by Kal Spriggs
“I should ask the Captain--”
“Baron Giovanni is preparing for a battle, Ensign, he doesn't have time to hold your hand. Follow my orders, or I'll have the Marines over there do so.” And then, she thought, I'll bring your ass on charges so fast your head will spin.
“Yes, ma'am,” The Ensign's sullen voice answered.
Toria let out a deep breath and turned to face the orderly lines of refugees as they boarded. Her eyes caught on the face of a little girl, who held hands with her mother and father as they moved up the line.
Her own memories flashed back to her childhood. To the mad scramble where her mother had tearfully pushed her into the arms of a stranger just before the doors had closed.
That would not happen today, she thought, not if I can do anything about it.
***
The three squadrons of fighters swept in on the flank of the Chxor cruisers.
Since there was no longer the option to lure the Chxor away, Lucius had gone with the decision to bloody their forces enough to, hopefully, stop pursuit. He’d pulled in all of his fighters for this strike, in a hope to crack some of the Chxor defenses. He had staged them and the makeshift carrier in the shadow of one of the small moons of a gas giant, which made it unlikely that the Chxor would track them back to their origin.
The fighters took only sporadic intercepting fire, none of it near the mark. They launched their missiles in one crippling point-blank salvo that lashed through the gaps in the overlapping cruisers’ defense screens to slam home on the hulls of the vessels. The three targeted ships took multiple hits from the eighteen fighters.
The two hundred sixteen missiles in the initial burst exploded in one long chain. The cruisers were designed to take and absorb damage. Their massive, flat planar screens were magnetically sealed bands of plasma fifteen millimeters thick. The hulls were heavily armored against missiles, lasers, and even projectile weapons.
If Cato Naevius's squadrons carried the heavier Pilum missiles, any of those hits would have gutted a cruiser. The effect of that many light missiles startled even Lucius.
Lucius heard snarls of satisfaction from the pilots as the warheads detonated in a chain of explosions that rocked those three ships.
One cruiser bucked as three of its ten engine pods ripped apart. Plasma vented and power couplings ruptured and detonated to rip larger holes in the hull. The second vessel rocked with the explosions, the crippled ship staggered through the inferno. Video from the recon probes showed secondary decompression and fires raging on the ship.
The third Chxor cruiser shuddered from several secondary explosions. The ship continued on without any visible sign of further damage for several seconds. Then the defense screens flickered. The engines stuttered. A single bright flare engulfed the entire vessel. Seconds later, only a field of debris remained. Fusion reactor overload, Lucius thought to himself, lucky hit on that one.
The three squadrons wheeled away, their ordinance expended. They could have gone in on strafing runs with their plasma cannons, but Lucius ordered them out, satisfied with the results.
It was more than he had hoped for, without a single casualty, and good combat experience. Although... an attack on the Chxor’s cruisers in a fighter was slightly less dangerous than a live fire training run. Training missions became routine over time if officers didn't plan out complex engagements, and that caused pilots to grow bored, which led to accidents.
It was the Chxor dreadnoughts that one had to watch.
With that cue, the Chxor dreadnoughts finally began a belated broadside at the retreating fighters. They did not slow or alter course. That would have no point, they would not catch the fighters. In any case, the Chxor wanted the planet, not the fighters. As the cruiser screen maneuvered to maintain a solid protective layer about the dreadnoughts, the two wounded ships drew to the rear of the formation. The most heavily damaged fell out of formation, its engines unable to maintain the acceleration.
“Time to play matador,” he muttered to himself. Time for one last gambit, he thought. If this plan worked, then he could save the evacuation fleet and possibly damage the Chxor. If it didn't, then he would lose his ship for certain and the evacuees might not make their escape. “Execute Bravo Bravo Seven,” Lucius ordered.
