Donn expected Coth to start with the next row of flotillas, however, they changed the order. The two that started at the top flipped to the bottom. The two at the bottom flipped to the top. Donn eyed the change, wondering at it.
Clearly, Coth had intent behind his change.
It would soon result in all eight of Donn’s half wings having ten flotillas of twenty battlecruisers and ten flotillas with four or five shell-shocked survivors.
It also would mean that the last, or second to last group of ten to be slaughtered would include the wing commander’s flagships or Donn’s own flag.
Was Admiral Coth, or that Longknife human intentionally keeping the admirals alive so they could make a decision? A decision to call it quits?
Donn’s thoughts were interrupted when staff officer number one said, “M’Lord Admiral, several of the ship programmers have proposed a change to our ships. Some of the battlecruisers were delivered by their human builders with extra-large reaction motors. All were changed to allow more of the smart metal for ship’s armor. However, they now bring to our attention that with larger reaction motors, the ships opposing us can maneuver harder. Dodge better. They offer this for your consideration.”
It took Donn hardly a second to make his decision. “Make it so,” he commanded.
Only moments later, the admiral was thrown hard against the sides of his couch, then, two seconds later, hard against the other side, even as the ship dropped out from under him.
Is this what it feels like on that Kris Longknife’s flag? Is this what she suffered?
But it worked!
The next enemy salvos destroyed only forty of his ships. The one after that, only thirty!
However, this also addled their own fire. The number of loyalist ships blown away or sent reeling out of the fight dropped to six, then four.
Donn took the measurements of the distance between him and the doubly doomed vanguard wing. It was coming within range of the first of the ships on who's shoulders Donn had laid the success of the rebellion. He was not yet in range of that vanguard and while he would now likely have more ships when he did, so would Admiral Coth.
Donn breathed deeply and prayed to every fate that wove a tapestry that they would soon cut the cords for those ships and not his.
62
Kris would have smiled, if her lips didn’t weigh so much. Since it would not have been a happy smile, she did not risk the effort.
The ships she had to destroy before they reached the jump were in five sections, all detached from a different wing. Sixty were ahead of the rest, pulled from the rebel vanguard before she had slaughtered all that would not surrender. Some two hundred and twenty, including forty or so of the few remaining 24-inch rebel battlecruisers, had come from the top, center, and bottom wing and had formed themselves into a major fist, intent on smashing their way through her.
Following a bit behind them, were seventy-five ships, including fifteen of the bigger battlecruisers. If the two lead forces could knock Kris for a loop, they might squeak by and make their way into the Imperial system.
Whoever commanded the detachment from the rebel vanguard had tried an extra twist. He’d cut back on his deceleration. Now he bolted toward the jump and shot right across Kris’s bow, getting between her and the jump.
“Comm send to wing. Prepare to steer fifteen degrees closer to the enemy.” She paused only a moment. “Execute.”
The Princess Royal and the rest of her fleet kept up their brutal 4.4 gee vector. Now, less of it was aimed to slow them for the jump and more to get them across the bow of the rebel ships.
“We will come in 24-inch range of both the first and second detachment in fifteen seconds,” Nelly advised Kris.
Kris did the numbers in her head. She had a bit more than one hundred and fifty ships left in her ten wings. Thirty-two were human, the other hundred and twenty were Iteeche. Again, she ordered the Iteeche flotillas to pair up and concentrate their fire. The four pairs would fire at the lead force. The one single flotilla would aim for the big ships in the larger force barreling down on them. The human squadron would fire by divisions at eight of the smaller battlecruisers that were already closer to the jump than they were.
Unable to fire back, all the smaller rebel battlecruisers jinked much harder than any that her forces had targeted before. It still didn’t save seven of them, but it was the worst shooting Kris had seen from her ships all day.
The forty-five 24-inch rebel battlecruisers concentrated their fire on a single human ship. As the fates would decree, they chose the Irrepressible. After its earlier damage, it must not have had enough crystal armor to cover all of its hull. Or maybe it had just taken too much damage the first time.
