“Thank you, my dear,” I said, feeling a wave of relief at the show of support. Because frankly if the Admiral’s own wife didn’t believe in him to the point she was openly heckling him on the bridge of his own flagship, why should anyone else?.
I didn’t need the First Fleet to single-handedly defeat the enemy, although I would gladly take it if we could, but what I did need was for everyone to hold on—and more importantly hang together until I could lure the Imperials where I wanted them. Somewhere in the outer system moving at a somewhat predictable course and speed.
“I have faith in my Protector, Jason Montagne,” she informed me with a small smile.
Why I felt concerned instead of well loved and supported like I should have, I didn’t know. I gave myself a shake, firmly reminding myself that despite a few small ups and downs my beloved Hold Mistress had been making big efforts to improve our relationship and I had as well. Things were better than ever before.
With that thought firmly in the front of my mind, I turned back to watch the upcoming battle.
Then I blinked.
On the main screen I could see behind the group of nineteen First Fleet warships was a single Light Cruiser racing ahead at full speed to join the group of nineteen warships, and behind it were a full squadron of six Heavy Cruisers roaring forward at their top speed to catch the much fleeter footed Light Cruiser.
“The captain of that ship is brave,” I remarked, pointing out the lone warship outrunning its escort of Heavy Cruisers just to try and join the rest of our embattled warships before it was too late, to Akantha.
She nodded, eyes brightening as she looked at the Light Cruiser.
But someone wasn’t nearly as pleased with the Cruiser’s actions.
“Brave but stupid,” Commodore Snyder put in dubiously. “It’s doubtful whether a single Light Cruiser’s contributions will materially change the battle. Even with its addition everything could be over before those heavies arrive, in which case all they’ve succeeded in doing is killing themselves.”
Akantha sniffed. “She is rushing to join her comrades in battle in a desperate attempt to even the odds and save the day, and all you can do is mock the attempt?” she asked sternly.
The two women locked eyes.
“Uh, Sir,” said Lisa Steiner voice cutting through the tension like a knife, “that Light Cruiser belongs to Rear Admiral Van Obenheim. It’s her flagship.”
“Oh?” I jerked with surprise.
“Even more reason not to go than before! Why risk the commander of the entire left flank?” exclaimed Commander Snyder, looking shocked.
I unconsciously nodded and then realized what I was doing and quickly shook my head.
“She’s the commander on the scene. Sometimes you have to do the unexpected or even the seemingly unwise thing in order to win the day,” I said, loyally supporting my subordinate even as I silently cursed her. The whole point of putting her in command of the left flank had been so someone closer to the action and without any appreciable communications lag could take over. If she died we were not just back to square one, but courting massive confusion and a breakdown in the chain of command. To try and stop that meltdown I would have to take personal command of the port flank, and all the reasons for appointing Rear Admiral Van Obenheim that had applied in the first place and at that time of the attack still applied right now. If not more so.
“Of course, Sir,” Snyder said into the growing silence after she realized I was still considering the situation.
“This is just a small bump on the road. A potentially very painful bump, but even if we wiped them out or the other way around, the main battle is still to come. That said,” I bared my teeth, “I’d like to win this one and bloody their noses good. Let’s see what we can do to help make that happen.”
“Of course sir but I don’t see what we can do—” replied my First Officer, looking doubtful.
“Then you haven’t been considering things deeply enough. Destroyers take half an hour to charge their hyper drives for a new jump. But our Corvettes can cycle their engines and point transfer in half the time if they push their strange particle generators to the limit,” I interrupted.
Her eyes widened with surprise and a growing respect. “You want them to short jump. It’s risky,” she said slowly but despite the hesitation in her voice I could see the sudden belief in her eyes.
“I want fifty Corvettes ready to jump in fifteen minutes, minus the ready reaction force that should have already been charging their engines up to the point-of-no-return. I expect those three squadrons to get over there and help out Rear Admiral Van Obenheim in half the time,” I ordered, shooting a look my Chief of Staff to make clear who should be passing along those orders before looking back to my number one, “meanwhile I want you to get with our navigator and have him draw up where those Corvettes are going to jump. We’ve lost enough ships to enemy action the last thing we need is to lose even more to mistakes.”
“Aye-aye, Sir,” both women chimed before hurrying off to do their duty.
While they were busy carrying out my orders I turned back to the main screen, where the Imperial Destroyer force had reached Rear Admiral Van Obenheim’s scratch force.
The Rear Admiral had yet to reach the brewing battle but the Imperial’s clearly had no intention of waiting around.
Once again their swirling fighting formation went on the attack. One right after the other the squadrons of the Imperial strike force slashed past our leading Cruiser squadron unloading their medium lasers at point blank range.
The Cruisers fought back, but with only four of them on point and twenty eight enemy Destroyers no sooner had our Cruisers started to hit an enemy squadron hard enough to begin lowering their shields than another one took its place.
The hardest hit enemy Destroyers were able to fade back into cover behind the other Imperial Destroyers. That is, they were until the Corvettes and Destroyers station behind the Light and Medium Cruisers made their move. Nine Corvettes with half a dozen Destroyers to back them up suddenly swarmed around the Cruisers intent on following after a damaged Imperial Destroyer squadron and finish them off.
