“What do you mean a reserve?”
“A level of power where the guns won’t fire, but the suit still has enough power to run away.”
“That they do,” she laughed.
Her laughing in two different places out of sync, but still in earshot, was nothing short of freaky.
“Right. Get them ready to be used. After lunch I want everyone in them for several hours.”
“Having already thrown them in the deep end, you intend to deepen the end on them?”
It took me a moment to figure that out.
“Yeah. You heard Jane. No backup. We might have to take that station the titan is heading for. Any chance of finding out if any of the locals are still on it? Or what is going on planet side?”
“Not until the comnavsat is put in orbit of the planet.”
“Let me know when that happens, if I don’t notice it.”
“What if they killed all the indigenous?”
“We’ll have to respond in kind. But I think not.”
“Why not?”
“The titan is heading there. No point in sending troops if the planet is already yours. Most likely the station is taken, and there are troops down on the planet, but no-one has surrendered down there. But I want confirmation if possible before we do anything.”
“Aye, sir.”
The question then became, how does one capture a titan without reducing it to a wreck first. Which had an obvious answer. One doesn’t. The thing carried divisions of troops. We already knew our combat suits were only marginally superior to dinosaur teeth and weapons. And what was effectively two heavy battalions of inexperienced combat suits, was no match for tens of thousands of dinosaurs.
The only way of doing it with the ships was battering down their shields, and then punching a hole through the hull somewhere. That would decompress the empty center, and then we’d need to send directed missiles to take out every airlock, and then find every closed bulkhead. It could be done, but not easily, and I was doubtful the squadron actually had the firepower to batter down a titan’s shields.
Unless. If we jumped inside it like Rogue had done, there were no shields, so it should be possible. But there wasn’t a lot of room in there. Judge would only just fit, although the destroyers would easily. We’d need precision jumping though. We could do it, but we’d have to take out the rear of the ship to stop it moving, and remove most of its power generation. Same as Rogue had done, and Rogue almost hadn't survived doing that. But we had mage shields.
The word ‘mage’ echoed through my mind, trying to make a different connection. When I made it, I couldn’t stop myself laughing.
“What’s up chuckles?” said Leanne, who out on the bridge, had only just stopped.
“Oh nothing.”
“Good nothing, or bad nothing?”
“Good. I think.”
“Still want them in combat suits after lunch?”
“Yes. One way or the other, they’re going to need to practice with them anyway, so it may as well be today.”
“They’ll be ready.” There was a quick giggle. “Let me rephrase that. The combat suits will be ready.”
It was nearly a half hour before the whole of the system I’d been waiting for went live. I zoomed in on my navmap, but Leanne beat me to it.
“Shit!”
“Tell me.”
“There are no life signs on the station. Someone opened it to space, with none of the internal bulkheads working.”
“What about the planet?”
“Barely habitable. There’s only one continent which looks like it could support intelligent life. Although there is small animal life on several others.”
“Could?”
“They nuked it.”
I felt my jaws tighten.
“So why would the dinosaurs be going there?”
“Two reasons I can think of. To claim the planet as a staging ground. Or a recreation stop. Three reasons. Or the titan is actually carrying colonists instead of troops.”
“How bad is the nuked area?”
“Highly radioactive, but only the actual settlements have been destroyed. If they’re tolerant to radiation, it’s probably still a vacation spot for them.”
“If not?”
“Then there are other places they can land in large numbers. The rest of the planet will get an increase in background radiation levels, but it will take a while, and nowhere else will turn lethal.”
“So we should wait and see where they go when they arrive.”
“Won’t that be too late to do anything?”
“We’re already too late. What matters now is we do the right thing.”
“And how do we know what that is?”
“I’ll let you know when I figure it out. Any idea when it happened?”
“Very recently, but before you started looking. Most likely a day or two ago.”
“Find who did this.”
“Damned right I will.”
Twenty Nine
Lunch was a somber affair.
I invited all the captains and squadron leaders to Judge, and then had all the messes connected into a single channel, with them all seeing me on a screen. I laid out what we’d discovered. The general reaction was horror.
“Do we know who did this?” asked a panther.
“We think so. By the time we’re ready to respond, we’ll know for sure.”
“How are we going to respond?” asked Woof.
“You’ll get your orders in due course. We received brand new dinosaur killing combat suits last night. Straight after lunch, everyone is going to start running laps around the tracks in them, before test running the new arm guns. Anyone who hasn’t fired a meson pulse rifle from a combat suit will have to get used to them as well. I want everyone ready for whatever we have to do. Eat, and get ready to bring the pain.”
“SIR, YES, SIR!” came from those at my table, and from every other mess.
The channel closed.
“Did you mean pain?” asked Jill. “Or did you really mean bring the rain?”
“There won’t be any rain. Probably no pain either. We’ll hit them with lightning, and only the ones who are unlucky enough to survive it will feel any pain.”
“Damned right!” exclaimed Norden.
No-one spoke as we ate. No-one had coffee. No-one said a thing as they left.
I went back to my ready room, but before going in, I noticed neither AI was sitting on the bridge, and Serena hadn't followed me. I changed direction to my chair, and then started looking at the other bridges. No-one was on them either.
Two hours later, with everyone having a break before we did combat launches again, I had targets. We had a break in that the previous fleet to visit the planet had left through a jump point we had a view of. And had stayed in our area of view as it headed around our cluster. The fleet was two systems away now, and thirty two ships strong.
Their position caught my eye, and I smiled.
The squadron jumped out to a system which had nothing of importance in it, meaning we’d not be seen while we trained. I’d had Tamsin plot a new jump out grid, and Serena pushed them into repeatedly jumping out into all three formations.
After half an hour of just jumping out and back in, I sent the squadrons off to do some formation flying on their own. A lot of the pilots needed time in the cockpit just moving somewhere. I gave it to them, and then had them jump to the nearest asteroid field and do formation flying through that. AIs had to jump ships to avoid collisions to start with, but they slowly got the hang of real flying, and pilots and co-pilots began to mesh together.