Roman nodded as the first missiles started to strike home.
Joseph cursed as the first volley of missiles started to slam into his units. By sheer luck—or the whim of a mad god—Haven was barely targeted by the first wave, suggesting that the enemy hadn’t realized that the cruiser was the flagship. But then, part of his mind whispered, the Planet-class cruisers were virtually impossible to distinguish from the Archer-class cruisers that made up most of his force. The enemy wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference until his ships started spitting missiles back at them, and by then they wouldn’t have been able to retarget the first wave of missiles.
“Spread our fire,” he ordered, ignoring the lieutenant’s shock. Luna Academy—much less the facilities Justinian had set up as training camps since his defection—would have been horrified at the decision, for spreading their fire ensured that no enemy craft would be destroyed.
On the other hand, if they were lucky, they might disable a few starships and prevent them from escaping before reinforcements arrived. The fortresses would have already fired courier drones through the Asimov Point, summoning reinforcements from the terminus.
“Link our ships into the datanet and coordinate our point defense,” Joseph ordered.
He cursed his own complacency under his breath as ships started to die. The Power vanished in a ball of fire as her shields were knocked down by the tearing force of antimatter detonations; the Pocahontas followed her a moment later, a missile slipping through a brief chink in her shields and detonating against the hull. If he’d had the datanet up and running…but no, that could have been taken as a hostile act. Governor-General Hartkopf—the title was ashes in his thoughts—had sucked his cruisers in, and they were all going to die.
“They’re shifting their fire,” the tactical officer said.
Joseph nodded grimly. The datanet was collapsing almost as quickly as it was being put up, with starships falling out of the network or being destroyed outright.
“Transmit an emergency signal, then drop a stealth beacon,” he ordered. “I want the admiral to know what happened here.”
“Sir…incoming fire.”
The savage missile swarm fell on his remaining starships. Robert Graves exploded in a ball of fire, followed rapidly by Spider Bite and Tunbridge Wells. And then the missiles sought out Haven. There was no time to say anything, no time to react, before the missiles started striking the hull and blew the entire starship and crew to vapor.
Midway rocked violently as a missile—one of the last fired by the enemy cruisers before they died—exploded against her shields. Roman allowed himself a small moment of hope as the cruiser absorbed the blow, before contemplating the damage report from two of his ships. He’d had the great advantage that his datanet, at least, had been ready for instant action when he’d opened fire and he’d used it unmercifully. Only a handful of missiles had broken through his defenses and overall damage was minimal.
“All enemy ships destroyed, sir,” the tactical officer said. “There are a handful of lifepods floating in space…”
“Ignore them,” Roman ordered. Some of the warlords had ordered their starships to fire on unarmed and helpless lifepods, but he wasn’t going to commit such an atrocity. Besides, the survivors could only testify that Governor-General Hartkopf’s ships had opened fire on them, without warning or provocation. It would certainly sour relationships between the two warlords. “Helm, break us away from the Asimov Point and set course for the mass limit, best possible speed.”
“Aye, sir,” the tactical officer said. Midway rolled in space and started to head away from the Asimov Point, followed by her consorts. The starfighters launched by the fortresses—too little, too late—were simply ignored. They could perhaps catch up with the starships, but their life support packs wouldn’t last long enough for them to inflict real damage.
But perhaps the enemy thought differently. A rational foe would have broken off the pursuit, yet the starfighters were still following them.
“New contacts,” the sensor officer reported, his voice rising in alarm. “Twelve starships just transited the Asimov Point!”
Roman scowled. All of a sudden, the enemy seemed a great deal more rational. “Identify them,” he ordered.
If he understood what he was seeing, the enemy fleet would certainly include a carrier that would recover the starfighters before they ran out of life support. They had to have had a reaction force on the other side of the Asimov Point, one that had been alerted as soon as the first missile was launched. The enemy—he acknowledged ruefully—had reacted with astonishing speed.
“Nine battlecruisers, two starships of indeterminate class and one bulk freighter,” the sensor officer said. Roman remembered how Admiral Justinian had turned freighters into carriers and put two and two together. If that ship wasn’t a converted carrier, he’d be astonished. “The unknown ships may be a new design of cruiser. Their power curves are roughly compatible with Darwin-class starships.”
“Launch a stealth probe towards them,” Roman ordered. Obtaining information on a new class of enemy ships was greatly to be desired. It would certainly help avoid surprises when Federation ships encountered the newcomer in formal combat. “Helm, continue to maneuver until we are clear of the starfighters.”
He sat back and watched as the enemy ships started to pick up speed, running through the vectors in his head. Unless the starfighters could delay them, they’d escape without needing to engage the newcomers, even in a long-range missile duel. And yet, there was almost no way to prevent the starfighters from engaging them…was there?
“Launch a spread of antimatter missiles,” he ordered. Shipkillers were never spent on starfighters; everyone knew that. And if they were lucky, the enemy starfighters wouldn’t recognize the threat. “Detonate them at closest approach to the enemy craft.”
“Aye, sir,” the tactical officer said.
Roman watched the results grimly. Only a handful of enemy craft were destroyed in the blasts—antimatter detonations were tiny in the vacuum of space—but the remainder scattered, convinced they were fighting madmen. The tactic wasn’t normally considered to be reliable, if only because it expended too many missiles, weakening the cruiser if she encountered another starship. And as long as starfighters were scattered, the threat they posed was greatly reduced.
“Sir…?”
“Keep us on course,” Roman ordered harshly. They couldn’t fight the enemy ships in a straight battle. “Once we cross the mass limit, take us into FTL and aim us towards the first waypoint.”
“Aye, sir,” the helmsman said.
Two hours later, with the enemy having given up the chase, Midway and her consorts crossed the mass limit and vanished from the Marx System. They left behind nothing but chaos.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“The Enemy of My Enemy is My Friend” is a common truism. Like many other truisms, it is true only as far as it goes. In reality, the truism might read better as, “The enemy of my enemy is my enemy’s enemy,” as a shared enmity does not automatically translate to shared interests, let alone friendship.
Jefferson System/The Hive System/Tranter System, 4095
The benefit to having access to an Asimov Point nexus, Captain Caitlin Bowery reminded herself as armoured Marines escorted her through the drop tube into Admiral Justinian’s private habitat, was that it gave the defenders the advantage of interior lines. Admiral Justinian could shift his forces to intercept any Federation thrust into his territory, even if the Federation managed to discover a previously undetected Asimov Point along the Rim that led into civilized space. It had allowed him to pull back most of his fighting units into Jefferson and prepare them for the grand offensive that would take him into the heart of the Federation, once the new units were built, crewed and worked up to fighting trim.