Persephone would have had a serious problem taking on a single one of the heavy cruisers, let alone eight and the two supercarriers.
“How close are the nearest Vaish ships?” I forced my mouth to work, but my brain was telling me to order a retreat away from this. I knew we were not going to survive a fight with the two carriers, even if it looked like we were hitting them on their back side.
“Closest are a four-hundred kilometers at heading 455.088 and -8706.08,” Paula said.
“I’ll pull on screen,” Kasta replied as her fingers danced across her mini control panel on her chair. Another corner of the screen changed to show a line of scrimmage, and I realized we’d popped out on the top part of the Jotnar side, and then angled deeper into their lines when Nikki flew from the first batch that came after us.
They had to know we were here, or they would soon.
“Madalena, we can’t possibly hope to take out those supercarriers,” I said.
“Our main forces are weakened by the struggle with my father. If we do not attack the carriers, our expected losses will jump to thirty percent, and we will be ripe for the other clans to attack us.”
“It’s two supercarriers and eight cruisers,” I said as Nikki continued to dive Persephone toward the swarm of ships. Now that I had been staring at the screen for long enough, I realized this group was far removed from the main line of battle because it was angling around to come at Nordar - 13 - c. That was the massive constructed planet I guessed manufactured all the Vaish ships. If they made it around the lines, they could bombard the planet, and millions of people would die.
“We must try,” Madalena said, and I could feel her normal confidence waiver.
“Alright,” I said as a wave of blue plasma tore through the space before us. Nikki twisted Persephone away with a sharp turn, and I heard Paula and Zea let out pained gasps.
“Four Jotnar ships from the main battle are peeling off to pursue us!” Kasta said.
“This isn’t a gooooood idddeeaaa,” Zea panted as Nikki punched on Persephone’s thrusters and we all sank back into our chairs.
“Will you give me command?” Madalena didn’t seem affected by the G-forces pushing on us.
“Yes,” I agreed after half a second of deliberation. I’d captained Persephone through many conflicts so far, but all of my battle strategies I was pulling out of my Marine ass. The Prime Valkyrie knew how to command a navy, and I wanted us to live through this more than I wanted to stroke my ego.
“Nikki, on my order, head bearing 435, and -532,” Madalena said, and I turned to look up at the screen. The Prime Valkyrie was asking her to turn around for some reason.
“Yes, Prime Valkyrie,” Nikki said calmly.
“Paula, I need wardrive exit at the nose of the smaller of the Jotnar carriers. Three hundred meters distance.”
“Uhhh, the nose?” Paula asked.
“A bit under it,” Madalena confirmed. “They only have one cannon there.”
“Three hundred meters?” Zea gasped.
“I’ll get it!” the android shouted as her hands pinched over the small controls of the officer’s seat.
“Gunners, prepare to fire above us,” Madalena said. “On my command.”
“Yes, Prime Valkyrie!” the rest of the crew shouted from behind us.
“Nikki, you will fly toward their stern once we exit.”
“I understand,” the pilot said. “Like what we did during the Trunale - 35 siege.”
“Yes,” Madalena said. “The Jotnar weren’t there, so they most likely do not have a record of our tactics.”
“Finished!” Paula exclaimed. “Sending to Nikki’s terminal!”
“Received,” Nikki said, and the tone of her voice was more akin to someone thanking a waitress for bringing them the bill. “I am ready.”
“Turn to a new heading,” Madalena ordered, and Nikki spun Persephone around to face the opposite way we were going. The movement made black spots appear in my vision, but now our screen showed us facing the group of Jotnar ships that had broken away from the main struggle.
“Engage hyperdrive,” Madalena said, and our screen shifted.
We were pointed at the nose of the massive supercarrier.
“Gunners, fire at their cannons when we pass!” Madalena shouted as Nikki played chicken with a ship almost ten times Persephone’s size.
We were only a few hundred meters away from the behemoth’s nose, and the lack of our sudden death made me wonder if we escaped detection.
Then a burst of reddish-purple plasma and laser fire streamed from Persephone and tore a massive chunk out of the front of the carrier.
