Federation Reborn 1: Battle Lines (48 page)

---<>---<>---

Lieutenant Lolita felt a thrill of fear when the number of enemy fighters registered. She was outnumbered six, no four to one. Not good odds. There was no way they could handle that, and survive.

She cleared her throat, knowing what had to be done. “Abort,” she ordered, hitting the transmit key on her radio. “Bombers abort, head back to the barn at Point Bravo. I say again abort. There is no way we can punch a hole. We're going to have all we can do to keep you alive,” she said as her force changed course. The fighters sent out to engage her adjusted their courses to intercept a moment later.

---<>---<>---

Captain Post scowled as he read the casualty reports. A dozen dead on the two BCs, twice that on the three surviving destroyers. Minor damage to all three ships, though
Starfish
seemed to be limping badly. He'd been hurt, hurt worse than he'd expected, but he had no intention of stopping. He wasn't going to throw the lives of his people away, not after they had come that far.

He'd expected better of his pilots though. Obviously he'd been wrong. Every single
Raptor
he'd sent out to engage had been destroyed. The homegrown fighters were exact copies of the venerable fighter design. Obviously command had screwed
that
up. The fighters had only particle shields so they had been easy pickings for the Federation
Cobras
. Only the more powerful
Sabre
,
Emperor
,
Fragmac
,
Cutlass
,
Cobra
, and
Executor
class fighters had survived more or less intact.

The fighters that had gone after the all fighter force had been torn to ribbons despite outnumbering them. It hadn't been enough of a margin. Emile had warned him about that. Only five of his fighters had survived the furball. They'd taken down seven of the enemy fighters though.

The fighters that had gone after the bombers and escorts had fared better, killing three of the bombers and four of the fighters for eight of their own number. But it had worked; the enemy fighters were in full retreat. The bombers and two remaining fighters had been rescued by a force of gunships. The gunships had chased his fighters for a bit before aborting just short of
Nevada's
engagement envelope.

The enemy obviously had detailed plans of his ships and weapons. Well, so did he. They hadn't sprung anything new on him.

“Sir, are we going to leave the destroyers behind to protect the transports?” Captain Mueller asked over the tactical link.

“No,” the captain replied, shaking his head. “They'll have to fend for themselves, I want the destroyers to help run the enemy down.” He glared at the squadrons of small ships keeping out of engagement range.

“Sir, those clusters of objects, they've fired! Missile swarm incoming! Four hundred, repeat four zero zero missiles incoming from port and starboard as well as nadir!”

“Engage. Weapons free! Counter missiles engage!” the captain snarled, clenching his fist for a moment before he turned to his keyboard and started to issue his own commands to lend tactical a hand.

“Sir! The gunships! A squadron has broken away from the others and is going after the transports!”

“No time! Tell them to jump out now! We'll deal with them later,” the captain growled, hands moving. He concentrated with his implants to help issue orders to the gunnery crews.

---<>---<>---

Captain Vargess admitted he'd made a mistake in not using the six defensive drones sooner. He should have used them to protect the vulnerable grazer platforms. But what was done was done.

Instead he had them engaged now, firing counter missiles at the enemy's own counter missile spread as well as using their point defense turrets to engage. The range was long, but the Horathians were closing it steadily.

He just hoped it would make some difference. They had to take the starch out of the enemy, hurt them better than they've done so far. Something had to break, and soon.

---<>---<>---

Captain Mueller saw the missile swarm coming in and nodded. She had anticipated it from the tactical recordings from
Jean Bart
. “Tactical, missile wall as we discussed. Nukes only. Defense, get to work,” she said.

“Yes, ma'am,” Commander Esenly said, knowing better than to argue about munition expenditure. If they were dead, it wouldn't matter. Besides, she'd always wanted to see a missile wall in action.

“Screen is up. Decoys are out, ma'am. Counter missile wave one and two are away,” Trisha stated, voice dropping into a professional tone she'd been trained to use. “Point defense targeting now.”

“Helm, hard starboard. Broadside on to the missiles. Weapons free. Fire as you bear,” the captain intoned.

Nevada's
answering missile group was a dozen dirty nuclear munitions. They went directly into the face of missile swarm and then exploded just short of interception. The explosion took out most of the incoming missiles and disrupting many others. The point defense picked off the rest.

---<>---<>---

“Well! That sucked,” Lieutenant Hamilton said in disgust. “I'd expected better than that!” he said waving a frustrated hand at the main screen. They had just shot themselves dry. He watched as the defensive platforms were picked off one by one.

“Yeah,” Captain Vargess said. “Me too.” There was an obvious difference between taking a capital ship by surprise like the admiral had in B101a1 and taking on a prepared and determined foe. It was also obvious that the enemy was willing to accept losses to continue the mission. They were a juggernaut, one he didn't have a hope in stopping.

“Sir, what about the smaller ship squadrons?”

“Against a BC? Two of them? Don't make me laugh. They'll eat them for breakfast. We'd need to soften them up a lot more than that before we can send them in. If we did it now, it'd be a slaughter. Our slaughter.”

“Oh.”

“Order to all squadrons, do not engage. Keep outside their engagement envelope. They are the bull, you are the matadors, keep them off balance.”

“Sir, what do we do?”

“Hope something breaks in our favor. I'm praying to the spirits for a miracle.”

“We'd better get one soon, sir,” a rating murmured.

“Don't get your hopes up. But don't count Admiral White out just yet.”

