“They don’t know we’re here,” she said. “Either that, or they do know but don’t have any clue we’ve spotted them. Either way, they’re doomed. Capp, what’s the range on the Mark-IVs? No, hold that. I want a full broadside. We’ll give it to them hard and fast. Give me cannon range.”
Lieutenant Capp called the gunnery, and the first mate got the answer moments later. “Barker says twenty-seven minutes until we’re in range, but he thinks we oughta get Hunter-IIs in the tubes first, in case they survive the first hit. Torpedoes’ll track ’em down and finish ’em off.”
There was something gloomy in the woman’s voice, and Tolvern glanced about the bridge, surprised to see that all of them looked glum. Capp, of course, who wore her emotions for all to see, but also Smythe, Ping, Lomelí, and the ensigns. Even her pilot, Nyb Pim, hummed a low, worried note.
“There’s only two dragoons,” Tolvern said, surprised at their reaction. “We’ll take them easily. The brawler’s ready to detach and give supporting fire. These must be survivors from the battle, the ships who couldn’t make it out with their carriers. They don’t have facilities to patch them up, and must have been sitting out here crippled and silent all this time.” She hardened her gaze. “What’s wrong with the lot of you?”
Capp cleared her throat. “Only been six days since we left the yards, Cap’n.”
“We’ve been battleworthy for weeks—that last visit was nothing but a cosmetic patch up.”
“I know, but now we’re all cleaned up. Got us a real engine again. Got the number four and six shields fully patched. New forged tyrillium and everything. Even them Albion lion emblems is freshly painted.”
“I thought you were excited to be away from Fort Mathilde. Cold and dry and boring—that’s what I kept hearing.”
“Happy to be out here, sir,” Smythe said. “But do we have to fight again so soon? And alone, too, just us and the brawler?” He stood near the tech console, rocking from the balls of his feet to his heels and back again. “Couldn’t we call for reinforcements? Boghammer and Icefall are only two days flight from here.”
Tolvern could only scoff at their reticence. “We don’t need Svensen’s wolves, or any other ship, for that matter. We’re not McGowan’s shiny little toy. This is HMS Blackbeard, and we deliver the pain.”
“Aye, but we take it, too, don’t we?” Capp said. She’d freshly shaved her scalp before they set out from Mathilde, and rubbed a hand across the stubble. “Always get banged up, and in a hurry. Can’t we have a few days to fly around before we get shot at again?”
“You know what they’re calling Blackbeard in the fleet?” Smythe said. “They call us HMS Battered.”
Tolvern blinked. “What?”
“It means we always take extensive damage in our naval engagements,” Nyb Pim added helpfully.
“I understand what it means, Pilot. But who says that?”
“Everyone,” Capp said. “We say it, too.”
Tolvern had spent the last couple of years mocking Edward McGowan’s propensity to keep his Punisher-class cruiser out of action until the last moment—a tendency that had given his ship, HMS Peerless, the taunting nickname Spotless—but it had never occurred to her that her ship had collected a nickname of its own. She had to admit there was some truth to what they were saying.
It had been true under James Drake, and true since she’d taken command and her ship had received its overhaul and upgrade into a battle cruiser. Blackbeard had been in too many battles to count, and while they’d won most of them and somehow survived the losses, there had been close calls.
They’d entered Castillo after brutal fights in Fortaleza and beyond, the most damaging being the sneak attack that killed half her bridge crew, crippled her engines, and left both Nyb Pim and Admiral Drake maimed and in stasis. Months later, Drake was still not at a hundred percent, and had remained at Fort Mathilde during the present expedition.
More fighting had followed, even while Blackbeard was not at full strength. After Tolvern and a motley fleet of Alliance ships threw back a determined Adjudicator charge, destroying a star fortress and damaging three others, along with numerous dragoons, the aliens had fled the system and collapsed its single jump point on their way out. That left the humans and Hroom trapped, with only their base in the asteroid belt and a resource-poor, thinly-populated planet of primitives at hand.
