The main reason the Imperials had swooped in with such alacrity upon arriving in this star system was that Middleton and Chancellor Foles had successfully tricked them into thinking they were well on their way to capturing Admiral Edelweiss’s surrendered warships. If the enemy had not believed that those Imperial warships were potentially hours away from servicing the AG and Mercy’s End, they would have laid a proper siege to the star system and none of the AG’s cleverly-laid traps would have amounted to a pile of spent carbon scrubbers.
A more sentimental man than Middleton might have seen his blood boil at Foles’ reluctance to provide this arsenal at the battle’s outset. She had consigned thousands of the AG’s crew and dozens of their ships to the void by withholding the details of her star system’s defensive panoply, and Middleton did find himself scowling at that realization—but he also found himself with a much better understanding of the Chancellor’s motives and aims.
“I’ve reviewed your arsenal,” he said with a curt nod after confirming that the launch and command codes appeared to be valid—or at least that they largely matched those of the first four hundred missiles. “And I understand your reasons for withholding its complete details,” he added pointedly, since he was quite certain she was still keeping some portion of her people’s defensive armaments in reserve. “I need those missiles released immediately so I can deploy them at my leisure. I’m also ordering your Corvettes to remain in low orbit behind your third planet for now to avoid Imperial fire; your remaining warships can’t lend any support to this fight at this point, and I don’t want to see any more needless deaths. Middleton out.”
He cut the recording and gestured for Hephaestion to send it on, which the young man promptly did.
“All right,” Middleton said, the tactical gears of his mind working as fast as he could ever remember while he plugged new parameters into the virtual simulator, “let’s see what we can come up with in the next ten minutes…”
Chapter XXXV: Willpower vs. Ferocity
“We can withdraw no faster than what I outlined, Mrr’shan,” Middleton repeated over the p2p with the Void Hunter leader. In the fifteen minutes since he had received the command codes for the Independence missiles, he had positioned the Prejudice so that the light delay in his conversation with the Mothership’s actual would only be a few seconds per exchange. “And that withdrawal absolutely cannot deviate from the itinerary I outlined.”
“Many of my ships will be lost,” Mrr’shan hissed a few seconds later.
“I know your people will pay a heavy price—“ Middleton began, only to be interrupted mid-sentence by her delayed continuation.
“My people are eager to prove themselves; their deaths are acceptable,” she explained, pausing to hear his interrupted reply. She then flashed her fangs in a truly evil, bone-chilling facsimile of a grin, “My ships, on the other hand, have already been badly depleted. After this battle the Void Hunter fleet must be replenished—and more,” she said as her predatory, vertical pupils narrowed.
“I’m sure something can be arranged,” Middleton said through clenched teeth. He also knew that the Void Hunters cared far less about quality than they did about quantity; he suspected they would accept a lower overall tactical value of hulls if those hulls happened to be plentiful. The Void Hunter Clans were clearly a ‘diverse’ group that placed a premium on segregation. “But you need to keep that main gun of yours firing as often as possible.”
Mrr’shan’s menacing grin disappeared and, for a moment, she looked like a downtrodden kitten, “We…my gunners are uncertain how many more times we can safely use the Lion’s Roar.”
“What does that mean?” Middleton pressed, uncaring for the rather poetic name they had given to what was definitely the single most powerful weapon on this particular battlefield.
Her ears laid back and she briefly flashed her teeth, “The Roar is our most treasured weapon and it is aboard our most sacred ship—the ship which carries our entire future. If it becomes unstable or unusable…” she trailed off darkly.
Middleton hated all of this information compartmentalization. In spite of his repeated requests, he had been denied access to the Void Hunter Mothership on what were essentially religious grounds and it seemed that his respect for the Void Hunters’ preferences had come back to bite him.
“Mrr’shan, the lion needs to roar at least five more times, no longer than two minutes apart, if we’re going to spring this trap,” Middleton said firmly. “Can your people manage that?”
