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Santini frowned as he read the tardy reply from Space Force HQ.
[DCFSO to Santini. Tensions between Space Force and the Emperor are running high. Your uncle needs as much flexibility as possible to handle the situation. He asks that you comply with the order releasing the 566th battlecruiser squadron for redeployment. Plans for your eventual assumption of command of Capital Fleet are progressing. You can best help by being patient and not take any independent action. Your uncle sends his regards. End of message.]
His intuition was telling him that something was not right. His uncle had never had his deputy record a message when it only took a few minutes to record one himself, and releasing the 566th would upset the carefully made plans to use that squadron to provoke a military response by the Kravell Empire. That squadron had the right people who would follow orders and keep quiet about it afterwards. Substituting another squadron on short notice was just too risky, but the final discrepancy that was setting off alarm bells in his limbic system was the sentence about eventual assumption of command of Capital Fleet. He’d met with his uncle and cousin at a face-to-face meeting on earth just last month. Surely his uncle hadn’t forgotten that they’d agreed it would be his son who would assume command of Capital fleet when the time was right. Santini decided that a quick query to his cousin was in order.
* * * * *
Logan could not believe what the tactical display was showing him. The 107th was now in Tango Delta 39 star system, and it appeared to be empty of enemy ships. The fleet was still near the wormhole it had come out of, and all the other wormholes were being carefully scrutinized by light cruisers from the 34th squadron. The starbase was still there too, but it wasn’t answering FTL calls, and the fleet was still too far away to make normal EM transmissions practical. He opened an intercom channel to the Main Bridge.
“Yes, Admiral?” said McKeon.
“What’s your best guess as to why this system is devoid of enemy ships, Commander?”
McKeon took his time answering. “Well...it could be that the bloody nose we gave them was enough to make them call off the whole campaign, but I wouldn’t want to bet on that. None of our heavies scouting adjacent wormhole connections have seen anything. That appears to suggest they’re not trying to sneak around our flanks. The only other strategy I can think of is that they might be regrouping somewhere in the Rift for another attack either here or somewhere else. I think we have to assume that they’ve captured enough astrogational data by now to figure out where the Empire has expanded to.”
Logan nodded. McKeon’s thoughts jived with his, and he didn’t like the possibility that the enemy might be preparing another incursion. That meant they had the initiative unless the 107th moved even further forward into the Rift.
“The Emperor requested that we check out the status of this system’s starbase. He didn’t request that we move into the Rift, but I hate just sitting here waiting for them to attack whenever they feel like it,” said Logan.
“We could use the lights to recon forward.”
Logan had already considered using the light cruisers to see what was on the other side of the wormholes in this system. It was the kind of mission that they were built for, but the more often they did it, the more likely they’d run into ambushes and be destroyed. Depending on how you calculated the odds, they were already pushing their luck. But if the enemy fleet was waiting in ambush on the other side of one of these wormholes, then Logan had to find out in order to set up the appropriate counter-move. If he failed to do that and the enemy managed to push their way back into TD39, then the 107th might have to retreat all the way back to TE33. And if the enemy followed, then the hundreds of engineers on their way to study the crippled ships there would be at risk. At least the 105 aliens found on the wrecks were now on their way back to the Capital by troop transport. It was obvious now too that those squat, stocky aliens were not the builders of those ships, and that begged the question of what had happened to the tall, slim, blue-skinned race that in all probability had built them. If the so-called Uglies had defeated the blue-skins with superior ships, why weren’t they using their own ships, and if the blue-skins were technologically superior, how had the Uglies managed to commandeer their ships? Logan realized that McKeon was still waiting for a response to his suggestion.
“For now, the light cruisers will keep this side of the wormholes under observation while we check out the starbase. I’ll send our battlecruisers ahead. We’ll follow as quickly as possible. Once we’ve learned what happened to the starbase personnel, I’ll decide if we send the light cruisers to recon the other side,” said Logan.
Four point four hours later Logan had his answer concerning the starbase personnel. There weren’t any on the starbase. All of them had apparently been taken somewhere else. Logan’s first thought was that the Uglies had taken the humans back to their worlds for the same reason that the crippled-ship survivors were being taken back to the Capital. He wondered which side would treat its prisoners more humanely.