The War Shrike gave a slight shudder as her seven gravity matrix impellers engaged. The amount of energy they drank from the vessel’s fusion reactors was tremendous. The thrust they produced was highly efficient when compared to a mass-based reaction drive. The size of the War Shrike required incredible amounts of power to propel it through space. A certain amount of energy always went to entropy, and when dealing with the power requirements of a warship, a paltry five percent of the power drain dissipated as electromagnetic noise. That five percent was enough to make the War Shrike light up like a small star, if someone had the sensors to see.
Evidently, the Chxor did.
The Chxor formation altered again. The new formation put the cruisers into a blocking screen against this new and greater threat. The dreadnoughts moved to place themselves in better firing positions in the battle line.
Any single one of those massive dreadnoughts out-massed the War Shrike three times over. They also packed an insane amount of firepower, which outweighed anything the War Shrike could throw back by an order of magnitude.
The War Shrike mounted virtually identical missiles, but even there, Lucius was at a disadvantage, for while the War Shrike mounted four tubes to the dreadnought’s two, there were four dreadnoughts, and the enemy dreadnoughts had three times the missile storage than his own.
In short, a lone battleship had no business whatsoever getting in the way of a Chxor dreadnought, much less four of them.
The Chxor didn’t alter course, they didn’t have to. Their target was the planet and their other target, the object of their hunt, was located in orbit above the planet. An ideal situation for them.
Lucius could run through the mental calculations the Chxor must be undertaking. First they would calculate the cost of destroying the battleship, find it minor. Then the commander would consider any possible defenses that the planet held, and decide that the casualties involved in neutralizing them to be minor as well. It wasn’t logical that an out of the way planet might possess serious defenses.
Those two casualty lists would be added together, and the final cost tallied up. To a Chxor, it was only logical that victory was assured, if not now, then later.
Lucius was of another school of thought, one that used logic as a tool for people, not people as a tool for logic. While to the Chxor it was unthinkable for a ship to continue to fight after defeat was assured, Lucius didn’t think much of assured victories. He had cheated death and had victory snatched away too many times from guaranteed battle plans. Lucius didn’t know how this day’s fight would work out, but he did know that he would hurt the Chxor. The War Shrike would move forward to engage the enemy.
Plan Bravo Bravo Seven made almost a head-on course. The enemy task force would pass the War Shrike just within twelve thousand kilometers, at the outermost limit of Lucius’s secondary battery. His main battery would bear at twenty thousand kilometers, outside the Chxor’s own range. He had felt the temptation to use his own speed and maneuverability to stay outside of the Chxor’s range.
His course angled to allow the Chxor the option of altering course to lengthen the engagement, which would be brief at the speeds they traveled. If they altered course, it would draw them away from the planet. They couldn’t hope to catch Lucius, he had a far higher acceleration than their vessels, almost four times faster. They could, if they altered their direction now, maintain an engagement for several minutes, which would give them a number of shots at the War Shrike, perhaps enough to destroy her. Lucius wasn’t willing to gamble on their taking that chance. They were too cautious, too drawn to certainties.
But their commander would be tempted, very tempted. He might even think of an alternative…
“Captain
,” Lieutenant Palmer looked up from his sensor station. “Two of them Dreadnoughts peeled off, along with their escorting cruisers. It looks like they’re goin’ on course Charlie Delta Seven.”
The Chxor were doing exactly what made sense to them. Two Dreadnoughts would be enough to crush the planetary defenses. Two might be sufficient to destroy the War Shrike in a passing engagement. Therefore, it logically made sense to divide forces to accomplish both tasks.
And it might yet work, if Lucius got too smart for his own good. The Chxor might have made the right decision. “If not…” Lucius smiled. “Laser com message to the Gebneyr, Plan Bravo Bravo Seven is a go.”
***
Kleigh watched the screen as the enemy vessel closed. He did not try to think of what was going through his enemy’s mind. He saw no reason to make such attempt. The enemy had acted in ways to defy logic time after time in the past, as he seemed to do now. Why a commander would take a ship away from a planet, which presumably held some strategic and tactical bonuses, and lead it against overwhelming odds was beyond Kleigh’s mental outlook. There was no logic to his opponent’s actions, unless he looked for escape and had panicked. That was a solid assumption, Kleigh decided. Such illogical beings were driven by emotion, too often.
