The Oncoming Storm (40 page)

Kat watched as countless vortexes opened and dispersed nemeses. Twenty-seven superdreadnoughts, forty-two smaller craft, and over five hundred gunboats, launching now from their carriers. The tiny vessels carried one hell of a sting, she knew, and a handful of them could take down a superdreadnought. The gunboat pilots of the 7th Fleet were still dawdling. It would be too late by the time they joined the fray.

“Picking up a message,” Ross said. “They’re beaming it all over the system.”

“Put it through,” Kat ordered.

The voice was strongly accented, although Kat couldn’t place it. “Infidels, the hour of judgment is at hand,” he said. “Accept your fate, surrender your ships, and join us in worship of the One True God, or die at our hands and be plunged into the bitterest hell. You have ten minutes to comply.”

Kat glanced at the display. Ten minutes . . . just long enough for the superdreadnoughts to enter firing range. The gunboats would be on the fleet in two minutes, unless the fleet surrendered beforehand. But that was not going to happen. The officers who might have surrendered had died on Cadiz.

Outsmarted yourself, didn’t you? she thought, with a moment of bitter amusement. Your plan worked too well.

But she knew it was unlikely to matter.

She looked at the XO. “Do we have any ID on the senior surviving officer?”

“I can’t find anyone higher than a commander,” the XO said. He sounded shocked. It was easy to believe, now, that Admiral Morrison had been an enemy agent all along. “The fleet is completely headless.”

Kat drew in a breath. “Open a channel to the entire fleet,” she ordered. She waited for Ross’s nod, then continued. “This is Captain Kat Falcone. I am taking command of the fleet.”

She pressed on before anyone could challenge her. Technically, she outranked everyone else confirmed to be alive, but they would know how little experience she had. And she wasn’t part of 7th Fleet’s command network. Someone might well challenge her on those grounds alone.

But, not entirely to her surprise, no one raised a challenge. They were all too focused on staying alive.

“Route the tactical fleet command net through Lightning,” she ordered, cursing the designers under her breath. Lightning just wasn’t designed for fleet command. If the designers hadn’t been so fixated on winning the contracts for a whole new generation of command-capable heavy cruisers . . . she shook her head bitterly. It was water under the bridge now. “And get me a full status update.”

She took a breath. At least some of the gunboats were finally getting out into open space. It was clear the pilots were disoriented and their flight rosters had been shot to hell, but they were out in space. She issued orders to the gunboats to engage the enemy gunboats before they attacked the fleet, then weighed the situation as best as she could. No matter how she played it in her mind, she saw nothing but defeat if they held their position and tried to fight. The enemy fleet had them firmly under their guns.

None of the reports sounded promising either. Her best superdreadnoughts required at least two weeks in the yards before they could be considered combat capable, even though the crews were doing their best to bring the ships to battle stations. Many of the smaller ships were in better condition—the rot hadn’t set in so badly—but they didn’t have the firepower to take on the Theocracy.

“We will cover the superdreadnoughts until they are ready to escape,” she ordered. The Theocracy would go for the superdreadnoughts first, just to take them out before they could be brought back to full readiness. It would be quicker to repair any ships that escaped than build new hulls from scratch. “And as soon as they are ready to go, we will beat a hasty retreat.”

She felt several of her officers glancing at her back in disbelief. The Royal Navy didn’t run . . . but the Royal Navy had never faced a serious challenge before. They had never been involved in the Breakaway Wars. The only real opponent had been pirates, and none of them had posed more than a brief challenge to their might. And if 7th Fleet had been worked up and ready to go, they might have given the Theocracy a bloody nose. But she knew all they could do was run.

The Board of Inquiry might blame me for running, she thought, as the enemy gunboats raced closer. But they won’t blame anyone else.

“The planetary defense network is still crippled,” the XO said, “but some of the automated platforms have been isolated from the communications net and are responding to orders.”

“Target them on the gunboats,” Kat ordered. She braced herself. “And stand by point defense.”

She watched grimly as the gunboats slashed into engagement range, evading with consummate skill as the superdreadnoughts opened fire with point defense. No gunboat could stand up to a single blast, but they were incredibly hard to hit. She had to admire the professionalism shown by the enemy pilots as they closed in on their targets, then opened fire with shipkiller missiles. Armed with antimatter, they would be devastating against shielded and unshielded targets alike.

“Antimatter detonations,” Roach reported as four of the missiles were picked off by point defense. “They’re not holding back, Captain.”

Kat nodded. The gunboats had scored five direct hits on one superdreadnought, blowing the massive vessel out of formation. For a long moment, it looked as though Hammer of Thor had survived, then the starship vanished inside a massive fireball. Kat fought down despair as the gunboats raced away from the destroyed ship, then reformed and angled back towards their next target. The point defense crews continued firing, trying to pick off the gunboats before they could enter engagement range again. But it seemed a waste of effort.

“Message to superdreadnoughts,” Kat ordered. Safety regulations warned against it, but she was so far past caring that it hardly mattered. “They are to launch shipkillers on dispersal mode.”

