Opening Moves (25 page)

“
Enemy ships entering the minefield,” her sensor officer confirmed. “Defenses responding.”

This was it. With a heavy heart Natara took her crew to war.

* * * * * * *

Space glimmered with a thousand twinkling lights, like a dark cloud parting to reveal the stars behind. Each little point of light was an ion engine coughing into life, driving forward a captor mine from the first layer of defenses. The mines swarmed forward like a cloud of fireflies and homed in on the leading elements of the Ashani fleet, in this case its fighter screen.

Pyshana watched the mines activate with great intensity, calculating in her mind how many casualties they would cause and how best to deal with them. Sweepers would have been a waste of time, easy pickings for the orbital defenses. There was only one way through this: the hard way.

“
Order fighters to target the mines. Destroy them any way they can. They must
not
hit our ships.” There would still be enough other stuff coming their way sooner than she wanted.

The Ashani fighters engaged their afterburners and tore forward, spitting beams at the small missiles with great vigor and determination. They managed to shoot down a respectable number of the first wave, but with two more waves of mines activating and streaking for the fleet's spear heads they were never going to shoot them all down, many pilots chose to not even try. Ordered to defend the fleet at any cost they placed their craft in the path of anti-ship weapons and rammed them, destroying both the missile and themselves in a bright pyre. It was madness. For a decade the population had been whipped into a frenzy of ultra-nationalism and xenophobia by the strategoi, and by this point the vast majority of them believed there was no greater glory than to die in battle for their people. They embraced death readily and made the sacrifice
en masse
to blunt the Érenni's retaliation. Pyshana admired their dedication, but deep down a part of her understood that they were throwing away their lives for nothing. When the next battles came their loss would be felt.

The SUNBURST took a solid hit from a heavy missile, cracking open a section of hull and severing power lines as a small sun engulfed her upper port side for a moment. The ship faltered momentarily. Alarms blared through her and radiation warnings screeched through the suits of every surviving crew member in the sections close to the impact. But then SUNBURST continued on as damage control shifted the vessel's systems around the damaged area. The space before the Ashani fleet was awash with exploding fighters and mines and a flurry of small suns as they gradually pushed through the outer lines by sheer attrition.

“Fleet command is ordering the first wave forward,” Pyshana's executive officer reported.

“
Monitor their progress closely,” she replied curtly. “Watch where the enemy fire comes from and plot firing solutions on likely targets.” It was almost guaranteed the twenty ships of that first attack would be cut to pieces. They were little more than a method of testing the enemy defenses and probing weak spots in their firing arcs. “Keep a particular eye on that star base.”

* * * * * * *

“Enemy vessels closing fast.”

“
Lock on main batteries,” Captain Natara nodded. “Fire at will.”

Batal watched the enemy vessels enter range. It was a mix of cruisers and destroyers which represented quite a powerful force. Many showed the scars of mine impacts and some were trailing clouds of atmosphere and burning plasma, but so far the Ashani had lost no major warships thanks to their fighter screens' fanaticism. Their losses so far would have caused a Komerco force to pull back and reassess their strategy but apparently the Ashani regard for any life, even their own, was scant.

The sensors across her panels lit up with warnings, and a second later the entire Érenni battle line fired. Lines of red laser fire tangling across the sky mainly from defense satellites, punched through the Ashani ships, often passing clean through the relatively weak hulls and disappearing away on the other side. Six of the warships exploded immediately, leaving no debris larger than a shuttle in their wake, the other ships were wracked with secondary explosions and gutted from the inside out leaving them dead hulks drifting powerlessly.

“
Hells and demons!” Natara whispered in awe. She had never seen such firepower, and despite the terrible number of deaths she had just witnessed, it had impressed her. “They must surely retreat now.”

Batal looked over his shoulder and shot her a level glance. He wasn't quite so sure about that.

* * * * * * *

“
There, look!” Pyshana exclaimed triumphantly, pointing to a display of sensor data. “The battle station barely opened fire despite our vanguard being well within its range and firing arcs! Our scouts were right, it has no teeth!” Intelligence reports gathered from Ashani ships disguised as freighters had hinted that the battle station was barely functional. Now it seemed they had been correct.

“
Command has seen it too, Ma'am. The Strategos is ordering us to concentrate on that sector.”

“
So be it.” Pyshana inhaled deeply, letting the air fill her lungs and raise her chest. The glory of battle had covered her. She felt no fear or doubts; just the clear knowledge that she had a mission to complete and she knew exactly how to do it. She felt almost as if the battle was already won and the Érenni were a mere formality. “Take our place in the assault echelons and drive us forward.”

The Ashani fleet, as a whole began to move now, heading for a location just to the 'right' of the first sacrificial attack, as far as two-dimensional bearings on a three-dimensional battlefield made sense.

Pyshana's squadron was in the fifth line of the attack and on her screens she could already see the defenses firing on the ships at the head of the attack. The red lances of Érenni lasers were matched by the greenish beams of the Ashani ships aiming for the local defense satellites. With their simple construction they vanished with only a handful of hits.

“
Send in our fighter screen. Have them go for the weapons' platforms!” Pyshana ordered, rejoicing in every shudder and muffled thud from her ship telling of weapons firing somewhere deep in her command. There were still enough mines to cause problems, and two light cruisers were listing badly with white atmosphere spewing forth from their hulls, gaping holes showing where they had struck a hidden field.

