by John Lumpkin
Officers passed the orders onto his subordinates, and a chorus of aye ayes filled the room.
Neil studied the data on the incoming missiles and decided he had nothing to offer. They were a known quantity. Just like last time, he thought, imagining the ways he might die. Nuclear fireball close aboard, or a lance of steel from a fragmentation warhead penetrating into the CIC, incinerating us, or explosive decompression sucking us into space.
Of roughly 300 missiles from the Chinese fleet, most went toward the main battlegroup surrounding the ailing Eagle. About 60 were headed toward San Jacinto’s little squadron.
The defenses – lasers, interceptors and guns – worked the number of inbounds down to 50, then 30, then 20.
The survivors fragmented, a bit sooner than they should have, in Neil’s opinion. The squadron could maneuver out of the way of many of the flechettes. The point defense lasers and gun batteries went to work on those that presented a threat.
Something thudded, loudly, against San Jacinto’s hull, causing everyone to look up from their consoles. Three more … giant hailstones hitting the roof.
“We’re okay,” announced a damage control tech a moment later. “We’re okay. Glancing blows. No hull penetration.”
Tom, coordinating the movements of the squadron, said, “Fremantle reporting hit to her dropship bay, but no other damage. Pawnee undamaged. I lost comms with Bayandor.”
Neil looked down at his chat window with the other ships.
BAYANDOR … CONNECTION LOST.
Without being asked, a sensor tech called up an image of Bayandor from one of San Jacinto’s cameras. Her forward hull was pocked in several places from flechettes, but she wasn’t venting atmosphere.
“She’s got her docking lights on,” the tech pointed at the screen. They were blinking off and on in sets of three.
“They may have taken a hit to their comm lasers,” Vikram suggested.
Neil pulled up a schematic of Bayandor. “Looks like some of the damage is near that location. Their main radio transmitter is in the same place. Not a lot of redundancy on her.”
“Okay, we’ll assume they are still in play, but unable to talk,” Captain Thorne said.
Swiftsure’s own flanking squadron, on the far side of the battlefield, reported in. They had beaten off their own missile attack, but the frigate Shoshone had taken several hits to her batteries and was unable to power her weapons. She broke from formation and underwent turnover.
The main volley of American missiles arrived in the Chinese fleet. The volumetric display was filled with new data, as vector arrows appeared and disappeared around the Chinese ships as they tried to dodge.
Their defenses performed well. Out of more than 400 inbound missiles, about 50 lived long enough to fragment usefully. Three nukes also made it through, although they all detonated early when they detected point defense lasers hitting them.
Neil stared at the Chinese formation. He saw no telltale novae marking a fusion drive losing antimatter containment … but he knew there was more than one way to kill a ship. He took control of a camera from a sensor tech and panned it across the Han fleet, looking for wrecked gun mounts, jets of gas from penetrated hulls, and armor plates scored by nuclear fire.
About half of the Chinese ships were damaged. Two frigates underwent turnover and pushed away. The rest kept going, all moving under power. Neil unhappily sent a message to Vikram, who forwarded it to the flagship.
A few moments later, she said, “Flag confirms no kills on Chinese force.”
Nice of Eagle to say so, Neil thought bitterly. The central allied force was now fighting the main wave of Han missiles. The fleet defense cruiser Lansing was picking them off as fast as they could enter her weapons’ envelope … until a score of missiles retargeted on her. Flechettes raked her hull, knocking out a dozen laser cannon.
Other ships started to take damage after that. Trenchant took a full hit on her nose and lost her heavy laser for good, but she bravely remained in formation. Somerset’s forward coilgun turret took a dozen darts and came apart. The corvette Sentry exploded. Every ship in Bannon’s main squadron was damaged.
The ships grew closer. Zhou Man unshuttered her main laser and poured fire into the fleet. Shichang, strangely, did not fire her big gun, but neither did she withdraw. Other ships finally entered laser range, and the exchange of laser-counterbattery fire began. Zhou Man at last lost her main mirror to concentrated fire from the Eagle.
