From Furies Forged (Free Fleet Book 5) (30 page)

              Other ships behind those that had been smashed fell away.

              “The gamma rays and other nasty light waves can pass through anything not shielded against them. The Kalu ships are basically front armor, guns and missiles, engines and enough metal to keep atmosphere out and the ship together under acceleration. Any ships the beam passes through is liable to be cooked better than Sunday dinner,” Heston said, he must have seen Smith’s face.

              “Does it stop?” Smith asked.

              “When all that energy is soaked up, probably gets four or five ships though,” Heston said with a shrug, the cannon’s bellowed every four seconds, the gunners changing from focused beams to larger cone fire to reduce cooling times, firing instead once every two-seconds. The lethal light-waves killed less ships in a row, but they had a better chance of getting more in the initial hits.

              “I think it’s time we added some rail-cannon fire into the mix, Milra remember to rotate for everyone. Resilient keep an eye on the timer,” Salchar said, his voice cutting through the tens of voices that were having muted conversations.

              Both Resilient and Milra acknowledged his orders. Marleen’s reply was every single ship in the fleet turning to present the most rail-cannons they could bring to bear and firing.

              The ships could fire a few hundred missiles every eight or so seconds, it was an impressive show of firepower.

              It didn’t even touch the rail-guns rate of fire. Medium, heavy and planetary railcannons opened up.

              A
stream
of rounds left the Free Fleet the plot showed the rounds as they continued to spit out.

              A chill ran down Smith’s spine as he watched a display of firepower he hadn’t thought possible.

              Cannons seemed to punctuate his thoughts as Kalu ships died from the last rounds that had already passed through their formations.

              “Shields are falling steadily,” Krat warned a red arrow next to average shield strength on the main screen.

              “Resilient?” Salchar looked to the blue AI next to him.

              “Four minutes,” she said without preamble, glancing to him as he looked away.

              “Can we hold out for that long Krat?” Salchar asked

              “Commander I’m hurt,” Krat jokingly sounded.

              “Very good Krat,” Salchar gave the shield commander a tight smile, tight from the gravity of the situation, not the joke.

              “Have the corvettes rotate and move as necessary, do you see a need to change formation?” Salchar asked Rick.

              “Looking good to me, might be an idea to emphasize shield strength over amount of fire on target,” Rick said, his and Salchar’s eyes meeting for a second.

              “Very well, Vort connect me with the ship commanders, my chair,” Salchar said.

              “On it Commander,” the ship kept fighting as Vort carried out his task.

              “Rotate us to show the starboard and cannons on that side,” Marleen said. Milra had been tilting the hull of the ships to bring more weapons into play but no major moves.

              “Changing position,” Milra said altering her place.

              “Channel to the other ship commanders is ready,” Vort said.

              “Resilient, missiles?” Salchar asked.

              “Were going to make the Kalu have a
very
bad day,” she assured him as the missiles entered into close range at less than a hundred thousand kilometers.

              “Send the channel please Vort,” Salchar said, keeping out of Resilient’s hair.

              “Time until the enemy missiles reach us?” Rick asked, Salchar in a meeting with the other ship commanders. The transition between the two seamless.

              “Five seconds for lead missiles,” Marleen said.

              “Bring them under PDS fire as soon as possible,” Rick said, the map populating with hundreds of impacts as missiles, controlled by the terrible calculating and processing power of the AI’s in the fleet and those that were connected via the FTL relays.

              They became as nimble as Smith’s own jump fighter, avoiding fire and exploding into deadly dandelions of warheads.

              They washed through the Kalu, killing thousands of ships.

              The next wave rushed through their previous missiles mayhem, plunging into the following ranks of Kalu.

              So it continued, Kalu fighting missiles, firing their own at the Free Fleet with abandon as controlled barrage rushed to meet them.

              It was insanity for anyone to continue through that maelstrom, but the Kalu’s alien thinking carried them onwards, their numbers continuing to make them not just a credible threat but a terrifying one.

              The PDS was fucking
scary
good especially with the AI patches, there were hundreds of thousands of missiles and shields fell at an increasing rate with close-by explosions and the occasional direct hit.

              Cannons continued to take out targets faster and faster, shields continued to fall and ships moved out of the line of fire to recover.

              “Nice work Resilient, let the other AI’s know that I would not want to tangle with them!” Salchar said with a ghost of a smile, getting chuckles of those that were nervous and anxious enough to take any excuse to bring levity to the situation.

              “Rounds going in,” Marleen said. The wall of fire acted as it had been created.

              Space was filled with debris, an area hundreds of kilometers big was covered in remains of ships, something that would make anyone aware of just how massive space was, frown in apprehension.

              The wall of rounds found the debris, found missiles, found husks and smashed into ships right before another wave of missiles added their own destruction.

              Penetrators went off, ripping into armor, through it and into the actual ship itself, if enough hits landed, or landed the right way.

              Anything that missed exploded and turned into fast travelling shrapnel the size of a mug.

              “Shifting ship,” Milra said, bringing more guns to bear and the three cannons that had been cooling off as the other three fired.

              Salchar and Rick had a quiet conversation every so often, Rick letting Salchar know what was going on with the Fleet, or Salchar passing orders onto the rest of the fleet through him.