“Pass beneath,” Madalena said, but Nikki was already pushing Persephone’s nose down so we wouldn’t smash into the carrier’s bow like a bee against a car windshield.
“Aim for the bottom harbor entrance!” Madalena shouted back as Nikki flew Persephone along the underside of the caterpillar-shaped carrier. The behemoth’s hairs were cannons or laser arrays, but it seemed as if Persephone’s top was only a few meters away from the carrier’s belly and Nikki actually had to dodge between the long barrels of the cannons.
Meanwhile, our own small cannons fired relentlessly.
“Doesn’t this thing have shields?” I asked as our stream of plasma fire ripped apart the Jotnar carrier’s underbelly like blowtorch across foil.
“We are under its shields,” Madalena said.
“How did we get under its--” I started to ask, but then Nikki accidentally clipped a cannon with the side of Persephone’s wing, and the alarm screamed.
“Shields ate it! Eighty-four percent!” Zea gasped, and I saw that we were about to reach the stern of the carrier.
Where its massive thrusters burned through space like a trio of mini suns.
“Nikki, crawl port side.” Madalena said.
The pilot grunted in reply, and Persephone twisted to our right and began to wind up across the tail of the carrier so we weren’t incinerated by the beast’s thrusters.
“Kasta, we will need to hyperdrive to around location 234 and -112. Set course,”
“Got it,” my friend said as her fingers flew over her small controls.
“Who is on front laser array?” Madalena shouted.
“Uhhh, that’s me,” Zea said.
“We are going to come out on top, aim for the bridge. If you miss, we will not be able to exit their shields before their drones swarm us.”
“Okay,” the hacker whined.
“You can toggle control to someone--”
“I got it!” Zea shouted, and then she gasped as Nikki pushed on Persephone’s acceleration.
I expected the supercarrier to be tough, but the amount of punishment it was taking surprised me. Our gunners were peppering the behemoth's hull with hundreds of plasma balls and beams. A single one of the balls seemed to take out most ships, but the Jotnar vessel’s hull was only being cut open. The metal wasn’t glowing much, and it didn’t seem to be in danger of imploding or twisting into a melted husk.
“Wrapping around the top,” Nikki hissed as Persephone angled up and crested the last slope.
“We’ve got thirty drones on our tail!” Paula shouted.
“Front cannons on the bridge!” Madalena shouted. “We will only have one pass!”
“One pass?” Zea asked.
“Fire!” the Prime Valkyrie shouted half a second after Nikki pulled Persephone up on the top of the carrier and aimed us at the bubble of armored metal that came out of the hull like a wart.
Our cannon shots streamed out of Persephone like heavy rain. The heavy balls slammed into the bridge along with the beams from the lighter cannons. The metal there was black, but the impact of our plasma shots was changing the color to a dull orange.
“Zea!” Madalena shouted at my friend a half moment before our laser arrays fired. It was a cluster of smaller red beams that most ships used for utility cutting applications.
The beams missed the bri
dge by what looked like fifty meters.
“Shit!” Zea screamed with frustration. “It needs another three seconds to--”
“You get one more chance,” Madalena growled as Persephone screamed toward the metal wart.
One of our plasma beams hit a ball right next to the carrier’s bridge and exploded in a swell of power. That should have been enough to destroy everything around the carrier, but the surrounding metal just looked like it had been smashed in with a massive hammer. The metal glowed slightly, but the hulls of these ships were tougher than anything else we’d come up against yet.
“You can do it, Zea,” Eve said a moment before the laser beams shot out again. This time the hacker’s aim was true and the red lines cut right into the bridge like a surgeon's scalpel. The gash didn’t seem large, but then a plasma beam hit the same spot, and the metal erupted like a pimple filled with flaming puss.
A cheer went up across the bridge, but the celebration was cut short when a plume of magma erupted out of the carrier’s hull in front of us. Nikki bent Persephone out of the way, but I could almost feel the heat coming off the plume.
“Paula, are the carrier’s shields still up?” Madalena asked.
