“It’s good to be back in the old ship with the old crew,” Jean Luc gloated, while all around him the members of his bridge crew fought the ship like a well-oiled machine.
“Multiple hits on the Cruiser’s starboard side; she was just managing to turn away as we passed, Commodore,” reported the Officer at Tactical. “But I’m pretty sure we knocked out their primary engine!”
“They can run, but they can’t hide,” Jean Luc said dismissively. “And just like a good woman, sometimes they need to be knocked around a bit before they know who’s boss. Even if we can’t finish her off, she’ll be weak in the knees and needy for power by the time the Vineyard manages to clinch. So while I’ve no intention of giving up, we’ll let the Vineyard roll her if need be.”
“Their shields are flaring while ours are still holding strong, Commodore,” reported the Tactical Officer.
“Of course,” Jean Luc grinned, “our gunnery was ready, while theirs was taken by surprise—and we’ve got the shields of a Battleship, while they are a Cruiser and not meant to go toe to toe at close range with a ship of the line.” His voice turned dismissive, “Exactly as planned.”
Chapter 69: Helplessness
“No!” I cursed as the Furious Phoenix lost its main drive.
“The Phoenix is turned broadside on to the Clover,” reported Eastwood in a more clinical voice than any former member of our old battleship could have managed, “however, her shields are spotting and she’s taking hull damage.”
The Phoenix finally moved out of range of the Lucky Clover, but her relief was short-lived as mere seconds later she began taking fire from the Vineyard.
“Are you accelerating at our top speed?” I demanded.
“We are currently decelerating to close with the battle taking place around the Mother-ship,” Laurent told me in an urgent voice. “We can’t speed up now, Admiral; we won’t get there in time to do the Phoenix any good anyway. If we try to get there any faster we’ll only overshoot our target and have to come about again—costing our allies precious time.”
Everything inside me burned to stop slowing down and instead speed up to rescue Akantha and the Phoenix. People were dying; men and woman who’d signed onto the Confederation lash-up I’d been raving about before being imprisoned were on a ship that was being demolished by the Traitor and his Caprian-built, Dreadnaught class Battleships, and there wasn’t a blasted thing I could do about it!
As I fought the urge to jump out of my chair and start raving like a madman, everything around me started to turn red in my field of vision.
Fighting for control, it took several deep breaths before I had re-mastered myself. I had to remind myself that their Battleships were just as big as mine, and that my ship’s size and power wasn’t the advantage I was used to having when charging headlong into the fray.
“Being helpless to do nothing but watch stinks,” I said, shaking my head and wincing as the Phoenix’s shields once again spotted. “The Strike Cruiser’s got superior range and maneuverability, but up close the Battleship’s got the advantage in just about everything—including weapons.”
“You can’t blame yourself, Admiral,” Laurent said heavily, “the Captain of the Phoenix made her call.”
“I’m the Admiral,” I said, staring at Laurent like he was just about the stupidest thing in the cosmos, “of course I get the blame; if it weren’t for me none of this would be happening!”
“You know what, Sir, you’re absolutely right,” Laurent said, his face turning red, “people are dying in Tracto fighting the Bugs instead of everyone being eaten.”
“You forget the spacers—” I started.
“Who’d have arrived back home and be undergoing ‘loyalty testing’ by the government,” Laurent said, waving a hand in the air like he was swatting a fly. “And who knows how many would have failed the tests and been ‘downsized,’ either serving a prison sentence or being exported off to a hostile colony world?”
“We’ll never know,” I agreed reluctantly. And because of that we must by default blame the man at the top responsible for this fiasco, I silently added. I didn’t say it out loud because I didn’t have the stomach for another fight with my Captain while my wife was fighting for her life.
The Phoenix’s shields started failing, and the Strike Cruiser began a desperate roll for survival while her secondary engines burned for all they were worth.
“You hear me, baby? Hold together,” I prayed under my breath as atmosphere started venting from ruptures in the hull of Akantha’s ship. Come on, you can do it, I silently urged as the Strike Cruiser slowly inched out of range.
