The minutes ticked by, and it felt like no time before Arsenyev said, “We’re in range to hit the frigate with our primary laser, sir.”
“Fire, and Werner, give me a full-screen visual of the target.”
It never failed to warm his heart, watching enemy ships melt under the heavy beam his ship’s main capacitor was capable of generating, and this time was no different. After several seconds of concentrated power, the frigate exploded.
Under normal circumstances, that would have caused his CIC crew to burst into cheering. Not now. They had a drawn-out slugfest ahead of them, and this was merely the opening act.
As they sailed past what was left of the enemy formation’s outer screen of ships, Keyes barked, “Launch Condors.”
“Aye, sir.”
The tactical display exploded with a flurry of tiny green lights, each representing a Condor. With the addition of the Wingers from Spire, his Air Group had grown significantly since the last time the UHF had had the opportunity to count them. Immediately, Fesky’s well-trained pilots fell into formation and began performing alpha strikes on the corvette Keyes had designated.
At last, the Providence came to a stop in line with the battle group’s flagship as well as the corvette on the opposite side of her. “Give me a full-screen visual of the enemy destroyer and magnify.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Captain, the destroyer is coming about to line up a shot from its main gun,” his Tactical officer said.
“We aren’t going to allow that to happen, Arsenyev. Hit them with everything we’ve got. Open with a full salvo of kinetic impactors all down her port side, with a firing solution that targets as many point defense turrets as possible. Immediately following that, I want you to put forty Banshees in the air.”
Arsenyev gave a prim nod, and Keyes could sense her satisfaction with the order.
“Would you like me to assign Lieutenant Laudano to assist with the calculations?” he asked.
“That won’t be necessary, sir. I can work from a set of firing solutions I’ve already generated in anticipation of a situation similar to this one. It’ll just take a slight adjustment.”
Keyes nodded, not trusting himself to speak in light of the unexpected emotion that had flared up in him at Arsenyev’s words. Now, what’s that doing there? He cleared his throat.
“Sir, Fesky has succeeded in taking down her target and has shifted focus to the remaining corvette,” Werner said. A row of explosions blossomed along the destroyer’s flank, then, and the sensor operator continued. “Seven turrets down, Captain.”
“Excellent. Fire Banshees.”
The missiles that made it past the destroyer’s remaining turrets didn’t obliterate the ship, nor had Keyes expected them to. They did, however, deal massive damage, and it brought a transmission request from her captain.
Captain Stephen Cooley appeared on the main viewscreen, his face paper-white. “I yield, Keyes. We yield.”
No, I’m afraid you don’t. “I’m facing down three more battle groups, Cooley. I can’t afford to leave your destroyer operational.”
“Wait. On behalf of my crew, I’m begging you. They have families, Keyes, and so do I. We’ll run to the escape pods at once.”
“I don’t have time to wait around for that.” Keyes sighed. “I’m taking out your engines so that you can’t pursue.”
“Thank you, Captain Keyes. Thank you. Thank you.”
“Yeah,” Keyes said, and made a cutting gesture across his throat. Werner terminated the transmission.
“Fesky’s just neutralized the last corvette, sir,” Werner said. “She won’t have known the battle group’s flagship already yielded.”
“That’s that, then. Tactical, target the destroyer’s mains with three Banshees each. Coms, recall our Air Group. The next engagement will come soon, and we have no reason to expect it will go as smoothly as this one did. Let’s regroup.”
Chapter 32
Ek and the Warlord
As the warlord’s followers escorted Ek and Warren Husher into a long, cavernous room, she took in her surroundings and began digesting their meaning. The rare paintings that adorned the walls had not been arranged by someone with a true appreciation for art, but by someone who wished to impress and intimidate viewers. A Lowery hung next to a Hashyl, which made no sense from any perspective, aesthetically, historically, or otherwise.
“Kind of medieval, isn’t it?” Warren said, turning his lined face toward her before staring ahead once more.
Ek joined him in gazing toward the front of the room, where a large, bearded man sat on an enormous chair that could only be termed a throne. His officers stood arrayed on either side of him, facing each other across the large space.
“A Fin has become a very valuable thing to own,” Thresh boomed, before they had even reached him. “And what a remarkable Fin, at that!”
The fighters escorting them stopped several meters before their leader, drawing back against the wall to leave the prisoners in front of Thresh’s throne. Everything is calculated to send a message. Their standing alone said to them that they could run if they wanted—they would simply be intercepted. Or perhaps gunned down.
“I haven’t decided whether I’ll keep you or sell you,” Thresh said. “At any rate, if you’d like me to treat you well, you should probably answer my questions truthfully.”
“By all means,” Ek said.
“Good. Tell me, how did you come to occupy an Ixan shuttle, and so near my planet?”
The bombast of calling Thessaly his planet amused Ek, but Thresh had no way of knowing that, because she gave him none. “We come from Spire, where we barely escaped the Gok attack.”
Thresh’s eyes drifted briefly to a man and a woman standing to Ek’s right, who wore identically colored wedding scarves, indicating marriage to each other. The woman wore a vest too small for her. Ek saw that she could not button it even if she tried.
