Democracy 1: Democracy's Right (36 page)

The enemy commander, unless he had another trick up his sleeve, hadn't timed it just right, although given the problems with coordinating operations across light years, he’d done better than anyone could reasonably have expected.  If Colin chose to continue towards the planet, even accelerating, he would be forced into a close-range action against the orbital fortresses, one where his ships wouldn't have the advantage.  If he broke away from the planet, they would certainly be committed to a missile duel with the enemy superdreadnaughts...which, if they managed to run them down because of their higher velocity, would have a chance to bring them into energy range.  And if
that
happened, the rebellion was finished, along with the superdreadnaughts.  The enemy commander, intentionally or otherwise, had caught Colin between two fires.

Just for a second, Colin felt indecision creeping up on him, but remaining where they were would be the worst choice of all.  “Signal the enemy ships,” he ordered.  “Tell them” – his lips twitched in delight – “
hell
no!”

“Aye, sir,” the communications officer said.  Whatever the Empire might say about fair treatment, or even forgiveness, they all knew better.  The Empire would either execute them on the spot or dump them all on a penal world, with no hope of escape.  “They’re not responding.”

The display sparkled with bright red icons. “I think they have responded,” Colin said.  Absurdly, a stray thought ran through his mind, reminding him of the lessons on human-alien interaction back at the Academy.  Most of them had been about how important it was to teach the aliens that humanity was the superior race and any resistance would bring death, but some had been genuinely interesting.  Aliens often had different ways of communicating than humanity, yet some ways of communication had been universal.  Opening fire, for one, was a pretty good way of conveying threatening intent.  “Helm” – he tapped his console for a moment, designating a new course – “alter course as specified.”

“Aye, sir,” the helmsman said.  If he had doubts about the wisdom of the course, he didn't show them.  Colin wouldn't have been surprised if he had.  In order to avoid fire from the superdreadnaughts, he was flying alarmingly close to the orbital stations.  The wave of incoming missiles the fortress had launched might have been battered down, evaded, or survived, but there were would be more coming at them soon.  “We are altering course...now.”

Colin nodded.  Whoever was in command of the enemy ships would know, now, that he intended to fight.  The only question remaining, therefore, was brutally simple.  Could his ships survive long enough for them to power up their drives and escape?

***

“They rejected the officer,” Captain Faulding said, in tones that suggested that it was a personal insult.  “They refused even to discuss it with us!”

“They would have been stalling,” Brent-Cochrane pointed out.  He had half-expected the rebels to try just that, but he would have demanded that they powered down all of their systems before entering any discussions.  They would doubtless have refused.  “You may fire at will.”

His superdreadnaught shuddered as another salvo was unleashed towards the enemy ships, which were rapidly reconfiguring themselves into a new formation.  In theory, they possessed equal firepower to Brent-Cochrane’s ships, which at least raised the possibility of the enemy commander electing to fight a duel with energy weapons.  In practice, it wasn't too likely that Commander Walker would dare.  Both sides would suffer horrendous damage, but Brent-Cochrane was in a friendly system and Commander Walker was...not.

He watched as the rebel point defence started to engage his missiles and scowled.  Their point defence was more effective than he had expected...and he suspected that their damage control was even better.  The ships were over-engineered – the Imperial Navy Design Board was composed of professional paranoids – yet that didn't explain the improved performance that the rebels were getting from some of their systems.  For the first time, Brent-Cochrane had doubts about his chosen course of action.  Would it not be wiser to put the plot to dislodge Percival to one side and unite against the rebels?

“Send a signal to Greenland,” he ordered, softly.  “Tell them that I want their Household Troops out here supporting us.”

“Aye, sir,” the communications officer said.  There was a long pause as the rebels continued to move away from the planet, and then opened fire in unison.  Brent-Cochrane let out a breath he hadn't known that he had been holding.  There were no unexpected additions to their firepower.  “Commodore, they’re refusing, citing safety concerns...”

“Fuck them,” Brent-Cochrane scowled.  He smiled darkly.  If the Household Troops refused to come and join the fight, they were damn well not getting any of the credit.  “Continue firing.”

Chapter Thirty-Six

Colin watched, as dispassionately as he could, as the first salvo of missiles from the superdreadnaughts roared into the teeth of his point defence.  Missile after missile vanished as the datanet designated them as targets and picked them off, but there were always other missiles to take their place.  The enemy commander had been canny enough to load his external racks before arriving at Greenland and it had given him the throw weight to take a massive toll on Colin’s systems.  A handful of missiles slipped through the defence network and slammed against the shields, shaking the massive superdreadnaught as they struggled to remain on an even keel.

“No damage, but shields were nearly overloaded,” the tactical officer warned.  Colin nodded, sourly.  The tactical instructors at the Academy had warned them, time and time again, that the opening barrage was the most important and he’d wasted his opening barrage on the orbital fortress.  It
was
damaged – the superdreadnaughts had hit it quite badly – but it couldn't actually give chase.  Moving with ponderous inevitability, the enemy superdreadnaughts were converging on his fleet, tightening the range.  The only advantage the rebels had was that their missiles didn't have to fly so far to hit their targets.  Colin wasn't unaware of the irony.  He was in the same position as the enemy ships at Jackson’s Folly.  “The damage control parties are moving up replacement shield generators now.”

