It wasn't a decision he could make for his crew. If these people out there had been Union citizens or even just humans his course of action would have been clear and unopposed. But it was something different top put it all on the line for aliens from halfway across known space with zero emotional relation or importance to humankind.
“Fifteen seconds, skipper,” his first officer reported stoically.
“Captain,” Lieutenant McLane, the ship's gunnery officer, was the first to speak. “We swore oaths to protect those that need it. I don't remember the oaths limiting that to humans. I say we stay.”
“Stay,” Belasquez agreed from sensors.
One by one each department head gave the same answer: each one chose to stand firm and do the right thing, whatever the cost.
Commander Ranaissa turned in her chair to face Beaufort directly, the middle aged man meeting her gaze. “I know the crew would agree. There isn't one of us who'd leave these people to die,” she smiled. “You taught us too well for that, skipper.”
Beaufort had to swallow a lump in his throat. The sensation he felt was odd, a mixture of intense pride coupled with humility. More than anything else it told him that this was the right place to be, and that he was in the company of the finest people he had ever had the good fortune to meet. “Thank you,” he said quietly, then took a deep breath. “All right, people. We have a job to do.”
“Aye, sir! Lead enemy elements five seconds out,” Ranaissa called, thinly gloved hands running over her console.
“All weapons ready. Turrets Echo and Foxtrott operating on auxiliary power. Remaining drones moving to face the enemy,” McLane added.
“A shame we can't raise the next fleet base. Comm, can you put me through to the ground detachment?” Beaufort asked.
“No sir. All communications are being jammed.”
“Understood. If we survive we'll retrieve them in person. If not... God be with them.” Miles Beaufort bowed his head slightly, acknowledging the dangers the situation posed to all of his crew. He hoped it was worth it. “Weapons, do you have those missile firing solutions I wanted?”
“Plotted and ready, sir.”
“All missile tubes: fire at will!” JOHNSTON's captain bellowed. “Guns, concentrate on enemy cruiser. Weapons free!”
“Enemy in range, firing,” McLane called out.
Once again the exchange commenced almost simultaneously.
Flames belched from missiles tubes on both sides of the cruiser and from the six it carried in its bow, arrayed around its hangar bays. Six railgun turrets – four facing forward on the port- and starboard side and one dorsal and one ventral – opened up, hurling their twenty kilogram metal slugs against the incoming Ashani.
The Dominion's response sent howling damage alarms and shudders and screams of tearing metal through JOHNSTON's hull. While the human interceptor drones and laser clusters on both sides stitched the debris littered space between the two forces into a tapestry of exploding nuclear warheads, there was no way to intercept plasma laser beams or railgun rounds. The Ashani cruiser's main batteries bathed the Leyte-class ship's bow in fire. The six destroyers, clearly not the missile-heavy type ONI had gathered data on, added their own fire, tearing into the armor and superstructure. Their weapons were lighter than those of the Sunchaser-class cruisers, but each carried six in its main firing arc.
Counter-missile launchers one and two ceased to exist, their highly explosive warheads vaporized in an instant. With them vanished the auxiliary control crews manning the duty stations close to them. The primary frontal LIDAR array took a direct hit, putting it permanently out of action. Missile tubes one through five were turned into lumps of molten metal only microseconds after their birds had started. Most of the long antennas and sensor mounts crumpled under the heat like singed cloth, leaving behind a twisted nightmare landscape right out of a painting by Hieronymus Bosch. Two of the Ashani cruiser's main lasers cut through the thick bulkhead of the main hangar bay and the adjacent pressurized compartment. Howling like a hell mouth, the atmosphere raced out into the vacuum in a superheated hurricane filled with razor-sharp debris sped up to the speed of sound, cutting down the flight maintenance crew that had waited nearby in their shock harnesses. The gashes in JOHNSTON's hull glowed scarlet.
