“Good,” Middleton said as he reviewed the complements of the eight Void Hunter shuttles present in his hold. Rather than the usual twenty constituents of a hunt pack, each of those shuttles had forty elite feline warriors inside—and these felines were armed with customized power armor, heavy ordnance, and even demolitions charges.
The prospect of forty of the savage cat people boarding a ship under his command was enough to send chills down Middleton’s spine. According to the Void Hunters’ mission reports, a hunt pack armed with such high end equipment—equipment which was understandably rare and precious among the Void Hunters—could destroy a Cruiser in less than two minutes, and had actually done so on several occasions.
The tactical projections showed that, of the eight Void Hunter elite units, between three and five would succeed in taking down their target vessels. Unfortunately they were too few to send against the Battleships, which had standard Marine complements of three hundred to six hundred, so Middleton had assigned each of these first strike hunt packs to board an Imperial Cruiser which only had a hundred Marines apiece. Removing a handful of those frighteningly effective Cruisers from the board would ensure that the battle was over in short order, and in this type of engagement speed was crucial.
“Identity confirmed on four of the Destroyers in orbit of the third planet,” Hephaestion reported, “they are the same ones which fled from our previous engagement.”
“Too bad,” Middleton said with unexpected bitterness at the prospect of facing an enemy force which would almost certainly be ready to fire on the Prejudice far more quickly than any previous Imperial groups had been.
The Prejudice’s stealth suite was robust, but far from perfect. Even with the slightly inferior sensors of the Prichtac ships, Middleton had devised several methods of penetrating his own warship’s stealth systems—methods which he had then incorporated into Hephaestion’s routine active scan protocols just in case the enemy had ships with similar stealth capabilities.
Middleton had no problem with losing a fight, but he would be blasted to his constituent quarks if he lost a fight because he overlooked something he should have already been prepared for. And he never expected to encounter an inept enemy, which meant that he had to now acknowledge the likelihood that this task force would be better prepared to retaliate against the Prejudice than its predecessors had been.
“ETA to fleet arrival: one hour,” Hephaestion reported.
“Steady as she goes, Helm,” Middleton said as Toto methodically brought the Prejudice into the first deployment window. “Chief,” he called over the link, “prepare to launch the first team. T-minus thirty seconds.”
“Thirty seconds, aye,” Mikey acknowledged, and after the countdown reached zero he reported, “Team One away.”
“Good work,” Middleton said as Toto executed a subtle course correction. They were very nearly in orbit of the third planet, where the majority of the Cruisers had gathered along with one of the Battleships. The Destroyers had taken up defensive positions throughout the star system in accordance with basic military principles: keep the mobile units on terrain where they can make the most of their mobility.
One by one, and over the course of the next thirty minutes, the Prejudice stealthily deployed the eight teams of Void Hunter elites.
“Team Eight away,” Garibaldi reported with what sounded like genuine relief as he feigned a sneeze over the link, “blasted cats were starting to get on my allergies.”
Middleton forgave his Chief Engineer the moment of brevity in what was an otherwise tense, anxious phase of the battle. Soon enough, they would be in a fight for their lives.
The clock counted down to the AG Fleet’s scheduled arrival, during which time the Prejudice put as much distance as possible between herself and the enemy capital ships in orbit of the third planet.
There was a large but thin cloud of asteroids trailing the fourth planet, which was a mid-sized gas giant. Middleton intended to use that planet as a fall-back position for his ship if the enemy managed to effective target him early in the battle.
“Fleet arrival in three…two…one…mark,” Hephaestion counted down tensely. Just as scheduled, the AG Fleet arrived en masse and in a window of point transfers lasting only twenty six seconds from the first to last arrival—a record for the fleet during Middleton’s time as its commander, and an altogether respectable number for a war fleet.
Middleton had arranged for his fleet to be separated into two roughly equal halves, either of which could be expected to emerge victorious against the Imperials—but both of which would sustain considerable casualties in the process.
