Following her orders, she sent several of her Vanguard scout ships in search of the rest of the fleet as she followed the enemy’s trail. Reaching a dead-end she back tracked to their last confirmed location.
Moving to the gravity well by the system’s gas giant the Squadron Mistress ordered her ships to prepare to bend.
In olden days she would have set up her fleet with her strongest ships in the lead but that was before the war with the humans. The enemy’s larger capitol ships now seemed to all possess spinal mounted particle accelerator cannons. Newer Karduan battle destroyers and larger ships also had these weapons but this called for a change in tactics.
What that meant was going into system blind could mean facing a spinal cannon targeting the first ship through. Instead of an older Karduan squadron configuration she adopted a human formation. Di-Jac had several lesser ships leading her force with her battle destroyer in the center. These smaller warships acted as a screen to protect her main ship and absorb the enemy’s fire. This would give her time to react and counter fire as needed.
Entering the gravity well her lead ships exploited the well’s weakest point and activated their bender drives and were pulled through disappearing from the system.
One would think that entering a vast gravity well and bending to another system was safe from collision from another ship coming from the other side. The problem was that the weakest point of a well was the weakest point of a well. A ship’s sensors from either side of a gravity well would identify the same point to cross. Still, that area of space is vast and having a direct collision was highly unlikely.
Squadron Mistress Di-Jac wasn’t wondering about collisions when her ship moved to enter the bend. She was pondering on the location of this ever elusive enemy and if she would be able to find them.
A moment later her bridge’s alarms went wild and all of her command console’s emergency indicators lit up. Looking to main viewer she saw a Karduan Vanguard exit the gravity well just several hundred meters above her ship. A second or so after that a human transport ship emerged just a few hundred meters below her ship. Both ships moved at extreme speeds to avoid the battle cruiser.
“Mistress what should we do?” the helm station operator called out.
They had just initiated their bend cycle and they had about a second before they would be pulled in. To abort now might cause damage to their ship or even cause a mis-bend landing her somewhere along the gravity well’s route.
“Bend!” she called out as her ship disappeared into the wormhole.
What seemed like only a moment later the Battle Destroyer KBD 23 emerged from the bend right behind her lead screening ships.
“Identify those ships?” she ordered looking to her Second.
A moment later her ship was rocked as it was hit with several particle blasts.
“Lady, those ships were the ones we’re looking for,” her Second called out as their ship was hit again.
“Find that attack cruiser and return fire!” Di-Jac commanded having quickly deduced that the enemy, that the Wolf was now among them.
“The difference between a good officer and a poor one," Captain Hope remarked, "is about ten seconds.”
Alistair Dover recognized that his former headmaster was quoting American Admiral Alreigh Burke from World War II and it was a reference to the difference between winning and death in battle. Hesitation was death in a firefight.
“Ready Sir!’ Lt. Dover said turning from the helm.
“Fire,” Hope said calmly as he watched the battle raging around him.
The ship’s long spinal cannon erupted at its bow sending a barely visible blast of highly charged particle energy towards the Karduan battle destroyer.
The particle wave tore into the battle destroyer’s bow, shearing off the left half of its front and renting the ship’s armored side all the way to the end of its stern. Even though the ship was mortally wounded its crew tried to fight on and moved to target the attack cruiser and return fire with whatever still worked.
“Enemy situation?” Hope asked his bridge crew just a second after the particle strike hit.
“We’ve launched attacks on all five ships around us,” Chief Burke said from the fire control station.
Ben Lewis maser operator chimed in next.
“Besides the battle destroyer we have two escort destroyers and two full destroyers. All enemy ships have taken light to heavy damage,” the former midshipmen said realizing that he probably hadn’t given enough detail.
“Our stealth armor must still be working even at this range,” Dover added having rushed over to the maser station.
“Mr. Daily prepare a Dancer and a Prancer to fire,” Hope ordered.
“Aye sir,” Martin replied.
“Helm, z-negative two thousand meters,” the captain ordered just as the first of the enemy’s return shots hit the Wolf’s armored hull.
It had taken them a while to recover from the fact that they had an enemy ship right in the middle of their formation. It then took another minute to figure out where they were from vectoring their shots. All the while the Wolf had pounded the five Karduan ships with particle and fusion energy weapon as well as missiles and torpedoes.
“Negative two thousand, aye,” Ensign Harrison echoed from the helm.
“Mr. Daily are you ready?” The Hawk asked needing the next part of his impromptu battle plan to work.
“Yes sir,” Martin answered “Prancer and Dancer torpedoes are ready!”
“All turrets cease fire and launch torpedoes,” Captain Hope ordered again sounding calm in his commands.
The Star Wolf dropped straight down and out of the cluster of enemy ships around her just as four Blitzkrieg torpedoes were launched from bow and aft tubes. These weren’t the normal Dashers with their fast speed and heavy payloads. These were two Prancers and two Dancers, once more named after Santa Claus’s reindeer. A Prancer torpedo had an EM or electro magnetic scrambler that would detonate and interfere with an enemy’s sensors and their fire control system’s target locks.
