Warpath

by Randolph Lalonde

  “We are being ordered to take out Destroyer Alpha and Destroyer Beta. The Triton are taking on the battleship,” Frost said from his left at the tactical station.

  “Beam weapons first, we’ll discharge one DEMP beam on each of the destroyers. They are turning to come straight at us, so focus on their bridges. I’ll fire driller torpedoes at the one on the left while our beams discharge, you take care of Beta with the guns,” Jake said. “How are those new shields coming?”

  “I’m having trouble with power switching,” Ayan said. “I can only get twenty eight percent of what I need, something’s not connecting.”

  “It’s power junction four,” Finn replied. “It’s failing under full load.”

  “All right, I’ll reset and try starting the new shields up with less power.”

  “Hurry please,” Jake said, looking at the minimal shielding on the nose of their ship. “Helm, fit us in behind the Triton, flying sideways. Our shielding is still strong on the sides.” He looked at Ayan out of the corner of his eye, hoping she wouldn’t take the change in tactic personally. She seemed completely unphased by his decision.

  They were seconds away from clearing the dust cloud, and their scanners began to reveal damaged sections of the destroyers that they were ordered to defeat. Alpha already had significant damage to their fighter launch bay, and Beta had an opening in their port side hull that yawned open for nineteen meters. Both of them were still regenerating their shields.

  “Fighters detected,” Kadri announced. “Five squads on scanners, they are flying an escort formation around the boarding shuttles.”

  “Can the Triton’s gunnery deck take care of them all?” Jake asked, watching as fifty-six new enemy contacts appeared on the tactical display.

  “At that range, there is little chance,” Frost said. “They’ll make a dent, but the delay between firing and striking is too long to guarantee hits.”

  Jake checked the status of their fighter wings to find that Samurai Squadron, and three Squadrons from the Triton were reporting ready. “Oz,” Jake asked through an encrypted channel. “Are we launching fighters once we clear this dust?”

  “Yes, we need the cover,” the Admiral replied. “So does the Huntress.”

  “Then we launch,” Jake said, nodding at Stephanie, who was watching him.

  “Launch all fighters?” she asked.

  “Samurai Squadron,” Jake said. “And whoever Minh-Chu wants to take with him. Launch at maximum speed as soon as we clear the dust, they have to cover a lot of distance.” The Triton and Revenge were approaching the edge of the dust field, it was seconds away. “How are our new shields?”

  “Activating, I can give you a one hundred and forty percent improvement overall, and repelling coverage across the nose of the ship. Warn the fighters. As they cross the field, they will get bounced forward, about twelve G’s.”

  “Helm, take us down under the Triton, facing the enemy destroyers,” Jake said.

  “We need to be at least four hundred meters away from the Triton so our shield doesn’t interfere with their antigravity field,” Ayan said. “Nine hundred would be better.”

  “You heard her,” Jake said to Ashley.

  “Nine hundred metre distance under the Triton,” Ashley repeated back from the helm. “No problem.”

  Jake watched his status displays, glancing up at the tactical hologram as fighters rushed forth from the Triton and Revenge’s fighter bays. Their shields were reporting a ninety percent boost in strength. “Everything all right with the shields?” The first of the torpedoes from the enemy ships were twenty nine seconds away.

  “I’m holding at minimum power while the fighters launch,” Ayan explained. “If I turn them up all the way too soon, they’ll get thrown out of our shield barrier at about forty nine gravitational units.”

  “New technology, new rules,” Jake said. “Looks like I have some learning to do.”

  “Don’t we all?” Ayan said. “I have to manually balance the power here, so I’m going to be busy.”

  The last of Samurai Squadron passed through their forward shielding, catching a boost of speed as they did so. The entire squadron split and continued their indirect course towards the cluster of enemy fighters around the Huntress. The Triton’s gunnery deck and the high rate of fire pulse turrets aboard the Revenge opened fire on the first salvo of enemy torpedoes.

