Opening Moves

by James Traynor

  * * * * * * *

  “Enemy vessels closing fast.”

  “Lock on main batteries,” Captain Natara nodded. “Fire at will.”

  Batal watched the enemy vessels enter range. It was a mix of cruisers and destroyers which represented quite a powerful force. Many showed the scars of mine impacts and some were trailing clouds of atmosphere and burning plasma, but so far the Ashani had lost no major warships thanks to their fighter screens' fanaticism. Their losses so far would have caused a Komerco force to pull back and reassess their strategy but apparently the Ashani regard for any life, even their own, was scant.

  The sensors across her panels lit up with warnings, and a second later the entire Érenni battle line fired. Lines of red laser fire tangling across the sky mainly from defense satellites, punched through the Ashani ships, often passing clean through the relatively weak hulls and disappearing away on the other side. Six of the warships exploded immediately, leaving no debris larger than a shuttle in their wake, the other ships were wracked with secondary explosions and gutted from the inside out leaving them dead hulks drifting powerlessly.

  “Hells and demons!” Natara whispered in awe. She had never seen such firepower, and despite the terrible number of deaths she had just witnessed, it had impressed her. “They must surely retreat now.”

  Batal looked over his shoulder and shot her a level glance. He wasn't quite so sure about that.

  * * * * * * *

  “There, look!” Pyshana exclaimed triumphantly, pointing to a display of sensor data. “The battle station barely opened fire despite our vanguard being well within its range and firing arcs! Our scouts were right, it has no teeth!” Intelligence reports gathered from Ashani ships disguised as freighters had hinted that the battle station was barely functional. Now it seemed they had been correct.

  “Command has seen it too, Ma'am. The Strategos is ordering us to concentrate on that sector.”

  “So be it.” Pyshana inhaled deeply, letting the air fill her lungs and raise her chest. The glory of battle had covered her. She felt no fear or doubts; just the clear knowledge that she had a mission to complete and she knew exactly how to do it. She felt almost as if the battle was already won and the Érenni were a mere formality. “Take our place in the assault echelons and drive us forward.”

  The Ashani fleet, as a whole began to move now, heading for a location just to the 'right' of the first sacrificial attack, as far as two-dimensional bearings on a three-dimensional battlefield made sense.

  Pyshana's squadron was in the fifth line of the attack and on her screens she could already see the defenses firing on the ships at the head of the attack. The red lances of Érenni lasers were matched by the greenish beams of the Ashani ships aiming for the local defense satellites. With their simple construction they vanished with only a handful of hits.

  “Send in our fighter screen. Have them go for the weapons' platforms!” Pyshana ordered, rejoicing in every shudder and muffled thud from her ship telling of weapons firing somewhere deep in her command. There were still enough mines to cause problems, and two light cruisers were listing badly with white atmosphere spewing forth from their hulls, gaping holes showing where they had struck a hidden field.

  Up ahead the battle station struck an attacking missile destroyer and severed its engines from the primary hull. The warship continued engaging as it spun out of control until a pair of Érenni cruisers finished it off. Pyshana noted that despite the attack the station had barely fought back and that its hull was marked by the return fire, something the heavily shielded station should have avoided. She quickly pulled up the files the Naval Intelligence Directorate had gathered on the massive space fortress. At that distance a fully operational Fathal-class station should have long dealt with any opponent possible of hitting her. Going by the amount of missile batteries and plasma lasers housed in the giant structure there shouldn't have been a scratch on its surface. But the reality looked different.

  Missiles spouted from the Ashani fleet, the carefully timed volleys weaving through the combating ships and hitting satellites with pin point precision. The Dominion was pressing ahead, losing ships every minute but driving surely into the defenses.

  * * * * * * *

  “This is so not good,” Rául concluded in a slight panic. “They're almost past the lines!”

  Captain Calendar looked at the IRON MAIDEN's admittedly limited sensor suite. It wasn't a good system but it told him everything he needed to know. Rául was right. The Ashani were engaging the main line of defense satellites and if those were destroyed it'd just be the incomplete station and the defense fleet standing in their way. As a gambling man he wasn't keen on those odds.

  “Take a look out there,” Alexej pointed from his seat out of the window.

  Tarek followed his direction and spotted a red and greenish thunderstorm filling his view.

  “Going by my readings some of the other freighters are already preparing to leave,” Annie commented calmly.

  “We should, too,” Rául said. “I don't want to be here when the Ashani show up again. We barely made it last time.”

  “It's too early to run,” Tarek stated evenly, giving Rául an assured look. “We'd just fly right into the main Ashani force. Take a look at the long range sensors. They're focusing their attack here, but by doing so they're also forcing the defenders to send in ever more ships to plug the gap they've cut. And all the while the Dominion's remaining forces slowly move in closer all around the planet.” The MAIDEN's sensors showed how the sphere of red symbols designating the Ashani armada cautiously drew an increasingly tight cordon around Senfina. “Now, the engines are charged, the people strapped in, and if we have to go we can be moving in seconds. Still, let's not try anything hasty.”

