The Last Hero

by Nathaniel Danes

  The tense nerves stemmed from the unknown. The intel from the captured database, and the advance probe helped take away some of the mystery, but he still didn’t like jumping a fleet of fourteen ships, five battleships and nine cruises, into a situation he couldn’t see with his own eyes.

  “Comm, what’s the status of the fleet? Sensors, is the turret still active?” Holloway barked at the seated subordinates intently reviewing their terminals. He brushed a sweaty hand over the short white hair under his cap.

  “All ships through, sir. None reporting damage.”

  “The turret is dow—no, wait. It’s still operational. Badly damaged, but the main laser is powering up!” a young bridge officer shouted.

  “Who’s closest to that damn thing?”

  “The Yorktown, sir,” snapped Commander Sara Hamilton, Chief of Staff to the admiral and a former British Naval officer. “I’ve already ordered them to attack. She’ll make it space junk in a few minutes.”

  “Good, good,” he said with a sigh of relief. “Let me know when it’s destroyed. Sensors, give me a bead on the enemy ships. They knew we’re here. I want to know where they are.”

  The fleet’s combined sensor arrays took several minutes to map the surrounding space. The admiral circled his command station, impatiently awaiting the findings.

  Canada’s flag bridge, modeled after submarine bridges, stationed the commander in the center over a holo table displaying the orientation of friendly and enemy ships. Various department stations vital to fleet combat operations surrounded his station.

  “Commander, what’s the status of the Yorktown?” he asked.

  “She’s firing main weapons now, sir. They should be finished in a moment.”

  “Any damage?”

  Commander Hamilton looked up from her secondary command terminal.

  “Just a few bumps and bruises, nothing to worry about.”

  Thank God! Can’t afford to lose any ships. What the hell am I doing here? Didn’t exactly have a class on this at the academy. At least here I get a...

  “Admiral!” the sensor officer shouted.

  He jerked his head in the direction of the fearful cry.

  “The enemy fleet is on an intercept course, twelve ships. They will be in weapons range in an hour.”

  “What!” Holloway bent over the ensign to look at the screen, hoping that he’d made a mistake. He hadn’t. “What the hell are they doing there? They should be orbiting the planet a day away?”

  Hamilton said, “Must have been on patrol. Bloody unlucky for us.”

  Holloway suppressed any doubt or fear and did what any good naval officer would do, he commanded.

  “Listen up. Comm, signal Earth’s Fist and tell them to come through and launch their fighters and drones. The rest of us need to get into attack formation. Canada will take the center. The other battleships take the extreme flanks. United States and Russia take port. Great Britain and Germany take starboard.

  “Tell Waterloo, Normandy and Gettysburg to move between us and Russia. Stalingrad, Lepanto, and Midway on the Germany side. Place Thermopylae, Yorktown, and Hastings in reserve near Earth’s Fist.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  Holloway stared at the tactical display holo. The round table would serve as his chessboard in the coming battle. Earth’s Fist’s massive sensor signature popped onto the display at the same time the Bearcat formation appeared.

  With his pawns, knights, bishops, rooks, and queen, set, Admiral Holloway gave the order.

  “All ahead full.”

  ***

  “Five minutes to launch distance,” the sensor officer announced.

  Holloway barely heard the warning. All of his attention was focused on the 3D display. Each second painted a more detailed picture of the enemy ships. The twelve primary enemy vessels appeared to dissect into three categories of varying size.

  Four battleships, each with a greater mass than the Canada, closed fast with the support of six ships that appeared to be their version of cruiser class, albeit larger than Earth Command vessels. The final two didn’t look like much, measuring only half the size of a cruiser. That didn’t mean they might not have an awful bite.

  Their shape differed in just about every way. Instead of tubes, a disk functioned as their base design. A track and field discus to be more exact; the center of the vessels gradually rose up and down from the outside in so the center rested above and below the rim. At the very center of both sides was a half circle that the prior battle had identified as their main weapons platform. The rim of the discus held the fighter bays. In all, sixty fighters launched.