  “Raising shield intensity,” Ayan reported.

  All but three of the enemy torpedoes were torn to shreds by thousands of energy and solid shots. One of the remaining torpedoes was deflected by the gravity field emitted off the nose of the Revenge, detonating hundreds of metres away. The other two struck the gravity field and exploded, barely making any difference to the high-energy barrier beneath. Jake checked and saw that Ayan had managed to rebalance the power distribution so they were well protected. She was keeping up with the task of drawing power equally from different parts of the ship, and maintaining the intensity of the field across their entire exterior. It all had to be done manually, and Jake didn’t think he could do the job nearly as well, if at all. He didn’t complain that it wasn’t as powerful as originally promised, it should be enough to get them through the situation they faced and more.

  “Fire DEMP beams,” Jake ordered.

  “They will be three percent effective at this range,” Frost said.

  “Drain our capacitor bank, then we recharge and fire again.”

  “Aye, firing.”

  The white beams fired, one striking each destroyer. Their shields registered an eleven percent dip in power. The Revenge would not be able to fire again for forty-nine seconds. The enemy destroyers kept firing torpedoes. Another twenty-four were on their way into range, and Jake looked up in time to see that their point defence weapons reduced that number to only two with no help from the Triton.

  The last two torpedoes hit them head on, covering them with a nuclear flash, and their sensors went dark for two seconds. “Our shields registered a nine point eight percent loss in power,” Kadri reported. “Scanners and antennae are back online. We can keep this one, right Captain?” she said, turning and nodding towards Ayan.

  “All right,” Jake said, watching the Triton alter course to pursue the main battleship. “Helm, full thrust ahead, we want to pull right up alongside these destroyers. If they’re going to start firing nukes and antimatter torpedoes, we’re going to have to make sure they take just as much damage from them as we do.” He glanced at their power generation and shield integrity. Only twelve percent of their main power was being used for their new shields, and they were already fully regenerated.

  “Closing into close range with Destroyers Alpha and Beta,” Ashley said. The Revenge’s large rotary thrusters burned white, accelerating the vessel towards the enemy. Their point defence turrets burned like flickering fires along the surface of the hull, tearing through another salvo of twenty four torpedoes that never made it to their mark.

  The waiting while they closed in was what tested Jake. He knew well enough that the time could not be spent idly, and he checked on the status of his ship, then on Samurai Squadron. Minh-Chu was directing his squad to come at the Huntress wide, and Slick – the commander of Triton’s fighter wing – was following his lead. There were hundreds of small bursts of light against the enemy battleship’s shields as the fighters tried to blind their sensors by unloading the smaller nuclear munitions on it. They would be useless when they closed in on the tugs and fighters around the Huntress, so it made sense that they’d assist the Triton while they could.

  The anti-fighter guns on the Order battleship were slow and inaccurate thanks to the frequent bursts of nuclear fire that scrambled their sensors and made communication impossible. The Triton was closing in as the fighters moved on, things were about to get difficult for the enemy battleship.

  The main thrusters on the Revenge reversed so they wouldn’t rush by the enemy destroyers. They were still moving quickly, but they would almost match the en
emy’s speed by the time they finished closing in. These kills had to happen quickly, Jake knew. There were definitely Order of Eden reinforcements on the way.

  The Revenge rumbled as all fifteen of their main rail cannons fired. The capacitor banks for their directed magnetic pulse beams were fully charged. “How effective are our beam weapons at this range?” Jake asked.

  “Thirty nine percent,” Frost replied.

  “Wait until fifty, then drain all our beam weapons on Destroyer Alpha. Aim all weapon emplacements at that ship, I want it gone before the Triton has fully engaged that battleship.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Frost said.

  “Helm, keep our nose pointed right at Destroyer Alpha until we’re under it,” Jake ordered.

  “This is Ronin,” Minh-Chu said over his communicator. “All squadrons have engaged the enemy fighters. It looks like there are still some gun crews working on the Huntress, too. Five turrets just started firing.”

