The battle cruisers shut off their main propulsion. They were still closing on the battleship, but as they were no longer accelerating, their rate of closure was no longer increasing.
The automated systems controlling the battleship’s maneuvers would spot that, would take the necessary action to counter it, firing thrusters at maximum as they tried to slow the turn of the massive battleship, still trying to ensure that when Inspire reached weapons range the battleship’s bow would face the battle cruiser.
If the person in charge of the battleship was sharp enough, experienced enough, they had time to spot what Geary was doing, to guess what his plans were. They had barely time enough to override the automated controls and swing the battleship’s bow back. The escorts could have done the same, and faster, but the overwhelmed command staff on the battleship had probably, for these few hectic, precious moments, forgotten that the heavy cruisers and HuKs couldn’t maneuver on their own until released from control.
“Implacable, accelerate at maximum, adjust course as necessary to target main propulsion,” Geary ordered.
Seconds later, “Formidable, accelerate at maximum, adjust course as necessary to target main propulsion.”
And, as everyone on the bridge of Inspire waited anxiously, “Inspire, accelerate at maximum. Get his propulsion!”
The battle cruisers leaped forward again, but their order had suddenly shifted. Now Implacable would be the first in line, then Formidable, and finally Inspire. Along with the order of the attack, the exact times when they would be within range of the battleship had changed. The battleship’s thrusters fired again in another attempt to compensate, trying to counter its own earlier moves. The enemy ship wavered under contending momentum and the push of its maneuvering controls, momentum trying to keep its huge mass turning in one direction while the maneuvering thrusters were working all out to reverse the direction of turn. A sudden shove from its main propulsion might have helped throw off the battle cruisers’ attacks, but that would have been an unconventional move, not something that automated systems or officers trained to do as they were told would think of.
The battleship hung momentarily suspended between competing forces, its bow pointing straight “up.”
The relatively few weapons on the battleship that could bear on a target coming in on its stern opened up for the very brief moment when Implacable was within range as the battle cruiser swept onward at a relative velocity of thousands of kilometers per second. Humans couldn’t aim and fire under such circumstances. Only automated fire-control systems could judge the precise instant when a target flying past at such a velocity could be hit.
Geary saw Implacable’s two broken missile launchers report themselves ready to fire seconds before the battle cruiser tore past under the stern of the battleship, volleying out missiles, hell lances, and even grapeshot set for the smallest possible dispersion patterns at the farthest possible dispersal range. As the battle cruiser shot away from the battleship, Implacable’s hell lances fired repeatedly at missiles the battleship had launched despite the poor intercept angles, destroying most of the missiles before they could score hits.
Formidable came right behind, hammering the same stern area, her missiles, hell lances, and grapeshot flashing against shields already fading under the blows being absorbed. But the battleship was better prepared this time, more weapons coming to bear as it angled a bit off the vertical, slamming blows at Formidable as well as another volley of missiles that pursued the battle cruiser as it opened the range once more.
Geary had his eyes locked on his display, seeing the battleship begin to finally push over, more weapons coming to bear as Inspire made the last, most dangerous, and most important firing run.
Inspire raced past the battleship, hurling out shots toward the battleship’s immense main propulsion in the moments after the rear shields collapsed and before they could rebuild.
Geary felt Inspire shudder, not just from the launching of her own weapons but from multiple hits. Inspire lurched heavily as something big struck aft, perhaps one or more missiles. Alarms went off, and portions of the display flickered as power was automatically rerouted. He could only hope the battle cruiser hadn’t been hit too badly and remain focused on the battleship as the sensors on Inspire and the other battle cruisers looked back and tried to evaluate what damage had been inflicted.
“We’d better hope we took it down,” Duellos said, his voice grim. “I’ve momentarily lost maneuvering control of Inspire and half of my own main propulsion.”
Geary could hear the different watch-standers reporting damage from hits. “Hell-lance batteries 1A and 3B are out of commission. Missile launchers are off-line. Hull has been holed in several areas aft of amidships. Aft shields have collapsed and are rebuilding using emergency power, now at ten percent. Personnel casualty numbers unknown.”
Damage reports were also showing up from Implacable and Formidable. Both had taken far less damage than Inspire, but neither was unscathed.
Debris from the weapons fired interfered with the evaluation of damage to the battleship, but Geary realized that the battleship’s maneuvering thrusters were still pushing it over at maximum. “What’s he doing?”
Duellos tore his attention away from his own ship’s damage for a moment. “He’s hurt.”
The battleship kept spinning bow over stern, coming around faster. “His maneuvering controls have jammed,” Geary said. “Wait. They’re pushing his stern partway toward us.”
The display updated triumphantly and Geary fell back into his seat with a gasp of elation. “Thank you, ancestors. We did get him.”
Inspire’s weapons had inflicted awful damage on the momentarily unshielded main propulsion units of the battleship. The massive, heavily armed and heavily armored ship was helpless to change her vector, spinning end over end through space. The impact of the hits had shoved the battleship slightly off of its earlier path, so that it would now pass slightly above the refugee ships instead of passing right through the middle of their very loose formation.
Taking out the battleship using conventional weapons would still take a long time. But… “He can’t maneuver. Captain Duellos, do you have working planetary bombardment launchers?”
Normally, a ship could evade large projectiles thrown at it. The distances in space were too large, the ability to simply alter course very slightly to cause the projectile to pass harmlessly by too easy to employ. Even a miss by a single meter was all that was needed to avoid damage.
But the battleship couldn’t even do that. He was locked onto his current path until his crew managed to repair the damage to the maneuvering systems, and Geary knew that Syndic warships did not carry nearly the same damage-control capabilities as Alliance ships. To the Syndic CEOs, that wasn’t “cost-effective.”
The ones who paid the price for that policy weren’t the CEOs, naturally.
“I only have one that can bear on the battleship’s path,” Duellos said.
“Fire when you can,” Geary ordered. “Formidable, Implacable, engage the enemy battleship with bombardment projectiles. Use everything you’ve got. Take it out before they can manage any repairs.”