The Lost Stars: Imperfect Sword (28 page)

Vectors changed suddenly on the ships of Marphissa’s formation, shifting wider and flatter, the projected intercept point with the Syndicate warships swinging higher to one side.

“CEO Boucher sees what’s happening,” Diaz said. “Her battleship is firing thrusters to bring her bow around.”

The projected vectors and intercept points kept shifting rapidly, the Syndicate battleship firing its thrusters on full to try to compensate for the sudden changes in how it would encounter the
Midway
.

“All units,” Marphissa ordered. “Fire when your weapons are within range.”

EVERYTHING
was still moving very fast, but it felt like it was happening too slowly. Marphissa watched as the Syndicate battleship, unable to counter its own momentum quickly enough, zoomed upward just past
Midway
’s bow instead of just past her stern. She did not actually see every weapon on
Midway
lash out at the stern quarter of the Syndicate battleship. It happened far too fast for human senses to register. Nor did she see her cruisers and Hunter-Killers add their fire to the barrage, or the weapons on the Syndicate warships firing back, the angle a bad one for the Syndicate battleship so that many of its weapons could not get shots off.

Manticore
shuddered from a few hits, but Marphissa didn’t hear any alarms going off to signify major damage.

The two formations separated more slowly this time, the Midway formation continuing to swing outward in a flat arc while the Syndicate formation angled away.

Marphissa didn’t wait this time to see the results of the engagement. “All units, immediate execute, come up one two five degrees, accelerate to point one light speed.” Her formation bent upward again,
Midway
lighting off all of her main propulsion again, the warships now on their backs relative to their earlier alignment, which made no difference at all to the spacecraft or their crews.

As her ships came around, she saw the results of the engagement show up on her display.

A single Hunter-Killer still accompanied the Syndicate battleship. The light cruiser was rolling off into the distance, all systems dead, one of the Hunter-Killers had blown up, and the third had broken into several pieces, which were tumbling away.

The few surviving enemy escorts must have concentrated their fire on
Manticore
. A few shots had gotten through her shields but had been weakened enough that they had failed to penetrate her armor. No other friendly warship except
Midway
had taken hits, and every shot aimed at
Midway
by the Syndicate battleship seemed to have hit her bow area, where her strongest shields and heaviest armor were placed.

Marphissa inhaled deeply as she saw the results of
Midway
’s fire on the Syndicate battleship. She had not realized until that moment that she had been holding her breath.

CEO Boucher’s battleship looked as if a god’s hammer had slammed into its stern quarter and stern. The battleship was trying to regain maneuvering control, but having trouble, with more than half of its main propulsion units and a lot of maneuvering thrusters destroyed.

“I wish I could have seen her face,” Diaz said. “I wish I could have seen Happy Hua when she realized that
Midway
had all of her weapons operational, and they were all firing at her rear end as she waltzed past.”

“Yes,” Marphissa agreed. “That would have been nice. Kapitan Mercia, what’s the best way to finish off the Syndicate battleship?”

“Take us past his stern again, Kommodor. If he hasn’t regained maneuvering control, we can hammer him hard, and even if he does get control, he won’t be able to evade us. I am happy to report that all of
Midway
’s weapons worked at high efficiency.”

Marphissa brought her formation a bit farther down and angled it to port to match the wavering movements of the Syndicate battleship. The lone Syndicate Hunter-Killer still hung by the battleship, but the little warship offered the battleship no real additional protection. “They’re getting the battleship straightened out,” Diaz said, “but they’re having a lot of trouble. The remaining main propulsion units are all pushing to one side of the center of mass, and it’s taking all they can manage to keep the battleship from going into a wide spin.”

“They will have an easier time controlling it if they cut back on the remaining main propulsion units, Kapitan,” the maneuvering specialist offered.

“They would? Yes. I see that. But they will not because CEO Boucher will not let them.” Diaz looked at Marphissa. “Am I right?”

“Very likely,” she agreed. “It will be very hard to convince a Syndicate CEO that reducing thrust at a time like this is the right course of action. Boucher will think that she needs to keep her remaining thrust at maximum even though that’s the wrong thing to do since it’s making it harder to keep the battleship on course. We’re going to come on the stern quarter opposite the one we hit last time and hammer that battleship’s remaining main propulsion. They won’t be able to turn his bow to face us with their main propulsion shoving them in the opposite direction, so they’ll have to try turning away from us and bringing the bow all the way around the long way.”

“Even if he turns away, we’ll probably still get clean shots at his stern,” Diaz said.

“That’s what I’m counting on.”

With the Syndicate battleship wavering up and toward the star, while Marphissa’s flotilla closed in from behind and below, this was much more of a stern chase than the previous encounters, which reduced the relative speed of the encounter a great deal.

Kapitan Mercia called in. “We can brake velocity as we approach to get the relative speed close enough to zero that
Midway
can sit there and pound on that Syndicate bastard until he breaks.”

“Not yet,” Marphissa said. “Braking down our velocity like that would take more time and prolong our approach. If we give her enough time, Happy Hua may still figure out what she needs to do to get that battleship’s bow around in time to meet us. I want the rest of her main propulsion taken out so she can’t escape. After that, when we come back again, we’ll come in slow enough to pound the hell out of that battleship for as long as it takes.”

“Yes, Kommodor. Request permission to alter my own vector a little as necessary on the final approach to maximize my chances of hitting that battleship’s stern hard.”

“Permission granted,” Marphissa said. “I will tell the other warships not to conform to your movement this time because I want to ensure that CEO Boucher’s ship doesn’t get good shots at any of our escorts while you’re angling for a good shot from
Midway
.”

Mercia paused, then nodded carefully. “I should have considered that, Kommodor.”

“It’s my job to consider such matters,” Marphissa said. “Yours is to get that Syndicate battleship.”

