Call to Arms (Black Fleet Trilogy, Book 2) (2 page)

“No it doesn’t.” Lee stared at the moving plots, well aware the data he was seeing was almost two hours old at their current range. In fact, nothing the remaining Phage ships were doing made a whole lot of sense. The aliens had been waiting in the Xi’an System and had fallen upon the armada like a like a pack of wild dogs, coordinated and deadly. But now they seemed to be confused, ineffectively dividing their firepower among the remaining Third Fleet ships.

The
Brooklands
was just outside the orbit of the fourth planet in the system, her orbital velocity so minimal that she could keep the powerful targeting radar focused on the engagement near Xi’an. The Phage force changed behavior and tactics so drastically that Lee had a feeling that he was observing something vital. He froze just as he was about to order the cruiser onto a new course, torn between his duty to the Confederacy and the responsibility to see his ship and crew safely away once they’d accomplished their mission goals. What was he missing? Why were the Phage changing tactics in the middle of such a decisive victory for their side?

“Other than the
Taipei,
what ships are still operational?” Lee asked.

“The
Zhejiang
and the
Dao
,” the OPS officer reported. “
Dao
is still full mission capable.”

Lee frowned at that last bit. The
Dao
was easily the most powerful ship in the system, one of Third Fleet’s few true battleships. If she was still full mission capable (FMC), then her captain was likely keeping her out of the engagement and letting the smaller, less armored ships take the pounding. He’d have to review the sensor logs later to be certain, but if the Third Fleet captain was holding back with their most powerful ship while sacrificing two thirds of his available fleet, it didn’t bode well for Starfleet’s potential effectiveness against an enemy that had no such reservations.

“Coms, message the
Dao
and request a status update including expended munitions,” Lee said. “Nav, begin running an active plot from our current position to our nearest jump point… make sure the helm is always updated.”

“Aye, sir,” the specialist at the nav station said.

“Sir, the
Dao
is reporting no damage,” the coms officer said after ninety minutes had elapsed. “They did not include weapon status despite repeated requests.”

“Thank you.” Lee sighed. “That tells me what I needed to know.”

“And that was, sir?” the XO asked.

“The
Dao
’s captain is going through the motions, but he has no intention of putting himself or his ship in a position where they can get caught up in one of those swarm attacks.”

“Sir!” the OPS officer called out. “New contacts! Fifty-two targets just appeared in-system. Initial returns indicate Phage ships.”

“Signal a retreat,” Lee said. He was momentarily embarrassed by the relief that washed over him as he ordered his ship to withdraw, but that was quickly tamped down by the realization that he would be taking his entire crew back to Terran space alive. “Track the
Zhejiang
and the
Dao
and let me know if the
Taipei
is able to separate herself enough to accelerate to their transition point.”

“Captain, look!” The XO pointed to the main display.

The Phage were once again attacking in a deliberate, cohesive nature. All remaining Phage ships raced for the
Dao
and began blasting away with their directed plasma weapons, just as the big battleship flared on the
Brooklands’s
thermal sensors, her engines going to full power in an effort to escape.

“The
Dao
is taking a beating,” the OPS officer said. “She’s barely fighting back. Point defense fire indicates they’re operating in an automatic mode. Engines are still at full power.”

“Captain Chen is panicking,” Lee said to himself.

He only knew the
Dao
’s captain by reputation, but it was enough that he realized Chen’s appointment likely had little to do with his actual ability to command a battleship and more with who his family was connected to within the Asianic Union. The pride of Third Fleet attempted to flee the area while Phage ships made unanswered runs on her, looking like a swarm of hornets chasing an ungainly, lumbering beast.

“New arrivals look like they’re chasing after the
Dao
as well,” OPS reported. “We’re still more or less being ignored.”

“I would theorize that they know we’re the least threatening thing in the system,” Lee said, more thinking aloud than addressing his OPS officer. “All our long-range weapons are expended, and we have light armor. Other than high-energy RF from the radars, we’re little more than a steel asteroid out here. Either that, or their sensors have the same limitations ours do, and they haven’t detected us yet.”

