by Ryan Krauter
"Will we get there in time?" Merritt asked grimly. It was a sobering question- should we bother going because they might be destroyed by the time we get there- but it had to be asked.
"No problem," Cory replied easily. Merritt doubted that, but she would try to help no matter what. "If we can clear up Avenger, she can engage the main Priman body from the rear again. She can do a lot more damage there than we can, so that's where we should be going."
"Alright," Merritt allowed, "get your people together; I'll call it in to Avenger."
"They're heading this way?" asked Loren of Sarria Mastruk's face on the screen.
"Affirmative," she replied. "Captain Sosus says they'll be here in two minutes to run interference and hopefully buy us a way out from these two cruisers. We'd be a big help to Majestic and Cobalt if we could separate from these guys and get there without being blown up on the way."
"Alright," Loren replied. "Stand by for torpedoes, C3; we're steadying up on our course and waiting for the cruiser to fall in line."
Sarria Mastruk just nodded, her catlike Drisk eyes riveted on the tactical data on her screen. She longed to give the command to fire on that enemy ship.
Avenger didn't have long to wait. The Priman cruiser rolled in behind her, even as the enemy ship fell back due to Avenger's better sublight acceleration. A steady stream of laser fire came in from their two batteries that could traverse forward, chopping away at Avenger's stern. A weak spot in the shields, a lucky convergence of fire, and a Priman bolt took the corner off the aft main gun deck where the Aft Quarter was located. The armor shredded and tore apart as the atmosphere blew out of the holed compartment. One of the large transparent steel windows shattered and flew apart in pieces as tables, chairs and benches were sucked out into space. What looked devastating was not actually deadly, though; since it was a mess hall, nobody was stationed there during combat operations.
"Fire!" Mastruk yelled with a clenched fist at the weps officer in C3. While normally lasers were controlled in C3 and torpedoes were called for by the captain, Loren and Sarria had worked together long enough to know each other's vibe when it came to combat, and Loren didn't begrudge her calling for the launch since he had been a second late to realize Avenger was ideally boresighted on the enemy cruiser.
Four torpedoes ripple-fired out of the rear launcher on the deck just below the Aft Quarter. They accelerated and sped towards the Priman ship whose captain realized too late that his eagerness to give chase put him right in Avenger's sights. The four torpedoes impacted within a second of each other, the first two overloading the shields and the second two tunneling into the bow of the ship before the shaped charges went off and ravaging the internal structure of the ship.
"Give'em another!" Mastruk commanded of the weps officer, who was giving Mastruk a countdown with her fingers as the tubes reloaded. The weps officer stabbed the firing tab and smiled as another volley leapt from Avenger and shredded the Priman cruiser. The enemy ship shuddered and went dark, coasting ballistically through space on the course it had been killed on.
"Aah!" Cory yelled out loud as she savagely thrust the stick to her left, rolling her Intruder over a suddenly active AA turret on the Priman cruiser she was skimming. Her remaining six Intruders were strafing the hull of their chosen victim as they headed back towards Avenger and the planet. She gritted her teeth as she held down the trigger on the stick, sending streams of solid armor-piercing shells from her twin autocannons into a laser battery that jutted out in front of her. Chunks of armor, shrapnel and slag from the hull, and pieces of exposed equipment all trailed behind her marauding Intruders as they chopped away at the enemy ship. Soon enough, they flashed ahead of the vessel and began their evasive trek towards Avenger.
Cobalt shook with the impact of a coordinated volley. Apparently, some of the Priman cruisers had stopped waiting for Majestic to hold still and had targeted her ship instead. The Primans were still trying to get on the other side of the battleship, and Captain Rese saw how they were trying to trap the Confed ships in a modified spherical formation which would allow them to fire on all sides of the ships simultaneously.
Captain Rese looked at her XO, who shrugged and continued monitoring the weapons systems. She had to chuckle once; he was a fatalistic sort, and figured either they'd live or they'd die. Nothing much fazed him.
"Helm, prepare to break formation," she commanded with a sudden burst of decisiveness. "We need to spread out so they can't cover us up like they're trying to do. Let's get ready to head to starboard by thirty degrees, nose down ten, and see what they do."
"Instructions laid in and standing by," she heard with barely a pause. This crew had trained well, and she only hoped they'd all be able to both put that training to use and to survive to use those skills another day.
"Concentrate all fire on the designated target," Captain Montari commanded as he tapped one of the Priman cruisers on his display. It was one of two that was trying to maneuver around them and box them in.
"Captain," somebody called, and Montari was so engrossed in the display he didn't even register who it was, "Cobalt is moving off towards our starboard. It looks like she's trying to open the formation so the Primans can't come down the other side."
Montari sighed in resignation. It was the ideal thing to do, and he'd do the same. "Good luck, Captain Rese," he muttered under his breath.
The engines of a cruiser exploded, an uncontained field collapse detonating the engines and all the fuel in the intake tanks, as Captain Vol watched helplessly. Another of his proud vessels and fellow warriors, dead in their quest to reassert control over the worthless savages of this galaxy. If it were up to him, he'd exterminate them all and start over with a new planet full of lab animals. His people didn't need these humans, and Drisk, and Qualin...
