Rebel

by Mike Shepherd

  “Understood. That’s a job I’m glad to accept.”

  “Wait one. Vice Admiral von Mittleburg, have you been following my negotiations?”

  “I have and am satisfied with what you offered. Tell them that I have personally reserved some 18-inchers for them if they go back on their word.”

  “I understand,” said the skipper of the Utena. “My leading chief has successfully rendered my fire control system unusable. I have ordered all ships to follow our lead. If someone stupid tries to do something, I assure you it will be as ineffective as possible. Oh, someone just smashed the main bus to the lasers. I swear to God, you have nothing to worry about from us.”

  “Commander Blue, can you confirm any of these actions?” Admiral Bolesław said.

  “Unfortunately, no, Admiral. However, I can say that the fire control system is down and the lasers have no charge.”

  “Let me know if that changes,” Admiral Bolesław said, then turned to the screen with Admiral von Mittleburg. “The cruisers are out of the battle.”

  “Then God help the destroyer men. All ships, put those little boys out of action before they hurt one hair on the head of our Grand Duchess.”

  Vicky’s destroyers, now picking their way carefully through the cloud of crud and past the cruisers that offered them no opposition, were well out of range of the Empress’s destroyers. The defense of Vicky’s battle line was totally in the lap of the cruiser gun line.

  They spoke. The larger 8-inch lasers on the heavy cruisers had a tough time tracking the rapidly jinking destroyers. The light cruisers’ 6-inch main batteries were more nimble. The secondary batteries on all the cruisers had an easier time tracking the destroyers and taking them under fire.

  The Empress’s destroyers burned, bled, and exploded.

  “I’ve cracked a scrambled net channel,” Commander Blue said.

  “On speaker,” Admiral Bolesław ordered.

  “We can’t take much more of this.”

  “Could we just blast the cruisers? They’re almost in range.”

  “Don’t you dare waste your main punch.” The Empress was on this net now, screaming like a banshee. “You told me those ship wreckers of yours could take down battleships! Now you will take down the battleship that little traitor is on! Get that bitch, or I’ll have your heads on pikes right next to those cowardly cruiser men!”

  One destroyer fired on a heavy cruiser anyway. One 21-inch pulse laser shook the ship hard, but it held its course.

  The Empress’s scream was soul-shaking.

  The Empress’s destroyer next to the one that fired took it under fire and blew it to pieces.

  Three more destroyers were hit by the gun line and fell off, powerless.

  The destroyer that had blown up its mate suddenly came under fire from the two destroyers nearby. It disintegrated in one huge fireball.

  “We can’t keep this up,” came a voice on net. “We’ve got to surrender, like the cruisers, or we’ll all be dead.”

  Another destroyer turned its fire on the ship beside it.

  “Thus to all traitors.”

  Two of the destroyers—and four of Vicky’s cruisers—took that one under fire, leaving another glowing ball of hot gas where it had been.

  “We can’t keep killing ourselves as fast as they’re killing us. I quit,” said a disembodied voice on net. On screen, a destroyer cut its acceleration down to almost nothing though it continued to dodge.

  No one shot at this one.

  “Don’t fire at any destroyer that powers down,” Admiral von Mittleburg said on net. On his private channel to Admiral Bolesław, he said, “Are you getting a request for surrender?”

  “They’re a bit leery of going on net asking to surrender since the last two to try got shot up by their mates,” Admiral Bolesław said. “Let me see what I can do.”

  The admiral turned to Vicky. “You want to stand next to me? It might help.”

  “I thought I was the carrot,” Vicky said.

  “Maybe I’ll use you as carrot cake. You ever have a slice of one? I loved my mother’s.”

  “About that surrender,” Vicky said.

  He turned back to the screen. “This is Admiral Bolesław. I have Her Grace, the Grand Duchess Victoria, at my elbow. We are prepared to offer asylum and protection to anyone who chooses to stop shooting at us. Empty your lasers. Disable the power buses to them and join your brothers on the cruisers picking up any survival pods you can find.”

