Invasion (Blue Star Marines Book 3) Read online

  So the fleet stayed in its home system, ready to repel the Skarak every time they attacked.

  But Boyd knew something of the Skarak that tactical intelligence seemed not to know. The Skarak were not only interested in energy or mineral resources, they seemed attracted to human resources as well. Every time Boyd had encountered them, they had scooped up as many living bodies as possible and turned them into lifeless, dead-eyed Skarak soldiers. There was something more to the Skarak threat than an aggressive war for material.

  Boyd looked at the small holo-stage on the hangar deck. The Resolute was falling into formation with a large attack group centered around the Titan, a massive carrier. A dozen cruisers surrounded it, while the Resolute drifted into formation at the lower flank alongside a small group of Blue Star frigates.

  The frigates were standard Union frigates that had been customized for Blue Star operations. They were lightly armed with only one mass beam emitter and one high-energy laser. They had a full complement of spitz guns, but the main weapon of the Blue Star ships were the Blue Stars themselves. Highly-trained, highly-skilled special operations Marines. Their equipment was equal to what the regular Marines used, but their skill levels set them apart. They were ready to be tasked with infiltration missions, going behind enemy lines, small scale surgical strike missions, capture, assassination, any mission that a battalion of regulars could not handle. A Blue Star company was the dagger when a planet buster combat drone would not do.

  The Blue Star frigates’ idents appeared on the holo-stage as the Resolute slipped into formation.

  Boyd had been out of the battalion on his infiltration mission for so long that he did not recognize one of the frigates. The Forthright was a new ship.

  “She’s a beaut,” Dorik said as he walked into the hangar. “But she’s nothing on the Resolute. They are fresh off the farm. This is their first mission.”

  The farm was the name given to Forge Farm, the Blue Star training and administration headquarters on Terra. Built on the site of the first Marine training center on Terra, it was talked about with admiration by the regulars, many of whom longed for a posting to the Blue Stars.

  Boyd recognized the other two frigates. The Bold and the Insistence were tried and tested Blue Star companies. The Bold had been partnered with the Resolute on more than one mission, and Boyd had friends amongst the Bold company.

  “I haven’t seen four Blue Stars on one mission before,” Boyd said. “This must be serious.”

  “You bet,” Dorik said. “Listen up. We’ve got a transport coming in now from the Reyes Foundation. We need to jettison this shuttle to make room.”

  As Dorik organized the hangar, arranging the Marines and preparing them to shove the shuttle that Boyd had used to escape the Faction out through the hangar door, Boyd looked at the holo-stage and spotted the incoming signal—a small delivery transport heading to the Resolute.

  “The Reyes Foundation?” Boyd said, looking at the incoming signal. “That’s weapons design. Are we going to test a new weapon?”

  “Looks that way. This must be the special mission the colonel talked about.” Dorik said, looking back at Boyd. “You want to help here?” He nodded toward the shuttle.

  Boyd walked over and helped shove the shuttle across the hangar. The gravity plates reset to zero under it and allowed the shuttle to slide effortlessly across the deck, the Marines merely steering it toward the open doors. The shuttle drifted out beyond the deflection shield that held the atmosphere inside the hangar, then tumbled away before receiving a nudge from a grapple beam that sent it falling away at speed. As it went, Boyd felt his time with the Faction tumble away with it, leaving only the memory of one. Thresh.

  With the shuttle a distant speck, the foundation’s transport maneuvered alongside the Resolute’s hangar and moved a large, black, dome-shaped structure with a square base inside. The instant the dome was delivered, the transport peeled away and was gone, lost amongst the gunships and fighters that hung in formation around the massive Titan.

  “What is it?” Boyd said, walking round the black dome. It was as big as a ground speeder but solid with no seams and no obvious entrance.

  “That is need-to-know, Boyd,” Dorik said.

  “Do I need to know?” Boyd asked. He touched the side of the device.

  “Yes, you all need to know,” Major Featherstone said as he marched onto the hangar deck.