“How can I tell?” the engineer gasped as another plume of fire gushed out of the side of the carrier and almost fried us.
“Shoot away from the carrier!” Nikki snarled as she twisted Persephone away from another plume. Then another appeared and we almost dove through it. Each of her movements was causing everyone besides Kasta to grunt, and my vision was starting to swim.
This carrier was about to go nova, and we were right fucking next to it.
“My shot just bounced off!” Paula shouted, but I had been too focused on the many plumes of fire and hadn’t paid attention to the cannon she was controlling.
“Keep trying!” Madalena urged. “Kasta, plot hyperdrive behind our line of skirmish; twenty kilometers. Everyone else on cannons stop shooting the carrier and focus on the drones behind us.”
“What about the other carrier?” Zea screeched as Nikki banked Persephone really hard to the right.
“We need to escape,” Madalena answered. “Paula?”
“Still bouncing- there! There! It punched through!” the engineer screamed with joy.
“I’ve got the course! Sending to Nikki!” Kasta shouted.
“Engage hyperdrive,” Madalena ordered, and then our display screen shifted from the erupting carrier. Now we were looking at the side of the Vaish battlefortress and the main line of skirmish.
“Shiiiiit,” Zea hissed with relief.
“Nikki, go toward the Jotnar’s right flank.” Madalena pointed at the screen where I saw the thickest congestion of ships, but the pilot was focused on her controls and didn’t see the Prime Valkyrie’s gesture.
“Wait, we are going into that?” Zea asked. “What about the other carrier?”
“Our forces need relief there,” Madalena answered. “We will return to the carrier after we have assisted here.”
“We are getting more communication from Odin Geirr,” Zea said.
“Audio,” Madalena replied, and the man began to speak to Madalena in their language while Nikki pushed Persephone toward the flank of the Jotnar forces.
“Their forces are disengaging,” Madalena updated us.
“So we are done?” The relief in Zea’s voice was more than a little apparent.
“No,” the Prime Valkyrie answered. “When your enemy turns to flee, you must cut their hamstrings and then drive your spear through their backs. It will enforce our dominance when we ask for their alliance later.”
“I was afraid you were gonna say that,” Zea groaned.
“Adam, I return command to you,” Madalena’s hand rested on mine, and I felt the woman’s pride pour from her.
“Okay,” I said as I read through Persephone’s scanner displays. There were twenty Jotnar ships on this wing exchanging fire with the Vaish fleet. Their port sides were the obvious place to hit since they faced us, but I could also see the rest of the fleet was beginning to withdraw. “Nikki, angle toward the sterns of that first group of the closest destroyers. We’ll pass by with them on our port side while we angle toward the larger craft trying to flee.”
“Yes, Adam.” Nikki pushed on Persephone’s acceleration, and I could see the group of Jotnar ships begin to turn from the Vaish so that they could attempt to aim their front cannons at us.
“Faster, Nikki,” I urged.
“Yes, Adam,” the pilot said, and my heart thumped hard in my chest as I felt the G-forces lean against my body.
“Gunners, fire on the destroyers as we pass when I give the signal.”
“Yes, Adam,” the voices behind me said in unison, and Madalena’s hand squeezed mine a bit.
The destroyers were the usual Jotnar hawk-like shape, and our approach was starting to mess with their lines. They didn’t want us to flank them, but their shields were also trying to weather and return the plasma fire from the Vaish forces.
“They know Persephone destroyed one of the supercarriers,” Madalena explained. “That is why they are pulling away from the rest of our navy to defend against our approach.”
The destroyers started firing, but their initial salvo hadn’t accounted for Persephone’s speed, and the plasma bolts flew far behind us. Nikki sped up a bit to stay ahead of the beams, and I heard a gasp from Zea and Paula as the G-forces strangled their bodies.
“Fire!” I yelled as soon as we reached the first destroyer in the line. Our spray of red plasma licked against the first in the pack, then the second and third when we darted past.
