Life on a warship just before a possible fight often bordered between a frantic rush and pure chaos as everyone went about doing their assigned jobs. This was where training and routine take over as crews focused on the tasks at hand. Fuel tanks were topped off with the ship’s ram scoops. Missiles were moved from ammunition stores and redistributed to the MML and to each missile turret’s auto-feeder. Weapon turrets and elevator maintenance was completed and double checked. Fighters and shuttles were run thru preflight check lists, refueling and armaments uploads.
Down in engineering - diagnostics were done on the maneuver drives, bender drives and on the spinal mounted particle accelerator cannon. The last depended on the bender drives to power it, so without one you didn’t have the other.
Boarding parties and damage control teams prepared for the worst. Security teams ran drills and carried out weapons inspections. Emergency hull patches were prepositioned and fire suppression systems were checked.
Crews were fed and as some noticed that the worse the upcoming battle was thought to be than the better the food was. Those that could tried to catch a few winks of sleep. Though they mostly just laid there wondering about their uncertain future.
As captain, Mike felt almost useless. He had studied the next system and the point where they’d come through the gravity well’s worm hole. He reviewed in his mind - the tactics, speed and the weaponry that his ship was capable of. However, what he mostly did was sit in his captain’s chair monitoring progress reports and section updates.
Earlier in the mission he had tried to lend a hand fixing a damaged turret’s carriage housing and elevator. The Chief Petty Officer of the repair team softly said that they had it under control as he guided him away from the work. Mike had seen this before, that it was Ok for a junior officer or even up to the XO to get their hands dirty but not the captain. It was a matter of pride for the crew. Their captain led them and he didn’t get his hands dirty unless the shit was really hitting the fan. It was matter of pride – end of story.
So Mike sat there and waited as his ship and the task force got ready to bend.
The Cody polarized her hull, opened a bend and disappeared. Task Force Trident waited and prayed. Minutes later the Vanguard sloop reappeared, signaling that the next system was all clear.
The bend found them in another system void of life or habitable worlds. It was the way of the universe – stars systems with rock, ice and gaseous worlds. Proto-planets, novas and nebulas sprinkled in made for a lovely yet lonely cosmos. In all of this great expanse there where a few planets capable of life. This system wasn’t one of them. Rocky worlds, ice and gas giants were this system’s fate.
The Wolf Squadron moved through the system refueling as they moved to the new bender point. One more system and they’d be able to bend to Blue Rock.
Captain Hope slowly rubbed his face with his hand as they prepared for the next bend.
“Sir?” Commander Richards prompted.
Hope sighed, “They have to have a force sitting there.”
“There is no intelligence to the confirm that but my gut agrees with you,” the first officer stated.
The Hawk nodded remaining silent as he stared at the viewer.
“If they have destroyed Blue Rock there be no need for a containment force, but if it is still there …”
“Then there will be enemy ships in the next system,” Captain Hope said finishing his thought.
Cmdr. Richards nodded, “We’ll be ready.”
The captain looked at his chair’s command console.
“The squadron will bend in two hours, standard formation,” he ordered.
“No reconnaissance with the Cody?” the executive officer asked.
The Hawk shook his gray head.
“We go in together,” he said and then added “With the Wolf in stealth mode, the squadron will look like a relief convoy transporting captured supplies.”
“I’ll make the preparations,” Commander Richards said with a nod.
Hope picked up his coffee mug and took a tentative sip as he looked up at the holo map.
Task Force Trident set up on the edge of the gas giant’s gravity well. The planet’s size was five times that of Jupiter with an atmosphere that gave off a soft orange color to the world below.
The Randori would take the center with the Cody ahead of her and the Liberty just behind her. The New Orleans and the Anarchy would take flanking positions. The squadron’s ships would be in staggered positions, each at different elevations so no one was on the the same line. The Star Wolf would be several thousand meters below the squadron. There she would be in position to fire without interference from the other ships. The Cody would be the point of their spear and if there was trouble, she would use her speed to attack, run or just get out of the way and give the Randori a clear shot and field of fire. It was a pretty standard formation for the ruse they were playing.
Polarizing their hulls, they opened a bend and slipped through to the other side.
The system had a red sun, two gas giants and a small ice giant. It also had a large asteroid field that stretched from one gas giant to the other and helped form a ring around the second. There were no class M worlds or colonies but none of that mattered to the Wolf Squadron as they came out of the bend. Guarding the far gravity well by the sun was two standard destroyers and a destroyer escort. They appeared to be on picket duty and were across the system from where the task force had entered.
The ship mistress of the guard ships was very happy to see them. She had mistakenly believed that they were her overdue supply ships. She rattled on and on about being stuck on sentry duty and about being all but forgotten. Playing along with her they hurried across the system to deliver their supplies.
The ship mistress was still babbling about her assignment when the Star Wolf and the Randori fired simultaneously. The two spinal mounted particle accelerator blasts took the picket ships by complete surprise. The Wolf’s blast came from astern and tore through the lead destroyer. The Randori’s blast hit the second destroyer in the bow and ripped through it, literally tearing the front of the ship off.