The Dancers were launched behind the Prancers and would arrive just after they detonated. These torpedoes were equipped with ECM or electronic counter measures. Once in place they would send out a signal to confuse the enemy and simulate the signature of the attack cruiser. Hence they would draw any remaining enemy fire to their locations.
As the Star Wolf had stopped firing just before it descended, it was no longer sending out their location to the enemy. Now Captain Hope had a choice - to fight or escape back into the gravity well.
“Helm, bring our bow up 90 degrees,” the old captain commanded angling his ship back up towards the enemy ships with his ship in a narrow profile.
“Sir, what about the Cody and the Randori?” Lt. Daily asked from the computer station.
“If we are facing the front half of this Blue’s squadron then they must be with the rear guard,” Dover added moving over to the captain’s chair.
Hope let out a heavy sigh. It was one of those sighs a father gives his children when they still haven’t learned their lessons or when a person has to make a hard decision.
“Commander Hutton and Lt. Collins are skilled officers, they will have to hang on a bit longer,” he replied. There was no way he could leave these five damaged ships without finishing them off.
“Yes sir,” Daily answered as Dover just nodded and turned back to the helm.
Hope hit a touch pad on his chair’s arm.
“Padre is the spinal cannon ready?” he asked.
Chief Engineer Zimmerman’s voice piped right back.
“She is recharged and ready to fire,” he said and then added “God willing.”
“Helm take us up and into the enemy, full maneuver drives,” Hope ordered as his crew braced for battle.
Dover rushed from station to station trying to be as good of a first officer as Commander Richards had been.
“Sir, we have two fusion turrets that are damaged and we ha
ve minor damaged to portside armor along C deck and moderate damage to B deck starboard side.”
“Load standard torpedoes, target the destroyers,” Hope said and then continued “Spinal cannon target the battle destroyer. Let’s finish her off first.”
“Aye sir!” a chorus of happy and nervous voices echoed.
“Particle and fusion turrets fire on targets as they come to bear but no firing until after the spinal gun fires,” the Hawk said not wanting to let the enemy know where he was too soon. With any luck the Dancer and Prancer torpedoes would have confused them long enough for the Star Wolf to get in the final bite.
In naval combat there was a tactic called crossing the T. This was normally done with fleets fighting while in-line where one side comes through the other line forming a T. Famous battles such as Trafalgar, Jutland and Leyte Gulf were all examples of perfectly performed crossings of the T that led to victory.
Hope didn’t have a line of ships but he did have a spinal mounted particle accelerator cannon. Coming up from below he angled his ship-long cannon at the damaged battle destroyer and opened fire. Later generations of military historians would call this “Dotting the I” as the Wolf’s opening fire from below ruptured the enemy ship’s keel.
“Fire!” he announced waiting until they were in optimal range.
This time the particle blast was not a glancing blow but hit the battle cruiser a mid-ship as they came up making it look like a lower case letter I with the exploding ship becoming the dot. The particle wave had the added fortune of striking the side that had been damage earlier in the battle. The energy shot tore through the exposed hull and blew out the other side tearing the ship asunder.
At the same time as the battle destroyer met its end the Wolf’s missiles, torpedoes, fusion and particle turrets, opened fire on the other enemy ships. What made this all worst for the Karduans was that their sensors were temporally scrambled and when they did come back online they were registering the Star Wolf still at its original location thanks to the Dancers’ ECW magic. All of the Karduan screening ships had been firing into that area thinking that they were destroying the attack cruiser. In the end they did destroy the two Dancer torpedoes but by then it was too late.
“Bring us hard to port as we clear the battle destroyer,” Hope ordered.
“Sir, I’m reading a critical buildup in the battle destroyer’s engine core,” Martin Daily reported from his station.
“Helm, flank speed!” Lt. Dover ordered, “Put some bloody distance between us and that wreck.”
A second later the battle destroyer’s engine core exploded. For a moment it was a bright ball of molten wreckage and metal. The Wolf rocked from the dying ship’s shock wave and it was rough for a moment or two.
“Open fire on the remaining ships,” the Hawk commanded, the seasoned veteran ignoring the death of the battle destroyer as they closed on a destroyer and escort destroyer.
Both enemy ships had been initially hit from the Wolf’s first salvos after bending into the system. The destroyer’s bender drives were wrecked but she still had power and was firing at a false signal coming from a Dancer torpedo.
The escort destroyer was also damaged as its bridge area had been hit by a standard ships torpedo and several missiles, and was completely gone. Its remaining crew though was bravely fighting on from its auxiliary bridge.
Two standard torpedoes were fired as the Wolf’s forward particle and fusion batteries pounded the enemy ships from the rear.
“Damage report,” Dover ordered as the attack cruiser seemed to quake for a moment.
“We’ve taken some damage to our engines from the explosion of battle destroyer,” Daily called out.
“Sir, maneuver drive is down to three fourth normal speed,” helm reported.
“We’ve lost the Spider!” Parker announced from the comm. station. “That shock wave dislodged her from our hull.”
Hope took it all in and gave his orders.
