Then the missiles struck. The ship lurched heavily to port as a series of concussions nudged the battleship close along her starboard side. Shockwaves buffeted the Gael Warrior from bow to stern, causing her hull to ring like a bell. One explosion seemed to hammer Kendric down against his seat, leaving him momentarily stunned. Light and gravity faltered, then resumed.
He groped for his helmet, then stopped. Pressure was holding on the bridge, though the bridge crew had taken a battering. Somewhere, an instrument console had shorted out, and acrid smoke wafted across the bridge. Somewhere, a crewman sobbed the agony of broken bones after being hurled against a console by the force of the blasts. An alarm klaxon wailed off in the distance, as a computer voice announced with maddening calm, "Pressure loss above Deck 05. Bulkheads sealing. Pressure loss above Deck 05. Bulkheads sealing." The Gael Warrior had taken some heavy damage with that barrage, but there was no time to check on its extent. They were almost on the target now.
"Missile spread ready..." Fairfax called above the roar. Targeting brackets closed on the red circle, embraced it with a flicker and the beeping alarm of a positive lock. "Fire!" The lurch as twenty missiles arrowed toward the planet was scarcely felt through the tumult of the vessel's passage through the atmosphere. Then, guided by the inhuman speed and precision of the fire control computer, the battleship's main dorsal batteries fired. The volley was seen rather than felt as a flash that out-dazzled the glare of Trothas V's cloud layers and ice.
The Warrior's barrage of laser beams struck the planet's surface at the instant of firing, her mass driver projectiles a fractional instant later. Trothas V's planetary defense installations were shielded, as were the ships, but enough high-energy beams and projectiles smashed through the shields to savage buildings, crater the ground, pulverize surface beam turrets and bunkers, and raise a billowing pillar of smoke and dust above the wreckage. The beams pouring megajoules of energy against the battleship as it flashed high overhead ceased abruptly as fire control broke down and gunners died in flame and thundering concussion.
Then the missiles struck. The barrage contained a mix of high-explosive and Hell warheads, the idea being to split the planetary defense tracking computers. They would target on the Hell missiles first, of course, seeking the telltale radiation emissions that identified them, but time was short. The ground defenses couldn't spot them all, not in time...
High-energy lasers stabbed up from a dozen points on the planet's surface, vaporizing half of the incoming missiles high in the atmosphere, but the havoc raised by the Warrior's beams screened the rest. Ten missiles struck three of them with Hell warheads, exploding at the shield interface or passing through to bury themselves in concrete and armor plate before detonating with a combined brilliance. Shockwaves rippled out from the detonations, clearly visible on the screens of the Gael Warrior as she raced into the west.
Huge sections of the complex's shields failed as generators were smashed. Control rooms crumpled in fire and shrieking fury, and field projectors and converters melted into flaming slag. Hell warheads that had exploded above the shields still bathed the complex with the energy of a miniature sun.
Shields failed.
Seconds later, another barrage of beams and missiles thundered across the planetary complex as the Reannruadh swept overhead in the Gael Warrior's wake. This time, no defensive beams intercepted the incoming spread of missiles, and the destruction was cataclysmic and complete. The two warships arrowed back into the blackness of space, leaving a monumental column of roiling, flame-shot cloud mushrooming into the sky above what had been one of the planet's strongest bases.
Kendric felt a chill of revulsion as he watched the destruction on the viewer, which now displayed the view aft of the receding planet surface. During the approach, he had been busy with concerns of course and speed, of weapon targeting and control, of the presence of enemy defenses and the possible appearance of rebel Interceptors. He had not been thinking of the target as anything but that—a target. Only now did he realize, with dawning horror, that the industrial complex must have housed what amounted to a small city.
He pushed the thought aside. The complex had been a military installation and would not have been occupied by any but military personnel—people in rebellion against the TOG Imperium. And hadn' t they tried their damnedest to destroy the Warrior and her crew! No matter how he rationalized, Kendric could not shake off his horror at the scale of the destruction they'd wrought.