  “All but one destroyer has powered down.”

  “Which one is the holdout?”

  “The Following Wind is still armed and dangerous.”

  “Pass its position to the gun line.”

  “Passed.”

  “There is one of your number who is still loaded for bear. Rest assured, this bear is locked and loaded and aimed at you. Either disarm, Following Wind, or you will die on a count of three.”

  “One.”

  After only a medium pause. “Two.”

  Admiral Bolesław shook his head.

  “He’s powering down. The Following Wind has emptied its pulse lasers and 4-inch guns.”

  “Very smart of you, Following Wind,” the admiral said.

  “We had to persuade our ‘political officer’ that it’s better to surrender to the Grand Duchess than to get blown to bits in the service of that bitch of an Empress we have.”

  Said Empress, no matter what her genetic makeup, was now screaming on the net. Commander Blue suggested switching to another channel, and the destroyer men did. There, uninterrupted, they settled the conditions of their temporary parole.

  Vicky, however, went back to the channel with her darling stepmommy. “Hello, bitch,” she said when the woman finally had to stop for air.

  She waited while Annah screamed to her heart’s content. When she finally had to gasp for another breath, Vicky got some words in edgewise. “You sent your cruisers and destroyers at me. We blew them away, and those that were smart surrendered.”

  She had to pause again while her loving stepmum exhausted that breath. “Now we’ll handle your battleships, bring the smart ones over to our side, hunt you down, and put you out of your misery,” Vicky finished.

  The Empress went back to her raving. Vicky found herself thinking about what she’d just said.

  I meant to say I’d hunt her down and kill you. Instead, I flinched away and settled for putting her out of her misery. Am I going to do the same when Retribution has her pleasure barge in its sights?

  I’ll need to have a black heart in my chest when that time comes.

  CHAPTER 61

  “RECALL the destroyers,” Vicky ordered.

  “What?” Rear Admiral Bolesław said.

  “Is that line to Vice Admiral von Mittleburg still open?” Vicky asked comm.

  “Yes, Your Grace.”

  “Vice Admiral von Mittleburg, will you be so kind as to recall the destroyers?”

  “Your Grace, ah, Vice Admiral Peterwald, may I ask what you have in mind?”

  “Yes, you may, Vice Admiral. We have just seen how an unsupported attack, cruisers and destroyers against a force of destroyers, cruisers, and battleships came to grief. Just now, our destroyers have no support. Please recall them. Next time we unleash the ship wreckers, I suggest we do it when everything we have is at hand keeping all that the Empress has left very, very busy.”

  “Understood, Your Grace, the Grand Duchess Vice Admiral Victoria. Comm, recall the destroyers. Your Grace, they had gotten quite close.”

  “So had the Empress’s destroyers, all brave Sailors, Admiral. There is no question I could be making a mistake, but after what we’ve just seen, the first destroyer attack in some eighty years, I think we need to rethink their use.”

  “You could be right, Your Grace. I certainly cannot say that you are wrong. The little boys have turned about and are returning to our fleet.”

  “Very good,” Vicky said. “Now, let’s think a bit about what happens next, shal
l we? I think we have some time.”

  Fifteen minutes later, the Empress’s battle line was closing into 18-inch laser range. Vicky and her admirals had gone through several options for handling the coming slugging match. Vicky had discovered how useful her computer could be when it came to quickly running alternative battle plans. They’d watched a good many times as their battle fleet was destroyed.

  The plan they were about to execute had been passed down to the smallest ship through coded tight beam. Now they’d see how it worked.

  For the moment, Vicky stood before the main screen on Retribution’s flag bridge and ordered Comm to hail her opposite number.

  A wiry, white-haired man wearing the stripes of a grand admiral took her call.

  “I am Her Grace, the Grand Duchess Vice Admiral Victoria, and I command here.”

  “I am Grand Admiral Kuznetsov, and I have orders to take your surrender or destroy you. Which will it be, young lady?”

