Galaxy's Edge: Savage Wars by Jason Anspach & Nick Cole

Author:Jason Anspach & Nick Cole [Anspach, Jason]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Galaxy's Edge Press
Published: 2020-02-24T16:00:00+00:00

43

Assault Frigate Chang

Objective Rio

The Chang had come in toward midnight. Contact with Task Force Wrath had been reestablished beforehand and comm with the Defiant’s CIC indicated Admiral Sulla himself was going to attempt to bring the Chang in during an orbital window when the Savage hulks weren’t over the area of operation. The scout ship Explorer had been lost in the first assault by the hulks, but some satellite and drone recon was still active and available.

The hours before the Chang arrived were tense. Every hour, almost on the hour, one of the massive, almost otherworldly Savage hulks would cross the sky above like some high-altitude wraith drifting ghostlike through the night. The strange and ominous howl of its engines drifting down from the tens of thousands of meters it was running at washed across the graveyard city.

“They can’t maintain any kind of altitude,” one of the commanders said during an ad hoc organization of forces still on the ground. He then went on to tell everyone about the suspicions that repulsor tech was one of the few things the Savages hadn’t perfected in their long crossings.

“They’ve got to keep circling the planet in low orbit, so they’ve broken formation to keep a presence over us at least once every hour,” he explained.

And that did seem to be the case. It was a different ship every hour, always one of the three smaller vessels. The biggest did not appear even once.

“Those things were never meant for orbital insertion,” said the supply captain, who seemed to know a lot about Savages. “They’re almost forty kilometers long! They’d collapse of their own weight if they actually surrendered to gravity and set down. Probably.”

Colonel Marks knew the truth of that.

He’d lived fifteen years on one of those ships and had barely explored it. From what he could remember, anyway. That was a long time ago.

Other surviving officers still fit for duty had gathered at the Twenty-Fifth Light’s Headquarters Crawler to figure out who was in charge and what was going to happen next. There was only one other colonel left: a staff officer who’d been badly wounded and was expected to die. That put Colonel Marks in charge for the time being.

Contact was finally reestablished with Strike Force Wraith, and it was decided by Admiral Sulla that the Chang, under-crewed, would come in and try to pull what remained of the task force off the planet in one go. Then what was left of the fleet would jump for home, and they’d let the higher-ups sort out this mess and next steps.

For the next hour the wounded and the details assigned to get them aboard the Chang as fast as possible were sussed out. A lot of equipment was being left behind and sensitive systems were being demoed as evac preparations got underway.

The Chang, a boxy assault frigate with a central bridge built right into the superstructure, came down through the atmosphere and drifting smoke fast. Diving through the skies after a calculated pass by one of the Savage ships.

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