  Holloway paid extra close attention to the swarm of deadly dart shaped fighters. The Bearcats seemed to like to deploy these in large masses in order to overwhelm specific points of enemy defenses.

  The rims of the Bearcat ships also contained the anti-missile capabilities, which made it unlikely they would resolve this easily with a salvo of nukes. Fortunately, Holloway knew the anti-missile batteries of his own ships meant the same held true for the Bearcat commander.

  To win the engagement, each side would have to maneuver to within fifty kilometers to reach the useful range of their energy weapons. With skill and strategy, each commander would deploy their smaller attack craft, fighters, and drones for Fleet, just fighters for Bearcats, to move in closer for the kill shots with pointblank missile launches and laser blasts.

  While both sides could travel near the speed of light when in transit to a gate, the demands of their weapons meant fighting had to take place at much slower speeds. Lasers had to hold their targets for a few second to do damage. Missiles couldn’t hit a target if launched from a vessel traveling at too high a rate of speed. Their momentum would restrict their ability to change course and were therefore easy to avoid.

  The time it took ships to accelerate and decelerate to high speeds also helped dictate that war in space proceeded at a relative glacial pace. The irony being that a ship only became beatable when it slowed down; it also could win only if it slowed down.

  Despite the unlikelihood of any missiles breaking through, the benefits of such an event warranted that each commander had to try. When the two forces reached a distance of one thousand kilometers, the admiral softly said, “Fire.”

  A moment later, the forward missile tubes on each ship fired, sending twenty-two nuclear warheads toward the enemy. A barely perceptible shudder shook the command ship.

  At eight hundred kilometers, the Bearcats sent their volley. The Canada’s battle computer instantly tracked and coordinated counter-fire with the other line ships.

  Less than ten seconds later, all missiles were destroyed with no damaged inflicted on either side.

  Holloway didn’t mourn their failure, there wasn’t time. With laser range soon reached, he gave another order to the ships on his chessboard.

  “Evasive maneuvers!”

  Eleven holograms immediately began wild shifts on the mesmerizing display. Ships engaged boost thrusters placed along the hull to dart up, down, and to the side before firing forward lasers. They then rapidly jumped to another point to fire while keeping their noses pointed at the enemy.

  The Bearcats instigated a similar tactic.

  The tactic not only presented the enemy with a moving target but also enabled their fleets to cover much wider blocks of space. It helped to prevent encirclement in the vastness of the battlefield.

  Lasers crisscrossed no-man’s-land, separating the opposing forces as each side hoped to gain an advantage before striking. In space, there was no atmosphere for a laser to burn so their beams were invisible.

  Pop!

  The sound startled Holloway. Sparks flowed out of control panels on the flag bridge. A small fire broke out a couple meters to his left next to the comm officer. He dove for the relative safety of the metal floor.

  Holloway instinctively reached under the holo display table, grabbed an extinguisher, and charged the electrical flame, forcing its surrender. Lo
oking down, he saw the comm officer covered in burns.

  “Get a medic to the bridge! Commander, report!”

  In a frantic but controlled British accent, she answered, “Direct hit, sir, on the forward port power coupling. The laser is down. I have dispatched repair teams.”

  “The rest of the fleet?”

  Hamilton’s eyes zipped from screen to screen. She took in a massive amount of data at an inhuman rate.

  “The Lepanto, Waterloo, and Normandy have suffered significant damage but are keeping up their rate of fire.”

  “Those are the closest ships to us.” Holloway briefly retreated into thought. “The flanks? Are they hitting the flanks hard?”

  Pause.

  “No, it appears they are firing just enough to keep the battleships occupied.”

  “Yeah, they want to smash the center...and we’re the center. Where’s the swarm?”

  The sensor officer shouted, “Still holding in the rear!”

