Eagle (Jacob Hull)

by Debenham, Kindal

  “Well, we have no interest in making you serve us. We have no interest in killing you either, though you are all in a position where it would be easy for us. There has been enough war, enough killing, and we never asked for, or wanted, any of it. Our cause has triumphed here, thanks to your own hatred and blind ambitions, but that is not enough for me.”

  Jacob looked directly into the pickup, hoping his words would reach whoever was watching him on the other side. He made sure his words carried the seriousness of his message. “We want this to be over now so we can be free to enjoy our rights and liberties in peace. We don’t want to have to worry about Telosian raiders, San Marcos saboteurs, or Oduran invasion forces showing up on our doorstep any more. So I hope you will listen to me very, very carefully, because I will only extend this offer once. If you want to live, if you have any desire to survive the next encounter with my forces, you will lay down your arms, surrender, and agree to the terms of a peace treaty that ends the war between us. You may even leave with our blessing if you promise you will never again declare war against us. Otherwise, within the next half hour, I will begin to destroy your forces, and I won’t stop until every single one of you is dead.

  “Jacob Hull, out.”

  The projection unit shut down, and Jacob let out a long breath. Then he looked around the rest of the command center, not knowing what he expected to see.

  His officers stared at him. Some showed surprise; others resentment. Most, however, were filled with sudden hope an excitement, and as Jacob returned to his command chair, they murmured to each other at their stations. One of them spoke up. “Sir, we have an urgent signal from Captain Bellworth on the Kay.”

  Jacob winced. He could already guess what Isaac wanted to discuss. “Tell him I need to focus on what the Odurans are doing and have him continue to hold formation.”

  The officer nodded, clearly unhappy, but Jacob turned back to his fleet. He arranged Isaac’s cruisers further back to give them the chance to hit the enemy in the flank again if they tried to charge. He hoped his friend wouldn’t try to take the initiative on his own and start launching missiles.

  He looked back over the damage reports from the rest of his fleet. Unfortunately, there were plenty. Nearly every remaining ship had taken some form of damage, though most had been able to avoid destruction thanks to the extra armor. Those that weren’t so lucky were now being evacuated or had already joined the mass of debris scattered throughout the system. As he looked at those ships, he saw a fleet that had been pushed to the edge. There was no doubt they’d won here, but Jacob knew how close it had been. A catastrophe could have happened if anything more had turned against them.

  Eagle itself was the prime example. The flagship’s bow had been so mangled he doubted it would survive another head-on attack against the Odurans. Very little of its forward armor remained, and damage reports were still pouring in from all over the ship. Captain Martino had already warned him that if they took another missile hit, the entire ship would need to be abandoned. It wasn’t the most promising evaluation a ship commander could give their superior officer, but Jacob knew it was what he needed to hear—and many of the other ‘ironsides’ weren’t much better off. Shipyards throughout the Union were going to be busy after this fight.

  “Sir, we have movement.” The officer gestured at the tactical display of the command center, and Jacob looked up from his reports. Yeseti’s last dreadnaught was leaving behind the rest of their formation and moving carefully to the mouth of the passage nearest Jacob’s forces. All of the remaining Oduran craft had formed up and trailed the flagship, leaving none to act as a rearguard if Leon came roaring through. Jacob’s heart beat faster as Yeseti’s dreadnaught left the passage, moving at a slow, non-threatening pace, while the remainder of her forces stayed sheltered in the dark matter. Yeseti had her dreadnaught’s rad masts extended, a clear bid for parlay, which he hoped boded well.

  Jacob stood when the communication officer motioned to him. He nodded, and Admiral Yeseti appeared, flanked by Governor Carmichael and Admiral Sessors. None of them looked especially happy; in fact, Yeseti looked as if she wanted to claw at the bulkheads with her bare hands. Carmichael looked haughty; as if he was using hollow contempt to shield his utter desperation. Sessors, for his part, was openly downcast; obviously the high-born Oduran had little practice at remaining composed in the face of defeat.