He showed and felt no emotion while he ordered two of his five-class dreadnoughts and their escorts to alter course in order to maintain a longer engagement window with the battleship. If the battleship altered course, it would make little difference. Such a border world would have little in the way of defenses, two dreadnoughts and their escorts would suffice.
The two dreadnoughts on their intercept course began deceleration. They slowed their velocity relative to the closing battleship. They had only four escorting cruisers to absorb the damage that the enemy ship would be dealing out, but, again, that should suffice. The limited time of the engagement at those closing rates would not allow the battleship to do any particular amount of damage.
The fighters from the earlier attack had withdrawn outside of sensor range. Perhaps they planned to reload their missiles. It didn’t matter. Eighteen fighters would raise the cost of the engagement, but by only a slight amount. They could not break through the cruiser screen by themselves
Kleigh felt the utter dispassion which, for a Chxor, passed for satisfaction. Another victory for the Chxor, another world conquered, another enemy defeated.
***
Lucius awoke from a short nap and returned to the bridge. He had rotated the crew through, giving them plenty of rest. The level of tension would make sleep difficult, but rest would be needed. Even now the closer group of dreadnoughts, with their six cruisers, was just over an hour outside of missile range. At his current course, he would brush past them, at eleven thousand kilometers for a period of a couple minutes, and then be in missile range for another hour, approximately thirty minutes before the second group reached missile range.
Lucius had one serious advantage in that area. The missiles that the Chxor used were virtually identical to the ones he would be firing at them. However, they limited themselves to their shipboard sensors. Lucius had four probes to track the enemy forces. He had watched them and had firing solutions on the enemy ships since just after he broke the War Shrike out of orbit. His missiles didn’t have the power to travel that distance, but he could see everything the enemy did quite clearly. The Chxor never used probes. Their technology base had the capability, but their ships didn’t mount the equipment. A simple oversight in the design phase made for a crippling tactical disadvantage. To the Chxor it didn’t make sense to redraw the designs for probes, especially since none of their commanders complained of the lack.
To them, he would be a contact, readily identifiable as a battleship, with an electromagnetic profile to match that of the Desperado-class. They could find his course and speed by watching where he went. If he hadn’t lit off his engines, they wouldn’t have seen him until they reached the outer limit of their shipboard sensors targeting range. Even then they may not have seen him, since he could have kept the ship’s emissions to a minimum until they got very close.
The Chxor, all in a group, could squash him at that close of range, though. If his shadow drive went down, it made a viable, go-down-fighting plan.
It wasn’t necessary. In fact, the planet he was paid to protect had told him to get lost. Approximately sixteen thousand people had chosen to run. Those twenty-nine ships hid themselves in the sensor shadow of Faraday as they crept out of the system. Even those slow cargo ships would easily outpace the Chxor, given enough time.
Time that Lucius would win them.
The Chxor, with their built-in handicap, wouldn’t even know the ships had departed.
Lucius began to smile. He was going to give the Chxor a number of lessons on the importance of long range sensor systems.
***
Kleigh typed in notes to his shipboard log as he waited. Some of the non-Chxor crew had begun to make mistakes and he made another note that aliens, especially Humans, needed more conditioning to remove some of their illogical habits. It made no sense to worry about one’s self before or during a battle. This war for Chxor’s logical supremacy required no less. The inconsequential individuals must make themselves tools for the greater good. Those that made illogical errors and blamed them on weaknesses of their bodies showed a failure in dedication.
More discipline was in order.
He noted that the fighters had returned and begun harassment of the wounded cruiser, which fell further behind. They must not have missile reloads, he noted, because they engaged the lamed cruiser with their pulse cannon. The ineffective fire accomplished little against the cruiser’s armor. The enemy’s actions grew more and more irrelevant and illogical.
