Reconnaissance in Force (Book 6 of The Empire of Bones Saga)

by Terry Mixon

  Kelsey used her implants to interface with the console. Since they hadn’t locked it, she had no problems accessing it. Another potential security issue on Persephone to talk over with the recovery specialists.

  It was a weapon. There were munitions, but they weren’t missiles. It was something she’d never seen before.

  A check of the targeting system gave her more insight. The range was less than twenty thousand kilometers. Very, very short range in space. The weapon also required orienting the ship to fire, because it had control over the attitude thrusters.

  “This looks like an orbital bombardment weapon,” she said at last. “It fires solid slugs at high velocity, but the targeting is only for short range. Like from orbit to a planetary surface.”

  She stared at Hopwood. “This isn’t a supply run. It’s an ambush. They want to take out the computer on Erorsi before it knew there was a problem.”

  He scratched his chin. “If that’s the case, then the destroyer is going to be on higher alert than we’d expected. It might not shoot us when the admiral springs the ambush, but we might not get away clean either.”

  “The destroyer also might not be alone. A single destroyer couldn’t take all the ships that the Erorsi computer could field before we smashed it. If I were them, I’d send more ships to back it up.

  “They also have to secure this system against an attack from Pentagar. Probably by sending a force large enough to take them out as quickly as possible. It’s what I would do.”

  The man stared at her. “What do we do now?”

  She shrugged. “We follow the plan. If Jared springs the ambush, we separate the freighter. If he doesn’t, then we know there are other ships in play and he’s improvising. We’ll have to do the same.

  “Once we have the freighter locked down, I want the holds examined. They might not have any Raider implant supplies. If so, that’s a very bad break. If there are some, I’ll want as much as possible shifted to the pinnaces. We might have to bail and I don’t want to leave any of it behind if I have a choice in the matter.”

  He nodded. “I’ll see if I can find a cargo manifest. It might tell us what we need to know without a thorough search. There’s no reason they’d fake it. It isn’t as though the computer here sent a customs party to inspect them.”

  “Actually, that isn’t a given. We don’t know if it sent Pale Ones to check the supplies. I find it hard to believe the paranoid device would let Rebel Fleet humans onto its stations. Let me know what you find as soon as you find it.”

  She stared pensively at the main screen. They’d know in just a few minutes if Jared was going to attack. If he didn’t, she needed a new plan. Time to come up with it.

  * * * * *

  Brandon cursed as the destroyer escaped. “We need to get after it. The ambush is blown.”

  “Flank speed to the flip point,” Anderson said. “Get to operations, Mister Levy. You’ll fight the ship while I focus on fleet and fighter operations.”

  “Aye, ma’am.”

  He raced for the lift and impatiently waited for it to get him to the operations center. On Audacious, it was where a normal superdreadnought’s main bridge was. He had to admit it was significantly larger than what he was used to.

  A full crew had already transferred control of the ship from the main bridge. He understood the need to segregate operations, but he still thought they were going around their elbows to scratch their butts.

  The flag bridge should be reserved for this all the time, and the operations center should be where the ship was controlled. Of course, that meant that a carrier needed a flag officer rather than a captain in command of everything, but that was a fight for another day.

  “Status,” he said as he took the center seat.

  The helm officer partially turned in her chair to face him. “We’re on course for the Erorsi flip point. We’ll arrive just in time to recover our fighters and make the flip. Call it fifteen minutes.”

  “The cruisers and destroyers will proceed us,” the tactical officer said. “The captain ordered them to follow the destroyer as closely as possible and take it out.”

  He wasn’t sure that would help very much. The cat was out of the bag.

  “Has one of the destroyers launched a probe through the flip point?” he asked.

  “Negative. They’re flipping. They’ll signal back via probe.”

  “I want to see the layout in the other system as soon as we get the data.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Brandon checked the ship’s systems. Everything was in the green and all hands were at battle stations. The fighters were queued up and ready to launch as soon as they emerged.

  The basic plan for the fighters was to launch them a squadron at a time. It would take about a minute to get the next fighter on the launch rail once the previous one was gone. So, a total of two minutes to get everyone out. Three minutes when all three squadrons were aboard.

  Missiles were armed and ready. The beam weapons were in defensive mode, ready to cut down any missiles fired at the carrier. They’d be at their most vulnerable when they flipped. If the other ships didn’t take out the crippled destroyer, it might shoot them up. If it could.

  “They don’t know what kind of force is after them,” he said after a moment. “They saw the fighters and the lead destroyers. The rest were off his scanners. He might think it’s a grand idea to wait for his pursuers to come through and shoot the hell out of them, if they can. I know we’re going through after the rest, but I want us ready for any unlikely surprises.”

  He watched the two lead destroyers make the flip. The rest of the ships were still more than ten minutes out.

  Three minutes passed before a probe came through and a data update came back. They’d found exactly what he’d worried about. The destroyer had been waiting for them.

  Luckily, the commanders of the two destroyers had been ready for something like that. They’d taken some hits, but they’d eliminated the other ship. Too late to stop the bastard from sending a warning, Brandon was sure. The enemy force had split with almost two-thirds of their number on the way to Pentagar.

