Empire in Crisis (15 page)

As soon as sensors detected the missile warhead
detonations, the 107th fired another missile barrage, only this time it was a
maximum spread of 224 missiles now that the element of surprise was gone. The
alien commander reacted just as Logan would have expected a human commander to
react given such little time to consider his options. Zulu1 began active radar
scanning at twice the distance compared to the first time. Once again, the warp
missiles’ programming enabled them to fire first, but the extra distance also
made target accuracy harder. 

A third barrage of 224 missiles was fired as soon as visual
confirmation of detonations was acquired. Logan wondered how long it would take
the enemy commander to figure out the best counter-strategy. The 3rd barrage
gave him his answer. Zulu1 didn’t go to active scanning at all! With no source
of incoming radar energy to aim at, the warp missiles didn’t detonate and
simply flew past the enemy ships. Logan shook his head in amazement. Whoever
was in command over there was not only smart, he also had a lot of guts to hold
back and risk being fired on without trying to fire back. 

Logan now examined his remaining options. He could try to
trick the enemy again by ordering another missile barrage and have his missiles
activate their own radars at close range, but then the enemy would be able to
aim and fire their energy weapons quickly and precisely. They would know where
the missiles were as soon as the radar waves hit their ships. The missiles
wouldn’t know where the ships were until the radar waves had hit the ships and
then bounced back to the missiles. 

He checked the remaining missile inventory of all ships and
nodded. The battlecruisers had shot their entire missile loads. The capital
ships could fire five more times. That meant that the 107th could deploy a
maximum of 120 missiles, and it would then be without any missiles at
all. There was no way that the Fleet would make it through the gauntlet on
the strength of missiles alone. His ships were going to have to fight it out
with their beam weapons, and in order to get the most bang for their buck, they
would have to get precise targeting data and get relatively close. Logan made
his decision and selected the tactical options that would put that decision
into operation.

The 107th launched all 120 warp missiles and then both
missiles and ships went to warp speed. At half a light second, the ships shut
off their warp drives and dropped back down to a velocity of just over 10,000
kilometers per second. At 45/100th of a light second, the warp missiles did the
same thing. They were now in the lead and 10 of them began to actively scan the
space ahead. As soon as the alien ships detected the incoming radar waves, they
aimed their beam weapon turrets at the sources of those waves and fired. The
remaining 110 warp missiles detected the return radar signals and relayed that
data to Undaunted, which then collated that data, pinpointed the precise
locations of all 65 alien ships and distributed that data plus targeting
priorities to the rest of the Fleet. As soon as all ships received that data
and were ready to use it, Undaunted gave the warp missiles the go ahead to
detonate, and the Fleet opened fire at the exact same time.

At a velocity of 10,000 kps, the Fleet needed 24 seconds to
pass the alien ships and then make it to the wormhole. With the targeting data
provided by the sacrifice of 10 warp missiles, the Fleet would get one free shot,
and then both sides would be able to target the other.

“HITS! WE GOT THREE HITS!” shouted Undaunted’s Tactical
Officer.

Logan shifted his gaze from the tactical display to the
sidebar that had all 56 ships of the 107th listed by name, plus all 65 enemy
ships listed by number, with a status indicator beside each one. Undaunted’s
first target had received three hits without causing any apparent damage. The
tactical computer would also try to determine which enemy ships were already
damaged from the first two missile barrages based on whether those ships fired
all, some or none of their beam weapons.

 When Undaunted received its first hit, the alien energy
beam was so powerful that it turn hundreds of tons of hull armor into superhot
plasma in a fraction of a second, and that expanding plasma generated the same
kind of reaction in the hull that a multi-kiloton nuclear explosion would have
created. Logan felt the ship heave so suddenly that the inertial dampeners
couldn’t compensate fast enough. He was glad that he and the crew were wearing
pressure suits to compensate for a sudden depressurization, though if an alien
energy beam penetrated right down into the Flag Bridge, it was unlikely that
pressure suits would save anyone from the effects of the beam itself.

