Admiral Junayd grinned savagely. “Inform Commodore Isaac that he is ordered to take us into the system,” he said. The hyperspace eddies surrounding the system would make life difficult, but the enemy would be equally disadvantaged. “And drop us out as close to the enemy as possible.”
He grabbed his tunic, then hurried onto the bridge. The report from the courier boat was already playing in front of him: fourteen enemy starships, led by a heavy cruiser that was becoming alarmingly familiar. He saluted the enemy commander mentally—woman or not, it was clear she had nerve—and then took his command chair. Dull rumbles echoed through the giant superdreadnought as she prepared to advance.
“All ships are reporting ready, Admiral,” Commodore Isaac reported.
“Take us in,” Admiral Junayd ordered. Was Isaac delaying matters in the hopes the enemy would escape, spiking his superior’s career? There was no way to know. “As soon as we arrive, open fire.”
“Aye, Admiral,” Isaac said.
“Gateways!” Roach snapped. “Enemy gateways!”
Shit, Kat thought. Nine vortexes appeared, right behind her squadron. The trap—it had to be a trap—had been carried out very well. They knew we were coming.
“Evasive action,” she snapped as the first superdreadnought lumbered out into realspace and started to scan for enemy targets. “Launch missiles at the stations, then take us away from the planet!”
“Aye, Captain,” Weiberg said.
Kat swore under her breath as the enemy fleet emerged, its gateways flickering out of existence behind it. Nine superdreadnoughts, twenty-seven smaller ships . . . an overwhelming force by any reasonable standard. The enemy had either had a remarkable stroke of luck or someone had betrayed the squadron. She closed her eyes in pain, then forced herself to run through the tactical situation. There was no point in continuing the attack, not now. She’d be lucky to get out of the system alive.
“Deploy drones,” Kat added. The enemy ships flashed red as they locked on, then opened fire. “Ramp up our speed as much as possible, then start repowering the vortex generators.”
“Aye, Captain,” Roach said.
“Captain,” Lynn said through her implants. “I should warn you that powering up the generators so rapidly . . .”
“We’ll die if we stay here,” Kat said. The enemy might have opened fire at extreme range, but they’d fired so many missiles it was unlikely to matter. Her point defense and ECM couldn’t hope to stop them all. The only upside was that they didn’t seem to be deploying gunboats to help steer their missiles towards their targets. “Keep powering up the drives; prepare to take us out as soon as possible.”
“Point defense online, ready to fire,” Roach reported. “Datanet online; we’ll fight as one.”
It won’t be enough, Kat thought. The wall of missiles was rushing closer, far too many to be stopped even if everything worked perfectly. We’re in deep shit.
“Deploy shuttles with targeting packs,” she ordered. The enemy would catch on quickly, once they realized what had happened, but she should get at least one shot in. “And prepare to fire a full barrage. Can you ID the enemy flagship?”
“Negative, Captain,” Roach said. “They must be using lasers to coordinate their ships.”
They learned from Cadiz too, Kat thought. She looked at the enemy formation, nothing more than a crude hammerhead. Where would she put the flagship, if she were in command? There was no rear, no place of safety . . . and only a fool would place the flagship in the position where it would be most likely to draw fire. The superdreadnoughts to the left or right of the lead ship?
“Designate Enemy Number 5 as priority target, lock missiles on her hull,” she ordered. It was a potential candidate for the enemy flagship and she might just get lucky. “Scatter a set of ECM drones among the missiles and disrupt their targeting as much as possible.”
“Aye, Captain,” Roach said.
“Fan out the second barrage, targeted on the smaller vessels,” she added. “And use the shuttles until they die.”
Roach hesitated, noticeably. “Aye, Captain,” he said finally. “Missiles away; I say again, missiles away.”
Kat winced, inwardly. She’d just sent the shuttle pilots to certain death, just to keep her own ships alive a moment longer. And the hell of it was that she didn’t know if it would be worth it or not.
