by Ryan Krauter
Knowing Captain Rese and not wanting to take away from her fighting spirit, Captain Montari quickly concluded and call and disconnected. He knew she wouldn’t be happy with being told to hide under cover.
"There is one unhappy captain," Montari's XO concluded from her chair two steps away from him.
"She lost a ship once; while I know she'd do it again if it meant winning the battle, there's no need for that kind of voluntary sacrifice. Yet."
They paused for a second as they watched the volleys of fire between Confed and Priman ships cover less and less distance as the two forces closed the gap. Hits were coming in continuously now, though Majestic's huge shield generators and power banks were keeping up with demand.
"This is going to hurt, XO," Montari said softly as the silent countdown in his mind crept towards zero.
"At least I'm not making the payments on this old girl," she said with a fatalistic grin.
"Helm," Montari said slowly. "Execute turn... now!"
Majestic volleyed off one more salvo of four torpedoes from her forward tubes, then executed a surprisingly nimble ninety degree turn to starboard, which uncovered her six broadside torpedo tubes. Still not taking the ability of his weapons to home in on Priman targets for granted, Captain Montari had ordered his XO to have them launched into the path of the oncoming Priman ships. His guided torpedoes this battle had only been managing about a fifty percent lock-on rate; the rest had careened off into the void, unable to lock onto anything as advanced Priman ECM stripped them of their tracking abilities.
Six torpedoes running unguided so close together were hard to cope with, however. The Priman ships scattered in a disorganized melee as the lead ships tried desperately to avoid the weapons. Their laser batteries tried to shoot them down as well, but it wasn't enough. Three of the weapons connected amidships in the same cruiser as she was pulling her nose hard up; the shaped charges cut through the ship and Majestic's laser batteries were on the ball, shifting to concentrate fire on the explosions scarring the ship's hull. The Priman ship's keel failed; with her back broken, the ship began to fold up on itself as the fore and aft sections of the perforated hull tried to go in different directions.
Wasting no time, Captain Montari ordered Majestic to come to port and begin to circle the dispersing Priman fleet, Cobalt riding high and behind, adding her own volume of fire to the deadly mix.
Three of the 'Lightweight' torpedoes got through the Priman defenses, one each to three different ships. Captain Vol cursed everything about this galaxy again as he watched his ships valiantly try to rebuild their formation. Luckily, there was no major damage dealt by the mysteriously appearing torpedoes, though the ships were damaged and lives were lost. This was war, though, and in the middle of a brutal knife fight like this, all that counted was whether the ships were still fighting. He'd worry about repairs and lost crew later.
He spared a second to look at his tactical display again. His ships were finally giving as good as they got now, having formed up again and scoring repeated hits on the tough Confed battleship. It was difficult to coordinate precision fire on specific locations, but he was going to have to try to take out their torpedo tubes if he wanted to take an advantage. The battleship was trying to gradually open the range between itself and his own ships; even if half her torpedoes didn't track his own vessels, it made perfect sense for the Confed captain to stay far back and cram torpedoes down his throat. At that distance, the Confed captain's ship stood a better chance of doubling up shields to intercept his own blasts while at the same time swatting at the Primans with the long arm of those torpedoes.
"Keep us at medium range!" Vol shouted to the helmsman as his ship was rocked by an explosion. "We'll have to deal with those torpedoes either way, but only at this range are our weapons going to hurt them!"
He saw with a small sense of accomplishment the battleship execute a roll to show the Primans her heavily armored underside. Her shields had finally weakened to the point where the ship's captain had needed to give the ship a break, and it gave Vol hope.
"We can kill them!" he rallied his crew. "Look; they're rolling because we've taken too much out of their shields." He plotted quickly in his head, then looked at his board and selected three of his ships by tapping their icons and dragging a course line on the display. Sending the command through the data link, he ordered those ships to angle above the plane of the battle and come down on the battleship's other side. He'd pound the ventral shields from every direction until his shots tore the guts right out of that ship.
