Rebellion of Stars (Starship Blackbeard Book 4) (25 page)

Tolvern grabbed the gun again. And then, the night lit up. Gunfire flashed from both sides of the road, dozens of guns targeting her position. More gunfire came from behind the burned-out lorry. Moving figures, dozens of them.

This wasn’t an infiltrator. This was a major assault to overrun the base.

#

“I’m coming out,” Rutherford said.

“Hold your position,” Drake responded.

“Is that an order?” The other captain’s tone was insolent.

Blackbeard
rocked from a blow to stern. Lindsell was hammering her hard with his cruiser and a corvette, and Potterman’s cruiser was caught in the crossfire of two destroyers while torpedo boats charged him from all sides, preventing him from coming to Drake’s assistance. Catherine Caites was already swinging around with
Richmond
, her bluff having failed, but hadn’t yet returned to the battlefield.

“Manx, is the secondary battery ready yet?” Drake asked.

“Barker says three minutes.”

Drake glanced at the console to see the enemy corvette approaching at high speed. “I need it
now
.”

He turned back to Rutherford, who didn’t appear on the main screen, but on the captain’s console. “Yes, that’s an order, dammit. You’ve got to keep
Dreadnought
off those forts.”

“I’m sitting here like an idiot. Gamma has lost her main battery, and her torpedo tubes are getting pounded. I have to bring the fight to
Dreadnought
. I’ve still got one engine. Let me do something with it.”

“Malthorne is turning,” Drake said. “Gamma can catch a breather in a few minutes.”

“But you won’t,” Rutherford said.

No, he wouldn’t. Caites fired off two long-range missiles. Her guns were warming. Potterman clawed his way free of the destroyers and knocked out two torpedo boats, but he was too harried to give Drake aid.

The enemy corvette streaked past
Blackbeard
, but Barker had finally got the secondary cannon online. They fired all three guns and cracked the corvette a hammer blow to the upper decks as she passed. Explosions rippled along her surface.

Lindsell still came at him with
Churchill
, together with a full complement of support craft, but Drake swung around with the main guns just as Caites lanced in at the enemy’s left flank. Drake’s own support craft were maneuvering expertly into position. It was an encounter Drake now believed he would win, given enough time.

This small victory didn’t change the basic equation. The battle was turning against them. Drake could match Lindsell, blow for blow, but here came
Dreadnought
. The battleship lumbered out from Hot Barsa, abandoning the attack on the forts.

Drake sent out a general order to the fleet. “Direct all fire at
Churchill
.”

He’d meant to break Lindsell before playing his last card. Get past these powerful forces before taking on
Dreadnought
. But that wasn’t going to happen in time. So he sent a message to Isabel Vargus.
Now.
 

The mercenary fleet had been lingering just out of
Dreadnought
’s range and was already following the battleship as she pulled out of orbit. But now Vargus accelerated and moved to cut off Malthorne’s flagship. It might buy Drake a few minutes.

Blackbeard
gave the enemy cruiser a broadside.
Calypso
joined
Blackbeard
from below, unleashing her own torpedo boats. Caites screamed in at the helm of
Richmond
. Suddenly, Captain Lindsell, who’d been landing most of the blows to this point in the battle, found himself under concentrated fire.

He let loose with his guns, and one of Drake’s torpedo boats broke apart. Next, two of Lindsell’s torpedoes slammed into one of the rebel destroyers. The first torpedo blasted an opening for the second one, which cut right through the heart of the ship. The rebel destroyer vented a brilliant plume of plasma and rocked with explosions before breaking in two. Escape pods jettisoned. Screams for help came across the com.

But while the enemy was attacking, concentrated firepower ripped apart
Churchill
’s armor both above and below. Lindsell rolled away in a desperate maneuver to save his craft. Drake hit
Churchill
again with his belly guns, and
Calypso
landed two more missiles. Lindsell fled, crippled and chased from the battlefield while the injured corvette and two destroyers tried to guard his retreat.

Instead of giving pursuit, Drake directed fire against the other ships of Lindsell’s task force, now in disarray. He’d cornered a destroyer and was hammering it into submission when
Dreadnought
appeared.