  When Audacious finally flipped, they arrived to find the system in turmoil. It looked as though the ambush on Pentagar was off. That group had turned and was on its way toward the carrier and her escorts. The ships headed for Erorsi were still on course, though.

  “Signal from the flag bridge,” the tactical officer said. “Cry ‘Havoc!’ and let slip the dogs of war.”

  Bright sparks of light lit up the tactical plot as the fighters launched.

  “Shakespeare,” he murmured approvingly. “Vitter will appreciate the comparison. Raise battle screens, but make sure the launch and landing approaches are kept clear,” he said. The screens were not conducive to launching small craft in their most protective mode. “Go to active scans. I want to know everything we can about the incoming ships.”

  “Aye, sir,” the tactical officer said. “I see six light cruisers and fourteen destroyers coming our way. They’re almost in extreme missile range.”

  He smiled coldly. They’d turned around before the carrier had come through. They probably expected a pair of destroyers. Then that jumped to four destroyers and two light cruisers. They’d still outnumbered the Imperial ships three to one, so they were coming in hot to deal with the problem.

  Then Audacious had flipped. If the enemy didn’t use fighters, they might be surprised at how much combat strength a carrier could put on the board.

  The fight was going to be hard, but winnable. They’d take some hits, but that was the price they paid. Even if someone broke through, they’d never get back home. The ships Captain Anderson had left behind would make sure that no one escaped.

  Captain Anderson had sent out fleet instructions to the escorts, who were forming up around the big ship. The two destroyers had minor damage. The ship that had tried to jump them was an expanding cloud of debris and escape pods.

  “Enemy ships laun
ching missiles,” the tactical officer said.

  Brandon checked the flight time versus the fighter’s launch sequence. The final squadron would clear the bays in time to for him to raise the battle screens completely. Barely.

  “Once the last of the fighters is clear, full power to the battle screens and fire back. Use your best judgement on targeting.”

  The fight was on.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Kelsey dragged the man from the freighter’s command chair and sat down. With the marines guarding her back, she could focus on the situation around them. Data was finally coming in. A fleet of Rebel Empire ships had come into the system and a battle at the flip point was getting under way.

  Part of the force was headed toward Erorsi. The freighter and its escort had come deeper into the system than they’d planned, so the coverage of the ship’s they’d had ready to pounce on the destroyer were further away and at a disadvantageous angle.

  “Incoming signal,” Hopwood said from the helm console. “It’s the Rebel Empire destroyer. Orders to come about and make tracks toward the outer system.”

  “Do it,” she said. “The longer we can keep them in the dark about our identity, the better chance we have.”

  The new course took them even further away from the ships they had lying in wait. If only she had a way to deal with the destroyer herself. It didn’t even know she was flying along at point blank range, but she didn’t have any ship-to-ship weapons.

  But she wasn’t unarmed.

  Kelsey brought up the targeting system for the bombardment weapon. Its range was ridiculously short for this kind of thing, but it had the power to take out a warship if they got close enough. Currently, the freighter was too far away to make it work.

  “Cain, edge us closer to the destroyer a bit at a time. Be casual.”

  “I have no idea what a casually drifting freighter looks like, but here goes.”

  He altered their course just a fraction and the range between the two ships began shrinking. At this rate, it would take a few minutes.

  With some time to spare, she tapped into the ship’s interior monitors. The battle was still raging in engineering, but it looked as though Paulson was pushing the defenders ever further away from the critical equipment.

  Elsewhere, a few crewmen were putting up a struggle, but most of them weren’t armed. It shouldn’t be more than a few minutes before the last of them was down.

  One thing she saw that looked promising was the cargo bays. They weren’t completely empty. Perhaps they hadn’t failed. There might be some Raider implants in there.

  Her stomach jittered a little as the freighter crept closer to the escort. They were just crossing into extreme range. She’d get one shot at this.

  That’s when one of the escape pods jettisoned.

  “Dammit!” she shouted. “I locked those down!”

  A signal pinged them from the destroyer, but she ignored it, focusing on the targeting software. Kelsey took over the helm remotely and brought the nose of the freighter onto target. The moment it came to bear, she fired.

  The results were spectacular, to say the least. The kinetic weapon was much, much faster than a missile. There was no dodging it. The oversized flechette quite literally blew through the destroyer, entering amidships and coming out aft in engineering.

  While the other ship didn’t blow up, the damage was extreme. His drives cut off and he tumbled, out of control.

  Kelsey cut their drives back and changed course. The weapon had no provision for automatic reloading. If the other ship got its act together, he’d fire missiles at her. To call her anti-missile defenses pathetic was an understatement.

  One of its fusion plants was spiking, which was very, very bad, but the Rebel Empire destroyer still managed to fire a single missile before it blew up. The damned thing raced toward Kelsey and the freighter.

  She fired everything she had at it, which perhaps annoyed it enough to miss them. That was the only thing she could think of at this ridiculously short range. It had almost scarred the freighter’s paint, but it had missed.

