Dragoons rushed in to defend, but Tolvern wouldn’t withdraw now, and fought them back with torpedoes and missiles. Smythe cried out that the main battery was finally ready. Explosive shot this time.
No need to maneuver carefully now. Just hit that big hole, right down the enemy’s gullet. The cannon fired. It tore straight through the hull, and the massive star fortress was suddenly in two pieces. The engine fins broke off, spinning in crazy circles, while the bridge end drifted away, sputtering and dying as it bled off its gasses and debris and living crew.
They’d destroyed an enemy star fortress. Tolvern joined the shouting and backslapping.
The celebration only lasted a moment, and then they were falling back to join Peerless. Warthog was still there, still taking blows, but no longer delivering them. The enemy had slagged her main guns and nearly burst the containment field around the engine. She was no longer maneuvering, just a dead weight, a target.
“Tell them to get out of there.”
Capp touched her ear and shook her head. “I can’t raise her, Cap’n. She’s mute . . . or dead.”
Bravo and Alpha were pressing hard, ignoring the brawler and going straight for McGowan’s ship now. Apollo was holding off three dragoons, but couldn’t get the others off Peerless’s back.
“Tell the Singaporeans to target Bravo,” Tolvern said. “Soften it up for attack.”
There were plenty of doubting looks at this. “We’re gonna try for another one?” Capp said.
“Captain,” Smythe said. “You’d better read the damage report first. We’re in rough shape.”
“I said target the blasted carrier!”
Bailyna Tyn lost another sloop, gone in a terrific explosion, and was down to three, plus the destroyer, Crown. She was facing the bulk of the dragoons now, a good dozen of them, who had her hemmed in, even as she took fire from Delta, who seemed to have survived the Scandian raid intact.
But the surviving ships of the Fourth Wolves now entered the fray, starting with Wasteland and Hellhound. Svensen’s ship joined them, limping along sluggishly, not firing even when a dragoon passed within close range of its pummel guns. Word on the com gave the reason why. Half the command room crew was still in the hold, fighting off decimator units that had boarded alongside the returning raiding party.
The last two wolves, Boneless and Icefall, seemed stuck within a few miles of Delta, which attacked them with savage fury. The star fortress had breaches in its hull, but nothing had affected its ability to fight. It seemed that these last two wolves would go the way of War Cry and Anvil.
But then Tolvern realized Boneless was really maneuvering to hold off a pair of dragoons while Icefall hit Delta at close range with pummel guns. Finally, Icefall launched a pair of torpedoes. In the instant before they hit, Tolvern understood.
Nuclear torpedoes.
Big flashes, one after another. Delta momentarily vanished from the viewscreen as the sensor struggled to filter the radiation. When the screen came back up, the enemy carrier was listing. A gaping black gash opened its side. The engine bled plasma. Delta turned, trying to get away. No firing, just fleeing. Somehow, it had survived the nuclear attack, but it was badly wounded.
Unfortunately, there was nothing to follow Icefall’s torpedoes. No heavy fire or torpedoes or even missiles from HMS Catapult to add to the damage. Svensen and the colonel were simply trying to unite their forces while moving toward Blackbeard and Peerless.
Alpha began to retreat. Delta continued to fall back. Charlie was nothing but wreckage. That left Bravo as the sole star fortress to press the attack.
Tolvern caught her breath, waiting as Bravo hesitated. For God’s sake, let it retreat.
Bravo began its push. Crippled dragoons littered the battlefield, but there were still fifteen of them supporting the star fortress, and they gathered into a massive wedge to surge ahead of the carrier. The battered Alliance fleet had no hope of standing up to them.
Tolvern sent an all-fleet message. “Now! All ships pull back to Fort Mathilde.”
They withdrew, leaving only the helpless, apparently doomed Warthog behind. The enemy ignored her. Tolvern’s striker wing, ammunition depleted, swept in to dock with Blackbeard.
Star wolves and sloops of war shielded Blackbeard and Peerless. Apollo slashed across the battlefield in an attempt to scatter dragoons, with Crown standing off a pace, hurling explosive shot into the battlefield. Catapult, too. The war junk tried to target Bravo, but the aliens had finally spotted the Singaporean vessel and send a pair of dragoons after it. The smaller ship was forced to flee to safety behind the rest of the Alliance fleet.
