DREADNOUGHT 2165 by A.D. Bloom Read Free Book Online

said into comms, "Step to
it and sink those teeth in! I want you gum-deep in Squidy hull in
less than sixty seconds. Perimeter teams deploy and hold the
line."
    Lucy Elan powered up the capacitors in her
rifle and nodded at Ram's sidearm. "You taking that thing?"
    As a rare collectors' item and an antique,
the gold and ivory Honma & Voss X-ray laser was worth more than
five years of VP salary, but it was too good a weapon to keep in a
case. He nodded. "This is what it was made for."
    All of the breaching craft called in. Ram
was pleased to hear reports of working drills and easy hull access.
Somehow Arroyo in Tick 3 had even been cutting for thirty seconds,
but he didn't sound optimistic.
    The hatch out to the Dreadnought's
hull opened into Altair's glare. The aliens could see again.
Particle beams shot up from the tops of the armored towers and
waved overhead like thin carnival searchlights as they continued to
cut into the Charon . Bodies,
whole and not, packed the vacuum. They drifted together with Charon and the
Dreadnought.
    Ram hoped the Squidies didn't even know they
were on the hull.
    The Dreadnought drifted, an 800-meter, flat
planet, slowly spinning. Now, it was day, but in roughly four
minutes, Ram thought, it would be night. Ram jumped and landed on
the battleship's hull and bounded to the port-side rear of the
Tick. From there, he had a view towards the center of the giant
ship and the five other armored boarding craft clinging to the
Dreadnought with his own. They were all bent from the impact, like
armored shanties leaning to one side or the other on the barely
curving, blast-scarred hull.
    The Ticks had landed in a rough hexagon as
planned. Hopefully they could support each other with turret and
small arms fire because as soon as the aliens knew they had
boarders on the hull, the Squidies would be coming out in force to
kill them.
    Fifty meters out to port, squads from Tick 3
took up positions around their craft, facing outwards. The surface
under them had been flash-burned from the nuclear dets, but between
the shallow, circular wales that dotted the outer hull like smooth
bomb craters, Ram could still make out the shape of the human skull
the aliens had painted on their battleship. Just ahead of Tick 3
was the edge of the left cheekbone. Most of the Ticks were
clustered in the skull's left eye socket. The chin was at least 300
meters away, over the slight curve of the hull.
    When they faced Charon , the towers and guns fired everywhere,
waving and slicing. Ram couldn't see the particle emitters
themselves. The Dreadnought's guns, big and small, had been set
recessed into the tops of the low, rounded, blast-protected towers
that rose up from the hull. "Look at all those hardened guns," Lucy
said.
    "They can't hit us," Ram insisted.
    "You sure about that?"
    "We already bet on it."
    The voice in Ram's helmet was casual and
relaxed. "Commander Devlin, this is Arroyo in Tick 3. My topside
gunner has movement down by the uh... chin. He said he sees big,
mechanized Squidies poking out from behind gun towers and
eyeballing the Ticks."
    "Copy that, Arroyo," Ram said. "All
Ticks, all squads, this is the XO. Deploy the knuckledraggers and
get 'em on the line. I'm calling in the air support to cover us
while we drill. ETA should be five minutes, tops. All units, hold
the line." Ram gestured and tapped at the command menus projected
in his visor to open a channel to the
carrier . "Blackbeard to Red , Blackbeard to Red . This is Blackbeard requesting seagulls."
The Lancers could dodge the battleship's big guns and provide air
support. That was the plan.
    There was no answer from Hardway . There was nothing but noise
on comms. Ram tried a second and third time. He checked his system
and his suit computer. There was nothing wrong on his end.
If Hardway was out there,
they just weren't answering. The whole plan depended on having
close-air support from the Lancers and long-range artillery support
from Hardway's batteries