“Fire all missiles on the force that is closing with us,” he ordered his Tactical Officer.
“Are you sure, my Lord?”
“Are you questioning my orders,” growled the High Admiral. “If I give an order, I expect to have it obeyed.” His voice rose to a shout. “Without question.”
“Yes, my Lord,” said the wide eyed officer in a hushed voice. “Orders sent out to all ships. Launching all missiles.”
The superbattleship shook slightly as it released every missile in its stern tubes, then started the rotation that would bring port, bow and starboard tubes around. After the starboard tubes had released it rotated back to the bow aiming at the enemy, firing the only reloads aboard. The other ships also released every offensive missile they had, leaving the fleet devoid of long range weapons. The missiles adjusted their deceleration for a couple of minutes, forming up as a solid mass that would strike in the same instant. That accomplished, the weapons went into full deceleration, starting to kill the velocity they were carrying from the launching ships.
“Enemy ships are returning fire,” called out the Tactical Officer.
The vector arrows of missiles appeared on the plot, almost a hundred of them, then another wave, followed by another. Those ships were running with full magazines, and they would have over two thousand missiles still aboard the force. By the time they caught up with the Ca’cadasan force they would be closing at less than point four light, and the Ca’cadasan ships still had sufficient counter missiles, barely, to take care of that attack.
And then they will wait until they are much closer, and we have decelerated down to point four light ourselves, and send another wave, maybe two or three, at us.
It was worrisome, but he could only fight the battle in front of him, and worry about the next stage when it came. If he could fight off those waves, which would still be closing at less than optimal velocity, with just his lasers and close in weapons, and wait until the enemy ships were within beam range, he would have them.
“We have those fighters coming in again, my Lord,” called out the Sensor Officer. “We’re tracking two, coming in on a different vector than we expected.”
The inertialess fighters had continued to dog his force, coming in on high velocity attacks without teeth. They were down to an estimated forty or so, and since they hadn’t fired missiles on any of their passes, it was assumed they had none. The fighters always went off on the opposite vector from their approach, which made sense since they still carried considerable momentum, speeding off at point nine light. As soon as they were out of their pitiful laser range they jumped back into their warp and accelerated away. Which meant they had to go through deceleration, stopping in space, and coming back, a maneuver that took some hours to accomplish.
Two coming in on a different vector at an unpredictable time meant they were not part of the original groups. Which meant, what? That they might have missiles?
“What is their velocity?”
“Estimated velocity, one point seven five light.”
Which meant they weren’t slowing down for an attack. Which meant?
“We’re picking up four more objects, my Lord. Separating from the fighters and heading our way.”
By the Gods, thought the High Admiral. Those were the missiles they had fired at his force before they had closed with the station. They were highly inaccurate, but if they detonated close to a target.
Four brilliant flares blossomed in space as the missiles cut off their warp drives and the hidden inertia caught up with them. Three of the explosions were too far away to do much more than warm the hulls of three of his vessels. One detonated within two hundred kilometers of one of the ships, flooding the hull with heat and radiation. Hull metal boiled away, grabber units overheated and went offline, and the ship went into a slight tumble.
“Continue on,” ordered the High Admiral as his bridge crew looked at him with questions on their faces. That ship was doomed, and there was nothing they could do for her. They would have to stop decelerating to stay with her, which would increase their time in normal space, and their risk. It was not worth that risk.
The damaged ship continued to roll, its remaining grabbers trying to right the spin and bring them back to an even keel. It took some minutes to straighten out, and the ship began to decelerate at its maximum rate, only two thirds of what the other vessels could make. It continued to gain distance on the other ships, almost two kilometers per second per second, adding on to the total every second in a geometric progression.
“The fighters are moving away, my Lord,” said the Tactical Officer. “They don’t seem to be decelerating.”
So that was their one shot, he thought, staring at the plot, trying to detect other threats.
* * *
“We’ll be within our planned missile firing range in five minutes, Ma’am,” said the Tactical Officer, looking back at his Admiral.
Mei Lei sat still in her chair, unmoving except for the motion of her head. The plot was showing the enemy force, six ships now, the seventh falling ahead on its damaged propulsion system. The vector arrows of Imperial missiles had almost reached them, those that had avoided the Caca counters. Those counters had unexpectedly ceased going out before the human weapons had finished crossing their engagement range, and the Admiral had to suspect that they were out.
The Caca missiles had already struck their targets, and now there were only a pair of battleships and a half dozen destroyers still closing on them. All they have left are their lasers, and maybe some particle beams, she thought.
Six Caca superbattleships, and she was coming out of the dark with eight battlecruisers, sixteen light cruisers and twenty-one destroyers. They still outmassed her, but some of them were damaged, while all of her ships were at full capability, with the exception of missile loads.
“What is von Rittersdorf’s status,” she asked her Com Tech.