San Jacinto and Swiftsure’s squadrons – the latter reduced to just Swiftsure and Centurion – entered the fray. San Jacinto’s laser cannon scored hits along the flanks of an outlying enemy destroyer. The vessel, already damaged by a nuclear warhead, found itself unable to counterfire its maneuver thrusters to stop a pivot, and it began a lazy circle it could not break out of.
Then the fleets were in gun range, three small groups converging on the diamond of Chinese ships. Erin’s guns engaged the damaged destroyer – Admiral Bannon wanted ships disabled, and the destroyer could still fire.
The battle degenerated into a dogfight, with ships twisting and turning to avoid the enemy’s bow-mounted weapons while trying to bring their own to bear.
Neil lost track of the larger engagement, concentrating on answering rapid-fire requests from Thorne and Davis and the weapons officers, plus the odd query from Fremantle and Pawnee. He was pulled back and forth, up and down, against the straps in his console chair as the ship thrust, pivoted, rolled and thrust again. He felt a brief, bizarre sense of comfort when the ship pulled close to one gee to dodge a salvo of coilgun shells.
There was Bayandor, going toe-to-toe with a Han cruiser she had no business taking on. The Iranian frigate weaved through bursts of gunfire and got in close, pounding the cruiser with her own guns even as short-range lasers penetrated into her hull. Undaunted, she swung around on the cruiser’s tail and poured fire into the ship’s drive, going for a candle kill.
Davis saw this and ordered one of San Jacinto’s main batteries to put some metal on the Han’s flank to prevent her from maneuvering out of Bayandor’s way. The cruiser turned anyway, and the gun shells struck her on the bows. The ship’s forward globe crumpled.
But San Jacinto had to thrust away before it could deliver the coup de grace; the Han flagship launched a barrage of spinal mount shells at her. They missed, one by less than 50 meters.
The British frigate Centurion was the next to die; three Han ships had corralled her into range of the guns and lasers of the Chinese flagship. Interior explosions cracked her hull open, and she was adrift.
The realization came to Neil in a flash.
We’re losing.
There was Eagle, with the San Jacinto’s sister Vincennes at her side, right in the middle of the Chinese diamond, slugging it out with the enemy flagship. Shichang, hanging back and presumed disabled by the allies, suddenly unshuttered her main laser cannon, and targeted the American battleship.
At this range, the damage was devastating. The first blast hit the ship on the side and punched all the way through; fireflies of superheated material twinkled away from both the entry and exit cavities. Inside, the blast burned through a primary heat sink, which exploded, then into the ship’s CIC, killing Admiral Bannon, Eagle’s captain, and two dozen other crewmen.
Vincennes thrust, interposing herself between the wounded Eagle and the Shichang. But the flagship’s blood was in the water.
“Signal from the flag,” Vikram told San Jacinto’s CIC. “All ships …”
“Continue, Vikram,” Thorne snapped.
“That’s it, Captain. The transmission cut off.”
The battleship Eagle was dead in space.
“Signal from Mogami,” Vikram said shortly. “Admiral Tanaka assuming command of the fleet.”
“Any orders?” Thorne said. Mogami was well behind the action now.
“Continue with existing plan,” Vikram said. Then she looked at her console and closed her eyes.
“Also sig
nal from Curtis LeMay,” she said. The ship was badly damaged, barely able to thrust. “Captain De Caxias says she’s assuming command. She’s ordering all ships to disengage and return to the keyhole.”
Thorne pressed some keys on her own console, her expression betraying anger, frustration and disbelief all at once. Sure enough, the senior American captain and the Japanese admiral were both giving orders to the fleet, and they were conflicting.
A breakdown in the chain of command, she thought. In this day and age.
For a full five seconds, Captain Thorne was unable to say anything.
Carla Mendoza, calling from the bridge, her voice uncertain: “Orders?” Fremantle and Pawnee, San Jacinto’s escorts, communicated requests for direction as well.
Neil heard a distant thud. “Han counterbattery just disabled Laser Mount Two,” Garcia said.
His words snapped Thorne back into action. “What’s the best way out of here?”
