The Slaver Wars: First Strike (The Slaver Wars Book Four) (36 page)

Commander Evans
stepped over to the tactical officer and, inserting her command key, gave the
order.

Two metal hatches
slid open on the WarStorm and, for a moment, there was the barest flicker of movement.
Due to the sublight drive and inertial dampening systems on the Devastator
Three missiles, they literally left the tubes and arrived at their target simultaneously.
The first missile struck the Hocklyn shipyard’s powerful energy shield,
knocking a hole in it. The second missile shot through and detonated against
the heavily armored hull.

-

Fleet
Commodore Resmunt gazed in shock as two powerful explosions struck the
shipyard. The first was a brilliant light and EMP pulse that shut down the
weapons of many of the ships closest to the explosion. The second explosion was
against the heavily armored hull of the shipyard itself. He looked up at the
War Room’s main viewscreen and, when it cleared from interference, saw that a
good quarter of the shipyard was a mangled wreck and its energy shield was down.
Human weapons were raining down upon it and in less than a minute, what had
taken months to construct was a tangled, giant mass of expanding gases and burning
and glowing metal.

“What was that?”
First Leader Ganth oathed as he saw the shipyard destroyed. “What type of
weapon did they use?”

“I don’t
know,” Resmunt responded as he played the image over and over in his mind. “It some
type of new weapon we’ve never seen before.”

Ganth gazed at
the commodore, knowing that the battle had now turned. “Honor is before us,” he
intoned respectfully.

“Honor is
before us,” Commodore Resmunt replied as he saw hundreds of small new threat
icons leaving the human carrier ships. He watched the new threat with worry.
What were the humans up to now?

-

“Jacob, hit
the Hocklyn ships that were closest to the shipyard. Some of them may not have
had time to restore their systems after the EMP blast,” ordered Amanda,
breathing a sigh of relief now that the shipyard was gone. The entire Hocklyn
fleet seemed to be in disarray from the sudden destruction, now was the time to
strike them. “Send me your light cruisers; I want them going in with Second
Fleet.”

“On their
way,” Jacob replied. “Go get them, Amanda!”

-

Commodore Resmunt
felt his flagship shake violently as another human nuclear missile struck the
energy shield. Looking over at the damage display console, he saw more lights
turn a glaring red. Already, the War Room was full of smoke and the ventilation
system was struggling to keep it clear.

“Fleet
status,” he demanded in a hard voice, knowing he was now losing the battle.

The small
ships had been armed with numerous nuclear tipped missiles, which had ravaged
his fleet, causing damage beyond belief. Ships that had been too close to the
shipyard had been easy targets and had died before their shields could be
restored. Other ships that had been damaged previously had been the target of
multiple missile strikes, which had created holes in their energy shields,
allowing missiles to strike the hulls of the ships. In just a few minutes, over
forty Hocklyn ships had been destroyed.

“Only four dreadnoughts
remain, as well as seven war cruisers and sixteen escort cruisers,” Ganth
snarled in anger as he saw victory slipping away.

“Pull us back
to War Leader Osbith’s fleets, perhaps by adding his ships to ours and using
the defensive satellites we can still hold the humans at bay,” ordered Resmunt,
feeling desperate.

He also knew
it would buy some valuable time to repair his damaged ships. He doubted if the
humans would follow his ships into the satellites, at least not at first. He
also knew he had his heavily armed fleet base to fall back to if necessary. If
he had to fight these humans hand to hand down on the surface then that’s what
he would do.

-

“They’re
falling back,” breathed Commander Evans in relief as the bomber strike swept
past them on its way back to the carriers. “We hurt them badly with the
Devastator Three strike and the bombers.”

“Follow them
in, but stay just out of range of those defensive satellites,” Amanda ordered.
“We need to initiate some ship repairs across the fleet before we tackle that
defensive satellite grid.”

