“Will she keep doing it?”
“She’s Syndicate through and through,” Marphissa said. “Flexibility in anything but morals is not taught by the Syndicate. And she’s ruthless. She sees a chance at a kill, and she’s going to take it.”
It took time for the formations to come back together as they swung in their huge arcs through space. “You make the call when to kill your propulsion completely,” Marphissa told Mercia. “The rest of our ships will be slaved to your maneuvers, so we stay right with you.”
“I understand,” Mercia replied, her eyes locked on her display as she talked to Marphissa. “I will comply,” she added, unconsciously using the Syndicate phrase that had been required of her for so long.
“Showing five minutes to intercept,” Czilla reported.
Marphissa touched her comm controls. “Gryphon, Hawk, Eagle, Sentry, Sentinel, Scout, Defender, slave your maneuvering controls to Midway. I will not designate specific targets this time because our aspects will be changing as our formations engage. Your primary targets are the remaining enemy escorts. If you can’t get a good shot at an escort, add your fire to that of Midway at the enemy battleship.” She ended and looked at Diaz. “You, too.”
“Yes, Kommodor.” Diaz had his eyes fixed on his display as well.
One minute passed. Another. CEO Boucher’s formation came onward steadily, tracking to pass close behind Midway’s stern.
“Midway has cut all main propulsion,” Czilla said.
Manticore lurched as her automated maneuvering controls, fixed on maintaining the same position relative to the battleship, cut back her own main propulsion dramatically.
Vectors changed suddenly on the ships of Marphissa’s formation, shifting wider and flatter, the projected intercept point with the Syndicate warships swinging higher to one side.
“CEO Boucher sees what’s happening,” Diaz said. “Her battleship is firing thrusters to bring her bow around.”
The projected vectors and intercept points kept shifting rapidly, the Syndicate battleship firing its thrusters on full to try to compensate for the sudden changes in how it would encounter the Midway.
“All units,” Marphissa ordered. “Fire when your weapons are within range.”
Chapter Twelve
Everything was still moving very fast, but it felt like it was happening too slowly. Marphissa watched as the Syndicate battleship, unable to counter its own momentum quickly enough, zoomed upward just past Midway’s bow instead of just past her stern. She did not actually see every weapon on Midway lash out at the stern quarter of the Syndicate battleship. It happened far too fast for human senses to register. Nor did she see her cruisers and Hunter-Killers add their fire to the barrage, or the weapons on the Syndicate warships firing back, the angle a bad one for the Syndicate battleship so that many of its weapons could not get shots off.
Manticore shuddered from a few hits, but Marphissa didn’t hear any alarms going off to signify major damage.
The two formations separated more slowly this time, the Midway formation continuing to swing outward in a flat arc while the Syndicate formation angled away.
Marphissa didn’t wait this time to see the results of the engagement. “All units, immediate execute, come up one two five degrees, accelerate to point one light speed.” Her formation bent upward again, Midway lighting off all of her main propulsion again, the warships now on their backs relative to their earlier alignment, which made no difference at all to the spacecraft or their crews.
As her ships came around, she saw the results of the engagement show up on her display.
A single Hunter-Killer still accompanied the Syndicate battleship. The light cruiser was rolling off into the distance, all systems dead, one of the Hunter-Killers had blown up, and the third had broken into several pieces, which were tumbling away.
The few surviving enemy escorts must have concentrated their fire on Manticore. A few shots had gotten through her shields but had been weakened enough that they had failed to penetrate her armor. No other friendly warship except Midway had taken hits, and every shot aimed at Midway by the Syndicate battleship seemed to have hit her bow area, where her strongest shields and heaviest armor were placed.
Marphissa inhaled deeply as she saw the results of Midway’s fire on the Syndicate battleship. She had not realized until that moment that she had been holding her breath.
CEO Boucher’s battleship looked as if a god’s hammer had slammed into its stern quarter and stern. The battleship was trying to regain maneuvering control, but having trouble, with more than half of its main propulsion units and a lot of maneuvering thrusters destroyed.
“I wish I could have seen her face,” Diaz said. “I wish I could have seen Happy Hua when she realized that Midway had all of her weapons operational, and they were all firing at her rear end as she waltzed past.”
“Yes,” Marphissa agreed. “That would have been nice. Kapitan Mercia, what’s the best way to finish off the Syndicate battleship?”
“Take us past his stern again, Kommodor. If he hasn’t regained maneuvering control, we can hammer him hard, and even if he does get control, he won’t be able to evade us. I am happy to report that all of Midway’s weapons worked at high efficiency.”
Marphissa brought her formation a bit farther down and angled it to port to match the wavering movements of the Syndicate battleship. The lone Syndicate Hunter-Killer still hung by the battleship, but the little warship offered the battleship no real additional protection. “They’re getting the battleship straightened out,” Diaz said, “but they’re having a lot of trouble. The remaining main propulsion units are all pushing to one side of the center of mass, and it’s taking all they can manage to keep the battleship from going into a wide spin.”
“They will have an easier time controlling it if they cut back on the remaining main propulsion units, Kapitan,” the maneuvering specialist offered.
“They would? Yes. I see that. But they will not because CEO Boucher will not let them.” Diaz looked at Marphissa. “Am I right?”
“Very likely,” she agreed. “It will be very hard to convince a Syndicate CEO that reducing thrust at a time like this is the right course of action. Boucher will think that she needs to keep her remaining thrust at maximum even though that’s the wrong thing to do since it’s making it harder to keep the battleship on course. We’re going to come on the stern quarter opposite the one we hit last time and hammer that battleship’s remaining main propulsion. They won’t be able to turn his bow to face us with their main propulsion shoving them in the opposite direction, so they’ll have to try turning away from us and bringing the bow all the way around the long way.”
“Even if he turns away, we’ll probably still get clean shots at his stern,” Diaz said.
“That’s what I’m counting on.”
With the Syndicate battleship wavering up and toward the star, while Marphissa’s flotilla closed in from behind and below, this was much more of a stern chase than the previous encounters, which reduced the relative speed of the encounter a great deal.
Kapitan Mercia called in. “We can brake velocity as we approach to get the relative speed close enough to zero that Midway can sit there and pound on that Syndicate bastard until he breaks.”