Steadfast at Dawn appeared almost exactly where Jessica had predicted, based on all the research done by Ballard and CS-405. And reminded Jessica of the First Rule of Battle, as First Fleet Lord and later First Lord Kasum has taught her: no battle plan survives contact with the enemy. His job is to fuck it up.
Team One would be along shortly, but Buran’s JumpDrives were faster across a short distance than anything programmed by a human. The JumpSails made up for it by letting you sail continuously across JumpSpace, rather than having to drop out, look around to place yourself, and then jump again. Until the vessel emerged, Jessica had no idea how successful Robbie, Alber’, and Tomas had been.
Apparently, better than anticipated, for both good and evil.
Jessica had hoped that they would separate into constituent parts in orbit, flinging Energiya into hiding in the depths of space while warriors prepared to unleash their particular brand of hell down in Trusski’s orbit.
In that first second, Jessica understood that she had guessed wrong, and was going to pay an awful price in the moments between now and when her heavy units got back to rescue her.
“Fire,” she ordered over the general push, just in case anybody was actually waiting for an order from her. “All ahead full.”
Steadfast at Dawn had appeared as a unit. Not even separated out yet, but one monstrous entity even larger than Auberon, a keep with four towers defending the corners.
Eight Type-3 beams reached across space and splashed harmlessly into that battleship’s Power Absorbers, but that was expected. A moment later, all six Primary beams lashed out as one chord, each tuned to a different pitch so a commander could track them aurally. II Augusta poured her fire into the mix as well, six more Type-3 beams hammering.
Without VI Ferrata and VI Victrix, First Expeditionary would have been utterly doomed. The Type-3 beams on the two big, RAN vessels were insufficient to fill the bucket that was the Power Absorbers on a Nightmaster, who would just drain the energy off and use it to recharge systems as fast as it could, while slowly bleeding off the rest after it jumped to safety.
But Jessica and Yan had been there at St. Legier. Had watched a vessel known as Dancer in Darkness challenge an Imperial battleship named Amsel, The Blackbird, and her consort, the Corynthe Mothership Kali-ma.
da Vinci’s voice on the command comm was music to her ears. And Ainsley had apparently been paying attention to something Jessica had missed.
“Heavy Wing, this is da Vinci,” she called in that slow, laconic voice she used with her people. “Adjust your targets aft and down as much as possible with parallax. Big girls have had their fun, and the boys aren’t back yet. On my mark: three, two, one, fire.”
Jessica smiled as twenty-seven Type-3 beams lashed out simultaneously. They were untuned, since the horseshoe design Bedrov had used for the E-2 fighter could just barely handle the emitter itself, but at this range, it was still one hell of a lot of energy.
And with the target adjustment, not all of them hit, but da Vinci had seen something. CS-405 was jamming Steadfast at Dawn with everything the little corvette had, but was still scanning the vessel hard.
Team One had apparently drawn blood, back in orbit. Black carbon-scoring ran down the side of the Energiya like a John Hancock signature, a massive gash that lined up with one of the four cruisers that the monster still carried. Maybe they had seriously injured the beast.
In the back of her head, Jessica was counting the seconds until the Buran ship could jump again. If they stayed there and tried to slug it out, Auberon and her consorts would savage them, especially since every weapon Buran had was no better than a Type-2 beam for range. If they stayed in RealSpace, she would bloody their nose, and then Team One would cross their T with a battle axe.
Because they were planning ahead, the Primary teams on Auberon managed to get off a second salvo in twenty-four seconds, which might have been a record for a full gun deck. The beam emitters on the two warships recharged fast enough that they were getting ready for a third salvo. The fighters would be unleashing their second shortly.
But six Primaries, fired as one, was an unstoppable force.
And Nina Vanek had apparently been paying attention to da Vinci. Four hit the same weakened corner hard enough that Jessica could see metal sublime under the heat, and fragments spall off at high speed.
And then nothing. Steadfast at Dawn had jumped again. Twenty-nine seconds under intense, withering fire seemed to be the fastest they could do right now.
Jessica nodded to Enej and Casey.
“Phase Five complete,” she said over the general comm. “All units prepare to move. Flight Wing, go defensive now. We’ll be back shortly.”
“Roger that, Flag,” da Vinci replied with a crispness that was new. Probably the hangover of actually being in charge.
Auberon shuddered with something approximating ecstasy as it vanished into JumpSpace. Jessica felt the same way. She had been on the bridge of the Blackbird when a Mauler savaged the battleship. She had no desire to repeat the experience.
Ninety-four seconds later, RealSpace again.
Like before, Jessica had gone straight down. All of the Buran vessel’s maneuvers had stacked like levels in a house, so First Expeditionary was hiding in the basement, a monster from a teen-horror vid. Steadfast at Dawn had entered the Trusski system at a point not far from the north pole, jumped down to a standard approach point, and then into orbit.