  “Good,” he said with a slight grin. “Let’s give them a reason to use them. Commander, order the Lepanto, Waterloo, and Normandy to pull back slowly. Helm, do the same. All others hold their position.”

  “Sir?” Hamilton remarked.

  He ignored her doubt in his plan.

  “Contact the fighters and reserve force...tell them to prepare to attack.”

  “Aye, aye, sir!” she answered.

  The wounded core of the Fleet line gave ground. Smelling blood in the water, the Bearcat commander’s natural predatory instincts took over. The swarm of sixty dart fighters and a reserve force of one cruiser and two destroyer class ships charged for the apparent weak spot. As the strike force neared weapons range, the admiral acted.

  “All ships full reverse! Draw the fuckers deep into our lines.”

  The aggressive tendencies of their race blinded the Bearcats. Once an attack launched, their blood wouldn’t allow them to pull back.

  Soon the Fleet’s line resembled a bent steel pipe as the Bearcat strike force found their flanks endangered by the sheer audacity of their thrust.

  Red dots signifying hits on the Canada’s hull pinged frantically on the holo display, but Holloway refused to rush the trap. When the time arrived, he gave the order.

  “All stop! Send the fighters in and tell the Thermopylae, Yorktown, and Hastings to attack! And Commander...release the drones.”

  When Earth’s Fist deployed the drones, they didn’t take the traditional holding pattern around their mother ship. The forty mindless warriors attached themselves to the sterns of the ships on the line, blending in with the larger hulls. The Bearcat strike force didn’t notice the odd spheres until it was too late.

  Before the fighters or reserve cruiser came into range, the swarm was taken by complete surprise.

  Fleet’s fighters and cruisers slammed into the swarm’s disintegrating formation, overwhelming the sixty brave pilots with wave after wave of missile fire and laser strafing runs.

  The pleasure derived from springing a successful trap vanished along with two of the ships on the holo display.

  “Report!” he ordered.

  “It’s the Waterloo and Normandy...they’re gone,” Hamilton said. “The attacking cruiser is coordinating a strong field of fire with the destroyers.”

  “To hell with them.” He hammered a fist onto the holo table. “Can we fire the main laser?”

  “Ship’s bridge reports that the repairs are finished. It’s powering up now.”

  “Tell the United States to make for the center and get on the horn to the Gettysburg and Midway. I want coordinated fire on that damned cruiser.”

  A replacement comm officer replied, “Sir, Midway and Gettysburg have confirmed the order.”

  “Commander?”

  “Forward laser at full power.”

  “Fire!”

  Three beams struck the discus shaped cruiser. The Canada hit her head-on while fire from the Gettysburg buried into its starboard, side and the Midway burned a hole in the port hull.

  The sensor officer announced, “She’s dead in the water.”

  A cheer rang through the flag bridge.

  Holloway’s stern face didn’t move.

  “Fire missile batteries now.”

  Moments later, six missiles landed on the cruiser in a cascading nuclear wave that culminated in the ship’s explosion.

  The bridge crew erupted into cheers again. Holloway remained still as a stone statue.

  “Sensors, status of the enemy swarm?”

  “What’s left of them are in full retreat. The drones and fighters are picking them off in pursuit.”

  “Comm, order a squadron of drones to execute the pursuit. I want all other drones and fighters to engage the enemy destroyers. Tell the reserve cruisers to come alongside.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Holloway returned his full attention to the holo display. The loss of the Waterloo and Normandy stretched the left flank thin when the United States redeployed to the center. But it held as the destruction of the Bearcat attack force caused them to rethink their situation. Holloway knew in battle that advantages could quickly disappear if opportunities weren’t properly seized. He needed to act soon.

  The remaining enemy ships, minus the dying destroyers, consolidated in the hopes of filling the void left by the defeated attack. The four battleships and five cruisers shortened their line. Holloway knew he couldn’t allow that to happen uncontested.

  “Where’s the United States and the reserve cruisers?”

