Authors: Zachary Jones

Refusing Excalibur (5 page)

BOOK: Refusing Excalibur

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Victor was surprised, to say the least.
Could the Lysandrans be that desperate?
Fersfield 23 was the closest system to Savannah. Too close, in fact. Its jump point rested deep inside the overheated corona of Savannah’s orange K-class star. Even with the most powerful shields, any starship would be baked to death before it could escape.

“Get a scope on the Fersfield 23 jump point now!” Victor said. At this time of year, the Fersfield 23 jump point was located almost exactly between the planet Savannah and its star, giving the
Osprey
a direct view.

Victor switched his screen to show the magnified image of the jump point, with the flame-colored star of Savannah Prime in the background. Silhouetted against the star was some kind of long and slender vessel.

The size of the ship startled Victor. It appeared to be stationary relative to the jump point; its velocity upon entering it must have been almost nil.

Could it be some kind of massive warship?
Victor wondered.
Or some superweapon the Lysandrans built to end the war?
If so, then he wasn’t impressed. A ship that size wouldn’t have much in the way of acceleration, and the quality of its shields or thickness of its armor didn't matter—it would eventually roast in the heat of the corona.

Then the ship changed shape, opening like an umbrella until the needle turned into a great black disk, casting a visible shadow into space. The shadow completely covered the Fersfield 23 jump point.

“Oh, shit.”

Ice formed in Victor’s stomach. Rapid-fire flashes appeared inside the jump point, and starships flowed out at hundreds of kilometers per second, their exit vectors well within the shadow cast by the disk. Then he remembered the light-speed delay. What he was seeing had happened a little over five minutes ago.

“Helm, vector on the Fersfield 23 jump point, maximum acceleration!” Victor keyed his flotilla channel. “
Vulture
and
Sabretooth
, stay in formation with my ship!” He then changed channels to transmit to Savannah. “Admiral, this is
Osprey
. The Lysandrans have deployed some kind of shade to protect the Fersfield jump point. I’m moving to engage now.”

“Roger that,
Osprey
. All other ships in Savannah’s vicinity are moving to engage the shade now. Good luck out there, son.”

His father had just ordered him on a suicide mission. Only three dozen Savannan warships defended the homeworld. Most of them were lightweight destroyers backed up by a few cruisers, including the ships of Victor’s flotilla.

Three dozen against an ever-expanding fleet of Lysandran warships, many of them capital ships. Victor and his flotilla could not fight off that fleet. But they could make an end run to the shade and destroy it.

Victor closed his eyes.

Goodbye, Gina. Goodbye, Alex. I love you.

He opened his eyes.

“Helm, make sure our vector follows the shadow cast by the shade,” Victor said.

“Already done, Captain,” Lieutenant Colletta said.

“Good. Put us on a collision course with the shade as well,” Victor said.

Lieutenant Herrera turned to look at his captain, nodded, and returned to his task. If the
Osprey
didn’t survive, then perhaps her wreckage could do the job.

Commander Dace leaned over. “I suggest we tell the other ships to do the same.”

Victor nodded and passed the word. The thirty-odd Savannan warships vectored to follow the shadow cast by the shade, every one of them on a collision course, moving at full speed.

“We just need to survive the next two and a half hours,” Victor said.

“I suspect the Lysandrans are making every effort to ensure we don’t,” she said, pointing at her screen.

Victor checked his own tactical screen and saw a swarm of Lysandran fighters, cruisers, and destroyers racing ahead of the battleships. The fighters, accelerating at 1,000 gs, would be the first obstacle. It appeared the Lysandran destroyers had matched the acceleration of their cruisers. They were forming into an expanding wall to block the way of the Savannan warships. Victor tried not to think about how badly outnumbered his flotilla was.

He organized the fleet into a tight formation so the point defenses of each ship would overlap. It was the best chance they had of surviving the fighters and missile barrage.

The Republic warships fired into the swarm of enemy fighters as soon as they came into range, downing as many as they could before the fighters dropped their torpedoes.

“Torpedo launch!” Commander Dace said. Despite the attrition inflicted on the Lysandrans fighters, hundreds of them still survived to drop their slow but powerful weapons. At least fifteen torpedoes homed in on the
Osprey
.

“Going evasive!” Lieutenant Colletta said. He threw the
Osprey
into a series of violent maneuvers while the point defenses picked off one torpedo after another.

All around the
Osprey
, torpedoes detonated and Savannans died. The
Vulture
was consumed in a ball of white flame almost as soon as the torpedoes reached the fleet. The
Sabretooth
survived most of the barrage until a close-proximity detonation caught her. The starship stopped maneuvering, and another torpedo homed in and finished her.

When the storm of torpedoes ended, only four other Savannan vessels survived, all destroyers. The
Osprey
was the only cruiser to make it through.

The fighters turned around and fired their drive at full power to reengage. But they couldn’t cancel out their speed and catch the Savannan warships before the Lysandran screen of destroyers and cruisers did.

Victor ordered the survivors to close around his ship, forming the strongest possible defense. It wouldn’t be enough, what with fifty times as many Lysandrans as Savannans. Victor had to try anyway.

Minutes after passing the fighters, they reached missile range. Thousands of Lysandran missile launches filled Victor’s tactical screen. He had used the last of the
Osprey
’s countermissiles against the fighters.

Victor chewed his lips. Five ships could not survive that kind of barrage. Splitting the ships apart to evade would only make them easier targets. However…

He looked at the destroyers, reading their names.
Rogers
,
Ivanov
,
Ubeki
,
Takeda
. Victor hated himself for what he was about to order them to do.

