by D. J. Holmes
“Shouldn’t the British have opened fire by now?” Shiva’s Captain asked over a private COM channel. “Their escort should have a range advantage over us.”
“You’re right,” Kumar responded.
Before she could give any orders, one of Shiva’s sensor officers spoke. “Those British warships are doing something strange, it almost looks like they are launching escape pods.”
“Show me close up visuals of those ships,” Kumar demanded.
When the visuals came up on the main holo display something looked odd. Taking charge of the holo display, Kumar zoomed in on a section of one of the medium cruisers. When it dawned on her what she was looking at she let out a tirade of curses.
“What’s wrong?” Shiva’s Captain asked over the COM channel.
“Look at those four British medium cruisers, they are not medium cruisers at all. Look, why didn’t we see it sooner! They’re just freighters with additional hull attachments to make them look like warships. Worse, they have Havenite missile pods attached to them. They are the same missile pods we used to try and ambush the British fleet when they came to Haven.”
Kumar switched the visual display to look at one of the British freighters. She swore again. There were a series of Havenite missile pods attached to the outer hull of the freighter, just as there were to the freighters designed to look like warships. “It’s a trap,” she shouted. “Send orders to our squadron, full deceleration now. Angle us up and away from tango two, keep us clear of their missiles.”
*
8:40 pm HMS Mule
Acting Commander Stephanie Julius stood on the bridge of her ship, watching the lead elements of the Indian fleet approach. It was almost time. “Have the other warships been evacuated yet?” she asked one of the two officers who were on board Mule’s bridge with her.
“The last escape pods launched fifteen seconds ago,” Sub Lieutenant Scott answered. She had volunteered alongside Julius for this mission.
“Contact the engineers overseeing the missile pods, tell them we will be launching shortly. They are to pack up their equipment and get ready to head to the shuttle bay,” Julius ordered.
“Will do,” Scott replied.
“Bastion has just signaled, we are to fire in ten seconds,” the second Sub Lieutenant on board Mule reported.
“Acknowledge the order and prepare to fire,” Julius replied. “Fire,” she ordered when the time came.
When Admiral Cunningham had asked for volunteers to command a number of experimental ships, Julius had jumped at the chance. The opportunity for an independent command was the dream of every Lieutenant. She hadn’t expected to be put in command of a commandeered Haven freighter. Even so, over the last three weeks as fleet engineers had worked on Mule, she had begun to take on the appearance of a warship, at least from a distance. The advanced ECM units that had been installed on the freighter also meant she would look like one to anything but an intense sensor sweep. More importantly, she had the armaments of a warship. From the twelve missile pods that had been attached to her hull, twenty-four Havenite missiles shot into space. As Mule’s seven sister ships added their own missiles to the salvo, one hundred and ninety-two missiles accelerated towards the Indian squadron trying to intercept them.
That’s what you get for trying to be sneaky, Julius thought.
The Havenites had been stockpiling missiles for at least the last year in an effort to defend themselves. The Indians had managed to capture many of them when they took the planet and reports from the resistance indicated they had forced the missile engineers to continue to build more missiles under threat of death. When Cunningham had appeared in the Haven system, the Indians hadn’t been able to deploy all of the Havenite missiles. Having liberated them from the Indians, Cunningham had put them to good use. Now the missiles were about to accomplish the very purpose they had originally been built for, fending off an invading fleet.
Once she was satisfied all the missiles had cleared their missile pods, Julius opened a COM channel to Mule’s meagre crew. “Our mission is done, the missiles are away, everyone to the escape shuttle now,” she ordered. The missile pods were a one-time deal. Mule was now a death trap for anyone who tried to stay on her.
“The Indians have just fired more than one hundred and fifty missiles. Bastian and our escorts are firing as well,” Scott reported before she stood to leave her station.
“Good, that will be an extra surprise for the Indians,” Julius said as she followed Scott towards the exit from the bridge. Bastion’s Captain had ordered every British warship to fire at least two penetrator missiles in their first salvo. The British warships would get a chance to fire a second salvo but after that it was unlikely any of them would survive. The crews had already evacuated and the few officers who had remained behind to fire the first salvo were likely heading towards their own escape pods. The ships’ computers could fire their final salvo.
Just before she stepped out of the bridge, a sudden force flung Julius into a reinforced bulkhead. As her body slammed into the unrelenting bulkhead she blacked out. Coming to a couple of seconds later, Julius had the strange sensation that she was slithering across the floor. Opening her eyes, she saw the world around her was indeed moving. She soon realized it was her who was moving. As she struggled to take a breath it became apparent that the atmosphere on the bridge was being sucked away. As the air was being sucked into space it was pulling her body along the ground. There must have been a cosmic particle strike, Julius thought as she struggled to stay conscious. She grabbed the base of the nearest command chair and clung on to stop herself being sucked towards the microscopic hole in Mule’s hull.
As if from a great distance she heard Sub Lieutenant Scott’s voice, “Lieutenant Julius, are you okay? Quickly, you need to get out of the bridge.”
