Spacer Clans Adventure 1: Naero's Run (39 page)

49

Two standard hours later, the Matayan Fleet under Emperor Mellis Tarret VI hit the Alliance’s right flank hard, coming at them head on.

Matayans killing Matayans on either side.

Naero watched the opening battle unfold. Several ships on fire within minutes. Waves of fighters from both sides sweeping in several directions like flying insects at war.

Yet she and all the Alliance forces remained very aware of the larger Triaxian force positioning itself around them, jockeying for optimal vectors.

The Matayan fight was just a feint, an opening salvo–a sideshow, meant to distract and keep them busy.

That could not be their focus.

Admiral Joshua, Klyne, and Aunt Sleak adjusted their elements to counter the enemy’s shifting strategy and tactics.

The Matayan Emperor drove toward Adrin’s flagship, bent on snuffing out the Prime Minister’s rebellion.

Yet he over-extended his line of advance in doing so, and called his reserves under Prince Nellis II. A rash attempt to finish things decisively.

Adrin called in Ellis’s attack wings. Together they jammed up the emperor’s superior numbers and cut them to pieces at close range.

Then the Gigacorps unleashed their main assault.

Hundreds of ships, massed in precise formations.

Wave after wave arcing and slicing through the Alliance’s weak left flank.

The miners and their battered ships did their best to hold the line.

Up close, the invaders quickly found themselves in a cloud of small ships, bombs, drones, close-range missiles, and mines shot straight at them. Several attackers took heavy damage at the outset.

Even worse, key warships would suddenly lose their shields, or all power, or their weapons went dead at crucial moments.

Shalaen’s cosmic powers might not be limitless, but she used them sparingly to affect the outcomes of key engagements.

Any ship too damaged to keep fighting was towed back toward the
shipyards, where clouds of teks and fixers swarmed over them, trying to set them right.

After a few smaller enemy vessels were taken over and towed away, the enemy pulled back and changed tactics. They paid too high a price for a direct assault.

Triax massed its big ships further out, safely away from the defender’s close-in strategies, and punched at them with their big guns.

Aunt Sleak cut in over the com. “We can’t allow that. Close with them. They can stay out there and blast us all day.”

“Agreed,” Admiral Joshua said.

“Let’s take the fight to them,” Klyne said.

The fleets closed again, under heavy fire from all directions.

Naero commanded
The Brightstar
, leading her sortie of two dozen fast-attack cruisers and destroyers on a strafing vector from above the battle, slashing across the entire enemy line.

She’d pulled her command and crew together so quickly that there wasn’t time to learn anyone’s names. So many new faces, but everyone did their best to work together under duress.

Screens of starfighters protected the Alliance Fleets from several vectors, including waves of Ghost Dragons and other refitted fighters.

They concentrated rapid-fire on the Triaxian main ships as they passed, disrupting shields and softening up the heavies. Their only protections their speed, optimized shielding, and heavy fighter screens.

Four enemy strike carriers suddenly jumped dangerously close to the battle. A gutsy, canny move for Triax.

Had they jumped in too close to other main ships or the planet, they would have been destroyed.

But now they could launch enough fighters right on top of the defenders to overwhelm.

“All ships. Change of plans,” Naero said. “Form up on my mark in a Bravo-X-ray-1 formation. Concentrate all batteries on those new carriers. Take out their shields. We’ll perform a Clan Wilde Flip around them and blast their engines and power cores from behind.”

One of her cruiser captains cut in. “Captain Maeris, we’re taking heavy fire to our rear. Enemy battleships and several other destroyers turning our way. We’ve got multiple incoming fighter wings.”

“We’ll have a lot more if those four carriers launch. Get in close and pour it on those strikers. Their big ships won’t target us for fear of hitting their own.”

Another tactical option presented itself.

“Send all of our fighters in to jam up those launch tubes,” she said. “Shoot micro-missiles and bombs down each one to clog them up.”

Now her XO protested. “Captain, we can’t lose our fighter escort. The enemy will be all over us in minutes. That’s insane!”

“Just do it! Obey my commands.”

“Yes, sir,” the XO said. “Fighter wings on it.”

Naero led her sortie in at full attack speed, pummeling the first two carriers and then the pair to the rear, disrupting their shields.

Their fighters swarmed in concentrating missiles on the launching tubes and drop bays.

Intense enemy fire from the Triaxian battleships blasted one cruiser and two of Naero’s destroyers to burning wreckage. A stray shot even struck one of their own carriers, causing heavy damage.

Triax sought to take them down, no matter the cost.

They had more ships. The Alliance did not.

“Everyone hold on. Hard about and flip the strike force over on our heads. Fire up their tails as we’re still breaking away from them.”

It was a Wilde move, used all the time by fighters, but Clan Wilde was the first to perfect it with light warships during the Second Spacer War.

