Which meant that deceptive tactics would be required if the Committee was to survive this day. Survive today, work toward victory tomorrow. Maxwell had no idea what the bug was babbling about, an attack on Amethyst? None of the Committee members had ordered such a strike, though it was possible that Vice Chair Markaasdottir did on her own authority. That seemed unlikely; he knew the woman. She was zealous for the cause and more than willing to take risks. But attacking a freeport? That seemed out of character.
It didn’t matter, not now. Now, all that mattered was delivering as hefty a blow to the enemy as was possible. Maxwell energized his F-322’s light energy shields and powered his weapons. The F-322 was a wide craft, a pair of long triangular wedges, the points leading forward, connected by a bubble cockpit and stubby fuselage. It was a nimble and fast craft, suited for air and space superiority. Armed with four starfighter grade KM10 missiles and a pair of laser cannons, the F-322 had so far never failed the Committee in battle.
Looping around, Maxwell keyed his comms. “Boyce, I’m taking the lead fighter. You get his wing.”
“Copy, Lead. Smash and dash?”
“You got it. Hit the fighters, then turn back and hit the gunboats.”
“Copy.”
Maxwell barely let the targeting reticle turn red, indicating a lock and squeezed the trigger. The missile dropped from the rack and raced forward, heading right on target. Sweeping left, he ignored his own previous statement, got a lock on a fighter toward the rear of the ragged formation and fired again. He smiled when he saw that Boyce had done the same. In such a close engagement, the pilots of those strange warbirds would have only a few seconds to react, which might not be enough.
It wasn’t. The first of the warbirds didn’t even react to the missile, taking the hit right in the middle of the fuselage, exploding brilliantly. The second of Maxwell’s targets banked hard to the right and dove, the weapon missing by a matter of four or five meters, enough to save it from a direct impact. The proximity fuse went off then, and the warhead exploded, ripping a chunk out of the aft end of the fighter, sending it tumbling off, trailing fuel and smoke.
Boyce’s targets met similar fates, one destroyed outright and the other managing to evade, only this one got clear of the explosion and then came around to engage. At that point, the gunboats came out of their own stunned reveries and began maneuvering and shooting as well.
“Switching to guns!” Maxwell called over the tac channel. He smiled. This was what he’d been waiting for, what he lived for. He turned on one of the gunboats and opened up, peppering its shields before breaking off.
((--[][]--))
Verrikoth watched, his anger seething, building, but knowing an inner coldness tempered it. Clearly these pilots, while equipped with an excellent platform to fight from, lacked the skill and talent of his regular wing commander, Sokann. Perhaps it hadn’t been a good idea to send him off to Hecate. Of course, at the time, Verrikoth had no idea that a new starfighter design was about to fall into his lap from one of the Republic engineers. Still, he knew as he watched three of his Sparhawks fall to an enemy missile strike that these pilots were extremely green. Perhaps too green. They didn’t have the reaction time or the confidence to respond in such a fast-moving situation. Not that it mattered now, though Verrikoth did lament the loss of the ships.
But he pushed that aside. Preparedness could wait until the fight was over. He checked the tactical display and saw that Nemesis had easily dispatched the missiles.
“Commander, the cutter has changed vector,” Helk called. “She’s inbound for us, almost on top of us!”
“How is that possible?” Tyler demanded, whirling on the zheen at sensors.
“Sorry, sir, I lost track of it when we were dealing with the missiles.” As he spoke, the cutter swept past Kopesh’s flank, putting the destroyer between it and the heavy cruiser, using the smaller warship as cover from Nemesis. The two light lasers hammered the destroyer’s aft shields, scoring several hits, but as far as Verrikoth could tell, there were no penetrations.
Jensen Tyler glowered at the zheen, then looked away. He’d deal with the sensor operator later. Verrikoth was willing to admit, the coordination of the Committee’s forces had been masterful. The gunboats had proven tougher targets than the starfighters and now they, with the one remaining Sparhawk pilot, were moving to chase the attackers away. Their battle quickly went from a rout to a real fight, and suddenly the F-322’s reeled under the steady attacks.
