“What else?”
“He might like to have some troops on standby to send us. Just in case.”
“I’ll suggest it. But until we know for sure, they’re going to be allocated where we know they’re needed.”
“Like doing nothing on that Ralnor planet?”
“Supporting the Ralnor is not doing nothing.”
“I stand corrected.”
“You’re sitting.”
“I sit corrected.”
Claymore actually laughed.
“We have troops if we need them. They’re mostly still in training, and we’re still outfitting them, but they’ll be available if we need them. What we don’t have is decent troop ships to deploy them.”
“Get Fearless into the shipyard as soon as possible, and get the upgrade done.”
“She’s not scheduled for an upgrade.”
“She should be. At the very least be given the same front end, or more, as Crusader was given. And a lot more anti-fighter defenses. Not to mention additional shielding. Does Fearless have a full length cargo bay as well?”
“What do you mean by as well?”
“Seems all our ships have big full length cargo bays. Or did.”
“She does yes. Why?”
“It’s space which can be better utilized for more shielding. Seriously, you want to get battleship shielding on her, at least. And that goes for any other assault ships we have. Like Monty for example. Huge cargo bay, inadequate shielding.”
“You want me to see if Shenaid can do a destroyer crystal and install it on Monty?”
“Definitely.”
“Won’t be soon though. She’s still getting the Excalibur ones fixed in her mind, before trying to copy one.”
“When she’s ready. Do we have any other assault ships than the frigates?”
“Two. A merc called Bonko has a standard cruiser. And General O’Neill has one called Homer. Neither is capable of taking the fire Fearless can at the moment.”
“Get all three in and upgraded as much as possible. If not, then maybe we need a need a new class of ship.”
“What kind?”
“I’m just throwing ideas in the air.”
“Keep going.”
“What about an Unassailable type battleship, but instead of carrying drones, it has accommodation for a division, and spits out Cobra’s each carrying a company.”
“Going to be bigger than a battleship for a division. Might carry a regiment though. I’ll pass that on as well. Any other ideas?”
“No. Not for now anyway.”
Her head vanished. I looked towards Claymore.
“I’ll be in my simulator.”
“Enjoy.”
Eighteen
Dinner was barely over when Claymore popped up another my eyes only screen.
There was a single Trixone fleet on the way, but this one was entirely battleships. And this time, even from a distance, I could tell these ones had fighters. Twelve ships, twelve hundred fighters.
One of our Excalibur threes had spotted them at the edge of scanner range, and was now shadowing from in front. With the probable location of a jump point pin pointed by their course, another one was tasked to go in behind them, and locate it.
Now I had a dilemma, but I had time to walk to my ready room, and think it through.
To stay here and defend.
Or go in and attack.
Twelve hundred fighters was going to wash through the jump point like a hose turned on. While we’d likely hit most of the first few hundred, at some point we’d miss enough to become a big furball on our side. And we’d find ourselves with fighters on one side, and battleships coming through on the other. I didn’t fancy it at all.
A fighter battle at point blank range of battleship guns was going to cost. And if we ignored the fighters to make sure of the battleships, the cruiser guns would get the Excaliburs.
On the other hand, if we attacked, we had plenty of space, and the speed to use it. And when you put it that way, I didn’t need to ask any of my pilots. We all felt the need for speed. The last turkey shoot might have been effective, but no pilot likes to sit there while the AI has all the fun.
In the end, it was a no brainer. I gave orders, we recovered the last of the salvage droids, and jumped into the next system.
Blossom and Unassailable immediately turned sharply, heading away from Claymore, on a course which would take them out of range of the plant sensors, while still taking them towards the next jump point. Some of the Excalibur threes were already heading back, and they changed course to rendezvous with them. Blossom was still not up to a battle, and Unassailable was her protection in case something else found them we hadn't seen yet.
Claymore powered towards the approaching fleet at normal cruising speed. Instead of a five hour wait for battle, it would now be closer to three. I’d stood the pilots down after dinner, and there wasn’t a CAP out. They had two and a half hours to rest before saddling up.
I spent the time in my seat, trying to look like I knew what I was doing. Fake it until you make it was the advice in the senior officer course, and I was doing my best to not show what was going on inside me.
Twenty minutes out I rose, stretched, and headed for the fresher off my ready room. Bladder empty, I returned to my chair, and buckled up. Across the maintenance deck, pilots were doing the same thing. Jane and Shenaid joined Claymore and I on the bridge, and I watched a status list as all ships came online and ready for launch.
Ten minutes out, and I eased the speed slider back a little. The question was who was going to launch first. Them or us? Another minute went by, and I gave in.
“Launch.”
On each wing, the clamps holding the inner ship released, and destroyers flew off one way and corvettes off the other way. At the same time, sixteen Excaliburs launched. The links between the destroyers and corvettes released all at the same time, and the AI’s began to move each ship into its starting position. The remaining Excaliburs took another thirty seconds to be loaded in the tubes and launch. I could hear a few voices urging cargo droids to hurry it up during the process, causing me to smile.
