by Blaze Ward
Abbotsford and Achaemenes had gone straight down at the first sign of trouble, along with Wombat and the rest of the support force. Even Andorra had fled once she released all her dangerous little hawks. But she had no guns to speak of.
They would be safe out on the edge of the system for a few hours. At least until this mess was resolved one way or the other.
“Is there enough firepower to seriously hurt that formation?” Denis asked first.
“No,” Jessica replied simply.
One heavy cruiser would be in deep trouble. Even a small squadron, if they were low enough and slow enough to attempt to hold orbit. This force was too big, and moving too fast, and not interested in getting down into the sort of range where all those little mines could detonate warheads and fire the resulting lased beams upwards at the nearest target.
Varga was just surfing the orbital well right now. Down, around, and back up full tilt. Coming after her.
“If the fighters had stayed with the warships, I would have lit the whole net up at once,” Jessica said. “Even with the gaps, it would have been a rising tide eating a sandcastle made of melee fighters.”
“So a waste of time?” Robbie asked from his screen.
“Not at all, Nyamboya,” she replied. “There are missile satellites in there as well. Once he commits to climbing up at us, we’ll open up with everything and both soften him up and distract him. He has nowhere to go with nearly fifty fighter craft, except to either land on the planet or get everyone to deep space and abandon the vessels themselves and pick up the crews.”
“Would he do that?” Denis asked.
“Red Admiral would,” Alber’ barked sharply. “But the Red Admiral wouldn’t have gotten himself into this mess in the first place. Hardware is far cheaper to replace than men.”
Spoken like a true berserker. But Jessica knew Alber’ was also right. Most of six squadrons of men would be prohibitively expensive to lose for a couple of years while they rotted in prisoner camps waiting to be traded home. The fighters themselves could be replaced far faster and far cheaper than training up new crews.
“So what’s Act Two, Jessica?” Denis asked.
She smiled. Robbie had gotten used to calling her by her first name in certain circumstances. Kigali did occasionally. She doubted Alber’ ever would unwind that much.
But it meant a great deal to her that Denis Jež, a man long nursing a small grudge at all the times he had been overlooked, was relaxing. Was willing to accept that he was not just a part of this team, but perhaps the steel skeleton upon which everything else was built.
She was just the Flag Officer. Denis commanded Auberon now.
She might not have been here without the support of the Senate itself, but Jessica Keller would have never considered attempting a stunt like this without men like these beside her.
Jessica smiled. These men might be mere footnotes in her legend. She had no doubts that the historians would concentrate everything on her and ignore the rest. But that legend would rest on their shoulders today.
“Simeon,” she replied simply. “Lane Seven.”
It was a measure of the men, of their temperament, or their experiences, in how they responded.
Denis nodded workmanlike, already deep in his own planning.
Robbie scowled, but he did that.
Kigali literally sneered in contempt, but he probably doubted the Imperials could be as challenging as Lane Seven itself was.
Alber’ d’Maine smiled like Aphrodite herself had risen from the waves and offered herself to the man.
The others simply held their peace. Command Centurion Doriane Matveev, Ishfahan, hadn’t been with Jessica long enough to find her niche with these men. Command Centurion Kanda Lungu, Ballard, had a disdain for warfare anyway, but she had been willing to commit all manner of petty delinquencies along the way. The six Destroyer commanders were all aggressive men and women in their own right, happy to add their swords to those on the table.
But Auberon would carry the flag. And probably suffer the greatest for it. That might break Denis’s heart, but you would never, ever, see it. That much she was sure of.
Now she needed to teach the Imperials to respect her as much as they feared her.
Chapter LXXXVI
Date of the Republic July 19, 396 Somewhere, Thuringwell
If he had to pick, it was probably that damned trumpet that was the most eerie part of the whole scenario.
Gaucho was used to the occasional sound of gunfire. If projectile weapons were so much louder than beams and particle cannons, it was still a predictable thing.
And he could hear the sound of engines pushing transmissions to the metal’s edge as a group of tanks maneuvered around, somewhere to his right. They were even getting closer.
But that damned trumpet seemed to be coming from everywhere. Or nowhere.
Gabriel might be coming for him. But Gaucho had his doubts that his just reward would be a nice one.
Takouhi tapped him on the leg, and then pointed to the left when he looked.
Ghosts, moving through the trees.
Well, not ghosts. Ghouls, maybe. Come to munch on the corpse of his lovely flying machine.
She pointed a weapon at them.
Where in Hades name had she been hiding a pulse carbine, anyway?
Gaucho went back to his watch area and paid attention. Murph was poised and silent as well, but he never spoke much.
Not sober, anyway.
An explosion in Cayenne’s airlock nearly made Gaucho wet himself.
This was nothing like flying. Some jackknob had just lobbed a grenade into the airlock by way of saying hello.
That was rude.
Takouhi waited a few seconds, apparently for them to grow confident, and then opened up with the pulse carbine.
Gaucho couldn’t tell if she got anybody, but all hell broke loose a second later.
