“Are we going to help them?” asked Tamsin.
“Yes. Open a channel to all ships.”
“Open.”
“All captains to your bridge. All pilots to your armoury. Prepare for station assault using combat suits. You have two minutes.” I thought for a moment and went on. “This is not a drill.”
Heads popped up on the console rapidly, with all of my captains looking surprised, but ready for anything. Serena ran to her seat at the same time. Eagle’s head joined them as well, even though he appeared to be running hard.
“Prepare to jump. We’ve got a dozen Rawtenuga ships to chase away from the station we helped the other day, while the pilots go in and clear the station of dinosaurs.”
“How many on the station,” asked Eagle.
“Unknown. Also unknown is if stunners will work or not.”
“Understood. We try using stunners, but if they don’t work, we change to pulse rifles. If they don’t work, we try mesons.”
His face shadowed for a moment as he dived into the back of his combat suit.
“If the mesons don’t work?” I asked.
“We go hand to hand.”
“Better take swords then, as well.”
“Roger that.”
“Anything which can take a meson pulse isn’t going to care much about swords,” said Woof.
“They will with the strength of a combat suit running them through,” said Norden.
“Let’s hope they don’t need to find out,” said Gitte.
“What about us?” asked Metunga.
“We’ll wait and see what the situation is, and how long it takes us to deal with the ships.”
“Seconds?” suggested Mel.
“Not for any ship docked at the station, which decides not to come out and play.”
“I can deal with that,” said Gitte. “Removing docking clamps is easy.”
“Ditto,” said Haynes. “You want to rift the pilots in?”
“Yes, but wait until we find out where they’re needed.”
“Jumping in five,” said Tamsin.
“Put us where they can see us.”
She didn’t answer, mainly because we were there anyway before she could. The station was off in the distance, with six of the twelve remaining ships between us. They immediately altered course to come at us, and three more detached from the station and followed after them. As far as I could see, the remaining three were damaged, and might not even be combat capable.
A channel opened, and a Trixone with a red flower looked at me.
“You came. And in bigger ships. We were beginning to think you would not. Can you help us?”
“Give us access to whatever you have in the way of internal surveillance.”
The flower looked to one side, which was strange, as it had nothing which looked like eyes. Then it looked back at me.
“Done. We can’t stop them. Can you?”
“We’ll find out shortly. Have your civilian population hide as best they can, and make sure your warriors don’t take offensive action against our troops.”
“Already done, and the orders have been given. But we have very few warriors left. Please hurry.”
The channel ended abruptly.
Tamsin had the station internal layout up on a side screen, and it was rotating and changing levels too fast for me to keep up. Finally, it vanished, and she looked at me.
“Ready,” she said.
“What’s ready?”
“The troop rifts.”
“The what?” asked Woof.
“Understood,” said Eagle. “All pilots follow your squadron leader.”
“What am I missing?” I asked Tamsin.
“Each of our ships have a marked area on the cargo deck, where a rift box is enabled. As soon as the ship AI feeds the box where the rift is to go, it will send anyone standing in the marked area. Works much the same as the jump drive.”
“Who thought up that mad idea?” asked Dorm.
“Commander Tapping.”
“Chaos?” asked Woof.
“Yes. She suggested the idea while they were getting the jump drive working.”
“Why do we have it?” I asked.
“It’s only recently been tested by one of the marine battalions. Ours were the first ships to get it as standard, and others are having them added at the moment.”
“All combats suits ready,” said Eagle. “Let’s get this done!”
“Sending in five.”
Six
“WAIT!”
The voice exploded across the bridge with a level of command I’d not experienced before.
Three new heads popped up on the console, only one of which I knew, and one I remembered from social functions. Sergeant Colonel BA Baracas hadn't been the voice, but was someone we knew from early training. The other two were also youngish looking women. The one on the left was tagged as Colonel Amanda Peck, and the one on the right was tagged as Master Sergeant Caitlin Brown. All three were running hard, and it turned out the colonel had the voice.
“We want those three docked ships, Captain Bud. Hold for our arrival.”
“Aye, sir.”
Not my chain of command, but definitely a senior officer.
“What’s the hold up?” asked Eagle, who’d obviously not heard the wait command.
“We’re being joined by marines, who want the three docked ships.”
“Who’s coming?”
“Colonel Peck, BA, and a Master Sergeant Brown.”
“Which Peck?”
“Amanda.”
“Right. Sounds like three platoons only. They’ll want a precision insertion. Tamsin, connect me in with them, please.”
“Confirmed.”
“Amanda, it’s Algy.”
“Be with you in a minute.”
“I suggest you go direct to separate destroyers. Be quicker deploying there than from Judge.”
“Which?”
“Long Boulder, Carved Boulder, Rolling Boulder. You’re coming through Bud’s squadron living room?”
“Is that where we’re going? Fine, almost there.”
They were obviously moving with an arrow, without knowing where it was taking them. I wondered if our living room was going to need a new door. Combat suits with heavy weapons wouldn’t leave much space going through. But I had other things to worry about.
“Approaching range for Judge’s main guns,” said Leanne. “They’re coming on at what looks like their full speed.”
“Do they know who we are?” asked Jill.
“I doubt it,” said Tamsin. “They’ve not seen this design of ship before.”
“Good,” I interrupted. “We’re pulling a one eighty, and going to run from them at their speed for a bit.”
“We’re doing what?” demanded Woof.
“Pretending we feel overmatched to give our troops time to get here.”
“Oh.”
“How do you want to do it,” growled Metunga, who was obviously with Woof on the necessity.
“Tamsin, pull half our speed off, and bring the squadron around in as tight a curve as we can, then match speed.”