Con-Red: Recourse (68 page)

“Damage control reports all contained.  All primary systems back online and in the green.
  Engineering reports all clear for the reactors.  Propulsors five and six inoperable.”

This was quickly followed by the displaying of casualty figures
, while the carrier moved forward with the rest of the formation.  Weapons fire that had died down during the enemy attack now intensified once more and lit up all of space surrounding the formation as the systems came back online.  The renewed defensive fire quickly started to take a toll on the enemy fighters.  Even optically guided the guns were accurate enough to destroy five of the enemy in the first few seconds.  Others disintegrated moments later as the carrier’s squadrons pulled the aliens in closer to Achyuta’s battle group.

All the while Admiral Singh’s migraine slowly worsened from a nuisance to almost a hindrance.  The headache intensity
had been increased for the last few minutes, but in the current excitement he had failed to notice much of a change.  That was until now.  Achyuta’s entire head pounded harder with each passing second causing him to start feeling unsteady on his feet.  It was similar to the pain he had felt when the enemy’s mind weapon had been activated.  For a second he thought that he was the only one in so much pain, but noticed a few of the bridge crew look away from their stations and start pressing their hands on their head in a failed attempt to stop the suffering.  On the other side of the bridge Achyuta heard a glass of coffee fall to the hard deck and bounce loudly while spilling its hot contents.

“Detecting enemy intrusion signal change.  Jamming no longer successful.  Attempting to
compensate and reconfigure to match,” Regela calmly informed, not effected in the least by the enemy assault.

“
Multiple graviton bursts detected!” Lieutenant Gorzak groaned out from his station before doubling over in pain.

Before Admiral Achyuta Singh’s world exploded into excruciating pain
and suffering for the second time, he observed every enemy ship on the tactical sensor display disappear.  The agony caused his legs to weaken and his body to grow numb.  One second he was standing there in command of his force and the next he was falling to the hard decking with his eyes reflexively shut tight, unable to support himself any longer.

Achyuta
felt his whole body shake and bounce on the floor even through the debilitating pain shooting through him.  He could hear multiple people screaming even through the loud alarms blaring around the bridge.  As before flashes of death and destruction filled his mind.  People he had known and loved his whole life perished gruesomely right in front of his eyes.  There was nothing he could do to stop it.  Try as he might the images would return with a vengeance.  In seconds he witnessed the deaths of thousands of people and the destruction of over a dozen Federation worlds.  The overwhelming might of the enemy clouded his thoughts.  How could they ever fight against such great beings?  Achyuta knew without any doubt that the thought was not truly his own.  His pride would never let him think in such a way.

“Establishing containment field
s.  Sealing off all critical areas.  Armory on lockdown.  Violent acts throughout the fleet dramatically increasing,” Regela’s voice continued recite what was occurring throughout the fleet even as she coordinated its defense.

Once again the entire vessel rocked heavily in a way only too familiar to the admiral.
  “Shields down to sixty percent,” the AI informed and the carrier tilted down under him, accelerating slowly.

At the same time the pain inside him began to subside, but only slightly
.  It was still enough to allow him to force his eyelids open in order to see the bridge again.  By the time he gazed up at the forward display Achyuta was greeted with a battlefield that had rapidly changed during the previous moment.  His opponents were no longer many thousands of kilometers away, but just hundreds now and closing rapidly.  With just the quick glance his analytical mind instantly noted that another of his meager force had been destroyed by the enemy.  The anti-fighter frigate
Libertad
had previously flanked his carrier, but now lay floating dead in space in ruins.  It had apparently been taken revenge upon by the enemy for doing its fleet defense job with too much efficiency.  In fact a good number of the enemy fighter casualties had come at the hands of the
Libertad
. 

Other ships had also suffered further at the hands of the alien shorter range weapons, but were fighting back without pause.  Weapons fire crisscrossed through open space and struck targets on both sides
making shields flash into crimson and light blue.  One of these dense continuous orange beams lashed out from an enemy vessel and struck the
Regal
at that very moment.  Unlike Federation weapons this beam never actually left its point of origin.  It held steady on the carrier’s port bow for two seconds before cutting off, weakening the shields further.  He watched more of these orange beams fired out and strike other ships under his command.

