A Pirate's Tale: The Only Solution Is Retribution (42 page)

“You need to pass this information on to Leonidas.”  Gem turned his head toward Ana and she said, “Leo was not a commander of a warships, he fought on the ground.  He needs your wisdom, Gem!”

Gem nodded and pressed his communicator.  Leonidas appeared and he told him what he suspected was going to happen.  Thirty minutes later, Leonidas and Blakely arrived on the Play Toy and Gem was put in command of the Pirate Fleet.  Ana listened in to the meeting and was amazed at Gem’s ability to see things others missed.  She was so fortunate that he loved her.  She really didn’t deserve him but gave thanks that he did.

Gem looked at Leonidas and Blakely, “The number of ships that came here to attack us pretty much reveals how the Romanov Fleets are organized.”

Leo’s straightened up and he asked, “How do you figure that?”

“Because a basic unit would have been sent to destroy your ship.  They wouldn’t break up a unit and lose its command structure.  That means that their fleets are made up of two hundred ship units commanded by a Squadron Leader.  Five of the squadrons will compose a fleet commanded by One Fleet Commander, so that means their major fleets will be made up of units of one thousand warships in each fleet commanded by a single Junior Fleet Commander.  Another higher ranking commander will command five of these fleets.  At that point, a single Major Fleet Commander will be in overall command of half of the fleets and another will command the other half.  Serge will be in overall command of both.”

Blakely stared at Gem and said, “So one Major Commander will command twenty five thousand warships with five Senior Fleet Commanders reporting directly to him.”

“Yes, and I believe that Serge will order one of them to go out and meet us with his command while he keeps the other in reserve above Romania against any of our ships that could break though to attack the planet and launch a nuclear missile at the city he’s located in.”

Leonidas and Blakely thought about this information and Gem said, “That means that there will be twenty five Junior Fleet Commanders commanding the one thousand ship units.  There will be five higher ranking fleet commanders leading five of the thousand ship units and one overall commander.”

Blakely looked at Gem, “Why is this important?”

“Because if we can take out the leaders, they will lose their cohesion and no one will be willing to make a major decision without higher up approval.  Take their leaders out and the more organized force will have a superior advantage in what follows.”

Blakely looked at Leonidas and then said to Gem, “How do we find these leader’s ships.”

“Simply look for the ones with the highest number of incoming and outgoing communications.  The Commanders require information to make decisions and that means they will be receiving reports on everything from readiness reports to enemy ship counts.  The Toy and Thermopylae will be targeting those vessels and will fire missiles at all of those ships as we find them and, if we’re successful at taking them out, no one in those fleets is going to be willing to issue any orders if they know they’re dead if they do.”

“What do we do about the other ships?” Leo asked.

“The Romanov Fleets are highly organized and they will maintain their ranks during the battle.  The trick is to isolate the units with overwhelming numbers, hit it fast, and run from the others.  We’ll organize our fleet into four hundred ship units and tell them to run around the Fleets avoiding contact until a two hundred ship unit breaks out to attack.  They’ll turn and all of them will open fire at once.  They’ll then turn and run before they can be hit by superior numbers.”

“Do you honestly think this will work?” Blakely asked.

“We’d be overwhelmed and beaten if they just released their ships to go after us in mass.  But commanders like to command and get their egos stroked by doing it.  They will refuse to lose control of their subordinates by breaking ranks to go after us.  Remember, there are many directions to run in open space and by rapidly changing course and keeping a distance between our units, we will spread them out and run them into our units as they’re chasing us.  They will be ordered to focus on their assigned targets and will not see our units moving around them until it’s too late.  It is during this time that we will find the ships where their leaders are located and take them out.”

Blakely looked at Leonidas and shrugged, “Do you think our Commanders can do this?”

Leo looked at Gem, “You are going to have to explain it to them.”

“I will and I will also create a pattern our units should follow while evading that will put them in position to fire on other Romanov units on the fly.  However, all of us need to make sure that we know if the Romanov Fleets take enough punishment and go after us in mass, then we will stop using units and it will be every ship for themselves.”