Mrr’shan looked off-pickup and spat something in her people’s crude, guttural language. Almost faster than Middleton could see, her left ‘hand’ lashed out and when it returned to the pickup its claws were coated in a thin layer of blood. A mewling sound came from the direction she had struck out, and the Void Hunter matriarch nodded in apparent satisfaction as she said, “Five roars, once every two minutes—but we can promise no more.”
“Five will do,” Middleton nodded. “Continue your retreat per the instructions I forwarded to you. In eight minutes, we’ll come about for the first exchange. Middleton out.”
He watched as the ring of Imperial Destroyers neared firing range, which they would achieve in the aforementioned eight minutes. His retreat itinerary had called for Mrr’shan’s Corvettes to continue forming into a flattened, oval-shaped formation just offset from center around the Mothership. This new formation of the Void Hunter Corvettes was only going to be able to engage the near third of Destroyers, but the Mothership’s so-called ‘Lion’s Roar’ could clearly reach the Destroyers on the far side of the Imperial formation.
Middleton called up the Independence missile control program and sent the launch codes for all two hundred of the robust platforms to be launched from the third planet’s moon. The course he programmed into them would take them into firing range of the Destroyers opposite those which the Corvettes would eventually be able to engage. His missile launch sequence would send forty Independence-class missiles out every two minutes, with each group of forty targeting a single Imperial Destroyer.
If things went according to plan, and if the Imps didn’t get lucky with what amounted to PD fire from their turbo-lasers, roughly half of those missiles would land hits against each of the five targeted Imperial Destroyers. That volume of concerted fire should, according to his projections, be more than enough to overload their shields long enough for the Lion’s Roar to finish them off.
He had already dismissed the possibility that he could maneuver the Mothership into range of the capital ships in the as-yet unmolested Imperial One group. The enemy commander had already seen it in action, and only a suicidal simpleton would blunder headlong into its range with his high-value assets. He was clearly not up against a simpleton, so even if he held back the Lion’s Roar for later in the engagement the only targets he would likely encounter would be more of these Lupine-class Destroyers. Middleton was therefore convinced that the only way he could leverage the Mothership’s devastating firepower in the remainder of this engagement was to deploy it against those Lupine-class Destroyers.
“Missile launches detected,” Hephaestion confirmed as forty new icons appeared on Middleton’s tactical plotter. The new missiles had been launched from their highly-secretive and heavily-secured silos on the third planet’s second moon, and they surged forward while fanning out in an attempt to minimize the number of Imperial Destroyers whose counter-fire might scrape them off the board before they could be fired.
Sure enough, eight of the thirteen Imperial Destroyers lashed out with an irregular barrage from their turbo-lasers roughly a minute and a half after the missiles had been launched. Two missiles were scrubbed in the first five seconds, then another three went down in the ensuing ten seconds. Three more were destroyed in the next twenty seconds, and finally the aptly-named missiles unleashed their defiance against the Imperial invaders.
Thirty two missiles erupted with a volley of near-perfect timing, sending ninety six heavy laser beams to
ward the enemy Destroyer. Of those ninety six beams, thirty eight landed with enough might and fury to punch straight through its shields and gouge a dozen briefly-molten rents in the Destroyer’s hull. But the crystalline armor over the Destroyer’s was robust enough to keep the damage from being catastrophic, and its commander correctly began to turn the ship in order to present its still-shielded broadside to where its bow had previously faced.
The last thing that ship felt, even before it could complete its defensive turn, was the Lion’s Roar.
The Mothership’s main gun lanced out less than two seconds after the Independence-class missiles fired. The powerful beam stabbed into and through the Destroyer’s unshielded bow before slicing midway toward its stern. Explosions rippled through the ship’s spasming corpse as shield generators overloaded spectacularly; maneuvering thrusters fired randomly, sending the ship into a spinning tumble; and her engines flared off and on for several seconds with nothing resembling coordination, which only served to exaggerate its death throes.