"The Confed cruiser is moving out to block our ships from dropping down on the starboard flank of the battleship," Captain Vol heard from his sensor officer.
"Redirect fire on that ship!" he ordered quickly. "They can't repel the sort of firepower that battleship can take; a few volleys and they'll be out of the fight, and with any luck destroyed."
"Firing on the cruiser," Captain Rese heard from the weps station. She'd ordered all of Cobalt's fire directed at a single ship; one of the vessels trying to get on the other side of Majestic. Now, with Cobalt sliding away from the battleship, the Priman cruiser was still stuck on 'top' of the Confed formation, exposed to fire from both of the ships and unable to slide down. Ideally, she knew, the cruiser would have liked to get next to Cobalt on the same plane of maneuver and use her own cruiser to shield itself from fire coming from Majestic. Captain Rese was taking a big risk, because while moving out prevented one cruiser from getting into position, it would eventually take her so far out that she'd be isolated and could potentially be surrounded herself. It's a risk she'd have to take, because Majestic was taking the vast majority of the enemy fire and was showing it badly now.
"Ready to fire," the XO called, and relief washed over Captain Montari.
"Roll and fire," he called. They would be firing all their laser batteries at one of the cruisers trying to go over the top of them, hoping that Cobalt would keep the other occupied. Those two ships were trading blows one-for-one, and neither would be able to keep it up for long.
Majestic lanced out with her many laser batteries, reaching for the enemy ship and finding her with a vengeance. She continued rolling as fire from the other Priman vessels depleted her shields; the battleship uncovered new turrets and freshly regenerated shields in a constant balancing act. Finally, a great explosion flared amidships on the Priman cruiser, then was quickly snuffed out. The weapons went silent, though the ship still appeared to be under power.
"Torpedoes on the other cruiser; help Cobalt!" Captain Montari called, and his orders were carried out directly as four of the six starboard torpedo tubes, the only ones left functioning, spat out torpedoes at the enemy cruiser. They flew towards the enemy, straight as arrows
, and engulfed the cruiser in a consuming ball of fire. The oxygen quickly burned off, revealing only charred wreckage and large sections of hull floating free as the ship itself tumbled away.
That wasn't much consolation as Captain Montari looked pointedly at Cobalt's data link. She was dead in space, engines offline and venting oxygen, silent as the night. She had quite possibly saved Majestic from a flanking maneuver that might have destroyed her; Montari could only hope he'd survive to go rescue the crew.
"Good to see you, Cory," Loren said as lightly as he could when he saw her face on his display. "I have a bit of a situation here." That was an understatement, of course, but Cory wasn't in much better shape. She was down to just five Intruders. There would be a lot of empty bunks in the Warbirds' quarters tonight.
"What do you need?" she asked without pause.
"Well," he paused as he grabbed the arms of his chair to keep himself in place. Avenger was pummeled by another series of blasts, and it sounded like a vengeful giant was taking a sledge hammer to the ship's outer hull. He knew from dismal experience that the sound meant the shields were failing and the external armor belt was taking the full force of the impacts, and the armor wouldn't last forever. "Well," he began again, "I need to separate from this Priman and go help the Lemurian destroyers. They're almost out of it, and that cruiser will outlast them. There are still eighteen transports just sitting out there and we need to keep both of these Priman cruisers on this side of the engagement busy so they don't go after them."
Loren looked at the display, including the data he was getting from the Lemurians. They'd been sharing their own feeds through the Confed data link, and Loren had watched helplessly as their numbers had been winnowed down. There were two left; one was Captain Renner's ship, though it was more wreck than fighting vessel at this point, with only a few point defense turrets functional.
"We'll make a run on the engines of the cruiser firing on you," Cory offered, "and then see if you can break away. We'll go from there."
"Thanks," Loren replied, watching her helmeted image disappear from the small window in his display. He hated having to get her to do such a risky maneuver, but right now he couldn't think of it as asking a friend to possibly go get killed for him. He needed to think of it as the captain of the ship trying to find the best way to save almost ninety-thousand civilians stuck in those Stalwart class transports that the Primans had corralled in orbit.
Cory's remaining five Intruders, accompanied by the six Talons under Merritt's command, came swarming in on the Priman cruiser with a vengeance. They didn't have to strafe the whole hull; indeed, all they had to do was take their shots at the engines. Point defense weaponry was weak in the rear; you couldn't just mount AA turrets on the engines, so the drives of the ship created a weapons coverage blind spot. The problem was avoiding all the point defense fire on the way in and out from the attack run, but that's what Intruder pilots trained for.
As Avenger and the cruiser traded blows from their main batteries, Cory's Intruders attacked the engines. Avenger was actually running low on torpedoes and was holding off now until she could get a high probability shot. Still, Cory attacked, relentless in her need to complete the mission.
She dove in again, eyes narrowed, fangs in the floorboards as they said, and held the trigger down yet again. Suddenly, he cannons stopped firing and a red warning indicator flashed in her canopy.
