Progeny (The Progenitor Trilogy, Book Three)

by Worth, Dan

  Chapter 36

  On the outermost edge of the Santiago system, space was torn apart as the Commonwealth invasion fleet emerged from hyperspace. The fleet of over a hundred warships had followed a series of waypoints from the Delta Pavonis system designed to obfuscate their true objective and, at times, had divided the fleet into its constituent carrier groups before re-uniting them as a coherent force for the final jump to Santiago. Now they emerged in perfect formation, a vast wall of ships centred around the Churchill. It was a triumph of command and fleet co-ordination, a testament to the professionalism of the Commonwealth Navy and the vessels that Cartwright had hand-picked for this mission. It also spoke volumes for the capability of the fleet’s commander.

  Admiral Chen leant forward in her command chair as the Churchill emerged from hyperspace. Ahead, through the bridge windows, Santiago’s sun shone like a baleful yellow eye, the planets around it just faintly visible as points of light arranged along the system’s ecliptic. To port and starboard, space was filled with ships under her command, their be-weaponed, armoured hulls shining dully in the weak light from Santiago’s sun.

  ‘All stations report,’ said Chen.

  ‘We have emerged from our jump at the correct co-ordinates,’ said O’Rourke.

  ‘Jump successful. All ships have emerged from hyperspace at the correct location,’ said Singh.

  ‘Mitchell here,’ came the report from gunnery. ‘All weapons ready and shields fully operational.’

  ‘All ships reporting in and are at full combat readiness,’ reported Andrews.

  ‘The flight deck is reporting in,’ said McManus. ‘All wings are ready to go.’

  ‘Excellent,’ Chen replied. ‘Mr Singh, do we have sight of the enemy?’

  ‘Recon cruisers coming on-line now ma’am,’ said Singh and scrutinised his console for a moment as the results from the Thea class cruisers began to flood in. ‘We are not detecting any Shaper ships within sensor range. Two carrier battle groups are on station in high orbit above the planet: Jupiter class with a dozen escorts each. Signatures match the Pompey Magnus and the Roosevelt.’

  ‘What about Shaper ships deeper within the system out of our detection range? What have the Nahabe spotted?’ said Chen.

  The Nahabe had advanced ahead of the main fleet as a heavy scouting force, using their stealth capabilities to conceal themselves and their superior sensor capabilities to get a fix on the position of the Shaper ships in the system.

  ‘Shadow in the Void and three of her sister ships are on station as planned, concealed within the asteroid belt between the orbits of the fourth and fifth planets. The other four vessels are in a similar position on the opposite side of the system. We’re getting the data from them now,’ Singh replied. ‘Confirmed: seven Shaper ships in system, two more than intel. suggested. The super-destroyer and four of the destroyers are shadowing the carriers, the other two destroyers are in different locations around the asteroid belt - looks like they’re hunting for the Nahabe. Data from the Nahabe indicates that the super-destroyer is acting as the command ship in the system and forms the key link back to the Shaper hive-mind. Wait... there are three more destroyers inbound at high speed, heading for Valparaiso.’

  ‘Damn. Time to their arrival?’ said Chen.

  ‘Based on their current speed and heading, just over three hours,’ replied Singh.

  ‘Meaning we’ll have to defend the landing against them when they arrive,’ McManus commented. ‘Do we abort?’ he asked, meeting Chen’s gaze.

  Chen weighed up the situation, then made her decision

  ‘No. We position ourselves between them and the landing and have the Nahabe outflank them. It’s time that the Shapers felt the bitter taste of defeat once again.’ She fixed McManus with a steely eyed look. ‘I intend to take this system and hold it against all comers for as long as is necessary,’ she added and then began to issue orders. ‘Ensign Andrews, signal to the Nahabe that we shall proceed. They are to engage the bulk of the enemy fleet, concentrating on the Shaper vessels. We shall not be far behind. We are go for the operation. Navigation, adjust our next waypoint to bring us out of our jump five hundred kilometres from the enemy force and above them relative to the position of the planet.’

  ‘Aye, Admiral,’ said O’Rourke and consulted his console. ‘Co-ordinates adjusted. We’ll be coming out right on top of them.’

