The Orphan Alliance (The Black Ships Book 3) (22 page)

The
Salamis
, Near
Chula 565

“W
ell, that was certainly unexpected,” Harry muttered as he stared at the
trace table.
Are they trying to lull us into a false sense of security?
 “Commander,
do you have any theories?”

Flemming, shaking
his head in surprise, was caught off guard by the question. “Ah, well, I expect
the enemy saw close to forty ships attack Tauhento and only seventeen at
Oaxes.”  He dragged his fingers across the growing stubble on his chin.
“Perhaps they sent their A-game to Tauhento and knocked together a force of raw
recruits to put us down?”

“I don’t
give a shit what their reason is,” Prouse rumbled as he approached the table, “
s’long
as they keep acting like a pack of damp-eyed
nancy
-boys.” He nodded to Harry. “We’re on the move, sir.”

The enemy
had been travelling to Oaxes in column formation. That alone indicated that
they weren’t elite forces. They had also been sloppy about their station
keeping, which indicated that they had probably gone straight from training
pods to warships.

The frigate
captured after the previous battle, the one with the damaged engineering
section, had been put back into service after a mad scramble by almost every
engineering team in the task force.

She had
limped out here to perform one last task, the creation of an artificial
singularity.

As they
passed near the ship, the Dactari force was knocked out of distortion, but in
the reverse of the usual drop order. If they had maintained proper intervals,
it wouldn’t have been nearly so bad, as the drop wash would have passed through
the gaps, but the enemy commander had let them get too close to each other

The plasma
wash had destroyed nearly half of the enemy forces, but they still outnumbered
the Alliance fleet by roughly three to two.

Further
complicating the situation was the fact that Harry’s forces were still ten
minutes away from effective engagement range. The radius of drop-out
probability had to be avoided or he could have lost the entire task force
before ever firing a shot.

Now it
meant ten minutes of hell as they approached an enemy with linear acceleration
weaponry. They could reach out farther and hit harder than the Humans and,
experienced or not, they were certain to make the most of their advantage. With
the singularity still present, they couldn’t run. That left only one option.

Four bright
flashes appeared in the middle of the enemy formation – four artificial stars
that died in a matter of seconds.

“That’s all
of them,” the tactical officer announced. “The rest of the warheads are on
their flanks.”

There had
been over three hundred Mosquito sub-munitions scattered around the estimated
arrival point. A hundred were directly in the path of their expected arrival,
while the rest were arrayed in a huge cylinder, with the open ends facing
either the Alliance at one end, or the gravity well of Chula 565 at the other.
Many of the warheads in their path would have been destroyed by drop wash
and many more by gunnery. Still, four had managed to kill four enemy ships.

The rest had
them boxed in with only one way out.

The guns of
the entire task force began firing once it was clear that they wouldn’t be
hitting the remaining sub-munitions. It would take a long time for the rounds
to reach the enemy, but there were always the smallest of chances that an
incoming round might also be intercepted.

“Going to
nine-tenths pitch,” the helmsman called out. Though it was a seven-minute run
to the enemy at full pitch, a series of random velocity changes would help to
throw off enemy fire. Even their high-speed projectiles took a few minutes to
reach out this far and, unless they were firing straight down the throats of
the Alliance ships, even the smallest change in velocity would play havoc with
targeting.

Harry hated
this part of battle – the long moments when you couldn’t do anything but wait.
They would have to run the gauntlet for another six minutes before effectively
returning fire.

An icon
changed color on the trace table.
At least some of us don’t have to sit
idle,
he thought as he watched the targeting layer update. The fire control
teams were selecting vessels around the perimeter of the enemy fleet as
priority targets. They were the ships that had nobody behind them. If they were
destroyed, their demise wouldn’t unmask the batteries of a new ship that would
then be free to fire on the Alliance.

Frigates
and cruisers near the heart of the formation were also being targeted for
boarding. Once they were out of the fight, they would help to screen the
Alliance vessels. The Dactari might be reluctant to fire back at ships that
held their comrades, even if those ships were firing at them.

A deep,
ripping buzz rumbled through the bridge as the main battery opened fire on
eligible targets. The
Salamis
carried the only rail guns in Harry’s task
force and four hundred kilograms of projectile were now outbound at more than
eight times the velocity of conventional rounds.

“Back to
full pitch.”

Some
flashes began to appear where opposing rounds were impacting. All of the
flashes were closer to the Alliance due to the higher velocities of the Dactari
projectiles.

“Center of
incoming mass appears to be targeted on the
Salamis
,” the sensor
coordinator advised. “We’re about to take a damn good pounding.”

Harry
continued to present an air of calm composure. The boarding parties were ready
to go, the targets were allocated, and all he could do at this point was set an
example.

“Any second
now,” the sensor officer said, a little more loudly.

As if on
cue, the view began to color as the high-velocity rounds began to impact the
shields. Dappled rings of red and orange danced across in front of the
Salamis
as the enemy projectiles probed for weaknesses in the massive carrier’s
shields. Some found their way inside the small openings that blinked in and out
of existence to allow for outbound firing.

“Two
Vulcans and a one-oh-five are down on the starboard bow,” fire control
announced.

“Cease fire
and stabilize the forward shields,” Prouse ordered. “The rest of the task force
can do the firing while we soak up the enemy rounds.”

“The
Riel
took a hit,” sensor announced. “She’s falling back.”

The
raindrop pattern of impacts was interrupted by a large red ring and the deck
shuddered under Harry’s feet.

