“We’re gaining some distance from the targets now that we’ve destroyed the close ones, but those scouts will be back on us in no time,” First Officer Eastwood reported from his station at Tactical.
“Steady as she goes,” Laurent told the bridge—mostly speaking to the Helmsman in my opinion.
“Detached ships are coming fully about and accelerating towards us,” reported the Sensor Warrant.
“Two Scouts coming up fast,” barked Eastwood, “recommend the Helm fishtails the ship so gunnery can get in a few good shots and shake them off, Captain.”
“We’ll lose our forward motion, Admiral,” DuPont exclaimed, “and then we’ll get even more Bugs on us than if we’d continued straight forward.”
I glanced over at Laurent, whose eyes were boring into my own. I could tell he wasn’t happy, probably because Eastwood was talking to him, and like a kid going to another parent hoping for a different answer, DuPont was trying to get me to override the decision.
“I think the First Officer’s suggestion is a good one, but then I’m always up for a good Bug roast,” I said loudly, still meeting Laurent’s eyes. “However, since it’s your ship, Captain,” I stressed the rank, “why don’t you decide?” There, I thought with satisfaction, Laurent gets what he wanted, a clear display of support for him as the new ship’s captain, while I’m still shown as being the ultimate power in charge. If anything happened to go wrong—as things often did in combat—while I might still be on the hook for the blame, the Captain would be there right alongside me. Win-win-win.
Plus, as the Captain was a trained tactical officer, we’d likely get the best decision for this situation.
“Fishtail the ship,” Laurent ordered, sounding more grim than usual.
“Yes, Captain,” DuPont acknowledged, sounding less than excited by these new orders.
“Gunnery, you are to keep your eyes on your target reticules and prepare for targets as far back as your weapons will turn or depress. We’ve got Bugs circling up on our rear,” the First Officer growled, giving his microphone a good thump on the desk for emphasis.
Almost reluctantly, the ship began to adjust its course. While still moving forward, we were now turning slightly, first to one side and then to the other.
At the epoch of one turn, a pair of heavy lasers lanced out behind us and at the furthest extent of the other, an entire quad lashed out.
“A hit,” reported Sensors, “the second Bug ship is now venting atmo into space.”
The sense of relief at this news was slight, yet palpable, but relief turned to dust in my mouth as soon as I saw both Bug Scouts were hot on our tail—and another five of their brethren were on the way.
“At least our focusing arrays will have a few minutes to cool down,” the Captain said to me in a low voice.
“Every cloud must have its silver lining, I suppose,” I said with a sigh. “At least we’ll be ready for blasting a few more scouts out of cold space.”
“That’s always possible,” Laurent conceded.
I looked over at him with surprise, and the Captain just shrugged and pointed over to the main screen.
“I’m afraid that unless something changes, we’re going to be in range of that Large Harvester before we get too much further. They managed to press their engines faster than I thought possible.”
I looked back at the main screen with a jolt, and then used my data slate to pull up the Bug Harvester’s acceleration profile. “They’re moving as fast as a Medium Harvester,” I protested, although who or what I thought was listening to my exclamation of unfairness and going to do something about it was anyone’s guess.
“Possibly we should have ignored Clinton and gone with our Helmsman’s advice,” Captain Laurent said with a scowl.
“It was a command decision,” I said dismissively, even though it took me a couple seconds to recall that ‘Clinton’ was the first name of our new First Officer. Although, now that I thought about it, neither the Captain nor the First Officer were as new as they had been almost two months earlier when we left Wolf-9 in the Easy Haven star system.
“Even still,” Laurent said, looking displeased with himself.
“We make the best decisions we can at the time and move on. Victory or defeat is the final arbiter of whether it was ultimately a good decision or not,” I said, politely not mentioning that there was another final arbiter outside of fleet or ship actions—mutineers and rebels. Because if your crew decided you weren’t doing a good job and threw you in the waste recycler, then you quite clearly hadn’t been doing a good enough job.
