“How did you escape the EEF, Admiral?” she asked the old man from Japan. He was the leader of the fleet. He guided those people to that bitter end. But somehow, miraculously perhaps, he was here. Running away from sound defeat didn’t seem compatible with his character.
Admiral Takanaga’s face dropped at the recollection.
* 2 *
25 hours earlier and half a parsec away. The Battle of the Breach.
The Rebun’s bridge was awash with blaring reds. Crimsons of blood. Of rage. Of a madman’s rave. Even Admiral Takanaga had some difficulty keeping focus. For the last thirteen minutes, his old battleship had been engaging solitary enemies who flew in the vanguard of the EEF fleet. Most of them had scattered and gone back now, giving the Admiral some time to look ahead to the site of the main battle and assess the situation. Or so he had thought.
“Two enemy vessels approaching from starboard! Light patrollers!” his tactical officer reported.
“Distance?”
“30 kay and dropping fast!”
“Too close for warheads. Turn the Rebun to starboard. Magnify on the intruders. We’ll give them a full laser bank welcome.”
“Aye, sir,” his helmswoman acknowledged and turned the ship as per instructions. She was a fiery gingerhead with lots of fighting spirit. Scottish ancestry, he believed. Her name escaped him in the heat of battle. She wasn’t the Rebun’s usual pilot. Takanaga delegated that one to another ship. Experienced bridge crew was in high demand across the defence force he had cobbled together in much haste.
The view on the large front screen panned slightly. Enemy ships were two large moving points bristling with attachments. Both flashed brightly and the Colonial flagship shook for a short, intense moment. Everyone braced to avoid falling to the floor.
“Direct hit to the bow! Shields holding at 82 percent!” the tactical officer gave a rundown.
“Targeting the bridge directly?” Admiral Takanaga asked rhetorically. It was one of the very few ways two light patrollers could damage a large battleship like the Rebun. He gave the next order in absolute calm. “Fire the lasers. Full volley.” It was a controversial choice, perhaps, deploying the ship’s least powerful guns.
“Firing the lasers!” The tactical officer punched the corresponding button. The view on the screen turned bluish white for less than an eye blink. When the view became clear again, the devastation everyone saw proved the Admiral’s choice was the right one.
“Direct hits! One enemy ship destroyed. The remaining one is turning away. It’s lost one of its engines.”
The crew gave an enthusiastic whoop. Everyone took the victory with cheer. Only Takanaga remained unmoved.
“Do not revel in death and destruction. Every life extinguished too soon is a reason for sadness,” he said. Smiles died. He addressed the tactical officer who was his younger mirror image. “Issei, my son, how badly are they hurt?”
Issei focused on his console readout before producing an answer about the damaged enemy ship. “Their shields are nominal. They have one impulse engine left and it seems to be working at half capacity.”
“Are their lives in danger?”
“No.”
“Good. This is not an opportune time to launch rescue missions.” Admiral Takanaga drew his eyebrows close and cast a solemn look to his left where a young Ensign chuckled. He was yet another replacement for a far more skilled man. “That was not a joke.”
“No, sir,” the Ensign straightened his uniform jacket, brushed his hair with both hands, fidgeted, and finally buried his gaze and his hands in his station.
“Helm, give us the fore view.” Admiral Takanaga braced himself literally by increasing the hold on his armrests. The helmswoman acknowledged and focused the screen on a wide view of the battlefield ahead.
The frontline was a blazing inferno of ships imploding and exploding under barrage after barrage of laser beams, plasma torpedoes and pulse weapons. Takanaga watched with his jaws clenching and unclenching as the worst happened on his very eyes. The Leonidas, a large battlecruiser he’d ordered less than ten minutes ago to spearhead a small task force to the left flank, broke in half under concentrated enemy fire. It was a considerable setback as the cruiser had been shielding the approach of a portable beacon to replace the one that had been destroyed.
