Birthright: Battle for the Confederation- Pursuit Page 17

  "I have, Captain," Merritt said neutrally. "They don't know what the plan is, just that the order came from Commander Stone."

  "Exactly. Avenger can't fire torpedoes and half our laser batteries are offline. We plan to dump some of our inventory into space as mobile mines in our wake, then use both transports with torpedoes strapped inside to roam and flank the enemy once we find them. We hope that by keeping the torpedoes in the transports from flying under their own power that the Primans won't detect them; they'll just see transports. We'll operate them remotely and run them right into the Priman cruisers if we can."

  "Do you need us to fly them from here?" asked Merritt.

  "Loren mentioned that your simulators have that ability, and yes, I'd like you to do just that. I realize it's a long shot, and I hate to potentially waste ships and weapons, but they have us under the gun here and we need to get out of this place if we're going to survive."

  "I'll get on it."

  Another half hour had passed with no results. Captain Vol was pacing his bridge, trying to will the Confeds into appearing so he could smash them.

  "Captain!" he heard an excited officer call to him. "Tring and Elexa have made contact with the Confederation ship!"

  "Excellent!" he replied excitedly. "Do we have a datalink yet?" Even for the vaunted Priman sensor technology, this stasis-like damping field that engulfed the shipyard made his sensors marginally unreliable.

  "Partial datastream coming in now, Captain," was the reply. "No comms, but live data and some video, enough for a partial holo display for you."

  Vol waited in anticipation as the display in his bridge, operating much the same way as Confed's holo displays worked, created a real 3D image for him to inspect. It was mildly aggravating to not have audio, but he'd make do.

  He saw his cruisers in open pursuit of the Confed ship as it headed towards the edge of the shipyard.

  "Set a course for the Confed ship's exit point," barked Vol, and his orders were quickly complied with.

  The escort carrier was in the lead, operating with less gross tonnage due to her design, in addition to the loss of many of her fighter craft and the other cruiser's engine damage. Suddenly, as if a curtain were being drawn back on the space ahead of the advancing cruiser, tiny blips started to appear in her path. Vol didn't make the connection at first, but once the first blip exploded against the escort carrier's hull, he knew: mines, maybe dormant torpedoes.

  "Get me comms!" he demanded to his communication officer, but there was no amount of intimidation that could fix the problem. He saw the damaged cruiser in the rear of the formation swing wide, changing course away from the apparent minefield, and the next thing he saw was a tiny Confed ship flitting around space near the Priman warship. He leaned over, glowering at the data feeds, and saw that his computers were calling it a transport. Why in all the empty reaches of space would they have a transport out there? Were they really trying to board his ship?

  Another explosion on the escort carrier, this time not as deadly. The torpedo was not running, instead just floating in space. Their shaped-charge warheads were very directional, and they must have hit it at such an angle that the warhead's force was mostly spent towards open space. He did see several blips start to move, though, and knew that his ships' ECM wasn't what it used to be against the Confeds. They'd found some sort of fix, because despite the cloud of electronic emissions congesting local space, the Confederation torpedoes were powering up and trying to guide themselves to his cruisers. The Priman point defense lasers start speaking up now, hammering away at the buzzing torpedoes and taking down some of their number just as Vol noticed another transport dodging around underneath the cruiser.

  The transport evaded the fire aimed at it, spinning and maneuvering to avoid the energy streams reaching out towards it. There was a live person in control of that ship, whether actually onboard or via remote.

  Finally, he realized what was going on as the transport ran into the belly of his escort carrier. There was a flash of brilliant light as the charge aboard it exploded, the directional blast digging into the heart of his ship and sending gouts of flame and debris shooting out of the hangar levels.

  "The transports have explosives aboard!" he called to his comm officers. "Either torpedoes or just shaped charges. Tell the cruisers to destroy the other transport now!"

  His comm officer renewed his efforts, but Captain Vol knew it was no use; contact was still impossible.