Two-dimensional, planar thinking. One of the very first things of which Nils Kasum had broken in a sixteen-year-old Jessica Keller.
And one of the cornerstones of Imperial tactics facing Buran. Jump a huge fleet to the edge of the gravity well, and then waddle the entire convoy down toward the Starbase known as Ural while wolves picked off strays and the wounded. Fight as long as you could, and then retreat in as orderly a manner as possible.
Only the fact that Buran did not seem to commit as many ships to this frontier as they could have even made it possible for Fribourg to do that much. Jessica would have taken two Nightmasters and a pack of Warmasters and blown up something big on Karl’s side of the line every time they tried it.
All she could figure was that they didn’t have as big a fleet as Fribourg or Aquitaine, either relative to population or in absolute size.
Or maybe they just never started anything. Karl had frequently had acted as a bully, until Jessica had dissuaded him of the notion once and for all. The first time Buran had initiated any major event had been when they attacked St. Legier with nuclear weapons, and even that had done far less physical damage than it could have.
The psychological scars would still be generations healing.
“Headcount?” Jessica asked as Auberon came to rest, seventeen AU out, and almost exactly below their previous point, relative to the star and the planet.
“Six corvettes plus II Augusta,” Casey replied quickly.
“Very good,” Jessica replied. “Let me know when Team One or Wombat appear.”
Now, the hard part. Playing a game of tag in a dark house. Or maybe this was that monster vid, and the plucky heroes were trying to find the creature before it found them.
Plus side: she was willing to play Buran’s game, rather than sit still and wait for them to come to her. Minus side: until Team One showed up, she was seriously outgunned.
It would be even worse if Steadfast at Dawn decided to go after the Flight Wing. That would be a turkey shoot, mitigated only by the number of Archerfish mines and primary mines that Wombat would be rolling out of her rear racks, hoping like hell that everything worked.
“Contact,” the comm officer called. “CA-264. And escorts.”
Senior Centurion Daniel Giroux had been with her most of his career, and she would have it no other way. She would enjoy telling Kigali how Giroux had introduced VI Ferrata and VI Victrix, when this was all done.
And escorts. Ha.
“Lock them into the pattern and jump soonest,” Jessica ordered.
“Roger that,” someone said. Maybe Denis. Maybe Enej. A male voice, so not Casey or Nina.
The job would get done. That was all she cared about.
Jump.
Everything reloaded. Everyone in motion.
First Expeditionary Fleet. The Wild Hunt.
A thing that Moirrey had once referred to as All the Hounds of Hell Coming for your Soul.
“Wombat, time’s running short,” da Vinci called on the main channel. “Call it good enough and get clear.”
“Yes, mother,” came the reply.
da Vinci laughed in spite of herself. Command Flight Centurion Ainsley Barrett, giving orders to starships. Yan still teased her about being his boss, but she had definitely, extra-special, made sure Bedrov hadn’t snuck aboard any of her team’s ships. Possibly by kidnapping the pilot at the last minute.
A blip gone from her scanners as the minelayer vanished, leaving da Vinci and her friends alone in the darkness, a school of herring surrounded by angry sharks. Of course, the original Red Admiral had made that same mistake.
“Devilfish, stand by,” da Vinci continued.
The kid who had replaced her as a scout pilot in the P-6 was okay, she supposed. Well, better than okay. Pretty good at her job. She was just never going to measure up to da Vinci’s legend. But it gave her a starting point against which to strive.
Right now, the girl, Rama Papadopoulos, was all set to switch from hard scan to white noise, as soon as anybody nosy appeared. On warship scanners, the combined flight wing would look like a fog bank, once you got close enough. Forty-five fighter craft: three wings of E-2 Heavies and two wings of C-1 Escorts; plus both GunShips off Auberon: Necromancer and Sunset. And one crazy son-of-a-bitch in a bright red DropShip.
Cayenne had no business being out here, having nothing in the way of guns for a fight like this, but Gaucho was running as silent as that big beast could manage, and had every EVA-capable marine, medic, and engineer in the squadron, suited up and ready to rescue pilots if they got hurt while their carrier was a long jump away.
Hopefully, Buran would think he was an asteroid in the middle of the formation. Gaucho was still mad about getting his previous ride shot out from under him.
“Contact,” Devilfish called suddenly. “Looks like a trio of cruisers just tried to catch us sitting back where we had been with the warships. Stand by. Stand by. Hard ping. I repeat hard ping. Incoming.”
da Vinci blew out a deep breath and concentrated on her guns. Chances were good that those sharks were jumping over here as soon as they coordinated.
Things were about to get exciting.