Aurora Rising: The Complete Collection (134 page)

“Yes—”

“Sir, we’ve got ten swarmers targeting starboard Decks 2-4.”

Hell. If the
Pindus’
shields had reasonable power remaining they could withstand the hits for a period of time, but they had no shields—well, 7% shields and dropping—and three gaping holes in the hull. He checked the tactical map but found no available backup nearby.

Colonel Gaetan:  Command, we are heavily damaged and request fighter support to get some swarmers off our ass.

“Two swarmers are firing into the Deck 2 hull breach. It’s been sealed off, but the interior bulkheads can’t take this much of a pounding.”

Sure enough, the sound of weapons blasting against metal surged to thunder beneath his feet.

Colonel Gaetan:  Sooner would be better.

Command:  Three Flights en route to your location,
Pindus
. Hang tight.

Colonel Gaetan:  Thank you, Command.

Gaetan pulled up the starboard cam to watch as twelve fighter jets emerged from the chaos of crisscrossing pulse beams, Metigen lasers and incessant explosions to begin firing on the attacking swarmers.

He cringed as one of the alien ships turned its weapon on a fighter and swiftly ripped it apart. A pilot dead, and more likely to follow. But over four hundred men and women served on the
Pindus
who could be saved through their efforts.

One of the fighters inverted and dove full vertical to intersect a swarmer’s path, succeeding in drawing its attention away from the
Pindus’
damaged hull. On reaching the bottom of its arc the fighter pivoted and opened fire on the sinister, glowing oculi at the center of the alien craft.

The swarmer promptly returned fire. The fighter’s shielding crumpled under the barrage in less than three seconds, and the small vessel shattered into pieces before the pilot was able to eject.

Damaged but not destroyed, the swarmer broke off and redirected its focus to the
Pindus
.

SENECA

C
AVARE,
M
ILITARY
H
EADQUARTERS

“Stanley, pause and reverse four seconds.”

Are you speaking to me, Commander Lekkas?

Morgan made a face any human would interpret as one of annoyance. “There’s no one in here but us. Yes, I’m talking to you.”

But my title is STAN.

“First off, it’s not a ‘title’—it’s a name. And when I’m with you, your
name
is Stanley.” She held a mild…if not disdain, at least offhand disrespect for the Artificial. ‘Stanley’ had been the surname of the horrid administrator of her boarding school when she was a teenager, so….

She valued its computational capabilities well enough, for they were nothing short of astonishing. But its tactical analysis was crap. She’d been told it was because the Artificial was new and its metaheuristic algorithms were still evolving and maturing, but the fact was that when presented with a battlefield layout it couldn’t determine in five hours what she could in five seconds. The Artificial was simply unable to grasp the nature of the unpredictable ebb and flow of humans in combat against one another.

Of course, they now battled aliens. What this meant for its tactical decision-making capabilities remained to be seen.

Reversed 4.0000 seconds.

She enlarged the frozen frame to study the damage that had been inflicted on the alien vessel: one tentacle shorn off and another left dangling, plus a hole blown through the outer edge of the oculi. Another two, perhaps three seconds and the hole would have grown large enough to obliterate the vessel.

They needed more time for even suicide strikes to be successful. Preferably, they needed a way to make strikes on swarmers not be suicidal.

“Have you processed sufficient footage to create a sim of a swarmer’s maneuvering and attack behavior?”

I have, Commander.

She didn’t mind being addressed by her rank, but she couldn’t shake the wholly unjustified sense the Artificial was being condescending in its excessive use of it. “Good. Fire it up and put me in a ship.”

The reclined, form-adapting chair in the otherwise bare room made for as comfortable a location for sim immersion as it did for reviewing footage in a full-sensory overlay. Sensors attached to her hands to capture her motions and she was set.

Her sim environment consisted of a standard basic training field. Stars shone in every direction, but there were no planets, suns or other objects to get in the way. The participants were for now a single swarmer, Morgan and her ‘fighter.’ It wasn’t
her
fighter and as such lacked many of the tools typically at her disposal—but the rest of the pilots wouldn’t have access to those tools so neither did she.

The mission: discover a reliable way to destroy a swarmer without destroying one’s ship or oneself.

“Begin sim.”

She accelerated instantly, before sighting the attacker.

Rule #1: Never stop moving.

The alien vessel materialized in the right quadrant at -32.4° vertical. She gave chase.

Rule #2: Offense is the best defense.

