Modern antiship missiles possessed evasive capabilities, thoughtfully introduced by their designers as part of the neverending contest of offense against defense. Dozens of Brimstones jinked as they sped toward the RHN ships, creating some difficulty for the tracking systems of the Halifaxian defense guns. Some penetrated this barrier, and pressed on, to be met by clouds of magnesand. Not a few were ruined in this way, but there were just over two hundred that came within lethal range. Many of these detonated and fired a one-time burst of directed x-ray laser energy at More's flotilla. The Golden Lion was speared by the furious laser barrage of seven weapons. The Theseus and Adonis were scalded too by deadly beams. Kongo and Kestrel fared a little better, their shields deflecting most of the radiant energy that assailed them. Steadfast rode out the storm well, with her CIWS clawing most of the weapons attacking her from the void before they could unleash themselves. Cormorant was less lucky. Twice as many missiles survived to attack her, and these X-rays lashed her hull mercilessly, causing her shields to fail temporarily.
"How are our own birds doing, Del Rio?" More asked.
"Striking as we speak," the lieutenant answered. "Multiple hits on Triumph. The others are striking the battleship too."
Aboard ATS Triumph
The forward three-quarters of Triumph were rocked by successive blows of Halifaxian Sledgehammer missiles. They were in almost all relevant ways the same as the Armada's own Brimstones - thermonuclear antiship missiles. The battleship was without shields and she felt every impact of the X-ray laser strikes and the conventional atomic detonations. The battlewagon was meant to take punishment that would vaporize lesser warships. Its multiple hulls absorbed the concussive shock of the close-by explosions, allowing her to shrug off terrible impacts. Triumph was severely damaged. All maneuver drives were gone, the main reactor had been destroyed, the displacement drive had been blown to pieces. Two out of eight turrets were lost, half her missiles had been shorn away before she had the chance to use them, and her fighter bays, in what remained of her stern, were racing away through the void.
Around Captain Acton several more of his bridge crew lay either dead or dying. "All turrets," he ordered. "Fire on the Steadfast only! All ships, concentrate on one of the other RHN vessels!"
The functional gauss turrets of the Triumph began accelerating giant projectiles at Steadfast. Both ships were at longer ranges than would have been deemed normal for opening a gunnery duel, but the battleship had been immobilized by the loss of her drives, and could do little more than orient herself via gravitic maneuver vanes. All of her gauss cannons zeroed in on the heavy cruiser that had taken position at the apex of the rough sphere of RHN ships.
Aboard RHS Steadfast
"How the hell is she surviving that," Del Rio gasped in awe. "She's got no shields and must have been hit by twenty Sledgehammers."
"Missing her stern too," More added. "We've got to put more distance between us and Triumph. When she's too far to be of any use in this fight, the AT will refuse to pursue."
"Cormorant and Golden Lion report heavy maneuver drive damage, captain," Garand said. "Their best acceleration will be fifty percent of normal."
"It will do." More opened his commchannel. "We're heading away at best speed," he said. "Captain Acton, or whoever is in command of the Triumph, is not going to let us go quietly. We put distance between us and slam anyone who follows."
"Incoming warshots," Feeney cried. "Fighters are saying they have no ability to intercept!"
"Brace yourselves," More warned.
Twelve multi-ton shells came through the dark of space like sharks chasing after prey. At this distance, there was little chance that they would obtain direct hits on the Steadfast. They did not have to. The warheads inside each shell were some of the largest fusion weapons ever placed aboard a ship. Within seconds of each other, the shells burst, with four close enough to fling their baleful energies, equaling fifty megatons of conventional high explosive, at the Halifaxian ship. More was hurled across the bridge, his only consolation being that the inertial compensators had lessened the worst of the sudden jolts that rained on the Steadfast one after another.
"Shields down, captain," Ensign Tan reported. "Commander Koslov is saying he can't get the generators back online."
"We're dead if we don't get our shields up," More said. "Distance to Triumph?"
"Sixty thousand kilometers," Feeney said. "The rest of their squadron is chasing."
