Admiral's War Part One

by Wachter, Luke Sky

  “Stop them, Tactical,” Hammer commanded.

  “I’m giving them everything we’ve got,” the Tactical Officer shrugged helplessly, “we just don’t have anything more to give.”

  “Keep at it—and never say ‘never’,” ordered Hammer.

  I wish I had some kind of amazing way of turning this situation around, but even the professionals were stumped. Without room to maneuver and with our durability reduced to its lowest level yet, there seemed to be little hope. ‘Never say never.’ Might as well ‘never say die’ for all the good it would do us.

  I wanted to snort, but I manfully held it in. If only there was something left we could throw at them to make them back off. But, as Hart said, we simply didn’t have anything else to throw. Every ship was firing all it had a the enemy already; every ship except for the two halves of the Aegis warship—

  I jerked in my chair as if my brain had been struck by lightning. “Tell Dark Matter to release the Aegis ships,” I said urgently.

  “What?” Hammer asked looking confused.

  “I said that we still have something to throw at them: the Aegis Battleships, We’ve got three pieces of two ships,” I said with rising excitement.

  “Yeah, but just letting them go will only cause them to drift—and not much, at that,” Lieutenant Hart protested.

  “We’ll hit them with our ships weaponry and push them out if we have to,” I said brusquely.

  “But lasers won’t cause them to go out unless they…burn through the hull,” Hart said with some kind of dawning comprehension, “and cause an atmospheric decompression, pushing them away from us.”

  “Not just lasers, man,” I said sharply, “use the plasma canons!”

  “Which actually have mass, unlike the Heavy Lasers! Why that’s sheer genius, Sir!” Hart said enthusiastically. “It won’t be much, but it might be enough to cut off some of this fire if we position them strategically…”

  “Tactical prepare to fire as soon as those ships are free,” I said and then rounded on Steiner, “and relay that message to Dark Matter! He’s going to have to release them sometime before he jumps—now would seem to be the opportune moment!”

  “Aye, Sir,” said the petite Comm. Officer.

  Before the enemy ships were able to move within our formation and draw along either side of us, the Rear Admiral released the Aegis Battleships.

  “Tactical…” I said with extreme urgency. We had yet to fire and the enemy was almost upon us.

  “Calculating the angles of fire,” said Hart sounding under pressure.

  “Now, Mr. Hart!” I yelled as the enemy moved slowly and majestically to within several ships lengths of entering the formation.

  “Uploading program…fire!” Hart shouted into his microphone, and our plasma cannons—which had fallen silent due to the lack of an enemy small or light-skinned enough to be affected—abruptly went to rapid fire. Within three seconds, they were joined by the rest of the fleet who were no longer firing at the enemy but, at the shattered remnants of the Aegis ships.

  Or ‘ship,’ rather, as I noticed that of the still mostly-intact flagship of Admiral Silverback was only taking fire from our plasma cannons. Apparently firing on our own ships that still had personnel onboard with Heavy and Turbo-lasers was a road too far.

  What’s more, they were right. I remembered yet again—with a genuine cringe—the time I had ‘rammed’ Strider’s Cutters with the Lucky Clover. I had almost gotten a number of good people killed because I didn’t think to pull them off the hull in time.

  Unmoving at first, and then slow to the point of being glacial, the ship and ship fragments nevertheless proved to a terribly unwelcome surprise for the enemy. One Battleship that had clearly intended to slot right in between Dark Matter’s two remaining ships suddenly found itself about to collide with half a warship, and immediately had to go to maximum emergency power and overshoot our formation to avoid it.

  “Yes! Tell the other ships to switch fire to the other fragment,” barked Hart.

  Steiner glanced at me and I gave a sharp nod in reply.

  The fleet switched targets—all except for us.

  Another Battleship was forced to dodge around the formation instead of rampaging inside. It was down to the wire and it didn’t look like we’d shifted the final crippled Aegis ship far enough out to make the difference.

