by D. J. Holmes
“Very nearly,” Lightfoot agreed. His Flag Captain had commanded a medium cruiser under Admiral Gupta’s fleet when they had raided the system. “It would be a pity if we ruined all the effort they’ve spent rebuilding their supply hub.”
“No unusual readings from any of our drones yet Admiral,” Lightfoot’s sensor officer updated everyone.
“They must have some more ships,” Commander Evans, Lightfoot’s Chief of staff, suggested. “We’ve hardly seen sight nor sign of anything since we left their HQ system.”
“We’ve been well behind enemy lines all the way here,” Hamilton responded. “If a Karacknid fleet suddenly appeared several systems behind our frontline they wouldn’t encounter too many warships.”
“No,” Evans agreed slowly. “Though they have far more ships than we do.”
Hamilton nodded to Evans. “Point taken.”
“There may not be any other ships in the system, but this is new,” the sensor officer reported as the holo image of the system zoomed in on Jaranna itself.
In the midst of the Karacknid fleet there was one ship that stood out. If it hadn’t already been surrounded by dreadnoughts, Lightfoot would have assumed it was one. Yet it dwarfed the ships around it. “What is it?” he asked.
“Neither ours nor Alliance sensor records have seen anything like it before,” the officer replied. “Wait, I’m running the sensor return through the Kalassai intelligence… I’ve got something. They call it a Command Dreadnought. Apparently, they’ve only come across a couple of them before. They believe they are assigned to higher up Karacknid fleet commanders.”
Lightfoot froze. It made no sense. They had been fighting the Karacknids for three years and had never come across one before. Did that mean they hadn’t been facing a senior Karacknid commander? And if they were now, why were there only one hundred ships in the system? The warship he was staring at looked designed for getting into the thick of a large fleet battle. Why was it sitting relatively alone behind the front lines? Something is not right, he thought. We’ve seen Karacknid scouts on our journey here, this commander must have known we were coming. Which means if he has more ships, he has laid a trap for us. “I want a new spread of stealth recon drones,” Lightfoot snapped. He paused as he scanned the system. Imagining himself as the Karacknid commander he guessed where he would hide an ambushing fleet. “Focus on these four locations,” he added as he highlighted four key areas. As his officers got to work releasing the drones, Lightfoot silently thanked the fact that he had given the order to go in at one quarter impulse. Any faster and his fleet could have already sprung the Karacknid trap if there was one.
It took thirty minutes for his second spread of drones to detect something, but when they did, Lightfoot’s instincts were confirmed. One stealth drone had detected a handful of ships lying completely still about two thirds of the way to Jaranna. Though Lightfoot had no idea how many ships were actually there, the presence of a few made him sure there would be far more. Then a second sighting had come in. Behind a small moon that orbited the system’s sixth planet there were one hundred and forty powered down Karacknid warships. “Full reverse,” Lightfoot ordered as soon as the second contact came in. “Lay in a course directly out of the system. Full power.”
As his fleet turned, Lightfoot half expected the hidden Karacknid ships to reveal themselves and attempt to pursue him. When they didn’t, his concern grew. If the Karacknid commander intended to keep his numbers hidden, it meant they could be even higher than he feared. If there is a new senior Karacknid in charge of the war, how many ships does he have elsewhere? Lightfoot worried. “Dispatch four frigates to Admiral Somerville. He needs to know about this immediately.” Operation Counterstrike could be in jeopardy.
*
Slayer, Jaranna system
High Admiral Tanaka-lang slowly retracted his claws as the Allied ships reversed course. He had thought he had them. Four hundred Allied ships was a small force. Yet it was a significant proportion of the ships that had broken through his lines. With a fleet nearly twice their size hidden within the Jaranna system, he had been less than an hour away from pulling off a standard claw ambush. From five different directions he would have surrounded the Allied Fleet in a cocoon of death and slaughtered them. Now they were falling back. Something had spooked them. Tanaka-lang knew a lesser Admiral might have given chase. There was a 50-50 chance he could have caught the Allied Fleet with at least some of his ships and forced them into a fighting retreat but he would have given away his numbers. That was the last thing he wanted. The Humans had uncovered the vast majority of their fleet. If he could cut them off and finish them, the door would be open for a counterattack into the heart of Human space. High Admiral Hur’lang’s plan to invade Alliance territory through Human space had cost him his life. Yet the theory behind the plan was sound. “Order our fleet elements to remain hidden,” Tanaka-lang commanded his subordinates. “Send another wave of frigates to our frontline positions. Every theatre commander has permission to fall back if pressed heavily. Any supplies and munitions they can spare are to be sent back to us with all haste.” Though he hadn’t received any word from the frontline bordering Alliance territory, Tanaka-lang was sure the Allied Fleet that had cut off his main supply route wasn’t acting alone. If the allies were smart, they’d be launching attacks up and down the front to force his fleets to use up supplies. That was fine with him, he had no qualms temporarily abandoning a few frontier systems.