A flurry of missiles swept outward to the Adjudicators. Not only from Tolvern’s missile frigate, but from Fort Mathilde itself, now in range. Not enough of them, though. The missile barrage was a fraction of what they’d mustered earlier in the battle.
“What do we do, Cap’n?” Capp asked.
“We’re going pull in behind that minefield, use the asteroid to shield us, and let Mathilde keep them off us.”
That would have been a decent plan had they been talking about something like Fort William or Fort St. George, massive orbital fortresses around Albion, dug in and reinforced over decades. Not this former mining base, reoccupied after a lengthy absence, with minimal defenses, weak gun emplacements, and a small, poorly trained garrison—half of them rustics barely two weeks removed from living in the Dark Ages. It might buy them two or three hours, and then what?
For the first time she thought seriously about fleeing. Abandon the base and fly for the jump point. Blackbeard would get out, Peerless, too. Apollo, certainly, and possibly Crown, if she could shake off a dragoon assault. Probably the remaining ships of the Fourth Wolves. The war junk could hide, maybe, like Wang had after the engagement in Fortaleza. She’d lose the missile frigate, lose Colonel Bailyna Tyn’s sloops. Lose the crippled Warthog.
And lose Fort Mathilde. Seven hundred people down there, not just marines and mech raiders, but civilians who’d come in on transports. Plus all those people coaxed out of hiding on Castillo—the remnants of the former colony of Novosibirsk. Promised help in freeing their planet.
A fair number of those rustics remembered what it was like before. One man, she was told, had fled the destruction of Sevastapol as a child, grown up as a refugee on Novosibirsk, and lived through the invasion, the slaughter, the entire reducing, then carried on to tell the tale. Fifty-nine years old, and back in space for the first time in a half century.
She couldn’t abandon those people to death.
Smythe spoke from the tech console. “Bravo is up to something, sir.”
“Besides pummeling us into oblivion?”
He increased the resolution. The star fortress had folded in its curious flipper-like appendages with their engines, and now brought them out again. Multiple smaller craft gripped the edges, each with its own engine. Where had those come from?
“Don’t like the look of that, Cap’n,” Capp said. “Got to be landing craft.”
Tolvern nodded. “I expect you’re right. They’re going to land decimator units and take the base from the ground.”
“Then how we gonna duck our heads behind Mathilde? We’re gonna have to land them Vikings first. Marines, too.”
Based on scattered reports coming in from the Scandian assault on Star Fortress Delta, the decimator units were the equal of raiders, mech unit for mech unit. If the aliens landed first, the small garrison and the civilians would have no hope. But she couldn’t possibly withdraw the star wolves from the fight and survive.
For now, the fort was giving a good accounting of itself. It didn’t have enough firepower to punish the star fortress, but any dragoons who got too close suffered the consequences. What enemy bombs and missiles struck the surface had done little more than hurl dust and rock into orbit.
Svensen called. He was breathing hard, hair matted with sweat, but stood calmly in his command room and had apparently put down the enemy ass
ault on his ship. “You see what they’re trying to do?”
“I do. If we can hold them off for a few minutes longer, can you get your raiders down?”
“Honestly?” He glanced to one side as if worried that his crew would overhear him and lose their morale, even though he was speaking English. “If they have half as many decimators as I think, and given our losses . . .? And given that every mech raider and marine I’ve got has been through battle already, while these bastards will be fresh?” Svensen shook his head. “No. We’ll go down there and die.”
A twist in Tolvern’s gut. “Other suggestions?”
“We could die up here and maybe take out Bravo while we’re at it. If anyone survives, they can wreck the fort’s guns so they can’t be used against us.” A harsh chuckle. “Not much of a suggestion, is it?”
McGowan called, too, and said pretty much the same thing. Apollo’s captain thought maybe he could get a nuclear torpedo from Crown, then use his corvette’s superior maneuverability to ram Bravo, if someone could open a hole in the armor first. A suicide charge. The Hroom colonel made an equally impractical suggestion.