“Aye, Captain,” the XO said. He seemed to have fallen into the role of her operations officer, even though he should have taken command of the cruiser while she commanded the entire fleet. But there was no time to switch roles. “But that will damage our datanet.”

Kat shrugged. “What datanet?”

“Direct hit, starboard hull,” the tactical officer snapped. “Shields held, but barely.”

Fran nodded. Defiant had been lucky. Four of the gunboats assigned to her had been picked off before they could launch their missiles, detonating the antimatter in their warheads and wiping out several of their comrades. Only one missile had struck her shields. Fran was grimly aware that the starship’s shields were held together by spit and baling wire.

She glanced at the order from Lightning, then smiled. “Launch shipkillers on dispersal mode,” she ordered. “Target clumps of enemy ships and fire!”

She smirked as the superdreadnought launched a spread of antimatter-armed missiles aimed at the gunboat formation. There was no hope of actually scoring a hit, but it didn’t matter. The warheads detonated as soon as they were within range, the giant explosions wiping out dozens of gunboats and disabling several others. It wasn’t a viable tactic in the long run, but it would buy them some time. But would it be enough?

“Seven minutes until we can open a vortex,” the engineer reported.

Fran cursed. It was going to be a long seven minutes.

“Clever,” Admiral Junayd observed. His gunboats had been hammered by the shipkillers, far too many of them swatted out of space like flies. The remainder would have to return to their carriers to rearm before they could return to the fight. “But futile.”

He smiled grimly as the fleet finally came into range. “Target missiles on the superdreadnoughts,” he ordered, “and open fire.”

Moments later, the Theocracy’s superdreadnoughts launched the first full broadside of the war.

“The enemy superdreadnoughts have opened fire,” Roach reported.

Kat nodded, unsurprised. Under normal circumstances, firing at extreme range would have been futile. There would have been plenty of time for a fleet command datanet to lock onto the missiles, calculate interception trajectories, and open fire. Hell, the missiles might have burned out their drives and gone ballistic by the time they entered the point defense envelope, making their destruction a certainty. But this time the tactic might well pay off for the Theocrats.

The point defense datanet barely exists, she thought, and the bastards are practically holding the planet hostage. One antimatter missile on the surface and most of the population will die.

She gritted her teeth. “The superdreadnoughts are to fall back, if they can muster the power,” she ordered. She hated to do it, but preserving the fleet was her first priority. Cadiz would just have to take care of itself. “Reform the fleet; I want smaller ships between the superdreadnoughts and the incoming missiles. If we can’t form a datanet, I want to put out enough firepower to prevent the missiles from getting through.”

“Aye, Captain,” the XO said. “And the planet?”

Kat cursed herself under her breath. She couldn’t leave Cadiz completely undefended. “Reprogram the planetary defenses,” she ordered. They would normally have put the planet first, but the standard command network was in tatters. “They are to concentrate on missiles that might enter the planet’s atmosphere.”

“Aye, Captain,” the XO said. He sounded relieved. “The enemy fleet is picking up speed.”

“Order our superdreadnoughts to fire a return barrage,” Kat ordered. The Theocracy’s fleet was advancing towards her ships, shortening the effective engagement range. But there would be no coordinated fire. She would just have to hope her fire dissuaded the enemy from pursuing too closely. “And then angle the point defense to provide as much cover as possible.”

She watched grimly as the swarm of missiles rocketed towards the fleet. None of them were targeted on Lightning—thankfully, the limited datanet had prevented the Theocracy from realizing that a mere heavy cruiser was the linchpin of the fleet—but there were more than enough of them to do real damage. Her ship’s point defense went to work, sweeping missiles out of space, yet there seemed to be no shortage racing towards her superdreadnoughts.

Then they started to strike home.

“Kali is gone,” Roach reported. “Agincourt and Bosworth have taken heavy damage. Bosworth reports that her drive section is completely gone. Butcher and Thundercracker have both taken limited damage.”

Kat nodded. “Keep trying to link our point defense together,” she ordered. If Bosworth had lost her drives, there was no way she could be saved. “Order Bosworth to transfer all non-essential crew to her shuttles . . .”

A green icon flickered once, then vanished, to be replaced by a handful of icons representing lifepods. “King David is gone,” Roach said, bleakly. “Defiant is requesting permission to launch SAR shuttles.”

Kat hesitated. “Denied,” she said, finally. The enemy gunboats would fire on shuttles, even though they were performing Search and Rescue duties. “The lifepods are to make their way to the planet.”

Roach turned to stare at her. “Captain . . .”

“That’s an order, mister,” Kat snapped. “Concentrate on your duties.”

She understood his feelings all too well. The Royal Navy didn’t leave anyone behind. It had been hammered into them at Piker’s Peak that starship crewmen and officers had to depend on one another. But she didn’t dare risk allowing SAR shuttles to be engaged by enemy gunboats—or, for that matter, leaving them behind.