One of the targeted enemy superdreadnaughts staggered and fell out of formation, wreaked by internal damage, while the other blew apart in a sheet of superhot plasma. The first ship, she noted, was spewing out lifepods, suggesting that the ship had been badly damaged and had perhaps even lost damage control. The survivors wouldn’t have to worry about being picked up by hostile forces, she saw; the enemy commander had detached a pair of light cruisers to pick them up. It was a considerate thought and suggested that Admiral Wilhelm, whatever drove him, had earned the loyalty of his crews. It would make him a far more dangerous opponent than Admiral Percival.
The tactical officer worked his console as the follow-up salvos adjusted their attack profiles, focusing on new targets. The Geek-designed systems worked well, but Katy was dismayed to see just how quickly the enemy point defence adjusted to the incoming missiles. The point defence weapons hadn’t been seriously improved, much to her relief, but the point defence sensors had been improved to the point where they would have been capable of countering her attacks, if they’d had better weapons.
“That can’t be coincidence,” she realised, grimly. “Someone sold them the details behind our weapons and sensors.”
“It looks that way,” the tactical officer agreed. He scowled down at his console as the missiles laboured to catch up. “Their ECM is slightly obscured, but it reads out as rather like a Mark-XXI system.”
One the Geeks invented, Katy thought, feeling her blood run cold. If Cottbus had such systems in deployment — and that took more time than most laymen appreciated — what else did they have in their arsenal? How had they done it? Did they have spies within the Jupiter Shipyards, or even the Rim shipyards? If they knew where they were, they could attack them… and a successful attack on the Geek-built shipyards would cripple the Shadow Fleet. Who the hell sold our secrets to them?
“Incoming missiles,” the tactical officer said. The tactical display altered itself, focusing in on the incoming missiles, as he spoke. Katy could have altered it back, but there was little point. If the point defence network failed them, they would have no choice, but to run for their lives. “Entering point defence engagement range now.”
Katy watched, already knowing what she would see. The enemy missiles were flying right into the teeth of her point defence, but their penetration capabilities and support systems were literally years ahead of anything they should have possessed. Incoming missiles, particularly in a stern chase, were easy to detect, but these missiles moved with the same capabilities as the Shadow Fleet’s missiles… and some of them were slipping through the point defence.
We didn’t see all of this at Cottbus, she thought, as the first missiles slipped through the defences and slammed into a superdreadnaught, concentrating on knocking down its shields. The thought was galling, but it had to be accepted. If she had refused battle at Hawthorn, she wouldn’t have known about the improvements in Admiral Wilhelm’s systems until it was too late. We’re going to have to go into every system on the assumption we’re facing modern systems…
She scowled. She’d spent two years in the Logistics Department of the Imperial Navy, before being assigned to the Havoc as First Officer, and she had a rough idea of just how hard it was to get modern hardware out into the hands of people who needed it. The Sector Fleets on the Frontier tended to be better equipped than those in the interior sectors, but it wasn’t uncommon for modern hardware, stolen by corrupt officers in various logistic hubs, to get out to pirates first before reaching the Imperial Navy. No matter how much technology Admiral Wilhelm had obtained, from whoever it was who was supplying him, there would be hard and fast limits.
The problem seemed insolvable, but she had enough experience to figure out parts of it. Admiral Wilhelm wouldn’t have sent modern hardware to worlds that weren’t directly involved in his war effort, because that would have been nothing, but a waste. He would have needed to arm four sector fleets, which suggested that he wouldn’t have had enough modern hardware to equip his worlds anyway, with the exception of Cottbus. The logic seemed tempting enough, but logic, in so many ways, was merely a way to be wrong with confidence. The only way to know for sure would be to attack one of his logistics hubs and see what happened.
In other words, no changes there, then, she thought dryly. The concept of up-to-date intelligence in modern warfare was something of a joke. The enemy would have days, if not weeks, to change everything before her forces arrived. At least we can run a Freebooter or two through the system first.
She looked up as the superdreadnaught twitched, and then expelled another flight of missiles towards the enemy fleet. The range was closing now as both sides went to rapid fire and, at such ranges, the enemy’s superiority in missile weight would begin to tell. She watched dispassionately as they launched wave after wave of missiles, staggering the launches so that her point defence would always be engaged, and knew that it was time to disengage.
“Helm, prepare to flicker out,” she ordered, watching as the enemy fleet launched another wave of missiles. If they were lucky, the fleet would waste hundreds of missiles on targets that weren’t there any more. “Communications, inform the other ships to follow us out to the first waypoint on my command. I think its time to leave.”
She smiled as the enemy missiles closed in on her position, her point defence opening fire to engage them. “Flicker,” she ordered. She braced herself as soon as she issued the order. “Take us out of here.”
The burst of nausea shocked her, as always, but it was driven away by relief and amusement. She’d destroyed one superdreadnaught and badly damaged two more, for no losses at all, beyond minor damage. By almost any standard, it was an excellent naval victory and one that would restore confidence to her entire remaining fleet. She could almost forget just how bad the odds actually were… and just how low their chances of actually surviving had become.
“Set course for the second waypoint as soon as we reach the first,” she ordered, as she called up the tactical map of the sector. Oddly, being away from Hawthorn had left her feeling rather free, almost like old times. “We’ll reload… and then we have some raiding to do.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Charlie, who had been expecting poor Andy Gillingham to have been picked up by the local security forces — those loyal to Admiral Wilhelm, rather than the Empire — had been surprised when he sent messages to Sandra, and then shown up at her apartment. He’d suspected a trap from the start and had watched carefully, waiting for the other shoe to drop, but it seemed that they’d been either missed or Admiral Wilhelm had decided to leave them completely alone. It had taken two days of worrying before he’d realised the truth; Admiral Wilhelm’s people didn’t know that Andy Gillingham was their unwilling asset.
It made a grim kind of sense. The shipyards were, literally, over-crewed. Admiral Wilhelm had brought in trained personnel from four different sectors, just to ensure that he had enough starships and supplies to fight his war against the Provisional Government. Charlie had expected Gillingham and his fellows to be kept on the shipyards all the time, now that one of them had been revealed as a spy, but how could they all be crammed together indefinitely? The shipyard production rates might have fallen if morale had been allowed to fall… and cutting shore leave would have guaranteed a fall in morale. Gillingham and his fellows had to be allowed to land on the planet, if only for a few hours at a time, or the entire war effort would suffer.