It spun and accelerated toward her, rapidly closing the distance. Its speed was even more impressive inside the sim environment. She altered her trajectory and continued to alter it as she drew closer.

Rule #3: Never stay on the same trajectory long enough to get a bullseye painted on your nose.

The swarmer fired before her ship’s weapons were in range. Another difficulty in need of a solution. She diverted all non-motive power to the forward shields and yanked the ship hard to port and in reverse.

The cockpit’s dynamic pressure adjustment system mitigated the effect of the g-forces, but she still felt the nauseating lurch in her stomach as the ship propelled her in directions and at speeds the human body was never intended to tolerate.

At first the beam grazed the fighter, but it quickly adapted to lock onto her movements. Her strengthened shields lasted seven seconds, but despite some impressive gyrations she was unable to escape the beam.

Fighter destroyed.

No shit, genius.

Rule #4: Practice until you win.

“Again.”

Morgan stood at parade rest a polite distance from the conference table at which Field Marshal Gianno huddled with a number of advisors. While she waited she flexed her calves and clenched and unclenched her shoulder muscles. The recliner had lost most of its comfort three hours in.

Finally the Marshal dismissed the others to carry out their orders—mostly details involving the preemptive diversion of resources to Elathan—and turned to her.

“Commander Lekkas. According to Security, you’ve been plugged into STAN for six hours with only two five-minute breaks.”

Morgan snapped to attention. “Sounds about right, ma’am.”

“At ease, Commander. I trust you have insights to share.”

“Yes, ma’am. We need the bending laser weapon the military’s been researching or we are dead.”

The Marshal’s expression did not change. “Normally I would inquire how you knew about the research—or deny its existence—but time is short and most of the old rules are falling away in the face of exigent circumstances. The arcalaser weapon is not ready for field use.”

“I’m not sure that matters. It’s a question of necessity.”

“Why are you so convinced? Our fighters have seen some level of success against the swarmers.”

“How many of them survived the encounter? How many of those who
did
survived due to blind luck and intervening factors? When you asked me to work on this problem, you said I was the best fighter pilot in the Federation. After exhaustively reviewing our combat footage I simmed against a single swarmer for a solid one hundred rounds. I eliminated it twenty-seven times. My ship was destroyed fourteen of those times as well as every time I failed. If we’re facing tens of thousands of them, we cannot survive those odds. Ma’am.”

Gianno took in the information without visible emotion. “Why do you lose?”

It wasn’t the question Morgan had expected; most superior officers equated explanations with excuses. “At a hardware and engineering level, the swarmers are superior to our fighters to an insurmountable degree. They are faster. Their weaponry has greater range than ours and I estimate upwards of fifty percent greater force.

“Absent the application of massive firepower—multiple sustained frigate weapons at a minimum—their only structural weakness is at the oculi and only while the swarmer is firing. Burning off some of the tentacles decreases the weapon’s force and accuracy but actually widens the beam, thus making it harder to avoid.”

She drew her shoulders up a notch. “Therefore, the sole way to destroy one is to fire directly into its oculi while it too is firing—an act all but impossible without being the recipient of its fire for longer than our shields can withstand. Unless we can remove ourselves from the line of fire.”

“Via bending lasers.”

“Yes, ma’am. I saw no evidence in the footage of the aliens having such a capability. I don’t know why they don’t. Maybe they never thought of it, or maybe they didn’t think they would need it.”

“Why use agility when brute force will suffice.”

“Conservation of resources is an often-used and nearly as often effective strategy in combat. But I don’t care why they aren’t fielding the technology—I only care that they aren’t. And we can field it. We can, can’t we, ma’am?”

Gianno’s mouth tightened. Her gaze shifted to several screens displaying information which had nothing to do with bending lasers.

“The technology is thus far proving highly unreliable. The arcalaser has trouble maintaining the target selected by its operating ware. It fails to hit the target at a thirty-four percent rate, and when it fails the result is unpredictable. It can hit anything in its range, including friendlies.”

Ouch. The news was worse than she had feared. She was working on a suitable reply when Gianno’s gaze returned to bore into her with intimidating authority.

“The testing facility is at the Lunar SSR Center. Go there, get in a fighter and see if you can make it work.”

“Ma’am, I’m not an engineer.”

“No, you’re not. But it is my hope that by using the arcalaser and seeing it action, you can tell the engineers what is going wrong from a practical perspective. It is my further hope what is going wrong will be a problem they can fix, and quickly.”

Morgan thought that was something she could in fact do. “I’ll leave right away.”