"They started without us," Cory heard Merritt say on their private channel. The main Priman body was already well-engaged with Majestic and Cobalt, and their maneuvers had meant it took longer than planned for Cory's Intruders to get within launch range of their small torpedoes.
"Don't worry, dear," she chided, "the battle will catch up with us any second now." She was painfully correct on that matter. The Priman fighters were seconds away. In fact, if she was going to launch her torpedoes at optimum range, they'd have to fly right through the initial meeting with the enemy fighters. She watched her heads-up display; a single Priman cruiser was in her sights, and a signal-strength bar was showing her the amount of ECM being blasted in their direction. The bar was in the red; her computer was saying that her squadron's torpedoes would be scrambled the instant they left their hardpoints. That meant a close-in, boresight launch, which meant getting right into the hail of AA fire and more than likely losing people. It was a risk they'd signed up for, but that didn't make the consequences any easier to contemplate.
Since the Intruders didn't have to hold a steady track to allow the targeting computer time to hand off guidance to the torpedo, at least her ships were free to maneuver. They began to roll and juke as the Priman fighters closed in. Intruders and Talons sprayed laserfire ahead of them, as did the Primans. Instinctively, Cory pushed her flight stick forward hard just as a blast came in; she felt a thud through her spaceframe that reminded her of the time her repulsors had malfunctioned and her Intruder had backed right into a hangar bay bulkhead. The ship rocked and he eyes flashed to the damage control screen. Whatever sort of blast that had been had hit her upper dorsal hull, right on the hyperdrive pod. It showed severe damage, but the rest of her systems seemed unaffected.
"You alright over there?" she heard over the net. Naturally, Merritt was right on her wing as he inspected her ship.
"You're my gallant hero," she said with a smile. "I'm fine, as long as we don't need to hit hyperspace. Now, honey, go blow up those Priman fighters so we can take out this cruiser."
"Anything for you," he replied. He snap-rolled his fighter ninety degrees to port, putting it up on one wing as if he was flying in atmosphere, then pulled back on the flight stick and arced out of her view.
Merritt looked at the odds. Twenty-four Primans, twelve Talons. Well, he didn't have to destroy them all, just keep them distracted until Cory's ships launched their torpedoes. "Alright Vipers," he called out the squadron name on the comm net, "let's buy our friends in the Intruders some time."
"We've lost another one," Renner heard his XO say with surprising calm as another destroyer icon winked out. It was hard to hear over the rumble and vibration that constantly buffeted his own ship now. They'd taken a hit in the engineering spaces, and while their acceleration didn't seem affected, they were losing fuel and the engines had begun a concerted effort to tear themselves apart. The Engineer had given them fifteen or twenty minutes at these power settings before they tore themselves to pieces. Renner knew it would be over one way or the other by then.
His ship was down to only two functioning laser batteries now, and the XO was doing her best to keep them firing at worthy targets. He was beginning to wonder if this was going to amount to anything then he saw a flash from the main display and the lead Priman cruiser suddenly veered off course, trailing bright white gas from the engine spaces.
"Report!" Renner yelled excitedly.
"Looks like
an engine containment breach," the sensors operator called back over the noise. "I see her speed dropping every time she maneuvers, and power levels are down as well. Whatever it was, she's out of the hunt."
"Great news," Renner admitted. "Maybe now we can-"
He was interrupted as concentrated fire from the remaining Priman cruiser tore the bow clean off another destroyer, the resulting explosion sending the rest of the ship careening off course and towards the planet's upper atmosphere.
Cory was down to ten Intruders now; one of her wingmates had been destroyed by AA fire from the cruiser they'd been approaching and one had been the victim of a lucky high-deflection shot by a Priman fighter that had been blown to bits an instant later by one of Merritt's Talon fighters.
