"I will not jeopardize the culmination of my life's work with one psyche evaluation. We have all the necessary resources to secure the . . . confidentiality of the breached subject matter. This program is already committed, and fully underway. We cannot afford to lose our momentum, especially over something so trivial as night terrors. I'm authorizing a complete memory dump into the central processors. We're going to need extensive recoding to make this disappear."
-Internal Memos
The bridge of the Indomitable shuddered under the force of an impact that herald the scoring of another direct hit. Warning klaxons blared across the threat board and all crew stations. The air was putrid with the scent of scorched electrics and the telltale smoke of an internal fire raging somewhere on the cruiser's lower decks.
An armored gauntlet large enough to cup his head in its palm reached down to grab Thomas Beagle by the collar of his own armor suit, and haul him back on his feet.
"You sure know how to throw one hell of a homecoming," Isabel Benderez grunted in her thick Caribbean accent.
He tossed the hulking warrior a rueful smile, immediately realizing how pointless the gesture was beneath his own expressionless visor. Old habits die hard, I guess.
They braced themselves against the central holo-tank as the ship was rocked again.
"When I said I wanted to make an entrance, this wasn't exactly what I had in mind," he managed as they knocked into each other.
It was a lie, and they both knew it. The Indomitable's jump in-system had ripped a gaping hole in the fabric of space, large enough to fill . . . well, a cruiser. That kind of anomaly usually didn't go unnoticed by planetary defenses.
Although it sure would have been great if it did.
"Give me an update on those ships, XO!" he shouted to the only other man not currently strapped down who had managed to keep his footing.
"Sir! Both carriers have moved to engage us." the man replied coolly. "The Huntress is recharging her main gun, but her last shot cored the secondary hangar deck. We've lost most of our fighter reserves, and got a fire burning through Section E, aft."
On the holographic display, a pair of red-painted signatures closed ominously with the green profile of the Indomitable.
"Virgin's primary weapon systems are offline. She's coming about on our flank. Wait one . . . confirm! Virgin has matched course with ours."
"Prepare for broadside," Thomas replied, more calmly than he felt.
Isabel leaned in to study the display as best she could, just as Indomitable shuddered again. "They're going for a broadside? Against a Halcyon?"
"They must be counting on Huntress disemboweling us before we can finish them off."
In an even fight, a space cruiser always outmatched a carrier. When it could divert the entirety of its systems and arsenal on destroying that one ship, victory was a forgone conclusion. The Indomitable might have been mothballed by the USNC as outdated, but it was still a proud, albeit old, goddamn cruiser.
Facing both the carrier and her sister, though . . . hell with it! Let's see how close we get to our objective before taking them down with us.
"Helm, maintain course and increase speed. Gunners! Target the Virgin!"
"Gunners zeroed in, sir!" reported a tech from his station.
"Fire!"
The space between the dueling leviathans was crisscrossed by a withering storm of kinetic rounds. They left sinister contrails thick as tree trunks to slowly fade into the void. Explosions blossomed over both the dueling ships' hulls. Hundreds of new stars seemed to wink into existence around them. In reality, it was the debris they were quickly kicking up.
The Indomitable weathered the initial assault as best she could. Her thick armor plating helped shrug off a majority of the inflicted damage.
The Virgin was not so lucky. Though she continued to flank her opponent, there was plenty of evidence that the cruiser's unforgiving salvo had been much more damning than her own. Her hull was pock-marked with ugly, smoldering craters. Billowing plumes of oxygen suggested she'd been significantly breached in at least three places. She was beginning to list slightly, secondary turrets still firing defiantly at her tormentor. But many of her harder-hitting batteries had fallen silent.
For the first time since the jump, Thomas was beginning to think there might actually be a chance to even the odds. Maybe even get the Indomitable into planetary orbit.
Being able to train her primary cannon on whatever significant military target they could locate on the ground was appealing. Even if the other response ships caught up to her after a single firing, it might actually give them something of an edge when they took the fight to the ground.
