Predator (Old Ironsides Book 3) Read online

  ‘Enemy.’

  The word was whispered by the tactical officer as a simple warning. There needed to be nothing more said, the single word enough to inform Marshall than an enemy signature had been detected by Sol’s most outlying relay stations.

  ‘Battle status, now.’

  Marshall snapped the order and instantly Titan’s bridge lighting became subdued to a dull red that alerted the crew that battle was likely imminent.

  ‘This is it,’ Olsen said. ‘How do you want to play the game?’

  ‘To win,’ Marshall replied, an old habit of theirs before committing to battle. ‘Tactical?’

  ‘Multiple signatures,’ came the terse reply. ‘At least twelve of them. They’re too distant to calculate mass, all moving super luminal toward Sol.’

  Could be warships, could be scouts, Marshall reflected. Either way, it didn’t matter. They weren’t CSS or private vessels otherwise the call of “enemy” wouldn’t have been used. These were vessels entering Sol space that were not recognized as human, and that meant they had to be destroyed.

  ‘Can you calculate their destination?’ he asked.

  The tactical officer nodded as he scrutinized the data on his screens.

  ‘Looks like they’re heading for Polaris Station, admiral.

  That made sense, Marshall reflected. Their plan was probably to overwhelm the military response before advancing upon an undefended earth.

  ‘Prepare for super luminal leap,’ Marshall ordered. ‘Ambush trajectory, Alpha Group and Delta Group. Beta and Charlie to act as a rear guard and reinforcements.’

  ‘Aye, cap’n.’

  Alpha and Delta group each had a single capital ship, in this case Titan and Pegasus respectively, along with two frigates each and a small armada of cruisers and destroyers. A third ship of the line, Poseidon, led Beta and Charlie Group. Marshall’s plan of attack was simple, and he spoke it out loud.

  ‘We don’t know our enemy’s strengths or tactics or their weaponry for that matter,’ he said to Olsen. ‘We’ll ambush them, hit them hard, and then escape if necessary.’

  ‘Guerrilla warfare,’ Olsen nodded in appreciation. ‘Works for me. Fighters?’

  ‘We hold them in stand by,’ Marshall replied. ‘I don’t want to commit to a long slog against the enemy until we know what they’re capable of. One capital ship almost took out two frigates with two shots. Let’s not give them the chance to hit back too soon, eh?’

  ‘Aye captain,’ Olsen nodded.

  Titan’s mass drive hummed into life as the helmsman responded automatically. Wired directly into the ship’s controls and data linked to Marshall’s ID chip, the helmsman reacted quite literally with the speed of Marshall’s thoughts. Although the Admiral frequently called orders to the helm by force of habit, the helmsman was already executing a manoeuver by the time Marshall opened his mouth, saving precious fractions of a second in battle.

  ‘Super luminal in three, two, one…, now!’

  Titan’s bridge surged with a light spectrum and the huge warship blasted into super luminal cruise along with the fleet close behind.

  *

  CSS Defiance

  ‘Five minutes to Sol.’

  The tension on the bridge was palpable as Captain Lucas rapped her fingers on the armrest of her chair and watched the tactical display. Although it was entirely blank she knew in her heart of hearts that the enemy was right behind them.

  ‘There was nothing else that we could do,’ the XO, Walker, said to her. ‘We had to run and we had to come home.’

  Lucas nodded in agreement but said nothing. Sula watched the captain but held her tongue. She felt an overwhelming need to comfort Lucas despite now knowing that the captain was more than capable of shouldering the burden of command. None the less, Sula knew now what CSS crews faced in battle, what her father had faced time and time again in the massive dogfights against Ayleean warriors like the ones who now were aboard their ship.

  The bridge entrance opened and Sula turned to see Lieutenant Tyrone Hackett walk in with a customary loose limbed stride, flanked by two Marines who kept their eyes on him and their rifles at port arms. Captain Lucas shot out of her seat.

  ‘Lieutenant,’ she said as he approached. ‘Tell me something that doesn’t involve us losing battles.’

  Tyrone’s gaze met Sula’s and lingered there for a moment before he walked by. Ellen held out a clenched fist and Tyrone bumped it with his own and a brilliant smile.