It was enough. Blackbeard was back in full fighting trim. Reforged armor, engines at peak efficiency. They even had the capability to manufacture fresh ordnance in the facilities salvaged and rebuilt deep in the asteroid beneath Fort Mathilde.
Tolvern had everything she needed, in fact, except the ability to get out of this blasted system and back into the war.
Smythe cleared his throat. “Sir, can I ask a question?”
“A question? Or voice an insubordinate thought?”
“Well . . . that depends on your point of view. I don’t mean it to be insubordinate.”
Tolvern sighed. “Go ahead, Lieutenant.”
“I’m wondering what the rush is. These dragoons were left behind when we drove the enemy out. Haven’t been doing anything since then.”
“I assume they’ve been reporting our actions to the enemy via subspace.”
“But that’s no immediate threat.”
Capp nodded vigorously. “He’s right, Cap’n. Can’t do nothing against us or they’d have done it already, yeah?”
“I’m not saying we should ignore them,” Smythe said. “Only that there’s no point in tackling them alone.”
“Won’t hurt us to call in the Vikings,” Capp said. “Or at least the admiral. See what he says.”
Tolvern settled into her seat and gripped the armrests. “You don’t think it’s just two dragoons, do you?”
“We’re looking, and that’s all we see,” Smythe said. He shook his head. “But the ghouls have good cloaking. Wang’s ships had been pinging the outer system all this time and she never found them before. There could be anything out here. Even a carrier. Are we sure they all left the system? It looked that way, but are we sure? Our star wolves fake that sort of thing—maybe the ghouls can, too.”
Tolvern checked the time on her console. Nine minutes to cannon range. She had to make a decision quickly.
“Others are fighting out there,” she said. “The last subspace had Vargus and Fox in combat. If they’ve got Void Queen and Citadel in the action, that makes Blackbeard the only battle cruiser currently on the sidelines.”
“Dreadnought is out of the action, too,” Smythe reminded her. “Mose Dryz has a third of the fleet in Persia, bottled up just like us.”
“And don’t you think the general would fight if he could? Don’t you think every day that goes by and he gets word of losses, that he is desperately trying to break free?”
They had no answer for that. Nor did she need to give them any more instructions. Their expressions hardened, turned serious. Lomelí got back to her work, followed by Ping and a pair of ensigns, who’d been watching without contributing. Nyb Pim’s long fingers had kept at his console during the discussion, and he began to hum and whistle in low tones, as he did when he was especially focused. Capp got on the com with the brawler.
“Warthog detached,” Capp said.
Nerves, Tolvern decided. Nothing more. They’d been idle for too long. A good fight would shake them up. These wounded dragoons were just the warm-up they needed.
Still, she’d better be sure it was just the two.
She wanted Wang’s war junks—specifically, their scanning and detection—but they’d remained in flanking position near Fort Mathilde. That was over four billion miles away, and by the time they ran active scans and passed Tolvern their data, the battle would be over. Hopefully.
But Blackbeard was hardly deaf and blind.
“Smythe, give me full active scans. Hit the whole neighborhood, I want it lit up.”
“As soon as we do, they’ll know we’re coming for them.”
“We detached the brawler. Unless they’re idiots, they know already. Scans, Lieutenant.”
“Yes, sir.” He and Lomelí moved to comply.
Tolvern interfaced with the gunnery. Barker had penetrating shot in the main battery, and explosive in the secondary. Possibly, she should reverse that. If the dragoons were out here, roughed up from the battle, their armor would already be shredded.
“Capp, are you still on the line with Warthog? Connect me.”
Tolvern was shortly speaking with the commander. Blackbeard’s rider ship was slow and had limited maneuverability, but had the thickest armor in the fleet, and enough firepower to deliver the pain. Not only was Warthog a shield, but she could land a mace-blow in the heat of battle.
“How do you want me positioned?” the commander asked. “Forward your deck gun?”
Tolvern took a final look at the numbers Nyb Pim was sending her. “Swing thirteen degrees to port, four point five below us on the Z. Match my yaw.”
