Heyward’s Steadfast was in the lead, followed by Carey’s Kestrel and Yao’s Kongo on either wing. Albacore, as the weakest and slowest of the four vessels, took up the rear. The moving diamond descended from above, approaching the polar flotilla at an oblique angle. Dozens of particle beams lanced across the intervening distance, incandescent, plasma brightness splashed against the black night of space. The missiles and nuclear shells that each vessel carried would have been more immediately effective, but these remained at rest in their launch tubes and magazines. More would not countenance their use above an inhabited planet. Though the larger settlements on Pessac would be protected by powerful shields, he had no wish to rain down radioactive particles or debris on the world. Low orbital nuclear detonations would wreak havoc on unprotected areas of Pessac just as surely as any atrocity that the Ajaxians visited directly upon it. The bursts of radiation released as a result of the destruction of the powerplants on the ships his squadron was pulverizing were unavoidable, and More refused to add to it. The attack would be conducted solely with their secondary particle cannon batteries.
Fire from the leading ships struck home first. Against the smaller warships that formed the bulk of the Ajaxian strike fleet, the plasma was more than enough to cripple. Sloops and corvettes disintegrated under heavy, murderously accurate fire, or were sent tumbling through space as internal atmosphere and fuel vented from rents in their hulls. Almost all of the ships seemed to have been taken by surprise.
Albacore added to the barrage, turning her guns on the largest of the ships present, the ship that the shipbrain identified as the aptly named DNS Arrogant. The shield on the destroyer was tougher than those on the sloops and corvettes. It flared as it fought to shunt the incoming energy into hyperspace.
*****
Aboard DNS Arrogant, Aquitaine system
“What the hell is going on?” Heddrik demanded as he raced onto the bridge.
Stahl had been the officer of the deck when the attack began, and hurriedly relinquished the captain’s chair to Heddrik.
“A surprise attack by the RHN,” he said. “Four warships.”
“Only four? There must be a second wave on the way.”
“There is no sign of that,” Stahl said. “The attackers are already peeling off, having finished their run.”
“They flee already?” The Arrogant was rocked by a trio of plasma hits arriving in rapid succession. Stahl braced himself against the side of Heddrik’s chair. “They have achieved what they set out to do.” Sixteen Ajaxian ships had been either destroyed or crippled in the swift assault.
Heddrik’s face was red with rage. “We will hit back with everything we have at our disposal!” he shouted to his weapons officer. “Do it, Thune!”
“Captain, we are too close to Pessac,” Stahl reminded. “Orbital detonations will cause damage to the world below, something the emperor expressly wishes to avoid.”
“Damn it!” Heddrik cried, smacking Stahl across the face. “Thune! Launch missiles! Now!”
Clutching his burning jaw, Stahl watched the holo as dozens of antiship missiles boosted from their launch cells buried inside Arrogant and the surviving DN warships. It was an impressive sight. A blizzard of shipkillers chased after the fleeing Republican ships, a vengeful swarm of Furies with no task but to destroy. He grasped the innate wisdom of the Domain Navy’s strategy in that moment. Though nearly half of Heddrik’s ships had been taken off the board, the others retained the firepower to annihilate their impudent tormentors.
The missiles were supplemented by the particle beams spat by the Arrogant. Faster by far than the missiles, these slammed into the largest of the enemy vessels, blossoming into yellow-orange clouds as the plasma washed against its shield.
If they had any effect on the RHN heavy cruiser it was not apparent. The vessel continued its headlong flight, forming a displacement envelope around itself and dissolving into hyperspace as the others did the same.
No, Stahl corrected himself. The trailing ship still lagged behind, and was significantly closer to the pursuing missiles than the other three. It would be only a minute or so before it was caught and destroyed.
“Another particle volley!” Heddrik ordered.
Before Thune could comply, an angry, repeating string of warning beeps suffused the bridge. Heddrik spun on his heel, looking to Stahl, who raised his hands, signalling ignorance. Heddrik looked to sensors. “Well?”
