“Enemy shields at 84% and dropping!”
The Sythian cruiser fired its thrusters, turning to run, but there was nowhere they could go to get away from the assault.
After just a few moments, the glow of the Sythian command ship’s shields began to darken and fade. The torpedoes tore blackened holes in her outer hull. Gunners fired over and over again at the same spots, digging progressively deeper. Explosions flashed within the enemy ship. Thick clouds of debris spun out into space. That went on for long seconds before the enemy command ship cracked in half.
A cheer went up from the crew. Even Okara looked revitalized.
“Good work!” Hoff targetted another command ship for his gunners to fire on. “One down. Thirty to go.”
Okara sat up beside him. “We’ve got incoming!” she yelled.
Hoff mentally set the grid to center on their ship. A vast sea of red enemy contacts had appeared in orbit above Firea. They’d jumped straight into the Dauntless’s path.
“Break orbit!” Hoff ordered. “Have our interceptors cover us.”
“Yes, sir!”
Okara gasped. “There’s over ten thousand fighters out there . . .”
Hoff was about to order the ship’s gunners to begin firing torpedoes at them until he heard that. Ten thousand. Quantum-launching warheads at them would be inaccurate and highly wasteful. It was probably exactly what the enemy wanted them to do. They’d waste all their munitions on the enemy’s fighters and be unable to do anything to their capital ships.
“Have our X-1’s engage the enemy. Hit and run only. As soon as they’re out of ordinance, come back and re-arm.”
“Yes, sir.”
“They’ll be torn apart,” Okara warned.
“Not if they’re good pilots,” Hoff replied. “All they have to do is drop their missiles and run.”
“And then what? We have six squadrons—seventy two interceptors. It’ll take hundreds of attack runs for them to take out all of those fighters!”
“It’s going to be a long engagement,” Hoff agreed.
The star map flickered with movement, and another sea of red enemy contacts appeared in front of the Dauntless, this time on her new heading. The Sythians had hemmed them in on two sides.
“Helm! Adjust course . . .” Hoff trailed off as another four groups of Shell fighters jumped in—starboard, aft, top, and keel. The Dauntless was completely surrounded.
“We need to plot a jump back to Avilon,” Okara said.
“Adjust course to where, sir?” the officer at the helm asked.
“Calculate a new jump! Into the Stormcloud nebula. Transmit the coordinates to our fighters.”
“Yes, sir!”
“Cloaking shields aren’t the only way to hide,” Hoff said quietly.
“They’ll jump after us,” Okara said.
“I’m counting on it. There’s enough interference in that nebula to knock out their sensors and comms.”
“Ours, too.”
Hoff smiled and shook his head. “Ours are better. We should still be able to see their capital ships lying outside the nebula to shoot at them. The enemy, on the other hand, won’t be able to find us, or even communicate our position to each other when they do. They’ll dribble in randomly, and we’ll take them out at our leisure.”
Okara’s eyes lit with understanding, and she began nodding. “It’ll buy time. Perhaps enough to take a few more command ships down before we die.”
“Jump calculated!”
“Begin sequencing,” Hoff replied. He turned back to his XO. “Who said anything about dying? We’re Avilonians. We don’t die.”
“I meant—”
Hoff’s lips twisted ironically. “I know what you meant, Okara. But what I meant is that I’m going to win this fight.”
Chapter 28
The order to launch came through the comms a split second before Atton saw his launch tube light up like the inside of a sun. His interceptor rocketed out into space, pinning him to the back of his flight chair. He’d set inertial management to 98%, so he could still feel his maneuvers. Stars burst to life as he left the launcher. The planet Firea stretched out below him, vast fields of snow shining a dazzling white in the distant light of the system’s sun.
“Form up Gold squadron! We’ve got incoming!” Chevalier Davellin ordered.
Atton studied the star map. There were thousands of enemy fighters racing toward the Dauntless on the far side of Firea. The Avilonian fleet sat dark and derelict in the middle of the Sythian formation.