After his tech people had examined the computer records, they reported a disturbing development. Somehow the Uglies had been able to communicate what they wanted to the starbase personnel and then to coerce them into accessing the astrogational database and visually display every Empire explored star system and wormhole connection in precise detail over a period of days. If the Uglies had recorded that visual data, they would be in a position to recreate the astrogational data in a way that was compatible with their technology. That would mean they’d know the most important star systems to attack and the most direct way to get there. Unless...was there even a chance that the 107th could intercept that valuable data if it moved forward aggressively enough? The odds were heavily against it. The only information Logan had on Rift wormhole connections was the data that his exploration squadron had gathered and which Logan’s ship had brought back before the attack. That data only went halfway into the Rift in a relatively narrow path. If the Uglies had taken a different route back, the 107th would never find them. And there was more bad news.
The starbase’s FTL transmitters were damaged in what was clearly a deliberate attempt to deny them to humans. They would practically have to be rebuilt from scratch, something that the 107th wasn’t capable of doing. So asking the Emperor for permission to try to intercept the captured astrogational data was out of the question. By the time the request could be relayed back to TE33, then transmitted by FTL to the Capital with the reply coming back the opposite way, the enemy’s lead would be so great that there’d be no point in even making the attempt. Even if he ordered the 107th to charge forward right now, it still might be, and probably already was, too late.
With the situation on the now crewless starbase known, Logan ordered the 34th to send one light cruiser into each of four wormholes to scan the other side, with another cruiser waiting on the near side for a message drone. The Fleet kept its position near the starbase in spite of urgings by some of the squadron leaders to act more aggressively.
Time passed slowly. It was now 3.7 hours since Logan had made the decision to send the light cruisers to the other side of the wormholes. The cruiser that was scouting the star system from which the first alien incursion had originated should have emerged from the wormhole into that other system and sent back a message drone by now. However, there were several possible reasons why a scouting cruiser might not launch a message drone quickly. Logan couldn’t help thinking that one of them could be that the cruiser had been ambushed and destroyed or crippled as soon as it had emerged from the wormhole. McKeon had already suggested moving the Fleet forward to cover that wormhole, but Logan rejected the idea. He would wait. The cruiser on this side of the wormhole was in constant contact with the Fleet via FTL transmissions. If something happened to it and the transmission stopped, Logan would know instantly, even if that ship didn’t have time to send a warning. The main display pinged the two-tone signal of an incoming FTL voice transmission.
“Jutland to FC. Sensors show spike in wormhole radiation indicating a massive transit in progress. We are mov—“
Logan felt a shiver go up his spine. A message drone would not be causing the wormhole to react that way, but a large fleet of ships would, and the fact that the transmission was cut off mid-word was a bad sign. He had contingency plans for just this kind of situation.
“The Fleet will go to Battle Stations.” Logan kept his voice calm in order to avoid spreading panic. “Get me Squadron Leader Ortega on my second screen.” A woman’s face appeared on the indicated screen within seconds.
“We’re going to Battle Stations now, Admiral,” said Ortega in a less than calm voice.
“Here’s what I want the 496th to do. I need to know if an alien fleet has emerged from that wormhole and is now heading this way. Take your squadron at maximum warp to within detection range of that wormhole or until you detect a hostile fleet. In either case, keep your squadron at max effective detection range and report what you see. Questions?”
“What if the alien fleet has split up, Admiral?”
“You have the discretion to split up your squadron, but your ships are not to get close to the enemy no matter what, understand?”
“Understood, Admiral. We’re ready to go to warp as soon as we’re finished talking.”
“In that case, I won’t keep you here any longer. FC clear.”
With the channel closed, Logan leaned back and listened to the chatter of the Flag Bridge personnel as each ship in the Fleet confirmed that it was at Battle Stations. It didn’t take long for the queries to start arriving. Squadron leaders were urging in polite and, in some cases, not so polite ways that the Fleet had a duty to charge ahead to either rescue or avenge the two light cruisers. Logan kept his calm demeanor and ignored the borderline insubordinate comments. Those could be dealt with after the battle was over, assuming that he and the offending officers were still alive by then. The familiar two-tone ping gave him the excuse he needed to cut off the CO of one of his super-dreadnoughts. The 496th had made contact.
