Battle Force

by Shane Lochlann Black

  Vadac’s gamble had paid off, at least so far. His decision to engage the heavier Argent in a place where she would have no choice but to dive into the Kraken Nebula to avoid the battlecruiser’s lethal disruptor banks also prevented Hunter from launching fighters or gunships to strike back. It was as daring as it was brilliant, and the Sarn captain was intent on pushing his advantage to the limit.

  Argent’s HAVOC anti-proton weapons flashed and growled, detonating proximity bursts in the path of the oncoming aggressor. Fiery energy trailed from the Sarn vessel’s battlescreens, but still she closed range.

  “XO, do we have a launch window?” Captain Jason Hunter barked.

  “Negative, skipper. Too much disruption from the nebula. Our fighters can’t maintain a drive field in this chaos!”

  Hunter pounded a fist on the arm of his command chair. It was true he had powerful weapons at his command, but without her star wing, his warship was at best about 30% combat-effective. After the surprise attack, his escorts were pinned outside the approach. They could move to support the Rho Theta region, but they would never be able to find their flagship in the Kraken Effect. Argent was going to have to fight this one alone.

  “Commander, remind me to start the next fight in a place of our choosing,” Hunter deadpanned.

  Commander O’Malley chuckled as he held the steady bars over the force command station. “Very good, sir.”

  “Zony what are the chances we can slip under this guy?” Hunter shouted. The din of the intra-field cavitation was starting to overwhelm the crew’s ability to hear each other.

  “Iffy at best!” Lieutenant Commander Tixia shouted. “I can turn up the volume on our countermeasures, but the frequency drift is interfering with our standard patterns. Every time we establish a screen, we get easier to see on the flip side, even with the Effect. We’ve got to get back into open space to reach full capability again!”

  “Tactical?”

  “Not a chance,” Zony replied.

  Hunter grabbed the gray handset off the conn overhead rack. “Weps, this is Charlie Oscar. Report.”

  “I hope you’re not listening to all that advice about running for calm waters, cap!” Lieutenant Devin Leach snapped. He was busy tuning the starboard batteries to the upper end of the particle mix. “Get me toe to toe with that sonofabitch and we’ll knock him flat.”

  Hunter watched the viewscreen carefully for any hint of what was going on in his ship’s course wake. He knew the enemy vessel was close, but without clear targeting, there was no way to tell for sure what was going on out there.

  “What’s your plan, Weps? We gonna eyeball him into the sights?”

  “Give me Zony’s best guess on bearing, put him off our port lead and hope he takes the bait.”

  “And then what?”

  “With your permission, sir, we’ll pound him into premium wreckage.” Leach slammed the commit bar for four of his eight primary cannon. The weapons were now overloaded by capacitance and their particle mixes were tuned so high they would be firing beams that would turn unstable only a half-mile out. Not the most surgical or conventional style for the HAVOC main guns, but definitely a way to turn a boxing match into a bloodsoaked knife fight between psychotic cannibals in short order.

  “Spin them up, Weps. One way or another we’ll climb back into direct fire range.” Hunter hung up the handset. “If I order an intercept course, what’s your best guess, signals?”

  Zony glanced at her proximity scope. It was as haywire as everything else at her station, but it was one of those antique pieces of equipment the young part-human officer preferred. She couldn’t be entirely sure, but she suspected it was reading a vessel trying to round its target’s course. If Argent hurried, she could accelerate into the smaller ship’s turn, and catch it out of position, likely halfway between weapon cycles.

  “Three forty mark five. If we get there quick, sir, we get our choice of teddy bears.”

  “You heard the lady, pilot. Hard a larboard, all ahead flank two!” As the huge battleship rolled back to port, a bolt of volatile energy snaked through the colorful clouds of ionized plasma and radiation and detonated against Argent’s forward screens. The warship smashed through the explosion of magnetic disruption and accelerated directly into the teeth of the storm. Her batteries rose like angry serpents once again, swerving to port as Zony’s estimated point of intercept came into range. “Stay frosty, tactical,” Hunter muttered.

  “Firing range, sir” Zony reported.

  “Visual acquired!” Tyndall shouted. “Extreme ECM inversion! Point eight!”

  “Signals?”

  “Affirmative, sir! Acquisition! Tropical Five bearing zero one zero at fifteen thousand miles!”

  “Lock it up, tactical!” Hunter grabbed the headset again. “Fire as she bears!”

  The lights on the bridge dimmed as the first two primaries opened up again on the diving target. Bolts of barely-controlled energy exploded from Argent’s main guns again and again. The first reacted with an ionized hydrogen-chlorine cloud and detonated into a massive shockwave of fast-moving fire that filled space with a spidery electrical conflagration. The second screamed through the deflection zone, on for lateral angle but high. The proximity explosion crashed into the battlecruiser’s weak-side shields, superheating them to dangerous levels.