A few seconds after the Mothership’s main gun had fired, the Destroyer went dark and its broken hulk began to fall out of formation with the Imperial wolf pack.
“The Destroyer formation is changing course,” Hephaestion reported tightly. “They are abandoning the high ground and converging on the Mothership—they will reach firing range in two minutes.”
The second wave of missiles erupted from their silos on the third planet’s outer moon. Forty fast-moving weapon platforms were soon streaking toward the second Destroyer on Middleton’s list, and the Imperial wolf pack unleashed counter-fire precisely as it had done to the previous wave.
But this barrage was slightly more effective, snuffing twelve Independence missiles from the void before the twenty eight remaining missiles’ fire converged on the second Destroyer. As with the first Destroyer, this wolf’s forward shields went down as a nearly identical thirty one beams landed—and just like the first Destroyer, the Lion’s Roar destroyed the second one before it could present a fresh shield facing.
“Two down,” Middleton reported as the Destroyers began unleashing fire on the Mothership. Turbo-laser strikes flared on the massive, nearly settler ship-sized vessel’s shields, but the Void Hunters had appropriately adjusted their orientation so that this new fire landed on their full-strength port shields.
The Void Hunter Corvettes were max-burning toward the nearest Destroyers, while the Void Hunter Destroyers did the same. The two Imperial-built, captured Destroyers served as the ‘heavies’ of the Void Hunter formation and lashed out with their turbo-lasers, stabbing into a near enemy’s shields and causing them to drop by thirty percent.
“They would pull back if they could,” Middleton said grimly, “but they’re committed. Establish a p2p relay with Mrr’shan’s Mothership—I want to offer these Imperials the chance to surrender.”
In no way did he expect them to accept, but as a military man he felt it was his duty to offer his opponents the opportunity to lay down their arms before the inevitability of their situation claimed their lives. There was no question that they would cause significant damage to the Void Hunters in the process of standing tall and fighting to the last—likely destroying half of the felines’ warships before they in turn were destroyed—but as one warrior to another, Middleton felt compelled to make the offer.
After Hephaestion had established the p2p relay with Mrr’shan’s ship, Middleton sent a broadcast from that ship’s comm. array just as the third wave of missiles launched from the moon, “This is the Supreme Commander of the Alliance Gorgonus Fleet: I’m going to offer you one chance to strike your reactors, eject your cores, and surrender your ships. If you do so immediately, I’ll spare your lives and see you returned to the Imperial Fleet unmolested. If you tarry,” he hardened his voice as the Independence missiles tore through the void en route to firing on their next target, “you won’t live long enough to understand that this really was your last chance—or that I am genuinely extending this offer in good faith. You have thirty seconds to strike your reactors and emergency eject your fusion cores; if you fail to do so, I’ll oblige you with deaths befitting warriors of your admirably stern resolve. This is AG Fleet Actual—your clock is running.”
It wasn’t exactly a ‘touchy-feely’ communiqué, to be sure, but it was as generous and inviting as Middleton felt at that particular moment.
And, just as he expected, the thirty second window came and went without a single she-wolf striking her reactors. They ignored the incoming missiles and focused their fire on the Mothership, splashing beam after beam against its robust port shields.
The third wave of missiles fired and Middleton called up the missile command interface to issue new orders. If the enemy wasn’t going to use their long guns to snipe the missiles, then he was going to redistribute their firing pattern to maximize their effectiveness. He dedicated twenty five of the fourth wave to fire on the fourth designated Destroyer, while peeling the other fifteen off to lend their support to the Imps on the side of the wolf pack nearest the Void Hunter Corvettes.
The third barrage of forty uncontested missiles landed fifty three strikes—twenty six of which directly struck their target’s hull. That weight of fire was more than sufficient to cause catastrophic power grid failures on the enemy ship and send it into a paralyzed fall out of formation. Atmosphere streamed from the ship, and soon the emergency fusion core ejection protocols released the ship’s beating heart.
