Jhon nodded, "and I know the Fleet battle cruisers have very good stealth outfits. Nobody had any idea Commodore Makar was in the area when he opened fire." He smiled ruefully. "It even took Commander Holron by surprise, let alone me."
"But we only have three of those battle cruisers," Admiral Torrens reminded him. "Commander Holron took Indestructible back to Altiar, and the Guard doesn't have anything that new. Our own ships are good, and Captain Har Ovrilan knows what he's doing, but they don't have the same stealth fit."
"How about Har Ovrilan? Will he follow orders from Commodore Makar or will there be Guard versus Fleet issues to deal with?" Jhon frowned. "I can probably handle basic tactical problems, and I can certainly authorize weapons release on the planet-busters, but I don't have a lot of experience playing the peacemaker between different services."
"I doubt you should have to," she replied. "They both seem good at their job, and Har Ovrilan won't question anyone's loyalty to the Throne after they attacked a super-dreadnaught with a battle-cruiser." The smile that appeared on her face made Jhon wonder why he had ever tried to make her relax. "I'm sure we can manage plenty of exercises for them to get used to each other, even if they are in simulations.
"I might even put you in charge for one."
"I'll do my best, Admiral." Jhon said.
"I'm sure you will Your Highness, I'm sure you will." Her smile had grown wider, and there was something about the diminutive admiral that made Jhon very glad she was on his side.
*
Thirteen days later, he was back in the same place, watching the display again. Someone would know they were coming, a fleet this size had a fivespace ripple that was impossible to hide. Now his display showed tactical representations rather than the ships themselves. The plan was for the maulers to go through first, followed by the super-dreadnaughts. Everything else would follow as a unit, and swing in to support the initial breakthrough.
Privately, Jhon hoped the Enemy would not notice their arrival, but given the suspicious absence of the supply convoy, his thought was that the Enemy was already blockading the system, if they hadn't destroyed it. That was his main concern. What if they were too late, what if Belkrath was already gone and he was leading a suicide mission into hostile space? He put his hands behind his back and clasped his wrist, hoping no one would see how tightly he was squeezing. Admiral Torrens might be sitting in the big chair right now, he took a quick look to make sure she was; but it was all his responsibility. None of the ships would be here if it weren't for him. He was ultimately in charge, and he could feel it.
I should be in that chair, he thought to himself. At least that way everyone would see me and if things fell apart I would be where they are all going to look for orders. Maybe letting her take us in was a mistake. It was too late for any changes at this point, so he simply squared his shoulders and looked back to the display.
The image showed the entire fleet from an external perspective, rather than from his own aboard Imperial Protector; the two squadrons of maulers were arranged in a doubled tetrahedron, the Fleet's standard 'tet' formation, with one ship from each squadron at the points. The four super-dreadnaughts, also in 'tet' formation were further back, with the rest of the force further back in a looser formation, ready to englobe or concentrate if necessary.
A second image, inset in the main one, showed a representation of Belkrath's system. They were coming in from the side of the primary Belkrath was on, a little above the plane of the ecliptic. Belkrath hung like a jewel, caught between the primary and the gas giant it itself orbited. None of the system's five main planets were on the far side of the star, though the two outer ones were further ahead in their orbits just as the inner ones were behind in theirs. While the display could easily show the planets, there was no way to tell what if any ships were there. Ripples passed downwards, not upwards between the differing spaces, so there was no way to tell what was waiting for them in the system.
In eight minutes, it would be clear. The countdown timer was there in one corner of the display, counting down the minutes and seconds until they emerged. Jhon looked around the flag bridge again. In a smaller ship everyone would be harnessed in shockframes, ready for the shock of combat. Imperial Protector was a mauler, and her flag bridge was buried more than a kilometer beneath her outer hull. Impacts that could vaporize a destroyer would barely score her two hundred-gigatonne hull. Still, even this far inside this massive a ship there were shockframes on all the bridge chairs, just in case they reached the point where they would be needed.