  Yeseti began without preamble, biting her words off with a vicious snarl. “To High Admiral Jacob Hull, of the Celostian Navy, this is High Admiral and Captain Elite of the Grand Alliance fleet, Ilyena Yeseti.” She paused, and then continued as if the words were being dragged from her voice-box unwillingly. “I am forced by your superior position and armaments to concede defeat. My forces will surrender our arms to you, so long as you can restrain yourselves from mercilessly slaughtering our people. I have little faith in your words, but I hope even you would allow a defeated foe passage back to their own territory.”

  Her face twisted in a snarl of hatred. “Yet do not be deceived; it is not the justice of your cause or the rightness of your intentions that has given you this victory. Your fleet possesses superior arms we were not able to match, and your underhanded tactics have given you every advantage. Our cause will continue, our alliance will continue, and our efforts to resist and turn back Celostian aggression will also continue, so long as our nations live. This defeat cannot and will not change that fact.”

  As Yeseti continued, and Jacob felt his hands curl into fists. Anger burned at the edges of his focus. “We will give you no promise to end this war—for we will have our vengeance whatever threats you level—and if you hold our lives hostage for that promise, then we will fight you to the last ship. No treaty under such circumstances can be honorably made, and we are willing to die—taking as many of you with us as we can—rather than surrender to such tyranny.”

  “High Admiral Yeseti, of the Grand Alliance, out.”

  Jacob took a few moments to calm his feelings. The words had been calculated act of defiance, one that would have been broadcast to both fleets in order to harden her crews’ resolve. She’d spurned the offer of peace he’d extended. He unclenched his fingers, and looked over at the tactical display. For a long moment, he studied the ships that hung there in space. His gaze went not just to the craft that were still moving. Dozens of ships lay without power or in pieces throughout the system. Could he allow the battle to be over with that? Was he willing to risk more to force Yeseti’s hand?

  The other officers in the command deck were watching Jacob now; everything had gone still. Murmured reports filled the background, but they were distracted instead of the focused and clear conversations Jacob was used to. He looked back at the officers, meeting the eyes of the few who watched him openly, and he saw determination and support in those gazes. They were ready to fight, still, and he realized he was making a terrible choice. They could risk their lives now or in some future day when the war continued.

  Then he turned his attention back to the communication board and gestured to the officer. When the light came on, Jacob let his voice come out hard and unyielding. “Jacob Hull to the ships of the Grand Alliance. Our battle will continue.”

  Someone let out a curse in the command center, but Jacob did not allow himself to be distracted. “You have heard my terms, and I will not choose to withdraw them. You will not leave this place unless you submit to the conditions I have given you. If this war must continue, then I would rather kill you here, when I have you dead to rights, than take my chances at some later battle. Any vessel or crew willing to submit to my terms—who would choose to swear for an honest peace rather than continuing this war—may still surrender. Otherwise, you will be destroyed.”

  Jacob paused to let the reality of those words to settle in, and then he continued. “I will allow you to return to your forces. You will have one hour to reconsider your refusal of my terms, and then we will resume our attack. I hope your decision will be wiser than your previo
us poor choices. Jacob Hull, out.”

  When the transmission ended, Jacob turned to gauge the reaction of his officers. He had no chance to do so, however, before the officer at the tactical station shouted. “Sir, we have multiple missile launches from the enemy flagship! They’re targeting us!”

  Jacob swore and hurled himself toward his command chair. From that spot he could see a whole constellation of missile contacts branching out from Yeseti’s ship. Every single one of them was curving in toward the Eagle, while the opposing dreadnaught started to draw in its radiation masts and pull back. One look told Jacob all he needed to know; there was no hope of avoiding the salvo and only a small chance of surviving it. He braced himself. “All nonessential personnel, report to the escape pods. I repeat, all nonessential personnel—”

  He cut off when the tactical officer gasped, and the display suddenly burst with new information. Right where the missiles had started to curve back towards the Eagle, a cruiser had suddenly jumped into existence. The Kay appeared in a brilliant flare of dark energy that shoved the courses of the missiles out of line; flechettes scattered from the cruiser as if the ship was throwing off sparks. Even as those countermeasures started to take effect, the Kay dove toward the enemy dreadnaught. Isaac’s ship made a heart-stopping firing run that took it so close to the enemy some of the automatic defensive turrets started to snap at each other.

