Opening Moves

by James Traynor

  “Of course, it's reason enough for all of us,” Pyshana responded instinctively without thinking.

  “Honor gives you nothing,” Corr'tane's voice was a deep contemptuous growl. “Just a cold grave for people with more ambition than sense. Use your mind, cut our losses and retreat! Or, by the gods, I will make you do it!”

  “You should understand... of all people, you must understand sacrifice!” she called over a rumbling explosion that shook SUNBURST's bridge.

  “Sacrifice?” he scoffed, his voice galloping like a prairie hunter. “I know all about sacrifice. I gave up everything to help our people! I gave up everything to help you! All that work I put into raising you and educating you, and you want to throw it away for some stupid notion of honor? You've been a strategos for barely a week and you're already as big a fool as the rest of them!” He took a deep, quick breath. “You're smarter than this, Pyshana. This isn't you,” he said more quietly, slowly. “Don't let this be the end. Bring your ships back.”

  “I understand,” Pyshana answered, also more calmly now. Her voice was suddenly very flat. “This isn't how I want my time to end.”

  “My ships are almost in position. Begin to fall back and you can get what's left of 12th Fleet out in good order.”

  “There will be no need,” she shook her head, a gesture nobody saw, not even her staff of SUNBURST's shaking command deck. “You're the smart one, Corr'tane, always have been. But it's time I did something on my own, something I believe in.”

  “Stop talking like that, damn it! I want you to pull back now.” Corr'tane unconsciously struggled against the restraints of his shock harness.

  “How can I live when so many of my loyal crews have died? My place is with them.”

  “Your place is with me!”

  “Not anymore, Corr'tane. It's time for me to make my own way and my own decisions. Good luck with the rest of the war.” She sounded strangely peaceful amid the shaking hull plates of her ship as it came under more fire. “Father and mother will be proud when they hear of you. Save our people, and our line.”

  “Pyshana! Don't do this!” he yelled, his anger rapidly giving way to fear, the fear of losing everything that was left of his family. There was a 'click' in the line.

  Stunned, Corr'tane logged out of the private comm section. “Captain Pryatan, raise the SUNBURST.”

  “Aye, sir.” She shot her comm officer a glance but the man shook his head. “Strategos Pyshana's flag ship isn't responding to our hails. Her ship is moving forward.”

  “Move to intercept,” Corr'tane grated, fighting against her own fear and despair.

  “Strategos, we'll never make it in time, we're…”

  “I said do it!” Corr'tane roared in a rage he had never felt before, one fueled by his need to keep the last of his family alive. “We can either lose some of our ships or all of 12th Fleet. Full speed!”

  * * * * * * *

  Pyshana was at peace again. It was the same realization that had overcome her at Senfina: an acceptance of destiny. If she was to die here today then there was no way to hide from that. She might as well embrace it. She had responsibilities and she didn't want to abandon them, but she had to do this now. There was no choice, not anymore.

  “All right Captain. Bring us into the fire.”

  “Yes, Strategos,” Farwalker said calmly. Her eyes were blank.

  The dreadnought cruised forward, and again the Érenni defenses responded, warships breaking up and exploding on all sides, their debris showering the survivors before they too were turned to scrap. Even though space was dark the entire line here was bathed in light.

  “Strategos, receiving a message,” Farwalker said with urgency.

  “If it's from my brother I do not need to hear it.”

  “No, Ma'am, it's from 86th Missile Destroyer Division.”

  Her head rose up at the unexpected report. “Put it through.”

  A crackly channel opened, bursts of static punctuating the voice on the other end. The jamming out there was worse than anything any of them had ever witnessed. “Fleet command? Come in?” a young male voice said anxiously.

  “This is the Strategos. I hear you.”

  “Good,” he replied, clearly relieved. “We wanted you to see our final acts, and to use them.”

  “What do you mean? What's happening?”

  “I am Ensign Volkor Tamush, and I die for the Dominion.”