“Fusion shell, inbound!” Adler shouted. “Five seconds! Point defenses have failed to intercept!”
“Brace for impact!” Stahl shouted, and then his world was bathed in heat and light.
*****
Aboard RHS Albacore, Aquitaine system
“We will never be able to outrun them.” Kim said. “We have to displace now.”
“Where is my DP bubble, Julius?” More demanded.
Howell’s holo flickered to life beside More. Showers of sparks fell behind him as Ensign Gregorio Stewart made adjustments to several floating holos at once. “The DP drive is rebooting,” he explained. “We’ve been pushing it too hard. It is having trouble dealing with all of the errors that are accumulating inside it. Internal safeguards began the automatic shutdown process. We’ve overridden it, but it will take at least four minutes before it can form a new bubble.”
“You have two minutes. If we don’t get out of here soon, we’ll be fragments in orbit around Pessac for decades to come.”
“Aye, admiral.” Howell’s holo flickered out.
“We don’t have that long,” Kim said worriedly as the missiles continued their chase. “How long to intercept, Ally?”
“Eighty-four seconds to intercept,” Ally announced.
The bridge of the Albacore rang with unpleasant warning beeps, coming together in quick succession, their combined noise forming a hideous aural backdrop to the near-death experience that the ship faced.
“One hundred two missiles in pursuit,” Ally said.
In just over a minute, the missiles armed with x-ray lasers would detonate and take shots at Albacore. Then, about a half-minute after that, the missiles with proximity/contact detonation warheads would impact against the destroyer’s shield. More prayed that she would have a shield left.
“We have to lose them,” he said. “We’re too slow to run away. Have to hide. Ally, take us into the atmosphere!”
Ally complied. Albacore swiftly executed a steep, banking turn that took it down into the ionosphere of Pessac, plowing into the gas molecules in a fiery blaze.
Hu’s jaw dropped. “Captain, if we are caught by the enemy’s missiles we will be assuring dozens of high altitude fusion blasts! What if they are above populated areas?”
More smiled mirthlessly. “They won’t be. Ajaxian missiles won’t shoot a fireball that they can’t target accurately.”
The Albacore had become a flaming torch roaring across Pessac’s northern hemisphere. Its sensors had been deafened by the blaze around her, but that also meant that the chasing missiles had a more challenging time of targeting her too. Though they had come within range, none opened fire on the Republican warship, or attempted to collide with her. Instead, they stood off at a respectable distance, outside of the cottony gauze of Pessac’s atmosphere.
“We can’t keep this up forever!” Hu exclaimed.
“We aren’t going to, ensign,” Kim said. “Don’t you have some intel to study?”
Hu stiffened, flushing with embarrassment. “Excuse me, admiral.”
More grinned. “Never boring in the RHN.”
Kim pointed to the screen. “We’re on course for the main DN fleet. We’ll have more to worry about shortly.”
More nodded, and tapped to open a channel to engineering. “Howell, how is that DP drive?”
“Almost back online,” Howell’s disembodied voice said over the din that filled the bridge. “Twenty seconds and it will be ready for envelope formation.”
“The Academy never quite prepares you for life-and-de
ath decisions measured in sub-minute increments, does it?” More said to Hu. “Ally, lift us out of the atmosphere. Head straight for the DN’s main fleet. Make the battleship the target.”
Hu gasped. “You don’t mean to ram it?”
“We haven’t come to that quite yet, ensign,” More said. In obedience to More’s command, Ally guided the Albacore out of Pessac’s atmosphere, emerging like a glowing coal spat out of a firepit.
“We’ll be shot at by every ship out there now that we’ve left the atmosphere,” said Kim.
More shrugged unhappily. “We’ll have to chance it. I don’t want to risk a misjump because of a patchy DP envelope.”
“Displacement bubble forming,” Ally reported. “Ready to jump in ten seconds.”
“Taking fire from the main fleet ships,” Kim said. “They are scrambling to get out of the way.”
Ally’s unruffled voice announced the bubble’s completion. “Displacement envelope at ninety-seven percent. Ninety-eight percent. Ninety-nine percent. One hundred percent. Envelope at maximum strength.”
