“On the way,” I replied, grabbing my jacket and hurrying out the door.
****************************************************
“What have we got?” I asked the moment I stepped on the bridge, but seconds later the image on the main-screen said it all.
The main enemy fleet was here—or, if they weren’t here yet, they would soon be.
“We’ve got over a hundred unique contacts on the fleet’s tactical plot and the numbers keep growing by the minute, Sir,” reported Lieutenant Hart, his voice stiff with tension.
“It looks like this one is for all the marbles, people,” I said, striding over and then taking a seat on the bridge Throne. Tapping on the arms of the Throne, I brought up all of my private screens and with the tap of a button set them to my pre-set personal settings.
“Do you want to set the fleet to Condition One?” Captain Hammer asked.
“We’ve still got a few hours before that becomes necessary, at least for those ships nearest the Starbase. I think we’ll leave the exact readiness Condition up to the various captains of each individual warship,” I said after a moment’s contemplation.
“Aye aye, Sir,” said the Captain on the other end of the holo-screen.
“Carry on, Leonora,” I said, turning back to the screen.
Like the tendrils of a deadly, poisonous jellyfish the lighter sized warships of the enemy fleet moved past the hyper limit and burned-in system at sustained speeds that frankly left our own Destroyer captains envious.
The Imperials were obviously keeping the best tech for themselves if this mix of retrofitted and older Imperial model warships could do this. Or maybe it was more a factor of the junk technology that was floating around in use in the Spine than anything else. I mean, the MSP had the technology to build some really fast and powerful warships—if we ever had enough time to stop repairing battle damage to start laying down hulls. Well that and the trained personnel. This whole ‘building up a military organization from whole cloth’ was, in reality, more a masochist’s dream than anything else. And while I disdained both extremes, I’d much rather be a sadist…well, okay who was I trying to kid here? Jason Montagne had been born to a life of suffering.
All I could do was accept my fate and make darned blasted well sure that my children learned that they didn’t have to take guff off anyone. I might have to accept punishment from the galaxy for the horrors of my ancestors, but if I had to tear the entire Spine apart and put it back together again I would personally balance the scales. It would be interesting to see the damage my sons—and, yes, daughters too—would cause if I had anything to say about it. This despite my wife’s instance that they were hers alone, it would be interesting to see the damage those little blokes would do. I tried to imagine what eight or even just four little monsters with Akantha’s desire for battle and my own talent for getting myself into dangerous and even impossible situations could do to the galaxy at large and shuddered.
“Well, at least their dad will always have their back,” I grunted, turning back to watch the slow creep of the Imperial forces as they began their full-fledged invasion of Easy Haven.
The moment a squadron of hodgepodge Destroyers from Sector 25 that had been on patrol around the edges of the hyper limit brushed up against an advance squadron of Imperial Reclamation warships, the third battle for Easy Haven could be said to have officially begun.
“Dispatch our lighter warships, but keep them paired up in groups of two squadrons each,” I instructed, “whatever Janeski hopes to accomplish by sending out his lighter forces in advance I mean to stymie it.”
“Yes, Sir,” said Steiner activating her coms.
“And send out Code Orion. I want any and all of our hidden forces around the Starbase complex to go to silent running if they haven’t already. I don’t know how good they are, but Lynch’s streak missiles and hidden gunboats need to be a complete surprise to have maximum impact,” I said.
Of course, Orion didn’t just send the streak missiles, automated gunboats and orbital turrets into silent running mode. That might be what the other members of my mandatory command councils thought, but I knew better than to put all my eggs in one basket.
Even as we spoke, a large force of Lancers, Marines and planetary security forces were gearing up for the fight of their life.
This little side operation was going to be my knife in the dark, and it was going to entirely be an MSP, Droid and, where necessary, a Border Alliance operation—which BA forces were currently decked out in those archaic power armor suits of Lynch’s. Although, for their part, I planned to put those land army guys under a communications blackout and give them the mushroom treatment.
Now I just had to pray those retrofitted Penetrator Landers lived up to their reputation.
Just thinking about how much was riding on those landers, I felt a cold sweat break out and drench my back. Despite all the brainstorming, I still only had one method for dealing with the Imperial’s supersized flagship.
It had to work. There was no backup plan. I was flying solo and it was down to me, the Droids and the heroic men and women of the MSP and Sector 25 Amalgamated Defense Fleet, there were just too many grand fleets to the point that it got confusing and besides the last ‘grand fleet’ I led got its head handed to it. That was going to have to be enough.
Just like last time, there were no mysterious allies, Easter Bunny or Commander Spalding to pull my chestnuts out of the fire. But that was alright because this time I was ready for whatever Rear Admiral Arnold Janeski had to throw at me.
I was staking my life on that fact—my life and everyone currently in the 25th Amalgamated Sector Defense Fleet.
Chapter Twenty-four: Stuck in Gambit
“We just can’t do it, Sir!” shouted Brence.
“Wrong!” roared Spalding, getting up in the younger man’s face and shoving a finger under his nose.
