“There’s a plan, a rather desperate plan to knock the monster out of the fight,” she said, “but we have to lure it to Persia, first.”
“It might be going there already.”
“It might,” she conceded, “and the visible withdrawal of our fleet will make the target all the more enticing. But I need to be sure.”
Maxwell only paused an instant, before recognition dawned in his eyes. “Meaning you intend to leave my ship dangling on the near side of the jump, wounded, unable to go through. A big, tempting piece of bait. That’s your plan, isn’t it?”
“More or less. We’ll make it look like you’re struggling to keep up while the rest of us go through.”
“Dammit.”
“It’s an ugly thing, Maxwell, and I wouldn’t order it if we weren’t in desperate straits. But as you said, more losses will be suffered before this is over.” She gave what she hoped was a sympathetic shake of the head. “I wouldn’t order this if I didn’t think that Fervent’s destruction would prevent greater losses down the road.”
“Fervent has been in eighteen different military engagements,” Maxwell said. “Eleven under my two predecessors and seven under my command. She has notched six direct kills of hostile craft, including three sloops, a pirate vessel, an Apex lance, and an Adjudicator dragoon. Crew members have been awarded two rampant lions and fourteen royal crosses, among other accolades. It’s a pitiful end to a glorious history, if you ask me.”
“I agree. The universe can be cruelly ironic.”
The fight seemed to have gone out of Maxwell, and he merely looked deflated. Tolvern resisted the urge to prod him, knowing that the result was inevitable. At last he sighed.
“All right, if we’re going to let the leviathan eat her, here’s how I’d do it without losing any of the fine men and women under my command.”
#
All but fifteen of Fervent’s crew were shortly transferred to other ships that had lost crew in critical areas. The remainder, concentrated on the bridge and the engine room, set off toward the Persia jump, where the cruiser trailed a number of other wounded ships that Capp had organized. Maxwell himself stayed on board his ship. The whole squadron of wounded vessels moved sluggishly, which allowed Fervent to match pace.
Tolvern positioned missile frigates in a semicircle around the Persia jump point, with fourteen of her swifter warships guarding them. She gathered the slower ships like sloops and torpedo boats a few million miles away in orbit around the star, cloaked to the best of their abilities.
Meanwhile, back at the jump point disgorging the ships fleeing the leviathan, Void Queen came through, turned about, and presented guns as she drifted back toward Blackbeard.
Vargus sent an audio message, short and to the point. “Trafalgar and Polaris are next to jump, followed by Citadel. Prepare for enemy attack.”
Trafalgar and Polaris were light cruisers, and Citadel was the third battle cruiser, of course. Earlier reports had indicated that Captain Fox’s ship would be the last to withdraw into Nebuchadnezzar, which meant these were the last forces to arrive. Anyone else must be dead.
Tolvern got Capp connected with Void Queen’s counterpart to coordinate their respective gunneries, then called over to Smythe at the tech console.
“Once Citadel is through, how many ships are we missing from Fox and Vargus’s task force?”
Smythe worked his computer. “Nine, sir.”
“Nine? Going against the lists, we were already down eight when Fervent came through and Maxwell made his report. So only one more lost ship? That can’t be right.” She thumbed at her screen to show the forces as she had them arrayed. “We still look thin on several fronts.”
“Nine more, sir. Besides Maxwell’s reported eight.”
Good God, could that be right? If so, Fox and Vargus were lucky to get out of there alive.
Several ships had recently come through, and had been counted, but not yet identified. One of these, upon scans, was an unknown vessel. Smythe and Lomelí raised the alarm before they got the all clear from Vargus. The unknown vessel was apparently Scorpion, the surviving warship of an Old Earth fleet. Smythe hit her with scans, and an assistant tech studied data coming over from the incoming ships.
“Stay on task,” Tolvern told them. “We’ll have time to look at Scorpion later.”