It was there one moment, then, in a blink, it was just a ball of expanding gas.
The fourth flotilla managed to wing a big rebel warship and send it spinning out of the line.
Ten seconds after the aft lasers fell silent, the bow lasers were reloaded. Kris’s vanguard went to zero gees and aimed itself at the rebels.
Again, seven smaller warships were culled from the vanguard detachment. None from the big ships coming up. The Dauntless was heated up, but their armor saved them from burn-through. She stayed in the line.
Ten seconds later the forward lasers opened up. When the stern guns fell silent, the vanguard detachment could count only a bit more than a quarter of the enemy ships that it had engaged two minutes before. A second big warship from the approaching detachment had been blown away.
The Dauntless was a glowing hulk shooting off sparks as it rolled helpless in space.
“Comm, send to Task Fleet 6. ‘Any ship that is heated up by a rebel salvo will fall out of the battle line and cut its deceleration toward the jump. Acknowledge’.”
The reply to that order was a bit slow in coming, but soon enough, her board showed acknowledgments from all thirty of her remaining ships.
The battle went on, every half minute another seven or eight of the ships speeding toward the jump would die or be blasted too badly to do much more than stay alive.
Every pair of salvos from the rebel ships would cause one of Kris’s ships to fall out of the fight, glowing brightly. Every salvo, more of the forward rebel detachment would vanish or lose power as it was ravaged by internal fires that only died when the ship was opened to vacuum.
None of those ships were in range of her force. None of them could fight back. It was a bloody massacre. Kris wanted to offer quarters, to ask the rebel ships to offer their surrender.
The problem here was the same one she’d faced five years ago as the last of the alien raiders made for the jump into Alwa. There, they had screamed something like surrender . . . and held firm to their course. A course that would take them straight into Alwa where they could slaughter the birds and humans that Kris was sworn to defend.
In the end, Kris had ordered their destruction because their words said one thing, but their actions did another.
Today, the rebel Iteeche did not ask for quarter. They continued dodging and weaving, doing their best to avoid destruction, but not taking that one last option that would guarantee they would see tomorrow.
If Kris had thought the bug-eyed monsters adamant in their refusal to surrender, she was finding it here in spades.
She did not ask them to surrender and they did not ask for quarter.
Nine salvos later, there were no rebel ships left between Kris and the jump that led into the Imperial System. Now it was time to turn her attention to the onrushing ships racing for the jump.
She eyed them, but also the large battle taking place behind her. It was less behind her than it had been when she first started destroying the lead force and was getting closer by the minute.
Admiral Donn studied the battles before him. He had culled over three hundred ships from Admiral Coth’s forces across from him. In return, the loyal admiral had slaughtered almost two thousand of Donn’s own ships. Still, this might yet be a victory.
> He had let Coth draw him off, as he blasted away at the loyalist’s forces. When the critical moment came, however, Donn had given the order and his fleet had tacked three points back towards the vanguard wing that was so intent on destroying his rebel ships. Those ships were so committed to making that jump and winning the war when they went into orbit over the Imperial Capital. They would laze that Imperial Palace until the very stones it rested on ran as water.
Those were the orders those in the Battleships of State had given him and those were the orders he would die to carry out.
The question nagging at the back of his mind was a bitter one. Do I and those brave sailors that I lead die for nothing? If the ships racing for the jump are all annihilated by the loyalist vanguard wing, do I fight and die when all is lost?
This was a bitter fruit for him even to nibble at, yet he did. Death was inevitable for him. Whether it came for him from an enemy laser, or from an order to walk out the nearest space lock, he would die today. Even if he surrendered, he would have to take that short walk, either to apologize to the Emperor, or to atone to the political masters who gave him his orders.
His choice was simple. Victory or death.