"We'll need one hundred thousand before his guns can't get a fix on us. Zigzag, Amy. Let's not make this easy for them."
"Yes, captain," came the shipbrain's voice, unruffled and unworried by the carnage around her. "Executing thirty degree deviations from main trajectory with randomized increases or decreases per turn."
"Good - and Del Rio?"
"Captain?"
"Let's give Triumph a taste of her own medicine. Fire all turrets."
"Yes, captain."
Aboard ATS Triumph
"What's happening?" Acton demanded of his slain bridge crew. "What is going on?" His head swam and his vision was blurred. "What has happened to Steadfast?"
The bridge was suffused with a miasma of smoke and sparks. Consoles lay strewn across the deck, their electronics innards spilled out beside their dead operators.
"Guns," he sputtered as he slid from the captain's chair. "Fire again on Steadfast."
Golden Sabers, Memnon system
"That was uncomfortable," Imagawa shouted as her Wildcat raced through a sizzling ember cloud of a T43E Barracuda she had just smoked. "There are too many of them."
"We're bound to be hit by something, Witch," Percy said over the squadron's tacnet. "There's a pellet with our names on it if we don't put some distance between us and the Tarts."
"Sabers, we have to break off combat," Imagawa said. "Our ships are speeding away, and we can't let too much distance come between us unless you'd like to stay in Memnon. Time to head back."
The Golden Sabers began to pull up and away from the roiling mass of fighters doing battle in the void between the Halifaxian ships that the Tartarean battlegroup. They were pursued by four Barracudas.
"Coffee," Imagawa ordered. "You lead us out! Hammer, on me!"
The two Wildcats began a roll and fell away from the rest of the squadron. Soon they were headed straight back at the pursuing Tartarean fighters. The Barracudas split apart from one another, and approached the Wildcats from different directions. One of them launched a Firebolt interception missile at Imagawa. She allowed it to race toward her, the distance closing by hundreds of kilometers every second. At the last moment, she nosed her fighter into a hard dive, and expelled five decoys. The Firebolt ignored her descending Wildcat and chased after the decoys.
The Barracuda followed her, as did his fellows. Imagawa's machine was scorched by laser fire on its nose, but was otherwise unharmed. "Follow me," Imagawa said as she rolled her machine into a split-s. "Closer now," she said to no one.
The Barracuda lined up behind Imagawa's Wildcat and hurled thousands of gauss pellets at the bigger fighter. As Imagawa turned once more, the Barracuda followed her. The Tartarean pilot grew so intent on the Wildcat that he did not see Percy's own. The Barracuda slid easily into the gunsights of the second Wildcat and was soon a flaming wreck as Percy's kinetic energy penetrators slammed through it.
Imagawa braked hard, and let Percy shoot past her, pursued by a second Barracuda. She pulled hard to the right and fired her M53A lasers at the trailing fighter. These scored hits on the nose and cockpit, shearing it away from the body of the machine and the noseless Barracuda began to spin end over end.
A familiar voice blared over the comm. "Witch! This is Coffee! We're picking up a squadron of Gar strike fighters that's gotten loose from the pack. They're headed for the 34th!"
"Got it. Go on ahead. We'll catch up to you."
Imagawa floored her fighter, demanding every bit of power that her Wildcat's twin J89 engines could deliver. She was accelera
ting at over twenty g's. The inertial compensators reduced that to just four felt g's, but the effect was still unpleasant. Strike fighters weren't often seen in smaller naval engagements. The Gar was a big machine - built to lug a single antiship missile like the Sledgehammer or the Brimstone and weren't particularly strong in fighter-on-fighter combat. They tended to operate only in conjunction with smaller fighters that could protect them from enemy machines like the Wildcat or the Barracuda. Imagawa scolded herself for not anticipating their presence. The AT had brought a battleship all the way from Tartarus to Memnon. They were expecting something big. They had also arrived with a light carrier, which would easily embark a squadron of strike fighters in place of a unit of Barracudas.
