“That ship is sitting and tracking the 508th ships,” Jackson said, hands on his hips and eyes narrowed as he studied the tactical plots arrayed on the main display. “They’re not overly worried about us; they’ll rely on the ships over Juwel to counter any moves we might make, but he’s sitting quiet and watching those three destroyers.”
“Maybe they lost track of us, sir,” Dole offered hopefully.
“Possible, but unlikely,” Jackson said with an indulgent smile. “They have ships spread out all over this system and despite how careful we’ve been I’m afraid they’ve had plenty of opportunity to triangulate our rough position from our com traffic. It was one of the reasons I wanted us tucked up behind that gas giant: Any starship approaching us would have interacted with the magnetic field enough that the passives should have easily detected them.”
The crew fell silent and Jackson continued to watch the threat board, listening to the ship groan slightly as she fought against her own inertia and the gravitational pull of the massive planet ahead of them to come onto the course he had ordered. He looked at the clock and saw they had at least thirty hours before they hit their first threshold and had some decisions to make.
“XO, you have the watch,” Jackson said, the exhaustion of the last few days weighing down on him. “Stay on duty for another four hours and then call up your relief; after that I want you in the rack for at least eight hours. Understood?”
“I have the bridge, aye,” Simmons nodded. “Don’t worry, sir … you won’t see me up here again before I need to be. It’s been a long watch.”
“That it has, Commander,” Jackson agreed. “Carry on.”
His feet felt leaden as he trudged off the bridge on the way to his quarters, even his artificial leg seeming to move slower than normal. It was at times like these he keenly felt that he was getting older and he didn’t appreciate the feeling. His wife, Jillian, teased him that he’d better start looking into the Tsuyo rejuvenation treatments if he expected to keep up with their twins. He’d always taken mild offense at the ribbing, the age difference between the two of them something he was self-conscious about just below the surface, but he had to concede that she might have a point.
He remembered not too long ago pulling fifty-six-hour watches with nothing but coffee and adrenaline to keep him awake, sleep for six, and then come back on watch ready to kick some Phage ass. It just wasn’t fair. He felt like he was finally figuring things out and developing true wisdom as a shipmaster, and now his body was letting him down.
Once he reached his quarters he nodded to the Marine sentry that had followed him from the bridge, standard procedure when the ship was at general quarters, and decided that the extra time for a shower was well worth it. Three days in the same uniform meant he certainly wasn’t setting an example for his crew when it came to dress and appearance. War or not, there was no excuse for looking rumpled when on the bridge of a starship.
Ten minutes after he’d entered his quarters he was lying on his rack and snoring softly, the sound of the engines lulling him to sleep. His sleep was fitful despite how tired he was, visions of tens of millions of people slowly suffocating on a planet that was slowly being poisoned running through his head.
“Captain Wolfe to the bridge, Captain Wolfe to the bridge.”
The call over the intercom was repeated again, the computer’s flat, dispassionate voice not telling him if it was an emergency or not. He figured since he was being summoned via the intercom and not messaged over his comlink it had to be something serious. He was already sitting on his rack pulling his boots on, intent on hitting the wardroom for a quick breakfast before going on watch, but the call to the bridge put all thoughts of food out of his head.
He rushed through the hatch and ran to the bridge, feeling the ship through his boots and knowing they were still underway, but the engines were silent. Either they had propulsion problems or they’d hit their initial velocity and were now cold-coasting. The Star’s layout had the captain and XO quartered on the command deck within a few seconds of the bridge, a feature Jackson wished all warships had. The Blue Jacket, his first command, had his quarters two decks down in the superstructure and required he take two separate lifts. But back then warships were designed without their designers considering that the ship might actually be in a war.
“Report!” he barked as he slowed to a walk just before passing the Marine sentry onto the bridge who, since he was armed and wearing a cover, saluted him as he passed. His own escort took up position just inside the hatchway.
“The 508th has engaged the enemy, Captain. Our own status is unchanged.” Commander Chambliss, the Star’s Flight OPS department head, rose from the chair and made room for Jackson. The assault carrier was so lightly crewed that he’d been pulling in officers from all over the ship to cover watches on the bridge, as long as they were technically qualified. Chambliss had actually commanded a light frigate as a lieutenant before deciding to accept promotion in rank for a chance to serve on the larger mainline ships. When Jackson found this out he immediately put him into rotation for bridge watch.
“Go on,” Jackson said, sitting and logging into the terminal and giving it a second to populate his preferences.
“The Link connection went active just after you’d gone off-watch,” Chambliss went on. “It took some time for the handshakes and decryption routines to bounce back and forth before we began receiving a steady, valid telemetry stream. As soon as we were able to ascertain the posture of the 508th ships we called you to the bridge. They’ve gone active sensors and all weapons are live. No fire has been exchanged, but there are four Darshik cruisers converging on their position.”
“That’s not too bad of odds,” Jackson mused. “The Terran destroyers can use their stand-off weapons to reclaim a numerical advantage and then use their laser batteries so as not to expend all of their missiles in the opening salvo of this battle.”