  To his great relief, he saw the Reaper get underway towards the remaining transport, her sixteen anti-aircraft batteries lighting up space at they spit rapid fire laser streams at the small Confed craft. Despite its efforts, the transport was soon overwhelmed. The lasers chopped it apart, separating wings, fuselage, and finally lighting off the fuel cells. Vol allowed himself a brief period of relief before he refocused his attention on the cruisers.

  They weren't going to catch Avenger; he could see that now via the data feeds. His ship, however, would have plenty of time to fire on the enemy vessel.

  Vol stood up and walked to the main bridge display, commanding it to show a series of video feeds with a few taps on the control pedestal. Sometimes it was more rewarding to see the enemy die with your own eyes instead of watching a computer proclaim victory. He selected the best angle and put it as the primary feed in the display. The view was from his own ship, and the camera was looking low and port towards Avenger's exit point as his own vessel raced to intercept. He smiled, knowing that he'd have time to arrange his ship for the meet while Avenger was simply going to have to run the gauntlet to clear the area.

  "All hands," Elco spoke over the shipwide intercom. "Clear the lower decks and hangar levels immediately. We have almost no shields and I mean to show the Primans our keel if it comes down to it."

  He returned his attention to the bridge, trying to soak up every last piece of information that could help. He had precious few options left; navigational shields only, malfunctioning torpedo launchers, functioning laser batteries on the starboard side only, and he didn't want to launch the few remaining fighters since he aimed to jump to hyperspace as soon as possible and didn't have time to wait on recovery operations. The only good news was that he still had three of his aft torpedo launchers; the fourth had suffered an indeterminate failure and was out of action again. They wouldn't be able to reload, but he intended to launch them when the time was right.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  "There she is," Vol said quietly, victoriously. He saw the stricken Confed ship making for her exit point in the shipyard. He was waiting for her, ship ahead of and above Avenger's path, rolled so that his port side weapons all had a broadside aspect on the enemy ship. Priman weapons were a bit more evenly distributed around the hull than Confed ship design, but the doctrine of 'crossing the T' was universal; point as many of your weapons at the enemy as you can while in turn limiting their ability to do the same. The initial encounter was going his way as he ordered his gunners to fire at will. No sooner had she cleared the narrow gap than Avenger rolled to show him her starboard side laser batteries, which opened with a withering blast to rival his own. The only difference was that his shields were fully functional while Avenger's appeared to be offline.

  Scores of laser hits impacted the Confed ship's hull, scorching the surface and vaporizing armor, leaving pitted and gouged panels behind. Avenger began to roll again, showing Vol her keel much like the feared Starshaker class battleships did. Only, Avenger didn't have armor that was many feet thick and intended to take repeated direct hits; she had hangar bays, laser and AA batteries, and engine pods all waiting to be destroyed. He ordered torpedoes fired, saw several shot down but one impact on Avenger's starboard ventral side just outboard of the starboard hangar. A great explosion followed, rended hull plates blown into space as compartments within the hull were destroyed.

  He heard the bridge hatch open and saw Representative Ravine walk as fast as dignity allowed to join him on the platform.

  "I apolo
gize for my report taking so long," she said by way of greeting.

  "You have nothing to apologize for, Representative," Vol replied quickly. "You have many more responsibilities than I do. The fortunate thing is that you are here to watch us defeat Avenger."

  "Excellent," she replied, for despite her occasional doubts about how her people meant to fight this war, she had to acknowledge that there was no downside to vanquishing this particular ship.

  By now, Captain Vol's ship, Vigilance, had passed beyond Avenger and begun a turn to starboard to bring her back over the top of the Confed ship.

  "Helm," Vol commanded, "take us back across their stern, nose down ten degrees. We'll destroy their engines and then finish her at our leisure."