“Ortega to FC. Long-range sensors have detected 144, repeat, 144 ships travelling at 4.6C directly for starbase. We are attempting to maintain our relative position, but the range is decreasing. ETA at starbase in 5.9 minutes. Request instructions.”
“Continue your withdrawal. Further instructions to follow. Clear,” said Logan. He muted his station.
“Oh fuck,” he said in a whisper so that no one else would hear him. That many enemy ships meant that the 107th was outnumbered, and if those ships were the same size as the five cripples in TE33, then the 107th was in big trouble. With light cruisers scattered throughout this and adjacent star systems, and heavy cruisers positioned in multiple systems all the way back to TE33, Logan was loath to simply retreat back along the path to TE33 and possibly even further back to the Capital. If he did that, those cruisers would be unsupported and would very likely be picked off one at a time. The crippled ships at TE33 would be lost for purposes of learning their technical secrets, and his mission to stop the incursion would have been a failure.
What he really wanted to do was to entice the enemy fleet to follow the 107th through a series of wormholes with a carefully planned and executed ambush on the other side of each one, but with their superior speed the enemy could, if they pushed forward aggressively enough, catch up to the 107th before it could rendezvous with reinforcements, assuming that some reinforcements could be found somewhere in time. He had to consult with the Fleet Astrogation Officer, but before he did that, he had to give new orders to the light cruisers.
He called up the list of contingency plans made for just this kind of situation on one of his Command Station screens. After a quick review of each one, he selected Alpha9 and activated the execute command. The light cruisers still in this system would receive FTL orders to transit their wormholes, gather the light cruisers waiting on the other side and make their way back to TE33 as best they could, while also passing on the same orders to any heavy cruisers they encountered on the way.
With that task out of the way, Logan quickly stepped over to the Astrogation Station. “What do you need, Admiral,” asked the FAO.
“Can the 496th stay out of weapons range if they continue to stay in front of that fleet?”
“Yessir. In fact they’ll still be out of the enemy’s detection range by the time the enemy gets to the starbase, but only just.”
“And if the 496th lets the enemy see them at that point, and that fleet starts to pursue, can they make it to the wormhole before the enemy catches up?”
This time the FAO shook his head. “No, sir. The enemy fleet will catch them roughly two thirds of the way to the wormhole.”
“Can the 496th get to extreme detection range of the starbase while staying on a path leading to TD38 without the enemy detecting them first?” That took a bit of computation. Logan watched the FAO’s screens to make sure he understood what Logan wanted.
“They can do it if they start that course change soon, Admiral.”
And if the enemy then heads for the wormhole from the starbase, can the cruisers get to the wormhole safely with that longer lead?”
“Yes, but it’ll be close. They may end up in beam weapon range when they decelerate in order to enter the wormhole.”
“Okay. I want us to get to the TD38 wormhole as fast as possible. Get this fleet moving, Commander. I’ll take care of the 496th.”
As he headed back to his Command Station, Logan reviewed the options available to him. That enemy fleet seemed to be heading for the starbase. So far they hadn’t detected any Empire ships, because of their shorter detection range. The question was what would they do once they got to the starbase. Logan was willing to bet they would then head for the wormhole leading to the TD38 system, but they might hold position at the starbase for a while before moving on. And on the remote chance that they might head for a different wormhole altogether, he really should keep the starbase within extreme detection range. That, unfortunately, meant that the 496th might come under enemy fire just as they were trying to enter the wormhole. With the 107th waiting on the other side to pull off another ambush, there was no way to give the 496th any support. As he made arrangements to send a text message to Ortega, he decided what he wanted the 496th to do.
Ortega sighed with relief as she read Logan’s text message.
[FC to Ortega. The 496th will change heading and head for a point midway between the starbase and the TD38 wormhole. Hold position there until you detect enemy ships and then head for a transit of the TD38 wormhole asap. The 107th will be waiting on the other side. End of message.]
Her Astrogation Officer had informed her of the risks her squadron would be taking if they continued to let the enemy fleet gain ground on them. The new Fleet Commander was willing to lose contact with the enemy fleet in order to give the 496th a decent chance of getting out of this star system unharmed. She didn’t think the old FC would have done that.
“Okay, people. We have new orders,” she said as she stepped over to the Astrogation Officer’s station.
