“That’s cutting it a little close,” Garibaldi quipped over the link.
“It is what it is,” Middleton grudged.
“I am detecting fire,” Hephaestion reported, hesitating for a moment before continuing grimly, “it appears that the thirty ambush craft we detected have been destroyed by the Battleships’ guns.”
Middleton’s scowl deepened, “That’s a thousand Void Hunters the Imps just erased from the board. We could have used them in the next hour.”
Minutes ticked by, during which time Garibaldi’s people finished the patchwork repair to the bridge before Mikey led an EVA team out to work on the disabled shield generator.
Middleton watched the Stalwart defensive effort continue to unfold in their wake, where the Stalwart Commander actually seemed to have taken control over one of the Imperial Cruisers and was max-burning away from the rest of its cohorts. Another of the Cruisers’ gun deck was spewing fire at the fellow Imperials, who had finally decided to fire on their own ship to avoid being further harmed by it.
Most importantly of all, the Imperial Battleship which Middleton had left critically wounded had ejected its fusion core and powered down its systems. It had all but waved a flag of surrender, which meant there were only two Cruisers and two Destroyers remaining on the board from the original twenty one ship Battle Group. And the captured Imperial Cruiser—which Middleton presumed was now commanded by the Stalwart Commander—was making its way for a supporting position adjacent to the remaining Stalwart Fleet.
The Stalwarts had retreated with one Battleship, the Glorious Burden, six Cruisers and five Corvettes which now took up their fallback position in defense of the second planet. It was hardly enough to repel the full-strength Imperial One Battle Group, or even to mount a decent defense against it, but when the League’s warships arrived it would certainly be sufficient to the task. The Void Hunters’ stealthy ambushes had proven far more effective at disrupting the Imperials than even Middleton had predicted.
As the Stalwart retreated, dozens of hulks of Imperial, Prichtac, and other designs now drifted in the wake of their vicious battle. Middleton only hoped his people would soon have the opportunity to pick over that salvage to reinforce their soon to be dangerously depleted arsenal.
“The Void Hunters are slowing their retreat,” Hephaestion reported as the Imperial warships advancing toward the felines came within two minutes until firing range of the missiles Middleton had programmed to gut those Battleships.
“They want to bait the trap,” Middleton explained, “they need the Imperials to commit themselves to engagement before we fire those missiles. If the Imperials are overcommitted when they enter range, and the missiles do sufficient damage, the Void Hunters can counterattack and close distance with their heavies and boarding parties. They’ll probably lose several of their Destroyers and Cruisers in the process, but they’ll be able to close to knife range and send their boarders onto the enemy ships.”
It was a risky play—and one which even Middleton would have been hard pressed to sign off on if such a play was his to order—but in his time spent around the Void Hunters he had never known them to shy away from danger. If anything, they seemed far too eager to seek it out—thus their predilection for employing and developing boarding parties instead of expendable ordnance like Starfire or Independence missiles.
The seconds ticked by until the missiles were scheduled to fire, but Middleton would still need to wait for several long, tense second before receiving their reports.
And when they came, it was everything he could have hoped for.
“I am reading one hundred eighty nine Independence-class missile blooms,” Hephaestion reported steadily. Several agonizing seconds later, the havoc they had wrought was plain to see on the plotter, “Both Battleships are neutralized…no, they have both been destroyed…” Hephaestion amended, his tone contested by the warring emotions of solemnity and triumph.
“The Cruisers are surging forward,” Middleton said with a measure of respect known only to warriors standing opposite their enemies after finding them to be made of the sternest stuff in the cosmos, “they didn’t even falter for an instant. Mr. Hephaestion,” Middleton inclined his chin toward his plotter as a rare chill ran down his spine, “that is how a warrior conducts a charge at the enemy’s ramparts: no break in his stride, no regret on his conscience, and a promise of retribution in his throat.”
Hephaestion nodded grimly, “They are formidable warriors, Captain.”