Tyler, meanwhile, continued issuing orders. “Tactical? Are the freighters still in range?”
“Yes, Commander, they are.”
“Then target them and instruct the gunners to open fire. Take them out!”
“Yes, sir!” the zheen cried with gusto, sending updated commands on his console. Seconds later, all the forward guns on the Nemesis opened up, first bracketing then pounding both ships as they attempted to flee. A few seconds after that, the boxy freighter exploded, and the more sleek vessel had its engines and entire aft end blown apart. Debris from both ships spread outward over the area and some of the chunks began to rain down into the atmosphere.
Kopesh, meanwhile, did not join the flagship in its assault on the cargo vessels. The destroyer made a long looping turn and accelerated, interposing itself between the cutter and Nemesis’s aft quarter. The two smaller warships raced at each other, as the heavy cruiser began a turn of its own.
Flayl sat on the bridge of her ship, her taloned fingers loosely gripping the arms of her command seat. As she was a hak’ruk, with multiple legs in her body segment, the seat was more of a padded stool that she would climb atop, rather than a standard chair. No one made any comment about it, not on this ship. “Ahead full, fire once the ship is in range.”
The cutter came at the destroyer, for a head-to-head pass, sensors showing that the small ship was focusing most of its shield power forward, readying for the strike. The destroyer accelerated as well, her own weapons readying.
At the last moment, both ships made small course corrections to hit the other on its flank instead of continuing the game of chicken to its destructive end. The two ships slid past one another at high speed, weapons blazing. After that pass, Kopesh still had mostly strong shields, though some light spotting on her port flank. The cutter’s screens, meanwhile, were battered. Only one of the destroyer’s shots managed to punch through the shields to hit the cutter’s paper-thin armor. Damage sparkled along the hull, especially in the gaping hole in the port side. Speed and maneuvering were down as the small vessel turned away from the destroyer, on a course toward the planet.
…And straight into the full broadside of Nemesis’s long guns. A dozen hits slammed into the remaining shields and the hull of the small warship, punching through the vessel and out the other side as though the vessel was made of vapor rather than solid material. Amazingly, the reactor did not breach and the warship, now completely devoid of power, continued on the same ballistic course, heading for the northern hemisphere of Krovi 2. No lifeboat or escape pod jettisoned from the hulk; it just coasted away from the battle to its ultimate doom.
Verrikoth nodded to himself in satisfaction. That had been an excellent display of gunnery. “Well done, Tactical,” the Warlord said to the other zheen, whose thorax blushed to a deep pink at the praise, which quickly returned to his normal hue. Looking back to his own displays Verrikoth saw the outcome of the battle with the local fighters. In fact, he happened to return his attention to the fight, as three things happened. First, the enemy F-322s fired more missiles into one of his gunboats, shredding the craft with all its crew aboard. Second, the remaining Sparhawk came at them from beneath, firing his cannons continuously into one of the enemy fighters. The enemy, preoccupied with getting the kill, hadn’t even noticed the danger and turned too slowly. Ten seconds of pounding and his shields collapsed. He started to turn as a pair of the Sparhawk’s missiles joined the lasers, exploding against the starfighter’s belly, vaporizing the vessel. And t
hird, two of the remaining gunboats swung in behind the remaining F-322 and blew it apart.
Verrikoth watched the display at the carnage that lay before him. One gunboat lost, nearly his entire starfighter wing was gone. Light casualties, considering the firepower he’d brought into this system. Turning his attention to the targeting feed, he watched the steady progress of the dead cutter as it entered the planet’s upper atmosphere, and the friction of the atmo began to heat up the hull of the vessel. It would fall into one of the frigid oceans, half a world away from the location of the Committee’s base, but Nemesis had a perfect view of the stricken vessel as it plunged to its end. Watching the targeting feed, he could feel the heavy cruiser training its weapon on the installation on the ground below. The turbolasers could pound the base, but they were focused weapons, distant, impersonal.