By the time the 107th had emerged from the other end of the wormhole and was getting the missile ambush ready, Logan was starting to feel the fatigue of being awake for over 20 hours straight. He knew that the enemy fleet, now codenamed Zulu1, had paused for only a few minutes at the starbase before turning towards the TD38 wormhole. The 496th had been able to send an FTL message to the wormhole just before the last ship of the 107th entered it. Logan knew when to expect the 496th to emerge and had a pretty good idea of when the alien ships would emerge as well. The good news was that there was time to move the 107th back from the wormhole. The bad news was that there wasn’t enough time to move it as far back as he would have liked. It was unlikely that the ambush would cripple or destroy all the enemy ships, and if the survivors were aggressive, they stood a good chance of catching the 107th before it reached the next wormhole in the chain leading back to TE33. He had to inflict as much damage with this ambush as possible, which was why this ambush would be executed differently from the last one.
As each alien ship emerged from the wormhole, it would be highly visible due to the trail of energy particles streaming off its hull. The circle of warp missiles would see them and would be programmed so that each emerging ship would be fired upon by the focused energy from 20 missile warhead detonations. There wasn’t time to deploy the 2,880 missiles needed to attack all alien ships, and Logan wasn’t prepared to spread his missiles over all 144 enemy ships. The cripples at TE33 had proven that these were tough ships that might be able to shrug off hits by a dozen missiles or less. No, if he wanted the alien ships damaged enough to get them off his fleet’s back, then each target had to have at least 20 missiles assigned to it, which meant there would be at least 54 ships that would pass through the gauntlet undamaged. Whether the alien fleet commander would continue to move forward aggressively with basically only one third of his fleet was a good question.
“The 496th is coming through!”
Logan jerked with surprise and chagrin at the realization that he had fallen asleep at his Command Station. He looked at the main display, which was showing video relayed from recon drones of Ortega’s battlecruisers with their spectacular energy trails gradually fading away. She would be receiving instructions as to where her ships should go. If Zulu1 were hot on her trail, they would be coming through in about five minutes or so. Those five minutes went fast.
The enemy surprised him by bringing all 144 ships through in a single wave in an impressive, tight formation. Empire fleets would not have attempted that. Entering a wormhole in a tight formation was no guarantee that the ships would emerge in the same formation. Collisions had happened within the wormhole itself. His pondering the nuances of wormhole navigation were quickly replaced by the awe he felt at the sheer magnitude of the tsunami of nuclear energy surging over the alien fleet from the thousands of warhead detonations. It didn’t seem possible that any ship could make it through that gauntlet of destruction and still be able to maneuver and fight, but some did.
Now that the ambush had been sprung, there was no longer any reason for the 107th to maintain its sub-light velocity. The Fleet was already accelerating to warp speed, as per previously disseminated instructions, on a heading for the wormhole leading to the next star system in the path back to TE33. Logan watched the display switch to a tactical representation based on the warp detection data. Sixty-eight alien ships were also now accelerating in the same direction. The less than expected number of damaged ships was disconcerting, although Logan reminded himself that just because an enemy ship was capable of warp speed didn’t mean that it was completely undamaged. But regardless of what their actual combat capabilities were, it would be prudent for him to assume that all sixty-eight could fight. And if they could all get up to their maximum speed of 4.6C, they would catch up with the 107th before it reached the next wormhole. There was one chance of inflicting further damage to them. Logan looked over at his Fleet Tactical Officer who looked back and nodded.
“Open fire, FTO,” said Logan.
“Commencing fire, Admiral!” shouted the clearly excited officer.
Logan checked the display. An icon with the number 56 appeared and slowed down while the angry red icon of Zulu1 came closer. The interception would be tricky. The 68 alien ships were gradually gaining speed but were still travelling at sub-light velocity. In order to avoid being detected by the enemy ships and then fired on by their beam weapons, the 56 warp missiles were slowing down their retrograde vector using normal maneuvering engines. Logan knew that another 56 would be launched within seconds. Ships travelling faster than light could not be damaged by energy beams from exploding warp missiles. Hitting a target moving that fast was problematic enough, but even if the missile was firing from dead ahead, as the first and second waves would be, the effect on the surrounding space from the warp drive used by the ships would cause the energy beams to lose their coherence and their ability to penetrate armor. What the 107th was doing now was attempting to exploit a small window of opportunity to hit those ships before they reached superlight speed, while also getting close enough for the warp missiles to aim accurately. The first wave would be able to do it. The second wave probably would not, but Logan deemed it worth a try even though it would deplete the remaining stockpiles of warp missiles a little more. The 107th had already used up 61.8% of its missile inventory.
