Birthright: Battle for the Confederation- Consequence (23 page)

              "Alright, as for now, orders stand.  Try to make contact with Avenger and see what she's doing.  We'll adjust as necessary once we talk."

              The Fourteenth wheeled around and headed towards the rear of the still-forming Priman fleet.  Her fighters, escorted by the three surviving destroyers, pivoted and dropped their bows to head towards the same point in space, albeit from a different inbound vector. 

              The Primans saw it coming and launched as many fighters as they could, about equal to the Confed number.  The destroyers switched their positions in the formation, putting themselves between their own fighters and the incoming Primans and rolling a bit to port in order to point their AA turret broadsides at the enemy ships.

              As the gap closed, the destroyers opened up, catching the inbound Primans in a withering hail of rapid-fire AA blasts.  Explosions blossomed among the enemy fighters and their formation broke; the Confed Intruders wasted no time and accelerated through and past the disorganized enemies as they raced towards their target vessels with all the lust of a hungry predator chasing down wounded prey.  The Priman fleet opened up with its own AA fire, causing some Intruders to dodge and lose lock, while others caught full-on blasts and simply vaporized.  Still, the moment approached and arrived; ninety torpedoes sprung from their hard points, exhaust glowing as they raced ahead to the fiery ends that their CPUs craved.  A few were shot down, others defeated and running unguided off into deep space by Priman ECM, but many more found their marks.  As the Intruders conducted their starburst and exited the area, explosions dotted the surfaces of a dozen Priman cruisers, secondary fires appearing on many of them afterwards.  A portion of the Priman fleet was obscured by all the detonations, which served to help the Intruders clear out as it was harder to target them among the confusion. 

              Into the mix came the capital ships of the fleet in their cone shaped attack formation, trading blows with the Primans as they closed.  Just as the fire intensified, the screening cruisers and Crusaders peeled off, letting the two mighty Starshaker class battleships unleash an unrestrained fusillade against the enemy.  The battleships launched their broadside torpedoes straight out against the enemy ships, while simultaneously launching from their forward and aft tubes and sending them out guided against their targets.  Priman ECM still neutralized almost half of them, but that still left ten torpedoes to blast their way through Priman hulls and into the depths of the vessels. 

              Both sides traded high volumes of laser fire, and eventually the battleships ran low on main battery power as their shields were used up and failed.  The big ships rolled to show the Primans their thickly armored keels as the Confed formation raced beyond the edge of the Priman fleet, and both sides began to maneuver to go at it again while ships of both sides shifted to adjust positions within the elements.

              Majestic shuddered as another series of blasts hit home, and it sounded for all intents and purposes as though a rampaging horde was throwing boulders at his ship.  The pounding on the hull which reverberated through the ship, the noise of the blasts and associated warnings and alarms from his flag plot room, people yelling updates; it was chaos, the fog of war that every soldier was drilled to expect from their first day of training.  It was a mess, barely manageable, but there was no choice but to try and reign it in as best as he could. 

              His fleet gave better than it got on that pass; five Priman cruisers destroyed, three more adrift or aflame, a dozen more damaged but still in the fight, and a few dozen fighters destroyed.  It had cost his fleet a Crusader and fifteen Intruders, plus a cruiser badly damaged, but hopefully that sort of bloody nose would make the Priman Commander reconsider the idea of the last-man-standing brawl which he had initiated.  If they could all stand off and maneuver the way both their doctrines seemed to favor, he could make this fight last for hours and hopefully get some reinforcements. 

              He also had to consider that his battleships would run out of torpedoes before the Primans ran out of ships, but if he could de-fang their forces noticeably, the next Confed fleet to engage them would do much better.  As the ship bucked beneath him, he first gave thanks that all the senators were on the carrier Broadsword, which was much better protected by the remaining elements of the fleet, and that they hadn't been onboard the Archer when she'd been destroyed in the opening salvo of the conflict.  The whole objective of rescuing them and returning them to Confed space would be sort of moot if they all died out here before they could get home.

              Avenger was rocked by another series of hits from the closest Priman cruisers.  Her mag-shield was running at full strength, and thankfully the Primans seemed to actually think there was another Crusader out here with them.  The Primans weren't hitting the ship with every shot fired, and Captain Elco could see from the holo field that they were firing towards the point in space where CSS
Resilience
was broadcasting its IFF as well.  Avenger was close enough to fire torpedoes, but that presented a problem; when the Primans saw Avenger fire on another 'Confed' ship, would the jig be up?  How long would the ruse last?

              Elco could only order his ship to keep weaving among the Primans, trying to look like she was holding station on the 'other' Crusader class ship in the Priman formation.  He he to give Loren a chance to get off the Priman ship.

              Loren and Velk raced down the maintenance spaces of Harbinger in search of the compartment Velk had identified.  They arrived and waited behind a vented access panel while trying to ensure there were no crew in the corridor.  Both of them knew what was at stake, but there seemed to be an unspoken agreement that encouraged them to try and avoid harming the unwitting crew.

              Finally, Velk deemed the coast to be clear and they snuck into the corridor and then the small compartment.  It was bare, all business, about half the size of Avenger's bridge, and filled with silver boxes about big enough to fit Loren's flight helmet in.  Racks lined the bulkheads as well as two room-length shelves in the middle of the space.

              "This is it?" Loren asked, almost disappointed.  He'd for some reason expected more; he thought he'd hear a choir of angels and see some magic shaft of light illuminate something to show him the way.  Instead, just dozens of metallic boxes; it didn't seem so ominous.  "So, um, what are these?"