“Keyes was at Spire,” Thresh said. “Keyes, who shares my hatred of the UHF.”
“I wouldn’t ascribe hatred to Captain Keyes,” the married man said. “He’s too much a pragmatist for that.”
Thresh glared at him. “He hates them, Saul. How could he not? But that’s irrelevant. What matters is that the Fin tell me his next move. What does he anticipate from the UHF, and how will he thwart them?” Thresh had returned his gaze to Ek, but soon glanced again at the woman, whose hand was on her belly.
Interesting. “I will answer your question once you grant me a private audience.”
Thresh laughed, long and loud, in what was clearly another power display. “Who are you to make demands of me, fish? Why in Sol should I grant you anything?”
“You are right to consider Fins valuable. Perhaps you have heard about our powers of perception.”
“Yes, indeed! I’ll get a high price for you. Right now, though, I’m thinking I probably won’t keep you for myself. You talk too much.”
“I have perceived that your entire command structure is about to descend into chaos. I will require a private audience to inform you of why.”
For a long time, Thresh studied her, his mirth gone. Then he flicked his hand toward his followers. “Leave us.”
Some of the guards hesitated, and Thresh bellowed, “Leave us! I think I’ll be safe on my own with one land-walking Fin.”
Once alone, they stared at each other in silence for some time. Ek knew that Thresh was waiting for her to speak, in an attempt to indicate he did not feel concern over her warning. But the attempt would fail. Ek was patient.
“All right, Fin,” Thresh growled at last. “Tell me what you meant.”
“The man Saul is your second-in-command.”
“Yes. How did you know that?”
“You require me to walk you through each of my perceptions? Then I am happy to do so. Only your second-in-command would dare speak out of turn with a leader as ruthless as you portray yourself.”
“As I portray myself?”
“How do you know she’s pregnant?”
“She wears a vest too small to button. Clearly, she has not had a chance to purchase a new one since her pregnancy. And she touches her stomach as humans touch a loved one.” She took another step forward, pinning Thresh to his throne with her gaze. “You are of Asian ancestry, and so Saul will immediately know the child is not his. Therefore, he must be assassinated. But the assassination will not turn out as you hope. Saul has more loyal supporters than you believe. Many of them stood in this room just moments ago. Your lover will not be able to handle the resulting fallout. She cannot even find the time to buy herself clothes that fit, let alone cope with the guilt she will experience once her denial over what she has done is shattered. She will flee with the newborn, leaving you to deal with an uprising you have unfavorable odds of suppressing.”
Thresh’s shoulders rose and fell, indicating heavier breathing and an accelerated pulse. “What would you suggest I do about all this?”
“You resent how the UHF has oppressed the people of Thessaly. The bombings and occupations have angered you, as they have angered many throughout the Bastion Sector. But your people do not view you as a savior. They view you as an opportunist. If you wish to insulate yourself against your second-in-command and his followers, you must earn their love.”
“How?”
“You have a fleet of Falcons at your disposal, and your counterparts throughout the sector do as well. If you join with them, using your combined might to fight the UHF’s tyranny, and to defend your species from the Ixa when they come, you will be revered. You will also increase humanity’s chances of survival, which I assume you view as a positive, considering you belong to it. A new world is forming. If you would like a place in it, then I suggest you join the fight to save it.”
None of Thresh’s bravado remained. His posture rigid, he stared at Ek as though at a bizarre spectral phenomenon. “All right,” he croaked.
“Excellent. Let us get to work.”
Chapter 33
A Second Hull
The Providence’s Flight Deck A had been pulverized during the battle over Spire, taken out by a collision with a Gok carrier. And so it made sense that, in preparation for the journey to engage the next UHF battle group, most of her Condors would reenter her on the starboard side, through Flight Deck B and other, smaller flight decks on that side.
At least, that was the story Husher had wanted to sell to the enemy battle groups’ sensor operators, whose sensors had only been able to see the Providence’s port side. But instead of landing inside her, he’d suggested to Fesky that those Condors remain outside the supercarrier, hugging her stern like a second hull to avoid detection by enemy sensors. The CAG had trained her pilots well, and the Wingers came already highly skilled, so Husher knew they had the chops to pull it off.
And they did pull it off. When the Providence met the battle group that had entered from the Feverfew-Caprice darkgate, guns blazing, she suddenly adjusted her attitude ten degrees up from the ecliptic plane. Five squadrons of fighters blazed past her underside to hit an enemy unprepared to deal with Condors this soon.
The frigate Husher’s squadron targeted did not even have time to engage its point defense turrets, and his Haymakers got in for a clean alpha strike, followed by another from the squadron behind them.
By that time, the turrets started hitting them, and the second squadron kept them busy while the Haymakers moved in for alpha strike number three. That did it. The frigate blew apart under their concentrated fire, and both squadrons scattered to avoid any shrapnel hurtling through space.
The cockpit of Husher’s Condor washed red, and a glance at his tactical display showed him a missile closing with him, from the nearby missile cruiser that Fesky and her Divebombers had been supposed to deal with.
