Mikhain watched as the shuttle pilot pulled instinctively high above the fearsome battle raging between the Raythons before them, seeking the darkness of space high above and the chance to slip away undetected.
Mikhain turned to the tactical display once more and saw the vast hull of Defiance moving above the battle, large enough to encompass the space between Arcadia and Atlantia in one go and casting a huge shadow across the battle as she eclipsed the light from the red dwarf star, an ominous red halo shimmering around the rim of her hull.
Mikhain felt the fury in his guts spark into flame as with one hand he advanced Arcadia’s throttles, and with the other pulled back on the helm. Like a gigantic whale, Arcadia began to raise her bow, pulling out of the plane of battle and rising up toward Defiance’s massive superstructure as an automated warning echoed through the ship.
‘Hull breach, sections nine through eleven. Boarders detected!’
Mikhain smiled grimly as he glanced at an internal schematic scan screen and saw a flood of red spilling into the ship. The Legion were aboard and moving fast, sweeping through the decks in their countless billions as he gripped the controls firmly and kept Arcadia climbing up, her hull now steeply inclined against the cruisers as their broadsides ceased.
A voice rang out across the bridge from Atlantia.
‘Mikhain, what the hell are you doing?!’
Captain Idris Sansin’s voice was full of the volatile tension of battle but also tinged with alarm. Mikhain replied without concern, surprised at how calm his own voice sounded.
‘What should have been done long ago, captain.’
A long silence ensued down the communications channel, punctuated by the crackle and snarl of flames burning in the bridge around Mikhain. With the attacking cruisers now out of plane with Arcadia and unable to fire effectively, and the crew long gone, the relative quiet was almost comforting.
‘Withdraw!’ Idris snapped. ‘Get out of there, Mikhain! There’s nothing else that you can do!’
Mikhain smiled almost wistfully, and felt more at peace now that he had ever done.
‘I guess you’re right, captain. There’s nothing else to be done.’
‘Leap, damn it!’ Idris roared. ‘Get Arcadia out of here!’
Mikhain heard the bridge exits close automatically as the ship’s computers detected the Legion closing in on his position. They sealed off much of the noise coming from elsewhere across the wounded ship, further enclosing Mikhain in a bubble of peace illuminated by the glowing sparks of damaged electrical systems and a soft, flickering light from the ceiling as the power began to fail.
‘I’m leaving,’ Mikhain assured him.
Somehow he knew that Idris would say something else, yell some other command that Mikhain no longer wanted to obey, and so he reached out and shut off the communication system. The bridge fell entirely silent as Mikhain switched off the tactical display and switched the main viewing panel to optical sensors, zero zoom.
The huge expanses of Defiance’s hull swept into view as Arcadia pitched up at a steep angle and climbed away from the battle. Mikhain recalled his service aboard the great carrier, two tours, recalled every detail of her structure and design, including the fact that mid–way between her bow and stern, right beneath her main plasma batteries, were six massive plasma lines linking her weapons to her fusion cores. Heavily shielded, the lines were impervious to plasma fire or even torpedoes.
Mikhain saw Defiance’s surface coated with oceans of surging nanobots, a rippling sheen of velvety black that glowed here and there like burning coals where the ship’s internal lights shone through. The sight was horrific, as was the sudden rush of sound from Arcadia’s bridge doors, like sand falling on metal as Mikhain turned and heard the Legion crash into the far side of the doors.
The doors seemed to ripple suddenly as they were weakened by the force of so many tiny machines burrowing into their surface on the far side. Mikhain saw the metal began to smoulder from the heat generated by the friction of countless thousands of tiny pincers slicing through from the corridor outside, the doors weakening with every passing moment, and then suddenly they failed and a black torrent of Hunters poured into the bridge to the chilling sound of thousands of metal legs drumming on the deck.
Mikhain turned back to the main viewing panel, filled now with the bulk of Defiance’s hull, and he closed his eyes and released the helm as with his left hand he advanced Arcadia’s throttles to maximum.
