A buzz. He slammed back in the seat. Then he was hurled away from the ship with such violence that he nearly blacked out. The stabilizers came on, followed by a burst of engines as he took control. The nose dipped down and his view improved. A falcon hurtled past him to the right. That was Silver, the daredevil, waggling his gun stabilizers.
The screen showed Greeves, Lourdes, and Crispin within a few miles, and he spotted more plasma burn above him. That seemed to be Arvad and Orwell. He swung his falcon around.
HMS Blackbeard loomed in front of him. Her bridge was a streak of yellow light, her engines glowing blue, but not engaged. Other lights blinked down her hull, gun bays testing, shields sliding into place. Cannon exposed, then retracted.
The skull and crossbones above her bridge was an homage to her days of rebellion—that emblem had literally been plundered from a pirate frigate—while the golden rampant lions above decks spoke of her loyalty to Albion.
Below the ship hung the squat, ugly form of Warthog, just now detaching from Blackbeard’s hull, but still connected by an umbilical. That would come off in a moment. Carvalho felt a momentary twinge as he thought of the brawler and her crew. He knew them well, knew the risks they’d be facing today.
Capp called from the bridge. “Hey, luv. Having a good time out there?”
“All business here, Capp.”
“Yeah, sure ya are. Greeves ain’t getting sweet on you again, is she? Anyway, them aliens made some maneuvers, and we’re gonna start moving ourselves. Nib Pym is working up a course, and I’ll send it over in a few. Get yourself around the backside of the Toad and wait.”
Officially, the planet was named Fortaleza Six, being the second gas giant in the system after four lifeless rocky inner worlds. But someone had said it looked like a Samborondón toad, the giant, carnivorous beasts that came out of the earth during the monsoons, and the name stuck.
As it loomed in his view, he could see the resemblance. Swirling brown storms pockmarked the planet like giant warts, and two long, curving streaks near the north pole were like horns. If he hadn’t been staring at the planet, he might not have noticed one of the storms migrating rapidly from north to south above the surface. He brought it into close focus on his viewscreen. Just as he thought, it wasn’t a storm, but one of Wang’s war junks orbiting through the upper atmosphere, emitting a baffling signal that made it look like an atmospheric disturbance. The war junk’s wings were spread, which gave her the look of a giant beetle in flight.
Out of curiosity, he pinged the ship with active sensors. Nothing came back but a patch of thick gas. Diablos, those Singaporean ships knew how to hide.
Wang came over the com. “Who the devil is this?”
“Carvalho, sir. Striker wing commander.”
“Carvalho, is it?” Her tone was colder than the void. “Are you trying to give me away to the enemy?”
“Sorry, sir.”
She muttered something in Chinese. “Poke me again, and I’ll pop you like a blister.”
“It won’t happen again.”
But she was already gone. Feeling sheepish, Carvalho checked the com and was relieved to see Wang’s message marked as private status. At least she hadn’t dressed him down in front of his wing mates, thank God.
Capp called again with the intercept coordinates. He passed them down the line, and the twelve falcons formed a cluster about a mile wide, accelerating around the planet to slingshot themselves away.
“Any sign of our reinforcements?” Carvalho asked Capp as they left Blackbeard and the Toad behind.
“Nah, McGowan ain’t showed up yet, but we figure it’s less than an hour now until he makes the jump. And them Adjudicators are slowing, which buys us more time. That’s your job too, luv. Make ’em think, get ’em worried about traps and mines and all that rubbish.”
“Got it.”
“But don’t get yourself killed, yeah? I’m planning on shagging you good and hard when this is over with.”
Carvalho couldn’t help but grin, and only secondarily glanced at his display to verify it was a private call. “Don’t worry, we won’t get crazy.”
“Roger that. Over and out.” A nonstandard sign off, but that was Capp all the way.
#
The vanguard of the incoming alien fleet detected Carvalho’s presence about forty minutes later, and three dragoons peeled off from the main force to confront them, while the other eight, plus the pair of star cruisers, continued on toward the planet.
