Christopher Nuttall - Barbarians at the Gates

Marius sucked in a breath. Three converging lines met on the display, just beyond the mass limit. He saw no way of avoiding a long-range missile duel, at the very least, not with Justinian’s starfighters snapping at their heels. He briefly considered turning and trying to tackle Bogey Four head-on, but Bogey Four had enough firepower to devastate his force if his maneuver didn’t work. So the only way out was through.

He silently cursed Parkinson under his breath as he considered the situation. His tired crews were about to run another gauntlet.

“Launch another set of sensor drones,” he ordered grimly. “And then arm half our fighters for antishipping strikes. Perhaps we can pay the bastards back in their own coin.”

Jefferson System, 4092

“I have missile separation—multiple missile separation,” the sensor officer sang out. “They’re launching from extreme range—emptying external racks.”

Marius nodded. There had been little respite for his battered Retribution Force over the last two hours. Admiral Justinian’s forces had launched repeated fighter strikes against his ships, forcing him to cover the carriers at all costs. Five more superdreadnaughts had been blown into flaming debris, along with a dozen cruisers and destroyers. Enterprise , it seemed, was the luckiest carrier in the fleet. Four others had been destroyed, and every one of them—including Enterprise —was damaged. Only sheer luck had saved two carriers from destruction.

Justinian’s fleet had been forced to close with the Retribution Force before they could start launching missile strikes, which was the only thing that gave the regular Navy a chance to escape. Marius had watched the enemy ships and their apparent courses and silently calculated the most likely moment when they would open fire. Their commanders had actually opened fire earlier than Marius had expected, in defiance of The Book and common sense. It would take nearly ten minutes for the missiles that had already been expended by Justinian’s forces to reach his ships, which was more than enough time for his point defense systems to calculate interception solutions and gird their mechanical loins for battle. And their own missiles, once his forces started to return fire, wouldn’t take nearly as long to reach their targets—Justinian’s fleet was rushing towards them, not trying to run away.

“Retarget the point defense,” Marius ordered.

He continued to study the enemy fleet’s formation. Admiral Justinian was playing it carefully, choosing to open fire at extreme range rather than wait until they closed in. That again suggested a certain sensitivity to losses, which in turn suggested that Justinian was rather less confident of overall victory than it appeared. Or perhaps he expected another Sector Admiral to declare his independence? Whether another admiral did so to join Justinian, or just for his own purposes, it would tear the Federation apart.

“Prepare to launch missiles, full spread,” he said calmly. He studied the trajectories, running through various possibilities in his mind. Starships, particularly capital ships, carried expendable external racks on their hulls that were loaded with missiles. This posed a considerable danger, particularly when antimatter warheads were involved, but it gave an opening salvo a far superior throw weight.

Up until now, his ships hadn’t been able to launch their missiles, as there was no point in using shipkillers to swat starfighters, even if it were possible. Two of his superdreadnaughts had died because enemy starfighters had managed to detonate their warheads, using the Retribution Force’s weaponry against itself.

But now, they could finally shoot back at their tormentors.

“Aim to disable rather than destroy,” he ordered, assigning targeting priorities. If they could knock some of the enemy fleet out of formation, it would reduce the number of starships chasing them, perhaps even forcing the enemy to fall back. “Launch attack starfighters in the wake of the missiles, then launch a spread of ECM drones.”

“Aye, sir,” the tactical officer said.

There was a pause as the officer worked at his console frantically. The overall display updated, allowing Marius to see the weight of fire bearing down on his ships. The enemy had fired over ten thousand missiles towards his fleet. But most of them wouldn’t get into attack range.

“Missiles armed and ready, admiral.”

Marius smiled.

“Fire.”

Magnificent shuddered as she vented her external racks in one smooth motion, followed by launching the first spread of missiles from her external tubes. Every superdreadnaught in the Retribution Fleet fired at the same time, creating a massive salvo that merged into one coordinated entity. The controlling missiles, each carrying a command and control system rather than a warhead, angled towards their targets, utterly ignoring the spread of enemy missiles. There was little chance of collision between both spreads of missiles, Marius knew; the point defense would have to stop as many of the incoming missiles as possible. His starfighters launched from the carriers and fell into position behind the missiles. If they were lucky, the ECM drones would confuse the enemy long enough for the starfighters to sneak into attack position without being detected.

“Enemy missiles will enter point defense engagement envelope in one minute, thirty seconds,” the tactical officer informed him. “Point defense datanet is online and tracking targets.”

“Good,” Marius said. “You are cleared to engage at will.”

He watched as Justinian’s remaining forces fell back, leaving only Bogey One and Bogey Two to tackle his ships. It would have looked odd to a layman, but Marius had to admit that Admiral Justinian had no real choice. The other Bogeys could not have engaged his force, unless Drake decided to turn back and engage them himself. The battle had boiled down to one simple issue: either his Retribution Force crossed the mass limit and escaped, or they were hunted down and destroyed before they could flee the system. In the days before the continuous displacement drive, he knew, his fleet would have been doomed. Without a way to cross the interstellar desert, they would have had to punch their way through the Asimov Point, surrender—or die, once they were finally run down by the enemy.

“Enemy missiles now entering point defense range,” the tactical officer said. “The point defense is engaging…now.”

Unlike Justinian’s starfighters, the actual missile bombardment seemed more focused on Drake’s destroyers and smaller ships. Only an isolated handful of missiles were targeted on the capital ships.

Marius ground his teeth as he watched the projected trajectories and knew that Justinian was playing it smart as well as safe. The onrushing missiles would strip away the smaller—and less well-defended—point defense platforms first, ensuring that the following salvos had a greater chance of punching through to the capital ships. The blunt truth was that the destroyers and even the cruisers were expendable when compared to the remaining superdreadnaughts and fleet carriers, but in the long run the results would be fairly even. Justinian knew that he would have at least four hours to pound Drake’s fleet to wreckage before they could safely escape.

Hundreds of ECM drones spilled out of Magnificent , set to deception mode. The missile sensors, not the brightest of computers, would be seeing thousands of possible targets, forcing many to expend themselves on useless drones rather than real starships. Thousands more were swatted out of space by the point defense network, which was constantly updating its projections in real time.