"Ready," she called on the frequency. They were almost at the launch point; the spot where they were too close for the Priman ship to be able to evade the incoming torpedoes. Finally, mercifully, the countdown reached zero. "Launch!" she called, somewhat unnecessarily since all the Intruders were sync'ed to the same timer. Ten Quick Strike light torpedoes leapt from their hardpoints on the bellies of the Intruders, protected until that point by being nestled in between the powerful engines of the big attack fighters.
They streaked through space towards the cruiser, which was already beginning an ineffective turn to port. The torpedoes piled in, eight of them in total ramming into the engines one after another. The other two barely missed, passing down the stricken ship's flanks and off past her bow. The ship's captain had avoided letting the torpedoes stitch a line down her flank, but instead had allowed the majority of them to hit his ship's engines. The Priman cruiser started to spin, the rotation of the turn they'd started continuing as they lost control of the ship and were unable to correct for it. The rear spun around the long axis, putting the ship in a slow but helpless flat spin as it drifted helplessly off.
"Gotcha," Cory said to herself triumphantly. Her celebration was cut short a second later as another of her Intruders died as as result of Priman fighters. Joy turned to rage, and she vowed to exterminate every last Priman that defiled the space around her.
"Warbirds!" she yelled to her squadron. "Form up on me. We're going to help Commander Elder take out these Priman fighters."
"We've lost another ship?" Captain Vol said incredulously to his sensor officer. He'd watched the sensor feeds as the swarm of torpedoes from the Confed Intruders had crippled the vessel. "Why are our fighters not wiping them out?"
"Unknown," the officer replied neutrally. "The enemy formation is down six attack ships and six fighters," he offered by way of consolation.
"I don't care about the attack ships any more," Vol countered. "They've fired their ordnance; they're not a primary threat at this point unless they try to strafe our hull."
He was about to give another command when a thunderous impact rocked his ship. It sounded like a thunderstorm in the passageways, and the shock wave that ran through the bridge almost knocked him out of his seat. It took a moment to regain his senses, and he was finally able to sort out the scene around him.
His ship had taken some sort of direct hit, most likely followed by a secondary explosion. He saw damage indicators for the entire starboard side of his vessel, and at least one member of his bridge crew was on the ground where they'd landed after the impact had sent them sprawling. He peered through the haze, which was occasionally lit by arcs from shorted energy conduits, and saw Representative Ravine assuming the station of the assistant helm operator, the officer in question flat on the decking either unconscious or dead. Ravine turned to him and nodded, then started working the panel under the instructions of the helmsman. If she survived to rise to become Commander, Vol thought, she just might go very far.
If Majestic hadn't been equipped with the inertial compensators that damped down motion and inertia to those aboard, everyone would probably have long since vomited up everything they'd eaten in the last two days. Majestic was constantly spinning, climbing, dodging and rolling as she uncovered her laser batteries or torpedo tubes to fire on the Primans, then offered her thickly armored keel as the enemy fire poured in. A track of her course on the tactical plot would have looked like a child's random scribbles, such was her need to stay moving and never show the same spot of hull for long.
It was beginning to take its toll. Majestic had lost three of her port broadside torpedo tubes as well as two of her dorsal laser batteries. Her shields weren't regenerating well in places, and Priman shots were beginning to make their way through to her hull plates. They had a ways to go before the ship was seriously threatened, but it was still six-to-one odds. Captain Montari risked a quick glance at Cobalt's status and was relieved to see she was still staying in Majestic's shadow, though he didn't know how much longer that would last.
He heard the rapid-fire chirps from the weapons console that indicated another volley of torpedoes was being launched. At this rate, he could actually see the possibility of running out of the big weapons. They took up a lot of space and he only had so many to fire; he was going to have to think about cutting back a bit and waiting for more ideal firing solutions.
"Firing," Loren heard the weps officer announce again. The two Priman cruisers were trying to flank Avenger, one on each side, and he couldn't maneuver out far enough away to get them both on the same side of his ship. Laser fire lanced out between the Avenger and the lead Priman cruiser, pummeling the shields which faltered and let through a handful of blasts which burned up some hull plates and left scorched metal behind.