Soft glows of missile trails
became visible on the holographic displays as the Federation warships unleashed fresh barrages of ASMs against the enemy.  These projectiles raced away from their ships in the mist of particle beam, plasma round, and disruption pulse fire.  Achyuta watched them impact and splash against the glowing shields of the alien vessels.  The Disruption pluses were unaffected by the shields and washed over the hulls in an effort to disable all operational electronics.  While most alien systems remained unaffected weak points within the shields did develop, allowing some beams to punch through these heavy defense fields in order to strike the armored hulls themselves.

The missiles were once again mostly swept away by repulsion fields and defensive fire and w
hatever damage was inflicted by the rest was not enough to even slow the opposition.  They continued their assault against his ships, concentrating on the heavier capital ships.  Admiral Singh let out a deep grunt and pulled himself back to his feet, using a nearby command console for support.  His eyes never left the forward display the entire time, which is why Achyuta didn’t miss the destruction of one of the enemy ships.  A tremendous orange wave ignited in space around the ship before it broke apart into wreckage.  The warship had been hit with a full RAP salvo from both of the
Regal’s
damaged destroyers, expertly targeted by Regela. 

“Yeah!” Captain Chu
lovski exclaimed through gritting teeth from the other side of the bridge.  Achyuta turned slowly to see the Flight Operations Commander standing there with his large arms around Captain Hinnamen, supporting his comrade who was in a weakened state.

Admiral Singh turned back to watch a
nother enemy ship, this time a much larger cruiser or battleship well over one and a half kilometer in length, also take hits from Gauss rounds.  These rounds originated from the damaged
Karabela.
  Having now only one functional heavy turret limited the warship from causing more damage against its heavily armored and shielded target.  At such close distances it took the pair of heavy slugs just a fraction of a second to impact the great vessel.  Both detonated within the ship itself and caused significant injury in those specific areas, however, for a ship so massive they were barely felt.  The Admiral marveled at the size of the alien combatant knowing that the Federation had nothing in its arsenal to match.

Like an enraged beast
stung by hornets the enemy vessel lashed out in retaliation swiftly and savagely.  Achyuta saw the pointed bow begin to glow in a mixture of red and violet to form a swirling sphere of energy.  Having seen something similar in the
Federation
footage he knew what was about to happen even before it did.  There was nothing he could do, but watch in shock as a part of this spinning energy coalesced into a solid beam and struck out at the
Karabela
.  The massive ray hammered into cruiser’s ventral shields.  For a number of seconds of the barriers actually held back the intense energy before slowly collapsing back against the ship. 

Achyuta’s breath held for the entire time the beam made contact with the ship and his heart s
ank as the CGB TacLink showed imminent failures in the cruiser’s shield generators.  In self-preservation the generators powered down.  As soon as they did the heavy beam sliced into the armor plating along the underside of the port side wing.  The weapon cut straight into the ship itself and came out through the top.  It was as if the armor alloy was nonexistent.  In just seconds the entire wing structure was severed from the cruiser’s central structure and detonated in a brilliant flash of fire and debris.  With that single blow the
Regal
Battle Group lost its last heavy Gauss cannon and its most powerful warship received sever damage.

The admiral took a
nother moment to assess the situation before looking away from the raging battle outside and slowly began to make his way back to the command chair.  “Regela initiate Fugiwara Maneuver,” he ordered as he turned away.

Around him others of the bridge
crew started to slowly recover from the initial shock as the mind attack subsided.  Whatever Regela was doing to counter it must be succeeding to some extent, Achyuta figured.  However, he still observed that some were still too distraught to work. A few gradually began to resume theirs while fighting through the pains they experienced.  By the time Achyuta reached his chair he could already feel the
Regal
slowing as the AI executed the given maneuver.

The Fugiwara Maneuver was a tactic developed decades ago by Admiral Kwaila Fugiwara.  It was a based off
ambush methods used by ground forces for centuries before that.  A complete battle formation would have part of itself start a slow strategic withdrawal in the hopes to lure the enemy in a pursuit.  Once engaged this element would pull back further and as such create a concave pocket within the battle line.  This would in turn allow the rest of the formation to flank the enemy and trap it inside a crossfire.  Achyuta saw the start of this effect when he finally sat down into his chair.

