“Gateways,” Roach snapped. “I say again, gateways!”
“Red alert,” Kat ordered quietly. Five gateways were opening up in front of them, revealing seventeen freighters and five destroyers. None of them looked particularly alert, but coming out of hyperspace with readied weapons was generally considered a sign of hostile intent. “Lock weapons on target.”
“Aye, Captain,” Roach said. “Weapons locked.”
Kat smiled. “Fire,” she ordered. “Drop the cloak, raise shields!”
Lightning shuddered violently as she unleashed a full spread of missiles. The enemy had no idea she was there until it was far too late; the missiles, launched from well within engagement range, zoomed towards targets that had barely any time to react. A handful of point defense crews managed to spit off a shot or two before the first missiles slammed home, ripping into weak shields and undefended hulls. She felt a brilliant surge of excitement as the first freighter died, exploding into a fireball as her missiles ripped it apart, smashing everything it carried in its holds. Three more died in quick succession, followed by seven more. The remaining freighters were lucky enough not to draw the attention of her first barrage.
“Retarget the second spread,” she snapped. “Take out the remaining freighters!”
“Aye, Captain,” Roach said. “Enemy destroyers are bringing their weapons to bear on us!”
“Ignore them,” Kat ordered. “Deal with the freighters!”
Admiral Junayd hadn’t expected anything to happen, so he’d left command of the system in Commodore Malian’s hands while he’d composed a message for his superiors, explaining why he should be sent additional reinforcements. He was on his feet, running for the command core, before his mind had quite realized that alarms were howling through the massive station. By the time he reached the command core, it was clear that all hell had broken loose in the space near the planet. The icons representing the freighter convoy were in disarray, while a large red icon was systematically tearing them apart.
“Admiral,” Commodore Malian said, “the system is under attack!”
“The convoy is under attack,” Admiral Junayd snarled. The enemy ship, damn her to hell, had singlehandedly smashed an entire convoy. Five destroyers didn’t stand a chance against her, but she could evade anything he dispatched from orbit. And yet he had no choice. “Dispatch the cruisers now!”
The last of the freighters died in a colossal fireball, followed by one of the destroyers. Their crews, no doubt anticipating the execution they’d face for allowing the entire convoy to be destroyed, were angling their ships towards the enemy cruiser, but they simply didn’t have the firepower or defenses to stand up to her weapons. Maybe they’d be able to get close enough to ram, yet he rather doubted it. They simply couldn’t hope to survive long enough to slam their hulls into the enemy.
“The enemy ship is pulling back from the planet,” Commodore Malian said. “You scared her off, sir!”
“They did what they came here to do,” Admiral Junayd snapped. The attack had been perfect—perfectly timed, perfectly carried out . . . why stick around and risk throwing it all away? He’d already been humiliated in front of the entire sector. The commanders at the front wouldn’t hesitate to use it against him, if only to make him take the blame for their future failures. “They’re not scared at all.”
A second destroyer vanished from the display. “Contact the destroyers,” Admiral Junayd ordered reluctantly. “They are to fall back and wait for the cruisers. Repeat the order if they fail to comply at once.”
“Aye, sir,” the coordination officer said.
Admiral Junayd cursed under his breath. It was unlikely the destroyers would obey orders . . . unless their commanders believed there was a reasonable chance they would escape execution. It would be better to die quickly, trying to make up for their failure, than to die slowly at the hands of the Inquisition. And their crews would be under a cloud too. It wasn’t impossible, given the scale of the failure, that they would all be executed.
And this is the system you are pledged to serve, he reminded himself. How can a commander and crew learn from their mistakes if they are killed out of hand?
He shook his head sadly as a third destroyer died, the remaining two falling back on the planet. He’d have to argue that the true failures had already died, scapegoating the dead, if he wanted to save their commanders . . . but he had no choice. The Theocracy didn’t need more dead officers, not when too many had died in the war. It needed people who could learn from their mistakes . . .
“Put a lock on the StarCom,” he ordered. He needed to make the case to his superiors personally, before Commodore Isaac or someone else started muddying the waters. “Until I countermand the order, the only messages going out of the system will be ones I personally authorize.”
“Yes, Admiral,” Commodore Malian said. “But what are we going to do?”
“Do?” Admiral Junayd asked. “We’re going to do our duty.”
“The remaining destroyers are falling back to the planet,” Roach reported.
“Good,” Kat said. The cruisers would be within engagement range in two minutes, when she would have to run, but there was enough time to complete the second half of the mission. “Send the signal.”
“Aye, Captain,” the XO said. He keyed his console. “Done.”
And let’s hope that fools the bastards, Kat thought. Parker was cooperative—and he was being watched carefully, after a less-than-gentle interrogation—but she knew better than to rule out a last attempt at betrayal, even though he had to know his sister would probably never be returned to the Commonwealth. And if it fools them, there are options here.
She shrugged, then looked at Weiberg. “Open a gateway,” she ordered. “Take us out of here.”
“Aye, Captain,” Weiberg said. The vortex spiraled open in front of Lightning and then sucked them through its giant maw. “We’re clear.”