  Vadac’s locked barricade disruptor banks returned fire. The Sarn warship’s weapons only managed to intensify the hydrogen fire engulfing the two ships. Another wave of explosive energy blasted through the Kraken Nebula. It was the space equivalent of two drunk men fighting in a burning building. Whisper-white lances of disruptor energy pierced the firestorm, but Argent held her ground. She returned fire again, and again. Main battery energy flashed over the dorsal hull of the Sarn ship. The battleship’s fourth war shot slammed into the Krelex’s starboard quarter. A bone-shattering explosion threw the smaller vessel into a roll moments before a white-hot discharge of ionized hydrogen crashed through its drive field like a roaring river.

  “Direct hit!” Lieutenant Dohey shouted from the tactical station. “Tropical Five maneuvering thrusters are damaged. She is still underway on main drive.”

  “Targeting alarm!” McInerney shouted.

  “Confirmed, captain!” Zony added. “They have a 20% effective waveform!”

  “Evasive dive larboard side! Helm! Delta fifteen from intercept! Mark! Ahead emergency flank!”

  “Too late!” the XO shouted.

  Aboard the Krelex, the bridge crew was operating at top precision. A jangling alarm went off at the tactical station. “All missiles locked on target!” the first scale shouted.

  Vadac leaped to his clawed feet. “Fire!”

  The Sarn battlecruiser’s capital racks went into full operation. A wave of deadly birds were in space in a matter of seconds and slicing through the Kraken Effect towards Argent’s leading edge.

  “Missiles in space! Vampire vampire!” Dohey shouted. “Sixteen weapons in track.”

  “Hold your turn, pilot! Bring our starboard point defense to bear. Port engines back full.”

  McInerney shifted her controls and set the independent throttles on two of Argent’s eight powerful engines, allowing them to pull the mighty battleship’s port edge away from the oncoming missiles and bring them into the starboard firing arc for her banks of Oerlikon quad-mount proton cannons. Although she was maneuverable, a war of positioning and fast flying favored the Sarn vessel, which was likely the reason Vadac had introduced missiles into the fight in the first place.

  Five quad-barrel point cannon snapped left, drawing targeting information from Argent’s sophisticated SRS banks. They twitched up and back and side to side, simultaneously trying to anticipate and follow the diving and slashing maneuvers of the inbounds. With the range down to only a few hundred miles, the forward-most point defense cannon finally acquired and opened fire on the leading missiles. The Sarn birds were sophisticated, but between the unstable energy, interference and destruct
ive wall of energy weapon fire, only six got through. Hunter’s bridge pitched to starboard, throwing everyone against their shock harnesses. Impacts tore and slashed at Argent’s quarter lead battle screens, throwing orange-white blooms into space one by one, but the shields held.

  Unfortunately for the Sarn captain, the few seconds delay the battlecruiser needed to get its missile attack off closed the range for the much larger ship’s main battery. Now all eight of Hunter’s HAVOC guns had a track on enemy contact Tropical Five, and Hunter’s new weapons officer took full advantage.

  Skywatch Citadel-class hull 740 exploded in high energy discharges as her entire main battery went to full cycle fire. The first three shots peeled wide, forcing the battlecruiser to veer away and draw her own firing arcs out of their effective alignments. Shot four was on for deflection, but low. Shot five missed. Shot six detonated only a half-mile from the enemy cruiser’s aft section, knocking out her main engines at a crucial moment. Her attempt at an evasive maneuver lost power just in time for shot seven to disintegrate her auxiliary starboard shields.

  “Direct hit two on enemy vessel’s starboard edge!” Zony shouted.

  With atmosphere and drive plasma trailing, the Sarn vessel somehow managed to restore engine function. Within moments, she was accelerating away from her opponent.

  “Tropical Five is disengaging, sir.” tactical officer Dohey reported.

  “I recommend we pursue and take her a prize, captain,” O’Malley said. “No telling what stories they’ll have for the empire when they get clear of the interference.”

  “At any other time, I would agree, XO. But we’ve been fortunate. I’m down my battle group and my star wing. When I’m one lion, I don’t want to attract two hyenas. Pilot, plot a least-time course for Repeater Five. I want to know what the status is on Cavalier Ten and our rescue corvette.”

  “A least-time course puts us north of the Far High waypoint. We’re going to need time to get back to repeater Five, and our engine power is down 40%.”

  “We don’t have a choice. We can’t track anything in this soup. Get us there as fast as you can, Yolanda. Zony, secure from general quarters. XO, you have the conn. I’m going to engineering.”

  Twenty-One

  “I have no information, sir. All I can tell you is the distress signal was transmitted by a station identifier that had a confirmed Skywatch auto-react. Either they’ve broken our encryption somehow, or they are using stolen fleet equipment with inside knowledge of some kind,” Lieutenant Boyle reported.

  “Why the Marique Lex?” Walsh wondered out loud. “Something tells me I should understand what I’m seeing, but these dots don’t connect. First we have unidents wandering around in Core Space off Rho Theta. Then we get two distress calls. One from the station. A second from a supposed downed fighter. The unidents never come back, but then we make contact with a ship that has no known origin.”

