“True enough I guess,” admitted BA. “So we don’t have official orders?”
“No,” said Chaos. “Which is probably just as well.”
“Yeah,” said Amanda.
If we’d had them, the girls would still be on Fearless, and I’d be still asleep waiting for Jon to assemble a proper strike force, and call us back.
I used the silence which followed to think. Fifteen fleets was too many for even Chaos to take on safely. And yet, going direct to the planet and leaving them at our back was a really bad idea as well. We could find just as many at the planet, and end up sandwiched between them. Or worse.
This was the real problem. Even if the ship was overpowered, one ship was always going to be vulnerable to serious numbers. But then, as the team always said, we went in the shit end. However, there was always alternatives to the front door.
I opened my mouth, but Chaos came out of jump and didn’t go into another one. I looked over at her.
“Decision time,” she said. “We’re a jump away from this incursion corridor. And as far as I can tell, the Trixone don’t have any detection set up here, so they don’t know we’re coming yet.”
“What’s to decide?” asked Amanda. “Take us to George. Now.”
“Not so fast,” I said.
Amanda glared at me. The others didn’t look happy either.
“Yes so fast,” said BA.
“No.”
They looked shocked. Amanda opened her mouth for what I assumed was an order, but I looked away from them, and pulled out the navmap for the whole area. Chaos highlighted every Trixone fleet on the map, as far around as Jane had placed comnavsats. There were a lot of fleets out there.
“Oh,” said Aleesha.
“What?” asked Alana.
“That’s a serious amount of military,” I said.
“So?” asked Agatha.
“If I’m reading this right, the Ralnor had nothing in this area of space at all. So the plants have had no casualties as they pressed forward. If you look here,” I pointed at a system on the Trixone side of the border, “that looks like a shipyard for the region. And that,” I pointed to another system on the border, “looks like a staging point for fleet creation. And these,” I pointed to three more systems going into Ralnor space,” are significant fleets heading for where we think George is. Not to mention those at the jump point into that system.”
“So?” asked BA.
“Think of it like this. You have a company sized unit to do a rescue mission with, and the enemy has an army group in the field, strung out along the only line of advance you must follow. While most of them are regimental sized, there’s at least one multiple division sized army to get past, and it’s on the other end of the regimental units.”
I had their attention now. Ground units they understood. Probably better than I did.
“We have the means to sneak past them all, but at the end of the day, everyone is heading for the same place. And we don’t know the size of the force at where we have to go. We don’t know if George and Scimitar are there and can be picked up quickly, or if we’ll even survive what we find there. And the longer we are there, the more of that army will come to pound on us.”
I paused for breath. No-one spoke.
“So we can’t go straight there. And we can’t even look like we’re going straight there.”
“Sorry, why?”
Alison looked confused.
“Because they will know where we’re going after a few systems. And no matter how hard we try to be random, at some point they will be ready to hit us as we appear.”
“How do you know that?” asked Abigail.
“Jane already lost a freighter that way,” said Chaos.
I was waiting for the inevitable ‘oh’, but it never came.
“How did you learn how to see all that?” asked Aleesha.
“What do you think I was doing while you lot were traipsing around on planets? I wasn’t bored out of my brain for no reason you know. Jon still has me learning ‘officer stuff’.”
“Military histories?” asked Amanda.
“And a lot of military fiction Jon thought was worth me reading. Not to mention Chaos and I have seen all this before, and dealt with a lot of it on our own already.”
“But you can’t now?” asked BA.
“That’s not what I said. But we do need a plan, which doesn’t involve being predictable. And if possible will draw some of the fleets in our destination away, hopefully piecemeal enough for us to take on safely.”
I was looking at Amanda as I said this. She didn’t smile, but her eyes gleamed. Space wasn’t her element, but she knew tactics in the field. Between her, Aleesha, and BA, we sorted out a play. This wasn’t American football, but we needed to get to the end zone in as organized a way as we could, which kept the enemy guessing.
Before we jumped, Chaos popped up the manual controls at each station. The girls wanted to fight rather than be passengers, and there was no way I’d be able to keep everything I needed in my head. While Chaos could do a lot, the girls were more attuned to opportunities. So we divided up what didn’t face forward, or wasn’t part of what I’d be shooting. This included the rear facing guns and missile launchers, the new missile launchers, the cruiser turrets top and bottom, and the missile launchers which were not in the nose. The idea being while I was concentrating on what was in front of us, the girls would hit everything else we could.
Hands on the controls, and speed at optimum for strafing fleets, Chaos jumped us into the next system, behind a line of battleships. Strafe, fire, rapid torpedo button taps, and the first three broke up. Jump behind the other three, and repeat. Then we jumped clear into the next system heading away from our destination, and repeated the double strafe there.
The system had a second three fleet half way across it, and this time I yanked the speed back by half, we came in further away side on for the middle pair of battleships, and I used the space to strafe all six, before we jumped clear into the next system. This double fleet was approaching the jump point, so we appeared as if we’d jumped through normally. Strafe, fire, torpedo, jump.
