All Is Fair
Copyright© 2024 by TheNovalist
Chapter 17: Memento Mori - part 1
The Heavy Cruiser ISS Montreal was the pride of Commodore Gerrard’s 21st System Defence fleet. At almost a kilometer long, it was a formidable piece of military technology, built at a time when pure, unadulterated, almost pornographic levels of firepower were expected to combat the perceived Khuvakian scourge and the now mostly forgotten border clashes with the Maruvians, which everyone at the time expected to be the next big war, but even Gerrard had to admit that his most prized possession was a little outdated. It was, if one was to be technical, a retrofitted Narwhal class cruiser and one that was approaching eighty years old at that. This ship had been laid down when his grandfather was a very young man, but it was still easily the most powerful ship in the 21st sector of Imperium space and by a considerable margin.
The Narwhal class held a few distinctions of its own, too. At the time of its production, it was the first heavy cruiser to sport its very own point defense system, albeit a crude, practically useless one before its recent upgrade. It was also the most heavily armed and armored cruiser ever constructed at the time, almost rivaling the battleships of that era. The armor on the Montreal was as thick as he was tall, and even he wasn’t entirely, one-hundred percent sure exactly how many turrets it had in total. All in all, it was a kilometer’s worth of gun-bristling, armor-plated, ion powered, human ‘fuck you’ to any hostile force that it encountered, and, as such, the Narwhal class heavy cruiser still held the record of the highest number of victorious combat engagements of any type of imperium ship, ever.
And now it was all his.
The Sys-Def branch of the military had a long and proud history of giving second leases on
life to ships deemed obsolete by the Imperium navy, often spending an eye-watering amount of credits on upgrading them to bring them into line with modern technology. For the Navy, it was cheaper and more efficient to simply design and then mass-produce a new line of warship, but the Sys-Def had neither the R&D facilities nor the drydock capacity to do more than just update whatever hand-me-downs the Navy tossed their way.
The Khuvakian wars, especially the appalling losses at Signus IV, had severely limited the number of ships that made it into Sys-Def fleets and vessels that were listed as mothballed before Gerrard’s parents had been born were still forming the backbone of the System Defense forces’ anti-piracy and stellar policing fleets. Of course, the core territories - especially around the leading trade and travel hubs of Earth and planets like Caledonia, Heredon, and New Atlantis - were the most prestigious of Sys-Def postings. As such, they received the lion’s share of newer ships from the navy, but there was something to be said for commanding a fleet in the more distant, vastly more dangerous outer rim sectors.
Sectors like the 21st.
Piracy was rife out here, and not that piecemeal shit the core worlds had to contend with, either. Sector 21 didn’t have to deal with the odd smuggler trying their luck against the defenses of the Hudson Expanse or trying to sneak some shady shit onto Earth Space Dock. No, out here, they had to deal with whole fleets of the little fuckers. From raiding parties hitting mining colonies and small settlements, to wolf-packs chasing, cornering, and then boarding the massive freighters that ferried goods back to the manufacturing centers of the Imperium, none of them shied away from a fight. When entire pirate factions grouped together into a single enormous fleet, they could render entire systems as no-go areas for months at a time, and whole Imperium battlegroups would be needed to clear them out by force. Gerrard and his fleet had seen more combat in the past year than the average core-world commodore would see in his entire career, but he held the honorable distinction of having never - never - needed to call in the navy to fix a problem he couldn’t handle himself.
His tactics were ruthless, his focus unwavering, his opinions on piracy and the men who pursued it as a career were uncompromising, and his authority over the men under his command was absolute. He was a force to be reckoned with, and he knew it. The pirates stupid enough to operate under his sphere of control called him the Gator, after the ancient earth predator that could lay in wait for days, if necessary, before snapping his vicious jaws onto unsuspecting prey. His traps and his ability to predict the hyperspace vectors of pirate fleets were legendary, even if only to the pieces of pirate scum who managed to fall into his grasp.
Just like the fleet that was currently tumbling out of hyperspace in front of him.
