Democracy's Right

Chapter Thirty

“So I have sent to Camelot for additional support,” Angelika concluded. The conference had only been going on for ten minutes and she was already sick of it. Imperial Navy regulations insisted on all squadron commanders holding a conference with their subordinates regularly, yet she much preferred social gatherings on her flagship. At least they could have shared a meal as well as a long chat. “I’m sure that Admiral Percival will see the justice of our cause.”

There were some hastily-hidden smiles. No one seriously expected Admiral Percival to be motivated by anything resembling justice. It was more likely that he would consider how each possible decision would affect his own career before making up his mind. Angelika would have condemned that, but then… every Imperial Navy officer would probably make the same calculation. She probably would too, if she ever reached such rarefied heights. It was such a long way to fall.

“Until then, we will continue to support the troops on the ground and patrol the asteroids, hoping to locate their hidden bases,” she said. “I think that…”

She looked up in alarm as the GQ alert echoed though her ship. “All hands to battle stations,” her XO said. “Set condition one throughout the ship. Captain to the bridge; I say again, Captain to the bridge.”

Angelika scowled. She had chosen to hold the conference in her cabin as it allowed her to chance to be more relaxed and informal. She should have known better, she told herself as she broke the link and grabbed for her jacket, pulling it on and following it with the white hat that signified supreme command. The wags in the fleet called it the Worry Hat. The bastards, in her opinion, were quite right. She checked her appearance quickly and walked swiftly — not running, the ship’s commander could not be seen running — onto the bridge.

“I have the bridge,” she said, as the hatch hissed closed behind her. No one saluted or stood to attention, something that was not permitted during battle stations. “XO; report.”

“We have multiple hostile starships flickering into the system,” her XO reported. Angelika took the command chair and studied the main display. The glowing red icons representing nine superdreadnaughts — and a handful of supporting ships — were positioned in front of her. For a moment, she wondered if Brent-Cochrane had been permitted to return to Jackson’s Folly, but the IFF signals didn’t match. She was looking at the rebel superdreadnaughts. “I confirm nine superdreadnaughts, nineteen cruisers of varying design and four ships of unidentified purpose.”

Angelika pulled the data up on her personal terminal and frowned. The rebel superdreadnaughts were the ones Commander Walker had successfully hijacked, but the battle computers couldn’t put a name to the other ships. That suggested that they were from the Rim or the Beyond, where the Imperial Navy had lost quite a few smaller ships to mutiny — or perhaps they had simply been sold off by corrupt Imperial Navy contractors. She had urged Admiral Percival to hold a full investigation into the contractors within the system, but nothing had come of it, probably because the contractors were closely linked to the Roosevelt Family and it would only cause embarrassment. Or, perhaps, the Admiral himself was stealing the ships and selling them off. The irony made her smile. Admiral Percival was actually less corrupt than some of the other officers nearer the Core Worlds.

She shook her head. Whatever the origin of the smaller ships, the superdreadnaughts alone were more than powerful enough to destroy her command, which meant… standing still and waiting to be hit probably wasn’t a good idea.

“General signal to all ships,” she ordered. Her tone, she hoped, would discourage anyone from questioning her too closely. “I want every warship in orbit to form up around the flag. The monitors are to be dispatched at once to the waypoint” — her hands danced across her terminal, designating a set of coordinates — “I have selected, where they are to wait for further orders. If I do not issue orders within the week, they are to make their way back to Camelot and report to Admiral Percival.”

She saw another icon blinking on her display — General Branford wanted to talk to her — and ignored it. There was nothing she could do for him and his men now. The simplest tactic would be to power up the flicker drive and jump out, but it went against the grain to leave without taking a bite out of the enemy first. Of course, the enemy had bigger weapons and might take a much bigger bite out of her… she pushed that thought aside and waited for her orders to spread through the command network. There was too much to be done.

And to think I was bored and stressed, she thought, mockingly.

“Communications; transmit directly to the Petunia and the Dudley,” she ordered. “They are to separate from their squadrons and fly directly to Camelot, where they are to report to Admiral Percival and recommend that he dispatches a superdreadnaught squadron to reclaim this system.” She scowled. Her enemies would probably accuse her of defeatism, but then her enemies weren’t looking at nine superdreadnaughts with blood in their eyes. “Inform me when they have flickered out.”

The enemy superdreadnaughts were still bearing down on her with ponderous inevitability, but her small fleet was already forming up around the Violence. She called up the tactical display and ran through several different options. There was no way they could actually hope to win — which, in some ways, simplified the tactical situation enormously — but perhaps they could bluff. And who knew; maybe the horse would learn to sing.

“The fleet is to follow the designated course,” she ordered, as the command datanet tightened up. Her hands danced over the panel, drawing out a course that would allow them to fly away from the planet in normal space, while also allowing her to take a few long-range shots at the incoming ships. It was lucky, she told herself, that she’d insisted on deploying and maintaining the external racks, even though her crew had grumbled endlessly about it. “Any starships within the outer system — most particularly Fabricator — are to head out of the system and rendezvous at the first waypoint.”