“Detonation in three...two...one...now!” shouted the FTO.
Without any detectable ripples in the fabric of space that would have been generated from the missiles’ warp drives, the enemy fleet wasn’t able to detect them and therefore couldn’t defend against them. All 56 missile warheads detonated. Three more alien ships stopped accelerating. Logan was dimly aware of a ragged cheer from the Flag Bridge personnel. It was a small victory, but it was a victory. The second wave did not accomplish similar results. The remaining 65 ships attained superlight velocity before the second wave missiles had accurate target locks. Their detonations had no apparent effect.
Logan now had another tough decision to make. As long as the 107th stayed at warp speed, it was safe from attack by the alien fleet, and the reverse was also true. Energy beams travelled at the speed of light, and if the ship firing those weapons was travelling faster than light, the ship would actually outrun the shot from its weapons. In theory, if one ship or fleet was chasing another at warp speeds, the ship or fleet in front could fire its weapons backwards, and the ship or fleet doing the chasing might run into the oncoming energy beam. But aiming accurately at a target moving that fast while the firing ship was also moving faster than light was a technical problem that the Empire had not solved. Had the aliens solved it? Logan suspected that he would find out soon.
Zulu1 soon overtook the 107th and then passed it. When the alien fleet didn’t bother to move over to be directly in front of the Empire ships, Logan knew they weren’t going to be shot at while at warp speed, but that only meant they’d be shot at when the 107th dropped down to sub-light velocities near the wormhole. Logan was determined that this would not be like the first encounter in the Rift all over again. He tried to remember what the fleet combat teaching materials had said about assaulting a wormhole defended by a superior force. If he remembered correctly, there was no good way to do it, but that was against an enemy that also had warp missiles. The captured cripples did not have any such weapons or the capability to launch them. If he assumed that these 65 enemy ships were the same kind of ships, and that was a dangerous assumption to make, then a wormhole assault might just work. He gave the necessary orders.
Ninety seconds later, the 107th had dropped down to the minimum warp speed of 0.1C. The Fleet was already within the aliens’ detection range, so Logan knew that Zulu1 would see what he was doing. The 107th was now composed of 56 ships. When the distance between the 107th and wormhole was down to three million kilometers, ten light seconds, Logan turned to his FTO.
“Execute.”
What the alien fleet commander saw on his tactical display was 56 warp engines travelling at minimal warp speed until they were only half a million kilometers away. At that point, the ships of Zulu1 went to active scanning using microwave radar to pinpoint the locations of those 56 ships, with the accuracy needed, in preparation for firing at them with their beam weapons. But those 56 sources of warp speed weren’t ships. Logan had ordered that each ship in the Fleet fire one warp missile, and as soon as that warp missile engaged its own warp drive, the launching ship shut down its warp drive. What Zulu1 had tracked over the last few light seconds were missiles acting like ships, and by going to active radar scanning, the 65 alien ships had also given away their own precise locations. The warp missiles had a fraction of a second advantage, and they used it to aim their focusing equipment at their targets and detonate.
.
This time each missile was aimed at a different enemy ship. The change in tactics was a gamble, but Logan reasoned that if he continued with the 20-to-1 targeting ratio, his surprise barrage would only affect a maximum of three enemy ships, and running a gauntlet of sixty-two ships would be only marginally better than against sixty-five. The 20-to-1 ratio had been necessary when the alien ships were emerging from the wormhole and moving across the line-of-sight of the waiting missiles, thereby making it harder to hit them. His ship’s tactical computer had estimated that half the 20 missiles would simply miss under those circumstances. Here, the alien ships were almost stationary, and the warp missiles were moving directly at them with very little lateral movement. That not only made hitting the ships more likely but it also meant that a hit was more likely to stay focused on one part of the hull instead of slashing across a moving hull. The tac computer estimate of penetrating hits on six to nine enemy ships was worth the gamble in Logan’s opinion. The problem was that at their current distance of 10 light seconds, they couldn’t tell which alien ships had received penetrating hits or how badly damaged they were.
