Into the Breach (Empire Rising Book 15), page 18
Matching actions to words, Georgia began to twist and weave her Hellcat. By now, she was able to carry out random jinks and twitches without having to think about it. Without any effort, she summoned the trance-like state that had come to her in her previous engagements. In front of her, the scene quickly turned to one of fire and explosions. Minutes ago, the first stage of the mark VII missiles had disengaged and released three smaller anti-matter missiles. Zooming in towards their targets, thousands of them were being blown apart by Flex-aor fire. There were so many detonations that the ships of Sierra Three were blocked from view. Instead, it seemed like her Hellcat was chasing a wall of fire.
Suddenly, the wall disappeared. In its place, large blue, rapidly expanding balls of anti-matter appeared. In the space of two seconds, at least thirty anti-matter detonations appeared in the midst of the Flex-aor fleet. Before Georgia had time to even think about assessing what damage had been done, Flex-aor point defensive laser beams started to zip past her fighter. It ratcheted up in intensity so quickly that for every second that went by, Georgia’s shock that she was still alive grew. In her peripheral vision she was conscious of larger explosions to her left and right. Each one meant one of her pilots was likely dead. Yet, Georgia didn’t even feel a flicker of guilt. Her focus was entirely on the Flex-aor capital ship that had been assigned as her primary target. She had to take it out; if she didn’t, the fleet would be in serious trouble.
As Allied fighters were destroyed, the fire focused on Georgia’s Hellcat kept intensifying. Sweat began to run down her forehead and back. At the start of the engagement, there had been enough Flex-aor warships for one warship to focus its entire point defensive fire on her Hellcat. That number had to have risen to two or even three. A beep from her fighter surprised her. She was so focused it took her a second to register what it meant. She had just entered range with her missiles! At once, she thumbed her main trigger. Two missiles raced away from her Hellcat.
Ordinarily, Georgia would pull her fighter up and away from the enemy ships as they focused their fire on her missiles. This time, she did no such thing. Every pilot in Jeffers’ attack wing knew the stakes. There would be no pulling back. Instead, she lowered her finger to her second trigger and began to fire hundreds of small plasma bolts. Focusing on the heavy cruiser that was her target, she raked it up and down with bolts even as she continued her evasive maneuvers. The bolts weren’t able to penetrate the warship’s armor. Yet, they did destroy sensitive antenna and point defensive weapon emplacements. Georgia didn’t care what she hit, as long as it distracted the heavy cruiser’s defensive gunners.
The sudden blaring of her shield made Georgia jump. Even so, her finger never came off her trigger. A second later, her shield flared again. The warning sound told her it was gone. Still, she didn’t let up. Only at the last second, just before her two missiles both struck home, did she pull up and away from the heavy cruiser. As she did, her canopy was filled with a blue haze as both missiles detonated. For a moment, Georgia feared the anti-matter would stretch out to reach her. But then, she zipped past the heavy cruiser and was gone.
Her ordeal wasn’t over yet; however; defensive fire continued to chase after her. The surviving Flex-aor warships, no doubt irate at the destruction she had brought, were trying to take her out. With no target to focus on and nothing but dark space in front of her, Georgia gave herself up entirely to her evasive maneuvers. She lost all track of time as she twisted and wove with all of her skill. When the defensive fire ceased, she didn’t realize, for nearly twenty seconds. With a start, she looked around to see no energy beams were zipping past her. Instead, she saw Imperial and Varanni Alliance fighters. So few, she thought to herself even as she was amazed she had made it. “Starling squadron, check in,” she requested, afraid of the silence that was about to greet her.”
“Starling Two here, Squadron Leader,” one voice answered.
“Starling seven here as well,” another said.
“Eleven here too, though I took a laser to my starboard wing, I’ve lost a third of my maneuvering thrusters.”
Georgia waited, willing more voices to speak up. The silence lengthened. Refusing to accept it, Georgia repeated her request. “Starlings, report in.” No one else spoke. The continuing silence made Georgia’s heart grew cold. In anger, she looked at her sensor display. Between the first salvo of ships from the Allied Fleet and her fighter attack, it looked like the Flex-aor had lost ninety ships, almost a quarter of their force. But at what price? Georgia asked herself. Another one of her displays told her there weren’t even a hundred fighters left of Jeffers’ attack wing. Even his fighter was missing.
“Listen up, pilots,” a voice Georgia was only partly familiar with said over the attack wing COM channel. “I think I’m the senior Squadron Leader left. Let’s alter course for the rendezvous coordinates. This has been a bloody day, but our part is done. Hold yourselves together, and we will share a drink for our fallen comrades once the fleet gets out of here.”
Georgia’s finger moved towards activating her COM unit to speak to her pilots. She knew they needed comfort as she did. Yet, no words came to her. Their losses had been devastating. Not just their losses, she told herself. Eight of her pilots were dead. She could picture every one of their faces. Your losses, Georgia told herself as tears began to run down her cheeks. She had been responsible for training them. She was the reason so few had survived.