“It’s suicide, Commander. Even if it somehow powered up the alien jump drives’ the resulting shockwave would propagate to our position before we could jump and kill us all,” cried Brence.
“Propagate smopagate,” Spalding sneered, “it’ll do no such thing. What do you take me for’ a fool? The worst that’ll happen is the Elder tech jump engines get slagged,” he scoffed.
“Listen to him, Chief Engineer,” Parkiney urged from the sidelines, “we’ve run the numbers six different times. Even if it works, it just won’t work.”
“You too, Parkiney?” Spalding barked. “I’d thought better of you, man.”
“I can’t ask anyone to do this,” Brence crossed his arms over his chest.
“I’ll do it myself, then!” Spalding turned, heading for the bridge exit.
“No, Commander!” Brence said, trying to stop him by getting in his way and blocking him.
“It’s just another day or two before the engines are fully charged, Sir,” Parkiney urged in a soothing voice, but the old engineer wasn’t some horse or cat to be taken in by a calming voice and a hit of alfalfa or cat nip. “Why risk death or…or even these jump engines when it’ll just fix itself in time anyway?”
“You’re wrong, the both of you. We should have jumped three days ago according to the calculations the jump engines gave us! That thing,” he thrust a finger out to point at the alien jump engines, “is just sucking us dry of power so that it can repair itself, and I for one have had enough of it. It’s time to put that piece of alien junk back on our schedule,” he said, thrusting Brence aside. He knew what he knew, which was that something hanky was going on and it was time to take a torch to the problem and fix it but good.
“You yourself know better than anyone that our translation program isn’t one hundred percent; this could all just be a translation problem,” urged the younger engineer, “and for all we know, the battle for Wolf-9 could be all but over by now. Jumping in early just because—”
“Early?! We’re already late, boy!” bellowed the Chief Engineer. “Late by a good two weeks and now t
hree days more. Time to jumpstart this alien piece of junk!”
“But, sir, what about the Construction Manager?” Bostwell asked, standing up from his position behind the com-console and hurrying over. “What would she say. I don’t’ think she’d—”
“Traitors and mutineers, the entire lot of you,” Spalding snarled at the three man team trying to block him from doing what needed to be done. “Engineering is not for the faint of heart. And don’t mention that woman in my presence again,” he bellowed, rounding on Bostwell with the tip of one of his fingers popping over as he aimed the built-in mini-plasma torch right at the other man’s eye. “Taking her side in this, are ye? I knew there was a rat aboard feeding my movements to her. But it’s time to learn that a house divided against itself will surely fall. You’re either with me or against me on this. There’s only one master and commander onboard a warship—and right now that’s me: Captain Terrance P. Spalding. So follow me or get out of the way!”
“Manager Baldwin just—” tried Bostwell.
“That woman is dead to me. Dead, you hear?! She’s a seductive shrew, a pipe-wielding hypocrite armed with an auto-wrench and determined to disassemble the Clover even if it kills her. From the word ‘jump’ she’s been trying to shut down the 2.0 rebuild project and now, when we’re ready to actually jump and I need her the most, she says she’s going to send over a Lancer team to sit on me and to tie my hands until this Elder tech monstrosity decides it can’t jump again for the third time in a row? And then what? Wait for the fourth and fifth and sixth time until we just plain give up? No. Not just no, but Hades no! The Lucky Clover jumps today and she joins the Admiral at Easy Haven or we all go down in flames! I’m going to set off an antimatter pellet and super-charge those engines right here today, and if that doesn’t work for you then put on a space suit and walk the plank. Any man that doesn’t have what it takes to make it in this man’s navy is free get on a shuttle and jump ship with the rest of the cowards who can’t hack it in the MSP!”
While the three men exchanged fearful looks, Spalding opened the blast doors and headed out of the bridge behind the four of them a man lurched to his feet from his station at the Navigation console. One man, at least, was ready to get off.
“Sit down,” Spalding whirled and pointed his plasma torch at the other man before thumbing it active, “my offer goes for everyone but you, Shepherd. I still need at least one man at Nav if we’re going to make this jump, and so help me if I have to chase you down…after everything I’ve done for you, you’ll think that head wound your still suffering from was light after I get done with you.”
“Wha-at!” exclaimed Shepherd.
“Any other man and I might give him a pass, but you owe me, and since you’re so determined to go see what lies beyond the great beyond on the other side anyway…” Spalding shrugged, marching back into the room to shove the Navigator back into his seat. Buckling him in tightly and securely, he then tapped out a code on the other man’s console, “There, you’re locked in good and tight now. You won’t be getting cold feet and going anywhere before I get back.”
“Let me-e go,” shouted Shepherd, pulling and struggling with a set of seat restraints that were no longer willing to be unlocked. “Some-one get me a-a kni-ife!”
“Those seat sensors sense a broken restraint and the grav-plates on this entire floor are set high enough that everyone in here will be hugging the floor with no way to get up again until I come back,” warned Spalding.
It was a silent bridge that watched him jump into the lift.