They pulled heavy G-forces and the ship’s structures groaned and strained, but they flipped end over end like gaming tiles and fired straight into the carrier engines and cores as they did.

Two of her ships collided, causing heavy damage.

But one carrier blew up, the other three caught fire, and one listed badly, all in a matter of seconds. Their gamble paid off.

“Hard spin aft over head and come about,” Naero said. “Fire at will. Boost the engines and keep those carriers between us and their big guns. Call our fighters back before we’re cut to pieces.”

Her ship rocked hard under multiple enemy hits. Shields down thirty percent.

Her strike force took a pounding.

Yet they blew up two more of the carriers and left the fourth a burning wreck.

They shot away to regroup.

She lost five ships total. Down to nineteen.

She noticed something else.

The enemy wasn’t taking any chance on any ships coming back.

They had noticed warships re-configured by the fixers and returning to the battle in a matter of hours or even minutes.

Now any ship left adrift was set off with charges or blown apart entirely by missile frigates.

The fixers would have fewer wrecks to reconfigure.

Aunt Sleak cut in. “Nice job on those carriers, Captain. Regroup and assist Admiral Joshua. Vector in on Point Z-333 Gamma and break up that knot of dreadnaughts. They’re cutting Joshua’s ships to pieces.”

More blips on the horizon.

Three more enemy attack waves on the way.

And they couldn’t even contain the forces they were up against now.

“Admiral Sleak–”

“We see them. Take out what we can before they get here. Keep fighting. No let-up.”

“Yes, sir. Will do.”

50

Admiral Joshua stood in a very bad way.

Naero’s strike force swept in to bust things up.

“All ships,” Naero commanded. “Bravo-Romeo-2 dual ring formation. Ten in front, nine behind. Vector all shields full forward. We’re going to punch at each of those enemy dreadnaughts until they go down. As many as we can.

“We’ll get bloody. Anyone takes too much damage, break off and get the hell out. Try to make it back to the shipyards to re-configure. No heroic suicides. We can’t afford to lose any more ships. Rejoin the fight when you can.”

The strategy was brutally simple.

Ignoring all enemy attacks, they jumped on the cluster of six dreadnaughts, spinning around them, concentrating all direct fire on one ship at a time until they either destroyed it or took it out of the fight.

Naero lost one more cruiser from several direct hits from big guns on the way in.

Down to eighteen ships, shrinking to two rings of nine.

All eighteen rapid-fire spinal guns and secondary batteries pulverized the first dreadnaught in moments.

But four of her ships were forced to flee. One got swarmed on by enemy fighters and didn’t make it.

Two rings of seven. They kept at the second dreadnaught.

It took them precious seconds longer to disable it, but that took finally some heat off of Admiral Joshua.

Enemy fighters and smaller warships hemmed them in, trying to cut them off.

Naero lost five more ships. Two destroyed, three fleeing.

She re-formed into a single ring of nine.

They attacked the third dreadnaught, pouring fire into it, while they took another pounding themselves.

More enemy forces closed in each second.

“All fleets and units,” Admiral Joshua commanded. “We are about to be overwhelmed. Enemy reinforcements are coming online. Come about and keep fighting. Perform a fighting withdrawal to the Omicron line and take up your new positions as you receive them. Fight well.”

“Copy that,” Naero said. “All ships, lets dust this bastard and break off. Flip and spin the ring fast. Disperse and evade in Echo-Whiskey-6.”

They left the third dreadnaught in flames.

One of her destroyers collided with another enemy ship at top speed.

Both were obliterated.

Naero and her remaining eight ships scattered, broke away, and then came about, limping and maneuvering back into a Romeo-Sierra-2 rearward stack formation. They fired and withdrew in good order, taking precise, long-range potshots at the enemy.

Triax and its allies continued to reform with their arriving reinforcements and slowly advanced once again, all the while under heavy fire from the defenders.

“Good work,” Admiral Joshua said. “We’ve bloodied them and good. Now we have to hold them again and make them pay. They’ve already lost more than one hundred and thirty ships.”

“While we’ve lost about forty,” Aunt Sleak said. “And the enemy complement just doubled in a matter of a few hours, if anyone cares to notice. The losses we just handed them are nothing to Triax.”

“We’ll have half of our ships back online in a matter of hours,” Klyne said. “They rejoin the fight by ones and twos. Those fixers are amazing.”

“That’s still not fast enough,” Naero cut in. “Our foes are too many.”

“Let them come,” Nevano Kinmal said. “My people and I are ready for them. Let them bring their numbers. We have a little surprise of our own prepared for them. Let them come.”

And come the enemy did, full on and relentless.

Triax knew they had the advantage, and sent their attack waves in precisely timed assaults designed to bleed them and cut them to shreds.

On the starboard flank, the Matayans were still locked in their death struggle.

