by Daniel Gibbs
It was a victory that never came. His fleet jumped in and was waylaid by the bulk of the Coalition fleet supported by waves of planet and station-based defense fighters. The Coalition Defense Force knew he was coming, because Miri Gaon had told them.
Now she was here. In the Trifid Region, on Lusitania itself reportedly—Hartford was skeptical she could be kept from getting off-world, if she hadn't already left with the Shadow Wolf—and aware of some of his plans. History might repeat itself.
Hartford's condition was agonizing, in truth. No matter the reassurances he tried to give himself, or the ones he heard from others, he couldn't get the thought out of his head. Miri Gaon was going to ruin it. She would destroy everything. Though he hid it behind the mask of his quiet expression, his very being was being gnawed at by a raw fear just as potent as its opposite, hope. Because for all the reasons, he knew things couldn't go wrong… he couldn't avoid the thought they would.
He was diverted from his mental considerations by a report from another of the station officers, speaking with a Scandinavian accent. "Fleet is approaching Lawrence limit. Preparing for jump." Seconds passed, stretching out toward a minute that felt like an hour. Finally, another report came in. "Ships are at limit. Initiating jump."
Hartford breathed out. This part, at least, was over.
"Wormhole generation detected," the officer suddenly said. "Multiple wormholes forming. Incoming vessels are of multiple types and classifications, all armed."
"They're not ours?" asked Caillaux.
"No, Captain."
While everyone else was surprised by the report, Hartford seemed unfazed. It would be a comfort to his subordinates, in fact, but only because they didn't feel the fear take him by the throat.
For all of Aristide and Li's assurances, he'd been right to be afraid after all. "Assume combat stations," he called out. "Order the fleet to abort their jumps and engage!"
After several seconds, the Shadow Wolf's sensors cleared from the effects of the jump. The holotank was nearly blanked out by the sheer quantity of contacts, friendly greens, and hostile ambers playing over Henry's face.
The Morozova and her contingent from Cyrilgrad were, predictably, the first to directly engage. Missiles erupted from launchers and raced across space to the incoming ships converted by the League. Within moments, other missile-armed ships in the ad hoc fleet joined in the volley. Plumes of plasma and flame filled the empty void between the two forces. A few missiles plowed into the lead ships even as they were starting to raise their deflectors, causing terrible damage against their civilian-grade hulls with makeshift armoring and support welded into place. One of the ships took a missile in the aft section that knocked out its engines. It lost acceleration and started to fall behind the rest of the League Q-ship fleet.
Both sides traded fire in the next seconds, the Shadow Wolf included. Projectiles and directed energy crossed each other in space between the two fleets, joined by more flights of missiles and the telltale cerulean lightning of the electromagnetic pulse cannons the Leaguers now employed. The latter weapon splashed harmlessly against ships with intact deflectors. In a couple of cases where multiple pulses struck ships in the privateer fleet with compromised deflectors, those vessels went dark.
The Shadow Wolf was, of course, not one of them. Cera brought the fusion drives online and used them to accelerate the ship faster than the others, granting them increased maneuverability and evasive capability. Henry noted some of the other ships, including most of those originating from Trinidad Station, likewise displayed hidden fusion drives, which granted a similar boost.
Their maneuvers brought them into contact with a familiar sight: the Holden-Nagata vessel that ambushed them at TR-778. Again, its EM weapon was firing at them, as were affixed particle cannons, but this time, the Shadow Wolf's deflectors met the shots. As they passed beside their foe, the ship's port plasma cannon and gun turrets raked the vessel with fire. A converted heavy gunship flew in behind them and added in its particle lances to the fray. Together, they drained the enemy vessel's deflectors. Both ships maneuvered to avoid close hits from the dangerous EM weapon.
The numerical superiority of the privateer fleet was telling. But Henry noticed the shifting formation of the League fleet. Every ship moved with military precision to adopt a defensive position. He keyed the comms. "Henry to all ships. Stay tight, and don't get too aggressive. They're creating overlapping fields of fire to catch us if we get too exposed."