  Boyd and Dorik came to attention along with every other Blue Star Marine. With a wave of his hand, Featherstone instructed them to stand at ease.

  “This is a new fleet weapon from the Reyes Foundation. It’s called a demon. It’s a mass field generator designed to collapse space and matter in a three-hundred-meter radius. It’s like a mass beam but much more powerful. It can’t be directed as a beam, and it currently can’t work with a combat drone delivery system. The drive fields and mass field don’t get along, and by that, I mean they explode. Due to its limitations in this regard, the demon needs to be delivered manually and placed at the site of detonation. Sounds like a job for the Blue Stars to me.”

  The hangar erupted with a loud shout of agreement from the Marines as they called out their battle-cry, their rallying call of ‘Blue Stars.’ The shout sent a shiver of excitement down Boyd’s spine. It was good to be back.

  “The Blue Star frigates in the attack group are each being given a demon. Our orders are to stand by. The carrier group will meet the Skarak head on and then kick their scaly hides. Once the attack group has engaged, the Blue Stars will attempt to deliver the demons to the hull of the Skarak mastership. Tactical intelligence believes that with the mastership out of action, the warships will disengage.”

  “Sir?” Boyd raised his hand. “A mastership?”

  “We’ve all encountered the warships. A mastership is much larger. We have little to no understanding of its capabilities, but it is believed by tactical intelligence to be much more powerful than a dozen warships. The fleet has not engaged one yet, but there is one heading directly toward Supra as we speak. The carrier attack group and the Blue Stars will take on this alien giant, and we will take it down.”

  A siren sounded across the hangar deck. It rang out across the ship and across every ship of the attack group. The noise of excited and nervous chatter built until Major Featherstone held up his hand for quiet.

  Then a message came over the Resolute’s ship-wide communication systems, directly from the Titan and to all ships.

  “Attention all hands. This is Admiral Garon of the Titan. Skarak armada now confirmed to be on final approach to Supra Eight. Stand by for attack orders.”

  The message ended. The Blue Stars all stirred but remained silent and calm.

  “Be ready, Blue Stars,” Featherstone said. “The attack group will engage, and we will move to deploy the demon once we have a line of attack on the mastership. The Resolute will move us into position and the assault Marines will carry the demon, traversing space to the mastership. Stand by, Blue Stars.”

  Featherstone left the hangar deck. Boyd looked at the demon before moving to the small holo-stage at the side of the hangar. The Marines were all looking, watching the attack group move to intercept the Skarak armada.

  Boyd tapped the holo-stage and enlarged it for all to see.

  The Titan was moving off, away from Supra toward the outermost moon, Supra Eight.

  “There are half a million people on Eight,” Dorik said.

  “My brother’s on Eight,” a Marine said from the back. “He’s local militia.”

  The cruisers moved ahead of the Titan. They fired a salvo of combat drones, every tube delivering a drone to the attack that raced away toward the Skarak. As they closed in, the warships opened fire with their primary weapon. The blue crackle beams erupted and struck forward to connect with the salvo.

  The drones detonated as the blue beams struck, disintegrating the outer shells until the cores collapsed. A wall of plasma fire blinded the sensors to the Skarak fleet until they bu
rst through, throwing cooling clouds of plasma aside in huge, billowing waves.

  The combined attack group fired with their spitz guns. The long-range pulse weapons filled space with a billion flickering pulse rounds that closed in on the lead Skarak ship. The Titan fired its spitz cannon—the bundled spitz guns with twenty pulse emitters apiece.

  Fire rippled over the leading ship, its forward rapier cluster collapsing under the barrage.

  Then the fleet launched a second combat drone salvo before the Skarak moved into range of the energy weapons.

  Across the group, mass beams and high-energy lasers flickered on, slamming into the closest of the Skarak. A second warship took a devastating volley and its forward hull collapsed under the weight of a dozen mass beams.

  Then the Skarak opened fire.

  Blue crackle beams burst from the rapier clusters at the front of the warships. When the mastership fired, it sent huge billowing beams of blue crackle energy toward the cruisers that dwarfed the entire warship attack.

