Opening Moves (27 page)

“Captain, fighters inbound! Fifteen thousand clicks and closing fast!” Torok Sen called out, her nimble fingers highlighting their vector.

Natara detached her thoughts and noted the new threat. A full squadron of Swiftpaws had swept around the battle line exploiting gaps in the minefield opened by their comrades' demise, and now sought to hit her ship from its weaker aft quarter where engines were in the way of defensive laser clusters. “Change course thirty-five degrees to port, plus ten on the Zed! Point defenses, redirect fire aft! Engage at will!”

Compared to the inbound fighters the PERISAI moved almost sluggishly to bring a larger number of her defensive mounts to bear. They began tracking the fast moving craft as they sped towards the cruiser. The instant the Swiftpaws entered a range of less than ten thousand kilometers the batteries opened fire. The laser beams reaching out from the PERISAI were barely visible in the vacuum of space. Immediately two of the fighters silently exploded into expanding clouds of hydrogen and debris. The others began evasive maneuvers but stayed on course. The cruiser's sensors had trouble tracking them.

“
It's hard to cut through their ECM, ma'am! Their systems are adapting faster than mine can crack'em!” Torok Sen reported, frustrated.

“
Enemy forward fire intensifying,” Batal stated coolly. A hundred thousand kilometers ahead the Ashani line had been reinforced by fresh reserves and was delivering a heavy barrage to the defenders. Only a few thousand kilometers ahead the burning wrecks of two cruisers similar to the PERISAI spun out of control and burned out in the harsh vacuum, glaring flames licking out of their perforated hulls.

Natara noticed a number of ships were in her position, with fighters striking their rear and flanks and drawing fire away from the warships ahead. These Ashani were cunning warriors, but far too wasteful with their lives.

“Weapons, stay on the fighters, but make sure our primary firepower is still concentrated forwards,” she barked. “Hold our position and don't give way. And Batal? Take out the damaged and weakened ships first.” Deliberately targeting weakened ships was unsavory, but necessary to quickly cull the Ashani numbers. She hated herself for it, but did not hesitate. They had to win here.

* * * * * * *

Two more destroyers went up in a brief flash only a few dozen kilometers away, the blasts showering the SUNBURST with shrapnel. The debris' impact rang and echoed on the outer hull. Pyshana did not blink or flinch at the sudden losses, even though they were on both sides of her own command. Quite frankly it was a small miracle that they, too, had not suddenly been hit and destroyed. Their battered hull certainly couldn't take more than token punishment.

A constant row of pulsing green beams floated serenely across space, high energy plasma laser beams reaching out from the Ashani lines. They looked strangely beautiful if observed with detachment. Thousands of them floated across space tens of thousands of kilometers in every direction like a horizontal rain storm. From the other side thin red strings of laser beams stabbed rapidly from the Érenni lines; and the flash and flame in which they ended served to further illuminate the battle zone. It was abstract, surreal even, and totally captivating.

An increase in comm chatter focused her attention once more, a series of status reports coming in from the missile ships of the bombardment force.

“
This is fleet command,” Pyshana announced grandly, putting as much confidence and assurance in her voice as she could muster. She realized that what was left of 8
th
Fleet was balancing on a knife edge and could break at any second. Her people had great courage in them but without proper direction they could not win. “All ships be ready to advance, on my vector. Keep up your fire.”

“
Bombardment group to fleet command,” Captain Farwalker's high voice reported in. “Missile ships ready. All tubes locked and loaded and will fire on your orders, Ma'am.”

Pyshana felt a brief moment of relief and elation. Everything was falling into place. Now all that was left for her to do was to set the plan in motion – and survive its execution.

“Captain, I want you to set up a rolling barrage here,” she transmitted a set of coordinates directly from her command console. “Set your missiles for timed detonation based on these figures.”

“
Yes, ma'am,” Farwalker replied, though sounding deeply confused. She had originally been worried that her weapons were going to be too weak. Her missile load-out was meant to decimate civilian targets with as little damage to the infrastructure as possible, air-bursting neutron bombs over population centers and burning out ground-based defensive installations with low-yield nuclear weapons in the lower hundred kiloton range. Anti-ship missiles were generally straight nuclear warheads meant for direct impacts, faster and of a far greater yield than her own devices. And now it seemed the fleet commander didn't even want her to hit the Érenni! Her target area was empty space closer to their own lines than the enemy, followed by a gradually forward-walking barrage. It made no sense and probably wouldn't put a scratch on a single Érenni ship. Still, orders were orders, so she gave the word.

The missiles raced from their carriers in a steady stream one after another, the massive tubes ambling past the fleet and into no man's land. The Érenni defenses didn't even try to target them, confident that such slow moving weapons would be easy prey for the fleet's point defenses, and as it happened they never even got that far, exploding at the designated location within the thick debris field made up of the wrecks of 8
th
Fleet's doomed first wave of attack. The weapons didn't cause damage; that was not Pyshana's plan.

However, they
did
create a large blast wave amongst the wrecks, a force which nudged the broken hulls out of the way. The second wave of missiles exploded, then a third, and each successive strike pushed a collection of hulks farther away from the Ashani battle line with gradually increasing speed – and
towards
the Érenni.

The effect was exactly what Pyshana had counted on. The comparably weak missiles were not blasting the wrecks apart but kept them together, simply pushing them on, towards the Érenni defenses like an eerie tide of ghost ships coming to take their revenge on the living.

The sight of destroyed ships being carried along by forward momentum in the early part of the battle had inspired this idea in Pyshana. She would use the wrecks as shields for undamaged ships to advance behind and absorb the Érenni fire and batter through mines. Even in death they would be valued parts of the fleet and the harbingers of their ultimate victory.