When Captain Chen decided to blindly flee the engagement rather than fight his way out, the fate of the
Dao
was sealed. The bridge crew of the
Brooklands
watched as the Phage ships buzzed in again and again, disabling the ship’s aft weaponry and degrading the engines enough that the battleship’s acceleration was drastically cut. The loss of thrust allowed the fresh Phage ships to close the distance. The only bright spot of the horrific scene playing out on the main display was that the
Taipei
and
Zhejiang
seemed to be slinking out of the system unnoticed, racing along a widening arc as fast as they could.

It was a horrific six hours, watching the ship try to flee its tormenters, especially being as helpless to intervene as the
Brooklands
was. Just as the leading edge of the Phage reinforcements came within their maximum weapons range of the
Dao
, an enormous flash completely washed out the
Brooklands
’
s
optical sensors, but the radar images told the tale.

The
Dao
had taken a critical hit, exploding with enough force that she took fifteen attackers along with her. As the optics came back up, the thermals showed the ship had broken up into four large pieces, along with a lot of associated debris, and each was traveling roughly along the same course the battleship had been taking out of the Xi’an System.

“Fuck!” Lee shouted, causing everyone on the bridge to jump.

The loss of the
Dao
was a huge blow to the human war effort as large, powerful battleships were quite rare in the current Fleet makeup. He was simultaneously sick at the loss of human life and enraged that someone as incompetent as Chen hadn’t been replaced as CO of such a vital asset.

“Any escape beacons?”

“Negative, sir,” the OPS officer said. “No radio beacons from the
Dao
.”

“Helm, begin accelerating us out along our escape vector.” Lee forced himself to calm down. “All ahead two thirds. Let’s not draw undue attention to ourselves. We’ll charge to the jump point at the last minute.”

“Ahead two thirds, aye.”

“OPS, keep track of every enemy contact down near Xi’an.” Lee watched the Phage swarm all over the wreckage of the
Dao
, already dragging the larger pieces back to the planet. “I want to know immediately if they even begin to sniff in this direction.”

“Aye, sir.”

It was another four hours of steady acceleration until Lee began to feel that they just might make it out of Xi’an alive. It was another ten minutes after that when his OPS officer dispelled that optimism.

“Phage formation is splitting up,” he said. “Ten are continuing to push the remains of the
Dao
to Xi’an. The rest have divided into two forces—one pursuing the
Taipei
and
Zhejiang
, the rest moving onto a direct intercept for us and accelerating.”

“Helm, all ahead full,” Lee ordered, eyes glued to the updated tracks. The Phage ships were pushing ahead at three hundred G’s of acceleration, but the
Brooklands
had an almost insurmountable lead. They’d hit their jump point long before the enemy came into range.

“All ahead, aye,” the helmsman reported.

“Updating our jump point plot,” the nav specialist said.

Lee just nodded, watching the clocks on the main display adjust to show time to warp transition, time from enemy weapons range, and total mission time.

The
Brooklands
was not built with speed in mind and was never supposed to venture down too far into a system during a battle or be required to escape. She was meant to carry a high relative velocity from the time she warped in, fired her missiles, and warped out. As such, her engines were a bit on the underpowered side, and the Phage had an outside chance of catching them given the acceleration profiles of the small attackers that had been documented in previous engagements. From what he could see so far, however, the small force seemed content to just chase them out of the system.

“New contacts!” OPS said in alarm. “From the other side of the system, closest to us.”

“Resolve!” Lee practically shouted.

As Xi’an was on the Frontier, there were definite battle lines drawn with the Phage incursion coming from the far side and the Terran defenders usually warping in from three available vectors on the opposite side. That didn’t mean, however, that Lee discounted the possibility that the enigmatic enemy couldn’t move beyond Xi’an and push in from the other side, cutting off their retreat.

“Confederate ships!” the OPS officer exclaimed in relief. “Transponder data coming in now… Black Fleet, Ninth Squadron, five ships in total, all
Starwolf
-class destroyers. Lead ship is the
Ares
, sir!”