Two other ships that had been lingering near the jump point didn’t respond to attempts to hail them over the fleet com. Instruments must be down. Scans revealed a destroyer and a star wolf, so beat-up that it was a miracle they’d made the crossing at all. They limped out of the way just before Citadel made the jump, and Capp used backup flash signaling to order them to follow the squadron of walking wounded.
Fox’s ship was fully intact, thank God, except for some damage to his brawler. He slid into position, and soon all three battle cruisers were aligned, with their brawlers positioned as shields. Dozens of other warships gathered into formation to hold the jump long enough for the slower, injured ships to reach the Persia jump. Capp had sent off fourteen ships in all, and they were soon out of immediate danger.
Tolvern recorded a message to the commanding officers of the force she held in place around the jump point.
“This isn’t an all-out battle. It’s a holding maneuver, but it must appear serious. If the enemy suspects that the whole operation is a feint, a lure to drag them into Persia, the plan falls apart. I know we can’t stand up to a star leviathan, but we have to make it look like we’re going to try.”
She had barely sent the message when two things happened within minutes of each other. The first was the appearance of a newcomer on the far side of the system, near the Xerxes jump. This caused some alarm, but most likely it was friendly if coming from that direction, Xerxes being the next jump on the way to Scandian-held systems. The ship was cloaked, and it remained at the jump point as if waiting for the rest of its fleet to arrive. Allied reinforcements, most likely.
The second was the arrival of the star leviathan. Only twenty minutes had passed since Citadel entered Nebuchadnezzar, and already the monster was through, dragged along by six enemy carriers and their riders.
Within minutes of jumping through, the star fortresses began to disgorge their dragoons, and more than thirty of the smaller Adjudicator warships were soon accelerating toward Tolvern’s fleet. As they did, the star fortresses threw out a massive barrage of missiles. The leviathan had tucked in its tentacles to go through the jump, and now unspooled them.
Tolvern watched in dismay as its full size became apparent, and she saw how much it had grown since she’d last faced it. There were several new tentacles, and the old ones had grown thicker and longer. The main bulk had swelled by nearly a quarter of a mile in length, and it was fatter around the middle. As it stretched out, it looked like some vast bio-mechanical squid with huge, glowing engines.
The leviathan dwarfed the massive star fortresses surrounding it, but they kept it contained and drove it toward the human and Hroom warships arrayed in battle formation. The sheer size of it bearing down on them made Tolvern blanch, and it was all she could do not to order an immediate retreat as it exposed spore cannons and fired.
The dragoons made a swift charge, and star wolves rushed to smash their formations before they could break into the heart of the Alliance fleet. Blackbeard fired missiles, followed by her sister ships, Citadel and Void Queen. Thousands of bomblets corkscrewed toward the battlefield from a thick cluster of Hroom sloops firing their serpentine batteries from below the battle cruisers on the Z-axis. Five destroyers slid into position in front of the dragoons and spat a line of mines, followed by missiles and a spray of light cannon fire as they fell back.
The mass of Alliance fire slammed into the lead dragoons. Three enemy ships went down almost at once, and two more fell back after suffering heavy damage. Other dragoons caught the destroyers before they could retreat, forcing them into evasive maneuvers as they attempted to gain the safety of the battle cruisers’ guns
.
Missiles from the star fortresses were landing on the battlefield, and bomblets and the occasional missile splashed off their armor from the other side. Six star fortresses could put a vast quantity of ordnance into play, and it was all Tolvern’s fleet could do to fight off the missiles with countermeasures.
At the same time, the harvester spores were expanding, gliding past ships. One cluster caught a wounded dragoon and gummed its engines. The monster turned toward it with tentacles waving greedily. The enemy gave the implants a jolt to shock it back into line.
Tolvern carefully studied the leviathan’s movements. “Is it pulling loose on the side with the damaged implant?”
“Doesn’t look like it, sir,” Smythe answered. “There’s no different activity near that node that I can detect.”
“They’d better not have replaced it with a new implant, or we’re in trouble.”
“I don’t see how they could have.” Smythe tapped his keys. “Oh, I see what’s happening. They’re giving it extra jolts on that side.”