              Rick was the conduit to the rest of the fleet, the bridge was the conduit to the overarching information of the fleet and Hic Stamus.

              Salchar made it look
easy.
Smith didn’t know how anyone could command just a ship, let alone a ship and a fleet.

              Fire kept pouring down on the Kalu, it put the Jump-ships firepower to shame. Though the jump ships just needed to hit the Kalu ships to throw off their calibrations, and they could destroy a ship coming through a wormhole.

              “Two minutes,” Resilient said.

              “Ben?” Salchar asked.

              “Ready to go,” Ben said as the ship continued to rotate, bringing the ten lower laser cannons that were located on the lower sections of Hic Stamus and tilting so that two on the top could also fire, the ship rotated slightly, changing which two on the top could fire, and which rail cannons could join in.

              “One minute,” Resilient said, Milra moved Hic Stamus so it was heading straight at the Kalu and along its path of motion.

              Vort’s voice could be heard warning the rest of the ship that they would be entering a wormhole shortly. The fleet moved into preset positions.

              “Wormhole jump,” Resilient said, guns fell silent, projectors appeared from under their heavily armored recesses, capacitors were drained as wormhole generators created the necessary components of ripping through space and time with precision.

              Wormholes filled the space, creating an impenetrable wall, right in the Kalu formation.

              Ships disappeared, like the ships that had run into the second wormhole.

              Few of the Kalu got past the wormholes, flying around them was met by laser cannons and rail cannon fire.

              “Transitioning,” Milra said, applying thrust to put a bit of an angle on the ships’ motion she didn’t have the time to smoothly cross the event horizon but the angle helped out a little bit.

              They came out on the other side. Smith half expected to see Kalu waiting on the other side. Instead he was met by the inky blackness and spotted lights of an area between stars.

              “I want reports from every ship and section. I want to know what happened to Dasa, More and Divine Solace,” Salchar said, not quite able to keep the hoarse emotion out of his words.

              Smith released the holographic table, his hands hurting from gripping the railing around it so hard.

              He hadn’t even noticed it with the adrenaline, fear, excitement and anxiety that seemed to run through him at varying levels throughout the battle.

              “That’s how the big boys play,” Heston said with gravity, looking to Smith.

              “Fuck,” Smith said with feeling, unsure of how else to express what he had felt and seen.

              He had been on the bridge for some forty minutes, two Corvettes and a Destroyer had been destroyed. One Battle cruiser was going to need a yard and fourteen other ships had lost their shields, three of them had needed to pair up with another ship to use their wormhole as their projectors had been shot up.

              Numbers were rolling in from the sensor platforms in the Nexus. One-hundred and forty-three thousand had followed their Kalu war-brothers into the black. Leaving just under two-hundred and fifty-three-thousand in working order. Twenty-eight-
million
Kalu, still alive and working their way through inhabited space.

              The rage from before, the want to just plow through them and finish them off fell away as those numbers settled in. That single fleet was now a quarter the size of the other two fleets already past the line, the harm that they could cause just served to boggle his mind and cold water douse his spirit.

              “Well anyway you’ve got a few hours before you’re off to help Cheerleader and Boot out, I’d suggest you get some rest before then,” Heston said.

              “Yeah, this war isn’t going to be won in a day,” Smith said a new realization filling him.

              “Nope, but with battles like that one, hopefully we can whittle the bastards down,” Heston said with feeling.

Chapter Hit and run

              Cheerleader looked over the information that was being transmitted from the dead system that Orshpa was passing through. Looking at the entire fleet made them look as if they were just toy models. Zooming in showed the truth. Star-warriors halfway between a corvette and a destroyer flowed between the Star-destroyers which were as big as the smallest Free Fleet carrier.

              Scarier than the number of ships, was the formation that they were flying in.

              “It looks like Orshpa learned from his first engagement,” Boot said, respect mingled with anguish. Orshpa was coming in with his entire fleet in a single line, like some massive page being pushed through space.

              They weren’t going to come in waves like they had in Eltar, or how Falhu’s forces had moved through their systems.

              Orshpa wasn’t just reacting to the Free Fleet’s tactics, he was changing his own tactics to counteract them.

              “I believe it would be best if we tell Salchar to keep a hold of the jump fighters, using them to harass the forces moving through the Nexus,” Cheerleader said, sitting back in her chair.

              “Why?” Boot asked.

              “If they attack that formation then Orshpa is going to flip his ships and pile unholy fire into them. The jump ships are our best assets for hit and run. He could wipe them out before they get all of their missiles out,” Cheerleader said, waving to the hologram of the formation to emphasize her point.

              “I agree,” Boot said.

              He had a habit of doing that, asking why, to see the logic of the other persons thinking while reserving his own judgement. It made people think through their plans, it also made Cheerleader sit back more than one time, his voice in her head asking why she was doing what she was doing and gaming out the scenario.

              Both of them had come into contact with a Kalu fleet, Cheerleader with Falhu’s forces, Boot with Orshpa’s in the opening fight at Eltar.

              “Who said that they wished every mission was boring, if it wasn’t it was because either someone had fucked up, or they were so deep in the shit there was no foreseeable exit?” Cheerleader asked.