“Then we are going to fight beside these reptiles?”
“Yes, as you have already experienced, better to be with them than against them. What is your answer?”
“We’re in,” Spider responded. “When do we get our pistols back?”
“As soon as we are in transit to the enemy fleet,” Slone replied.
“You know taking on the Sinclair Mobile Fleet with one ship is suicide, so the gold is going to no one.”
Slone wondered why Spider thought they were alone, and then realized they have been in the hold without windows for a while. “Not to worry, Spider. We are surrounded by our fleet. Now all of you get some rest. We have a long day ahead when we exit the slipstream in just over nine hours.” Without another word, Slone, Alaya, Tavia and Centurion Marshal left the hold. Slone turned to Centurion Marshal, “Bill, issue each mercenary a handgun and three clips of bullets. Make sure the serpents know that if they turn the guns on them they are to be killed immediately.”
“Yes, captain.”
The Slones returned to their quarters, as did the Marshals, after first instructing the serpents about the orders concerning the mercenaries. They got as much rest as possible, since they would be awake for the transit to the fleet and then the combat. Slone knew his ship had been given the dubious honor of starting hostilities and they would withstand the worst of the first return fire. This was both an honor and a curse, and this was not lost on any of the human crew aboard the battleship. The Slones and the Gardners were glad their children were aboard the Invicta. The serpents were not bothered by such thoughts, because their concept of the universe was rooted in a firm belief in preset destiny. If they were going to die, it didn’t matter what they did, so they might as well be productive. The Rising Star sailed on in the slipstream as the crew slept. As system entry approached, the ship was awakened by the klaxon announcing one hour to entry. There was time to shower and dress. The Slones and the Marshals left their staterooms and separated. Alaya and Tavia kissed their husbands for good luck and left for the Gladius. Bill Marshal went down to his troops and Christopher Slone went to the bridge.
Paul McMann reported, “Thirty minutes to system entry.”
“Tom, put me through ship wide.” When Tom Gardner nodded that the line was open, Slone began, “Attention, we are about to enter the Petrovia system. It is our job to use this ship, for the purpose she was created, as a Q-Ship. When we enter the system, we will be transmitting a Sinclair recognition code and we will pretend to be a member of the fleet. Once we are inside the fleet we will reveal our true intention. We will go to battle stations an hour before reaching their fleet. I know you will all do your duty. I expect they will not want to destroy their prototype battleship. Therefore, I am certain we will be boarded. We will have four serpent ships providing combat space patrols and they will shoot down as many boarding shuttles as they can. See to your duties. System entry in fifteen minutes.”
When the clock wore down, Paul McMann depolarized the sails and the battleship dropped out of the slipstream. “Give me a reading on the system as soon as you pick up telemetry. Paul, move us away from the slipstream at three quarter speed. Remember we have no way of detecting the fleet, so we must maintain a set course until they are past us.”
“Yes, captain. Transit time at this speed will be just under twelve hours, which will decrease by twenty-five percent once the fleet is past and we can go to standard speed.”
“Tom, open a channel to the Gladius.”
“Channel open, captain.”
“Alaya, you are cleared for departure. Good hunting. We have notified the other ships to form up with you. Maintain your course; the fleet is passing us now.”
Three serpent ships took off from the Avenging Talon as the fleet passed the battleship. The Romani had a solid battle plan. The fleet would move ahead and remain invisible. It would surround the Sinclair Mobil fleet and wait for the Rising Star to enter the enemy fleet. Once the Rising Star was inside the enemy lines, it would open fire and the Romani fleet would become visible, all but the destroyers. The hope was that the fire from the battleship and the sudden appearance of the Romani fleet would confuse the Sinclair fleet, which would be trapped in orbit and unable to maneuver. It all looked wonderful on paper. The problem with battle plans was they were only good until the first shot was fired and then all bets were off. The Gladius took up its station above the battleship. The other three serpent ships were positioned two below with one joining the Gladius above the battleship. These were the only areas not containing weapons. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, Alaya sent the all clear to Christopher. Hatch had been monitoring the fleet and they had now passed the battleship and were heading to the enemy fleet and their assigned positions.
“Increase to standard speed. What is the transit time now,” Slone asked.
“Transit time is now seven hours, twelve minutes,” Paul McMann reported.
“Very well, set the ship to ready status. Have all departments make sure that everything is in order. With the minimum crew, we have, we will not be able to collect forgotten materials.”
