Troy Rising 3 - The Hot Gate (46 page)

“Six, Company.”

“Crispy lizards. Mission.”

“Downloading.”

“And we begin again.”

* * *

“Dex, get me the Ogut ship commander,” Clemons said.

“The Ogut, sir?” Guptill replied then shook his head. “Oh, the pantywaists?”

“That is our primary mission,” Clemons pointed out.

* * *

“Mission of the One-Four-Third Tactical Assault Squadron is to return to Terra System…”

“Yes!” Angelito said.

“…To assist One-Four-Two Tactical Assault Squadron in reinforcement maneuvers.”

“Damnit!”

“One-Four-Three will load Third Battalion, Second Marine Regiment for counter assault on Rangora forces occupying the surface of the Thermopylae Battlestation. Undocking procedures will begin within the hour. One-Four-Three will follow Battleship Battle Group Nine exit to outer zone of action. That is all.”

“Thermal, Comet.”

“Go.”

“What’s the hold-up. Our birds are up. BBG taking its time?”

“Main door is welded shut from impacts.”

“Oh,” Parker said, shaking her head. “That has to suck.”

* * *

“Sir, incoming from the Thermopylae commander, Admiral Clemons.”

As part of the negotiations, each group was allowed a security detachment. Realistically, nobody was going to assassinate the diplomats and, as this furball had proven, it wasn’t like they could protect them if war broke out. It was space. They couldn’t disguise themselves as women and slip through enemy lines.

Security Chief Lahela Corrigan, known as Kamalila, Hawaiian for Shadow, to her very few friends, was a very good body guard. She had an innate “bump” for situations and people. She knew, often before the subjects, when people were going to lose it. She could spot a threat by just glancing at a crowd.

It hadn’t, however, taken a world-class security expert to know that the Eridani Negotiations were going to go south in some form or fashion. Among other things, the Horvath were involved. And none of the polities, including earth, wanted the Ogut to bring in a battle wagon.

Now they were sitting in a converted Ogut freighter in the middle of a space battle and she was left to twiddle her thumbs and wonder when an errant missile was going to destroy her perfect record.

So she might as well play receptionist.

“The Ogut let it through?” James Horst asked.

The Ogut had been quite accommodating in providing both sides with as much of the tactical view of the battle as was available from their ship screens. Nor had they acceded to the Horvath demands that the humans be turned over to the squids. However, they were also staying well away from the battle between the heavyweights. If they were “discussing” with the Rangora what was now, obviously, a set-up, the humans weren’t involved.

Horst had, therefore, been spending half the time watching two hundred billion dollars worth of space fortress getting, apparently, slagged and wondering just why the Rangora were so desperate to take earth. This little diplomatic faux pas was, in fact, a very big deal. The Rangora had created a condition of existential threat during a negotiation the Ogut Empire had personally guaranteed would lack same. The only thing that could create a greater casus belli would be actually boarding the ship to capture the human negotiators.

“More complicated than that, sir,” Kamalila replied, quietly. “The Rangora had to have opened up a channel to get it through.”

“Curiouser and curiouser,” Horst said. “Yes, please, put him through.”

“Envoy.”

Horst had never met the commander of Thermopylae and wondered what he thought about his battlestation getting pounded to scrap.

“Admiral,” Horst said. “A pleasure to hear from you.”

“Glad to see you’re still intact,” Clemons said. “To be clear, you and your personnel are all secure?”

“The code is Naples, Admiral,” Horst said, meaning that he was not being held under duress. “The Ogut have the Horvath and the Rangora, and ourselves, closed into separate zones. We’re quite comfortable. They’ve even provided us with views of the battle.”

“It’s not bad,” Clemons said, affecting a slight Welsh accent. “I’ve “ad worse.”

“Only a flesh wound?” Horst said, smiling faintly.

“Our original mission was to return you to Earth, Envoy,” the admiral said, seriously. “As per that mission, we have two choices. We can pound all these lizards to scrap then ask the Ogut nicely to cough you up. It’s already been noted that Horvath and Rangora diplomatic personnel are free to go. However, there is still a possibility of an accident when several billion megatons of firepower are being thrown around the system. There’s a bit of a pause at the moment and we’d like to get you out so we can get down to some serious ass-whuppin.”

