Admiral Invincible (A Spineward Sectors Novel: Book 7) Read online

  Moments later I was swept back into the flow of reports and counter reports as the Droid Destroyers continued their attack run.

  “Where the blazes did they come from, Sensors?” Laurent snapped.

  “They just point transferred into range of our sensors, Captain,” the Sensor Warrant sounded stressed, “one moment there was nothing there and the next they were popping up. They must have been lying doggo somewhere deeper in system with their hyper-engines at the ready.”

  “Well, next time find them before they find us!” the Flag Captain ordered angrily.

  “We’ll do our best, sir,” the Warrant replied.

  “Destroyers have assumed a diamond formation, heavies on the outside and lighter vessels on the interior. They are currently aiming to skirt the edges of our formation, most likely to pick off a few of our lighter ships,” reported Tactical, “I read four destroyers and twenty to thirty fighter types.”

  “Even numbers then, on the heavies,” I said confidently. “Bring the fleet about with the Phoenix in the lead, lighter ships to fall behind our larger ones. We’ll go for a head to head engagement so we can fire as we pass.”

  “Bringing the ship about,” replied DuPont before the order could be relayed through the entire chain of command down to him.

  I smiled. It was good to see that we hadn’t lost our tactical flexibility in the heat of combat.

  But that smile disappeared as the Destroyer ships moved to compensate.

  “Sir, you are aware that we only have three ships of the same or higher classification as the Droid Destroyers, while they have four,” Laurent coughed and reminded me.

  “We’ve got them out-massed,” I said waving this minor point away, “I have to think a Strike Cruiser, a Light Cruiser, and a Destroyer are the equal of any four droid destroyers. I mean, we handled those droid Motherships back in Aqua Nova when we were heavily outnumbered. Personally, I like our odds against a smaller number of ships with inferior mass,” I added almost hungry to come to grips with the enemy.

  “Naturally, I agree with you, sir,” Laurent replied professionally, “however, the fact remains that these are a new class of ship we’ve never seen before; we’ve only received second hand readings. The Computer pegs these ships as belonging to the tribe called ‘Harmony through Specialization,’ and every report we have indicates these Harmony ships are a lot more effective, pound for pound, compared to the Conformity style ships we’ve dealt with in the past.”

  “Live and learn,” I said just as the Destroyers moved to compensate for our change in course. We had to fight them sometime and somewhere and right then I was liking our odds. Which, of course, inevitably led to the question: if I was in such a superior position, why were they attacking us?

  I frowned at the screen.

  “All Corvettes and Cutters are to position themselves behind the larger warships,” I instructed.

  “Aye, sir,” Steiner replied.

  Looking at the screen, I saw that one of our ships was falling behind. Worse, almost as soon as I noticed this, the Destroyers’ movement track adjusted course to point directly at the laggard. They were going to cut it off from the rest of the fleet and savage it.

  “Tell the laggard to catch up,” I said to Steiner indicating the slower ship.

  The com-tech blinked and relayed the message. After listening she turned back to me with consternation, “That’s the Prison Freighter, Admiral. They say they’re already burning flat out.”

  It took a half second for what she’d said to sink in and then I could feel my face turning warm around the edges. I opened my mouth for a hot reply, but quickly realized that would just be me venting my spleen on other people for my own stupidity.

  So, in a calm voice, I said, “Slow the Fleet; we need to cover the Prison Transport.”

  “Aye, Admiral,” the Captain said, repeating my orders to the rest of the Phoenix while Steiner got back on the horn with the Fleet at large.

  “The Destroyers have adjusted course and increased speed,” the Tactical Officer reported, “they’re making a run for the transport.

  I sat there, watching the screen and the ETA for when the destroyers would be able to intercept the Prison Transport. It was going to be close, but we would get there in time.

  Something still felt off and I tried to figure out, once again, why those Destroyers were attacking a clearly superior force. At that moment their target was obvious: they wanted to destroy the prison transport. But we would get there before them, so why were they continuing the attack?