"I'm out," she said in wonder. She'd never been involved in a long-enough running battle to actually expend all her ammunition, but all her solid projectiles were gone. She had her laser cannons, but they weren't as effective against a hull and even those would eventually burn up their power cells.
The fighters swooped away from the cruiser, peeling up off their runs and trying their best to avoid the point defense fire. One Talon wasn't so lucky, and caught a full-force blast right in the cockpit. The fighter disappeared in a fireball.
"I'm out of autocannon rounds," Cory declared over the squadron's frequency. "If you are, too, just use your blasters. Let's head it back in," she said in resignation. She knew this couldn't go on forever, but they were so outnumbered that all she could do was keep trying and hope...
That hope was rewarded as the Priman ship's engines flickered, then could only experience was Cory would describe as a backfire. The drive plume went out for a split second, then shot almost an entire ship-length out behind. Then the engines flickered a second time, going out for good. The ship coasted on, engines and weapons silent; she even had a couple unfired torpedoes attached to her hull. Cory thought those would definitely be worth coming back for when this was all over.
"Avenger," she said over the net, "looks like you're clear."
"Thank you, Captain," Loren replied with a salute. He looked away from the comm screen and at the helm station. "To the Lemurian destroyers, max speed."
He surveyed the large damage-control display at the aft of the bridge. Too much red, too many systems out. Almost out of torpedoes, half their laser batteries destroyed or simply overheated from too much continuous fire, and enough internal damage to keep the yard hands cursing his name. He only hoped he'd get there in time to help Captain Renner.
This was it. Renner knew it was over. The other destroyer was breaking up, all hands trying to make it to the escape pods before the ship split apart around them. His ship was next, he knew that and accepted it. He only wished he'd been able to take out that damn Priman cruiser. He'd done some damage, made it hurt, but they were going to survive this and he wasn't. He looked at the tactical display one last time and wished it would work long enough to get a clear picture. There was so much damage he couldn't see the situation, what was real and what was faulty data.
He did see something moving in, though, and it wasn't another Priman. "XO," Renner said as he tried to adjust the incoming data to no avail. "XO!" he said again, and this time got a response. The officer looked at the main display with ever-widening eyes. Renner had switched to external cameras and focused on the incoming ship. It was trailing debris and sections of the lighting and shield grid were flickering, but there was no doubt; it was Avenger.
Avenger barreled in towards the confrontation. The Lemurian destroyer was limping pathetically along, heading out towards the waiting Stalwart class transports that seemed stuck in space, unable or unwilling to move after seeing two of their own destroyed before the battle started.
The Priman cruiser came about, showing her broadside batteries; her greatest number of weapons available in a single salvo. She'd been pummeled, to be sure, but had far more left than the last pitiful Lemurian ship. The batteries traversed and readied to fire.
Avenger lined up and fired first, two torpedoes reaching out from her forward tubes. As she bore down, her autoloaders readied two more torpedoes in tubes three and four, the only forward-facing ones still functional. There was no need, though. The torpedoes closed the gap in remarkably short order and ripped into the Priman ship on her port aft quarter. The ship swayed, then started to tumble as internal explosions carried on the work of the initial blast. The whole ship seemed to try to turn itself inside-out as sections of hull and various emplacements blew apart, tearing at the seams that held the ship together.
Captain Vol was at a loss. While not all of his vessels had been destroyed outright, he was down to only two ships that could leave the battle under their own power, and it was time to do so. To be sure, the Confed battleship was as ravaged as any of his vessels. He could even perhaps destroy it if he stayed, but he had no illusions that he'd survive the encounter. What good would it be to eliminate the ship if his own forces were all destroyed? If he couldn't hold the system, it wasn't worth spending the lives of the rest of his crew.
There was also the matter of the Representative. She had accorded herself very well, and as a future Commander her life shouldn't be wasted, either.
There was one last command to issue, however. If he couldn't take out the Confed soldiers, he could at least take out the cowards o
n the surface of the planet that had dared to try and leave.
He'd already ordered his two-ship formation to break contact, and the Confed battleship had seemed more than happy to let them go. Captain Vol took a moment to check his data feeds and was pleased at what he saw. While he had used all the torpedoes available to him, there was one ship that still had three that had not been launched. The ship itself was mostly crippled, but even under backup power, they could be fired. He gave the order over his secure comm link, and a second later the crippled ship acknowledged its last order.
Avenger had heaved to for the moment to recover her fighters. That had taken a disturbingly short amount of time, but it was over now and he could deal with those implications later. There was also the matter of the captain. Loren knew Captain Elco had been on the surface at the military base near the capitol that had been destroyed; he'd have to work on organizing some sort of search for him as well.
He took a quick inventory of the system; there were several Priman ships that were wrecked but not destroyed. Some most likely had survivors aboard, possibly technology that was still intact. Somebody would need to head that up as well. It wasn't ever discussed, but both sides seemed to take prisoners, though the Primans most often chose dying in battle. Still, there were a handful of prisoner-of-war camps for Priman captives, and Loren resolutely hoped that the Primans did something similar. With all their claims of wanting to take over and guide their misled children in this galaxy, he'd assumed that they wouldn't just execute any captives on hand.
