Loyalty to the Cause (TCOTU, Book 4) (This Corner of the Universe) (39 page)

Without
the ability to overwhelm the enemy, missiles were used right before and during
a combat pass, timed to arrive before and during the fleet’s direct fire. 
Elathra
would not face a line ship as part of the rearguard and Vernay had been very
relieved when Heskan informed her that they likely would not be tested in point
defense during the battle.  It was a mixed blessing, Heskan knew.  Missiles were
devastating but could be intercepted while direct laser fire was unavoidable.

The fleets
crawled toward each other on the tactical plot.  After twenty-two minutes, they
narrowed the gap to just over 1
lm
.  As the range dropped to precisely 63
ls
,
Cooke’s order to form “line ahead, relative rest” reached Heskan.  He quickly
repeated the order down his chain of command and ten seconds later the entire fleet
rotated, as one, a full one hundred eighty degrees to null its forward
momentum.  Twenty seconds later, the fleet turned again, in unison, ninety degrees
to line ahead at relative rest.  The maneuver took thirty-four seconds to
execute and positioned them exactly 60
ls
from their enemy.  Heskan
marveled at the impeccable timing of Cooke’s commands. 
What’s even more
amazing is that he’s dozens of light-seconds behind us on the C-3 ship so
there’s not only the time lag to account for between his fleet and the enemy’s but
also between the fleet and his command ship.
 With command abilities that surpassed
his own, it was easy for Heskan to see why Seshafi’s ship captains held such
utter reliance upon their fleet commander.

New
orders of speed and course were issued.  “The game’s afoot,” Heskan declared. 
“Look sharp, Diane.”  Over the next two minutes and forty seconds, each fleet performed
as fluidly as an orchestra following its conductor, enacting furious maneuvers
and counter-maneuvers designed to force the enemy line out of position.

During
the opening run, Cooke’s van valiantly charged ahead while the main and rear slid
“sideways” toward Wallace’s fleet.  Wallace’s van was late in reacting,
resulting in the Seshafian van achieving the favorable position of three
dimensionally “crossing the T” ahead of Wallace’s line.  With the opposing
fleets hurtling toward each other at .26
c
, Wallace was forced to order
his ships to decline the pass and maneuver away from the enemy.  As each line
reformed, 2
lm
from each other, Wallace complimented over the general
frequency, “Well done, Piers.  You timed that magnificently.  By the time I saw
that van’s thrust, I was out of hand.  Now let’s see if I can return the
favor!”

Wallace
did not.  On the second pass, Cooke correctly identified Wallace’s feint and
ordered a vertical line ahead to disrupt the axis of his attack.  The pass was
inconclusive except for the splendid shots Heskan’s rearguard would have made
on an out-of-position Saden rear.  Vernay’s hands tightened into fists as she
glared at the ship’s chronometer.  “I can’t believe we weren’t allowed to fire,”
she grumbled.  “We would’ve lit that section up with the angle we came in on.”

Wallace’s
unrestrained praise once again echoed on the bridge.  “Now, now, Admiral, you
must be a gentleman and not embarrass me too sufficiently,” he chided.

Cooke’s
jaunty reply sounded over the speakers.  “It’s been a good show, yes?  I’m
rather hopeful that you might initiate negotiations at this point, sir.”

Both
lines reformed and were cruising on the same plane, in the same direction, 60
ls
from each other.  Hostilities would be permitted in less than five minutes.

“Piers,
our demands are in the
casus bellum
,” Wallace stated.

Twenty
seconds later, Cooke replied coolly, “Oliver, your C.B. demands nearly a
complete takeover.  You mustn’t think we could possibly agree to that.  For the
record, we’d consider permitting joint sales rights in Sistrum.”

More
time elapsed before the Red Admiral’s response.  “Nevertheless, my friend, our
demands remain as written in the
casus bellum
.”

Cooke
clucked, “Now come, Admiral, you must admit that I’ve had my way with you
during our runs.  You
have
to be amenable to some compromise.”

Stress
levels on
Elathra’s
bridge rose with each verbal interchange.  Heskan
noticed that the Saden line was beginning to skid toward them.