  I locked my jaw as I tried to reason it out. It just wasn’t coming to me. Maybe they were like that Conformity Fleet we’d fought in Aqua Nova, single-minded and relatively stupid. But looking again at their smaller ships I didn’t see how they could survive by being both small and stupid. Plus, all reports to date indicated highly effective warships with solid tactics.

  When in doubt, change things up and, if possible, do the unexpected, I decided.

  “New orders to the,” my mouth felt bitter as I spoke the next words, “Admiral’s Pride…and the gunboats are to accompany us as we break formation and move to intercept the Droid Destroyers away from the main body.”

  Even as I spoke, Laurent was already relaying orders to the bridge of the Phoenix and as soon as the Admiral’s Pride signaled ready, we shot away from the rest of the Fleet with a trail of gunboats following along behind.

  At first the Droids attempted to change course and skirt around us but the Phoenix proved too fleet for them. Sooner than I would have expected, the Droids gave into the inevitable. You could tell the moment they came to the decision to stop trying to evade us and sneak around, because they all simultaneously changed course and turned right toward us.

  “Course change,” exclaimed Tactical, “enemy vessels are vectoring in on us.”

  “Helm, prepare for sudden maneuvers,” ordered Laurent.

  “I want a firing pass on those destroyers and then a hard turn back to the rest of the Fleet,” I instructed, “give it to them with both barrels, and tell those gunboats they are to focus on anti-fighter patrol.”

  Laurent nodded, “Will do, sir…you do know that, pound for pound, Gunboats do better duty on anti-ship missions than anti-fighter. They’re still generally superior to any fighter of a comparable tech rating, but not by much.”

  I frowned, since gunboats generally had a four man crew while fighters only had one. Meaning of course that sending them off against the Fighters could easily be a waste of resources.

  My frown turned to a scowl, I knew this already from my own private studies—studies intended to rectify the shortcomings in my Fleet Commander education—but it hadn’t been in the forefront of my mind when I was busy snapping off orders. Now that I had the time to take a breath and think, I could change my mind, which was something I hated to do. Better to be decisive and get it wrong than to make all the right decision after it no longer mattered what I’d did or done. And, of course, I just didn’t like to appear to get it wrong in front of the crew.

  I hesitated and hated myself for it.

  “Alright,” I nodded, “have them follow us in and make an attack on the Destroyers as we pass. We can use all the hits we can get but after that they are to be ready to keep those fighters off us. To the best of their abilities, that is; I don’t expect miracles outnumbered three-to-one,” I added.

  “I’ll pass that along, sir,” Laurent said, motioning to Steiner.

  As we approached, our forward weaponry started to come to bear but it was much lighter than our usual weight of fire as we were still pointed right at the Destroyers, which continued to barrel straight toward us.

  “Adjust course fifteen degrees to port and down five degrees to bring the rest of our broadside to bear,” I ordered coldly. It was time to put some heat on target.

  “Adjusting course now, Admiral,” DuPont said.

  “Gunnery on both ships are to fire at will,” I said as the Furious Phoenix and the Ad
miral’s Pride started to come about.

  “Tactical, give the order,” my Flag Captain instructed.

  “Gunnery is to prepare to fire at will,” acknowledged the Tactical Officer.

  “Fire!” roared First Officer Eastwood.

  I shook my head, and Laurent looked over at me as the beam tracks appeared on the Main Screen and gunnery started lighting up the enemy shields.

  “Maybe we should think about having him in another section,” I commented. “Aren’t First Officers supposed to move around more?”

  Laurent frowned and then nodded. “I’ll have a talk with him.”

  “It just seems every time there’s a battle he’s over at Tactical,” I said.

  “It’s his job to help correct troubled spots,” he held up a hand, “and even with the best crew, during a battle, there’s more trouble to be found in Tactical than any other section.”