The falcons hesitated—quite sensibly considering the overwhelming firepower that three dragoons represented—and began to withdraw as if having second thoughts. The dragoons came forward with a sudden acceleration, almost as swiftly as Royal Navy corvettes jumping out of the blocks, and gobbled up the empty space between them and the much smaller striker craft.
Carvalho could spot the ships with his sensor arrays, but they had excellent cloaking and appeared as greasy streaks on his screen, their exact contours blurred. Even as they exposed forward batteries, he couldn’t peer through the cloaking to pick out exactly what was preparing to shoot at them.
Carvalho ordered a maneuver that seemed born of desperation, and the dragoons followed him in a dive down along the Z-axis. Small, twisting bomblets blasted out of the exposed battery, and the spiraling movement baffled the falcon’s defense grid targeting.
He peeled off falcons as they passed by a small asteroid that wandered in orbit far from the system’s main belt. The dragoons came in behind, and Carvalho ordered the falcons to turn about in a unified front, as if unable to flee any longer. The enemy ships pounced eagerly, a fresh wave of bomblets chasing the first, which had yet to arrive.
And fell into the trap he’d laid.
It was a row of Youd mines dropped by Warthog before the enemy fleet’s arrival. One detected the incoming dragoons and sent a signal to the rest, and suddenly a wave of swarming mines accelerated head-on into the alien ships, which were shedding velocity as fast as they could. The first mine detonated, followed by a row of explosions, one after another.
Carvalho’s screen blanked out, losing contact with the enemy in all the noise. He braced himself, hardly daring to hope, and cursed as all three enemy ships reappeared, still intact after the bombardment.
The falcons bent and twisted around the asteroid as the enemy bomblets came in. While skimming the surface of the asteroid, Carvalho nearly collided with Crispin approaching from the other direction, with Greeves shooting by to one side. Lourdes dropped in below, only a few yards above the ground, and unloaded with her pulse battery, bringing down some of the incoming bombs. Other bombs rained down on the surface, hitting the asteroid, and not the striker craft.
All except one. A single bomblet struck one of the falcons and knocked it askew. The striker craft was too close to the asteroid to recover. It struck the surface and exploded.
“Mierda,” Carvalho said as the last of the bombardment rained away. “Who was that?”
“Silver,” Greeves said. Her tone was strangled. “I told him not to take it so close.”
His stomach sank. Silver, that idiot. Such a braggart, always running fancy maneuvers to show off his skills, and he hadn’t even survived the initial encounter. Carvalho was angry with him, and at the same time the loss was a punch to the gut. A comrade, killed in an instant.
His sensors lit up with incoming active sounding. The dragoons were falling back, hammering everything in the neighborhood, looking for more mines, clearly rattled by the encounter. The falcons sprang after the departing enemy ships. One dragoon was limping, slow to accelerate away from danger, and he gave orders to close ranks.
He wasn’t sure if it was mine damage, or all the active sounding, but he finally got his first good look at the Adjudicator dragoon. It was about the size of a navy destroyer, but more barrel-shaped around the midsection, with knifelike elements thrusting forward from the bow, and strange, finlike protuberances down the side. A glowing blue torus ringed it midway down the
hull. What in all the stars of heaven was that thing?
He came alongside and let loose with pulse fire, shooting at a blackened stretch of armor. The glowing ring flared, and an external energy shield rolled down the surface, against which his pulses landed, flared into light, and dissipated. He fired a missile, and it exploded against the blue light with all of the effect of a bursting water balloon.
His shots might have little effect, but the minefield had done damage; he could see gasses venting from the upper decks, and bits of debris falling away near the engines to disintegrate as they passed through the ship’s plasma field.
“Underneath!” Greeves said.
She and two others flashed by in the opposite direction, having got out in front. Several others were up there, too, dodging and shooting down bomblets as the dragoon regained control of its weapon systems.
Carvalho rolled beneath and saw what she was talking about. There was a gaping hole in the enemy ship’s undercarriage where mines had torn through the skin. He launched all three of his remaining missiles at it, then fell back in a hurry as a hornet’s nest of bomblets erupted from batteries. His companions pulsed them down before they struck him.
