Admiral's War Part One

by Wachter, Luke Sky

  “Message to the Fleet: Sub-Formations 1 and 3 are to reverse course immediately—Admiral’s Orders” Steiner said urgently into her com-piece.

  Every ship in the two sub-formations stopped, turned, and reignited their engines.

  “The Royal Rage has come about, Sir,” Hammer reported.

  “Admiral Dark Matter says he needs to speak with you,” Lieutenant Steiner said, turning back to me with a harried look.

  “Put him through,” I instructed.

  Chapter Forty-one: All According to Plan

  “Still no reaction,” Janeski observed.

  “The locals should be seeing us by now, Admiral,” Captain Goddard said respectfully.

  High Admiral Janeski nodded, pulling up the image of his forces in this star system.

  “Everything is proceeding apace,” he said finally. Pulling up the image of the space around the convoy, he watched as this Grand Fleet—the third ragtag group to take up the name that he had faced during the Reclamation—continued to barrel past the point of no return. The deeper they went, the sooner they would be destroyed.

  “Half their fleet has spread out to deal with the freighters and escorts while the rest continues to remain concentrated and…” Goddard observed, only to trail off for several seconds before adding, “there they go. The concentrated half has just initiated an emergency reverse burn.”

  “Too little, too late,” Janeski said with satisfaction. He would have preferred to be closer to the heart of the action, but the Invictus Rising was just too large a ship to fully hide its energy profile, even with Imperial technology. It was frustrating being out so far away, but that was the life of a naval service professional.

  “There they go,” repeated the Flag Captain with relish.

  “Indeed,” Janeski said eyes on the screen like a hawk guarding his eggs. He had studied the intelligence files and updates in depth. The Governor, despite an innovative use of old outdated tech and the occasional flash of creativity was, in the end, nothing more than a young amateur newly come to the game. Give him another ten years and maybe he would become something to worry about, but right now he was like a monkey with a gun: every bit as comical as he was dangerous.

  Strange-looking perhaps, potentially deadly at his worst, and almost totally lacking in the basic intelligence that lifted man above the beasts, but throw out a banana or three and such a creature was easily distracted. Uplift it and maybe someday it would be a real problem…

  He looked back at the screen and his lip curled as he thought, Case in point.

  Chapter Forty-two: Ambushed on all sides

  “Can I help you, Admiral?” I asked Admiral Dark Matter tersely.

  “Yes—” the other man began.

  “Contacts!” cried a Sensor Operator. “I’m reading multiple warships to our starboard side!”

  I stiffened in my chair.

  “Mr. Patani!” protested the Sensor Officer.

  “Contact! Multiple contacts to port,” shouted a Sensor Specialist jumping out her chair.

  “Control yourse—” the Sensor Officer trailed off before tapping on his own screen and then turning back to me with wild eyes.

  “I read a fleet to port and a fleet to starboard, Admiral!” he said speaking in an urgent voice. “Numbers as yet undetermined.”

  My eyes shot to the screen. “A Fleet…two fleets?” I was momentarily dumbfounded until the main screen suddenly exploded with newly-verified sensor contacts.

  “Supercharge the shields, Mr. Longbottom,” Hammer ordered, snapping me out of my moment of surprise.

  “We’ll have to continue this discussion at a later time, Rear Admiral,” I said, turning back to the commander of Sub-3, “we seem to have a bit of a problem.

  “I’m reading more sixty contacts to port spread out in an arc and nearly seventy contacts slightly ahead to starboard!” yelled the Sensor Officer.

  “I have identified three battleships and rising on the port side,” called out an operator.

  “I can confirm a total of eight ships of the wall ahead and to starboard,” shouted a specialist.

  “Yes, I think that would be wisest, Sir,” Dark Matter agreed grimly.

  “Keep close to my formation and await orders. We’re going to have to force our way out of this together if we’re going to make it through this,” I said, cutting the connection and turning to my bridge crew. “Just where the blazes did these warships come from?” I demanded hotly. How did two blasted fleets appear at close range, less than ten minutes away from my forces, and the first I heard about it was once they lit off their main drives?! Heads would roll for this incompetence or I’d know why!

