Opening Moves (72 page)

“
Everybody in the SDT,” the sensor and defense tower was a complete goner and in the two decks of Section Four right beneath it. “Bastards must've struck right at the foundation,” the commander muttered, then cleared her voice. “A hundred and thirty-seven dead. About fifty wounded in the nearby sections and decks. Medical teams are on the job.”

All the while the Ashani destroyers kept up their laser fire, but compared to the asteroid strike JOHNSTON had just suffered, they constituted a mild hailstorm. But even mild hail, if concentrated enough, could hurt. Concentrating their main batteries the enemy destroyers attacked on part of the hull at once instead of spreading out their four forward mounted plasma lasers, and together the lighter weapons were able to penetrate the fifty centimeters of solid metal plating. They did comparably little – the
Leyte
-class cruiser carried nothing essential to its survival that close to its outer hull – but every circuit they cut, every laser cluster they put into auxiliary mode was one little wound that made it harder for the human warship to stay in the fight.

The cruiser's own missiles hadn't been idle in the meantime. The Ashani destroyers were light on defensive firepower, usually relying on the company of other warships to form anti-missile fire zones. With their own bows pointed at JOHNSTON, their laser clusters' field of fire was severely diminished, and two birds from the cruiser port side tubes broke through and engulfed the closest destroyer in two miniature suns. Unlike JOHNSTON, it didn't have the mass or armor to absorb the hit, and when the light of the nuclear fires rescinded, all that was left was charred hulk barren of all life.

The stern of a second destroyer suddenly flared in a series of smaller explosions.

“
The two Agama gunships!” Belasquez called out.

The small craft barely massing half as much as a single Ashani frigate tore past the destroyer, guns blazing, launching missiles from four single-shot tubes almost as an afterthought. The wounded destroyer swayed around, her primary battery focusing on the newcomers. Four sickly green beams leaped through space, cutting one of the gunships neatly in half. The action came too late for her remaining companion on JOHNSTON's port side as the four Agama anti-ship missiles crossed the few thousand kilometers in a heartbeat, outdoing the Union cruiser's earlier display of destruction before their prey's defenses even had had the time to react. The second Agama gunship vanished almost at the same time, brought down by its comrade's killer only seconds later.

JOHNSTON equaled the score herself. Three railgun rounds shredded the Ashani destroyer's hull before all remaining port side guns gave it the
coup de grâce
in a concerted crack of thunder. Its reactor going critical, it joined her dead sisters in a small, expanding cloud of plasma.

Brave little ships, Beaufort thought. They had bought him some time.

Charlie turret put a round right into the first starboard side destroyer's hull, leaving the ship dead in the water, but the Ashani reacted immediately. The last three remaining fighters, their numbers thinned out by proximity nukes, laser clusters and chance hits by JOHNSTON's main battery, raced forward in a suicidal charge, crashing into the cruiser's starboard and taking Charlie turret and the energy supply for Delta turret with them.

“
Enemy frigates on collision course!” Belasquez warned. “They're heading for our bow, four thousand and closing, fast!”

Beaufort cursed silently. “Helm, level her out and take us forty degrees to port. Starboard side batteries, prepare to engage. Alpha and Beta turret, concentrate on frigates. Execute!”

The cruiser limped into position, trading shots with the remaining destroyers. The damage to her sensors and the ever present and expanding debris around her made it increasingly hard to track and hit her targets. Luckily, the same counted for her opponents. But the frigates were nimble craft, their strength as picket ships being in their speed and maneuverability. Even as Beaufort's ship finished its turn and threw fire at them they raced closer, somehow managing to evade the railgun turrets tracking them.

“
With the bow sensors down the computers have trouble locking on to them, skipper!”

At eleven hundred kilometers Gamma turret proved to be a lucky shot, its two independent barrels putting a slug into one frigate each. The frontal hits guaranteed that the projectiles traveled through the whole length of the small ships, utterly destroying them. But the remaining Ashani frigate launched her four missiles.

JOHNSTON's starboard laser clusters went into overdrive, and for a moment it seemed as if even fate had jumped in to help the beleaguered cruiser as two warheads were cut down while a third bird slammed harmlessly into a piece of debris. But nuke number four got through.

It hit the cruiser's starboard halfway between the starboard SDT and the mangled bow. Metal shrieked, lights went out and people were ripped from the shock harnesses with their seats. Atmosphere rushed into the vacuum, fanning the nuclear flames. The whole ship screamed like a dying beast. Sparks burst from consoles and work stations, bolts exploded inwards, propelled to lethal speeds by the pressure enacted on them. Beaufort felt lighter than usual. Internal gravity was down, too. The internal comm channels filled with the screams of people, wounded and dying. And yet...

The lights went on again, as did the consoles that had not been broken. Damage readouts rushed down the screens as did status reports, showing that the maintbots and medical teams were already on the job. JOHNSTON was mangled, but she was still in the game.

“
Send word through the ship!” Beaufort commanded. “Let them know how well they fought, and how proud they should be.” He coughed a little, only now feeling the blood in his mouth from where he had bitten his cheek. “But this isn't over yet. Damage report?” There was no replay. “XO, what's our status?”

The captain pushed himself against his shock harness' restraints to reach the first officer's station, grabbing hold of the console. Commander Ranaissa did not react to his arrival, continuing to stare impassively at her screen, her head held in place by her helmet.

“Therese? Talk to me,” he whispered, reaching for her shoulders. His touch prompted no response, and he grabbed her hand to check the readout of the small screen on her wrist. He felt a lump in his throat, instinctively knowing what he would find there. A flatline. A new set of impacts reminded him that there were still enemies out there, and that he still had a ship to command. But Beaufort did not rush himself. He owed his friend that much. He placed her hand carefully down, then lowered the black sunscreen visor of her helmet, covering her face. “
Au revoir, mon amie
.”