“If it can be arranged that would be prudent,” Horst said. “However, the Rangora would have to be in agreement. And the Horvath, I suppose.”

“That would seem to be an area called Negotiations, Envoy,” Clemons said, grinning. “However, I suggest you hurry. This temporary fire halt isn’t going to last very long.”

* * *

“We’ve got all the welds we can separate separated, Mister Trotman,” Butch said. If he had disliked being in the missile tubes during a battle, he liked even less standing on the surface of the Thermopylae. Somewhere out there there were Rangora Marines trying to take the station. Supposedly there weren’t any on the door itself. “But some of these welds go deep.”

Not surprising in Butch’s opinion. The Orion drive had gotten hammered. All there was was a stump. Where the rest of the drive was was anybody’s guess.

Not many of the Rangora missiles had missed the drive. It was a pretty big target. But the combination of transferred energy and the couple of near misses had the three kilometer wide, multi-billion ton door just stuck as hell.

“Yeah,” Trotman commed. “Engineers are trying to figure that out. Supposedly Sol forces from Troy are coming through to help out. But we’d like to be able to get the ships out of the main bay. So far there’s a lot of head scratching.”

“Well, it ain’t like they can hit it with a hammer…”

* * *

“We’re overthinking this. Hit it with a hammer.”

“Got a hammer the size of Mjolnir on you?”

“Missiles.”

“It’s already been hit by missiles. That’s the problem.”

“Other way around. It’s six thousand one hundred and twenty meters across the main bay. Thunderbolt have a thousand gravs of accel. Lots of kinetic impact.”

“You want to fire missiles inside the main bay. At the door. You got any idea what kind of spalling that’s going to cause? The debris?”

“And keep firing until it opens. Kinetic energetics are cumulative. If you’ve got a big enough hammer…”

* * *

“Fire missiles at the door?” Admiral Clemons said. “You’ve got to be kidding!”

“It’s the best they can come up with, sir,” Commodore Guptill said. “Without SAPL we can’t do a recut. They don’t even really know it will work. If it doesn’t, all our mobile units are more or less grounded.”

“Leonidas? Granadica?”

“I don’t care for it,” Leonidas replied.

“Neither do I!” Admiral Clemons said.

“That does not mean I am not in favor,” Leonidas added. “I, too, see few other options if our cavalry is to be useable.”

“Actually, I got a better one,” Granadica said. “Just hatching it.”

“Which is?” Admiral Clemons asked.

“Same basic idea. Just better.”

* * *

“What the hell is that coming out of Granadica?”

Granadica had been producing a lot of “stuff” while overseeing maintenance. Mostly it was off-the-shelf. She’d produced a brand new Independence class, dozens of shuttles and tugs.

Dana wasn’t sure what was coming out this time. It was about the size of an Independence. But there were no weapons on it nor any evidence of tractor systems. So it wasn’t a warship or a tug. There was, however, three suspiciously larges bulb amidships that indicated massive annie plants and the fore of the thing was shaped like a ram’s head.

“I call it Mjolnir,” Granadica answered. “Like it? I was in the middle of producing a Constitution. So I sort of…squashed it up.”

“No,” Dana said. “I don’t like it. Because it looks like you’re about to hammer something really big.”

“Sure am,” Granadica said. “Hold onto your socks. In fact, better reinforce your docking clamps.”

“All ships, all boats, undock. Remain at stations. All personnel, prepare for high level auditory transfer and possible anomalous acceleration. All ships. Undock. Remain at stations. All personnel…”

“Oh, frackety, frackety, frack…” Dana muttered, hitting the release on her docking clamps.

“What is she talking about?” Angelito asked.

“First rule of engineering,” Dana said.

“Which is…?”

* * *

“Look, I don’t tell you about war, you don’t tell me about engineering, Leonidas!”

“This is a most unsound concept, Granadica…”

“It’s the first law of engineering…!”

* * *

“What in the Emperor’s name is that?” Lieutenant Lanniph muttered. It couldn’t be heard, simply felt beneath the feet.