*
Emilie wanted to shout and pump her fists. Only the fact that so many fighters had been lost kept her from doing so. Somehow, miraculously, Georgia’s fighter had survived the attack. Almost as significant, more than ninety of the Flex-aor warships from Sierra Three had been wiped out. The crucial number had been eighty-two. All the simulations Roche and her staff officers had ran suggested they needed to take out eighty-two for her fleet to be able to escape. Wing Commander Jeffers’ fighters had done it! But at such a cost, Emilie thought as she watched the few remaining fighters turn towards the rendezvous point.
For a moment, her mind went to Georgia. She could picture exactly how her cousin was feeling. In the Karacknid War, Emilie had lost her first command and nearly half her crew. The shame and guilt had nearly overwhelmed her. It had taken months for her to get over it. I will have to speak to her if we get out of this, Emilie promised herself. No, when we get out, she added sternly.
With an effort, Emilie forced her eyes away from Georgia’s fighter and refocused on Sierra Three. She had four more missile salvos closing with the Flex-aor fleet, and would be able to fire two more before her ships entered energy weapon range. The Flex-aor had fired two of their own, and would be able to fire two more as well. More concerning were Sierra Two and Five. Sierra Two would get to fire two salvos at Emilie’s ships and Sierra Five one before the Allied fleet reached the system’s mass shadow. It will be our turn to bleed soon, she thought as she watched the closest enemy missile salvo. The missiles in it broke apart, releasing between six and ten smaller missiles. Suddenly, a far larger swarm of enemy ordnance was homing in on Matilda.
Before the Allied Fleet opened up with their point defenses, they got to watch their second salvo of mark VII’s crash into Sierra Three. Forty-five ships were destroyed or crippled by the anti-matter missiles that reached their targets.
“Lancer corvettes are moving to engage,” Lieutenant Cao reported.
Trusting her staff officers and the Captains of all her ships, Emilie watched as the defense of her fleet began in earnest. First, the Lancer corvettes began to engage the incoming missiles. Taking up a position far in advance of her main formation, they destroyed hundreds of them and forced the rest to carryout evasive maneuvers, breaking up their formation.
Next, thousands of long-range AM missiles raced away from the Allied fleet. Many of them scored hits. Area effect weapons then filled space with flack explosions and balls of electricity. Finally, the defense plasma and laser cannons, and short-range AM missiles targeted individual Flex-aor missiles. Though thousands were destroyed, Emilie could see they weren’t disappearing quickly enough. She winced as thermonuclear detonations started to erupt within her fleet. Shields flared on the holo display as proximity hits bathed Allied ships in nuclear energy. Most survived the deadly energy, not all did.
“Multiple ships not responding,” Roche reported. “Dancer, Requiem, and Constantinople are gone. At least four other ships appeared to have suffered serious damage.”
“Launch rescue shuttles, abandon any ships that cannot keep in formation,” Emilie ordered. She could afford no sentimentality. Any ships that couldn’t keep up with Matilda had to be left behind. The Allied fleet could not slow down.
Over the next thirty minutes, Emilie could do nothing but rearrange the holes in her fleet’s formation every time a Flex-aor salvo struck home. Forty-six ships were destroyed or abandoned. In return, her salvos took out two hundred and sixty Flex-aor ships from Sierra Three. Jeffers’ fighter strike had weakened the point defensive capabilities of Sierra Three enough that each of Emilie’s salvos wreaked havoc.
Even so, Emilie discovered her fingers nervously tapping on her command chair after the last Flex-aor salvo was dealt with. With her ship still charging straight towards Sierra Three, they were about to enter energy weapon range. Let’s hope we have the technical advantage, she told herself. She would have loved to have had some Kalassai city ships with her. Their massive energy weapons would have long since been able to reach out and take out Flex-aor targets. Since first encountering them, the Imperial Navy had been trying to replicate the technology, yet it required levels of power that not even an Imperial Dreadnought could produce. That being said, the Navy’s antiship energy weapons had improved significantly over the last twenty years. “Fire!” Emilie ordered as soon as her ships entered range.
Immediately, hundreds of plasma bolts, laser beams and mass driver rounds were unleashed on the Flex-aor ships. Emilie’s whole body tightened as she expected Flex-aor return fire to strike at any second. Yet, none came. At least, her volley struck home first. Travelling at the speed of light, the laser beams were the first to hit their targets. Tens of Flex-aor ships simply disintegrated from the fire. The plasma bolts arrived a fraction of a second later, adding to the carnage, and then the mass driver rounds detonated just before reaching the Flex-aor fleet. They filled space with thousands of tungsten shards that, like shotgun pellets, ripped through what was left of the enemy warships.
For a brief second, Emilie thought her ships had completely destroyed Sierra Three, but then, Matilda’s sensors were able to peer through the explosions. At least twenty ships were still accelerating. The sudden flaring of shields and explosions amidst the Allied Fleet told her they had fired their own laser cannons. Only two ships were completely blown up, yet fifteen started to fall out of formation within seconds.
Emilie cursed. They’d all have to be abandoned. “All weapon systems can fire when ready,” she ordered. It took thirty seconds for her warship’s capacitors to recharge. As soon as they did, more beams, bolts and mass driver rounds smashed into the surviving Flex-aor. No ships made it through the second volley. Cheers went up around Matilda’s bridge. The path was now clear to the system’s mass shadow and the shift passage that would get them to safety.