The enemy battleship grew closer. Squadron Commander Kleigh’s sensors didn’t yet have enough data to pinpoint a firing solution, but he had the vessel’s course plotted accurately. The enemy made no move to alter course or speed. That maintained the brief weapons pass on Kleigh’s force as well as the separated dreadnoughts. The path would take it directly into the fire of the other two dreadnoughts. If it didn’t change course, it would actually pass between two of the dreadnoughts and their cruiser escorts. Logically, the enemy ship should have altered course to avoid such close and lasting range with the two dreadnoughts. That the ship hadn’t suggested panic and illogical emotional responses.
It didn’t bring satisfaction to Kleigh. That would have been as illogical as his opponents’ panic. He foresaw the most probable outcome of this situation and saw only success and victory for the Chxor. Squadron Commander Kleigh expected significant rewards and his genetic line would receive benefits for its clear and logical thoughts.
Something resembling irritation came to Kleigh then when a series of missile tracks appeared on radar. The human was defeated, why did it continue to fight? The battleship, unlike the Chxor, must rely on remote platforms or drones to pinpoint the location of the task force, to allow it a range advantage.
The Chxor realized after a moment of reflection that he had not considered that possible tactic, something which he should have. If the Human altered course now, he might stay ahead of the task force and avoid any real dangers.
Of course, the Human’s actions, while possibly damaging, could not continue for long. The battleship would eventually run out of missiles. At that time, it would have to depart the system or close the range. So, Kleigh decided, his mistake was not so great as to be necessary to go on record. That was good, his reward and genetic descendants would be of great service for the Chxor. And the Human was still doomed.
Kleigh ordered the cruisers to interdict themselves between the missiles and the dreadnoughts. He then ordered the main batteries to hold their fire, but granted the secondary batteries permission to engage any missiles which bypassed the cruiser screen.
Yes, this battle would continue to its logical conclusion and that would be that.
***
Lucius watch
ed the Chxor maneuver. He had used their weaknesses against them before. There were serious gaps in their tactical doctrine. Only a handful of their commanders ever adapted those tactics. “Give me a fleet and I could rip them to pieces.”
“Sir, why didn’t the Fleet ever do that?” Commander Anthony Doko asked. “I mean, we’ve done so much with hit and run tactics… why didn’t the Admiralty ever change the doctrine?”
Lucius grimaced, “Because the political appointees of the Admiralty like big ships. Until we fought the Chxor, we had the advantage in ship size against the majority of our opponents. Hell, if they had time to get the Emperor Romulus and the other ships of her class produced, they might well have turned the war around. Honestly, my tactics pull a lot from the good Colonial Republic Fleet officers... even a bit from the old Provisional Colonial Republic Army, back when they were rebels against Amalgamated Worlds.” Lucius shrugged, “And there are some commanders who have pulled off victories against the Chxor without rewriting our doctrine.”
Anthony Doko scowled, “If you’re talking about Admiral Vibious—“
“Not him, necessarily,” Lucius shook his head, the late Admiral Vibious had won victories by attrition that favored only the Chxor and cost too many lives, too many ships, and left Lucius with a foul taste in his mouth. “But there were others.”
Not many, he privately admitted, but there were some. Lucius saw that the clock had run down. “Prepare to fire missiles,” Lucius said.
“Aye, sir,” Doko said, dubiously.
Lucius watched the first volley of Pilum missiles go in and sighed. The Chxor cruisers served their purpose. Two of the four exploded against the cruiser's ridiculously oversized defense screens, which flickered but held. A third was picked off short of the ships by a last minute shot from a laser battery.
The fourth made it through the screen, but a dreadnought swatted it out of space without a problem.
As he’d suspected, the enemy defense was too strong for some piecemeal fire. He immediately regretted throwing away the four missiles. He only had twenty-eight left now.
