“We’ve just passed RA-5’s orbit, sir.” An officer checked the screen. “We’ll be joining our allies soon.”
Now that they had lost the fortress due to Treagium’s defection, Matthew believed they should go back to his original plan. He ordered the Sunpherean Second Fleet to hide inside the Stony Band. Since Treagium may have informed Thyphol of this arrangement, it may not be a sneak attack anymore, but that was okay. In fact, it might be better for the enemy to know that they were hiding there, according to Matthew, because hesitation and suspicion would weaken the enemy’s spirit. The minefield inside the Stony Band would be meaningless, though.
“That idiot …” Rafael murmured to himself. The thought of Matthew made him wonder how many failures of human societies were actually caused by incompetent people taking charge of critical positions. He took a long breath and raised his voice. “Stay outside when we arrive at the Stony Band. Move away from the enemy’s incoming route, and wait for my command.”
The officer behind him appeared to be confused. “But we’re supposed to …” He swallowed the rest of the sentence as Rafael threw him a contemptuous look.
If you could understand—Rafael wanted to tell his fifteen-year-older subordinate—you’d be commanding me at the moment. He left his chair and stopped in front of a window, casting a well-built figure onto the glass. He knew the kind of first impression he always left on people. They tended to associate strong muscles with lack of intelligence. Prejudice! Hadn’t they been counting on the queen’s assistant? The young Presley who looked smart but turned out to be useless?
Gradually, the allies’ fleets could be made out in the distance. He recognized the triangular array of ships as Swinburne’s signature; the large cubic arrangement belonged to the Sparklish, who had the best-equipped fleets in the RA but not the strongest. Now the Sunpherean Third Fleet following behind was joining them to form the second defense line. He browsed his surroundings as his Second Fleet went past the allies. When he came back, how many of those ships would stay intact? They were lucky to be modern soldiers, with technology to ensure the quality of their life millions of miles away from home. No need to sleep in foxholes or deal with harsh weathers. No bugs or bug repellent. Technology! Its only downside was that they might die sooner.
Normally he would dismiss any sentimental thought before he went on to a battle, but this time he indulged himself.
* * *
Millions of miles away from the battlefront, however, people did not feel any easier. To Oakley, this battle not only determined the future of this country, but also tested his philosophy of officer appointments. Of course, nobody would care to talk about his mistakes if they died or became war prisoners, but it still mattered. Just like how some people value their postmortem reputations: death is neither the worst nor the end.
“Admiral Oakley, King Matthew is on the line.”
Oakley didn’t hear the soldier’s words at first. He was studying a bar plot with his officers based on the information sent back by their scouts. The enemy had just begun coming out of Pathway Trawtle, and the total number of warships had quickly added up to hundreds. After the soldier called him again, he left his chair and entered a private phone booth located at the back of the Command and Control Center. He pushed a button on the wall. A screen lit up with Matthew’s long face so close that he almost winced.
“What is going on with your Second Fleet, Admiral Oakley? The enemy’s passing by and they’re doing nothing!”
“I’m sure Admiral Tait has his own plan, Your Majesty.”
“So … so you didn’t ask him to do that? I don’t want to intrude but … do you trust his judgments?”
Oakley’s face darkened. “I wouldn’t have let him command my soldiers if I had doubt.”
Matthew pursed his lips for a few seconds and softened his tone. “All right, can I have a word with Her Majesty?”
“She’s not in today.”
Since the news conference two days ago, the queen’s officers had decided not to bother her unless the situation was out of control. But Oakley didn’t know that Geneva had just arrived when he was talking to Matthew. Wearing a black skirt suit, her face no longer plump, she finally had the grownup-look she’d been longing for.
“Wait.” She pointed a finger at the bar plot on the screen. “Why did that number stop growing?”
The number of enemy’s ships coming out of the Trawtle was still increasing, but the number that had gone through the Stony Band froze at 2,600.