“WE LOST NUMBER FOUR TURRET!”

Logan remained silent. There was nothing he could say now
that would make any difference, and the tactical reports would be coming thick
and fast. He grimaced when he saw the status of the dreadnought Unconquered shift
from a green OP meaning operational to a red CH meaning critical hit. Undaunted
heaved again.

“NUMBER SIX TURRET GONE!”

The tactical display pinged for attention, but Logan kept
his focus on the sidebar. One of the alien ships had exploded. More and more
status indicators for ships on both sides were shifting from green to a damaged
yellow or severely damaged red, and more CHs were appearing now. Undaunted
heaved again so violently this time that if Logan hadn’t been strapped down in
his chair, he would have hit the ceiling.

“HULL PENETRATIONS ON DECK SEVEN AND HANGAR BAY!”

Logan tried to get an overall feel for which side was
getting the worst of the fighting. A dozen alien ships were now listed as
critically hit, but most of his battlecruisers were also in bad shape.
Twenty-one out of twenty-four of his capital ships were still able to maneuver
and fight.

Time remaining until they reached the wormhole was now less
than 10 seconds. That meant that the 107th had passed the alien fleet’s battle line
and was now pulling away from it. Undaunted got hit again.

“PENETRATION IN ENGINEERING! POWER NUMBER TWO IS DOWN!
THREE TURRETS STILL OPERATIONAL!”

That was bad news. Undaunted had four power plants and now
one was gone. Three was enough to power the remaining energy turrets and
maneuvering engines, but if the weakened hull armor protecting the Engineering
section got hit again, the ship could become a helpless cripple. The display
now pinged several times in quick succession. Two more alien ships exploded and
so did one battlecruiser.

“WORMHOLE IN THREE…TWO…ONE…NOW!” shouted the FAO.

Logan heaved a sigh of relief. Once inside the wormhole,
combat was impossible, but so was communication. He carefully scanned the
sidebar data. It wasn’t showing the impact of the last several seconds of
combat, but the news was bad enough anyway. One battlecruiser had been
destroyed, eleven critically damaged and the remaining four all damaged to some
extent. Six capital ships were critically damaged. Only one super-dreadnought
was still listed as completely operational. The rest all had some damage. On
the other side, three alien ships had been destroyed, and forty-four were
listed as critically hit, which surprised Logan, and all the rest had some
damage.

“FTO, the number or enemy criticals seems high to me. What
confirmation do we have on those ships?” asked Logan.

“I’ll have an answer for you shortly, Admiral.”

The analysis seemed to take longer than Logan thought it
should have, but he decided that the adrenaline rush was distorting his sense
of time.

“I have that information now, Admiral,” said the officer.
“Thirteen of the forty-four were deemed to have critical hits because they
exhibited minimal combat capacity from the beginning of the firefight. TC says
they were probably damaged already from the first two missile barrages. The
remaining thirty-one were classified as critical after receiving at least one
confirmed hit resulting in diminished firepower and/or atmospheric venting,
Admiral.”

Logan thanked the officer and unstrapped himself in order
to be able to pace around the Flag Bridge and consider his next move. It would
take another nineteen minutes to transit this wormhole. Once on the other side,
he could use the string of light cruisers from the 74th squadron to relay a
message back to the starbase at TE33 and from there to the Capital by FTL
transmission. Sending the results of the battle was the easy part. Giving his
assessment of the situation was the hard part. The 107th had gotten badly mauled.
That much was clear. At this point, he didn’t know how many of his
critically-hit ships could still maneuver or reach warp speed. Some ships might
have to be abandoned and scuttled. Even those ships that could still travel at
warp speed might not be able to fight very well or at all. The only casualty
reports he had so far were from within Undaunted, and thankfully no one on
board had been killed or seriously injured, but there were bound to be serious
injuries needing starbase medical treatment on other ships, along with
fatalities too.