The remaining destroyer escort was hit by shots from the Cody, New Orleans and the Anarchy. It wasn’t a very fair fight but war never is. The goal was to effectively destroy your enemy while taking as few casualties as possible. The attack cruiser and the Q-ship gave them the means to do just that. The fact that they were behind the enemy’s front lines and that they looked like a harmless supply convoy gave them a terrific advantage of surprise.
The Hawk couldn’t afford to offer them a surrender this time. The two destroyers could put up a real fight and they didn’t have time to spend repairing battle damage. Moving off they continued to fire with their long range particle turrets. In a matter of minutes, the three Karduan warships were nothing more than crumpled and torn scrap metal.
The object of the fight is not a fair fight but to bring overwhelming force into the battle and to dominate a fight. You never want to fight a fair fight - its war damn it!
Dozens of Karduan escape pods had been launched as the remaining enemy leaders signaled their surrender without being asked.
“Sir, there are eighty-four survivors,” Lt. Martin Daily reported from his station.
Hope let out a sigh before he spoke.
“Have all ships help in rescue operations,” he instructed and then continued “and then have the prisoners taken to the Liberty.
“Also, have all Karduan officers and any Blue males brought here for questioning,” the first officer added, receiving a nod from Hope of agreement.
Commander Hutton, Lt. Collins and Gunny Masters had been summoned from their various ships to the Star Wolf. Once there they assembled with Commander Richards and Ensign Bre-Nan in the security office of the brig. Together they started the interrogations of the surviving Karduan officers and Blue males.
The female officers were as most had been in the past - arrogant and angry. Both of which
conditions lent to slips of the tongue and unintentional revelations. Mike was present to help root out any telepaths amongst them. He being a Psi-Void made him immune to their powers. He also had an added effect that would help reveal them in the way that he smelled. They had discovered that his pheromones acted like a mild aphrodisiac to Karduan telepaths. Most Karduans, found that the average human smelled bad, mostly like meat fat and salt which offended their sensitive vegetarian noses.
Through their interviews none of the Blue officers reacted strangely to his presence. Also during questioning all of the Karduans freely admitted that they didn’t have a Prendere or Thought Seeker with them. It seemed that their picketing force didn’t warrant such a high ranking person. As for the Blue males, most of them were cooperative though a few refused to speak to them at all. Bre-Nan reported that these males were so afraid or were so conditioned they would never misbehave or seek freedom. The other males were more forthcoming especially to Bre-Nan who identified several of them as Believer disciples of their mythical prophet the Redeemer.
Martin Daily with Alistair Dover’s help, then took a team over to the enemy ships and tried to download anything they could from their mainframes. The first destroyer was a waste of time as it had exploded and was so far gone that that it was nothing but a cloud of metal chunks. The second destroyer was more like a ship without a bow and its engine section was like a piece of melted wax. Hell, the engines had been blown clean off. The destroyer escort was in slightly better condition and it was there that they worked to retrieve any vital information from its systems.
“So what do we have?” Captain Hope asked after several hours of waiting.
His officers had gathered in his day cabin and were all enjoying a drink and a sandwich, courtesy of Mr. Lucas, the captain’s steward.
“The enemy had left these ships here on sentry duty to keep any unauthorized space traffic from coming or going to Blue Rock,” Commander Richards announced having read the reports as they came in.
“It seems that the Templar outpost’s Knight Commander agreed to the Treaty of Neutrality but refused any type of alliance with the Blues without Papal approval,” Daily added.
“The ships left here were older and seemed almost neglected as the Karduan high command has been busy with their breakthrough attack while stabilizing and controlling their new front lines,” Lt. Dover reported with his British accent.
“There doesn’t appear to be any telepaths with these ships or at least none of them had a reaction to Lt. Collins’ presence,” Commander Hutton reported before taking another bite of his sandwich.
“The captured Blue males reported that they didn’t have a telepath with them,” Collins added.
“Fifteen of them are Believers and wish to join us,” Bren-Nan added with a smile.
Hope slowly nodded taking in all of their information.
“What about any other intelligence?” he inquired hoping for more intelligence.
“The commander of the squadrons who is chasing us is Grand Fleet Mistress Pir-Ly of the House of Win,” Richards informed.
“A Grand Fleet Mistress?” Hope remarked raising a gray almost white eyebrow.
The XO nodded, “It seems that she is one of their top admirals and was brought in just to hunt us down.”
“We’re flattered, what do we know about her?”
“She was a hero from the Karduan Civil War and was the planner of the attacks on our outposts at the beginning of this war,” Martin answered.
“The Grand Fleet Mistress is revered and feared within the Karduan worlds,” Bre-Nan commented.
“Pir-Ly also planned the breakthrough of our lines by uniting several fleets from different Houses within the Karduan empire. It seems that the Great Houses don’t always cooperate or even coordinate their attacks but this time through her leadership they have worked successfully to overwhelm our defenses,” Commander Richards said.