  ‘Glad to hear it. Ensign Andrews, inform the fleet to prepare for immediate combat following the jump,’ Chen replied. ‘Helm, engage jump drive.’

  ‘Of course, if we can see them, they sure as hell can see us,’ said McManus under his breath as the Churchill and the rest of the invasion force jumped once more. ‘We should be on the look-out for them trying something crafty.’

  ‘Don’t you think I know that?’ Chen replied. ‘They’ll have seen us coming. Damn it, they could hardly not see us. I’m just banking on them not being able to work out where we were going until it was too late to redeploy sufficient forces to engage us. Those three incoming ships won’t be the last once they work out what we’re up to.’

  ‘What do you intend to do?’ said McManus.

  ‘Kill them, of course.’

  ‘I wouldnae have it any other way,’ the Commander replied, his face a picture of grim satisfaction.

  The fleet emerged from their jump into the chaos of the already unfolding battle in low orbit above the Earth-like surface of the planet Valparaiso. The Shaper super-destroyer, a vast, glittering behemoth over five kilometres from bow to stern, was under heavy attack from the Nahabe gunspheres, who in turn were taking heavy fire from its considerable defences as well as its two destroyer escorts. Two of the gunspheres had been heavily damaged already, and space between the frantically manoeuvring ships was criss-crossed with searing beams of energy. The two enslaved carrier groups, meanwhile, were facing directly towards the Commonwealth fleet as it emerged from hyperspace and advancing upon their current position. As Chen had rightly suspected, their arrival had not taken the Shapers by surprise. She ordered Andrews to put her through to the fleet.

  ‘All ships, this is Chen. Concentrate all fire on the carrier groups. The Shapers are using them as a blocking force: we have to push past them. Leonides and Nelson groups, advance on our left flank. Plataea and Pericles, push forward on the right. Everyone else, stay with the Churchill and loosen formations.’

  At Chen’s command, the fleet began to spread out, aiming to trap the enemy carriers in the cross fire as they advanced and also give themselves more room to manoeuvre. As they closed with the enemy, those same enemy ships were now preparing to fire.

  ‘Admiral, it’s the Shadow in the Void. The Lord Protector wishes to speak to you,’ said Andrews.

  ‘Put him through,’ Chen replied. A second later the armoured form of the Nahabe commander appeared in her HUD.

  ‘Admiral Chen, this is the Lord Protector. We are currently engaged with the Shaper command vessel and her escorts. Gunspheres Broken Moon and Cursed Star have sustained heavy damage but are still able to fight. The super-destroyer’s shields are weakening, but her defences are considerable. I’m not sure how long we can keep this up - only our superior manoeuvrability compared to the super-destroyer is giving us any advantage. Four of my ships are currently engaged with the escort destroyers. Two more vessels have recently jumped in from elsewhere in the system.’

  ‘Lord Protector, we need to concentrate on the larger vessel.’

  ‘I realise that,’ replied the Lord Protector. ‘But we need those destroyers dealt with. They have us penned in against the super-destroyer’s defences and we cannot jump clear. I fear I may have miscalculated and allowed them to flank us. We are outgunned.’

  ‘Roger that. We are preparing to engage the carrier groups and will render assistance as soon as possible,’ Chen replied. ‘Hang in there. Chen out.’

  ‘How soon?’ said McManus. ‘They seem to be taking some punishment.’

  ‘Let’s see shall we?’ Chen
replied. ‘We have the carriers outnumbered four to one. Time to test the new weaponry at our disposal.’

  As Chen spoke, the Pompey Magnus unleashed its main gun against the advancing Commonwealth forces. The massive plasma cannon spat a bolt of white hot energy towards Chen’s ship, but the shot was premature and glanced off the forward shields of the carrier Marcus Aurelius. The Roosevelt wisely held its fire, whilst the beam cannons of the escort vessels were still out of range. The two fleets were still closing with one another.

  ‘Helm, aim us at the Pompey Magnus,’ ordered Chen. ‘Gunnery, prepare to fire the main gun. All other ships, pick your targets and prepare to fire.’

