Rumors of Honor (System States Rebellion Book 2) (21 page)

“Romanov
to all ships. I’m aborting the mission. We’re getting out of here. Romanov
out.” Switching channels to the Helm Station on the Bridge, he said, “Helm,
program a fleet-wide change of course. I want us out past the zone boundary as
soon as possible. When everyone’s ready, go ahead and execute.” In less than
five seconds, 1st Fleet was accelerating hard for the hyper-zone boundary, and
its downward sloping trajectory was beginning to curve up sharply. Romanov knew
that it would take another two hours more or less to claw their way back out of
the zone, but there was nothing he could do about that. Whatever the Spartans
were sending his way, they had him where they wanted him.

Spartan
Space Force HQ:

“They’re
veering off!” yelled the Duty Officer.

Janicot
laughed. “They’re trying to, but they’re in too deep now.” Just as he finished
speaking, the display showed a new icon representing Drake’s second wave of 240
missiles. Palmgren’s boats would be firing again soon too, but this time they’d
be firing KE warheads instead of fission ones. Janicot wished for the Nth time
that they had more of those things, but production of Pu-239 was still ramping
up. He was pleased to see that data on Sierra1’s course change had been relayed
to both Task Forces as confirmed by the fact that both of the first waves’
trajectories were adjusting to compensate for the enemy’s maneuvers. Even so,
it would still take almost 16 minutes for Palmgren’s first wave to intercept
the enemy fleet and a further 6 minutes for Drake’s first wave to catch up to the
fleeing ships. It would have been nice to have both waves reach their targets
at the same time, but that was far too easy for the enemy to avoid by simply
moving towards one wave while at the same time moving away from the other. P2
knew that, which was why Palmgren’s first wave had atomic warheads while
Drake’s missiles didn’t. If any of Palmgren’s missiles penetrated the FED
missile defense, the nature of their warheads would become abundantly clear.
That would encourage the FED ships to move closer together so that their
overlapping fields of anti-missile laser fire had a better chance of stopping
additional missile waves. When follow-on waves of missiles arrived, the FEDs
would assume that they too had atomic warheads and would be unlikely to engage
in evasive maneuvers that would risk collisions. KE warheads would be just as
deadly, even if their guidance systems were destroyed by laser fire, as long as
the FED ships maintained their same vectors.

1st
Fleet Flagship:

The
tension on the Flag Bridge was palpable. Romanov realized that he was sweating
profusely, and it wasn’t just because he was wearing the pressure suit. Radar
was showing multiple waves of missiles coming from both above and below now.
1st Fleet would be running a deadly gauntlet, and he was certain that not all
of his ships would make it back. How many was a question that he didn’t want to
try to answer. There were less than 30 seconds until the first wave from above
crossed the fleet’s path. Anti-missile lasers were already firing, but accuracy
was low at this range. As far as they could tell, each of his 20 ships was
being targeted by 10 enemy missiles. Romanov couldn’t believe his luck. Under
the circumstances, that was an incredibly stupid approach. It would have been
far better from the enemy’s point of view to go after two or three ships with
all 200 missiles in order to overwhelm their defenses.

“They’re
retargeting!” yelled the Tactical Officer.

Romanov
didn’t even have time to curse the enemy before all the enemy missiles of the
first wave re-oriented themselves on just two ships. The sudden last minute
change of course confused the laser battery targeting computers, which held
their fire for the crucial seconds the missiles needed. Each ship was hit by at
least half a dozen warheads, but one would have been enough because the ships
weren’t armored. Romanov heard someone cry out in anguish as two of his ships
were vaporized into clouds of superhot radioactive gases.

Romanov’s
rage at the loss of two ships and their crews was mitigated to a tiny extent by
his grudging admiration for his enemy’s cunning, the sneaky bastards! Not only
had the last second change in targeting strategy confused his ships’ lasers, it
was also now confusing him as to what to do about the next wave of fast
approaching missiles. Would the Spartans try the same trick again, and what, if
anything, could he do about it? He had to think fast and make a decision.

“Romanov
to Fleet. Adjust defense laser targeting to stay locked on to incoming missiles
regardless of whether they shift to other targets!” He checked the sidebar
data. The next wave from above was 13 seconds away and appeared to also be
allocated more or less evenly among all his ships. He was certain the Spartans
would try the same maneuver again and was surprised when they didn’t. The last
five seconds seemed to fly by. He had just enough time to become aware that the
data was saying that 97% of second wave missiles had been hit by laser fire
when he felt his flagship shudder from what had to be kinetic energy impacts.

It
only took him half a second to understand what had happened. Even a direct hit
by a defense laser would not vaporize all of the meter-long tungsten rod that a
kinetic energy warhead contained, and what was left of that rod could still
cause damage if it hit the ship with enough velocity. His flagship was damaged
but could still maneuver and still had seven out of ten operational missile
tubes. He checked the status of his other 17 ships. Two were not damaged at
all, one had lost all its missile tubes, and the rest were somewhere in
between. The waves from above were hitting the tops of his ships where the
missile tubes were located. That meant that the Fleet’s ability to maneuver and
accelerate was not impaired, but that would change when the ships took damage
from the missile waves coming from below, which would hit the bottom half of
the ships, where the engines were located. If he didn’t do something, and damn
quick, his Fleet would be gradually pounded into so much scrap metal.

“Get
me a direct line to the Tac Officer!” yelled Romanov. When the officer came on
line, Romanov quickly told him what he wanted the officer to do. As soon as
that was done, he switched his com channel back to Fleet-wide.

“Romanov
to Fleet! You’ll be getting firing data shortly. Execute those instructions as
soon as possible. We need to cut down those incoming waves. Stay in formation
and keep your fingers crossed. Romanov out.” With that out of the way, there
was nothing left for him to do but wait.