Gerrard had never understood why his tactical acumen was such a revelation to his fellow fleet commanders; to him, it was eye-wateringly simple. Sensor pings had picked up a large fleet traveling through Hyperspace. He had managed to get into position ahead of them and launch interdiction buoys, and this fleet had flown right into them. It was common sense, but apparently, he was the only one capable of doing it. He’d had just enough time to empty his carriers of their boarding craft and marines and get them into position flanking the buoys before the fleet had been shot out of FTL, with the rest of his ships lying in wait to stop them from escaping. The fleet would hold the line while the boarding parties secured the enemy ships. Biggest ones first - because that is where the Pirate captains always were - and then everything else could be reduced to debris from range without any risk to his men. It was textbook.
“Tactical, report,” the Commodore barked out across the bridge of the Montreal, his eyes glued to the main viewscreen and twinkling with barely concealed glee at another successfully laid trap.
“Sensor readings coming in now, Sir,” The young man at the console called back as lines of information scrolled wildly across his screen. There was a pause before the rest of the reply came; hesitation was not a virtue that Gerrard tolerated, and he dragged his eyes away from the sights before his fleet in preparation for the withering glare he was about to throw in the direction of the younger lieutenant, but the look of confusion on the officers face gave him pause. “Err, Sir? I don’t think this is a pirate fleet.”
“What?”
“It’s too big, Sir. There are colony ships, and ... Jesus, they have a battle cruiser—a new class one that I’ve never seen before. I’m counting nineteen cruisers, ten of them heavies, and over thirty destroyers, three colony ships, and a single Battlecruiser.”
That unwavering confidence that had marked Gerrard’s career faltered for a moment. The only fleets that could have anything like that sort of composition belonged to the Navy, but there weren’t supposed to be any naval fleets out here. Admirals weren’t technically required to inform Sys-Def command of their paths through defended space, but they almost always did, if only to stop misunderstandings like these. It was a common courtesy, not to mention a professional one. The most infuriating part about it, though, was that he would be blamed for it. Some off-the-books or secret fleet maneuver heading to god-knows-where, intercepted by some bumbling Sys-Def hick who couldn’t tell the difference between a pirate fleet and an Imperium one, despite the fact that, while they were in Hyperspace, nobody could!
“Ah, for fuck sake,” He muttered through a sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose, his eyes now scanning over the outlines of the massive ships of this mystery fleet as they started to right themselves. “You’re right; that’s not a pirate fleet. Open a channel. I guess I’d better start making my apologies before we all get thrown in front of a court martial.” There was a slight spattering of nervous chuckles around the bridge. His men were well aware of his intolerance for incompetence, but outside of that, they liked working under him. He was fair, level-headed, and good in a crisis, but he wasn’t one to pass the buck. Somebody had screwed up, and it almost certainly wasn’t Gerrard, but he would take it in the neck anyway; the idea that he could throw some lowly officer under the bus for this fuck up was one that simply wouldn’t occur to him.
“Um, Sir?” The young woman manning the comms array frowned at her console. “They aren’t responding, not on any of the official Imperium frequencies ... and ... none of the ships in that fleet have their transponders active. I can’t even identify the names of the ships, let alone anyone on them.”
Gerrard’s brow furrowed a little deeper. It may not be a technical requirement to notify Sys-Def of fleet maneuvers in policed space, but deactivating a ship’s transponder was a breach of regulations severe enough to land a captain in military prison for the better part of a decade. And it wasn’t just a single captain, either. There were more than fifty of them out there, and each one of them was breaking one of the first laws of the Imperium Navy. Even if an Admiral ordered them to deactivate their transponders, they would be duty-bound to disobey without a specific order from Naval command, usually with a sign-off from the Minister of Defense himself, and those fleets - the black book, top secret ones - would sure as shit have told Sys-Def to not interfere with their travel.
A hundred different explanations raced through Gerrard’s mind, each one less plausible than the one before it. An entire fleet taken by pirates? Despite the fact that no local pirate armada would even dare challenge even Gerrard’s fleet, let alone that one? Impossible! A whole fleet mutinying and deserting? Slightly less ridiculous an idea, but not by much, and every Sys-Def fleet in the quadrant would be on the lookout for them. But a black ops fleet allowing itself to be interdicted this easily? That was a level of fuck-uppery that was so comically massive as to be almost dismissed out of hand ... almost. “Get me through to Vice-Admiral Grant in fleet command,” Gerrard finally ordered. “Maybe he’ll know what the hell is going on.”