  The transmission dissolved into static, then cut out.

  “Where is that division?” Pyshana asked hurriedly. What in all hells had that officer meant?

  “Coming in fast from starboard,” Farwalker answered. “Five missile ships.”

  A deep explosion rocked every station on the bridge, slamming Pyshana hard into her harness and pressing all air from her lungs. She forced her eyes back on the tactical display.

  The missile ships were designed for long range battle, opting for a large missile payload and speed and sacrificing laser armament and armor for it. In close combat they were probably even more fragile than the usual Dominion line warships. Pyshana didn't understand what Tamush was trying to achieve beside a noble death. Which, she thought sympathetically, was an end to itself. As she watched on, one of the vessels was destroyed as its course crossed that of half a dozen defense satellites, their weapons slicing the smaller ship open from bow to stern. A second one followed its doomed comrade almost immediately. Just two more wrecks among the hundreds.

  “They die well,” Pyshana said, her voice now almost happy. “An example to us all.”

  The three remaining ships passed the vanguard and dove into the heart of the Érenni front line. One more of the missile ships died as the local satellites turned to engage – and then fired. But the weapons fire didn't have a chance to reach the two surviving missile ships; they detonated themselves first in a brief flash. Pyshana was caught out for a second, not understanding what the entire point of this action had been, when all of a sudden the front of the Érenni defenses vanished in light. Each of the missile ships had been packed with nuclear weapons, each carrying more than two hundred warheads. And Volkor Tamush and his comrades, in a last act of defiance, had set them to explode the same instant that the missile ships made it to the Érenni defense grid.

  Érenni Central Command

  Akvô, Home world of the Érenni Republics.

  Even eighty thousand kilometers away the light from the blast shone like a second sun, the illumination explained in all its terrifying power on the command center's various display screens. Sensors in the region, however, were down, fried by the proximity to the extreme amount of gamma radiation. The Érenni saw, and yet were still blind.

  “Send readiness orders to sectors Alpha Five and Alpha Six,” Gwythyr glowered at the dissipating nuclear explosion as he spoke. “Prepare to move the reserves forward, then warn the civilian population of incoming fire.”

  “What changed?” Mairwen asked with dread. “What did the Ashani do?”

  The old Tuathaan officer watched the mass of friendly and enemy icons change positions in the large central holotank before him. “Either something very stupid or truly brilliant,” he muttered, more to himself really than to the tall and slender Érenni female. Things had been under control in the very sector that had just gone critical. In fact, he had been far more concerned about the sector Beta Two where the Dominion's 3rd Fleet had advanced with the slow but impeccable power of a glacier. But now that fleet had changed its heading, too... “We must be prepared for the worst,” he said after a moment of contemplative silence. “We just might have a problem.”

  Dreadnought SUNBURST, 12th Dominion Fleet

  “Sensors are coming back online, Ma'am,” Farwalker said. The readouts all across the bridge still flickered. Somewhere in the background a radiation warning buzzed but was ignored by everyone.

  “Seven bloody hells...!” Pyshana breathed. “Was that the missile ships?”

  Farwalker tried to make sense of her own console's
readings, then nodded. “Confirmed. Looks like they launched an alpha strike in a fan pattern, then detonated their entire payload in front of the Érenni line.”

  Data fed through to Pyshana's command terminal and was amplified by her suit. For a moment her breathing almost stopped as she hurried to check twice to make sure that what she saw was correct. “A breach,” she whispered with mounting excitement. “A breach in the line! They opened up a gap for us!”

  “Yes, Strategos,” Farwalker smiled as hope flickered in her eyes again. “A four thousand kilometers wide hole!”

  Pyshana punched the general comm key on her console. “All ships, converge on my position! The enemy defenses are broken, we can take the fight to them! Advance immediately and leave nothing standing in your path!”

