Captain Travis Ward cursed as the enemy superdreadnaughts grew closer, although he wasn’t sure who or what he was cursing. The enemy, for being clever enough to ambush the rebel fleet, Admiral Walker, for flying right into an ambush… or himself for being stupid enough to believe in a scarred woman called Hester Hyman. He’d fled one world as the Imperial Navy overran it, only to discover that the Empire just kept moving outwards, like a tidal wave of destruction that smashed everything it touched. Valiant, his cruiser, was the last remaining starship from the Kingdom of Thayne. The Empire had overrun the system with its normal calm efficiency and all Travis had been able to do was take his cruiser and go on the run. The Beyond had taken him and his crew in, given them a home, but there had been no hope for his world — or for his family, trapped under the Imperial Navy’s blockade. Travis had no way of knowing if they were alive or dead.
He could have jumped out and fled, yet something kept him in his place, something more than the fact that the Imperial Navy seemed to be ignoring the smaller ships. The Popular Front had given him hope and, even if he was more than a little cynical about their prospects, it had meant the world to his crew. Like Jason Cordova, they could never go home again, unless the Empire was beaten. And the best hope for defeating the Empire seemed about to die.
“Prepare to flicker,” he ordered, keying his console. If Admiral Walker needed time, Travis and his crew would buy it for him. Running was simple, but he had a far more dangerous stunt in mind. “And then remove all the governors from the flicker drive.”
His crew didn’t argue, even though they understood what he was proposing. “Yes, sir,” the helmsman said. Turning and charging towards the enemy ships would be a quick way of committing suicide without harming the enemy, but he had another idea. “I have laid in the course, sir.”
“It’s been a honour, gentlemen,” Travis said. He keyed his console again, accessing files that he had never even looked at since he and his crew had gone into exile. His wife and children, permanently young and unscarred, photographs taken before the Empire had arrived. “Jump!”
Scientists had long known that it was possible to use a flicker drive to add additional velocity to a starship, yet it wasn’t a practical tactic because the effects overwhelmed the compensators and killed the crew outright. Valiant, her course already laid in, flickered through space and rematerialised right in front of one of the superdreadnaughts. Before the enemy ship could react, the cruiser rammed the superdreadnaught and exploded.
“What the hell?”
“Unknown,” the tactical officer said, sounding equally puzzled. The explosion had been extremely powerful, powerful enough to burn out the superdreadnaught’s shields and drives, leaving it floating helplessly in space. “I don’t know.”
Colin looked up at the timer. The Imperial Navy ships seemed to have slowed, if only so their commander could figure out what had just hit him. Colin had no intention of giving him time to figure it out. If they kept slowing, they might just manage to escape…
Brent-Cochrane’s first thought was that the rebels had invented a new weapons system after all, but that didn’t seem likely or his entire squadron would have been destroyed by now. The waves of distortion coming from the explosion was making it harder for his sensors to work out what had happened, or why. Doubtless one of the analysts would figure it out eventually, but until then… his ships had actually lost speed in the confusion. He cursed and ordered the ships to maintain course. Even through the rebels had nine superdreadnaughts to his seven, his sensors were making it clear that the rebels no longer had their full battery of firepower at their disposal.
He gritted his teeth. The battle wasn’t over yet.
“Flicker drives ready, Admiral,” the helmsman reported. Colin almost sagged with relief, but held himself together through sheer force of will. “We are good to go.”
“Get us out of here,” Colin ordered. “Jump us out now!”
A moment later, the damaged superdreadnaughts and their remaining escorts vanished from the Greenland System.
“They’re gone, sir,” the tactical officer said.
Brent-Cochrane shrugged. “So they are,” he agreed. It looked bad, but then, he’d damaged the rebel ships and prevented them from scoring another easy victory. And, if Public Information couldn’t spin that into a great victory, they weren’t worth the money the Empire lavished on them. “Signal to all ships; stand down from condition-one and forward updated damage reports to me.”
His grin grew wider. “And add a further signal,” he added. “Well done.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
“Just how bad is it?”
The Chief Engineer rubbed his forehead. The fleet had been holding position nine light years from Greenland while they conducted a preliminary assessment of the damage and planned repairs. Colin had also sent half of his crew to their bunks to rest, knowing that the stress of the battle would have tired them out, too much to risk allowing them to help with the repairs. The superdreadnaught’s Chief Engineer, a man who should have held a far higher rank in the Imperial Navy, had refused to be put to bed. His beautiful ship had been badly damaged.
“Not as bad as it could have been,” he admitted, finally. Colin wanted to shout at him, to demand answers, but they were both on the verge of collapse. His Flag Captain had urged him to get some sleep himself, yet he had refused, knowing that he had to oversee at least the preliminary repair work. “The main armour plating held up remarkably well.”
Colin nodded, impatiently. If the battle had gone on for a few more minutes, even without the enemy ships slipping into energy range, it would have been disastrous. The shields had been on the verge of complete collapse, rendering the hull vulnerable to enemy fire… even so, enough had leaked through the shields to leave parts of the hull scorched and blackened. The bombardment against the shields themselves had been almost as bad, leaving hundreds of components burned out or badly damaged. And seventeen crewmen were dead, killed by the enemy. After the number of loyalists Colin had killed, it seemed painful, almost as if he had killed them personally.
It was not a rational thought. But they’d followed him and now they were dead.
“So the structure is intact,” the Chief Engineer continued. “We have already begun swapping out compartments from the storage bins and replacing the burned-out systems. Given a few days, we should be back at roughly eighty percent, perhaps more if we manage to fabricate some new components here. If not, we will have to go back to base and complete the repairs there. The main priority is replacing the shield generators and we don’t have enough spares to replace them all.”
“And once they’re burned out, they can’t be repaired,” Colin said, in understanding. He had never been trained as an engineer — the Imperial Navy preferred to separate the various departments, mainly through invisible lines of command — but he knew the basics, if only through making himself the master of Shadow, back before the mutiny. Shield generators were built to withstand and contain vast levels of energy, redirecting it away from the ship or even into storage power cells, yet when they were overloaded they vaporised. Four of the deaths had occurred when shield generators had exploded and damaged the starship’s interior. “Can we fight?”
The Chief Engineer shrugged. “Depend what you want us to fight,” he said. “If we run into another squadron of enemy superdreadnaughts, one that is in top condition… we’re dead. The squadron we escaped might be able to kick our ass if they ran into us now, even though we did take out one of their ships and cripple another. Something smaller… a battlecruiser squadron, perhaps… I wouldn’t want to fight if we could avoid it. We are not in a good state right now.”