  “Colonel, we’ve secured engineering,” Lieutenant Paulson said over the com. “My people are making another pass to look for hidden hostiles.”

  “Be sure to check the escape pods,” she said. “One ejected at what I would delicately call a critical moment. We’re safe for the moment, but we have enemy ships in route to our position. Probably no more than an hour out.”

  “Copy that. Paulson out.”

  Invincible was under power from Erorsi orbit. Maybe she would gather more of the bad guys’ attention. To make things harder for the Rebel Empire fleet, she boosted the freighter to maximum speed and made sure the course took them away from the ambushing ships.

  They might not have clearly seen what had caused the freighter’s escort to explode, but they had to be suspicious. Particularly when she failed to follow their inevitable orders to head their way.

  The freighter had a lot more drive power than she’d expected. They’d probably intended for it to get away from Erorsi as fast as possible once they’d sprung their surprise.

  She was so focused on the strategic situation that she jumped when someone whooped over the com.

  “Who is that?” she said sharply. “Report!”

  “Sorry, Colonel. It’s Corporal Galloway. I’m down in one of the holds looking at a crate full of what certainly looks like Marine Raider pharmacology units.”

  “Which hold? I’ll be right there.”

  Kelsey headed for the hatch as the man gave her a hold number. “Mister Hopwood, you have the conn.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  If there really were Raider implant supplies on this ship, she might be able to get some of them out to the pinnaces. They could drop away and go stealth. They might go unnoticed.

  She sprinted toward the lift. Time was not on their side, but this was worth the risk.

  * * * * *

  The deck crew had rearmed Annette’s fighter by the time Audacious flipped, so she was ready when her time came to blast out of her launch tube.

  “All Audacious squadrons, this is Black Jack Actual,” she said over her com. “Focus on the lead ships. Cover your wing mates on their runs. Black Jack will take lead. When we pull out to rearm, make your runs in sequence.”

  The goal was to have fighters coming in waves. One wave should be attacking, another should be covering them, and the third should be rearming. Somehow, she didn’t think this was going to be that easy.

  Part of her was relieved that no fighters came screaming out of the enemy formation. That would’ve complicated an already dangerous situation. The rest of her was disappointed not to test her mettle in a real dogfight.

  She sent a final targeting set to her people and pushed her fighter up to maximum acceleration. The six light cruisers were their targets. They posed the greatest threat to the carrier and her escorts. Not that fourteen destroyers would be a walk in the park, mind you, but they’d be very hesitant to engage without their big brothers.

  Annette focused on her designated target while keeping an eye on the overall tactical situation. The big ship probably wasn’t going to waste missiles on fighters. His anti-missile flechettes were going to be the big threat, and his beam weapons.

  That was another reason to take out the cruisers. The destroyers didn’t have beams. They’d be limited in their response.

  She noted how their battle screens were layered and picked a weak point where two overlapped. When her targeting scanners had locked on, she fired both her missiles and pulled away.

  The cruiser fired a burst of anti-missile flechettes, both at the missiles and her fighter. It had a dozen other fighters to deal with, too, since she’d split her squadron of twenty-four to attack only two light cruisers.

  Her fighters proved a lot more maneuverable than the shooters expected, but that didn’t mean the good guys escaped unharmed. That only happened in the vids. Two of her fighters exploded and one
veered out of control before the pilot ejected. Once the battle was over, they’d send search and rescue after him.

  The ship killers they’d fired exploded all over the targets. They’d fired in waves so that the screens had time to fail. The leading missiles ruptured the battle screens where they overlapped, creating fissures that they rest exploited.

  In the end, their fire was overkill. Both cruisers died in flame, gutted by the fiery swords that disemboweled them.

  Space was full of chaotic violence as she pulled her squadron back toward Audacious to rearm. They’d learn from that mistake fast. This was going to be ugly.

  * * * * *

  Jared grinned when he saw Kelsey punch the destroyer’s lights out. He had no idea what she’d done, but the results were gratifying. The destroyer exploded and left her ship running for empty space.

  “Go to active scanners.”

  “Aye, sir,” Marcus said. “It’ll take a few minutes to get a return from the inbound force.”

  “Go with worst case. Two heavy cruisers and eight destroyers. Have the ambush force that was originally supposed to cover the freighter try to protect her.”

  He checked the tactical plot. At full speed, it would take the enemy almost an hour to get into missile range of Invincible, if the enemy were obliging enough to keep coming in their direction. They’d be able to fire on his ambushing force in half that time.

  The Rebel Empire forces outnumbered Jared’s ambushers about three to one. Invincible had more firepower than all of the enemy ships combined, but it wouldn’t be able to bring them to battle if they ran.

  Of course, in this situation, that might not be the worst outcome. They could hunt down the stragglers. Probably.

  If any of them headed out into deep space that might make them hard to find. He could take steps to make that outcome unlikely.

  “Marcus, have our ambushers launch probes to shadow the attacking force. I want enough coverage to be sure each ship has no less than three probes that are out of weapons range and hopefully undetected.”