“Yes, captain,” Tom Gardner replied and after a short gap, reported all departments acknowledge.
“Tom, put me through to Centurion Marshal.”
“The line is open, captain.”
“Centurion Marshal, distribute the weapons and ammo to the mercenaries and go over deployments with them. Keep your eye on them.”
“Yes, sir,” The reply came back from the centurion.
When they first entered the system, they sent a text only message to the Sinclair fleet letting them know their mission was accomplished but they had battle damage and voice communications were down. They received a text message back in acknowledgement with the promise of repair. Thus far, things were progressing nicely. An hour before reaching the outer vessels of the fleet, a message came in from the Gladius reporting the invisible fleet had reached their stations around the Sinclair fleet. It was almost time to spring the trap. Slone turned to Tom Gardner.
“Tom, order general quarters.”
“Yes, captain,” Tom pressed a button and the klaxon went off throughout the ship and over the intercom, the computer voice came on, “All hands, battle stations, this is not a drill.”
Since most departments were already at their stations, the ship was set for combat ten minutes after the first klaxon sounded. Within the hour, they passed through the outer destroyer shield, which was thin due to the small number of destroyers. The main screen consisted of cruisers and these were distributed around the large cluster of dreadnoughts. The fleet was in a synchronous orbit around Petrovia above the capital city of Saint Petersburg. Given the diameter of the planet, the synchronous orbit required the fleet to orbit 40,000 kilometers above the planet surface. This actually allowed the Romani fleet to encircle them. The destroyers of the tenth legion were deployed on the planet side of the Mobile fleet and would glide past the enemy slowly so as to be ready to fire when the signal was given. As always, they were under the command of Captain Oskar Rand. The ten dreadnoughts of the tenth legion, along with the serpent dreadnought and the eight Petrovian dreadnoughts were all situated on the space side of the enemy. It was the job of the Rising Star to move through the center of the enemy and keep up a rapid fire for as long as she was able. It was up to Christopher Slone to determine when to strike. His first volley would be the signal for the dreadnoughts to become visible and open fire. The destroyers would fire continuous barrages of missiles into the enemy while remaining invisible. As to the ten cruisers of the tenth legion, they were assigned to go ahead of the Rising Star into the center of the enemy formation and open fire after becoming visible once the signal was given. Those were all of the moving parts of a very complex plan that everyone knew was designed to cause panic and confusion. If it worked would depend on the will and ability of each ship’s captain, on each side of the conflict. The board was set, and the pieces were in place. The largest fleet
battle fought in over a century and a half, was about to begin.
Slone guided his ship into the cluster of cruisers assigned to the side of the formation he entered. The Rising Star was now moving slowly as the ship traffic was heavy and he had to remember there were invisible ships operating in the area. His wife, whose ship could detect the invisible fleet, kept him apprised of where the ships were located. Two cruisers were starting to come up on his port and starboard sides. It was time to get the show started.
“Tom, open the battle channel.” This Tom Gardner did immediately. The Romani techs had modified the communications on the battleship to work on their battle channel. This allowed all of the ships, including the Petrovian dreadnoughts, to hear everything going on as ship’s captains issued commands. Slone activated the communicator at his chair, “Gunners mark targets, port and starboard, fore and aft. Lock all missiles on the nearest target in the facing direction. Reload and fire at will as fast as possible as we go through the enemy fleet. Concentrate all fire at the closest threat.” Slone allowed a few seconds for his translators to pass the orders along to the serpent gunners not versed in human speak. “Roll out the guns. Start the cadence.” Slone could hear the machinery opening the gun ports and the missile tubes. As soon as all were open, Slone gave the first fire order. “Fire,” he practically shouted into the communicator.
On the bridge, you could hear and feel a dull rumble as 84 cannons and 32 missiles fired almost simultaneously in four directions. “Seal the bridge.” Slone ordered. The armor came up to shield the bridge bubble and all further visual was from cameras projected onto the front of the bridge window. The blast door at the bottom of the bridge ramp was also closed and Slone and the bridge crew were now sealed into the bridge with only a trap door and a ladder leading from the floor to the upper gun deck for escape.