Amanda leaned
back in her chair and allowed a moment of calm to overtake her. The adrenaline
from the battle was still pumping through her veins. She closed her eyes
briefly and waited for her breathing to return to normal. Opening them, she saw
the main viewscreen was focused on the planet below. It was a beautiful Tellus
type planet with massive oceans and small landmasses.

Amanda stood
up and walked over to the communications console where Lieutenant Trask was
sitting. “Contact Admiral Streth and inform him that phase one of the battle is
complete. The Hocklyn shipyard has been destroyed and their fleet driven
beneath their defensive grid.”

Angela nodded
and sent the transmission. She had been frightened the entire battle,
particularly when she had felt the WarStorm shudder violently from nuclear
missiles detonating against her powerful shields.

“We survived
that,” a friendly voice spoke over her mini-com.

Looking over,
she saw Benjamin smiling at her from his sensor console.

“But what
comes next?”

“We take the
planet,” Lieutenant Ashton commented from Navigation. “It’s going to be our
main base for this sector.”

All eyes
turned toward the viewscreen as they wondered what was still ahead of them.
Operation First Strike was well on its way to success, and only the planet
below and the remaining Hocklyn forces in orbit stood in its way.

 Resmunt gazed
uneasily at the main viewscreen from the War Room in his flagship, the
Liberator. For the past five days, he had watched with growing trepidation as
the humans used their small bomber and fighter craft to degrade his satellites
defenses. Looking at the main sensor screen, he saw that the latest attack was
even now withdrawing. His dwindling fighter forces had met each human attack
wave until now none remained.

“They have
eliminated seventy-two percent of the satellites,” First Leader Ganth reported
in frustration. They had only managed to destroy twelve of the small enemy
craft out of the sixty that had just finished making their attack run on the
remaining satellites. The larger human war craft were staying outside the
satellites weapons range as well as the defending warships floating beneath.

“They will be
coming for us soon,” Resmunt spoke as he looked at the numerous red threat
icons hovering just out of reach of his ship’s weapons. He had accepted that he
would soon be finding honor above this distant and lonely planet so far away
from their home worlds.

“How are the
repairs coming on our remaining ships?”

“Repairs have
been completed,” replied Ganth, looking over a data screen. “The ships are not
at 100 percent. Some of the damage can only be repaired at a shipyard, but they
are all combat ready and capable of bringing honor to their crews.”

Resmunt let
out a deep breath as his eyes returned to another viewscreen showing the blue
white world beneath them. He had sent most of his Protectors down to the
surface to defend the fleet base. With the defenses he had put around it, he
knew the humans would suffer heavily when they tried to take it.

It was also
frustrating that the AI FTL transmitter was still offline. His technicians were
not sure what was wrong with the device, other than it had failed when the new
human weapons had destroyed the orbiting shipyard. The humans were still
jamming normal FTL communication so there was no way he could get a message out
to the High Council to report on his current situation.

He looked back
at the sensor screen and the green icons that represented what remained of his
fleet. War Leader Osbith’s fleets were still intact with four dreadnoughts, eight
war cruisers, and twenty-four escort cruisers.

Resmunt’s own
survivors from his battle at the shipyard were four dreadnoughts, seven war
cruisers and sixteen escort cruisers.
He had sixty-three
ships to oppose a fleet of over one hundred. In normal times, he would have
been quite pleased with a fleet of this size. But this situation was anything
but normal for the Hocklyns. He also knew that the humans had other fleets that
were probably in the process of still attacking the empire. Without FTL communication,
he could not be sure what was occurring in his sector, but he had a suspicion
that other worlds were still falling, particularly the slave worlds.

-

Jeremy watched
from the Command Center of the Avenger as they jumped into their next target
system. From the information his stealth scouts had brought back, this star
system contained a heavily industrialized planet that the Hocklyns had
conquered.

“Jump
complete,” Colonel Malen reported from where she was standing in front of the
holographic plotting table.

“Sensors
coming online,” Kevin added as his screens gradually began clearing of static.

“All systems
online and functioning normally,” Ariel reported from his side where she
normally was after a jump.

The main
sensor screen quickly cleared, and the other twenty-seven ships of his command
appeared as friendly green icons.

