Still, they had made short work of the drones that the Viskr ships had launched early on in the fight. Unmanned, unshielded craft did not stand much of a chance against high velocity mini-guns. The enemy had not launched any more drones after the first wave, and had yet to send a single fighter against the Imperial fleets.
The Viskr fleet though had not allowed itself to be drawn away from their base, so it could not be fought safely out of range of the battle station’s weapons. And so a dilemma had arisen: Betombe’s fleet could either stay in a wide orbit of the station, just at the effective range limit of their weapons systems, or they could get close and personal while presenting the smallest target profiles they could get away with. The former choice would mean offering the largest possible targets to the enemy for the long time it would take to chip away at their defences; the latter carried the risk of much more serious damage for every hit they took. In either case, combat effectiveness would be reduced.
It was not the kind of choice Betombe liked making. Dilemmas in general annoyed him, and in his professional opinion this specific one was really quite shit. So, in the manner that had won him both battles and infamy, he simply created a third option.
His twist on the flak curtain was not really a new idea, as such, but he was pretty sure it had not been used before in quite this way. Or at least, what he had come up with was definitely not a tactic taught at the War College or the Imperial Flight Academy. Sometimes the most effective idea was just so simple that nobody could slow down their brain enough to think it up.
The Imperial ships’ C-MADS defence turrets had all been re-tasked. They were no longer trying to deflect the slugs being fired at their own hulls, as their engineers had intended. They were firing to protect other ships.
Betombe’s battle group was arranged around the Viskr battle station, the starships hanging in space and converging slowly on the station as they fought with its defensive fleet. Only brief bursts from manoeuvring thrusters kept the Imperial ships in slow lateral orbits, their noses always pointed at their ultimate target as — excruciatingly slowly — they spiralled fatefully inwards.
Try as it might the station was unable to fight them off; every time one of its metal slugs streaked towards an Imperial ship, the neighbouring ships’ turrets would deflect it with a rapid barrage of smaller projectiles. Each time a true anti-ship missile came close, it was detonated prematurely by a burst from a gigawatt laser.
Betombe knew that the Viskr crewing the opposing ships would now be wrangling with almost the same dilemma his own fleet had faced when they first entered the system. But there was no chance they would derive the same solution; the Viskr were desperately dependent on battle computers — to the point of being almost strategically illiterate — and no battle computer he had ever heard of would think to use its point defences to protect something other than itself. In a way, it was almost funny.
“Sir, message Sleeper Hold Actual: be advised there is a gap in enemy fire cover, five-zero degrees from your heading.”
“Acknowledge the message. Tactical, get on it. Show me this gap.”
“Aye Sir,” the tactical officer said. She flicked her hand across a holo at her station, and within seconds she was passing the data to the central battle map. “I believe I’ve found it.”
Betombe studied the enemy ships, watching the way they moved and reading off the information that Love Tap had gathered from them.
“This one is listing.” He pointed to a corvette which was moving further and further out of formation. “These two frigates should be filling the gap, but they’re each trying not to expose themselves.”
“Plug the gap with a battleship, you could do a lot of damage,” Tactical said.
“My thoughts exactly. COMOP, contact the Gorgon and have them do just that.”
“Incoming volley,” a voice yelled from the starboard consoles.
The entire command deck jerked hard enough to make Betombe brace himself against a guard rail. It must have been a significant impact indeed if it was enough to jar the entire ship.
“Damage control, what just happened?”
“Combined fire,” an officer called back. “Three destroyers; gauss guns firing in close order along a shared trajectory. We’ve lost the forward hangar.”
“They’re adapting,” Betombe muttered. Somehow their damned battle computers must have figured out how to confuse the targeting systems on the C-MADS turrets. That would not do at all. “Return fire. Everything you can manage. I want those ships pulverised for their efforts, before their friends copy the idea.”
“Aye Sir, tracking to targets.” Tactical’s hands danced across her holos, and Love Tap responded with immediate violence.
Invisible against the inky backdrop of space, metal slugs streaked towards the trio of Viskr vessels that had attacked the dreadnought, accelerated hard along the guide rails at the core of the ship’s lateral gauss guns. Love Tap was already swamping the enemy sensor palettes with laser light, hoping to knock them offline just long enough for his projectiles to get inside the flak boundary. Steel flechettes accompanied the slugs, simple decoys which would reduce the chances of the real ordnance being knocked aside by point defences.
The destroyers broke their tight formation, two of them protecting the third with their broadest sides. Defence turrets sprang into life along their hulls, spinning and pivoting rapidly to track the incoming fire, spitting tungsten interceptors venomously in a near constant stream. Hundreds of bursts of heat and light revealed the many projectiles that were deflected from their targets.
The two ships were peppered by small explosions, deeply pitted craters appearing in the smooth metal of their outer hulls. Gouts of burning atmosphere erupted from the breaches, and the vessels seemed to reel under the assault, pulling away from Love Tap as if shielding their exposed flanks instinctively. Another volley, and both ships took more hits this time. The first wave had damaged too many of their defence turrets.
