Birthright: Battle for the Confederation- Turmoil (16 page)

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 perforated 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."

"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.