The cruisers on either side of the battleship were both hit with almost all of the 36 cannon broadsides and they literally came apart at the seams. Each one broke into large sections. By the time the missiles reached them, there was not much left to hit. Some of the missiles hit the wreckage and a few passed through and actually locked onto other targets in range but were mostly taken out by point defenses. Point defenses were automated and they worked even if the ship was in a rest period. This was necessary to defend against meteoroids. Thus far, surprise was complete. Slone managed to get off another volley as the Romani cruisers, and dreadnoughts became visible. He could only imagine what was going on aboard the Sinclair fleet as the suddenly visible ships opened fire from within and outside the fleet. At the same time the invisible destroyers fired all of their starboard missiles, sending 120 missiles into the orbital formation.
Aboard the SS Vermont, the admiral was in his quarters and Captain Wainwright was watching the ships near him. The Vermont was situated near the center of the orbital formation. Due to the size of the fleet, there was no visual of the ships farther away from the flagship and the fleet was maintaining a ten kilometer distance between the ships in a three dimensional space. Therefore, Captain Wainwright could be excused for not noticing the first shots of the battle.
He first became aware of the danger when the communications tech reported, “Captain, the cruisers Auspicious and Valdez have been fired on by the Rising Star.”
Captain Wainwright sat up and took notice. “Put up a threat board and get me the captain of the Auspicious.”
Suddenly the sensor tech reported, “Captain, a fleet just appeared spaceward of us and also cruisers have appeared inside our formation. They are opening fire.”
“Battle stations; call the admiral to the bridge. Engineering, ahead one half for maneuvering.” The klaxon started sounding throughout the ship just as the sensor tech reported, “Captain, over a hundred missiles are coming from the planet into the fleet. They are overwhelming the point defenses and planet side ships are reporting missile hits.”
Admiral Wilson entered the bridge just as this last statement was made. “Order the fleet to battle stations and command them to move away from the planet.”
The threat board came up and revealed the true level of danger. “Where did all of these ships come from and what are their ID codes. Also order the fleet to fire at will.”
The sensor tech reported, “The enemy consists of nineteen dreadnoughts and ten cruisers. Eight of the dreadnoughts are transmitting a Petrov Corp transponder signal. The rest of the fleet is transmitting a signal our computers cannot identify. The Rising Star is also firing on us but is transmitting our transponder codes. Our missiles won’t lock on her.”
“Where did the Petrovians get eight dreadnoughts from?” Captain Wainwright said, to no one in particular.
“What are the damage reports from the fleet?”
“We have multiple hits on the farthest dreadnoughts from the planet. We also are taking a lot of fire from the cruisers that appeared in the center of our formation, ahead of the Rising Star. The cruisers Auspicious and Valdez are destroyed. Some escape pods launched, but it looks like most of the crew died with their ships.”
“Order the fleet to pull together; we have to get into some kind of formation. We still outnumber them by six dreadnoughts and seven cruisers. This is a battle we should win.”
As the Sinclair Mobile Fleet actually became mobile in an attempt to form up for battle, the Romani fleet kept firing into the ships orbiting the planet. Aboard the Longinus, Captain Lorenzo did not expect to win the battle in orbit; he was just hoping to decrease the odds a bit. The fire from the Rising Star was devastating. He had never seen a single ship take out two cruisers with one broadside on each cruiser. If Sinclair had more than this one prototype, then this was indeed a game changer. The Sinclair fleet was breaking orbit and coming out to fight, so it was time for the Romani to move to phase two of the battle. “Order the fleet to phase two, and increase the cadence to battle speed,” Lorenzo ordered and the message went out as the drumbeat increased. Since the Romani were already in motion, it did not take them long to change course and put distance between themselves and the planet. They had decided in advance, what the formations for each phase would be and phase two required an elongated hexagon. As the fleet moved away from the planet, the ships moved to their assigned positions, in reverse order. There were ten dreadnoughts from the tenth legion and eight Petrovian ships. This allowed for the formation of three hexagons positioned one behind the other at a distance of five kilometers. This resulted in a hexagonal cylinder where each point of the hexagons was a ship one kilometer from its next point. This formation allowed full coverage of ships attacking from outside the cylinder while limiting those inside the cylinder to one or two abreast. One did not want to be inside the cylinder. By this time, the Romani cruisers were moving at flank speed to exit the enemy formation and form up with the Romani. Their mission was to cover the flanks of the Romani formation and engage targets of opportunity. They had been dishing out damage while in the formation but had also been on the receiving end of the Sinclair cannons. Three of the cruisers had damage, but none of them was out of the action. Behind the cruisers came the battleship.