Ahead of us, the plants had finally decided to party, and with my close up sight, I could see they were propelled away from the hulls so fast, it looked like the ships were flaking bark particles. As I pulled back my view, this changed to a cloud around the bigger ships, which now slowed to allow the fighters to form up and move towards us.
Which suited me just fine.
“Plan A is a go.”
The squadron CO’s acknowledged. The destroyers and corvettes moved out to form a large ring around Claymore, wide enough so they were outside the boundary of the cloud coming at us. The flights of Excaliburs took up positions between them. It reminded me of a Ferris wheel I’d ridden as a kid on a visit to London city, only Claymore in this instance was the hub, and the whole wheel was going broad side through space.
With a minute to go before firing range for the Excaliburs, I came back to bridge mode, looked at Jane, and she nodded. All ships were in position and on course, and we sped up slightly to full cruising speed. I counted down another twenty seconds, hands on the controls, and went back to battle mode.
“Strafe.”
I pressed the strafe button, but didn’t shift where Claymore was pointing. The rest of them did, bringing their front facing guns to where they could hit something.
“Fire at will.”
I’d always wondered who Will was and what he’d done to get fired on the first time, but now was not the time.
I pressed the torp button first, blasting a hole in the cloud in front of me, followed it with a full salvo of cap missiles, which exploded only a little further in and dangerously close to my own shields, and finally with the gun trigger. I held it down, the front guns cycling rapidly like an old style machine gun.
Claymore was firing the cruiser and point defense turrets, while Jane was using the titan and battleship turrets at o
ne end of the battleship line. The first pulses never got to their target, having been dissipated by too many small ship impacts on the way. But we wanted them worried more than killed at this stage. They couldn’t fire at us because of their own fighters in the way. It didn’t stop them firing missiles, but we had more than enough mosquitos to negate the threat.
My expanded vision showed me only about twenty five percent of their fighters were surviving to blast past Claymore, which was better than I’d hoped. And they were turning to follow us, but at the speed we were going, they were going to be left behind.
I began waving the front of the ship around in an arc, guns blazing continuously, torp salvos every other second. Shields were going down, but the center of the cloud was a continuous conversion of ships to debris, which was more of a problem for the shields than their cruiser guns were.
One of the battleships took a major hit from the titan guns, but kept on coming with the rest.
Out on the edges of the battle, the plants were trying to turn to get a bead on our fighters, but continually strafing ships didn’t give them much chance. All the same, I saw an Excalibur vanish on one side, and then another a few seconds later a quarter around the bottom of the battle area.
“I got them,” said Shenaid, meaning the pilots were safe.
Orders were not to launch again unless ordered by me, so I knew those two were now really pissed. I did know they were even now running for spare birds, hoping they would launch again.
Guns fired, torps launched, anti-fighter missiles were going in all directions, point defense turrets firing everywhere, and so far I’d not really been doing much other than hosing what was in front of me.
The damaged battleship vanished. Jane switched target.
“Coming up on their battleship gun range,” said Claymore.
We were almost through the fighter cloud now.
“Phase two, go.”
Ships stopped strafing, pilots took back full control, and the Excalibur flights peeled away, turning to engage the fighters now strung out behind us. The destroyers and corvettes now turned inwards, still blasting away at fighters in front of them, but aiming now to form a line for an attack on all the battleships at once. The exceptions were Vulture, Falcon, and Hawk, who also peeled off with the flights, so they could provide bigger guns and mosquito support.
I was getting a little worried about shields now. The HUD overlay was showing them dropping on all ships at an alarming rate. But this slowed as we came through the last of the fighters. Two more Excaliburs winked out behind me, but I couldn’t afford to pay any attention there now.
All of us still moving towards the battleships were now hyper aware of pulses coming from them, and we started juking madly to put the gunners off, or whatever the plants used to aim with. Sudden turns and even rolls became normal, as we did whatever was necessary to avoid pulses, but we always came back onto a loose heading for our designated battleship. Or in my case, ships.
The destroyers were coming in from a relative beneath position, while the corvettes were coming from a relative above position, one of each targeting the same battleship. I was lined up on the one in the middle, with Jane firing the titan turret at the one to the left.
I switched the forward guns to all fire at once now, and let them all recharge. Our fire lessened as the range closed, each pilot trying to time their shots to do the maximum damage at the end.
The range was coming down rapidly now, but I was holding off until I was in point blank range. The battleship to the left vanished, and I was aware the titan turret was rotating to the right.
Four ships coming on an up angle. Seven ships coming on a down angle. One going head to head.
At the last moment, all of us shifted to parallel the target ship, which involved me pulling the trigger, pushing the torps and cap missile launch buttons at the same time, and pulling up to go over the top. This was actually as scary as it sounded as mistiming would end in collision. It was close. Too close really.
