“Coming in!” Major Barnes cried as the shuttles dropped, chasing the falling debris back to the ground. “We have no interest in staying any longer than necessary!”
The shuttles landed all around the perimeter, many making last-minute lurches to avoid new craters in the street as they dropped the last few meters. Once more, soldiers came out the ramps and scattered into the buildings, but this time as the shuttles lifted they bent into tight arcs that kept them low as they raced away across the city, dodging ground fire as they went.
Yells resounded in the street near Drakon. He glanced out the blown-out window nearest to him and caught a glimpse of a crippled shuttle cartwheeling across the sky, trailing smoke and fire. The shuttle clipped the top of a building, spun wildly, then crashed into another building farther on. Drakon couldn’t see it as the shuttle exploded, throwing pieces of itself and the building in all directions, but his armor’s sensors dutifully reported the burst of heat, pressure, and debris that marked the death of the shuttle’s flight crew.
He made another check of all comms and sensors for information on the situation above the atmosphere. But with the defender’s jammers still active, Drakon’s surviving shuttles racing away at very low altitude seeking hiding places, and the freighters running for their lives, there was no longer any means of relaying data about events in space.
“All right, you apes,” Drakon called over his command circuit to every one of his soldiers on the ground, all of whom either knew or suspected that this assault was not going as well as planned. “Stand by for assault on the Syndicate base in five minutes.”
“Hey—!” An exclamation was cut off as a lieutenant died.
The soldiers defending the buildings across the street had followed orders, withdrawing as soon as the last shuttles lifted. Most of them had made it across safely, but Drakon saw threat markers multiplying rapidly as the sensors on his soldiers’ battle armor reported a swiftly increasing barrage of enemy fire from the vacated buildings. “General,” Colonel Kai said, “from the volume of enemy fire, I would estimate there is at least a full brigade facing me.”
“Same here,” Colonel Gaiene reported. “General, the pressure on our outer perimeter is rising fast. They’re sending out thrusts across the street at us. If I don’t shift a lot more troops to defending against attacks from the outside, we’ll get overrun.”
“I concur,” Colonel Kai said.
“Shift troops as necessary,” Drakon said. He knew that would leave too few soldiers available for the attack. “Delay the assault on the fort until we’ve stabilized the security of our outer perimeter.”
Neither colonel asked how long the delay would be. They were both busy shifting their brigades to defend against the counterattacks, and they both knew that Drakon didn’t have any answer for how much time it would take before they could launch the postponed attack.
With the pressure on his forces from outside the perimeter, attacking the enemy base might no longer be an option. The victory they had planned for, and had thought would be fairly easy, now seemed impossible.
Drakon looked at his display, hearing the thunder of battle increase on all sides, and wondered whether surviving would be possible.
Chapter Nine
The freighters were heading off in all directions, doing what freighters always did, seeking individual safety, even though under most circumstances the only way to stay safe was to stay together where friendly warships could protect them.
But these weren’t normal circumstances.
The Syndicate battleship had veered slightly off the vector that would have brought its flotilla to the inhabited planet. It was now heading for one of the fleeing freighters. Battleships were slow and cumbersome for warships, which meant they were vastly faster and more agile than freighters. Freighters were designed for economy, to haul large cargos across long distances by the most efficient means. Warships were designed to catch and destroy other ships as quickly and effectively as possible. All of the inefficiencies of their design, the extra crews, the extra propulsion, the weapons, combined to produce a platform that could easily annihilate efficient spacecraft.
Kommodor Marphissa glowered at her display as if her displeasure could somehow change the laws governing acceleration and momentum and mass. “He can’t get away.”
“No,” Kapitan Diaz agreed. “The freighter’s only chance would be if we caused the Syndicate flotilla to divert its path.”
“Can we offer it bait? Do you think CEO Boucher would take bait? A cruiser with its main propulsion out?”
“Hua saw that at Midway,” Diaz pointed out. “Manticore was truly disabled in that fight, and we still got away from her. She’s not going to abandon destroying that freighter to chase us. She’s going to destroy that freighter, then probably veer port to hit this second one, then swing from there—”
“I can see the path,” Marphissa snapped. Only those freighters fleeing all out for the jump point for Kiribati had any chance of escaping, and even a single, small Syndicate warship waiting at Kiribati would catch them there.
Diaz looked away. “Your orders, Kommodor?”
Instead of answering him directly, Marphissa hit her comm controls. “Sentry, Sentinel, Scout, Defender, remain above the ground forces providing what support you can, but take any necessary evasive action to avoid enemy warships. Your priority—” This was so hard to say, so hard to get the words out past something in her throat that wanted to block them. “Your priority is to avoid enemy attacks. If you must abandon support positions above the ground forces to do so, then take that action.” The small Hunter-Killers would not stand a chance against Haris’s cruisers or the Syndicate flotilla, and Scout had already taken damage from an heroic but reckless dive into the atmosphere to support the ground forces.
“Kommodor,” Sentry protested. “If we abandon the ground forces—”
“If you are destroyed, you will not be able to support anyone. Do not hold your ground support positions if that will result in your destruction by enemy warships.” She wanted to spit once she had said those words. Anything to get the awful taste of them out of her mouth.
“We understand, Kommodor. We will comply.” The answer came reluctantly. Sentry did not sound any happier than Marphissa did, but they could not argue the ugly logic that drove the order.
“Hawk and Eagle,” Marphissa told the light cruisers, “you will be flotilla two. Your mission is to shadow and attempt to engage Haris’s light cruiser. It will probably try to hit one of the freighters that the battleship cannot reach. Hawk is senior ship in your flotilla. Gryphon and Manticore are now flotilla one. We will shadow Haris’s heavy cruiser and attempt to bring it to battle. Everyone, do your best. For the people, Marphissa, out.”
She ended the call and slumped in her seat, gazing despairingly at her display. This is what her brave words had come to. Nothing. All her warships could do was try to keep Haris’s two cruisers from doing damage to the freighters, while the Syndicate battleship flotilla went where it would and did what it would.
She would keep her warships here as long as possible and try to support the ground troops if possible, but Marphissa knew that her ability to influence the outcome of events at Ulindi was almost nonexistent. She felt the bitterness of defeat even as she ordered Manticore and Gryphon into another hopeless charge toward Haris’s heavy cruiser to force it to veer away.