The other two dragoons joined the fray, stabbing at them with energy weapons as well, and Carvalho was forced to call off the attack altogether. The eleven remaining falcons of the striker wing pursued at a safe distance while he decided what to try next.
Meanwhile, Blackbeard was in motion, with Warthog following. The battle cruiser and its rider took cover behind one of the Toad’s larger moons. No sign of the war junks; they were well hidden at the moment, but more surprisingly, he couldn’t see Bilbao, either. It had a newly installed plasma ejector battery and was nearly immobile since Tolvern had stripped out the main engines to correct Blackbeard’s deficiencies.
General fleet com came through. Sounded like Smythe, but there was a lot of static over the line. “Attention, all crew. Incoming jump detected. Ships entering the system.”
“Thank God,” Carvalho said over the wing com. “Two days, that’s all we have got to hold out. And then McGowan and friends will be here.”
“Then we’d better land some blows, mate,” Greeves said.
“All right, boys and girls,” he said, “let’s see if we have enough firepower to take out this wounded dragoon. Go!”
Chapter Fourteen
Tolvern stared at the subspace message, disbelieving, even as Smythe continued to announce incoming ships.
“A second ship has just entered. Another big one,” Smythe said. “Waiting for confirmation, but it has to be another cruiser. Too big for anything else. Unless . . . you don’t think it could be Citadel, do you?”
Citadel had been their big hope. Void Queen was way out in the Omega Cluster beyond the Hroom empire, and Dreadnought was stranded in Persia, which left Captain Fox’s ship the next best option. A second Ironside-class battle cruiser and escorts would surely turn the tide.
Barring Citadel, Tolvern had hoped McGowan on Peerless would bring enough ships and gear to hunker down on one of these moons and turn Fortaleza into a true fortress out here on the frontier.
But now this subspace.
The Nebud. point collapsed. Reinforcements impossible. McG. in Castillo with small force. Not yet under fire. Retreat possible, but not auth. by admiralty. Boghammer.
Tolvern’s mouth went dry and her heart pounded as she watched Smythe eagerly study the data coming in from the jump point while Lomelí launched countermeasures toward the first wave of incoming missiles. Most of the ship’s sensors were trained on the incoming dragoons and star fortresses or they’d have surely noted that something was wrong about the incoming ships.
Nyb Pim gave a low hum, indicating doubt. “Captain, if you will excuse me. We need to begin our maneuvers.”
Smythe was talking to himself as he studied the jump point. “Our reinforcements are underway already. Weren’t they to be traveling with an entire task force? Why wouldn’t they wait for the rest to come through?”
Capp swore. “What are you saying, it’s just the two of ’em?”
“Hold on,” Smythe said. “It’s not two ships, it’s a whole bunch of them. I swear, nothing else came through. Lomelí, give me more sensors out there.”
“Captain?” Nyb Pim prodded. “The nav computer is ready to execute.”
“Lomelí, belay that order,” Tolvern said. “Keep sensors on the incoming enemy.”
“But, Captain,” Smythe said. “Don’t you want to know what Peerless is bringing with her?”
“She’s not bringing anything, because those aren’t our ships.” The others turned to look at her. “I just got a subspace from the Castillo System.”
She swallowed hard before voicing it aloud. All their hopes, dissolving in an instant.
“There are no reinforcements on the way. Not Peerless and Triumph, not anyone else. McGowan is in Castillo because his jump into Fortaleza collapsed. Those ships coming through must be additional star fortresses, and the smaller ones will be dragoons peeling off after they came out of the jump.”
There was a whole lot of clamoring at this, but she told them to shut up and concentrate on fighting off incoming missiles. Capp called the gunnery, told them to stand by. Tolvern consulted with the pilot. Nyb Pim had plotted a course that would give them a short initial engagement and then lead the enemies away from Bilboa—assuming the mobile platform remained undetected—in a bid to unite with McGowan’s task force.
That was no longer possible.
Instead, what? Run for their lives? Carvalho’s falcons were out there, as was Warthog, but they might be retrieved if she could survive the initial encounter. The war junks would have to be left behind, but they could probably remain undetected if Wang kept her nerve.