Then, once again other urgent demands crowded into his awareness. "Damage control," he said. "What's our condition?"
For several long moments, Kendric could get no answer. Then a screen on his console came to life as a familiar face, dirty and haggard now, stared back at him.
"Chief Wemyss, damage control, sir!"
"Report!"
"We're alive, sir. Ventral turrets have lost power, but we're restoring that. Three main ventral turrets are gone, and I don't know how much small stuff. Forward fire director tower is gone. We've lost intraship with the Tower Fire Director and with Damage Control Central. A hit penetrated Beta Flight Deck. There are casualties.. .but no major damage..."
The voice of the Bridge Communications Officer interrupted over Kendric's earpiece circuit. "Captain! Intraship with the Flag Bridge is out! Dead line!"
Kendric turned away from Wemyss to address this new problem. "Anything by radio?" The Flag Bridge had its own set of radio equipment for communication with the squadron. Should the communications lines be broken, personal transceivers could be used to talk to the Warrior's main bridge.
"Negative, sir...and nothing relayed from the other ships."
That could mean that the Flag Bridge had lost power, that those trapped there had not yet been able to switch to emergency lighting and to locate personal transceivers. Or perhaps there was too much wreckage, blocking a weak signal. Or perhaps they were all dead. Kendric remembered the computer voice litany during the battle, about pressure loss above Deck 05. The Flag Bridge, Damage Control Central, and the Tower Director were all above the bridge in the dorsal tower.
He turned back to Wemyss. "Chief, what's the situation in the
Tower?"
Chief Wemyss passed a hand across his face, smearing the sweat-streaked grime there. "I don't know yet, Captain. I'm on Deck 3 forward...and I've lost touch with my people up there. Lieutenant McConner is the DCO...and I can't raise him, either."
That was bad. It could be that critical intraship comm lines had been severed somewhere, but it could also mean that the Gael Warrior had lost part of her superstructure.
"Okay, Chief. Round up a crew as soon as you can and get up to the Tower. I think we took a hit up above the bridge somewhere. We've lost communications with the Flag Bridge.. .and it looks like Damage Control Central may be cut off, too. We've had a report of pressure loss up there."
Wemyss looked tired. "Aye, sir."
"What's your ERT on power to the ventral batteries?"
"Estimated repair time...I'd say two to three hours, Captain. We lost a main power feed from Plant One and the bypass overloaded and burned out. I have a crew replacing the bypass circuits now."
"Okay, Chief. Keep me informed."
One of the biggest problems that the Captain of a large ship faced was simply that his ship was so large. The Gael Warrior had taken damage both along her belly and to her dorsal tower somewhere above her bridge. Until a damage control party could make its way above 05 deck or until communications were restored with someone on the decks overhead, there was no way to tell how bad the topside damage might be. Commodore Severno might be dead...or he could be wounded or trapped or simply isolated, waiting for the damage control parties to cut their way through to him. The chances were that the Flag Bridge was intact; it lay buried near the center of the dorsal tower, heavily armored and protected. There would be no way of knowing for certain until Wemyss could get someone up there to assess the situation.
"Captain? Munro here, Communications."
"Go ahead."
"Sir, we're receiving heavy traffic for the Flag from the rest of the squadron. What should we do?"
Kendric frowned. With Commodore Severno and his staff out of the picture for the moment, command of the squadron fell to him. If Severno was still alive, he would scarcely appreciate Kendric's taking command of the squadron, but there was little choice at the moment.
"I'm assuming command of the squadron, Lieutenant. All attempts to raise the Flag Bridge have failed, and the situation requires that I relieve Commodore Severno...on my authority. Make a log entry to that effect, please. And pass the radio traffic through my console here."
"Aye, Captain."
The incoming news was good. Of the squadron's ten ships, only the Gael Warrior had suffered significant damage. The planetary fortress had apparently concentrated its fire on the largest attacking warship. The Abu had suffered minor damage, hit by an outlying mass driver cannon, and the Galad had taken a surface-to-orbit missile that had smashed one of her ventral turrets and shut down her fire control computers before she could fire. All other ships reported no damage and their fire missions complete.