“So we are facing one of their greatest strategist,” Lt. Peters said glumly.
“Buck up old man,” Dover said slapping him on the shoulder with a smile.
“After all we already beat her once,” Mike added thinking of her carefully laid trap that Captain Hope skillfully foiled.
“Any good news?” the ancient captain asked.
“Yes sir, the ships under her commanded are a mix of older ships and captured human vessels. It seems that the Karduan forces are spread pretty thinly with the breakthrough and all of their mopping up operations they have going on. We threw a real monkey wrench into their plans by destroying so many of their ships. It has caused them to shift their forces and scrape together this pursuit force,” Richards explained.
“Her task force is made of two squadrons which we have already reduced by ten ships. She also has only one-star destroyer which is of an older design and one remaining battle destroyer,” Martin Daily added having helped the first officer compile and write the intelligence brief.
“Older ships means slower ships unless she disregards them which means a weaker pursuit force,” Hope said thinking aloud and then added “What else?”
“They are expecting another squadron but they have no estimated time of arrival or size of this force,” Richards announced which caused the room to get silent.
“They have also moved up a forward operating base station which is located in the Sargasso System. We already knew about this from the pirates we recently captured. They had some kind of deal with the station’s mistress,” Dover shared.
“The station is a mobile repair facility and according to both our Blue captives and our human pirates, she has a dozen or more damaged ships there being repaired at any given time,” Martin reported.
“Defenses?” Mike asked before Captain Hope could.
“If the reports are true, she has a maser net detection system located by the system’s sole stable gravity well, along with an anti-ship mine field, six automated gunships and perhaps with a squadron sitting on station,” Richards revealed.
Lt. Card of the frigate New Orleans, who had been sitting there quietly as all of this was being revealed now whistled.
“That would be one tough nut to crack!” he said.
Several heads nodded in agreement.
At that moment Hope cleared his throat.
“We will make the bend to Blue Rock in two hours. Everyone make ready, the order will be Confederation ships in the front and former Karduan ships in the rear. We don’t want the Templars to think we are a Blue squadron and start shooting,” the Hawk ordered.
The room said a collective “Aye sir” and were dismissed.
After the others had gone, Mark Richards stayed behind with the old captain.
“The Templars might still shoot us even though we’re Confederation navy, after all they signed that Treaty of Neutrality.”
Hoped nodded, “You’re right they might, so I guess we’ll have to trust in the Lord.”
Richard shrugged and left to prepare for the Wolf Squadron to bend leaving the old man to his holo maps and deep thoughts.
The ISS Star Wolf was going to take the lead with her stealth plating off. It was a risk but Hope wanted to show the knights exactly who they were. The ISS New Orleans would be on the attack cruiser’s port side and the Randori would be on her starboard side. The Liberty, Anarchy and the Cody would fall in behind them at combat intervals. He didn’t want his ships too close together in case of a spinal blast as well as to give them room to maneuver just in case.
Once all ships reported that they were ready to bend he gave the word to polarize hulls and bend. In a matter of seconds, they were through the worm hole and in the Blue Rock System.
Everyone was at battle stations and when they emerged from the gravity well and they were glad they were ready.
Before them guarding the well at sentry keeping stations were three Templar warships. The center ship was a battle cruiser along with two armored cruisers, one on either side of the massive ship. The armored cruisers were the same
size as a heavy cruiser and were the newer version of them with several upgrades. All of the ships had spinal mounted particle cannons and were larger than the Star Wolf.
“Hail them,” Hope ordered.
“Sir, they are hailing us.”
“On speaker,” Richards ordered.
“Welcome back Star Tiger!” the voice over the comm. link said and continued. “We were starting to worry about you but it looks like you had some good hunting!”
Commander Richards turned and looked to the Hawk in surprise.
“They think we are the Star Tiger,” he said knowing that the ISS Star Tiger and the ISS Star Wolf were identical sister ships. Their class was designed for behind the lines operations so it shouldn’t have been too much of a surprise to find her operating in the sector.
“Open a channel on the main viewer,” Hope calmly ordered.
“Aye sir, channel open,” Chief Parker at the communications station said.
“Templar ships, this is Captain Sir Randolph Hope, commanding the ISS Star Wolf,” he said and then paused.
As the channel opened, the viewer showed the scene on the bridge of the battle cruiser. The crew was hurrying about their duty stations but seemed un-phased at the news. They were all in combat space suits, most of which had small white shields bearing a red cross on them that were placed over their hearts. Everyone wore a sidearm and the officers had extension swords attached to their belts.
“I’m Sir Mark, Knight Captain of the Papal Battle Cruiser, Julius II.”
“I’d have to say Sir Mark that we are rather surprised to find your base still intact,” Hope said dryly.
“Any explanation?” Commander Richards inquired.
The knight captain made a scowling frown, “I’m afraid that you’d have to speak to our Knight Commander about that,” he said.
Wolf's Run: The Chase of War (Star Wolf Sqaudron Book 2) Page 22