"Stand off and engage," Dulaney added, showing his agreement with Henry's suggestion.
Yet Henry was already sure the order wouldn't be heeded, and the following seconds proved him right. Too many of the captains were independent, and wanted to guarantee their share of spoils through direct action. At least fifteen of the ships continued to press their attacks closely.
One of them, a converted destroyer, was the first to suffer for this careless behavior. The ship in question was attempting to keep its primary batteries on a League vessel and exposed itself to overlapping fire from multiple opponents. While it succeeded in inflicting some damage, the mass of fire on its deflectors soon left them degraded enough that a pair of EMP blasts crippled it completely. In the next thirty seconds, four more of the privateers suffered the same fate, with no losses inflicted on the enemy.
"Idiots," Henry snarled as the fourth friendly marker went out. This was what he was afraid of, and why he'd hoped for even more ships: the League might be numerically inferior, but their fleet was trained to work together like few of the privateers were. He went back on and barked, "Dammit, people, stop exposing yourselves. Stand off!"
"Captain Henry is correct." The voice of Piotr Tokarev came through. "You’re wasting your ships! Pull back with the rest of the fleet or, by God, I will have your heads!"
Some of their allies did so, some didn't, and the end result was the loss of another five to only one League vessel. This went a long way to redressing the imbalance of losses in the first exchange.
The Shadow Wolf shuddered. "Direct hit on port deflector, looks like a medium-caliber mag cannon round," Tia said. "Deflectors still holding but degraded."
"I'm giving them what I can, but we're not designed for fighting broadside to broadside," Piper added.
"We're not designed for fighting at all," Henry noted dryly. "Cera, if you can get us some shots from the bow, I'd appreciate it."
"Makin' th' arrangement now, sir," she replied with slightly inappropriate cheer.
The Shadow Wolf's maneuvers pulled her away from the enemy fleet before bringing her back toward them. Their bow centered on a medium ore hauler with its cargo pods turned into mag-cannon emplacements. "Shooting all forward weapons," Piper said. The purple bolts from the plasma cannons were the first to appear, hammering at the ore hauler's deflectors. The following shot from the Shadow Wolf's neutron cannon struck home. The white-hot sapphire beam from the Shadow Wolf's belly sliced across the ore hauler's hull like a scalpel. Ammunition explosions went off one by one, gutting the hauler while leaving its superstructure roughly intact.
To avoid exposing them as the other ships had done, Cera turned them back away from the block of enemy Q-ships while more fire converged around them. "Looks like we made 'em mad, Captain," she said to Henry.
"We're going to make them even madder.”
From the Pluto Base command center, Admiral Hartford observed the ongoing battle. In numbers, he was still inferior. But he had good reason to be confident in the pace of the fight. More of the attacking ships were crippled or destroyed than his own Q-ship fleet. It was reasonably evident to him that the enemy lacked a unified command and control.
Beside him, Li chuckled. "Individualists," he said with mirth. "The fools can't even fight well. Each wants glory and spoils for themselves."
"It provides us tactical opportunities." Hartford didn't bother with Li's confident sense of superiority. The battle wasn't lost, nor was it won. He turned to Caillaux. "Captain, what is the status of our
defense wing?"
"We have four squadrons of fighters," replied Caillaux. "They are older models pulled off the front for lack of capability."
"I see." Hartford turned his attention back to the holoprojection of the engagement. "Order two squadrons armed for anti-ship combat and launch them when ready." He glanced at Caillaux. "How long until they can put into space?"
Caillaux checked one of the screens beside him. "Re-armament has added time to their launch requirements. Fifteen minutes until screening fighters can deploy, twenty-five until anti-ship fighters."
Hartford frowned. He couldn't blame the crews since the expectation of attack was low, but this would prolong the time until his strategy could be employed. Time during which the enemy fleet could regain the initiative. But he also knew the crews couldn't be rushed. No threat of punishment could warp space-time after all, and there were raw physical limits to their abilities.
