Naero's War: The Citation Series 2: The High Crusade (36 page)

If you have not read the original Naero Books by Mason Elliott, Please enjoy the following teaser from the first Spacer Clans Adventure, Book 1:

Naero’s

Run

NAERO’S

RUN

(Amazon Link to Naero’s Run:
http://amzn.to/1eRKCOb
)

by Mason Elliott

“We’ve got more than enough to consider here,” Aunt Sleak said. “We’ll post our final decisions on the Spacer ClanNet. All crew, take a breather. We’re out of jump in less that two standard hours. Everyone on duty needs to be at their ready stations. Dismissed.”

Naero went back to her quarters to do some laundry and a little more reading before they emerged. With regular effort, her quarters were less of a disaster than usual. She’d kept her bunk and her floor more or less cleared off, and slept in her bunk regularly now, instead of on the floor or in zero-G or a float bag.

And definitely not in her flex chair, as she had for years because she either couldn’t get her bunk panel out or it was too piled up with crap.

Being small had its advantages. She could curl up like a cat and get comfortable almost anywhere for a snooze.

But keeping her quarters in better shape was a promise she made and kept–to herself–and her parents.

They emerged from jump with the customary shuddering of the ship. The fleet spread out into is standard formation, emerging back into real Space-Time.

Naero punched up their positions on one of her screens, even though she didn’t have bridge duty for several hours.

The Shinai
flanked
The Dromon
on the port side, with
The Slipper
posted starboard. Their two smaller ships,
The Nevada
and
The Ardala
,
brought up the rear this time.

A red hot scarlet particle beam, 60mm in diameter, lanced through Naero’s walls like they were paper, disrupting her wallscreens.

A direct hit from a big gun.

At the very least, from a heavy destroyer.

Warning lights flashed immediately.

The rupture in the hull led to an immediate explosive decompression.

Naero held on tight to her bunk and went flat on the floor as the hull sealed itself.

All ships were vulnerable coming out of jump. They couldn’t activate their shields until right after they emerged.

Someone had been waiting for them.

The Dromon
continued getting rocked by multiple hits from what felt like several spinal guns and secondary batteries.

But the big planetoid could take it and give back plenty, her quad main guns humming and whining to life, coming online.

Naero hit her wristcom. All her screens down.

“Bridge. Status?”

“We stepped into it. They were waiting for us. We’re under heavy fire. Multiple bogeys.”

The general alert sounded.

“Battle Stations. Battle Stations.”

Aunt Sleak cut over the com. “All hands. All hands, to your stations. Prepare for battle. All ships, all batteries, return fire. Launch all fighters.”

Naero suited up and raced to the drop bay of her fighter. She met Jan along the way.

More intense fire.
Dromon
reeled and fired back.

She and Jan almost got rocked off their feet again.

A security team intercepted them at the launching bays.

Their fighters had already dropped with their backup pilots.

“The fleet captain wants you two at your secondary defense stations, not out in the mix.”

Jan started to protest.

“Orders are orders. Get to your stations.”

They ran to their remote gunnery stations, small secured cubicles with a chair and a console, operating triple pulse turrets on the hardpoints above them.

Naero brought up her autotargeting displays, weapons already powered up and humming.

The secondary battery gunnery stations operated independently and were well-protected. They were also fully automated, but they still functioned more effectively with a human interface.

Coordinated targeting profiles came online as she watched.

Jan operated a torp turret nearby.

Directly ahead of the fleet. Twelve elite Matayan destroyers, each with a dozen escort fighters.

Half of their number pursued and attacked a convoy of two dozen independent mining freighters.

Aunt Sleak’s fleet scrambled, launched, and deployed a total of threescore fighters in a standard Alpha-Charlie-1 defensive screen.

They were outnumbered two to one.

“All batteries make ready. Incoming torps,” the bridge com sounded.

Countermeasures took out half of the blips heading their way.

Spacer fighters and the forward defensive batteries blasted the rest.

“That attack’s a diversion,” Naero muttered.

