That brought a shrug from Husher. “Probably a product of having just a mom for most of my life. I think I dealt with not having a dad by spending more time worrying about mom than she did about me.”
“It’s kind of amazing, you know. How in touch with others’ emotions you are. Almost like a Fin.” A terse laugh escaped her lips. “When you first came aboard the Providence, I doubted you. Thought you were just another commissioned officer Command busted down to our ship, who Keyes would have to whip into shape. But you’re a true leader, Vin. I hate to admit it, but you did a great job as marine commander while I wasn’t stable enough for the job.” She stood, permitting herself a small smile. “Anyway, I’d better go. I don’t know what my marines will be facing when we reach the Kaithe, so I want them ready for anything.”
Husher leapt to his feet, crossing the cabin and beating her to the hatch. “Here, let me get that.”
She chuckled, a little awkwardly, looking up at him. “You don’t need…”
But he’d paused with his hand on the handle, looking down at her with an expression she’d never seen him wearing before. Maybe because he’d never let himself wear it.
He reached toward her, and she fell into him. Suddenly, his arms were around her, with her hands suspended in midair, bracketing his body as he brought his lips down to hers.
It was some time before they came up for air.
Chapter 20
We Engage
Keyes took his lunch in the crew’s mess, which lately he tried to visit whenever he could, to see whether the various species and groups were integrating well.
Of course, as he chomped down on the second cardboard-tasting biscuit that accompanied the freeze-dried instant soup, he considered that these visits likely accomplished nothing. The crew would obviously remain on their best behavior for as long as he sat here.
Even so, it isn’t hard to see that the old-guard marines hate those recruited from among the insurgents. And vice versa.
The two groups shot glares at each other across the balkanized cafeteria. Though Keyes also noticed both groups occasionally glancing nervously at the table of five off-duty Gok marines. That was reassuring to see, since it probably meant the human marines felt nervous that any conflict between them might set off the hulking aliens.
It also amused him, or at least it would have in the past. Nowadays, he didn’t find much time for mirth.
From among the Gok ships that had joined the allies, two platoons’ worth of Gok had joined the Providence marines just before the fleet left for Pirate’s Path. So far, they’d been nothing except respectful, and Keyes was certainly glad to have their strength.
Pushing himself up from the table, he brought his tray to the wall chute and dumped its contents there, to be sorted and processed by the weak AI in charge of many menial shipboard tasks. He’d had the system installed in the Providence years ago, to deal with the constant crew cuts that UHF Command had loved orchestrating. Now, with a full complement of marines, pilots, and crew, the AI had become a mere convenience and no longer a vital means of staying afloat. So to speak.
A young petty officer saluted him on his way to the CIC, and Keyes just stared at the man until he looked away with a jerk. Keyes had been lost in thought, and it took him a few seconds to realize he hadn’t acknowledged the gesture of deference in any way. Oh well. He didn’t need his crew to feel good about themselves. He only needed them to obey.
When he reached the CIC, Arsenyev had things well in hand. He’d been meaning to speak to her about questioning his orders in front of the crew, but he had to admit she made an exceptional XO, which he always knew she would.
“Captain,” she said, “I’ve been comparing darkgate positions with the coordinates we logged during our last two journeys down Pirate’s Path, as you requested. The current positions are consistent with where we’d expect them to be.”
“Very good, Lieutenant.” Keyes had been mildly concerned when, on their first journey, the darkgates hadn’t been where the UHF database said they should be, with the discrepancies growing the farther down Pirate’s Path they went. It seemed that was due only to sloppy bookkeeping this far out, and not some sort of malfunction with the darkgates themselves. Now that they had the correct positioning, he could update the database accordingly.
“Are all ships present and accounted for after our transition from the last system?” he asked.
“Yes, sir. One of Ek’s Roostships took longer than expected, but they emerged a half hour ago. Apparently they ran into some temporary engine trouble just before they could transition.”
