“The Stalwart Cruisers are matching the Imperial Cruisers, Captain,” Hephaestion said. “Superior numbers and a broader formation are allowing them to maintain gauge on the enemy.”
“Quantity over quality,” Middleton muttered as he decided to have the Stalwart fall back rather than go blow-for-blow with the Imps. “P2p with the Commander—“ he began before remembering that the Stalwart Commander had been aboard the now thoroughly-destroyed Stalwart Duty and, at best, was among the boarders who were making their way to the Imperial Cruisers. “Make that to Primarch Beam of the Glorious Burden,” Middleton amended, “have his people begin to fall back toward the second planet. They’ve bled enough here; we’ll need capital ships for the League to form up with when they arrive, and those Prichtac Cruisers represent most of our heavies in this grid.”
“Relaying, sir,” Hephaestion acknowledged as the firefight continued to unfold. Middleton knew that the Stalwart could not effectively disengage from the Imperials even if they came about and max-burned for the planet, but he also knew that his losses could be somewhat mitigated during a tactical retreat—and, most importantly of all, that some of the Stalwart Cruisers would indeed be preserved for a later stand. “Message away,” Hephaestion said after nearly a minute of attempting to transmit the entirety of the message.
“Good,” Middleton nodded, “now we need to take down that last Imperial Battleship. Toto, re-orient for an attack run on Imperial Two’s last Battleship,” he instructed as the surging Cruisers began to accelerate in pursuit of the now-retreating Stalwart heavies. “With any luck, the Commander’s boarders can bring down one or two of those Cruisers. If we can do the same to that Battleship, Imperial Two will have no choice but to fall back and await reinforcements before proceeding to the planet.”
“The Battleship’s front shields are nearly down and are experiencing critical spotting,” Hephaestion offered, but Middleton shook his head.
“We’d never survive a frontal assault on a Battleship, no matter how badly damaged she might be,” he explained. “Come up on their weakened port stern,” he forwarded the prime targets to Toto’s station, “and fire after we’ve reached medium range.”
“Our stealth systems will be less effective,” Toto said grimly.
“Which would be a problem,” Middleton replied dryly, “if we didn’t have a pilot so skilled at performing…creative evasive maneuvers.”
Toto chuffed loudly before putting the Prejudice on the course Middleton had instructed, and for a brief moment he wondered if he’d just signed his own death warrant—not from the Imperial guns, but from Toto’s erratic maneuvers.
He shook that silly thought from his mind as his sleek warship closed to medium range. The Stalwart Cruisers continued to put distance between themselves and their Imperial counterparts, who seemed content to deal with the boarders and re-form with their remaining Battleship rather than give chase.
The Imperial Battleship rolled to author a final broadside toward the Stalwart Corvette, battering its hull with a barrage of turbo-laser fire that overloaded the Stalwart ship’s engines. The Prichtac-built ship exploded violently, but its fellows finally left the Imperial Battleship’s effective firing range. The Imperial Cruisers destroyed another two Stalwart Corvettes before they, too, were out of range.
That left the Prejudice with a brief window to exchange fire with the enemy Battleship. The course which Middleton had commanded Toto to take was a wide, sweeping arc which would allow the Prejudice’s momentum to carry it into, and out of, the Battleship’s firing range before no more than three counter-salvos could come from the Imperials’ guns. Three salvos from an Imperial Battleship were significantly more than Middleton would like to have endured, but this was his crew’s turn to take it to the enemy.
“In medium range,” Toto declared, his tone an obvious request for permission.
“Let them have it,” Middleton nodded, gripping his workstation as he powered down the stealth suite’s active system and re-routed power to the shields.
The Prejudice lashed out with her eight turbo-lasers, scoring eight tightly-clustered hits on the enemy Battleship. “Four hits to the shields, four to the hull,” Hephaestion reported, “their port shields are now off-line and two of their turbo-laser mounts have been scrubbed by our fire.”