She scowled. There was no way to mask her actions as anything other than a retreat. The freighters and the manufacturing ship would require time to power up their flicker drives, far longer than a warship or even commercial fast transport. If she held out long enough before flickering out, she might manage to keep the rebels concentrated on her, rather than hunting down targets that couldn’t run. And who knew — perhaps there was a superdreadnaught squadron within range that could come to her rescue.

The two fleets and their projected courses appeared in front of her. If she was right — if the enemy commander didn’t have a plan of his own — they would have around thirty minutes of long-range missile fire before she had to flicker out, perhaps less. It wasn’t enough, but it would have to do.

“Signal to General Branford,” she ordered. “My intentions are to fight a running battle before leaving the system. You are urged to safeguard your positions and hold out. The Navy will be back.”

Colin watched the enemy fleet’s deployments with something akin to awe. If Percival had been so badly outmatched, he would have set a new speed record fleeing the system, without bothering to consider the multiple ways he could delay and even harm the advancing rebel juggernaut. The enemy commander present in the system, however, was brave and shrewd enough to realise that if they held out, they might successfully damage his fleet before they left the system.

“Impressive,” he mused. The enemy fleet’s monitors were already rising out of the planet’s gravity shadow. If he’d risked jumping in closer, he might have been able to intercept them, but then… that risked scattering his fleet. Besides, monitors were the one class of starship that Percival wasn’t actually short of; destroying five or six of them wouldn’t crimp him for long. “And it puts the ball in my hands.”

He tossed different ideas around in his head. If the monitors had remained in orbit, he would have ignored the remaining Imperial Navy starships and gone for them, but instead there was no point in charging at the planet. It wasn’t going anywhere. The enemy commander was tempting him with a chance to destroy nearly sixty starships, or perhaps force them to surrender and add them to his fleet. And it wasn’t a opportunity he could refuse, not only for the chance to weaken Percival, but also for the possibility of removing a dangerously-smart enemy commander from the playing field. The commander, whoever he or she was, had pulled him into a neat little trap.

“Alter course to intercept,” he ordered. The battlecruisers and other smaller ships that made up the Imperial Navy’s occupation squadron had one advantage over his ships; they could simply outrun his ships, even in normal space. The sublight drive fields that provided propulsion might have the same top speed for all craft, but the superdreadnaughts, with their far greater mass, had a far lower rate of acceleration. The enemy missiles would have a far shorter flight time than his own missiles — his missiles would be chasing an enemy, while his ships would be flying towards the enemy missiles — which gave them another advantage. But then, he told himself, if it became evident that they meant to keep the range open, he would simply break off the chase. “Prepare to open fire.”

He keyed his switch. “Commodore Ismoilzoda, you are cleared to break off and perform your own mission,” he added. “Good luck.”

“They took the bait, Captain,” the helmsman said. “They’re coming after us.”

Angelika smiled, dryly. The helmsman was young, the youngest person on the bridge. He wasn’t old enough to realise that nine superdreadnaughts in hot pursuit wasn’t actually a good thing… well, it was at the moment, but it wouldn’t remain that way. Given time, the range would stabilise and then the superdreadnaught’s superior firepower would begin to tell. And then her ships would have to flicker out or die.

“Good,” she said, concealing her own thoughts. Every Imperial Navy officer had to come to terms with his or her own mortality, yet they were also used to carrying the biggest stick in the known universe. A battlecruiser should have been secure against anything pirates or rebels could throw at it, but instead Violence felt fragile with nine superdreadnaughts bearing down on her. Angelika wondered, absently, if she had remembered to update her will. It seemed so silly to worry about mundane things when the enemy ships were about to attack.

She looked up at the tactical display. Unless the rebels had somehow developed long-range missiles with additional speed, their firing range would be identical to hers, which meant that when the red circle marking powered missile range touched the enemy ships, they could open fire on her. Or would they wait and allow the range to fall a little more? What was the enemy commander thinking?

“Bring up the point defence and prepare to engage enemy missiles,” Angelika said, calmly. There was no point in panic, even though the red circle was sliding ever closer to the enemy ships. “Lock weapons on the lead superdreadnaught and prepare to engage.”

“Weapons locked on target, Captain,” the tactical officer said. Angelika could hear the quaver in his voice, but he was carrying out his duty. “We are ready to engage.”

“Place the damage control parties on full alert,” Angelika added. Her XO nodded. There was no way that the squadron was going to escape without damage. “And prepare…”

The red circle slowly touched the icons representing the enemy ships.

“Fire,” she ordered. “Full spread!”