  “Enemy maneuvering for advantage! They’re headed right for us, Sir!” cried the Sensor Officer. My eyes snapped back up to the screen. The entrapment wasn’t total, but it was effective.

  “They must have been hiding in a low-power state behind a stealth field, Admiral,” Captain Leonora Hammer explained.

  “A stealth field?” I demanded, wondering what exactly it was—and where I could get one.

  Hammer’s First Officer broke into the holo-conference using a priority override.

  “It seems to be a combination of abilities built into their ships and these satellites we are observing here,” he said, pointing to something off-screen and then his image was abruptly replaced with several faint grey blurs on zoomed in tactical screen. The blurs flashed three times before he continued.

  “Interesting,” Hammer sounded impressed.

  Hmm…if they were telling the truth there was no way to easily retrofit our ships beyond our already existing silent running protocols. The satellites were probably some sort of advanced Imperial tech, but it couldn’t hurt to ask.

  “They seem to have been developed along the same general lines, at least in functionality, as the jamming satellites you used at Elysium, Sir,” the First Officer said directly to me. “However, while the functionality is similar from the sensor returns we’re getting now, it must use a completely different technology. There’s no way to modify our existing jammers for this kind of operation,” he finished regretfully.

  “Unfortunate,” I muttered dourly, my mildly hopeful mood crumbling under the continued pressure of this surprise attack.

  I turned back to the screen, now that the surprise ambush which had slipped past every sensor team in our entire fleet had been somewhat explained.

  Behind us and on our original course, we had the scattered arc of supply and Task Force 3 warships, with an arc of warships appearing at close range to the left of Silverback and our desperately-burning corvettes. They were a little behind Sub-1 and Sub-3, but they’d be easily able to sweep through Silverback—who had an equivalent number of ships if you counted the Corvettes, which I wasn’t. With more heavy units being identified every moment there was nothing I could do for the insufferable Aegis officer other than wish him luck.

  This was his chance to prove that scattering his forces in the face of the enemy—against direct orders—was the winning strategy. While I felt for his crews, the ones I felt for more were the Corvettes under Commodore Kling that I’d sent out ahead.

  “Counting the task force near the planetoid, the Reclamation Fleet has more than 250 warships, Admiral,” Captain Hammer said, looking a little white-faced as she finished tallying the enemy ships and reported the number

  “Leaving the task force behind the planet means we only have a measly one hundred sixty odd for us to deal with. Those are numbers we can deal with, Captain,” I said with a confidence I simply didn’t have. It’s not that I felt our situation was hopeless. But…well, sure, we also had a hundred and sixty odd warships to match theirs. But there was one big crucial a difference my forces and Janeski’s.

  Forty five percent of my fleet’s number was the currently out-of-position Corvettes, while other than those four convoy escorts the enemy possessed nothing smaller than a Destroyer.

  “What’s the breakdown on their forces? I want
hull sizes and classification,” I said.

  “I’m reading eight Battleships and twenty Cruisers coming at us to starboard, which has been designated E-Force 4,” Hammer reported in a strained voice. Clearly the ambush had been harder on her mentally than dealing with known forces, “With a similar amount, designated E-Force 3, about to hit Silverback from the port side. E-Force 1 is the original Convoy force, and E-Force 2 is the force which came out from behind the planetoid.”

  I felt a chill course through my body that I hid with a nod. “Let’s hope Admiral Silverback does his job and stalls E-Force 3 until we can take the measure of E-Force 4,” I said firmly.

  Hammer looked at me like I was daft to think that the scattered Sub-3 could hold off both the convoy escorts and the now…I looked again to verify that, yes, the 78 units of E-Force 3 at the same time.

  “He just has to slow them down,” I explained uncomfortably. After all, it’s not like I expected great things from such a repeatedly shortsighted ‘thinker’ like Silverback, “I’m not expecting a miracle.” I also silently didn’t add that I expected the headstrong Admiral Silverback to fold like a house of cards at the first stiff wind of opposition—if not sooner.