  ‘Where would you like me to start?’ he asked the captain.

  ‘Anywhere damn it, just get talkin’ and don’t stop until you’re done.’

  Tyrone took a brief moment to order his thoughts.

  ‘The enemy are octopedal in biology and appear to have an aquatic or amphibious nature and origin,’ he said. ‘That much was clear when we encountered them. They’re fast, aggressive and it seemed to me they take pleasure in attacking other species. You could sort of see it in their black eyes, the beady little bast…’

  ‘Arduous as your battles may have been we need information,’ Lucas cut him off. ‘Are they attacking us for a reason?’

  Tyrone nodded.

  ‘Yeah,’ he replied, ‘Shylo and the elders said that the invaders treated them something like cattle. It was like a harvest or something, and that the Ayleeans were mostly loaded onto ships along with other lifeforms on the planet and shipped off somewhere.’

  ‘Cattle?’ Sula uttered.

  ‘Yeah,’ Tyrone said. ‘Looks like we’re on the menu for something. Either they use other species as slaves or they have them for dinner. Either way, it’s a fair bet that whatever’s waiting for us on the other side of harvest day isn’t hugs and kisses.’

  Captain Lucas nodded. ‘What of their ships?’

  ‘I don’t know much,’ Tyrone said, ‘but the Ayleeans reckoned that the octopeds didn’t build the ships they’re travelling in. Their biology doesn’t match up with the ships they’re using too well, suggesting they were taken from other species during similar invasions.’

  Captain Lucas punched a clenched fist into the palm of her hand as she looked at Walker.

  ‘That means they’ll have weaknesses,’ she said. ‘They won’t be able to operate their ships as well as the original builders, and that might be why they need to weaken their victims from the inside before they can invade.’

  Sula saw the XO nodding in agreement, perhaps the first time that he had done so since they’d embarked on their mission.

  ‘Stands to reason,’ he said. ‘Those capital ships are very powerful and should be more than a match for our fleet if they had more than, say, half a dozen of them. But if they’re merely hitching a lift on somebody else’s ride…’

  Captain Lucas turned away from them and looked up at the display screen, even though it showed nothing but an absolute blackness as deep as oblivion.

  ‘Where is Shylo?’ Tyrone asked. ‘And the elders?’

  ‘They’re being held in the landing bay under armed guard,’ the XO replied.

  ‘Captain, the Ayleeans got me out of there,’ Tyrone said. ‘They’re on our side, so there’s no need to keep them locked up.’

  Walker shook his head.

  ‘We can’t take the risk that they’ll attack us themselves. They just lost their planet and their people and they’re not the most trusting of species at the best of times. Letting a couple hundred of them just wander around a CSS frigate during time of war would be tantamount to suicide.’

  ‘They have children, lives,’ Tyrone snapped. ‘They’re as much people as we are.’

  Sula stared at Tyrone and couldn’t help the smile that spread on her features.

  ‘Wow,’ she said, ‘what did they feed you down there, hot shot? You sound like you actually like some of them.’

  Tyrone cast a withering glance in her direction.

  ‘Like is too strong a word,’ he replied. ‘But tolerate, yeah, definitely. I wouldn’t be here if they hadn’t got me out and besides
, you could use their help.’

  ‘How so?’ Captain Lucas demanded.

  Tyrone turned to her. ‘How many Marines you got aboard Defiance?’

  ‘Two hundred,’ Lucas replied, ‘plus fourteen Special Forces.’

  ‘Any one of those octopeds is worth four men in a fight,’ Tyrone replied. ‘And the Ayleeans below decks are the only ones who have engaged them in open battle, hand to hand. How much do you think they’re gonna be worth if this comes down to a boarding fight?’

  Captain Lucas bit her lip uncertainly and Sula instinctively came to Tyrone’s aid.

  ‘Captain, if Lieutenant Hackett can so completely change his tune regarding how he feels about the Ayleeans, then either he’s learned something new about them or he’s under the influence of the kind of drugs I think we all could use right now.’

  A ripple of bitter laughter rattled around the bridge. Captain Lucas eyed Tyrone for a moment and then she nodded, to the XO’s dismay.