“They got a
big one through,” the damage control officer called out. “Graze down the port
side. No inner hull damage. Took out fifteen shield emitters, eight Vulcans and
six one-oh-fives.”

“We got
lucky,” Flemming muttered.

“We get any
luckier and we’ll be in trouble,” Prouse muttered back, keeping his voice low
enough that the bridge staff wouldn’t hear him. “If they keep taking out shield
emitters, we won’t be able to keep body and soul together for very long. These
boys can’t run, so they’re going to go down hard.”

“Coming
into the envelope now,” Prouse announced in a louder voice. “Activate the fire
control trace and let’s get to work.”

The firing
pattern shifted, now that the task force was coming into effective range. The
Dactari, having had several minutes of uninterrupted firing, now had to raise
their shields in the face of effective fire. They could drop a small forward
section to fire, but at this range, that small opening was a viable target for
Alliance gunnery.

Concentrated
fire began to hit ships on the flanks of the Dactari formation while a steady
flow of ordinance forced the heart of the enemy formation to be more
conservative about their targeting opportunities.

“Boarding
eight is away,” tactical announced. “All eight teams are launched and fire
control has integrated their trajectories.”

The first
wave of Mosquitoes began to leave the launchers. Almost twenty percent of each
wave were designated as decoys for the eight boarding targets. The old boarding
sledges fired their liquid-fueled rockets and hurtled past the front layer of
enemy ships, angling for their targets in what passed for the second echelon of
the disordered force.

S
ix sledges survived their various approach vectors. Five were preceded
by their escorting decoy warheads, receiving the frequencies needed for
high-speed shield transit. They rammed through the outer hulls, shaking their
payloads of soldiers as they slid past heavy bulkheads.

They slid
to a stand-still and, as their dampened inner hulls reached the limits of their
travel, explosive seals blew open the sides to allow the boarders out and into
the enemy vessel. They struggled against strong winds as the atmosphere of
several dozen compartments was vented out through the hole they had just made.

From this
point on, they would be fighting in the vacuum of space, venting each
compartment as they moved to secure key compartments. It was something they had
been training for since the first war. Their enemy may have received the basics
of close quarter-fighting during their training implants, but nothing made up
for actual experience.

The Dactari
recruits, already low in numbers, fell quickly.

The sixth
sledge was forced to attempt a low-velocity push through and the pilot had
begun the maneuver directly opposite the cruiser’s large hangar bay doors.
There simply wasn’t enough time to accelerate to full ramming speed if they
managed to get through and so he was planning to rely on getting into the bay
before opening his hatches.

As soon as
the serrated nose of the heavy craft penetrated the shield, he rammed the
throttles all the way forward and the sledge leapt ahead, narrowly escaping the
brunt of the point defense systems, but the tail of the sledge was caught in
the rapid fire of the cruiser’s defensive weapons.

“We’ve lost
the main nozzles,” he screamed. “There’s no shutting her down. We’re riding a
damned signal flare!”

 
“H
oly hell!” Prouse exclaimed. “Did a live
warhead follow that sledge in?”

“No sir,”
fire control replied. “Not even decoys.”

“Sir, she
lost her nozzles to point defense fire,” sensor advised.

Prouse
shook his head. “Right, we’ll keep an eye on that cruiser, but let’s start
hammering the first echelon, now that the boys behind them are occupied.” He
looked down at the trace table. “Midgaard are asking for three more targets.”
he looked up at Harry, eyebrows raised.

“Let ‘em
try, Captain.”

Prouse was
in the middle of authorizing the last of the three targets when another turned
orange. Both men leaned in, frowning.

“The
Pandora
?”
Prouse looked over at Harry.

“Shelby
still has Fenris and his team aboard,” Harry said quietly. “She’s got a better
ship for this kind of work. Better even than the Midgaard.” He nodded.

Prouse
authorized the target and the icon representing the
Pandora
leapt out to
the flank, where a heavy cruiser was turning to bring her main batteries to
bear on the
Danube
. “Look at that,” the fleet captain said in
admiration. “She dances around the rest of us. If we had just another five
years of peace, we would have made the enemy technology look like museum
pieces.”

T
he
Pandora
threw out her own screen of decoys as she closed on
the cruiser, who now seemed to forget all about the
Danube
as she
desperately tried to bear on her new assailant.

 
“We
have their shields,” the tactical officer called over his shoulder.

“Very
well,” Shelby acknowledged. “Helm, lay us against that bay door on the port
side.”

“Laying
along the bay door on the port side, aye, ma’am.”

She opened
a channel. “You ready down there?”

F
enris was surprised he could notice how attractive her voice was at a
moment like this. His blood was coursing as the cruiser loomed outside the
forward bay door, and yet he still found himself grinning at the sound of her
voice.

“We’re
ready,” he replied simply.
We can deal with that later, assuming we both
survive this.

They raced
toward the enemy ship, startled Dactari crewmen staring out at them from the
hangar deck, no doubt assuming they were about to be rammed. They ran in
terror, just like they always did. It was something a prize master counted on.

It gave
them an uncontested foothold in the hangar bay.

The two
ships made contact at a slight angle, leaving a four-foot gap on his side of
the front rank of ten warriors. He fought his fears, reminding himself that
there was no gravity to pull him down into the gap, and led his crew across.

He was
pulled back down as he drifted over the threshold of the bay entrance, landing
lightly in enemy territory. He sprinted ahead, making room for the four waves
that followed him and began searching for any crew who may have remained in the
large hangar. A lone technician stepped out from behind a pallet of cases, a
look of dumb relief on his face at not being killed in a ramming maneuver.