Wilson crossed his arms in front of him and raised his eyebrows. “That means, our Second Fleet is doing something.”
* * *
The waiting had been a tough trial for Rafael’s officers and soldiers. They were also puzzled: watching the enemy passing by without firing a bullet was not Rafael’s style. When finally they received the command of open fire, they were even more puzzled. Their targets were the stone debris, not the enemies flying through. Only after dozens of missiles shot into the Stony Band and caused massive explosions did they realize the purpose of their actions. If any of the missiles had been aimed at the enemy ships, it may or may not have made a hit, but with the storm of flying stones raving inside the Stony Band, the rest of the enemy would have to take a detour.
“The back door’s going to be sealed for a while,” Rafael said to his officers. “Time to unleash the dog.”
He let his officers take charge of the rest and walked to a table placed in the corner of the room. He sat down in an armchair and grabbed his laptop from the table. This was a special laptop made for combatant commanders and commanders-in-second of the three Sunpherean fleets. Using this laptop he could monitor the situation, contact headquarters, and send out direct orders to his captains.
Now the picture he was looking at was filled with small symbols. The front of the enemy was engaged with RA’s second defense line—eight allied fleets formed by 2,000 ships and 10,000 planes. The line had been gradually retreating from RA-5’s orbit toward the sun, until his Second Fleet began attacking the enemy from the back. He moved the cursor toward the sun and the picture changed. On RA-4’s orbit stood the alliance’s third defense line, containing the Sunpherean First Fleet and three Ribbon Islands’ fleets, with the latter far below its standard due to the recent sneak raid. “That idiot,” he cursed again. Matthew should have gathered every fightable ship here. How much could the third line do if the majority of the front were doomed?
He would talk to headquarters, but not now. He picked up his coffee and waited. Half an hour later, about a third of the besieged enemy vanguards had lost their battle effectiveness. The damage on the alliance’s side was much smaller. He pressed a button on his laptop and a live image popped up on the screen, showing the queen and the admirals sitting in the Command and Control Center. Some of them must have noticed him and redirected their gazes.
“Good job at the Stony Band, Admiral Tait,” Oakley said with satisfaction. “Do you need reinforcement?”
He’d love it, of course, but he had to consider the overall situation. “Sir, the enemy we’ve been dealing with is mostly from the Imperial Fleets.”
The Imperil Fleets originated from Thyphol’s colonies, which were inferior to the Thypholian Central Fleets in terms of armaments, training, and other factors.
“The Central Fleets will be here any minute. I think we should let the Imperial Fleets pass, and have our third line deal with them.”
Oakley sighed. “I just spoke to King Matthew. He thinks we should try to hold the enemy as far from our planets as possible.”
“And I think we should win,” the queen said with an ironic tone. Rafael sensed that something about that woman had changed over the past few days. “Is anything we’re doing now not for the purpose of protecting our planets?”
“Thanks, Your Majesty.” Rafael bowed slightly and disconnected the line.
* * *
Since the Sunpherean Third Fleet created an outlet, the Imperial Fleets broke through t
he second defense line and marched toward Planet RA-4. Soon they were intercepted by the rest of the Alliance’s fleets. Meanwhile, Rafael’s Second Fleet turned around, getting ready for the next engagement.
Rafael left his desk and joined his officers. Nothing hostile had shown up on the large screen in front of them, but he could feel the shortened breaths and tensed nerves around him. “I want our Second, Sixth, and Seventh Squadrons to gather at the front and get prepared,” Rafael said. His officers seemed clueless but followed his command. Those three squadrons were composed of small and fast destroyers. This was not a usual arrangement when encountering massive enemy forces.
Gradually, gray symbols representing the enemy ships appeared on the situation map. At first, individual symbols were separable from one another, but it didn’t take long before half of the screen was covered by gray clouds. Rafael glanced at the numbers printed above the image—there was no way they could deal with these many enemies! He moved closer to the screen and pushed a few buttons on the wall. As the image zoomed in, the symbols became separable again. Hmm … he searched. Where was the Storm Center?