  ‘Release them from custody,’ she said. ‘Bring their leader to me.’

  Tyrone whirled to carry out the order, but not before he flashed Sula a smile that caused her skin to flush a deep shade of crimson.

  ‘Ensign?’ the captain snapped.

  Sula almost jumped out of her skin and turned to Lucas. ‘Yes ma’am?’

  ‘We may be about to go into battle and you’re not signed up for this,’ she said. ‘I want you on a shuttle off the ship as soon as we get a picture of the battlefield, understood?’

  ‘But I can help,’ Sula said. ‘I already did!’

  ‘And I appreciate it,’ Lucas replied, ‘but I won’t fight this ship with one hand behind my back. Your time will come but it’s not now, okay?’

  Sula’s shoulders sank but Lieutenant Goldberg stepped up alongside her. ‘That would be a tactically unsound decision, ma’am, based on Ensign Reyon’s performance so far.’

  ‘I concur,’ said a voice behind her, and she turned to see Tyrone move alongside his wingman. ‘We’re stronger together, right?’

  Captain Lucas shook her head.

  ‘Don't say I didn’t warn you,’ she said as she turned to the bridge crew. ‘Bring the ship to battle status!’’

  ***

  XXXIX

  CSS Titan

  ‘Sub luminal in twenty seconds, captain.’

  Admiral Marshall stood on the command platform, as was his habit, his chair ignored behind him as he prepared himself for battle. With no information available when in super luminal cruise, he was reliant on the picture of the developing battlefield that he had just before they’d engaged the mass drives. Multiple targets, all heading directly toward Saturn on a trajectory that suggested they would attempt an ambush at close range.

  ‘Prepare all stations for a frontal assault,’ he ordered. ‘We can’t let them slip through too close to earth or any of the orbital stations.’

  ‘Aye, captain,’ Olsen acknowledged, the bridge crew carrying out their tasks with a quiet discipline and lack of ostentation that masked their anxiety.

  Marshall had been in this position a couple dozen times in his career. Although the bridge seemed quiet he could detect the tension, a live current in the air seething unseen between them all. They were on the verge of open battle and virtually every officer aboard the ship had seen recordings and read books about the last, great battle fought by a CSS fleet action at Proxima Centauri, against the Ayleeans. Some seventy vessels were engaged in that final, titanic engagement that cost the lives of thousands of CSS personnel and many more Ayleeans. Marshall could recall vividly the tremendous exchanges of plasma fire, the vast cloud of ionized debris and gas like a planetary nebula flickering with diabolical lightning as the warships engaged each other at close range. Like all battles, tactics and strategy only took you so far. Eventually, inevitably, it came down to a slugging match at close range as the opposing sides tore chunks out of each other until a final, deciding blow was delivered.

  That blow, fortunately for the CSS fleet, had been the destruction of the Ayleean flagship Riizoor when a series of well placed and timed bombardments ignited the plasma store deep inside her hull. The entire armory and most of her engine bays had been obliterated in a blast so powerful that for several minutes the battle itself subsided, the tremendous and instantaneous loss of life subduing even the most brazen of warriors.

  The Ayleean cause had been doomed from that moment onward.

  Marshall knew that his enemy possessed warships of greater power than his own and that his only chance of defeating them in battle was to create a similar, devastating attack. Not for him would there be a traditional engagement. This time it was hit hard and run fast, and then come back again to keep their enemy on their toes, keep them confused and unable to use their superior firepower to dominate the battlefield.

  ‘Ten seconds, captain.’

  Marshall cracked his knuckles and straightened his uniform.

  ‘It’s time, ladies and gentlemen,’ he said simply, avoiding the convention of sharing elaborate words of inspiration at a time when he knew many may lose their lives. ‘May providence favour us, the enemy fear us and the battle go our way, because this is our home. Defensionem ut impetum.’

  ‘Defense as attack!’ snapped the bridge crew, and on cue the navigation officer called out the countdown.

  ‘Four, three, two, one, now!’