  Before the dreadnaught’s guns could react, the Kay fired a single, brilliant spray of plasma from its lance. The thermonuclear fire speared straight through the heart of the vessel, searing through the armor as if it had been a mere dream. Plasma burst back out of the hole; at least one reactor had been breached. Even as the damage hit home, the railguns of the Kay opened up in precise, devastating bursts that ripped apart the radiation masts still struggling to retract, gutting the ship’s ability to rid itself of the waste heat created by its many systems. Then, to top off the damage already done, all four missile bays let loose a concentrated salvo that smashed into the dreadnaught’s bow, each projectile exploding within meters of each other.

  That final blow was the last straw. The blasts actually separated the front of the dreadnaught from the rest of it, flipping a curved section away into space like a discarded bottlecap. Atmosphere gushed out of the catastrophic opening that wound created, catching fire and creating a secondary blast that rocked the rest of the ruined warship. As the Kay struggled to accelerate away, escape craft burst from the dreadnaught. Moments after that, an entire wave of shuttles launched, heading back toward the shelter of the remnants of Yeseti’s task force.

  Left behind, the dreadnaught continued to burn with more secondary explosions occasionally causing further damage to the wreck. Its missile salvo, deprived of remote guidance from the dreadnaught and snarled by the wave of dark energy in the Kay’s arrival, self-detonated in useless explosions that came nowhere near Jacob’s flagship. Jacob let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding, and then the communications officer spoke up.

  “Sir, another transmission from the Kay. This one is going out to all ships.”

  “Put it on.” Jacob waited, and then Isaac’s cold tones came over the speakers. There was no trace of victory in his tone, only the lethal promise the destruction he’d just wrought was a sign of things to come.

  “This is Captain Isaac Bellworth of the Celostian Navy, commander of the CNS Kay. You have just witnessed the utter destruction of your task force’s flagship, just as you’ve already seen the destruction of most of your fleet by our forces.

  “Let those casualties be your warning. Unless you surrender immediately, every single one of you will die. Your air will run out, your ship will fall to pieces around you, and only the lucky ones will reach escape pods or shuttles in time. Surrender now and accept a peace treaty, or we will kill you. Captain Bellworth, out.”

  Jacob worked some moisture back into his mouth. Isaac’s thirst for vengeance had obviously not been satisfied, and Jacob was suddenly glad he had let the man retain his command. The communications officer looked up again and tapped his console meaningfully. A text message popped up on Jacob’s console, forwarded by the officer, and he read it slowly.

  See? I can do diplomacy too. –Isaac

  Fighting a grim smile, Jacob shrugged his feelings aside and turned to the tactical display just in time to see the first ships start to break away from the Oduran fleet. They were mostly smaller craft—nothing larger than a destroyer—but they reversed their orientation and sped away toward the opposite end of the passage. Broadcasts of surrender started coming in a moment later, as soon as those ships were out of the reach of their former comrades.

  Jacob grunted. At the very least, Isaac’s message had gotten through to some of the enemy. “Inform Captain Nivrosky he is to accept their surrenders and begin to offload their crews. I want every single one of them to shut down their DE sails and evacuate their ships.” He turned his attention back to where Admiral Yeseti’s remaining forces were attempting to form up in some sort of battle line. Their numbers were pitifully small compared to what they had been before, but they still had several cruisers. If they chose to fight, it would be a nasty exchange, no matter what advantages Jacob’s battered force enjoyed.

  The next hour passed quickly. Aboard Jacob’s ships, the Celostian crews worked hard to repair what battle damage they could. Jacob sent frigates to search for survivors aboard the various wrecks in the system. He ordered them to start with the ships from his own task force first; they were the ones that held his first priority, especially when it was only the pure stubbornness of Yeseti and her ilk that kept them from being able to deploy all of his ships to recover the dead and wounded.