Malthorne’s battleship dwarfed every other ship on the battlefield. With more armaments than an orbital fortress and nearly as invulnerable, she scattered rebel ships ahead of her. They came to take shelter behind
Blackbeard
. Not that
Blackbeard
could provide much protection. Drake braced his forces.

Vargus had been pursuing in the mercenary fleet and now attacked.
Outlaw
led the charge, followed by several smaller schooners and frigates. The heavily armed but poorly maneuverable
Pussycat
swung wide and directed fire at
Dreadnought
’s bridge from a different angle.

Drake had hoped to force
Dreadnought
to confront this threat. But the battleship continued forward, turning on a small secondary battery and a few missiles to deal with the mercenaries. Even this was more than Vargus could handle. Cannon ripped apart two schooners, mauled a frigate, and knocked a hole in
Pussycat
’s formidable armor. Vargus pulled back from her run, her own ship emerging unscathed, but unable to continue the attack for lack of fire support.

The three rebel cruisers swung wide in end-to-end formation to attack
Dreadnought
with enfilading fire. When the battleship closed, they let loose with broadsides. Explosions flashed all along her surface.
Dreadnought
let loose with her own guns.

As if to show off
Dreadnought
’s power and even indifference to the combined might of the rebel fleet, Malthorne didn’t target any one ship, but fired cannon at a frigate, torpedoes at the three cruisers, missiles at the destroyers, and secondary batteries at everything else. Showing, as she did so, that she could fight everyone and everywhere at once.

The result was minimal damage to the three cruisers. But one of Drake’s remaining destroyers was in trouble, hit by missiles and stumbling from the battlefield straight into the remaining ships of Lindsell’s fleet. A rebel frigate took three torpedoes. Her ordnance detonated, and when consoles cleared, there was nothing left of her. Another frigate lost her engines and drifted aimlessly. A torpedo boat flew off, venting gasses, the crew preparing to eject.

While
Dreadnought
was knocking around various enemies, the mercenaries took advantage of the loss of attention. This time, Vargus seemed to catch the enemy off guard.
Outlaw
landed two blows right above the bridge.
Pussycat
landed another before
Dreadnought
chased them off a second time. Jane analyzed damage. Twenty-two percent degradation of
Dreadnought
’s secondary bridge shield.

“Capp, get us up there,” Drake said. “Oglethorpe, I want the rest of the fleet following. That’s our chance. Hit that shield with everything we’ve got.”

But Admiral Malthorne called in two destroyers to stand a few hundred miles off his bridge as a secondary defense. His main battery was hot and ready to fire again.

Another ship approached the battlefield. “It’s
Vigilant
, sir,” Smythe called.

And so it was. Rutherford’s cruiser was firing her remaining engine and pulling away from Fort Gamma’s protective guns. Followed by a destroyer and a frigate,
Vigilant
accelerated toward the battlefield.

“Balls of steel,” Capp murmured in an appreciative tone. “Bloody fool, though.”

Drake raised his old friend. “You have your orders, Rutherford. You are to stand down and protect those forts.”

“The devil take your orders.” Rutherford’s tone was unusually stiff. Almost afraid, if that were possible. What had gotten into the man? “You have no hope.
Dreadnought
will tear you apart.”

“And how is your death going to help that? You are the last defense of the planet. Do what I say. Get back there at once.”

“No, Drake. I will not.” Rutherford cut the link.

Malthorne’s battleship was taking fire from three sides now, but still calmly positioning herself. Another broadside from the enemy.
Calypso
took a pounding. Two of her shields suffered so much damage it was a miracle the cannon fire hadn’t blown through her entirely. One of Drake’s last two destroyers fled, hunted by missiles. She launched desperate countermeasures, but two of the missiles came through. More heavy damage.

Vargus was still fighting furiously, but her support vessel,
Pussycat,
was fleeing the battlefield, a long trail of smoke and debris pluming out her backside. Another schooner was lost. The two destroyers Malthorne had called in now turned their guns on the mercenary flagship itself, and Vargus was about to be overwhelmed.