***
XLI
‘Arcadia’s gone to maximum power!’
Lael’s frantic call sent a chill through Idris’s body and he stood rooted to the spot, his hands gripping the guard rail as he saw Arcadia soar out of the field of battle, pitched vertically as her ion engines flared.
‘Oh Mikhain, what have you done?’ Emma whispered beside him, Lazarus likewise fixated by the tremendous scene.
Defiance’s plasma cannons glowed as they prepared to fire and a sudden hail of plasma soared down toward Arcadia like fiery rain, tearing into the frigate’s hull and leaving bright flaming slashes down her flank as though she had been mauled by the talons of some gigantic beast as she soared upward toward the carrier’s massive hull.
‘No,’ was all that Idris could utter, his voice barely a whisper, and then Arcadia’s bow smashed into Defiance’s lower hull.
The frigate’s massive bow ploughed deep into the carrier, bludgeoning its way through countless decks, forced upward and through the massive ship by the tremendous force of inertia behind her combined with her ion engines blazing at maximum thrust. Defiance pitched sideways dramatically as from the impact point a fearsomely bright flare of released energy blazed like a new born star and the two enormous ships began to roll in a fatal ballet, both of them out of control and with Arcadia’s massive engines still at full power.
Defiance’s broadsides careered wildly out into space as around her the cruisers that had been attacking Arcadia sought to escape the massive ship’s erratic course.
Idris fought to get his mind into gear and his voice working. ‘Helm, bring us to bear!’
‘On what captain?’
Idris could barely believe his own words, but he knew deep down that Mikhain had not attempted to escape the doomed frigate. He glanced at the tactical displays once again and saw that Arcadia’s shields had been deactivated before she had impacted the carrier.
‘On Arcadia,’ he said. ‘Target her fusion cores!’
‘Aye, captain!’
Atlantia heaved over as the helmsman disengaged from the cruisers attacking them and began to reposition. Idris managed to shake himself from his own inertia and grabbed the combat communications console.
‘All fighters prepare to disengage!’
Emma grabbed the captain’s shoulder, concern writ large across her features. ‘If you lose Arcadia your strength will be halved.’
Idris replied without conscious thought, his mind still trying to come to terms with what he had witnessed.
‘If they lose Defiance, they might also lose confidence in their ability to win the battle.’
Idris grabbed the guard rail as another salvo careered off the frigate’s hull and called across to the tactical officer.
‘All power to starboard batteries, hit her with everything we’ve got!’
*
‘Holy crap!’
Teera’s cry echoed across the communications channel as Evelyn squinted against the brilliant flare and explosion as Arcadia ploughed into Defiance amid a glittering cloud of shattered metal fragments that expanded outward from the two mortally wounded vessels as though a galaxy of stars had exploded between them.
Evelyn pulled her Raython around in a tight turn and saw a pirate vessel rocket past her, cannons blazing as it shredded an enemy fighter. The damaged Raython spun over and its engines exploded in a bright fireball that Evelyn was forced to jink to avoid as another cloud of debris rained across her canopy.
She looked again above her to see
Defiance’s cannons fall silent as fires burst into life across her superstructure, Arcadia still powering forward and driving the carrier over onto her side as the thrust from Arcadia’s massive engines forced Defiance into an uncontrollable roll to port.
Captain Sansin’s voice rang out across the airwaves.
‘All fighters prepare to disengage!’
Evelyn found herself transfixed by the sight of Arcadia’s crumpled and burning bow buried deep inside Defiance’s hull, explosions rocking the two vessels as they twisted in their doomed embrace, trailing debris from their wounds as they went.
‘What about Mikhain?!’ Evelyn called. ‘He might have tried to get away!’
Andaim’s voice rang out firmly in reply.
‘Not this time, Eve,’ he said. ‘All fighters, stand by for disengagement to quadrant oh–four–zero, maximum velocity.’
Evelyn gripped her control column more tightly as she saw the Phoenix swoop past in the opposite direction, plasma fire tearing a Colonial Raython apart in a cloud of flame and debris as it did so.