He opened a channel to the destroyers. “This is Captain Selan on the
Osprey
. I’ll order my ship to go cold. If you can increase your emissions to match ours when the
Osprey
goes dark, you might trick the missiles into going after you, allowing us to slip past. Do you understand?”

“This is Commander Faller of the
Takeda
,” said the most senior of the destroyer captains. “We read you. We’ll sync with your shutdown. Good luck, Captain Selan. We’ll save you a spot at the table.”

“Roger that. And thank you.” Victor closed the channel. “Prepare for full shutdown.”

“Aye, aye, Captain,” Commander Dace said. “It’s a good plan.”

“No, it’s a desperate one,” Victor said. He timed shutdown to happen one minute before impact. Enough time for the destroyer to get far enough away that the blast of the warheads didn’t threaten the
Osprey
but short enough to minimize the ruse being detected.

“Shut down,” Victor said. All at once, the lights dimmed, the gravity cut out, and the drives turned off. In an instant, the
Osprey
became a drifting hole in space. Only her passive sensors, running on minimal power, told Victor what was going on outside.

The destroyers boosted their output just as planned, masking the
Osprey
’s shutdown. As time passed, it became clear the ruse was working. The destroyers went down fighting, expending the last of their countermissiles in a single volley, buying themselves a few more seconds of life. Enough to swat down a few dozen Lysandran missiles with point-defense guns before being overwhelmed and destroyed. His passive sensors were blinded and, Victor hoped, so were the enemy’s by the glare of multiple detonations.

“Begin venting atmospheric and fuel,” Victor said.

“That’ll make us easier to spot, Captain,” Commander Dace said.

“Yes, but it’ll also make us look more dead,” Victor said.

Seconds later, before the glow of the detonations faded, the
Osprey
vented half her air supply and two-thirds her fuel, enveloping the warship in a cloud of expanding gas.

When the glow faded enough to see, the fleet of Lysandran cruisers and destroyers became visible, and they were approaching fast.

Victor took a deep breath and forced himself to relax. The bridge became very quiet as old instincts overwhelmed the knowledge that no amount of sound would give them away in the vacuum of space.

Closer and closer, the Lysandran cruisers and destroyers closed on the
Osprey
. Behind them, the Fersfield 23 jump point was still lit up by the continuous flashes of ships jumping in, protected by the shadow cast by the shade.

Victor ground his teeth; the nearest Lysandran warships were only seconds away. He prayed none of them would examine his ship too closely.

They didn’t. No enemy warships changed their course to engage the
Osprey
. Before he knew it, the entire Lysandran vanguard was flying away.

“I think we tricked them,” Commander Dace said.

Victor let out a long sigh. “Yeah, I think we—” He noticed a pair of Lysandran destroyers turn around and decelerate at full power. “Shit.”

Dace looked at her screen. “Looks like they didn’t fall for it.”

“They fell for it, all right. If they thought we were still operational, they’d send missiles after us, not a pair of destroyers,” Victor said.

“Captain, one of the destroyers hailed us. They’re requesting to know our status,” Lieutenant Herrera said.

“Ignore them. We’re just a dead wreck. Let’s stay that way for as long as possible.”

“Those ships are pulling 200 gs. They’ll catch us well before we drift close to the Fersfield jump point,” Commander Dace said.

“Yeah, we’ll have to deal with them,” Victor said. Depending on how close the destroyers got, it could be a simple matter of just blowing them away with the main guns. But if they decided to fire a volley of missiles from standoff range, the
Osprey
would be in trouble. “Our best bet is to play dead until the last moment.”

Dace nodded. “Okay, Captain. We just sit here, right?”

“Bring the ship to reduced readiness. They won’t have much to do while the ship is powered down, but at least they can get some sleep,” Victor said. “You should join them.”

“After you, Captain,” Dace said.

He shook his head. “I can’t sleep in 0 g. You go ahead. I’ll watch things here.”

Dace gave him a stubborn look. “If you’re staying on duty, then so will I, Captain.”

He shrugged. “Have it your way, Commander.” He ordered reduced readiness, and several members of the crew floated from the bridge, to rest, to eat, and to prepare for the end.

***

The crew’s rest ended when the lead destroyer fired a pair of missiles at the
Osprey
.

“You think they figured it out?” Dace said.

“No, they’d fire more missiles than that if they did,” Victor said. “They’re cleaning up a wreck. And they’re still accelerating toward us. They probably mean to blow us up on their way back to the main body of the fleet.”

“We’ll be dead for real if we don’t do something about those missiles, Captain,” Dace said.

“You’re right. Lieutenant Ryam, plot a firing solution for the PD guns on those missiles,” Victor said.

“On it, Captain,” the gunnery officer said.

“It’ll take a few minutes for us to power up enough to fire the point-defense guns, Captain,” Dace said.

“I know, and, when they see us powering up, they’ll fire everything they have at us,” Victor said.

“So what do we do?” Dace asked.

“Power up our guns when they get close enough. We could dust them easily enough. Then we just deal with any missiles they get off before we destroy them,” Victor said.

“That’ll be chancy, Captain,” Dace said.

“Yeah, well, it’s all I got, Commander,” Victor said.

Dace nodded. “I guess it’s just a question of when we want to start powering up.”

He checked the tactical screen. “We want to be ready to fight the moment those missiles reach PD range.” Victor did some calculations on his console. “Which will be thirty minutes from now. It’ll take ten minutes for us to power the
Osprey
back up, so we’ll wait twenty minutes.”

“Roger that, Captain. Power back up in twenty minutes,” Dace said.

Victor looked to the helm. “Lieutenant Herrera, as soon as the main thrusters come online, vector for the destroyers.”

BOOK: Refusing Excalibur

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