Hoff eyed the star map, searching for the rest of the fleet. He’d been prepared, so they’d jumped away to the far side of Firea, but the rest of the fleet was still surrounded by Sythians, caught in the thick of the fight. Hoff saw two Avilonian cruisers simultaneously explode as they succumbed to enemy fire.
“They’re being slaughtered,” someone whispered beside him. Hoff turned to see that it was his XO, Tactician Okara. Her jaw was slack with horror, her glowing green eyes fixed and staring as the Avilonian fleet was cut to pieces.
She looked as frightened as he felt.
“Orders, sir?” someone else asked. It was the ship’s navigator.
“Engineering—what’s our status?” Hoff replied.
“Shields at 25%.”
Hoff came to a decision then. His ship, the Dauntless, was a covenant-class battleship—eight kilometers long with a crew of over 50,000 drones, and two thousand living crewmen. They had over a hundred thousand torpedoes on board. Those munitions could be quantum-launched from extreme range, and the Dauntless was much faster than her Sythian counterparts, so there would be no concern about return fire. Even without the rest of the Avilonian fleet to support them, the Dauntless would be a formidable foe.
Hoff mentally selected one of the Sythian command ships from the star map on his ARC display. “Gunnery! Open fire on that ship with everything we’ve got. Shoot to kill.”
“Yes, sir!”
“Helm, keep us away from the enemy. Engineering—activate SLS disruption fields.”
“Yes, sir,” they said, one after another.
“Sensors! Get me a virtual rendering of the battle and put it on the main screen.”
“Focal point, sir?”
“For now, our target. Comms—launch fighters! Have them fly cover for us. I have a feeling there’s going to be a lot of Shell Fighters coming our way very soon.”
“Yes, sir.”
Okara turned to Hoff, her eyes still wide and blinking. “You’re going to fight back?” she sounded confused.
“Did you think I would run?” Hoff smiled and slowly shook his head. “No, Okara. From what? They can’t catch us.”
The main viewport shimmered, and their view of Firea transformed into a virtual rendering of a Sythian command ship. It was a massive, teardrop-shaped cruiser with organic lines and a shining lavender hull. Explosions began sprinkling that hull with fire as torpedoes teleported straight to their target. The alien ship’s shields flared brightly with the assault.
“Enemy shields at 84% and dropping!”
The Sythian cruiser fired its thrusters, turning to run, but there was nowhere they could go to get away from the assault.
After just a few moments, the glow of the Sythian command ship’s shields began to darken and fade. The torpedoes tore blackened holes in her outer hull. Gunners fired over and over again at the same spots, digging progressively deeper. Explosions flashed within the enemy ship. Thick clouds of debris spun out into space. That went on for long seconds before the enemy command ship cracked in half.
A cheer went up from the crew. Even Okara looked revitalized.
“Good work!” Hoff targetted another command ship for his gunners to fire on. “One down. Thirty to go.”
Okara sat up beside him. “We’ve got incoming!” she yelled.
Hoff mentally set the grid to center on their ship. A vast sea of red enemy contacts had appeared in orbit above Firea. They’d jumped straight into the Dauntless’s path.
“Break orbit!” Hoff ordered. “Have our interceptors cover us.”
“Yes, sir!”
Okara gasped. “There’s over ten thousand fighters out there . . .”
Hoff was about to order the ship’s gunners to begin firing torpedoes at them until he heard that. Ten thousand. Quantum-launching warheads at them would be inaccurate and highly wasteful. It was probably exactly what the enemy wanted them to do. They’d waste all their munitions on the enemy’s fighters and be unable to do anything to their capital ships.
“Have our X-1’s engage the enemy. Hit and run only. As soon as they’re out of ordinance, come back and re-arm.”
“Yes, sir.”
“They’ll be torn apart,” Okara warned.
“Not if they’re good pilots,” Hoff replied. “All they have to do is drop their missiles and run.”