They overtook and tore past CEO Boucher’s sadly diminished flotilla in another moment of extreme violence. This time,
Manticore
jerked badly a couple of times, and alarms sounded in the wake of the firing run.

“Happy Hua targeted us this time,” Diaz said, looking furious. “She couldn’t get in good shots at
Midway
, but she tried to nail us.”

“How bad is it?” Marphissa asked.

“A hell-lance battery out as well as one of the missile launchers. Hull penetrations in two places. Two dead and a dozen injured.”

Marphissa winced internally at the losses but kept her gaze on her display.

The Syndicate battleship’s staggering attempts to swing its bow around had not come close to succeeding.
Midway
had hit its stern badly, taking out all but one of the remaining main propulsion units and badly chewing up another one of the battleship’s aft quarters.

On the other hand,
Manticore
had not been the only escort hit by the Syndicate battleship’s fire.
Gryphon
had taken one bad hit,
Eagle
had lost some of her main propulsion, and
Hawk
was temporarily unable to maneuver. Marphissa had deliberately kept her Hunter-Killers away from the battleship during the engagement, which was probably the only thing that had saved them from being badly damaged or destroyed.

Marphissa searched her display for the fate of the sole surviving Syndicate escort and spotted the Hunter-Killer bolting at maximum acceleration on a long, curving trajectory that would bring it to the jump point for Kiribati, far across the star system.

She made a quick check of the fuel-cell status on her own Hunter-Killers and shook her head. “We’ll have to let him go,” Marphissa told Diaz. “Our own Hunter-Killers don’t have the fuel-cell reserves left to catch him.”

“Too bad.”

“Yes.” She touched her comm controls. “
Midway
, you are to detach from the formation and operate independently to finish disabling and destroy the Syndicate battleship. I will keep the rest of the formation clear to avoid sustaining any more damage until the enemy battleship has been rendered safe to approach.”

“It shall be done,” Kapitan Mercia said, baring her teeth.

“
Gryphon
, stay with
Hawk
until
Hawk
regains maneuvering control, then both of you rejoin the formation.”

“Yes, Kommodor,” Kapitan Stein acknowledged, not quite hiding her relief at not being asked to once more exchange fire with a battleship.

As
Midway
began cumbersomely swinging about to reengage the enemy battleship, Marphissa began to reverse course by pivoting her remaining ships in place and starting to kill their momentum before accelerating back along the same vector in the opposite direction. Unlike
Midway
, though, she wouldn’t be closing to firing range again until that enemy battleship had lost its fangs.

The Syndicate battleship no longer had the unbalanced thrust of its main propulsion shoving it to one side, but it had also lost a lot of thrusters aft. Even a ship with a lot less mass would have found it hard to maneuver under those circumstances, but a battleship faced serious trouble. And with only one main propulsion unit still working, it could not accelerate fast enough or change vectors quickly enough to have any hope of escape or evasion.

That left slugging it out with the
Midway
, and as Marphissa watched, the Syndicate battleship tried once again to swing its bow around in time to meet the latest charge.

But Kapitan Mercia had her thrusters and main propulsion still intact, so while the
Midway
remained a clumsy elephant compared to smaller warships, she was a graceful, light-footed elephant compared to the damaged enemy battleship.

Using her momentum to skate around the enemy battleship faster than it could turn, Mercia’s battleship raked the enemy from one quarter to the other, destroying the last working main propulsion unit and smashing weapons, sensors, and anything else that wasn’t fully protected by the battleship’s armor.

CEO Boucher’s battleship staggered, beginning a slow tumble under the force of the hits that its remaining thrusters strove to counter.

Having reduced her relative velocity to something nearly matching that of the Syndicate battleship, Mercia had
Midway
back in position within ten minutes and began hammering the enemy systematically, working her way up from the stern to smash section after section of the enemy warship while exposing
Midway
to only a few enemy weapons at a time.

“I’ve never seen it like this,” Diaz said with awe as he watched the methodical destruction of the enemy battleship’s weapons and remaining thrusters. “You look at a battleship and you know the weapons they carry and the defenses they have, but it isn’t until you see something like this, with our battleship hurling out volley after volley that would each tear
Manticore
apart, and the other battleship soaking up all that damage and still going, that you really appreciate what terrible monsters they are.”

“It’s not pretty,” Marphissa agreed. “If that ship hadn’t done most of the damage at Kane, I might feel a little sorry for them.”

“There must be a lot of snakes aboard forcing them—” Diaz began.

“I don’t care,” Marphissa said, her voice low and angry. “We had snakes aboard, and we did something. They’re dying, but they could still do something.”

They were doing something, but it consisted of attempts to continue fighting. The Syndicate battleship volleyed missiles at the
Midway
, but the range was so short that
Midway
could target the missiles with hell lances right after launch as the missiles were at a low relative velocity. The few missiles that survived failed to break through
Midway
’s shields.

Once their missiles were exhausted, the Syndicate crew tried firing bombardment projectiles at the
Midway
whenever a launcher was able to bear on her. But
Midway
was able to use her thrusters to twist out of the way of incoming rocks, adding in bursts of acceleration from her main propulsion when necessary. No launcher got more than a single bombardment projectile off before being knocked out, since they had to be visible to
Midway
’s weapons in order to fire on the battleship.

As the escorts watched the slow crushing of the Syndicate battleship’s ability to fight,
Gryphon
and
Hawk
rejoined Marphissa’s formation, the light cruiser having managed to get enough thrusters working again to maneuver.

Midway
had meticulously hammered about two-thirds of the hull of the enemy battleship when the enemy abruptly stopped firing.

“Hold fire,” Marphissa ordered.

Mercia didn’t look happy at the command. “The Syndicate battleship is still dangerous.”