  The cruisers broke formation and scattered as the crackle beams struck. The blue lighting from several crackle beams rippled over one cruiser’s hull and then all power was lost.

  The huge blue beam from the mastership slammed into the stricken cruiser, breaking it in two in a second. The broken cruiser’s core erupted, engulfing the broken ship in white plasma fire.

  The mastership moved on and into position over Supra Eight. Her lower hull opened, appearing to melt away, and thousands upon thousands of small craft dropped through the opening, all heading to the moon’s surface.

  “They are going for the people on Supra Eight,” Boyd said. “That mastership is just coming to collect them all.” Boyd looked at Dorik. His old friend appeared to be a million kilometers away, his eyes fixed on the holo-image yet strangely vacant. Boyd nudged him. “Say, Rik, the Skarak, they just want the people, right?”

  Boyd looked at Dorik as he turned and looked vaguely at Boyd. He nodded and then looked back at the image of the small ships dropping away from the mastership.

  The Titan moved between the scattered cruisers and fired its array of weapons. The carrier’s fighter wing sped forward and engaged the smaller craft in ship-to-ship combat across the surface of Supra Eight.

  The Titan fired on one Skarak warship and destroyed its forward rapier cluster, and then a second fell quickly before the Titan itself took fire from the mastership. The Titan fell dark as the blue crackle beam flickered over its surface.

  The holo-stage showed the Resolute and other Blue Star frigates advancing toward the mastership.

  “Okay, Blue Stars,” Boyd said. “This is it. We’re going in. Check your suits. Check your weapons. Then stand by to move this demon.”

  Major Featherstone walked back onto the hangar deck. He tapped his wrist-mounted holo-stage and displayed an image of the mastership.

  “Listen up. This is our target—a section of the hull of the mastership.” Featherstone pointed at the image.

  Boyd noticed Dorik still looking at the feed from the main attack on the Skarak armada. He nudged him hard and drew his attention to the major.

  “I will get you as close as possible, then you traverse the rest of the way. Suit thrusters only. Tactical intelligence thinks the Skarak will not be able to target anything as small as a demon or an individual Marine, at least not with their main weapons. Watch out for Skarak soldiers that may be deployed against you. Speed is the key. Deliver the demon and then get out of there. Yes?”

  The Blue Stars answered with their battle-cry. “Blue Stars!”

  Boyd noticed Dorik had not called out with the others. He gave him another heavy nudge.

  Featherstone looked to Boyd.

  “You ready to do some front-line work again, Sergeant?”

  Boyd nodded. “Just what I’ve been waiting for, sir.”

  Featherstone nodded then turned on his heel and left.

  Boyd clapped his hands and called out to the Marines. The sight of the mastership was growing larger in the view from the open hangar door.

  “Okay, grab a hold of this demon. Let’s be the first to get our package delivered.”

  The Marines arranged themselves around the demon. Boyd looked at the holo-stage, which showed the four Blue Star frigates moving in toward different parts of the mastership that was almost as big as Supra Eight itself.

  A beam lanced out from the mastership and engulfed the Forthright. She glowed blue for a second and then was gone, the blue crackle beam spiraling around in space and shrinking down into a dense point where the Forthright had once been.

  Boyd looked up at the device next to him. The Forthright had been swallowed up by its demon. The device next to Boyd was capable of generating a mass field powerful enough to swallow an entire frigate and crush it out of existence.

  A siren sounded across the hangar deck and then came Featherstone’s command.

  “Deploy the demon. Go, Blue Stars. Go.”

  Boyd gripped the demon and moved it across the hangar to the open outer door. At the last minute, the deflection field dropped and the Blue Stars were out into space, delivering the demon to the Skarak mastership.

  14

  The massive, dark oval mastership, bristling with stiff kilometer-long rapiers projecting out in all directions from its slick hull, blasted out another flickering blue crackle beam that slammed into the upper hull of a cruiser. The Union ship, maneuvering away from the beam, was too slow and was struck near its drive assembly. The ship instantly broke in two, spilling fluid and bodies into space. As the plasma fires of the smashed cruiser cooled, the small Skarak fighters swept in to snatch the floating crew.