Slone ordered flank speed and was surprised at the speed of which his ship was capable. He powered through the enemy fleet. However, he did not do so unscathed. His first broadsides had taken out two cruisers. That was important, but dreadnoughts deal the damage. The next ships he came to were dreadnoughts. After the first attack, he had ordered speed increased to standard from the three quarters speed they were traveling. As the Rising Star came up to the dreadnoughts, the Sinclair fleet was still in confusion, but captains of dreadnoughts did not achieve their position unless they could show competence in the tight situations. Sinclair Corp might be many things, but as a former member of the Sinclair navy, Slone knew dreadnought captains were the best of the best. His serpent gunners had reloaded in record time and were ready. He had a Sinclair dreadnought on either side of him, but they were trying to cross his bow in a scissor maneuver that would greatly limit his abil
ity and give them each a free broadside. However, even the best, sometimes miscalculate and Slone could see that their scissors movement was not quite aligned and if they kept their course, they would collide. If he could, he would help them achieve that.
“Forward gunners, fire at the starboard dreadnought. Target the port engine,” Slone ordered. “Lock missiles onto the port dreadnought and fire.”
The six forward cannons fired and the shots leapt across the gap and slammed into the rear of the ship. Two bounced off the hull curvature and one penetrated an area of the rear with minimum damage. Three hit the intended target and penetrated the port engine. The ship slowed immediately in its maneuvers as the captain realized if the ship continued its maneuver, it would collide with the other dreadnought. As this was taking place, the four forward missiles reached their target and caused no damage. They were all taken out by the point defenses. Slone would have liked to have them hit, but the purpose was to distract the bridge crew from the impending collision. The dreadnought with the damaged engine tried to pull away, but they were big ships with a lot of momentum and the other dreadnought did not see the danger in time. As soon as Slone saw the collision was inevitable, he ordered a hard turn to starboard. As he watched the video projection, the dreadnoughts collided at an angle with the starboard one colliding with the port dreadnought just behind the forward frill sail. The collision caused minimal damage, and Slone was not concerned about that. However, it prevented them from crossing his bow, caused their tails to swing towards each other, removed the Rising Star from their firing arcs, and left them at the battleship’s mercy.
Slone now issued his orders, “Helm, maintain hard to starboard, port batteries fire on my command at both ships.” Slone waited until his turn brought his port side to face the ships locked in collision. When they were in his port arc, he gave the order, “Fire.” The battle ship lurched to starboard as the 36 cannons of the port battery fired. The shots leapt across and slammed into both ships. Most entered and detonated inside the vessels causing considerable damage with bodies and cannon spilling out of the side of the nearest ship. As soon as his ship fired, Slone ordered the turn to starboard to end and rotation to begin. This caused the ship to rotate in space along its long axis to bring the next broadside up as the one just fired was reloaded. Since there was no up or down in space, the change in position was not noticed. When the ship was upside down to its previous position, Slone ordered the starboard batteries to fire and another 36 cannons discharged their rain of destruction towards the now helpless nearest dreadnought. The shots hit and detonated inside the ship, which began to come apart. The rotation continued as the Rising Star pulled away from the dreadnoughts. The ship closest to the battleship was out of the battle for good. There were internal fires and leaking atmosphere. Some escape pods were launching. However, the ship behind it was only slightly damaged and now pulled up and fired a broadside towards the Rising Star. By this time, Slone’s ship was back to its original position and stopped rotating. The shots from the Sinclair dreadnought were a bit high. They tore through the upper portion of the ship and the part that had been the fake starliner took the hit. The twelve cannon broadside slammed into the ship and tore through the dining room and some of the staterooms. Ironically this part of the ship was not armored so the shots actually passed right through and never lodged in the ship to explode and do damage. They did however depressurize the passenger portion and many of the expensive touches that were placed on the ship to appeal to the passengers were sucked into space as the atmosphere bled from the vessel. Any ship nearby would have wondered why a ship of war was bleeding tablecloths and fine china. “Fire,” Slone again barked the order and a full broadside of 36 cannon shots leapt towards the intact dreadnought and she too began to bleed fluids, weapons and bodies. There must have been a significant hit to the generator room as the force fields covering the hangar deck went out and people flew out along with anything not locked down as the atmosphere escaped. If the electrical was down, then the point defenses were out and they could not stop missiles.
Rising Star Page 24