Christopher Nuttall - Barbarians at the Gates

“Aye, sir,” the lieutenant said.

Joseph barely heard him, considering the tactical situation. Two squadrons of cruisers were racing towards each other, already within missile range. His ships were using their active sensors; the enemy—and he was already thinking of them as enemy ships—weren’t. That proved very little, he knew. They could track his ships through their emissions.

“They’re not responding,” the lieutenant told him.

Joseph scowled. Something was very wrong.

“Send a message to the fortresses,” he ordered. “Give them a full update and warn them that Hartkopf might be trying something…”

He broke off. The unknown starships had just opened fire.

“Fire,” Roman ordered. Midway shuddered as she vented her external racks, and then unleashed a full broadside from her internal tubes. The other cruisers followed suit, slipping to rapid fire as the enemy ships came within range. Firing so many missiles was chancy—an alert operator might notice that his ships had fired more missiles than they were supposed to be able to fire—but there was little choice. Nine heavy cruisers—even outdated ships—were nasty customers. “Shift to rapid fire, and keep firing.”

The display frantically updated as command missiles took control and angled their charges toward their targets. The enemy ships hadn’t been completely fooled—or perhaps someone over on the other side had decided to run all kinds of drills—because their point defense opened fire at once, raking great holes in the formation of missiles. Their return fire was much slower off the mark, suggesting that they hadn’t had their missiles armed and ready to fire.

Roman allowed himself a moment of relief. All they had to do now was survive and destroy the enemy ships. This far from the fortresses, the crews would never be able to tell that it hadn’t been Hartkopf who had attacked the cruisers. The report they’d make to their superiors would be exactly what Roman wanted it to be, as if he’d dictated it to them personally.

“First wave shifting to terminal assault,” the tactical officer reported grimly. They’d fired off enough missiles to destroy the heavy cruisers, but the enemy point defense was taking a heavy toll on the missiles. “Second wave preparing to follow up the first wave; command missiles taking control now.”

Roman nodded as the first missiles started to strike home.

Joseph cursed as the first volley of missiles started to slam into his units. By sheer luck—or the whim of a mad god— Haven was barely targeted by the first wave, suggesting that the enemy hadn’t realized that the cruiser was the flagship. But then, part of his mind whispered, the Planet -class cruisers were virtually impossible to distinguish from the Archer -class cruisers that made up most of his force. The enemy wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference until his ships started spitting missiles back at them, and by then they wouldn’t have been able to retarget the first wave of missiles.

“Spread our fire,” he ordered, ignoring the lieutenant’s shock. Luna Academy—much less the facilities Justinian had set up as training camps since his defection—would have been horrified at the decision, for spreading their fire ensured that no enemy craft would be destroyed.

On the other hand, if they were lucky, they might disable a few starships and prevent them from escaping before reinforcements arrived. The fortresses would have already fired courier drones through the Asimov Point, summoning reinforcements from the terminus.

“Link our ships into the datanet and coordinate our point defense,” Joseph ordered.

He cursed his own complacency under his breath as ships started to die. The Power vanished in a ball of fire as her shields were knocked down by the tearing force of antimatter detonations; the Pocahontas followed her a moment later, a missile slipping through a brief chink in her shields and detonating against the hull. If he’d had the datanet up and running…but no, that could have been taken as a hostile act. Governor-General Hartkopf—the title was ashes in his thoughts—had sucked his cruisers in, and they were all going to die.

“They’re shifting their fire,” the tactical officer said.

Joseph nodded grimly. The datanet was collapsing almost as quickly as it was being put up, with starships falling out of the network or being destroyed outright.

“Transmit an emergency signal, then drop a stealth beacon,” he ordered. “I want the admiral to know what happened here.”

“Sir…incoming fire.”

The savage missile swarm fell on his remaining starships. Robert Graves exploded in a ball of fire, followed rapidly by Spider Bite and Tunbridge Wells . And then the missiles sought out Haven . There was no time to say anything, no time to react, before the missiles started striking the hull and blew the entire starship and crew to vapor.

Midway rocked violently as a missile—one of the last fired by the enemy cruisers before they died—exploded against her shields. Roman allowed himself a small moment of hope as the cruiser absorbed the blow, before contemplating the damage report from two of his ships. He’d had the great advantage that his datanet, at least, had been ready for instant action when he’d opened fire and he’d used it unmercifully. Only a handful of missiles had broken through his defenses and overall damage was minimal.

“All enemy ships destroyed, sir,” the tactical officer said. “There are a handful of lifepods floating in space…”

“Ignore them,” Roman ordered. Some of the warlords had ordered their starships to fire on unarmed and helpless lifepods, but he wasn’t going to commit such an atrocity. Besides, the survivors could only testify that Governor-General Hartkopf’s ships had opened fire on them, without warning or provocation. It would certainly sour relationships between the two warlords. “Helm, break us away from the Asimov Point and set course for the mass limit, best possible speed.”

“Aye, sir,” the tactical officer said. Midway rolled in space and started to head away from the Asimov Point, followed by her consorts. The starfighters launched by the fortresses—too little, too late—were simply ignored. They could perhaps catch up with the starships, but their life support packs wouldn’t last long enough for them to inflict real damage.

But perhaps the enemy thought differently. A rational foe would have broken off the pursuit, yet the starfighters were still following them.

“New contacts,” the sensor officer reported, his voice rising in alarm. “Twelve starships just transited the Asimov Point!”

Roman scowled. All of a sudden, the enemy seemed a great deal more rational. “Identify them,” he ordered.

If he understood what he was seeing, the enemy fleet would certainly include a carrier that would recover the starfighters before they ran out of life support. They had to have had a reaction force on the other side of the Asimov Point, one that had been alerted as soon as the first missile was launched. The enemy—he acknowledged ruefully—had reacted with astonishing speed.

“Nine battlecruisers, two starships of indeterminate class and one bulk freighter,” the sensor officer said. Roman remembered how Admiral Justinian had turned freighters into carriers and put two and two together. If that ship wasn’t a converted carrier, he’d be astonished. “The unknown ships may be a new design of cruiser. Their power curves are roughly compatible with Darwin -class starships.”

“Launch a stealth probe towards them,” Roman ordered. Obtaining information on a new class of enemy ships was greatly to be desired. It would certainly help avoid surprises when Federation ships encountered the newcomer in formal combat. “Helm, continue to maneuver until we are clear of the starfighters.”