Murph moved so little that Gaucho wondered if he was asleep over there. At least until he fired a single shot at something unseen.
Hopefully, he had gotten the guy. Murph was hell on wheels in flying combat simulators. Maybe he had also spent enough time in Hogan’s Alley sims to be useful today.
Gaucho was just a pilot. Let Takouhi and Murph kill things.
Nobody moved in the area he was assigned to watch. That was fine with him. At least they had a direction to bug out if they had to.
More pulse fire.
Gaucho couldn’t tell if anything good or bad resulted. These were single shots or short bursts. Nothing like in the vids where the heroine stood up and ripped the whole charge pack off from the hip.
He suspected Takouhi was that crazy. Hopefully, nothing today would bear that out. There were tanks and horses coming. That much he could hear.
Apparently, she had gotten somebody’s attention. A grenade came this way. Sort of.
Not close but definitely not lobbed at Cayenne this time. It went off with a soft whoomp in the forest soil.
Takouhi responded with a longer burst. And then silence.
Again, kinda eerie.
He could hear men over there, yelling back and forth at each other.
Murph fired again. A single shot. Nothing more. No clue what he saw.
And that damned trumpet.
Louder this time.
Hopefully that meant closer.
Ta–TA. Ta–TA. Ta–TA.
The triple note that cute brunette in Dash’s Lance played when they went balls out across an open field.
Screaming metal as well. Hopefully there was a tank coming to save his ass.
It would be nice to have some armor between him and the bad guys again. Dead trees just didn’t cut it. Not against crazy people with guns.
Movement.
Gray against the green and brown.
More ghouls.
Imperials. In his zone. Trouble.
Gaucho raised the pistol and steadied it on the log, like Murph was doing. He stopped and turned off the sa
fety, before Murph could get in another I–told–you–so, and aimed.
Three men.
Not exactly coming at him, but coming this way.
A projectile weapon right now would be more useful. The sound would at least hopefully drive them to cover. There was so much noise right now they might miss him shooting at them.
Hopefully, he could hit something at this range. It wasn’t like he was crop–dusting or something.
Maybe that was the thing.
Think crazy, trick flying. Crop–dusting at full speed, through a canyon, because why the hell not, with a bridge. And people fishing off the bridge.
Spear–fishing. Let’s make this a challenge.
Gaucho smiled and squeezed the trigger, aiming for the tourist on the left in the funny hat as Gaucho’s wood and canvas biplane blew past at too–low and too–fast.
The man dropped cold.
Crap. That worked.
Gaucho got excited and fired again. Maybe he got another one. Maybe not. Both fell forward.
And things started exploding off of his log.
Gaucho ducked, thinking thoughts about tree branches and iron bridges.
Crop–dusting and gun fights.
He could do this.
He got as flat as he could and found a gap at ground level.
A flying squirrel would have to be insane to try to thread this needle. Paint–your–aerial–wagon–bright–red crazy.
Fortunately, there was just such a squirrel handy.
Something over there moved.
Maybe a boot. Polished black leather would look like that with some mud on it.
Guacho went crop–dusting again, and then popped up and fired three shots into the trees so entirely at random as to constitute insanity.
Always let Lady Luck have a few rolls to herself. Otherwise, she gets jealous.
Chapter LXXXVII
Imperial Founding: 174/07/19. BB Varga. Thuringwell Orbit
They had cleared Thuringwell’s dark side and gotten organized.
Kozlov approved.
They would be climbing out of the gravity well, but were moving at a high speed and would continue to accelerate as they went.
Keller had arranged her forces into the most useless formation he could imagine. Apparently, Auberon was more badly damaged than he had imagined, if she had put the battlecruiser up front and kept the completely uninjured heavy cruiser back to protect her.
He would have to consider a savage braking maneuver to loop around her stern at this rate. Instead of retreating from him, she was diving down the gravity wall to meet him halfway.
Alternatively, he could ignore the cruisers and pour everything into Keller’s hide as he went by, and then reach deep space and turn around.
Perhaps she would flee after that. Perhaps there would be an Act Three worthy of the name.
Certainly, the choreography demanded it.
Keller had her six destroyers in two arrowheads, with the Escort Carriers behind the line vessels. The two light cruisers, missile on the back and Survey Cruiser on the near side, escorted the battlecruiser at the back.
Perhaps Nyamboya had also been hurt worse than he thought, and needed protection from the oncoming Imperial vengeance.
Shivaji sat at the front of a diamond with the other three cruisers, just ahead of the battlecruiser and escorting both Nyamboya and Auberon as much as that damnable corvette. The one that had utterly annihilated any of his missile waves that had gotten through the static and fighter screen.
Tomas Kigali had lived up to his diabolical reputation today.
Facing, Saveliy had shifted all of his intact frigates in an over–lapping line of battle between his heavy vessels and Keller’s force, with the two injured ones on the back of the formation. Varga had the van, exactly the opposite of before, but it would put him even with Auberon as the two fleets drifted into and past each other. Wintergold was in the center, and Novo Daysahn at the rear.
