“Those two disabled ships,” the sensor tech replied. “Every ship is firing that has line-of-sight. Sierras 41 and 46 are gone, sir. They’re just gas. And they’re still pumping plasma into the area.”
“Wow,” the CO said. “The Dreen have a hell of a penalty for having a bad Eng. I need to point it out to ours. How’s the modification of the missiles going?”
“Queasily, sir,” the TACO said. “But we’ll have at least one spread converted in twenty minutes or so. It was a nontrivial exercise.”
“That pretty much describes everything we do, Lieutenant.”
“So how did you get the beams to work?” Weaver asked when the linguist had finally calmed down.
“It was just a method of thought,” Miriam said, standing up and taking her place at the keyboard. She looked at it distastefully but powered it on. “I’ve had so much poking around my brain, I’ve sort of learned to poke in odd spots myself. I’ll see if I can do it again.”
“Okay,” Weaver said. “What do you want to play?”
“Anything but J-pop…”
“Colonel, are your dragonflies prepared?”
“Now that they’ve been resupplied, Captain Prael,” Colonel Che-chee replied. “I even have calmed my males. They very much did not care for waiting in space with no way home.”
“Glad to hear they’re okay,” the CO said distantly. “It’s important that you stay close to the ship. Our maneuvers will be minimal on the firing end, but we will be maneuvering. Especially on the second jump.”
“Understood, Captain,” the colonel replied. “Are we going to do this or not?”
“Dreen fighters redeploying in our direction, sir,” the TACO said.
“We’ll do a multidirectional jump, then,” the CO replied. “Set it up. I want to jump into the boarding group, out to a point triangulated between them and the main fleet then into the main fleet and back out.”
“Into the main fleet, sir?” the TACO said.
“Yes,” Prael said.
The Blade exited warp at whatever velocity and vector she had had prior to entry. This meant that each time she entered a star system, she had to adjust to the local vectors. More importantly, it meant that to attack a ship, she first had to match course and speed, then flash in, drop out of warp, fire, and flash out.
Her approach was superluminal, making locking onto her nearly impossible. But for the brief seconds she was exposed at the firing end, she was vulnerable. And Dreen destroyers and cruisers had excellent targeting software.
“Sierra 31 is releasing vapor,” the TACO reported. “We got in some hits at least. No change in delta V.”
“CIC, Damage Control,” the Eng reported. “Hull breach in section forty-two. Two KIA, one WIA.”
“They got in some licks, too,” Prael said. “Colonel, lock your flies to the hull for this one. Maximum spread.”
“Acknowledged,” Colonel Che-chee said. “Must report one dragonfly and rider destroyed.”
“You have my condolences, Colonel,” the CO replied. “Now lock down. We’re going to be maneuvering on this one. TACO, set mines for release on approach of Dreen emissions. Launch all tubes, minimum ejection, hold in field. Set course for the middle of the fleet. Go for one of the heavies. On exit from warp, maneuver in normal space, vector one-one-four mark zero.”
“Attack orders set,” the TACO said. “Target Sierra Five, superdreadnought. Mines deployed and holding inside field.”
“Engage.”
The Blade flashed in again, this time to the middle of the oncoming Dreen fleet. On exiting warp, she fired all twenty Chaos guns on either side, the starboard targeted on the three-kilometer-long superdreadnought barely ten thousand kilometers away.
All but three of the Chaos balls hit, smashing meter-square holes into the side of the superdreadnought.
But the massive ship barely seemed to notice the damage, responding with deadly accurate plasma and mass driver fire. The Blade had a Hexosehr plasma screen, but under the hammer of the gigawatt plasma guns it flared and died in a nanosecond and the stripped atoms tore at the skin of the ship, punching huge holes into the hull and ravaging the interior.
More fire poured from the ship’s sisters that were massed around the brain-ship, creating an impenetrable wall. The area around the Blade for a moment became a blaze to rival the output of the Tree. And then she was gone…
“Damage report!” Captain Prael said over the communicator. At the first pop in his ears he’d slammed down his helmet and he could tell by the shadows the compartment was now completely in vacuum. Given that there were at least a dozen air-tight doors between CIC and the hull, that was a bad sign.
“Multiple hull breaches,” the Eng replied. “Nine chaos guns down portside, four starboard. Rear torpedo room out of action. Forward reports two tubes damaged. Hits went deep into the ship. Casualty reports still coming in.”
“CIC, Dragonflight,” Colonel Che-chee said. “Four dragonflies destroyed by fire. Are we going to do that again?”
“I sure hope not, Colonel,” the CO replied, sighing. “Colonel, your people are getting slaughtered by this. Grab some drop-tanks and stay out here. Cover us if any of the fighters get close. If we’re destroyed, you can still make it back to the Tree. TACO, did any of the mines survive?”
“We got feedback reports from two out of the ten, sir,” the tactical officer reported. “I don’t know if the Dreen detected them or not.”
“Well, if they did, we just took all that damage for nothing…”
When the smart warhead on the SM-11 space-torp detected Dreen emissions in range it didn’t fire its engines. That would have been far too much signature. It simply fired the exploding bolts holding the terminal stage to the main torp. With everything that was still popping and sparking in space around it, including the ravaged shells of eight of its brethren, the release of the bolts was hardly noticeable.
The warhead didn’t use its powerful radar nor its laser range finder. It didn’t engage its targeting engine. It simply drifted, just another bit of space debris. With its electronics heavily shielded and running on the simplest of battery systems, it appeared as nothing more than a rock. Just a rock. Nothing to endanger a Dreen warship.
That was, until it came within a thousand meters. Then, again, it did a very minor thing, jets of air puffing off a plastic shroud.
And releasing two thousand space-spiders into the vacuum.
But space is vast. A bare three hundred actually impacted on the hull of the Dreen superdreadnought. Of those, most were killed by kinetic energy. Others bounced off. A few though, a bare handful, woke up in time to grab on. They paused there, drawing on their last shreds of food energy to produce enzymes capable of converting the Dreen armor into more food energy. And, as an important byproduct, drilling into the hull.
“Matched on course and speed of Sierra 31,” Conn reported.
The Dreen knew what was important in the boarding task force. The Dreen destroyers and cruiser had surrounded the troop carriers in a tight shield that required taking out one or more before the Blade could attack the vulnerable transports.
Perhaps he should have targeted one of the more vulnerable destroyers to start. But the Navy doctrine was always the same: Go for the Heavies.
“Damage control?”
“We got one more gun up on the port side,” the Eng replied. “The rest aren’t going to get repaired short of a Hexosehr space dock. Well, and possibly a few months of fabber time.”