“Good shooting,” Middleton congratulated Toto just as the uplift put the warship into a corkscrew to evade incoming fire. In spite of the improvements to the grav-plates, Middleton was forced to grip the edges of his console in order to avoid slamming his head into it.
A turbo-laser strike landed on their forward shields before a trio of heavy lasers impacted on those same shields in rapid succession. “She’s rolling,” Hephaestion said tightly as the Prejudice, with Toto keeping her bow straight on to the enemy Battleship, slid sideways through space as her momentum carried her away from the enemy warship.
“Forward shields down to sixty one percent,” Middleton reported, checking his slowly recharging port shield generator and finding it to be at almost fifty percent.
Then the Battleship completed her roll and a volley of concentrated fire slammed into the Prejudice’s bow—one beam actually struck the void-side of the bubble-shaped main viewer. The strike caused several cracks to appear in the ovular, convex panel—which very much looked like an eye when viewed from the outside, and which likely now appeared to be a bloodshot eye due to the web of cracks which steadily grew across it.
“Head bags!” Middleton commanded, having waited as long as possible before giving that particular order. Communication aboard the Prejudice was sketchy during combat maneuvers, probably due to the ship’s power plant somehow interfering with local com-links. Middleton had therefore decided to keep his bridge crew on direct vocal communication for as long as possible.
His crew donned their head bags in a matter of seconds, and Hephaestion called out, “Com-link checks. Command Team, sound off!”
“Helm,” Toto growled.
“Tactical,” Middleton followed.
“Engineering,” Garibaldi soon piped in.
“Hangar,” crewman Chan added.
“Comm.” Hephaestion finished. “All primaries accounted for, Captain.”
“Rotating shields,” Middleton said belatedly, having already switched out the critically spotting forward shields for those previously over their port flank. “Mr. Chan,” Middleton called down to the Hangar Team’s leader, “it’s Independence Day.”
“Deploying fireworks,” Chan acknowledged, and slowly the Prejudice began to drop Independence-class missiles from her hangar. The missiles had originally been outfitted with surface booster modules, but those had been discarded during their initial flight to intercept Admiral Edelweiss’s ships. As such, what remained of each missile was a six meter long warhead and two meter long drive unit. That short drive unit was primarily intended for maneuvering the warhead into position after the primary drive unit brought it into range.
Much like Starfire missiles from the Old Confederation, Independence-class missiles were single-use lasers with each beam roughly equivalent to a heavy laser.
The difference between Independence and Starfire missiles was that an Independence missile fired three laser beams compared to a Starfire’s one.
Middleton had managed to stack eight Independence missiles in his shuttle bay, and it took Mr. Chan forty seconds to deploy them all—which was two seconds faster than the estimates had suggested.
“Ready to make a bang, sir,” Chan reported.
“Good work, Hangar,” Middleton acknowledged as he brought up fire control for those missiles onto his Tactical station. “Helm, we’re going to need to coordinate this next salvo with the missiles. I’m slaving missile fire control to your station—make them count.”
“Gladly, Captain.”
Three seconds later, the Independence missiles fired, and an eighth of a second after they did so the Prejudice’s eight turbo-lasers scoured the Battleship’s hull throug
h the briefly-spotty starboard shields.
“Three more turbo-lasers and one heavy laser are now off-line,” Hephaestion pumped his fist. “Enemy starboard shields are down to twenty three percent with severe spotting. Her port shields are still down—she’s taking fire to port!”
“What?” Middleton checked his plotter and quickly confirmed that the Imperial Battleship had indeed taken a pair of heavy laser hits to their exposed port flank—and those hits had been authored by an approaching Imperial Cruiser’s guns. “Well done, Commander,” Middleton said in open admiration as the early returns from the Stalwart boarding actions came across the board.
The next thing Middleton knew, he was gasping for breath and finding none available to him. His vision slowly cleared as he dimly realized his head bag had been ruptured. He tore it off with one hand while he reached with the other for the backup head bag tucked into his pocket.
