CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“Herr Graf, we have comms again,” Westgate spoke up.
“Danke,” Basaltberg said, giving Lisa and the corpsman working on Hasselreider one final, lingering look.
“She’ll be fine,” Lisa assured him.
“We got to her in time, Herr Graf,” the corpsman confirmed.
“Good,” Basaltberg said. His eyes touched Lisa’s. “Danke,” he said quietly.
“Bitte,” Lisa said. Helping the corpsman cut open the astrogator’s vac suit, after all, was the least she could do to help.
No one in the flag bridge had been killed, but it had been a close thing. Hasselreider had been the worst casualty, with blast damage from Plasma Conduit Seven blowing back into the compartment and sending fragments of her console into her vac suit in several places. It had only been through quick work by Lisa and one of the corpsmen that they were able to get her suit open and stop the bleeding in time. The other two injuries had been relatively minor, and other corpsmen were already in the process of treating them.
Which wasn’t to say either the flag bridge or Friedrich der Grosse itself was exactly sitting pretty. The plasma blast hadn’t depressurized the compartment as it had Damage Control Central, but if this part of the ship took another hit and lost containment Hasselreider, at least, was dead. And it was likely she wouldn’t be alone.
The flag bridge com section had also been temporarily lost, taking with it not just voice communications but all the tactical displays as well. Now, as Lisa looked up she saw the displays beginning to come back to life.
She winced as the reality of Gerechtigkeitsgeschwader’s situation began to appear. Basaltberg had gone into battle with twenty ships. Now, he had only eleven combat-effective units left, and Lisa had no idea how loosely the Andermani defined the term combat-effective.
As for Friedrich der Grosse herself…
She felt her throat tighten. The display showing the flagship’s own damages had come up now, and it was even worse than she’d suspected. Only one of the forward launchers remained operable, and the telemetry and communication links were badly damaged.
The good news, such as it was, was that three of the battleship’s four point defense stations had survived, although two of them had been cut off from central fire control. Those two would be firing under local control only, their crews forced to rely on the on-mount sensors for targeting solutions.
Gerechtigkeitsgeschwader’s four battlecruisers had been reduced to three. Seydlitz remained theoretically intact, though from the sheer damage profile listed on the display Lisa could only wonder what was holding her together. Zhong Kui’s forward firepower had been cut in half, but at least Winterfeldt’s damage was all aft, and Yanwang had emerged completely unscathed. Basaltberg’s single remaining heavy cruiser, Gewalthaufen, was also unhurt, but his destroyers had been gutted. Only the undamaged Mazu and Kuafu remained capable of combat, supported by the frigates Schwert and Kurzschwert, and all four of them together mounted only as many launchers as a single battleship.
And speaking of battleships…
Lisa frowned, giving the damage listing a second, longer look. Could Vergeltung really have come through that hellish barrage unscathed?
“Signal all ships,” Basaltberg said to Westgate. “Cripples are to remain turned away from Tomlinson. Capital ships and undamaged units will alter to open their wedges as we pass. Then get me Kapitän der Sterne Schwender.”
“Ja, Herr Graf,” the com officer said, turning to his board.
“And us, Herr Graf?” Kranz asked pointedly. “May I ask which heading we fall under?”
“You may indeed ask,” Basaltberg told her. “I’ll decide after I’ve spoken to Kapitän der Sterne Schwender.”
His chief of staff nodded, though in Lisa’s view the gesture indicated acceptance without necessarily being agreement.
Kapitän der Sterne Chao Schwender’s image appeared on the com display. “Schwender, mein Graf,” he said formally.
“Kapitän der Sterne,” Basaltberg greeted him in return. “From what I can see here, Vergeltung appears undamaged. Is that true?”
“Not entirely, Herr Admiral,” Schwender said. “We’ve lost one point defense, our port sidewall is on the tertiary generator, and we have minor damage to our after telemetry arrays. With that proviso, though, we are completely combat ready.”