Keyes nodded, reviewing the tactical display for himself. He couldn’t help but marvel a little at the military might he now commanded. At three hundred and sixty-four UHF warships, President Wateridge had devoted almost half of the remaining human fleet to this mission. Accompanying them were almost every Roostship that remained in existence, totaling two hundred and thirteen, as well as the twenty-three Gok warships that had joined them in the Bastion Sector.
Taking such an enormous fleet this deep down Pirate’s Path imposed an incredibly high fuel cost, and others had pushed for leaving most of the ships in the Caprice System, for Keyes to reunite with before pressing on to attack Baxa.
He’d objected to that idea outright, instead insisting that they stay together and refuel in Caprice on the way back from the Kaithe’s homeworld. With the numbers they knew the Ixa to possess, allowing anyone to split the fleet would be the height of folly.
Luckily, the Commonwealth had deferred to Keyes’s decades of experience, and the local government in Caprice was resigned to providing the allied fleet with whatever it needed when it passed through again. The politicians had finally come to understand that humanity’s existence hinged on the outcome of this war.
He glanced at his sensor operator. “Werner, how’s our laggard Roostship’s acceleration profile looking?” If the Winger ship had stopped accelerating, that could mean continued engine trouble.
“Steadily increasing, Captain. It will exceed our own shortly, and so the Roostship should soon rejoin the main body of the fleet. They—”
Keyes turned back to Werner, curious as to what had made him break off like that. The man’s eyes had widened, and his lips were pursed together.
“Werner?”
“Sir, an Ixan corvette has emerged from the darkgate behind the Roostship.”
“Just one corvette?”
“So far, it appears—no. A cruiser just emerged as well.” Werner stared at his console, the color slowly draining from his face. “A destroyer has appeared. And now another cruiser. Two frigates…a ship type I don’t recognize…and yes, a ship that I know to be one of their support ships.”
Not wanting to affect morale by getting Werner to put a magnified visual on the CIC’s main screen, Keyes instructed his console to do so instead. Ship after coal-black ship slipped out of the darkgate, forming up in a configuration Keyes recognized from the First Galactic War. It was one of the formations the Ixa used to protect the support ships that formed the backbone of their fleet.
A grim silence gripped the CIC over the next hour as the allied fleet continued to traverse the system while more and more Ixan ships entered it.
An Ixan battle group consisting only of corvettes darted forward, speeding toward the solitary Roostship struggling to reach the safety of her fleet.
“Sir,” Arsenyev said. “Should we send some ships to back up the Roostship?”
Keyes considered the question for a long moment. “We can’t,” he said at last. “Even our fastest ships wouldn’t reach her in time, and deploying them would compromise our tactical position.”
Like a pack of starving wolves, the corvettes overtook the Roostship and made short work of her. The Winger carrier managed to launch only half of its Talons before exploding. The corvettes switched to firing on the smaller fighters, but two squadrons succeeded in outstripping them to flee toward the Providence.
W
hen the Ixan fleet finally finished transitioning, they had nearly five hundred warships in-system, including nineteen support ships. The fleet unfurled itself into a wide, thin formation that proceeded to give chase, no doubt seeking to envelop and outflank the allied fleet.
Why didn’t anyone get in touch over the micronet to notify us about an Ixan fleet tearing through human space?
As quickly as he asked himself the question, he had the answer: the Ixa must have come through the third darkgate of the first system on Pirate’s Path, which was the only one with three entrances.
“Sir,” Arsenyev said softly. “Do we engage?”
It was a fine question. With the new weapon Keyes had learned about in his brief engagement with the Ixan captain Teth, which consisted of missiles that exploded into clouds of kinetic-kill masses, he knew his fleet’s number superiority didn’t mean as much as it otherwise would have. According to the Gok who’d joined the allied fleet, the Ixa called their new invention Hellsong missiles.