Using his Ocharium boost to leap ahead, he engaged his fighter’s gyroscopes to whip around her short axis just in time to neutralize the missile. Three other pilots, including one of his Haymakers, weren’t so lucky. All three of their fighters exploded, only one of them ejecting to escape death.
On the tactical display, he saw the three squadrons Fesky had taken to destroy the missile cruiser slipping out of formation and getting forced farther and farther from their target.
Husher slapped his helmet to activate his transponder. “Madcap, I thought you had that cruiser taken care of!”
“Sorry, Spank,” Fesky said, her voice drained of energy. “I don’t know what happened.”
“Looks to me like you got sloppy. We all need you to wake up and join the battle.” If Keyes thought they could pull off defeating four UHF battle groups, then Husher was happy to help prove him right. But if they did manage it, it wouldn’t involve screw-ups like the one Fesky had just made.
“I’m sorry, Spank…”
God. She sounds pathetic. “Listen, Fesky, I know how hard losing Spire must be for you. But before that ever happened, you fought alongside humans against your own kind. You have a new home, now. The Providence is home, and we need to fight as hard as we can to protect it.”
“It’s not about my own kind. I lost them a long time ago, and I lost Spire, too. It’s about losing the Fins. And losing Ek.”
“That’s crap.” Husher’s words sounded harsh in his own ears, but they needed to be said. “Ek would not want you to let your mourning distract you from being the CAG we all know you are. Ek would want you to harness that mourning, let it fuel your anger, and use it to fight the UHF with everything you have.”
A brief silence, and then Fesky said, “You’re right.”
“Of course I’m right.” On the tactical display, the missile cruiser was pelting the Providence with Banshees, and both the destroyer and the other cruiser were doing the same. Some of the shots were getting through. “Enough talk. We need to do something about these cruisers right now.”
“The captain of the missile cruiser I tried to take out has the most talent,” Fesky said. “So let’s take out that one first. I need your Haymakers to start targeting missiles while the other squadron under your command engages its point defense turrets. My three squadrons will work on neutralizing the cruiser itself.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
But the captain of the missile cruiser was indeed talented, and the moment the Condors moved to target her, she performed a full retro thrust to evade them, redirecting her missile barrage at them alone. Several more Condors went down, including two of Fesky’s Divebombers. The surviving pilots had their hands full with avoiding getting killed themselves.
In the meantime, the destroyer and the other missile cruiser continued to bombard the Providence.
Husher’s mouth went dry. They’d needed to whittle down this battle group far quicker than this.
The third battle group was almost upon them.
Chapter 34
The Spirit of the UHF
“Fesky’s run into trouble, Captain,” Werner said. “The Lightning has started focusing entirely on the Condors.”
“Launch the reserve fighters we kept in the port side and tell them to join her. In the meantime, we need to redirect some of our fire to dealing with the missiles being launched at us by the Porcupine. The point defense turrets alone aren’t cutting it.”
The main capacitor still wasn’t charged from their discharge of the primary laser hours ago, and Keyes didn’t feel comfortable letting it fully recharge in the middle of an engagement. At least we’ll soon have enough for secondary lasers.
Werner spoke again. “Captain, the third battle group is nearly here.”
“The flagship Imogen has sent us a transmission request,” the Coms officer said.
“Accept.”
The face that appeared on the CIC’s main viewscreen belonged to Admiral Jacobs, which felt like even more of a sucker punch than the overwhelming odds Keyes faced. Jacobs counted among the very few admirals ever to gain Keyes’s respect.
“Captain Keyes,” she said, her voice worn-out from decades of shouting commands. Even during the First Galactic War, Jacobs had been considered old to still serve in the field. Now, everyone lived in disbelief of her continued battle prowess.
“Admiral Jacobs. I’m sorry that the UHF has ordered you to do this. It pains me to have to fight you.”
“I volunteered for this mission, Captain.”
Keyes closed his eyes and breathed.
“I am an officer of the United Human Fleet,” the admiral went on. “This is my job, and I will never be insubordinate, as you have been. You pose a danger to the very concept of an effective military.”
Keyes opened his eyes again, still trying to grapple with the thought of battling one of his oldest heroes. “With all due respect, Admiral, the women and men of the Providence embody the spirit of the UHF in its truest form. Ma’am, how long will you remain so dedicated to an organization that has betrayed its own species in service of a corporation? Will you still be proud of your decision when the last Winger dies? Will you stand by it as the Ixa begin destroying our colonies, one-by-one?”
The admiral slowly shook her head. “I still remember the boy who threw himself into the Ixa’s teeth to save countless Fleet lives in the Coreopsis System. Now you fight savagely to take those lives away. But enough talk, Captain Keyes. Do you surrender?”
“Ma’am, I will never surrender while humanity is in peril.”
“I was afraid you’d say that. You’ll be brought to justice either way. Jacobs out.”
Chapter 35
Hurricane
Juggernaut: The Ixan Prophecies Trilogy Book 2 Page 11