There were twelve Gars ahead of Imagawa's own squadron. Coffee and Tears hosed three of the trailing machines with grapeshot, causing them to tumble off in the darkness. Percy took out a fourth with a spray from his lasers. Imagawa overhauled a fifth machine, just as it was lining up its attack run on the Steadfast. She cut the Gar in half with her gauss cannons, catching it between the two engines mounted in the rear of the craft.
That still left seven Gars and these began launching their Brimstones at the Steadfast. The Golden Sabers claimed three more of the strike fighters before they turned and fled, but their missiles continued onward.
Imagawa keyed her comm. "Steadfast, this is Witch. Seven, I repeat, seven Brimstones headed your way."
Aboard RHS Steadfast
"Where are my shields, Boris!" More cried out over his comm to his chief engineer.
"Going up now, captain!"
More checked the holo that hovered above is chair. A glowing shield was materializing around the Steadfast. "Feeney?"
"Five seconds to impact!"
Shells were less accurate at range. They could not correct their courses, as could missiles, and once radar had determined their directions, they could be evaded. To compensate, they ordinarily were armed with warheads of far greater power than that found on an antiship missile. A direct hit was not required to do significant damage to a target. Just two shells came within lethal range of the Halifaxian heavy cruiser. These burst just as the ship's shields formed a complete hyperspace shell around it. More was thrown to the deck by the concussion of the first blast, and then tossed into the air by the force of the second. The lights were gone on the blackened bridge. That meant auxiliary power was offline. He could smell smoke.
"Amy, you there?"
No answer. He could hear someone coughing.
"Sound off. Who's with me?"
"I'm okay," Ensign Tan announced from the gloom. "A sprained wrist, maybe."
"I'm here too," Feeney said. "Phil - Lieutenant Garand, he's alive but unconscious."
"Del Rio?"
"Del Rio's down too," Tan said. "He's bleeding bad."
"Boris, can you hear me?" More called. "Boris?"
There was a crackle over the comm. "Steadfast, come in. Steadfast, this is Kongo. Please respond." It was Heyward.
"Matt, this is Andrew. Power's out except for a handful of systems with backup. What's going on?"
"Your shields are down and so are your drives. Seven Brimstones are headed right for you, starboard side."
"Damn! Where are you?"
"We're moving on an intercept course but we won't get all of them. Cormorant's gone, and Golden Lion is dead in space."
"Time to intercept with us?"
"Thirty seconds, tops."
"Do your best, Matt."
"Will do."
Dim light returned to the bridge. "Captain More, this is Commander Koslov."
"Good to hear you, Boris. What do you have for me?"
"Thirty percent power, captain. No more. Reactor coils are almost all burned out."
"Work on it," More ordered. "Thirty percent is better than nothing." More checked the wavering holo beside him. A wispy and weak shield was forming around Steadfast. "Teddy," he said. "Take over for Del Rio. "Launch two Sledgehammers. Conventional blast warheads. Three-second detonation."
"Aye, captain. Tan slid into Del Rio's empty chair and lofted two antiship missiles out of their launch silos.
"Won't such close detonations hurt us, captain?" he asked as the Sledgehammers streaked away from Steadfast.
"Yes, but they will hurt the Brimstones before they close with us," More replied.
More perceived the ensuing detonations as a successive series of blinding flashes and terrific jolts. Then all was darkness.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The blast door blew in as if it had been a rickety wooden fence knocked down by a hurricane. Lieutenant Jenkins raised his M22 gauss rifle and loosed a stream of kinetic penetrators at the first figure to appear in the smoky breach. The rounds tore open the chest of the Memnonian huscarl, tossing him backward. A second and then a third huscarl appeared, and Jenkins, with Private Brand at his side, floored them as well.
Sergeant Cone commed from the other side of the bridge. "Multiple ceiling breaches, lieutenant! Cass is down!"
"I see them," said Jenkins. He and Brand spat a flurry of gauss rounds at one of the breaches that had been ripped open by magnapex charges. A Memnonian huscarl plummeted to the deck, missing the lower half of his body. But other openings were being made, and several plasma grenades were dropped through them.
"Grenades!" Jenkins cried.
