On Stillman’s order, 2nd Fleet’s 345 Raptors peeled away from their attack runs on the enemy carriers to go after the cat fighters attacking Stillman’s heavies. Only about 30% of the Raknii missiles got through the deceptions and two-thirds of those that did, fell to 2nd Fleet’s ship’s potent point-defense weaponry... lasers, charged-particle beams and Hail Storm defense systems. Still, that left over 70 high-yield, anti-ship missiles having shape-charged explosive warheads impacting on Ben Stillman’s 15 heavy warships, with devastating effect.
* * * *
In spite of the incredible depth of her nickel-iron armor, Rear Admiral Stacy Irwin’s flagship, CSS Behemoth, was taking a hell of a beating. With one-third of the incoming cats’ fighter-borne heavy anti-ship missiles targeted at her and virtually all of the cat’s cruiser fire targeted solely at her single asteroid-battleship, Behemoth lost over 80% of her energy weapons turrets and experienced atmospheric breaches in three compartments. Her damage control parties were fighting dozens of internal fires, two of which were considered major, and one that was approaching the reactor rooms. Fortunately, the great ship’s thick armored drive doors hadn’t been penetrated yet, so if they could get that one worrisome fire extinguished, Behemoth would survive a while longer.
“Admiral, all of our ECM masts and most of our point-defense weaponry near the surface have been knocked out,” stated Irwin’s Flag-Captain Roger Cameron. “We’ve lost most of our exterior weapons turrets and have 53 dead and 182 wounded aboard. Don’t you think it’s time for us to throttle back and let one of our sister ships take over playing the catnip bag for a while?”
The question irritated Irwin, as she’d been considering that very thing, but hadn’t yet figured out a way to pull it off. “How might you suggest we do that exactly, Captain Cameron?” Irwin asked snippily. “Do you really want to open our drive doors in the midst of this firestorm we’re in? How long do you think it would take for the cats to shove a few dozen 11-gigawatt plasma balls up our ass if we turned and lifted our tail for them with those doors open?”
Captain Cameron? Roger Cameron knew that he’d stepped in it, when the admiral became formal like that. Still, he doubted how much longer his monstrous ship could survive the ungodly pounding she’d taken over the past few hours.
“We still have a few maneuvering thrusters left, Admiral,” Cameron answered. “We can use them to slow ourselves enough to let Leviathan and Gargantuan take the lead and shield us from the worst of it, without opening our doors or exposing our tail to the cats.”
“God damn it, Roger!” Irwin thundered. “We have never lost a battle to these pussies, and I don’t intend to be the first officer in the Confederate Fleet that does!”
“I’m not saying anything about losing anything, Admiral. We still have a couple of laser comm channels that are still functional, so you can still direct the battle from a more rearward position.”
“I can’t direct what I can’t see!” Irwin screeched in exasperation. “We only have three search antennas for our scanners left, that haven’t already been blown away.”
“All the more reason to drop back and let Leviathan and Gargantuan take the brunt of this, Admiral,” replied Cameron. “If we lose those antennas, you’re effectively blind and won’t be able to direct anything!”
Stacy Irwin bit off the next retort that she had ready to explode. Stacy, quit being an ass. Roger is right, goddamnit!
Irwin sighed and said, “All right, Roger, you’re right. I don’t have to like it, but you’re right. Advise Leviathan and Gargantuan what we’re doing and why, and drop us back.”
* * * *
“Admiral, message incoming on the spook channel! It says there are approximately 20,000 cat corvettes approaching our carriers, coming out from Slithin.”
Admiral Ben Stillman reeled at this chilling news, like a sharp slap in the face.
Damn! Those little shits may be small, but they have ungodly numbers of them, and our carriers and destroyers are vulnerable to those little popguns of theirs.
“Advise our carriers and their escorts to retire back towards us at maximum speed. They should be able to outrun them.”
“Aye, aye, Admiral!”