The comm officer gave a curt nod and started tapping away at the icons on her terminal before, a few seconds later, the aged, weathered face of Vice-Admiral Sherman Grant appeared. Piercing grey eyes, a cropped head of snow-white hair ... and a dyed blue beard. He looked like what he imagined a military careered Santa would look like after a weekend at the Burning Man festival. Jesus, Core World fashion was a minefield that even Gerrard knew to back the fuck away from.
“Gerrard,” the man said gruffly. “What can I do for you?”
“Admiral, I have interdicted an unknown fleet, no active transponders, and no response to communications...”
“Pirates, obviously,” the Vice-Admiral rolled his eyes. “Don’t tell me you interrupted a briefing for that.”
Gerrard clenched his jaw for a moment, “Sir, there are fifty ships in this fleet, including a modern Battlecruiser and three colony ships. There is no way they are pirates.”
Grant straightened himself in his chair and frowned. “Impossible,” he said after a few moments of scrolling through his terminal. “The only Colony ships on mission are being used for the Orpheus evacuation efforts, and they’re a hundred light years from you.”
“Well, with all due respect, Sir,” Gerrard tried and failed to control the mounting frustration in his voice. “My sensors, my crew, and my own damned eyes are all telling me the same thing. Three colony ships, one battlecruiser, fifty-plus other ships, all of which vastly outclass their counterparts in my fleet. I am requesting that you contact the Naval liaison and ask if this is one of their off-the-books missions before this turns into a blue-on-blue incident.”
“Sir...” The tactical officer interrupted, “They have raised shields and powered weapons.”
“Shit, okay, gimme a minute,” Grant nodded, overhearing the report and suddenly starting to take the situation a lot more seriously.
“Thank you, Sir,” Gerrard almost growled before turning to the tactical officer. “Order the shuttles to start their approach, they can always be called off if this is a friendly fleet, but I don’t want them hanging around with their dicks in the wind if this isn’t what it seems.”
The tactical officer nodded sharply and started relaying the orders and the Commodore watched as the tiny specs of silver in the peripheries of his screen started moving toward the fleet. God, he hoped that this wasn’t some black op shit, as much as the alternative worried him. The last thing he needed was for body bags to be heading home after their own side killed them. “Tell all ships to raise shields and target the hostile fleet, larger ships first, but do not engage unless ordered to do so or unless fired upon first!”
“Sir! Their fleet is splitting,” The tactical officer yelped, eyes wide with nervous energy. “Frigates and corvettes are moving to defend the colony ships, the rest of the fleet are powering engines straight toward us! They must’ve spotted the shuttles!”
The bridge crew knew what that meant as much as he did. If this was some black op fleet or anything that could be called even remotely ‘friendly,’ then they would have done the exact same thing the 21st Sys-Def fleet had done; they would have just sat there and stared at him until someone higher up made a decision on what happened next. For them to make any sort of move, defensive, offensive, or, in this case, both, could only mean one thing.
They were hostile.
“Shit! All cruisers target that battlecruiser.” Gerrard ordered a heartbeat after receiving the report. “Destroyers, strip shields off the other ships as best you can. Tell those shuttles to haul ass; make sure they board the largest military vessels first!”
The comm channel suddenly reactivated, a frantic-looking Vice-Admiral Grant filling up the right-hand side of the view screen. “They’re rebels!!” He almost screamed.
“What?!?”
“It’s the rebel fleet that ambushed the Marines on Garros II. You need to withdraw!”
“Withdraw? I have active interdiction buoys out there; I can’t withdraw!” Gerrard shouted back. “Why the fuck weren’t we warned??”
“I don’t know. That’s an execution for later.” Grant shook his suddenly pale head. “Three Navy battlegroups are converging on your position; the closest is eleven hours out. Can you hold them?”
“For eleven hours?!? Are you out of your fucking mind? No, not a chance! We won’t last two if this turns into a firefight!”
“Then you need to scatter, fight, run, buy as much time as you can, and preserve as much of your force as...”
The screen went dead.
“Admiral?”
“Sir, comms are being jammed!” The suddenly very young-looking lieutenant practically screamed, her voice pitched much higher than normal with the fear coursing through her. Not just through her but through everyone.
Through him.
