Pax Imperia (The Redemption Trilogy) (57 page)

“Particle beam,” Miller breathed out, over the hushed silence. “The station has a particle cannon, order the fleet to open fire—”

Before he could finish the sentence he was interrupted by a second bright pinprick of light, smaller than the first, but quickly followed by another, then another, and another. The darkened hull of the station suddenly seemed to come alive, as a growing swarm of sparkling lights spread out all along the circumference of the station. Then, as if upon a silent command, the lights simultaneously rose up, away from the station. A hundred sparking stars, all reaching out towards the heavens.

Senator Malthus, Captain Miller and crew could only watch in growing dread, as the stars increased in speed, arcing up and up, before coming straight back down—on a direct intercept course with the oncoming ships. Like a hundred shooting stars, the deadly missiles easily locked on target, hardly able to miss the densely packed ships, all in such close proximity to one another.

“Missiles, incoming!” Miller screamed out a warning, but it was already too late. With great trailing plumes of fire, the missiles slammed into the advancing ships, exploding, sending burning chunks of armour, hull and ship spinning helplessly off into space. The front-line of the armada visibly faltered, as wave after wave of the missiles slammed into them. Expecting little resistance, and most too shocked at the surprise attack, few activated their point defence systems in time, and therefore most missiles found their mark.

Malthus watched helplessly as ship after ship fell to the relentless missiles, either critically damaged, their engines and flight control systems damaged beyond repair, or, with the missiles having penetrated through armour and hull causing the ships to explosively decompress, the crews killed instantly.

“What are you
doing
?” he demanded, turned on Captain Miller furiously. “Why are you not doing anything? Return fire.”

“Senator, you ordered us to take the station intact,” Miller remind him. “You said that you wanted Radec’s family alive.”

“Not at the cost of my entire fleet,” Malthus roared. “Do you know how many billions of credits those ships cost me? Commence firing immediately,” he snarled.

*****

David and Chris shared a vindictive smile as they tracked the missiles, observing them impacting into the enemy fleet, ship after ship shattering from the repeated blows.

“I warned them,” David muttered darkly. “I told them what would happen.”

“I’m just glad that we didn’t blow ourselves up,” Chris said, relieved. “I think some of those missiles were over two decades old.”

“Don’t make ‘em like they used to,” David agreed. “Anyway, the Commander said that we could take whatever we needed, so I simply took
everything
that wasn’t nailed down. How many of them do we have left?”

“Not many Lieutenant,” Chris shook his head. “We expended almost our complete inventory with that first volley.”

“Well it was only going to work once,” David acknowledged.

The very next thing they knew, both officers were grabbing at the nearest consoles as the station shook violently, the lights flickering, before extinguishing entirely, only to return a few seconds later.

Both officers exchanged glances.

“I think you must have pissed them off, sir,” Chris reported, grabbing at his console again as another jolt shook the station. “They’ve opened fire.”

“Damage report?”

“Light. Mostly restricted to the docking ring.”

“We cannot keep this up much longer,” David frowned. “We’re a repair and resupply station. Not an Imperial battle station. Where is the Commander and the 4
^th
Fleet?”

“They are on an intercept course with Malthus’s fleet. They should be in range in a few more minutes.”

“Very well, let’s see if we can buy them a little more time. Give ’em both barrels Chris.”

“Lieutenant?” Chris replied confused.

“I meant the guns. The pulse cannons and railguns, Chris. Fire both at will.”

“With pleasure,” Chris said, passing full fire control authority for all the stations weapon emplacements over to the tactical computer.

In what is often termed a target-rich environment, the tactical computer was not lacking for things to fire at. Therefore with the cold hard logic of a machine, the computer simply targeted the closest warship, with the highest probability of being hit, and ordered the closest gun battery to commence firing.