The superdreadnaught rocked alarmingly as another missile slipped through the defences and struck the shields.  It shouldn't have been so dangerous, but with so many impacts in so short a space of time there was a good chance that one or more of them would overload and burn out a shield generator, rendering the hull vulnerable.  Superdreadnaughts were the most heavily armoured ships in space, easily able to take one or more hits, but even they had their limits.  When missiles started exploding inside the hull, the ship was very close to being destroyed or crippled.  It wouldn't make much difference, Colin knew; they were nowhere near friendly territory.

He looked up at the timer, counting down the seconds.  He’d never intended to stay longer than an hour in the system, but he'd started recycling the flicker drives at once, just in case the defenders proved unusually robust.  The enemy ships had ten minutes to cripple or destroy them before Colin could run; ten minutes...it might just be long enough.  Their closing speed was slowing as Colin’s own ships fought to increase speed, but it wouldn't be enough to save them from an energy duel.  Two converging lines formed on the display as he ran through the tactical problem.  The enemy ships would be within energy range for at least a minute before he could run, which meant...the rebellion was on the verge of failing.

I will not allow it
, he thought, thinking hard.  The smaller ships could escape, of course, but that would just leave the superdreadnaughts vulnerable to the enemy ships.  The Imperial Navy was ignoring the smaller ships, choosing to concentrate on his superdreadnaughts, even though the smaller ships added a great deal of point defence to the formation.  It wasn't a poor tactic either.  There were hundreds of rebel starships out there, but only nine of them were superdreadnaughts and, without the superdreadnaughts, none of the smaller ships posed a major threat. 
I will not...

He glared at the display, as if staring at it would somehow change reality.  The basic fundamental tactics of space warfare hadn't changed in centuries, even though the technology had been improved until there was little room left for improvement.  He’d been trained in the traditional school...and all of his training was telling him that it would come down to a brute force encounter between two squadrons that were, at least on paper, equally matched.  If the enemy had brought both of their superdreadnaught squadrons to the party, Colin knew, they would have had to surrender or they would have been certainly destroyed.

Or perhaps we don’t have to destroy them
, he thought, suddenly.  The tactical instructors had talked about the decisive victory, the victory that would destroy the enemy’s space navy and crush his systems in one blow.  Small wonder, really, when the last war the Empire had fought against an alien race had been against one that possessed only nine star systems when they’d been discovered.  The Empire had no concept of a long war, which meant...

“I want you to shift our targeting priorities,” he ordered.  Both sides had been shooting at each other, merely concentrating on getting in a few hits per salvo.  The damage, such as it was, would be largely random.  “I want you to concentrate on disrupting their drive fields.”

The tactical officer looked up, new hope apparent in his eyes.  Each of the enemy superdreadnaughts were surrounded by a drive field; knock out the drive field and the superdreadnaught’s speed would be instantly cancelled as the laws of physics reasserted themselves.  It would take the superdreadnaught’s crew time to replace the damaged drive nodes and regenerate the drive field...the only risk was that the enemy ships would start doing the same to his ships.  It couldn't be helped.  Given enough time, he was sure that the enemy commander would start thinking in the same terms.

“Yes, sir,” the tactical officer said.  His hands danced over his console.  “Do you have any targeting preferences, sir?”

Colin hesitated.  If they had been able to identify the enemy command ship, he would have targeted it on general principles, hoping that the enemy commander – it bothered him, absurdly, that he didn’t know who he was facing – would either relocate his ships to cover his ass, or would be killed.  He’d checked the IFFs against the Imperial Navy registry, but the enemy commander – for whatever reason – had chosen to scramble his IFF signals, probably to prevent Colin from doing exactly that.  It was against regulations, yet if he succeeded in killing Colin and breaking the rebellion, all sins would be forgiven.

“The closest enemy superdreadnaught,” he said, finally.  “You may fire at will.”

***

“The enemy ships are altering their targeting priorities,” the tactical officer said.  “They’re targeting
General Napoleon
specifically.”

“Interesting,” Brent-Cochrane mused.  The two formations were still converging and there was nothing the rebels could do to prevent that, so had they decided to try and knock out one of his ships before they entered energy range?  Or had they just decided to be annoying?  The rebel ECM was better than anything he could deploy and it wasn't easy to be absolutely certain of their actions.  The disruption caused by the missile explosions were screwing up the sensors.  Even hardened systems were having problems.

He watched as the rebel attack developed.  Standard doctrine, at least when the two sides were evenly matched, insisted that each ship should pair up with an enemy ship and exchange fire.  The rebels had clearly decided to throw standard doctrine out of the airlock...and he had to admit that it made sense.  If they knocked out one of his ships, or even discouraged her from taking part in the general pursuit, they would find it easier to escape.  He glanced up at the timer and swore.  How long would it take for the rebels to power up their drives and escape?  His ship shuddered as she launched another spread of missiles, adding to the chaos, yet the rebels were proving alarmingly effective at knocking them down.  As far as their sensors could tell, the rebels had only lost a handful of shield generators and had managed to replace them before the Imperials could take advantage of it.