If I quickly neutralize most of the enemy’s support ships…
Given the support ships’ importance, if he could manage that, the Ixan fleet would likely flee in panic. There was a possibility Keyes could turn this engagement into an utter rout.
And a rout was exactly what the allies needed in this war. More than one, actually, but this would be an excellent start.
If he could pull it off.
“We engage,” he said.
Chapter 21
Support Ships
Keyes consulted Ek closely whenever deciding on maneuvers for the fleet, and not just because she’d demanded that she and the Wingers be given equal footing.
He also considered her an incredible tactician, despite her relative lack of experience. Her ability to divine the enemy’s intentions made her one of the best battle commanders he’d ever seen, as evidenced by the victory she’d taken from Carrow in Larkspur.
He communicated with her via his personal console inside his austerely decorated office. Typically, he would have included other captains, both UHF and Winger, in a meeting about the entire fleet’s movements. But the engagement with the Ixa would happen in a few short hours, and he couldn’t afford the bickering that such a well-attended meeting inevitably brought.
Today, it was just he and Ek.
“I say we target the support ships,” he said. “Not a surprising tactic, by any means, but it makes sense, and I think the Ixa will be surprised by just how cohesively our fleets work together. I mean to arrange our ships in a way that makes the shock of that efficient cooperation even greater.”
“A fine sentiment,” the Fin said. Since leaving Sol she’d recovered enough of her strength to leave her wheelchair, but she still seemed weakened. “But I do not trust the Ixan disposition. Look at the thin arc in which they have arranged their hundreds of warships. Does that not seem a strange configuration to you, given how highly they value support ships? We have easy access to those.”
He shook his head. “Not as easy as you might think. You haven’t faced their new Hellsong missiles, capable of producing clouds of thousands of speeding kinetic impactors. I have faced it, and I know how much extra leverage it grants them over a battle space. Besides, I would argue that the Ixan formation does do a good job of protecting their support vessels. It spaces them out as much as possible, making it much harder for us to take them all out in one fell swoop.”
Bracketed by her midnight wetsuit, Ek’s expression didn’t change, though it rarely did. “I will not argue with your experience, Captain Keyes.”
“All right, then. Here’s what I propose: all UHF and Gok ships will start toward the enemy at a steady pace, spreading out to deny them a superior firing arc. But your ships will remain behind. With any luck, that will look like dissension between the human and Winger captains. But once we pass the halfway point, your Roostships will start forward as well, with all speed. We’ll get our Nav officers to calculate it so that your Roostships arrive a half hour after our ships do.”
Keyes paused, to see whether Ek saw through to the purpose of what he proposed. If a Fin couldn’t see it, then Ixa likely wouldn’t, either.
“There is more to this, is there not?” On the screen, Ek shifted in her chair. “Based solely on the movements you have described, I do not view this as an optimal use of our forces.”
So she sees there’s more to it, but she doesn’t see what the strategy conceals. That will have to do, I suppose. “You’re right, Ek. Once my ships reach the Ixa, we will engage them in a typical manner, though spacing out our forces and keeping our distance from the enemy to give us time to neutralize their Hellsong missiles, and to evade the ones we fail to neutralize. But as your Roostships draw near, we will switch our focus to the Ixan support ships almost exclusively. I expect they’ll pull them back to the rear of their fleet, at which point your fleet will split into two diverging trajectories, causing you to shoot past the enemy. You’ll only just have begun to decelerate, and you’ll launch Talons as you pass by. The Talons will target the support ships as your Roostships come around and target the rest of the Ixan fleet. Together, we’ll surround them and smash them.”
“I see the merit in your plan, Captain.”
“Thanks.” He supposed, from a Fin, that rated as fairly high praise. “Let’s go execute it.”
Back in the CIC, Keyes began doling out orders that would bring his plan to fruition. As he did, a mounting headache began, and his stomach felt empty, even though he’d eaten recently. He hoped that was merely the excitement of his first true battle with Ixa in twenty years, but the thought that he was missing something would not stop nagging him from the back of his mind.