A dozen heavy railguns and pulse cannons swivelled around on their mounts to target the enemy ship, still a dozen kilometres distant. Upon targeting the enemy ship, the guns paused, waiting for final firing authorisation from the station’s computer, which arrived a hundredth of a second later—

The gun battery momentarily vanished in a blinding light, as, almost simultaneously, all the railguns and pulse cannons in the battery commenced firing. While the distance to the target was measured in kilometres, the time taken for the weapons fire to impact was practically instantaneous. While the railgun rounds were mostly invisible to the naked eye in the depths of space, the bright red glow from the ionised plasma of the pulse cannons was clearly visible to all as both weapons impacted the enemy ship amidships. The armour, already weakened from an earlier missile strike, peeled away at the overwhelming bombardment, triggering structural instability within the hull, the ship bursting apart into a cloud of blistered armour, hull and debris.

While it was the first, it was far from the last.

As the enemy ships continued advancing on the station, more and more weapon emplacements commenced firing, until all were firing in an almost continuous stream of weapons fire. The entire station lit up with the streams of glowing plasma; incandescent ribbons of death, reaching out and pushing back against the encroaching darkness.

Like an enraged beast, the station dispatched death and destruction to all that approached.

*****

“You said that the station was defenceless,” Malthus cried, watching helplessly as ship after ship fell to the unrelenting and highly accurate weapons fire from the station.

“I said that it was
most likely
defenceless,” Captain Miller corrected him. “It looks as though I was mistaken,” he added, watching slack jawed as the bow of another armed freighter crumpled under the onslaught of weapons-fire.

“Confederation Fleet approaching. Time to intercept thirty seconds,” an officer called out across the multitude of shouts and cries.

Thirty seconds?
Miller thought.
That doesn’t sound good.

“I thought that you said Radec was only bluffing, Senator?” Miller snapped at him.

“I might have been mistaken,” Malthus admitted.

“Signal the fleet to come about,” Miller roared to be overheard.

“What? I ordered you to secure that station, Captain. Which you have done a fairly piss-poor job of doing, considering that it is still
firing at us!
” Malthus screamed.

“I’m fully aware of the offensive capabilities of the station,” Miller replied. “Now,” he added. “However, I am even more aware of the combat capabilities of that fleet and what will happen if we don’t come about to bring our main guns to bear. It is quite possible that in a few minutes there will be nothing left of your precious fleet, Senator.”

*****

“Thirty seconds until contact,” the Operations Officer calmly reported. “Enemy ships are starting to come about.”

“Signal the rest of the fleet, they are free to manoeuvre at will,” Jon felt that the order was fairly superfluous, as while passing through the enemy armada directly ahead, any ship that didn’t manoeuvre was likely to collide with something. “Order the outer escorts to fall into close formation. All ships fire at will.”

Breaking over seven hundred years of naval doctrine, the outer circle of ships, the smaller escort frigates, tightened formation, as the inner defensive ring of heavy cruisers and destroyers moving further apart, making space for them. It was like a carefully choreographed ballet, where all the dancers suddenly shifted position. With the fleet formation now inverted, the larger, heavily armoured ships now shielded their much smaller, lightly armoured brethren. While passing through the enemy line, the only thing that was going to keep them all alive was the heavy armour of the capital ships, and none were more heavily armoured than the
Invincible
. The massive battleship started to pull away from the rest of the fleet, the leading edge of the now wedge-shaped formation, as its large bow guns swung around to face the oncoming ships.

“Tactical,” Jon called out. “Open fire with the main guns. It’s time to punch us a hole.”

Situated on the bow of the
Invincible
was the ship’s main armament, consisting of two ‘super-heavy’ railgun batteries. Being one of the oldest ships of the fleet, it lacked the modern energy-based weapons of the newer, more modern class of warships. What it lacked in modern technology, however, it more than made up for in brute force. For the ‘super-heavy’ railguns were the largest, most powerful ever fitted to a ship of war. The depleted uranium round that it fired weighed over two thousand, four hundred kilograms, with a muzzle velocity of over ten thousand meters per second.