Shinai’s
fire control and com computers fixed on and monitored all channels–including those between the hapless freighters and the corsairs.

“Mayday, mayday, we are under intense corsair attack. All ships. Assistance, assistance. Heavy damage and casualties.”

“What do you want?” another panic-stricken voice cried out. “We’ll surrender. You can board us. We have no goods and few supplies. Please, stop firing. Our ships are full of workers–full of people. You’re killing civilians. We’re on fire!”

Scanners displayed an awful, one-sided battle among the transports.

Most of the old bulk freighters didn’t even have weapons.

Each of the heavily armed Matayan destroyers was more than a match for them or most of the ships in Aunt Sleak’s fleet.

Except for the 6m quad spinal guns of
The Dromon
.

One crippled freighter broke apart and exploded under concentrated fire from three destroyers. It didn’t have any shields, and only minimal armor. Its two turrets either didn’t work or had been taken out already.

Static and Matayan battle language rang out in triumph.

Dromon’s
four primary guns cut loose, lighting up the entire sector. Its blue-white blasts ripped into the lead corsair flagship and its wingships, disrupting their shields.

The starboard wingship took two hits and listed to one side. Its aft section exploded.

“This is Captain Sleak Maeris of Clan Maeris. Enemy vessels, be advised: Cease hostilities and vacate this system or be destroyed.”

Matayan curses and laughter her only reply.

“Clan Maeris,” one of the freighter captains cut in. “This is Captain Philsen of
The Botaru
. Help us! Our situation is desperate. The corsairs are trying to destroy us. We don’t know why.”

“Acknowledged. We’re coming in. Disperse if you can. You’re still too bunched up. Scatter and concentrate on defensive actions. Jump if you’re able. We’ll try to draw them off. We’re boosting your distress call.”

Three more corsairs turned on the fleet, with all twelve dozen fighters full front on intercept.

The other trio of Matayan attackers kept after the freighters.

Naero heard the pleading and the screams on the open channel, just before another freighter got blasted to oblivion.

Naero realized she had tears on her face.

Was that how her parents went? Blasted to death by Matayan guns?

The rage she felt nearly overwhelmed her reason.

She checked her systems, gripped the controls of her gunnery station, and forced her emotions to go cold.

Against superior numbers, Naero and her Clan Fleet closed for battle.

(Amazon Link to Naero’s Run:
http://amzn.to/1eRKCOb
)

Want to find out what happened during the Annexation War? Please
enjoy
the
following
teaser
from
a
spinoff
series
that
we
call
:

Naero’s War:

The Annexation War

The Citation Series, Book 1

Naero’s War:

The Annexation War

Annexation War Amazon Link:
http://amzn.to/1gmxGQk

by Mason Elliott

Naero’s flagship,
The
Hippolyta
,
was one of the latest, Dromon Class dreadnaughts. These warships were fashioned out of dense, iron-nickel planetoids, not less than half a kilometer in diameter. Incredibly tough and rugged on their own.

It took the most powerful mining plasma-borers–working in precise conjunction with construction fixers and an army of teks–months to hollow out armored crew quarters, lift and transport tubes, launching and loading bays. Next came space for power cores, sublight engines, jump drives, backups, gravitics, life support, sensor arrays, communications, navigation, weapons, main bridge and backup bridge.

Set in the exact heart of
The
Hippolyta
were its signature big guns. A quad of the largest production guns ever constructed on any ship of war: Four,
16 meter
, rapid-fire, particle beam cannons.

Cannons any larger than that exploded, melted, or otherwise were not feasible within the limits of current tek and materials. Thirty-six secondary batteries, assorted specialized weapons and gun emplacements, and forty-five advanced fighters.

Seven hundred and forty able crew, including a full Rifle Company of two hundred and forty Spacer Marines, and all of their equipment, vehicles, and gear for ship’s security and rapid response deployment. Strike Fleet Six’s Marines came from the 3
rd
Spacer Marine Division–known as
The Death Eyes–
because of their superb snipers and their overall, excellent marksmanship ratings. Marines made up a third of the warship’s complement.

