Chapter 6
n coming hyper drive wake detected. Enemy ship's will break out in 10 minutes!" Said the voice of the ship's new AI.
Captain Colter rolled her eyes at the voice. She was still finding it hard to get used to. The personnel who installed the AI had come on board with the new XO. She just hoped it worked as well as her new XO did. All bridge crew were at their duty stations and in vacuum suits in case of explosive decompression.
"Breakout of incoming ships in 5 minutes captain. I have firm readings of at least 60 ships." The AI's voice stated calmly.
Captain Colter raised her eyebrows at this. To be able to separate out 60 specific ships was a feat that deserved respect. Usually a human crew needed a little more time to get readings enough to extrapolate from.
"Confirmed Captain." responded Commander Alton from Sensors. Captain Colter nodded.
"Diamond pattern attack formation. Stay on track. Original plan still a go. Send to Task force ignore new ships, keep to current attack plan." Captain Colter said calmly.
"What is the ETA of the new ships?" She asked.
"They will come out of hyper approximately 1 hour and 10 minutes normal space drive out from our projected position, Ma'am." Responded tracking control.
"Good. That gives us time to take care of our primary job. What is the status of our current targets?" Colter asked.
"All enemy ships are targeted and accounted for, captain." Responded the AI.
"Then all we can do is wait." Sighed Captain Colter as the Task Force closed on the group of enemy ships which were moving to attack her own force. Both groups were closing on one another at 100 kilometers per second. At the current speed, missile engagement would become viable in another 12 minutes.
The enemy having detected the emperor's task force had gotten a slow but credible start. They were in a good formation, but intelligence suggested that their ship abilities were far less than their own. The largest ship in the enemy formation was 3,750 meters long. Almost as large as an Imperial Battleship. Of the 105 ships headed their way, 65 were at that length. The remainder were divided as follows, 15 ships of 2200 meters in length, and the remaining 25 ships were at a length of 850 meters or less.
"Missile range." Stated the Ships AI.
Admiral Sethon watched as the battle unfolded from the flag bridge. He had already given his instructions to the task force commanders and planned to let all commanders fight their battles as they deemed necessary. He would only interfere if he saw a decided advantage that no one else did. So far, everything was going according to plan, with the exception of the enemy ships that had just entered the system from hyper space.
"Missiles detected behind approaching enemy force. Missiles were masked by approaching force." The voice of the AI said calmly.
Admiral Sethton winced as he looked at the readout on the new missile targets. The enemy had apparently launched 12,000 missiles that had been masked by the enemy drives and the more primitive jamming the enemy had. Well, primitive or not, it had been effective. Who ever was commanding over there was no slouch.
Lord Rashva'ss was puzzled. They outnumbered the enemy 2 to 1, yet still they came. Admittedly they had large ships, but it was still confusing. They had that monster ship he almost drooled over, and he hoped they would capture it. The rest of the enemy ships were all between 1,000 spans long to anywhere from 250 spans longer than his greatest great ships, to 2250 spans longer than his greatest great ship. That was not counting the huge spherical ship they had brought with them. Well, no matter, the missiles were now pulling ahead of him, and he was ready to order broadsides to be fired. Soon, the enemy would come to know who the master was.
Mathew Braxton watched as the enemy missiles approaching deployed multiple warheads. Well, he thought grimly, that was a trick they were well acquainted with. It was going to hurt them though. They had not thought that the enemy had this capability, as none of the captured missiles on the enemy ship had them. However, they had not discounted the possibility.
Mathew watched as their own missiles rushed out to meet and pass the enemy missiles. Explosions were happening on a 500 kilometer front. Missiles died and lived. Of the almost 20,000 missiles fired at the enemy, over a third were destroyed. The enemy believed in over kill apparently. If they hadn't, more of the emperor's missiles would have gotten through that first meeting. More still were fooled by the primitive jamming. Others died from enemy anti missile fire. Point defense finally engaged the remaining missiles.