It was a fearsome opening move by the Ashani cruiser. It was also the last move it ever made. The human warship had concentrated all its available main battery on her, and even though two turrets operated on auxiliary power and accelerated their projectiles to just a quarter of their comrades' speed: at the close range the exchange was taking place, JOHNSTON's salvo was the equivalent of a shotgun blast into an unprotected chest. The two slugs from Alpha turret came in at slightly divergent angles, ripping through the enemy ship's spiked, maw-like bow like dumdum bullets, gyrating and tearing open paths the size of a small house in their wake. The shots from Bravo turret and her four companions slammed into her like blades, roaring down her full length and gutting her as completely as Vlad the Impaler had done to his victims fourteen hundred years earlier. But the Ashani vessel was lucky. Hers was a quick death. A twenty kilogram slug traveling at fifty thousand kps left no wounded behind. Just as JOHNSTON's bow flared in the rush of lasers and escaping and burning atmosphere, the Sunchaser-class vessel tore up from the inside, vanishing in a series of explosions running down its hull.
“We've lost most of our bow sensor array. Alpha and Beta turrets are running on auxiliary power, Heavy casualties in Section One!” Commander Ranaissa yelled over the thunder of explosions and moaning metal. Besides decks, every Union warship was divided into sections, each having their own auxiliary power systems and damage control teams. The larger the ship, the more sections it had. JOHNSTON had seven.
“Enemy cruiser down!” McLane called out from his duty station.
“Destroyers are trying to flank us, sir! Frigates still on approach, taking evasive maneuvers.” That was Belasquez, the sensor officer. “With the loss of the bow sensors and the radiation and all the debris out there, they're hard to track!”
“Helm, up the zed thirty degrees and full ahead! Weapons, fire at will!” Beaufort barked his commands, holding on to his seat as another series of laser impacts rocked his ship. They did less damage than the first salvo, with many of them failing to even penetrate the cruiser's thick armor. But he didn't take any chances. His ship was outnumbered nine to one and wounded. By rising compared to the ellipsis and rushing forward he could pull his mangled bow from the line of fire and bring his aft turrets to bear and –
“Drones down! Missile getting thr– ”
McLane's outcry was cut short as a massive hammer blow struck JOHNSTON, throwing everybody aboard roughly into their shock harnesses, driving the air out of their lungs and leaving more than one with broken ribs and in a state of unconsciousness. The cruiser bucked like a wild horse and a nigh imperceptible light pierced the eyes of everyone. Beams cried like living things and hull plating deformed inwards. For the blink of an eye the lights and consoles flickered, and when they came back online the shrill beep of a radiation alert raced through the ship. Automatically their suits medical systems pumped painkillers and anti-radiation drugs into the bloodstreams of the most affected crew members.
“Report!” Beaufort's command came out in a croak. “Somebody put that bloody alert out!”
Therese shook herself in her seat, then concentrated on the data her console fed her. Her face paled. “The ventral sensor and defense tower's gone, skipper. Direct hit by a nuke. Computers peg it at around one hundred megs. All arrays and laser clusters there are gone. Damn it, the whole structure's gone.” Her fingers raced across her console. “Ventral turrets and clusters operating on secondary circuits. Heat and radiation have penetrated through the four upper decks at the center. Lots of casualties, sir,” she added grimly.
“How many, XO?”
“Everybody in the SDT,” the sensor and defense tower was a complete goner and in the two decks of Section F
our right beneath it. “Bastards must've struck right at the foundation,” the commander muttered, then cleared her voice. “A hundred and thirty-seven dead. About fifty wounded in the nearby sections and decks. Medical teams are on the job.”
All the while the Ashani destroyers kept up their laser fire, but compared to the asteroid strike JOHNSTON had just suffered, they constituted a mild hailstorm. But even mild hail, if concentrated enough, could hurt. Concentrating their main batteries the enemy destroyers attacked on part of the hull at once instead of spreading out their four forward mounted plasma lasers, and together the lighter weapons were able to penetrate the fifty centimeters of solid metal plating. They did comparably little – the Leyte-class cruiser carried nothing essential to its survival that close to its outer hull – but every circuit they cut, every laser cluster they put into auxiliary mode was one little wound that made it harder for the human warship to stay in the fight.