Wallace’s
next transmission was received with less than two minutes until zero-hour and for
the first time, Heskan heard a sliver of doubt in Wallace’s voice.  “I’m sorry,
Piers, but I cannot.  Are you sure you couldn’t accept the
casus bellum, in
toto
?”

Cooke’s
answer was resolute.  “Absolutely not, Oliver.  That will never happen.”

Twenty
more seconds and Wallace’s cryptic reply echoed through the bridge.  “Then may
Camille forgive me.”

The
twin battle lines continued their collision courses.  Without fresh orders, Cooke’s
line sailed straight forward while Wallace’s formation maintained line ahead
but slid toward the Seshafians from the side.  The distance between the two
fleets had diminished to 50
ls
.  Twenty more seconds came and went
without a response from Cooke.  Another ten seconds of silence passed before Truesworth
exclaimed, “Captain, message from Diomedes!  Her Combat Information Center is
reporting an explosion on her bridge!”

“What?”
Heskan and Vernay asked in unison.

Truesworth
pressed his shocksuit helmet closer to his left ear.  “Ajax is reporting the
same thing.  She says her entire bridge compartment was just destroyed.”

Heskan
mashed his command channel button to report the disaster to Cooke when an
inbound message superseded him.  “Attention, Admiral Chattersby, this is
Lieutenant Commander Clark on the Fleet Command Ship.  We’ve suffered some kind
of catastrophic failure on our bridge.  There’s been an explosion and we think
the entire fleet command crew is dead.  I repeat, Admiral Cooke is dead!  You
must assume command of the fleet!”

“Oh
my God,” Hall gasped from his station.

Vernay
looked grimly at Heskan.  “Chattersby is dead on Diomedes—”

“You
know Commodore Johnstone on Ajax is too,” Heskan added.

“They
wiped out the entire chain of command,” Vernay finished.

Over
the bridge speakers, the general frequency became chaos as news of the Saden
treachery spread through the fleet like a wildfire.

“We
have to surrender,” an unidentified captain stated.

“Who’s
going to lead us now?” a second lamented.

“Their
van is closing!  Ajax, strike your lights!”

In
front of Heskan, Truesworth cried out, “Vampires!  Missiles from Formidable.”

Heskan
jerked to his left.  “WEPS, track them,” he snapped.

Despite
the command, Hall continued to stare uncomprehendingly at the tactical plot.

“Hall!”
Vernay screamed.  He blinked shimmering eyes at Vernay who pointed insistently at
the wall screen.  “Do.  Your.  Job.”

Hall
lurched back to face his station.  Over the bridge speakers, a tormented voice
cried out, “We’re coming in straight and slow, someone do something!”

“The
missiles have locked on to Diomedes, ma’am,” Hall declared.  “They aren’t a
threat to us.”

Vernay
nodded briskly.  The tactical plot flickered with the direct weapons fire exchanged
between the vanguards.  “At our present closure rate, we have twenty seconds
until contact, sir.  We’re just going to skim GP range.”

Heskan
pressed his section’s comm frequency and hastily ordered, “Attention, rearguard
commanders, fire on your counterpart and maintain line ahead on Elathra.  Heskan
out.”

“Not
much of a tactic,” Vernay critiqued lightly.

Heskan
nodded in frustration and admitted, “Sometimes you just gotta ride it out.”  He
looked toward the front of the bridge.  To the left of the center screen, a
side display showed the status of each ship in the fleet, with focus on
Heskan’s rearguard.  The right side screen displayed the nearly real-time
optical of
Elathra’s
target, the privateer brig skidding quickly toward her. 
A hasty check on the main tactical plot confirmed Vernay’s projection that the opposing
rearguard sections would only briefly cross into the 5
ls
range of general-purpose
lasers. 
The angle of their pass was too steep,
Heskan analyzed.
 
Sure, the vanguard sections faced each other for a good fourteen seconds of
fire but that’s causing their rearguard to just barely clip us.  Scepter may
not even get a chance to batter down our defensive screen.

As
the lead ships of the rearguards closed on each other,
Elathra’s
particle cannons, with their 6
ls
range, would instigate the exchange. 
Selvaggio quickly presented
Elathra’s
best face to the enemy, straight
on.  Like most system defense ships, a majority of her armament was designed to
fire in her forward arc.  Both particle cannons and the dual GP laser mounts
could fire in front of the snow.  Only her carronade lasers, limited to
starboard and port arcs only, would remain silent as the ships passed.

