Opening Moves (40 page)

The Tuathaan fleet was built mainly around the ubiquitous
Tóraí
or
Hunter
-class attack ship. It was a small vessel compared to most star nation's core fleet vessel, fitting somewhere between a light cruiser and a destroyer, tonnage-wise. Individually it didn't hold a candle to an operational  Dominion cruiser, but it was a fast and agile class of ship, easy to mass-produce and an embodiment of the Tuathaan warrior spirit. Ideal for raids or for individual starship to starship combat between rivaling clans out to settle feuds, its designers had seen to it that the majority of its weapons were loaded into its bulbous bow. That left only token weapons' mounts and defenses to the sides and rear. However, since most of the ship's energy was directed towards its bow the Tuathaan had come up with a simple and cost-effective way to give their small ships the capability to launch fighters. Each
Tóraí
carried an assortment of parasite craft piggy-backing on its hull, or rather, in niches along its outer hull. Each niche was connected to an airlock and a fuel pump so, depending on clanhold and preference, a
Tóraí
could carry between six and sixteen fighters.

These parasite pockets now proved structural weaknesses as lasers licked at the fully fueled small craft, with the Dominion ships' even smaller mounts powerful enough to burn through them. Fighters exploded in their mounts, tearing holes in the attack ships' hulls through which howling hurricanes of pressurized air and screaming people were sucked into the vacuum, never to be seen again.

Corr'tane had left his fighters back in normspace, in Dunnan Gal. Fighters had no warpfield generators, and their small size and mass made it extremely hard to track them in the fold. His squadrons would have been wasted here, and where they were now they had important orders of their own.

In the fold, Corr'tane's surprise attack had wreaked havoc on an unprecedented scale. More than a hundred and forty of the enemy's ships had been destroyed, their remains floating through space as fields of debris of slowly expanding clouds of plasma. Easily the same number of ships had taken heavy damage, their sensor profiles fluctuating in CLAWBLADE's central plot. The Tuathaan column closest to his fleet had simply ceased to exist as a fighting unit, its vessels and screens reduced to heaps of slag and floating corpses. The two columns next to it, 'above' and 'below' 3
rd
Fleet's relative position, had taken damage, but by now the initial shock was beginning to wear off, even though the Ashani vessels continued their relentless barrage.

Barely five seconds had passed since them opening fire, and already a second missile salvo was underway, but reduced in size this time as his frigates and light screening elements had depleted their magazines in that ferocious alpha strike. Due to Corr'tane's waiting, it wasn't the center that was hit the hardest, but the rearmost third of Clan Dunnan's forces that were withering away under his fleet's attack. In the blink of an eye his forces had closed the numbers gap to the Tuathaan, and now they had the advantage in tonnage.

The missile salvo found its targets in the second and third Tuathaan echelons, but less than fifty percent of the birds got through this time as the clanholds' ships' defenses and electronic countermeasures frantically fought back and the
Tóraís
and other ships struggled to fly evasive maneuvers. Nuclear flowers blossomed in the void of foldspace, radiation and heat engulfing ships and sailors alike. But the initial terror began to fade.

“
Enemy units are reforming, sir!” Pryatan warned him. “The survivors of the second and third column are changing course to attack us. Ships from the other echelons are joining them!”

“
What about the rest?!” Corr'tane demanded as his eyes tried to sift through the haze of information in the holotank.

“
We've got about four hundred ships accelerating toward the corridor's entrance. Distance now a quarter million kilometers, growing rapidly, sir!”

Corr'tane's expression tightened. They were going in the right direction, but his plan's success hinged on his forces being the hammer to the anvil he had left back in the star system. The Tuathaan ships were faster than his and had a higher rate of acceleration, and his own force had started at a standstill relative to them. Compared to the clanholds' ships, their engines roaring, 3
rd
Fleet was moving anemically. Slowly, Corr'tane's six hundred ships moved to face the rearguard force the Tuathaan commander had chosen to sacrifice to allow his remaining ships to make the journey to Dunnan Gal. Once there he still had a chance to defeat the Ashani
en detail
if he played his cards right.