As soon as sensors detected the missile warhead detonations, the 107th fired another missile barrage, only this time it was a maximum spread of 224 missiles now that the element of surprise was gone. The alien commander reacted just as Logan would have expected a human commander to react given such little time to consider his options. Zulu1 began active radar scanning at twice the distance compared to the first time. Once again, the warp missiles’ programming enabled them to fire first, but the extra distance also made target accuracy harder.
A third barrage of 224 missiles was fired as soon as visual confirmation of detonations was acquired. Logan wondered how long it would take the enemy commander to figure out the best counter-strategy. The 3rd barrage gave him his answer. Zulu1 didn’t go to active scanning at all! With no source of incoming radar energy to aim at, the warp missiles didn’t detonate and simply flew past the enemy ships. Logan shook his head in amazement. Whoever was in command over there was not only smart, he also had a lot of guts to hold back and risk being fired on without trying to fire back.
Logan now examined his remaining options. He could try to trick the enemy again by ordering another missile barrage and have his missiles activate their own radars at close range, but then the enemy would be able to aim and fire their energy weapons quickly and precisely. They would know where the missiles were as soon as the radar waves hit their ships. The missiles wouldn’t know where the ships were until the radar waves had hit the ships and then bounced back to the missiles.
He checked the remaining missile inventory of all ships and nodded. The battlecruisers had shot their entire missile loads. The capital ships could fire five more times. That meant that the 107th could deploy a maximum of 120 missiles, and it would then be without any missiles at all. There was no way that the Fleet would make it through the gauntlet on the strength of missiles alone. His ships were going to have to fight it out with their beam weapons, and in order to get the most bang for their buck, they would have to get precise targeting data and get relatively close. Logan made his decision and selected the tactical options that would put that decision into operation.
The 107th launched all 120 warp missiles and then both missiles and ships went to warp speed. At half a light second, the ships shut off their warp drives and dropped back down to a velocity of just over 10,000 kilometers per second. At 45/100th of a light second, the warp missiles did the same thing. They were now in the lead and 10 of them began to actively scan the space ahead. As soon as the alien ships detected the incoming radar waves, they aimed their beam weapon turrets at the sources of those waves and fired. The remaining 110 warp missiles detected the return radar signals and relayed that data to Undaunted, which then collated that data, pinpointed the precise locations of all 65 alien ships and distributed that data plus targeting priorities to the rest of the Fleet. As soon as all ships received that data and were ready to use it, Undaunted gave the warp missiles the go ahead to detonate, and the Fleet opened fire at the exact same time.
At a velocity of 10,000 kps, the Fleet needed 24 seconds to pass the alien ships and then make it to the wormhole. With the targeting data provided by the sacrifice of 10 warp missiles, the Fleet would get one free shot, and then both sides would be able to target the other.
“HITS! WE GOT THREE HITS!” shouted Undaunted’s Tactical Officer.
Logan shifted his gaze from the tactical display to the sidebar that had all 56 ships of the 107th listed by name, plus all 65 enemy ships listed by number, with a status indicator beside each one. Undaunted’s first target had received three hits without causing any apparent damage. The tactical computer would also try to determine which enemy ships were already damaged from the first two missile barrages based on whether those ships fired all, some or none of their beam weapons.
When Undaunted received its first hit, the alien energy beam was so powerful that it turned hundreds of tons of hull armor into superhot plasma in a fraction of a second, and that expanding plasma generated the same kind of reaction in the hull that a multi-kiloton nuclear explosion would have created. Logan felt the ship heave so suddenly that the inertial dampeners couldn’t compensate fast enough. He was glad that he and the crew were wearing pressure suits to compensate for a sudden depressurization, though if an alien energy beam penetrated right down into the Flag Bridge, it was unlikely that pressure suits would save anyone from the effects of the beam itself.
“WE LOST NUMBER FOUR TURRET!”
Logan remained silent. There was nothing he could say now that would make any difference, and the tactical reports would be coming thick and fast. He grimaced when he saw the status of the dreadnought Unconquered shift from a green OP meaning operational to a red CH meaning critical hit. Undaunted heaved again.