He gasped desperately as his fingers fumbled for the new head bag’s collar, which he managed to seat beneath his jaw and behind his ears before the bag’s automatic inflation system created a seal and life-giving gases began to flow into his lungs.
He drew several gasping, futile breaths before realizing that they had taken another shot to the front of the bridge—and that this one had finished the job which the first hit had started.
The main viewing oval was completely gone, though the carbon rim in which it had been set appeared relatively undamaged. A visual check confirmed that Toto was still at his station—which was a miracle, given the Sundered crewman’s proximity to the strike—and so was Hephaestion.
Middleton dimly became aware of Hephaestion’s voice coming through the fog which still clouded his senses, and he managed to wheeze, “Tactical is green. Repeat: Tactical is green. Rotating…shields,” he spluttered before suffering a thankfully brief coughing fit.
“Firing!” Toto snarled, and Middleton refocused on his console to see another eight turbo-laser strikes land on the Imperial Battleship’s hull.
“Eight for eight,” Hephaestion reported as the Battleship’s primary engines fluttered and eventually stalled, “their main engines are down—they’re taking fire from another Cruiser!”
It seemed that the Stalwart Commander’s people had succeeded in wresting control of at least one more gun deck on another of the Cruisers, and they had promptly turned its arsenal on the beleaguered Battleship.
The Cruiser’s barrage of turbo- and heavy lasers scoured the Battleship’s exposed flank, sending geysers of breathing gases erupting beneath clouds of crystalline debris. The Battleship was now a floating hulk, and Middleton’s plotter showed that only fifteen percent of its throw weight remained after the latest Stalwart barrage.
“Let’s get out of here,” Middleton said hoarsely, “on my mark, resume maximum stealth acceleration on our previous course. Three…two…one…mark!”
Toto complied, banking the Prejudice and gunning the engines to nearly three fourths of their maximum output. At that same moment, Middleton switched the front shields to cover the ship’s port quarter while also re-powering the ship’s stealth suite. There were warning indicators all across his console which suggested the stealth system might fail at any moment, but thankfully it did not do so as the nimble warship left the Battleship’s zone of control—less than a minute before coming under its fellow Cruisers’ fire.
“The Commander is on his own until the League arrives to reinforce him,” Middleton said, coughing a final time to soothe his irritated—and doubtless bloody—bronchi. “Set course for the Void Hunters’ position. We need to be able to reinforce them after they engage,” he said, checking the time-to-engagement clock for the Void Hunters and seeing that eight minutes remained until they would begin firing at each other—and unlike the Stalwart with the Prichtac-built warships, the Void Hunters in their ramshackle fleet would not be able to exchange with the Imperials in anything resembling a fair fight.
The first line had held, if only just, but now the Imperials were about to have their turn. Even at maximum acceleration, it would take nearly an hour for the Prejudice to reach the Void Hunters’ zone of control. That meant Middleton’s people had time for some basic repairs.
“Chief,” Middleton barked over the link, “send a team up here to patch the hole in my bridge—now!”
Chapter XXXIII: Fresh Meat!
The Void Hunter fleet was composed of nineteen Corvettes, two non-Imperial Destroyers, two non-Imperial Cruisers, two Imperial Destroyers, the Mothership, and their remaining arsenal of boarding craft. Since they were up against a force of thirteen Imperial Destroyers, four remaining Cruisers—after two had been disabled by Mrr’shan’s ambush parties—and two Battleships, the odds seemed so utterly lopsided against them that it would have been insanity to think the felines could put up a reasonable defense against the Imperials.
But none of that accounted for the Void Hunters’ true strength: their savagely effective boarding parties. Middleton’s estimates put the number of available boarding craft in the Void Hunter fleet at two hundred, with the other three hundred having been scattered throughout the star system prior to the Imperial arrival. Each boarding craft could carry, at most, forty Void Hunters with a better average estimate closer to twenty per craft. Apparently it was routine for Void Hunters to kill each other in the immediate lead-up to a fight—that, combined with relatively shoddy craft, made for what tactically-minded people like Middleton would call a ‘high attrition environment.’