  She nodded, seemingly taking some strength from my words even if she didn’t appear to entirely believe them.

  “Enemy forces are advancing in battle formation!” reported Lieutenant Hart. “Two minutes until intercept.”

  On the screen, the enemy warships of E-Force 3 finished shaking out and the eight battleships, twenty cruisers, and fifty destroyers moved into attack position. Like a vicious hammer aimed directly at the Grand Fleet, E-Force 3’s Battleships were in the middle of the enemy formation, with Cruisers on the wings and the Destroyer squadrons floating behind as if taking shelter behind the more powerful ships.

  “Time to take out the trash,” I said, ignoring the fact that behind us the remains of the enemy’s Task Force 3—now designated as E-Force 1—had reversed course and the enemy fleet to our port side, designated E-Force 2, was aiming to punch right through Silverback’s pitiful Sub-Formation 2 and stick a spear right in our rear.

  “E-Force 3 has eight battleships to the seven of our Sub-1 and 3,” Hammer pointed out.

  “I saw that,” I said shortly.

  “Eight Battleships to our seven; twenty Cruisers to our seventeen; and fifty Destroyers to our forty five. They have us outnumbered, Sir,” Hammer sounded concerned.

  “Our hearts are pure and our ships very well-maintained. How can we lose?” I inquired with a smirk, hoping we could just get past this wave of drama and back to the battle. I mean what did she expect? There was only so much handholding I could offer in the middle of a major engagement. This was the moment of truth and, thanks to that insufferable Silverback—and my refusal to cater to his every wish and desire like a toadying sycophant instead of his commanding officer—instead of outnumbering the enemy with all three task forces, here we were. Up the proverbial creek and paddling as hard as we could with anything we could find.

  “This is no laughing matter,” Hammer said.

  “I wasn’t laughing…smirking, maybe,” I allowed after a moment of serious reflection.

  Hammer spluttered.

  “Here they come!” called out Hart.

  I stood up. “Stand at your posts and prepare to give it to them with both barrels. New order to all ships,” I declared, thrusting my hand at the screen, “roll and fire!”

  “Turn the ship!” cried Leonora Hammer, “eight degrees to the starboard quarter and line us up for a full on broadside with alacrity, Mr. DuPont.”

  “All ships. All ships! Turn and fire! I say again: turn and fire. Take your cue from the Flagship and engage the enemy,” Lisa Steiner said through the com-link.

  With a flare of its engines, the Royal Rage did a smart turn to port and a half-roll to present its broadside. Moments later, the enemy fleet came into firing range.

  “Open fire!” I thundered.

  “Fire!” cried Hart, holding tight to his microphone.

  Turbo-lasers thundered out from the gun deck, striking the forward shields of the enemy Battleships.

  “The enemy are beginning a combat turn, Captain!” called out the First Officer.

  “Steady on, crew, and mind your stations,” ordered Hammer in a crisp, carrying voice.

  The enemy warships surged forward noses toward us. Then, with an almost ponderous majesty, the enemy Battleships began to turn as well.

  “For what we are about to receive, may Saint Murphy make us grateful!” I said moments before every Battleship and Cruiser in the E-Con 3 opened fire on the Royal Rage.

  Since I was still standing at that point, I staggered and quickly crashed to the floor, slamming my nose into a guardrail as a series of blows slammed into the ship.

  “Shields down!” cried Ensign Longbottom.

  “Grav-plates are fluctuating and we have multiple hull penetrations on the starboard side. Trying to lock them down now,” reported Adrienne Blythe on Damage Control.

  “Roll the ship, Mr. DuPont!” ordered Hammer.

  “In the name of Murphy the Malevolent, what was that?” I asked holding a hand to my nose. When I pulled it away, there was blood on my hand.

  I irritably wiped my nose on the sleeve of my uniform. “Every ship that could bring its broadside to bear on us fired at the same time, Admiral,” Leonora Hammer reported, gripping a nearby rail for support.

  “We were fired on by the entire fleet?!” I exclaimed incredulously, but it was confirmed that my eyes had indeed not deceived me and yes, in fact, the entire enemy force with the range to do so had concentrated its fire on the Royal Rage.