  I pursed my lips and then shrugged. “Just look into it then,” I finally said.

  Turbo-lasers flashed and then heavy lasers ranged, causing the enemy shields to flare.

  “Spotting on the Destroyer #3 on the port side,” reported the Tactical Officer. “And there she goes, she’s rolling to compensate,” he said as the Destroyer turned to present her other side and then fell back into the tail end of the diamond formations, switching places with the Destroyer that had previously been in the back.

  The destroyers continued to rotate, turning in place and swapping out positions in order to give the ones with damage time to power up shields.

  “Spotting detected…blast, there she rolls again!” cursed Tactical as the Destroyers continued to duck and weave, always doing their best to present a strong shield to our lasers.

  “Enemy ships are coming in on close approach,” reported the Sensor Warrant.

  “Ready our close in weaponry,” Laurent cried, looking just as ready to blast these blighters with our plasma cannons as I was.

  Meanwhile, the Destroyers continued to bore in on us.

  “Separation! I have multiple missile tracks on course zero one-two,” cried Tactical, “relaying to anti-missile grounds. I say again: I have eight missiles, two per Destroyer, on an intercept course for the Flagship.”

  “Enemy Squadron is breaking wide!” exclaimed Sensors as the missiles continued their attack run.

  “Turn to intercept and knock out those missiles,” I snapped.

  “They’re crossing against our T; if we turn to follow we’ll lose point defense,” Tactical reported in a rising voice.

  “Blast it! Get those missiles,” I ordered furiously as the Destroyers streaked by.

  And while we couldn’t turn to follow immediately, our starboard broadside was quickly brought to bear.

  “Focus all fire on one of those Destroyers and make it count,” I snarled as my eyes shot over to the Destroyer currently on the side of the formation nearest us, “and make it Destroyer #2—don’t let up even if it rotates. Make them jump in front of the beam if you have to.”

  I watched with impotent fury as the Destroyers continued their arc away from us and the Prison Transport surrounded by our smaller fleet of corvettes and cutters, and despite pounding on the arms of my chair as I watched them run, by the time we knocked down the missiles it was too late to catch them.

  As long as they wanted to run and keep running, there was nothing we could do to catch them…not with anything big enough to do the job anyways. I was pretty sure if I sent the smaller ships after them, which were probably fast enough to do that job, they’d be more than willing to tangle with them—especially if they could string them out and pick them off a couple at a time. No thanks.

  I glared at the screen as they continued to get further and further away.

  “Well, that was unexpected,” Laurent said causing me to startle.

  I quickly moved to hide any evidence of my distraction. “They’ll be back,” I said grimly, “we’re going to need to start being slavish about convoy duty.”

  “They can’t follow us through hyperspace,” Laurent said after a moment.

  “No,” I agreed, “but if they know where we’re going they can get a pretty good idea where to meet up with us.”

  “And just how would they know?” Laurent asked and then his face turned dire. “You’re referring to spies in the upcoming conference, human patsies that have betrayed their race.”

  I took a moment before responding, “Well, I was more thinking that if one set of droids could break our communications encryption another could just as easily, or the first group could have sold our coordinates and intended destination to a second or third group of them, either Conformity or Harmony. But, upon reflection, your idea has merit all on its own except for one fact,” I said.

  “What would that be?” he asked with a frown.

  “How would these hypothetical spies know we’re coming?” I asked rhetorically. “I mean, we’re moving pretty quickly here, and even if a courier ship could have shot past and got there before us, I don’t see how they could turn around and then have hyper-jumped back to the droids in time for the machines then to set up an ambush. No,” I shook my head, “it’s much more likely that if there is a spy then he or she is from Aqua Nova. Such an individual would be positioned to either send a courier or use a hidden droid ComStat network to relay information.”

  Laurent grunted unhappily, then a thought seemed to occur to him for he smiled crookedly, “If the droids already have access to our current ComStat network, then I’d say their ‘hidden network’ is the one Middleton is currently hijacking.”