Davis looked at the volumetric display, punched in some codes into his console. A blinking vector appeared … his proposed course. It took them away from the battle but also away from an escape toward the keyhole.
“We’re mostly behind the battle now, and we can pull away in this direction,” Davis said, his voice tense. “We won’t have to fight our way through the main body of the Han forces. We still have 60 percent of our remass and can make our way toward the keyhole later.”
“Abandon the fleet?” Mendoza said over the comm.
“What fleet?” Davis shot back. “We won’t make it through there. It’s time to run.”
“The troop transports will be virtually undefended,” Mendoza said.
Thorne said, “We can’t help them. They should make it out, but this battle’s lost. Vikram, signal all ships, San Jacinto squadron is disengaging. Send our vector.”
Fremantle acknowledged immediately. Bayandor, still unable to communicate, saw the ships’ new vectors and turned to follow them, after pouring a final laser blast into the tail of the cruiser she had been hounding. Pawnee broke away as well, but Han cannon fire forced her to build a vector that would take her far from the San Jacinto.
The center of the battle line was chaos. Lansing and Vincennes, the only remaining American vessels still operating under their own power, underwent turnover and thrust toward the keyhole. The lone Japanese ship, Kiyokaze, and the British and Australian ships remained engaged. It wasn’t long until Somerset was disabled, and Trenchant signaled surrender. Swiftsure escaped as San Jacinto did, but on still another vector, Captain Courtenay deciding running for the keyhole was too dangerous from his own location.
The Kiyokaze and the Australian frigate Warramunga saw a few Chinese ships chasing the damaged Curtis LeMay and tried to defend her.
Curtis LeMay died anyway.
The allies’ defeat was clear, but the battle was not over. One of the Chinese heavy laser ships was still functional, her long-range cannon blasting away at the retreating vessels.
“Pawnee calling,” Tom announced. “They are at their heat sink limit and need to extend their radiators.”
Neil grimaced. Pawnee was the smallest ship in the squadron but had used her lasers liberally in the battle. As soon as her radiators came out the Shichang turned to target her. The first blast from Shichang’s heavy laser separated one of the two radiator panels from the ship. The second blew off nearly half of the other, cutting into her hull and destroying her stowed solar array, her backup power source.
Pawnee flushed her heat sinks into space and cut her fusion candle to the minimum, generating just enough power to sustain life support systems. But the Chinese fired several gun salvoes to chase her, forcing her to fire her defensive lasers and use her candle again to dodge. The heat generated by the activity had nowhere to go, so it permeated through the ship’s living spaces. It was hopeless, now. The ship would soon overheat beyond human capacity to survive. She carried no lifeboats – almost no ship did; in most emergencies it was simply safer to stay put and await help. Fremantle messaged a willingness to go back and conduct a rescue, but Thorne would not allow it. Docking operations would mean an hour of vulnerability, and would guarantee the destruction of the rescuer’s ship at the hands of the Chinese.
It was unlikely any of Pawnee’s crew would survive that long, anyway.
Neil received a single message from the frigate’s intelligence officer.
ENS HARDIN (PAWNEE): GOING TO TRY TO GET TO JUMPER BAY. GOOD LUCK.
PAWNEE … CONNECTION LOST.
Not long after, Neil saw the frigate’s single jumper break away from the hull, presumably carrying the lucky few who had reached it. A few more bailed out in spacesuits. They would surrender to the Hans, if any Chinese could reach them before their air ran out.
After a half-hour, someone still on Pawnee got on the comms and begged for help. Only Vikram heard it. She listened for a moment, and shut it off, shaking her head to flush the pleading voice from her mind.
Thirty minutes after that, Pawnee was a hurtling, searing tomb, slowly falling behind the accelerating San Jacinto and her surviving escorts.
Captain Thorne herself delivered the brief. She didn’t dwell on what everyone knew: The U.S. Space Force just lost, and lost in a big way. Ten ships were destroyed or disabled; even now, Chinese ships were chasing down and boarding those who couldn’t get away. Telescopes pointed at the hulk of the Eagle showed another Chinese ship taking it under tow. No Han ships had been killed in the engagement, although several were drifting, radiating just enough heat to indicate their life-support systems were still functioning.