His
flagship was the first to fire. Seven missiles with Mark 1 atomic warheads left
their tubes only seconds before the arrival of the third wave from above. It
was too late to do anything about that third wave, but his counter-move could
try to do something about wave four from above and wave one from below, which
was now less than a minute from impact.

When
wave three hit the flagship, the resulting shudder was greater than the
previous impact. Romanov immediately understood why. More KE warheads had gotten
through the laser defenses because his ship had lost some of that capability
too, and some of those hits were from tungsten rods that had gotten through
undamaged. His flagship was now down to just one operational missile tube and
half of its laser turrets. Casualties were mounting too. He estimated that one
more wave would knock out the main tactical display, and then he’d be blind.
The rest of his fleet had also suffered more damage but in total still had 21
operational missile tubes which were even now firing Mark 1 missiles as
instructed.

Spartan
Space Force HQ:

They’re
firing at us,” said the Duty Officer in a surprisingly calm voice given what
his declaration implied. Janicot’s heart skipped a beat as he contemplated a
missile attack on Spartan population centers.
If they’re targeting our
cities, those have to be nukes!
He relaxed when he saw the number of
missiles heading downward.

“Drake’s
boats can handle five missiles with AMMs,” said Janicot. When the wave of five
missiles began to lose cohesion as two missiles fell behind, Janicot wondered
what the FED Commander was up to. Drake’s first wave of missiles was now 34
seconds away from impact, and the icons representing both groups of missiles
seemed to overlap on the large display. Janicot knew that they weren’t close
enough to risk collision, and it just seemed to be close because of the scale
of the display image. The first three FED missiles passed Drake’s wave, but
when the last two reached their closest point relative to Drake’s missiles, their
fission warheads detonated, with the resulting tsunami of electro-magnetic
energy temporarily overwhelming the sensors used by the Ops Center.

The
image cleared just in time for Janicot to watch as two more FED missiles did
the same thing to Palmgren’s next missile wave.
That cunning bastard is
using nukes in an anti-missile role! Those five missiles heading in our
direction are probably intended to attrit Drake’s follow-on waves too. The
question is does he have enough of those warheads to gut the rest of our
missile barrages?

1st
Fleet, Trafalgar:

Remington
winced at she felt the ship shudder with the impact of another kinetic energy
warhead.

“We’ve
lost another engine!” yelled the Engineering Officer.

That
meant they were down to only three operational engine thrusters, and the ship’s
acceleration was down by 66% of normal. At least Trafalgar could still keep up
with the flagship and the other two ships that could still accelerate. All four
of them had suffered some damage to their engines, but Romanov’s gamble to
vaporize incoming missiles with Mark 1s had paid off. As far as she could tell
from the badly degraded optical and radar sensors, there were no more incoming
waves of missiles. All of Sparta’s missile boats appeared to have shot themselves
dry. Remington scanned her Auxiliary Command Station and nodded in relief that
the jump drive was still operational as well. 1st Fleet, or what was left of it
that could still maneuver, was only about 11 minutes away from crossing the
hyper-zone boundary and being able to micro-jump away.

With
the loss of contact to the Bridge, Remington had assumed Command as the ship’s
Executive Officer. It was for exactly situations like this that the XO was
required to monitor Bridge functions from Engineering during a battle. She had
sent a runner to the Bridge to determine the situation there, but there was no
word yet. The fact that no electronic commands were coming from any of the
Bridge stations was a bad sign. One of the incoming KE warheads must have penetrated
deep enough, at just the right angle, to hit the Bridge. The resulting jet of
super-hot vaporized metal would have killed everyone instantly. She knew that
there had been others killed and injured too, but didn’t know exactly how many
or where. Determining that would have to wait until the ship jumped away. For
now, she had to remain at her station here, even though Trafalgar could no
longer fire missiles, had zero operational lasers, was almost blind and was
barely able to maneuver.

“Romanov
to Trafalgar. What’s your status?” Remington jumped at the unexpected sound of
the Fleet Commander’s voice. The datalink between Trafalgar and the flagship
must be down, otherwise Romanov would know what Trafalgar’s status was, or
perhaps he just wanted to reassure her commander with a personal voice contact.

“This
is XO Remington, Sir. I’m conning the ship from Engineering. I’ve lost contact
with the Bridge. We still have one third maneuverability but limited sensor
data. Jump drive is still online. Number of casualties is unknown. We can make
it across the boundary if we don’t get hit again, Sir.”

“Understood,
Commander. Our radar is still functioning, and you’ll be happy to know that we
don’t see any more incoming missiles. As soon as we cross the boundary, we’ll
micro-jump away and then line up for a jump back to Hadley. If for whatever
reason you and I lose contact, proceed back to Hadley as best you can. Any
questions?”

“No
question, Admiral.”

“Very
good, Commander. Romanov out.”

Chapter Thirteen:

Spartan
Space Force HQ:

Janicot
watched another red icon dissolve, indicating that the FED ship had
micro-jumped away. That made the total six ships that had survived and escaped.
There were still three more that were clearly unable to accelerate and were now
coasting towards the boundary. Drake’s boats were back on the ground, and the
maintenance crews were frantically reloading them with missiles, but the
computers were saying that any missiles launched now wouldn’t reach those three
ships before they crossed the boundary. Whether they still had the ability to
jump away was a question that couldn’t be answered yet. Of the remaining 11 FED
warships that had started the attack, two had been vaporized, and the other
nine were essentially drifting wrecks. Several had survivors who were
requesting rescue. The others would be searched for survivors as quickly as
possible. If any of those other three crossed the boundary and didn’t jump
away, they’d be searched eventually, but catching up to them would be time consuming
and difficult.