The wave of enemy missiles entered attack range and closed in on their targets, a handful burning out their drives and going ballistic before vanishing from the display. Kat watched, bracing herself as best as she could, as hundreds of missiles died . . . but hundreds more made it through, lancing down towards her ships. The datanet wove all fourteen of her warships into a single unit, ensuring that not a single moment of effort was wasted or duplicated, yet it wasn’t enough. She gritted her teeth as the missiles reached their targets . . .
Lightning shook violently. Red lights flared up over the ship’s status display, then faded slowly as the datanet caught up with the results. A second missile slammed into the rear shields, sending more shock waves running through the vessel. Kat gripped hold of her command chair and prayed, silently, that they survived long enough to open a gateway and get out. There was no other hope.
“Armstrong and Mother’s Milk are gone,” the XO reported. “Checkmate is streaming debris after taking heavy damage. Mermaid’s drones drew off the missiles closing in on her . . .”
“Understood,” Kat said. Deploying so many drones wouldn’t please the bean counters, but under the circumstances she found it hard to care. The fact that the enemy would probably learn more about Commonwealth ECM from the encounter was more of a concern . . . she shook her head, dismissing the thought. She would worry about that later, if they survived long enough to escape. “Deploy a second flight of drones.”
“We hit Enemy Number 5 nine times,” Roach reported. “No appreciable damage. Enemy fleet is launching a second barrage of missiles.”
“Continue firing,” Kat ordered.
She sucked in her breath sharply. Clearly, the ships they’d seen at Aswan had been the worst in the sector. The force bearing down on her had plenty of experience swatting missiles with its point defense. Their timing wasn’t perfect, and she could see the datanet was nowhere near as sophisticated as her own, but the weaknesses weren’t glaring enough to matter. She really needed ten times more missiles and launchers.
“Seven minutes to vortex activation,” Weiberg warned. “There are power surges on Henry Crux. She may not be able to open a vortex in time.”
“Prepare our generator to open one for the entire squadron,” Kat ordered. It was another risk—and sooner or later she would run out of luck—but there was no choice. The enemy had trapped her quite neatly. “And alter course. Take us towards the primary star.”
“Aye, Captain,” Weiberg said.
The XO gave her a sharp look but said nothing. Kat didn’t blame him. The closer they got to an immense gravity well, the harder it would be to slip into hyperspace and make their way through the eddies to escape. On the other hand, it would be a great deal harder for the enemy to track them through hyperspace, assuming they were willing to give pursuit. The odds would still be in their favor, but she’d have a reasonable chance of either escaping or giving them a bloody nose before they killed her.
“Picking up a signal,” Linda said. “They’re ordering us to surrender and promising fair treatment if we surrender now.”
Kat shook her head. She knew, all too well, just what she could expect if she fell into enemy hands. The Theocracy would know, of course, that she’d been hailed as a heroine—the woman who’d escaped their attack on Cadiz and led a counterattack that had blasted the occupation forces off the surface of the planet and recovered thousands of civilians and soldiers before falling back again. She’d be raped, publicly humiliated, and then slowly killed, the recordings distributed acr
oss the Commonwealth in the hopes of weakening morale. Maybe they’d backfire, maybe they’d just make the war more savage, but she’d still be dead . . .
. . . and the rest of her crew wouldn’t have it any better. The men would be interrogated, then killed or dumped in a POW camp; the women would be raped, then killed or forcibly brought into the Theocracy. She’d heard too many horror stories to believe there was any hope of surrendering peacefully. The Theocracy simply spat in the face of common decency.
“Ignore it,” she ordered. She glanced at the timer, then cursed under her breath. Time was not on their side. “Continue firing.”
“The enemy is not responding,” the communications officer shrugged.
“They refuse to face the light,” Cleric Peter said. “We must bring them to heel.”
