As the ship left the atmosphere, it could speed up. But, apparently, so could the dragonflies. Their wings had retracted and now projected as thin canards, tilted up and down and glowing faintly blue. And the laser fire hadn’t reduced. The sonar-dome was melted through and the forward torpedo room had had to be evacuated, the torps jettisoned before they exploded.
“What’s the atmosphere outside like?” the CO asked.
“Less than one tenth of a percent, sir,” Lieutenant Souza answered. “We should be able to survive a short-ranged hit.”
The problem was that the dragonflies had closed to within fifty klicks. The ship probably could survive an ardune strike that close, but they’d taken enough damage.
“Fire ardune torp into the center of their formation,” the CO said. “Evasion course Charlie.”
“We’ll have to turn,” Lieutenant Souza said. “Otherwise the torp’s liable to slam into us.”
“Pilot, prepare for skew turn,” the CO said. “Rear torpedoes ready?”
“Ardune torp up on four,” Lieutenant Souza replied.
“Prepare to fire on four,” the CO said. “Pilot, skew turn!”
The ship pivoted in space, continuing in the same direction but briefly presenting its rear to the oncoming dragonflies.
“Fire!” the CO shouted as the torpedo came to bear.
The skew had thrown off the fire of the dragonflies so the torpedo made it out of the tubes and, following its programming, went “up” from the ship and then forward towards the enemy.
“Fire lasers when they bear!” the CO said.
The laser to laser battle began again. By bearing on just one of the dragonflies with both lasers they’d found they could burn through its shields after a few minutes of continuous fire. Doing that, they’d dropped a few. But there were over fifty in the swarm and while their lasers were not particularly powerful, they concentrated, too.
“Forward torpedo room breached!” the XO said.
“Good thing we launched all the torps,” the CO said. “Or we’d be in a right pickle about now.”
At that moment the torpedo dropped into the midst of the enemy formation and detonated in a flash that shut down all the visual systems.
“All right!” Spectre shouted. “Eat quarkium you dragonfly bastards!”
“Wait,” the XO said, then let out a sigh. The area of effect of the warhead had been enough. Nuclear weapons don’t propagate in space the same way that they do in atmosphere. In atmosphere, besides the immediate blast area effect there are various effects from atmosphere. The blast gets propagated by compression waves, destroying far beyond the “totally destroyed” area of the actual blast.
In space, there was no way to do damage much beyond where the blast spread. But in this case, the dragonfly formation had been entirely in the blast zone. None of the dragonflies came out the other side.
“Tactical, what do you have on the scope?” the CO asked.
“We had to shut the radars down, sir,” Lieutenant Souza said. “Otherwise we would have lost them to EMP. We’re coming back up, now.”
“I don’t see anything,” the XO said, looking at the visual scope. It had only shut down temporarily, to prevent “blinding” the CCD camera.
“Come on, Tactical,” Spectre said impatiently.
“Coming up now, sir,” Lieutenant Souza said. “Stand by…”
“Nothing there,” the NCOIC said. “Spread the scan.”
“Opening up on spread scan,” the tech said, then gulped.
“Oh, maulk,” the NCOIC said.
“Conn, Tactical.”
“Go.”
“We have five… six… increasing groups of bandits approaching. They’re coming from all over the world, sir.”
“How far?” Spectre asked.
“Nearest is about two hundred klicks, sir, approaching from zero-one-eight mark minus five.”
“Pilot,” Spectre said. “Get this tub out to warp point. Then punch it for 60 AU from the sun. We’ve got to chill.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” the pilot said, backing away from the planet.
“The Marines are on their own,” the CO said, shrugging. “Let’s hope they can figure out a way for us to come back. If not, we’ll be back some day.”
“Yes, sir,” the XO said.
“Damn this planet.”
“Conn, Tactical.”
“Go.”
“I’ve been doing some computations, sir,” Lieutenant Souza said. “We’re deep inside the grav well of this Jovian. I don’t think we’re going to reach warp before we’re swarmed.”
“Lieutenant, you’ve got two torp tubes and four SM-9s at your disposal,” the CO said. “Do something about that.”
34
Berg passed four kills for Gunny Frandsen before the latter’s luck ran out.
The tunnel had descended deep into the earth, the walls changing from stabilized earth to limestone, then back upwards. As they abruptly changed to granite and he negotiated another of the snaking turns, Frandsen stopped and then started to backpedal.
“Dra—” he shouted over the team net. Then a head snaked around the corner and snatched the armor off the board. With a crunch that echoed through the tunnel, the gunny’s armor crumpled like a beer can under a foot and splashed bright red.
The head of the dragon was twice the size of a suit of armor and armored itself with heavy overlapping plates. The head was bright red, shading backwards through purple to a blue body with red highlights on shoulders and hips.
That was about all that Berg noticed as he opened fire with his Gatlings. But as he had halfway come to expect, the rounds bounced off the bullet head of the thing, which slithered forward fast and low, snatching Sergeant Jaenisch off his board and crunching again.
“JAEN!” Berg shouted, his hands dropping to his hips. “Hatt! Back, back!”
“Grapp you!” Hatt shouted, backing slowly as he pumped grenades at the thing. The explosions were damaging some of the plates on the thing’s head, but they weren’t penetrating. Whether Hatt was cursing Berg’s suggestion or the dragon wasn’t clear since he was the next to go. The dragon snapped him off the board then hammered him back and forth on the granite walls.
Berg fired three of the .50 caliber rounds in various spots, juncture of the neck and shoulder, throat, leg. All three sparked off the refractory armor of the beast.
Then it was his turn as the beast charged down the granite tunnel. Its maw opened and for a moment all he saw was teeth and tonsils. Then he opened fire with all three guns.
The thing was fast. It was on him before he could trigger more than two rounds from each pistol, but he was biting down on his fire clamp at the same time and looking right down the thing’s throat.
The 7.62 mm rounds chewed into the back of the beast’s mouth, ripping the soft flesh but not stopping it; the thick bone on that portion of the head caused them to do no more than embed in flesh. It was hurt but nothing the Gatling could do was going to kill it.
The .50 caliber rounds, however, punched through the bone. One buried itself in still more bone in the thick skull of the beast. Another ricocheted down and out, punching a hole in the bottom of the monster’s mouth. The third ricocheted down its throat, lodging deep in the neck of the beast in a spot that would, eventually, kill it.
The fourth, however, punched through a thick ridge of bone, then struck the beast’s backbone, cracking a vertebra and severing its spinal cord.
The dragon dropped ten feet from Berg, its mouth still thrashing open and closed and its body thrashing. But it had no voluntary control over its limbs, which rattled in convulsions, shaking the refractory walls of the tunnel and causing rocks to drop from the ceiling.