The first group was every Stalwart-crewed warship in the AG Fleet, with 17 Corvettes, 9 Destroyers, 12 Cruisers of various design, and 3 Battleships. In addition, 21 of their gunships were attached with each Battleship commanding seven of the compact, short-range, but brutally effective small craft.
The second group was the combined Void Hunter and SLL forces, minus a few ships left behind to defend the vulnerable Constructor and bulk freighters of the SLL. All told, there were 20 Corvettes, 10 Destroyers, 6 Cruisers and the Void Hunter Mothership, which rated somewhere between a Cruiser and a Battleship in overall tactical value—a value which was heavily skewed due to its spinal-mounted laser which had played a not-insignificant part in the battle with Paganini’s force.
While the Stalwart group might at first appear significantly more formidable than the Void Hunter and SLL group, the Void Hunters’ small craft—four of their five hundred total being present for this particular engagement—presented a uniquely harrowing obstacle with which Admiral Edelweiss was now more than passingly familiar after losing five of his ten Cruisers to their most elite members.
The plan was for the Stalwart group to advance toward the system’s interior while the Void Hunters and SLL ships remained at the hyper limit. The Stalwart were more adept at conducting fleet maneuvers at this point, and their ships were more formidable than the generally lower-quality ships in the Void Hunter and SLL group, which made the decision regarding assignments obvious.
“All ships present and accounted for,” Hephaestion added after counting the individual Alliance ships’ point transfer signatures. “Time to engagement with the enemy: two hours and eight minutes.”
“Good,” Middleton said, “now we wait—and watch.”
“The enemy ships have formed up into two groups,” Middleton explained, gesturing to the Tactical plotter while Hephaestion looked over his shoulder, “each with two Battleships and five Cruisers, but the Destroyers have remained in pairs and quartets. Both capital groups are situated over the north and south poles of the second planet.”
“Which means they intend to fight,” Hephaestion correctly concluded.
“Not only that,” Middleton expanded the view of the third planet, “but they left a half dozen warships in orbit of the third planet when they pulled back to the second planet.”
“Bait,” Hephaestion scoffed, and Middleton was impressed with the young man’s decisive—and correct—conclusion. “They mean to entice us to seize those ships, thus slowing our advance.”
“Correct,” Middleton agreed, “the Destroyer packs are maintaining near-constant overwatch of that position. Within twenty minutes—far less time than it takes to fire up the fusion plants aboard those ships—the Imps could snipe them out of the sky. Which means…” he said leadingly.
“That they want us to attack the Destroyers first,” Hephaestion surmised before grinning fiercely, “which is why you sent the hunt packs to the Cruisers.”
“Whatever your enemy wants, you should aim to deny him,” Middleton quoted the old axiom. “We will in fact move against the Destroyers, just like our opponent wants us to do, but before we engage with them the hunt packs will wreak their peculiar brand of havoc on the enemy capitals. If they manage to take out four or more of the Cruisers, the Imperials will have no choice but to consolidate their forces and, possibly, to at least move sta
r-ward if not withdraw completely. If we catch a break in the timing of those Destroyers’ rotating overwatch of the third planet, we might even keep them from being fired on entirely.”
The Comm. station chimed and Hephaestion quickly moved back to it, “Incoming message from the Imperial Commander.”
“On screen,” Middleton instructed, and a white-haired man’s visage filled the main viewer.
“This is Rear Admiral Dmitri Edelweiss, Commander of Task Force Three assigned to the Fourth Fleet of Man,” the man greeted with surprising joviality and lightheartedness. “Your aggressive posture is most unfortunate, though I suppose such is to be expected from uplifts and subhumans,” he continued, speaking with such a lack of shame that Middleton found himself almost laughing at the absurdity of the other man’s apparent attitude. “If you surrender your arms I can assure you that I will plead on your behalf at your upcoming tribunal, but if you persist in your hostile actions I will have no choice but to dispose of you in a manner befitting beasts and creatures of your base standing—Edelweiss out.”