The titan turret got off one last shot, and the battleship to my right was gutted. The battleship turrets on the titan turret were now all pointing more or less down, and Jane fired them together as we passed over the top.
The front end of my target was gone already, and the down pointing turrets blasted the remainder of the ship in half. I didn’t even need to strafe, just keeping us going over the rapidly disintegrating ship.
On either side, all the destroyers and corvettes were strafing, firing missiles, torps, and guns as fast as they’d cycle.
And we were past.
I pulled back on the speed slider, letting us get some range away from what was left, as I looked over what was behind us.
Only two battleships remained, and neither of them were firing, both almost stopped, but moving on momentum only.
A corvette was spinning away uncontrollably, with a massive hole through its middle. Most of the rest had minor holes somewhere, and no shields. Mine were still up, but they were hovering on nine percent. In the distance, the last of the enemy fighters vanished.
I pulled Claymore to a stop, flipped us over and rolled, and started back at a slow pace, ready to fire again. When no fire continued to come from either battleship, I took my finger off the trigger, and brought us to a stop again, where there wasn’t any debris to bother fighter recovery.
Stepping down to bridge mode, I looked over to Jane.
“That went well,” she said.
Nineteen
I sat there and listened.
Knüppel gave orders to the least damaged destroyer to try and catch the corvette still spinning away from us. The squadrons were forming up, but now I had time, I could see we’d lost another five Excaliburs. I looked over to Shenaid, who was looking exhausted.
“I got them all. Even the corvette pilot. If you don’t mind, I need to go lie down.”
“Go. And thank you.”
She rose, took a moment to steady herself, and slowly shuffled out. My gaze moved to Jane.
“Butlers are helping the pilots to their quarters. The two who were moved first are helping them, after I told them they wouldn’t be launching again.”
The pilot chatter had lessened now. I added myself back into the channel.
“All pilots RTB.”
The squadron leaders acknowledged, as always, I dropped out again, and flights and big ships started heading towards Claymore.
“Tell Slice to come here,” I said to Jane. “We’re moving to the jump point as soon as landing and docking is complete. Unassailable can collect all the debris here before coming after us.”
“What about them?” asked Claymore, jerking her thumb in the direction of the two battleships.
“Any life signs?”
“Some,” said Jane. “But if they have power at all, it’s emergency only.”
I pondered for a moment. If we’d had any marines, I’d have sent them in. We didn’t.
“Do we have any combat droids?”
“Two companies. And I have a dozen combat suits on board, and yours as well. I took the liberty of loading them all on Monty. Do we want them?”
She meant the battleships.
“Hard to tell. They look beat up. But if they’re repairable, they might come in useful. Give us some more firepower perhaps, or useful to shield Blossom.”
“I can go?”
“Knock yourself out.”
I was quite surprised when she actually rose, and ran out. Claymore was obviously finding something funny.
“What?”
“Jane has never had the chance to do a boarding action on her own before.”
I chuckled. Ordinarily I’d have wanted to go with her, but I had fighters landing, and ships docking to worry about. And worried I did. Several of the Excaliburs looked terrible, and Claymore gave me screens so I could watch them land, coming in from the rear. The first bird in always took the most forward elevator, and they landed progressively back until all elevators were in motion d
ownwards, while the next flight waited for them to cycle.
The first beat up bird landed on the forward elevator normally, and started down. The next one didn’t make it, crashing into the deck just short of the second elevator, rolling over itself and smashing down again, twisting as it did so, rolling right into the forward elevator, and crashing down on the Excalibur beneath it.
There was no fire, as the elevator shaft was still in vacuum, but I cringed when a screen popped up from a cam in the shaft showing the resulting mess, still going down. The bird underneath had been badly crushed on top, and the bird going in was hardly recognizable at all.
The doors closed above, and air and heat began to be pumped in. I waited holding my breath to see if this caused a fire, but it didn’t. The doors underneath opened, letting what I now saw was a gravity sled down to the deck below.
The two birds, or what was left of them, settled.
For a moment, nothing moved, before cargo droids began to appear from several directions. One of them stopped where part of the cockpit canopy of the one underneath was visible, and ripped a section of it out. The pilot crawled out the hole with his suit in full protection mode, slowly stood, and shifted back into a flight suit.
It was Watershed.
I stopped breathing.
It took several minutes for cargo droids to find an entrance point into what was left of the cockpit of the bird on top, especially since it was sandwiched into the middle of the wreckage. When they finally had a pilot sized hole, no-one came out.
A smaller cargo droid climbed in, and began to pull the body of the pilot out. The suit was still active, and several of the armbands had been used.
The body shape was female.
Larger droids took the body from the smaller one, and carried it off the wreckage, to where a group of pilots was now waiting. They laid her down, and Claymore bent over her.
I looked around to where Claymore was sitting, and found her gone. I hastily looked back at the screen.
The suit shifted from protection to flight suit, making me think Claymore had some sort of suit override ability.
Legend of Dreamwalker (The Hunter Imperium Book 5) Page 9