"Admiral, Captain, perhaps you should remind the flight crew of their Social duty?" Li asked pointedly. "Fifteen minutes seems to be too long to do such simple tasks, unless they are not working to their full potential."
Hartford shot an angry glance at Li. "You know nothing of what you speak," he said pointedly. "The fueling and arming of a fighter is not a simple task. Fifteen minutes shows they are performing to their highest expectations. Had the wing been on standard operation, it would be twice that."
There was visible skepticism on Li's face, but he said nothing.
Content at putting down the insufferable political officer, Hartford returned his attention to the battle. "Order the fleet to burn toward Pluto Base.”
The Shadow Wolf shuddered slightly, the telltale sign of kinetic reaction pressing the deflectors' generators against their reinforced moorings to the ship's structure. "Deflectors strained but holding on starboard," Tia said. In that direction was a Q-ship, a former liner from her appearance. Mag-cannons bolted to her hull fired a steady stream of shells at the Shadow Wolf as it maneuvered and twisted. Pulse fire from the turrets struck at the deflectors of the other ship with little effect.
Piper brought the starboard-facing plasma cannon to bear, and this time, there was more of an effect. The deflectors of the other ship degraded, and the pulse fire from the manned turrets started blasting away unshielded hull. One of the shots hit one of the mag-cannon emplacements and blew it apart. The former liner twisted until it presented a strong deflector section toward Shadow Wolf, never leaving its place in the enemy formation.
Cera completed a turn that did the same for them, giving the weakened starboard deflectors a brief reprieve. Yet again she brought the bow toward the other ship at an angle. Not only were both plasma cannons engaged in battering at the deflectors, the Shadow Wolf's neutron cannon was lined up for a shot as well. "This will be the last one for a little while," Piper warned. "I'm getting heat stress warnings from the system, and the capacitors will need to recharge."
"Understood. Shoot."
The neutron cannon fired, a full-power shot that met a resisting deflector. The repeated use of the weapon in the fight so far meant it was too weak to effectively break through the other ship's deflector to do damage, but it did drastically weaken them. Renewed plasma fire blasted pieces of metal and material from the armed liner, progressively damaging her as she moved toward the interior of the League formation to get protection from the other ships. Despite Piper's best efforts, the vessel managed to get to safety.
Henry wasn't as interested in that as he was the maneuvers of the enemy fleet. As one unit, they were altering course. His suspicions were confirmed by their ultimate heading. "It appears they're burning for their base," he said. "Probably looking to get us into range of its plasma cannons." A possibility came to him. "Any sign of defense fighters yet?"
"None," Piper confirmed.
"They probably weren't ready, but I'd say we'll have no more than another ten, fifteen minutes before we start seeing them." Henry used the controls to bring up a second image on the bridge's interior wall display showing the station. "They've probably got at least three, maybe four squadrons of fighters, if not more. If those things are equipped with anti-ship missiles, this could get dicey."
"So we need to get these ships beat before the fighters can join in?" Tia asked.
"That's what I'd prefer, yeah." Henry channeled the tactical comm. "Any thoughts on cutting them off, Commodore?"
"Yes, and that's precisely what we're going to do," came the reply. "All ships with sufficient engine power, go to full thrust and pull ahead."
Henry nodded. "Cera, you heard the man. Put as much into the fusion drive as you need to keep us with the Mad Hatter."
"Aye," she answered.
The Shadow Wolf joined nearly twenty ships in rushing forward, their engines all straining at high thrust while weapons fire continued between the two sides.
Due to the nature of their ships, the exchange lacked the sheer volume and capacity of one between similar numbers of warships. This was balanced by the all-or-nothing element of the fight. Military ships had armoring and subdivision planning to survive direct hits from enemy fire. Civilian ships were designed to withstand some damage but had nowhere near the survivability of a military vessel if hit without deflectors. Even without the League EMP cannons to cripple ships in one salvo, the loss of deflectors meant inevitable defeat.