“
Captain? Weapons are down across the ship. That nuke must've cut a central power node!”

“
Commander Ranaissa is dead. Lieutenant McLane will act as First Officer,” Beaufort said flatly.

“
Yes, sir,” the weapons' officer answered instinctively, a note of surprise in his voice.

They had all known and respected the Commander. More than one had had a crush on her, too. Her loss was like the loss of the ship's soul. It was the same as losing a part of themselves.

“I repeat, skipper: weapons are down! Damage control estimates it'll be at least fifteen minutes before they've found a way to fix the issue.”

“
Captain? Destroyers are intensifying their fire, and that frigate's coming back again!” Belasquez's voice carried nothing of the fear and alarm that the sensor officer felt.

“
What about the refugees?”

“
The first ships are slipping out of the gravity well as we speak. Dominion vessels in the outer system are on an intercept course, but the computers peg them as too far away, sir.”

At least their sacrifice would not have been for naught then. He would be able to look the dead crew members' families in the eye and tell them their loved ones died for something worthy. That was, if he made it out of here first.

“Helm, status of our drives?” Beaufort demanded, his mind racing.

“
Nominal, sir. We've got full thrust and got the Malenkov-Okuda's on stand-by.”

“
All full ahead then. Put some space between us and those bastards.”

The ship lurched forward as a stream of superheated plasma many kilometers long burst from its engines. It wasn't enough.

“Enemy destroyers are keeping up with us, sir. The frigate is closing in again,” Belasquez reported.

“
She's opened her missile tubes, skipper!” McLane warned. “Reading a lock-on. If she puts a bird right into our stern, sir...”

They'd be gone, Beaufort finished the statement in his head. “Helm, prepare for evasives on my mark. Everybody, brace yourselves!”

“Missile launch detected. I'm reading...,” McLane stopped, the continued in a puzzled voice, “a hundred birds in the air?”

“
Bullcrap! That's like whole volume of that ship! What is–”

The three remaining Ashani warships vanished off the plot. Fifty anti-ship missile converged on the three ships, overwhelming their defenses with ludicrous ease, bathing each of them in a volume of fire that would have brought down a dreadnought.

JOHNSTON's main holographic display solidified into a dark face wearing an Alliance uniform.

“
I apologize for coming to your assistance this late, Captain Beaufort,” Commander Subhash Kapila's voice was calm. “I hope my 'little ship' didn't come too late?”

Too late for some, Beaufort was inclined to answer as his eyes touched on the body of Therese Ranaissa, but he bit down the reply. Kapila had just saved every remaining soul aboard his cruiser.

“No, you didn't. In fact, you arrived just in time.” He watched as the Alliance missile destroyer slowed down and took up a position on JOHNSTON's port side. “Our guns are down and we've taken one hell of a beating. Lost too many good people, too,” he added darkly.

“
I understand,” Kapila nodded somberly. “We saw the start of it and decided that sometimes it's more important to do the right thing than the thing someone far away wrote on a piece of paper,” he grimaced and glanced at a station out of the camera's field of view. “Almost a third of the convoy has already made it out. Whatever the repercussions might be, we can get out of here knowing we did-”

“
Captain, enemy activity!” Belasquez outcry cut Kapila's statement short.

Beaufort's eyes snapped to his tactical plot and widened. The Ashani destroyer they had believed to be dead in the water rose up behind the Alliance warship. “Kapila, watch out! Behind you!” He saw the Alliance CO's eyes widen in a mirror image of his own. The stern with its engines and close-by reactors was the most vulnerable part of every star ship –- and the Alliance ship would take longer to turn around than it would take the Ashani bogey to move into firing position.

Everybody on both sides of the comm connection knew this, and Beaufort watched in growing horror as the Dominion warship lined up alongside the human destroyer's axis.

“
Launch stern tubes!” Kapila yelled. “Go for a full d– ”

The connection cut off in the middle of the sentence, and JOHNSTON's bridge crew watched in silent agony as the Dominion attacker's main battery cut a swath of destruction through the missile destroyer from stern to bow in one long, continued plasma laser salvo. Destroyer NO. 721 belched plasma and atmosphere, debris and mangled bodies before her fusion containment failed, turning the powerful small ship into an expanding cloud of particles and gas. The four missiles from her stern tubes made the Ashani destroyer follow her only seconds later.

Beaufort just stared at his screen, taken aback by the events he had been witness to. It was as if fate itself had come to teach them all a wicked lesson about the incalculable nature of war. Kapila and his crew had returned to stand at their side against good reason and the best interest of themselves and their families, and just as they had succeeded in their task the joy of victory had been ripped from their hands, just as life, itself, had been taken from them. As it had been from too many, Beaufort grimaced, his eyes wandering back to the still form of his good friend.

Lieutenant McLane cleared his throat. “Weapons will be back online in eight minutes, sir.”

Beauforts eyes darted back to the diminishing cloud that once had been the Alliance destroyer. The Pacific Rim Alliance was the main strategic competitor to the North American Union. And one of their ships and crews, all two hundred and seventy-three of them, had just died saving them.

“
Mr. McLane, make a note in the ships log commending Commander Subhash Kapila, CO of the
Long March 46
-class missile destroyer No. 721, Alliance Navy, and his crew for their valor and selfless actions in the face of enemy fire.”

McLane hesitated only for second before he punched a key on his console. “Noted, sir.”

What Miles Beaufort had just done was akin to a United States Navy captain suggesting a Soviet officer for a Medal of Honor – at the height of the Cold War. That was sure to raise a ruckus once McKenna Station's mainframe downloaded their logs for review by Fleet Command. But it was the least he could do, to at least suggest the commander for a medal for what he had done.