“Not yet,” Marphissa said. “Braking down our velocity like that would take more time and prolong our approach. If we give her enough time, Happy Hua may still figure out what she needs to do to get that battleship’s bow around in time to meet us. I want the rest of her main propulsion taken out so she can’t escape. After that, when we come back again, we’ll come in slow enough to pound the hell out of that battleship for as long as it takes.”
“Yes, Kommodor. Request permission to alter my own vector a little as necessary on the final approach to maximize my chances of hitting that battleship’s stern hard.”
“Permission granted,” Marphissa said. “I will tell the other warships not to conform to your movement this time because I want to ensure that CEO Boucher’s ship doesn’t get good shots at any of our escorts while you’re angling for a good shot from Midway.”
Mercia paused, then nodded carefully. “I should have considered that, Kommodor.”
“It’s my job to consider such matters,” Marphissa said. “Yours is to get that Syndicate battleship.”
They overtook and tore past CEO Boucher’s sadly diminished flotilla in another moment of extreme violence. This time, Manticore jerked badly a couple of times, and alarms sounded in the wake of the firing run.
“Happy Hua targeted us this time,” Diaz said, looking furious. “She couldn’t get in good shots at Midway, but she tried to nail us.”
“How bad is it?” Marphissa asked.
“A hell-lance battery out as well as one of the missile launchers. Hull penetrations in two places. Two dead and a dozen injured.”
Marphissa winced internally at the losses but kept her gaze on her display.
The Syndicate battleship’s staggering attempts to swing its bow around had not come close to succeeding. Midway had hit its stern badly, taking out all but one of the remaining main propulsion units and badly chewing up another one of the battleship’s aft quarters.
On the other hand, Manticore had not been the only escort hit by the Syndicate battleship’s fire. Gryphon had taken one bad hit, Eagle had lost some of her main propulsion, and Hawk was temporarily unable to maneuver. Marphissa had deliberately kept her Hunter-Killers away from the battleship during the engagement, which was probably the only thing that had saved them from being badly damaged or destroyed.
Marphissa searched her display for the fate of the sole surviving Syndicate escort and spotted the Hunter-Killer bolting at maximum acceleration on a long, curving trajectory that would bring it to the jump point for Kiribati, far across the star system.
She made a quick check of the fuel-cell status on her own Hunter-Killers and shook her head. “We’ll have to let him go,” Marphissa told Diaz. “Our own Hunter-Killers don’t have the fuel-cell reserves left to catch him.”
“Too bad.”
“Yes.” She touched her comm controls. “Midway, you are to detach from the formation and operate independently to finish disabling and destroy the Syndicate battleship. I will keep the rest of the formation clear to avoid sustaining any more damage until the enemy battleship has been rendered safe to approach.”
“It shall be done,” Kapitan Mercia said, baring her teeth.
“Gryphon, stay with Hawk until Hawk regains maneuvering control, then both of you rejoin the formation.”
“Yes, Kommodor,” Kapitan Stein acknowledged, not quite hiding her relief at not being asked to once more exchange fire with a battleship.
As Midway began cumbersomely swinging about to reengage the enemy battleship, Marphissa began to reverse course by pivoting her remaining ships in place and starting to kill their momentum before accelerating back along the same vector in the opposite direction. Unlike Midway, though, she wouldn’t be closing to firing range again until that enemy battleship had lost its fangs.
The Syndicate battleship no longer had the unbalanced thrust of its main propulsion shoving it to one side, but it had also lost a lot of thrusters aft. Even a ship with a lot less mass would have found it hard to maneuver under those circumstances, but a battleship faced serious trouble. And with only one main propulsion unit still working, it could not accelerate fast enough or change vectors quickly enough to have any hope of escape or evasion.
That left slugging it out with the Midway, and as Marphissa watched, the Syndicate battleship tried once again to swing its bow around in time to meet the latest charge.
But Kapitan Mercia had her thrusters and main propulsion still intact, so while the Midway remained a clumsy elephant compared to smaller warships, she was a graceful, light-footed elephant compared to the damaged enemy battleship.
Using her momentum to skate around the enemy battleship faster than it could turn, Mercia’s battleship raked the enemy from one quarter to the other, destroying the last working main propulsion unit and smashing weapons, sensors, and anything else that wasn’t fully protected by the battleship’s armor.
CEO Boucher’s battleship staggered, beginning a slow tumble under the force of the hits that its remaining thrusters strove to counter.
Having reduced her relative velocity to something nearly matching that of the Syndicate battleship, Mercia had Midway back in position within ten minutes and began hammering the enemy systematically, working her way up from the stern to smash section after section of the enemy warship while exposing Midway to only a few enemy weapons at a time.
“I’ve never seen it like this,” Diaz said with awe as he watched the methodical destruction of the enemy battleship’s weapons and remaining thrusters. “You look at a battleship and you know the weapons they carry and the defenses they have, but it isn’t until you see something like this, with our battleship hurling out volley after volley that would each tear Manticore apart, and the other battleship soaking up all that damage and still going, that you really appreciate what terrible monsters they are.”
“It’s not pretty,” Marphissa agreed. “If that ship hadn’t done most of the damage at Kane, I might feel a little sorry for them.”
“There must be a lot of snakes aboard forcing them—” Diaz began.
“I don’t care,” Marphissa said, her voice low and angry. “We had snakes aboard, and we did something. They’re dying, but they could still do something.”
They were doing something, but it consisted of attempts to continue fighting. The Syndicate battleship volleyed missiles at the Midway, but the range was so short that Midway could target the missiles with hell lances right after launch as the missiles were at a low relative velocity. The few missiles that survived failed to break through Midway’s shields.
Once their missiles were exhausted, the Syndicate crew tried firing bombardment projectiles at the Midway whenever a launcher was able to bear on her. But Midway was able to use her thrusters to twist out of the way of incoming rocks, adding in bursts of acceleration from her main propulsion when necessary. No launcher got more than a single bombardment projectile off before being knocked out, since they had to be visible to Midway’s weapons in order to fire on the battleship.
As the escorts watched the slow crushing of the Syndicate battleship’s ability to fight, Gryphon and Hawk rejoined Marphissa’s formation, the light cruiser having managed to get enough thrusters working again to maneuver.