Chapter 42

Year 4, Day 191, HIMS Lacerate, Deep Space, Star Wars Universe

Alexander was still dressed in his armour, thankful that the previous captain of the Lacerate had chosen sturdy office furniture as he sat behind the desk in the Captain's Ready Room idly reading what little he could access on the desktop computer. He frowned slightly, he'd let his skills go a bit rusty when it came to the IT side of things, relying too much on very expensive hacking tools and his technical people, both of which were currently busy making sure there weren't any nasty surprises hanging around inside the Lacerate's databanks.

There was a chim and Alexander looked up from the screen, "Enter"

Mark Clayworth, also still clad in his armour, walked inside.

Alexander raised an eyebrow, "Trouble?"

Clayworth shook his head and took at a seat, "Nahh, got the locked down tight. One of the search parties found a holdout hiding in his quarters, didn't put up a fight."

Alexander nodded, "Good, we're going to have enough trouble fighting with an unfamiliar ship when we get to Earth 29, last thing we need is trouble inside"

Clayworth nodded grimly, "I can't say I like the idea of going into battle with equipment we don't know"

Alexander shook his head, "Not much choice I'm afraid, E29 is holding out on the ground, bleeding the Kromaggs dry, but that ship gives them the ultimate high ground, I honestly can't believe they didn't use them before"

Clayworth smiled, "Perhaps they didn't have the need, after all, until we started messing with things they were steamrolling everyone who stood against them"

Alexander frowned, "I can't shake the feeling that my little trip to their HQ caused them to dust off a few plans that were sitting in the 'too expensive' pile"

Clayworth laughed, "You might have a point there Alex. Nothing like a kick in the ganglies to get people to start thinking again"

Alexander smiled and shook his head, "Speaking of thinking, we need to talk about what you're going to do when we get to E29"

Clayworth blinked, "Me?" He asked nonplussed, "I might be a marine, but what I know about fighting ships you could fit in a matchbox, and those are the ones that float"

"Needs must mate," Alexander said grimly, "I don't know what a transit on this scale will do to me" He stopped at Clayworth's expression and held up a hand, "Oh I'll live, no permanent damage, but will I be able to function? That I don't know. It might be like our first trip to Boston"

Clayworth winced, remembering Alexander passing out after rapidly transiting a strike force to the Falling Skies universe. "Okay, I understand, but why me?"

"Who else?" Alexander asked.

***

"We're at the location you provided sir." Hoshi Yoshida said from her seat at the main navigation console.

"Good, hold position please." Alexander said from the Captain's chair. He'd almost said 'bring us to a full stop' before remembering that would move them out of the 'sweet spot' just as quickly as ordering the ship to move, everything in the universe was always moving after all.

Alexander tapped a few commands on the console on his chair, activating the ship-wide communications circuit. "Attention everyone," Alexander said, "in a moment we'll be transiting to E29, I don't know exactly what the effects will be on you, but it shouldn't be anywhere near as bad as the transit that brought us here since I'll be moving everything in and around the Lacerate rather than jumping you individually."

Alexander paused for a moment to gather his thoughts, "Best estimates put it at roughly forty minutes for the transit, so stay calm and at your posts, help your fellows and the prisoners if they have a bad reaction to the transit. I'll be bringing us out near the orbit of Jupiter. I know that whatever happens you'll do me proud. Let's go kick some Kromagg buttocks."

Alex cut the comm-circuit and stood up. He nodded to Clayworth as he made his way towards the Captain's ready room just off the bridge. "You have command Colour Sergeant"

Clayworth nodded, "Aye sir, I have command".

Alexander stepped inside the office and the doors swished shut behind him. He made his way to a chair and pulled it away from the desk, into the middle of the small room, and sat down. He rolled his neck and tapped a command on his wrist console, causing his armour to enter lockdown mode. He couldn't move inside it at all, it was an unpleasant experience, but the very last thing he needed was to be flailing around in pain while trying to move ten million kilograms and change through a dimensional vortex.

With a mental command, something he was finding easier and easier since he'd augmented his brain only a day earlier, he brought up the macro he'd written earlier and activated it.

At first it felt just like a normal jump, the slight fuzziness, the world fading into gray scale in front of him; then the pressure started, just a tiny pop of his eardrums, an urge to blink, and a slight tingling in his mouth. He wasn't keeping track of the time, but at around six minutes in his eyes started to feel like someone was pushing them back into his head.

At fifteen minutes he felt like there was a jackhammer inside his head, every beat of his heart sounding like thunder.

At twenty minutes he was experiencing the worst migraine of his life. Tears were leaking out of his eyes and there was blood in his mouth where he'd bitten his tongue.

At thirty minutes he felt a pop and something warm ooze out of his ears. A few seconds later he realised he couldn't hear the ever present hum of the ship around him anymore.

At thirty five minutes the world started to go dark, starting at the corner of his eyes, creeping ever inwards.

At thirty eight minutes he wanted to die.

At thirty nine minutes and forty seven seconds it all stopped and he almost passed out from the sheer relief of it. His head lolling forward he tried to speak only to nearly choke. With effort he spat, it didn't go far, blood and spittle and something he didn't care to think about oozed down the front of his armour. His body was wrecked with coughs as he tried to take a deep breath.

"Well that sucked" He said in a raspy whisper when he finally managed to get his body back under control. A few moments later he managed to tilt his head back slightly and stopped moving completely as he looked out the small window.

There, just outside the window, was Jupiter. He'd done it.

***

Persevely the experience the rest of the crew had with the transit was relatively mild; the worst reaction reported was a case of vertigo, most reporting only slight dizziness. Compared to the transit that had brought them from Terra Prime to the Lacerate the first time it was downright pleasant.