“NUMBER SIX TURRET GONE!”
The tactical display pinged for attention, but Logan kept his focus on the sidebar. One of the alien ships had exploded. More and more status indicators for ships on both sides were shifting from green to a damaged yellow or severely damaged red, and more CHs were appearing now. Undaunted heaved again so violently this time that if Logan hadn’t been strapped down in his chair, he would have hit the ceiling.
“HULL PENETRATIONS ON DECK SEVEN AND HANGAR BAY!”
Logan tried to get an overall feel for which side was getting the worst of the fighting. A dozen alien ships were now listed as critically hit, but most of his battlecruisers were also in bad shape. Twenty-one out of twenty-four of his capital ships were still able to maneuver and fight.
Time remaining until they reached the wormhole was now less than 10 seconds. That meant that the 107th had passed the alien fleet’s battle line and was now pulling away from it. Undaunted got hit again.
“PENETRATION IN ENGINEERING! POWER NUMBER TWO IS DOWN! THREE TURRETS STILL OPERATIONAL!”
That was bad news. Undaunted had four power plants and now one was gone. Three was enough to power the remaining energy turrets and maneuvering engines, but if the weakened hull armor protecting the Engineering section got hit again, the ship could become a helpless cripple. The display now pinged several times in quick succession. Two more alien ships exploded and so did one battlecruiser.
“WORMHOLE IN THREE...TWO...ONE...NOW!” shouted the FAO.
Logan heaved a sigh of relief. Once inside the wormhole, combat was impossible, but so was communication. He carefully scanned the sidebar data. It wasn’t showing the impact of the last several seconds of combat, but the news was bad enough anyway. One battlecruiser had been destroyed, eleven critically damaged and the remaining four all damaged to some extent. Six capital ships were critically damaged. Only one super-dreadnought was still listed as completely operational. The rest all had some damage. On the other side, three alien ships had been destroyed, and forty-four were listed as critically hit, which surprised Logan, and all the rest had some damage.
“FTO, the number or enemy criticals seems high to me. What confirmation do we have on those ships?” asked Logan.
“I’ll have an answer for you shortly, Admiral.”
The analysis seemed to take longer than Logan thought it should have, but he decided that the adrenaline rush was distorting his sense of time.
“I have that information now, Admiral,” said the officer. “Thirteen of the forty-four were deemed to have critical hits because they exhibited minimal combat capacity from the beginning of the firefight. TC says they were probably damaged already from the first two missile barrages. The remaining thirty-one were classified as critical after receiving at least one confirmed hit resulting in diminished firepower and/or atmospheric venting, Admiral.”
Logan thanked the officer and unstrapped himself in order to be able to pace around the Flag Bridge and consider his next move. It would take another nineteen minutes to transit this wormhole. Once on the other side, he could use the string of light cruisers from the 74th squadron to relay a message back to the starbase at TE33 and from there to the Capital by FTL transmission. Sending the results of the battle was the easy part. Giving his assessment of the situation was the hard part. The 107th had gotten badly mauled. That much was clear. At this point, he didn’t know how many of his critically-hit ships could still maneuver or reach warp speed. Some ships might have to be abandoned and scuttled. Even those ships that could still travel at warp speed might not be able to fight very well or at all. The only casualty reports he had so far were from within Undaunted, and thankfully no one on board had been killed or seriously injured, but there were bound to be serious injuries needing starbase medical treatment on other ships, along with fatalities too.
Standard strategic doctrine said that fleets suffering the kind of human and equipment damage that the 107th had taken should be withdrawn from combat operations in order to regroup, repair and replenish personnel and munitions. But if Zulu1 continued to push forward, and it had at least 18 ships that could do so, the 107th might not be able to withdraw from the front lines. It seemed incredible that any commander, human or alien, would continue to act aggressively after losing almost 90% of his fleet. On the other hand, his opposite number had to know that the human fleet had suffered a lot of damage too and perhaps could be completely wiped out with one more unexpected attack. Setting up another ambush at the other end of this wormhole was a tempting strategy, but that would put seriously injured crewmen at risk, as well as risking the entire Fleet, which was something that the Emperor had told him to try to avoid if possible. No, he decided he would play it safe. The message back would tell the Emperor that the 107th was withdrawing to TE33 and would contain a request for a relief fleet, repair ships and resupply ships. In the meantime, those of his ships capable of combat operations would sit on top of the wormhole that Zulu1 would most likely use if it continued to move forward.
