Conquest (Star Force Series) by B. V. Larson

Author:B. V. Larson [Larson, B. V.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2011-12-12T20:00:00+00:00

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The Macros had called for air support. I can’t say that I blamed them. They were in trouble. Every beachhead is at its weakest when it first hits enemy territory. Part of my basic plan had been to attack them before they could get organized, before their numbers could grow. With luck, I’d figured they would not be able to defend themselves.

We hadn’t had that kind of luck, but we’d done them a lot of damage. The fighting was hard, but at that moment, I figured we were clearly on the winning team. Unfortunately, the Macros realized this before we could wipe out their main nest.

Everything changed when several wedge-shaped vessels the size of buildings dove into the oceans with us and glided through the water toward my massed formations. We were all in one place now—maybe that was what they’d been waiting for. They came down and came in close to fire their big belly turrets at us at point-blank range.

A spaceship really isn’t all that different from a submarine in design. Both have to be self-contained and airtight. Both are designed to withstand extreme environments. I’d never seen the Macros fly a cruiser down into the oceans, but I’d never seen anything indicating they couldn’t do it.

The second I realized what was coming for us, I ordered my men to scatter. My first thought was to swarm the cruisers one at a time and use our grenades to take them out. Maybe, I thought, this was an opportunity to take the enemy fleet out, to deal a devastating blow.

But then more of them kept diving down after us like greedy seabirds finding a nest teaming with thousands of hatchling turtles. I gave a general bug-out order to every commander and pulled my own rip-cord. With repellers on full and my gasbag dragging me up by the wrist, I shot up past the shark-like cruisers that swam near. Once we were above them, we were safe from their belly-turrets. The escaping last men dropped a barrage of grenades down like depth charges, but we couldn’t see if they did much damage in the inky dark water below.

Once we broke the surface, we flew for the beaches at top speed. We had to get under the Andros Island’s defensive umbrella as soon as possible. The cruisers didn’t dare follow us to the surface and gun us down. They’d taken enough loss against Andros Island’s stinging lasers. Over the intervening days, we’d rebuilt a large number of them, and we’d stationed most of the hovertanks on the beach as well to patch the gap in the island’s defenses and to cover any retreat from the sea.

My marines reached the beaches with their tails between their legs, but most of us had lived to fight another day. I walked the shoreline, counting dead, wounded and missing. We were still eight-five percent effective. I wasn’t sure exactly how much damage we’d done the enemy with our campaign, but I was fairly certain we

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