“I’m surprised that the Phoenix can take as much damage as she has and still keep operating,” Laurent said with surprise.
I started to nod my head in agreement, and then a light bulb went off and I realized one of the reasons why it might be able to take more damage than expected. “The Cruiser’s made out of Mono-Locsium, and Spalding mentioned in one of his reports something about a girdle of Duralloy II around the middle of the ship, to make up for our lack of Mono-Locsium for replacing the damaged sections.”
“Hmm,” Laurent said as he rubbed his chin contemplatively, but I wasn’t fooled—even while rubbing his stubble, he was still watching the main screen like a hawk.
As we watched, the weight of fire from the Vineyard slowed down to a trickle until just its turbo-lasers were firing. I felt like jumping up and down and cheering, but of course I did nothing of the sort, so I settled for placing my hands in my lap and clenching my fists.
“She’s beat up and in trouble, but the Phoenix is finally doing what she was made for,” Laurent said with a worried smile, “fighting from just outside the range of our Confederation tech turbo-lasers.”
“Just get us there as fast as possible, Captain,” I urged, struggling to keep my worry out of my voice because while the Phoenix was proving to still be incrementally faster than the Vineyard, my Lady’s ship still had to keep turning slightly away from the pirate Battleship to keep her engines protected from direct, up-the-kilt shots. This slight turn let her fire at the Battleship, but the pirate was able to cut the corner enough to stay in the game—and in any prolonged slugfest between a Cruiser and a Battleship, the Cruiser was doomed no matter the tech gap.
“Hold together baby…I’m coming,” I said under my breath.
Chapter 70: Riding to the Rescue
“The Vineyard is increasing separation from the Furious Phoenix,” Captain Laurent reported.
“ETA,” I demanded, increasingly hungry to rain some pain down on my pirate kinsman and his crew of traitors and bloody space reavers.
“Five minutes and counting, Admiral Montagne,” he replied snappily.
“And if we bypass the Vineyard and go straight for the Lucky Clover instead?” I asked, my mouth twisting as I ground my teeth.
“The Vineyard is the closer target,” Laurent said. His words were neutral, as if reporting a set of facts, but his tone made it a question tinged with disapproved.
“Akantha went after the low hanging fruit and got her ship burned; I don’t plan on making the same mistake,” I said with a shake of my head, “besides, we need to go after the Blood Lord directly.”
“First, how do you know getting you to go after the Clover isn’t part of his plan? And second, how do you know the Prince is on the Lucky Clover?” Laurent asked.
“I don’t know, and he’s too much of a raging egomaniac to trust someone else at the helm of his ship during the use of his patented ‘Montagne Maneuver’,” I said scornfully. “He had that piece of ‘secret’ technology, and as far as I can tell he never disseminated it to the rest of his pirate fleet, or we’d have heard about it before. Now that the ship and his no-longer-secret Maneuver is back in his grasp, he’ll not let go of it easily.”
“Interesting speculation,” Laurent said, “but hardly conclusive. Let’s say we accept this speculation as fact; it still doesn’t mean we have to go after the Clov
er.”
“Cut the head off the snake and the body dies,” I said evenly, “relay the order: we’re going in.”
“Yes, Admiral,” Laurent acknowledged.
Minutes passed and even as we approached, ignoring the Vineyard in favor of a straight attack run on the Lucky Clover, both the enemy battleships ran their engines full out on a converging course back on the Mother-ship, which was still firing randomly and behaving chaotically.
“Is it just me, or has the weight of fire from the Mother-ship fallen slightly?” I asked tightly. I was mainly asking as a way of distracting myself, the feeling of tension I felt at making a firing run on the other Battleships left a ball of lead in my guts. I’d fought things smaller than my ship, or more numerous than my ship, but never had I been outclassed and outnumbered. So this was a first for me, and seeing the Phoenix just get itself hammered was doing little for my confidence.