“Thank God.” Lee exhaled in relief. “Send the
Ares
all the battle data we have, and tell Captain Wolfe his timing could not have been better.”

****

“Data packet coming in from the
Brooklands
, Captain,” Lieutenant Davis said. “Looks like a raw dump of their entire sensor feed.”

“Archive it, Lieutenant,” Captain Jackson Wolfe said to his OPS Officer. “We don’t have time to analyze it just now. Tactical, what are we looking at?”

“We have twenty-nine hostiles closing on the
Brooklands
,” Lieutenant Commander Barrett said. “Still waiting on the computer to resolve the rest of the system, but we received some preliminary data over the Link from the other Fleet ships.”

The shared data link, or “Link,” had been a relatively simple upgrade, but had proven its worth at every engagement. Essentially, any ship in the area would broadcast their sensor telemetry so that it could be networked with the others and redistributed among the rest of the fleet. It eliminated the need for individual ships to wait twice as long for a valid radar return over long distances.

“Coms, tell the
Icarus
and
Atlas
to adjust course and accelerate toward the
Brooklands
,” Jackson ordered. “Tell them to engage and destroy all twenty-nine targets.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Have the
Artemis
and
Hyperion
break off and pursue the formation chasing the remnants of the Third Fleet armada,” Jackson continued. “Nav, plot me a course down to Xi’an, maximum performance. I want to catch those units before they’re able to deorbit the remains of the
Dao
.”

“What if there are more ships than just the ten defending Xi’an?” Wolfe’s XO asked.

“Then we’ll deal with them, Commander Wright,” Jackson answered. “I’m more worried about why they’ve decided to try and establish another beachhead on Xi’an. What’s so special about that planet? They’ve already stripped the crust of any usable material.”

“OPS, prep a drone for atmospheric flight,” Celesta called out. “Set flight profile for high-altitude surface scans, full instrument suite.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Lieutenant Davis keyed her headset to send the command down to Flight Operations.

Jackson smiled slightly as his XO correctly predicted his next command. After the dust had settled from the initial attack of the Phage, Jackson had pushed CENTCOM to give Celesta Wright a command of her own. Surprisingly, she’d declined and requested to remain as his executive officer. Her rationale had been that the mission that had resulted in the destruction of the
Blue Jacket
had opened her eyes to how unready she was for a ship of her own. Jackson completely disagreed with her self-assessment, but he was more than happy to keep her on his crew, and if she felt she wasn’t ready, it would negatively affect her ability to command.

“Nav! Where’s my plot?” Jackson asked.

“Coming up now, sir,” the young specialist second class at the nav station said. Unfortunately, he hadn’t been able to overcome his nervousness about working on the bridge of the
Ares
.

Based on the look Celesta gave the hapless spacer, it would be his last watch at the nav station.

“Let’s look alive!” Jackson didn’t let up. “There are at least seventy Phage combat units in this system and no Confederate assets within range to provide relief.”

Three possible courses down to Xi’an appeared on the main display as the specialist finished his calculations. The
Starwolf
-class ship was far more capable than his previous
Raptor
-class vessel, and the navigation plots reflected that. Each of the courses showed an acceleration profile far more aggressive than the
Blue Jacket
would have been capable of and would put them in orbit over Xi’an in just over twenty-hours from their current position.

Jackson considered each for a few seconds. “Helm, come to course. Charlie… all ahead full.”

“Ahead full, aye.”

“I hate splitting the squadron up like this,” Celesta said quietly from her seat on Jackson’s right. “Even with the Link, we’re still waiting hours for updates from the other ships.”

“Nothing for it this time,” Jackson said. “We need to protect the
Brooklands,
and it looks like those Third Fleet battlegroups were decimated. If we can save the last two, maybe this won’t be a total loss.”

“All for a planet that can no longer even support human life,” Celesta said, seeming to catch herself in mid-eyeroll.

“But also a system that’s a strategic jump point into three other Terran systems,” Jackson reminded her. “Even though we have no idea how the Phage navigate, they seem to be more than happy to use our own warp lanes against us.”