‘Mikhain had it coming Eve,’ Taron yelled jubilantly as the enemy Raython was smashed apart. ‘Let it go.’
Evelyn looked up at the titanic struggle on–going above her as Defiance fired her massive flank thrusters in an attempt to balance out Arcadia’s ion engines, but it was no fight at all. A dense black morass of the Legion’s ranks were swarming to the affected area in an attempt to repair the damage but Evelyn could see that both ships were lost.
‘All fighters, break away now!’
Evelyn angrily hauled her Raython into a tight turn and threw her throttles wide open. The Raython leaped forward gamely as she shot out of the battle zone, Teera’s Raython alongside her and the Phoenix just ahead of them, the powerful freighter’s engines blazing as it accelerated away.
Evelyn twisted around in her seat just in time to see Atlantia’s cannons open fire, a brilliant blaze of plasma streaking across the blackness and smashing into Arcadia’s stern. The massive frigate’s rear quarter vanished amid the vivid explosions, and Evelyn turned away just as the entire ship was consumed by a fireball so bright that it dimmed the light from the red dwarf star as Arcadia’s fusion cores were shattered by the salvo of direct hits.
The power of four small suns was released in an instant, and Evelyn saw from the corner of her eye the two massive spacecraft consumed by the flare of light, the surrounding cruisers reflecting the burst of energy and hit moments later by the tremendous shockwave that rocketed out from the blast. Evelyn’s Raython was jolted from behind as the shockwave smashed past her fighter, a faint ring of light zipping past as the hydrogen atoms of deep space were crushed together and heated by the force of the wave.
The blast wave vanished and Evelyn wasted no time as she pulled up out of the formation of fleeing fighters and over the top of a tight loop, a handful of Raythons and pirate vessels zipping by her as she rocketed back toward the battle. To her amazement the entire formation of capital ships had broken before the force of the blast, and now Defiance and Arcadia remained locked in their death dance, but both ships were consumed by darkness and Defiance had been pushed away from the frigate by the force of the blast. Arcadia’s aft hull was missing entirely, now a lethal cloud of expanding chunks of burning debris and billions of the Legion’s dislodged Hunters, while Defiance’s superstructure was slit roughly half–way down her hull, her gaping interior blackened but intersected by lines of fire still raging through her.
Atlantia was limping away with a trail of sparkling debris and escaping gases behind her, attempting to get clear of the lethal cloud of wreckage. A small cloud of enemy fighters were swooping this way and that around her like flies hovering above a whale, trying to shoot at the damaged sections of her hull.
‘Reaper Squadron, re–engage!’ Andaim called, his Raython following Evelyn’s back into the fray.
The swarm of Raythons and ragged pirate ships rocketed back into the battle and Evelyn opened up on a brace of fleeing Raythons as they swept across Atlantia’s massive burning hull. She saw their plasma shots smash across the damaged surface of the frigate, and she waited with cold and brutal fury a dense ball in the pit of her stomach until they finished their attack and pulled up.
Evelyn already had her aiming reticule in place, and as the first Raython pulled up into her line of sight she fired twice. Both plasma shots blasted across the fighter’s rear quarter and one wing and engine was ripped from her fuselage in a flaming trail of spilling fuel that moments later consumed the craft in a cloud of sparks and fire as though it were a comet bursting through a planetary atmosphere.
The second Raython broke hard right away from its damaged wingman in time for both Teera and Andaim to swoop in and catch it in a terrific crossfire. The fighter burst into a cloud of flaming debris that expanded and flamed out into nothing but cold metal as Evelyn pulled up and over the debris cloud.
‘The cruisers are disengaging!’
Evelyn heard Lael’s call from Atlantia and looked up to see the lumbering cruisers pulling back from Atlantia.
‘The Legion is withdrawing!’ Teera whooped.