“And then what? We have six squadrons—seventy two interceptors. It’ll take hundreds of attack runs for them to take out all of those fighters!”
“It’s going to be a long engagement,” Hoff agreed.
The star map flickered with movement, and another sea of red enemy contacts appeared in front of the Dauntless, this time on her new heading. The Sythians had hemmed them in on two sides.
“Helm! Adjust course . . .” Hoff trailed off as another four groups of Shell fighters jumped in—starboard, aft, top, and keel. The Dauntless was completely surrounded.
“We need to plot a jump back to Avilon,” Okara said.
“Adjust course to where, sir?” the officer at the helm asked.
“Calculate a new jump! Into the Stormcloud nebula. Transmit the coordinates to our fighters.”
“Yes, sir!”
“Cloaking shields aren’t the only way to hide,” Hoff said quietly.
“They’ll jump after us,” Okara said.
“I’m counting on it. There’s enough interference in that nebula to knock out their sensors and comms.”
“Ours, too.”
Hoff smiled and shook his head. “Ours are better. We should still be able to see their capital ships lying outside the nebula to shoot at them. The enemy, on the other hand, won’t be able to find us, or even communicate our position to each other when they do. They’ll dribble in randomly, and we’ll take them out at our leisure.”
Okara’s eyes lit with understanding, and she began nodding. “It’ll buy time. Perhaps enough to take a few more command ships down before we die.”
“Jump calculated!”
“Begin sequencing,” Hoff replied. He turned back to his XO. “Who said anything about dying? We’re Avilonians. We don’t die.”
“I meant—”
Hoff’s lips twisted ironically. “I know what you meant, Okara. But what I meant is that I’m going to win this fight.”
Chapter 28
The order to launch came through the comms a split second before Atton saw his launch tube light up like the inside of a sun. His interceptor rocketed out into space, pinning him to the back of his flight chair. He’d set inertial management to 98%, so he could still feel his maneuvers. Stars burst to life as he left the launcher. The planet Firea stretched out below him, vast fields of snow shining a dazzling white in the distant light of the system’s sun.
“Form up Gold squadron! We’ve got incoming!” Chevalier Davellin ordered.
Atton studied the star map. There were thousands of enemy fighters racing toward the Dauntless on the far side of Firea. The Avilonian fleet sat dark and derelict in the middle of the Sythian formation.
“There’s too many of them! What the frek are we supposed to do against that?” Gold Ten said. Gina’s voice.
“Language, Pilot,” the Chevalier replied. “Orders are to engage the enemy, empty our Thunderbolts and mines, then head back and re-arm.”
Atton did the math. Sixteen Thunderbolt missiles, times 72 interceptors. Assuming all of those missiles hit their targets, and none of the interceptors succumbed to enemy fire, they would all have to go back and reload at least ten times. It was absurd.
Then the grid flashed with incoming contacts, and things got worse. They were surrounded. The contact report revealed there were more than a hundred thousand Shells within a hundred klick radius.
“Seriously?” Gold Nine said.
“They really don’t want to make this a fair fight, do they?” someone else put in.
“Cut the chatter,” the chevalier said. “New orders Golds. We’re jumping out. Transmitting jump coordinates now. Start
calculating!”
The coordinates for the jump were inside the Stormcloud Nebula, at the edge of the star system. Atton shook his head, not comprehending Strategian Heston’s plan.
“I thought we were going back to Avilon,” he said.
“You thought wrong, Pilot,” Gold One replied.
The comms crackled with a new voice—mission control. Orders were to keep enemy fighters off the Dauntless while they launched their ordinance at the Sythian command ships. They were going to use the nebula as cover and take advantage of their superior sensors to hunt down any Shells that accidentally stumbled into them.
Atton’s jump finished calculating, and he began sequencing it. An audible countdown from five began.
When it reached zero, space disappeared with a bright flash. Then came the grasping gray tendrils of the nebula. Sensors were washed clean of enemy contacts. Gold squadron reappeared all around, along with the other five squadrons of interceptors from the Dauntless. The battleship itself lay large and majestic above Atton’s cockpit.