Leonidas shrugged, “I was going to do that from the start.  This sounds like a good plan.  Thank you, Gem.”

Blakely exhaled sharply, “Just how do you know any pattern you develop will work against them.  You don’t know how they’ll be forming up to meet us.”

Gem smiled, “They will form up between us and the planet.  If we spread our ships out, they will have to do the same to keep us from rushing around them towards the planet and attacking.  We know how many ships they’ll be using and that tells us how many will be facing our units.  If we start the pattern as they move forward, it will work.”

Blakely looked at Leonidas shaking his head, “My mind is just not big enough to really understand how we’ll do this but I’m going to trust he knows what he’s suggesting.” 

“We’ll still be heavily outnumbered but this plan gives us an opportunity to whittle down their numbers before they send in the other fleet holding station above Romania,” Gem replied to him.

Blakely blew out a hard breath, “We’ll connect all our ships on the general frequency in an hour and you can tell us what we need to do.”

“It is going to take us the better part of two days to get the units established, organized, and practice the pattern so they understand it.  Once that’s done, we’ll go and pay Serge Romanov a visit,” Gem said with a smile.  Leo and Blakely nodded.

• • •

Serge stared at one of his major trading partners on his console’s monitor and heard him say, “You were incredibly stupid to attack the Unity, Serge.”

“I DIDN’T DO IT!”

The Egulen looked at Serge and shook its head as it said, “Serge, Serge, Serge, you’ve placed me in an untenable position.  All the planets I trade with have called for a boycott of anyone that does business with you.  I personally had no love for the Unity and detested the way they stopped some of my business plans, just as I’m sure you did as well.  But claiming you had nothing to do with it is ludicrous?!”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I had my engineers make that device that was shown during your speech and by the way, it was a marvelous speech, Serge, you almost made me weep.  However, they then searched a shipment of electronic parts I purchased from you recently and found that frequency coming out of a box that have not been opened.  That frequency was emanating from numerous devices inside the box.  I had it opened and they found fifteen electronic parts that had some sort of small device inside them causing that frequency.  So unless someone boarded your freighter, inserted those devices into those sealed electronic parts, without your crew seeing them do it, they came from you!  That pretty much proves that you are the one that destroyed the Unity and I’m pretty sure every inhabited planet in the galaxy has performed the same searches and knows it as well.”  The Egulen paused and said, “I’ve been wondering, Serge.  We’ve been friends for years and I’ve bought trillions of credits worth of your products.  Why did you send those devices to my world?  My engineers have found them scattered around my planet in most of the cities and also on the ships I use to trade?”  Serge sat and stared at the Egulen in silence and he finally said, “Well…until you can answer that question satisfactorily, I will have to no longer purchase your products.  Even if you choose to make them free, I really think no one is going to accept them after what you did to Cruet.”

The display went dark and Serge slammed his fist on his console.  That blasted Pirate had ruined his plan and now he was isolated.  Every one of the planets that were members of the Unity had contacted him and told him to stay away.  He was a pariah and it was all that Pirate’s fault…along with that cursed adopted daughter.  But he could go out in conquest just like the Unity had done and force the planets to his will.  The Unity had stripped them of their warships and they would be forced to obey him or be bombarded from space.  But first, that Pirate had to pay. 

Where was his security chief?  He looked at his panel and scrolled back. He found the message where he was going to check out the Insectoid planets; he pressed a button on his console, “Have you heard anything from my Chief-of-Security.”

“No, Sir.”

Serge began to wonder if the Insects were still operational.  But they had not shown up so they must have been harmed by his devices.  He pressed another button on his panel and saw the two Senior Fleet Commanders appear on his display, “I am going to dispatch one of your fleets to Tortuga.  I want you to go there and blast them into rubble and that includes the planet.”

One of the Commanders nodded and the other looked away for a moment.  He turned back to Serge and said, “That won’t be necessary, Sir.”

Serge’s eyebrows came together, “Oh?  And why is that?”

