Christopher Nuttall - Democracy's Light

“Understood, Admiral,” the communications officer said. “Signal sent.”

There was a curious detachment, Admiral Wilhelm decided, to watching missiles raging in on ships that didn’t happen to carry his person onboard. They might have been his ships, under his command, but his life wasn’t at stake. It gave him a unique opportunity to study the rebel improvements in missile technology in action, while allowing him to remain out of the fighting.

“They’ve managed to improve their jammers,” he commented, to no one in particular. The point defence systems were being confused and forced to rely on their active sensors to track the incoming missiles, which in turn allowed to the rebels to confuse them still further with false returns. A handful of the missiles, he decided, would carry enhanced ECM warheads to confuse his systems, far more capable than the ones he’d put into production. The Nerds had either held the systems back, or they hadn’t known. He wasn’t sure which possibility worried him more.

His ships engaged the rebel missiles with their point defence. The sensor confusion meant that they had to engage every target… and, because of the relative sizes of the missiles, it was impossible to tell if they’d engaged a sensor ghost or just managed to miss a real missile. Wilhelm had seen a study once, conducted back during the days before the rebellion, that concluded that point defence weapons wasted ten shots for every shot that actually hit a target — it had been suppressed, of course. In the Battle of Cottbus, as he’d already named it in his head, he would have been surprised if they weren’t wasting nineteen shots out of every twenty.

“Impact imminent,” the tactical officer said, calmly. “They’re passing through the final line of defences now.”

I should have developed gunboats , Wilhelm thought coldly, as the missiles raged down on his superdreadnaughts. He had had the technology — they weren’t a great improvement on standard gunboats — but they required willing pilots, not men and women who suspected that they were being sent out to die. The death rates for gunboats that entered combat were horrendous… and he wasn’t comfortable asking for that much loyalty from his people. After all, if Colin Harper could rebel, who was to say that one of his subordinates couldn’t rebel either?

The display updated rapidly as the missiles struck home, reporting in cold clinical terms what was happening to the superdreadnaughts. He pushed the thought that they were crewed by living men and women, some vaporised with their ships, others desperately trying to survive as the air blew out into space, out of his mind. The damage was mounting, but they weren’t capitalising on their previous successes.

“Interesting,” he mused to Jake. “Why aren’t they finishing off the damaged ships?”

As soon as he asked the question, he knew the answer. The rebel commander, Katy Garland — one of his analysts had finally identified her as a former Commander, back with the Macore Observation Squadron before the rebellion — had realised that they couldn’t wipe out his fleet, so she was trying to inflict as much damage on his force as possible before she retreated. She had to be powering up her drives now, having decided to leave them on standby rather than permanently powered up and active, and trying to win time.

Time I am not going to give her , he thought, and smiled.

“General signal to 5 thand 7 thSquadron,” he ordered. He’d kept them deep within the gravity shadow, partly because that was what the raiding cruisers would have seen, right back at the beginning, and partly to keep her from becoming suspicious. “They are to advance at once upon the enemy.”

“Aye, sir,” the tactical officer said. His hands danced across his console. “Message transmitted and understood.”

Wilhelm leaned back in his chair and watched, a slight smile flickering around the corners of his mouth, as two fresh squadrons of superdreadnaughts, complete with Nerd-designed external racks, started to advance upon the enemy fleet.

“Admiral, the planetary squadrons have just become active,” the tactical officer said. “They’re leaving orbit and heading up towards our position.”

“Neat,” Katy commented, sourly. It was easy to see what Admiral Wilhelm was doing, but it was going to be too late. If she had considered a death ride into Cottbus’s gravity shadow, intent on destroying the shipyard at all costs, she would have launched it before the incoming fleet could intervene. She glanced up at the display and scowled. The incoming missiles had tapered off slightly now that all of the external racks had been shot dry, but the enemy still had over forty completely intact and undamaged superdreadnaughts. She barely had a ship that hadn’t taken damage. “Confirm; the entire fleet can flicker?”

“Apparently so,” the tactical officer said. He glanced down at his console. “Flicker capability in ten seconds.”

Another wave of missiles struck home against the Jefferson’s shields. They held, barely, against enough fury to burn off half a planet, but the starship couldn’t take much more of that. The hammering was burning holes in the shields and unleashing the primal power of nuclear warheads against her ship. The Jefferson was going to need weeks, at least, in a yard before she was fit for combat action again… and there was no suitable yard short of Earth itself. The facilities at Hawthorn simply weren’t up to the task.

Katy counted down the seconds in her head. “Flicker,” she ordered, finally. “Get us out of here.”

The fleet vanished from the universe.

“Interesting,” Admiral Wilhelm said, as the final rebel ship flickered out and was gone. “Did you notice how well they held together?”

Jake frowned. “I can’t say that I did,” he said, finally. He was many things, not all of them decent or useful, but he wasn’t a space combat expert. “I’ll just take your word for it.”

Wilhelm barely heard him. “They could have broken up into a mob of disorganised ships, or they could have scattered and broken under our beating, but they held together long enough to retreat,” he said, slowly. “We killed forty-seven ships, including eleven superdreadnaughts, and they still didn’t break. They fought like men, Jake, not rebels.”

Jake lifted an eyebrow. “It’s a little late to have doubts,” he pointed out. “They might have been sincere about offering you and yours amnesty before the shooting started, but right now I’d say that Admiral Garland’s most earnest desire is your head on a platter. How many of their people do you think we killed?”

“Not enough,” Wilhelm said. He looked over at the communications officer. “Compress all of our basic sensor records and transmit them to the Robin Hood before she departs,” he ordered. “She has a long trip ahead of her.”

“Yeah,” Jake said. “Do you think the Robin Hood will get there on time?”

“We can, but hope,” Wilhelm said. He actually thought that the odds were very good, but there was no way to know for sure. “Carola needs to know what’s happened here before something unfortunate happens to her on Earth.”

“Well,” Charlie said, from his position in the cockpit. “I guess that’s us told, right?”

“Shut up,” Sandra said, not unkindly. “Who was it who did all the work to get that signal sent out?”

“Some signal,” Charlie said, angrily. “One warning signal, a non-specific one at that. Do you think that your… Andy will even survive long enough to come back to you next week?”