The incoming Priman fire was just as intense, and Loren ordered the ship rolled to offer their upper starboard hull to the incoming fire. He needed to protect the hangar bays at all costs; unlike the Majestic, he couldn't expose Avenger's underside to enemy fire. The price was beginning to mount; Avenger was down a laser battery and torpedo tubes one and two, with several hull breaches through the tough external armor plates surrounding those areas. She'd taken a barrage on her port side sublight engine pod, the resulting damage knocking out the big forward facing maneuvering thruster which severely degraded her ability to turn quickly. Avenger left a thin trail of sparks in her wake as she charged through space in her duel of position with the Priman cruisers.
"We're trading blows too evenly," Loren lamented to Lieutenant Commander Mastruk over their direct link between the bridge and C3. Her grim look was all he needed to know that she saw it, too. The lack of his torpedoes being able to guide themselves drastically reduced the usefulness of those weapons, and Avenger had been designed to attack with torpedoes first using her stealth abilities; a knock-down fight was not her strong suit, regardless of how many laser batteries she carried. "We need to knock one of those cruisers out right now, even if it means taking some risks." As if to accentuate the point, Avenger shuddered with another round of impacts and Mastruk's picture blanked out for a second as either power or data was briefly disrupted to that circuit.
"I've got a risky idea," she offered. "Show them our stern, let them think we're running," she said.
"Then hit them with the aft torpedoes when they give chase," Loren finished.
"Those cruisers only have two forward guns," she observed. "If they're right behind us, we can do a hell of a lot more damage to them than the other way around."
"Can't argue with that," Loren agreed. "Set it up; I'll get us turned."
Loren looked at the helm officer. "Helm, point us towards the planet, then steady on that course, maximum acceleration. Let's make them think we're running while we prepare a surprise." He only hoped the other cruiser didn't score too make hits while Avenger became a steady and predictable target.
"Laid in, Commander," the officer replied.
Renner's three remaining destroyers swarmed over the Priman cruiser like flies on a carcass. The problem was, they were just about as destructive. Renner's ship was down to one remaining laser battery; one of the others had no functioning weaponry at all, and was barely holding its oxygen inside its perforate
d hull. Still, they couldn't do anything else; to run was to give the enemy a steady target to fire at, and nobody was going to be the first to quit.
He was gratified to see that his ships were still scoring hits; the Priman ship was leaking air and the occasional gout of flame from several wounds of its own, but the ship's larger size meant they'd have to do a lot more damage to it before it was out of the fight.
Another hit on his savaged ship brought Renner to the realization that he had a decision to make soon, while his ship was still controllable.
"Helm," he said a quietly as he could over the noise in the tiny bridge. "Lay in a program to ram, maximum acceleration, and put it in the buffer. We may have no choice."
The helm officer simply replied with a yes, sir, and bent to the task resolutely.
Chapter Eight
"Eat vacuum," Merritt muttered as another Priman fighter burst apart in a brief explosion and expanding cloud of shrapnel and debris. It was ugly, but they were turning the tide now that Cory's Intruders were in the mix. While not designed to be a dogfighter, the Intruders had the same laser cannons the Talons did, and their heavier armor allowed them to take hits that would destroy a Talon, which made up for their lesser maneuverability. The Priman fighters were actually trying to separate and regroup, accelerating away at a higher rate than the Confed ships could.
"Idea time," he heard Cory's voice over the comm net.
"I don't want to know," he replied seriously. Her ideas for situations like these were usually not conducive to a long and healthy life.
"They're taking off; we do the same," she said. "We go strafe this cruiser," he saw an enemy ship get highlighted through his datalink, "and then make tracks for Avenger. By the time they catch up with us, we'll be in range of Avenger and her AA batteries. She needs help with those cruisers, and we could do some real good helping what's left of those Lemurian destroyers by the planet as well."