As his officers got to work, Tanaka-lang watched the Human fleet cross the system’s mass shadow and jump into shift space. The sudden appearance of the Allied Fleet behind his front lines had caused him concern. Supplies were always an issue, and the Allied Fleet had cut off the main supply route his entire fleet relied upon. It was also worrying that none of his fleets to the east of where the Allied Fleet had punched through his defenses had reported in yet. That was a mystery Tanaka-lang was still trying to solve. But after an initial few days of concern, his worry had diminished. His main battlefleet was scheduled to reach the Mar’am system in twelve days’ time. When they did, the Allied Fleet was going to get a surprise. If he could scrape up enough supplies, Tanaka-lang intended to drive that surprise all the way to Earth and then Alliance space. Soon we will have you under our guns, Tanaka-lang thought towards the Allied Fleet that had just disappeared from Slayer’s sensors as his claws reappeared from their sheaths and dug into his command chair. Soon.
*
IS Misfit, 16th March 2484 AD (two weeks later).
“What are your orders Commodore?” Scott’s First Lieutenant asked.
For a second Scott thought the Lieutenant was talking to someone else. She still wasn’t used to her new rank. Just imagine what it will be like if you get your own command staff, Scott thought. She had enough people to organize with just Misfit’s bridge officers under her command. Shaking herself, she focused on the matter at hand. Her squadron of twelve destroyers and cruisers had just raided two small Karacknid colonies. Circling back towards the Karacknid fleet HQ system, they were on their way home. Upon entering their third Karacknid system, instead of the relatively undefended world they had expected to encounter, they found a large freighter convoy. Over two hundred freighters were being escorted by twenty Karacknid frigates and four destroyers. “Let me see those scans,” Scott said as she looked at her First Lieutenant. “Send them to my command chair.”
As a 3D image of a Karacknid destroyer and frigate appeared in front of her, she enlarged it. In conjunction with Xui-le, she had designed most of the modern warships currently serving in the Imperial Fleet. In doing so she had studied Karacknid ship design and tactics as deeply as anyone she knew. Upon seeing the Karacknid escorts she knew there was something different about them. As she examined them more closely, her interest increased. The two ships before her were definitely a destroyer and frigate. Yet they were unlike any variant she had come across. They have to be old, surely, she said to herself. Why else would the Karackni
ds be using them to escort freighters? Why haven’t we come across them before? At several points during the war, Human and Alliance fleets had found themselves behind enemy lines. If the Karacknids utilized older ship variants outside of the frontline, they would have been spotted. Looking up from the Karacknid ships, she took in the view of the whole system again. She had come to attack a small mining world. Every small piece of damage her squadron and the other raiding squadrons Somerville had dispatched could do would count for something. But a small mining world was just that, a small target compared to the convoy in front of her. No, it’s irrelevant at this stage, she decided as she turned away from the mining facilities. The real question is, what is that convoy doing? It had been over four weeks since the Allied Fleet had entered the Karacknid HQ system. Word should have spread far and wide of an enemy fleet operating behind their lines. Why was a Karacknid supply convoy heading straight for the Karacknid HQ system? Do they know something we don’t? “Can we catch the convoy?” she asked her officers.
“It would be close Captain,” Misfit’s Second Lieutenant responded. “We know their freighters can increase their acceleration rates if they need to. If the escort turns and takes us on, the freighters will probably make it to the system’s mass shadow and escape.”
“Then we follow them,” Scott said. “We remain in stealth and match their course. As soon as they jump out, we’ll go to full acceleration. We should be right behind them by the time we get to the next system. Then we can see exactly what they’re up to. And, if the opportunity arises, we will blast them into pieces,” she added as she winked at her First Lieutenant. “Send the word to the rest of our ships. Get us moving.”
“Aye Admiral,” Misfit’s Second Lieutenant acknowledged.
“The Karacknid mining station?” her First Lieutenant asked.
Scott shook her head. “It’s their lucky day. That convoy of ships is heading in a strange direction. Answers are more important than hurting Karacknid infrastructure at this stage.”
“Understood,” the Lieutenant replied with a nod.
Thirty-six hours later Misfit and the rest of Scott’s ships jumped out of shift space into a new system. The cruiser’s passive sensors looked for the Karacknid convoy. Gasps from her sensor officer and Second Lieutenant told Scott they had found more than the convoy. A second later everyone on Misfit’s bridge saw what the gravimetric sensors had detected. There wasn’t just one convoy in the system; there were ten! Or more! Scott guessed. “I want to know what we are looking at immediately,” she demanded.
For nearly thirty seconds no one answered her as every bridge officer peered over their consoles, working furiously. Scott’s Second Lieutenant was the first to speak. “It looks like there are thirteen convoys similar to the one we tracked in the last system. They are heading towards the same shift passage. It is the one that will eventually lead to the HQ system. Every convoy has destroyers and frigates similar to the ones we spotted escorting them. There are a handful of cruisers sprinkled into the mix as well.”
“Wait,” Misfit’s First Lieutenant interjected. “The furthest away squadron, it’s not a convoy. Those aren’t freighters. They’re battleships and dreadnoughts!”