“I’ve just received word from the ships I’ve assigned to patrol the filaments at the intersection closest to Romania that thousands of Pirate Warships are coming out of the intersection and moving toward us on the Romanian Filament.”

“HOW MANY?!” Serge yelled.

“They counted several thousand before all of them were attacked and stopped reporting.  None are reporting now.  It appears the Pirates were not harmed by your devices and are coming here to hold you accountable.”

Serge sneered and looked at the junior Major Fleet Commander, “You will take your fleet out to meet them.  I will hold the second fleet here against any of them breaking through your lines.  My intelligence estimated before we initiated our attacks that the Pirates don’t have enough warships to be a problem for you.  Move out and destroy them.  Once that’s done, go to Tortuga and blast the planet!”  The junior Commander nodded and disappeared from Serge’s display.

“Sir, don’t you think we should both go out to meet them.”

“NO!  If just one ship breaks through, it will fire a nuclear missile at my city.  You will gather your ships above the city now!”

“What about the rest of the planet?”

“FOLLOW YOUR ORDERS OR I’LL FIND SOMEONE WHO WILL!!”

“Yes, Sir.  I’ll move into position immediately.”

Serge was frightened and that wasn’t something he was equipped to deal with.  But he had them highly outnumbered with more modern warships; he should be fine.  He began shaking and kept saying over and over, “I’ll be fine…”

T
he sixteen thousand and fifty-eight pirate ships were organized into forty units of four hundred ships.  Blakely was in command of the fleet and he protested doing it initially, until Leonidas persuaded him to do it.

“Captain, our two ships are going to be completely focused on finding the warships with the Fleet Leaders on board and targeting them with a missile.  There is no possible way for us to do that and also command the units.” Leo said to Blakely.

“But I’ve never commanded anything nearly as large as this.”

Gem looked at him, “You’ve commanded your forty ships, haven’t you?”

“Well, yes.”

“Then simply look at each unit as a single ship and act accordingly.  You have the pattern they need to follow so your main task will be just keeping them on course.  Controlling all the ships in each unit will fall to the Forty Unit Commanders, you can do this,” Gem said reassuringly.

Blakely closed his eyes and then opened them, “I’ll do what I can.”

Leonidas looked at him, “Captain, the ones that came here are here because you are here.  They respect you and will do what you order.  I’m not certain they would trust Gem or me if we were issuing them orders.”

Blakely rolled his eyes and nodded, “I said I’ll do it!”

• • •

Leonidas and Gem were far ahead of the incoming pirate fleet and came off the filament into normal space where it passed Romania at its closest point.  A huge fleet of Romanov Warships were moving away from the planet and placing themselves in normal space between the filament and the planet.  Leonidas looked at Embree, “Alright, it’s time to do your magic.”

Embree pressed a button on his panel and an image of the Romanov Fleet appeared on the huge wall monitor.  A moment later, bright white lines appeared going between the ships and Embree began removing some of the ships with small numbers of white lines out of the image.  Ten minutes later, only ships with numerous white lines moving toward them remained on the monitor and their numbers were decreasing rapidly.  Leonidas watched the process and saw Embree pressing buttons furiously on his console, “What are you doing?”

“I’m sending half of those ships on the monitor to the Toy and I’m sending ship frequencies we’re going to go after to the missiles in our inventory.  I’m arranging them from the ships with the most communications down to the ones with the least.  The ones with the least are the twenty-five thousand ship commanders.  We need to prioritize the senior leaders for initial attack and then go after the junior commanders once they’re eliminated.”

“You need to hurry, I don’t know how long they’re just going to sit there and allow us to scan them.”

Barney smiled, “Sir, they aren’t going to break up their formations to attack us.  They probably think that’s what we’re trying to provoke them into doing.  No, they’ll hold formation and wait for our fleet to arrive.”

Leonidas looked at Barney, “You think?”

“Sir, we’ve removed the scouts they have in subspace so they don’t know where our fleet is located.  The fleet could be just outside normal space directly under us waiting for them to weaken their formations in order to attack us.  If they knew where our fleet was, then they’d send ships out to attack us now.  However, they don’t know so they’ll wait.”