The big problem was Bilboa. There were twenty-seven crew on board, and no way to recover them before the battle heated up.
“Warning,” Jane announced. “Class-one detonation expected.”
“Keep those missiles off us,” Tolvern said.
The ship shuddered as the missile hit, and Capp let loose with profanity that would match the frustration they must all be feeling. They’d faced two days of battle—they’d all told themselves they could survive that—at which point McGowan would arrive and even the odds.
Damage was minimal from the strike, and the crew was doing an excellent job of knocking down long-range ordnance, while not yet showing their own hand. Now that it was a real fight, Tolvern’s strategy had to change. Instead of battering the dragoons and forcing the star fortresses to hold back, could she provoke a straight-up battle with one of the two capital ships and inflict some serious pain? Force the dragoons into a defensive role around their carriers. That would buy time to recover Bilbao’s crew and make a run for it.
“Pull around the back side of the planet,” she ordered. “Drop mines, see what we can do to funnel the enemy into them. I want Warthog up for support, use whatever mines she’s got, too—we’re not saving anything for another day. Capp, Nib Pym, work us a course that gets us back toward Bilbao, with Wang’s ships behind the enemy action.”
Capp touched her ear. “Barker is shouting something about armaments. What do we want in the tubes, Cap’n?”
“Hold on the tubes,” Tolvern said. “Let me think about it. First thing, I want penetrating shot in the main battery. Explosive in the secondary only.”
They knew what that meant without speaking. Penetrating shot to tear holes in the thicker armor of the heavier star fortresses, followed by explosive shot and torpedoes. That meant she intended to go hard after one of the carriers.
“Tubes . . . tubes.” She was thinking hard. “Get me Mark-IVs in one through three,” she said. “Hunter-IIs in the rest.”
Tolvern took in the bigger picture with the new facts in mind. Carvalho’s striker wing had done yeoman’s work out away from the planet, where they’d laid mines and played cat and mouse near a wandering asteroid. Three of the dragoon
s had fallen well behind the main force, and wouldn’t be a factor in the first phase of the battle, with one seriously damaged, and likely knocked out of action for a good long stretch.
But at cost. One falcon down, a pilot named Silver. The rest of Carvalho’s striker wing maintained their distance from their wounded, but still dangerous, prey.
Warthog was soon tossing mines by the dozen, and Barker dropped a few from Blackbeard as well. She told herself grimly that every bit of ordnance spent helped lower their weight for a jump with their repaired and replaced engines.
Soon, it was time to shift to missiles, and the batteries came up. Still closing, the Adjudicators made the first move.
“Twenty-six enemy missiles in the air,” Lomelí said. “I can’t pull them all down. Some of the heavier ones are up as well. We’re going to take some blows.”
“Then make sure we land some blows of our own,” Tolvern said. “All missile batteries, reload and fire at will. Mark-IVs, when ready. Hold the other torpedoes.”
A wave of missiles rolled out, followed by the slower, heavier Mark-IV torpedoes. Warthog swung in front of the battle cruiser, cannon still retracted, but firing her own missiles and torpedoes. They rolled in a wave toward the enemy, who spat countermeasures, flashes and radiation bursts, as well as small missiles designed to hunt and kill bigger ones.
Tolvern was at a disadvantage to the enemy. She didn’t know the Adjudicators’ weapons and tactics—had only one short engagement to draw on—but they knew hers, having already fought it out against Alliance fleets somewhere around Xerxes or Nebuchadnezzar. Countless other battles with human settlements over the years would have given them further insight into human thoughts and strategies.
Her only hope was that the enemy had yet to face a battle cruiser and its superior armaments apart from the sneak attack, which hadn’t shown Blackbeard’s true capabilities. Carvalho’s success with the striker wing seemed to indicate some hope on that front.
She hoped to sneak the torpedoes in among the quicker, but lighter missiles. Send the torpedoes while enemy countermeasures were already engaged, and she had a good chance to knock a hole in a carrier’s armor, which could be followed up with a bombardment from Warthog or the explosive shot in Blackbeard’s secondary battery.
The Alliance Trilogy Page 14