Scott’s eyes widened. The lead convoy had over four hundred ships in it. Even as she watched, the leading ships disappeared off the gravimetric sensor right at the point where they crossed the system’s mass shadow. They had just jumped into shift space. “Check our sensor logs, how many ships did we initially detect in that forward convoy? They’ve been jumping out the entire time we’ve been watching them.”
“There were six hundred Captain,” a sensor officer reported. “Though the number started to drop as soon as we detected them.”
“A battlefleet,” Scott said as dread filled her voice. “Why didn’t the ship’s computers recognize those warships immediately?” she asked.
“Their drive signatures are slightly different than what the computer is programmed to recognize as enemy capital ships,” the sensor officer reported.
“Like the frigates and destroyers in front of us?” Scott followed up.
“Yes Captain,” the officer replied.
Scott closed her eyes. The enemy battlefleet was already an entire system ahead of her. There was no way she could get to Admiral Somerville in time to warn him. Not if she turned back and retraced her steps. They’d beat her to the Karacknid HQ system by days. And there’s no way to know how many warships they have, she complained to herself. She was certain Misfit’s sensors hadn’t detected all of the Karacknid battlefleet. They could have been jumping out ships for more than half an hour. There could be ten thousand of them for all we know! She pulled up a star map of local space. Her squadron had been assigned to raid the north-western most systems Somerville had wanted hit. As far as they knew, the Karacknid supply network led from their HQ system all the way to their homeworld. Any reinforcements coming from the inner systems would have been traveling through systems far more to the east of where she was.
“What is it?” Misfit’s First Lieutenant asked as he turned his command chair towards Scott and the star map she had on display.
“Those warships. They are either old, brand-new or have come from a different theatre of war,” Scott explained. “Think about where we are. If what we just saw was a new battlefleet jumping out of the system, and all these freighters are their supply train, we’d expect them to be coming from the interior of the Karacknid Empire. That’s where we’d expect their newer ships to be coming from, straight out of their shipyards. Why are they out here? Why have they been traveling from East to West. What if this is an entire fleet that was fighting in another war? Perhaps one they’ve won. Now they’ve come to join the fight against us. Either way our fleet is in big trouble. That could have been a fleet of Karacknid veterans we just saw on their way to the HQ system.”
“Then we need to warn Admiral Somerville as soon as possible,” Scott’s First Lieutenant replied. “He could get caught between that fleet and the Karacknids defending their HQ.”
Scott was all too aware of that, but she didn’t respond. She was desperately trying to figure out a way to get word to Somerville. She shook her head. There was only one option she could think of, but it seemed impossible. If the Karacknid battlefleet was heading towards the HQ system, they only had to pass through one more system. How could she possibly catch them in such a short space? “Get me all the Captains of our squadron. I need to speak to them privately. I’ll be in my office.”
Standing, Scott quickly stepped out of Misfit’s bridge and into her adjoining office. By the time she sat at her desk, most of the Captains in her small squadron had their holo images arrayed around her. “I am certain that we just watched the tail end of a Karacknid battlefleet jump out of the system. Given how many convoys there are in front of us, it has to be a big fleet. That means Admiral Somerville’s fleet is in trouble, serious trouble. If we can’t warn him in time, the entire fleet could be caught and wiped out. You all know what that means. The door to Earth and even the heart of the Alliance would be wide open. We have to get word to Somerville, no matter the cost.”
“What are you proposing Commodore?” Captain Rankin of the destroyer Beastly asked.
“I’m going to dispatch one destroyer to retrace our steps as quickly as possible and get back to the Karacknid HQ system. It may be the Karacknid battlefleet delays coming to their HQ’s aid. If so, that destroyer may make it in time. If they don’t delay, there’s no way retracing our steps can get us back quickly enough. That’s why the rest of us will head on. We’ll charge through this system and do whatever it takes to get in front of the Karacknid battlefleet.”
“That is suicide,” Captain Cummings interjected. “We’d never make it past all the convoy escorts, never mind a Karacknid battlefleet!”
“We have no choice,” Scott replied calmly. “Unless someone has another suggestion?” As she looked from Captain to Captain they all averted their eyes and held th
eir tongues. They knew there weren’t any to be made. “Listen, I know this may be a suicide mission. But we have to try. If the fleet is wiped out, we will be hunted down and destroyed. If not, if we escaped and made it back to Earth, there’d be nothing left by the time we got there. We have to try… But I’m not going to force any of you to follow me into certain death. I will randomly select which destroyer is going to retrace our previous course. I’ll send orders to you all that make it clear you do not have to follow me. If you want to go with the destroyer, then so be it. However, Misfit will be entering this system at maximum acceleration. You can follow me or not. Decide now, as soon as I write these orders, we will be moving.” Not wanting to entertain any more discussion on the matter, Scott cut the COM channel. Each Captain knew what was at stake. Talking was not going to achieve anything more. She dictated the orders and moved to the bridge. “Jump us right to the mass shadow. Then I want maximum military acceleration. Set course for the shift passage the Karacknid battlefleet just jumped into,” Scott ordered. For several seconds Misfit’s bridge officers stared at her, some with mouths open. “Do it now!” she snapped. Suddenly the bridge was a hive of activity.
“Ready to jump,” her ship’s navigation officer said thirty seconds later.