  Boyd focused on the mastership. He saw a group of Skarak fighters deploy from a warship and make directly for a group of Blue Stars from the Bold and their demon device. The Marines fired with their pulse rifles, tiny points of light flickering over space. The rifles did little to deter the incoming fighters. Bolts of shimmering blue blasted away from the fighters and killed the Blue Stars, leaving the demon drifting alone toward the mastership.

  Boyd’s holo-stage alerted him to a group of fighters moving in on his position.

  “Blue Stars. Loose formation. All rifles to concentrate fire on a single target. Follow my fire.”

  Boyd raised his pulse rifle and picked a fighter sweeping in at speed. He fired a single well-aimed pulse at the target. Immediately, the Blue Stars around him followed his fire and a dozen pulse rifles poured heavy fire onto the incoming Skarak.

  The blue glow at the front of the fighter told Boyd that the Skarak ship was about to fire, but then it was overwhelmed by the pulse rifles of the Resolute’s Marines. The fighter bucked under the punishment, and the blue fire erupted haphazardly and flowed back over the fighter before it finally exploded in a brilliant flash.

  Punching through the blue flash left by the destroyed fighter came the rest of the Skarak group. Boyd took aim again. Just as he fired his targeting pulse, a squadron of Blades from the Titan’s fighter wing swept in to give Boyd and his team fire support. Holding station over a kilometer away, the Blades’ high-powered lasers sliced across space in front of Boyd and the demon, destroying the Skarak fighters that dared to move in too close.

  The mastership’s crackle beam was powering up, blue lightning flickering at the bases of its thousands of rapiers. The blue lights shimmered over the hull and Boyd thought it looked slick, like a swamp, or a thick layer of slime. It did not have a hard edge like any Union or Faction ship he had seen.

  A cruiser swept in and fired all weapons into the mastership, the blasts of laser and spitz fire sinking into the mastership’s shimmering outer hull. The hull appeared to boil away in places, but it quickly flowed back over the damaged regions.

  A Skarak warship pivoted and directed its primary weapon at the cruiser attempting to sweep away, having completed its attack run on the moon-sized enemy vessel. The rapier cluster at the front of the Skarak ship blasted out a blue crackle beam that
slammed into the cruiser’s upper hull. Lights flickered and blinked out as the ship went dark. Immediately, a swarm of Skarak fighters leapt away from the mastership and descended on the cruiser.

  Boyd looked away, unable to help those in the cruiser, then out of the corner of his eye, he saw the flash of the cruiser exploding. His faceplate darkened to save his vision from the sudden brilliant white eruption only a few kilometers away.

  The range finder on his personal holo-stage showed he was only a few hundred meters from the hull of the mastership, but the reading was changing all the time. It was impossible to get an accurate fix on the surface. Boyd tried to judge the distance visually, but the surface was impossible to pinpoint that way as well. It appeared close and then suddenly far away, the flickering lights of battle sinking into its depths.

  The Titan’s lights came back as it recovered from the mastership’s attack. The massive Union carrier immediately blasted the mastership with all its forward weapons. The entire front circle of the ship lit up with spitz guns, mass beams, and high-energy lasers. They slammed into the mastership, punching deep holes in its thick, viscous hull.

  A group of three Skarak warships broke away and powered toward the Titan, their rapier clusters glowing in readiness to strike. A pair of cruisers and a group of supporting gunships swept across the advancing warship’s flank, pouring fire into one warship and then the next.

  The Skarak delivered their crackle beams and lights across half the Titan blinked on and off, the carrier’s power systems interrupted, but the Titan’s spitz guns continued to fire.

  With only a few meters to go, as far as Boyd could make out, he felt sure he could make out his reflection on the hull of the massive Skarak mastership. Its surface rippled like black tar. Boyd had touched the surface of a crashed Skarak warship but not the surface of a live mastership, but the look was the same—a deep shimmering darkness.