  Vol was about to explain to the Representative that normally he wouldn't consider such a move, but between all the torpedoes the Confeds had dumped in the shipyard and the fact that they hadn't fired any while taking such a pummeling in the process of escaping must mean that their aft launchers were offline.

  "Torpedoes, Captain!" Vol heard in an excited voice. "Avenger just launched three towards us!"

  "Well," Vol yelled back, "shoot them down! Helm, evasive maneuvers!"

  Vigilance began such an aggressive turn that the inertial compensators couldn't keep up, and he found himself holding onto the same guard railing that the Representative was using. She was always confident and stoic on his bridge, and he felt now more than ever that she would make a capable Commander some day. Perhaps he could even lead a fleet for her if he performed well...

  Only one of the Confed torpedoes made it through causing a hull breach on an outer compartment of his ship. While Priman ships didn't carry as much armor as their Confed counterparts, their shields were often able to force an early detonation of the Confed weapons, causing their warheads to damage hull plates instead of penetrating the hull first. Measured against the destruction of Avenger, he'd take the torpedo and light laser damage from her in trade any time.

  "Resume pursuit," Vol added, though he was starting to worry about Avenger's range now. She was beginning to tickle the edge of the stasis field surrounding the shipyard, and that carried the possibility of her escaping the forces that prevented hyperdrive fields from forming.

  "Coming about, Captain," was the reply. His ship still chopped away at Avenger, carving furrows in her armor plates and on occasion penetrating them entirely. Debris clouded his ship's path as several hits destroyed both of her aft ventral laser batteries.

  Captain Elco stood behind the helmsman's station, left hand holding onto the back of the chair to steady him as his ship bucked and shook beneath him. The bridge was a loud and distracting mess; warning horns, lights blinking and demanding attention, status reports coming in over the damage control station speakers, it was almost overwhelming. One had to learn to compartmentalize. True, lots of bad things were happening to his ship, but only one or two of them would end in the loss of the whole vessel.

  "How much longer to hyper?" he asked of the helmsman. He had to raise his voice to be heard over the din around them.

  "Twelve seconds," came the terse reply.

  "Keep us rolling, helm," Elco urged. "We don't want them to hit the same piece of hull too many times." He looked over at the ops/conn station to the right of helm control. "We still good to go for hyperspace?"

  "Good enough, Captain," came the grim reply from the Drisk woman. She knew the situation and what the captain had wanted to know. It didn't matter if the laser batteries were functioning, if long range sensors were hit, or if the environmental plants were working right; all that mattered was that the hyperdrive engines would light off and that the sublight drives would keep Avenger moving until that point. So far, they were still holding onto that luck.

  "Five seconds," came the call. Elco looked forward at the main holo now, watching the Priman cruiser cutting low across Avenger's stern, looking for the chance to disable her for good.

  "Come on," Elco muttered, hoping that all the goodwill and efforts he'd put into getting his ship the things she always needed would pay off now when everyone's lives depended on it.

  "I'm detecting a hyperdrive field forming, Captain," Vol heard from a sensors station. It was unfathomable. Avenger had a hole speared straight through her; he'd seen the sensor image captures and had seen the stars though her as they'd crossed paths on the merge.

  "Torpedoes," he barked, realizing that the lasers were not causing enough damage to stop the enemy ship quickly enough.

  "Torpedoes away!" Vol heard.

  With a flicker of motion, Avenger was gone, vanished to the relative safety of titanic and once-impossible speeds.

  Vol had pulled in a breath to give another command; he let it out now, slowly, trying to calm himself for the sake of the Representative. He couldn't lose control in front of her.

  He turned to Ravine. "It appears they weren't as badly damaged as I'd believed."

  "That ship seems to have a knack for surviving, Captain," Ravine replied by way of consolation. "It's regrettable, but I think we will have the chance to finish the job. She can't possibly make very good speed to anywhere, can she?"

