Birthright: Battle for the Confederation- Reprisal Read online

  Loren spared a sideways glance to see her smile briefly. He returned it, then looked back to the main display, where the holographic representations of the entire fleet made their way around the space in the middle of C3’s cavernous volume. He reached out to a small panel and commanded a zoom in which caused Avenger and the Priman ship to fill the majority of the space around then, leaving just the close in escorts of the Priman ship visible as well.

  Suddenly, the flicker, a slight vibration under the deckplates that years aboard ship told him the hyperdrive engines were spooling up. He inadvertently looked down at the deck as so often did, and when he snapped his eyes back to the display, the Avenger was sitting low on the starboard aft quarter of the Priman command ship.

  He looked at Mastruk, and despite himself, yelled. “Fire!”

  Avenger winked back into normal space right where Elco was hoping they would, in a spot that minimized the number of weapons the target ship itself could bring to bear against her. The Priman’s escorts, on the other hand, were another matter.

  Elco had ordered full shield power to be sent aft towards the escort side of Avenger, leaving the hull side directly facing the Priman ship unshielded. It would result in damage, to be sure, but Avenger would take far more hits from the escorts than the command ship itself.

  Only a quick tweaking of Avenger’s course resulted in her bow being pointed directly at the command ship’s engines. Four torpedoes lanced out and barely had a chance to arm and lock onto the enemy before impacting the hull. The enemy ship’s shields caused early detonations, but one made it through to detonate on contact with the hull.

  Ten seconds later, another volley leapt towards the Priman ship. In the meantime, Avenger’s laser batteries kept up a steady stream of fire on the command ship. They weren’t even bothering to engage the escorts, just pound the command ship as much as possible. The torpedoes hit, this time all four passing through the weakened shields. Lieutenant Commander Mastruk has ordered the launch staggered, firing two torpedoes and then the others two seconds later. The second two penetrated a dozen bulkheads into the enemy ship’s engineering spaces before detonating.

  Avenger immediately executed a full power turn, the thrust reverser gates mounted flush with the hull by the engines spewing luminescent drive plasma at the ship swung her bow one hundred eighty degrees to port and nose down. There was another escape path that would have let them go sooner, but they needed their aft torpedo tubes facing the scarred hull of the Priman ship. Elco figured that they needed two more volleys to finish the job.

  In C3, Loren hung onto the railing next to Sarria Mastruk as Avenger reverberated from another series of punishing hits. He kept his gaze on a weapons status board, and feared taking his eyes off it lest the shaking and bucking ship make it hard for him to find and focus on the display again. Knowing what she was doing, Loren just yelled to Sarria.

  “Sarria, what’s our shield status?”

  “Shields?” she had to yell back over the cacophony of crewmembers’ voices the background noise of the ship being wrenched apart. “They failed ten seconds ago. Captain’s rolling the ship to try and spread out the damage.”

  “Wonderful.” Loren had no need to yell any orders- the crew had only one standing order at this point. Torpedo batteries would fire two more volleys before they’d jump to hyperspace, and all laser batteries would continue to hammer the wounds caused by torpedo hits.

  Finally, after what seemed like hours, Loren saw the aft tubes fire. He was counting the seconds down from ten until the second volley and their escape from this gateway to hell that Avenger was looking down. He saw the master status board of a large section directly under the C3 flicker from yellow to red, indicating severe damage. That’s when the barrage hit.

  The Priman escorts had been caught completely by surprise when Avenger jumped into their midst and fired on their flagship. Before they could coordinate their efforts, they came under concentrated from Admiral Illam’s Ninth Fleet in an attempt to buy Avenger some time. Everything happened so fast it was hard to organize themselves, but eventually they sorted things out.

  Several escorts made it their mission to attack Avenger as she rolled through their midst, disregarding the Confed ships firing on them so they could expend maximum firepower on the intruder. While the Primans didn’t use torpedoes like the Confederation, their laser technology was much more highly refined. Their long range heavy lasers packed a large percentage of the damage that a torpedo did, and a laser couldn’t be spoofed or run out of ammo. Dozens of heavy laser bolts converged on Avenger every second she was in their midst. Finally, the Confed ship’s shields began to fail, and Priman gunners began trying to mass their fire on the same spots simultaneously, Captain Elco’s order to roll the ship being the only thing that managed to keep the massed fire from rapidly destroying the vessel. The Primans only had thirty seconds or so before they’d lose their chance to punish the enemy.

  Just as Loren began to think they’d cheated their way out of painful retribution from the Primans, a concentrated, heavy barrage from several different Priman ships tool their toll on the ship. Using a starboard laser battery as a targeting point, the Primans poured all their fire onto that spot, destroying the turret and continuing on. Through the armored hull, internal bulkheads, and interior desks. The fire chewed its way into Avenger, tearing apart decks, airtight blast doors, power nodes, crewmembers, and anything else that was in the way. Fires raged down corridors, power packs and generators exploded in showers of sparks and color, and unfortunate crew died a variety of ghastly ways. Some were incinerated, others suffocated, some were torn apart by shrapnel or explosive forces, some were simply sucked out into space through the ever-growing gash in Avenger’s starboard dorsal side.