Dorothy Fletcher-Stillman, Ben’s wife and captain of the Defiant, was below with the damage control parties. As the largest ship, Defiant had taken the lion’s share of that heavy missile attack from those cat fighters and the great gray lady was hurt, and hurt badly. Ben had lost four light cruisers and a heavy cruiser to that initial attack, but his remaining cruisers all had varying amounts of damage, with Defiant probably having incurred the worst of what was left of them. They certainly couldn’t stand up to another attack like that last one.
The Raptors hadn’t arrived in time to prevent almost 800 cat fighters from launching their missiles at his fifteen heavy warships. The last time they’d tangled with the Raknii at Kitty Litter almost three years earlier, that cats hadn’t possessed carriers, fighters, missiles or any energy weapons of sufficient size that could threaten humanity’s cruisers, except for stern-shots.
The cats are definitely learning.
Fortunately the Raptors had managed to chase down and destroy about half of those attacking fighters with short bursts from their chain-guns and with the havoc their Demons were reaping on the fleeing cat carriers, only a few rearmed cat fighters tried penetrating the Raptor screen now circling protectively around Ben’s crippled cruiser squadron.
“Have our carriers route 100 Demons to keep the pressure up on those cat carriers and then come provide top-cover for us after their release,” Stillman directed his communications officer. “That way I can release our Raptors to go make their runs and return for refueling and rearming. Tell them to send the rest of their Demons out to play tag with those cat corvettes coming out from the planet — same tactics as at Kitty Litter.”
* * * *
We’ve hurt them! Tzal marveled at the unbelievable destruction that the gigantic alien asteroid-warship had withstood, but now it was dropping back behind the other two. We finally hurt them!
It had been costly —terribly costly. Tzal already had lost virtually 60% of his new fleet... 1,100 heavy cruisers, 1,400 cruisers and 2,700 destroyers destroyed, or badly damaged. Now he’d just received word that a full enemy fleet had emerged in his rear and was threatening his vulnerable carriers. He was also told that Rak fighters had gotten one missile attack through, that had badly hurt the enemy’s fifteen heavy ships and that the 20,000 old-style ships coming out from Slithin were approaching the enemy’s remaining nine carriers and their escorts.
Tzal knew that even with his fighter attacks uninterrupted, his losses to those monstrous asteroid warships and the incredible amount of firepower they contained was unsustainable. Now with his carriers fighting for their lives, he knew the Battle of Slithin was lost. Tzal sent orders for the remnant of Blug’s fleet to attack the human carriers with all vigor, and for his own carriers to retrieve as many of their fighters as they could and to jump for Yegraia, one of Region-4’s border worlds near Region-5.
Tzal also issued orders for his remaining cruisers to break off their attack against those gigantic asteroid warships and to follow him back to the coordinates of those damaged human cruisers on the other side of the asteroid belt. Tzal intended to withdraw his remaining forces to Yegraia as well, but first he wanted to take his frustrations out on those damaged human cruisers.
* * * *
Defiant and her remaining escorting cruisers kept up as good a rate of fire as they could at the fleeing cat carriers, but battle damage from the earlier fighter-launched heavy-missile attack had badly degraded their available speed and the cat carriers were pulling out of range. When 100 Demons formed up around them to provide fighter cover, after having destroyed yet another 90 cat carriers with their medium-yield, ship-killer missiles, Stillman released the Raptors that had providing them with cover to go make their attack runs on the kitty carriers before returning to their own ca
rriers for refueling and rearmament.
When even Defiant’s big guns could no longer reach their targets, Stillman ordered his heavies to turn back to conduct search and rescue operations for his five cruisers that had been crippled in the cats’ initial missile attack.
* * * *
“Admiral! The cat cruisers are turning away… looks like they’re heading back towards the asteroid belt.”
Rear Admiral Stacy Irwin toggled a switch on her command chair and said, “Squadron from Flag… all ships open drive doors and pursue those cat cruisers at best speed. Maintain fire as long as they’re in range.”
* * * *
“Admiral, incoming message on the spook channel. It says just under 4,000 cat cruisers and destroyers have broken off their attack on our asteroid-battleships and are headed our way!”