“They are,” Middleton agreed as the Cruisers entered firing range on the Void Hunters, “which is why we have to halt their advance in this star system. We’re the last—the only—line of defense out here against this invasion. We have to hold this line.”
“Indeed,” Hephaestion assented as the first salvo from Imperial Three’s Cruisers arced toward the Void Hunter warships—ships which had been arranged with their two Cruisers in the front, the four Destroyers behind them, and the nineteen Corvettes clustered around the Mothership still further behind the Destroyer group. “Eighteen turbo-laser hits against the two Void Hunter Cruisers,” Hephaestion reported, his demeanor resuming that of the unflappable young man who Middleton had come to admire as well as respect, “the Void Hunters are rolling as they drive toward the enemy. The Void Hunter Destroyers are returning fire.”
Middleton saw the Void Hunters’ two captured Imperial Destroyers, taken after the battle with Paganini’s task force, return fire against the left-most Cruiser in the Imperial formation. Only five turbo-lasers struck the enemy Cruiser’s shields, but it was enough to draw down their forward shields significantly.
The Void Hunter Corvettes then, somewhat surprisingly in Middleton’s mind, split out in a three dimensional cone and advanced toward the oncoming Imperials. It would take them nearly ten minutes to reach firing range with their relatively limited arsenals, and at least twice that long even at maximum burn to reach boarding range of the Imperial Cruisers.
“The Mothership’s power plants are experiencing a precipitous draw,” Hephaestion reported in alarm. “They are firing!”
The Mothership lashed out with its primary weapon: a spinal-mounted laser platform similar to those which had been employed by the Conformity Droids back in the Spineward Sectors. In fact, except for the lack of lethal radiation which had preceded those Droid weapon platforms, this particular weapon’s signature could not be denied as being fundamentally similar—if just short of outright identical—to those weapons.
The Mothership’s spinal laser lashed out and took the left-most Cruiser in the forward shields, burning fully through them and carving a chunk of crystal from the Imperial’s forward hull—a chunk which looked to be about as large as an average Cutter.
“Massive decompression detected from the Imperial Cruiser,” Hephaestion declared, “they are falling out of position with severe engine fluctuations. The Corvettes are firing missiles,” he added in surprise, which happened to be a sentiment Middleton shared, “I am reading one hundred ninety high-velocity kinetic warhead engine blooms—ten per Corvette. Time to impact: two minutes.”
“Their ordnance list showed them as nearly depleted of expendable munitions,” Middleton smirked, “it seems I’m going to need to have a talk with Mrr’shan after this is all over.”
“The Corvettes appear to be taking up a defensive posture,” Hephaestion added, and Middleton confirmed the young man’s assertion with a glance at his plotter.
“They’re looking to protect the Mothership,” he explained. “They’d be torn to shreds if they moved to engage at range, but if the Imperials come to firing range on the Mothership they’ll be in a position to counter from all angles. It’s brave, but those Destroyers could easily outflank them,” he said, and sure enough just a few seconds later he saw the Imperial Destroyers do precisely that.
The Lupine-class Imperial Destroyers blossomed outward into their own conical formation as their engines burned at maximum, creating the head-on image of
flower petals unfurling around the Cruisers at the formation’s center.
It would have been obvious to a child versed in simple trigonometry that the Imperials were easily going to gain the angle on the Corvettes, which they outgunned at least three to one in spite of being outnumbered nearly three to two. Imperial technology also allowed the Destroyers to outrange the Void Hunter Corvettes by such a margin that it would be practically impossible for the Corvettes to reach firing range before being scoured from the board. None of that even touched on the fact that the Imperial Destroyers’ shields were fully twice as robust as the Void Hunters’ Corvettes, which only served to underline just how lopsided this battle appeared to be.
But appearances could be deceiving—just as the commanders of the Imperial Cruisers soon discovered.
“The Void Hunter Cruisers are returning fire,” Hephaestion said in confusion, “they are scattering their fire across the enemy Cruisers…curious. Captain, I am detecting spotting along the Imperial warships’ forward shields.”