The Klassekian closed her eyes for a moment, going through multiple sibling groups of her species to reach the Com Tech aboard the Duke’s ship. He was leading nine light cruisers and thirteen destroyers from his own destroyer flagship. They would come in to the rear of the Cacas, passing behind them at fifteen light seconds, bringing them under fire on the approach and the retreat. They had very specific targets. She hoped that her own squadron would capture most of the attention of the enemy, as well as most of their fire.
“Estimated time until they see us?” she asked.
“They will of course see us once we launch,” said the Sensor Officer. “But I’m thinking a minute or two before that time.”
“And there is nothing they can do about our being here at that time,” said the Tactical Officer with a smile.
They want to strike out, to kill the creatures who attacked the capital and this system, she thought. All well and good, but the enemy could still hurt them. She would probably lose ships in this encounter. She would surely lose people. They all knew the score; this was what they had signed on for. But she still felt the crushing weight of responsibility on her shoulders.
The tactical plot told the story. They were approaching the enemy at a thirty degree angle from the front, their velocity point six light. Everything was powered down as much as possible. No electromag fields; lasers and particle beams powered down. Particles had been sleeting through the ships for the last twenty hours, but all of the crews were sheltering is the most protected parts of the vessels. They would be in the one light minute beam range of the enemy for a total of three and a third minutes, coming and going. Three and a third minutes of trading close in beam fire, and the heavily armored Cacas would have the advantages.
“Power up all weapons and protective systems the moment we fire,” she ordered. The lasers could feed off the fully charged crystal matrix batteries, while the particle beams would take about a half minute to spin up to full speed. Electromagnetic fields would take only a couple of seconds, while the cold plasma injected into the field would take some more seconds
to spread through that field. They would only need that protection on one side, so they could change out the plasma every couple of seconds if necessary and still have enough for the engagement, barely.
All of the ships had started out with some missiles, those that hadn’t yet been offloaded and the few they had been able to take aboard. They had shifted them around during the coast, using remote chemical thrusters to move the missiles outside the protection of the ships and through the hard radiation of space. Since the ships weren’t accelerating, it was the same as moving them between vessels that were standing still, except for the velocity generated radiation. Now each of the battle cruisers carried at least thirty-five capital ship missiles, three of them thirty-six. The light cruisers in the forward force had twenty-seven or eight missiles, while the destroyers had an average of twelve. The ships in the rearward force were without missiles. That wasn’t their purpose.
“Missile launch in three minutes,” said the Tactical Officer.
That was according to SOP, but it still had driven the Admiral crazy throughout her career. She could read the timer herself, as could everyone else on the bridge. But regs called for the Tactical Officer to keep everyone informed. She checked the digital timer herself, the one at the top of the tactical plot. It read two minutes and forty-eight seconds, and one ticked off was she watched. When it hit zero the battle would officially be joined.
* * *
“I have objects coming in from thirty degrees from the port bow, five degrees above the ecliptic,” called out the Sensor Officer. “At least twenty of them.”
“Natural objects?”
“I think not, my Lord. They’re closing at high relativistic speed.”
“Then why haven’t we picked them up before now?” asked the High Admiral, his anger rising at the fact that the officer hadn’t spotted them before they had gotten so close.
“They must be powered down, my Lord,” said the anxious officer. “Grabbers, weapons, even their electromag fields.”
Which means they risk considerable radiation, thought the High Admiral, a shiver of fear running down his spine. They wanted him and his ships that badly.
“When will they be within beam weapons range?”
“In about three minutes, my Lord.”
The High Admiral stared at the approaching ships, wondering why they hadn’t fired yet. Possibly they didn’t have missiles, but that would not be the way to bet. So their commander had something else in mind. Time ticked down, until the enemy was right on the edge of effective energy weapons range.
“They’re firing missiles, my Lord,” called out the Tactical Officer.
“The ship grabbers have come online, my Lord,” reported the Sensor Officer. “We have eight of their scout capital ships, seven of their large escorts and eight of their small escorts.”
“How many missiles?” shouted the High Admiral, his anger again getting the best of him.
“Two hundred an eighty-three of their capital missiles, my Lord. Three hundred and one lighter missiles.”
Almost six hundred missiles, coming in at point six light, accelerating at eight thousand gravities. They wouldn’t add much to their velocity total on the way in, but they would be dodging and evading the whole time, keeping his lasers busy. And then he knew the enemy commander’s plan, and he had to admit that it was brilliant. He might be able to still win the battle due to his larger ships, and the fact that the enemy missiles wouldn’t be carrying their maximum kinetic energy. But either way, he was going to be hurt, badly.
* * *
“Missiles away, ma’am,” called out the Tactical Officer as the ship shook slightly from the launch of her forward tubes.
“Powering up grabbers,” reported the Helm, starting the ship in its evolution to bring the port tubes to bear, followed by the stern and starboard. The ship would remain in an orientation to bring all of her laser rings to bear, falling across the front of the enemy while the helm tried his best to present an unpredictable target. All well and good, for about half of their run. The middle part would see them taking fire no matter what.
