite those interested in sampling our food into where we could control things, and perhaps also have some diplomats on hand to see if anyone was interested in talking. It would mean having some rooms with soil floors, but the makers of fertilizer could also display their wares this way for the plants to sample.

  By the time I’d finished talking, either live or to vids, and Tamsin had sent off the dinner invitations, I was summoned to my own conference room.

  General Smith was at the head of the table, with identical twins sitting either side of her, a tall blonde woman next to one of them, and BA next to the other. The twins were both wearing eagles on their shoulders, while the blonde wore oak leaves.

  BA waved me next to her, and when Eagle came in a moment later, he immediately headed to the chair next to the blonde. Belatedly, I paid attention to the popups my PC was showing me. The twin on the general’s right was Amanda Peck, the other one was Aleesha Peck, and the blonde was Alison Vogane.

  The three of them looked surprised to see three stripes on Eagle’s shoulders, which presumably meant his demotion wasn’t a widely known thing outside of pilot circles, yet. Needless to say, he had to explain it before anything else. In spite of looking exhausted, he looked really happy, and that must have helped them accept the change. It was obvious General Smith had known, and she was their next target for not having told them. This was a very close group. That much was obvious. They used first names all the time, even with a junior off
icer they didn’t know listening in.

  The general took charge of the meeting, and we covered the basics of both the space, station, and ship battles between us. Amanda and BA freely admitted they’d underestimated the Rawtenuga, partly because of no data on them, and mainly because they’d not had a decent ground enemy since the Darkness War. They were too used to soft targets now, and suddenly coming up against a hard target had taken too long to adjust to.

  The need for a meson based sidearm came up quickly, and if it should be an actual gun, or just replacing the stunners on the suits. They decided to ask for both to be developed.

  It made me wonder what the official Imperium line was in relation to the Rawtenuga. Were we just helping out here, or were we going to fight a proper war? But that was a question it was not my place to ask. The answer would probably arrive with new guns, and updated combat suits, along with orders to stay here. I’d just have to wait.

  Eagle said he was happy with the performance of his pilots, but if this was going to be something they did again, they needed a lot more assault course training in the suits. Most of their suits had been damaged enough to need replacing. Some had been breached, and we now knew our belt suits could protect against dinosaur teeth, but no-one wanted to go against them without the extra layer of actual armour.

  One thing I knew was coming, was enough spare combat suits to equip us for doing the same job on our own if we needed to. But the discussion reinforced we were going to need more than just pilots for this kind of action. Those decisions were above all of our pay grades though.

  With dinner time approaching, the general ended the meeting, but the twins stopped me from leaving as I was rising.

  “Who’s the short firebrand in the strange short long-nosed combat suit?” asked Amanda.

  “Might be Woof, or his AI. Why?”

  “He seemed to revel in the destruction.”

  “That would be Woof. Never make a big hole if you can make an even bigger one. You ought to know what Lufaflufs are like.”

  “That we do,” said Aleesha, and all of them were laughing as we left the room.