As if they had been expecting this kind of move, the Imperial Destroyers all began moving at once and swarmed my smaller, less numerous warships, while I watched with a stone face. It’s not that I couldn’t do anything—I was already sending reinforcements—or that I couldn’t do anything more. I could just ignore the fact Van Obenheim was racing to the battle and start issuing orders. No. The problem was that anything more I did at this point would only make things worse. Which really grated. I was used to being in the thick of the action, going toe to toe with the enemy but as the number of ships and people underneath me had increased I—
Light lasers flared and a swarm of rockets erupted from the pack of Corvettes, temporarily swamping Imperial defenses and keeping my people from being fully en-globed and incidentally breaking me out of my train of thought.
“They’re taking the battle to the Imperials,” Commander Snyder cheered and for a moment it looked like plucky on scene commanders and the resolve of their crews would carry the day or at least break them free of the en-globement attack but then weight of metal as it inevitably always did made itself felt. Unfortunately weight, and not just the numbers, was on their side.
“They need to crush that one in the rear and they’ll be able to pass through!” Akantha encouraged, pointing at a particular Imperial Destroyer on the main screen as if she could somehow urge our people to select her target and somehow free themselves from combat.
Personally I supported the sentiment, even if not her plan or the way she was airing it on the bridge of the flagship in the middle of combat operations.
“Dear, we need to let the bridge crew do their job,” I reminded her tactfully.
Akantha shot me a disgruntled look and then, to my surprise, turned away with a sniff. Normally in the past she would have at least made some kind of cutting comment and the
n most likely continued to ignore me until I got mad about it. I was surprised.
During the first initial flurry of rocket fire the Corvettes had pushed deep into the Imperial formation, hot on the heels of their mini-missiles, and a pair of Destroyers were sent reeling from the formation spewing atmosphere and super-heated plasma into cold space.
But when our Corvettes went to pursue they ran into an equal number of enemy Destroyers. The resulting clash pitted Corvette level light lasers against Destroyer level medium lasers, and the effect was punishing.
Three Corvettes received punishing strikes while a fourth was struck so hard by half a dozen medium lasers that a hole was punched right through its front armor and out its stern. Moments later, the fatally damaged Corvette exploded.
Three more Corvettes had their shields knocked down sending them into a series of increasingly hazardous evasive maneuvers.
Then the Cruiser squadron who had been left behind saw their chance to do some serious damage and began to turn. Thrusters flaring, they pointed their noses at the Imperial Destroyer squadrons and began to accelerate. Eager to get into the thick of it, the Light and Medium Cruisers temporarily sacrificed their broadsides' angle of fire in return for a chance to trade blows at point blank range.
Realizing the danger, the Imperial Destroyers started to drift back trying to regain their constantly interweaving formation which was able to spread out the damage our warships could deliver. However the light warships of the Spineward Sectors First Fleet showed there were no cowards there today, and they pressed forward losing another pair of Corvettes in exchange for pinning down the Imperials. They did so just long enough for their fellows in the battered Cruiser squadron to join them.
Once again lasers flared, but this time it was heavy lasers from the Medium Cruisers backed up by an extra helping of medium lasers from their Light Cruiser companions that were telling. Under their weight of fire a single Imperial Destroyer lost its shields and Spineward Sectors lasers dug through its armor and into its internals.
Seconds later, a fusion core ejected into cold space and escape pods started ejecting from the Destroyer’s hull.
However, with all the losses on our side the battle was now closer to three to one than it was two to one. In other words our guys were in trouble.
Fortunately or unfortunately the more heavily damaged Imperials continued to pull back leaving their fresher brethren to face the charge bringing the numbers back closer to their original disparity.
Pressed hard, one of our Light Cruisers took a series of repeated laser strikes that knocked out first her starboard shield generators and then her engines. While the other Light Cruiser was forced to go to full acceleration, breaking formation, in order to save itself, barely avoiding half a dozen medium lasers intended for its own vulnerable engines.
Then the Rear Admiral and her flagship arrived. Aiming right for the middle of the Destroyer formation and still moving at a rapid pace she started taking fire. Shrugging off the attacks, only a few of which managed to penetrate her shields, Gretta Van Obenheim opened fire from both broadsides simultaneously. Moving too quickly for more than one shot, her gunnery team showed why that particular Cruiser had been chosen as her flagship when their lasers punched through the shields of an Imperial Destroyer on either side of the Freya’s World warship, even penetrating those ships' armor.
Then the flagship was turning to decelerate and rejoin the fight. To the surprise of the enemy, though, she was decelerating on a course that would bring her alongside a pair of damaged Imperial Destroyers that had teamed up for mutual protection.
With consummate skill, the Cruiser flagship was on a course to slide right between the Imperial Destroyers when the Destroyer captains went to the best speed their damaged engines could produce in an attempt to gain some distance. They gained some separation—but not enough to avoid Van Obenheim’s lasers, and the Freya’s World Cruiser authored her second double broadside of the engagement.