  Érenni Cruiser PERISAI

  Somehow Natara managed not to rip the armrests off her command chair. Even stranger, her breath came in a regulated ebb and flow, and her demeanor was as calm as the seas on Akvô on a sunny summer day. And all that in the face of this unfolding nightmare!

  Half a dozen defense platforms were gone, as were a hundred laser satellites, and the innards of half the other satellites in range had been fried by what was a chain of nuclear explosion. And even as the plasma cooled enemy ships and fighters began to race forward to exploit the new opportunity.

  “Warn command immediately.” Her voice sounded nothing like her. It was as if a robot had temporarily taken her over. “Inform them that the enemy is moving on Akvô.”

  “They already know, captain,” Commander Torok Sen replied. “Central Command is ordering us to hold position. They're sending in units located closer to the breach first.”

  Natara nodded slightly and forced herself to remain still. Her whole body felt loaded like a spring, filled with the desire to do something. It was as if she was watching a forest fire rage out of control with a hose in her grip while being told not to turn on the water. Forcefully she had to remind herself that Central Command down below had a better view of the battle then she. They knew what they were doing.

  She really hoped they knew what they were doing.

  Dreadnought SUNBURST, 12th Dominion Fleet

  Metal moaned as the defenders' fire pierced the mighty dreadnought's hull again and again, turning its surface into a pockmarked mess.

  “Come on!” Pyshana yelled over the noise of her shuddering flagship. “Keep us moving! We need more power to the engines!”

  “We can't! Reactor two is offline. Reactor three is down to auxiliary power. We're suffering too much damage too fast!” Farwalker returned the shout.

  Every ship in 12th Fleet's battle line raced for the gap in Akvô's orbital defense screen, and as if both sides were locked in a deadly dance everything left in the Republican arsenal turned to cover the hole. No amount of jamming was able to protect the incoming vessels here as engagement ranges shrank to barely ten thousand kilometers, then even below that. All you needed to pick a target was to point a camera into the general direction of the battle.

  Ashani wrecks cluttered the approaches and forced the following ships into evasive maneuvers to push them aside. Some were lucky as the wrecks managed to absorb part of the fire aimed at the attackers. But enough still got through to keep the assault hemmed in.

  “Press on!” Pyshana demanded as another hit shook SUNBURST. This time power flickered off and back on again across the bridge. “This is our chance!”

  “More enemy ships just joined the defense. Planetary defenses are shifting missile fire towards the breach, Ma'am. If the enemy puts a squadron into our flanks we're done! We're losing too many ships to break through!” Farwalker yelled, frustration threatening to take over her voice as more and more icons on her ship status display began to flash crimson red. “We're taking heavy damage. The ship won't last much longer!”

  What was left of her decimated fighter screen threw itself into the breach. The nimble, small craft were fast enough to evade fire from the laser defense sats, but low yield nukes streaked their way from incoming Republican ships and laser clusters joined the firestorm, tearing the Swiftpaws to pieces by the score. Her rapidly dwindling fleet was clustered together too tightly, caught in the crossfire, and the Érenni knew it. Ships shifted to slowly close the noose around 12th Fleet's neck,

  “This isn't right!” Pyshana rocked against her shock harness. “We're so close! We're almost there!” Akvô's blue image filled the whole view screen, almost larger than life.

  Another hammer blow shook the dreadnought and Pyshana felt the sudden draft as oxygen rushed out of the bridge.

  “There is no way through!” Farwalker clung to her console. “We've lost all portside sensors, laser clusters there are down. More Érenni ships are moving into position, Ma'am!”

  “Just one more push!” Pyshana muttered, almost praying. After coming so far all they needed was just that one final effort!

  “I can't give you it, Strategos,” Farwalker's voice was bleak. “This ship is a wreck, and our fleet is dying. We will not survive.”

  Pyshana laughed mirthlessly. A moment of hope had opened for her, but it had been a cruel trick of fate, just another way to torment her before sending her to certain death. She closed her eyes, thought of her life, then pushed the thoughts away with a violent shake of her head. “So be it. At least we die well.”

