“Five minutes ago,” I say. “She managed to rope the CO into doing the deed.”
Sergeant Fallon laughs. “Well, congratulations to the both of you. Of course, this may set a record as one of the shortest marriages ever.”
“Attention, all hands.” Colonel Aguilar’s voice comes booming over the 1MC.
“The Lankies have changed our battle plan for us. The cruisers and escorts will shield the carriers while we move to the rear, to gain time for the drop-ship launches. Once the drop ships are away, the carriers will join the fight. Stand fast, and do your duty. When they land, do not give them a meter. We are the last line, the captains of the gate.”
Overhead, the warning klaxons sound, and a dozen docking clamps swivel into position above our row of drop ships.
“?‘To every man upon this earth, death cometh soon or late; and how can man die better than facing fearful odds, for the ashes of his fathers, and the temples of his Gods?’?”
The clamps come down and lock onto our ship. The tail ramp whines shut and seals itself. Next to me, Halley is putting on the Dragonfly like a suit of armor, merging with her systems and letting the ship become an extension of her.
“Wonderful speech,” Sergeant Fallon says from the cargo hold. I look over my shoulder through the passageway, and she nods at me and puts two fingers to the browridge of her helmet in a jaunty little salute. She looks like she’s having the time of her life.
“Front-row seats to the end of the world,” Halley says when we’ve reached launch position at the bottom of the hull. There is nothing below us but the dirty blue-green sphere of our home world, and nothing in front of us but the darkness of space. Regulus is in a long starboard turn, and as we swing around, the other ships of the task force come into sight. They are forming a battle line between the carriers and the Lanky ship, nose to tail and tightly spaced, to concentrate their point-defense fire against incoming ordnance. Halley puts the fleet ship-to-ship channel on the comms and pipes the output through the speakers.
“Now with soundtrack,” she says. “I really wish we had some music.”
“Twenty Taiwanese Synth-Pop Hits to Die To,” I say, and she laughs.
“Attention, all units in Earth orbit,” Colonel Aguilar announces over the emergency channel. “This is Colonel Fernando Aguilar, NACS Regulus. I am taking command of all military units. All units, proceed to grid two-eight-seven by one-one-five and establish a blocking position against the incoming Lanky ship. Whatever we have left, now is the time to bring it and to use it.”
“We are passing into the launch drop window in seven minutes,” Halley says. “Once we are loose, I’m flooring it for the deck, so you mudlegs back there make sure you have all your toys strapped in.”
One by one, the remaining ships of Earth’s orbital-defense patrols climb into higher orbits and come to join the blockade position. Halley has a tactical display on the center console of the Dragonfly, and I count the icons parading slowly across the hemisphere to join our cluster of defenders. A South American frigate, an African Commonwealth corvette, some patrol boats from the Oceanians. They’re not enough to blunt the hammer that’s about to descend upon us, and their crews know it, but they have decided that dying in a shield wall is better than dying on the run.
“We have visual on the bogey,” Regulus sends. “Contact, bearing three-five-zero by positive zero-zero-one, two hundred meters per second, CBDR. Distance one hundred thousand and decreasing. All units, unmask batteries and prepare for barrage fire.”
With all the task force ships networked, the information from Regulus’s CIC instantly pops up on all the tactical screens in every other ship. On the screen between me and Halley, an inverted V shape in blaze orange appears on the very edge of the scan range.
“Weapons free,” Colonel Aguilar sends. “All units, engage. Fire at will.”
We are too far for the rail guns, but most of the task force ships have held back their missile armaments, and now they’re unleashing everything they have in the magazines. Dozens of missile trails streak toward the incoming Lanky, still tens of thousands of kilometers away and increasing the range of our missiles by its own rush toward our effective weapon envelopes.
“Five minutes to launch window,” Halley says. “I’ll drop early if I have to.”
The missile barrage takes no more than two or three minutes. Then the ship-to-ship tubes of the task force ships are spent. I watch the tactical display as dozens of little inverted blue V shapes rush toward the big orange icon and then disappear one by one.
“Missile fire ineffective,” Regulus sends. “Stand by on rail gun batteries.”
“Belay that,” a new voice comes on the emergency channel. “All units, hold rail gun fire. This is Indianapolis. We are in terminal approach at T-minus sixty. You don’t want to mess up our run right now.”
I can hear the abandon-ship alert in the background of the transmission, and there’s a sudden ball of lead materializing in the center of my abdomen.
“No, no, no,” I say. Halley catches on at the same time and shouts a curse against the windshield.
“Indianapolis, abort. That is an order. You will abort your attack run immediately,” Colonel Aguilar sends.
“Negative, Regulus. Get out of the way and make the best of what comes after. It’s been an honor serving with you all. Take care to pick up the escape pods we left behind, please. Campbell out.”
There’s a blip on the display, coming in from the opposite end of the screen from the Lanky intruder, who is now fifty thousand kilometers out and driving on undeterred.
“All units, cease fire! Weapons hold! Weapons hold!”
Indy is moving at full burn, and judging by her insane speed, she must have been burning her main engines at full power for a while. The little OCS is nowhere near as heavy or as fast as the freighter we used to destroy the Lanky ship in the Fomalhaut system, however. I’m not an ace in physics, but even I can do the math involved. Our last-ditch freighter missile at Fomalhaut needed days of constant acceleration to get up to Lanky-killing speed. Indy has had only a few hours to accelerate, and there’s no way she’s going fast enough to destroy a seed ship by ramming it. Colonel Campbell is about to throw Indy against the Lanky ship for nothing, and there’s not a thing we can do about it. The orbital combat ship has turned itself into a guided kinetic missile that is hurling itself into the jaws of the shark at tens of thousands of meters per second. She crosses our sensor threshold and streaks across it in mere seconds.
I want to close my eyes. I don’t want to be witness to the death of Indy and however many of her crew that decided to forsake the escape pods and steer the ship toward its target. But I can’t tear my eyes away from the display.
Then there’s a small new sun hanging in the blackness of space fifty kilometers away.
“Indy is—Jesus, Indy has hit the Lanky. At fifty K per second.”