  The Churchill shifted, aligning itself with the enemy carrier. The other ships in Chen’s HUD lit up with icons indicating that they were being targeted by the other carriers and destroyers equipped with the new spatial distortion weapons. They were now within optimal firing range.

  ‘Fire!’ barked Chen, and a dozen ships died.

  Space between the two closing fleets rippled suddenly, torn apart by the exotic weaponry now fitted to the Commonwealth ships. The lead ships among the enslaved carrier groups simply came apart under the onslaught, their bows shattered suddenly as if they had driven into an invisible wall, and then the tears in reality continued to rip along their lengths, twisting decks and hull plating and bursting them open. Chen saw the Pompey Magnus torn open in a split second from bow to stern, the two kilometre long vessel hanging open, ripped almost clean in two, before her reactors detonated with a blinding flash that engulfed the remains. The bows of the Roosevelt, hit by several of the smaller destroyer mounted cannons, simply ceased to exist, before a final blow ripped out her entire bridge section along with a two hundred metre chunk of her upper decks. Escort destroyers, frigates and cruisers were pummelled as if by a gigantic fist both from the front and from both flanks. Ships began to break apart, explosions tearing along their shattered hulls as blow after blow from the massed Commonwealth ships tore into them and broken energy capacitors, ammunition magazines and smashed reactor cores went critical. Hopelessly outclassed and unable to return fire, the remaining vessels now struggled to manoeuvre around the expanding fireballs, wildly tumbling debris and shattered wrecks.

  Chen could scarcely believe what she was seeing. The scenes of carnage caused by the guns of her fleet were incredible. Half of the opposing carrier groups wiped out at a stroke. There was a ragged cheer from her bridge officers.

  ‘Fucking hell, that showed ‘em!’ cried McManus. ‘Jesus, I’ve never seen the like!’

  As if to emphasis his point, the Roosevelt, now out of control, collided with one of her escort destroyers, driving the stump of her shattered bows clean through the destroyer’s aft gun decks. The two vessels were locked together for a moment, hull spars twisting and rending, before the destroyer began to come apart from multiple internal explosions, eventually immolating itself and the remains of the Roosevelt in a vast expanding sphere of plasma.

  ‘Gunnery, report,’ said Chen.

  ‘Our Arkari made cannon performed well yet again, Admiral,’ replied Lieutenant Commander Mitchell over the comm. ‘We scored a direct hit on the Pompey Magnus. Cannon is recharging. It’ll be a few more minutes until we can fire it again.’

  ‘Duly noted. Good work, Mr Mitchell’ said Chen.

  However their celebrations were to be short lived. Singh noticed first that something was wrong.

  ‘Admiral, a number of our destroyers appear to be drifting out of formation. Their weapons systems and shields are showing offline and their engines are powering down. Two of our own escorts, the Alesia and the Salamis are affected as well as nine other vessels throughout the fleet. Since we’re accelerating, they’re dropping back.’

  ‘Confirmed,’ said Andrews. ‘They are not responding to hails.’

  ‘Have they been attacked by something, some new disabling weapon we haven’t seen before? An EMP device perhaps?’ asked McManus.

  ‘That’s a negative,’ Singh replied, examining the sensor logs. ‘Each ship went offline at the moment it fired its main gun.’

  ‘Must be some sort of catastrophic malfunction,’ said McManus. ‘Christ, I thought they’d tested these bloody things before they sent us into battle.’

  ‘Andrews, warn the rest of the fleet, if they haven’t already noticed,’ said Chen. ‘Tell them to stay clear of the drifting ships, and the destroyers are not to fire their spatial distortion cannons for the rest of the battle. We can’t risk more ships becoming disabled!’

  They were closing on the remaining enslaved ships now. The enemy vessels were still manoeuvring around the wrecks of the destroyed ships and were bringing weapons to bear. They were almost in range.

  ‘What about weapons mounted on the carriers?’ said McManus. ‘Are we going to risk it?’

  ‘If I order the carriers not to fire their spatial distortion cannons, we don’t have much to hit the Shapers with. We might as well throw rocks at them,’ said Chen, angrily. ‘I’m willing to bet that there’s something about those particular destroyers that caused them to fail.’