The carefree smile on the Admiral’s face was an expression which Middleton wanted dearly to erase, and thankfully the operation countdown showed that the hunt packs were only twelve minutes from executing their mass sabotage of the enemy Cruisers.
Two minutes later, Hephaestion reported, “I’m reading an explosion on an enemy Cruiser!” Several seconds later that information propagated to Middleton’s terminal.
“I’ll take it,” Middleton muttered, knowing that even though the Void Hunters had been detected earlier than expected they had apparently coordinated the takedown of those vessels. Soon after the first explosion registered on the Prejudice’s sensors, a second, then a third and a fourth, a fifth, and finally a sixth ship suffered significant damage due to internally-placed demo charges. “Helm, move to intercept Destroyer Group B,” Middleton commanded, “de-powering stealth systems; shields charged to maximum.”
The Prejudice lurched forward as, predictably, the two Destroyers which Middleton had just targeted moved to achieve firing position on the unpowered warships in orbit of the third planet. Middleton could not hope to defeat the two Destroyers with just the Prejudice’s armaments—at least not before another Destroyer group outflanked him during the battle—but he thought he might be able to persuade them to fall back to a less exposed position once they felt the Prejudice’s punch.
“Toto, you may fire when ready,” Middleton commanded, and a few seconds later the Prejudice’s eight turbo-lasers stabbed out and scored five hits against the nearest Destroyer.
The turbo-laser strikes failed to pierce the Imperial warship’s shields, but that facing was reduced to thirty percent and the Destroyer was forced to roll after returning fire with its near broadside. A single hit registered on the Prejudice’s shields, in part due to the ship’s stealth suite and in part due to Toto’s outrageous evasive maneuvers. Shortly after that hit, another pair of strikes landed on the Prejudice’s forward shields which brought the forward shields down to 74%.
“What’s the status of those Cruisers?” Middleton asked as the Prejudice rolled and juked its way toward the pair of Destroyers which intended to scuttle the warships which Middleton hoped to roll into the AG Fleet.
“Three have suffered catastrophic engine damage,” Hephaestion reported, “the fourth appears to have ejected one of its fusion cores, the fifth’s stern shields are down and the sixth appears to be adrift in space, though I am unable to ascertain the extent of the damage it has suffered.”
“Stay on it,” Middleton ordered as Toto lanced out with another barrage of fire-linked turbo-lasers.
Six hits landed on the same Destroyer and this time a pair of laser strikes gouged into the Imperial warship’s crystalline hull. The damage appeared to be minor, with only trace gases detected escaping the ship in the immediate aftermath, but after a moment Middleton noted that he had successfully forced the pair of Destroyers to veer off from their previous goal of scuttling the precious, presumably unmanned warships.
“So far,” Middleton muttered to no one in particular, “so good.”
Imperial Destroyer Group D, while out of range of the Prejudice, had just entered extreme range of the approaching AG heavies. They unleashed their longer-ranged Imperial-grade turbo-lasers and were rewarded with a handful of hits on the inbound Prichtac-built heavies.
Less than a minute later, Hephaestion reported, “Our Battleships have reached firing range on Destroyer Group D.” The three AG ships of the wall then unleashed their combined turbo-lasers on the quartet of Imperial Destroyers. Enough fire was focused on the trailing ship that, to Middleton’s surprise, it exploded outright.
“They must have had lingering battle damage,” Middleton mused as he reviewed the sensor feeds. But, much to his surprise, it seemed that was not the case. Of the twenty four combined turbo-lasers which the Prichtac-built Battleships had fired, thirteen of them had landed in short succession and that had been enough to burn clean through the Destroyer’s shields and her armor.
It was still a lucky break, but Middleton would take it since he knew that fortune was fickle—and an early victory was usually more valuable than a later one.
“The Imperial warships are consolidating,” Hephaestion said with satisfaction. “The Destroyers are falling back toward the star and the capitals are doing likewise.”