They know better than to surrender to us, Admiral Junayd thought. He’d urged, as strongly as he dared, the First Speaker to rule that POWs were to be treated decently, but the Speakers had not listened. It wasn’t a surprise—no one had been decent to the Theocracy’s POWs, back on Earth—yet it had come back to bite them. The enemy would sooner fight to the death, trying desperately to take a bite out of his ships, than surrender. They know what they can expect.
“Continue firing,” he said instead. Perhaps, if he’d won outright at Cadiz, he could have changed things . . . or perhaps he wouldn’t have wanted to change things. He angrily pushed the thought out of his head a moment later. There was no point in wishing for things he couldn’t have. “Do not stop until they surrender or die.”
He shook his head, studying the display. The enemy ECM drones were far better than he’d realized, good enough to keep convincing his missiles to waste themselves on the drones rather than their targets. One of the enemy ships had fallen out of formation—another flight of missiles was on their way to blow it into atoms—but the remainder of the ships had maintained a surprisingly decent formation despite their surprise at being caught in a trap. Their ships were taking damage, yet not enough to slow them down . . .
And they’re heading right towards the star, he thought. He couldn’t help another flicker of admiration. Clever bitch.
The superdreadnought shuddered as it unleashed another wave of missiles, launching them towards the enemy. Admiral Junayd sat back in his command chair and forced himself to relax. It wouldn’t be long now.
“Peter Blair is gone,” the XO reported. “They overwhelmed her, once she fell out of formation.”
Kat nodded, then swore as another missile slammed into Lightning. The cruiser’s shields were still holding, barely, but damage was starting to mount. A few more shocks like that one and her ship would start coming apart at the seams, if she didn’t lose a shield generator or a drive node first. Several of the former were already starting to overheat. And if she lost more than a couple of drive nodes, her ability to escape the enemy would be badly compromised.
“Vortex generator online,” Weiberg snapped. “We can jump out!”
Maybe we should get closer to the star, Kat thought. It would be worth trying, if the enemy hadn’t been breathing so closely down their necks. No, there isn’t any time to be clever.
“Open the vortex,” she ordered. “And hold it open long enough for the squadron to escape.”
“Aye, Captain,” Weiberg said. The lights dimmed as nonessential power was rerouted to the vortex generator. “Vortex opening in three . . . two . . . one . . .”
“Admiral, the enemy is opening a vortex gateway,” the tactical officer yelled.
“I can see that, fool,” Admiral Junayd snapped. It changed everything. Taking his fleet into hyperspace so close to a star was asking for trouble. “Continue firing!”
It was too late. One by one, the remaining enemy ships—some so badly damaged they were bleeding plasma—slipped into the gateway and vanished. The gateway closed as soon as the last ship had gone, leaving behind no trace of its existence. Admiral Junayd mentally saluted his foe—she’d held her nerve like a true warrior—then smiled to himself. She might have escaped, but her confidence would have taken one hell of a beating.
“Stand down from battle stations,” he ordered calmly. Six enemy ships destroyed, the remaining eight damaged . . . it might not have been a complete success, but it was hardly a complete failure. “Damage report?”
“Minimal,” Commodore Isaac said. “Their missiles were unable to penetrate our shields.”
“Then a victory,” Admiral Junayd said. He turned to the cleric. “You will prepare a prayer of thanksgiving.”
“Of course, Admiral,” Peter said.
I can spin this into a victory, Admiral Junayd thought. The Theocracy needed a victory and he’d delivered, even if it was a very minor achievement indeed. But what will I do with it?
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Kat hung in the inky darkness of space, looking down at Lightning’s hull.
The shields had held, barely, but some energy had leaked through the protections and left her ship’s hull scorched and pitted. A number of weapon and sensor blisters had been wrecked; the ship’s name, painted black against the white hull, had been completely eradicated from the hull. Her crew was already at work, swapping out the destroyed systems and replacing them from the stockpile of spare parts she’d brought with her, but it wouldn’t be enough to restore her ship to full capacity. She’d have to go back to a shipyard to complete the job.