  “New contacts!” the tactical officer shouted. “Battle computer reports six vessels in track. Identified as Wildcat fighter formation Cavalier Ten operating off the Argent.”

  “And there’s the captain’s rescue formation right on time,” Walsh said. “Signals, establish LOS with that formation and send Commander Argent my regards. Transmit our telemetry for the last two hours and provide their flight leader with the best sitrep you can, I’m–”

  “Sir, I have an incoming signal.”

  “Source?” Walsh asked.

  “Can’t say for sure. It appears to be coming from the Mycenae Ceti system.”

  “Direct communications from a neighboring star system?” Boyle wondered out loud. “How–?”

  “On screen.”

  The bridge crew of the starship Rhode Island needed a few seconds to get their bearings. What they were witnessing went far beyond anything they had experienced before. The signal seemed to be coming from a deep space probe of some kind operating in concert with one of the spherical ships they had detected in the telemetry from Repeater Five. This one was quite a bit heavier, however. Walsh guessed it was in at least the three million ton range. In formation with the enormous alien vessel were two Sarn Invector destroyers. They were all in geosync orbit over what appeared to be one of M-Ceti Four’s moons. Boyle suspected the obvious and her captain confirmed it for her.

  “They’re allied with that faction,” Walsh said. He took a breath to speak and froze as the rest of his bridge officers gasped. The alien vessel opened fire on the moon’s surface with some kind of impossibly bright proton beam. The intense weapon ripped through space again and again, tearing massive chunks out of the moon’s surface. Secondary explosions crawled over the impact craters. Walsh and Boyle both suspected there were ground stations or some kind of military batteries there. A few moments later, heavy beam weapons returned fire from the impact zones. Whatever was down there wasn’t giving up without a fight.

  What Walsh couldn’t get over was the fact all this was being broadcast from several light years away. The only way they could be getting this signal would be if either the aliens were using Skywatch jump gates or if they had their own. Either way, it was bad news for the task force. If this new faction was numerous, Strike Fleet Athena could very easily be flying directly into a disastrous trap.

  Not far away, the bridge crew of the starship Minstrel were witnessing the same battle. They had been first to make contact with Argent’s twin cruiser escorts only minutes before they started receiving the startling transmission from the neighboring star system.

  “What in blazes is that thing?”

  “I don’t know, Cal,” Lieutenant Winchester replied. “But I sure hope they don’t have more than one.”

  “Why are Sarn destroyers working with a ship that is firing on their own moon? That’s M-Ceti Four. That planet was last reported populated with Sarn civilians!”

  “That is very good question, signals,” Winchester said. “Out of my pay grade, but still a good question.”

  “What do we do, sir?” Finn asked.

  “We defer to the captain of the Black Prince, pilot. He is the ranking officer in the sector at the moment. Meanwhile, we hope the captain can complete her mission aboard the Proximan station, otherwise this whole operation might be for nothing.”

  Twenty-Two

  Hunter sat alone in the Argent executive conference. This time there was no tennis ball, and whatever self-doubt there had once been had been replaced with a combination of resolve and rage.

  “Darya Komanov reporting as ordered, sir.”

  “Have a seat, major,” Hunter said without taking his eyes off the display. “That will be all, corporal.” The battalion marine closed the door. The huge reactive crystal screen was replaying the attack on M-Ceti Four’s moon, which Argent had picked up on course for the Rho Theta frontier.

  Komanov sat near Hunter’s end of the table. The captain let a few moments pass and then swiveled to face the intelligence officer.

  “I know you were ordered to keep quiet about this, but it’s out in the open now, so I want to know what we’re dealing with before I fly six thousand fleet and marines into harm’s way.”

  “Powers wants the alliance between the Kraken Decarchy and the Sarn Star Empire disrupted,” Komanov said.

  “Just like that?” Hunter asked, raising his eyebrows. “Won’t an outright attack cause them to just close ranks?”

  “Not if we show we can engage the World Burner and win.”

  “World Burner?”

  “It’s a power source built around a super-heavy proton beam. Slow. Not very maneuverable. But with escorts it can destroy just about anything it can see, including fortified ground batteries and surface formations.”

  “Where do you people come up with this stuff?” Hunter asked, leaning back and contemplating the pattern on the ceiling. “I need a lot more tonnage to go after a ground assault platform like that. Black Prince and Montpelier are a start, but after that I’m short on heavies. We are supposed to be hitting supply lines!”

&nb
sp; “That was our mission until Powers got the heads up about this thing, and before we found out the president’s daughter may be trapped on M-Ceti Four. We still have to bust up those supply lines.”

  “So let’s be clear here,” Hunter said. “I have to fight my way through the arm, beat the Sarn, beat whatever built that monster out there, then beat the monster, all so I can get my marines down on M-Ceti Four and rescue whatever these bastards are trying to kill, and while I’m at it, I have to disrupt this new alliance?”

  Komanov didn’t hesitate. “That is correct, sir. And we’re running out of time.”

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