“We’re boxed in from all angles, sir, we can’t take much more of this,” Pavel reported from tactical. The young officer’s hands trembled at the controls.
The flank charge towards the enemy fleet was the right call, but they’d still taken heavy damage and losses closing the distance. Increasingly so with the Imperial fleet flanking on the starboard relative. A satisfying opening volley from the United Fleet battleships helped boost morale. They’d obliterated an entire enemy cruiser formation who’d gotten a bit too over confident. But the others took notice and repositioned on the Imperial battleships for cover.
Now they slugged it out with the Imperial battleships as they closed the range while being harassed on the flanks by Imperial frigates. A coordinated strike from several formations of Imperial frigates was responsible for the loss of the Madison and Idaho. The USSF had no information on these new Imperial warships.
The deck lurched and alarms wailed anew.
“Hull breaches along the forward starboard section,” his ops officer reported. “Our forward armor is completely compromised. We’ve lost forty percent of our railgun batteries on the forward section—those Imperial frigates are cutting us to pieces slowly. Main power just fell below forty percent.”
Shepherd glanced quickly at the tactical display. Two Imperial battleships over reached. He could do some significant damage before they peeled back Excalibur’s hull.
“Helm, full lateral roll. Bring her hard over starboard. Angle our compromised armor away from the battleship formation best you can. We can take some hits from those frigates but strikes from those beasts will remove us from this fight sooner than we ought to be.”
The United Fleet Excalibur-class battleship would roll, and it would turn—at the speed of evolving ecosystems. But what she lacked in maneuvering capabilities she made up for with firepower. Arrayed along her hull were anti-capital ship railguns, much larger variants than cruisers or frigates were capable of mounting, with greater power demands. Many smaller railguns and CIWS littered the rest of the hull for close in brawls, paired with new havoc heavy missile launchers. Despite the showdown, the distance of the engagement remained between four to five light-seconds. The havoc missiles wouldn’t be useful at this range and within such a thick mass of ships—didn’t want to miss an enemy target and instantly strike a friendly.
A hostile inbound missile would instantly trigger an audio alert to any helm operator’s headset. A full powered burst—for even half a second—from any maneuvering thruster would push any ship a few thousand meters off vector. At such speeds, the havocs couldn’t alter course in time. Upon missing its mark, the tactical officer could trigger the missile’s onboard computer to self-destruct. It wouldn’t do to have the missile continue on a ballistic course and slam into some distant world—colonized long after the missile fired. Once the engagement progressed to phase three—within one light-second—havocs wouldn’t miss. Until then, both sides held onto their precious reserves of missiles.
Despite the close in brawl, ships still maneuvered to mitigate exposing themselves too much as a target. Two hundred thousand kilometers was knife fight range for space battles. However, at that distance, a twelve-hundred-meter ship still didn’t have much of a profile. Significantly less so if you kept your bow towards your enemy with careful strafing either to port, starboard, dorsal or ventral.
A minute later the ship completed its roll and brought a fresh set of railguns to bare on the overreaching Imperial battleships.
“Pavel, full broadside bombardment, all rails, empty the magazines. Target both of them—and fire!”
Excalibur cut loose with everything in her arsenal—a surgeon with a scalpel—the facing sides of the Imperial battleships peeled back. Secondary explosions ripped through the length of each enemy warship. But they reached out to Excalibur with their dying embrace. Laser strikes obliterated her freshly exposed armor and burned into the hull through and through.
United Fleet heavy cruisers seized the opening and closed for a point-blank barrage against the stricken Imperial battleships, ending their carnage against Excalibur. This exposed them to concentrated Imperial laser strikes and they too joined the doomed Imperial battleships as smoldering hulks littering the void.
The United Fleet hadn’t lost any battleships yet, but most of them bristled with heavy damage. A particularly annoying formation of Imperial frigates maneuvered close in and hammered Excalibur’s engines. Battleship engines were an easy target for the frigates at such a close range. However, the daring Imperial frigates paid a heavy price as the point defense cannons shredded them as they passed, but the damage was done.
“Main engines are down, maneuvering on thrusters only.”
The report from engineering sealed it.
“Sir, there’s no way I can restore engines; they got a clean precision strike. Spacedock is the only thing which can fix this.”
If they had their escorting ships intact, those frigates would never have got that close, but they didn’t and they did.
“Main bulk of the Imperial heavy formation picking up speed. Vectoring directly for us.”
Shepherd lowered his face into his hands. “Indeed. Time for the coup de grâce.”
More Imperial lasers dug deep into Excalibur’s hull, but she held.
“Sir, another wing of ships closing on our starboard side fast, we can’t take even one solid hit there.” He paused. “It’s Delta Wing!”
Shepherd raised his head as Delta Wing plowed directly into the stern of the Imperial ships hammering Excalibur. A devastating unified volley obliterated several Imperial cruisers and crippled many more.
Then a grating swagger he’d heard before crackled over the comms.
“Sit tight, SC, we’ve got you covered.”
Rayne.
Phoenix appeared a hundred thousand kilometers behind an Imperial battleship and fired a volley of havoc missiles directly into her exposed stern. There was no defense against that. As the flailing enemy ship listed to port, more havoc missiles gutted her centerline and massive secondary explosions ripped her apart. Then, Phoenix surged forward faster than any ship of that size should be able to, and blasted railgun salvoes into several Imperial cruisers attempting to come about to face her head on.
Once the Imperial cruisers turned, Phoenix accelerated past them blasting from all batteries as she went. Even at 230 meters, she was as maneuverable as a 120-meter Imperial frigate, and that was her next target.
****
Aaron leaned forward.
“Hold fire until we’re right on top of them, Lieutenant.”
Phoenix vectored directly for the Imperial formation harassing Excalibur’s sister ship Arthur. The Imperial frigates were picking it to pieces just as they had done to Excalibur. The Imperial warships either didn’t notice or didn’t think Phoenix could threaten all of them at once.
They were very wrong.
“Now, Lieutenant, all rails, maximum firing rate. I want all of those targets destroyed or crippled on our first pass. Maybe they will take notice of us after this and forget about Arthur.”
At this range, no evasive maneuver was going to spare you from a railgun barrage. Phoenix shredded the formation of six lightly armored frigates within a minute.