37 enemy ships were destroyed outright, and almost all the rest had damage of some sort. Only 14 enemy ships were undamaged at all. Mathew watched the readouts grimly as the enemy missiles closed in.
It was the emperor's forces turn to be hit. It was not pretty. No missiles penetrated the defenses of the Battlesphere, but of the 50 ships that had accompanied the battle sphere, 2 dreadnoughts, 6 battleships, 4 cruisers, and 4 destroyers were destroyed outright. Damage symbols surrounded twice that many more. A second group of 5,000 missiles were detected coming from the direction of the planet. They definitely did not have enough forces to take and hold this planet.
Especially not with fresh reinforcements coming to the rescue. The task force fired more and more missiles. Extra decoys had been placed into missile tubes and that saved the task force more damage. The two fighting fleets converged and passed one another. The emperor's force kept going to try to take out the enemy shipyards circling the planet, and the enemy ships kept going to rendezvous with the second enemy force that had transited into the system only 20 minutes ago.
"Captain Colter? Admiral Sethon. Break off attack. Destroy the shipyards, but set your heading back to planet, Lantree. We need to reevaluate the situation. We hurt them, and hurt them bad, but we can not take and hold this planet at this time. Sethton out."
Captain Colter sighed. She had been expecting something like this. Despite having better equipment, better missiles, better everything, they were calling it a day. At least the enemy would think twice before attacking the empire, or so she hoped.
"Transmit code Top Kick to the fleet. Set course for Lantree." Sighed the captain.
The second group of 5,000 missiles were intercepted by the emperor's forces. Another 3 ships died, and 6 more damaged. The enemy shipyard was destroyed totally, as were several orbiting facilities. All in all, the empire gave better than it received, but it still hurt after the final tally had been done.
Lord Rashva'ss was angry. He watched as the enemy managed to make it into hyper. There was no point in trying to catch them. They had proved themselves extremely formidable. Even the group that had separated from the enemy had eluded their grasp. Lord Rashva'ss ordered all ships to assume orbit around the planet. He seethed as he thought of the destruction the enemy had inflicted on his forces. Well, they had driven them off this day, but it had hurt.
Several hours later, all of Lord Rashva'ss's captains were assembled to review the battle tapes. What was seen was disturbing. The total of missiles launched and fired by the Shas'vsaz should have annihilated the enemy. It didn't. They destroyed or absorbed all missiles. It was frightening. Nothing had ever survived that amount of missile fire before.
The task force had arrived back at Lantree. Injured personnel were transferred to hospital. Still others that were severely injured were transferred to yet another ship and taken to a base hospital only a few light years away. In the interim, several class A battle forts had been placed in orbit around the planet, as well as two squadrons of battleships.
The empire would not be caught short in the event of an attack from the enemy. Data had been collected and the commanders of the task force as well as the captains and commander of the reinforced system were on the Dragon Rising as they went over the sensor log of the battle for system A as it was called.
While no new technology had been revealed, it had been surprising how many missiles had been fired at the task force. Also, the number of ships that had come in system while the task force was in the process of attacking was disturbing. 67 ships had been transferring into system A. While the amount of damage the task force had inflicted had been great, with the reinforcements that had arrived, it was almost as if it had been done for nothing.
"While we definitely severely damaged the enemy at system A, the reinforcements they received cancel out a lot of what we did. However, we did manage to destroy the shipyard located at this system, thus denying the enemy repair capabilities by a yard close to our base of operations. Unfortunately, they seem to have managed to counter more of our missiles than we had anticipated. We will have to re-think our strategy with the missile type loaded on the Battlesphere." Admiral Sethton said grimly.
"Don't get me wrong. We hurt them, and hurt them badly.
Unfortunately, they received a reinforcement of what appears to be a
reinforced task force, which puts them back up to close to the fleet
level they were at prior to the engagement. Admittedly they have some
damaged ships, but have close to a fleet sized element located there at
this time." Admiral Sethton finished.