“There’s too many of them! What the frek are we supposed to do against that?” Gold Ten said. Gina’s voice.
“Language, Pilot,” the Chevalier replied. “Orders are to engage the enemy, empty our Thunderbolts and mines, then head back and re-arm.”
Atton did the math. Sixteen Thunderbolt missiles, times 72 interceptors. Assuming all of those missiles hit their targets, and none of the interceptors succumbed to enemy fire, they would all have to go back and reload at least ten times. It was absurd.
Then the grid flashed with incoming contacts, and things got worse. They were surrounded. The contact report revealed there were more than a hundred thousand Shells within a hundred klick radius.
“Seriously?” Gold Nine said.
“They really don’t want to make this a fair fight, do they?” someone else put in.
“Cut the chatter,” the chevalier said. “New orders Golds. We’re jumping out. Transmitting jump coordinates now. Start calculating!”
The coordinates for the jump were inside the Stormcloud Nebula, at the edge of the star system. Atton shook his head, not comprehending Strategian Heston’s plan.
“I thought we were going back to Avilon,” he said.
“You thought wrong, Pilot,” Gold One replied.
The comms crackled with a new voice—mission control. Orders were to keep enemy fighters off the Dauntless while they launched their ordinance at the Sythian command ships. They were going to use the nebula as cover and take advantage of their superior sensors to hunt down any Shells that accidentally stumbled into them.
Atton’s jump finished calculating, and he began sequencing it. An audible countdown from five began.
When it reached zero, space disappeared with a bright flash. Then came the grasping gray tendrils of the nebula. Sensors were washed clean of enemy contacts. Gold squadron reappeared all around, along with the other five squadrons of interceptors from the Dauntless. The battleship itself lay large and majestic above Atton’s cockpit.
In the distance giant chunks of ice swirled out of the gloom, appearing wraith-like from the nebula. The Dauntless opened fire with bright sheets of red pulse lasers, clearing a path. Ice shattered and exploded, vaporized by the assault.
“Now what?” Atton’s wingmate, Loba Caldin, asked.
“Boost your sensor range and follow me,” Gold One replied. “We’re going to scout ahead and screen the Dauntless from enemy fighters. When they find her, they’ll have to get past us first.”
* * *
“Get us clear of the enemy formation!” Captain Picara ordered. “There’s no point in us sticking around to watch them die.”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
Lasers tracked toward them. Hundreds of deadly bright streaks raced after them, impacting on their shields with a steady hiss.
“We’re going to collide with something if we don’t slow down!” the navigator warned.
“If they don’t want to die, too, they’ll get out of our way,” Picara replied. “Keep accelerating!”
Lights flickered steadily overhead as the shields drew extra power to dissipate the energy from enemy weapons’ fire. A thin veil of white smoke drifted through the bridge, bringing with it the acrid smell of burned circuitry.
Someone’s control station gave up a shower of sparks and they cried out in alarm. Endless waves of missiles spun away to all sides.
“Shields at 74%!” engineering called out.
Picara
eyed the enemy formation. They’d barely crossed half of it. The deck shuddered with the distant boom of a stray missile finding its mark.
“They’re firing missiles across our path!” gravidar warned. “We’re running straight into them!”
Picara grimaced. “We’ll make it.”
Another boom, louder this time. The bridge rattled around them.
“Shields at 67%!”
There wasn’t anything to do but weather the storm. Impacts came fast and furious, one deck-shaking boom after another. Sythian warships raced by in a shiny, lavender-tinted blur, forming a tunnel around them.
Suddenly, whole squadrons of Shell Fighters began darting into their path, deadly glinting specks that would be no better to run into at this speed than an asteroid field.
“What are they doing?” Picara gripped the edges of the captain’s table, her nails digging painfully into the glossy black surface of the holo projection plate.
“Brace for impact!” someone called out.
Explosions roared in Picara’s ears, louder than ever. The Deck shook and shuddered and the lights flickered. Then the lights went out and all the noise became fading echos as the sound in space simulator lost power. Picara saw herself float free of the deck.