“Coms, send a fleet-wide reminder to exercise extreme caution and use secondary lasers to detonate the Ixan missiles well before they reach us.” His entire fleet had their primary capacitors charged, making him wary of his enemy’s new capability. “Instruct them to discharge primaries at the slightest hint a stray impactor might hit them.” Even a moderate impact could rip apart a warship with her primary capacitor fully charged.
The battle began reasonably well, with just one UHF captain failing to heed Keyes’s advice. The man waited too long to shoot down the approaching Ixan missiles, and when he did, it was far too late, despite his desperate effort to move his ship out of the kinetic-kill cloud’s path. Hundreds of impactors rained against his ship’s hull, which exploded, endangering the vessels nearby. Luckily, those captains were more wary, and they were prepared with evasive courses.
In exchange, the Providence took out an Ixan frigate and a cruiser with a barrage of missiles, and two other UHF ships saw success against a destroyer and a corvette, crippling the engines of one and destroying the other outright.
The engagement continued in this way for several minutes, with the Ixan losses slightly exceeding the allies’.
But it’s not enough. Come on, Ek. He hoped he’d handed the correct parameters to the Nav officers.
At last, Ek reached the agreed-upon range, and Keyes sent out orders to start targeting the Ixan support ships. Predictably, the enemy began to withdraw them through their fleet in an attempt to protect them.
Good luck with that, Keyes thought as two hundred and thirteen Roostships split into two groups, bracketing the Ixan fleet, and then tearing past them.
Talons launched, focus-firing on the Ixan support ships, which were reaching the enemy formation’s rear at precisely that moment. Perfect. Adrenaline coursed through Keyes’s veins at their unfolding success.
But his elation was short-lived.
He’d expected the support ships’ destruction to make the Ixa panic, break apart, and scatter. Instead, they maintained tight formations and redoubled their efforts. As the Roostships zoomed toward the darkgate they’d entered from, a layer of Ixan warships peeled away from the rear of their fleet to envelop the Talons harrying the support ships, even as the latter opened fire as well.
Not expecting to receive so much at
tention, it was the Talon formations that splintered, the pilots panicking in the face of such overwhelming firepower. Apparently unconcerned about their support ships’ fate, the Ixa fired their new missiles, which exploded just before reaching the flock of Talons, covering the battle space in kinetic impactors and taking out dozens of fighters in the space of a breath.
As for the rest of the Ixan fleet, they advanced steadily forward, firing the same missiles at the UHF and Gok ships, which could only back away or risk having their primary capacitors blow.
“Captain,” Werner said, the panic in his voice mirroring the frantic movements of the allied ships on the tactical display. “More Ixan warships are flooding into the system and heading straight for the Roostships.”
Studying the display closer, Keyes saw that this second Ixan fleet also included what appeared to be support ships. But now, he saw them for what they were: bait.
Clearly, the Ixa no longer relied on support ships, but they knew the allies believed they did, and so they’d used that to lure them into a compromised position.
With the new Ixan ships pouring into the system, the allied fleet was soon outnumbered, with more enemy warships appearing every second.
“We must extract ourselves,” Keyes said, trying not to sound panicked himself. “With as few losses as possible.”
Arsenyev looked at him, eyes wide. “That won’t be easy, given how heavily engaged we are.”
“I know that. But we have to do it anyway.”
Chapter 22
On the Darkest Days
Ek kept a close eye on the engagement via the tactical display, and the moment she saw the Ixa allow her Talons to envelop the support ships, she knew her suspicions about their formation had been well-founded.
The nature of the Ixan trick also become instantly clear to her. They had used the support ships as a lure, and no doubt more Ixan ships would soon enter the system to fully spring the trap. Because she had let her respect for Captain Keyes’s experience cloud her own perceptions, the entire allied fleet was cast into peril.
Reckoning: The Ixan Prophecies Trilogy Book 3 Page 7