“They’re engaging missiles, ma’am,” said the Tactical Officer while he was setting up his fire plan, something he would be adjusting throughout the entire run.
Mei let out a grunt as she watched missiles disappear from the plot, nailed by lasers. The closer the missiles came, the better the Caca targeting. Still, it kept them from concentrating on the human warships that now slid into beam weapons range.
“Opening fire, now,” called out the Tactical Officer. The four laser rings each put out a quartet of beams, bracketing one of the Caca ships and making sure that at least one or more would score a hit. The Cacas were forced to put all of their fire on the missiles in the hope of stopping them.
It was a forlorn hope. Eight of the capital ship missiles made it through, four of them striking one Caca ship, two another, while the two singletons hit a third and fourth superbattleship.
The superbattleship hit by four missiles was hammered, huge breaches opened in the hull as the ship went spinning off. Most of the crew were dead from the overload of the inertial compensators as four one gigaton warheads propelled the ship off in the opposite direct. A moment later one of the antimatter containers aboard breached, and the chain reaction turned the vessel into an expanding ball of plasma. The ship hit by two survived, though most of its weapons systems went offline. The ships hit by single missiles mostly shrugged off the hits, though they did lose grabber units and laser domes.
Forty-one of the smaller missiles, not prioritized in the same manner as the capital ship weapons, made it through. The ship that had been hit twice took nine hits from the smaller weapons. It came out the exploding flares of the nine two hundred megaton warheads with a slight spin and heavy damage to the hull. One previously untouched ship attracted twenty-three of the smaller missiles, and suffered the same fate as its sister that had taken the four capital missile hits. And then there were four, two still in good shape, one with moderate damage, and one barely limping along.
The lasers from the human force hit, at maximum range and on the spread fire plan doing little damage. Still, the cumulative effect on pumping heat into the enemy ships while taking out surface installations added up. The human ships were able to get fifteen seconds of unanswered fire in thanks to the missiles, but then the Cacas struck back with a vengeance.
Ships started taking hits from Caca lasers. They were still on evasive, and the Cacas were forced to fire spreads to insure hits. A couple of battle cruisers were hit, one of the light cruisers, three destroyers. The smaller vessels sustained hull penetrations, small, but still damaging. The battle cruisers had enough armor to shrug off most of the laser hits for the moment.
As the forces closed both sides started narrowing their spreads as the travel time of the beams decreased. Both sides started to fire with the devastating particle beams. And both sustained mounting damage.
First kill in the knife fight went to the Cacas, as a destroyer flared into plasma as a particle beam dug deep into its guts and antimatter breached. A light cruiser died next, not totally destroyed, but rendered mostly lifeless and without power. Then another destroyer, tumbling off into the night with its systems wrecked. Two Cacas concentrated on a battle cruiser, and soon a fourth wreck was added to the total.
“How are we doing?” the Admiral asked her Tactical Officer as she watched a fifth ship go tumbling away.
“We’ve taken out half the gabbers on one of the ships, and wrecked the upper hyperdrive array on another. Estimating total enemy beam weapons now at sixty-four percent.”
Which was great, except all of that laser dome damage was along one side, and the superbattleships were rotating to align their still intact sides with the ships they were fighting.
“And what about our ships?”
“We’re taking a pounding, ma’am,” said the Tactical Officer with a grimace. The battle cruiser shook with his words, struck by a particle
beam that blasted through hull and armor to take out four of the emitters on a laser ring.
Any time now, Maurice, she thought, watching as more damage indicators came up on the schematics of her ships.
* * *
“Open fire, now,” ordered Captain the Duke Maurice von Rittersdorf. The Cacas had not reacted when he got within beam range, either not picking him up or too busy with the Duchess’ force. He held his fire for twenty seconds, letting the range fall. But now was the time.
Dot MacArthur shook slightly as she unloaded both of her particle beams onto the closest Caca ship, the powerful streams of protons hitting its upper hyperdrive array and eating large runnels into the structure. At the same time her lasers hit the same array toward the front, burning into the forward field projectors.
All of his ships had designated targets, and every Caca ship got its share of attention. They started firing back, which took some of the pressure off the Duchess’ force and onto his.
“We’ve just gotten hit hard in the stern,” called out the voice of the Chief in charge of damage control.
“Any damage to our weapons systems?” asked the Captain.
“No, sir.”
“Then we’re good to go.” He looked over at the Tactical Officer. “Keep pouring it on. I don’t want one of these sons of bitches getting out of this fight hyper capable.”
* * *
“Enemy ships are now leaving effective beam range,” said the Tactical Officer, looking up at the High Admiral who stood glaring over his shoulder. The male did not look happy, nor did he have a right to.
“Status of the hyperdrive?” asked the Admiral into the com.
Exodus: Empires at War: Book 11: Day of Infamy (Exodus: Empires at War.) Page 33