Jhon shivered as he imagined the kind of battle that would involve heavy enough weapons to make shockframes useful on a mauler. They were taking the force to war.
"Your Highness?" Admiral Torrens' voice pierced his reverie. "It's five minutes to emergence. I would recommend that you take your seat now."
"Just a moment, Admiral," he said. "I have one thing to do first." Moving to the center of the bridge, he flipped open a cover that rested on a small pedestal. Within there was a recess the shape of a human hand. Stripping off his uniform glove, he placed his left hand in the recess, and keyed a little-known code into his implant. There was a short pain from his forefinger, and then he could feel activity going on between the ship and his implant.
Identification accepted: Prince Jhon, current heir to the Imperium. Unit 957 of the line is ready for your orders. The voice felt like ice as it came from his implant.
Taking a deep breath, his hand resting firmly in the recess, he spoke. "The Imperium is at State Omega, in the absence of the Emperor, I, as heir presumptive am declaring State Omega and on my authority authorizing weapons release." The words hung in the air for a moment, a moment between one heartbeat and the next, when Jhon realized he had taken on the full responsibility for the human race.
Unit 957 of the line, Imperial Guard Starship Imperial Protector acknowledges the order as lawful. All weapons released to human control. First and Second Mauler squadrons, Imperial Guard are now at full combat readiness. This release will expire in ten standard days. Two authorizations remaining.
"There, that's done," he said, turning towards his own chair. As he did he noticed the main display had changed, each of the maulers was outlined in red, and the planets in the secondary display all showed crosshairs. A second timer was now running above the first, and Jhon watched as the first minute ticked over.
"That's one," Admiral Torrens said, "I hope we don't need another."
"I wish we won't need any of them," Jhon said returning to his seat. "What I do know is that we will need them sometime, and if I don't make it through this emergence, I want you to have some sort of a fighting chance."
"I agree," she nodded. "Let's just hope we don't have to use it."
Jhon settled into his chair to watch the remaining minutes count down. He laughed softly to himself, what if the late convoy had been nothing more than a labor action, and everything was fine here at Belkrath. He would look like a real idiot dropping in with two squadrons of maulers at battle stations just because of some pension dispute.
The screen shifted, and they were dropping out of fivespace, fourspace, and now back into threespace. Everything blanked on his real-time screens as the computers crunched the data from the passives, waiting for something to throw up before returns could come in from active sensors. Everything looked clean and he breathed a sigh of relief.
"There, that's it." A voice called across the bridge and hostile icons glared red in the display. "I make it forty-plus sources inbound. Computer indicates ten super-dreadnaughts and the rest battle-cruiser equivalents."
"All stations report." Admiral Torrens voice carried an air of calm across the bridge.
"Shields up and holding."
"All point defense active and tracking."
"Secondary batteries cleared for space to space combat."
"Primary armament at standby."
"Countermeasures engaged."
Jhon heard the reports, each mirrored on
his own status display, all the time watching the situation unfold. The Enemy craft were closing fast, though it looked like the battle-cruisers were holding back for the super-dreadnaughts. The formation was one he had never seen; more of a single flat plane, but his battle experience was limited enough that it did not necessarily mean anything.
Curious, he pulled up the image of one of the enemy vessels. They were wedge shaped, unlike the more rounded designs he was used to, and the angle facing them seemed to have nothing but missiles. It had lots of missiles; more than any imperial ship the same size. Moments later he saw why.
The entire force flushed every missile at once. Almost fourteen hundred missiles leaped from those ships, diving towards the eight maulers that had made the original emergence. Alarms wailed, his shockframe tightened around him, and the lights dimmed, to be replaced by the red battle lights. Once the battle lights came up, the alarm stopped, and Jhon bumped his arm against the shockframe, trying to rub his ears. The frame fought him a moment, then released his arm.
Counter-fire leapt out from his own force, and Jhon was amazed at the difference that came from flying a mauler. When Lancer had fired, you could feel it throughout the hull. But Imperial Protector was different; there was no sensation at all as hundreds of anti-missiles catapulted from their launchers, dozens of hammerbeam clusters cycled, and lasers stabbed towards the oncoming horde.