“All ships are
in their projected positions,” Ariel responded with a pleased tone.

Jeremy had
been letting her direct all of the fleet’s hyperjumps so as to better
coordinate their emergence into a fleet formation ready for combat. She was immensely
satisfied that all the ships were within just a few kilometers of where they
were supposed to be. She would get with Kelsey later and refine the jump
equations slightly. Perhaps if they carried them out to twelve decimal places
the jumps would be dead on.

Ariel placed
her hands on her shapely hips and looked around the busy Command Center. She had modified her body only slightly after Clarissa had commented about the extra
attention she had gotten from just enlarging her breasts by one cup size. Ariel
had stayed away from that, knowing that it might aggravate Katie, but she had made
her hips look a little more feminine with more curves in the right places.

“Battle carrier Cygnus is launching a CAP,” Malen reported as half a dozen small green
icons left the massive carrier. “All ships reporting normal status.”

“What do we
have?” Jeremy asked as his gaze turned toward the holographic tactical display.
This would be the first system his fleet had jumped into that possessed an
inhabited planet.

On the display,
a solar system appeared. There were ten planets, with two in the liquid water
zone. The outer three were large, Jupiter-sized gas giants. There were also
several small asteroid fields as well as numerous moons.

“The fourth
planet is the inhabited one,” Colonel Malen informed Jeremy as she studied the
data now coming in over the long-range sensors. “It has high power emissions
and all the evidence of a highly advanced industrial civilization.”

“Hocklyn
forces?” asked Jeremy, raising his eyebrows. He knew that there should be at
least one or two escort cruisers in the system.

“There is a
large space station in orbit,” Malen continued. “A number of ships are docked
to it, but from this range our sensors can’t make them out.”

“Ariel?” asked
Jeremy, glancing over at the AI.

“Two escort
cruisers and six freighters are docked to the station,” Ariel reported as she
ran the scans from the station through her computer systems. “There are also
another ten freighters moving in the system. I am detecting several mining
operations in the small asteroid fields as well as upon several of the smaller
moons.”

“This race
still has their full tech base,” commented Malen, narrowing her eyes. “I
thought the Hocklyns normally eliminate a big part of that?”

“They do,”
Ariel replied as she continued to study the data. “This bears some
investigation into the aliens that inhabit this system.”

“What are your
orders, Admiral?” Colonel Malen asked, turning to face Jeremy. “It’s obvious
from the two Hocklyn escort cruisers docked to the space station that this is a
Hocklyn controlled system.”

“Then we take
this planet from the Hocklyns and make it ours,” Jeremy spoke, his eyes
narrowing. “Perhaps the inhabitants of this world will become allies. Helm,
take us in system at sixty percent sublight.”

Katie watched
Ariel with a slight smile tugging at the edge of her lips. Both Clarissa and
Ariel had taken advantage of their new holographic figures to enhance them,
Ariel’s not near as drastic as Clarissa’s, but both were now definitely more feminine.
Both AIs seemed to be interacting with the crew better, and everyone had easily
accepted their holographic images. It was exciting seeing the two AIs continue
to grow.

“Still
watching, Ariel,” Angela spoke over their private mini-com. “I think these
holograms you made for Clarissa and Ariel are working out great.”

“They both seem
to like them,” Katie agreed as her green eyes played over the screens on her
large console, making sure all of the ship’s computer systems were running at
peak efficiency. “I’m just glad I was able to do it.”

“It makes
speaking to Ariel a lot easier and more personal,” Angela added as she listened
to a message coming in over her com system. It was just a status report from
the Monarch cruiser Reprisal.

“Ariel has
been my friend from the time I was fifteen,” responded Katie, recalling that
first frightening meeting in Admiral Strong’s office where Ariel had revealed
herself. “She always will be.”

Ariel smiled
to herself. She had been listening discreetly as always. It made her feel good
inside hearing what Katie had just said. Sometimes, she was glad she could feel
human emotions, and this was one of them.