Opening Moves (36 page)

His joy and excitement were still with him despite the difficult task ahead. Corr'tane was under no illusions about what lay ahead. The Tuathaan were an excellent enemy: resourceful, tenacious, fearless. What kept them from greatness was the utterly fractured nature of their society and the ensuing limits placed on each individual clan. Still, if he charged into Báine...

The Tuathaan knew there was a second Ashani fleet in the area and that Corr'tane commanded it. Accordingly they knew that 3
rd
Fleet would reinforce the units at Báine to help her embattled comrades, something the Clanholds' senior commanders had planned for in a display of unnerving foresight for the impulsive warriors by keeping a large strategic reserve ready to confront him when he arrived. The Tuathaan were expecting him, Tear'al was expecting him, it seemed
everyone
was waiting for his forces to show up for a bloody and decisive battle.

As such, Corr'tane had chosen to do something totally unexpected and simply ignore the Báine system. He would choose his own battle, on his own terms, elsewhere.

“We've reached the Dunnan Gal pocket, sir. No enemy vessels detected,” Captain Pryatan reported, a slender female officer with bright white hair and dark green eyes. She was among the most beautiful women Corr'tane had ever known, striking in appearance but, more importantly, also striking in intellect.

The whirling grays and blurry fiery streaks of foldspace hadn't changed in his command chair's visual display, but without stars to orientate there was no way to know the difference without a starship's sensors.

“Thank you, Captain.” He had no reason to doubt Pryatan's words. She was an excellent tactician and knew how to get the most out of his flagship, the dreadnought CLAWBLADE. The
Dawnhunter
-class dreadnought was an eleven hundred meters long mix between a bird of prey and a prairie wolf, beginning in a grizzled 'snout' bristling with plasma laser emitters and arrays of spiky targeting sensors, tachyon radar domes and anti-missile pods in each corner. Like smooth fur its beige hull covered the vulnerable interior and its crew under a thick layer of ceramics and thermo-resistant anti-laser compounds and a final skin of anti-radiation shielding. From time to time islands of antennae, sensors or laser-clusters dotted the surface in seemingly random patterns while the large mounts of the ships primary plasma laser batteries lay silent and unmoving, covering the sleek hull from every vector. The ship's stern held its massive engines unfolded into a pair of nearly four hundred meters wide 'wings', their tips housing CLAWBLADE's primary maneuvering thrusters, their base leading directly into the hangars for the ship's shuttles, dropships and
Swiftpaw
-class fighters. The space in between housed thirty anti-ship missile tubes on each side. It was the pinnacle of Ashani shipbuilding, and while the ship performed well, Corr'tane's first act as Strategos had been commissioning a modified version for his personal use, carrying an altered weapons' load and extensive labs and scientific facilities to allow him to continue conducting his research over combat zones. That ship was not quite ready, but for now the CLAWBLADE proved more than sufficient.

“
Signal the fleet: battle stations!” Corr'tane purred in his calm baritone as he locked his command chair's shock frame. “Exit the fold and assume combat formations.”

The ship's alarms wailed three times, paused, then wailed three times again, signaling every member of the crew that they were about to enter combat.

He noted the slight vibrations as the dreadnought's power plants began to pump into her warp field generators the incredible energies necessary to return the ship to normspace. CLAWBLADE's bridge was deep within the armored hull of the ship, hidden in its center and protected by an additional layer of armor like an egg. There were no windows to the outside world, but in his mind's eye he could visualize the shroud-like grays of the fold parting as the dreadnought shimmered back into existence, showing the diamond dotted darkness of space, with the Dunnan Gal binary system somewhere in the distance. The command screens around him lit up with fresh information and shifted to active status as the warship concluded its transition and its wide arrays of LIDAR, tachyon sensors and old-fashioned radar began to search local space for threats and targets.

Dunnan Gal's two stars were a large K3V main sequence star and a red dwarf, orbited by twelve planets and close to a hundred moons. The fourth planet, a densely populated world entirely too mountainous and humid for Corr'tane's taste, was the seat of one of the Tuathaan's oldest and most respected clans. Even the system's name spoke of it: Dunnan Gal, the homestead of Dunnan. And that, he thought, was the whole point of the matter. Though he did find it rather dull that the planet had the same name as the system itself. Well, creativity had never been a trait he would have ascribed to the Tuathaan in the first place...

As a clan home, the system's strategic importance was self-evident as sensor returns from orbitals and space infrastructure, and literally hundreds of small starships moving about, registered in CLAWBLADE's holotank. It was just perfect for his plan. And to him, it would also be a moment of very personal revenge he had awaited, for a very long time. It was easy to deduce from the suddenly exploding sensor and comm activity that Dunnan Gal's residents had by now recognized exactly who and what had chosen to pay them a visit. His lips drew back in a sneer as he noticed the frantic course changes and utter chaos which spread in the space ahead.

His mind drifted back to his youth, to the image of his father as he went to war against the Tuathaan. It had been just a small border dispute, and the newsfeeds had triumphantly declared it to be a quick and almost totally clean affair, a demonstration of Ashani superiority over the aliens, with the loss of only three vessels. But for Corr'tane it had been no cause for joy. One of those ships had been his father's command, and when the official from the Navy had arrived it was he who had opened the door and let him in. Even as a child he had known what the tall officer had come for, and had known and felt that his family was broken. It was the first time he felt the presence of death, something which had since become his constant companion in life. For long the two of them had played together, and now he was the bringer of death. He was no longer its plaything, but its master. The Tuathaan would learn that today.

“Picking up tachyon comm signatures. They are sending distress signals, sir,” Captain Pryatan reported. She and the rest of the bridge crew had also taken their seats and put on their shock frames. “They're calling in their fleet.”