“Herr Graf?” Schlamme cut in. “CIC confirms the destruction of at least one of the mercenary battlecruisers.”
“Good,” Basaltberg said, looking back at Schwender. “So it will be our three battlecruisers against theirs, and your Vergeltung against Preussen. Opinion?”
“I find the odds eminently acceptable, Herr Admiral,” Schwender said. “Particularly since we know the Iskras exhausted much of their ammunition in those first two salvos and that Preussen is badly hurt.”
“That was my analysis, as well,” Basaltberg said. “Gewalthaufen will be outnumbered two-to-one, but Vergeltung’s firepower should more than offset the insurgents’ advantage in heavy cruisers. Mazu, Kuafu, Schwert, and Kurzschwert will simply have to deal with the two remaining light cruisers and the destroyers until you can get around to them. Now.”
Basaltberg paused, and when he spoke again his voice had gone a shade darker. “I believe the odds favor us, but they will still be tight. Given the state of Friedrich der Grosse’s forward armament and defenses, I intend to present only her stern to Tomlinson as we pass.”
“I see,” Schwender said, his forehead furrowed but his voice steady.
“Unfortunately, our sensors and comms have taken significant damage,” Basaltberg continued, “which means I cannot form and manage a coherent picture of the engagement from here.” He seemed to straighten up a bit. “And that, in turn, means primary coordination for the attack will rest with Vergeltung.”
“I understand, mein Herr,” Schwender said, his voice going a little deeper.
Not surprisingly, Lisa thought, eyeing the stiffness of Basaltberg’s posture. Turning Friedrich der Grosse’s after aspect toward the insurgents would double her remaining firepower and allow her to deploy her towed decoy system.
But it would also further reduce the reach of her already badly damaged communications links. Whatever Basaltberg’s desire to personally bring this to an end, he knew that was no longer possible.
Earlier, Lisa had felt the frustration of being in the middle of a battle where all control was with other people. Now, Basaltberg had to face the same thing, only a thousand times worse, in order to complete his mission.
Back on Manticore, in the days before her wedding, Lisa had sometimes teased Travis about his continual references to his time with Basaltberg and the Andermani. Privately, she’d concluded that her husband-to-be had probably blown Basaltberg’s abilities and character out of proportion.
Now, for the first time, she realized he hadn’t.
“Very well, Kapitän, you’re in command,” Basaltberg said formally. “You have three minutes to prepare. Gott sei mit dir.”
“Und mit uns allen, Herr Graf. Schwender clear.”
* * *
Gerechtigkeitsgeschwader continued toward Tomlinson, its combat-effective units rotating once again to bring their forward weapons and sensors to bear. There wasn’t a great deal of time to accomplish that, and Travis and his two petty officers were still fighting to restore communications with Damage Control Beta as the targeting solutions came up in CIC, DCC, and on tactical displays throughout the squadron.
The displays blinked in crimson readiness, and Kapitän der Sterne Schwender’s level voice came over the com net.
“Engage,” he said.
And once again, Gerechtigkeitsgeschwader spat death into the night.
* * *
“Incoming!” Kistler’s voice sounded extra hoarse over the link to Preussen, and Llyn could picture sweat beading the TO’s forehead despite his vac suit’s temperature control. “We count thirty-six birds. Time-of-flight one-eight-zero.”
“Return fire,” Hansen replied. “And stand by counter-missiles.”
“Missiles away. Prepping second launch. Counter-missiles launching in…two minutes.”
“Very good.”
Quint said something under her breath, then turned to Llyn. “We hurt them, all right,” she said as, on the tactical, fifty-four missiles streaked away from First Fleet. “But I don’t think we hurt them badly enough.”
“We are throwing a bigger salvo,” Llyn pointed out.