“That will leave your bridge unshielded, Captain.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“And you’re sure you want to take blows again so soon?”
“You, too? We’ve got more than enough armor above the bridge to take a few hits.”
“Yes, sir.”
“They’re going to duck toward you as soon as we attack. Hold fire until they make a move.”
There was no further argument, and there could be no doubts on either ship that Tolvern intended to fight, and fight fearlessly.
Only moments now. Nyb Pim prepared to swing them wide to give a full broadside. A final check of the antigrav and inertialess systems.
“Go!”
The engines flared, and they shed velocity. All systems up. Cannons online. The ship shuddered with the outgoing shot, a mighty belch of fire. The cannon fire ate up the distance to the shadowy forms. Warthog eased into position, exactly on schedule. Her guns bristled.
Flawless.
They’d run exhaustive tests before leaving the yards for the last time, but it was good to see everything performing as expected. Her veteran crew, nerves steadied, worked like pistons in a finely tuned engine.
The dragoons blinked into sudden focus, a result of both the active scans going out from Blackbeard and their own countermeasures. Burst charges, intended to destroy the kinetic fire before it could hit. The two enemy ships might have been damaged, but their torus rings were blue and glowing, strengthening their armor, and their engines pushed them down on the Z-axis in an evasive maneuver. Warthog was already firing her own cannon to intercept the enemy’s new position.
“Captain, there’s something else out there,” Smythe said. “Scanners hitting something big.”
Lieutenant Capp cursed. “Well? What is it?”
“Working on it . . .”
Tolvern ignored them—no use worrying until she had data—and concentrated on the outgoing fire. Barker launched a pair of torpedoes—smaller, more maneuverable Hunter-IIs—even before the initial cannon fire arrived at its target.
“Enemy missiles in the air,” Lomelí announced.
“Bring ’em down, mate,” Capp said, her voice a low growl.
The defense grid specialist was already on it, countermeasures launched.
The lead dragoon had nearly twisted away by the time the cannon fire arrived, but shot from four cannons of Blackbeard’s twenty-two-gun array smashed it in a neat line from the torus ring to the engines.
Flaming gas burst into space. The engine belched plasma in a forced release, and just like that, the dragoon was nearly disabled. It was too much damage for a single shot, had the enemy ship been at full strength, which confirmed her earlier hunch that it was already operating at a disadvantage.
The second dragoon managed to twist about and dive before Blackbeard’s broadside arrived. With a narrower profile, most of the shot lashed at the empty space where it had previously been. That was the risk of firing at extreme range. Enemy countermeasures brought down the rest of it. The dragoon escaped the initial salvo unscathed.
But the brawler had already targeted the enemy’s new position, and the dragoon flew into the incoming fire. It took damage along the upper decks. The enemy fired a second salvo of missiles, but Smythe and Lomelí were tearing them out of the sky long before they presented a danger.
Tolvern waited until Blackbeard’s launch bay had turned away from the outgoing dragoon.
“Get the striker wing in the air,” Tolvern said.
“We’re on top of the missiles, sir,” Smythe said. “We don’t need falcons to shoot them down.”
“It’s not the ones already incoming that worry me.”
She pointed to the side viewscreen, where the hard scans were finding the enemy that had remained hidden during their approach. A ship began to materialize as the sensors pinpointed it.
“Here we go,” Capp muttered. “This is where we take our lumps. Let’s see what them ghouls have in store for us. Bloody star fortress, I’ll wager.”
Tolvern held her breath, worried that her first mate was right, and she’d be staring down one of the big carriers. Maybe it was even Bravo, the ship that had mauled Blackbeard, nearly killed Drake, and then come so close to finishing her off again during the last battle, before escaping with all its systems intact.
But it was only another dragoon. And still a couple of million miles away. Exposed now, it gave up thoughts of hiding and charged toward them, all missile batteries firing.
Her Hunter-IIs had almost run down the escaping dragoon. It spat countermeasures, but so far the torpedoes were evading them. Smythe pinpointed a weak spot in the armor where the brawler had struck, and the gunnery guided the torpedoes in.
