Duellos gazed morosely toward his display. “Sometimes I almost feel sorry for them. The Syndics. But then I get angry again, remembering how hard they fought for the same system that screwed them, how many people of ours they killed in the name of that system.”
“How many did Inspire lose in this fight?” Geary asked.
“The final casualty count is seventeen dead, thirty-five wounded. All of the wounded are now out of danger though some will take a lot more patching up. We were lucky it wasn’t worse.”
Implacable had only suffered a couple of wounded, while Formidable had lost one killed and had eight wounded. They had all inflicted far more injury upon the enemy than they had suffered, but somehow that wasn’t very comforting.
Geary sat watching the movements of the warships and the refugee ships, seeming slow across the huge distances they had to cross, waiting for any replies or reactions to his message. Commander Pajari had positioned most of her available escorts in two box-shaped formations, each facing one of the oncoming enemy flotillas. The destroyers of the Ninth Squadron continued their work hauling in escape pods and hauling out the men and women inside until they had all the prisoners they could carry, then heading over to meet up with either Implacable or Formidable and transfer the prisoners to the much larger battle cruisers.
He saw the movement before the combat watch reported it. “The heavy cruisers are accelerating toward our destroyers, sir!”
Moments later, the operations watch called out another warning. “Both light cruiser flotillas are accelerating onto attack runs against the refugee ships, Admiral.”
Thirteen
“They’re still using closely coordinated actions and still following the orders of some command authority who was not on the battleship.” Inspire, and Geary, were five light-minutes from rejoining the refugee-ship formation, and nearly ten light-minutes from the region of space where the heavy cruisers were moving in to tangle with the Alliance battle cruisers and destroyers. “The heavy cruisers are a distraction.”
Duellos nodded in agreement. “They won’t press the attack. They just want you looking at them instead of whatever the light cruisers try against the refugee ships. They may think you’re on Formidable or Implacable.”
“I’m still far enough away from the escorts that I need to count on Commander Pajari to do the right thing.” If he tried giving orders that would take five minutes to reach their intended recipients, based on information already five minutes older, he could seriously mess up the defense of the convoy.
The light cruisers were coming in from two directions, the original flotilla consisting of two light cruisers and four HuKs, and the second of just two light cruisers. They had pushed their velocity up to point one five light. With the convoy plodding along at point zero five light speed, that would still allow good fire-control solutions for the attackers while making it harder for the Alliance escorts to intercept the enemy. But while still short of the convoy, the light cruisers coming in from the right pulled up to race over the top of the convoy while the light cruisers and HuKs coming from the front dove down and over in a wide, reverse loop.
“Classic Syndic tricks,” Duellos said. “They want Pajari to disregard the ones in front who appear to be fleeing and chase the two zipping past just out of range overhead.”
Geary couldn’t suppress a grunt of surprise as the four remaining Alliance light cruisers leaped away from their own formation, all apparently racing in pursuit of the enemy light cruisers passing above them. Had Pajari fallen for the bait despite her words of reassurance?
But only one of the Alliance light cruisers actually steadied out in pursuit of the two bait ships. The other three kept swinging about and turning, curving along a path aimed toward the front of the refugee convoy. Half of Pajari’s destroyers had also jumped forward, moving out well ahead of the refugee ships.
The two enemy light cruisers and two HuKs there had, instead of fleeing, gone back into their loop, coming out finally, after having gone through a full circle, and heading for the refugee ships once more. But instead of finding a defense weakened by ships that had left their positions to chase the bait light cruisers, the small enemy flotilla found itself running headfirst into Pajari’s countermove.
Three Alliance light cruisers and a dozen destroyers tore into the two enemy light cruisers and four HuKs. The slashing firing run wasn’t one-sided. Parrot took two bad hits from the enemy HuKs, and Spur got battered as the enemy light cruisers concentrated their fire on her. But Spur and light cruiser Flanconade scored crippling hits on an enemy light cruiser, while the other enemy light cruiser reeled from fire coming from light cruiser Nukiwaza and a half dozen destroyers. The Alliance destroyer Flagellum got in a lucky hit on one of the HuKs, knocking out its main propulsion and leaving it helpless as well.
The surviving three HuKs fled as Pajari brought her warships back around for another firing pass. One of the enemy light cruisers fired back as it tried to limp away, but the crew of the second fled in escape pods before the second Alliance attack reached them, as did the crew of the crippled HuK.
The second firing run tore apart the still-fighting light cruiser and the abandoned HuK. The abandoned enemy light cruiser blew up as its power core overloaded under a barrage of hits.
Above and now curving slightly back from the left of the refugee-ship formation, the two bait-ship light cruisers altered their vectors as they absorbed the destruction of Flotilla One.
“They’re heading for the jump point for Tiyannak,” the operations watch on Inspire reported. “So are the HuKs surviving from Flotilla One.”
“More good news,” Duellos exclaimed, pointing to his display.
Events that had taken place over ten minutes earlier were now visible to Inspire. The two enemy heavy cruisers had pushed their diversion moves a little too far, and Captain Savik had positioned his battle cruisers just right. A sudden burst of acceleration from Formidable and Implacable had brought one of the heavy cruisers within extreme missile range, and the resulting volley from the battle cruisers had scored enough hits to slow the heavy cruiser appreciably. As its companion fled along with the two HuKs accompanying it, the stricken enemy heavy cruiser fired back in futile defiance as Implacable and Formidable swung in and blew it apart in a single attack run.
By that time, one of the three HuKs running for the jump point for Tiyannak had veered off, making a dangerously tight turn to bring it back toward the inhabited world. That would be the one HuK that Araya had thought Batara had managed to get working, probably dragooned into service with the Tiyannak forces but now reasserting independence as the former conquerors fled.
“We have met the enemy, and Batara is ours,” Duellos said with a grin.
“Not that we want it or intend keeping it,” Geary said, trying suppress his own elation.
The job wasn’t over yet.