  “Yes, that’s—” the Captain was interrupted.

  “The enemy is firing again!” reported Hart.

  “Supercharging the port shields!” cried Longbottom. “The starboard shield generator is still in shutdown mode while the computer runs a diagnostic.”

  Once again, the enemy opened fire. But this time instead of a concentrated barrage, the enemy started firing their weapons individually as fast as their weapons could cycle.

  “Shields down to 60%, 52%, 50-no-40% and falling,” reported Longbottom.

  “Returning fire,” said the Tactical Officer.

  “Shield collapse is imminent,” Longbottom said crisply.

  “New order to the fleet: all ships are to switch targets and concentrate their fire on the lead enemy battleship,” I commanded grimly. It was time to return the favor.

  Unfortunately, unlike the Reclamation Fleet not only did a number of Grand Fleet ships not switch their fire, of those that did the fire looked ragged and haphazard.

  Chapter Forty-three: Returning Fire

  “Keep your hands steady and eyes on the target,” the Chief Gunner shouted over the intercom.

  “Huzzah!” cried the gunners nearest the Chief, and the cry was quickly picked up by the rest of the deck.

  “This is Tactical: aim for the lead Battleship and go to volley fire,” Lieutenant Hart’s relatively small voice came through the Chief Gunner’s ear bud.

  “Aye aye,” grunted the Gun Chief. He switched back on the intercom, “Volley fire!”

  “Huzzah!” cried the gunners as they went from single shots to volley fire, and a single volley thundered out from the Rage’s gun deck.

  “Huzzah!” another volley thundered out.

  “Huzz—” the cry was interrupted by screams of pain and the sudden flash and spray of molten hot metal and fluids as Heavy Laser 13 was destroyed by outside fire.

  Outgassing and sudden decompression rocked the gun deck when the emergency bulkhead covering Heavy 13 deployed. But it wasn’t bad enough to cover the entire area open to space. The secondary bulkheads took crucial seconds to deploy, while nearby assistant gunners who weren’t strapped into chairs, and low-level grease-monkeys were dragged toward the breach and sucked out into space.

  “Keep at it, boys,” Lesner coughed as a result of the sudde
nly thin air on the gun deck. Responding to the low pressure, an emergency head bag with attached oxygen hose dropped from the gun mount he was sitting at. Shoving it onto his face and forcing a seal, he fumbled the straps until it was finally secured.

  By the time he was done, the breach had been sealed by the secondary emergency seals and Environmental was pumping in replacement gases as fast as the air vents could cycle. But it was going to take a while to fully replace the air and—right now every second counted.

  “Aim and fire. Aim and fire!” the Chief Gunner shouted, flipping the switch on the side of the head bag that activated the custom-built com-link attached to the head bag. “We’ve got them on the run!”

  Taking aim, he lined up his turbo-laser on the lead enemy ship. Acting on instinct, he waited until the moment felt right before depressing the trigger. It was time for some payback.

  The turbo-beam blasted through the weak spot in the enemy shields and he pumped his fist as his beam struck home, tearing deep into the enemy’s hull. When the targeting computer estimated the high likelihood that he’d managed to hit a turbo-laser on the enemy Battleship, it was just icing on the cake.

  “Take that, you foul oppressors,” he chortled happily.

  Again, the Royal Rage shuddered as another hit punched through. But that only meant the gun deck had to punch back—and twice as hard.

  “Hit ‘em with everything you’ve got, boys!” he screamed.

  Today was a good day to be a gunner.

  Chapter Forty-four: Imperial Frustration

  “Why won’t that ship just die already?” snapped Front Admiral Tolwin.

  “We are entering close approach now, Front Admiral. The main force of the enemy fleet will be at point blank range in moments after which they’ll begin to pull away,” reported Junior Captain Prentice Major.

  The Front Admiral ground his teeth. “The might of two entire squadrons of Battleships, with Cruiser assist, and still she functions? It’s as if she means to spite me…” swore the Admiral.