In the distance giant chunks of ice swirled out of the gloom, appearing wraith-like from the nebula. The Dauntless opened fire with bright sheets of red pulse lasers, clearing a path. Ice shattered and exploded, vaporized by the assault.
“Now what?” Atton’s wingmate, Loba Caldin, asked.
“Boost your sensor range and follow me,” Gold One replied. “We’re going to scout ahead and screen the Dauntless from enemy fighters. When they find her, they’ll have to get past us first.”
* * *
“Get us clear of the enemy formation!” Captain Picara ordered. “There’s no point in us sticking around to watch them die.”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
Lasers tracked toward them. Hundreds of deadly bright streaks raced after them, impacting on their shields with a steady hiss.
“We’re going to collide with something if we don’t slow down!” the navigator warned.
“If they don’t want to die, too, they’ll get out of our way,” Picara replied. “Keep accelerating!”
Lights flickered steadily overhead as the shields drew extra power to dissipate the energy from enemy weapons’ fire. A thin veil of white smoke drifted through the bridge, bringing with it the acrid smell of burned circuitry.
Someone’s control station gave up a shower of sparks and they cried out in alarm. Endless waves of missiles spun away to all sides.
“Shields at 74%!” engineering called out.
Picara eyed the enemy formation. They’d barely crossed half of it. The deck shuddered with the distant boom of a stray missile finding its mark.
“They’re firing missiles across our path!” gravidar warned. “We’re running straight into them!”
Picara grimaced. “We’ll make it.”
Another boom, louder this time. The bridge rattled around them.
“Shields at 67%!”
There wasn’t anything to do but weather the storm. Impacts came fast and furious, one deck-shaking boom after another. Sythian warships raced by in a shiny, lavender-tinted blur, forming a tunnel around them.
Suddenly, whole squadrons of Shell Fighters began darting into their path, deadly glinting specks that would be no better to run into at this speed than an asteroid field.
“What are they doing?” Picara gripped the edges of the captain’s table, her nails digging painfully into the glossy black surface of the holo projection plate.
“Brace for impact!” someone called out.
Explosions roared in Picara’s ears, louder than ever. The Deck shook and shuddered and the lights flickered. Then the lights went out and all the noise became fading echos as the sound in space simulator lost power. Picara saw herself float free of the deck.
Smoke poured into the bridge, and a horrible groaning screech sounded somewhere deep inside the cruiser.
Then something big and bright went racing by them. Picara blinked and squinted against the glare of it. Then she saw it for what it was—it was their ship, sliced out from under them. The bridge and the uppermost decks had been cleanly severed from the surrounding superstructure of the Emancipator. Picara gaped, watching as the larger part of their ship sailed on, its massive thrusters still glowing orange as it accelerated onward and slammed into another wave of Shell Fighters. Explosions peppered the ship’s outer hull, ripping molten furrows through it. An instant later the ship broke up into dozens of jagged black pieces, and the thrusters sputtered into darkness, splashing fast-freezing streams of liquid dymium into space.
After that, a poignant silence fell on the bridge, with all of them drifting in zero G. They watched out the viewports as they tumbled through space along their original trajectory, shieldless and powerless, and moving at over forty kilometers per second.
All it would take was one more collision—just one more stray Shell Fighter or missile crossing their path at the wrong moment and they would be gone.
* * *
Another Sythian command ship cracked apart. Hoff’s crew cheered, watching a rendering of its destruction on the main holo display. The interference inside the nebula had kept them from being detected so far, while their superior sensors still allowed them to fire out at the Sythians’ largest warships.
Hoff smiled. His plan was working perfectly.
“We won’t stay hidden for long,” his XO warned.
“Let them come.”
In order to find the Dauntless, the Sythians would have to use their hundreds of thousands of fighters to grid search the nebula. And even if that worked, they wouldn’t be able to transmit their discovery from inside the nebula.