“Nikki, make for the cruiser up ahead. Bearing 255 and -890.” My eyes drifted down to the rear screen display, and I saw that our strafe along the destroyers had left half of them twisting in ruin.
“Yes, Adam,” the pilot said as Persephone banked to our right.
“Four destroyers are eliminated!” Lux called out, and I felt a surge of relief fill my tense muscles. It was a drop in the bucket compared to all the ships melting around us, but I knew that our contribution would help save more Vaish lives.
“Front cannons! Fire on the first cruiser!” I ordered when Persephone spun close enough to the next group of larger ships.
Another salvo of plasma left Persephone and smashed into the cruiser at the same time as a dozen shots from the rest of the Vaish fleet. Most of the shots were absorbed by the shields, but three seemed to punch through, and the enemy craft’s hull began to turn a lighter color.
Then the group of ships elongated, and they were gone.
“They are leaving!” Paula stated the obvious, but she was staring down at her controls, and I guessed she meant most of the Jotnar fleet was also running.
“Does that mean we won?” Zea asked with obvious relief as the last ship blinked out of our screen. “I can’t believe it.”
“Yes,” Madalena said with a sigh. Relief pulsed from her like waves of the ocean, and the bridge was silent for a few dozen seconds as the women relaxed.
“Good job, crew,” I said after my heart had slowed down to a comfortable pace.
“Yes,” Madalena agreed. “Especially Zea.”
“Me?” the hacker asked with surprise.
“You hit the bridge with our laser array. It cut through the hull so that our plasma shots could get through.”
“Oh, well. Yeah. It was no big deal.” Zea shrugged, and a grin came to her full lips.
“If you had missed the second shot, we all would have died,” Madalena said.
“Uhhh, really?” Zea’s smile faded from her mouth, and her face turned an ash color.
“But you made the shot, so we are alive.” Madalena shrugged. “Nikki, take us into Odin Geirr.”
“Yes, Prime Valkyrie,” the pilot said as she turned Persephone toward the battle fortress.
“As soon as we dock inside of the harbor, I will need to speak to my admirals,” Madalena said to me as she rose from her chair.
“You sure I don’t need to come with you?” I asked as I unbuckled the harness from my chest.
“I would like you to come.” Madalena’s eyes strayed from me and focused on Eve. “But your participation must wait until you have dealt with my father.”
“He does not have to wait until he finishes the rite of passage?” Eve asked.
“Do you still wish to marry Adam as a Nordar woman?” Madalena asked.
“Yes,” Eve answered.
“And you?” Madalena turned to Zea.
The blonde hacker turned to Eve, then me, and then back to the Prime Valkyrie. “Yeah.”
“Let us speak of it later, then.” Madalena nodded to them. “I will have someone escort you all to one of our spas so you can relax while I speak with my admirals. Meet in the hold ten minutes after we land.” The Prime Valkyrie turned and walked from the bridge without another word.
“Spa! Yay!” Kasta clapped her hands together after she unbuckled her harness. “And to think, just three minutes ago we were staring down the barrel of a cannon big enough to fly inside of.”
“Just another day on Persephone,” Paula sighed as she leaned back into her chair. She hadn’t unbuckled her harness yet, but her hands rested on the clasp.
“Let us hope for many more,” Eve said, and the rest of us nodded.
Chapter 11
Nikki landed Persephone inside of the fortress’s harbor a few minutes after Madalena exited the bridge. The rest of the crew all had duties and they went about their work as soon as we set down. Paula, Kasta, Zea, Eve, and I slowly made our way to the hold, and we caught Madalena leaving with an escort of twenty heavily armored Vaish warriors.
“She’s a big deal, huh?” Paula asked.
“Uhh, yeah,” Zea said with a sigh. Her blue eyes turned to meet mine, but she quickly looked away.
“Sooooooooooo…” Kasta said after five or so minutes passed. Her eyebrows were raised, and she turned to face me. “How soon do you think this spa thing is going to go down?”
“Madalena said she would send someone,” I replied. I had expected the android to ask how my night with Madalena was, but I was glad she didn’t bring up the topic.
King Killer Page 17