“It will all depend on what tactics Captain Rawls decides to employ, sir,” Chambliss said. Jackson just gave him a flat stare at his statement of the obvious, unsure if there was some hidden meaning in the comment.
“Yes, Commander,” he said slowly, “I suppose it will. Is there anything else?”
“No other than that it was—Oh! There was one other thing that the passives picked up,” Chambliss said and pulled a sensor log snapshot up for Jackson to look at. “The opticals picked up what was first categorized as a transition flash, but it was much too weak to be a Darshik cruiser or one of ours.” Jackson studied the initial analysis CIC did of the occurrence and was impressed by how thorough they’d been.
“There could be one thing that made this,” he said, tapping his chin with his forefinger. “You ever heard of a Broadhead, Commander?”
“Just the usual conspiracy theory garbage, sir,” Chambliss frowned. “I know they exist, of course, but I don’t put a lot of credence into the Tsuyo propaganda of what they were supposedly capable of.”
“I’ve had some first-hand experience with them,” Jackson said. “I’ve even seen the second-generation Broadhead with my own eyes. What I don’t know, unfortunately, is whether this transition flash is consistent with the newer class. If it is—.” He trailed off, frowning.
“Sir?”
“It’s just that the original Broadhead didn’t have a transition signature this pronounced,” Jackson said. “In fact, on more than one occasion I had one sneak into a system I was actively scanning and never detected its arrival. I have a hard time believing the newer ship would be a step backwards in regards to its ability to penetrate a system unseen.”
“Maybe there was a malfunction with the drive?” Chambliss guessed.
“Impossible to say given my complete lack of knowledge of the craft,” Jackson shrugged. “Catalog it and have CIC on the lookout for a new player in the system … maybe the destroyers will pick something up with their active sensors and we’ll see it over the Link. If it’s who I think it might be I would expect we’ll
get a coded message within the next few hours.”
“Yes, sir,” Chambliss said. “If there’s nothing else, sir, I’d like to go back down to Flight OPS and relieve Lieutenant Zao.”
“Of course, Commander,” Jackson said. “I have the bridge. Dismissed.”
“Here they go,” Ensign Dole said a moment after Chambliss had gathered his things and left the bridge. Jackson looked up to the main display where the Link telemetry was populated on an overlay of the system and saw that the Relentless and Racer had both fired two Shrikes apiece at the incoming Darshik ships.
“Too far out still,” Jackson grated under his breath. The Shrikes were good, but the Darshik point defense was such that given enough time they could usually counter the missiles with laser fire before they got close enough to do any damage. He watched the battle on the Link and found it frustrating knowing that everything he was seeing had already happened over three hours ago. They’d originally been much closer but the taskforce and the Star were now on divergent courses and the com lag was increasing.
The fact that Rawls was moving his destroyers away from the planet they were supposed to be escorting the assault carrier to was infuriating, but not as much as watching the three ships get caught up in the same trap near the jump point that had already chewed up two other battlegroups. They’d only managed to get into the system thanks to the noise the Star made on her initial approach and likely the surprise Jackson had caused by transitioning in so far into the system, something Terran vessels never did.
Instead of taking that advantage, clearing the jump point, and getting his ships in play, Rawls’s hesitated and hung back near the dubious safety of a jump point his ships were in no position to even use. In the process he'd allowed the Darshik to re-establish their picket lines. Even now, against four ships, the three destroyers could push hard down the well and come about, allowing them to engage the cruisers at speed instead of hanging back flat-footed where they were at the mercy of the closing ships. The next twelve hours of the engagement would likely decide the success or failure of the entire operation.
“Sir, message coming in from the Relentless,” the chief manning the com station in Lieutenant Epsen’s absent said. “They’re reporting they’ve engaged the enemy.”
“Thank you, Coms,” Jackson said. “Send no reply. We’ll monitor their progress through the Link.”
“Aye, sir.”
Jackson checked their position, course, and speed and saw they were dead on where they were supposed to be and quickly approaching their first mission threshold. In the next six hours he would have to decide just how committed he was to rushing down to Juwel. The arbitrary waypoint would be when the engines were fired and they were accelerated again to the approach velocity they would carry until they had to brake hard for drop-shuttle launch.
He debated with himself about bringing up his active sensors for two hours to clear the immediate area, weighing the tradeoff of stealth for situational awareness. The chance that the Star had escaped notice as she skulked about in the outer system for the last few days was good as they’d not detected any directed radar pulses hitting the hull, but they’d lit the sky up with their engine burn as they escaped the gravitational influence of the gas giant they’d been trailing. He also toyed with the idea of broadcasting a coded-burst message during the window the sensors were transmitting as he was almost certain Agent Pike had made an appearance in the system and that his Broadhead had caused the strange transition flash.
After a few more moments of looking at the pros and cons of his current options he decided to just leave things as they were. The Star was gliding silent and dark after executing a drastic course change, if there was a Darshik cruiser shadowing them it would have also had to execute the same maneuver and they would have easily picked it up. Even if they’d been spotted, a likely scenario, he didn’t think there was any way another ship would be able to get within weapons range unseen given their relative velocity and a course that had them flying steeply back down the well towards Juwel. Although at times it was the most difficult thing in the world to have, patience was the key to winning battles in space when things happened over the span of days. A rash decision could have a ripple effect that ensured a mission’s failure long before he would ever even realize his mistake.