The station had no protection forces out at all, and we sailed across the top of it, with me strafing to hit as much of it as possible as we went. Chaos jumped us a good distance away while we waited to see how effective the attack had been. The station was toast, even if its death throws were going to take a while, but ships were undocking madly from it. I nodded to Chaos, and we jumped back. Four straight lines around the station while I strafed the bigger ships, and we jumped out again, leaving chaos behind us.
We stopped in a quiet place in the next system out, so we could flex our hands for a moment, and check if we’d had any effect.
“Not enough,” said Chaos. “But it’s a start.”
The fleets closest to where we’d hit first had reversed their courses, and were heading back our way.
“Not enough,” I repeated. “Shipyard next. And see what else there is out here we can hit in case we need to do more.”
Things became a bit more complicated. Instead of fleets, we were now seeing smaller groups of ships coming from multiple jump points. We jumped from one to another in what I hoped was a random pattern, taking out the largest ships in each group, and moving on. We ended up out in a cul-de-sac deliberately, and backtracked around, missing several fleets entirely, and hit the shipyard.
There was a fleet in orbit with it, and they were firing on us within seconds of the jump in. I pushed the speed slider to the stops this time, and used speed instead of jumping, fighting this single fleet as I normally would have. It took a little longer, it took a much bigger hit to Chaos’s shields, but it was only minutes before we had a clear run at the shipyard.
Here, we took our time, doing runs from different directions, strafing as we went past. It was a huge yard, stretching for some twenty kilometers, and trailing behind the planetary orbit. Several ships tried to launch, but we didn’t
give them time to either fire on us or escape. Once again I was struck with the level of ruthless I was being called on to do. But I had to put it aside.
The last of the shipyard disintegrated. There were no shuttles or escape pods. Just debris.
“We have two fleets moving out from the George jump point,” said Chaos. “And all the ships we left intact are now heading this way.”
“Not enough. Next target?”
“Nothing close. Jane hasn’t managed to get much further out from here. And she still hasn’t replaced the freighter she lost, so all we have are the systems it did before dying.”
I sighed, and looked around at the rest of them. If Tanith had been capable of going pale, his expression would have matched being white. The girls all looked a sort of strained serious. I could tell none of us liked this, but we had no real choice.
Which made the next decision even harder.
Thirty Eight
We needed a reason for fleets to head back home.
The only decent target left they might call home was the planet in front of us.
As it happened, the plants made the decision for us. Or at least, I kidded myself they did. The moment we made orbit, and started scanning for military installations, missiles launched from all around the planet. Enough to be a bother, but not enough to be any real threat. The ship had more than enough mosquito launchers to cope.
Chaos began painting targets. The missile silos and moveable launchers were easy enough to locate now, but she concentrated on finding other hard targets. Training grounds, factories, military posts, spaceports. Fighters launched, and each one took a capital ship missile before getting out of the atmosphere. Salvos of the main guns dug huge holes in the ground.
We took our time orbiting, and changing the orbits, systematically covering the entire planet. Another three fleets jumped back our way from our ultimate destination. But it wasn’t enough.
With a final nod to Chaos, we started raining destruction on food production areas. Oddly you’d think, the plants were cultivating large areas of the planet with food crops. But when you think about it, when all the animals are gone, even a plant turns vegetarian. Even feeding themselves with roots instead of mouths, they needed something to rot in the ground to feed off. So crops were raised to become compost, which became food.
And so we destroyed all the food production and storage we could find.
By the time we’d finished, there were only five fleets left at the George jump point, with the other ten fleets spread out across an hour of space, heading back here. In between, every ship which could move, was, this way.
First mission accomplished.
Chaos jumped us several systems back, and parked us in a nice quiet place where we wouldn’t be noticed. While it was still early, we took our time over breakfast, although stomachs were more than a little uneasy, and needing some medical monitor attention. But for what we still had to do, we needed the food and drink. Even though I’d eaten when I got up, I was hungry again now.
We took our time. I played with Nut for a bit, and after another hour, we met again on the bridge.
The navmap was showing ten fleets in the system next door to where we thought George was, spread out across that end of the system, with the closest to the jump point being two hours away now. In the order we’d encounter them, they were a two, three, three, and two.
But they weren’t the only ships in the system. There was a single fleet heading the other way, escorting a convoy of thirty freighters. This made a total of fifty transports we knew were heading for the planet.
What the hell on that planet needed fifty troop transports?
“Troops,” said BA, confirming what I was thinking.
“Can’t leave them behind us,” said Amanda.
“I know,” I said.
More slaughter. But those ships probably had one or more divisions of troops on board, going from captured ones in the past. These were bigger than we’d seen before, easily as big as the battleships, but without the weapons.
I readied myself, nodded to Chaos, and we started jumping again, ignoring all the ships in the systems we passed through. One set must have picked us up, because they reversed course again.