Laurent looked surprised and then impressed. “I forget sometimes that you never went to the Academy…any academy, really,” he said finally. “You take to command like a duck does to water. It must be your royal blood.”
“Thank you…I think,” I said, looking over at him quizzically.
Laurent took a deep breath and the Helmsman goosed the bow thrusters, giving the ship an extra eighth of a turn and a Scout exploded on screen as half the port broadside thundered its fury.
“The cost of command,” Laurent said, nodding at the main screen and the horde of Bugs rapidly overtaking our aged heavy cruiser, “that’s why I mustered out of the service a Warrant. I never went for the academy or command, the price…” he trailed off, “it wasn’t just lack of connections. There are ways around that, it’s just not something I wanted badly enough, I guess.”
“Lost ships and body bags,” I agreed, running my tongue over a tooth as my upper lip curled in sympathy. I knew the price of command plenty well, since every time I turned around my choices seemed to cost someone his or her life.
“Some might call that a calloused response, Sir,” Laurent said looking down at me, his mouth an even line.
“Well,” I frowned up and him before shrugging it off, “some might say that not aiming for officer during a fleet career and then talking about not wanting command after making Captain makes them unsuitable—or even a coward.” Laurent stiffened, the corner of my mouth on the opposite side of the Captain quirked, “But I say smoke those blighters. What do they know anyway? We’re out here, they’re back there, and the high and mighty ones that were supposed to know about these things went and made my uncle a Captain, appointed Yagar a Rear Admiral, and every single one of them left this fleet to die on the vine.”
Laurent blinked and then his face twitched, “An interesting position to take, Sir. Some might say unconventional, maverick, or even…,” he looked like he wanted to say something more but stopped himself first.
“Well, I’ve never been a conventional sort of Admiral,” I started, but was interrupted by a vigorous snort from the Captain. I cocked a grin in his direction even as I unconsciously stiffened my back to assume a more princely demeanor.
“You can say that again, Sir,” Laurent snorted, “’unconventional’ is your middle name.”
“Yes, well, again,” I said, a frown starting to form, “I have little use for those old men.” My gaze hardened in remembrance, “Politicians of any stripe have only brought me humiliation, pain, and death. Let them come, I say; they’ve already used up the last of my good humor. If what they want is a war to the knife, then I’ll grab a broadsword and shove it up their—” I broke off. There was no need to go any further; a royal and a prince—not to mention an Admiral on his own bridge—had no business descending into coarse vulgarity merely over the fact that someone had tortured and tried to kill him.
I hadn’t really understood that before, but now I did. If we didn’t have courtesy and civilization then we had nothing. Nothing but a bloodthirsty, blood feuding, vengeance seeking—I broke myself from my ruminations, “Revenge is a dish best served cold, or so they say.” I knew I was speaking more to myself than to the Captain, but that was less important than the sentiment I was trying to express, “and while my wife might disagree, I intend to give cold revenge a try.”
Captain Laurent’s eyes became hooded.
“If i
t pleases, I think we’ll need to deal with these Bugs first, Admiral Montagne,” he said in a stiff, formal voice.
“No worries, Captain,” I said easily, as if he hadn’t just shut down emotionally, “as far as I’m concerned, these Bugs are as deserving of my efforts as any other who’s tried to harm us. I mean,” I added absently, “at least they’re honest about it,” I tried to explain, “killing and eating us in job lots, that is. There’s little room left for treachery and deceit. It’s almost refreshing in a diabolical, doomsday sort of way—at least compared to dealing with politicians.”
Seeing I was only digging myself a deeper hole, I rolled my eyes and splayed my fingers before turning away in disgust. This should be a lesson: commiserating with an underling and baring your soul didn’t always produce the expected results. It was probably something best to avoid doing again in the future.
Fortunately, while we—I?—had been talking, the Light Squadron had arrived and were just now beginning their attack run.
“Captain Gardeto reports they are beginning their attack run, Captain,” the com-tech said, turning around in his seat.