The whole idea behind this battle was to shore up a secondary shield barrier and stop the enemy fleet in its tracks. The failsafe had been 90 percent done when the enemy broke through the first barrier. The Colonial Navy rushed in to make the work in progress operational. But without the beacon Leonidas had been protecting, there was a gaping hole right in front of the Colonial ships and the vast Earth armada was sailing into it.
The two big chunks of the Leonidas splintered into many smaller fragments. Admiral Takanaga closed his eyes and looked over his shoulder. The chances of anyone surviving that kind of annihilation were slim to none. His usual helmswoman was on that ship. He had put her there. The responsibility for her death fell directly on him. Japanese words left his lips in a whisper; a goodbye to an old friend.
And then he whipped back to the present and observed the unfolding horror. Without its driving force, the task force of four ships following in the wake of the Leonidas broke ranks and tried to run, abandoning the portable beacon they had been tugging in their midst. The blinking piece floated alone, exposed to the enemy, its flashing green lights a perfect target for the enemy.
“To the beacon task force! Maintain position!” Takanaga cried out his command. The young Ensign who had laughed was all jittery now. Still, he made sure the Admiral’s words carried on the right channel. It didn’t make a difference. The four ship captains had lost their mettle and signed off the lives of their crews.
Admiral Takanaga found his composure. His next words were as evenly spoken as if it was peacetime. “Signal the Hedgehog. They will take over from Leonidas.”
“Hedgehog’s comms are disabled, sir,” his son reported from the tactical post.
Takanaga scanned the portion of the battlefield where the Hedgehog should be. “Find them and magnify. What are they doing?”
On the screen, the Hedgehog was apparently rushing towards the ruin of the Leonidas and the abandoned beacon, even without orders. Then it veered off course and it slammed the prickly metal body which gave it its name into a smaller enemy ship passing it from the port. A sleek and fast EEF frigate bomber had been making a beeline from the enemy positions to the portable beacon, to carry out a bombing run. It had to be stopped at all cost.
The impact was vicious. The enemy had already moved their proton bombs into position, and they ignited on contact with the Hedgehog. Both ships lost their structural integrity. The Hedgehog moved on by sheer momentum. It drifted at high speed, unable to manoeuvre, into the enemy zone where it got obliterated by the massive fire from countless enemy guns. Leonidas had been the second largest ship of the Colonial Navy. Now the Hedgehog, the third largest vessel under Admiral Takanaga’s command, was gone too. Seconds after that, two more enemy ships slipped through the hole and destroyed the portable beacon with flashes of bright blue.
Admiral Takanaga stood up in his chair. The battle was turning into a disaster. The enemy was getting past the unfinished barrier and his ship crews were dying one by one. He became aware of the bridge crew watching his frowning self in absolute silence. “Farewell, Captain Valsen. We won’t forget your sacrifice,” he said in a strong voice for all to hear.
Next, he descended from his command post to inspect the tactical screen closely. To his son, he said, “We have to find their leader and disable him. Without the head, the serpent wriggles but dies.”
“I’m picking up signals from two superdreadnoughts,” Issei said while turning sliders and touching keys on the highly functional but outdated console.
In his last days before the defection from the EEF Navy to the Colonial cause, Admiral Takanaga encountered workstations with holo displays, and even the first examples of rel
iable EMR - eye movement recognition. The enemy had greater reaction speed, but the ageing Rebun had been constructed in the golden age of military design. It still held its own against the next generation of warships.
“I think his ship is somewhere around this section of the battlefield.” The tactical officer pointed to the rear of the enemy force. He embodied the same serene focus as his father. The Admiral was proud.
The Colonial Fleet had greater numbers thanks to commandeering civilian units. But in the case of warships, the enemy outnumbered the Colonial force six to one. As Admiral Takanaga watched the tactical screen, he observed what he already knew would happen. A mass of blue triangles approached the line of green squares - auxiliary units holding the gap for the portable beacon to arrive. Now that it couldn’t happen, they were quickly getting overrun. Good people were dying left and right on his watch.