Smoke poured into the bridge, and a horrible groaning screech sounded somewhere deep inside the cruiser.
Then something big and bright went racing by them. Picara blinked and squinted against the glare of it. Then she saw it for what it was—it was their ship, sliced out from under them. The bridge and the uppermost decks had been cleanly severed from the surrounding superstructure of the Emancipator. Picara gaped, watching as the larger part of their ship sailed on, its massive thrusters still glowing orange as it accelerated onward and slammed into another wave of Shell Fighters. Explosions peppered the ship’s outer hull, ripping molten furrows through it. An instant later the ship broke up into dozens of jagged black pieces, and the thrusters sputtered into darkness, splashing fast-freezing streams of liquid dymium into space.
After that, a poignant silence fell on the bridge, with all of them drifting in zero G. They watched out the viewports as they tumbled through space along their original trajectory, shieldless and powerless, and moving at over forty kilometers per second.
All it would take was one more collision—just one more stray Shell Fighter or missile crossing their path at the wrong moment and they would be gone.
* * *
Another Sythian command ship cracked apart. Hoff’s crew cheered, watching a rendering of its destruction on the main holo display. The interference inside the nebula had kept them from being detected so far, while their superior sensors still allowed them to fire out at the Sythians’ largest warships.
Hoff smiled. His plan was working perfectly.
“We won’t stay hidden for long,” his XO warned.
“Let them come.”
In order to find the Dauntless, the Sythians would have to use their hundreds of thousands of fighters to grid search the nebula. And even if that worked, they wouldn’t be able to transmit their discovery from inside the nebula.
“Gunnery mark your next target!” Hoff roared, laughing.
Beside him, Okara frowned. “This is hardly a victory, sir. We were supposed to disable the enemy and board their ships, not destroy them.”
“And we will—as soon as we’ve destroyed all of their command ships. Sythians don’t like to mingle with their slaves, so our objective remains attainable.”
“They’ll run before we can destroy all of their command ships.”
“Run? From just one enemy ship? You underestimate the Sythians’ pride. No, they won’t run. They’ll stand and fight until their last command ship turns into a flaming ruin beneath their feet.”
“If you say so, sir.”
“I do.”
“What are Omnius’s orders?” Okara said. Hoff shook his head. “You haven’t asked?” Okara’s glowing green eyes grew wide with shock.
“Omnius has been strangely silent. Knowing Him, that means he approves of my plan.”
“You assume he approves.”
“It is only logical. My plan will result in a successful outcome. That is what we are here for—to defeat the Sythians and rescue their human slaves.”
Hoff watched as a rendering of yet another Sythian Command ship came under fire.
Then it vanished.
“Where’d they go?” Hoff asked.
“They jumped away, sir,” the sensor operator replied.
Hoff brought up the star map on his ARC display and he found the enemy ship again, along with the rest of their command ships. All of them now lay clustered together on the far side of the system, having retreated to what the Sythians probably thought was a safe distance.
Hoff’s smile returned. “Resume firing!”
“From this range it will take longer to calculate jumps for our ordinance,” the gunnery chief warned.
“We’re not in a hurry,” Hoff said, chuckling to himself once more.
“Incoming! Enemy fighters!”
“The found us already?” Okara asked.
“That was too fast,” Hoff agreed, his brow furrowing as he panned the star map over to center on the Dauntless. A squadron of Shells fighters was racing in on their port side. As Hoff watched, they swerved suddenly, reacting to the appearance of the Dauntless, as if surprised to see it there. Then they opened fire with a steady stream of Pirakla missiles.
A second later the enemy was cut to shreds by X-1 interceptors.
“Brace for impact!”
Two dozen alien warheads splashed across their bow, causing the deck to shiver under them.
“Hull breach! Deck ten!”
Another drone deck. “Patch it up! That squadron was lucky to find us,” he decided.
Okara turned to him. “That, or we’re not as hard to detect as you seem to think, sir.”