Meanwhile, every main shield on Blackbeard was below fifty percent strength. The two and four were below twenty. The five at twelve percent. Lose any one of them and they’d die in the next barrage. Tolvern was short on missiles, had no penetrating shot, and only had enough explosive shot for thirty or forty more minutes of combat.
Warthog was gone, gutted and floating silently a half-million miles outside the current battle lines. Three of Tolvern’s nine surviving falcons had taken damage coming in and weren’t flight worthy. She had little choice but to send the remaining six back out, but knew that as soon as she did, dragoons would make short work of them. Better wait until the last moment, then use them to shoot at the Adjudicator landing craft.
Other ships reported similar shortages. Apollo and Catapult were particularly depleted in their ammo stores, but every ship was coming up against hard limits in how much longer they could keep fighting without resupply. They had more ordnance on the asteroid, but it was about to be invaded, so how would they get to it? Bravo nudged forward, positioning itself to launch its invasion.
And then, salvation.
“Delta is under attack!” Smythe shouted.
The two heavily damaged carriers had withdrawn from the battlefield to lick their wounds. Alpha, hard-hit in the initial exchange, and Delta, which had barely survived a devastating assault from the Fourth Wolves. These two carriers had no dragoon support, since all of the smaller ships had joined Bravo in the final assault.
It shouldn’t have mattered. All of Tolvern’s fleet was here, pinned against Fort Mathilde. If she’d had reserves, she’d have bloody well called them up long ago. Knowing this, the Adjudicators had the luxury of withdrawing their wounded behind the battlefield.
Except now the most damaged of the two retiring star fortresses was under attack. Pulse fire of some sort, ripping into the hole left by Icefall’s parting gifts. With no tyrillium to deflect it, the energy weapon burned deep into Delta’s interior.
The officers at the tech console worked furiously to identify the new attacker. It was Ping who made the announcement, his voice ripe with pride.
“Singaporean, sir! Must be Wang!”
Tolvern was so desperate for aid of any kind that there was a lump in her throat as she realized what must have happened. Wang’s two war junks had been silently following the enemy since Fortaleza. Maintaining a safe distance, she’d crept up on the battlefield, identified where her limited weapons could do the most damage, and then attacked.
At the same time, it was hardly a relief force sufficient to relieve the siege on Mathilde and its defenders. Soon enough the enemy would figure out that only two war junks were attacking the injured carriers, triangulate on their fire, and chase them off with dragoons.
Unless . . .
“Give me Svensen!” she cried.
The Scandian came on the line.
“I need a ghost fleet. As many ships as you can project out to Alpha and Delta. Project them one point two million and closing. Now!”
Moments later, a small force of star wolves appeared to charge in from an angle. Far from Bravo’s field of fire, and too distant to hit with pummel guns, but closing.
First, the war junks, appearing out of nowhere. Now five star wolves, charging hard. Maybe. The Adjudicators had seen this trick once before, but they still had to wonder. Were they real? Did they have more nuclear torpedoes? The Adjudicators had to be weighing the loss of two more carriers against taking the fort.
Wang’s war junks continued their attack while Delta and Alpha flailed about, trying to target them. An explosion rocked Delta’s hull, and her weapon systems went silent.
And then Bravo blinked. One moment it appeared poised to launch decimator landing parties at the fort, swing about to finish off Blackbeard, and pick apart the other ships. And then it was withdrawing, and with it the dragoons.
Tolvern didn’t waste a moment in landing ships at the fort to gather more ordnance to distribute among the fleet. Ships cleared airlocks and sent crew scrambling out on their hulls to work on emergency repairs. Crown formed a new perimeter of mines, out in front of the asteroid, while Apollo scooped up the ones around back to redistribute.
McGowan sent word that he had blown a containment field and needed to vent plasma or he’d lose his engines and possibly his whole ship. She begged him to hold on. Couldn’t have it seem as though the cruiser was helpless, not now, not while the enemy might still turn around. He sent back his acknowledgment of the order, tied together with salty language.
Wang stopped firing just before the first dragoons appeared. Smythe was pretty sure he’d pinpointed the two war junks and could have illuminated them fully with active sensors. If he was right, they should arrive at Fort Mathilde in about ninety minutes.
