Christopher Nuttall - Democracy's Might

He forced himself to watch as the second wave of enemy missiles approached his formation. A retreat under fire — and that was what they were doing, even if he didn’t want to admit it to himself — was hellishly complex at the best of times. Now, with missiles approaching from two different vectors, it was nightmarish. And then there were the enemy gunboats… what the hell were they doing? No one in their right mind would put gunboats in a major fleet action…

“The enemy fleet is turning away,” the tactical officer reported.

Penny nodded. The enemy might be altering course, but they’d fired a missile swarm of missiles towards the Morrison Fleet first. There were not only enough missiles to do serious damage, but also threaten the planet’s orbital industries if they got past the fleet. She gritted her teeth as the missiles flashed into the point defence engagement envelope, then started to vanish one by one. The improvements were definitely working, she noted; the ruthless drills the point defence crews had undergone were paying off. But enough missiles got through to take out three superdreadnaughts and heavily damage two more.

“ General Pike and Admiral Villeneuve have taken heavy damage,” the coordinator reported, grimly. “ Villeneuve requests permission to fall out of formation.”

Wachter glanced down at his console, then nodded. “Tell her to return to planetary orbit,” he ordered. “She may have to be scrapped completely.”

Penny winced. The icons on the display were nothing more than coloured lights, hiding the sheer hell that had been unleashed inside Villeneuve . Her compartments had been ripped open, depressurising large parts of the ship and taking out most of her drives. It was a testament to the sheer scale of redundancy built into superdreadnaughts that she hadn’t been destroyed, although it was a very lucky escape. As it was, Wachter was probably right. It would be cheaper to build a new superdreadnaught than repair Villeneuve .

“The gunboats are closing in,” she reported, looking down at her own console. “The command links seem to be working.”

“Good,” Wachter said. He grinned at her, then looked back at his console. “Continue pursuit.”

“The enemy missiles are showing an improved targeting capability,” the analyst muttered, through the intercom. “I don’t understand how…”

Colin looked at the display… and understood. “The gunboats,” he said, shortly. “They’re actually using the gunboats to help steer their missiles.”

Historically, the Imperial Navy had worked hard to improve seeker heads for its missiles, but they’d run up against some hard limitations. Building advanced seekers were either immensely costly or far too obvious to starship-mounted passive sensors, which then ordered the point defence to pick those missiles off first. And no one in their right mind wanted to risk a starship so close to the enemy formation.

But using gunboats worked… indeed, it was so obvious that Colin had to wonder why no one had ever thought of it before. Perhaps someone had, he speculated, and the beancounters had objected. Gunboats were too expensive to waste, they’d probably argued, even without outfitting them with better sensor suites and communication links. Hell, one could build a whole corvette for the price of a handful of gunboats. But whoever was in charge at Morrison had decided that the expense could go hang.

“The gunboats,” he said. But how to deal with them? The tiny ships were hanging on the edge of his point defence envelope; they’d dart out of range if anyone came after them. They were far faster than destroyers, let alone ponderous superdreadnaughts. “Target them with shipkiller missiles, then open fire.”

The tactical officer glanced up. “Sir?”

Colin understood his surprise. They were trading fire with at least fifty superdreadnaughts — the analysts weren’t sure if there were more, although Colin suspected that the enemy wouldn’t hold back now — and yet Colin wanted to fire on gunboats with missiles designed to take out capital ships? But there was no alternative. The gunboats could take control of enemy missiles and steer them towards their targets. It gave the enemy a major advantage…

“Use missiles to take out the gunboats,” he ordered. “Hurry.”

“They’re firing on the gunboats, sir,” the tactical officer said.

Wachter glanced over at Penny. “Took them longer than I expected to catch on,” he said. “But no matter.”

Penny nodded. Losing a handful of gunboats, no matter how expensive, was better than losing an entire starship. The two formations were slowly starting to converge into one, settling down to give chase to the rebels… assuming, of course, the rebels didn’t try to jump out. Had they tried? There was no way to know.

She watched as the remaining gunboats vanished from the display, then followed the progress of the next swarm of missiles as it flashed towards the enemy formation. The enemy were taking damage, all right. A battering match would be unpleasant for both sides, but the Morrison Fleet was right next to its repair yards while the rebels would have to travel thousands of light years to find a usable shipyard. And, by that time, the counteroffensive could begin.

General Clive rocked, violently. “Two direct hits,” the damage control officer reported. “We took minor damage to sectors…”

Penny looked over at Wachter. He didn’t seem bothered at all. Percival had been a coward, hiding on his giant space station, but Wachter had led his fleet into battle. If nothing else, Penny realised, he had more than earned his subordinates’ loyalty by sharing the same risks.

“The question,” Wachter said, “is do they know about Omega? And is it actually working?”

Penny nodded in agreement. From the handful of tests they’d performed, Omega seemed to work… as long as the original safety interlocks were still in place. The rebels knew that they were dangerously inferior to the Empire in raw numbers; logically, they would search for ways to improve their starships and technology. If they could get time between flickers down sharply, it would give them a major advantage. But that would mean removing the safety interlocks the Empire had installed.

“We won’t know,” she said. The rebels might just have calculated that a battering match would work in their favour, rather than withdrawing from the system. “We won’t ever know.”

“We shall see,” Wachter said. He cleared his throat, then looked over at the coordinators. “The fleet is to press the enemy closely.”

Penny smiled. “Energy range?”

“It won’t do any harm to let them think that’s what we have in mind,” Wachter said. “Besides, we need to press them as hard as possible.”

Colin hated to lose. It had been his determination to win that had guided him to then-Commodore Percival… and his determination not to let Percival destroy his career and future that had led him to mutiny. He took a certain amount of pride in winning far more battles, both real and simulated, than he’d lost. But the mystery CO of Morrison had beaten him, hands down. Colin scowled at the display, then reluctantly conceded defeat. There was no point in pressing the matter further.

The Imperial Navy was settling in for a long chase, exchanging volleys of missile fire with his ships. They were even gaining on the rebels, thanks to the number of damaged starships in Colin’s fleet. Given time, they would claw their way into energy range and rip his remaining ships apart. The Imperial Navy could afford to take the losses, Colin and the rebels could not. If they lost their superdreadnaughts, they lost all hope of victory.