“Take us to the first RV point,” Kat ordered. “And watch for any possible pursuit.”
She smiled coldly as she leaned back in her chair. Seventeen freighters and their cargo smashed . . . it wasn’t as good as capturing the ships, but it was good enough to give the enemy a bloody nose. And three destroyers were a bonus. The Theocracy would need to start assigning more and heavier escorts to their convoys, now they’d had a warning that their current precautions were nowhere near enough. Even if she never hit another convoy during the mission—and she intended to hit at least one more before the enemy realized they’d had a leak—they’d need to redeploy more of their units. It would have a baleful effect on their ability to take the offensive.
“We’ll meet up with Mermaid, then proceed to UNAS-G2-6585,” she said, as it became clear the enemy hadn’t risked a pursuit. “By then, we should have a better idea of just how to proceed.”
“Aye, Captain,” the XO said.
Kat felt her smile grow wider. The crew had been demoralized . . . but no more, not after a textbook-perfect ambush. And there was a second one to follow . . . once that had been completed, they’d be at the top of their game.
If we can take out the POW camp, she thought, it might be time to fall back and gather reinforcements.
“We did get a message from the spy,” Commander Amman said. He sounded as if he was trying hard to put a positive gloss on the disaster. “He tells us that the enemy is getting reinforcements.”
“Not that they need them,” Admiral Junayd said. He wasn’t sure if it was sheer luck or careful planning that had put the enemy so close to the emergence zone, but he had to admit they’d made good use of what they had. A heavy cruiser couldn’t have stood up to the superdreadnoughts, yet it had had no difficulty in shredding the freighters before making its escape. “They just struck us a mighty blow.”
He looked at the star chart, thinking hard. The emergence zones would have to be changed, of cours
e, but no one in transit would get the word before it was too late. If the enemy had plotted out other emergence zones . . . he shook his head. The only system with regular convoys passing through was Aswan itself. They wouldn’t be able to hit any other convoys unless they had inside information. And if they did . . .
No, he told himself. That is unthinkable.
“Get me a list of everything they destroyed,” Admiral Junayd ordered finally. He’d have to work hard to find a silver lining to this cloud, or his career would come to an abrupt and fatal end. “And next time, Commander, you’d better hope your damned spy brings us something useful.”
And maybe, he added to himself, it might be time to start considering contingency plans of my own.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
“Getting in won’t be hard, Kat,” Davidson said. They lay together on her bed, studying the report from Mermaid. “I’d go so far as to say we could probably get all the prisoners up and out within thirty minutes. However, will we have thirty minutes?”
Kat frowned. Redemption wasn’t far from Aswan; assuming the enemy sent a radio message instead of a courier boat, it would take twenty minutes for Aswan to get the message and scramble a response. The superdreadnoughts would jump through hyperspace and be on her head within minutes. And if the enemy sent a courier boat, she’d be lucky to have time to scramble her shuttles before the superdreadnoughts arrived.
“We might end up repeating Second Cadiz, only without 6th Fleet,” she said slowly. No matter how she looked at it, there didn’t seem to be any way to distract all of the superdreadnoughts, let alone keep them from responding to a distress call. “Five ships couldn’t stand up to them long enough to get the POWs out.”
She looked at the report and scowled. The POW camp wasn’t very complex; it was nothing more than a large dome covering a handful of barracks clearly designed for military personnel. Her intelligence staff had run the calculations and concluded that, as long as there weren’t a number of underground bunkers, no more than a thousand prisoners could be held at the complex. But it would still take time to deal with the handful of paltry defenses, load the prisoners onto the shuttles, and make a run for orbit. By the time they got there, the enemy fleet would have arrived.
“Then the fleet needs to be lured away,” she said. She was sure she could use Parker to convince the enemy to send one of the superdreadnought squadrons somewhere else, but that would still leave the other superdreadnought squadron. Hell, even a relatively small squadron of cruisers would be enough to put a major crimp in the operation. “We managed to do that at Cadiz.”
“There’s enough defenses around the cloudscoop here to make it practically invulnerable,” Davidson pointed out. “They wouldn’t panic and send everything after you.”
Kat nodded. “Is there any alternative?”
“We could try a covert orbital insert,” Davidson suggested. “That would at least get us down on the ground before the shit hits the fan.”
“We’d still need to get the shuttles down to you,” Kat said. “And if they got a message off before you took the guards out, you’d be screwed. I wouldn’t have a hope of recovering you, let alone any of the prisoners.”
“I knew the job was dangerous when I took it,” Davidson said cheerfully.
Kat poked him in the stomach with a finger. “There’s a difference between a dangerous but practical mission and an outright suicide mission,” she said. “We’re not at the stage where I have to send you and your men to die yet.”
“I love that yet,” Davidson said.
Kat rolled her eyes at him. She loved him, really she did, but there were times when his “live for the moment” attitude gnawed at her. It made her wonder just what sort of life they’d have when the war ended, when they probably would be demobilized as the Navy cut back to a peacetime establishment. Would they stay on Tyre? Or buy a ship and head out to live a life of independent trading?