Alpha braced itself against the phantom star wolves charging, and managed a salvo in defense. Delta managed nothing. Unfortunately, the star wolves vanished from the screens, the illusion broken. But Tolvern had caught a glimpse of the capabilities of the two injured star fortresses.
Delta had survived the battle, if you could count not being blown to pieces surviving. Its weapon systems were nonfunctional though, and the interior had to be a gutted mess. Alpha was in better shape, but still a fraction of its former power. And Charlie was nothing but drifting wreckage.
Of the four, only Bravo was intact. The same ship that had mauled Tolvern so badly across the inner frontier had suffered the least of the four carriers that had entered Castillo.
In addition to the heavy damage suffered by the star fortresses, the Adjudicators had lost nine of twenty-four dragoons, with several more seriously injured. Count that against Alliance losses of one Punisher-class cruiser, three sloops, two star wolves, a destroyer, Blackbeard’s brawler, and a handful of falcons, and the result was clear.
The humans and Hroom had won the battle. Barely, and at terrible cost, but a victory nonetheless.
And Bravo had lost its chance to reverse the tide. If it were to charge now, all of its momentum would be lost. It would face fresh ammunition, fresh mines, a better arrayed defensive position. Marines and mech raiders were landing to reinforce the surface, making that target harder to take, as well.
Wang appeared with her two war junks. All three of the Singaporean vessels showed themselves, then cloaked again. Let Bravo come, unable to find those pesky shield-softening weapons, and take its chances. Tolvern was even beginning to welcome the thought of a final confrontation. Instead, the enemy gathered its two wounded companions and the remaining rider ships and turned tail for the jump point.
The fight was over.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The aftermath of battle was always a harrowing experience, and the higher in command, the more Tolvern felt the weight of it. For the first hour, it felt like she was falling into the gravity well of a gas giant, choking on its suffocati
ng atmosphere and being gradually squeezed harder and harder until she couldn’t breathe.
They hauled in Warthog. Forty-three of the fifty-four crew had been killed, including Lieutenant Kiper, acting commander. The man had served on the bridge of Blackbeard since she and Drake crossed the frontier more than eight months ago.
Capp was the first to report Kiper’s death, and the lieutenant was white-faced, clearly thinking that if Carvalho hadn’t been leading the striker wing, he’d have been commanding in Kiper’s place. And dead, in his place.
Other losses were even worse, starting with 197 killed in action during the combined marine-mech raider assault on Delta: Colonel Tibbs, the marine commander, dead. Sixteen other high level Scandian or Albion officers dead in the attack, with roughly a hundred others seriously wounded.
In addition, Delta and its dragoons had destroyed two star wolves completely, with only a handful escaping in Anvil’s escape pods to be scooped up later. Nearly four hundred more K.I.A.
Three sloops lost, and several hundred Hroom with them. A destroyer, HMS Babylon, had withdrawn to the fort early in the battle, with more than half the crew killed or wounded. Further losses on nearly every ship across the fleet, with thirty killed on Peerless, sixteen on Blackbeard, eleven on Crown, and fifty dead across the surviving sloops. Twenty-six killed on Fort Mathilde when the enemy demolished a missile battery and smashed a sub-surface bombproof. Even Wang’s war junks, late arrivals to the battlefield, suffered several fatalities when withdrawing through a space crowded with exploding ordnance.
And of course, HMS Triumph. Zenger’s cruiser, destroyed. All hands lost.
Total killed in action: 1,378. Total wounded: 430.
But the Alliance fleet had survived. They had their fortress. They had supplies to patch up their ships. Maybe a few rustics from Castillo could be trained, gradually, to fill in on various ships until reinforcements arrived.
Tolvern’s most serious deficiencies, ironically enough, were on the base. She had to get those yards up to standard, had to get the prefab foundries and factories online. Needed more workers brought up from Castillo and trained. And she needed an effective fort commander, too. Mathilde had barely been tested in the battle, but Tolvern hadn’t liked the results. Had the enemy landed their decimator units, she suspected the surface-level defense would have collapsed at once.
The Alliance Trilogy Page 25