Suddenly, the holographic image of the Virgin began to shift.
The stricken carrier fought her list and began to roll over and away from the cruiser. As Indomitable continued her relentless bombardment, the armored ventral bay doors of her opponent slid open.
At once the holo-tank began registering dozens of tiny red dots leaving the Virgin, on a fast approach towards the cruiser.
Landing pods!
The faint, brief hope he had vanished in an instant. "They're sending boarders!"
Huntress never broke off her pursuit, but her main gun fell silent. That didn't stop her from continuing to pepper the Indomitable with her turrets.
The landing pods made for small, fast targets. They were impossible to target efficiently with any heavy weaponry. Even if a stray shot did get lucky and incinerate a pod, that was what? One kill in . . . the onboard computers were strained from the battle. Their estimates put the total at somewhere over fifty.
No way we can hold this ship against that many men. Not without taking heavy losses. This war will be over before it starts. And even if we do hold, how long will those carriers wait before they decide the boarding party failed?
Thomas unlimbered his assault rifle. Isabel had already loaded her pair of customized grenade launchers.
"XO, you have the bridge. Order Mongoose, Scorpion, and Raven Companies to secure this ship and hold their positions. We'll be joining them shortly."
The weight of what he was about to do rested heavily on his shoulders, alongside the responsibility for every life aboard Indomitable.
"Accelerate to maximum power. Divert anything we've got left to the engines. We're running."
His trusted lieutenant never flinched. "Sir, the Huntress is still engaged, and the Virgin is coming about. They will easily keep pace with us. We're outnumbered. At this rate, we won't be reaching orbit."
Thomas found himself smiling again. It always seemed to be ruefully, these days. God damn, I gotta break this habit now that no one can see me.
"I know. Order all hands to man their evac stations. Load as much heavy equipment as possible on the transports, and tell the men to clear out the armories and magazine. Launch whatever fighters we have left . . . Launch everything we have! We're abandoning ship."
"Case Black . . ." Isabel groaned.
There was a noticeable hush among the bridge crew. For a moment, everyone was silent, even as the deck rumbled and pitched.
Thomas nodded once to his executive officer. "Give the order."
"This is the XO, all hands, man your evac stations. We are executing Case Black."
Amidst the chaos of a full evacuation, the two armored soldiers made their way aft. There were only two places the landing pods could attach to the cruiser: her port and starboard docking collars. E Deck.
"Launch crews, prep all transports for immediate departure. All pilots, report to their stations. We are executing Case Black."
"Hey, you know, out of all the contingencies we planned for," Isabel began as they shouldered their way through the crowd, "this was definitely the one I liked the least."
"And here . . . I thought . . . you were going to complain . . . about how . . . it's racist . . . or something." Thomas managed to finish, promptly colliding with a sixth person.
Even at 6' 6", he was easily dwarfed by the Caribbean giant. After some more jostling, he let her lead. She parted the throng of scurrying techs, marines, and crew like a rock in a stream.
Marines, report to your checkpoints. Prepare to repel boarders.
"I'd rather complain about the possibilities of committing suicide." she went on. "You really think this is going to work? Scattering and going to ground?"
"My father's loyalists should be waiting for us when we touch down. After what was done to his army, I'm convinced that guerrilla warfare and the coordination of an effective civilian resistance seems our only hope for ending this war."
He didn't add his own misgivings for the entire campaign. The last time a resistance managed to effectively remove their enemies' occupation, humanity was still on Earth. And they weren't splintering their forces over an entire goddamn planet to do so, either.
All at once, Indomitable shook and groaned. This wasn't a hit. Somewhere in the lower decks, bulkheads were giving way.
"Sir!" the XO's voice came in over Thomas's radio, "We've been breached! Raven Company is not responding to our hails! Something's loose in Engineering, it just blew one of the containment shield to our reactor!"
They froze. Isabel holstered her grenade launchers and pumped the shotgun that had been slung over her back only a second before.
"Oh god. She found us."