Corr'tane nodded in satisfaction. “Excellent. What are their local forces?”

“We've got three cruiser squadrons, plus support, moving to intercept. It's possible there are more warships in the shadow of these planets, and the readings we get from many of these civilian vessels suggest a certain degree of armaments there, too.” She stabbed a button and the display in the main holotank zoomed in on Dunnan Gal. Scores of smaller craft rose from the planet's surface and undocked from the orbitals. “Patrol cutters, pinnaces and fighters, sir. About four hundred of them. They are trying to join up with the cruisers.”

Corr'tane stared at the plot and slowly shook his head, a resigned smile dancing across his face. Good old Tuathaan, as predictable as clockwork. Even outnumbered and out massed they still insisted on attacking instead of preserving their forces until help had the chance to arrive. A shrewd commander would have opted for a campaign of poking pinholes in the Dominion's attacking fleet, going after the smaller formations on the edge of Corr'tane's main force, or trying to attack his flanks once his forces began to go after Dunnan Gal and its numerous orbitals. But the mad charge becoming apparent in his tactical displays spoke volumes of the capabilities of whoever commanded the system's defenders. The Tuathaan vessels formed one large, formless blob. It would be interesting to observe whether they would manage to become something approaching a coherent fighting unit in the seventy-six minutes it would take both forces to get into each other's range. If they did, they could very well make him bleed. Not catastrophically so, but despite Corr'tane's somewhat callous reputation, he knew that every man and woman he lost was ultimately irreplaceable. These sailors and soldiers represented the experienced core of veterans of the Dominion's navy. If they died whoever was to replace them would undeniably be of lower quality stock.

Time appeared to slow to a crawl as both forces approached each other, their representations in CLAWBLADE's main plot barely changing at all. But appearances were deceptive. In truth, 3
rd
Fleet and the Tuathaan defenders raced towards one another at fractional speeds of light. The combined emissions from Dunnan Gal's defenders' drives suggested they were still accelerating. Corr'tane, however, was not in a hurry.

“
Captain, what's the best estimate for the arrival of reinforcements?”

Pryatan checked her console and punched in a query. “At maximum military acceleration a relief force from Báine could cross the fifteen light-years and be here within twenty-four hours. There are two smaller outposts in nearby systems, but unless the Tuathaan just happen to have parked major fleets there any reinforcements coming from that direction should be negligible. “

“Then I suppose we'd better keep ourselves busy in the meantime,” Corr'tane smiled slyly. “Let's gauge the skill of the man we're facing. Order sixth to tenth destroyer squadrons to break formation and hunt down the freighters within the system. Reducing the enemy's industrial and transport capacity should be part of every strategy.”

The Strategos watched as sixty destroyers broke from 3
rd
Fleet's tiered formation to race on widely diverging vectors deeper into the Dunnan Gal star system. An enemy willing to put reason over glory and honor would take the opening Corr'tane had just offered him and go after the many smaller targets. Given the size of the star system it really wasn't a stretch to say such a strategy would've kept both sides busy until reinforcements arrived. Ashani destroyers were vessels geared towards offensive operations, heavy in anti-ship missiles but only equipped with reduced defensive suites and comparably thin armor, something the ship class' designers had tried to compensate for with speed and state of the art electronic warfare equipment. Split up into groups of twenty or thirty the many small craft the Tuathaan had gathered for the system's defense would have posed a challenge to such a ship.

“
Enemy is maintaining course and speed. No reactions, sir. Entering engagement range in forty minutes from now.”

“
Thank you, captain. Well, it seems we'll have to keep prodding our runty friends. There's a large mining outpost on the eighth moon of that gas giant,” he focused his display on the system's sixth planet. “By the looks of it, there are also several space stations. Once we're passing its orbit we'll detach two dreadnought divisions and screening elements to wipe out these installations. Maybe the danger of losing those will prompt the Tuathaan to action.”

“
Aye, sir.”

Slowly, the distance between the two forces decreased. At seventeen minutes the attack force for the mining colony detached from the fleet's main body. Again, the Tuathaan armada maintained its course. A part of Corr'tane's mind found the development – or lack thereof – to be disappointing. As much as he understood the gravitas of his position as a leader of more than a million sailors and soldiers, part of his mind still longed for a challenge, for an enemy who was willing to think, and
act
,
out of the box of predetermined schemata.

“
Any significant changes in the individual course of the aggressor force, captain?”

Pryatan shook her head, her white mane rolling down her back in a sea of curls. “No, sir. The enemy has settled into a stable course. My best guess is they're waiting, conserving their reaction mass for the coming engagement.” She kept her voice level. Pryatan was an experienced officer, but she had earned her position during peacetime. For much of 3
rd
Fleet this would be their baptism by fire.

“
Tighten our forward screens, captain, and link the fleet's dreadnoughts into CLAWBLADE's fire control.”

Pryatan frowned but did as she was told. In the holotank the cruiser and destroyer squadrons at the front of his formation began to reduce the distance between one another and the main body of the fleet.

“Twelve minutes until effective missile range.”

“
Understood.” He leaned forward. “Distance to our forward screening elements?”

“
Around fifteen thousand kilometers, sir.”

“
Good, good,” Corr'tane nodded, scratching his chin. “Order to the fleet: initiate full-scale jamming.”

This time Pryatan hesitated. “Sir, at this distance jamming will have no effect on the enemy. In fact, given our power output we're more likely to blind our own sensors if we throw blanket distortions into the void.”

“Noted, Captain Pryatan. Now, if you'd be so kind.”

The female officer looked back at him then turned back with a minute shrug. “CLAWBLADE to fleet. Engage broadband jamming.”

Some of the tactical displays began to flicker, but Corr'tane's eyes were fixed on his own console as his fingers punched commands into fleetnet.