tug’s AI, which had an expert knowledge of a Starhawk’s internal layout, the probe slipped in deeper until it emerged within the pilot’s cockpit. Threads laced out, searching…connecting…joining. Several merged with the pilot’s e-suit, linking in with the medical and life support monitoring functions. Energy flowed through power connectors, as banks of lights switched on.
“Okay, PriFly,” LeMay said. “Pilot is alive but unconscious. Life support was down but has been reinstated. I’m transmitting telemetry from the Starhawk to sick bay now.”
“Blue-Sierra,” a new voice said in LeMay’s head, “this is
“Copy, sick bay.”
Each gravfighter possessed an onboard suite of medical support systems and robotics, but when the Starhawk’s power had been knocked out, the med systems had gone down as well. At this moment, on board the crippled fighter, medical robots would be probing the pilot, checking for injury, begin to take steps to stabilize his or her condition.
Idly, LeMay checked the pilot’s id, coming through now on her own display. Well, well. Commander Marissa Allyn-CO of the Dragonfires. And it looked like she was going to be okay.
That was good. A
And some of the survivors would be in a bad way.
She boosted her gravitational acceleration just a tad, pushing to get her recovery back to the ship just a few minutes sooner than otherwise.
“Holo transmission coming through,” the CIC comm officer reported. “It’s General Gorman, sir.”
“Patch him through.”
The Marine general faded into solidity on the CIC deck, a few meters in front of Koenig’s couch. Koenig rose to greet him. The gesture was unnecessary. A Marine major general was exactly equivalent to a Navy rear admiral, and neither had precedence of rank. But formal protocol required a polite reception even of a holographic transmission, and, besides that, Koenig wanted to acknowledge the heroism of the Marines’ stand here over the past weeks.
“Admiral Koenig?” the image said. “I’m Eunan Gorman.”
“Welcome aboard, General,” Koenig replied.
“And welcome to Ate a Boot. I’ve been briefed. Sounds like you went through a meat grinder up there.”
“Four ships destroyed, General, seven seriously damaged. But the battlegroup is intact and ready for action if the Tush come back. We can begin the evacuation at once.”
“How many transports do you have? What capacity?”
“Eight troopships, General. Converted Conestoga-class. Enough for your Marines, General. Not for the colony.”
“We have just under five thousand Marines here, Admiral. We’re willing to double up to get the civilians out.”
Koenig sighed. He’d been dreading this. “How many civilians?”
“Approximately fifteen thousand here inside this perimeter, General. Another twenty, maybe twenty-two thousand at three other settlements on the planet.”
“I’m afraid they’ll have to take their chances, General. We have enough room for your people…maybe a few thousand locals if we really pack them in. But not
Gorman’s image seemed to sag a bit. “I expected that, of course.”
Koenig pulled down a window in his head, linking through to a calculation function and spreadsheets listing the ships and compliments within the battlegroup.
“Hang on…okay. The Conestogas are rated at eight hundred men each. That gives us a surplus of fourteen hundred, more or less. If we ditch all of your heavy equipment-”
“That was already a given, Admiral.”
“If we ditch the heavy equipment and your Marines don’t mind being
“That won’t be enough.”
“Damn it, General, I doubt that our whole Navy has the transport capacity for almost forty thousand civilians, all in one go. We have room for seven thousand civilians. At that, feeding them and handling the sanitation requirements for that many people is going to be a nightmare.”
“You
“No, General, I don’t. And I doubt that anyone else in the Confederation knows either. The Turusch and their Sh’daar overlords are still very much unknown quantities.”
“They killed the researchers at Arcturus. So far as we know, they murdered every last one.”
“Again, General, we don’t know. Not for sure.”
But Gorman was almost certainly right. The last transmission from Arcturus last year had been…chaos. Heavily armored Turusch soldiery breaking into the domes, burning down the civilian technicians and scientists…
“The perimeter is secure, Admiral,” Gorman said. “Start sending down the transports. The shields will be open for you.”
“The first shuttles will be down in thirty minutes, General. Uh…how about security?”
There was a good chance that there would be panic, once the Marines started leaving and the civilians saw that they were being left behind.
“We’ll take care of that,” Gorman snapped. “Gorman out.”
And the image winked off.
Koenig stared at the empty spot on the deck for another moment. This was
Chapter Nine
26 September 2404
Major General Gorman stood on the HQ elevated walk and looked up. For the first time in weeks, the shields were fully down and he could see the landscape directly, with his own eyes, rather than through electronic feeds. With a scream, four Marine Rattlesnake fighters passed nearby, boosting clear from the landing field and accelerating hard, their passage drawing thin lines of vapor in their wakes as their drive singularities shocked the thick air.
The Rattlesnakes were distinctly old tech-distinctive and non-variable delta shapes that seemed downright primitive in comparison to the more modern Navy Starhawks and Nightmare strike fighters. A single squadron of Marine Rattlesnakes was attached to I MEF for close air support, but sending them out during the siege would have
