Guardian (War Angel Book 1) by David Hallquist (best contemporary novels .TXT) 📕

The new missiles won’t be “heavy” fusion warheads this time, but a load of four MIRV anti-aerospace drones, four variable-mission cluster munitions, and four deep penetrating warheads. Looks like I’ll be fighting in the atmosphere or on the ground. I sign off on everything and lean back.

We’ll all be getting back into it soon…

I’m sweating, and I notice my hand is shaking…

What am I doing? Men under my command are dead…plasma fire from everywhere…the whole universe coming at me…

No, I’m shutting this down right now.

I close my eyes and enter a breathing exercise. We’ve got the Terrans mostly beat, though it’s cost us. We just need to finish the job now. We’re going to have to go through Terra to stop Saturn, and that’s just what we’re going to do…

Darkness…infinite darkness and terror…all alone…forever…

It wasn’t forever. I beat that damn Saturn virus in seconds. If I have to, I’ll beat it again.

The men we lost, wherever they are right now, want us to finish this and win. They want us to beat the bastards who did this to them. They want us to win, and win again until the enemy quits or just can’t war anymore. So that’s what we’re going to do.

I said I’d do anything to beat Saturn, and so I will. I swore an oath to defend the Jovian Republic against all enemies, and I will.

I visualize us victorious over the State of Terra. Our ships flying through the oddly blue skies above, while their Special Security troopers lay defeated, broken, and surrendered below us. I see the people of Terra, now free at last from constant cybernetic monitoring and control, and able to look around without fear. I see the proud towers of their archologies occupied and taken, and their Council Supreme facing justice at long last. I see victory and hope.

It’s all going to happen. I and my men will make it happen.

I open my eyes and watch the crews work on Chimera through the cameras in the maintenance bay. They’ve got half a dozen frames in there at the same time, moving through, some of which they’re practically rebuilding, and they still make it look effortless. It’s a carefully choreographed movement of man and machine that never stops or pauses while they diagnose, repair, and replace some of the most complex machines in space with rapid precision. We’ve got the best tech teams in space…I’m literally betting my life on it. They’re every bit the masters of their trade as we Angel pilots.

Now I can think back on the battle we just had with more clarity…maybe.

Admiral Stacia sent the entire fleet into point-blank range of the Terran–Luna conflict, and I can’t tell if it was the right or wrong call. Up close like this put us in easy range of even primitive Terran nukes, with predictable results. It was like being at point-blank range with a railgun against an army armed with clubs—we gave away a lot of our advantages. We may also have precipitated the conflict itself. On the other hand, we were in position to intercept almost all the Terran missiles heading toward Lunar cities, and millions might be dead if we hadn’t been there. Sure, we could have stayed safer and taken potshots at relatively helpless Terran ships, but we wouldn’t have been able to provide anything like the kind of anti-missile support for the Lunar fleet, either. What was the right thing to do? Even with hindsight, it’s not clear.

The armchair admirals of the future will look back on this and think it foolish, no doubt. They’ll be certain they’d have done better, seen something that only became clear afterward, or anticipated some other unknowable item. Who knows how it will go down in history? All of that assumes we win, and Saturn isn’t the one left writing history…

“Hey,” Mad Dog sends over our comm line, breaking my train of thought, “I didn’t get enough Terrans on the last pass. Make sure to save enough for me this time.”

“No promises, Mad Dog,” I send back, “Terran warships are available only for a limited time. You’ve got to get them fast if you want any before they’re all gone.”

* * *

My squadron flies through the ruins of the space battle toward Earth.

Space around us still has that eerie, misty quality that comes from sunlight on dense clouds of countermeasure dust. It will be tough on our sensors, and not great on our hulls as we fly our Angels through it. It’s hard on unarmored space flight for a while, with high-speed grains and crystals, and space debris whipping around Earth at high velocity.

All the dust we shed kept going with our velocity well out of the Earth–Luna system. That still leaves everything Earth and Luna dumped into orbit, though. Most of the stuff in high orbit will gradually thin out as it catches the solar wind and blows away. The inner system dust will catch the atmosphere and burn up slowly, while the dust in the middle should be ionized by the radiation belts and then get pulled out of orbit. All that takes time, though. Ultimately, we’ll probably need to send in cleaner ships with their powerful magnetic fields and ion emitters to scrub the space lanes after this is all over. The big wreckage floating around will need drones to clear it out. Even a clean space battle leaves a real mess.

I’m getting reports that the Lunars have successfully taken the L1 colony after heavy fighting. It was Lunar cyborg space marines vs. Terran assault-battleoids the whole way. Ugly fighting where neither side gave one bit until the end. L3 is still in Terran hands, but there’s ongoing negotiations with the Lunar cruiser parked right outside. None of the other L colonies were badly hit in the fighting. Other, smaller space stations weren’t all so lucky. All