“Aye, sir,” Captain Keene said.
The superdreadnaught’s drive seemed to hum louder as it slid closer to the gravity shadow and glided across it. Admiral Wilhelm tensed, even though he felt nothing, knowing that almost everyone in the fleet who knew that they were crossing the gravity shadow felt the same. Like flicker-shock, it was supposed to be psychometric, although in this case he suspected that the headshrinkers were right. There was no obvious difference in normal space between the interior and exterior of a gravity shadow, although anyone attempting to use a flicker drive inside the shadow wouldn’t have a chance to regret the mistake.
The enemy fleet was having drive problems, he realised. That shouldn’t have been surprising, although it wasn’t something that any sane officer would have counted upon. The effects of the bombardment would have destabilised a few drive fields and even though it could be countered, and probably would be countered, it would take time for the engineers to recalibrate their drives, limiting the maximum speeds of the targeted ships. His opponent had evidently decided to keep his ships together, regardless of the danger of being caught away from the orbital defences, allowing his fleet to close the range.
“Tactical, see if you can locate the enemy flagship,” he ordered, as the range continued to close. They would be in firing range in just under a minute. “If you can…”
“Negative,” the tactical officer said. “They’re using standard datanet transmission protocols. If they have a flagship surviving — and they must, because they’re still in good formation — I can’t identify it.”
“Never mind,” Admiral Wilhelm said. There were bare seconds left now. “You may fire at will.”
“Tactical, you are authorised to open fire,” Arun said, as the enemy fleet finally closed the range into firing position. He had expected Admiral Wilhelm to push it harder, but at least he had given them the time to make a start at some of the repairs and program new targeting patterns into the missile launchers. “Fire at will.”
The tactical officer pushed a single key. “Who’s Will?” He asked. “Missiles away, I repeat, missiles away.”
The superdreadnaught shuddered as it unleashed it’s first massive barrage. The damage the enemy fleet had inflicted during the first round had smashed some of the external racks, but thankfully the majority of them remained intact, allowing them to launch a far more powerful broadside than the enemy would be expecting. The remaining superdreadnaughts and the arsenal ships opened fire at the same time, launching a monstrous spread of missiles towards the enemy fleet. It might not have been quite as big as the massive salvo Admiral Wilhelm’s arsenal ships had launched, but it was almost as terrifying. He hoped Admiral Wilhelm enjoyed being on the receiving end as much as he himself had enjoyed the experience.
“The enemy are launching missiles,” the tactical officer said. The display sparkled with new and deadly icons, far more than he had expected. “They have definitely duplicated the external racks as well.”
Arun muttered a word under his breath in Hindi. “Is there anything of ours that they don’t have?” He asked, angrily. “We fight the war and Admiral Wilhelm picks up the remaining pieces of Empire?”
The display updated again as the superdreadnaughts unleashed a second volley, then a third, trying to hit the enemy as hard as they could. Sophisticated targeting programs isolated the real enemy superdreadnaughts from the hundreds of decoys, retargeting the missiles to ensure that not a one would be wasted. Geek-issue ECM and ECCM was still more advanced, he saw with considerable relief, but Admiral Wilhelm’s inventors were catching up quickly. If they had held off for another two months, if that had been possible, they would have been a far more formidable threat…
But by then, the Provisional Government would have been firmly entrenched, he realised, grimly. Admiral Wilhelm had timed his offensive perfectly, although he couldn’t have known — or had he known — about Daria. If Daria had been working with him, she would have been easily able to ensure that he had direct access to the latest Geek developments, regardless of their security. She had been trusted by almost everyone, including Colin himself. She had had clearance to go everywhere, a snake in the grass, watching and waiting for the moment to strike. He couldn’t understand how she had coordinated so many different parts of her plan, or had she? Had she merely taken advantage of events?
He ground his teeth together and watched, grimly, as the first wave of missiles challenged Admiral Wilhelm’s defences. The Cottbus Sector Fleet had added quite a few improvements to their software, he saw, but fortunately their hardware wasn’t quite as advanced as the Shadow Fleet’s systems. The missiles were targeted, but their weapons couldn’t move quite fast enough, even though they had used a brute-force approach to building heavy point defence escorts. They carried more weapons than Shadow Fleet ships, but they didn’t have the targeting systems… and hundreds of missiles slipped through the gap. As he watched, vengefully, Admiral Wilhelm’s starships started to die.
The main body of the missiles had been targeted on the superdreadnaughts, but several hundred had been steered towards the point defence escorts and the battlecruisers. He couldn’t understand why Admiral Wilhelm had included them in his wall of battle, unless they were intended for something unexpected, and so he’d added them to the target list. Smaller and weaker than the superdreadnaughts, their speed useless when tied to the wall of battle, they died in their hundreds as the missiles roared down on them. The superdreadnaughts took mounting damage as well, their point defence struggling to the end to protect their command ships, but only marking them out for later attention. The second and third salvos arrived, targeting already damaged ships, punching through weakened armour and cracked hulls, shattering and destroying thousands of lives in split seconds.
“Incoming missiles,” the tactical officer said. The enemy fleet missiles might have been less numerous, but they were falling on an already damaged enemy. Arun’s point defence had been weakened badly by the previous exchange of fire. “Brace for impact…”
The swarm of missiles fell on the Shadow Fleet. Either because the enemy had identified it as the flagship, or because of the macabre working of chance, the General Grant came in for extra attention. Arun felt himself praying again as the missiles started to crash into the hull, breaking though the shields and slamming deep into his flagship. The entire starship heaved… and then he knew no more.
“Admiral, the General Grant has been destroyed.”
Colin winced. He’d wanted to be on the starship, leading the Shadow Fleet into battle, but Arun had talked him out of it. Arun hadn’t even made any mistakes, either; who would have believed that the enemy would try something as crazy as bringing arsenal ships out so close to the gravity shadow. They might have lost half their fleet, or all of them; hell, for all he knew, Admiral Wilhelm might have done just that…
But it had worked out for him. He had destroyed almost all of the Shadow Fleet that had been stationed at Earth, leaving only a handful of damaged ships to stagger back towards the orbiting fortresses, just as Colin himself had done, almost a year ago. He’d lost a vast chunk of his own fleet and would lose more when he challenged the defences in orbit around the planet, but the odds still favoured him breaking through the defences and securing control over Earth.
It might be time to start thinking about the emergency plan, Colin thought, and cursed Daria under his breath. She had known all the details of the emergency plan, to flee to the Rim and start again, if the Empire would tolerate another round of Civil War. He hadn’t realised how much he had depended on her until she had proven to be a traitor — if the past Empress could be defined as a traitor — and without her contacts, re-establishing himself along the Rim might be difficult. The Empire would get its civil war anyway… Admiral Wilhelm would not be unopposed.