The cruiser's own missiles hadn't been idle in the meantime. The Ashani destroyers were light on defensive firepower, usually relying on the company of other warships to form anti-missile fire zones. With their own bows pointed at JOHNSTON, their laser clusters' field of fire was severely diminished, and two birds from the cruiser port side tubes broke through and engulfed the closest destroyer in two miniature suns. Unlike JOHNSTON, it didn't have the mass or armor to absorb the hit, and when the light of the nuclear fires rescinded, all that was left was charred hulk barren of all life.
The stern of a second destroyer suddenly flared in a series of smaller explosions.
“The two Agama gunships!” Belasquez called out.
The small craft barely massing half as much as a single Ashani frigate tore past the destroyer, guns blazing, launching missiles from four single-shot tubes almost as an afterthought. The wounded destroyer swayed around, her primary battery focusing on the newcomers. Four sickly green beams leaped through space, cutting one of the gunships neatly in half. The action came too late for her remaining companion on JOHNSTON's port side as the four Agama anti-ship missiles crossed the few thousand kilometers in a heartbeat, outdoing the Union cruiser's earlier display of destruction before their prey's defenses even had had the time to react. The second Agama gunship vanished almost at the same time, brought down by its comrade's killer only seconds later.
JOHNSTON equaled the score herself. Three railgun rounds shredded the Ashani destroyer's hull before all remaining port side guns gave it the coup de grâce in a concerted crack of thunder. Its reactor going critical, it joined her dead sisters in a small, expanding cloud of plasma.
Brave little ships, Beaufort thought. They had bought him some time.
Charlie turret put a round right into the first starboard side destroyer's hull, leaving the ship dead in the water, but the Ashani reacted immediately. The last three remaining fighters, their numbers thinned out by proximity nukes, laser clusters and chance hits by JOHNSTON's main battery, raced forward in a suicidal charge, crashing into the cruiser's starboard and taking Charlie turret and the energy supply for Delta turret with them.
“Enemy frigates on collision course!” Belasquez warned. “They're heading for our bow, four thousand and closing, fast!”
Beaufort cursed silently. “Helm, level her out and take us forty degrees to port. Starboard side batteries, prepare to engage. Alpha and Beta turret, concentrate on frigates. Execute!”
The cruiser limped into position, trading shots with the remaining destroyers. The damage to her sensors and the ever present and expanding debris around her made it increasingly hard to track and hit her targets. Luckily, the same counted for her opponents. But the frigates were nimble craft, their strength as picket ships being in their speed and maneuverability. Even as Beaufort's ship finished its turn and threw fire at them they raced closer, somehow managing to evade the railgun turrets tracking them.
“With the bow sensors down the computers have trouble locking on to them, skipper!”
At eleven hundred kilometers Gamma turret proved to be a lucky shot, its two independent barrels putting a slug into one frigate each. The frontal hits guaranteed that the projectiles traveled through the whole length of the small ships, utterly destroying them. But the remaining Ashani frigate launched her four missiles.
JOHNSTON's starboard laser clusters went into overdrive, and for a moment it seemed as if even fate had jumped in to help the beleaguered cruiser as two warheads were cut down while a third bird slammed harmlessly into a piece of debris. But nuke number four got through.
It hit the cruiser's starboard halfway between the starboard SDT and the mangled bow. Metal shrieked, lights went out and people were ripped from the shock harnesses with their seats. Atmosphere rushed into the vacuum, fanning the nuclear flames. The whole ship screamed like a dying beast. Sparks burst from consoles and work stations, bolts exploded inwards, propelled to lethal speeds by the pressure enacted on them. Beaufort felt lighter than usual. Internal gravity was down, too. The internal comm channels filled with the screams of people, wounded and dying. And yet...
The lights went on again, as did the consoles that had not been broken. Damage readouts rushed down the screens as did status reports, showing that the maintbots and medical teams were already on the job. JOHNSTON was mangled, but she was still in the game.