Middleton’s brow rose in surprise before he scanned the raw feed for himself. It was every bit as confusing as Hephaestion had seemed to think it: in spite of the felines’ fire being relatively indiscriminate, there did appear to be unexpected flares in the Imperial Cruisers’ forward shields.
Then he realized what he was seeing, “Those are boarding craft penetrating their shields, Hephaestion.”
“They coordinated their strikes with the boarding crafts’ entries in order to create weak points in the enemy shields,” Hephaestion concurred, “and somehow their small craft remained undetected on our sensors as they pushed through the weakened shields.”
“Tricky kitties,” Middleton nodded approvingly.
“Two of the Cruisers’ engines have been hit,” Hephaestion reported darkly, “the explosive signatures are consistent with low-yield fusion bombs of the type that drive the Independence-class missiles.”
That set Middleton’s jaw. He had been explicitly clear that the use of WMD’s would not be permitted, and uncontrolled fusion explosions were generally considered to be in the strategic weapons category.
“What were the yields?” he demanded, knowing that the standard Independence-class charge yielded a hundred kilotons. Anything over twenty kilotons was considered a WMD by most accepted definitions, but even the smaller devices would be considered such if they did not detonate with a bare minimum of radioactive residue.
“Yields were…eighteen and nineteen kilotons, Captain,” Hephaestion said quizzically. He seemed to be uncertain as to the reason for his commander’s sudden anger at two Cruisers being taken largely out of the fight.
“Sweep that area for a complete radiation profile,” Middleton growled, simultaneously pleased at the Void Hunters’ application of asymmetric warfare principles and angered by just how close they came to the line he had drawn regarding conduct within the AG Fleet—and he could not accept as even remotely possible that their actions had been anything less than premeditated with the full knowledge that he would not have approved had they asked his permission to deploy tactical fusion devices. “I want active scans utilizing tight confinement, Mr. Hephaestion—and record the results on a standalone data module for later review,” he added, knowing that employing the active sensors might highlight his location to two of the oncoming Destroyers. But if he emerged victorious from this fight, it would be of paramount importance to reinforce discipline throughout his fleet.
“Yes sir,” Hephaestion acknowledged as the Prejudice’s powerful sensor suite pulsed active scanning beams out into the wake of the still-drifting Cruisers. “Results downloaded,” he said after several seconds as he produced a data crystal.
“Good,” Middleton grunted, returning his focus to the battle unfolding between the Void Hunters and Imperial Three. Of the original six Cruisers, three were now engine-down and the other three were continuing on course toward the Void Hunter Mothership. Those three ships fired a volley of turbo-laser fire at the Mothership while the two engine-nuked Cruisers added their fire to the effort. At their current distance, which was just within extreme range—even for Imperial turbo-lasers, which out-ranged everything else Middleton had ever read about—the Imperial Cruisers’ turbo-lasers only landed nine strikes out of thirty beams.
“The Mothership’s forward shields are holding,” Middleton said in muted surprise, “they’re only down to eighty percent.”
The two non-Imperial-tech Void Hunter Destroyers fired their bevy of heavy lasers at the enemy Cruisers, stabbing a dozen beams into the central Cruiser’s forward shields just as the Imperials came into long range. The two Void Hunter Cruisers added their own heavy laser fire shortly thereafter, putting five more beams into the central ship’s forward shields.
“The central Cruiser’s forward shields are critically spotting. She is presenting her broadside,” Hephaestion reported just as the Void Hunter Mothership lashed out with its spinal-mounted main weapon.
The Mothership’s main beam cut through a short-lived gap in the Cruiser’s forward shields, punching into—and through—the Cruiser’s bow at a sharp angle which saw the spinal-mounted laser erupt out from the Cruiser’s port stern quarter, skewering no less than eighty percent of the ship’s length.
Middleton’s mouth went agape as the Cruiser’s engines went offline. Its fusion cores were immediately ejected by automated systems as the fatally wounded warship went into its death throes. Backup power generators—and, in all likelihood, their service crews—valiantly attempted to combat the cascade failures long enough for the survivors to reach their escape pods. But only a third of the Cruiser’s escape pods launched before the ship went cold, dark and silent. Its ruined hulk tumbled end over end as its two remaining cohorts continued their valiant charge toward the Void Hunter Mothership.