“Gunnery mark your next target!” Hoff roared, laughing.
Beside him, Okara frowned. “This is hardly a victory, sir. We were supposed to disable the enemy and board their ships, not destroy them.”
“And we will—as soon as we’ve destroyed all of their command ships. Sythians don’t like to mingle with their slaves, so our objective remains attainable.”
“They’ll run before we can destroy all of their command ships.”
“Run? From just one enemy ship? You underestimate the Sythians’ pride. No, they won’t run. They’ll stand and fight until their last command ship turns into a flaming ruin beneath their feet.”
“If you say so, sir.”
“I do.”
“What are Omnius’s orders?” Okara said. Hoff shook his head. “You haven’t asked?” Okara’s glowing green eyes grew wide with shock.
“Omnius has been strangely silent. Knowing Him, that means he approves of my plan.”
“You assume he approves.”
“It is only logical. My plan will result in a successful outcome. That is what we are here for—to defeat the Sythians and rescue their human slaves.”
Hoff watched as a rendering of yet another Sythian Command ship came under fire.
Then it vanished.
“Where’d they go?” Hoff asked.
“They jumped away, sir,” the sensor operator replied.
Hoff brought up the star map on his ARC display and he found the enemy ship again, along with the rest of their command ships. All of them now lay clustered together on the far side of the system, having retreated to what the Sythians probably thought was a safe distance.
Hoff’s smile returned. “Resume firing!”
“From this range it will take longer to calculate jumps for our ordinance,” the gunnery chief warned.
“We’re not in a hurry,” Hoff said, chuckling to himself once more.
“Incoming! Enemy fighters!”
“The found us already?” Okara asked.
“That was too fast,” Hoff agreed, his brow furrowing as he panned the star map over to center on the Dauntless. A squadron of Shells fighters was racing in on their port side. As Hoff watched, they swerved suddenly, reacting to the appearance of the Dauntless, as if surprised to see it there. Then they opened fire with a steady stream of Pirakla missiles.
A second later the enem
y was cut to shreds by X-1 interceptors.
“Brace for impact!”
Two dozen alien warheads splashed across their bow, causing the deck to shiver under them.
“Hull breach! Deck ten!”
Another drone deck. “Patch it up! That squadron was lucky to find us,” he decided.
Okara turned to him. “That, or we’re not as hard to detect as you seem to think, sir.”
As if to prove her point, three more squadrons of Shell Fighters came swirling out of the flashing gray soup of the Stormcloud Nebula. This time they targeted the Dauntless’s fighter escort.
“Sensors! How are they finding us so quickly?”
“I don’t know, sir! Their ships must have better sensors than we thought.”
Hoff grimaced. He supposed he should have guessed as much. The Sythians had upgraded their sensors to see through cloaking shields. That upgrade had probably come with other improvements as well.
Shell fighters winked off the grid in quick succession as Avilonian interceptors swarmed them. As Hoff watched, yet another squadron of Shells came streaking in, joining the original three. Zooming out, Hoff searched the nebula for enemy fighters. The ones their sensors could detect were flying randomly through the nebula, searching blindly for the Dauntless rather than tracking toward them. That was a good sign.
Hoff considered raising cloaking shields to make things harder for them, but with all of the floating chunks of ice in the nebula, it would be too dangerous to drop their energy shields. Just one high-speed collision would be enough to rip them apart.
Another wave of Sythian missiles streaked out from the Shell fighters busy dogfighting around them. That volley hit the Dauntless, and the deck shuddered.
“Shields down to ninety two percent!”
“They won’t get anywhere,” Hoff decided.
“For now,” Okara replied.
Chapter 29
High Lord Kaon stared open-mouthed at the bird’s eye view of the battle on his star map.
“They still fire on usss!” Lady Kala hissed. “We must flee!”
“Flee?” Kaon was incredulous. “Their fleet is disabled in our midsts! They have but one warship left, and you wish to run away, as if they defeat us?”
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