Blackbeard
and her fellow cruisers fired back with everything they had. They were scoring hits all along
Dreadnought
’s upper decks now, but nothing was getting through. The battleship seemed to be clearing her throat, readying all weapons for another, perhaps final volley.

Rutherford had almost reached
Dreadnought
. What possible good could he do? With one of his engines obliterated by a saboteur, he could not maneuver about the battlefield. He might get one shot. The first time Malthorne turned his weapons on
Vigilant
, she’d be finished.

Rutherford’s destroyer and frigate peeled away, shooting.
Vigilant
herself continued doggedly forward.

“She’s not going to fire, sir,” Smythe said.

“How do you mean?” Drake said.

“I mean,
Vigilant
isn’t exposing her guns. She’s readied two torpedo tubes, but nothing else is online.”

What could it mean? Rutherford’s shields couldn’t possibly hold, whether his weapon systems were exposed or not. If he was going to take such a terrible risk anyway, why not come in shooting everything he had?

And then suddenly, Drake’s mouth went dry. He understood.

“Damn you, Rutherford. No.”

Chapter Twenty-six

It took only twenty minutes until Tolvern’s base was on the verge of being overrun. Her meager forces were trying to hold both the front and rear entrances against an overwhelming attack, even while other enemies poured out of the forest and hacked through the razor wire. Every human and Hroom in Tolvern’s force was armed and shooting, but they were too thinly placed. The enemy seemed to come from everywhere.

An armored vehicle pushed up the road toward her guard post. Enemies used it for cover, as it blasted at the guard tower with one gun and struck the defenders of the gate with the other. Tolvern returned fire. Her machine gun was so hot it radiated heat like a pair of tongs pulled from a forge, and Brockett was going up and down the stairs with more ammo, until she thought she’d burn through every last can. But she couldn’t slow the enemy vehicle. It pushed forward relentlessly. And then it stopped without warning.

Rebel Hroom poured out of the surrounding forest. Most of them were unarmed—not even carrying spears—but about a dozen had assault rifles. Those with guns flanked the armored car and the forces pushing up the road behind it. They unloaded their weapons. She couldn’t see the effect on the enemy hiding behind the armored car, but it must have been devastating.

But nothing touched the vehicle itself. Bullets pinged off the armored car, and it swung its guns over to engage this new threat. The armed Hroom were only eight or ten yards distant, and they fell in a row, one after the other. The armed rebels tried to retreat to the cover of the forest, but none of them made it. The last one shuddered and collapsed just as he was reaching the trees.

The bulk of the Hroom—the unarmed ones—had taken advantage of the distraction to run toward the base gates. They came on in long, loping strides. The enemy turned its attention toward them.

Tolvern slapped her hand against her ear so hard that it hurt. The com link came on. “Get that gate open!”

It opened at the same moment that the enemy concentrated firepower on the unarmed, fleeing Hroom. The back rank fell, mowed down as from a scythe sweeping through grass. The rest, some twenty or thirty in all, poured through the open gates. Tolvern had doubled her strength in a single moment.

A ragged cheer went up through the base. The enemy vehicle lumbered forward to force its way through the open gates, but grenades, hand cannons, and a well-placed mine checked its progress. It fell back two hundred yards, where it sat, smoking, as the enemy reorganized.

Tolvern took advantage of the lull in the fighting. She left Carvalho and Brockett at the guard tower and raced down the stairs to greet the newcomers. One was Pez Rykan. He stared at her through a soot-stained face. He wore a bandage on his neck, and his left hand was heavily wrapped as well, with only the tips of his long fingers pointing out.

“You’ve had a rough go of it,” she said.

“That would appear to be a—how do you say it?—an understatement.”

Yes. She’d personally witnessed at least thirty Hroom slaughtered on the road in just the last few minutes; from the visible injuries to him and several others, this wasn’t their first fight.

“How many of your force are left in the woods?” Tolvern asked.

“Perhaps a hundred. But others are gathering in the lowlands. Our numbers will soon be rebuilt.”