“That spinal beam is more powerful than anything I’ve seen,” Middleton muttered, acutely aware that it still fell well short of the reputed power of an Imperial Command Carrier’s main cannon. But since Middleton had never seen a Command Carrier fire its main cannon, his statement was absolutely true. “It burns through locsium like a plasma torch through glass…it suggests power several times that of those Conformity spinal lasers.”
“But the energy signatures appear to be remarkably similar to the Conformity weaponry,” Hephaestion observed.
“They are,” Middleton agreed as the Mothership accelerated to stern, burning her reverse thrusters for everything they were worth while its Corvette escorts fell back to maintain their previous posture. “It looks like I’m going to have a few more questions for Mrr’shan after this battle. Where is all the power coming from?”
“There is no radiation signature consistent with antimatter annihilation like that employed by the Conformity tribe’s spinal-mounted lasers,” Hephaestion said. “There is no other technology on file which would permit such a rapid firing of that weapon without some sort of commensurate signature.”
Middleton shook his head, resisting the urge to look toward the Prejudice’s stern—where the Total Conversion Drive unit was located, “I know of one piece of technology that might be able to put that much power out without leaving detectable traces.”
“It is possible,” Hephaestion belatedly agreed before the Imperial Cruisers and Void Hunter ships exchanged another volley of fire. Four Imperial Cruisers were able to lob fire at the six mixed Cruisers and Destroyers of the Void Hunters, and this time when they stabbed into the Void Hunter formation the first of the felines’ Cruisers suffered catastrophic damage. “Coordinated fire broke through the port shields of the Cruiser, Bared Fang,” Hephaestion reported, “their engines are off-line and they are critically venting breathable gases. They are ejecting escape pods.”
Middleton watched as the crippled Bared Fang slowly, but surely, went dark. Her crew evacuated as the Imperial Destroyers entered range and poured concerted fire into the aged Cruiser’s hull, tearing massive sections of duralloy hull from the feline warship’s super
structure while gouging deep rents in the its patchwork armor.
“Void Hunter missiles will begin to impact in ten seconds,” Hephaestion reported, drawing Middleton’s attention to the trajectories of the first wave of kinetic missiles. They were focused on the still-charging Imperial Cruisers, which seemed hades-bent to take down the Mothership before they were consigned to the void.
PD fire erupted from the Imperial Cruisers, and the first wave of roughly thirty warheads was heavily neutralized by the barrage of fire. Only eight of the first missiles slammed into the Cruisers’ forward shields, and even as they did so the Imperials presented their flanks in order to take advantage of their still fully-charged broadside shields. The kinetic missile strikes—six on the port Cruiser and two on its counterpart—failed to pierce the shields of those ships, though the six kinetic strikes dropped the Imperials’ shields to less than half strength.
The next wave of missiles fared far better.
“Fifty six total confirmed hits out of one hundred twenty missiles, Captain. Enemy Cruisers are showing critical spotting on the presented shield facings with multiple direct hull strikes detected resulting in significant out-gassing,” Hephaestion reported as the Imperial heavies’ icons flashed in rapid succession. The final volley of missiles would arrive in a matter of seconds, and the Imperial Cruisers wisely initiated rolls to present the fresh shield facings to the last barrage of missiles.
Middleton checked his shield status and saw that two enemy Destroyers were now in extreme range of his ship. His presented shield facings toward those Destroyers were at sixty three percent and fifty four percent, with his forward shields at seventy percent. “Toto,” Middleton urged as the Prejudice crept into extreme firing range, “stay bow-on to the Imp Cruisers and take precise shots on the near Cruiser once she exposes her bare flank. Target her turbo mounts or, if you think you’ve got a good angle, her engines.”
The Middle Road (Spineward Sectors: Middleton's Pride Book 7) Page 31