“They’re faster than we are; we should consolidate our advance rather than give chase,” Middleton said, both satisfied and disappointed that the Imperial commander had disengaged so quickly. That the Imperial Admiral was hunkering down in the system’s interior showed, or at least suggested, that in spite of losing a handful of his Cruisers he was coolly content to wait the affair out.
In Middleton’s mind that was a nearly certain indication that Imperial reinforcements would be forthcoming, which meant he needed to subdue the Imperials with all due haste in order to avoid facing Imperial warships on two separate fronts within the system.
“P2p with the fleet commanders,” Middleton commanded, “Group One is to advance to the orbit of the first planet and hold there while Group Two will remain at the hyper limit on full alert with the expectation of receiving Imperial reinforcements.”
“Orders sent, sir,” Hephaestion acknowledged.
“Get me on a secure line with the system’s government before we’re out of effective real-time comm. range,” Middleton instructed, and a few minutes later Hephaestion forwarded a connection to his terminal.
The wizened face of a dark-skinned woman appeared on the monitor built into Middleton’s Tactical station, “This is High Chancellor Nikita Foles, representing the sovereign star system of Mercy’s End. Who are you and what are your intentions?”
“I’m Supreme Commander Middleton of the reformed Alliance Gorgonus,” Middleton replied with as much dignity as he could manage while simultaneously balancing the Prejudice’s stealth systems. “We’re here to extend our invitation for your star system to rejoin the Alliance in the interests of mutual defense, but obviously we don’t have time for a formal conduction of negotiations just yet. I can, however, say that I would view it as a meaningful gesture of good faith on your part if you would re-crew those ships the Imperials left in orbit of your worlds and get them ready to act in defense of this system and, if I may be so bold, in the mutual defense of the Alliance Gorgonus’ constituent members.”
The woman’s eyes narrowed briefly before she nodded off-pickup, “I have dispatched crews to regain control over our warships, but I cannot guarantee they will be able to immediately contribute.”
“Now or later makes no difference to me. But if you would provide us with access to your in-system sensor feeds to aid us in our pursuit of these invaders, I would consider that to be a meaningful gesture on your part as well. Middleton out,” Middleton said coolly, severing the line before she could retort with what he had no doubt would be a riposte worthy of the cleverest serpent.
The Imperia
l warships steadily withdrew, and the AG Battleships only managed to score a few random hits to the nearest Destroyers before the enemy had fled weapons range of Middleton’s forces.
“Round one to us,” Middleton said, meeting Hephaestion’s triumphant expression with a short nod, “now let’s see what this Admiral is made of—and just how badly he wants to hold this system.”
Chapter XXVII: Counterpunching
“All ships are in formation and await your orders, sir,” Hephaestion reported, and Middleton confirmed via his terminal that the Stalwart ships were indeed ready to advance on the Imperial position. At the fleet’s maximum speed, his ships would be in firing range of the tightly-clustered Imperial force in eighteen minutes. The problem was that once he signaled his intention to advance, Middleton’s adversary would be able to employ no fewer than a dozen effective counter-attack strategies.
Middleton could have cut down on that number by half if he had brought the Void Hunters and SLL ships in as far as the second planet’s orbit, but doing so would have left his entire force extremely vulnerable to a flanking maneuver by whatever reinforcements it seemed Admiral Edelweiss was content to await.
Of the six Cruisers which the Void Hunter elites had sabotaged at the battle’s outset, only one of them had resumed formation with its fellow Imperials who were now in close orbit of the star system’s primary. The others remained powerless in space—in fact, their crews had surrendered when it became clear they would be unable to escape the oncoming Stalwart formation.
Middleton had ordered Void Hunter teams, carried aboard a lone Cruiser which broke ranks with the rest of the ships waiting at the hyper limit, to secure those vessels and their crews. Somewhat surprisingly, the Imperials had seemed willing—almost eager—to surrender to the felines, which only served to strengthen Middleton’s suspicions that reinforcements were en route.
The Middle Road (Spineward Sectors: Middleton's Pride Book 7) Page 24