But what of those who followed him? Should he order all of them to surrender? Likely Coth would send Marines to each of his ships to make sure its captain took that walk. It seemed unlikely that those on the Battleships of State would be in any position to do more than scream at them for choosing life over worthless death.
It was strange to entertain those thoughts, even for a moment, and yet he let them roll around in his head even as he did his utmost to catch that vanguard wing and destroy it before it destroyed their hope for victory.
Coth had made the turn as well, and now followed along slightly behind him, trading salvo for salvo, though seven or nine of Donn’s ships died for every loyalist. The battle raged, neither side cutting the other any slack.
The issue was still in doubt. This was no time to slack off.
63
Admiral Kris Longknife fought her battle with one eye over her shoulder, keeping herself very aware of the embattled force coming for her. She needed one eye to her right, watching the final annihilation of the leading detachment, and another eye to her left focused on the larger detachment barreling down on her.
If she’d been an Iteeche, this would have been easier to do. Being a human with only two eyes, it was much harder.
As the last of the ships running for the jump on her right was destroyed, she turned her main attention to the much larger force on her left. Some two hundred ships, including a dozen or more large battlecruisers, were bearing down on her. While she had concentrated on destroying the smaller menace closer to the jump, they had made a game changing move.
They had reduced their deceleration to one gee.
Suddenly they closed the distance to Kris’s ships like a big dog racing for a nice, fresh steak . . . or to rip the throat out of some trespasser.
The board showed an enemy force of six flotillas of twenty 22-inch battlecruisers with a one, two, or three 24-inch warships scattered randomly among the flotillas. Kris’s force still consisted of ten flotillas. Most had started with forty-five ships, half larger battlecruisers, the others had the 22-inch ships. Now, they averaged twenty-five in their ranks. Kris’s own BatCruFlot 6 was down to twenty-six 24-inch battlecruisers, with four more that had cut their power back and drifted closer toward the jump while they cooled down and mended ship.
She out-numbered and out-gunned this detachment, but that didn’t seem to matter to them. As Kris watched, the countdown for them to pull in range for their 22-inch guns reached one minute. Kris ordered the bigger ships in her vanguard wing to concentrate of the big ships opposite them.
In the opening salvo, nine big enemy ships vanished and one of the human battlecruisers got lit up and dropped out of line. The next salvo took care of the last four 24-inch battlecruisers and seven of the smaller ones.
Then the twenty-two inch battlecruisers on both sides were in range.
For the first time, the smaller battlecruisers in Kris’s wing got to fire their lasers. Kris ordered her wing to two gees, being about as close to the enemy as she wanted, and aimed them at twenty-eight of the enemy ships. However, they were spaced as widely as her own ships and jinking more than she’d seen any enemy ship do today. Her fleet only connected with fourteen.
The rebels lit up one of the human battlecruisers and it fell out of line. A loyal Iteeche ship blew up.
The next two minutes went the same way. Four salvos swapped, fifty plus rebels destroyed. The enemy played dirty. They lit up the Irascible, then, when it fell out of line, lit it up again and burned it. They did the same with the Implacable.
All the human battlecruisers went to Evasion Plan 6 and when the Undoubtable was lit up, it dropped its deceleration toward the jump to half a gee and shot toward it, still using Evasion Plan 6. She warmed up some more, but was well out of range before they could take another shot at her. In the meantime, seven more loyal Iteeche ships got raked hard. Three were destroyed.
A third of the rebel detachment was gone and they’d only managed to singe Kris’s wing. However, they were closer and had definite ideas for improvement.
The next time the two forces exchanged salvos, the rebels lost sixteen ships. They, however, concentrated their fire on one of the Iteeche flotillas. Six ships in a block.
Three blew up and the other three were left tumbling in space, their crew desperately trying to keep some compartments air tight.
That was the worst exchange Kris’s ships had suffered all day.
For the next salvo, the rebels were closer still, and the price increased for both sides. The rebels lost nineteen. Still, they took a bite out of another flotilla. Three ships were blown up. Another four were heavily damaged this time.