Chapter 27

A day and a half later Admiral White's forces settled down onto their intercept vector. He wasn't trying anything fancy, no stealth attacks; it just wouldn't work. Coming at the enemy in small penny packets would be next to useless.

Halsey
had followed his orders and avoided action. Captain Vargess had recovered his meager remaining forces and kept ahead of the Horathian fighters sent out to engage and pin his ship down. He was having trouble getting to Point Baker however. Twice the reinforcement fighters en route to his location had been forced to change their course. Such things ate up time and precious fuel.

Captain Vargess had been in charge of the initial battle because he had been the senior officer on the scene. The Admiral couldn't control his forces effectively over the time lag, even with the tachyon link. For all intent and purposes, he had been as much of a spectator as those watching through the ansible link. It had been a very frustrating and trying thirty-six hours.

Seeing the missile pod swarm prove so ineffective was disheartening. It meant the pods he had weren't going to be effective.

“Sir, what do we do?” Jojo asked.

“I'm working on that. Status?”

“Commander Meia was injured, but she got her forces back to the carrier, sir. Lieutenant Lolita is dead. Squadron 2's pass on the transports proved ineffective. They managed to jump out before the gunships could get into their engagement zone.”

“Understood.”

“Sir, are we going to use the gunships with the fighters? I was reading some of the manuals ….”

“The problem with that is the enemy has apparently the same access to those very manuals, Lieutenant. As I said, I'm working on it.”

She gulped. She could see her boss's fur rising, not a good sign. He rarely ever let his temper get the better of him, but this was a very stressful environment. “Yes, sir.”

Amadeus's brown eyes looked her over briefly before he returned his attention to the plot. Stealth was out, he thought, discarding the idea. That meant something else had to be done to even the balance. Or better yet, tip it in his favor.

---<>---<>---

Admiral White met up with his forces just short of their engagement range. He immediately ordered his crews to get to work on his plan. The gunships swarmed about, screening them from the enemy's prying eyes.

Once they were set up, the other ships transferred the missile pods onto the smaller ships. His plan called for a sacrifice, one he had to make if they were going to win. It wouldn't be easy though, he thought, as he called a quick captain's conference.

“We don't have a lot of time so save the questions. I've uploaded the plan to your database. Go over it while I explain,” he started. Captain Harris opened his mouth and then shut it. “Okay, here is what we're going to do.”

---<>---<>---

Meia had refused to stand down despite her shoulder injury. She'd insisted it had been a scratch and had ignored the cracked ribs on that side. The ship's doctor considered her walking wounded and tried to ground her but she ignored that too. She took over a fighter since 001 was too banged up to fly and went out with her forces and the fresh fighters. They went into stealth right after they formed up.

---<>---<>---

“Sir, they have split up. It looks like they are planning to hit us in a scissor attack from both fronts,” Trisha said, looking up to her boss and then the captain.

“On the two planes? Why not all three axis?” Commander Esenly asked.

“Count your blessings,” Captain Mueller said.

“Ma'am, I don't like it when an opponent acts this stupid. They haven't before. Something's up,” the commander insisted. She'd expected a hit on their stern, for the enemy to pull off their already thin fighter coverage and then slip a group in to chew their ass.
Nevada
had a lot of defenses protecting her vulnerable stern. It was armored with a shell plate of armor on her dorsal and keel, but a determined enemy could get in on the sides or cut the angle between her superheated plasma exhaust and the armor if they were good enough.

Fortunately, the designers of their ship had anticipated such a threat and had put a liberal amount of point defense turrets and counter missiles in those quadrants to cover the ship's fat ass. She just hoped it was enough.

“I know. Push the fighter screen out. Try not to leave any gaps though.”

“Ma'am, the gunships have broken clear of the other ships,” CIC reported.

“And the carrier?”

“She's still out of range, ma'am.”

“Damn.” Trisha murmured feelingly.

“You didn't think it'd be easy did you?” the captain demanded, eying the JTO.

“I was hoping, ma'am,” she answered. The captain smiled slightly at that rejoinder.

“Keep hoping. The destroyers are coming in on our starboard. It looks like this is it; they are serious about this,” she said.

She couldn't believe it. She had to admire their balls to set something like this in motion. “Ballsy little fuzz ball, isn't he?” She asked.

“You're telling me, ma'am,” Commander Esenly stated. “The enemy is set up to engage from both flanks at the same time, ma'am. Which do we take out first?”

“Do we have to choose? We can hit them both, right?” Trisha asked.

“Nevada
, destroyers, take out the small fry. We'll focus on the tin cans. Once they are out of the way, the rest will be easy pickings. They'll fall over themselves running,” Captain Post said over the intership link.

“What the hell is he playing at?” he murmured to himself, just loud enough for the microphones to pick up.

“Set up the shot guns,” Captain Mueller stated, hands on her armrests. This should be over quick but nastily she thought to herself.

---<>---<>---

Additional missile pods meant more mass which slowed the usually fast escort ships down appreciably. But the enemy didn't notice; they were focused on the destroyers making a seemingly suicidal keel attack.

The BCs tried to maneuver to engage the destroyers with missiles but failed miserably. The smaller ships were lightning fast and danced out of the way. The destroyers clung to their intended target however. When they got into energy weapons range, the Admiral ordered weapons free. All nine destroyers fired everything they had at the
Massachusetts
. Then their counter missiles and defensive drones cut in to absorb the returning fire.