“Me too,” Kat said. “I think we need something more cunning.”
“Use the drones,” Davidson said. “Make them think we have an entire squadron of superdreadnoughts under your command?”
“They’d call our bluff,” Kat said, shaking her head. “One failure to unleash a full Weber of missiles and they’d know we were conning them.”
She sat upright, crossing her hands under her bare breasts. No matter how she looked at it, she couldn’t see a way to get in, snatch the prisoners, and get out. Second Cadiz hadn’t been an easy ride, even with 6th Fleet backing her up; repeating it, without the superdreadnoughts, would be asking for trouble. No doubt the enemy had studied the battle as intensely as her own people. They’d know what she was doing and react accordingly.
“We could ask for support from Admiral Christian,” Davidson said. “A POW camp . . .”
“They’d need to cut loose at least two squadrons of superdreadnoughts,” Kat said. There was something to be said for eighteen superdreadnoughts slicing through the enemy rear, but not if it came at the cost of the Theocracy breaking into the core worlds. “I don’t think he could spare them even for a short while—and it would take at least a month before they could be returned.”
“Crap,” Davidson said. He sat up next to her, his expression grim. “We can’t just leave them there.”
“I have no intention of leaving them there,” Kat said shortly. She leaned into his embrace, feeling herself totally devoid of ideas. “I just don’t know how to get to them without getting us all killed.”
The intercom bleeped. “Captain, we will be at UNAS-G2-6585 in thirty minutes,” Weiberg reported. “We’re still ahead of schedule.”
“Assuming they keep their schedule,” Kat muttered. It had been risky, mounting the first convoy attack, but necessary. And yet, there had been no choice. She had to remind the enemy that she existed, that she could still make a difference. “We can’t stay here forever.”
She cleared her throat. “Understood,” she said, replying to her lieutenant. “I’ll be on the bridge in twenty minutes.”
“Fight you for the shower,” Davidson said.
Kat smirked, then leapt off the bed and dived into the tiny shower. Whoever had designed the captain’s suite, she’d often thought, had never bothered to consider what would happen if the captain had a partner. But then, it was rare for captains to be allowed to take their partners onto their ships. The only time it happened regularly was on exploration starships, which often spent months or years away from their homeworlds. She assumed their commanding officers had larger cabins.
She washed quickly, then pulled on her uniform while he showered. There was no time for anything other than a quick good-bye, then a run to the bridge. She forced herself to calm down as she stepped through the hatch and took her seat, checking the displays as Lightning grew closer to her destination. UNAS-G2-6585 wasn’t a particularly interesting star, save for one detail. It had no planets at all.
Which wouldn’t be so unusual, she thought, if it had been anything other than a G2.
It must have frustrated the UN’s explorers when they’d passed through the system, she thought, although the scant file contained nothing more than a bare-bones summary of the lone star. A G2 star held the promise of life-bearing worlds, or worlds that could be terraformed, but this one was all alone in the night. They’d surveyed the system briefly, found nothing, and headed onwards to their next target. UNAS-G2-6585 was useless to everyone, save as a navigational waypoint. The Theocracy, it seemed, agreed on that point.
They may not have realized we killed the first convoy, she thought, as the gateway opened, allowing them to slip back into realspace. Or they thought there wasn’t a hope of us lying in wait at every possible waypoint.
She smirked. The Commonwealth randomized its navigational waypoints as much as possible, choosing to allow independent freighters or convoy commanders to pick their own, rather than sticking to a preselected m
enu. It was a wise security precaution, all the more so after discovering a handful of spies within the Commonwealth. But the Theocracy, it seemed, disagreed. They liked their ships to run on time, following hyper-routes that might as well have been set in stone. Didn’t they realize it made their courses predictable?
They might not have had a problem with pirates before the war, she thought coldly. They were too busy paying them off to go after us instead.
“Transit complete, Captain,” Weiberg said.
“Cloak, then hold us here,” Kat ordered. “All we can do now is wait.”
She glanced at the timer grimly. They had three hours, assuming the enemy stuck to their schedule. She shook her head in amused disbelief, then forced herself to concentrate on the latest reports from engineering and tactical. The former reported that they’d done all they could to repair the damage from the ambush, but the latter warned that they were running out of missiles. There were only a handful left on the freighters . . .
We’ll need to resupply, Kat thought sourly. She’d had the disabled ships stripped of weapons and then cannibalized for spare parts, but there was no way to avoid the fact she was running out of all sorts of things she needed. Whatever happens, after this, we may need to go home anyway.
It was a bitter thought. She’d hurt the enemy, she knew she’d hurt the enemy, but she would still have to fall back and leave their sector. There would be a return, of course, with more firepower, yet she still felt as if she was running away. No, she told herself firmly; it was a withdrawal to resupply. She would be back . . .
An alarm sounded. “Vortexes, Captain,” Roach snapped. “Nine gateways!”
“Red alert, stand by all weapons,” Kat ordered. The gateways were farther away this time, disgorging seven freighters, two destroyers, and a light cruiser. “Move us into attack position.”
Falcone Strike (Angel in the Whirlwind Book 2) Page 33