  The Reclamation ships shifted slightly down from their original courses when a series of airlocks on the side of the crippled Aegis ship facing away from the enemy opened. For a moment it seemed like it was going to work, then disappointment washed over us as the Reclamation ship started to pass. At the last moment, the Aegis Battleship improbably clipped the rear end of the enemy. Shields flared and the Aegis ship was sent careening off on a tangent, its bow section completely crushed.

  The Reclamation ship proved it was not unaffected either. The force of the collision sent it tumbling end-over-end, throwing it off-course. It was now pointed sideways at Commodore Druid’s flagship and still moving toward him with forward momentum. A ramming event seemed unavoidable. Then, apparently deciding discretion was the better part of valor, the now-sideways ship flared its engines with a hard burn that continued its downward course.

  A collision still seemed imminent, but going all out the enemy ship barely cleared our own. Barely dodging the Prince and our hedgehog—if you could still call it that with so few ships remaining—their emergence threw the rest of the enemy into confusion, forcing them to dodge and avoid unless they wanted the now nearly out of control ship on their own side to crash into them.

  I breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Excellent work; commend Silverback on a well-played maneuver with those airlocks,” I said to Steiner, not too proud to give credit where credit was due—even to that man—as a third and then a fourth ship, which had intended to penetrate our formation and destroy our hyper dishes, was blocked by one of their own. They were then forced to dodge out and away thanks to the other Admiral’s actions.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” the Lieutenant said looking embarrassed, “but that ship lost its primary and secondary comm. arrays during the running retreat to this location. They’ve been using handhelds to stay in touch with the rest of us, and thanks to their distance and the fire between our ship and theirs we can no longer reach them. Also, Admiral Silverback transferred his flag off that ship some time ago in favor of the Wings of Fire, which is still engaged in delaying one of the enemy wallers. I can send a message to him if you want?”

  I blinked in surprise and then nodded wryly. Why was I even surprised? Like rat off a sinking ship, too bad for him he’d chosen the wrong port in the storm to try and escape in.

  “Make a note: I want a commendation in the file of the Captain of Silverback’s flagship—or whoever the other officer is in command of her right now, if that’s something we know or can find out,” I said firmly. “As for the intrepid Silverback, who has already transferred, it sounds like he’s too busy right now. I’m afraid he won’t be coming with us out of this system.”

  I put on a deliberately blank face but on the inside I was thinking that if we had to lose anyone, Silverback was the man I wasn’t going to shed any tears over. Frankly, I was more upset over losing the officers and crew of Wings of Fire than I was over either ship or Admiral Silverback.

  “Admiral Dark Matter reports he’s down to one heavily-damaged secondary engine. After these latest attacks, his Engineering department isn’t even sure if the engine will even extend, let alone light off when they try to use it again,” Steiner reported, adding yet another item to the list of things that were going against us.

  “Murphy and all his unholy tricks, the Demon strikes again!” I muttered with an instant pang in my heart. Even if he could make the jump to light and transfer out of the star system, if he couldn’t use his engines then Dark Matter and his flagship could be stuck inside the gravity sump. Without the proper shield strength to resist the effect, they would be slowly
crushed. Even if they survived the sump, their ship might not be able to make another jump, “Tell the Admiral the decision on whether to jump or not is entirely up to him. No man here will think him cowardly or uncommitted if he doesn’t feel his ship can make it. And that goes not just for the Royal Rage but every other ship in the fleet,” I vowed.

  Several officers looked at me blankly.

  “He’s past the point of no return, Admiral,” Hammer told me her voice barely above a whisper, “if that ship doesn’t jump, its own hyper drive is just as likely to tear apart as the gravity sump on the other end.”

  I felt my face flush.

  “Admiral Dark Matter says he’ll take it under advisement,” Steiner said, and if anything my face flushed even further, “and while he fully intends to go down with the ship if it comes to that, he will offer the chance to abandon ship to anyone who wishes it.”