“Ally, jump now!”
Albacore dissolved as the envelope shifted the ship from normal space into the parallel dimension of hyperspace where faster-than-light travel was possible. A single Ajaxian missile, having moved ahead slightly faster than the rest, seeing that its quarry had pulled away from the planetary atmosphere, removed its targeting inhibitors and detonated. The warhead fused its hydrogen isotopes, focusing the tremendous burst of energy into a single, searing beam of x-ray laser radiation. This lanced through the displacement bubble billowing around the Halifaxian ship, striking a glancing blow on its starboard maneuver drive. Briefly, an effusion of particles could be seen trailing behind the RHN vessel as it departed the real universe.
*****
Something massive followed Albacore into hyperspace, undetected by that ship’s temporarily blinded sensors. It was neither a missile nor a fusion shell, but something far more dangerous.
*****
Aboard DNS Arrogant, High Orbit, Pessac, Aquitaine system
Stahl awoke. His head hurt. He touched his forehead. It was bleeding. He saw stars. Literally. Actual stars. That shouldn’t be. He tried to stand. He did so slowly. His leg had been broken. What had happened? Clarity came back as he remembered where he was. He was on the bridge of the Arrogant. The stars he saw were visible through the vast hole that had been gouged out of the destroyer’s ventral hide, bandaged only by the gossamer forcefield that held in the ship’s internal gas mix. He could not hear. He pulled himself up. He was beside the captain’s chair. Heddrik was in it, slumped to one side. Stahl grasped the captain’s shoulder.
“Captain Heddrik, can you hear. . .”
Stahl didn’t finish his sentence. Heddrik’s corpse fell forward, missing its head.
*****
More felt a wave of nausea wash over him. This happened sometimes after a jump, but he had never felt this queasy before. The bridge crew looked just as discomfited as he was.
“What hit us?”
Kim coughed, and scanned her holo. “We. . . we took a hit to the starboard drive, admiral.”
More tapped his comm. “Julius, report.”
Howell appeared on the bridge as a shaky blue-white hologram. “DP drive is out and the starboard maneuver drive is finished.”
More summoned a holo and examined the position of the Albacore in relation to the rest of the solar system. It had badly misjumped, having traveled less than half the distance to Arles. “How long until we have the DP drive back online?”
“The bubble collapsed on us,” Howell said. “We must have been hit the moment we displaced. The feedback has burned out almost everything. Fixing it will take at least ten hours.”
More close his eyes briefly. “Understood. Get on with it.”
Howell’s holo winked out.
“We’re going to have to hike it all the way back to Arles on half-power if we don’t get the DP drive back. That will take days,” Kim said.
“Howell will get it working again,” More assured. “He’s good.”
“Contact,” Ally declared. “Thirty thousand kilometers aft.”
“Who else could be out here?” wondered Kim.
More’s heart sank as he saw what was behind Albacore. “We’ve been followed. They tracked our displacement. We left a trail of breadcrumbs behind to follow.” He tapped the icon that represented their sole pursuer. It was a hateful, ugly, blocky ship, wholly unlike the ships of the RHN. It was an Ajaxian battleship, bristling with guns and clad in armor tens of meters thick. “It’s the Cawnpore.”
“Admiral, there’s another issue. It doesn’t make sense,” Kim said.
As if things could get any worse. “What is it?”
“All of our chronometers are off.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not sure. We’re picking up the time stamps affixed to every broadcast from our observation drones. They don’t match our shipboard clocks at all. They’re off by almost three full standard days.”
“How can that be? We were in hyperspace for less than a minute.”
“I’m getting a backlog of transmissions from the other ships of the squadron, admiral,” Hu added. “The oldest are dated three days ago, right after we jumped.”
“Put the most recent in time on audio first,” More ordered.
Matt Heyward’s exhausted voice wafted over the bridge. “It’s been over three days since you were lost in hyperspace. That’s our working hypothesis. We expected to meet you at Arles. You never showed. The station is now under attack from a large force of DN warships. The evacuation is nearly complete. Hope you hear this. Heyward out.”