“Now all I’ve got to do is find an antimatter pumped laser and fire it at that piece of elder junk,” Spalding said with satisfaction. Fortunately, he’d been thinking he might have to do something like this for a few days now. Ever since the last jump cycle failed, really, which was why he was headed down to Cargo Bay 19.
“Anti-matter explosion. Anti-matter explosion,” he mimed disgustedly, “I said clear as day: I was setting off a pellet, not an antimatter generator. The only thing that’ll propagate is my laser beam! Well…unless the hit causes the jump engines to explode,” he muttered contemplatively before dismissing it, “I’m sure the aliens built in any number of safeguards,” he said before concluding that was entirely unlikely. It was more likely they set in some kind of anti-theft system than that they’d rig it to explode when it received a massive jolt of energy. He’d run the numbers and, unless he was wrong, the crown of each engine was set up to receive high energy bursts to power it up.
Too bad he only had one laser, and thus could only fire it at one of the jump pillars. That was more likely to unbalance things than the non-existent antimatter explosion wave propagation they were all worried about.
On second thought…if he overloaded one generator but not the others, maybe there would be an explosion after all.
Well, it was too late now—he was committed.
“Just as soon as I can get that thing out of the shuttle bay and pointed at those pylons we’ll be ready to rock and roll,” Spalding said with certainty.
Chapter Twenty-five: The Second Battle for Sector 25
“What’s the final tally on the enemy Fleet?” I asked after we’d had time to settle down. Well, no new Reclamation warships had popped up outside the hyper limit for the better part of an hour so it was a relative value of settled, “I’d like the class by class breakdown if you please.”
“Here’s the final tally as of this moment, Admiral,” Lieutenant Hart said crisply and then shot the numbers over to my screen.
________________________________________________________________________
1 Command Carrier
24 Battleships
65 Cruisers
156 Destroyers
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40 Freighters
8 Mine Sweepers
10 Troop Transports
Total Imperial Warships: 246
Total Imperial Support Ships: 58
Total Imperial Fleet Ships: 304
________________________________________________________________________
I swore a string of rather undignified and colorful curses—several of which, surprisingly, rebuked my own lineage.
“Please note that we don’t yet have a good estimate on the Command Carrier’s fighter complement let along a hard count,” Hart cautioned, “for all we know, they could have fully restocked and replaced any fighter losses. It has been almost three weeks full since the last battle.”
“I’d hoped that somehow we’d done more damage to them in the last battle,” I growled.
“We’ve got a slight edge on them in warship hulls, Sir,” Lieutenant Hart said confidently.
“Are you a fool? They outnumber us in every ship class they bothered to bring to the fight, and they also outnumber us in total hulls to boot! Somehow I don’t think that all those Corvettes, minesweepers and merchant conversions are going to carry the day for us,” I barked, pulling up the information on our current fleet level and thrust a finger at it.
________________________________________________________________________
20 Battleships
2 Jumble Carriers (350 gunboats)
50 Cruisers
90 Destroyers
70 Corvettes
25 Cutters
Total Warships: 257
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3 Minesweepers
20 Armed Merchant Conversions
10 Freighters
Total 25th Amalgamated Warships: 290
________________________________________________________________________
The enemy had more Battleships, more Cruisers, more Destroyers, and more ships in total than we did—which didn’t even bother to mention their Command Carrier. I’d probably need at least two squadrons of Battleships to deal with that ship alone if I was going trying to deal with her conventionally. That ship could probably eat up and spit out a single squadron like it was grazin
g through a light breakfast.
“Four more Battleships, fifteen more Cruisers, sixty six Destroyers, and they have both the tech and propulsion advantage!” I grunted sourly, silently grudging that LeGodat’s defenses and that arms dealer of Bethany’s little surprises were going to be worth their weight in gold.
Because the way I looked at it wasn’t 246 against 257. It was 247 against 162. That was nearly a two to one advantage when you threw in the tech edge, and perhaps even worse than that. Although I wasn’t certain when you counted everything on both sides larger than a Corvette. Sure, we had all the hulls at the lower levels. But somehow I was willing to bet that those Imperial strike fighters of his were going to more than make up the difference between our gunboats and light warships.
Once again, we were in it tough. The defenses were going to have to hold, which they wouldn’t if that Command Carrier got to within attack range of Wolf-9. As long as we had the Starbase and all of its beefed-up fixed defenses to fall back on, we had a chance but the moment those defenses were broken it was all over but the crying.
“You still have Operations Orion and Storm Cloud in reserve, Admiral,” Lieutenant Hart reminded me a little awkwardly. “I have to say I like our odds.”
I took a small, cleansing breath. “Of course you’re right, Lieutenant,” I said, able to take my cues when prompted, “we’re going to tear the Rear Admiral and his fleet apart one ship at a time. Let there be no doubt of that. It’s just going to be bloodier than I’d hoped, that’s all.”
Hart’s smile froze, and I could tell from the reaction around the bridge that I’d just failed to assure a large number of people regarding our certain victory. I could tell because they seemed unsettled or even outright dismayed as they repeated the words ‘bloodier than he’d hoped.’
Admiral's War Part Two (A Spineward Sectors Novel: Book 10) Page 13