No, he needed more. This Committee of Public Safety and their surprisingly capable subordinates had robbed him of his easy victory. And while he would derive a great deal of satisfaction from simply smashing them with an iron fist, it wouldn’t be enough. Not enough to satisfy him and not a sufficient message. Not the right message. Verrikoth was quiet for a moment, allowing the bridge crew to continue their tasks. There was no immediate threat in the system, and there was no real hurry to act. He could take the minute or so to think about things.
There were other pirate gangs in the Argos Cluster, at least four larger outfits he was aware of: Typhon and his wolves, of course, the Argos Liberation Front, Baron Death, and the Kingslayers. There were some single ship raiders and other bottom feeders, working the space lanes, taking what they could. There was one particularly vicious itinerant, the Brain Trust he called himself. All of these outfits were fighters, warriors (of a sort), even if they were scavengers and street rats. They understood power and they understood strength and fear.
But simply bombarding the base would send the wrong message, he thought again. That is something that Tandred and the other Republic leaders do. Oh, they send in troops to secure landing zones, round up recruits and secure cargoes, but they rarely involve themselves in fighting. Usually, the warships stand off and use their weapons; I need to show those groups that I have more than one tactic under my belt. If I can awe them with strength, they will fear me and leave my planets alone, but if I can show them that resistance to my forces and rule is useless, some will join me. And that is what I am looking for.
Verrikoth gripped the arms of his command chair tightly, so much so that he could hear the carapace in his fingers straining, almost fracturing. “They would dare to defy me? I want to ssee them die! Forget the bombardment, Commander! Prepare for ground assault!”
Chapter 4
Gawilghur and her escorts came to the edge of the rings, sensors banging away on full power, looking for anything dangerous. Using the active sensors in this way was a danger all its own, as it was the equivalent of shouting at the top of one’s lungs for attention, making any sort of stealth impossible. However, V’ka’sith wasn’t concerned with that. He was sure that anything this flotilla would be able to handle anything it might encounter in this star system. The Committee members in this star system had so far managed to keep things quiet, but the relay station on the far planet proved that something was going on here. There would be only so much they could do now that the secret was out.
“Bring us around the rings, but no closer than five hundred thousand klicks,” V’ka’sith ordered, his mouthparts squirming in anticipation. “If their attack ships are here, we’ll need all our shield power, and I don’t want to burn through it further by slamming through the dust. Launch sensor drones, full spread!”
The drones were crude, compared to Republic or Federation tech. Nemesis had several prototype devices aboard, but the smaller light cruiser was not afforded such luxuries. Even so, these devices gave about seventy-five percent efficiency to the prototypes and were still capable of extending the range and power of the sensors by a considerable margin. Still, Gawilghur carried only six such devices and had no way to make more, as a good number of the parts needed to do so were specially fabricated back on Tyseus. V’ka’sith had ordered four of them to be launched, which left a small reserve, something that did concern him, but only slightly. The gear was there to be used, after all. Of course, the radiation would interfere with the output of the drones as well, not to mention their usable life. They did have some rad shielding, but nothing as hardy as the warships with their energy fields. They’d be lucky to get three or four hours of work out of them before the radiation fried their circuitry. Even still, that should be long enough, and the zheen commander would certainly not be ordering them to be drawn back in, soaked with radiation as they were.
There it is. Tucked beneath the rings, on an odd orbital trajectory to the gas giant, which for two separate weeks out of its six-month orbit would skim to “lower” and then (on the other side of the planet) the “upper” section of the dust ring, cutting a swath through the neat layout. During the intervening months, the dust would be drawn back into a semblance of neatness by the planet’s gravity, and the surface of the moon was sandblasted and pockmarked with impact craters from the larger chunks.
Nor was it the only moon. In fact, there were twenty-two other satellites of varying sizes moving over, under and around the gas giant. For some reason, the Committee had chosen that particular rock on which to make a base. After a moment, however, the reason became clear. The moon was rich in minerals, of those most important, lead. This meant that the moon was shielded from the stellar radiation, so if the inhabitants could hollow out a deep enough cavern, they would find an oasis of protection there.