To everyone’s horror and surprise, Triax ruthlessly opened up on both ally and foe, blasting the Matayans on both sides straight to hell.

The Corps trap closed in around them to end the Matayan problem once and for all, and systematically annihilate the entire right flank.

There would be no more Matayan Fleet.

No more Matayan Empire. Ever again.

Just more Triax slaves.

The Matayans realized their peril too late, but turned their battered, burning ships at bay and fought stubbornly.

Prince Nellis II attempted to flee, but the Matayans were fully hemmed in. Nowhere to run.

Multiple hits tore his heavy cruiser to flaming pieces.

Prince Ellis kept fighting, rallying every ship he could, trying to break the sphere of destruction tightening in on them, firing at the Matayans from every angle.

Emperor Mellis VI drove his burning flagship over the tops of several Triaxian warships, tearing them apart even as his vessel exploded and was blasted to atoms.

He died, cursing everyone on all sides.

The Matayans attempted a break-out at the temporary breach he created, but massed enemy reinforcements cut them off, driving them back.

Prime Minster Adrin’s flagship listed, almost dead in space, burning and still being rocked by concentrated heavy fire.

A final message from Adrin cut in over their screens; he himself badly wounded, his bridge in flames.

“Farewell, my brave people. Keep fighting for honor and victory. Prince Ellis will be your emperor now. Give my dying ship her head, one last time, as I take her out to the stars.”

Seconds later, Adrin activated his shielded reserve jump drive in the midst of the battle.

Several ships around him exploded.

Adrin’s flagship became a huge antimatter bomb, and tore a tremendous path of destruction through the packed lines of scores of enemy warships.

The Matayan Fleet broke free, and regrouped under Emperor Ellis, fighting all the while.

At least they were no longer trapped in a kill zone.

Now they could maneuver again.

But even Adrin’s brave sacrifice only led to a brief respite.

The enemy’s overwhelming superiority in numbers continued to stack up.

Admiral Joshua and his forces tried every trick they knew.

Naero and the other forces under Klyne and Aunt Sleak sent their dwindling attack wings in again and again.

Shalaen disrupted enemy shields and ships until they heard she passed out.

But the enemy kept coming. Driving them back.

Then a multitude of bright stars like flares shot out from the mining ships on the crumbling port flank. First by hundreds.

Then by the thousands. They slammed into the forefront of the enemy lines and penetrated right through their deflector screens.

The resulting explosions rocked the enemy, blowing gaping holes in their vessels. Exploding some small ships entirely.

Even the fighters could not dodge the weird, blazing missiles, and got blasted along with the warships. Against such sudden, massive destruction, even Triax had no choice but to pull back in total, broken confusion.

Within a matter of minutes, the stunned enemy retreated well out of range and regrouped, both sides struggling to understand what had just happened. The battered, exhausted defenders had no strength to pursue their foes, even if they had wanted to.

“What in the holy hell was all that?” Admiral Joshua demanded.

Nevano Kinmal came in over one of the secure channels.

“Our techs and the fixers just developed this new improved device. It’s very unstable and only lasts a few minutes, but it can penetrate the enemy flux shields and packs quite a punch at short ranges.”

“I’ll say,” Klyne said. “How do they work?”

Kinmal cut to vid footage of a miner woman strapped into what looked like some kind of simple assault suit.

She switched the unit on and aimed herself at an enemy ship from the deck of a mining transport, smiling all the while. She gave an eager thumbs-up.

An intense white ball of hot energy enveloped her. Then she shot off toward her target.

When she hit, she blasted an enormous hole in the enemy battleship.

“So it’s a kamikaze device,” Aunt Sleak said flatly.

Naero gasped. They had just witnessed thousands of miners kill themselves, taking the fight directly to the enemy.

Kinmal started trying to explain it again. “The fixers miniaturized a fusion core, a jump drive set to overload, and a shield that lasts long enough for the pilot to hit their target.”

“An antimatter warhead,” Admiral Joshua jumped in. “But can’t we fix it on a torpedo or missile of some kind? The delivery system is…barbaric. Unacceptable.”

Kinmal shook his head. “We tried. There wasn’t time. The devices are too unstable, and we were rapidly running out of ordnance as it was. This works. The pilots can keep the energy levels stable manually until they hit their target. The fixers can mass produce these simple attack units efficiently. They work. And it was either this or let all of us die here.

“If it’s one thing miners have a lot of, it’s people. And they’re all of us willing to fight, and to die if need be, if that’s what it takes to defeat the Corps and give our children a better life. A life of freedom.”

Naero bit her lip, thinking back on a time when she thought all landers worthless. Now they shamed everyone with their matchless courage and defiance.

“Well, you’ve saved the day for us this time,” Klyne said. “But let our teks take a crack at stabilizing and using those new warheads. I agree with Admiral Joshua. Let’s not waste any lives we don’t have to.”