In a rare fit of self-doubt, Admiral Takanaga thought it was all his fault. He shouldn’t have called the battle. The High Command should have evacuated Wolf 359 instead. Where would they go? They’d find somewhere remote enough to keep hidden through the worst of Admiral Stoyanov’s grand offensive. Many would not survive the long haul required, but now it looked as though even more were losing their lives because they stayed and fought - because he asked them to. Hindsight was a pearl of bitter wisdom.
“There,” his finger lingered on the tactical screen, not where his son was suggesting.
“Are you sure, father? Would he endanger himself in the centre of the battle?”
“I know my old friend, Admiral Stoyanov. He is cunning. He will stop just out of range and take a good vantage point. That other superdreadnought will make a big circle, trying to convince us he’s hiding there, well away from danger.”
“That makes some sense,” Issei rubbed his chin, harbouring some doubt.
“He’s here,” Takanaga tapped the digital depiction of a superdreadnought on the screen and turned to address his bridge crew. “Direct all power to the shields, weapons and impulse engines. Secondary systems off or to the minimum required. Full speed ahead! We are hunting down a superdreadnought. Anyone who objects should leave the Rebun now.”
No one did, according to his hopes. They were his men and women to the end. For better or worse.
“Full speed ahead,” the Scottish helmswoman confirmed. Despite over twenty years of service, Rebun, the former battlecruiser of Earth and now the Colonial flagship, moved like the solar wind, swatting off any flies that flew in its way. The vessel quickly reached the remnant of the auxiliary line where things were really bleak. The EEF armada was in full breach mode, surrounding and destroying the Colonial ships one by one.
Rebun didn’t stop. It sped past the broken down line like a bullet. The view screen showed everyone where they were going, into the thick of the enemy. The superdreadnought loomed in the distance. It had made itself vulnerable. Rebun could reach it. Only three large destroyers stood like a human shield between the battleship and its target.
“We’re being shot at. Mostly just lasers. Shields down to 59 percent. 58 percent,” Issei reported the shift in their situation. His father and all gathered could hear the faint pinging and ponging of projectiles raining against the shields. As the Rebun moved deeper into the enemy zone, more and more ships started targeting it from all directions. It was quickly becoming one ship against the whole armada. “Should we take evasive action? Sir? Father?”
Admiral Takanaga had been staring at the contour of the superdreadnought ahead. He snapped out to say: “Keep her steady. Return fire at will but save the large payload for the big hornet ahead. We will stir the nest.”
The destruction of that ship was their best chance. Their only chance.
“Aye aye, sir,” Issei acknowledged. He and another officer returned fire. Golden hues of the Rebun’s guns spoke with deadly accuracy. The flagship shrugged off glancing blows and was making quick progress through the fray, toward the destroyers and the hulking monster of a ship behind them. “You’re sure Stoyanov is there?”
“I am sure. He knows who we are and is trying to box us in without destroying us.” Indeed, enemy ships were circling around the Rebun, some of them capable of causing serious damage. But they held off. “Stoyanov’s a politician. It’s a long game for him. Being leader of the fleet won’t satisfy his ambition. Peace will come and he wants to be ready for it. He wants a high-profile prisoner and he wants to look like he got me personally, a war hero in action. Aim torpedoes at those destroyers!” The three ships weren’t breaking off even though the Rebun was hurtling towards them at full speed. Their captains needed a better incentive to start moving out of the way.
“Torpedoes ready and aimed.”
“Fire at will!”
“Firing torpedoes.” Several balls of golden light sped towards the destroyers. The ships were too large and too close now to avoid getting hit. All they could do was minimise the damage. Two out of three big vessels started to move out of the way at last. Their compliance cleared a path to the superdreadnought. “It’s working!”
There was a sense of a heavy shroud lifting and the bridge crew again erupted with joy. But Admiral Takanaga believed it was premature. This was far from over. Now an antiquated battleship was going to take on a brand new mammoth ship at least four times its size. “Ready pulse warheads! Helm, scan that ship left and right. Identify its weak-“
A loud pop almost burst the Admiral’s eardrums. A huge tremor picked him up from the ground, spun him in the air nearly 180 degrees like he was some rag puppet, and tried to dig a hole in the floor with the top of his head.