  Ravine was absolutely right! Vol chastised himself for being so willing so give up; he simply needed to figure out what Avenger's best options were and send some ships to those locations to meet them.

  He raced over to the master plot and ushered the crewman there away. He began calculating, estimating, looking at the Carada system and the obvious choices. There was always an end-run back to Confederation space. It wasn't likely, in his mind, for that ship and captain to give up so easily. With damaged engines it would be a weeks-long journey through open or occupied space anyway, something that Vol couldn't see as much of a possibility. Still, he'd alert some of the patrols along the way back through occupied Priman space.

  There was a direct route to the nearest Confed stronghold, only a few days travel from here. The Confederation had actually raided, captured, and fortified a relatively major Priman supply depot and had held it against two counterattacks. He'd been assured that it was part of the rebel Confeds that had seceded from the Confederation itself and that the situation would be resolved through the Confederation Governing Committee that appeared to be all but puppets of the Primans, but that was the business of other forces within his government to worry about.

  And then there was the long-shot, the oddity that just might pay off. His sources had revealed Avenger's itinerary on her diplomatic/spy mission, and the next stop was Faaria, one of the more important worlds in the Mining League. Coincidentally, Avenger's initial heading pointed her more towards Faaria than any other location he could dig up. But was that logical? Was there any point in continuing on with their mission, considering their damage and the fact that they had to realize their plans were compromised? Was it an act of desperation, or were they unconcerned that Captain Vol might guess where Avenger was headed?

  He thought about it for some time, until he realized his bridge crew was getting nervous. They were trying to look busy, but he realized they were waiting for him to do something.

  "Here are my orders," he said confidently as he made his way to the communications officer. "Have Task Forces Four, Fifteen, and Seventy-Five be on the lookout for Avenger if she tries to make it back to Confed space. Alert the Red Fleet that Avenger may try to join with the rebel Confeds occupying our depot in the Yularia system. Tell Tring and Elexa to make way to Faaria when they can and await orders from us."

  Then he turned and walked back to his chair, seated himself and made a show of getting comfortable. "Helm, set course for Faaria, max speed."

  Vol looked at Representative Ravine. "I'm going to need some more ships."

  Loren walked the corridors of Avenger, a man on a mission. It had been over ten hours since they'd jumped to hyperspace, and he was still tense; he expected a forced transition back to realspace at any second as Primans ambushed and destroyed his ship.

  Captain Elco had laid in
a smart course for their journey; it would take them on a loop down and around the Faaria system, swinging back in from a vector completely off course from the straight-line plot from Carada to Faaria in the hopes of dodging any Priman ships that might be trying to blockage the place. Space was big, strategists always liked to remind the common folk, and it would take dozens of ships to even begin to cut off a single planet. Loren felt good about their chances of getting to Faaria, at least. Since the planet was aligned with a large group of galactic-core-based systems, it was still considered outside the conflict raging through Loren's home. Confed as well as the Primans were noninvolved parties, and Loren as well as the captain both were willing to bet the Primans wouldn't risk attacking Avenger while in orbit of the planet. Once they left, that was another story, much like the Carada Monarchy, but they'd get to that when the time came.

  Loren stopped at the entrance to main engineering, a journey that took almost twice as long as it normally would have thanks to the gaping hole through the ship. Internal comms were spotty at best, so he'd come down to engineering to get the latest from Chief Fyr.

  He entered and stood outside the chief's office, who saw him and motioned that he'd be out in one minute. Loren turned in place and inspected the main engineering level. He felt the occasional rolling tremors that had been plaguing the ship since her jump to hyperspace. They'd improved noticeably in the last hour or so as the engineers had stabilized the hyper field, but to someone like him who'd spent so much time aboard there was no way to miss it.

  "XO," the chief said by way of greeting as he extended his hand to shake, "here for the latest?"

  Loren shook the man's hand, somehow put at ease by the man's handshake versus a salute or more regulated greeting. "Ready when you are."