Christopher Nuttall - Democracy's Right

She scowled. There was no way to mask her actions as anything other than a retreat. The freighters and the manufacturing ship would require time to power up their flicker drives, far longer than a warship or even commercial fast transport. If she held out long enough before flickering out, she might manage to keep the rebels concentrated on her, rather than hunting down targets that couldn’t run. And who knew — perhaps there was a superdreadnaught squadron within range that could come to her rescue.

The two fleets and their projected courses appeared in front of her. If she was right — if the enemy commander didn’t have a plan of his own — they would have around thirty minutes of long-range missile fire before she had to flicker out, perhaps less. It wasn’t enough, but it would have to do.

“Signal to General Branford,” she ordered. “My intentions are to fight a running battle before leaving the system. You are urged to safeguard your positions and hold out. The Navy will be back.”

Colin watched the enemy fleet’s deployments with something akin to awe. If Percival had been so badly outmatched, he would have set a new speed record fleeing the system, without bothering to consider the multiple ways he could delay and even harm the advancing rebel juggernaut. The enemy commander present in the system, however, was brave and shrewd enough to realise that if they held out, they might successfully damage his fleet before they left the system.

“Impressive,” he mused. The enemy fleet’s monitors were already rising out of the planet’s gravity shadow. If he’d risked jumping in closer, he might have been able to intercept them, but then… that risked scattering his fleet. Besides, monitors were the one class of starship that Percival wasn’t actually short of; destroying five or six of them wouldn’t crimp him for long. “And it puts the ball in my hands.”

He tossed different ideas around in his head. If the monitors had remained in orbit, he would have ignored the remaining Imperial Navy starships and gone for them, but instead there was no point in charging at the planet. It wasn’t going anywhere. The enemy commander was tempting him with a chance to destroy nearly sixty starships, or perhaps force them to surrender and add them to his fleet. And it wasn’t a opportunity he could refuse, not only for the chance to weaken Percival, but also for the possibility of removing a dangerously-smart enemy commander from the playing field. The commander, whoever he or she was, had pulled him into a neat little trap.

“Alter course to intercept,” he ordered. The battlecruisers and other smaller ships that made up the Imperial Navy’s occupation squadron had one advantage over his ships; they could simply outrun his ships, even in normal space. The sublight drive fields that provided propulsion might have the same top speed for all craft, but the superdreadnaughts, with their far greater mass, had a far lower rate of acceleration. The enemy missiles would have a far shorter flight time than his own missiles — his missiles would be chasing an enemy, while his ships would be flying towards the enemy missiles — which gave them another advantage. But then, he told himself, if it became evident that they meant to keep the range open, he would simply break off the chase. “Prepare to open fire.”

He keyed his switch. “Commodore Ismoilzoda, you are cleared to break off and perform your own mission,” he added. “Good luck.”

“They took the bait, Captain,” the helmsman said. “They’re coming after us.”

Angelika smiled, dryly. The helmsman was young, the youngest person on the bridge. He wasn’t old enough to realise that nine superdreadnaughts in hot pursuit wasn’t actually a good thing… well, it was at the moment, but it wouldn’t remain that way. Given time, the range would stabilise and then the superdreadnaught’s superior firepower would begin to tell. And then her ships would have to flicker out or die.

“Good,” she said, concealing her own thoughts. Every Imperial Navy officer had to come to terms with his or her own mortality, yet they were also used to carrying the biggest stick in the known universe. A battlecruiser should have been secure against anything pirates or rebels could throw at it, but instead Violence felt fragile with nine superdreadnaughts bearing down on her. Angelika wondered, absently, if she had remembered to update her will. It seemed so silly to worry about mundane things when the enemy ships were about to attack.

She looked up at the tactical display. Unless the rebels had somehow developed long-range missiles with additional speed, their firing range would be identical to hers, which meant that when the red circle marking powered missile range touched the enemy ships, they could open fire on her. Or would they wait and allow the range to fall a little more? What was the enemy commander thinking?

“Bring up the point defence and prepare to engage enemy missiles,” Angelika said, calmly. There was no point in panic, even though the red circle was sliding ever closer to the enemy ships. “Lock weapons on the lead superdreadnaught and prepare to engage.”

“Weapons locked on target, Captain,” the tactical officer said. Angelika could hear the quaver in his voice, but he was carrying out his duty. “We are ready to engage.”

“Place the damage control parties on full alert,” Angelika added. Her XO nodded. There was no way that the squadron was going to escape without damage. “And prepare…”

The red circle slowly touched the icons representing the enemy ships.

“Fire,” she ordered. “Full spread!”

“The enemy ships have opened fire,” the tactical officer reported. Colin nodded. The enemy ships had fully-loaded external racks and they had launched nearly a thousand missiles towards his ships. They seemed to be focusing in on one target, the General Grant . The commander of the lead superdreadnaught had requested the position as a reward for excellent performance on the gunnery drills. Part of Colin’s mind wondered if he was so pleased with his performance now. “I am breaking down the formation now…”

“Activate our point defence datanet and prepare to engage,” Colin ordered. The tactical system had been constantly updating itself in preparation for the engagement. Now, with the threat developing in front of them, they could at last take action. “Prepare to fire.”

He was tempted to fire back at once, but that would have merely exposed his missiles to a longer flight time than strictly necessary. He watched the timer, noting that it would take the enemy missiles nearly four minutes to reach his ships, adding a curious sense of slow motion to the combat. At three minutes, he would open fire, avoiding the danger of a lucky hit wrecking one or all of his external racks. Nuclear warheads didn’t detonate if they were hit, unlike some other warheads, but it would still pose a serious risk.

The timer ticked relentlessly down as the swarm of enemy missiles approached. Despite his calm appearance, Colin was nervous, for it was their first engagement against a genuinely prepared foe. The Annual Fleet had barely had seconds to fire back. The penal world had never fired and surrendered at once. The defenders of Piccadilly had been taken by surprise. Here… the enemy had as long as they could possibly need to prepare their weapons. The effects were right in front of him. The enemy missiles seemed to be one great harmonious mass. Sorting out the real missiles from the decoys would take time… time they didn’t have.

“Tactical,” he said, as the timer ticked down to zero. “You may fire at will.”

The superdreadnaught lurched as it unloaded its first massive salvo, leaving Colin to sit back in his command chair and watch as the enemy missiles flew into a maelstrom of fire. The problem with external racks — and with the arsenal ship concept — was that they were only one-shot weapons. An external rack blocked the inner missile tubes, meaning that it had to be used and destroyed before the enemy targeted the superdreadnaught, perhaps blocking the ship’s missile tubes and rendering it partly defenceless. It gave the ships a hell of an opening salvo, but once they were fired, the superdreadnaught’s throw weight fell sharply.