  Hamilton said, “The States is in position and engaging the enemy. The Hastings and Yorktown have finished moving up.”

  “The Thermopylae?”

  “She diverted slightly to help the fighters take out the destroyers. They’re finished now.”

  Returning to the holo table, he leaned forward, placing both hands on the edge.

  “We are going to cut these bastards in half. Order the fighters and drones to break into two and attack the cruisers in the middle. I want all fire from us, the United States, Yorktown, and Hastings on that battleship.” He pointed at the intended target. “Tell Thermopylae to engage this ship.” He indicated the cruiser on the left flank.

  “Orders away and confirmed, sir.”

  “Umm...sir,” the sensor officer said, “the Stalingrad is on evac.”

  “Deploy rescue teams!” Hamilton shouted.

  “Belay that order!”

  All eyes turned to Holloway.

  “We don’t have time for that now. They’re going to have to hold on until we win.”

  Silence greeted his order.

  “Get this attack underway...fire every damn thing we have.”

  The Hastings fired her main laser and emptied her missile tubes but withered under the pressure of two battleships. The sacrifice wasn’t for naught. The concentrated laser and missile volleys from the Canada, United States, and Yorktown melted the central battleship soon after her fall.

  “Redirect fire to the last battleship in the center!” Holloway screamed over the victorious roar of Canada’s crew. He could taste the sweet delight of victory on his tongue and wasn’t about to spoil the treat by savoring it too soon.

  “Sir,” the sensor officer cried, “the Germany is lost.”

  Undeterred, the admiral refused to back down.

  “Goddamn it! Tell the Russia and Great Britain to hold their ground. Their center is crumbling. All they have to do is hold!”

  “What’s the status of the fighters and drones?”

  Hamilton said, “Drones down to quarter strength, and the fighters are at fifty percent. They’re having a hard time punching through their defenses.”

  A massive booming sound shook the ship. Officers and enlisted grabbed onto what they could, to remain at their stations. Holloway planted his feet apart on the deck, remembering days at sea, and rode out the wave like motion of his spacecraft.

  A red warning flashed on the hologram of the Canada.

  “Report!”


  “Decks two through four ruptured. Blast doors are down. Decompression is contained for now. We can’t take another hit there.”

  “Make sure the helm keeps our starboard side facing away from the main action.”

  “Woo Hoo!” the sensor officer shouted as the last battleship in the center split in two from a direct hit by the United States.

  “Comm, order the fighters and drones to break off. I want the United States to hit this cruiser and the Yorktown to join us on the other one,” the admiral ordered from the holo table.

  The drones and fighters failed to destroy the cruisers, but their efforts weakened them. A few volleys front the capital ships made quick work of the last of the enemy center.

  Just as the center collapsed, an enemy missile penetrated Midway’s defenses. A brilliant explosion marked her destruction.

  “Send the United States and the Yorktown to help the Great Britain. Notify the helm to take us to the Russia. Let’s finish this.”

  What remained of the Bearcat fleet, two battleships and three cruisers, soon found themselves surrounded and outgunned. Despite their doomed situation, the enemy fought on with great tenacity. In their death throes, they managed to destroy the Russia and Thermopylae.

  With the last of the enemy ships blasted into the void of space, rescue teams launched from the Canada, United States, Great Britain, Yorktown, Lepanto, Gettysburg, and Earth’s Fist.

  Holloway sat down for the first time since before they jumped. Tipping his head back, he took in a deep breath before slowly letting it out.

  Hamilton said, “Splendid victory, Admiral. They’ll be talking about that one for a while.”

  Hell of a costly victory. But I’ll take it.

  ***

  “At-a-boy Fleet,” Trent said to the Earth’s Fist bridge crew. He had watched the battle quietly from a distance on the ship’s holo display.

  The captain paused briefly from helping coordinate the recovery of the remaining fighters and drones to face Trent.

  “Yes indeed, now it’s up to you Legion ground pounders to get the job done.”