This made their maneuver all the more critical. The League ships could find sanctuary under the guns of the station; denying it to them was crucial to wearing them down, and that meant getting between them and the station itself. So long as they did it beyond a specific range, the station's weapon systems wouldn't be decisive, and they could keep the Q-ships boxed in.
Nevertheless, the situation made Henry uncomfortable. Something’s wrong here.
Caillaux and Li watched the viewers and tactical holotank as thoroughly as Hartford, but neither saw it the way he did. He couldn't blame them: Caillaux was not a fleet officer, nor had he ever been, and Li already demonstrated his ignorance of the military. "You’re luring them into range of our station's cannons?" Li asked.
Hartford grinned but said nothing. He kept his eye on the holotank and checked the distance markers. The formation of the privateers was thinning, just as he'd intended. They were trying to cut his forces off from Pluto Base. It was a reasonable counter since letting his ships get back under the guns of the base would grant tactical advantages.
And it was exactly what he wanted them to do.
Thanks to her fusion drive, the Shadow Wolf was near the lead of one side of the formation. Soon they would pull ahead of the enemy fleet and, after that, they would have the range to interpose themselves between that fleet and the base. The League-controlled ships would be caught between two fires.
That was what was making Henry so nervous.
"Something isn't right," he muttered. That drew Tia's attention. He returned that attention with a glance before finishing his thought. "Hartford, or whoever's in charge over there, can see what we're doing. He's made no effort to evade or adjust. He knows we'll cut him off."
"Implying he wants to."
"Or that he wants us to stretch out further." Henry examined the holotank again, using the controls to rotate the display around. For the first time in years, he thought like the man he used to be, the combat-tried CDF officer experienced with executing starship tactics and commanding men and women who applied it in battle after battle.
His finger stabbed the comm line key. "All ships, break away, break away now!"
Cera didn't need an order addressed to her. She fired the Shadow Wolf's directional thrusters and immediately changed their heading away from the enemy fleet.
Some of those behind and around the Shadow Wolf did the same. But others didn't.
"Henry, what in the hell—"
"Break away, Commodore," Henry urged. "Trust me!"
The League Q-ships acted as if under the control of one hand, one mind. They turned to their starboard sides suddenly,
some straining to do so more than others, given the limits of their propulsion systems. Their weapons tracked in the same direction and, with one will, opened fire. A series of mag-cannon shells and energy beams flew ahead and tore into the nearest section of the privateer fleet.
Henry cursed under his breath. The League maneuver meant for the next thirty to sixty seconds, the full fury of its fleet was focused on barely a tenth of the privateers. "Bring us back in!" he shouted, knowing there wasn't much they could do to help Dulaney and the ships accompanying him.
The results spoke for themselves. Blow after blow landed on the friendly vessels, battering their deflectors down. They returned fire with desperate fury, but outnumbered at the point of contact like they were, their shots could not achieve anything like the volume of fire descending on them. Deflectors failed and the EMP guns fired. One by one, the privateer vessels simply died. A couple didn't even have time to go dark as they took damage to ammunition bunkerage or other systems that blew them apart.
At the thirty-eight-second mark, the Shadow Wolf and another eight vessels re-engaged, coming at the side of the League Q-ship formation. At Piper's command, the neutron cannon, readied again, fired in tandem with the plasma cannons. Their target, another medium-sized transport, lost deflectors almost immediately. Xaser fire from a Tal'mayan privateer to their port played along the ship's flank and tore her open with wounds of flame and debris. Over the next several seconds, the rest of the privateer fleet re-engaged.
This saved the Mad Hatter. Dulaney's flagship and another large vessel, an old Saurian cruiser that looked a century old, were the only ships to be targeted with still intact deflectors. While the rest of the fleet forced the enemy to adjust, the Trinidad Station commander got his ship and its comrade out of the firing zone, burning hard to get out of the fight and allow their failing deflectors to recharge. Dulaney's voice came over the comms. "All ships, break and re-form. And I damn well mean it. We need a new strategy."