  A signal came in from Leon, reporting the Odurans were eagerly laying down their arms on his side of the passage. He received reports from Marine boarding crews as they swept through the ships, and many of them seemed to find the abandoned ships strange as they cleared them. None of the surrendered ships proved treacherous, as Jacob had worried. He smiled at the news; they would now have plenty of Oduran ships to turn to their own use.

  While he waited, Jacob began to arrange his forces more steadily for the attack. The Crown-class cruisers he placed near the mouth of the passage. Despite the battering they’d already taken, those ships were his most sturdy cruisers, and they would be able to meet any Oduran charge with ease. They also carried the torpedoes Jacob could use to flush the Odurans out of their hiding spot within the passage, so placing them where they could employ those weapons seemed prudent.

  The Knight-class cruisers he used to anchor his upper and lower flanks where they could sweep past the Odurans as they charged and put their lethal plasma lances to work. As Isaac had already demonstrated, those lances could make short work of virtually anything the Odurans had, and Jacob was sure the enemy wasn’t looking forward to a repeat demonstration.

  Jacob placed the frigates he had left with the Knight-class ships, while he used the destroyers, with their heavier armor, with the Crown-class cruisers. The corvettes he placed to the left and right, a little further back from the battle line, where they would be shielded from enemy fire but able to sweep in to strike a flank or take the enemy from behind as needed.

  Eagle he reluctantly placed behind the Crown-class cruisers. While her firepower would have made her useful, the dreadnaught’s armor had already taken too much damage, and Yeseti had already proved her intention to destroy the ship at all costs. Jacob couldn’t afford to risk such a valuable asset, especially when he enjoyed such an overwhelming advantage, but he could not help but feel a little unhappy he wasn’t sharing the same risks the rest of the fleet was facing. Not the wisest attitude for someone with flag rank, but Jacob had the feeling he would never quite shake it.

  The Odurans, for their part, had spent their time trying to rebuild something of a combat formation—not an easy task in the confines of the narrow channel they occupied. Of their eighteen remaining cruisers, eight had been Brute-class ships, m
eant for close range fighting. Those ships Yeseti had placed at the front of her formation, while the ten Scythe-class craft were located further back. Her corvettes and frigates were placed at the front, near the Brute-class ships, while the destroyers hung back with the rest.

  Jacob shook his head at the formation. Yeseti had placed all her ships according to their offensive capabilities rather than how they could best survive the coming attack. Her formation, cramped and constricted as it was, only meant her Scythe-class cruisers had an even smaller chance of returning fire if Jacob started shooting torpedoes through the channel. Not that they had much chance of doing anyway, but now all they could do was die last as the torpedoes roared through.

  The time had nearly run out on the deadline for the surrender of the enemy when the Oduran ships started to move. They were accelerating slowly, but surely, toward the entrance to the passage. Jacob watched them come, and then glanced at the timer that marked the minutes—seconds now—until he had promised to open fire. Then he touched a control to send a signal to the enemy. “High Admiral Hull to Oduran and San Marcos warships. Surrender now, or we attack.”

  There was no response from Yeseti’s ships—in fact, the Oduran craft began to accelerate even faster, as if they wanted to reach attack range before the deadline expired. Jacob wasn’t about to give them the chance, however. His next signal went to the Crown-class ships. “All cruisers in formation Beta, ready torpedo salvo. All ships, follow with a missile salvo.” He paused, and his eyes went to the enemy formation, still accelerating, still silent. Jacob let his voice grow cold. “Fire.”

  The Crown-class ships unleashed their torpedoes in a staggered burst, planned to allow the high-speed projectiles to enter the channel without striking each other. They shot toward the incoming Oduran craft, who began futile attempts to evade or decoy the deadly attack. Flares were shot off, flechettes deployed in response, but the countermeasures were hampered by the Oduran’s cramped formation and inability to maneuver in the passage. Of the nearly thirty torpedoes, only six wandered off target. The remainder sliced straight through the vanguard of the Oduran formation with devastating results.