“The enemy ships have opened fire,” the tactical officer reported. Colin nodded. The enemy ships had fully-loaded external racks and they had launched nearly a thousand missiles towards his ships. They seemed to be focusing in on one target, the General Grant. The commander of the lead superdreadnaught had requested the position as a reward for excellent performance on the gunnery drills. Part of Colin’s mind wondered if he was so pleased with his performance now. “I am breaking down the formation now…”

“Activate our point defence datanet and prepare to engage,” Colin ordered. The tactical system had been constantly updating itself in preparation for the engagement. Now, with the threat developing in front of them, they could at last take action. “Prepare to fire.”

He was tempted to fire back at once, but that would have merely exposed his missiles to a longer flight time than strictly necessary. He watched the timer, noting that it would take the enemy missiles nearly four minutes to reach his ships, adding a curious sense of slow motion to the combat. At three minutes, he would open fire, avoiding the danger of a lucky hit wrecking one or all of his external racks. Nuclear warheads didn’t detonate if they were hit, unlike some other warheads, but it would still pose a serious risk.

The timer ticked relentlessly down as the swarm of enemy missiles approached. Despite his calm appearance, Colin was nervous, for it was their first engagement against a genuinely prepared foe. The Annual Fleet had barely had seconds to fire back. The penal world had never fired and surrendered at once. The defenders of Piccadilly had been taken by surprise. Here… the enemy had as long as they could possibly need to prepare their weapons. The effects were right in front of him. The enemy missiles seemed to be one great harmonious mass. Sorting out the real missiles from the decoys would take time… time they didn’t have.

“Tactical,” he said, as the timer ticked down to zero. “You may fire at will.”

The superdreadnaught lurched as it unloaded its first massive salvo, leaving Colin to sit back in his command chair and watch as the enemy missiles flew into a maelstrom of fire. The problem with external racks — and with the arsenal ship concept — was that they were only one-shot weapons. An external rack blocked the inner missile tubes, meaning that it had to be used and destroyed before the enemy targeted the superdreadnaught, perhaps blocking the ship’s missile tubes and rendering it partly defenceless. It gave the ships a hell of an opening salvo, but once they were fired, the superdreadnaught’s throw weight fell sharply.

General Grant shuddered badly as several missiles slammed home, but the point defence network held true, preventing most of the missiles from getting through. The superdreadnaught suffered minor damage. Colin checked with the ship’s captain and was relieved to discover that damage control teams were already on the way. One advantage the Rim-dweller had over most of the Imperial Navy crewmen was that they knew more about the technology than merely the basics, or how to replace it. Given time, the Rim would become a far stronger threat than the Empire had ever dared fear.

He settled back in his chair and watched as the superdreadnaughts launched their second salvo towards the retreating starships.

“All hands, brace for impact; I say again, all hands…”

Violence rocked sharply as two missiles crashed home against her rear shields, powerful energies breaking through the shields to lick and tear at the starship’s hull. Her point defence weapons rotated and added their own fire to the datanet trying to cover the retreating fleet, but the sheer volume of fire the superdreadnaughts could throw was breaking the network down by main force. Angelika smiled, darkly, as her ship shook again. The rebels were cheating.

“Captain, Fantastic and Glorious Godley have been destroyed,” the coordination officer reported, through a coughing fit. The air on the bridge was starting to smoke as power surges ran through the ship, caused by overloading shield generators. “Vigilante has lost main drives and is stranded. The rebels will take her intact.”

“Not without a working drive,” Angelika snapped. The battlecruiser shook again, new red lights flaring up on the display. They had been exchanging fire for just over ten minutes and her fleet was being battered to pieces. Two of the smaller rebel cruisers had been destroyed and one of the superdreadnaughts was limping, suggesting that she had knocked out one of its drive nodes, but it was a poor exchange rate. It was far more likely that the rebels would simply destroy the crippled battlecruiser, unless they could find a tug to savage her and transport her back to their base. “Refocus the defence network and…”

Her ship rocked, violently. “Rear shields are down, Captain,” the tactical officer warned. Angelika swore under her breath. Without the rear shields, the enemy missiles could literally shoot through the hole and slam into the hull. The cadets at the Academy had a rude term for that, but somehow it seemed less funny now. “Our rear point defence array is offline and…”

“Bring up the flicker drive,” Angelika ordered. She’d risked overstressing the drive, knowing that when they needed to leave, they wouldn’t have time to power up the drive. “All ships are to jump out to the first waypoint on my command…”

She took one last look at the enemy superdreadnaughts, making their ponderous advance, and scowled. She hated to lose, even against vastly superior firepower. “Jump us out,” she ordered. “Now!”

The flicker drive engaged and they vanished from the Jackson’s Folly system.

“The enemy ships have jumped out,” the tactical officer reported. “They’re gone.”

Colin nodded. He wasn’t too surprised. “Secure from General Quarters,” he ordered. The damage report scrolled up in front of him. Apart from General Grant, which had lost two drive nodes, none of the superdreadnaughts were badly damaged. “Take us back to the planet at maximum speed.”

“Aye, sir,” the tactical officer said.