And there, tucked in the shadow of that moon, was a ship. A bulk cruiser, just like the one the captured records indicated. Its own energy shields were at extremely low power, but once the flotilla moved around the edge of the rings and into clear sensor range, they began firming up.
“Battle stations,” the zheen ordered. He pressed a control. “All ships, this is a call to alert. We have the enemy in sight. Bring your shields to full and your weapons online. Movement orders will follow.”
“Kapitan, I have something,” Grokk called from the tactical station. “Two of the port side drones have detected something, less than two k-klicks away, moving out from the rings.” His mandibles clicked as he examined the data. “Could be starfighters.”
“Have one of the drones close to one hundred klicks,” V’ka’sith ordered. “Get a closer look.”
“Yes, Kapitan,” Djarok said from the sensor station, manipulating the controls, sending a course change to the drone. It took about eight minutes for the drone to close within one hundred klicks of the target area. “Looks like some kind of artificial construct. Not a starfighter. Small. Maybe a satellite? Wait!”
Before he could say anting else, the device exploded. “Mines,” Grokk said, hissing loudly. Multiple explosions rippled along all along that area, a score of them within several hundred kilometers. The blast wave surged out, destroying that first drone, then ripping through three more of the sensor devices and washing the warships in energy, gamma radiation, and shrapnel.
“Damage report!” V’ka’sith spat, furious. The flotilla had been almost to the edge of the danger radius for the explosion, but not far enough to avoid damage.
“Corvettes Gr’kenth and Vin’zyek took the brunt of the blast wave,” Grokk stated. “Both are showing twenty-three percent loss of shields on the starboard facing, with minor spotting. Minimal hull damage.” He sucked in a breath. “Our starboard shields are at eighty-three percent. No damage.”
V’ka’sith hissed, his mouthparts clicking furiously, confirming the report on his own display. Tricky bit of defensive works there. Close enough to the rings to conceal the mines from a passive scan, but far enough out to catch ship trying to skirt the edge of those rings. A very clever design for that trap; but for a quirk of fate that trap would have caught the flotilla squarely. He hissed again, angrily, though mostly at hi
mself. These Committee soldiers were proving themselves more dangerous than expected and once again, I’ve underestimated them. He vowed to himself as he clenched one fist that he would not do so again.
“Tactical!” he roared. “Time until we are in range?”
“Thirty-one minutes, present speed, Kapitan,” the zheen replied, wincing at the other’s yell.
V’ka’sith stabbed the control on his chair. “All ships, this is V’ka’sith. Increase speed to flank, on course for the moon. We need to close the distance. Execute now!”
((--[][]--))
Astrid Markaasdottir cursed in frustration. The mines had gone off, but the damned invaders had swung wide, taking only a small hit. According to sensors, all but one of the ships had taken some damage on their shields, but nothing serious. She hadn’t exactly pinned all her hopes on the minefield, but she had expected them to make a better showing. If even one of the attacking vessels had taken some damage, it would have made the jobs of the pilots that much easier. As it was, fighting in this star system for any length of time was dangerous. Actual combat aside, the radiation was far more deadly for the tiny vessels than it was for the larger warships, even ones the size of the corvettes. They’d have extremely limited time on target before the radiation seeped through their shields and started affecting the pilots inside. The organics inside would succumb to the radiation hours before the electronics in the ships would suffer.
But there was nothing for it. She pressed two controls on her console, where she sat in the command center. A pair of virtual displays appeared before her, showing the faces of two men, one of them with extremely pale skin and dark hair, the other with brown skin and a shaven bald crown. Though Astrid could only see their faces and shoulders in the vid pickup, she knew that both of them were wearing skinsuits, most likely patched and repatched, since they couldn’t afford to buy or make new ones. But these would suffice. They’d have to since they couldn’t get more.
The Warlord's Path: Samair in Argos: Book 6 Page 10