Which isn’t an option at the moment, she thought bitterly. Assuming they headed straight back to the nearest shipyard she knew to be in friendly hands, it would still take at least a month. Our mission isn’t complete.
She gritted her teeth, then took control of the spacesuit and guided it slowly back towards the airlock. She’d always loved EVAs as a cadet, when it had been possible to indulge herself in the belief that she was completely alone in the universe, but now . . . now, she couldn’t help feeling stranded, as if there was no hope of rescue. The airlock opened ahead of her, allowing her to return to her ship, yet she still felt alone. Too many lives had been lost in the brief, aborted attack on Morningside.
At least we got their stations, she told herself unconvincingly. It wasn’t a total loss.
She shook her head as the airlock repressurized, allowing her to remove her spacesuit and pass it to the airlock officer. Six ships were gone, three more so badly damaged that it was unlikely she could get them home, let alone take them back into combat. That gave her four ships, not including Lighting. Attacking the enemy had suddenly become a great deal harder, even if the enemy didn’t set another ambush. The more she thought about it, the more she realized that something had gone very wrong. There was no way the enemy should have been able to isolate them so precisely.
“Thank you, Captain,” the officer said. “Will you be needing it again?”
“Just place it on the rack,” Kat ordered. “I’ll let you know if I want to return outside.”
She shook her head, then walked back to her cabin and stepped through the door. A large mug of coffee had been placed on her desk, waiting for her. She smiled tiredly, then sat down and took a sip while bringing up the latest reports from the repair crews. Lightning’s repairs would be completed, as much as possible, within a week, but the other ships were far harder to restore. One report even stated that Henry Crux had been so badly damaged that her bridge consoles had exploded, something Kat had never seen outside poorly maintained pirate ships . . .
But it happened to us, she thought. And logically it shouldn’t have.
She put the report aside, then brought up the records of the battle. They’d been in the system less than ten minutes before the enemy fleet had arrived . . . post-battle analysis had suggested the presence of a courier boat or a watchdog, but no trace of an enemy fleet. Hell, if the fleet had already been in the system, Kat would have expected them to sneak up on her and open fire at point-blank range. It would have been utt
erly devastating. Instead . . . they’d jumped out of hyperspace and attacked.
They couldn’t have gotten word so quickly unless they were lying in wait, she thought. If they’d been in the nearest system, it would still have taken them much longer to redeploy to Morningside, assuming they were ready to go. No, they must have been lying in wait . . . but why?
Her buzzer chimed. “Enter.”
The hatch opened, revealing the XO and Davidson. Both men looked tired; the XO was too exhausted to hide it, while Davidson’s pose would have fooled anyone who didn’t know him very well. Kat keyed her console, calling her steward to bring coffee for both of them, then rose and nodded to the sofa. She sat down facing them as the steward appeared with more coffee.
“Henry Crux is a write-off,” the XO said flatly. “She’s too badly damaged to be worth trying to repair, at least without a major investment.”
“Reassign her remaining crew to the personnel pool and slot them in when you find a convenient place,” Kat ordered. The shortage of personnel had finally come back to bite them in a big way. Repairs that could have been made in the heat of combat hadn’t been made, allowing the damage to get worse and worse until entire ships had been lost. “Inform Commander Kent that he’s assigned to the tactical department for the moment.”
“Aye, Captain,” the XO said. “I recommend he be allowed at least a day of rest first, though. He’s not in a good state.”
Kat nodded. Kent hadn’t been expected to gain a command for another three years, at least until he’d been offered a chance to transfer to Operation Knife. Losing a ship would hurt, but it would be far worse to be reassigned to what was, to all intents and purposes, a desk job until the squadron returned home. And then . . . losing a ship, even an ancient heavy cruiser, would be enough to cripple his chances of receiving a new command.
We could have him sent for psychiatric evaluation on Tyre, she thought morbidly. Here . . . all we can do is keep an eye on him.
Falcone Strike (Angel in the Whirlwind Book 2) Page 27