Emilie didn’t join in. She had already turned her attention to Sierra Two and Five. Soon, they would get in range to fire their missiles. “We have to weather Sierra Two and Five’s attacks and then we can celebrate,” she said to her officers. “Stay focused. Prepare to engage their missiles when they come in.”
For the next half an hour, Emilie busied herself with evacuating the damaged ships and reassigning the rescued crews throughout the rest of her fleet. Then, Flex-aor missiles tried to ravage her fleet once again. The first salvo that came in from Sierra Two didn’t cause too much damage, just ten ships were lost or crippled. But, Sierra Two and Five were able to coordinate their final salvo, not perfectly, but enough that Emilie’s ships would have to engage both sets of missiles almost at the same time. The result was unavoidable. Many more missiles reached attack range. Even Matilda’s navigation officer had to throw the dreadnought into a series of evasive maneuvers as two missiles homed in on Emilie’s flagship. One was thrown off, yet the second managed to detonate just in front of Matilda. Everyone on the bridge was thrown around in their command chairs as Matilda’s shield absorbed much of the destructive energy and then failed. Alarms began to boom warnings of damage.
“We’re alright,” Matilda’s First Lieutenant called out. “Just minor damage reports coming in from the nose section. We’ve lost some armor and some point defense nodes. Nothing else.”
Relieved, Emilie’s attention immediately turned to the rest of the fleet. She swallowed hard as she saw many other ships had not been so fortunate. At least fifty were missing from her fleet. Another twenty-six were falling out of formation. Her eyes darted to the system’s mass shadow. They were just eight minutes away from it. Then, she turned back to the Flex-aor fleets, another missile salvo was already on its way and would reach her ships in fifteen minutes. “Scramble every rescue shuttle we have. Tell our frigates to decelerate and stay with our damaged ships. I want every single person taken off before we jump out.”
Amazingly, in no small part thanks to the herculean efforts of Emilie’s command staff as they coordinated evacuations, the crew of every crippled ship was reached. Emilie refused to jump out until the last shuttle landed on the last freighter. The Flex-aor missiles got to within thirty seconds of being able to detonate when Emilie finally gave the order to jump.
In the blink of an eye, her fleet disappeared from the Z-16 system. As soon as they were in shift space, Emilie collapsed back into her command chair. Her body ached from the tension. She closed her eyes for a second as she thought of all the ships that had been lost. She had entered the system with five hundred, and was now leaving with three hundred and eighty-six. Yes, she had destroyed four hundred Flex-aor ships, yet it didn’t make her feel any better.
“We did it, Admiral!” Roche said as Emilie opened her eyes and looked around again. “We made it!”
Emilie grimaced at her Chief of Staff. “We did, and the fleet did well. But I have let us all down. We never should have been trapped so easily.”
“You cannot blame yourself, Admiral,” Rodgers insisted. “How were we to know Ala’ron would be in the system, let alone that she could have manipulated you like she did?”
“We should have been prepared for the possibility,” Emilie replied, not willing to let herself off the hook. “We know she did it at Hiva’non. We should have been prepared for it to happen here. From now on in, we need to assume she is with the Flex-aor fleet every time we fight them.”
“But you realized what Ala’ron was doing before we were trapped, and we escaped,” Roche reminded Emilie. “It could have been much worse.”
Reluctantly, Emilie nodded, her Chief of Staff was certainly right on that count. It could have been much worse. She could still feel the giddiness Ala’ron had felt when the High Queen had thought Emilie’s fleet completely trapped. Not this time, she thought towards the creature that had invaded her mind. The memory of what had happened sent a shiver down her back. But then, she remembered the map she had sensed from Ala’ron’s mind! Quickly, Emilie pulled up a blank star map of local space and began to enter data on it. For more than five minutes, she put in everything she could remember. As she worked, she sensed the bridge growing quiet around her. She could feel everyone watching her. Only when she was finished did she look up. With a tap, she projected the map onto the main holo display.
“What is this?” Roche asked, confusion filling her voice. “Those are not our ships’ positions.”
“No, they certainly aren’t,” Emilie agreed. “Just before I managed to break Ala’ron’s telepathic connection, I tried to read her thoughts. This is what I got.”
“The positions of the Flex-aor fleets?” Rodgers asked as his voice rose.
Emilie shook her head. “Not exactly. Ala’ron sensed what I was trying to do. This is a map she wanted me to see. I am sure of it, for just as I saw this, I could also feel another emotion from her. It was deception. This is a fake.”
“A fake, but how can that help us?” Roche asked.
“Here, this sector,” Emilie said as she pointed at a blank part of the map that was not very far from the defensive line Admiral Becket was setting up along the Empire’s south-eastern border. “Ala’ron wanted me to think there were no ships here.” A smile spread across Emilie’s face as she studied the map. The day had been a disaster, yet perhaps not a complete one. “We need to dispatch scout ships to this region immediately, and send other fast frigates to Admiral Becket. She needs to be warned.”