Moments
after the cannons fired, Heskan watched
Scepter’s
twin dorsal tri-GP
laser mounts begin to strobe briefly as she cruised to within 5
ls
.  The
brig was presenting her starboard broadside to bring both tri-GP mounts and a dual
GP turret into the fight.

Heskan
witnessed a single, circular distortion appear before the brig on the optical as
one of
Elathra’s
particle cannons struck home.

That
single burst from
Elathra’s
starboard cannon consisted of thirty,
distinct nano-second pulses of neutron particles.  The sheer power of these pulses
helped offset many of the deficiencies of the weapon.  Each of the thirty
pulses issued in a single salvo not only held substantially more mass than the
“massless” photons in lasers, but also unleashed those particles several
centimeters into their targets. 
Elathra’s
neutron beam burst utterly bypassed
Scepter’s
thin AIPS screen and continued its journey toward the brig’s
hull.  Duralloy cleaved from the brig’s side, culminating in a muted flash of
an explosion near the ship’s afterdeck.  Before Heskan could compliment Hall’s
marksmanship,
Elathra’s
optical flickered as her own AIPS screen struggled
against the initial barrage of
Scepter’s
GP lasers.  It was over in a
heartbeat.  Moments after the exchange of fire, Wallace’s rearguard section
passed over the Seshafians and receded from weapons range.

“Damage
report,” Vernay demanded.

Lieutenant
Gables, sitting at the Operations station, answered after a brief hesitation. 
“Not bad.  Our screen held everything out except the last shots, just some
minor damage to our ventral radiator.”  She shook her head.  “The damned
thing’s so big it’s just begging to be hit.”

“What’d
we do to that brig?” Heskan asked.

“Still
analyzing the results of our pass,” Truesworth said.  “A particle beam
definitely got through.”

Ahead
of
Elathra
, neither Seshafi’s vanguard nor main section had changed
course or speed since their combat runs.  Over the general frequency, a voice
filled with anguish wailed, “Look at Diomedes!  She’s nearly finished.”

Commander
Tannault broke in over the unknown captain.  “She got hit by some missiles and
then took considerable direct fire from Formidable.  Ajax doesn’t appear to
have fared much better.”

Heskan
heard another young voice exclaim, “Dash just struck her lights!  She’s out of
the fight.”

“They’re
coming around for another pass!” cried a desperate ship captain from the van. 
“We’ve got to surrender!”

Heskan
studied the flotilla status display.  The vanguard had suffered horribly during
the first pass. 
Ajax
lost a third of her missile armament and several
laser turrets.  Her lower deck was ablaze amidship. 
Dash
had succumbed
to the hellish fire of two snows from the enemy van, resulting in little more
than a lifeless hulk drifting within the formation.  The van’s sole brig had
also endured a vicious raking and
Dash’s
sister corvette,
Fly
,
had taken damage as well.  Only the snow,
Tigre
, emerged unharmed, her opposing
counterpart electing to “double up” on
Dash
during the first exchange. 
In recompense, the Seshafian van had been so utterly shocked and disorganized it
had inflicted only light damage upon the enemy.

Cooke’s
main suffered even worse than the vanguard.  The section’s heaviest ships, the
third-rate, a brig and the heavy snow,
Malabar
, were all pockmarked and
trailing debris.  Given slightly more time to prepare for the first pass than
the Seshafian van, the main inflicted more damage to their Saden opponents. 
Formidable
and both brigs in Wallace’s main had taken obvious damage, but a replay of the
combat run revealed that the final two Seshafian snows had rotated and thrust
away from contact, leaving Wallace’s elements free to team up and devastate
Malabar
.

Heskan’s
own section fared better.  With minimal exchange of fire, none of his ships endured
serious consideration from their counterparts.  Additionally, because the
rearguard included four Colossus-class snows, their particle cannons bypassed AIPS
screens to deliver at least token punishment to the Sadens. 
Scepter
had
taken the worst of the pass, but was still spared any degradation to her combat
capabilities.