“Feels like…hammering, sir,” Private Zhogiruv replied. The threesome were moving back along their line of advance for “link-up with reinforcing party.” And now this.

“It must be close,” Lanniph said. “The mass of this thing would swallow the feel of hammering. Ilugach. Point.”

“Why m…” The private stopped and blanched. “Yes, sir.”

“If someone is hammering, presumably they are not also setting traps.”

* * *

It was called “elastic rebound.” Anyone who had ever hit an anvil with a hammer recognized it. Equally, a baseball. When two bodies of more or less equal sturdiness collide, the less massive body notably rebounds. What is less noticeable is that the more massive body rebounds. Distance and speed depends upon the relative mass and velocities.

The Mjolnir had only come at the door from a distance once. And even that was from the middle of the bay. The massive maneuver horns were too much of an obstacle to accelerate all the way across the bay.

But it didn’t really matter. It wasn’t about a single hard hit. The Mjolnir rebounded less than one hundred meters then, under the power of two Constitution Class drive systems with less than one Connie mass, accelerated back towards the door and hit with a clang that was, practically, audible in vacuum. Each impact transferred kinetic energy disparately to the weakest points. Thus, most of the energy was falling on the welds.

The welds were going to break eventually. The only question was how long.

* * *

“General, we are getting reports of hammering from…multiple sources,” Colonel Ufupoth said. The Operations officer of Infantry Battle Group Thoggon appeared puzzled.

“What sectors?” General Thoggon asked. “And what are they planning, now?”

The general had every bit of intelligence on his enemy he could ask. He knew where Richard “Dick” Denny was born. His family history. His children. Every battle he had ever engaged in from when he was a private, and that was simply unbelievable, until the first Battle of Eridani were available. Thoggon had analysis after analysis on the general’s forces, the Pathan command structure and its American “advisors” who were the de facto commanders. Pathan history and culture. The overall design of the Thermopylae. Detail maps for the military and civilian personnel centers.

All if it had told him beforehand that this might be a punishing battle. The degree of punishment was the surprising part. His men, most of them green troops, were being brutally slaughtered in the maze that the humans had constructed in the walls. And entering the laser and missile tubes, the shortest route to the main bay, was out of the question. Despite firing their entire complement, the Thermopylae was producing missiles fast enough that the occasional projectile was being thrown out just to keep them on their tails.

“That is the puzzling aspect,” Ufupoth said. “Reports are coming from every sector. We can’t localize a source. If anything it appears strongest in Sector Sixteen but it is more or less evenly distributed.”

“Hammering?” Thoggon said.

“Slow repetition, sir,” Ufupoth said. “Audio from a deck mike.”

The general listened for a moment, puzzled.

“It sounds almost like someone hammering on a hatch,” Thoggon said. “As if they were signaling for…” His scales stood straight up. “Hammering on a hatch!”

“What could…” Ufupoth asked. “General, they have nothing that could produce this level of kinetic impact!”

“I don’t care,” Thoggon said. “They’ve found a hammer!”

“We are cut off from the fleet by their missile cloud,” Ufupoth said. “If they can sally…” He paused as an officer whispered in his ear then his scales went up in turn. “General, the gate has cycled. Large mass footprint. Signal is from Sol system.”

“I doubted that it was reinforcements for us,” Thoggon said. “That would be good news! CRACK THESE BLASTED MAMMALS! We’ve got the most penetration in Sectors Nine and Fourteen. Redeploy all forces into those sectors. Point out to them that using the surface is not a survivable exercise.”

* * *

“Admiral Marchant,” Admiral Clemons said, grinning. “Glad to see you could make the party. Even happier to see the missiles. Looks like the Troy ran itself dry.”

“That she did,” Marchant said, grinning back. “But all in a good cause. It appears someone has broken your little toy ball, Admiral.”

“Nothing Apollo can’t fix,” Clemons said. “I hope.”

“I was given to understand your cockleshells would be awaiting us?” Marchant said.

“The door is most thoroughly jammed,” Clemons admitted. “But we’re working on…”

“IT WORKED?” Commodore Guptill screamed. “Holy freaking gods of the North! It worked!”

“Someone sounds excited,” Marchant said. “Uh… Admiral your door is kind of…”