One light hour away from the planet meant the Mississippi was invisible for that time, while the ship could easily see where every single defender of the system had been an hour ago. In a battle, all ships maneuvered in unpredictable patterns to avoid being shot by reinforcements they couldn’t see yet.
But no one knew they were in a battle except for the Mississippi. All patrols moved in predictable patterns. The Mississippi’s computers aimed cannons and torpedoes at the ships, railguns and turrets at the orbitals, kinetic bombardment at planetary defenses.
Many of Jagal’s defenders died before knowing they were under attack. It was a testament to how hard it was to wage war across the vast distance of space that there remained a garrison at all to fight back after that initial ambush.
When Jagal realized it was under attack, it ordered the civilian orbitals to take on the duties of the destroyed defenses. Asteria helped coordinate the garrison’s counter attack. Under the laws of war, that made Asteria an acceptable target for retaliation. And after it dealt with the patrols, the Mississippi came for Asteria.
All in all, the Mississippi’s main advantage was its rate of fire and its hyperdrive technology. Its weaponry and defenses were on par with anything the SA could muster, only scaled for size. The surviving forces of the garrison should have been able to deal with the dreadnought easily, had they had time to reunite in a battle formation.
But the Mississippi was on course for Jagal, and the Defense Fleet garrison was led by politicians…who lived in Jagal. Instead of reuniting the patrols, they had ordered them to face the Mississippi as soon as they could, to spare no loss to stop the ship from reaching the capital.
Commodore Terry, or whoever came up with the plan, had been a genius. The individual patrols had been no match for the firepower of the Mississippi and the auxiliaries it released from its hangars. Nothing had been able to even slow its direct course.
Clarke, serving on the Applegate, had seen entire patrols filled with sailors—his friends—disappear in seconds from the Applegate’s targeting computer.
Soon, it was his destroyer’s turn. He still remembered the expression of Captain Yin as she ordered her ship to strap in for battle. She knew what the result of facing the Mississippi without proper support would be.
She still did it, though. Because it was her duty. Because the population of Jagal depended on her. On everyone aboard the Applegate. Clarke had followed his captain right to the maws of hell, praying to all the gods that he’d be able to match Yin’s determination when his fate came.
Applegate’s direct engagement with Mississippi lasted for ten minutes. The dreadnought faced the destroyer as an afterthought, gutted it, and kept on its inexorable path toward victory and conquest.
Captain Yin died. Many other officers died, too, some of them in Clarke’s arms. But the debris and the bullets missed him, somehow, for some reason he still didn’t understand.
He was left as the acting commander of a mortally wounded ship, surrounded by the floating corpses of his friends and heroes.
“There’s not much a civilian station can do to defend itself after a ship with kinetic bombardment rounds sets its sights upon it. The station can’t dodge, can’t deflect the round with one of its own, can’t do anything but strap in and pray for a miracle,” Navathe said. “Many other stations prayed for a miracle during Broken Sky, and none came. Mississippi blew them up while fighting other ships. Asteria station, like many others, came under fire. My husband was a lowly engineer, watching the screens, wondering if he’d live long enough to see the station come apart.”
Clarke’s brief command at the Applegate had been, for him, a blank memory. There was little he could remember about his actions besides watching all the death and destruction around him. He recalled how small he had felt, how insignificant in the grand scheme of things.
Mississippi’s big engagements—the ones that people still talked about, the crucial ones—had come from the three surviving battleships who faced it at Jagal’s outer orbit. No one remembered all those lesser ships of the line, all those auxiliaries and escorts and orbitals filled with people.
Except their families. And the survivors.
Clarke had done what little he could. He sent all non-essential crew (what remained of it) to the escape capsules, and then, he had scanned the battlefield. Fighting the Mississippi was out of the question. The engines were too damaged to match the dreadnought’s velocity, and the Applegate’s weapons were all out of commission, anyway.
He realized as he watched his ships’ sensors that there was only one thing he could do. A tiny footnote in a battle that would shape the history of the Edge.
An action so insignificant that his superiors hadn’t even considered it—he could hear them scream at the surviving ships to ram the Mississippi if they couldn’t shoot at it. The idiots didn’t understand the basic physics of acceleration and velocity. Or perhaps they did, and didn’t care if thousands died torn apart by the brutal g’s needed to match the Mississippi’s velocity, if it meant a slightly better chance at their own survival.
“Just as the Mississippi’s targeting lasers caressed Asteria’s hull, a half-dead destroyer hailed the station as it limped in its direction. The commander, a man named Joseph Clarke, ordered Asteria to prepare for an emergency evacuation of all personnel. When Asteria’s director refused, Clarke ordered the station’s marines to depose the man. The Applegate had a skeleton crew by then, just Clarke, a handful of marines, corvette pilots, and a dozen sailors who had refused to evacuate the ship. With their help, Asteria’s entire crew embarked into the corvettes and left for Jagal’s surface. During the entire time the evacuation lasted, the Mississippi’s railguns blared against Asteria, but only few of the rounds hit it. Know why? Because Applegate was in the way. It covered Asteria’s evacuation by shielding it with its own body. Clarke was the last remaining officer in the bridge. That’s the kind of man that’ll lead your Task Force. You asked what he had done for the Edge, didn’t you? He saved my husband’s life. That may matter little to giants like Tal-Kader. But it matters to me. And if you truly are the men you aspire to be, it should matter to you too.”
Navathe talked about him as if he was a hero. Clarke disagreed. He remembered the invisible bullets tearing holes all across the bridge, turning dead bodies into chunky clouds of red salsa, destroying everything around him in perfect silence. He remembered how he had wondered when his pressure suit would puncture, or a bullet would reach him. Never in his entire life had he felt fear such as that. He would’ve given an arm and a leg to have the ship be anywhere else than in targeting range of the Mississippi. But what else could he do? By then, the Applegate was dead, and hadn’t exploded only by grace of the gods. Had he tried to move the ship, it would’ve fallen against Asteria Station, and then everyone would’ve died.
He did what he did because it was the only rational decision, the best way to minimize harm. The only thing he could do. He had regretted that choice while the Mississippi turned the Applegate into scrap metal, but by then he was already committed.