The portside Imperial warships bucked and writhed as half a dozen medium lasers punched through her shields, while the starboard Imperial went dead in space entirely.
Then back in the swirling scrum that was the main battle, a squadron of Destroyers that had bracketed one of our Medium Cruisers finished knocking down her shields and then poured their fire into her engines before moving off. The Medium Cruiser survived the fight but she was out of the war for the indefinite future. Even if she could repair part of her engines there was no way she’d be fast enough for the upcoming battle.
“That’s unfortunate,” I said unhappily. We only had thirty Battleships and five of them were off on a secret mission leaving me with twenty five of them. And as for cruisers? We only had seventy odd of them. Two less now, counting the Light Cruiser and now this engine damaged medium. What had we got in return? Not nearly enough. The rest of our force was comprised of one hundred Destroyers and fifty plus Corvettes, they were good for a screening force but we needed our heavy hitters to turn the battle in our favor and they couldn’t do any turning if they were dead in space without functional engines or even just too slow to keep up with the rest of the fleet.
“Sir?” asked Snyder.
“We can’t afford to keep trading like this,” I sighed.
“Well they did catch us scattered and out of position,” she pointed out after an instant of hesitation.
In a flash, the ready reaction squadrons joined the battle, stiffening our forces and turning a potential rout and total annihilation into a real fight.
Apparently, it was more of a fight than the Imperial commander of the Destroyer group was willing to stomach.
No sooner had the Corvettes arrived and come into combat range than the Imperials began withdrawing at top speed.
Rejoining their damaged comrades, the relatively undamaged Destroyers immediately encircled them and continued pulling away.
Behind them, Greta’s scratch forces hesitated forming up into working squadron formation with their Rear Admiral’s flagship quickly joining them. Then after forming up they set off at a cautious pace.
Too cautious in my estimation.
I frowned.
“Is there a need to rush?” asked Akantha. “It’s my understanding we’ll soon have another forty Corvettes jumping over there. They should be able to overwhelm the enemy, correct?”
My frown deepened. “They should, but why leave it to chance? If I were there I’d probably move to hit them fast, tie them down, and get it over with,” I said finally.
“She’s the commander on the scene. Unless you want to give her specific instructions on the battlefield you need to trust her,” Akantha said with a shrug. Clearly indicating the decision was up to me.
While I would have done things differently or even just would have preferred the Rear Admiral do things differently, Akantha’s reminder was as timely as it was important. I didn’t want to go around micro-managing my top under-officers. If I crushed any signs of initiative then if, by some terrible chance, my ship was knocked out or I lost communications there was a real risk my people would just stand around doing nothing.
Which is why I pressed my lips together began moving the entire fleet in support of Rear Admiral Van Obenheim and her forces and kept her apprised of our intentions via my communications array and subordinate officers but didn’t jog her elbow.
Fifteen minutes after giving the initial order, the Corvettes point transferred into the general vicinity of Van Obenheim’s scratch force. They were scattered but they were there, and it would have taken at least half of them another ten minutes to arrive on the scene if I’d just told them to get there using normal space drives. That meant that sure, the half that were closer would have arrived earlier, but I wasn’t interested in feeding my Corvettes one at a time into a battle against the best Destroyers in human space.
The Corvettes had just begun to gather up, setting course to rejoin Van Obenheim’s forces, when six squadrons of Light Cruisers point transferred into th
e area.
“It appears the Imperials were holding their hand,” I said, eyeing the Light Cruisers sharply as they broke out of their gravity-sumps at record speed and raced to meet up with their comrades.
“Sir. Rear Admiral Van Obenheim is requesting clarification of her orders,” reported Lisa Steiner, “she wants to know if she is ordered to engage the enemy at all costs.”
I felt a sour taste but immediately shook my head. “Relay to the Rear Admiral that she is to harry the enemy if possible and watch for any damaged stragglers that fall out of formation, but that she is not—I repeat ‘not’—to force an engagement with the enemy at this time,” I said.
The last thing I needed to do was throw a mixed bag of sixty Corvettes and Destroyers with only three Cruisers into a battle with a force of thirty Cruisers and another twenty Destroyers. Those were odds we needed to avoid at every opportunity.
“The Rear Admiral acknowledges her orders,” reported Steiner.
Moving at the best speed of their damaged Destroyers, the mixed group of Imperial warships pointed their noses toward the hyper limit and burned off.
“Run the numbers: are we faster than that Imperial task group?” I asked.
DuPont turned and reported before Snyder had the chance. “Even moving at the speed of our slowest Battleship we’ll catch them, Sir,” he said confidently.
I nodded. We’d catch them or they’d abandon their allies, I silently added, but there was no need to be a wet blanket.
“Then let’s get this fleet after them at our best course and speed, Mr. DuPont,” I ordered, which wasn’t really necessary because we’d been chasing after them for some time now but I did it anyway. It felt good to issue the order.
What was more the helmsman certainly seemed to appreciate because after nodding DuPont turned back to his work with a spring to his motions that had been missing previously. Perhaps I wasn’t the only one that wanted to feel as if I was doing more.
Admiral's Nemesis Part II Page 47
