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

A truly evil thought comes to me. If I destroy this ship, none of this has to happen…I could fire my x-ray lance as we pass, it could never dodge that at close range. Then the conflict doesn’t have to happen, and we can all go home. Just one shot…

The alien ship grows closer…closer…

It’s gone in a flash. It’s behind us and accelerating up and away.

Next are the three Saturnine heavy cruisers. They’ve been firing at the alien ship the whole way, they’ve destroyed a Lunar cruiser, violated Earth–Lunar space, and falsified transponder codes. We’d be justified in blowing them out of space without any warning at all by this point. But we’re not technically at war with Saturn yet, and there’s no telling if we’d win that fight.

These aren’t primitive, run-down Terran hulks. Saturnine technology at least rivals ours, and some think they’re better. And here we are, in nearly obsolete Guardian-class frames, taking on cutting edge Saturn tech.

I can see them coming over the horizon now—three dots ringed in the blue-violet flames of their torch drives. They could blast us right now, and there’s not much we could do about it. I’d be dead before I even knew the fight had started. Does it start here and now?

Rackham warns them of the violations they’re committing and orders them to cut their drives and prepare to be boarded. Do they call his bluff? Is it a bluff? He didn’t say what the consequences would be. We haven’t fired any warning shots yet. Our wing might win or lose in a fight, but well cripple them for the rest of our task force for sure. They have to know that. A fight that starts here could set off a war that makes the war for Terra look like a mere skirmish. They have to know that, too. What are they going to do?

They keep coming and start scanning us with targeting radars and lasers. We return the favor and activate our jamming, then launch decoys and countermeasure dust. The cruisers disappear from about half of my augmented senses as they turn on their powerful jamming systems and surround themselves in a cloud of countermeasure dust lit up by strobing flares.

This is it.

I’m ready. I’ve trained for years for this; I know what to do. As soon as they fire or I get the order, I’ll fight to the end.

They get closer. We’re almost going to meet head on. If anything’s going to happen, it’ll happen any second now.

They pass us in a flash. Dust hammers at my frame, scouring at the armor. Flares and decoys are flashing and pinging everywhere. There could be mines or anything in all of this.

Then it’s all past, and we’re in the wash of the cruiser’s torch drives as they blaze on after the alien ship.

That was it then. Well, at least…

“Enemy virus detected!” Chimera warns us. Systems flicker as my Guardian tries to isolate the virus and keep it from infecting a vital system or even my own cyber-systems. I get ready to pull the plug and eject. Am I going to lose my frame? Is it going to take me over again and isolate my mind in that endless darkness?

Long seconds go by as Chimera fights to save us both. Then, system by system, my frame starts to work properly again. It looks like the updates we put in after the last time Saturn hit us with a virus are working. The rest of my squadron is reporting in; no one’s been knocked out by the virus.

Rackham has us turning around and going after them in a chase. We’ll have to dump our current velocity, angle up to avoid the Earth’s atmosphere, and then finally begin to accelerate after those cruisers. The Chronos-class can do five gravities easily, so this will be a long chase.

Those cruisers are chasing after the alien ship, and they’re never going to catch it. Still, they’re on the way out of the Earth–Luna system, and we’re escorting them out. We may not be chasing them out, but that’s OK; they’re leaving.

I settle in for a long time under heavy gravity, making sure the Saturnine get out and stay out.

* * *

We’ve been following the Saturnine cruisers for hours now. We hit them with targeting beams and high intensity jamming, and they send back jamming, electronic warfare, and computer viruses. We’re dealing with their jamming poorly, and if it comes to a fight, we’ll be targeting mostly by cameras and guesswork. We’re handling the viruses pretty well though, possibly because our systems are too antiquated for their really good cyber war stuff to have much to attack. It could be the attack back on Eros helped our tech guys get ready for later Saturnine viruses, too.

The faster elements of our task force have joined us in the chase, also scanning and targeting the Saturnine ships. The admiral hasn’t ordered the task force to open up yet, but she’s making her displeasure known.

The Lunars aren’t sitting this one out, either. They’ve got a couple squadrons of their missile bombers and gunships trailing the Saturnine ships, and a couple of their light cruisers are out here with us, too. I’m sure the Lunars would love to blast those Saturnine craft into wreckage, but they don’t dare do it.

Every time the Lunars look a little too much like they’re about to open fire, the Saturnine cruisers pointedly paint targeting beams on Lunar settlements. The message is clear: shoot at us, and you’ll lose cities, and then the rest of our fleet will come here and finish you off.

So it looks like neither of us is going to make the Saturnine pay the way we’d like to. We’ve finally got enough firepower together to wipe them out, and we’re going to