Turning her head, she saw Scott was standing at the other end of the access hatch leading out of the bridge. She was clinging to something with one hand while motioning for Julius with the other.
Julius tried to push herself onto her knees. A scream escaped her lips as her weight moved onto her legs and the pain made her collapse. Looking down, she saw her right leg was bent at a very bad angle.
Struggling to take another breath in the thinning atmosphere, Julius looked back towards Scott. The distance was just too far, there was no way she could drag herself across the floor that far before she lost consciousness. “Get out of here,” she shouted as loud as she could. After taking a deep breath that felt as if she barely got any oxygen she shouted again, “that’s an order.”
“No,” Scott shouted back. “I’m not leaving you.”
As blackness closed around her peripheral vision, Julius knew she didn’t have time to argue with the Sub Lieutenant. Mustering her strength, she pushed herself back onto her knees. The pain alone almost made her blackout. Before it did, she reached up to the command chair she had been clinging onto. With her vision quickly closing she made one final effort to reach out and hit one of the emergency buttons. With a whoosh, the hatch Scott had been looking through sealed itself to prevent the hull breach from causing the entire ship to depressurize.
Falling back to the ground, Julius moved her head to take one last look at the closed access hatch. Sub Lieutenant Scott had her hand pressed against the glass of the hatch as she looked towards her commanding officer. Scott was the last thing Julius saw before her vision blacked out and she lost consciousness.
When Julius’ head hit the deck, Scott let out a sob. Then she turned and fled towards the freighter’s shuttle bay where the rest of Mule’s crew were getting ready to evacuate the doomed ship.
*
8:58 pm ISF Shiva
“We’re ready to fire a second salvo,” one of Admiral Kumar’s aids reported.
“Fire,” Kumar ordered.
She had made peace with what was about to happen. The British missile salvo numbered more than two hundred missiles. Her ships were going to take a beating. However, with the tw
o missile salvos she had racing towards tango two, nothing would be left of the British ships.
And Shiva should be okay, she thought. She had rearranged her squadron’s formation to make sure her flagship would not be too threatened by the missiles coming towards her.
“The British missiles will be entering our point defenses in ten seconds,” an officer on Shiva’s auxiliary bridge announced.
Just before Shiva and the other Indian ships opened fire, the two hundred British missiles multiplied to more than three hundred. “What?” the same bridge officer asked.
“Penetrator missiles,” Kumar spat through gritted teeth. “Almost every missile fired from those escorts must have been a penetrator.”
The effectiveness of the British penetrator missiles quickly became apparent as Kumar’s squadron threw everything they had at the incoming British missiles. Three hundred quickly fell to two hundred and fifty, then less than two hundred. Despite their best efforts more than sixty missiles were still coming towards the Indian ships as they entered attack range of their targets. Of those sixty, twenty-five were illusions created by the remaining penetrator missiles. Another fifteen were shot down by last-ditch efforts from the Indian point defense gunners. The rest exploded among Kumar’s ships.
Just as she thought her command had escaped any damage, twin explosions rocked Shiva’s nose. The shock waves rippled through the ship, causing numerous malfunctions in equipment and many minor injuries to Shiva’s crew.
For a couple of seconds Kumar clung to her command chair for dear life, not sure if a secondary explosion would tear her ship apart. “Damage report,” she demanded after the shockwave passed.
“It looks like we took two proximity hits almost right on top of one another,” one of Shiva’s Lieutenants reported from the command bridge. “We’re getting heavy damage reports from our nose section, however our engines and reactors are still functioning.”
“What about the rest of the squadron?” Kumar asked, turning to one of her Flag Lieutenants who was on the auxiliary bridge with her.
“Pradesh is gone,” the Lieutenant reported. “Medium cruisers Bihar and Haryana have both suffered direct hits, they are reporting heavy damage. We have also lost the light cruiser Odisha, and two other light cruisers have suffered proximity hits. None of our smaller escorts were destroyed, it looks like the British targeted our capital ships.”
Kumar tightened her hands into fists. Pradesh was the only heavy cruiser under her command, and the damaged medium cruisers would be next to useless for the rest of the fighting. In one missile salvo she had lost almost half of her force of heavy ships. As everyone around her dealt with the damage to her squadron, Kumar focused on the two missile salvos she had launched. She had already put her fleet on a course to rendezvous with Admiral Kapoor. Likely, he would relieve her of command, or at least relegate her to a place of insignificance. All she had left now was her own missiles and revenge on the British who had just hammered in the final nail on the coffin of her career.
As the first wave of missiles crashed into the British squadron, all eight of the freighters were destroyed along with the smaller escorting warships. Only the light cruiser survived. With more than a hundred missiles in the second salvo, the light cruiser stood no chance. More than ten missiles struck the cruiser at once. She was vaporized into millions of atomic particles. Kumar let the image of the light cruiser exploding burn itself into her memory. She knew it might be the only satisfaction she would get for a long time to come.