As if to prove her point, three more squadrons of Shell Fighters came swirling out of the flashing gray soup of the Stormcloud Nebula. This time they targeted the Dauntless’s fighter escort.
“Sensors! How are they finding us so quickly?”
“I don’t know, sir! Their ships must have better sensors than we thought.”
Hoff grimaced. He supposed he should have guessed as much. The Sythians had upgraded their sensors to see through cloaking shields. That upgrade had probably come with other improvements as well.
Shell fighters winked off the grid in quick succession as Avilonian interceptors swarmed them. As Hoff watched, yet another squadron of Shells came streaking in, joining the original three. Zooming out, Hoff searched the nebula for enemy fighters. The ones their sensors could detect were flying randomly through the nebula, searching blindly for the Dauntless rather thank tracking toward them. That was a good sign.
Hoff considered raising cloaking shields to make things harder for them, but with all of the floating chunks of ice in the nebula, it would be too dangerous to drop their energy shields. Just one high-speed collision would be enough to rip them apart.
Another wave of Sythian missiles streaked out from the Shell fighters busy dogfighting around them. That volley hit the Dauntless, and the deck shuddered.
“Shields down to ninety two percent!”
“They won’t get anywhere,” Hoff decided.
“For now,” Okara replied.
Chapter 29
High Lord Kaon stared open-mouthed at the bird’s eye view of the battle on his star map.
“They still fire on usss!” Lady Kala hissed. “We must flee!”
“Flee?” Kaon was incredulous. “Their fleet is disabled in our midsts! They have but one warship left, and you wish to run away, as if they defeat us?”
“We have lost two command ships, and they are killing a third!” Lady Kala shrieked.
Before they could argue any further, Queen Tavia’s visage appeared, hovering in the air in front of them. Her red eyes gleamed, and her black skin wrinkled. “M
y Queen,” Kala said, bowing her head.
“Kala, have your clusters jump into the nebula and follow them in.”
“The nebula?”
“It is where the enemy hides.”
“We shall lose contact with each other if we follow them.”
“Yess,” Queen Tavia hissed. “But with more of us looking, it will be harder for them to hide, and we need only stumble upon them with one command ship to deal with them effectively. They shall not remain hidden for long.”
“For glory, My Queen.”
“For Shallah,” the queen replied.
* * *
Atton’s threat detection system screamed a warning, and he threw his fighter into an immediate spiral to dodge incoming fire. Bright purple streaks of Sythian lasers and missiles went racing by on all sides, creating a tunnel of flashing lights.
Speakers crackled to life beside his ears. “Gold Squadron, take evasive action!”
Atton glanced at the star map and grimaced. The nebula was a mess of streaking missiles and swarming enemies. Three squadrons of Shell Fighters buzzed around them like flies. As he watched, another squadron came swirling out of the nebula to join them.
“How are they finding us?” He knew there were a lot of enemy fighters out there, but this was ridiculous. Space was vast.
A warning siren sounded close beside Atton’s ears, and he realized the enemy was targeting him. He dropped a cloaking mine and went evasive. Seconds later the inside of his cockpit flashed with the bright orange light of the mine exploding in his wake. The simulated roar of the explosion reached his ears, and two shell fighters winked off the map.
Mentally targeting the next nearest enemy, Atton pulled up hard and toggled his lasers for an automatic firing solution. Both lasers fired up at a 60-degree angle, shooting at his target before it even came into view. By the time he saw his target, its shields were sparking and failing, its thrusters peeling open like mechanical flowers.
Then the Shell’s reactor went critical. A blinding flash of light lit up the inside of Atton’s cockpit with a deafening boom. A speeding wave of shrapnel hissed off his shields, and then he was through the expanding cloud of debris and cruising toward a group of over a dozen Shells, all of them facing him and firing a steady, sparkling stream of Pirakla missiles. Before Atton could so much as twitch, those missiles went streaking by him and slammed into the Dauntless. The simulated booms of explosions rumbled distantly through his cockpit speakers.
Dark Space: Avilon Page 36
