Confederation -- 44

Chapter 44

The ship was unloaded. There was no additional equipment left on board, and everyone had gone down to the surface of Ceres, including Liz and our children. The Sunnys had made quick progress, and there were now enough finished rooms to hold everyone.

The dome system had plenty of space for apartments far more luxurious than the ship's cabins. I could see that we'd have to engage in heavy recruiting if we were to begin to fill the domes. There would also be the need to continually find more Marines and spacemen, especially if the Sunnys could deliver more ships.

Frazzle and I were on the bridge, heading back to Earth. We'd already gotten up to speed and were rapidly leaving the vicinity of Ceres. There was no need for us to have help. I could do all of the talking, and we'd need as much space as possible to transport people, so just the two of us were aboard.

I was finishing up speaking to Liz on the radio when Frazzle made an exclamation, "Oh-Oh! Dec! Look at dis!"

I turned to the monitor to see that he had it focused on Earth. The distance was extreme, but it was evident that a massive explosion had occurred. We could see the flickering of the fading light emitted.

"Dat's fusion reaction!" he exclaimed. "Somebody just set off big bomb on surface."

There was a second pulse of light followed closely by a third.

"Two mores goes off! Very bad for peoples on surface. Would it be de Motherland peoples who shoots them off?" Frazzle was so upset, he was wringing his hands together.

"I don't know. They might have some bombs left over, but I don't know how they'd deliver them. I don't think they have any missiles or airplanes that could do it. Perhaps they were set off on the surface by a timer or suicide bomber –"

He interrupted my speculation. "No! Look dere," he pointed at the distant planet with one hand while increasing the magnification with another. "It's another FTL. Maybe de Pugs dropped bombs."

I momentarily wondered if we should get more help but then decided it would take too long. Frazzle could fly, and I could shoot. We needed to get there quickly and stop whatever was going on. Otherwise, it didn't look good for Earth.

As I thought that, another explosion went off on the surface. I turned to Frazzle to tell him to speed up, but he anticipated my order and had already set the ship to maximum acceleration. We'd be there as quickly as possible.

"Let's arrive with plenty of speed," I said. "I'd like to fly past them and shoot before they can get ready for us."

"Dey likely to know we coming before we get too close. De Em-drive not very detectable, but they see us if they're looking," he responded.

"You're right, but maybe they think we're out of the system, or maybe they're only concentrating on the surface. Let's hope we get lucky."

He muttered over his shoulder, distractedly, "Lucky, dat's what we need to be."

The trip seemed to take longer than ever. Once we began decelerating and our rate of approach slowed, I was practically shaking with anticipation. Belatedly, I realized that it might be a good idea to get into our vacuum suits. We donned them, leaving the helmets open. I seated myself at the weapons console, and Frazzle continued his piloting.

We approached the Moon's orbit, coming past it on the dark side. The enemy FTL was just coming around the Earth towards us in a low orbital pass. I thought they were preparing to drop more bombs and, in an attempt to forestall them, I fired a long burst of anti-matter.

They were on a bombing run and, although my shot missed their ship, it struck the bomb, destroying it. They immediately turned towards us and accelerated. Their ship was armed, evidenced by a sparkling blue ball of plasma that came flying towards us.

We could see it coming from almost the instant they shot. It approached rapidly, growing in size. At the last moment, Frazzle wrenched the ship into a sharp turn, causing the internal momentum compensation to stutter slightly. I was jerked out of position and ended up sliding across the deck and fetching up against the stanchions of the seating in the back of the bridge.

Frazzle dove our ship down towards the atmosphere in an evasive maneuver as the plasma ball flew past. I scrambled across the floor on hands and knees until I could grab the framework of the weapons station, then I dragged myself up and into the seat. Once there, I got the targeting laser locked onto the enemy ship and triggered off another burst. This one came from one of the waist guns.

The enemy FTL managed to evade the shot somehow. The anti-matter burst wasn't as easy to detect as the plasma shots. It could only be seen when it reacted with ordinary matter, and I didn't know how they got out of the way.

Nor did I know if a Sunny or a Pug piloted the enemy ship, but whoever it was was a master ship driver. Their ship spiraled around and followed us down into the upper reaches of the atmosphere, still firing, but to no effect.

I desperately tried to get the targeting system locked on again as Frazzle threw our ship back and forth, avoiding the plasma bursts. At one point, my display showed the surface right where one of the atomic bombs had exploded. It looked bad.

The bomb had gone off over mid-town Manhattan, and there was now a colossal firestorm burning out of control all the way out to Queens. I couldn't see any of the tall buildings on the island. I figured they'd all been flattened.

I knew the death toll would be tremendous, although not as large as it would have been a few years prior. Since the EMP burst, our society had been forced to spread out. Cities no longer could depend on regular, bulk food deliveries, and the people who still survived had less of a tendency to congregate in large urban centers. Nevertheless, there were still plenty of city dwellers, and from what I could glimpse, most of them had just been wiped off the face of the globe.

We skipped out of the atmosphere over DC. It, too, was burning and must have been the target of one of the other two bombs. I guessed that would be the end of the Motherland president's attempt at empire-building. Without their central control, they'd fall apart.