Standard strategic doctrine said that fleets suffering the
kind of human and equipment damage that the 107th had taken should be withdrawn
from combat operations in order to regroup, repair and replenish personnel and
munitions. But if Zulu1 continued to push forward, and it had at least 18 ships
that could do so, the 107th might not be able to withdraw from the front lines.
It seemed incredible that any commander, human or alien, would continue to act
aggressively after losing almost 90% of his fleet. On the other hand, his
opposite number had to know that the human fleet had suffered a lot of damage
too and perhaps could be completely wiped out with one more unexpected attack.
Setting up another ambush at the other end of this wormhole was a tempting
strategy, but that would put seriously injured crewmen at risk, as well as
risking the entire Fleet, which was something that the Emperor had told him to
try to avoid if possible. No, he decided he would play it safe. The message
back would tell the Emperor that the 107th was withdrawing to TE33 and would
contain a request for a relief fleet, repair ships and resupply ships. In the
meantime, those of his ships capable of combat operations would sit on top of
the wormhole that Zulu1 would most likely use if it continued to move forward.

With communications to the rest of the Fleet impossible
during the actual wormhole transit, Logan literally had nothing to do. The
ship’s condition and crew were McKeon’s responsibility. Logan getting involved
with that was not only unnecessary but actually inappropriate and would be seen
as interference. Logan did inform his communications personnel of the orders he
wanted disseminated the second the Fleet emerged from the wormhole. The message
back to the Capital would be on its way quickly.

The emergence happened soon enough, and it didn’t take long
for the Flag Bridge display to be updated with the status of each ship in the
Fleet. The results worried Logan. Eight battlecruisers, the equivalent of one
full squadron, no longer had warp speed capability. Having already decided not
to draw the line in the sand here, the 107th had to continue to move back up
the wormhole chain, and leaving those eight battlecruisers and their crews here
to fend for themselves was out of the question. The crews would have to be
transferred to other ships, and the crippled battlecruisers would be scuttled.
That was all very well and good, except that it took time, and time was not
something that Logan felt he had a lot of. Zulu1 might be on its way through
the same wormhole even now.

When the minimum amount of time for Zulu1 to transit the
wormhole had come and gone without any sign of it, Logan was relieved but still
agitated over the fact that the transfer of crew and scuttling of the ships was
going so slowly. Just because Zulu1 hadn’t transited the wormhole right away
didn’t mean it couldn’t do it later, and the longer the 107th stayed near this
wormhole, the greater the risk of another battle whose outcome could go either
way.

With the transfer finally complete, Logan ordered the Fleet
to begin moving away from the wormhole. He watched the computer-enhanced images
of the abandoned battlecruisers as they dwindled in the distance. When the
Fleet was at a safe distance, all eight derelicts exploded.

To Logan’s surprise, Zulu1 did not emerge from the wormhole
until the 107th was halfway to the next wormhole. The light cruiser that had
been stationed near the wormhole had pulled back to extreme detection range. It
reported the fact that 35 ships had apparently emerged from the wormhole and
were now accelerating at warp speed on an identical heading to the 107th. That
was almost double the 18 ships that Logan had been expecting. McKeon expressed
the opinion that some of the critically hit ships had been repaired enough to
be capable of combat operations. A quick check of astrogations confirmed that
the 107th would get to the other wormhole first, but just like with the first
chase in the Rift, if Zulu1 continued the pursuit, it would catch up to the
Fleet before the 107th made it back to TE33. The good news arrived half an hour
later. Zulu1 had reached and was maintaining a warp speed of only 4.1C. That
was still faster than the 107th’s damage-reduced speed, but the difference was
not enough for Zulu1 to catch the 107th before it got to TE33, and the light
cruiser would be able to keep tracking the alien fleet from extreme range.