“By a considerable margin,” she agreed. “Unfortunately, numbers and throw weight aren’t the full story here. Basaltberg’s defenses are almost certainly better than ours and his capital ships are tougher.” She pointed at the secondary tactical. “Worse, the destroyers’ and Zhàn Fǔ’s cell launchers have run dry. That leaves us only twenty-six missiles for our second salvo and twelve for our third.”
“Which will drain the battlecruisers’ launch cells?”
“High and dry,” Quint confirmed.
Llyn nodded, feeling the tension of a gambler pushing his last chips onto the table. If the first two salvos did the trick, they won.
But every one of Basaltberg’s launchers were fed by internal magazines. Any ships that First Fleet failed to destroy had many more reloads available.
“Second launch away,” Kistler said.
Llyn looked at the tactical as First Fleet’s second, smaller salvo sped away. “A little surprised she didn’t hold them back a bit longer,” he murmured.
“I’m sure she wanted to,” Quint said. “You’d always like to see what the first wave does before you send off the second. But in this case, it’s pretty much a launch-’em-or-lose-’em situation. She may hold back her last twelve, just in case she’s still around to give them targets. But that’s not much more than whistling in the dark.”
In case she’s still around. “So you’re expecting Basaltberg to focus on Preussen?”
Quint gave a little shrug. “I would.”
“Third salvo launched,” Kistler said, his voice almost unrecognizable now. “Counter-missiles launching. Forty seconds to impact.”
“And, damn,” Quint said softly.
And on the tactical Llyn saw the fourth salvo explode from the Andermani launchers.
* * *
Basaltberg’s ships put four salvos into space—a total of one hundred and forty-four missiles—before the first one reached its target. Unconsciously, Lisa tensed, watching for the insurgents’ response.
When it came, it was decidedly anticlimactic: eighty missiles in two uneven salvos. A far cry from the seven hundred fifty that had devastated the Andermani fleet.
Basaltberg’s guess had been right. That single attack had been the enemy’s best and last hope. Now, they had all but run dry.
She looked over at the tactical. Schwender had redirected his third and fourth salvos, she saw, switching targets from the battlecruisers and the other ships which hadn’t joined into the second salvo in order to concentrate on the handful of smaller ships that still had launchers and the missiles to feed them.
The waves of missiles passed one another, and this time there were no midflight collisions.
The insurgents’ remaining counter-missiles began to launch, spreading their shrapnel, building their walls in space. Gerechtigkeitsgeschwader’s first salvo slammed into and through that cloud, twenty of the missiles surviving. They scorched in on their targets through the final, desperate fire of the point defense cannon.
And then the surviving missiles were clear, and once again the fury of thermonuclear destruction marched through the insurgent fleet in hobnailed boots.
* * *
Basaltberg’s targeting had concentrated the first salvo almost exclusively on the surviving Quintessence battlecruisers, with only an afterthought for the badly damaged Preussen. Two of the missiles got through to Spark, and the battlecruiser reeled as they detonated off her starboard bow and savaged her entire starboard side. Retaliation ate only one missile, and it was almost past her before it detonated. Almost. It exploded close aboard her port quarter, and her after hammerhead disintegrated under its fury.
Retribution’s cannon stopped two missiles, and her port sidewall smothered the damage of a third. The fourth detonated as its proximity fuse triggered, but it was too distant to inflict significant damage.
Only one of the surviving missiles targeted Preussen. Like Friedrich der Grosse, Hansen’s ship had turned away, exposing only her undamaged after aspect to the enemy’s fire. But that single missile eluded the pair of autocannon flailing at it with fists of flame, and unlike Friedrich der Grosse, Hansen’s battleship had never been fitted with a decoy system. That single missile threaded the needle of her impeller wedge’s kilt and exploded close aboard her after hammerhead, stripping away both of her aft launchers.
“Skew turn starboard!” Hansen barked as her ship reeled and damage signals screamed like tortured souls, and Preussen labored to obey her. Llyn could hear the hatred in Hansen’s voice, the self-contempt at having to turn her wedge to the enemy and cower behind it.