“Adjust our point defence to cover the
Napoleon
,” he ordered, slowly.  The rebels might have just given the crews of the remaining ships a break, allowing the full point defence of his ships to be focused on covering a single ship.  The rebels had launched full spreads from each of their ships towards her, yet...it would be an interesting struggle.  “Continue firing on the rebel ships.”

On the display,
General Napoleon
started to fall back as the rebel attack roared towards her.  Brent-Cochrane considered it absently, knowing that when a missile plunged past its target it was almost certainly not going to have the chance to alter course and engage.  A smart missile would probably find itself another target towards the rear of the formation, or maybe just detonate and hope to confuse the sensors.  The superdreadnaught staggered under the weight of so much fire, despite everything her sisters could do to defend her, and then fell out of line.  For a moment, Brent-Cochrane allowed himself the hope that that would be the end of it, just before the superdreadnaught disintegrated into an expanding sphere of overheated plasma.

There was silence in the CIC.  The Imperial Navy hadn't lost a superdreadnaught in combat since the First Interstellar War; technically, that hadn't even
been
the Imperial Navy.  Ships had been damaged, mothballed, repaired and replaced, yet no superdreadnaught had been lost in a battle.  Brent-Cochrane felt cold ice congealing in his chest.  The Empire was dependent upon the superdreadnaughts to maintain order, using the ships to intimidate everyone else into behaving themselves.  Time and time again, the Empire had displayed its will to crush dissent and punish rebellion a thousand times over, using the superdreadnaughts as the blunt instruments of its will.  The superdreadnaughts were invincible.  Even the mere threat of a superdreadnaught was enough to compel submission.

And now the magic was gone.  Whatever happened, Brent-Cochrane knew that the entire galaxy would soon hear of the day a superdreadnaught – perhaps more than one – was destroyed by rebels.  Word would spread from planet to planet, from ship to ship, and others would start wondering if it might be possible to beat a superdreadnaught after all.  The loss of a single ship would ignite a fire that would burn the galaxy, even if the rebellions were smashed without further ado.  His superiors would not be pleased.

“Continue firing,” he ordered harshly.  The rebels might not have lost a ship, but their ships were clearly taking damage.  “Do not let up on the bastards!”

“Aye, sir,” the tactical officer said. 

The superdreadnaught rocked as another missile slammed home.  Brent-Cochrane saw another red light flare up on the internal systems display, before fading to yellow as the computers decided that it wasn't so dangerous after all.  He clenched the handles of his command chair and ran through the tactical equations in his mind again, checking his first thoughts and concepts.  No matter what the rebels did, they were going to enter energy weapons range in three minutes and then...they would see.  Even if they wrecked his squadron in the crossfire, they would never survive being trapped in the unfriendly system.

***

Colin gritted his teeth as another wave of enemy missiles came slashing in towards his ships, a handful making it through the point defence and slamming into the shields.  This time, they were unlucky as energy leaked through the shields and gorged into the hull, knocking out both missile tubes and point defence weapons.  He tapped his console, bringing up a status display and scowled.  The battering his ships were taking was reducing their ability to defend themselves, which ensured that the battering would only get worse.  His crew worked hard to defend themselves, but the odds were slowly turning against them.

“Admiral, we have lost three more shield generators,” the damage control officer reported.  Colin cursed under his breath.  The work of a few hours in a shipyard, or even a day or two if they had to fall back on their own resources, was impossible when under fire.  Even if the generators were recoverable, they had to be powered down and checked carefully before they risked reinstalling them.  “If we lose one more...”

“Understood,” Colin said, tartly.  There was no need to spell out the consequences.  One more shield generator being destroyed, or knocked out, would mean that part of their hull would be permanently exposed to enemy fire, rather than small gaps appearing in the shields from time to time.  The enemy would detect the sudden weakness and move to exploit it, aiming their missiles to go through the gap and slam directly into the shields.  “Rotate the remaining generators to cover our rear.”

He leaned back in his command chair, watching the bloody inventory of damage flowing up in front of him.  The enemy ships had to be taking the same battering – he knew that his ships were handing it out as well as taking it, even though the enemy had refrained from trying to target one of his ships specifically.  He wasn't sure why the enemy had refused that...until it suddenly clicked in his head.  If the enemy managed to knock out their flicker drives, they’d won.  They’d just fall back and wait for reinforcements before closing in on Colin’s trapped ships.  It was clever, too clever.  He studied the enemy formation again, trying to pick out the command ship, but there was no way he could identify it.  The enemy commander was too smart for that.

The timer was ticking down, showing three minutes to escape – if they lasted that long.  The other timer was far less encouraging.  In two minutes, the enemy ships would be within energy weapons range, and then all hell would break loose.  At such short range, the battle would become one of mutual slaughter, but then...the Empire could afford to lose a superdreadnaught squadron or two if it stopped the rebellion.