“Good to know, Comm., but Fleet communications should go to the Admiral first,” Captain Laurent replied, his voice moderating the rebuke down to a simple reminder for the future.
“Thank you, Sir,” the tech said, turning over to me and opening his mouth.
“I already got the message, com-tech,” I assured him, covering a smile with my hand. There was no need to make the man think that I was making sport of him.
“Yes, Sir,” he said faintly before turning back to his console.
Suppressing a sigh, I said, “Make sure to signal my acknowledgement of the message.”
“Anything else, Admiral Montagne?” the com-tech said more formally than usual.
“I have nothing to add at this time,” I frowned.
“Yes, Sir,” he said, turning back to his console.
Feeling dissatisfied, but with no outlet upon which to vent my rising spleen, I turned back to the main screen and what I saw brightened my day.
“There they go,” growled Laurent as the two Corvette, two Cutter short squadron rushed into the breach, “a good thing, too; our shields can’t stand up to half a dozen Bug ships for long without spotting rather quickly.”
I winced, as the last thing we needed was our engines shot up, especially with that Large Harvester barreling towards us like some kind of angry space hydra eager to cut us up and consume our flesh.
A sudden flurry of light and medium lasers lashed out from the short squadron, as the little warships tore into the center of the enemy formation. It took the Bugs precious seconds to refocus their weaponry from taking pot shots at our rear and randomly firing off into space, to acquire our lighter warships as their new targets. By that time, another Bug was reeling out of their quasi-formation, streaming atmosphere and an already damaged Bug scout imploded, sending hull fragments and globs of quickly frozen internal liquids spraying out into space.
The battle wasn’t entirely one-sided, unfortunately, and a lucky strike penetrated the shields of one of the Cutters, sending it careening away at high speed. That left one Cutter and the remaining Corvettes in the middle of the bugs.
The space around our little ships seemed to light up as everyone, Bug and MSP warships alike, lit up every weapon they had.
One of our Cutters was venting atmosphere and the other cutter was moving at half speed by the time our ships cleared the fray. However, in their fury to hit our warships the Bugs hadn’t been careful with their fire and they took almost as many hits from their own forces as from our plucky little fighting ships. Two more Bugs had gone cold and silent, their backs broken, while another exploded into a cloud of green and brown goblets composed of expanding atmospheric gases and internal juices. Two more Bug ships were damaged, and as I watched and our short squadron pulled away, one of the damaged Bugs suffered an explosion on the side facing the center of their formation.
“What was that, Sensors?” Laurent barked.
“Sorry, Captain,” replied the Sensor Warrant, “it looks like the Bugs fired a number of their dumb-fire missiles. Amazingly, it hit one of their own ships instead of ours.”
“Ha,” Laurent laughed, “friendly fire isn’t, eh lads?”
“Stupid Bugs,” I heard someone mutter.
“Bugs on our nine-o’clock,” cried Eastwood, causing a fervor of activity to cascade through the Tactical section, “going weapons-free on your order, Captain.”
“You have it, First Officer,” Laurent cursed, “give them the Demon’s own time of it.”
Looking back up at the screen, I saw that while we’d been patting ourselves on the back over the destruction of the Bug Scout pursuit group, the Large Harvester had come within striking range of the Flagship.
“Firing turbo-laser now, Captain,” Eastwood, said reaching down to bark into his microphone. Apparently he didn’t like what he heard, as he immediately started pounding the base of the microphone on the desk of his console while shouting, “well get them retargeted and then to send that Harvester straight to Hades!” he snarled into his speaker.
Almost tentatively at first, our turbo-lasers started to pound into the hull of the Harvester. First one, and then a second, until finally all three of our remaining, functional turbo-lasers on that side of the ship lashed out with rising fury to stab the nose of the oversized Bug ship.
“Five hundred meters of pure mean,” Laurent said, pointing at the Harvester as our Heavy Lasers started tearing away at its reinforced front, “they don’t make them much bigger.”