  Loren heard the explosion coming a split second before he saw the results. He heard a deep rumble, then cracking noises among the sound of what he imagined the results would be if someone dropped tons of scrap metal on a hangar deck.

  Then the deck on the starboard side of C3 exploded upwards and ripped through half of the chamber. The exterior bulkhead contained the explosion, but this meant the energy had to roil around C3 before it would dissipate.

  Loren turned to tackle Mastruk to the ground, but she was a half step ahead of him and had already begun to dive for cover. He landed next to her and mimicked her gesture by putting his hands over his head.

  There was too much going on for him to take note of the fact that Avenger, at long last, made her microjump into the outer reaches of the Delos System.

  Loren began to get up, dazed from the concussion and a bit disoriented by the red emergency lighting and all the debris swirling in the air. Crouched on all fours, he looked around and decided it was safe to get up. Mastruk followed suit, taking the hand Loren offered to help her up.

  A quick study of the few functioning status boards on the port side of C3 told the story- several internal explosions had built on each other a few decks below, and the resulting explosions and fires had continued unchecked until the energy finally expended itself as it reached C3. A disturbing portion of the center of Avenger was red or black, and Loren didn’t want to stop and think about the details of what that could mean. Better to deal with what he had influence over.

  He looked at his second in command. “Let’s get down there,” he said, motioning with his chin to the pit of C3 that sat in a shambles.

  Lieutenant Commander Mastruk grabbed his upper arm with a serious look on her face. “You should get to sickbay.” She pointed to his upper leg, where some shrapnel had embedded itself and his uniform showed a slowly growing bloodstain.

  Loren shook his head. “It’s not bad. Besides, you’re injured too.” He tapped the left side of his head, indicating she should check her own head in that spot. She did so, and her hand came back with blood on her fingers.

  “It’s not bad,” she replied, mimicking him. He sighed, then got closer to examine her scalp. He tried to draw her hair apart without pu
tting too much pressure on the wound, and to her credit she didn’t so much as wince.

  “It’s not bad, am I right?” she asked.

  “Still…”

  “Head wounds always look worse than they are. Besides, I’m not going to sickbay unless you do. Sir.”

  Her attitude made Loren grin just a bit, despite the dire situation around him.

  “Okay,” Loren responded, “whoever passes out first lets the other one carry them to sickbay.”

  “Deal.”

  With that, Loren limped down from the raised platform they were on, Mastruk close behind.

  On Callidor, Velk knew something had gone wrong. Suddenly, the vast amount of information about that battle, something they all took for granted, was cut drastically. Order vectors on the holo display, ship status, and several complete areas disappeared, signifying that they were no longer getting updated information.

  There was only one conclusion- Velk had seen the suicidal jump from the Confederation Crusader vessel, saw the repeated launches of torpedoes, and concluded that his command ship, and thus Captain Visat, were no more, or at the least no longer an effective unit.

  “Representatives,” Velk began in a somber tone. “While the elimination of our command ship does not signify the end of our ability to fight, I fear it is an omen we should heed.” Some of the gathered representatives and advisors stirred, unwilling to speak up. Instinct told them to shower the Commander with reasons why his vast insight and ability would allow them to still succeed, but his tone stated that he didn’t want any input.

  “Are our forces ready for a withdrawl?” was all Velk asked. “Find Terir and put him on the comm line.”

  Representative Terir was out of his element. The destroyer he was on had, considering the importance of their passenger, stayed on lifeguard duty at the rear of the engagement. Their only scare came when a pair of Intruders arced in their general direction after completing a run on a larger ship, but scanners showed they carried no torpedoes and didn’t seem inclined to waste time engaging a mere destroyer.

  “Representative Terir,” said the captain from a half dozen steps away. “There is a communication from the Commander for you.”

  Terir nodded, then sat back down at his terminal and activated the privacy fields. Commander Velk’s powerful image appeared before him, but after only a second Terir could tell something was wrong.

  “Representative Terir.” Velk began without preamble. “You have no doubt noticed a very daring Confed attack on our command ship. Captain Visat and his ship are either destroyed or incapacitated, and I believe the time has come to withdraw our forces. Are all our troops off Delos?”

  Terir was only expected to do a few things while onboard, and having this information for the Commander was one of them. “Yes, Commander. The last shuttle left ten minutes ago.”

  “Excellent. I believe we have accomplished our strategic goals with the Delos campaign, if not the tactical one of destroying their fleet. Is the surprise for their naval headquarters ready?”

  “Yes, Commander. The mines are placed and they have already begun processing some of the smaller asteroids.”

  “That will have to do. We don’t need to lose any more ships; I believe our objectives are met. You may give the order to withdraw.”

  Terir sat there for a second, not feeling honored at all with the responsibility of delivering an order for his people to shrink from a battle. Velk may have found it acceptable that the greatest accomplishment of this battle was placing a supposedly sympathetic leader back within Confed, but Terir thought the Primans deserved more. They should have taken down more Confederation ships, bombarded the planet, detailed ships specifically to attack their navy’s home base. As it stood, it looked like the Primans were turning tail after letting the Confederation win back their home system. He would never have let a battle end that way. And when his time came to advise Representative Tash, he would see to it that he honored that promise.