Takanaga was out for several seconds. When he came to his swimming senses, the first thing he noted was a searing pain roughly at his hairline. He touched the spot and a stabbing pain made him wince. The hand came back red with his own blood, but his skull hadn’t cracked open.
The second thing he saw was a large gaping hole in the port side of the bridge. The bulkhead was all gone, along with the young Ensign who had laughed. A silvery shimmer indicated where the emergency forcefield kicked in to keep the remaining body of the bridge habitable. Beyond was a breathtaking vista of space lacerated by various energy beams of opposing ships carrying the fight. The Colonial side was losing fast.
With his vision hazy and ears throbbing, feeling it was harder to breathe in the thinned air, Admiral Takanaga got up to his feet. And immediately got down on his knees. The tactical console had gone as well, replaced by a blown up stump. His son lay spread on his back next to the remnant, eyes closed, chest slowly pumping up and down.
“Issei,” the Admiral whispered while his hands and eyes performed a quick health check. Relief washed over him when no signs of trauma came up. “Issei, speak to me. My son, open your eyes.”
He got no reply. Looking up, he finally registered that alerts were ringing, red lights glowing and dimming alternately. Three more members of his bridge crew were prone on the floor. Another two rushed back to their consoles. The Scottish helmswoman had been sitting in a chair the whole time. She recuperated first and was frantically punching and sliding things on her jumping touch screen.
“We’ve been hit through the shields! Never seen anything like that!” she shouted over the din. Then, as an afterthought, she touched a button and the sirens died down.
Admiral Takanaga looked past her, at the view screen that now had a large crack running diagonally from left to right. Despite the damage, he clearly saw the shape of the behemoth superdreadnought slowly coming closer. It was all glowing bright white. Takanaga took it for a boast. He imagined Fleet Admiral Stoyanov cackling in derision from the chair on his own bridge.
“Damage report,” he forced out the words while cradling his son in his arms.
The helmswoman was a whirr of activity at her console. “Multiple damage points. We’ve... we’ve lost control of warheads! They’re... armed? Does... Does anyone have control over the launchers?”
“Negative,” said a Specialist fro
m the engineering section.
“Same,” mumbled a Chief Warrant Officer who was normally tasked with maintenance around the ship’s exhaust valves. The man was shaking. His first ever bridge shift had turned into something from the most dreaded nightmare.
“We’re locked out? How is this possible?!” cried the helmswoman.
“Some kind of new weapon,” Admiral Takanaga suggested. “How much time till the warheads detonate?”
The helmswoman grabbed her face with both hands. She hadn’t yet thought of what her Admiral deciphered. The Rebun had been turned into a ticking time bomb with torpedoes jammed.
“About... seven minutes?” she muttered straight at him. Her eyes were two pools of deep green water.
“Evacuate the ship.”
“What?”
“Aye aye, sir. Evacuation protocols initiated,” the specialist carried out the order instead.
The red lights intensified even more and pulsed in a new pattern. A computer voice came up in the form of a calm, reassuring female, although whoever made that recording managed to add a sense of urgency to the words:
CRITICAL ALERT. ALL HANDS, ABANDON SHIP. PROCEED TO YOUR DESIGNATED EVACUATION POINT IMMEDIATELY. CRITICAL ALERT.
It played in a loop throughout all decks of the battleship. The remnants of the bridge crew all turned to Takanaga. Despite clear instruction, nobody moved.
“What do we do, sir?” the helmswoman requested orders.
Admiral Takanaga looked at the view screen again where the superdreadnought was gliding at a parade pace to the front and slightly above them, a terrifyingly massive hulk of metal, all glistening, powerful cannons on display. It was the largest military vessel he had ever seen. It probably even rivalled the grandiosity of the Science Consortium’s luxury cruise ship, the Prime.
Her Last Run Page 4