His understanding was that the scattered ambush craft—those Void Hunters which had already impacted the outcome of the battle by taking down a handful of capital ships—contained a strange mixture of the elite Void Hunters along with the least capable feline warriors. The elite warriors considered surprise and ambush to be of paramount importance and value. The less capable wanted to prove themselves in bloody combat and were willing to be deployed in craft with minimal life support, short-range chemical thrusters, and sometimes no weaponry. Apparently this was a method by which they could prove themselves to their fellow Void Hunters, but Middleton still did not understand—nor did he presently care to understand—the feline uplifts’ society well enough to describe their motives.
But he had been informed by Mrr’shan that, while there would be few elite hunters armed with high-end equipment aboard the small craft assigned to the Void Hunter fleet, those warriors would be relatively uniform in skill and equipment. This was in large part to better enable the Void Hunters to coordinate their knife-range boarding actions for maximum effect. If a particularly juicy target was made vulnerable, the felines would coordinate their efforts on that target while eschewing less desirable ones.
“I am detecting thirty faint signatures in the space between the Void Hunters and the Imperials,” Hephaestion reported after Garibaldi had brought a team of his people onto the bridge to patch the hole left by the main viewer’s destruction. A large, polymer sheet was stretched across the ovular opening and that sheet was reinforced by several layers of more robust polymer, after which the team would pour a quick patch mixture of metal filings and resin. It wouldn’t be strong enough to withstand any kind of serious explosion or impact, but it would enable the bridge to be re-pressurized with ample time to spare before they came into firing range.
“Void Hunter ambush craft,” Middleton mused after reviewing Hephaestion’s readings. “Let’s hope the Imperials don’t see them as well as we do.”
Imperial Battle Group Three slowly altered its formation as it approached the slowly-retreating Void Hunter warships. The two Battleships and four Cruisers slowly pulled ahead of the nimbler Destroyers, and Middleton scowled as he realized what the Imperial commander was doing.
“He’s goading us into overreaching by presenting his Battleships and Cruisers,” he said disappointedly, “he’s going to make us use our missiles on his big ships, and he’s probably prepared to scuttle them before letting them fall into our hands . Fine,” he said, keying the control key into hi
s plotter’s missile activation screen, which soon populated with three hundred and eighty three new missile locations that had been fanned out between the Void Hunters’ current position and the oncoming Imperial Battle Group, “position accepted.”
It was tricky controlling the missiles from this range. The light delay meant that he would need to send orders to those missiles nearly twenty minutes before he got the returns on the Imperial formation’s position when they actually reached firing range on the Imperial ships. He crunched the numbers four times in rapid succession, with each calculation confirming the results from the previous one. “P2p to Mrr’shan’s strike teams,” Middleton instructed, “they are to ignore the Battleships and Cruisers. If her ambush teams want to take a crack at the heavies as they pass by, that’s fine by me. But I want all of her strike shuttles ready for deployment against those Destroyers.”
“It will take sixty three minutes to receive confirmation of receipt,” Hephaestion said dutifully.
“Understood,” Middleton acknowledged as he input a cringe-inducing target package into his plotter. He wasn’t going to play games at this point—he was going to wipe those Battleships off the board. A hundred Independence-class missiles firing on each of them should be more than enough to not only scrub them off the board, but possibly even vaporize them outright if the fire was sufficiently well-coordinated. The other hundred eighty three missiles would be kept in reserve until Middleton had time to analyze the situation from a closer vantage point.
He transmitted the target package to the missiles via p2p, and watched as the Imperial ships crept ever closer to the fire zone representing the range of the Independence platforms.
“Forty six minutes to missile range,” Middleton called out as Garibaldi’s people began pouring the quick patch resin to the polymer mold they had completed. “At their current retreat vector, the Void Hunters will stay out of Imperial firing range for forty eight minutes.”
The Middle Road (Spineward Sectors: Middleton's Pride Book 7) Page 30