Clayworth hadn't noticed when the transit ended, it was only when the ESRO scientist managing their sensors called out they were now in the Sol system that he snapped into action.

"Find me the Kromagg ship" He ordered before glancing around the bridge looking for one face in particular, "Tommo" he said when he found the medic standing at the back of the bridge tending to a young man who was looking decidedly green, "go check on Alex, I've got a feeling he's going to need your help"

The medic looked grim, he patted the soldier on his shoulder and strode off towards the small office where the young Australian had vanished into three quarters of an hour previously.

"Sir!" Captain Brantholme, an intel officer who had been brought along because of his affinity with Kromagg strategies called from his place at one of the bridge consoles. "I've got the Kromagg ship, it's sitting at L1"

"Good, designate it target Alpha" Clayworth barked, "Yoshida, how long to get us there?"

"Not long" The scientist replied nervously, "Ninety minutes at cruise, forty if we push it, but I'd recommend against that, I'm not too sure about piloting in real space"

Clayworth raised an eyebrow, "That's quick?"

"We're over six hundred million kilometers away from Earth Colour Sergant, so yes, that's quick. We'll be pushing thirty percent lightspeed" Yoshida said snidly.

Clayworth nodded grimly, making a personal note to learn more about space, "Noted" he said, "that will give us time to plan at least"

A half an hour later the ready room door swished open and he turned his seat slightly to note Tommo was helping Alexander walk onto the bridge. The latter was now out of his armour and looked terrible, his face was pale and eyes glistening. Clayworth jumped out of his seat and made his way over to the pair.

"You right lad?" He asked in a soft voice as he took hold of Alexander's free arm, helping guide him.

"I'm fine" Alex rasped, "You're still in command, I just want to watch"

Clayworth nodded and helped guide him to an empty seat near the Captain's chair, the medic still close by. When they got him situated Alexander waved him away, Clayworth nodded and left the younger man to the capable care of the medic.

Clayworth returned to the captain's chair and went back to his embarrassing reading; the official title was 'A Primer for Incoming Imperial Cadets: Space Warfare' and was on the reading list for the Imperial Navy Academy, but Mark thought of it as 'space battles for dummies' and he felt like an idiot. He was a professional soldier who had fought on five continents before even meeting up with Alexander as his merry band of madmen, and here he was about to take a spaceship into combat, with his only grounding a handful of sci-fi movies and a book written for cadets, a breed that he considered to be subhuman (at least until they came under the care of a good crew chief). He was worried, hundreds of lives were riding on his shoulders on the ship alone, billions more down on E29.

He needn't have worried at all.

Technology isn't everything, history is replete with tales of inferior forces besting their technological superiors; however the reason those tales get told so much is they were very much the exception to the rule. Normally when a better armed force goes up against a lesser one, the one with the best gear wins. And such was the case with the forces of Terra Prime.

***

In the end it was almost anticlimactic. The Lacerate swooped down out of the blackness, it's ECM centuries more advanced than the Kromagg sensors, catching the Kromagg ship unawares.

Clayworth ordered a volley of turbolaser fire unleashed as they made their first pass, only to swear blisteringly as all eight shots missed. As advanced as the targeting computers on the Lacerate were you still needed to know how to work them in order to hit anything worth hitting. Thankfully the turbolasers were set in anti-ship mode and didn't do anything more than create a lightshow when they passed into the atmosphere of Earth, quickly dispersing.

It took time to bring the Lacerate back around for another pass, during that time the Kromagg crew had worked out something was going on, they didn't know what, their radar and lidar screens only showing a fast moving object that kept flicking in and out, but say what you will about the killer-apes, they were professional soldiers and knew how to fight.

As the Lacerate raced around the curve of the Earth for a second pass the Kromaggs managed to bring their mass drivers into position and launched a pair of projectiles massing several hundred kilograms each at a high speed right towards where they expected the Lacerate to appear.

One flew wide, missing the Lacerate by several hundred kilometers, veering off into space. The second came closer, missing by only a few hundred meters, but like the old saying said, close only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and nuclear weapons.

The Lacerate fired another volley, this time only seven of their shots missed, terrible marksmanship, but a single hit was enough.

The turbolaser bolt, designed to cut through shields capable of shrugging off multi-megaton nuclear warheads ripped into the hull of the Kromagg ship triggering a series of secondary explosions. Within the space of a few seconds the Kromagg ship, the cause of millions of deaths and tens of trillions of dollars worth of damage was little more than a floating cloud of debris.

***

A few hours later Alexander was lounging on the bridge, feeling much better, still not one hundred percent, but he didn't feel like he was going to die at any moment, just watching the Earth spin in the windows. Occasionally feeling the shudder as the ship changed course to fire on pockets of resistance left behind by the fleeing Kromagg forces.

They had hung on for a while after the destruction of their ship, but once the Lacerate started dropping telephone sized chunks of metal on them from orbit whenever the allied forces identified a good target they quickly decided that discretion was the better part of valor.

Unfortunately the Kromaggs weren't stupid, they knew that something big was happening, so they left behind entire sections of their invasion force, mainly infantry, to slow down any possible counter attack.

"Err..." Captain Brantholme said, jolting Alexander out of his thoughts, "Milord we just got a data dump from the Allies forces, and something very strange is going on."

"What?" Alexander asked.

"The Kromagg orbital bombardment... it doesn't make sense." Brantholme said with a puzzled expression on his face. "We've got strikes you'd expect to see, standard hits on high value military targets, but then you've got strikes that make absolutely no tactical sense, strikes against undefended targets all over the place. At first I thought they were terror strikes since they were hitting civilian areas, but... According to this data they were all targeted on video rental stores"

"What the f...?"