              "These are components of the comm system," Velk explained slowly, as though Loren would need help with the basics such as naming the shape and color to start with.  "They get their power and talk to the other components wirelessly.  They are all identical, and are meant to operate as a cloud and have individual units replaced as necessary.  We will need to destroy at least half of these to bring us below the threshold of acceptable computational power."

              "So," Loren concluded, "we need to bash half the room."

              "Correct."

              Loren grabbed a small handle on the front of one unit and slid it off the shelf, hefting it to gauge the weight.  There were four small lights on the front.  "Tash isn't going to like this," he sang through gritted teeth.  He lifted the unit above his head and then threw it to the deck as hard as he could.  It hit with a crash, sides collapsing and seams splitting.  He could see flashes of color inside and more of that fiber optic cable that he'd seen in the wall panel access earlier.  The lights on the front were out.

              "One down, a whole lot to go," Loren announced proudly, just as the ship began to shake from inbound laser blasts.  "And not a moment too soon."

              "I regret that this ship will most likely have to be destroyed in order to save the rest of our fleets.  This crew is most likely not complicit in Representative Tash's subversive plot."

              Loren sighed as he stomped on another box for good measure.  "Yeah, I know.  I wish I could think of something..."

              The ship rocked under another incoming volley.  "You mentioned escape pods, Commander Stone.  To what end?"

              Loren was surprised Velk would ask.  Did he plan to just sit here on the ship and face Tash no matter what?"

              "Well, I figure we can't stay here for one of two reasons.  One, the ship might just get blown into really small pieces.  The second is that, even if it survives, Tash will most likely not view our actions with kindness.  He may even try to hurt us."  Loren turned to see if Velk was taking him seriously.   "If we leave this ship, we can either catch up with my fleet or your new Commander's.  You can help her reestablish control over your military.  If one of my people picks us up, you'll still get home.  Either way, I figure we can't stay here, so we grab an escape pod or shuttle and get the hell out before they find us, because then they'll start with the anger and the violence.  I don't need that kind of stress in my life."

              Velk simply nodded.  "I understand, but I admit it feels contrary to my sense of duty to my people.  I should confront the Representative right here, on this ship, and end the conflict right now before more of my people die."

              "Except they think he's the Commander.  What do you have that will compel them to take your word over his?"

              Velk just looked away, then smashed another box.

              "So where's the nearest escape pod?"

              Velk spoke without turning around.  "There is a small shuttle hangar near here; we should take one of those.  First, they're far more capable than a pod, and second, the escape pods are culturally seen as the lowest of priorities.  It might not be serviceable."

              "Doesn't sound like the fleet safety inspectors would approve of that."

              "You forget we spent a thousand years out beyond the fringes of this galaxy.  All we had were our ships; there were no planets we could go to, nothing else in proximity that would offer any sort of salvation if a ship were to be lost.  Our fleets were spread out and already overcrowded; the grim truth was that if your ship was in trouble, the only truly ideal solution was to spend your last breath trying to save it.  If we all fled our ships every time something went wrong, the fleet would have become overtaxed in the first hundred years.  It may sound harsh, but we viewed the idea of abandoning ship as an act of cowardice."

              "You need to live to see this thing through, Representative.  Let's smash this junk and get out of here."

              Admiral Bak watched as the two fleets passed within medium range of each other again.  Torpedoes crisscrossed the dark of space, laser batteries flashed, shields sparkled, hulls were punctured, explosions vented into space, lives were lost.

              The engagement was evenly divided.  More damage to his vessels, roughly the same to the Primans.  He still couldn't figure out what was going on with Avenger, and his techs were pointing out a constant low grade weapons exchange within the Priman fleet itself.  It seemed that Avenger and the mystery transponder signal for Resilience were weaving among the Priman fleet, absorbing damage but not dealing any back out.

              "Admiral," Bak heard from across his Flag Plot compartment, "we have an incoming message from Avenger."

              "About time," he muttered.  "Put it on my station here," he commanded.

              Captain Elco's face appeared on the display panel at Admiral Bak's station.  "Captain," the admiral began, "I'm sure you have a hell of a story, but just give me the short version."

              "Loren and Velk are aboard a Priman ship," Elco quickly stated.  "They activated a beacon for a Confed ship in order to get the Primans to fire on her as well as to identify her so we could extract them.  We're in here among the Priman fleet with them so we can do that and hopefully finish the Priman ship off in the process; it's carrying the man who was their Commander until earlier today.  He's on the warpath and intends to head straight to Delos after he wipes us all out."

              "Sounds like the sort of person I'd like to shoot," Bak replied.

              "We'll see if we can arrange in introduction.  In any case, they're getting hammered by the Primans, and as soon as Loren and Velk are off, we'll try to finish the job."

              "Good luck," Bak wished to Elco.  "I'll keep us engaged with their fleet so we don't break contact too soon.  If you need anything, let us know.

              The lights on the bridge of Harbinger snapped off for a second before coming back on.  Tash knew what that meant; the ship's power grid was compromised.  If power distribution was lost, that meant no shields, guns, engines, anything.  Harbinger might not be the glorious mount he rode into victory on after all.

              "Captain Sohk," Tash announced, "I am going to have the prisoners transferred to a shuttle and made ready to depart if this ship becomes too damaged to lead from.  They are critical to demoralizing the enemy."