  ‘I’ll have a look at the schematics we have on record,’ said McManus. ‘Meanwhile, we need to defend those ships. It won’t take the enemy long to realise what’s happened and they’ll be sitting ducks. Worse still, they could be boarded.’

  At that moment a signal came through. It was an emergency broadcast and it was coming from the Salamis. Andrews put it on speaker for them all to hear.

  ‘May day, may day. This is Captain Crane of the Salamis. We have lost main power to all systems. The ship is drifting, we are virtually blind and we are unable to defend ourselves. Please respond.’

  ‘Salamis, this is Admiral Chen. What happened?’

  ‘Our main gun malfunctioned. Some sort of power overload. It completely overwhelmed the fail-safes and cascaded through our systems when we fired the weapon. We don’t know how bad the damage is yet. We just got the comm. back online as a priority to call for help.’

  ‘We won’t leave you undefended Salamis,’ Chen replied. ‘Hang in there.’ She turned to Andrews. ‘Ensign, send orders to the assault carrier Anzio to hang back with her escorts and defend those ships as we advance. Signal the other destroyers and inform them that help is on the way, if they can hear us. We have no time to lose. We need to take down those remaining ships and come to the aid of the Nahabe.’

  Chen’s ships were now closing rapidly with the remaining enslaved vessels. The enemy ships had successfully negotiated the tumbling wreckage that was all that remained of their comrades and were powering towards the Commonwealth ships, their engines at maximum. It seemed like a hopeless gesture. They were hopelessly outgunned by Chen’s ships.

  ‘What the hell are they doing?’ mused McManus, eyeing the ragged collection of destroyers , frigates and cruisers growing ever larger before them. ‘They can’t possibly hope to successfully engage us?’

  ‘Admiral!’ cried Andrews. ‘Message from the Lord Protector. The Nahabe have lost one of their ships. The Broken Moon has gone down with all hands.’

  ‘We need to finish this,’ said Chen, acknowledging the bad news. At the same time, something about the enemy’s behaviour sent alarm bells ringing in her head. ‘Mr Singh, scan those approaching ships.’

  Singh worked his console for a second, before reporting.

  ‘Enemy vessels are advancing at full speed. Engines are at maximum and weapons are fully powered... wait. I’m seeing unusual energy spikes from their reactors.’

  ‘Unusual how?’

  ‘Massive energy readings - way beyond the normal, safe levels and increasing.’

  Chen heard it then, a sibilant rasping in the depths of her brain. The Shapers were laughing at her, she could hear them.

  ‘They’ve overloaded their reactors on purpose. Shite! It’s a suicide run, it has to be!’ exclaimed McManus. ‘They know they can’t defeat us, so the Shapers are sacrificing their pawns. Recommend we throw every
thing we’ve got at them before the bastards get too close.’

  ‘Agreed,’ Chen replied. ‘Gunnery, range to target?’

  ‘First enemy ship will be in range of our beam cannons in five seconds. Spatial distortion cannon is still charging and unavailable for use.’

  ‘Kill those ships for me, Mr Mitchell,’ said Chen. ‘All vessels, fire at will!’

  ‘Roger that,’ Mitchell replied, as McManus ordered engineering to divert more power to weapons and shields at the expense of the ship’s engines.

  Dozens of energy beams spat from the turrets of the Commonwealth fleet in a searing display of firepower. The leading enemy ship, the frigate Antioch, crumpled under a withering storm of fire, its shields collapsing in a matter of seconds before its bows and superstructure were pummelled and then torn apart under the onslaught. Out of control, the vessel began to slew to one side, narrowly avoiding a collision with the cruiser Ajax before falling out of formation. As the fire from the Commonwealth ships switched targets to the other enemy craft now in range, the Antioch began to shudder from internal explosions and was eventually ripped asunder by a gigantic ball of fire as its overcharged reactor detonated, disabling the nearby Ajax and collapsing the starboard shields of another three vessels. With her shields down and unable to defend herself, the Ajax was next to meet the full force of the guns of the Commonwealth fleet and the ship died in seconds under the onslaught, exploding in a similarly oversized ball of escaping plasma and radiation.