We circled in a tight turn, coming out with a clear shot at the enemy's tail section. The targeting system flashed red as it locked on, and I triggered a long burst from our bow gun.

My shooting was more accurate this time, and a chunk of their tail section disappeared. Their Em-drive flashed and then blew apart as its containment vessel ruptured. This should have been the end of the battle, but they somehow continued to shoot as they coasted away from the Earth.

One of their plasma bolts finally struck us directly on the bow. The bow deflection shield largely dissipated the plasma ball, but enough leaked through to disable the bow cannon. It had been recharging, and the anti-matter containment chamber blew. The result was terrible. Anti-matter sprayed out in a jet directly towards the bow plate.

The cannon's base disappeared, and a large chunk of the bow plate vanished with it. The ship's emergency lights went on, and a siren started. The air pressure immediately started dropping. We'd been holed.

Frazzle and I sealed our helmets and turned on our internal air supplies. I briefly congratulated myself for my foresight in donning our spacesuits. The ship's warning lights continued to flash, but the siren gradually faded out as the atmospheric pressure in the bridge dropped towards zero.

I refocused on the battle and fired another shot from one of our waist guns. It struck their bridge area and opened the ship to space, blowing a lot of debris and some bodies out of the opening. We were too far away to see if they were Pugs, but I assumed that was the case.

I was just beginning to congratulate myself again for winning the fight when Frazzle came on my suit's com system, "Dere's another one of dem! Watch out!"

The enemy had another ship! I'd thought that there was only one left in existence, but somehow there had been two. The enemy ship had appeared over the horizon on the far side of the ship I'd just destroyed.

The second ship was closing with frightening rapidity. To make matters worse, it was armed with anti-matter weapons rather than plasma cannons. I knew this because part of my initial target's wreckage suddenly disappeared with a burst of light as the new enemy's anti-matter burst struck it.

Frazzle was ahead of me and had blown the small hold's doors open. The next thing I knew, a mobile cloud of dust suddenly appeared between our ship and the approaching enemy. He'd activated the point source and dragged the dust in place as a shield.

The enemy shot again, and there was an enormous flare of light as the dust absorbed the anti-matter. It worked, but now there was a large hole through the center of the dust cloud. I fired back right through the hole.

As soon as my shot had gone through, Frazzle reconfigured the cloud, closing the hole. There wasn't another flare, so they hadn't fired a second shot.

By now, the enemy ship had moved past our location and was starting to recede. I took another shot at them with my tail gun as it came to bear.

Frazzle was starting to move the dust cloud around into position to protect our tail, but he was too late. They'd fired another shot as they went past, and it slipped in before the cloud shielded us. Our Em-drive vanished, as did all three of our FTL vanes and the tail gun.

We were now drifting in space in an airless ship. Thankfully, there was still power, and we could still fight with both of our waist guns. Frazzle had gotten the remains of the dust cloud into position between the enemy ship and us. It was a little late, but still necessary since they'd fired a second shot as they started to decelerate.

The dust cloud flared and vanished. We now had no shielding, and their next shot would probably take out the rest of the ship.

I aimed both waist guns towards their position and fired a long burst. Somehow, I managed to miss their hull while disintegrating their anti-matter cannons. They had turned and were coming towards us, but could no longer shoot.

I watched, belatedly realizing that my shot had taken off part of their FTL vanes and somehow damaged their attitude adjustment jets. Their ship was slowly rotating as it moved forward. They were unable to steer and didn't have Em-drive power either.

I knew that I shouldn't relax, but I had the brief thought that this would be easy. They couldn't shoot, and I could. Of course, things went wrong immediately. As I was locking the targeting computer onto them, our reactor blew out, taking most of the rest of our aft section with it. The guns both went down instantly. The only one that had battery backup was the bow gun, and it was gone. I'd thought about installing batteries on the waist guns, but had mistakenly felt that the ship's power would be adequate.

The Pugs were headed directly at our position. They'd managed to accelerate before my shot had disabled them, and they were slowly approaching our position.

Frazzle turned to me in the dim, red, emergency illumination and said, "What's we do now, Dec? I can't fly. Maybe shuttle okay, but the computer is down, and I don't know."

I answered, "They are still coming, and there's a chance they'll figure out they can shoot at us with hand-held weapons. Let's go. You check on the shuttle and get it ready, and I'll try to get an anti-matter rifle to shoot at them before they think to shoot at us."

He was out of his seat like a little rocket, flying across the bridge in its now zero-gravity state. The pathway to the hold was longer without the in-ship transporter, but there was still a way to get there. I followed him quickly down the long hall.

We entered the main hold, and Frazzle shot over to the manual lock controls while I searched for weapons. The weapons locker was empty. Not an anti-matter gun to be found, neither pistol nor rifle. I suddenly remembered that the Marines had taken their weapons when they disembarked and transported down to the Ceres habitat.

I searched the locker again and finally found a practice sword left by one of the Sim-tigers. It was a Katana, but not a very sharp one. It had been used to strike targets, and the blade was in rough shape. There was still a bit of an edge, and the point was serviceable, but the thing wouldn't cut nearly as well as a sharp sword. It would have to do, though. There just wasn't anything else.