“
Full power to the engines. Have our right flank swing towards the enemy. All ships, advance and keep up your fire!”

Hurricanes of focused plasma and salvos of nuclear-tipped missiles streaked toward the Tuathaan, cutting holes in their attack formations. Making the turn to face the Dominion ships had opened the distance between the two forces to a hundred and fifty thousand kilometers. That distance was now rapidly closing again, despite the firestorm 3
rd
Fleet threw into their path.

The Tuathaan came on, regardless. Their massed attacks had beaten Tear'al and in the past had even managed to drive off Rasenni incursions, too. And now the red of Tuathaan lasers mixed with the green of the Ashani fleet, and a new stream of status and damage reports began to flood into CLAWBLADE's combat information center as Dominion ships were damaged or destroyed.

But Corr'tane was ready for them. He found himself strangely calm and detached. The excitement and doubts leading up to the battle had been replaced by a calm confidence, like a mechanism which simply churned out orders and analyzed tactics two or three steps ahead of the battle's events. He knew exactly where he needed his ships ten minutes from now and exactly how to get them there. He could see where the Tuathaan would go and what would happen when they got there. The attack on Dunnan Gal had been 3
rd
Fleet's baptism by fire, but it had been lopsided. This was the real thing, and his ships performed as perfectly as he had hoped. After years of training and exercises the Dominion's navy was reaping the fruits of their hard labor.

He planned for it: set up reserves, had threatened units ready to fall back under covering fire. The Battle of Báine Corridor was like a beautiful game of strategy he had enjoyed in childhood, a contest of minds and wills rather than technology and vigor. It was the smart people who would win this war: not the most violent or the best equipped, but those with the mind for war and the will to carry it out. These Tuathaan were already dead. They just didn't know it, yet.

Once again the missile batteries added their fire to the engagement. By this time the Tuathaan had a harder time avoiding them as the range between them and Corr'tane's fleet shrank with every passing second. The edges of the formation were able to spread out to avoid the worst of the barrage, and gradually the Tuathaan attack began to spread out and thin, though its center remained heavily concentrated. It was a valiant charge, and it was costing 3
rd
Fleet dearly. Able to bring all their offensive weaponry to bear the
Tóraí
-class attack ships demanded a heavy toll from the first echelons of Dominion fleet. Each of the small attack ships punched way above its league, and wherever its lasers hit, hull plating and the innards of ships gave way.

“
Our right flank has almost finished its movement. They're engaging the enemy's left flank, sir!”

Corr'tane followed Pryatan's announcement in the bridge's holotank. Ordered into the corridor's main current, the two hundred vessels of 3
rd
Fleet's right flank had finished their turning maneuver and now turned their main batteries' full attention to the attacking Tuathaan fleet.

“
And yet, they're still coming,” the strategos mused as the icons of a pair of heavy cruisers flickered for a second, then went out like the flames of a dying candle. Even outnumbered four to one and faced with the full brunt of Corr'tane's offensive firepower, the Tuathaan pressed forward, crashing through his outer screen. He punched the key enabling fleetnet on his command chair. “This is Corr'tane: frontal echelons, break contact with the enemy and engage in evasive maneuvers!” He hammered several columns of numbers into his console, noting locations 'above' and 'below' 3
rd
Fleet's bearing. “Move to these coordinates and fire at will.”

Through the opening the Tuathaan raced, a four-tiered formation of mad firing attack ships, hulks pulling debris clouds after them, and plasma clouds swept forward by the inertia of the ship they had once been.

“They're redlining their drives, sir!” Pryatan inhaled sharply, her grip tight on her chair's armrests.

The Tuathaan were putting every remaining ounce of energy into their drives in a mad dash to close the range between them and the core of Corr'tane's fleet. They were going for his dreadnoughts and battle cruiser divisions, hoping to use their maneuverability to inflict the maximum amount of damage on the heavier vessels before the fates of war finally turned against them.