Admiral Benjamin Stillman was stunned by this news. 4,000 cruisers… My god! Right now, Ben wasn’t sure if his remaining ten ships could survive four undamaged cruisers in a stand-up fight, much less 4,000 of them. They’d managed to pick up several hundred crewmen from the five destroyed cruisers, who managed to make it into life-pods after their captains had sounded abandon ship earlier. He’d intended to send in boarding parties to search for crewmen trapped below-decks, but those cat cruisers heading towards them had just doomed whoever might still be trapped in there.
Stillman knew that he had to get his remaining fleet away from those cat cruisers, or they’d all be just as dead. But with their drastically reduced speed, he doubted that they could outrun them and several, including Defiant, couldn’t even get up to jump speed anymore, to escape into hyperspace.
The rocks. We can hide in the rocks!
Ben Stillman toggled a switch on his command chair and over an encrypted channel, he ordered, “Flag to squadron. We’ve got way too much company coming for us to feed and we can’t outrun them, so everyone head back to the asteroid belt and find yourselves a nice big rock to set down on and lie doggo to make repairs. Let’s just hope that those cat cruisers don’t see us hiding in there until after Stacy Irwin’s cavalry arrives on those big, slow-assed mules of hers.
“Comm, signal our Demons to head home and then to our carriers. Advise them of those incoming cruisers and to change course perpendicular towards the cat carriers to avoid getting caught between the hammer and anvil. Concentrate on driving those carriers out of the system and when that’s accomplished, take out all those damned corvettes that are behind them!”
“Aye, aye, Admiral!”
* * * *
Tzal was disappointed when his fleet finally cleared the asteroid belt. There was a lot of wreckage floating about, but there was no sign of those crippled human cruisers that he’d been told about. His scanners told him that his carriers had already jumped out of the system, and there were still some large returns off at an oblique angle, which Tzal assumed were the human carriers. He knew he’d never catch them if they kept running, and there was no reason that they shouldn’t. His scanners also showed several hundred small blips, which he took to be human fighters, harassing what had to be the remnants of Blug’s fleet.
We can’t stay here with those monstrous asteroid warships coming in behind us, and there’s no sense in allowing those human fighters to destroy all of those Rak warriors crewing those antique warships of Blug’s.
Tzal sent orders for the remnants of Blug’s fleet to break off and rendezvous with his fleet at Yegraia.
* * * *
“Looks like the cats are bugging out, Admiral!”
“Very well,” said Confederate Vice Admiral Martin Davidson, commanding 2nd Fleet’s nine carriers and their escorts from his flagship, CSS Independence. “Comm, signal the fleet. Have them follow us back to assist what’s left of Admiral Stillman’s ships.”
* * * *
The Battle of Slithin had been a major wakeup call for both sides. The Raknii had certainly suffered the worst of it, by a large margin. Their losses had been staggering. The infrastructure of half the planet had been lost, along with the massive Slithin Station, when the Confederates detonated that 20-megaton nuclear device. Just over 15,000 old-style Raknii warships had been destroyed or disabled by that same nuclear blast, and the ensuing EM pulse that destroyed the power grid and most control electronics on that side of the planet.
In the ensuing battle, after the Raknii discovered that those three mysterious asteroids coming inbound towards the planet were in fact, gigantic human weapons platforms, Tzal’s fleet of 10,000 new warships suffered the loss of 1,114 out of 1,500 heavy-cruisers, 1,437 out of 2,500 cruisers, 2,789 out of 5,000 destroyers and 692 out of 1,000 carriers, along with the loss of 29,543 out of 50,000 fighters and 6,748 more of their old-style warships that had been chewed up by human fighter-launched anti-ship missiles.
All totaled, they suffered well over a million Raknii dead, including the startling and spectacular immolation of Region-Master Blug, himself. Add in the fact that the Raknii fleet had been forced to withdraw from the system, leaving the devastated planet Slithin to the tender mercies of the human invaders... May 17, 3868 had definitely not been a particularly good day for the Raknii Empire.
From a numerical point of view, the Confederate 2nd Fleet had suffered a great deal less. Rear Admiral Irwin’s flagship CSS Behemoth survived, but she would need several years’ worth of extensive overhaul in a major orbital shipyard before she’d ever be battle-worthy again. Four light cruisers, a heavy-cruiser and a mere 14 fighters had been lost, but CSS Defiant and her attendant cruisers had all been severely damaged, so 2nd Fleet’s losses seemed much greater than they were. Their greatest losses, however, were psychological.