*
Several light minutes away from where the British light cruiser Bastion met her fate, Sub Lieutenant Scott watched the final Indian missile detonate after it could find no more targets in range. “We made it,” she said over the shuttle’s COM to the rest of the crew who had been on board Mule. Almost half of them had been taken from Endeavour. “Second Lieutenant Julius will be missed,” she added.
Julius and the crew who had been lost when one of the freighters had been destroyed by a cosmic particle strike were the only casualties from the squadron. Though she didn’t know Admiral Kumar’s thoughts, she couldn’t help but think that whoever was in charge of the Indian squadron would be furious to find out they had only managed to kill a handful of British spacefarers.
Chapter 38 – A Clash of Titans
As the First Interstellar Expansion Era came to a close and the War of Doom approached, the battles between the different human nations intensified. Even without Dreadnaughts and Superdreadnoughts, the human fleets were able to hurl hundreds and hundreds of missiles at each other. In one sense, it was a real waste of ships and their crews. In another, it was perfect preparation for what was to come.
-Excerpt from Empire Rising, 3002 AD
9:20 pm HMS Churchill
“We’ve just received Bastion’s report,” an officer on Churchill’s auxiliary bridge reported to Cunningham. “It looks like her squadron only lost one officer in addition to the crew of the first freighter that was destroyed before engaging the Indians.”
“Send him my congratulations on a successful mission,” Cunningham ordered.
Bastion’s squadron had been put in place to surprise the Indians from the start. At worst, Cunningham had hoped to use the squadron to catch the Indians in a crossfire. That they would walk right into the trap hook, line and sinker was more than he had hoped for. The Indian battle fleet still outgunned his own, however, now the odds were a lot closer. Still, Cunningham thought as he looked at the approaching Indian fleet, this is going to be a bloody affair.
“We’re getting another COM message, this one is from the Prime Minister,” the same officer reported.
“Send it to my command chair,” Cunningham ordered.
As he read Fairfax’s message, Cunningham felt a glimmer of hope. Maybe the Indians won’t fight.
“Prepare to record a COM message to the Indian Admiral,” he requested. “Don’t put any encryption on it, I want every ship in the Indian fleet to hear me.”
“I presume I am speaking to Admiral Kapoor of the Indian Space Fleet,” he began when one of the bridge officers let him know they were ready to record. “My name is Admiral Thomas Cunningham. I’ve been tasked with protecting the colony of Haven. Included in the message I am sending you now are the results of a general referendum held on Haven today. The polls closed seven minutes ago. As you no doubt know, the British Star Kingdom voted to offer protectorate status to Haven. Today, under supervision from UN inspectors, the people of Haven voted with an overwhelming majority to join the British Star Kingdom and become our protectorate. In fact, eighty-four percent of the population voted to join us. The UN ships in orbit are preparing to return to Earth with this news. I urge you to turn your fleet around, the war is over. Even if you beat us today, the UN will accept the will of the Haven people, freely expressed in this referendum. Turn your fleet around, there is no need for any more loss of life.”
Turning to nod to let his subordinate know he had finished speaking, Cunningham caught a few smiles on some of his flag officers. Everyone had been tense about the Haven referendum. If the Havenites had voted not to join the British, Cunningham knew morale in his fleet would have plunged. If the Indians refused to turn around, he planned to let the entire fleet know the outcome of the vote. When it came to informing Churchill, he knew he didn’t need to bother, likely the news would spread around every crew member on the battlecruiser within the next ten minutes.
*
9:32 pm ISF Lakshmi
Kapoor sat in his command chair considering his options. His fleet had received Admiral Cunningham’s message several minutes ago. Though it could be a ruse, Kapoor was sure the Admiral was telling the truth. The question was, did it change anything? His voice had been the one that had pushed Indian Prime Minister Devgan towards war. Kapoor hadn’t been expecting Devgan to send him to take personal charge of the Indian fleet. Nevertheless, this was where he found himself. If he returned home now both he and Devgan would lose their positio
ns and perhaps even find themselves imprisoned by whoever seized power in India. The odds are still in our favor, Kapoor thought. If we can crush this British fleet, the British Star Kingdom will be forced to retreat into the borders of their own colonies. It will take them a decade or more to rebuild.
An alert on his command chair informed him that Admiral Khan was requesting a private COM channel. “Do you have a suggestion?” Kapoor asked after granting the request.
“I don’t believe Admiral Cunningham is bluffing,” Khan said. “I know we can still beat the British, but any battle today is going to be costly and, in the long term, the UN might make any victory useless. We can still turn around if you want. Admiral Kumar’s failure is the perfect excuse. She has thrown away our numerical advantage. No one would blame you for refusing to fight.”
“Thank you for your honesty,” Kapoor said to Khan. “I know we have rarely seen eye to eye. However, if we don’t fight today and the British keep Haven, then our colonial empire will dwindle. We need to take Haven to keep pace with the British over the coming decades. You’re an excellent commander Admiral. Today I’m going to need your best.”