“That transmission is four hours old,” Hu noted.
“Damn. This has been known to happen, but only very rarely,” More said. “It’s called a balloon jump. The last reported instance was over a half-century ago, when a Sellasian destroyer got too close to a Venezian ship, both jumped, and they spent a whole month in hyperspace as they crossed from one side of the system to the next. Cawnpore must have used our envelope to follow us into hyperspace, and blown it out. Her huge mass altered the hyperspatial dynamics of the displacement and kept us in longer than we intended.”
“And Arles is under attack and there’s not much we can do to help out,” Kim complained. “We hit the enemy hard, but he’s had lots of time to recover.”
“We were in far too long,” More said. “The question is whether the Cawnpore knows that.”
“Not likely,” Kim suggested. “If she realized that, she’d have already jumped away to take part in the attack on Arles.”
More traced his finger from Albacore to Cawnpore. “Our comms and the observation drones’ messages are encrypted. That means she won’t be getting that information from us. We’ve got to expect that she will be monitoring the radio traffic that is being sent from Ajaxian forces to and fro. That will delay their move against the orbital, but in the meanwhile, she’ll be focusing all of her attention on Albacore.”
Kim grimaced. “We’re down to just one maneuver drive.”
“And the battleship is big and slow,” countered More. “We have to stay ahead of it, out of gun range, and swat any missiles that come our way.” He tapped the comm on the arm of his chair.
“Matt, Tommasina, Inigo, this is Albacore. We’ve suffered a jump mishap. We’ve been in hyperspace for over sixty-eight hours real time, but only forty-three seconds shipboard time. We are being pursued by the Cawnpore, which followed us as we displaced. We believe that the Cawnpore is still unaware of the true time. We don't have a working DP drive. Complete the evacuation of Arles and report as to status. Albacore out."
"We'll probably be dead by the time their response makes its way back, if we don't displace very soon," Kim said.
“Even if we could, we don't dare displace yet, or else she'd tag behind us and add to their troubles," More said. "I have to allow Cawnpore to hunt us to buy time for Arles.
As long as she doesn't realize how much time has passed, she won't leave us to attack the orbital."
“Then we’re in for a bumpy ride.”
More studied the holo. “Arles is thirty-seven light minutes distant. Assuming Matt answers my transmission immediately, it will be over an hour before we hear back. For at least that long, we’re going to have to keep the Cawnpore occupied.”
“That fight will not go in our favor,” said Kim.
“I’m not looking to win a ship-to-ship fight. Just keep that bastard intent on destroying us and not Arles and the rest of the squadron. If we can’t jump, at least Matt and the others can get away before it shows up.”
Kim lifted an eyebrow. “You may be the first destroyer commander who wanted to prolong an engagement with a capital ship.”
More chuckled. “It’s what I would advise any of my students to do, in similar circumstances.” Then he sighed. “I am sorry for all of this, Ariana. Your first major command has been spoiled by having a flag officer aboard, and he’s making a mess of your ship.”
Kim shook her head. “No apologies, admiral. I wouldn’t have sat in that captain’s chair at all if not for you. Never a dull moment as part of the 34th Strike Squadron.”
More rested his chin in his hand. “That is what kind of what I want my grave marker to say - ‘It was never a bore to serve under Andrew More.’”
“I meant that in a good way,” grinned Kim.
“I hope that is how it’s understood.” More tapped his holo. “Now for my next move.”
Chapter Twelve
Aboard DNS Arrogant, High Orbit, Pessac, Aquitaine system
Stahl stood on the bridge of the Arrogant, beneath the fibroplast scab that had been hastily affixed to cover the hole above the destroyer’s bridge. He was thankful that the ship’s shield had held in the internal atmosphere, and that artificial gravity had not been knocked out, or else he, and everyone else, would have been ripped out to space by the Halifaxian particle shot that broke open her hull.
The Ajax Incursion Page 18