“Friendly,” announced Chaos.
“Where?” I yelled, not caring about ears.
A hollo popped up on the main console. It was an older man, and we all knew him, although not well.
“Galactica has your back, Chaos,” said Admiral Frank Hunter, and the hollo vanished.
A red dot nearby the white one winked out, and the fleet which had changed direction stopped to engage their new target.
The distraction almost proved fatal, as we came out of the jump sequence on top of the first fleet, and I missed the strafe on the first battleship. It was expecting us, and we took a full broadside in the front shield before we were past it, and I got my act together again. The rest of the battleships died quickly, and we ran towards the next fleet, which wasn’t too far away.
Behind us, fighters launched from the remaining battleship, and ahead of us, the other fleets were doing the same.
Another white dot appeared behind us a few systems away.
“Who?” I asked.
“Prometheus,” said Chaos. “And Enterprise,” she added, as a third white dot appeared, again in another system.
Our three upgraded Explorer ships, the only ones we had the same size as the plant battleships, were keeping up the pressure behind us now. I’d not seen any of them in weeks, and had no idea what Jon had been having them do, or where they’d come from.
“Rear fleet?” asked Chaos.
“Go,” I said, and we jumped behind the four battleships, me ready to strafe them this time, and they all came apart before they could get more than a few guns on us. Their fighters on the other hand had managed to get in some solid cruiser gun hits.
Chaos jumped us to the side of the third fleet group, and we took three of the battleships quickly, taking more hits this time from just about everything which could bear on us, and jumped to the other fleet, coming at them from a different angle again. And again we only managed three battleships down before having to jump again.
They’d wised up now. The fighters were now in groups of about fifty, each group aimed at a different approach vector, and as we appeared for the next run, we took a solid hit from several directions. But we took out the remaining three battleships, and went after the last lot. Again, we took solid hits but the launch platforms for the fighters were all gone now.
Chaos jumped us out to a lonely part of the system, to let us get our breath back. At least, I needed it, if no-one else did.
We still had the convoy to deal with, a lot of cruisers and destroyers, and close to two thousand fighters, spread across half a system.
“Grace.”
I looked at Amanda.
“You okay?”
I could feel myself flagging, as if the energy was slowly leeching out of me.
“Yeah.”
But I could tell they weren’t convinced.
“Get your medical monitor to give you a stimulant,” said Alison. “You look like you need it.”
I did as she said, and could feel myself picking up again. With a deep breath in, I put my hands back on the controls and turned to Chaos again.
“Friendly,” she announced.
“Who?” asked Amanda.
Thirty Nine
“Hey babe,” said Chris.
His head and shoulders popped up on the console.
“We’ve got this. Go get the convoy.”
He vanished as fast as he’d appeared, and one white dot suddenly became a mass of them, as Claymore started launching fighters, and destroyers and corvettes undocked.
I had time only for a quick note to self to make sure he understood how much I disliked being called ‘babe’.
Chaos didn’t wait to see what happened, and we jumped to the rear of the two remaining battleships in the system, neithe
r of which had launched fighters. Both took full broadsides a few seconds apart, the first getting the four titan guns and almost vanishing, the second without, and disintegrating into large pieces. For a convoy escort, putting them together like that was stupid, but maybe convoy escort was assigned the stupid commanders. I’d take whatever to make things easier at this point.
We jumped again, and strafed along one side of the convoy targeting the escorts, with the girls firing on the transports themselves, which had lost their formation and were beginning to scatter. Another jump and down the other side to complete the destruction of the escort.
Dealing with the convoy was now a matter of sitting there and duck shooting. Missiles were coming our way from the nearest warships, but they were never going to arrive in any time to hurt us. And I finally paid some attention to our shields. Sixty two percent was a lot better than I expected, and now we were no longer being fired on, they started going back up again rapidly.
Galactica appeared on the nav map near one of the other fleet remainders, and two cruisers died almost together, before Hunter jumped her to another attack vector. The other two Explorers were still engaged in other systems.
By the time the last freighter was gone, Claymore had finished with both her fleet and its fighters, and was recovering her own fighters. The destroyers and corvettes were lining up, and as I watched, they vanished one by one through what must have been a rift, to reappear near one of the other now disorganized fleets. Claymore jumped after them, coming in behind several of the remaining cruisers, and was launching fighters out the rear flight deck as she destroyed the cruisers in front of her.
The battle went on.
“Remaining cruisers,” I yelled at Chaos. “Go.”
We jumped three more times, taking a cruiser out each time, leaving only destroyers and fighters left. Galactica was taking fire, but the systematic destruction of destroyers in spite of taking fighter fire as well, went on.
Our shields were not fully recharged yet, but I felt I couldn’t wait. There were only five fleets at the jump point on the other side now, and they had only a thousand fighters between them.
Imperium Knight Chaos Rising (The Hunter Imperium Book 6) Page 17