Tolvern turned to her first mate. “Capp, tell Barker to leave the dragoons alone—there’s plenty of other ships for that—and target all weapons at the forward port-side star fortress.”
“Wouldn’t it help us more to kill the one hovering above the damaged implant?” Capp asked.
“We can’t get close enough to kill any of them. More importantly, we’re not trying to stop them here, remember? And that means not playing all of our cards. Not letting them know we’re aware of the damaged implant.”
The dragoons kept harrying her destroyers, and even a counterattack by three corvettes and a light cruiser failed to free them. Torpedo boats charged in, followed by a reserve force of star wolves. This opened a slight gap, which the corvette Swordfish slid into, firing her cannon. The cannon fire opened the wedge wider, and a destroyer slipped free.
Several dragoons caught one of the remaining four and battered it into submission until it was drifting on momentum, helpless, as it fell toward the leviathan. The creature spotted it, and its tentacles waved in anticipation as it spat globules from its spore cannons. Spores enveloped it. The destroyer had enough time to send out escape pods before the monster hauled it in. Swordfish and a fellow corvette, Meteor, darted across the battlefield in a frantic attempt to scoop up survivors while dragoons tried to pulse the escape pods out of the sky.
More spores caught the other three destroyers, one after another. A star wolf was caught in the attack as well. Soon, the leviathan had one ship in its maw and was dragging four others in with its tentacles.
A second star wolf, blasting its pummel guns in an attempt to sever a tentacle holding its companion ship, took a battering from two star fortresses. It drifted away, engines flaring, trying to slip free. A lazy tentacle swung out and grabbed it.
Tolvern stared in horror. The leviathan had grabbed six of her ships in thirty minutes of battle. The first destroyer had already vanished down its throat, and the explosions of her death were visible as the monster opened wide to swallow one of her companions. There was no possible way to rescue the others before they vanished, as well.
“That’s enough,” she said. “Withdraw the slower ships first. The rest of us will hold on here until they’re safely away. Pilot, give me an estimated time to disengage.”
Nyb Pim’s long fingers danced over his console as he set about calculating trajectories, acceleration times, and the like. While the Hroom worked, Tolvern ordered the star wolves, corvettes, and other swifter ships to regroup off the battle cruisers’ flank to fight off the dragoons trying to prevent her slower ships from withdrawing.
A ferocious side battle soon developed off starboard and above her on the Z-axis, with more than twenty dragoons working hard to pin down more prey for the leviathan. The battle cruisers, their brawlers, and four light cruisers held position to fight off the attacks from the enemy carriers while numerous smaller ships tackled the dragoons to push them out of the way.
“Captain,” Smythe said. “We got a reading on the newcomers. It’s the admiral, all right.”
“Thank God.”
Nine Royal Navy warships had jumped into the system from Xerxes. The lead ship was a battle cruiser—that could only be HMS Inferno, fresh out of the yards with Drake at the helm. It wasn’t a battleship—there would be no replacement for Dreadnought, devoured by the leviathan in the Lenin System—but it was the next best thing. By now, Drake should have the feel of his new ship, should have his crew trained and ready for battle. With him were two light cruisers, two corvettes, and a handful of destroyers.
This discovery was followed almost at once by an audio message from Drake. Tolvern was even more relieved to hear her husband’s voice than to see the ships, and felt a wild hope that he would have some miraculous tactic or bit of news to share. She was soon disabused.
“I got word of your scheme via naval relay,” Drake said. “It sounds . . . desperate, to be honest. A good way to lose Persia and every ship who enters. But we are, admittedly, in desperate circumstances, and I have no better ideas. Tell me how to support your operation. General Bailyna Tyn is on her way with additional sloops, but it will be several days before they can be brought to bear.”
She wanted Drake’s reinforcements, especially given her losses of the last hour and the battered condition of the task forces Vargus and Fox had returned from across the frontier. But neither Inferno nor any other possible combination of ships could save her in straight-up combat against a star leviathan.
They had to take the monster out of the fight. It was the only way. Then, with the preponderance of firepower on their side, they’d have enough strength to wipe out the Adjudicator fleet.