  “There is a covering force waiting at the edge of the gravity well. Several squadrons of destroyers and cruisers and a whole bunch of gunships, skipper,” Annie added. “If we make a run for it one of them will have enough time to plot an intercept course.”

  “Probably waiting to hit any Érenni reinforcements,” Tarek commented. “So, there's no easy way out. Sit tight and take it easy, the battle isn't over yet.”

  “Speaking of, look at these readouts,” Alexej pointed out. “Something big is about to happen over there.” He pointed to the battle zone. “I think our Érenni hosts might not be as open as we thought.”

  * * * * * * *

  A sudden warning chime caught Pyshana's attention. Her ship was almost at the frontline, already blasting away at Érenni defenses. Massive waves of energy fire were sweeping each way as the fleets grappled, holding nothing back. Every gun on the SUNBURST was firing on the satellites along with the rest of her group, 'above' and to their right Strategos Drushan's dreadnought and a solid escort of gunships were exchanging fire with the battle station. The Érenni defenders had put most of the base's energy into its defenses, having polarized the hull to create a dispersion effect against enemy lasers. It meant the powerful command group was having a hard time scoring damage, but at least wasn't taking fire in return.

  Fighters and gunships were constantly darting around her ship. Occasionally they were nothing but wrecks and it was momentum that kept them in formation. It was a deeply eerie sight to see destroyed ships still in combat formation advancing forward, like a fleet of ghost ships or a spectral fighter squadron blackened and charred by war.

  “What's that warning?” Pyshana called across the bridge.

  The sensor officer paused for a moment. He had been too wrapped up in monitoring the battle ahead to notice. “Ma'am, it's an energy reading, not localized. It's all around us.”

  “What could cause it?” the Fleet Captain asked, only to be answered by a shrug. “Well, make a guess then!” she demanded.

  “I would guess, I don't know... perhaps a mine field?”

  Pyshana's eyes widened in sudden terror. The reading was all around the ships currently engaged, including her own.

  “But Ma'am,
we've already neutralized the minefield with our fighters.”

  “We hit the mines that went active, the captor mines,” she responded quickly. “But what about other types?!” She had a sudden premonition of five hundred warships suddenly evaporating in a titanic fireball. “All engines, full reverse! Get us back!”

  “Energy spikes, everywhere!” the sensor officer called in alarm. “Mines!”

  Before the words had even settled in, Pyshana was deafened by an echoing explosion and the scream of ripping metal. SUNBURST jolted off course with sickening force, almost overpowering her gravity dampeners. Only her restraints kept Pyshana from being smashed into a bulkhead. There was a second crack, and this time cold air rushed out of the bridge with the force of a hurricane, tugging at her hair and uniform and filling her with a deep cold before her suit's helmet automatically sealed her off. Red lights and sirens wailed over the howling wind, warning of a hull breach which Pyshana had more or less worked out for herself.

  Her mind went completely blank. She couldn't think of a single damn thing, not ways to escape or plans to execute, she couldn't visualize the damage to her ship or even decide if she was prepared to die or not. It was as much a vacuum within her mind as it was rapidly becoming outside.

  The sensor officer was hurled past his station still strapped into his chair, banging off the ceiling and nearly decapitating Pyshana as he crashed along the bridge in a shower of sparks and down the corridor behind, any cries of terror were masked by the howling gale.

  She closed her eyes tightly. She could feel the vibrations in the hull and hear the supports and braces giving way somewhere deep beneath her feet. It felt as if ship was dying with its crew. There was another much closer rumbling, a more solid vibration and as it proceeded she felt the gusts slacken, though the cold inside her suit remained the same. With a metallic clang the wind stopped and a heavy silence engulfed the bridge.

  “Report!” she croaked. “Damage report!” Pyshana managed a little louder, and then realized the sensor officer was nowhere to be seen, the memory of his rapid departure stabbing her mind and forcing her to get back with the program.

  With atmospheric pressure normalizing, her helmet snapped open again. Her command chair's instruments were still working and she remotely called up SUNBURST's status display. She stifled a shocked gasp at what she saw. The entire port side of her ship was in ruins. Nearly all sections on that side were flooded with lethal doses of radiation. Incredibly, the core functions of the dreadnought were still operational. The reactor was being restarted and power was flowing again through her ship, but it seemed she was one of the lucky ones despite the tremendous damage. Most of the ships ahead of SUNBURST were nothing but wreckage.

  A message was filtering through on all channels. It called for a general retreat.

  * * * * * * *

  “Hot damn, what a show!” Rául hooted. “That was amazing!”

  The Érenni were renowned for their mine warfare, and apparently with good cause. Tarek had to admit that even he was surprised at how sudden the reversal had been. The best ships in the Ashani assault were broken wrecks and the survivors were turning tail to run. He could see the ships attacking the battle station, including what he expected was the fleet commander's vessel, were utterly destroyed. All together something like two hundred ships of various classes had been annihilated in seconds.

  The Érenni success was based on cheap proximity mines, the type common across the galaxy. The only difference was the Érenni mines were so sophisticated as to be almost invisible to anything except pure minesweepers, unless activated, which had meant the Ashani fleet cruised right past them until they were right in the thick of them. At which point the Érenni commander had chosen to detonate them, with staggering consequences.