  “You know what, you’re probably right,” I said soberly.

  Laurent looked at me with a faint expression of unease and muttered something I didn’t catch.

  “What was that?” I asked for clarification.

  The Flag Captain cleared his throat and shook his head.

  “I was just wondering about those Destroyers,” he said, pointing to the rapidly moving away tracks on the main screen, “and the likelihood of them coming back around before we clear the system.”

  I waited just long enough for him to know I wasn’t deceived by this blatant attempt to change the subject before splaying my fingers.

  “Let’s not wait around long enough to see, hmm?” I said turning to our Navigator. “Let’s plan to jump as soon as the Freighter finishes charging up her jump engines,” I instructed.

  “Yes, Admiral,” Navigator Shepherd replied.

  It was an anxious Admiral who lurked on the bridge until the entire fleet was ready to jump out of this star system.

  Chapter 12: The Wages of Ingratitude: Never will I accept them!

  “Point Emergence!” reported Richard Shepherd from his position in Navigation.

  Looking over at him and DuPont as the department sections around the bridge started calling status updates. Our aforementioned Helmsman then began to break us free from the inertial gravity sump created by piercing the bonds of hyperspace for faster than light travel, I wondered if it was about time to give the two of them a promotion.

  We had junior Navigators and Helmsmen at this point, a number of them in fact. But even navigators were still in shorter supply than I would have liked, and I didn’t want to risk having some higher ranking blowhard come in and ruin the smooth running operation I had going here. Whether or not they were actually qualified for their promotions was secondary as far as I was concerned.

  Loyalty was key and, despite my admittedly rocky start with DuPont, since then the two of them had been rocks. In retrospect I don’t know if I could have done as much as I had if they’d been working against me; mis-jumps, appearing too far out of a system to get there in time because of deliberately miscalculated jumps, or failing to take evasive action in time.

  No, I decided. They definitely need to be rewarded. Whatever their ranks were, I was going to increase them. Loyalty like that needed to be acknowledged and rewarded. I would invite them to dinner and then…

  “Contact!” y
elped an overeager Sensor Operator, earning the stink eye from the Warrant in charge of Sensors.

  “Control yourself, Pierre; this is an inhabited system,” the Warrant Officer said sternly. “We should expect to see several vessels post-jump.”

  “Yeah, but not weapons fire, Warrant,” protested the Operator. “I’m reading multiple medium and heavy laser discharges around one of the outer planets.”

  Every head on the bridge, including mine, swiveled in the Sensor Operator’s direction. Though a stern glance from First Officer Eastwood soon had those heads with other tasks assigned to them rotating right back to where they belonged.

  There was a pause as over half of the sensors on the ship were redirected toward the brouhaha around the system gas-giant. It would have been all the sensors but the Warrant Officer wisely retained enough to finish sweeping the area around our ship, in an ever expanding spiral, for an ambush. We didn’t need any ships laying dark on the edge of the system ruining our day.

  As the screen populated, the situation in the Mu-Heracles Star System became clear. The local SDF was under attack by a pair of Harmony through Specialization attack squadrons, based around those destroyer-and-fighter combinations they seemed to like, and they were definitely giving the system defenders a hard go of it.

  Looking at the screen for just a few seconds, I came to a decision. “New orders to the Admiral’s Pride,” I said, breaking through the din of reports and speculation buzzing around the bridge. “They are to rejoin the Furious Phoenix from their jump location at best speed and then maintain position on the Flag,” I turned to Captain Laurent, “take the ship in, Captain. It’s time to run off some Droids.”

  “Yes sir!” the Captain said, obviously eager for another run at the mechanicals.

  I nodded in satisfaction. It was going to take some time off our cushion to get to the Mutual Defense League’s grand meeting on schedule, but from the look of it the Droids here were going to defeat the Mu-Heracles SDF and then be free to do anything to the human population of this system if I didn’t act.

  It was worth the delay.