Middleton released a pent-up breath in relief when he noted that the Mothership had not wasted a shot on the dead warship. She had brought her bow onto the enemy ship, but quickly resumed a stand-off posture with her port beam presented to the enemy.
The fourth wave of missiles was launched, and the Imperial Destroyers steadfastly—and admirably—continued pouring their fire into the Mothership’s increasingly beleaguered shields. Her port shields dipped below the fifty percent mark as Middleton watched the Independence missiles near firing range.
Suddenly, the wolf pack broke formation. The ships too distant from the Corvettes to fire on the entire formation remained on their previous course, but the half nearest the Void Hunter Corvettes peeled off and attempted to break away from the feline warships.
The Corvettes adjusted course to pursue and it soon became clear that whatever the Void Hunter ships lacked in armaments and robust defenses, they more than made up for with their sprint speed.
Burning their engines deep into the red-line, the felines actually managed to out-flank the seemingly unrivaled Lupine-class Destroyers’ legendary maneuverability. It was a chilling sight to behold, with the seemingly overmatched Corvettes rushing headlong into a fight they had no business entering—let alone winning—with each ship displaying the absurd single-minded focus of a cheetah pursuing a lion on the open plain.
On their present courses, the ships would close to firing range for the felines’ weapons in six minutes—but the Imps were already in range, and made that fact known with a vicious volley which instantly destroyed two feline Corvettes.
The feline Destroyers returned fire, stabbing into the same enemy’s shields which they had previously targeted, but with little to show for it. The deadliness of the Lupine-class was centered on its speed, the range of its guns, and the fact that it was rarely—if ever—deployed in groups of fewer than four identical warships. With sufficient numbers, such as the thirteen in each of the Imperial Battle Groups in this star system, a wolf pack could pick apart even the mightiest of Battleships given enough time.
The fourth wave of missiles soon fired, and forty six of the seventy five beams landed on the fourth Lupine targeted by Middleton. This time, however, the damage was less extreme and the Mothership did unleash the Lion’s Roar. As the Mothership’s emitter cooled, yet another Imperial warship was reduced to a rapidly-expanding cloud of crystalline debris centered on a broken, partially molten keel.
The other fifteen missiles of the fourth wave, which Middleton had re-taske
d with firing on the center-most Destroyer of the group losing the flanking race to the Corvettes, opened fire thirty seconds later and punched through the Lupine’s flank shields. The Void Hunter Destroyers soon added their fire onto the weakened shield facing, and managed a lucky hit on the Imp’s engines which caused it to power down and fall out of formation.
The eight remaining Imperial Destroyers fired their turbo-lasers, with only the two furthest from the Corvettes targeting the Mothership while the rest hammered away on the incoming Void Hunter Corvettes. Another two Corvettes were torn down by concerted fire while a third scrammed its reactor and ejected its core—which promptly exploded and destroyed the very ship which had ejected it.
The twelve remaining Void Hunter Corvettes continued to burn toward the center of the fan-shaped Imperial formation. Those six Imp Destroyers fractionally increased their engine outputs, but it wasn’t enough to keep up with the sprinting Corvettes. As if to demonstrate the risks the Void Hunters were running by pushing their engines so hard, one of them spontaneously suffered a catastrophic engine failure and fell out of formation while the other eleven pressed on toward the remaining Imperial ships.
The fifth and final wave of missiles launched from the third planet’s outer moon, and Middleton was more than a little surprised to hear Hephaestion report, “The fifth Destroyer targeted for missile fire is powering down, Captain—it has just ejected its core. The other is doing the same!”
Middleton confirmed that those two ships had, indeed, fully de-powered and he sent an override code to the incoming twenty five missiles. Thankfully, he managed to send it before they reached the PNR on their fusion drivers and the enemy ships were spared.
The Middle Road (Spineward Sectors: Middleton's Pride Book 7) Page 33