Unlike the RA’s forces whose individual fleets were managed by their combatant commanders, Thyphol used a centralized commanding system. All fleet maneuvers and major ship deployments were directed by the Fleet Admiral and his assistants from a mother ship, which was usually protected by dozens of heavy cruisers. This type of centralized power enabled the Fleet Admiral to take into consideration the overall situation and make coherent decisions toward a certain goal. Although the Head of the RA’s Alliance was supposed to play a similar role, nobody, except the officers in his own country, strictly obeyed his order. Each nation gave its own interest the highest priority, and each combatant commander had his own style of commanding.
After Rafael located the Storm Center, which was densely packed with ships like the center of a galaxy, he turned around and asked for a word with the captains of the three light squadrons. Someone did a quick set-up and handed him an intercom.
“You must have seen the numbers,” he said to the intercom, moving to the window nearby. “Yes, we are in trouble. Neither we nor our allies would stand a chance if we were to fight in the traditional way. But it’s not hopeless. If we could bring down their mother ship, the game is over. I know we’ve tried that before and never succeeded. That doesn’t mean we couldn’t this time.”
Indeed, Rafael had been thinking about the best way to reach the mother ship when he was the captain of the Caparise. He had some ideas, but he knew nobody would listen. He had been waiting for this day when he could try out his strategy.
“I want you to form a needle array and plunge into the enemy’s fleets, in a single column. Remember, a single column. You could fire unrestrained at whatever you like, but I bet our enemy wouldn’t fire back. When you’re running at full speed, the hit rate on your type of destroyers is at most twenty percent, even if you don’t turn on your antimissile system. Shooting at a single-column array inside them would cause more damage to their own ships on the other side.”
Rafael turned away from the window and peeked at his officers. His novel arrangement had generated surprised looks.
“But once you are at the center, no trick can save you from a tough fight, and you wouldn’t be fast enough to run back. All I can say is: don’t let our allies laugh at us. Nobody lives forever. If this is our day, let’s die as men.”
* * *
In a corner of the Command and Control Center, Geneva was staring at her laptop. After the news conference, every one had been busy preparing for the battle, and she had to do her best to act normal. Yes, one man had just died for the country, but soon there would be a lot more following him. Was someone’s life more precious than others’? To a woman, that was her lover’s. To the queen, nobody.
She forced herself to focus on the situation map. It seemed her Second Fleet was trying to break into the bulk of the enemy; meanwhile, two Thypholian Fleets had bypassed the Alliance’s second defense line and headed directly to Planet RA-4. That was Pompey’s strategy, to take them down one at a time. Now that half of that planet had surrendered, he only needed to worry about the other side. If Ribbon Islands and its three fleets also submitted, there’d be no point for the rest of the Alliance to keep fighting.
She zoomed out the map and searched for the large star symbol that represented the fortress. It was lingering far away from the enemy’s incoming course, somewhere outside of RA-5’s orbit. She heard that Thyphol had taken over the fortress on the previous day, but thank God they couldn’t figure out how to run it anytime soon.
She put down her laptop and wandered in the room. Her officers didn’t really need her at the moment, but she’d like to be around. Then her attention was drawn to a live report when she walked past a screen. The background was an ocean decorated with strips of islands. After she sat down with a headphone, the imaged changed to a ground view. It was definitely somewhere in Ribbon Islands.
“If you look at the cloud over my head …” The woman news reporter was tired but remained calm. “Yes, we always have clouds here, heavy clouds impregnated with moisture, hurtling over our islands at incredible speeds. But this is different. It’s made of metal hulls and lethal substances. And a hundred miles above the ground where the atmosphere is almost gone …” She pointed at the sky. “There is another layer of hostile warships forming a blockade to any possible rescue from the space. Half an hour ago Emperor Pompey asked us to surrender, and we don’t know how long his patience would last.”