But she had no choice. Her after defenses were as shattered now as her forward ones, and she couldn’t bring her single pair of surviving launchers to bear without exposing the defenseless throat of her wedge to the waves of missiles still streaking toward her.
Eleven seconds later, even as the Andermani missiles tore into First Fleet’s hulls, it was Gerechtigkeitsgeschwader’s turn.
* * *
Thirty-one of the insurgents’ first wave survived the counter-missiles, continuing on through the autocannon gauntlet while decoys tried to lure them aside. Nineteen got past the final barrage. Five of them targeted Friedrich der Grosse, four targeted Vergeltung, and the rest were scattered among Basaltberg’s lighter units.
Both battleships pitched upward in the final seconds before impact. They had fewer active defenses from astern, but the geometry of their wedges made them less vulnerable from that aspect, and the angle into their kilts could be closed by a smaller pitch angle. Despite that, two of the shipkillers evaded Friedrich der Grosse’s wedge. One detonated on her port side, far enough away that the sidewall absorbed the explosion without further damage. The second ran up on her other side and detonated close aboard. Blast and radiation ripped through her sidewall, the forward sidewall generator exploded in ruin, and the starboard face of her locked habitat ring was turned into a tortured, half-melted landscape of ruin.
Fresh damage alarms screamed, and Lisa heard the reports flow in as the main DCC damage control team—which had somehow and inexplicably ended up under her husband’s command—worked frantically to stem the tide of destruction. The after reactor was scrammed barely in time, and all three of the flagship’s starboard shuttles simply disintegrated on their hard points. Thirty more of Friedrich der Grosse’s people died or were wounded, and Lisa found herself wincing at each loss.
Yet despite the death and destruction, all of the battleship’s remaining weapons systems survived unscathed.
Vergeltung was luckier. Only one of the four missiles that crashed in through her point defenses reached attack range. It detonated outside her starboard sidewall, sparing her crippled port side, and she came through completely undamaged.
Zhong Kui also let only one missile through her defenses. But that single shipkiller detonated barely a hundred meters astern of her, shattering her hull like an icicle dropped on a ceramacrete floor.
There were no survivors.
And then Gerechtigkeitsgeschwader’s second launch tore into the surviving insurgents.
* * *
A cascade of destruction burst through First Fleet’s all but depleted point defenses. The already damaged battlecruiser Spark died spectacularly and Preussen had barely begun her skew turn when she took two more near misses.
She survived the damage as only a battleship could. But there was a vast difference between surviving and remaining combat effective.
On Retribution’s displays, Llyn saw Preussen’s Missile Two go red, leaving the battleship with just a single launcher. He waited for Hansen to do something, or at least say something.
But for once the leader of the insurgents, the woman who would be Empress, was silent.
The Andermani’s third salvo slammed home, and the battlecruiser Retaliation, targeted by no less than five missiles, died as spectacularly as her sister Spark. The Bataan-class cruiser Amphitrite reeled out of formation, her half-shattered hull shedding life pods. The destroyer Brindle took a direct hit and simply vanished.
Retribution once again survived, again with negligible damage aside from the near miss that stripped away half her port sidewall.
But that almost didn’t matter. First Fleet had been reduced to seven units, only three of which—all destroyers—were undamaged. And aside from the Bataan-class Warrior and the heavy cruiser Crossfire, every one of them had exhausted their ammunition. That gave them exactly six operable missile launchers.
But the time to use them had long since passed.
“All ships: evasion!” Quint snapped.
Hansen was in command, Llyn reflected, and might well consider Quint’s unilateral order to be mutiny. But Hansen had gone silent, and Llyn doubted Quint cared what she thought. The Quintessence mercenaries were hers, and she wasn’t going to waste any more of their lives in a campaign that was clearly lost.