“I hear the Heavy Harvester Class is almost seven hundred meters in length,” I demurred, “and while they vary in size, the mother-ships always dwarf anything else they have.” I could tell the moment the massive Bug ship came into range, as its icon on the main screen was almost as big as our own.
Laurent grunted in response.
“Besides, we have shields while they don’t,” I made sure to point out, even as our Shield Operator started calling out our now rapidly falling shield levels.
“They also still have around a dozen scout ships,” the Captain retorted as half a dozen scouts came around from behind the Harvester and added their weight of fire to the mix.
“Blast,” I scowled, my eyes turning to rapidly search for our short squadron, maybe they could be of some help. When I found them, I saw that our little warships were dealing with a half a dozen Bugs of their own. I saw a scout explode, and then one of our Corvettes, the one previously damaged, go dead in space as it suffered a massive systems failure. Seconds later its primary fusion core ejected, and I stifled a curse as I knew it would only have a pair of backup nuclear fission piles for energy. That was assuming that those hadn’t also been knocked out, and that the Bugs didn’t finish them off before they could recover—or be recovered.
“The short squadron won’t be of any help,” I observed as the Cutter that had been going at half speed suddenly exploded, taking a Bug scout with it, leaving a pair of our warships to deal with the four remaining Bug ships. Far from providing help, those little warriors over there needed ours and we were completely unable to give it.
“Scratch one scout,” crowed one of our tactical trainees, only to be smacked on the back of the head by Eastwood.
“Man your post and call down targets to the gun deck—that kind of happy horse-hockey has no place on a warship,” snapped Eastwood. “We have a chain of command for a reason, and wiser heads than yours have set it in place.”
The trainee looked abashed and I wasn’t entirely sure I agreed. I mean, I liked the bridge participation—at least when we were kicking hind ends and taking down the names.
As I watched, another Bug scout was taken out by our portside gunners and all thoughts of espirit-de-corpse versus dull and boring, quiet professionalism (something I had yet to really experience) were knocked out of my head.
“Shields are down to 20% and falling,”
snapped the Shield operator, cutting through the din of voices and activity as our ship struggled to compensate with the strain of combat, “we’re beginning to experience severe spotting! Recommend we roll the ship now, Captain!”
“Roll the ship,” I ordered before Laurent had the chance.
“Make it so, Helm,” Laurent growled.
Seeing that our Helmsman had already started to roll the ship before the captain had given his confirmation, I shrugged. If I gave an order then I expected it to be carried out, or be given a blasted good reason why not. Like, ‘if you do that, Admiral, the grav-plates will fail and we’ll all be turned into crushed little piles of blood and bone,’ now that was a good reason to wait for confirmation from someone more experienced. But my command style was all about results and getting things done. I’d learned that doing something, or sometimes just anything, was preferable to just standing there doing nothing while the enemy came at you. If this was sometimes at odds with the ‘Fleet Way’ of doing things…too bad—I was the Admiral.
“Now I understand why you never promoted Tremblay to Captain,” Laurent grumbled in a voice loud enough that only I could hear it.
I cocked an eyebrow at him, confused since I’d never trusted the man far enough to give him that kind of power. Was Laurent saying he himself wasn’t trustworthy, or was this once again something that I was missing about how a ship with a captain was supposed to be run? It was probably the latter, now that I thought about it.
Our roll completed, the fresh broadside which had been focusing on harrying attacks by Bug Scouts renewed its thunder against the Harvester that had just come into the sights of its gunnery teams. Another Scout exploded just before the Harvester began taking heavy damage itself.
“We might just make it out of here without losing our engines,” Laurent said with surprise as a third Scout went dead in space, leaving us facing only three of the little Bug ships—and the much bigger Harvester, obviously.
Then the weight of the Harvester’s full power focused on us in an explosion of beam and missile attacks from both of its sides. Even the Scouts seemed to marginally increase the accuracy of their attacks, as fewer shots spewed out in every direction and almost three fourths of their attacks struck our weakening shields.
Admiral's Revenge (A Spineward Sectors Novel:) Page 32