Inevitably, the closer ship took the brunt of the attack. Before the next volley had even made contact, secondary explosions were ripping through its structure. A great yellow and white flower burst open from the ventral surface, folding and tearing the metal in its path as if the plates and crossbeams were nothing more than dry leaves. Geysers of fire sprang from the hull one after another, streaming out into the cold void, taking the ship’s innards and crew with them.
The final volley battered the doomed destroyer mercilessly, and life boats started to launch from her aft hangar. A blinding light flared in the darkness. Seconds passed before the shock wave contacted Love Tap, plasma and metal debris slamming against the dreadnought’s hull, causing his corridors and compartments to ring and shake with the clamorously alarming noise of a violent machine death.
On the command deck, Betombe added his voice to a cheer that faded with the explosion. The second destroyer was limping away, ignoring the life boats that had fled its late companion. Judging by their uncontrolled rolling, not one of the pods had cleared the destroyed ship in time. Either their navigation systems were fried, or concussion had killed the occupants.
You can run, Betombe thought, but your companion’s fate will also catch up with you. And you have revealed your command unit.
He looked to the unscathed ship of the trio, now a good deal more distant than it had been when Love Tap first returned fire. The way the others had moved to block the line of fire… whatever military unit the three ships belonged to, they were all of them beholden to that third ship’s commanding officer.
“COMOP, have Shrike and Fury concentrate their fire on that destroyer. I want it burned out.” He pointed into the battle map, picking out the command unit. “Notify all other Sixth Fleet commanders to harry enemy battle groups, and watch for signs that they are protecting specific units from our fire.”
“Sir.”
“Tactical, hit that damaged destroyer with a ship-to-surface missile.”
“Admiral?”
&n
bsp; “They were formulating a response to our tactics. If they shared it with their friends, then I want to strongly discourage the other commanders.”
“As you wish, Sir: firing ship-to-surface.”
An audio alert pipped twice, and Betombe watched a red streak leave the representation of Love Tap that shone brightly at the heart of the battle map.
Outside the ship, in the funereal silence of space, the missile bore down quickly on the already damaged destroyer, evading the enemy ship’s flagging defence systems with ease. The warhead, designed to level an entire city from orbit, was rammed into the fleeing craft’s engine cluster. Explosions burst through the hull one after another, faster than the eye could follow, ripping bulkheads and decking and armour plate alike. The destroyer was completely obliterated.
COMOP did not wait for the celebration to die down. “Admiral, message Gorgon Actual: enemy resolve is crumbling at his location, requesting more units to press the advantage.”
Betombe evaluated the master holo. “They can’t hold their lines. Redirect all Sixth Fleet ships; have them join Gorgon in forcing the issue where the Viskr formation is weakest. Fourth Fleet ships will maintain the flak curtain.”
“Aye Sir, sending instructions.”
“Tactical, this is it. Prepare all forward cannons for a fusillade. Target the battle station: command centre, engineering levels, primary reactors. I want it utterly disabled.”
“Understood, Admiral.”
On the battle map he watched Gorgon and her compatriots working together to widen the gap in the Viskr defences. As more and more Sixth Fleet ships arrived, the hole grew bigger and bigger. Viskr ships began to abandon other parts of their perimeter to reinforce those being pushed to retreat. Their line was falling to pieces.
“Helm, ahead one half. Get us to a good striking distance.”
The ship’s conventional drive flared, and the faintest of vibrations trembled through the command deck. With the blast shields down, that barely detectable reverberation was the only indication the dreadnought had begun to move.
“Brace for impact,” yelled Tactical.
The corridors leading to the bridge rang with the deafening sound of metal hammering against metal, painfully loud and uncomfortably long-lived. When it followed, the rapid clacking and heavy whir-thump-thump of the responding C-MADS turrets was so close it could be heard through the intervening decks. The station must have been trying to knock out the ship’s command deck. An explosion rumbled through the superstructure and an alarm began to sound; somewhere above and aft of them, Love Tap was losing atmosphere. Red strips now illuminated on every bulkhead, and pressure hatches began to close throughout the primary decks.
Tactical shouted over the din. “Target has locked on to us; they’re retraining all primary weapons.”
“Ready on forward cannons. Have Fourth Fleet hit their sensor palettes.”
“Sir, most of them have already come about to intercept enemy fire.”
“They can do both. Send the order.”
The battle map became a bright network of lines, each one connecting a warship to the enemy station. Every line represented a sensor being blinded, a chance to strike without being blocked. More and more of the lines appeared.
“Tactical; fire at will.”
Each of the main forward auto-cannons fired in turn, one after the other, shaking the deck. The discharges were so violent that the momentum dampeners could not absorb all of the spare energy, and sound and motion escaped into corridors and bulkheads and compartments. Lighting strips crackled and flickered. Rack shelving and webbing tipped and rolled precariously, threatening to spill their contents. Dust leapt from every surface, catapulted into the air by each sudden jolt.
Hit by dozens of sabot rounds, the battle station came off quite a lot worse.