Up ahead the battle station struck an attacking missile destroyer and severed its engines from the primary hull. The warship continued engaging as it spun out of control until a pair of Érenni cruisers finished it off. Pyshana noted that despite the attack the station had barely fought back and that its hull was marked by the return fire, something the heavily shielded station should have avoided. She quickly pulled up the files the Naval Intelligence Directorate had gathered on the massive space fortress. At that distance a fully operational
Fathal
-class station should have long dealt with any opponent possible of hitting her. Going by the amount of missile batteries and plasma lasers housed in the giant structure there shouldn't have been a scratch on its surface. But the reality looked different.

Missiles spouted from the Ashani fleet, the carefully timed volleys weaving through the combating ships and hitting satellites with pin point precision. The Dominion was pressing ahead, losing ships every minute but driving surely into the defenses.

* * * * * * *

“
This is
so
not good,” Rául concluded in a slight panic. “They're almost past the lines!”

Captain Calendar looked at the IRON MAIDEN's admittedly limited sensor suite. It wasn't a good system but it told him everything he needed to know. Rául was right. The Ashani were engaging the main line of defense satellites and if those were destroyed it'd just be the incomplete station and the defense fleet standing in their way. As a gambling man he wasn't keen on those odds.

“Take a look out there,” Alexej pointed from his seat out of the window.

Tarek followed his direction and spotted a red and greenish thunderstorm filling his view.

“Going by my readings some of the other freighters are already preparing to leave,” Annie commented calmly.

“
We should, too,” Rául said. “I don't want to be here when the Ashani show up again. We barely made it last time.”

“
It's too early to run,” Tarek stated evenly, giving Rául an assured look. “We'd just fly right into the main Ashani force. Take a look at the long range sensors. They're focusing their attack here, but by doing so they're also forcing the defenders to send in ever more ships to plug the gap they've cut.  And all the while the Dominion's remaining forces slowly move in closer all around the planet.” The MAIDEN's sensors showed how the sphere of red symbols designating the Ashani armada cautiously drew an increasingly tight cordon around Senfina. “Now, the engines are charged, the people strapped in, and if we have to go we can be moving in seconds. Still, let's not try anything hasty.”

“
There is a covering force waiting at the edge of the gravity well. Several squadrons of destroyers and cruisers and a whole bunch of gunships, skipper,” Annie added. “If we make a run for it one of them will have enough time to plot an intercept course.”

“
Probably waiting to hit any Érenni reinforcements,” Tarek commented. “So, there's no easy way out. Sit tight and take it easy, the battle isn't over yet.”

“
Speaking of, look at these readouts,” Alexej pointed out. “Something big is about to happen over there.” He pointed to the battle zone. “I think our Érenni hosts might not be as open as we thought.”

* * * * * * *

A sudden warning chime caught Pyshana's attention. Her ship was almost at the frontline, already blasting away at Érenni defenses. Massive waves of energy fire were sweeping each way as the fleets grappled, holding nothing back. Every gun on the SUNBURST was firing on the satellites along with the rest of her group, 'above' and to their right Strategos Drushan's dreadnought and a solid escort of gunships were exchanging fire with the battle station. The Érenni defenders had put most of the base's energy into its defenses, having polarized the hull to create a dispersion effect against enemy lasers. It meant the powerful command group was having a hard time scoring damage, but at least wasn't taking fire in return.

Fighters and gunships were constantly darting around her ship. Occasionally they were nothing but wrecks and it was momentum that kept them in formation. It was a deeply eerie sight to see destroyed ships still in combat formation advancing forward, like a fleet of ghost ships or a spectral fighter squadron blackened and charred by war.

“What's that warning?” Pyshana called across the bridge.

The sensor officer paused for a moment. He had been too wrapped up in monitoring the battle ahead to notice. “Ma'am, it's an energy reading, not localized. It's all around us.”

“What could cause it?” the Fleet Captain asked, only to be answered by a shrug. “Well, make a  guess then!” she demanded.

“
I would guess, I don't know... perhaps a mine field?”

Pyshana's eyes widened in sudden terror. The reading was
all around
the ships currently engaged, including her own.

“
But Ma'am, we've already neutralized the minefield with our fighters.”

“
We hit the mines that went active, the captor mines,” she responded quickly. “But what about other types?!” She had a sudden premonition of five hundred warships suddenly evaporating in a titanic fireball. “All engines, full reverse! Get us back!”

“
Energy spikes, everywhere!” the sensor officer called in alarm. “Mines!”

Before the words had even settled in, Pyshana was deafened by an echoing explosion and the scream of ripping metal. SUNBURST jolted off course with sickening force, almost overpowering her gravity dampeners. Only her restraints kept Pyshana from being smashed into a bulkhead. There was a second crack, and this time cold air rushed out of the bridge with the force of a hurricane, tugging at her hair and uniform and filling her with a deep cold before her suit's helmet automatically sealed her off. Red lights and sirens wailed over the howling wind, warning of a hull breach which Pyshana had more or less worked out for herself.

Her mind went completely blank. She couldn't think of a single damn thing, not ways to escape or plans to execute, she couldn't visualize the damage to her ship or even decide if she was prepared to die or not. It was as much a vacuum within her mind as it was rapidly becoming outside.

The sensor officer was hurled past his station still strapped into his chair, banging off the ceiling and nearly decapitating Pyshana as he crashed along the bridge in a shower of sparks and down the corridor behind, any cries of terror were masked by the howling gale.

She closed her eyes tightly. She could feel the vibrations in the hull and hear the supports and braces giving way somewhere deep beneath her feet. It felt as if ship was dying with its crew. There was another much closer rumbling, a more solid vibration and as it proceeded she felt the gusts slacken, though the cold inside her suit remained the same. With a metallic clang the wind stopped and a heavy silence engulfed the bridge.