Laurent opened his mouth and then hesitated before walking down to the Tactical section to confer with Eastwood.
Hurrying back, he said, “A new assessment shows that the speed of the Mother-ship has cut in half and her weight of fire is down to 80% of when it originally started firing, adjusted for overheated weapons systems.”
“Really?” I asked in surprise, I hadn’t been expecting much of an answer since I’d been more interested in distracting myself. The observation of the Bug Mother-ship had been a bit of idle speculation.
“It’s confirmed: the Mother-ship seems to be slowing down for some reason, and that includes its weight of fire,” Laurent said firmly.
“One minute from intercept,” our Navigator reported two minutes after we’d originally expected to intercept the Lucky Clover.
“We seem to be getting uncomfortably close to the Mother-ship,” I said with some concern. I was more than a little leery of blundering in like a punch-drunk fighter and meeting the same fate as my wife’s ship.
“Both of their shields have been weakened, even accounting for standard recharge rates for an undamaged ship—which these most definitely are not,” Laurent said, sounding confident of his assessment. “Meanwhile, our shields are at full power and we are completely undamaged.”
I had my reservations, but Laurent was a professional Tactical Officer who I had made Captain precisely for his tactical acumen. It just didn’t make sense to appoint him to that post and then ignore his advice, even if my gut was less than certain.
I decided that I was being a nervous and gun-shy, and that I needed to man up. That thought firmly in mind, I looked around the bridge and didn’t like the hesitant expressions on the faces of my bridge crew, so I stood up.
“Alright, officers and crew of the Flagship,” I said, stepping forward and projecting my voice just like I was speaking to a crowd of political supporters during a royal fundraiser. “This is the moment we’ve been waiting for, and the moment we’ve been bleeding and dying for. This is when we make all that sweat, and blood, and tears of the past several weeks have meaning. I can’t promise you a certain victory…only a fool would do that when faced with a pirate fleet headed by a pair of Battleships and backstopped by a Bug Armada. But what I can do is promise you that when we’re done with both of these threats—both to the Confederation at large, and the Tracto Star System in particular—they’ll have felt it before we’re done with them!”
I could see shoulders firm and heads pick up at my words, but knew I hadn’t quite sold it yet so I dug deep inside for my last shred of inspiration.
“This is the moment when every portion of this three-sided conflict comes to a head,” I declaimed, throwing wide my arms, “so engines, continue at our best speed. Super charge our shields to maximum; and someone let Gunnery know it’s time to stop polishing their barrels and get ready to make some thunder. This is not just the moment we get back some of our own—get our revenge, as it were—upon the Bugs and pirates and crooked politicians everywhere who said we couldn’t do it. They thought we were inconsequential, or at most a bit of inconvenient grist to be ground up in their wheels of progress,” I thundered, stomping forward into the center of the bridge with fire in my eyes. “We stand on the doorstep of a new millennium—this is the moment when all of that changes. Let’s do what no one else seems willing to do…let’s send these motherless sons straight to Hades!” I finished with an outright roar.
There was a moment of almost shocked silence, and then the bridge went crazy. Even the Easy Haven transferees seemed to get in the spirit and started stomping their feet on the deck plates. The Sensor section, less disciplined than most, jumped out of their chairs and started clapping their hands and cheering.
“Victory or Death!” I shouted, pumping my fist in the air.
“Victory or Death!” my crew cried in unison, and I saw the same fire in their eyes that I felt in my own.
Chapter 71: Clash of the Titans
When Battleships go toe to toe, it is said that entire star systems shudder—or, at least everything in the vicinity of the clash does, up to and including said Battleships. This last, I was about to personally discover.
“Acquire your targets and wait for my signal, Gunnery,” Eastwood said, holding his microphone in a death grip.
“We’re going in, Admiral,” DuPont said tightly.
On the main screen the Bug Mother-ship kept getting closer and closer until it seemed to fill the entire screen.
We were seconds from being within range of the pirate Battleships when they put on a sudden burst of speed and dove straight at the side of the Mother-ship.