The entire upper section imploded on the side facing Love Tap, and a hole was blown out through the opposite hull. Vapour billowed out of both wounds, taking with it hundreds of objects too small to make out. An intense burst of light and flame jetted from the docking aperture — somewhere inside the structure, a docked ship must have gone up.
The lower section, a huge rotating habitat structure, had taken a number of hits itself. Globular blooms of gas escaped from the hull in every place it was shattered, burning out almost immediately in the cold void of space, and the rotation of the entire section became jarring and irregular. A few point defences on the hull were still trying to respond, spinning randomly as they tried feebly to lock on to incoming ordnance. The station was mostly firing on its own debris.
“Hold fire,” Betombe said. The cannons stopped. “Assess damage.”
“They’ve lost command and control, co-ordinated firing control, launch capability, and spin regulation. Their weapons lock has lifted from us. Secondary explosions detected throughout the entire structure. Distress beacon has been triggered, and already failed. Primary reactor appears to have shut down.”
“In other words, we fucked them up real good. Any chance of them salvaging it?”
“Unlikely Sir. Looking at these readings, the place must be torn to pieces inside; hull breaches, zero gravity, fire, explosions, pressure variations… they’ll be lucky to evacuate survivors, if there are any.”
“Good, I’d call that mission accomplished.”
“The remainder of their defence force is disengaging from our ships,” Tactical said.
“Have our units pursue them aggressively. Damage rather than destroy; I want them able to jump out of here, but no longer equipped to fight. Make them a burden for the enemy.”
The Viskr were defeated, and they knew it. The ships that had so recently mounted a furious defence of the battle station were now in disarray, most of them frantically attempting to find a defensible orientation, to put distance between themselves and the battle.
Betombe cast his eye over the battle map one last time, and clasped his hands behind his back. “Open blast shields,” he said.
When the heavy shielding retracted from the view ports, he turned to look out to starboard at the retreating ships. Their carriers had already moved well out of range, and wormhole apertures began to form beyond them. Destroyers, corvettes, and a handful of battleships limped after them, chased down by the Sixth Fleet.
The admiral watched with satisfaction, proud that even after so many years without a real engagement his crew were still battle-ready. Not just his crew; all of them. It had been some time since any of these ships had been involved in anything more than war games.
A large explosion erupted into being out in the black, bright and pale, out-shining the other fiery sparks of ship-to-ship conflict. He was already shielding his eyes against the glare before the view port compensated. Something out there was not right.
“Tactical, what ship was that?”
“Sir, I’m afraid it was the Gorgon. Massive systemic damage. I see no distress signal.”
“How?”
“I’m now showing additional enemy contacts, multiple signals.”
“The wormholes?”
“Yes… the wormholes aren’t an exit route; they’re delivering reinforcements!”
“But that’s impossible,” Betombe said. “From where?”
— 16 —
Ex Caelo
Joarn Kages wore his discomfort openly on his sweaty face. You could not really blame him, Caden thought. He was almost a prisoner in his own office, surrounded by people whose disposition he was only guessing at, and the purpose of their visit — although probably not quite entirely clear to him yet — was obviously down to him doing something he ought not to have done.
“There was a man,” said Caden. “Medran Morlum. He would have come through here within the last few days. I don’t know how many times he visited you, but he linked in once while he was here. He made a payment to your personal account, from his own.”
“Oh him,” said Kages.
“So you know the person I mean?”
“Oh
worlds yes, I would never forget someone that strange. He wasn’t alone either.”
“Someone else was with him?”
“In a manner of speaking. A droid of some kind. He called it… Prem, I think it was.”
“Penvos Robotics,” said Eilentes. “They have a whole line of maintenance and worker models.”
“That would fit. Go on Kages, what did he want from you?”
“Oh I can’t tell you that, Shard. I’m sorry, I thought we were already quite clear on that point.”
Caden fixed the corpulent information broker with a steely gaze, and waited.
“I won’t crack,” Kages said after an uncomfortable interval. “I’m not going to betray my client’s confidence and potentially put myself and my livelihood at risk, just because you stared at me.”
Caden smiled. “Okay, well I certainly respect your integrity.”
“Thank you.”
“What if Mister Throam were to kick you through a window? Would that help?”
“I beg your— what?”
“I said, ‘what if Mister Throam were to kick you through a window?’ It’s a simple enough question.”
Kages gaped stupidly at him. He blinked twice, then seemed to regain his composure.
“You’re just trying to intimidate me.”
“That is certainly a component, yes,” said Caden. “But don’t think you won’t be going out of that window if you carry on being unhelpful.”
“You can’t do that, it’s just ridiculous! You represent the Throne.”
“Yes I can; I can pretty much do anything. Especially when it comes to the security of the Imperial Combine. As you said, I represent the Throne. When I complete my mission to preserve it, nobody is going to care that you were kicked through a window.”
“Do it then.”
“Well, there is the inevitable inconvenience of having to come outside to retrieve you before we can continue,” Caden said. “Perhaps it would be easier to just tell everyone in the city that you assisted the Viskr and their allies by providing them critical information.”
Books One to Three Omnibus (Armada Wars) Page 19