  “Incoming torpedo salvo,” Frost warned. “They’re spacing them out this time.”

  Jake looked up in time to see a series of torpedoes spaced several kilometres apart, and knew what was coming before the first one detonated. A nuclear flash erupted out of range, an attempt to blind their sensors. The next one in line was destroyed by point defence weapons fire, hundreds of high-energy bursts ripping the casing apart. An antimatter warning appeared above that torpedo a moment before it exploded. That was the first of seven explosions that followed, each one getting closer to the Revenge until the last four exploded against their shields only three seconds apart.

  Jake watched their shield energy level drop to three percent before the barrage was over. Their sensors took four seconds to reset, and their communications were out, but, to his surprise, their shields recovered to twenty eight percent in five seconds, and their power level increased steadily. Jake glanced over to Ayan’s engineering station in time to see her fingers moving across the controls at a frenzied pace. Finn entered the bridge in a rush, “I’m sorry, I got here as fast as I could.” He said to her.

  “Don’t worry, it’s my fault,” Ayan explained. “I thought I could do this and manage engineering for you from here at the same time so you could help with things down there. But, no.”

  “I don’t think Agameg could do both if he grew a third arm,” Finn said, glancing at Ayan’s station. A complex, ship-wide power diagram was in front of her along with the active equations that represented the energies that made their shield, she was interacting with both at the same time. “I wish there was someone who was already an expert at this so they could teach me how to do it,” she said.

  “You’re doing great,” Jake said. His tactical display showed that they were at fifty one percent effective range for beam weapons. “Fire DEMPs,” he told Frost.

  “Aye,” Frost said. The main guns thundered, and a straight line of white light connected the Revenge with Destroyer Alpha for five seconds while the energy drained from all three of their directed electromagnetic pulse beams. For the first time in his life, Jake saw the beams break through their enemy’s forward shields and penetrate their bridge.

  “Enemy shields are down to zero on their forward quarter,” Kadri announced. “I am getting no power readings from their bridge or any exterior systems on their forward hull.”

  Jake was about to order Frost to turn their main guns on Destroyer Beta when they went off, firing fifteen four hundred twenty millimetre railgun shots packed with high explosives directly at the nose of Destroyer Alpha. He watched the rounds close the distance and barely had time to feel sorry for the enemy before they struck. Destroyer Alpha’s bridge was gone, and the high speed explosive rounds broke through over a hundred metres of the ship’s interior, creating a gaping exit wound in the dorsal side. “Oh, that’s rude,” Frost chuckled to himself quietly.

  “Focus all firepower on Destroyer Beta. I need that ship gone.”

  Every particle beam weapon, slug turret, pulse weapon and missile launcher aboard Destroyer Beta opened fire on the Revenge. Jake was almost stunned at the sight of every last bit of their firepower either getting stopped by their shields, or glancing off because of their repellent gravity field.

  “We can take this for another ninety,” Ayan said, “Maybe. I can’t get power to the shields fast enough to maintain them while taking constant damage like this.”

  “Frost, main guns, now,” Jake ordered.

  “They’re loading,” Frost said. “Slow buggers.” Their main guns howled, battering their enemy, and Jake took direct control of their beam weapons, burst firing them across their lower shielding. Ashley guided the Revenge so it passed beneath them and slightly to port. The guns had a perfectly clear close range shot. When the enemy’s shields failed, all fifteen of their main rail guns fired at a range of eleven hundred metres, and milliseconds later, a section of their hull thirty nine metres wide was gone. Jake drained their beam weapons, sending their harsh light directly into the heart of their ship. “How is our fighter wing doing?”

  “Two Uriels have taken minor damage,” Stephanie reported from above. “We have three new aces in Samurai Squadron, the Mad Hatters have two new aces, and Skykeeper Squadron has three. I would say the Order of Eden are having a very bad day.”