“Send word through the ship!” Beaufort commanded. “Let them know how well they fought, and how proud they should be.” He coughed a little, only now feeling the blood in his mouth from where he had bitten his cheek. “But this isn't over yet. Damage report?” There was no replay. “XO, what's our status?”
The captain pushed himself against his shock harness' restraints to reach the first officer's station, grabbing hold of the console. Commander Ranaissa did not react to his arrival, continuing to stare impassively at her screen, her head held in place by her helmet.
“Therese? Talk to me,” he whispered, reaching for her shoulders. His touch prompted no response, and he grabbed her hand to check the readout of the small screen on her wrist. He felt a lump in his throat, instinctively knowing what he would find there. A flatline. A new set of impacts reminded him that there were still enemies out there, and that he still had a ship to command. But Beaufort did not rush himself. He owed his friend that much. He placed her hand carefully down, then lowered the black sunscreen visor of her helmet, covering her face. “Au revoir, mon amie.”
“Captain? Weapons are down across the ship. That nuke must've cut a central power node!”
“Commander Ranaissa is dead. Lieutenant McLane will act as First Officer,” Beaufort said flatly.
“Yes, sir,” the weapons' officer answered instinctively, a note of surprise in his voice.
They had all known and respected the Commander. More than one had had a crush on her, too. Her loss was like the loss of the ship's soul. It was the same as losing a part of themselves.
“I repeat, skipper: weapons are down! Damage control estimates it'll be at least fifteen minutes before they've found a way to fix the issue.”
“Captain? Destroyers are intensifying their fire, and that frigate's coming back again!” Belasquez's voice carried nothing of the fear and alarm that the sensor officer felt.
“What about the refugees?”
“The first ships are slipping out of the gravity well as we speak. Dominion vessels in the outer system are on an intercept course, but the computers peg them as too far away, sir.”
At least their sacrifice would not have been for naught then. He would be able to look the dead crew members' families in the eye and tell them their loved ones died for something worthy. That was, if he made it out of here first.
“Helm, status of our drives?” Beaufort demanded, his mind racing.
“Nominal, sir. We've got full thrust and got the Malenkov-Okuda's on stand-by.”
“All full ahead then. Put some space between us and those bastards.”
The ship lurched forward as a stream of superheated plasma many kilometers long burst f
rom its engines. It wasn't enough.
“Enemy destroyers are keeping up with us, sir. The frigate is closing in again,” Belasquez reported.
“She's opened her missile tubes, skipper!” McLane warned. “Reading a lock-on. If she puts a bird right into our stern, sir...”
They'd be gone, Beaufort finished the statement in his head. “Helm, prepare for evasives on my mark. Everybody, brace yourselves!”
“Missile launch detected. I'm reading...,” McLane stopped, the continued in a puzzled voice, “a hundred birds in the air?”
“Bullcrap! That's like whole volume of that ship! What is–”
The three remaining Ashani warships vanished off the plot. Fifty anti-ship missile converged on the three ships, overwhelming their defenses with ludicrous ease, bathing each of them in a volume of fire that would have brought down a dreadnought.
JOHNSTON's main holographic display solidified into a dark face wearing an Alliance uniform.
“I apologize for coming to your assistance this late, Captain Beaufort,” Commander Subhash Kapila's voice was calm. “I hope my 'little ship' didn't come too late?”
Too late for some, Beaufort was inclined to answer as his eyes touched on the body of Therese Ranaissa, but he bit down the reply. Kapila had just saved every remaining soul aboard his cruiser.
“No, you didn't. In fact, you arrived just in time.” He watched as the Alliance missile destroyer slowed down and took up a position on JOHNSTON's port side. “Our guns are down and we've taken one hell of a beating. Lost too many good people, too,” he added darkly.
“I understand,” Kapila nodded somberly. “We saw the start of it and decided that sometimes it's more important to do the right thing than the thing someone far away wrote on a piece of paper,” he grimaced and glanced at a station out of the camera's field of view. “Almost a third of the convoy has already made it out. Whatever the repercussions might be, we can get out of here knowing we did-”
Opening Moves Page 51