Kendric glanced again at the viewer image of Trothas V, now a blue and white half-sphere filling half the screen. From this distance, the world showed no sign of the nuclear fires that had touched it. The fighter battle toward Trothas V's outer moon had burned itself out. Preliminary reports indicated heavy casualties among the squadron's Interceptors, but nothing like what they would have been if Kendric has sent them in ahead of the squadron to attack the planet.
Elsewhere, TOG and rebel squadrons alike were gathering, battle groups reforming.
With so many ships engaged across such a large volume of space, the battle for the Trothas system might continue for days. Things were quiet here, near the planet, but that could change at any moment. Kendric needed intelligence more than anything else. How many rebel ships were nearby? What might they do about a battleship squadron drifting within a few thousand kilometers of their world?
The Gael Squadron's strike at Trothas V had proved that the rebel planet was no longer well-defended. Other planetary defense bases existed, certainly, but if the rebels had had reserves of fighters to throw into the battle, they would have deployed them against the Gael Squadron. On the bridge screen, the nearest concentration of enemy ships appeared to be those orbiting Trothas V-c. The fact that they had not stirred from their initial location suggested that they had a special purpose in the rebel plans.
No. He needed facts, not guesses. He ordered a channel, tight-beamed and scrambled, opened to the Group Leader of the Warrior's fighters.
"This is Gael Warrior, calling Warrior Group Leader."
The reply came back a moment later, ragged with static and the flicker of computer descrambling."Warrior, this is BetaFlightLeader. Group Leader Haldane is dead. I am assuming command of Group. What can we do for you?"
Haldane. Kendric remembered a laughing young man. Though he'd met him once or twice in the officer's mess and seen him at briefings, he didn't really know the man. Now he was dead, and the anonymity of it disturbed Kendric.
"Group Leader, we need intel on the rebel ships orbiting Trothas V-c. Can you accommodate us?"
There was another moment's delay. The squadron and the Warrior's fighters had moved apart since the planetary strike, and the speed-of-light time delay between question and response was more than one second.
"Will do, Warrior. Am deploying a squadron for an intel fly-by."
The minutes dragged on. On the bridge screen, Kendric watched six green points of light accelerate toward the moon. Meanwhile, Wemyss's Tower damage control party reported extensive damage to the Gael Warrior's dorsal tower and also that there was no way to approach the Flag Bridge without the services of a repair tender and an EVA repair crew.
Kendric frowned, considering. Commodore Severno and his people were almost certainly still alive but isolated by the wreckage. It was ironic. Right about now, Kendric was supposed to be turning over his command and submitting to arrest. Instead, he found himself in command of the squadron, with his own commanding officer trapped and out of touch with the fleet.
Ten ships and crews depended on him now, instead of only one.
I swear my allegiance to Caesar, to the Terran Overlord Government, and to the Praeceptum Princeps, pledging to these my life, my soul, and my honor, as an officer of the Terran Imperial Navy.
I pledge upon my honor to abide by the Praeceptum Princeps, which states categorically that Mankind is the supreme expression of evolved intelligence in the Universe. I pledge upon my honor to support the Terran Overlord Government as the supreme guarantor of Mankind's destiny in the Universe. I pledge upon my honor to support Caesar, supreme Overlord and Majesty of TOG...
—Extract from the TOG Imperial Navy Oath of Allegiance, sworn by all officers upon graduation from Naval Academy
The Gael Squadron drifted outward from Trothas, arrowing toward the planet's large moon. Kendric shifted nervously in his command chair. The opportunity had been too good to pass up, and without a higher authority to intercede, Kendric had determined to seize it. The thought made him uncomfortable, nonetheless. Scanned images transmitted from the intel fly-by had shown the composition of the rebel orbital squadron and offered an explanation for its seeming lack of activity.
