Boyens’s grin had turned smug. “Since we knew you might be in need of a little help against the other attacks, I brought Ulindi’s new fleet to assist. Just let me know what you need. Ulindi, and I, owe you a few favors. For the people! Boyens, out.”
“I’ll be damned,” Diaz said. “What are we going to do?”
Bradamont indicated her display, where the Syndicate flotilla they had been fighting was already twisting about as quickly as possible. “Since they’ve figured out that one of their expected reinforcements has turned out to be reinforcements for us, I’d say we’re going to chase these guys out of this star system. Once Gryphon joins up we’ll more than match Boyens’s flotilla, so we’ll escort them toward the main world so he can talk to General Drakon in something like real time. Unless the general tells me otherwise. We’ve won, and one of our allies has picked up some decent firepower. Our ancestors are watching over us, Kapitan.”
“You may make me a believer yet,” Diaz said, grinning.
Colonel Rogero checked his armor’s power levels, then scrolled rapidly through his whole force to see how everyone else was doing. Not well. And the Syndicate ground forces and citizens were even worse off.
Another enigma bombardment swept past like a deadly hailstorm, but by now the human soldiers had learned the best means of hiding from the enigma seekers and few were targeted.
That wouldn’t matter if everyone ran out of power, though. Without power for heat, oxygen regeneration, and water recycling, no one would last long on the surface of this planet.
“Colonel, that big hole is closing,” a scout left in that area reported.
He didn’t like the sound of that. “All scouts, get away from that hole and rejoin us. Move carefully. I want you back here in one piece.”
What were the aliens up to now? Why had they finally sealed that access to their base?
A powerful signal cut through enigma interference that had increasingly been hindering the human comm net. “Colonel Rogero, this is Kommodor Marphissa. I understood there was a big hole I could drop some big rocks down, but it seems to have vanished. What is your situation?”
“Awful,” Rogero said, feeling weak with relief as well as fatigue. “We’re not capable of breaching their defenses. We’ve barely been able to hang on. The whole force needs to be pulled off planet, but the enigmas have a seemingly endless supply of munitions that they’ll use against any shuttles that try to land now.”
“The area to your southeast looks clear. Keep moving that way. When you’re far enough from the enigma positions, I’m going to start dropping small rocks to keep the enigmas pinned down while we carry out the lift.”
It wasn’t easy, and they lost a few more people on the way, but Rogero got his unit, the Syndicate soldiers, and the citizens far enough to planetary southeast to be safe when the warships in orbit began dropping “small” rocks on the surface over the enigma base. Small meant metal projectiles falling at immense velocity to release their energy on impact, producing massive explosions that not only destroyed anything nearby such as enigma weapons launchers and sensors, but also threw up a lot of dust to help screen the human evacuation.
Rogero sent the citizens up first, dazed men, women, and children who weren’t hysterical only because they were too tired to panic. He then started sending up groups of his soldiers along with the Syndicate soldiers who willingly gave up their weapons. Despite encouragement from President Iceni and Kommodor Marphissa, and perhaps a few orders that Rogero insisted he had not heard due to enigma jamming, he stubbornly refused to leave until the last shuttle came down to pick him and a dozen other remaining soldiers up.
Exhausted despite the up meds his battle armor was pumping into his bloodstream, Rogero realized with a start of surprise that two of those soldiers were Capek and Dinapoli, two of the three who had been rescued by Manticore. “You two are making a habit of being rescued from this planet,” he said.
“I hope this is the last time,” Capek said.
Dinapoli, weaving on her feet from tiredness, managed a nod. “We saved some citizens.”
“Yes.” Rogero let everyone else begin boarding the shuttle, feeling the reassuring vibration in the ground that marked the ongoing orbital bombardment of the surface above the enigma base. “But let’s allow the mobile forces to finish this fight.”
He went up the ramp last. The shuttle began rising while its ramp was still coming up, then as the ramp sealed the shuttle pivoted to face straight up and rocketed for space.
“The last of our people is off the planet,” Leytenant Mack reported to Marphissa. “The final shuttle lift has cleared atmosphere.”
“Good.” She ended the call and glared at her display. “Let’s stop playing around. Midway, see what your big ones can do.”
Battleships could carry some big rocks. Midway unloaded the biggest chunk of streamlined metal she had, and fired it downward from an altitude of twenty thousand kilometers above the ravaged surface of the planet. Picking up energy with every kilometer it fell, the rock impacted with the force of a multimegaton nuclear weapon, creating a massive crater directly above where the enigma base lay and shattering the planet’s surface for a wide region around the site.
“My sensors can’t tell if the shot penetrated the enigma base,” Leytenant Mack reported. “But there doesn’t seem to have been nearly enough subsidence of the surface. The enigmas must have dug out some huge spaces under that planet, and if we collapsed them we should see the surface drop a lot more than it has.”
“Well… damn,” Marphissa said. “We’ll have to let the pirate have the last word on this.”
Imallye had taken her flotilla out to where a natural asteroid about thirty kilometers across was swinging through the wide, elliptical orbit about the star Iwa which it had followed for countless years. Though occasionally crossing the orbit of the planet, and currently heading inward only thirty light seconds from the planet, it would never have come close enough to be caught in the planet’s gravity and be pulled down to its doom.
But even though thirty-kilometer-wide asteroids had a tremendous amount of mass and momentum, the amount of diversion necessary to change its path enough to meet that of the planet was within the capabilities of several human warships. With tow cables wrapped about the asteroid, they tugged it about, altering the age-old path, and setting it on a course for the planet.
It would take a little while to get there. But when it did, the impact would devastate half the planet and break everything on the other half.
“Maybe that will get their attention,” Marphissa growled. “Just leave us alone! And we’ll leave you alone!”
“The base, the armadas, this must have cost the enigmas a lot,” Kontos suggested. “Even if they want to strike again, it will take them a while.”
“It had better take them a long while.” Marphissa leaned back, trying to relax after the long strain of the preparations for the fight and the actual engagements. But she couldn’t relax, because President Iceni had ordered Marphissa to take her flotilla to rendezvous with Imallye’s flotilla.
To negotiate.
“I have done this before,” Marphissa had protested to Iceni. “At Moorea, I took my ship close to Imallye to negotiate. It didn’t end well.”
“This time we outgun her,” Iceni had said.
“Not by much!”
“Make it happen, Kommodor.”