  “Ma'am,” Farwalker replied evenly. “Forward echelons are breaking up. We are almost at the front.”

  At the front. Where her battered dreadnought would come face to face with heavily armed and armored defense platforms and the republican mobile reserve. To be on the front meant instant destruction. Pyshana accepted it. Acceptance was all she had left.

  “You're a credit to the service, Captain Farwalker,” she said quietly. “I was lucky to have you at Senfina.”

  And suddenly everything changed.

  Sickly green beams, hundreds of them, thousands, struck the Érenni defenses, followed by a massive missile volley. The whole right flank of the battle tore up, throwing the defenders into confusion as they fought to react to the surprise blow.

  “It's my brother!” Pyshana cried in unabashed excitement.

  And indeed it was. The Dominion's 3rd Fleet surged in, its lasers running hot, all its missile tubes spewing warheads without pause.

  “Quick now! Adjust course, take us through the line!” a rush of adrenalin had her in its grip. The certainty of their death was forgotten. “Order all ships to form up and advance!”

  Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more...

  Érenni Cruiser PERISAI

  “May demons chew off their asses in hell!” a guttural curse left Natara's lips. It was a strange sight, a strange occasion for the usually so fair-minded aliens, let alone an Érenni officer. “Flank speed, all weapons fire at will!” So much for plugging that breach, she fumed as PERISAI rocked into motion.

  Even though that particular part of space had turned into a graveyard flooded with gamma radiation and dotted with burning hulks and blossoming nuclear explosions the Dominion now had a clear shot at the planet below. Every missile had the name of millions written on it.

  Orders or not Natara understood with an icy crisp clearness that she had to act. The cruiser roared forwards, its sensor suits tried to chew through the background noise and massive jamming while LIDAR darted from one speck of space to the next, always searching for targets.

  Within seconds official orders from Central Command reach them. The whole group was to advance. Every available warship was moving to intercept the Dominion fleet.

  “Target acquired,” Batal said dispassionately. “Firing now.”

  PERISAI's main batteries discharged, the focused beams instantly connecting with and damaging a distant enemy ship. Some Érenni gunships had already closed in on the Dominion vanguard and were now stuck in a deadly ballet with scores of Swiftpaw fighters. Defense platforms in the back of the front began to realign, moving as fast as their maneuvering thrusters all
owed it to fight the inbound ships moving closer to the planet. A series of nuclear explosions stuttered across the battlefront, though who had fired them was a mystery as they seemed just as destructive to both sides.

  “Priority message from Central Command, Captain,” Torok Sen's finger wiped across her console and the message displayed there also popped up in front of Natara. “We've been released from designated sector and are to engage the enemy at our own discretion to cause as much damage and chaos as possible.”

  “Understood, XO.” She leaned forward and studied the tactical display for a moment. The worst of the battle was centered in a comparably small section of space that looked like a flattened globe, with the main concentration of ships pressed into two opposing disk-shaped formation, courtesy of the limitations of the surrounding fixed defenses. “Very well. Get us down the Zed, approach vector five zero zero niner. Maximum jamming. We'll slip through the debris field and go right for their belly. Keep some anti-ship missiles in reserve.” She let her gaze briefly stride across the bridge. “This is it, people: the day we've trained for. Let's not fail our people.”

  “Keep your sword sharp, keep your mind sharper.”

  - Inscription over the gate of the Imperial Military Academy, Rasenna

  C H A P T E R 1 4

  Érenni Central Command

  Akvô, Home world of the Érenni Republics

  5th Day of the Battle.

  August, 2797 C.E.

  Mairwen didn't know exactly what was happening, but guessing from the hard expression on Gwythyr's face things were going very grimly. The broad greenish band on the tactical display ringing the planet had deep wedges in it, and even worse, a gap. A gap through which a mass of red triangles poured, to everyone's consternation.