  “Thank you, Lieutenant,” I said faintly, thankful that my blunder hadn’t been broadcast for all to hear. It would be nice if everyone and their sister didn’t know I’d just made a fool of myself.

  The enemy continued to pound us relentlessly. “Hart’s Heart reports that they’ve taken several glancing blows to their main hyper dish and are unsure if it will be able to survive the jump. But like the Rear Admiral, they intend to hazard the attempt,” reports Comm.

  “Noted,” I said, my calm outer words entirely at odds with the hammering of my heart on the inside. I’d entered this star system with eleven Battleships and right then I had less than half that—if you didn’t count the ships we knew were going to be staying here permanently.

  Beside us, the Armor Prince was rocked by an explosion as a series of hits penetrated its hull. Violent outgassing nudged it even nearer to the Royal Rage than our defensive formation called for.

  “Commodore Druid reports that they will attempt to compensate!” reported Steiner, and then the first ship from Epsilon Tarantula point transferred. One moment it was there, and the next moment space imploded behind it and she was gone.

  “Point Transfer; I think she made it Admiral!” cried Sensors, relief palpable in his voice.

  A weary cheer swept through both bridges. “Hear me, baby? Hold together,” I heard Leonora Hammer murmuring amid the cheers.

  Like a hive of angry bees that had just been kicked, the Reclamation Battleships struck back with a vengeance.

  “We just lost our main engine!” reported Adrienne Blythe. “Engineering says they need to look at the damage before they can say for sure one way or the other, but they think it’s probably a heat sink issue.”

  One by one, first the Blackwood/Epsilon Tarantula contingent jumped, followed by the Armor Prince. Then Hart’s Heart seemed to waver before disappearing, and all I had time to do was give off a simple prayer as suddenly we were the only Battleship left in the area. The flood of enemy fire we had previously experienced turned into a torrent.

  “Why are we still here, Nav?” I demanded.

  “We’re down to four fusion generators; we’re just a little slower than the rest of the fleet, Sir,” Brightenbauc snapped.

  “Shield power is down to 15% and collapsing. The generator is shutting down!” cried Longbottom.

  “Once that generator goes, they’ll pulverize our hyper dish,” Hart said grimly.

  “Hold those shields, Longbottom,” snapped Hammer, “I don’t care how you do it!”

  Several shots punched through our weakened shields—which were the only thing keeping us alive—and a pair of them punched through our main dish.

  “This is going to be rough,” said Brightenbauc.

  “That’s not what I want to hear, Nav,” Hammer barked.

  And then space twisted around us and we experienced one of the roughest translations and sump slides I’d experienced to date.

  Left behind—and unknown to the rest of us—the Wings of Fire suffered major damage when her hyper drive was unable to make the attempt at hyperspace and forcibly shut down. Thanks to the heroic actions of her Engineering department, the ship was saved—though it was a costly effort which saw a fourth of the department killed in the resulting explosion, which rendered the vessel structurally unsound.

  Chapter Eighty-one: In Retreat

  Five very battered Battleships all met up in our target star system: and uninhabited brown dwarf without even so much as an asteroid belt and only a few slowly-wandering comets.

  Fortunately, none of the ships had been lost in transfer. But Hart’s Hart wasn’t going anywhere without a new dish, and Dark Matter’s flagship needed at least a week of repairs before he was willing to risk the series of jumps that were needed to make it back to base. He had been lucky; his last faltering secondary engine nearly tore itself apart getting them out of gravity sump on that jump, and he was right not to push his stroke of good fortune.

  “I know it rubs against the grain, Admiral Montagne,” said the Rear Admiral when I stopped to discuss the matter with him. “But someone has to warn the rest of the Sector and meet up at the rendezvous point with the rest of our warships before the Reclamationists can crack our nav-data base and find out where we were supposed to all meet up.”

  “I suppose you’re right. It’s just the thought of leaving the two of you here while we run off…” I trailed off, feeling as if a great weight was bowing down my shoulders. “We’ve lost so many already.”