“Nelly, how much can I cut deceleration and still make the jump at a velocity that will get me to the Imperial System?” Jumps were interesting things. Created by the three alien species that had prowled the galaxy until a million years ago when they just up and vanished, humans were just now gaining a better understanding. Before this knowledge, humans went through jumps dead slow, lest they end up not coming back. Lately, mainly because of Longknifes, humans knew that you could go through a jump at less than 50,000 kilometers an hour and go where you wanted to go. You hit it faster and it took you further.
If Kris couldn’t reduce her velocity to 49,999 kilometers per hour or less by the time she reached the jump, she would not go to the Imperial System and she’d be in no position to protect the young Emperor.
“Kris, I’m sorry, but I can’t really recommend you cut your power below two gees at this time. You’re going to need to go back to 4.4 gees very soon if you hope to make the jump.”
“Thank you, Nelly.”
Another salvo went out. This time Kris lost eight Iteeche battlecruisers even though she destroyed twenty-two of the rebels.
That was the last salvo Kris could concentrate on with those ships headed for the jump.
The cavalry was arriving, and it had not come for Kris.
The next salvo, she divided her forces. Her 22-inch battlecruisers nailed another nine jump-bound Iteeche warships. She lost six of her rapidly jinking ships.
Meanwhile, her 24-inch battlecruisers were retasked. The main body was coming in range, and coming in range fast. Sixty or more ships got smashed from that fifteen hundred ships, some by Kris’s wing, others by Coth’s four wings.
“Nelly, how much can I edge over to keep that huge force out of range?”
“Not much, Kris.”
“Send the command to my comm desk.”
“Done, Kris.”
Kris took on a bit more weight and her course slipped thirty degrees to the right of the base course to the jump. The incoming rebel fleet was aimed directly at her, so the vector wasn’t going to help her a lot, but any little bit was something to be thankful for.
A
dmiral Donn gritted his beak as the doubly mis-chosen vanguard edged further from his grasp. Then things got way worse as the vanguard’s larger battlecruisers joined in the scourging of his fleet. However, weighing four times what he’d weighed on the home planet, there was little more for him to do.
They had almost caught up with the loyalist’s vanguard and wanted to smash them hard. Of course, Admiral Coth was still hitting him hard.
Donn had begun the day with eight thousand battlecruisers under his command. Eight million sailors and officers were at his beck and call. At the moment, he had less than twelve hundred ships under his command and was trying to help two detachments of less than three hundred make it through the jump to smash the Imperial power.
He’d reorganized the wreckage of his fleet as he raced toward the loyalist vanguard. Most of his original flotillas were down to ten or so ships, only a few had a flagship. He’d consolidated the three hundred survivors in each wing into ten flotillas of thirty. Most had a flag officer in charge. He was minutes away from the first three flotillas in three of his wings getting the range on the loyal vanguard. They would hit them good.
Meanwhile, his ships continued to trade salvos with Admiral Coth, and he with them. The next volley got him another eight of Coth’s ships, but Donn counted himself down fifty-six ships culled from four flotillas, one from each wing as usual. Remarkable, a fifth flotilla, the one closest to the loyal vanguard had also lost fifteen ships
So, the heavy battlecruisers of the vanguard had taken him under fire as well. Donn didn’t mind. The more they shot against him, the more ships would remain in those flotillas headed for the Imperial Capital.
It was a bad situation, but with his fleet aimed directly at the loyalist vanguard, it would soon get a whole lot worse for the other side.
64
Admiral Kris Longknife knew things were about to get very bad. For two salvos, her large battlecruisers had slashed at the approaching fleet while her smaller ships engaged the same size battlecruisers decelerating toward her. For now, instead of bleeding off velocity at 2.5 gees, the rebel ships were only slowing at one gee as they raced to get closer to Kris’s ships. Sooner or later, they would have to pile on the deceleration gees if they wanted to make the jump.
Kris Longknife - Admiral Page 35