Icons started dropping off the screen as hammerbeams reached out and caught the missiles. Others ran into the deadly clouds left by anti-missiles as they reached their pre-programmed burst distance and deployed their payloads. Each carried thousands of tiny hullmetal spheres, each with a simple sensor, and a single shot thrust unit. Attracted by the missile's drive flare they tried to interpose, wasting the warhead on a relativistic collision with a glorified ball bearing.
It wasn't going to be enough. Jhon's hand tightened on the grips of his chair. There were just too many missiles for two squadrons of maulers without support. Some of them were going to get through. Unlike lighter craft, maulers didn't have the mobility to dodge, and they could not stop all the missiles coming in. Every ship was going to take at least half a dozen hits.
"Brace for impact," came one of the voices from the bridge crew. "First missile impact in five...four...three...two...one. Impact."
Involuntarily Jhon stiffened, ready for the shock of the explosion. All that happened was a sudden spike in the shield readout, followed by a short message.
"Minor hull damage in sector G37, weapons and sensors unimpaired."
Jhon only realized he had been holding his breath when he let it out. The relief was followed by shock when another report came in, a second missile hit, this one in M14. Again the damage report indicated Imperial Protector was combat unimpaired. Slowly he released his death grip on the shockframe and started to pay attention to the battle again, not just the attacks on this ship.
"Missile launch." The voice repeated, and this time Jhon was breathing easily as the second flight of missiles came down on them.
It was another flight the same size as the first; fourteen hundred missiles from forty ships. Where were they all coming from? No Imperial force could launch that many missiles that fast. Even the capital ships with enough ammunition space to fight a sustained engagement lacked the space for that many launchers. That was especially true of forty ships when thirty of them were battle-cruisers.
The second wave of missiles closed, slashing down towards their slow-moving targets at eighty-five percent of lightspeed. Jhon's maulers had dropped from fivespace at barely one percent of c, and even at full drive their two-hundred gigaton hulls were sluggish. Again the anti-missiles launched out to meet the incoming wave, point defense cycling as cruiser size hammerbeams swatted missiles like flies.
Jhon waited the damage reports eagerly, sure the missiles could do nothing against the maulers; it was like throwing darts against the side of a tank, an exercise for the thrower, but not something the target would notice.
"Targeting priority changed, all missiles now appear to be targeting Imperial Fury," the tactical officer's voice carried no emotion that Jhon could hear. "Third wave launching from Enemy force, no change to target priority; all ships are now shifting to squadron defense mode."
Imperial Fury glowed on the screen as all eight ships shifted their fire to cover her. This time the size of the formation and weight of the attack combined against them. Only Imperial Guardian on the same point of the tetrahedron could lend her full defenses to assist. The flight time was too great for anti-missiles, and lasers lacked the reach. Hammerbeams stabbed, smashing into missile after missile, but each ship had only so many mounts, and they cycled only so fast.
Missile after missile stabbed into Imperial Fury's armored hull. Gouts of antimatter fire lit the ship so brightly that Jhon was sure the people of Belkrath would see a new star. One quick command brought the damage control window up on his display, spilling red across the screen. Shield holding but on full overload, over one hundred hits, point defense down by thirty percent, the litany went on and on. Jhon gulped and blinked, looking at the screen again. Three elements suddenly leaped out in bright green: main drive 100%, primary armament, 100%, secondary battery 96%; and then a fourth line flashed green: combat effectiveness 98%.
Even a full strike from all forty ships had not been able to stop one of his ships, and now they were moving into their own range. Jhon's own displays showed that Imperial Protector's hammerbeams were already acquiring firing solutions on the Enemy, and conventional maulers would have been returning fire with missiles of their own from the beginning. As it was, the Enemy had managed the first two rounds for free.