“All guns continue to fire, order the Spider to get out of the area, redirect fighters to provide an escort,” the skilled captain commanded as his tired old eyes locked on the main viewer.
The Star Wolf’s energy weapons quickly silenced the destroyer and escort destroyer’s guns. Both torpedoes and a host of missiles broke through their failing protective fire and point defense lasers. The wave of missiles and torpedoes overwhelmed their damaged defense grids and slammed into their engines and were followed by further explosions as both warships became powerless hulks.
Continuing to fire as they passed between them, the Wolf insured that they were out of the fight.
The other destroyer hadn’t moved since the cruiser’s surprise attack. It had taken repeated turret based particle strikes to aft section disabling its power core and damaging its maneuver drives. They had been lucky to have shot down a standard torpedo that had been launched at them but now they were scrambling to get their engines working or their auxiliary generators back online just to keep their life support system from failing. Their ship mistress had at once sent out a general distress call that now had quickly become a message of surrender.
The second escort destroyer had faired better than the other Karduan ships. Having only light damage to her hull she had charge forward to attack cruiser. Using its sensor lock she fired all of her guns only to find that there wasn’t a ship where they thought it should have been. Coming about she was helpless and out of position as the human attack cruiser tore through her sister ships and crushed the other ships of her squadron.
The escort destroyer’s ship mistress had several options. Face the attack cruiser alone or move to engage the smaller brig repair ship and its half dozen star fighter escorts. Instead of continuing the battle the ship mistress wisely ran back towards the gravity well and prepared to bend out of this nightmare to get to safety.
“Bring us about and set a pursuit course after that last escort destroyer,” Captain Hope ordered finally sitting back in his chair and picking up his coffee mug for a quick sip.
Lt. Dover rushed to the maser station and looked back to the captain.
“Sir, with our damaged in-system drives we will not be able to catch them before she bends out,” he revealed.
“What about our fighters? Can they cut her off before she reaches the well?”
“No sir, she has too much of head start and the fighters have been escorting the Spider away from the battle zone,” Midshipmen Ben Lewis said from the maser station.
“Load Blitzkriegs and fire when ready,” the captain ordered hoping the super fast torpedoes could reach the fleeing ship before it could open the gravity well and bend away.
“Blitzens away,” CPO Burke announced with a bit of glee and a second later two torpedoes fired from the forward tubes and seemed to vanish.
Everyone watched in anticipation for the Blitzens to hit. Holding their collective breathes they saw the enemy escort destroyer vanished not in brief flash of fire and molten metal but into the gravity well and to safety. The two torpedoes self destructed a few seconds after that.
“Damn!” Daily said expressing what they all felt.
“Damage report,” Dover called out.
“Get the Spider back here and have the fighters aid in picking up life pods,” Hope said.
“Aye sir” CPO Parker answered from the comm. unit.
“Helm, bring us around and back to that floundering destroyer,” The Hawk commanded wanting to either take possession of the ship or destroy it before the Blue crew could repair it and either resume the fight or escape. The ship mistress had surrendered but that really didn’t mean much to some of these Karduan ladies.
“Yes sir,” Ensign Harrison replied from the helm station.
Hope opened his command channel to engineering.
“Padre, is the spinal cannon ready to fire?” he asked knowing that the time needed to recharge had been met.
“Negative bender drives are down,” he answered in a hurried breath.
“What’s going on?”
“We had some damage from when that battle destroyer’s aft section blew up. It caused an energy surge to our power matrix for the bender drives,” Chief Warrant Officer Zimmerman reported.
“How long?” Hope asked needing some good news. If the bender drives were down, then they were stuck in this system until they could be repaired. It also meant no spinal particle cannon.
“Five or six hours,” the padre replied and again added “God willing.”
“What about maneuver drives?” The ancient star mariner inquired.
Zimmerman let out a sigh, “Well, they’re still working that is for now. The Alpha unit is at eighty percent and the Beta unit is at sixty-five. if we don’t park for a while and take them offline they might need even more repairs if we wait too long.”
“Roger that, give me ten minutes and well go to stations keeping,” Captain Hope said. He didn’t like it but the damage had to be repaired and the sooner the better.
Lt. Dover had been standing next to his chair as he received the engineer’s report.
“So, no main gun, no bender drives and the in-system drives need to be shut down as soon as possible. I’d say we are rather snookered,” he remarked summing up their battle damage.
Hope nodded, his face grim in contemplation of their situation
“It could be worse, we could be that battle destroyer,” he said looking to the main viewer. There they could see a split multi-screen of each section of the once immense Karduan ship. The battle destroyer’s engine section had exploded but its front half was slowly tumbling away taking it deeper into the system.
“Agreed,” Alistair said and then asked “Now what?”
“You tell me you are the XO,” Hope countered wanting to hear the junior officer’s ideas.
“Get the Spider back here, damage control parties are already at work as is the engineering staff and our repair droids,” Dover stated not really telling him anything new.
“What about the enemy ships?” the captain prompted.
“Fighters are already deployed but we still need to send out shuttles to recover life pods.”
Wolf's Run: The Chase of War (Star Wolf Sqaudron Book 2) Page 29