  All through the Delos system, Priman capital ships began to disengage. Without the expected coordination of their command ship, their maneuvers were less precise, but Fleet Admiral Dant, aboard the Galaxy, knew that wouldn’t last. The Primans were excellent fighters, and they would soon enough recover and adapt to not having a strongly centralized control system. Still, it appeared that the destruction of their command ship was enough to persuade their commanders that their destructive efforts would be better spent elsewhere.

  She watched the oversized holo display of the battle before her in her command center as more Priman ships switched from offense to a fighting retreat.

  An Ensign at a communications station beckoned for her attention, and she walked over.

  “Admiral, Captain Elco of the Avenger is on the comm waiting to speak with you.”

  “Good, I asked him to contact us as soon as he was safely away. Put him on this terminal.” Dant indicated a smaller monitor off to her left that was currently not displaying anything. Elco’s image soon appeared.

  “Captain Elco, congratulations. You seem to have turned the entire battle for the Confederation Navy.”

  Elco showed a grim smile, looking all the more ghastly in the dim red emergency illumination of the bridge. The shadows cast across his face added ten years to his appearance. After a battle like today, that was probably not far from the truth.

  “The Primans are getting away, Admiral,” he said, his words punctuated by a small but loud crackle from an electrical feedback at a bridge terminal which only underscored the still-hanging smoke in the air.

  “I think we might have to let them go, Captain. The fleet is a little worse for wear right now. Though I admire your ambition, I think we’ll have to give them a pass.”

  “Admiral,” another crewmember stated from a few steps away. He was a runner sent from the officers in charge of coordination with Confed Navy HQ. The Drisk Lieutenant stood patiently, message screen in hand.

  “Captain, I have some other matters that require my attention. Again, congratulations. Let me know personally if there’s anything your ship needs.”

  Fleet Admiral Dant touched a spot on the screen and ended the message, then turned to the Lieutenant.

  The man didn’t waste time, as he knew from his time onboard the Galaxy that the Admiral would rather you just spit it out than waste precious time waiting for her to ask him to speak.

  “It’s Confed HQ, Admiral. They are reporting a problem.”

  Admiral Dant and her advisors in C3 were used to receiving bad news, but this trumped most of the recent deliveries. She watched as a representation of Confed HQ filled a secondary holo field, including the asteroid field and the first few Confed ships near the entrance. The problem was, red dots were showing up by the hundreds, all over and through the field.

  “So you’re telling me that the Primans have mined the asteroid field,” the Admiral stated to Captain Pesio, the man in charge of the military defenses of HQ. He nodded, then continued.

  “That’s not all, Admiral. We sent out some tugs and a couple crews to capture or destroy a number of the mines. We couldn’t get close enough to capture one or run a detailed scan, but here’s what we know so far. They scan any objects that get close enough- we’re assuming they’re looking for a suitable size or perhaps energy signature, because our work crews didn’t set any of them off. They are armed with some sort of warhead, but we detect no separate launch vehicle, so we assume the mine is self contained and the whole vehicle will attack the target. We thought it was too big for that sort of mission, but more on that in a second. They’re armed with a small repeating laser, and they fired on our crews when they approached the mines. Also, when a crew did manage to get close enough to try opening a panel, the mine self-destructed.

  “Then we discovered the new ones.” The Captain touched a button and new footage appeared in the holo display, a live feed this time. It was of a mine, but it had touched down on the surface of an asteroid and was firing a sustained laser of some
sort into the surface. The mine was cylindrical, with the warhead on one end and some sort of instrument package on the other. Above and below the cylinder were sensor and engine components. Admiral Dant’s first thought was to agree that the warhead looked puny compared to the overall size of the mine, piquing her curiosity about what the thing was really designed to do. Then she saw; from the large end of the cylinder opposite the warhead, a swarm of small objects appeared and headed down to the cloud of debris blasted off the asteroid. The camera zoomed in further.

  “The mines are building more of themselves, she said flatly.”

  “That’s what we’ve concluded, Admiral,” Pesio replied.

  On screen, the swarm of objects resolved themselves into small machines, which processed the ore and began building another mine body right before their eyes.

  “We have similar technology, but how can they synthesize fuel and every component out there?” Dant asked nobody in particular.

  “We wondered that, and here’s the answer,” and Pesio touched another button, causing the feed to change to another mine which had apparently completed construction of at least one doppelganger. As the small army of construction machines finished their work, they extracted several components off the original mine body and integrated them into the clone.

  “Best guess is they’ve stockpiled components that they don’t think they could manufacture in space- warhead material, some fuel, maybe some of the more exotic electronics. Then they build a mine with raw materials they know will be here, slap on the rest of the parts, and they have a renewable supply of mines.

  “It’s brilliant, in a horrible sort of way,” Pesio continued. “Counting components on the original mines, we figure they can probably have each original mine produce ten to fifteen additional ones. So they only need to seed the target zone, and the mines multiply on their own while the Primans can clear the area.”