“
Fleet command to all ships: advance and destroy.”

* * * * * * *

“We should hold on to something,” Batal said with remarkable calm, the area immediately in front of the PERISAI filling with frantic laser fire.

“
Engines full ahead. Get us up the Zed!” Captain Natara stared at the rolling tide of debris as the sudden wave of Ashani fire closed rapidly on them. “Brace for impact!” They were on the move again and seemed to be concentrating their fire on the sector near the battle station where Natara's cruiser was holding position.

Even before the PERISAI could change course the first lances of green plasma lasers hit the ship head on, biting into the polarized hull and its anti-laser coating. A missile evaded the cruiser's defensive suite for all but the last ditch laser clusters and exploded nearby, pushing the vessel back hard. The engines went to full burn trying to compensate but for a few seconds the PERISAI was completely out of control. A second volley found them, once again slashing across the ship. This time armor and defenses were too weak to stem the tide of burning plasma.

“Portside lasers four and five are out! We've lost tachyon sensor dome two. Switching to auxiliary systems.”

“
Get us back in formation!” Natara snarled, taking the attack on her ship rather personally. “Get me those lasers back online. Keep firing!”

The ship suddenly shuddered again.

“Fighters dead astern, Ma'am! They're going for our engines!”

Natara could feel herself getting even angrier, but stifled her emotions. It'd do them no good if she lost her temper before the crew. “Point defenses?”

“Still engaging, but they are proving hard to hit.”

Three Swiftpaws dove for the PERISAI, firing as they closed on its vulnerable stern. Narata stared at the tactical display in front of her. Tiny figures beside the red triangles indicating the enemy fighters showed a rapid increase in crafts' speed. Her eyes widened! “They're not launching any weapons – they
are
the weapons! They're going to ram us!” The very thought would've sounded ridiculous to her only a few hours ago, but that seemed as if it was a lifetime ago. The remaining fighters accelerated and held their course, Natara watched helplessly as they got ever closer. “Brace for impact!”

The two fighters plowed nose first into the starboard engine assembly, tearing through power feeds and magnetic flow directors. The whole assembly spluttered and died as emergency procedures closed down the damaged system before the backlash of power fluctuations could hit the ship's main reactors. Frantic damage reports reached the bridge from the PERISAI's stern sections. The cruiser drew a vast flame of burning plasma after her as a ruptured fuel tank burned out. Natara didn't hear the reports. She was captivated by a sudden massive movement ahead of the advancing Ashani lines. “What's that? What's happening?!” she demanded.

Torok Sen quickly honed the sensors in on the disturbance, a wall of fire generated by a missile barrage. Her eyes widened in realization.

“
The Dominion's blasting the wrecks, Ma'am! Gods, they're coming this way!”

“
But a lot of those ships still must've had crew on them, trapped in damaged sectors!”

Sen gave her an emotionless stare. “Yes, captain. I suppose the Ashani just don't care.”

Of course they didn't. That was the
one
constant in this mad battle. The Ashani just didn't care for their own lives. How could fanaticism such as that be reasoned with or halted without completely exterminating it? Natara couldn't answer herself. With a sudden wave of depression she realized the Ashani wouldn't stop until every single one of them was dead.

“
Those wrecks are clearing the minefield,” Batal pointed out far too quietly. “Look, they're detonating mines and taking hits for the other vessels following behind. Very clever bastards, those cats.”

“
How is using your helpless comrades as shields clever?” Natara snapped, then immediately regretted it. The whole crew was stressed. It was their first battle and it seemed they were being thrown in at the deep end. In all honesty it was amazing the fleet hadn't broken from the sheer horror of it all. Natara knew that it was only the colony behind her that had kept her here fighting. If this had been an open battle they would probably have retreated long ago. They were going above and beyond their duties, and Natara was simply in awe of them. “It is a ruthless tactic,” she said more calmly. “Not one we should admire them for.”

“
Yes, Ma'am.”

“
We've still got a job to do. Engineering, give me what power you can so we can resume our position. If anything happens to blunder into our firing arcs, Mr. Batal will take care of it.”

The Komerco mercenary nodded, checking his weapons' status. Until they had full power back to their engines and they could return to the line they were merely spectators, as helpless as the colony below.

* * * * * * *

“
Hold your position Captain Damal'gar,” Pyshana said calmly into the comm system. “Stay with me.”

“
We're losing engines and fire is getting through!” a panicked voice replied. “We need to…” The message ended in static. Simultaneously the ship immediately on the SUNBURST's right, barely a hundred kilometers away, exploded in a single bright flash.

“
So much for Captain Damal'gar,” Pyshana said flatly with neither grief nor joy. “Make sure his escorts stay with us.”

The tactic of driving debris before them was working: it bludgeoned through the minefield and significantly reduced hits to the still active fleet. They were almost past the static defenses. Just a few more thousand kilometers remained.

A light cruiser fell behind, its hull peeling away as internal explosions shredded its insides. More fighters raced forward, some exploding spectacularly while the survivors didn't even flinch, slicing past the wreckage of their comrades and on into the teeth of the battle line. The fleet's losses grew but if they got past the minefield it would have been worth it all.

“
Just a little more!” Pyshana announced fleet wide. “Just stay with me, we're almost upon them!”

Two more destroyers were silenced, one by the looming
Fathal
battle station now almost close enough to touch in her tactical display...

“
Stay. With. Me!”

The remnants of 8
th
Fleet's broken comrades passed through the minefield. The gap was wide open and Érenni ships rushed to seal it again. In an example of exquisite timing Captain Farwalker's missile barrage coincided with the breakthrough, the normally useless low-yield nukes burning through the gap just as the defenders moved into firing position, smashing one unlucky cruiser and causing the rest to break off.