Her people knew it, too. They were already responding, pitching up or down madly, interposing their wedges against Basaltberg’s fourth wave of missiles. They were lighter and more nimble than any battleship, and the emergency maneuver saved nearly all of them.
The one exception was the destroyer Nebula, which took a near miss that shattered two thirds of her hull, killed almost half her crew, and sent her reactor into emergency shutdown. Her wedge vanished, leaving her open and helpless.
Llyn stared at the displays, his heart pounding out the seconds, waiting for Basaltberg to fire a fifth salvo, the one that would finish them all.
But that attack didn’t come. The Andermani fleet was still in missile range, yet the attack didn’t come.
“Quint?” Llyn asked carefully.
“He’s giving us a chance,” Quint said, her voice laced with sadness. Not for the mission, Llyn knew, or even for her ships, but for her lost people. “Like us, he’s a professional.”
She gestured to the com officer for an open mic. “All ships, this is Commodore Quint. Strike your wedges. I repeat, strike your wedges.
“It’s over.”
For a long minute the bridge was silent except for the urgent murmurings of the com officer repeating and confirming her order into his own mic. Llyn watched the displays, waiting. Retribution’s own wedge was the first to go, but it was followed immediately by those of the rest of the Quintessence ships. For a few seconds Preussen’s remained active, and Llyn wondered if Hansen was going to take her people and her ship down in the blazing fire of a Wagnerian opera.
But then, her wedge, too, vanished.
Llyn took a deep breath. “So that’s it?”
“Not quite.” Deliberately, Quint turned to him. “The Deneb Agreement stipulates how defeated mercenaries are to be treated. There are no such rules for civilians.” She raised her eyebrows. “Especially civilians who are up to their necks in provocation, bribery, and warmongering.”
“So I’ve heard,” Llyn murmured.
He could kill her, he knew. He could kill her right here, in front of her officers, without any of them seeing or hearing a thing. The falsified shuttle orders were still in place, and enough of Retribution’s shuttles were still in good enough shape for him to escape to Tomlinson. Long before Basaltberg’s overflying ships could decelerate and return he would be hidden among the populace with his forged papers, free to wait out the Andermani until Axelrod could bring him home.
He could do all of that. But as he gazed into Quint’s face, he knew he wouldn’t.
“All I can say,” he continued, determined to at least play it out to the end, “is that turning me in to the Andermani will cost you a huge amount of paperwork.”
“And I do so hate paperwork,” she said. “So here’s the deal.”
She seemed to brace herself. “In the closet in my cabin is a Quintessence uniform in your size. Get up there—right now—and put it on.”
Llyn felt his mouth drop open a couple of millimeters. “Excuse me?” he asked carefully.
“You’re Lieutenant Arnold Bax, special liaison on loan from the Vorpal Blade Mercenaries on Preston.” Her lips quirked in a small smile. “Yes, I know. But it should hold up long enough for you to get repatriated with the rest of us. The ID and other documents are in the pockets.”
“I—thank you,” Llyn said, an odd feeling seeping into him. He’d never liked having to accept favors. In fact, he’d worked very hard his entire life not to be put in that position. But here and now, he didn’t have a choice.
And to his mild surprise, it wasn’t nearly as bad as he’d expected.
“You’re welcome,” she said. “Now go.”
“Right away.”
He started to turn, paused as she caught his arm. “One more thing,” she said, her voice gone odd. “I assume Amos won’t need a uniform?”
Llyn braced himself. “No,” he said.
“Why?” she asked.
“Because he was going to kill you.”
Quint’s lips compressed briefly. “Yes, I thought that might be the case. Bryce wanted me dead, didn’t she?”
“That was her interpretation of her job,” Llyn said. “My interpretation was different.”
“I’m glad,” she said. “Well. Basaltberg will be here sometime in the next couple of hours to accept our surrender. The least we can do is try to tidy up a bit for him.”