Senior Captain Edward Rawls knew that he had royally screwed up.
When that insufferable Wolfe had decided to take the Aludra Star off on his own instead of staying in the convoy with the rest of the taskforce he’d felt confident that they’d arrive to find no assault carrier and thus, no reason to remain in such a hostile system. He genuinely felt for the people of Juwel, but he also felt the half-measures taken by CENTCOM to recapture the system meant that ships and spacers were just being wasted in a political PR game. As such, why should he needlessly risk the remaining three ships of the 508th to support such a weak strategic goal?
When Wolfe had come to him with some half-insane, half-impossible plan to transition their ships into the Juwel System well beyond the system boundary, and any acceptable margin of safety when operating a warp drive near a primary star, he’d firmly put his foot down. He’d been given overall command of the mission but, infuriatingly, the Aludra Star hadn’t been officially attached to his taskforce. That meant the notorious loose cannon had been able to detach his ship and do whatever the hell he wanted including violating a litany of Fleet regulations regarding chain of command and operational protocols.
He’d been beyond surprised when they’d transitioned in and found no Darshik armada facing off against them … right up until he realized that was because the Aludra Star had not only made it into the system safely but was engaged with enemy forces down near the planet. A cold lump of fear settled in his stomach when he realized he would not be able to just swing his ships back around in a wide loop and haul ass out of the system, and he hated himself for that fear that he seemed unable to control.
“Sir, both of our missiles have been intercepted,” his tactical officer reported. “One of the Racer’s got through, one Tango listing and secondary explosions observed.” The tactical officer’s icy calm brought back Rawls’s self-loathing with a vengeance and he hated the man for it. How the hell could he be so calm when he had to realize his captain was in way over his head?
“Bracket both ships closing from our port and lock on two more Shrikes,” Rawls said crisply. “Have the firing solutions continuously updated, but hold your fire. We need to get in closer to give our missiles a chance.”
“Aye, sir,” the tactical officer said. “Missiles locked, firing solutions updating continuously and ready to launch.”
“Good. Coms! Notify the Resolute and Racer that we’ll be accelerating down into the well, firing as we close the range,” Rawls said. “We’re sitting targets here and we need to push ahead to support the operations over Juwel. Any word from the Aludra Star?”
“No, sir,” the com officer said. “We received the last burst transmission requesting we activate our Link and haven’t heard from them since.”
“CIC reports no explosions or detected weapons fire within the system,” his OPS officer offered. “Lieutenant Commander Yu thinks Captain Wolfe is running silent on their next approach to the planet. They detected the engine flare from the assault carrier as it pushed out of a holding orbit behind the larger of the two gas giants.”
“This changes nothing,” Rawls said. “We press ahead. Nav! I need a course down to the planet for the taskforce … no need to worry about stealth or conserving propellant.”
“Aye, sir. Plotting—”
“Transition flash on the boundary!” the tactical officer called out.
“Darshik reinforcements?” Rawls asked, his heart sinking and the icy lump rolling over a few times. If it was indeed Darshik forces that meant his hesitancy and—fuck it, he may as well admit it—cowardice had let his entire taskforce get boxed in with enemy warships pursuing and waiting dead ahead. He almost wished Wolfe had been
given overall mission command and had absolved him of making these impossible choices.
“Transponder coming in … it’s a Federation ship, sir!” his com officer’s elation was contagious. “Resolving now … it’s the Icarus!” A few bridge officers smiled widely and Rawls heard a few quiet cheers. Rawls had to admit, he would have cheered himself had he not been so surprised. Either way, now that Captain Celesta Wright had joined the battle with her powerful Starwolf-class destroyer he felt a surge of confidence and hope where moments ago had been only fear.
“Coms! Please welcome Captain Wright to the Juwel System,” Rawls said. “Nav, where’s my course?”
“Plotted and sent to the helm already, Captain,” the specialist first class said. “Course has also been sent over the Link tactical channel.”
“Confirmation received from both the Resolute and the Racer, sir,” the com officer said.
“Very well,” Rawls said. “Helm, all ahead full. Tactical, stand by on Shrikes.”
“All engines ahead full, aye.”
The Relentless surged ahead and the change on the bridge was palpable. They’d yet to even talk to the captain of the Icarus and Rawls could tell the crew’s uncertainty at what they were doing had been replaced with a confidence knowing that one of the Federation’s most-decorated and combat-hardened starship captains was there with them.
19
“What in the hell are the escorting ships doing bunched up along the perimeter?” Commander Barrett wondered aloud as the Link connection established with the 508th ships. “And where is the Aludra Star?”
“She’s not on the Link, sir,” Lieutenant Accari said from the OPS station. “I’ll check the mission logs from the—RDS has just come online. Engineering has cleared the Icarus for maneuvering.”
Iron & Blood: Book Two of The Expansion Wars Trilogy Page 17