His central combat line flanked by the two Cosmos destroyers had already started to pull back away from the rest of the formation.  All the while Regela continued to unleash a hail of fire against the enemy as they moved closer
.  Plasma and particle beams splashed against the alien crimson shields and gave the vessels an ominous look as they moved through black space.  At the same time the top and bottom formations began to split in half and separate further to cover a larger area.  Admiral Singh saw that the badly damaged
Karabela
lagged behind.  It slowly rotated in space to present its still shielded starboard side to the enemy and was instantly harassed further by one of the enemy’s destroyer sized ships.  In response the lower line’s aging Ridge class frigate
Maridok
accelerated two rail gun rounds towards the vessel. 

The first round missed just barely, grazing the alien ship’s shields, but the second slammed home into the
destroyer’s bow.  Achyuta watched part of its side explode out as the powerful round traveled through the interior and detonated within it.  To a warship of that size the damage was fairly minimal; the response was not, however.  It turned slightly to starboard and released a staggering orange laser barrage from multiple emission points throughout the side.  Each beam hammered against the
Maridok’s
shields with a vengeance.  With its shields depleting quickly in the face of such firepower it let loose with another pair of projectiles.  One detonated instantly against the destroyer’s now reinforced shields while the other forced its way into the vessel before exploding deep inside.

It was joined by other rounds a second later fired from the
Sirius
, the only undamaged destroyer in Admiral Singh’s Battle Group.  The enemy’s entire dorsal starboard side became awash with fire as the six rounds slammed into it cratering multiple areas of its black hull.  Its discharge of laser energy quickly diminished to almost nothing right after the impacts.  Achyuta felt inside that the damage he now witnessed was not enough to stop a ship that powerful, but even so had managed to destroy the ship’s powerful bow weapon.   Its neighbor’s weapon was still in perfect working order, however, and the admiral witnessed its own sphere of spinning violent energy light up the enemy’s bow.  In a flash another great lance shot out from the alien vessel and angled up directly into the ventral bow of the
Sirius
.  The shields resisted the blow for only seconds before becoming overwhelmed.  Unimpeded the weapon proceeded to slice clean through the bottom hull and emerge from the top of the ship.  As if in slow motion it surgically began to trace its way through the Cosmos class destroyer from bow to the stern using a diagonal route.  About one third of the way through, the warship’s SMS tried to stave off further damage by rotating the ship away.  This caused the cutting beam to deviate to the left and painfully slowly stopping its rearward progress.  In seconds it sliced out of the port side and deactivated.

For a moment it seemed as if the
Sirius
remained unharmed.  That all changed in the next second as a series of power explosions rocked the large vessel.  Along with these blast waves and the ship’s starboard momentum, Achyuta saw over a quarter of the destroyer’s hull separate from the main body.  This cut out section floated ominously in space.  Anyone left inside it had to fend for themselves.

“
Life-pods detected,” Regela began to announce as her sensors registered multiple escape pods firing away from the wreckage.

“Initiate SAR,” Captain Hinnamen ordered as he steadied himself, fighting the
neuropathic pain shooting throughout his body.

“Vampires target Hotel
Four,” Admiral Singh breathed out as his headache began to worsen once again.

The CGB fighter squadrons fared slightly better.  The
y were starting to regain the upper hand that they had had in the beginning of the fight.  The fighters had been almost decimated in the moments of the alien cerebral attack.  It had caused many of the pilots of freeze or become distracted for just enough time to give the enemy fighters an edge.  Because of this many of those same pilots never had a chance to even see their attackers.  When the pain and confusing visions started to subside the Federation Naval squadrons began to exert their revenge for their fallen comrades.  Achyuta watched through blurry eyes as more of the aliens disappeared into explosions along with a pair of
Regal
Dragonfires.

“
Enemy ASM signatures detected, twelve in number, extrapolating course and targets.  Initiating defensive countermeasures,” Regela called out as new alarms rang throughout the bridge, hurting the admiral’s head even further.

He reached up to hold his head in one hand and forced himself to look at the forward display. 
The missiles being tracked disappeared quickly even before the laser and particle beams reached them. This time the phasing out was expected and Regela quickly readjusted fire to probable locations of the weapon reappearance points.  Most of that fire missed, as the warheads emerged at somewhat different points, but a few were actually intercepted by outbound fire from the CBG escorts.  The rest continued on their way until Regela altered the screen once again.  These new fields of fire took out three more of the anti-ship missiles and caused large singularities to open up in the middle to space.