This would be a classic engagement on his side. He would rendezvous with all the fighters and use them to screen his frigates, as before. Everyone was out of missiles at this point among the flights, so there was little the two forces could do except neutralize each other.
At least until he hammered Auberon. Because that was the plan. While any missile would be fired at the nearest target as the two lines passed, every Primary beam was going to be held for Auberon.
Saveliy was happy to let the rest escape with only minimal damage at this point.
He was absolutely going to destroy Keller before he left the field.
It would be undamaged starboard to starboard this time.
Time for you to die, Keller.
“Admiral, hostile scan lock from below,” the sensors officer called, routing a new image to his screen.
It was as if two hundred little fireflies had emerged from their slumber in Thuringwell’s orbit. Except there were no friendly, little bugs in orbit.
The signals turned into missiles separating from housings and beginning to accelerate after him.
Keller had planted a minefield for him, but used it all wrong. He could probably outrun all of those missiles, laboring as they were to get to the higher gravity planes he would be on.
Still, better safe.
“Squadron accelerate five percent,” he ordered. “Drop Yokohama and Cerberus back as well as Phineas Kervitch and set them on defensive duties. Sensors, plot missile plan estimate on screen five.”
A small change required, but nothing significant. If Auberon and Nyamboya were damaged enough that they needed Shivaji to protect them, he had enough firepower at his command to do the job.
Chapter LXXXVIII
Date of the Republic July 19, 396 SC Auberon. Above Thuringwell
Jessica watched the Imperial fleet adjust. Ballard not only kept their missiles blind and their scanners fuzzy, she also had a hard lock on every red and blue–shift almost as soon as it happened.
There. Distraction enough. The missiles would be chasing him. He would want to get clear, while looking back over his shoulder constantly.
Briefly, she considered matching the man maneuver for maneuver. Line her own destroyers nose to tail like the Imperial frigates. Put her cruisers into line to tango.
The good old days.
Except that Ballard had barely any offense to begin with, and Ishfahan has expended a truly staggering number of missiles in distracting the light cruiser who had wanted to maul her.
For a man so aggressive before, perhaps the Imperial Admiral had gotten too conservative now. His fighters were flying escort, rather than attempting to swarm her. His frigates had begun to launch missiles, but few and mostly it looked like an attempt to keep her at bay.
Plainly, he did not expect those two weapons to figure heavily in what was about to come.
The Red Admiral would have put his own Battleship, the Blackbird, in the middle, with a cruiser ahead and another behind.
Putting Varga up front gave him the most firepower at the start, but it would quickly taper off as the two lines blew by each other. Unless he was planning to hook around her stern as hard as he could and pour everything into Auberon.
No other tactical layout made any sense. She may have just forced another back–foot maneuver from the man.
Jessica made adjustments to the plan displayed in front of her and transmitted.
“Squadron, this is Keller,” she said out loud, trusting Enej and his team to get everything routed right. “I have just sent an update to plan Illumination, Situation Six. Implement immediately and acknowledge.”
Alber’ d’Maine had surprised the hell out of her and all of her crew the first time he had turned off half his gyros and spun Rajput on her long axis to fire all her Primaries back along her flight path as she coasted backwards through space.
Jessica wondered what the look on the Imperial Admiral’s face would be when Auberon accelerated forward at the same time the two cruisers pointed their snouts in his direct
ion without coming about.
It would be harder to do with all Auberon’s mass. Not impossible, but the flight deck did not need a sudden loss of gravity and down to go with everything else.
Robbie and Alber’ could handle it.
Chapter LXXXIX
Date of the Republic July 19, 396 CAX Shivaji. Above Thuringwell
In the end, Alber’ must have known Keller would go for the obvious solution.
She was still, at least comparatively, sane.
Rational.
Not fully dedicated to the Goddess of War in all her incarnations.
Not like Shivaji.
Keller was an excellent Fleet Centurion, diplomat, and commander. Well respected across the entire galaxy, beloved of the entire fleet.
But she still followed Athena, goddess of wisdom in battle.
Alber’ d’Maine looked around his bridge.
This day, he would dedicate to Odin, the great northern berserker.
On his immediate right, Senior Centurion Cruz Bösch, Executive Officer. On his forward left, Centurion Zoya Najafi, Science Officer.
His own Goddesses of War.
Around the three of them, most of the old crew of Rajput, transplanted into fertile soil and allowed to take root.
Disciples of death and devastation in all its myriad forms.
But he would need to take them to a higher plane of existence today.
“Tactical,” he called from that grand throne. “I am taking command.”
Bösch turned on him like a cat bereft of a mouse, until she saw his face.
As wars of wills went, it lasted but a heartbeat. She bowed and bared her neck before him.
“Acknowledged,” she said simply. “You have the bridge.”
Alber’ d’Maine would not be denied. And he would not destroy their careers by letting them take responsibility for this.
The day required it.
