Christopher Nuttall - Democracy's Right

I will not allow it , he thought, thinking hard. The smaller ships could escape, of course, but that would just leave the superdreadnaughts vulnerable to the enemy ships. The Imperial Navy was ignoring the smaller ships, choosing to concentrate on his superdreadnaughts, even though the smaller ships added a great deal of point defence to the formation. It wasn’t a poor tactic either. There were hundreds of rebel starships out there, but only nine of them were superdreadnaughts and, without the superdreadnaughts, none of the smaller ships posed a major threat. I will not…

He glared at the display, as if staring at it would somehow change reality. The basic fundamental tactics of space warfare hadn’t changed in centuries, even though the technology had been improved until there was little room left for improvement. He’d been trained in the traditional school… and all of his training was telling him that it would come down to a brute force encounter between two squadrons that were, at least on paper, equally matched. If the enemy had brought both of their superdreadnaught squadrons to the party, Colin knew, they would have had to surrender or they would have been certainly destroyed.

Or perhaps we don’t have to destroy them , he thought, suddenly. The tactical instructors had talked about the decisive victory, the victory that would destroy the enemy’s space navy and crush his systems in one blow. Small wonder, really, when the last war the Empire had fought against an alien race had been against one that possessed only nine star systems when they’d been discovered. The Empire had no concept of a long war, which meant…

“I want you to shift our targeting priorities,” he ordered. Both sides had been shooting at each other, merely concentrating on getting in a few hits per salvo. The damage, such as it was, would be largely random. “I want you to concentrate on disrupting their drive fields.”

The tactical officer looked up, new hope apparent in his eyes. Each of the enemy superdreadnaughts were surrounded by a drive field; knock out the drive field and the superdreadnaught’s speed would be instantly cancelled as the laws of physics reasserted themselves. It would take the superdreadnaught’s crew time to replace the damaged drive nodes and regenerate the drive field… the only risk was that the enemy ships would start doing the same to his ships. It couldn’t be helped. Given enough time, he was sure that the enemy commander would start thinking in the same terms.

“Yes, sir,” the tactical officer said. His hands danced over his console. “Do you have any targeting preferences, sir?”

Colin hesitated. If they had been able to identify the enemy command ship, he would have targeted it on general principles, hoping that the enemy commander — it bothered him, absurdly, that he didn’t know who he was facing — would either relocate his ships to cover his ass, or would be killed. He’d checked the IFFs against the Imperial Navy registry, but the enemy commander — for whatever reason — had chosen to scramble his IFF signals, probably to prevent Colin from doing exactly that. It was against regulations, yet if he succeeded in killing Colin and breaking the rebellion, all sins would be forgiven.

“The closest enemy superdreadnaught,” he said, finally. “You may fire at will.”

“The enemy ships are altering their targeting priorities,” the tactical officer said. “They’re targeting General Napoleon specifically.”

“Interesting,” Brent-Cochrane mused. The two formations were still converging and there was nothing the rebels could do to prevent that, so had they decided to try and knock out one of his ships before they entered energy range? Or had they just decided to be annoying? The rebel ECM was better than anything he could deploy and it wasn’t easy to be absolutely certain of their actions. The disruption caused by the missile explosions were screwing up the sensors. Even hardened systems were having problems.

He watched as the rebel attack developed. Standard doctrine, at least when the two sides were evenly matched, insisted that each ship should pair up with an enemy ship and exchange fire. The rebels had clearly decided to throw standard doctrine out of the airlock… and he had to admit that it made sense. If they knocked out one of his ships, or even discouraged her from taking part in the general pursuit, they would find it easier to escape. He glanced up at the timer and swore. How long would it take for the rebels to power up their drives and escape? His ship shuddered as she launched another spread of missiles, adding to the chaos, yet the rebels were proving alarmingly effective at knocking them down. As far as their sensors could tell, the rebels had only lost a handful of shield generators and had managed to replace them before the Imperials could take advantage of it.

“Adjust our point defence to cover the Napoleon ,” he ordered, slowly. The rebels might have just given the crews of the remaining ships a break, allowing the full point defence of his ships to be focused on covering a single ship. The rebels had launched full spreads from each of their ships towards her, yet… it would be an interesting struggle. “Continue firing on the rebel ships.”

On the display, General Napoleon started to fall back as the rebel attack roared towards her. Brent-Cochrane considered it absently, knowing that when a missile plunged past its target it was almost certainly not going to have the chance to alter course and engage. A smart missile would probably find itself another target towards the rear of the formation, or maybe just detonate and hope to confuse the sensors. The superdreadnaught staggered under the weight of so much fire, despite everything her sisters could do to defend her, and then fell out of line. For a moment, Brent-Cochrane allowed himself the hope that that would be the end of it, just before the superdreadnaught disintegrated into an expanding sphere of overheated plasma.

There was silence in the CIC. The Imperial Navy hadn’t lost a superdreadnaught in combat since the First Interstellar War; technically, that hadn’t even been the Imperial Navy. Ships had been damaged, mothballed, repaired and replaced, yet no superdreadnaught had been lost in a battle. Brent-Cochrane felt cold ice congealing in his chest. The Empire was dependent upon the superdreadnaughts to maintain order, using the ships to intimidate everyone else into behaving themselves. Time and time again, the Empire had displayed its will to crush dissent and punish rebellion a thousand times over, using the superdreadnaughts as the blunt instruments of its will. The superdreadnaughts were invincible. Even the mere threat of a superdreadnaught was enough to compel submission.

And now the magic was gone. Whatever happened, Brent-Cochrane knew that the entire galaxy would soon hear of the day a superdreadnaught — perhaps more than one — was destroyed by rebels. Word would spread from planet to planet, from ship to ship, and others would start wondering if it might be possible to beat a superdreadnaught after all. The loss of a single ship would ignite a fire that would burn the galaxy, even if the rebellions were smashed without further ado. His superiors would not be pleased.

“Continue firing,” he ordered harshly. The rebels might not have lost a ship, but their ships were clearly taking damage. “Do not let up on the bastards!”

“Aye, sir,” the tactical officer said.

The superdreadnaught rocked as another missile slammed home. Brent-Cochrane saw another red light flare up on the internal systems display, before fading to yellow as the computers decided that it wasn’t so dangerous after all. He clenched the handles of his command chair and ran through the tactical equations in his mind again, checking his first thoughts and concepts. No matter what the rebels did, they were going to enter energy weapons range in three minutes and then… they would see. Even if they wrecked his squadron in the crossfire, they would never survive being trapped in the unfriendly system.