  Jake couldn’t help but smile as he looked at the status of the Triton on his tactical display. To become an ace by the rules their squadron followed, they had to make five confirmed kills. By the numbers he was hearing alone, they were well on their way to freeing the Huntress.

  The Triton was firing a final salvo of torpedoes at the enemy battleship, which had several large hull breaches and all but their aft shields were failing. Jake checked on the type of torpedoes the Triton was firing to discover that only two were high explosives, the rest were targeting a gap in the battleship’s dorsal section, and were loaded with small bots that would invade their power systems.

  Their main rail guns fired another salvo of fifteen shots through Destroyer Beta, leaving the fore and aft sections of the ship attached by a thin strand of hull.

  “Aim at Destroyer Alpha, fire one more full volley, then we move into range with those fighters,” Jake said. “Let’s give our secondary gunners some close range anti-fighter practice.”

  “Aye,” Frost said. “Reloading and putting Destroyer Alpha out of business.”

  “Aim at only unshielded sections,” Jake said, marking the forward section of the ship.

  “You really mean to make a mark here, Captain,” Frost said.

  “I am disarming our enemy. We will not leave them with ships worth repairing.”

  The main guns fired, sending high speed explosive rounds through the front of Destroyer Alpha, reducing the forward quarter to shreds of red-hot metal. The shielding across the rest of the ship lost power, and it began to list to her port side.

  The Revenge turned and thrust in a graceful arc. “We are on our way,” Ensign Clara Ramone reported from navigation, looking a little surprised at Ashley’s work.

  “Enemy fighters are opening wormholes,” Stephanie reported. “Anyone who can is bugging out.”

  “Sir,” Liara addressed. “We are being directed to waypoint theta to recover fighters and prepare to enter the wormhole. The surviving crew of the Huntress has enough control to follow us through.”

  “Switch to standard shielding,” Jake said. “You can take a break, Ayan, great work.”

  “You are amazing,” Finn told her. “I didn’t understand half of what you were doing.”

  “To be honest, I spent a quarter of the time compensating for my own mistakes,” Ayan replied as she slowly powered their new shielding down. “At least I know what the software we need for this has to do now. Training someone else to do this just in case the software fails is going to be a task.”

  “I’m volunteering to be your first student,” Finn said.

  “Audio message from the Huntress, its Captain Lawson,” Liara said.

  “Put it through the bridge
intercom,” Jake said.

  “Thank you for coming to our aid, we were sure we were about to be captured. We have basic navigational control back, and are sending one of our probes to you with the coordinates of Freeground Alpha. I’d send it to you over an encrypted channel, but we don’t have a common key, so the probe will have to do.”

  “Good to run into you again, Captain Lawson,” they overheard Oz reply. “We will begin generating a wormhole as soon as we read the data in your probe.”

  “I look forward to buying you and Captain Valent a drink, see you at Freeground Alpha,” Captain Lawson replied.

  “Channel closed,” Liara said.

  “It looks like we’ve found what we were looking for,” Jake said, settling back in his seat. “A good, long day.”

  Epilogue

  Hope

  The Command Centre of Freeground Alpha was silent. Every crewmember across all forty-nine stations knew what was about to happen, they had been tracking three special ships through a wormhole exit point for the better part of half an hour.

  The Huntress was returning, and they had found the Triton and a new ship called the Revenge. Fleet Admiral Rice could scarcely believe it. After everything they had gone through since arriving in the Iron Head Nebula, the incredible losses, and the awful trials, there was finally a ray of sunshine.

  For her tastes, the good news was coming in a package that couldn’t be more perfect: two significant fighting ships. According to the preliminary report sent ahead by Captain Lawson, they made quick work of three Order of Eden vessels, had their own fighter wing, and were fully crewed.

  The Sun Spire moved into position at the lead of a wedge of Freeground carriers, destroyers, cruisers and other medium vessels that were set up to welcome them. The Huntress emerged from the wormhole first, showing significant damage. There were repair and recovery crews standing by in service vessels for them.