Their motto:
If We Can See It…We Can Kill It!

The main bridge was a massive armored dome constructed on top of the dreadnaught’s big metal, rough-hewn orb, protected by heavy blast doors, and the latest, most advanced shielding in the fleet. Within, the circular bridge was laid out in four levels under the huge dome, a dome sixty meters high.

Each bridge tier was separated by the height of a few steps from one to the next. The inner three levels could rotate in any direction, independent of the others.

The fleet captain’s command nanochair and station occupied the highest tier. Each bridge station had its own secondary shielding, in case enemy fire penetrated the shields, the blast screens, and the hull.

In combat, bridges were routinely targeted, for obvious reasons.

From that primary vantage point, the strike fleet captain could direct battles in three hundred and sixty degrees, through an advanced, battleholo display surrounding her, full zoom data-feeds, constantly updated by battle AIs. Naero could manipulate the displays by nanosensors programmed into the fingertips of her nanosuit gloves.

The battle display system also recognized her voice pattern, and would respond to voice commands, or commands punched in manually through pads on her command chair, or via other backups.

The next bridge level down from hers held the secondary bridge stations: Helm, Weapons, Communications, Navigation, and Scanning, spaced out equally along their ring.

The third ring held all of the twelve tertiary bridge stations, that monitored, controlled, and coordinated all of the ship’s other important functions:

Engineering

Gravitics

Life Support

Power Supply

Security

Shields

Medical

Jump and Sub-light Drives

Damage Control

Alliance Fleet and Intel Communications

Main Computer

Launching Bays

The fourth ring went to the two powerlifts, leading from the bridge to the other movers, decks, and levels of the ship. All lift and access points throughout the ship were constantly guarded by two battle-ready Marines, stationed on either side.

If a warship was boarded by enemy assault craft during a battle, invaders could be cut off and eliminated between decks, before they could reach a vital area.

Today, Strike Fleet Six had a mission–a simple one.

Captain Naero Maeris and her fifty warships proceeded to probe the next system on the outer, port arcwall of the Alliance advance at Beleron-4.

A routine run. Current intel assured them to expect little or no Triaxian presence or resistance.

By any stretch of the imagination, Beleron-4 was a nothing world, in the middle of nowhere, with zero, nacha–absolutely no strategic or tactical value whatsoever.

Checking it off the list on the pacified worlds of the Alliance system-hopping schedule was more-or-less just a formality.

But it still had to be done. And Naero and her lot drew the duty at random.

So why did Naero’s sense of warning go bonkers?

After they jumped in, simple three-stack, Delta-India-3 formation, the reasons for alarm grew perfectly clear.

They came in right on top of twenty Triaxian fleets of the enemy’s latest warships.

And a gigantic new flagship–as huge as
The
Hippolyta
–the advanced design of which did not even register as existing.

It had never been seen before.

Naero shot to her feet, kicked her command nanochair back out the way and sent it down into the nanofloor of her top-tier bridge control station.

She instantly called her battle display holos up in spinning, horizontal glowing ribbons and rings all around her.

Data relays went wild. Her fingers flashed among the highlighted screen arcs, taking control of them and their parameters.

Multiple warnings sounded, and with excellent reason.

Nothing about this was good in any way.

Haisha!
Twenty enemy fleets could chop them into confetti–well before any other Alliance forces could even jump in to help.

No strategy, no formation could possibly save them against superior numbers such as these.

“All ships, full withdraw. Emergency retreat on this vector, in Charlie-Romeo-7, cone-ring formation. Shields and all weapons full front and hot. Maximize all targeting profiles on the lead attacking enemy elements–they’ll be on us in seconds. Whatever happens–we fight until our carriers and some of our ships can break free and jump out behind us. Get the carriers out first!”

For a split second, everyone braced for the sheets of flame that would quickly overtake and overwhelm them.

(Annexation War Amazon Link:
http://amzn.to/1gmxGQk
)