CLAWBLADE shuddered and Corr'tane was thrown into his shockframe as the enemy's fire struck home. A second later another hit followed, and damage alarms howled through the ship. Outside, the Tuathaan raced closer into the maws of his dreadnoughts while their numbers withered away under the fire of eighty centimeter plasma lasers and countless secondary batteries. But the flickering icons around him showed that the squat, fur-less warriors scored hits of their own.

“
We've lost radar two and LIDARs one and seven. Alpha battery has lost lasers two and six, and the forward auxiliary sensors are fried,” Pryatan rattled down the damage report. “Damage control teams are on their way.”

Corr'tane nodded, but his eyes were fixed on the tactical display. A grim smile crept onto his face.

Pryatan looked at him, then at the funnel-shaped structure forming around the Tuathaan force. On the outer edges the ships' icons changed their bearings, turning their bows towards the enemy, still closing in on and firing at the eight million ton vessels ahead of them.

“
Now.”

* * * * * * *

“Enemy fleet has been neutralized,” Captain Pryatan reported.

Corr'tane opened his shock frame walked over to CLAWBLADE's main holotank. The Tuathaan commander had led his force deep into the system before transitioning back to normspace, right to the edge of the gravity well. The 3
rd
Fleet had been hot on his heels, but the Tuathaans' relative advantage in speed had meant the Dominion's forces were more than forty minutes behind Clan Dunnan's relief force. It had been a quick and prudent decision by the clanhold's commander. He must have suspected that Corr'tane had left a covering force behind and had decided to take the bull by the horns. If he could enter the system fast enough and quickly force an encounter with the Dominion's forces there, he still had a chance to play his cards right and win the day. He had gambled – and lost. It had taken his force too long to reach the planet, and the more than a hundred and fifty Ashani vessels in the system had evaded his force, fleeing farther system-inwards. When Corr'tane's ships had entered realspace the Tuathaan force had found itself trapped in the planet's and star's gravity well right between two enemy fleets. The rest had been a rather simple matter of timing. Stuck between two forces and swarmed by close to two-thousand star fighters, the battle had turned into a desperate struggle for survival, then into a panicked rout, then into silence. None of the more than four hundred Tuathaan ships that had made it into the system had made it out again.

“
Our own losses are running at fifteen percent.”

“
Excellent, truly excellent,” Corr'tane beamed. The 8
th
Fleet at Senfina had lost nearly sixty percent of its ships, either destroyed or damaged and in need of substantial yard time. Tear'al's ineffective advance on Báine had cost 12
th
Fleet about a third of his ships for no gain at all. Under these circumstances, fifteen percent spoke of a superb victory. “Send out search and rescue teams and make sure the battlefield's surveyed. We may still be able to repair some of these vessels, even the Tuathaan ones. We don't need their crews, though,” he added conversationally.

Pryatan nodded and relayed the order in the same tone.

There were no binding interstellar conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war. The Dominion's approach was blunt and straightforward: it was standard policy not to leave enemies alive after a battle. The Dominion had no need for prisoners and felt no need to devote resources to looking after them. Their slave labor needs were met by the Makani, and any intelligence they needed could be gathered through other means. It was also a message, a warning that any that faced the Ashani would be doomed to total destruction. Fear was as much a part of this campaign as other more tangible concerns.

The CLAWBLADE moved forward through the ruined battlefield, gliding majestically past the broken hulks of the Tuathaan ships, its escorts blasting any wrecks which impeded its path. Clan Dunnan's warriors had fought fanatically, but not too skillfully. Corr'tane had read they were a warrior race, but not soldiers. Too often they were said to fight for honor and personal glory. That made them ferocious enemies and dangerous in small numbers where experienced crews could work best with one another. But it also made them comparatively uncoordinated, and in these circumstances, the highly disciplined Ashani ships had exploited their lack of planning and lured them into a killing zone, a cauldron of warships and fire from which there was no escape.