Gone were the wondrous days when a single fleet could be confidently depended upon to brush Rak warships aside with impunity and take Raknii planets at will. Just five years earlier, the aliens hadn’t known that carriers, fighters, missiles, battlecruisers and battleships even existed. To run into so many of them all (except for battleships) here at Slithin after so short a time implied a staggering engineering effort and a totally inconceivable manufacturing capacity.
If the Battle of Slithin was any indication, mankind desperately needed to find another way to end this war damned soon, before the aliens began turning out battleships by the hundreds of thousands.
* * * *
Chapter-20
Man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much… the wheel, New York, wars and so on, whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man… for precisely the same reasons. -- Douglas Adams
June, 3868
The video showing the death of Supreme-Master Xior and the ascension of new Supreme-Master Drix and both of their messages to the Raknii people was slowly making its way out to every corner of the empire, and it was causing great alarm and trepidation wherever it was shown.
Surrender themselves without a fight, if attacked by humans? Could the new Supreme-Master truly be serious? Was he seriously contemplating surrendering their entire empire by baring his own throat in submission to these aliens?
Order was breaking down on many Rak worlds, as the most rabid of secular modernists rejected the new supreme-master’s message and this new Book of Revelations that he was sending out to be reproduced locally on every Raknii world. They were rioting in the streets to make their displeasure known. Thousands had reportedly been killed, as planet-masters in every region called Raknaa assault troops out of their barracks to restore order.
Prides and even families were being torn asunder, from the intensity of the debate over the radical ideas found within the new supreme-master’s book. On a few planets where the modern secularism was the strongest, civil wars had literally broken out. The planet-masters of over 120 worlds were in open rebellion to the throne.
Colonization of those 60 new virgin worlds surrendered by the Trakaan was all but
suspended, as Region-7 was a war-zone and Region-6 had suddenly grown ominously silent. Region-5 just didn’t have enough virgin planets left to meet the empire-wide demand, so discontent rising from population pressures was adding even more fuel to the flaming schism that was beginning to tear Raknii society apart.
Rumors were whispered about that ships and spaceliners destined for Klista, the capital world of Region-6, were mysteriously disappearing and never seen or heard from again. Shipments and spaceliner traffic destined for Klista were being suspended, until the mystery was solved.
Fear of the unknown was spreading throughout the Rak Empire like a wildfire. For the first time in generations, the Priestesses of Dol, better known as the Dolrak, were expanding their order to keep up with the new demands for their services. Also for the first time in generations, temples to Dol were undergoing expansion and the construction of many new ones were beginning.
Towards the end of the subcycle, news began seeping out of Yegraia, a frontier world in Region-4, near their border with Region-5, with more horrifying news. The ultimate predators, those demonic human aliens, had somehow found, attacked and taken Slithin, the capital world of Region-4 — a region considered far behind the lines and so removed from the war-zone, that it had been considered perfectly safe, lying so deep within the empire.
If the humans could find and take Slithin, where else might they attack next? Was there anywhere in Raknii space that was truly safe from these demons?
To make matters worse, it was reported that, before his death, Supreme-Master Xior had dispatched their great fleet of 10,000 powerful new warships, designed to fight against the humans on more even terms and overwhelm their small fleets with sheer numbers — and they’d somehow been decimated at Slithin.
* * * *
The Trakaan Planet Troxia
June, 3868
Negotiations between Fleet Admiral Kalis and Region-Master Raan evolved into a rather informal affair, with Admiral Thorn, Planet-Master Mraz and Fraznal, the Trakaan mediator, joining them —sitting in chairs appropriate to their specific physiology. These were arranged in a loose semi-circle beneath the shade of a gigantic old tree, in the park just outside the planetary administrative building in Troxia’s capital city. All had cold drinks at hand.
Wrath of an Angry God: A Military Space Opera (The Sentience Trilogy Book 3) Page 22