They could slice a warship in half with a single shot.

The guns had never been fired in anger, having only been periodically test fired during their one hundred and fifty years. Their age did not detract from their awesome ability in the least. The original designers would have been proud that, so long after construction, they were finally being put to use, fulfilling the task that they had been designed for—to punch through heavily armoured warships, to make a hole through enemy fleet formations, to lead the way into battle.

The pair of parallel conducting rails that propelled the massive projectiles ran for over three hundred meters, almost a quarter of the length of the ship, each magnetic field generator reinforcing the next, which meant that by the time the first round left the muzzle of the barrel it was travelling at a fraction of the speed of light.

The projectile shot out across the intervening depths of space, striking a light destroyer across the bow, just as it had been in the process of coming around to target the approaching Confederation warships. The kinetic energy imparted by the collision was enough to shear off the bow of the destroyer, along with a further two hundred meters of superstructure. The bow of the ship simply vanished in the resulting heat and light of the explosion. When the light from the impact finally dissipated nothing but an expanding cloud of dust remained, the bow of the ship simply gone.

The
Invincible
did not wait to see the result of the horrific impact, as already its other railguns were firing, one after the other, firing sequentially, as the guns simply could not draw enough power to fire in parallel. Each projectile fired unerringly found its target, as the front line of the enemy armada collapsed in upon itself under the devastating fire from the aging battleship. This resulted in a hole large enough for the Confederation Fleet to slip through, and then they were amongst the enemy ships.

The rest of the Confederation Fleet immediately opened fire. Their combined railguns, pulse cannons and particle beams tore into the enemy ships, leaving nothing but a trail of death, destruction and debris in their wake. Even this was only an introduction to the fearsome carnage that was soon to follow.

“Launch fighters,” Jon ordered. “Signal the rest of the fleet, target missiles. Launch at will.”

From the dorsal and ventral launch tubes of the carriers and flagship, wave after wave of fighters and bombers started to appear, launched from their motherships by the artificial gravity and centrifugal forces of the ships rotation. They opened fire almost immediately upon launch, the fighters darting in and out of the enemy warships, their smaller railguns and pulse cannons targeting enemy sensors, point defence weapons and gun batteries, as their less powerful weapons were unable to penetrate the dense armour surrounding these ships.

They didn’t need to, as immediately behind them came the next wave of heavy bombers, with their missiles and torpedoes streaking from their launch rails, targeting the now blind and defenceless warships.

Those ships lucky enough to survive the first wave, didn’t fare much better than their comrades, as the Confederation warships’ hulls started to retract once again, this time to reveal launch tubes of their own. Their outer doors swung open to reveal the row upon row of warheads of the heavy rockets secreted within. The sight of the 4
^th
Fleet launching that barrage was awe-inspiring, as wave after wave of flaming death lifted off, each and all finding their mark, tearing the heart out of the enemy fleet.

“We’re almost through,” the Operations Officer announced relieved. Indeed, the last of the enemy ships disappeared from the view-screen, revealing nothing but empty space and the silhouette of the massive station,
Terra Nova
, hanging motionless between the stars directly ahead.

Their journey through the enemy fleet had not been without significant cost however. For every ship they destroyed one, two, five or ten more took its place. They had lost over half their escort frigates from the enemy weapons fire; one of their destroyers had been destroyed, with another cruiser reporting heavy damage. Even then the losses could have been far, far worse but, as Jon had predicted, many of the enemy ships had held their fire, the risk of hitting another friendly ship in the closely packed formation just too great.

For the Confederation Fleet the worst was still to come. The ferocity of their assault, combined with the closely packed enemy formation, had, until then, both worked in their favour.

Advantages that were soon about to disappear entirely.

“Helm, one-hundred and eighty degrees on the horizontal axis, bring us around, reverse course, then full power to engines. Signal the rest of the fleet to do likewise.”