  “Uncle Vitaly,” came from a second screen, where Admiral von Mittleburg was observing Vicky’s sally. “Did they drag you out of retirement?”

  “Is that you, Heinrich? What are you doing mixed up in a thing like this?”

  Admiral von Mittleburg shrugged stoically. “These are difficult times, Uncle. We find ourselves making choices that, on another hand, we would never think of making. Are you really with the Empress?”

  “Of course he is,” the Empress said, joining the conversation. “All right-thinking men obey the oaths they have taken. Unlike some brats.”

  “Have they got a gun at your back, Uncle Vitaly?”

  “I would not quite say that,” the old grand admiral said.

  “But he’s got me with him.” The Butcher of Dresden smirked as he stepped up beside the grand admiral.

  “How sad to see you again, Butcher,” Vicky said with as much cheer in her voice as she could fake. “How did your officers take to you getting two battleships blown away? Is that why it took you so long to finally come visit us?”

  “I’ll finish now what I came here to do,” the Butcher said darkly.

  “Enough of this,” the Empress snapped. “Admiral, get on with this.”

  Vicky shook her head. She appreciated being called admiral because it jumped her up another rank to full admiral. But to address a grand admiral that way was to demote him. Her stepmother knew nothing of the Navy officers she was bossing around.

  “May I have your surrender?” the old grand admiral asked.

  “I’m sorry, Grand Admiral Kuznetsov, but no,” Vicky answered, then added, “No doubt you have noticed that my forces are not easily defeated. You have lost all your destroyers and light cruisers and several of your heavies. Many have chosen to surrender rather than fight to their own destruction. Would you be interested in considering the terms I might offer you to surrender?”

  “You little shit!” the Empress screamed, but did not become visible on net.

  You really do need an anger management intervention, Vicky thought but did not say.

  The Butcher was on the flagship and looked ready to vent his own spleen, but the grand admiral raised a restraining hand.

  “You face two-to-one odds, young lady. I have only to cruise along as I am doing, and I will make orbit and capture your station and begin to threaten the people on the planet below. You must come to me. I assure you, I will not make the mistake the destroyer men made of underestimating you.”

  “I do not expect that you will, Grand Admiral. However, my battle fleet will not surrender. Please remember as the day’s events unfold that I have taken two surrenders today. I will not delay in taking a third.”

  “We’ll be taking your surrender if we haven’t blown you to bits,” the Butcher snapped with all the equanimity of a five-year-old. The screen went dead.

  After a pause for everyone to catch their breath, Vicky turned to Admiral Bolesław.

  “That didn’t go so well,” he said.

  “I don’t know. Every ship that was monitoring that channel now knows I’m willing to accept its surrender, and we now know who is trying to command that screwed-up situation over there. Admiral von Mittleburg, who is your Uncle Vitaly?”

  “We are not blood relatives, but my father fought with him during the Iteeche War, and he used to own a vineyard next to my grandfather’s. I don’t know how they got their hands on him.”

  “Is he good?”

  “One of the best,” Admiral von Mittleburg assured Vicky.

  “Then we will have to hope that he is good enough to separate his Sailors from the Empress’s butchers so that many of them won’t have to die today,” Vicky said evenly.

  The two admirals looked at her and nodded sadly.

  CHAPTER 62

  THE battle began to develop very much along the line that Admirals von Mittleburg and Bolesław had foreseen. But not entirely.

  Vicky’s fleet was a good fifty thousand klicks closer to St. Petersburg, braking with their well-armored bows aimed in the general direction of the Empress’s forces. Those forces were also braking to make orbit, but the bit of extra distance they had to go meant Vicky had a good shot at their vulnerable rocket motors and reactors.

  Vicky had the advantage.

  For her part, the Empress had twice as many battleships as Vicky. Formed into four battle lines of nine battleships, they could spread out and engulf Vicky’s smaller force, concentrating their fire two to one against her two battle lines of seven and nine.