One torpedo hit, then another. A pair of flashes. When the sensors cleared, the dragoon had been reduced to a handful of large pieces of engine and deck plating, a streak of debris that strung out for a million miles as it continued on momentum. Capp pumped her fist.
Tolvern and her pilot already had the battle cruiser swinging back around toward the first, injured dragoon. Falcons in the air, bay doors closing. Main battery almost ready, secondary primed to fire.
The dragoon drifted in front of them, helpless and unable to return more than a feeble pulse fire. Blackbeard’s secondary battery had explosive shot. More than enough. Tolvern was so confident she ordered the first three cannons to hold fire, and attacked with the final four.
The enemy engine detonated under Blackbeard’s attack, and the rest of the ship drifted end over end. No way to fight, but life systems still active. Leave the bastards to float and let the Scandians take prisoners when the star wolves arrived.
Ronaldo Carvalho and his striker wing of ten falcons had formed ranks and begun to move toward the dead enemy ship, but there was no point to that now. Instead, he looped his forces around the battle cruiser, even as she began to swing about to face the final, incoming dragoon, still charging in their direction, and led by a flotilla of missiles.
Warthog swung around, too, and they presented a unified front against the enemy ship before it arrived on the battlefield. A swarm of missiles and slower, but more lethal, Mark-IV torpedoes crossed paths with the incoming fire.
For several minutes, all was a flurry of countermeasures and pulse fire from the falcons as they hammered at the dragoon’s missile barrage. It was expert work all around, and for a moment it looked as though they’d emerge unscathed. But one of the heavier missiles evaded a faulty burst charge, slipped through chaff, and was unharmed by a radiation flash designed to fry its systems.
It came right at Blackbeard’s bridge, only seconds from impact.
“Warning,” the AI said in her calm tone. “Class-two detonation expected.”
And in a bad spot, too. Tolvern braced herself.
The missile slammed into them, but didn’t detonate. Either it was a dud, or the radiation countermeasure had done its work after all.
Capp let out a disbelieving, delighted, donkey-bray
of a laugh. “You see that, Cap’n? No reported damage!”
And now it was Blackbeard’s turn. Missiles got past enemy countermeasures, enough to land a hard sting. The dragoon targeted desperate fire on the Mark-IVs, and managed to cripple the first two before they reached their target. The next pair seemed destined to fail, too.
Tolvern called the gunnery. “Main cannon ready?”
Barker’s gruff voice answered. “Aye. Penetrating shot again. The secondary is already back online—we’ll finish ’em off there if we crack the shell.”
But there was no need. The first Mark-IV of the second wave broke through and slammed into the dragoon. A huge explosion. A trio of missiles from the brawler detonated one after another while the dragoon was still recovering, and by the time the next torpedo hit, it was already exploding inside a gutted, flaming wreck.
A handful of missiles finished the job of turning the enemy ship into flotsam of very small pieces. And just like that there were no enemy ships left on the battlefield. Tolvern’s deck crew cheered and slapped backs.
Capp came behind Nyb Pim, grinning madly, and jostled the pilot’s bony shoulders. Nyb Pim remained seated, whistling happily.
“I don’t believe it,” Smythe said. He stared, gaping, down at his console. “Barely a scratch.”
“Believe it, mate!” Capp shouted from across the room.
Tolvern couldn’t afford to celebrate. “I need hard scans. We found one additional ship hiding, and there might be others.”
That settled them down. They turned sensors on their immediate neighborhood, and shortly Smythe found another anomaly. A blip, something unusual. Very close at hand, too, but they couldn’t pinpoint it.
“Wait a second,” Smythe said from the tech console. “Hold on . . . it can’t be.”
“What are you babbling about?” Capp asked.
Smythe shoved at his armrests and rose to stand above his console. “It is!”
“For God’s sake, what is it?” Tolvern said, impatient and growing nervous.
Because the others were right. The battle had all happened so quickly, so easily. And Blackbeard never emerged unscathed from a fight.
The Alliance Trilogy Page 28