A bright red flash from the display showed him that it was more than just the first two rounds. The third wave of missiles was now closing on Imperial Fury, and the degradation of her defenses was beginning to tell. Already her shield had failed, now the missiles were slamming directly into the battle steel armor that covered her hull. All eight ships were still firing, throwing as much energy as they could into the way of the oncoming missiles. Imperial Guardian was firing her secondaries in counter-battery mode, slamming capital hammerbeams into the missile storm. The flashing of flares and strobing of jammers made a hash of Jhon's display; the computers fought to rip enough data out to generate an image. Both ships disappeared in a cloud of interference, lit from inside by the lightning bolts of missile strikes.
"Task force two is inbound," this time Jhon was sure he heard something in the tactical officer's voice. "Here comes Commodore Makar."
"Good for him," Admiral Torrens' voice broke the silence, and Jhon realized this was the first time he had heard her speak since the battle started. "Right on time." The satisfaction was obvious in her words, and Jhon couldn't help smiling himself.
Four super-dreadnaughts had dropped into existence less than a light minute away; and unlike Admiral Torrens' maulers, these ships did have a missile armament. All four rippled fire, and each ship flushed 24 missiles as the Imperium returned fire for the first time. Even Victory managed to launch a full spread of missiles, and Jhon wondered how her crew had managed enough repairs to get every launcher on line. Commodore Makar's ninety-six missile riposte looked puny against the fourteen hundred round hammer-blows the Enemy had delivered, but Jhon's heart quickened at the sight of proof they were striking back.
That was when Imperial Fury emerged from the storm of the Enemy's third wave. Battered but still whole, the wounded mauler found the range and her hammerbeams lashed out against her tormentors. One of the Enemy battle-cruisers had ventured too close, flipping its slab-sided profile to reveal a wall of capital hammerbeams. Eight perfectly timed hammerbeams slammed into that upper hull, sending shrapnel and secondary radiation cascading through its hull. Its shields flared, unable to dump the hammerbeam's energy, then let go as the entire ship crumpled around the immaterial impact.
That was when Eron Makar's super-dreadnaughts found their own range. Ninety-six missiles
sliced down towards a single battle-cruiser, alone on the edge of the Enemy formation. Its defenses screamed, anti-missiles and point defense hurling defiance at Makar's fire. Then it simply blew up. Thirty of Makar's missiles made it past, their programming sending them onto spiral courses, using the last seconds on their drives to hunt for another target.
Less than a minute later, Deryn Har Ovrilan brought the third wave through and the rout began. Fifteen battle-cruisers dropped back into existence, surrounded by eleven cruisers and eight destroyers. While the lighter ships peeled off into a defensive formation, the fifteen battle-cruisers launched-three hundred and sixty missiles leaping back at the Enemy force, the full weight targeted on one super-dreadnaught. The Enemy tried, but their forces lacked the fine-meshed control that linked Admiral Torrens' ships together and they could not stop the missiles; almost a hundred got through. Unlike a mauler, no super-dreadnaught flying could take near a hundred simultaneous hits, and the hulk that remained was blasted all the way down to the citadel, which was itself streaming air and coolant.
Less than a minute later, Har Ovrilan fired again, angling his ships to maintain the range against the super-dreadnaughts and letting his missiles do the work. Jhon was surprised the Enemy did not return fire, and focused a sensor on the nearest ship. The image it threw up was of a field of empty launch cells. Rather than carrying dozens of reloads under armor, it looked like the Enemy optimized their designs, for a limited number of extremely heavy strikes, rather than any sort of long engagement. They had failed to kill their opponents with the initial storm, and now all they had were hammerbeams.
Unfortunately for them, the remaining human forces had hammerbeams too, and the range had closed to where they could use them. Jhon was surprised the Enemy did not turn and flee, there was no way his maulers could catch them, nor the super-dreadnaughts, and the battle-cruisers had their hands full with the Enemy super-dreadnaughts. The Enemy super-dreadnaughts were returning fire, but at a much lower rate than before. Rather than the forty-five missile salvos they had opened the battle with, they were launching their missiles in sixes.
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