The largest blip in the formation was a VLCA ship, basically a kilometer-wide dish antenna with the attendant power plants, drives, and superstructure that made it a ship rather than an orbital installation. One of the two lesser blips was, indeed, a carrier. It was a Miko
Tscha'ghur Ghak, or Serene Mountain Breeze, Class, capable of carrying three full wings of KessRith fighters. Its escorts were a pair of heavy cruisers and an array of lighter craft. The other was a KessRithian Command Communications ship.
It was the CC vessel that intrigued Kendric. He leaned forward as the bridge screen displayed the huge ship's image. Heavily armored but only lightly armed, its graceful, fluted curves bristled with antennae arrays and longscan turrets. It was designed to gather electronic intelligence and to coordinate the activities of huge numbers of ships in combat.
The rebel battle plan was beginning to look less like a battle and more like an accident triggered by the arrival of a small KessRith battle group. Why the KessRith fleet had come here was still a mystery, but their fleet deployment seemed to be designed with the defense of these three important, central vessels in mind. The defense of Trothas V must have been a secondary—almost as an incidental—objective. The KessRith and rebel ships dispersed through the Trothas system were all engaged with TOG fleet elements by now. By luck and by virtue of its small size, the Gael Squadron found itself within striking distance of the KessRith command vessels.
Strike those ships, and the KessRith defense might well fall apart. At the very least, it might throw off their own planning and control.
The cluster of blips representing the KessRith command squadron had vanished again behind Trothas V-c. It was then that Kendric had given orders to the rest of the Gael ships, and the squadron had swung sharply in its outward path from Trothas and begun arrowing toward the moon. The approach plan that Kendric had set up earlier on the navigational computers could still be applied, with a few changes. The squadron would drift at high speed directly toward the moon while the KessRith ships were on the moon's far side, out of sight, their scanners blocked by Five-cee's mass.
Once the squadron had changed course and speed, Kendric had ordered the fleet's fusion power plants cycled down. They couldn't be turned off without risking a long and involved process to fire them up once more, but their output had been cut back as far as possible in order to reduce telltale neutrino emissions. The moon might block light, radar, and all other electromagnetic radiation, but it was so much empty space so far as neutrinos were concerned. The squadron might be detected by the neutrino flux of their fusion chambers. Powering down reduced that danger in a system already b
athed in the neutrino emissions of a star and from more than a thousand fusion-powered vessels, ranging from fighters to VLCAs. The fact that Trothas V, with its myriad surface fusion plants, was squarely behind the Gael Squadron as they approached would help to mask them from KessRith neutrino detectors.
Course and speed had been carefully calculated, based on the orbit of the enemy squadron. Trothas V-c, a silver crescent rimming the vaguely discernible blue-gray ghost of its night side, grew on the Warrior's viewscreens with startling swiftness. The image displayed was actually a view aft, for each ship in the squadron had swung around to travel stern-first, their I-K drive Venturis pointed toward the moon. The last-second maneuver that the plan required would call for a sharp deceleration to allow the moon's gravity to whip them around and into the place in their orbit where the enemy fleet should be.
Kendric watched the screen with an intentness bordering on anguish. If the KessRith squadron had changed course after the TOG ships had vanished from view behind the moon, they would not be at that point at all. Everything hinged upon the cleverness of the KessRith commander. If he assumed the Gael Squadron had swung off into deep space after the pass on Trothas, there would be no reason to move the KessRith squadron. If the enemy commander were crafty, suspicious, or simply cautious, the Gael Warrior might sweep around to the dayside of Five-cee and find no enemy fleet at all.
Or he might find the rebel commander performing an unexpected maneuver to put himself in a good position to ambush the Gael Squadron.
The crescent sliced sharp across both forward and port screens now, growing broader as the battleship began its pass around the tiny world. It would not be long now.
"Helm, Captain," a voice said in Kendric's ear. "Execution of the next program phase in twenty seconds. Periapse in one minute."
William Keith Renegades Honor Page 9