With communications to the rest of the Fleet impossible during the actual wormhole transit, Logan literally had nothing to do. The ship’s condition and crew were McKeon’s responsibility. Logan getting involved with that was not only unnecessary but actually inappropriate and would be seen as interference. Logan did inform his communications personnel of the orders he wanted disseminated the second the Fleet emerged from the wormhole. The message back to the Capital would be on its way quickly.
The emergence happened soon enough, and it didn’t take long for the Flag Bridge display to be updated with the status of each ship in the Fleet. The results worried Logan. Eight battlecruisers, the equivalent of one full squadron, no longer had warp speed capability. Having already decided not to draw the line in the sand here, the 107th had to continue to move back up the wormhole chain, and leaving those eight battlecruisers and their crews here to fend for themselves was out of the question. The crews would have to be transferred to other ships, and the crippled battlecruisers would be scuttled. That was all very well and good, except that it took time, and time was not something that Logan felt he had a lot of. Zulu1 might be on its way through the same wormhole even now.
When the minimum amount of time for Zulu1 to transit the wormhole had come and gone without any sign of it, Logan was relieved but still agitated over the fact that the transfer of crew and scuttling of the ships was going so slowly. Just because Zulu1 hadn’t transited the wormhole right away didn’t mean it couldn’t do it later, and the longer the 107th stayed near this wormhole, the greater the risk of another battle whose outcome could go either way.
With the transfer finally complete, Logan ordered the Fleet to begin moving away from the wormhole. He watched the computer-enhanced images of the abandoned battlecruisers as they dwindled in the distance. When the Fleet was at a safe distance, all eight derelicts exploded.
To Logan’s surprise, Zulu1 did not emerge from the wormhole until the 107th was halfway to the next wormhole. The light cruiser that had been stationed near the wormhole had pulled back to extreme detection range. It reported the fact that 35 ships had apparently emerged from the wormhole and were now accelerating at warp speed on an identical heading to the 107th. That was almost double the 18 ships that Logan had been expecting. McKeon expressed the opinion that some of the critically hit ships had been repaired enough to be capable of combat operations. A quick check of astrogations confirmed that the 107th would get to the other wormhole first, but just like with the first chase in the Rift, if Zulu1 continued the pursuit, it would catch up to the Fleet before the 107th made it back to TE33. The good news arrived half an hour later. Zulu1 had reached and was maintaining a warp speed of only 4.1C. That was still faster than the 107th’s damage-reduced speed, but the difference was not enough for Zulu1 to catch the 107th before it got to TE33, and the light cruiser would be able to keep tracking the alien fleet from extreme range.
The entire trip back to TE33 took 26 hours. Logan was pleased to see that some of the heavy cruisers of the 55th and the 115th had already returned. They were ordered to join the capital ships and the undamaged battlecruisers that would now guard the wormhole they had just emerged from. The badly damaged battlecruisers, which were also tasked with carrying the crews from the scuttled ships, were sent on to the Capital after dropping off their more seriously wounded crew at the starbase. There was also an unexpected presence. Five battlecruiser squadrons detached from other fleets to be reassigned to two brand new strike fleets that had arrived at TE33. The new strike fleets hadn’t been officially formed yet, and Logan used his Imperial Warrant to ‘temporarily’ attach the five undamaged squadrons to the 107th. With those 40 undamaged ships from the two strike fleets now supporting the 107th from beyond effective beam weapon range with their warp missile barrages, Logan felt much more confident that Zulu1 could be stopped dead in its tracks.
The tracking light cruiser warned him of the imminent approach of Zulu1. The alien fleet emerged as expected into a hailstorm of beam weapons and warp missile detonations. The battle lasted only 13 seconds from start to finish. Half the alien ships were simply blown apart. The rest became drifting wrecks waiting to be boarded. Logan composed a long message to the Emperor with a complete report of the battle, the current condition of the 107th and his assessment of what should be done next. The message ended with a request for instructions.