She recorded her response.
“Withdraw to Xerxes. Make it look like you’re trying to hold the line there. We can’t have it seem as though we’re making a final stand in Persia or they might get suspicious. I’ll continue my retreat, and hope the enemy tries to catch us in a dead-end system. I’ll send a subspace once I’ve got the enemy in Persia and attacking the planet, and you can turn about and come in from behind as reinforcements.”
But as soon as the subspace was underway, she gave it more thought. For the enemy to believe she was trying to defend both Xerxes and Persia, she needed to reinforce Drake’s squadron or it wouldn’t look plausible.
“He’s not strong enough yet,” she said aloud. “We’ll send one of the wolf packs to support the admiral.”
Capp studied Tolvern. “Who you gonna send? None of them Vikings wants to leave the fight, and they’ll be spitting mad now that the monster ate a couple of their ships.”
“I was thinking about the Fourth Wolves,” Tolvern said.
“Svensen’s boys?”
“He can escort the Castillo refugees. Svensen’s keen on Elizabeth Kelly, and will want her out of danger.”
Capp fiddled with her console. “Yeah, not gonna work, Cap’n. Kelly’s not on the transport ship—she’s in stasis on one of them destroyers. Looks like the one that nearly got munched just now. Anyhow, I thought you was going to send Svensen down to the leviathan. Ain’t he the best one for the job?”
Tolvern licked her lips. “Let’s make it the First Wolves, then.”
The first mate raised an eyebrow at this. “Olafsen? He’s not gonna be keen on it, neither.”
“No, but he’s lost a star wolf, with two others knocked around in Castillo. If we send him back, he can pick up reinforcements and come back stronger than ever. I think he’ll go.”
“Aye, maybe you’re right.” Capp didn’t sound convinced.
The first mate proved correct. Olafsen still wanted to stay and fight, regardless of the damage his wolf pack had suffered. Besides, there were still survivors to collect from their escape pods. Tolvern repeated her order, and he was soon gathering his scattered star wolves. Grudging, but compliant.
Several dragoons gave chase, harassing his ships as they fled toward the Xerxes jump. The rest of the
dragoons kept trying to divide ships off from the main fleet to feed to the leviathan, which was finishing the last of its first batch of victims and seemed hungry for more.
Capp made noises of alarm as the leviathan resumed its forward crawl. “Hey, Pilot,” she said. “We gonna bust out of here or what?”
“There is nothing to bust,” Nyb Pim answered in his high voice. “The way behind is empty of enemies, and we have a clear fallback toward the jump point that leads into Persia.”
“It’s the time I’m talking about, you silly Hroom. King’s balls, don’t take things so literally. When can we go?”
“Another forty-three minutes and the crippled warships that Captain Jess Tolvern sent ahead will have enough leeway to make good their escape from the battlefield. Then we can follow and jump clear at the same time.”
Forty-three minutes sounded like an eternity when facing a leviathan that had wiped out a half dozen warships just since entering Nebuchadnezzar. Olafsen had gathered what was left of the First Wolves, and she sent him toward where Drake remained at the Xerxes jump.
Tolvern held her breath, afraid the enemy would give chase. They didn’t. Instead, the star fortresses and the leviathan kept pressing her remaining forces.
She was down to twenty-two battle cruisers, light cruisers, corvettes, and star wolves, plus four war junks, a scattering of support vehicles, and the Old Earth warship Vargus had encountered.
Scorpion had done no fighting so far, had merely clung remora-like to Void Queen’s side throughout the initial stages, but she had a lean, hungry look, something like a cross between a destroyer and star wolf, and from her battered appearance, the thing could both take and deliver abuse. Tolvern wished she could give it a taste of battle to evaluate its performance.
No time to experiment with that now. She slowed her retreat until the enemy had nearly run her down, then ordered a sharp change in course along angles that Nyb Pim had calculated, in a turn back toward the wounded ships fleeing for Persia.
The Alliance Trilogy Page 59