Searing flashes accompanied by concussive waves washed through the bridge, causing the Halifaxian marines' visors to go completely black to shield their eyes. Their M74 battle armor protected them from the high heat of the plasma, but could not prevent Jenkins and Brand from being knocked off their feet. A dozen or so huscarls, the elite troops of the Royal Memnonian Navy, dropped down onto the bridge. They were much the same as the marines of the RHN, bold and brash and utterly confident in their superiority over the soldiers of the regular army. They were equipped in much the same way too, wearing a suit of heavy powered armor not much different from the M74's worn by the Halifaxians. One split apart as a rocket struck his torso from behind, spraying his innards across the room. The head of another exploded at a gauss round smote his helmet in the side.
"What are you waiting for, lieutenant?" Cone jibed. "This party isn't invitation-only!"
Jenkins' head was still swimming. "I wish it was more exclusive! Too many party-crashers!" Jenkins loosed a burst of rounds at a charging huscarl, ripping off an arm from the man, who fell to the floor. "Was that rocket you?"
"That was my man Tikhonov," Cone said with pride. "He's a good lad."
Brand pounded another stream of rounds into a huscarl, throwing him off his feet. The private then let out a sharp cry of pain, clutching his shoulder. His arm was hanging by bloody threads.
"Brand is hit!" Jenkins shouted. More huscarls were jumping down to the bridge as they spoke.
"Damn! Sung's been hit too!" yelled Cone. "We're going to be overrun! It's time, lieutenant!"
"Fire in the hole!" Jenkins lay prone alongside the fallen Brand, and then pounded the detonator connected to the five linked Bandsaw mines strung around the bridge. A sheet of high velocity pellets tore through the chamber at a height of one meter, scything through the debris and the Memnonian huscarls.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Aboard ATS Triumph
The explosions came in waves. At least a dozen heavy gauss shells struck the Triumph in rapid succession, scouring her of layers of armor and blowing off three of her remaining gauss turrets. With shields down, there was nothing to buffer her from the full strength of the blasts. The battleship's port side had taken the worst of the damage. Unable to move, and with little ability to maneuver, she was a fat target for the weapons of the RHN warships. Though none carried cannons equal in size or power to the Triumph, their cumulative effect on the unshielded battlewagon was terrible.
That Triumph was still able to fight was a testament to the foresight of her designers who had provided her with ample armor, with substantial self-repair capabilities, a
nd at least three backups for every critical system on the warship.
Captain Acton dizzily rose to his feet, and then, his head swirling, he fell to his knees. "Tricia? Tricia?" he called to the Triumph's shipbrain. "Are you there?"
A response was slow in coming. At last, Tricia replied, "I am here, Captain Acton. My systems are failing. We will lose gravity soon. Turrets 2, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 10 are unresponsive. Amity has been destroyed. Endurance is badly damaged and may have to be abandoned. Gazelle is missing and presumed lost.
"Send a dispatch order to Hasty. It is to go to Tartarus. Tell those aboard to inform His Majesty of the Halifaxian treachery we encountered here."
"Yes, captain. It is done."
Acton spat up more blood. Range to. . . Steadfast?"
"100,000 kilometers. At this range we will have below one percent probability of achieving a hit, captain."
Acton coughed again. More blood. He opened up a comm to the remaining ships of his squadron. "To all ships of the Engagement Force," he told them, "continue. . ." and then fell to the floor, his eyes sightless.
Aboard RHS Steadfast
More awoke. Ensigns Garand and Tan hovered over him wearing worried expressions. Then Garand smiled. "The captain's awake," he said, smiling. "Good to have you back, sir."
More sat up. He was sitting on the deck of the bridge. He rubbed his head, which throbbed in pain.
"It's good to be back," he said. "How long have I been out?"
"Just a few minutes, captain," Garand answered. "We were all out of it for a time." He pointed to Garand. We just received a message from Triumph."
"Her acting commander is asking for a cease-fire." Garand explained.
"I say we give it to them," More said. "Relay my agreement."
The Memnon Incident: Part 4 of 4 (A Serial Novel) Page 6