Evelyn heard a rush of cheers and cries of delight as the Legion’s fleet began pulling back and regrouping. Evelyn remained silent, watching the cruisers. She could tell that they were merely re–positioning away from the debris field, cautious of the damage they could incur by continuing the engagement so close to it. Many of the pieces of debris from the shattered capital ships were many times larger than Evelyn’s Raython and could potentially puncture even the thick hulls of cruisers if they were hit at a high enough velocity. The ship’s shields were no defence against solid objects.
Captain Idris Sansin’s voice rang out across the channel.
‘All call signs, prepare for battle!’
The cheers and exclamations of joy died out abruptly as Evelyn’s Raython soared overhead Atlantia’s bow, Teera off one wing and a fleet of pirate vessels following them.
The Colonial cruisers were maintaining position ten thousand cubits away, most of them now facing Atlantia and in battle formation. Evelyn thought for a moment that they were going to attempt once again to attack when a flare of light appeared behind them and several more vessels loomed into view.
Evelyn’s heart sank as a pair of Colonial destroyers appeared from super–luminal cruise, flanked by six more cruisers.
***
XLII
Captain Sansin stared across the bridge at the main viewing panel and saw the massive destroyers and cruisers, the rapidly approaching fleet bursting out of super–luminal cruise into an ambush attack.
‘Fleet strength?’ Idris asked, his voice cold and calm.
Lael’s reply was considerably less confident in tone.
‘Two destroyers, by their markings I’d say Illustrious and Conquest, and six cruisers. With the four left from the original engagement, that’s twelve against one. Both destroyers carry a squadron each of Raythons, Phantoms or Corsairs.’ Lael almost sighed. ‘All vessels are at one hundred per cent strength.’
Idris gripped the guard rail tighter and relayed his commands.
‘Bring us about to face them, all power to shields and plasma batteries. Show them a fearless front.’
‘Aye captain,’ the helmsman replied.
‘Captain,’ Lazarus said, ‘you cannot win this battle.’
Idris did not look at the hologram as he replied. ‘I know.’
Lael’s voice broke between them. ‘We’re being signalled, by Defiance.’
Idris glanced across at Lael in surprise, and he absent–mindedly straightened his uniform despite the grime and sweat on his face and the battered state of Atlantia’s bridge.
‘On screen,’ he said.
The main viewing panel flickered and an image of Tyraeus Forge glowered out at them. Defiance’s bridge was in darkness, only a small number of blinking lights illuminating the gloom, and Tyraeus’s gruesome visage was punctured by the red g
low from his metallic eyes as he sneered at Idris.
‘You are defeated,’ he snarled. ‘Your time is done, captain. Surrender, or the rest of my fleet will crush you just as it did the rest of your kind.’
Idris shook his head slowly. ‘I would have thought that by now you’d have realized that surrender isn’t something we’re very good at.’
Tyraeus’ features twisted in fury. ‘There is no reason to fight on! You have already lost one ship and Atlantia is a broadside away from utter destruction!’
Idris nodded, surprised to find himself enjoying the frustration he was causing Tyraeus.
‘Then we’ve still one broadside to go. We’re not done yet.’
Idris whipped one hand across his throat as he looked at Lael, and she shut off the communication channel. Lael glanced at her screens.
‘They’re advancing captain, and charging their plasma batteries.’
Idris sighed and turned to face the main viewing screen, where the Colonial fleet was now visibly moving toward them and spreading out to engage the frigate. He cast a glance at the tactical displays and saw Atlantia’s shields glowing red on the screen, their strength severely depleted and the fusion cores struggling to rebuild the charge. Virtually every plasma cannon on the frigate’s port side was out of commission, and there was every chance that the Legion was still clinging to the hull and trying to enter the ship through the many damaged sections that were sealed off.
Idris turned as General Bra’hiv limped onto the bridge, one arm over Lieutenant C’rairn’s shoulder and the other over Qayin’s massive form as the three Marines moved to stand in front of the command platform.
‘A tremendous effort, general,’ Idris said with transparent admiration. ‘From you and from all of your men.’
Defiance (Atlantia Series Book 5) Page 28