  “Guess we won't need to run away just yet,” Tarek grinned. “But we're still going home after this!”

  * * * * * * *

  “The Strategos is dead!” a frantic crackly voice screamed on the fleet wide communication net. “We must withdraw!”

  “We do not run!” Pyshana shouted with a force she didn't know she had possessed. The very effort of breathing pained her. Compared to that, shouting was like a kick in the chest. But she knew she had to keep the fleet together. “We won't get another chance, press on!”

  “It's hopeless!”

  “Nonsense!” she roared. “They have sprung their little surprise and we still live! We have survived their worst and come through breathing! We will take the war to them. Don't you understand? That was their trump card! They have nothing else left. We need to push the attack now!”

  “With what? Our fleet is tattered!” the voice of doubt kept talking.

  “We are still Ashani! While we have our bodies we have a weapon. Our courage and determination are all we need!” she snarled. “All I ask of you is to follow me!” she cut the connection.

  “Orders, Ma'am?” her navigator asked formally. The bridge was slowly warming up again after its sudden depressurization, and the warmth gave Pyshana an infusion of spirit.

  “All ahead full! Hit them with whatever is left, and if we die, then we die well.”

  The SUNBURST labored forwards, its hull as charred as the wrecks surrounding it. With supreme effort of will it was moving again, now at the head of the attack. For a while she was alone, a single crippled ship ready to face the Érenni lines, but then more vessels fell in beside the crippled dreadnought, and then even more. Fighters once more blazed through space and the battered assault echelons regrouped into ad hoc battle groups. The reserves watching the outer perimeter were summoned and hurried to join their comrades in the second assault. With a fresh sense of purpose, driven by revenge for their dead and a need to honor their memory, the attack was renewed. Pyshana didn't even consider that it was she who now led these ships. She just pointed her dreadnought at the enemy and advanced with all guns blazing.

  * * * * * * *

  The sense of elation aboard the PERISAI evaporated faster than ice on Kom. Where in one instant the Ashani fleet had been in full retreat and utterly broken as a fighting force, it had suddenly rallied and was heading back into the firestorm of the well prepared defenses. Natara didn't understand the minds of such a race. How could they advance past the shattered remains of their comrades without realizing the exact same thing would happen to them? Why didn't they understand that?

  “They're coming into range again,” Batal pointed out unnecessarily.

  The Ashani fleet was in a poor state, with most of the leading ships already one or two hits away from exploding, but the Érenni lines weren't looking much better. With no more hidden mines and heavy losses to their satellites there was nothing to keep the Ashani ships away from the Érenni defenders. It looked like it was going to come down to whichever side had the greatest determination to win, and despite her feelings on violence Natara would make sure the Ashani did not desecrate the colony below with their presence. She actually found herself getting mad.

  “Power up our full electronic warfare suite and load up our hack packs. Begin jamming their sensors. Let's not make this easy for them,” she stated with cold professionalism, the sights she had seen today turning her from a police captain into a naval officer. “The moment they come through I want a missile barrage right in their path. Fire at the earliest instant and don't stop until they run or die.”

  Batal obeyed, mildly pleased that his commander finally seemed to have gotten in touch with her inner fighter. Maybe the Érenni weren't such easy pushovers after all.

  * * * * * * *

  A tightly clustered group of Swiftpaw-class fighters whirled through the wreckage of their brethren. Space this close to the planet was choked with the dead and the debris of the previous attacks and was interfering with long range fire. Pyshana praised all gods of the Ashani pantheon for that. With that much debris out there, much of it particles of armor and hyperalloys from inside ships enemy lasers would find it hard to unfold their full destructive potentia
l, especially in light of the still impressive Dominion electronic warfare cloud. Firing a laser in the debris field would be like trying to pinpoint a torch's light in a room full of tiny mirrors.

  The fighters ran into the rear portions of the mine field and lost three quarters of their number in the blink of an eye, but they did show Pyshana where the last batch of mines began. “Our primary target is still the station,” she resolved, intently studying the bridge's flickering tactical display. “But first we need to get there, preferably in one piece.”

  “We don't have enough fighters left to adequately screen us, Fleet Captain,” her second officer warned. “And our point defenses aren't good enough to stop a full attack.”

  “They don't need to be. Comms, get me our bombardment ships.”

  For a few moments the comm officer tapped his board, and then a voice came on the line from somewhere behind the main fleet.

  “Group Captain Farwalker responding,” a female voice stated.

  “This is Fleet Captain Pyshana. I am in command of the fleet following the strategos' death.”

  “Acknowledged, Ma'am,” the other officer said flatly, her voice betraying no hint of the Fleet Captain's opinion on her self-appointed promotion.

  “Captain, by our records you have fifty missile ships, correct?”

  “Correct, Ma'am,” she replied immediately. “My squadrons are armed with neutron charges and kiloton-range nukes for surface attack.”

  “Very well, commence long range fire with half your ships. You probably won't hit anything but it'll force the enemy to get out of the way and disrupt defensive perimeter. Try and get a hit on the battle station.”