Allied ships were spread throughout the system. The transports and supply ships, with a single frigate protecting them, were running for the keyhole back to GJ 1119. Damaged Mogami, which had pulled out early under bombardment by the Chinese heavy laser ships, was catching up to them. Vincennes, Lansing, Warramunga and Kiyokaze were also running for the wormhole, but they had participated in the main engagement, and several Chinese ships were chasing them.
Thorne had ordered a course toward Corenco-Six, a medium-sized rock in the system’s main asteroid belt, where an American company had a mining operation. The intelligence team on Vincennes had reported contact with a stranded crew there. It was as good a place as any to wait for relief. They might have some remass as well.
The intentions of Swiftsure were unclear. Captain Courtenay was headed toward Kuan Yin but was unable – or unwilling – to communicate. No enemy warships were in orbit, as the Hans had committed everything to the intercept, but the Brit would risk attack from Chinese surface lasers if he got too close.
Thorne had asked Neil to speculate what Courtenay was up to, and Neil had to respond he had no idea. She carried nothing that could liberate a continent. Thorne had looked sharply at him for his useless reply, but Neil recalled Donovan counseling him to never bullshit his way through a response to a superior, even if he would take heat over it. Feeding bad information to a superior would just make things worse.
After that, Neil barely listened to the captain, his mind stuck on Rand and all the others dead or captured in the battle over this marginally habitable piece of real estate. It didn’t seem worth it.
Then Captain Thorne asked her officers, “Why did we lose?”
Silence.
Her eyes narrowed in frustration. “It’s not a rhetorical question. You all are professional warfighters. Why did we lose?”
“The heavy laser ships cut us to ribbons,” Garcia said finally. “We could only hit them with missiles at that range.”
“No, the missiles would have been toast if we’d fired any sooner,” Lang said. “Not enough penetrated their defenses as it was. We waited too long to use the Brit heavy laser cannon to take out their heavy lasers.”
Neil shook his head, said nothing. But Thorne saw his motion, “Mercer? Something to contribute?”
“Trenchant didn’t have the range to engage the Chinese beam cruisers,” he said. “That wouldn’t have worked.
”
Several officers tried to speak at once. Thorne put up her hands and said, “Everyone, just think about it. Write down your thoughts and send them to the XO. We’re about as experienced a crew Space Force has, and the service needs ideas. Dismissed.”
The boredom was the worst. It had taken ten days for the Hans to come for him, ten days to figure out he was not just an American diplomat. Likely one of Sun Haisheng’s aides let slip his real identity, or else he had been identified in some Chinese database. Regardless, Donovan’s cover was broken, probably forever.
The Chinese on board were from their navy, not their intelligence services, and it was clear they were running their interrogation straight from the military handbook.
They fed him, minimally, and woke him up at odd hours, sometimes to interview him, sometimes just to wake him up. They took away his handheld as a security measure. Legally, it wasn’t close to torture, but to Donovan, having nothing to read was mistreatment all the same. He found himself looking forward to the interrogations, just because they gave his mind something to do. He also knew that was a bad thing, for his captors had him wanting something from them.
It was his first time aboard a Chinese ship. The walls and floors were gunmetal gray – the PLA spent no effort on décor. For some reason he liked it better than the bright white interiors of Japanese ships or the bland, dull tans and light blues aboard American ships.
It was more honest, perhaps, an acknowledgment of the stark environment they lived in.
He had tried to track the accelerations of the warship, and he was sure they had gone through at least one wormhole.
He was also certain Sun Haisheng and his entourage were aboard. He had seen a couple of officers from the Dextrous and blind Lieutenant Stahl being led onto the ship. Of the enlisted personnel – the crew of the Dextrous and the wounded from San Jacinto – he had no idea.
He surmised the Hans had somehow managed to break into the Groombridge 1618 system – one considered inside American space. An American fleet one system away was supposed to have been in position to prevent this … if it had been destroyed, the Chinese and Koreans could already be running amok, heading for America’s colonies.