  The bridge blurred in a spectrum of light as the massive capital ship decelerated out of super luminal. The main viewing screen flared brilliant white and then showed a vast field of stars and the distant disc of Saturn looming nearby. In an instant, at a glance, Marshall was able to orientate himself to their location and picked out earth as a speck of light no brighter than a distant star in the blackness.

  Marshall’s eyes flicked to the tactical display and even before he could give any orders he saw the rest of the fleet flash out of super luminal behind Titan and then the tactical officer shouted a warning.

  ‘Multiple gravity wells, all cardinal points! They’re coming!’

  Marshall glanced at the tactical display and saw the fleet moving into ambush positions, forming the “horns of the bull” to envelop the enemy within a barrage of plasma fire. He looked at Olsen, the XO.

  ‘All weapons on full charge, we hit them as soon as they arrive.’

  ‘Aye, cap’n!’

  The star fields before the fleet suddenly rippled as several gravity wells shimmered into existence, the space time “bow shock” of the incoming enemy vessels telegraphed a few seconds before they emerged from super luminal cruise. Marshall felt the old tension rise to a new peak, the agonizing waiting finally over and the chance to act upon him.

  ‘For what we are about to receive, may providence make us truly thankful,’ he murmured.

  A moment later and the rippling star fields burst with brilliant flares of white light and Marshall saw not one, or two or even three but a dozen massive Marauders surge out of super luminal and rush into position before the CSS fleet.

  ‘All vessels, fire now!’

  Marshall shouted the command as he clenched one fist before him, determined to get the first strike in. From Titan and all of the fleet’s ships a seething barrage of blue–white plasma rained inward toward the newly arrived Marauders and he saw the salvos begin to impact in brilliant explosions that rippled like lighting across the vast ships.

  ‘Direct hits, all quarters on all vessels!’ the tactical officer yelled jubilantly. ‘We’re detecting shield deficiencies and power surges across the enemy’s fleet!’

  ‘Good!’ Marshall yelled. ‘Reposition and hit them again, keep moving and…’

  ‘Incoming fire, brace for impact!’

  Marshall heard the command but he could not quite believe it as he could see the enemy fleet and they had not yet fired a single shot.

  ‘Where away?!’

  The reply came just before the impact.

  ‘Port bow captain, it’s one of ours, it’s Victory!’

&nb
sp; Before Marshall could reply the CSS frigate’s lethal barrage plowed into Titan with the strength of fallen angels. Marshall saw on the main display screen the massive broadside fired from barely a hull length away.

  The bridge shuddered as Titan reeled under the blows and the ship’s electrical systems burst outward in showers of sparks and flame as she was overwhelmed by the sheer level of energy washing across her shields.

  ‘All ships, break off the attack!’ Marshall yelled. ‘Get clear of each other! The fleet has been infiltrated!’

  ‘All lines of communication are down!’ the communications officer yelled as another savage barrage slammed into Titan. ‘The fleet’s channel codes have been flushed and we’re being jammed! We can’t talk to each other!’

  Marshall stared in horror at the tactical display as he saw the fleet begin to break formation, ships veering away from one another as they began firing in desperation at the attacking vessels, both those of the enemy and those of the CSS fleet now firing upon their comrades in arms. Marshall heard in his mind the words of Doctor Schmidt taunt him from afar: divide and conquer, captain.

  Polaris Station. Suddenly Marshall knew without a doubt what had happened, that his entire fleet had been deliberately manoeuvred into this precise position. Olsen had said that O’Hara had debriefed Captain Travis Harper himself, and now Harper, a long time friend of Marshall’s was firing on Titan with frenzied salvos that were battering the warship’s port flank. The command codes were in the hands of Admiral Vincent O’Hara and he had shut them down, replacing them with new codes and thus opening every ship in the fleet up to the infiltrators or to be controlled by O’Hara directly from Polaris Station. Arianna Coburn had been right, the enemy had been among mankind for a very long time, at least long enough to infiltrate the highest positions in the military.

  ‘We’re getting a distress call planet side!’ shouted the tactical officer as Titan’s hull groaned under another salvo and the lights flickered weakly. ‘Their shields and plasma guns around CSS HQ are all down. Everything’s being shut down!’