  “And we’ll lose even more if someone doesn’t show and get the rest of the fleet pointed towards a major defensive position,” Dark Matter said unrelentingly. “I’m not sure what good our wrecked and battered survivors will do when the Reclamation Fleet runs us to ground at Wolf-9, but it’s going to be a sight more than if you sit out here and let the rest of the fleet implode from inaction and run home to be conquered one at a time.”

  “You’re probably right,” I allowed.

  “Whether I’m right or wrong, you owe it to them—you owe it us to make the attempt,” he said glaring at me. “Enough men and women have died that you don’t have the option of staying here. You have to make all of our sacrifices meaningful and not let them be just another in a series of unfortunate blunders caused by near-mutinous subordinates and an ineffective Fleet Commander.”

  I instinctively straightened my back and glared back at him. “I’m issuing the order to charge jump engines. Every ship that can risk it will be required to jump,” I said, already able to list all three ships that were going to be going to the rendezvous point—a paltry number that included my heavily-battered flagship.

  “Good!” declared Dark Matter before promptly cutting the channel.

  Six hours later, we jumped out of the uninhabited brown dwarf that was nothing more than a number on some stellar cartographer’s map.

  Chapter Eighty-two: In Retreat II

  We jumped to the gathering point to discover that nearly every ship that we could confirm had escaped the ambush star system was either already there, or had been and already moved on.

  “Good to see you, Sir,” Commodore LeGodat said by way of greeting.

  “You’re a sight for sore eyes; I wasn’t sure if you’d made it out,” I said with relief.

  “Only three ships with you?” LeGodat half-asked, half-stated-the-obvious.

  I suppressed a wince. “Two more were badly damaged—one with engines and one with a hyper dish that’s not going to take them any further,” I said, thinking back to the list of repairs and parts those two ships were going to need. “I don’t know if Janeski is going to give us the time, but if he does we’ll be sending out a freighter with a repair team and the materials they need to get out of there.”

  “I see…so it’s five survivors amongst our heavies,” he said, briefly closing his eyes before opening them once again. “Between outright losses and a few desertions, we’re down to less than half our original group of lighter forces. Although you’ll be pleased to know Commodore Kling made it out with only three lost Corvettes,” he said.

  “That’s good to hear…
about the Corvettes, I mean,” I clarified, feeling as if I was reeling taking one body blow after the other. The losses which had just been icons on a screen were suddenly glaringly, gut-checkingly real.

  “I think you need to speak with the individual ship commanders before this fleet falls apart,” LeGodat said relentlessly.

  “That bad, huh?” I asked feeling somehow unsurprised to hear it.

  “We need leadership,” said the Commodore gravely.

  I nodded and agreed. “I’ll see what I can do,” I nodded, and then turned to Steiner to set it up.

  Over the course of the next several hours, I spoke individually with each and every ship commander and told them how their worlds needed them. I impressed upon them that we weren’t out of this fight yet, and that despite our seemingly insurmountable losses we could still bleed the closet Imperials white if only we stuck together.

  In response, I received blank looks, fear of the enemy, and outright accusations of murder and incompetence. Clearly, we were going to lose more ships than just those we’d lost to enemy fire before we returned to Easy Haven.

  By the time we were ready to jump out of the rendezvous system and into the next in the series that would take us back to the mighty defensive works of Wolf-9, we had just under a third of our original force. I wasn’t willing to wager how many more ships we would silently lose along the way.

  But one thing I was sure of was that I now hated one Rear Admiral Arnold Janeski in ways that made all my previous feelings toward the man seem childish in comparison—which, in truth, most of them had been.

  The only thing I didn’t know was whether or not there was anything I could do against the powerful fleet he had assembled.

  But I did know that I was bound and determined to try. I knew we didn’t have the forces to meet them head-on in the field, but we’d see how willing they were to break their teeth on the reactivated and expanded Wolf-9 defensive works.