The scene switched to a male reporter standing in front of the sea. “We are still waiting, but it shouldn’t take long.” The image zoomed in at the sea surface, which was placid at the moment. A minute later foams and swirls, almost undetectable under the shadows of the cloud, started appearing here and there. Then all at once dozens of ships emerged from the water and headed to the sky.
“This is our Black Seal Squadron. They have those spaceships that could function as submarines … Now you could see some of the enemy ships in the sky were being hit during the raid. The enemy’s ready to fight back, but our Black Seals are already back to the ocean and nowhere to be seen!”
The enemy fired at the water aimlessly. Meanwhile, dozens of missiles broke the surface and shot to the sky. “Those are the Torpedo Jumpers, I believe. They travel under the water horizontally over a distance before they come out, so that our enemy has no clue where our submarines are located.”
One after another, the enemy ships fell from the sky and caused massive surges in the water. Then the scene changed again, and a news anchor announced, “We, citizens of the Republic of Ribbon Islands, will not forget about the outrage the enemy had on our moon base …”
“Geneva!” Hearing Lloyd calling from behind, Geneva took off her headphone and turned around. Lloyd breathed heavily, with traces of wiped out sweat on his plump face. “Your ship is ready. I’ve made arrangement in our Toweland’s base.”
“I’m not leaving, Uncle.”
“Our ground-to-air system is having a problem.”
“What problem?” She frowned and rose from her chair. “Wasn’t it okay in the drill last week?”
“It was, but the cooling system failed to work for some reason. I’m sure we’ll be able to fix it soon. But just in case, you should leave now.”
She glanced at her officers and nodded. “All right, there’s not much I could do here, but I need to grab something from home. Where are my aunty and Calvin?”
“They are already there.”
She relaxed a bit. “Take care, Uncle.” She left her chair and headed outside. At the door, she stopped and turned back. For a while, she quietly looked at the people around the room. Something glittered in her eyes.
“What, Geneva?” Lloyd spotted her, apparently surprised that she hadn’t left.
Her lips moved, but no sound came out. Then she waved a hand at him briefly and disappeared into the hallway.
Chapter
13
Rafael gloomily watched the situation map on his laptop. For a while he thought his strategy was going to succeed. The three squadrons that dived into the Thypholian fleets had created unilateral damages—the enemy soon stopped firing at the intruders after they had figured out the consequence. The gray cloud was torn apart as the enemy ships at one side of the needle array moved out of the firing range of their colleagues. But as his fast destroyers approached the Storm Center, they encountered a group of strange ships, each with a curved tube at its bows. For some reason the antimissile system of his destroyers failed to intercept the missiles launched by those “elephants’ trunks”. One after another, he lost his ships, his men.
“Admiral!” an officer standing by the window called out to him. “The Caparise!”
The name immediately grabbed Rafael’s attention. As he rushed to the window, he saw an object flying toward him and crashed on the thick glass. The officer who was standing there jerked away, but Rafael didn’t blink. He took over the binocular from the officer and waited for the plane wreckage to slip off from his view.
Through the binocular he saw dozens of black objects surrounding a large silhouette. When lights flared at the ship’s broadside batteries, he could make out shadows of the “elephants’ trunks”. Yes, that was his Caparise. He needed no better look. She was commissioned around the same time when he enlisted, and since then she had accompanied him through all his training, fighting, achievements, and frustrations, until a week ago. He knew every compartment of her more than he knew about his own body. She was mild, steady, outdated, and yet could be quite ferocious when she was irritated. But now she looked like a helpless prey being slain by a herd of beasts. A piece of his flesh was etched away every time a missile collided on her hull.
“Bring it back,” Rafael said to his officer through his teeth. This was revenge! Emperor Pompey was revenging on him for threatening his Storm Center. “I don’t care what the cost is.”
The Starlight Fortress Page 11