  The Empress began to use that advantage five minutes before the biggest battleships would come in range with their 18-inch guns. Grand Admiral Kuznetsov had his four battle lines stacked an even distance from each other. Now they began to spread out. The lower line dropped lower and edged closer. The upper line went higher and also closer. The middle two squadrons held back.

  “It’s time we do something about that,” Admiral von Mittleburg said. “Ališ, you take the high squadrons, I’ll take the low ones.”

  For a few minutes longer, the grand admiral kept his formation as it was, then the two middle ones began to edge up, following the top squadron, the one that was trying to outmaneuver Admiral Bolesław’s lone squadron.

  “No surprise there,” Admiral von Mittleburg said. “Execute Redistribution Plan 3,” he ordered.

  The destroyers that had returned to the battle line had been used hard, some more than others. Admiral von Mittleburg had them reorganize themselves into four divisions with the Fourth Division holding all the badly dinged-up destroyers that could still answer bells.

  On his orders, Fourth Division took station in front of his battle squadron. The other three divisions moved over to support Admiral Bolesław. The two least damaged divisions formed up on the engaged side of the battleships, one forward, and one aft of them. The Third Division settled in among the rocket boats, ready to support where they were needed.

  The twenty-eight rocket boats had been evenly divided between the two battle lines. Now, Admiral von Mittleburg’s rocket boats split in half, one group staying with him, the other following the destroyers over to join Admiral Bolesław’s battle line.

  It was clear that the Empress was aiming everything at Vicky. Now, Admiral Bolesław’s line was enlarged to defend her.

  The Empress’s two middle battle lines were now well on their way to closing on Vicky’s battle line as they came in range of the Retribution’s 18-inch lasers.

  Backad“For what they are about to receive, may we be truly grateful,” Admiral Bolesław said softly, then his voice boomed. “Task Force 2 and accompanying ships, begin Evasion Pattern 2.”

  Around Vicky, the task force began to jink according to one of the moderate dodging patterns.

  Now the Grand Admiral did something to reduce the vulnerability of his battleships. One minute from 18-inch range, his remaining twenty heavy cruisers cut their deceleration and shot out, coming in range of the battle line well before they could hope to use their 8- or 9.2-inch main battery.

  “Battl
eships with 18-inch lasers, fire at the heavy cruisers. Transfer fire to the battleships when they come in range. Cruisers, close on the hostile cruiser line,” von Mittleburg ordered.

  Fifteen of the heavy cruisers were supporting the three battle lines engaging Vicky. Five were in the smaller force covering Admiral von Mittleburg. Retribution, Ravager, and Trouncer reached out with their first broadside. Fire was widely spaced; Vicky’s gunners expected the cruisers to be dodging, and they weren’t wrong. But they were prepared. All they needed was one good hit on a heavy cruiser’s armor to swat it down.

  Two cruisers across from Vicky and another two facing Admiral von Mittleburg were speared through by laser light and left drifting or struggling to keep way on. One exploded.

  The seven biggest battleships in Vicky’s force reloaded. It took thirty to thirty-five seconds before they got off their second salvo at the remaining sixteen heavy cruisers. The Trouncer was the last. This time, von Mittleburg’s BatRon 22 aimed for the cruisers across from Vicky. Again, four heavy cruisers died. The hostile cruiser gun line was down to twelve.

  Vicky’s ten heavy cruisers and six light ones should be able to keep them out of mischief. Better yet, if Vicky ordered a destroyer attack now, the Empress would have few cruisers to protect her battleships.

  Again, the battleships reloaded. When next they fired, they’d be exchanging shots with the Empress’s 18-inch battleships.

  “Commander Blue, how is the Empress’s jamming going?” Vicky asked.

  “Not so good, Your Grace. I think some of the cruisers we blew away had jamming gear on them.”

  “So what can you tell us?” Admiral Bolesław asked.

  “I have a good idea which battleships are the 18-inchers.”

  “Then it’s time to hit the big ones,” Admiral Bolesław said as he gave Retribution and his other two big-gunned battleships orders to fire at the closest 18-inch battleships held in thrall to the Empress’s power.