“We’ll have to enter the Bug firing envelope to catch them,” Helmsman DuPont said tightly.
“We’ll chase them to the Demon’s Eye, through the Lapu Lapu Verge and ‘round Perdition’s Flames before we give them up,” I declared. “Follow them in and don’t lose them, Mr. DuPont!”
“Admiral,” Laurent said urgently into my ear, “the Lucky Clover and Vineyard are both moving 10% faster than the Dreadnaught class’s top speed.”
“They must have modified their engines since we last saw them, perhaps when they were in Central,” I growled. “It doesn’t matter; they won’t escape me this time. I won’t let it happen!”
“Sir—” Laurent started to plead, but we were finally within range of the enemy Battleships.
“Fire!” roared Eastwood and in response to his words our turbo-lasers lashed out, speaking their fury to our foes.
The pirate Battleships thundered their outrage in response, and the space between our three ships was not only filled with random Bug fire, but the deadly accurate turbo-lasers of the Dreadnaught class.
“Shields at 94% and falling,” Ensign Longbottom reported crisply, “now at 86%, no 82 and still falling, adjusting shield power to compensate.”
While their turbo-lasers were punishing our shields, our weapons were breaking their shields down and the occasional shot was pummeling their outer hulls. The armor of a Battleship is made for exactly this kind of slugfest, and the pirate-controlled battleships shrugged off our hits and kept on going.
“After them, DuPont,” I ordered, “redline the engines if you have to!”
We were just starting to come to grips and enter heavy laser range when the Pirates cut around the hind end of the Mother-ship.
“We’ve got them on the run; don’t let them get away,” I bellowed.
“The turn is too tight,” cried our Helmsman, “we’ve got too much acceleration to cut the corner as sharply as they are.”
For a far to brief moment—five, glorious seconds—as we attempted to follow the Clover and Vineyard around the back end of the Bug ship, we were in heavy laser range and we pounded them with all the fury of a Caprian-built ship of the line.
“Shields falling rapidly,” Longbottom called out as the full broadsides of both Battleships, and more than a few strikes from the Bug Mother-ship, lanced into our starboard flank. “We’re down below 40% on our starboard side and our shields are starting to spot!”
The
Vineyard had just started to vent on its port rear side, when just like that the enemy ships flipped their orientations and we went hurtling past the now rapidly-decelerating Pirates.
“No!” I roared out of sheer frustration.
“Helm, get this ship turned around for another attack run,” Captain Laurent instructed, anticipating my next order.
“Right on it, Captain,” DuPont replied, his fingers flying over his console.
I sat there and fumed as DuPont laboriously looped our ship back around for another attack run. His ‘right on it’ wasn’t nearly fast enough for me. Even the spectacular explosion that occurred behind us two minutes after we overshot our slightly faster foes wasn’t able to cheer me up.
Chapter 72: It is, it is, a glorious thing…
“Full power to the broadside,” Jean Luc roared as soon as they cleared the firing range of his pesky nephew.
“On it, Commodore,” Tactical responded.
Moments later the entire fury of a Caprian-built Battleship—upgraded by a Pirate King—lashed into the rear of the Bug Mother-ship.
“An excellent ploy, Sir,” Tremblay said stiltedly, an excited smile pasted on his face.
“When I want your brown nose lodged up in my unmentionables, I’ll be sure to let you know, Senior Lieutenant Tremblay,” Jean Luc said scornfully. “In the meantime, why don’t you try and do something useful like…I don’t know, tabulate some reports on the effectiveness of our environmental recycling efforts.”
“In the middle of battle?” Tremblay said, looking flabbergasted.
“As that’s about all you’re good for, other than spying on your superiors and eliminating them…from power I mean,” Jean Luc chuckled darkly, “why don’t we have you stick to your strengths and focus on bureaucratic paperwork? Run off now and work on those tabulated reports—shoo,” he snapped when Officer Tremblay didn’t move quickly enough.
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