“Sir, We’re being targeted!”
“Open a channel to the hostile fleet, all frequencies!” Gerrard barked.
“We can’t, Sir. The jamming field won’t allow any outgoing communications! We can’t even relay orders to the rest of the fleet.”
“Fuck! Okay, target the battlecruiser; when we fire, the rest of the fleet will follow suit.”
“Commodore,” the tactical officer looked up at him with an expression of sheer dread. “We are completely out of position for a defensive engagement. We won’t be able to...”
“I know, son,” Gerrard said, surprising himself with the calmness in his voice. A calmness not shared by any other part of his body. “We fight, or we die. Those are our only choices, at least until we can restore comms.”
The tactical officer nodded, then turned back to his station. “Battlecruiser targeted, Sir. All weapons ready to fire.”
“Okay, time to see if this old girl still has her bite ... Fire!”
Crow. 7
Crow didn’t enjoy sleep. It wasn’t that he found it difficult to fall or stay asleep; it was more because he had lost the ability to dream, at least in the way that everyone else could dream–how he used to be able to dream. What he had now was something different; he either fell into a deep, dreamless sleep or - more often - he re-lived some of the more memorable parts of his life. The problem was that most of the more memorable parts of his time alive had not been pleasant. There was more warfare and fighting than he could ever hope to count, and none of those memories were particularly pleasant. Watching his men, his friends, his comrades, his brothers and sisters in arms die, over and over, for years, was an experience that left him haunted in more ways than one. Then, of course, there was the death of his wife, how she had died alone at the hands of some piece of shit company mercenary, how he had found his daughter cradling her mother’s dead body, those lifeless eyes staring at the smoke-filled sky.
Nightmares were something that he was intimately familiar with, reliving the most challenging times of his life, again and again, made almost every single time he slept a living hell. So, for him to have a good night, reliving a good memory, was a rare treat that he had learned to revel in. This night had been one of the good ones, a particularly memorable night with his wife on one of the last days of their honeymoon some thirty years ago. Stephanie had been even more vigorous than normal on that night, and for years afterward, they had joked that it was the only time he hadn’t been able to keep up with her, no matter how hard he tried. They had ended that night in a pile of sweaty, twisted limbs and rumbled sheets.
So, for him to be tossed out of bed, halfway through the best part of that memory, and dumped onto the floor as the ship lurched beneath his bunk was not only a less than spectacular way to wake up, it was being woken at the worst possible moment. He was seriously considering if he could get away with demoting the helmsman, just out of spite, but the wailing of the claxons and the flashing red light that suddenly illuminated his small cabin quickly brought him to his senses. He barely had his pants on and was carrying his officer’s coat under his arm when he ran out of his cabin door and toward the command deck.
“Communication jammers are active, Admiral,” the middle-aged lieutenant commander at the comm console reported as Crow rushed onto the bridge.
“Good, that will shut them up for a while. Will it hold?” Valdek replied with a feral glint behind his eyes.
“Not for long, Sir. Not if they know what they’re doing.”
“Let’s not hold our breaths,” Valdek nodded and turned back to the main viewscreen, “They’ll fire soon, the flagship first - it will be one of the heavy cruisers - and then the others will follow suit,” he said while apparently addressing the tactical officer to his right. “Whichever ship is the first to open fire, that is the one you target. Return fire immediately, everything we have, cripple her but don’t destroy her.”
“Understood, Sir.”
“What’s happening, Admiral?” Crow asked softly. Crow was a man used to being in the thick of the action, or at least in command of the thick of the action. But he was a terrestrial commander, he was grossly over his head when it came to massed fleet combat. Stellar warfare, in general, was a bit of a mystery to him; he just couldn’t get his head around the three-dimensional aspect of it. That had been the reason he had given overall command to Admiral Valdek when it came to anything to do with the rebel armada. It was not a decision he had regretted, Valdek had perfectly predicted how the Imperium would react after the events of Vallen and had kept them one step ahead of the pursuing battlegroups ever since.
More than that, he had been able to immediately and perfectly sum up the dilemma facing the Orpheus relief fleet in a way that allowed Crow to believe that handing that problem off to the ancients had been the best and only option. But it did leave Crow at something of a loose end when it came to any sort of ship-to-ship combat, and being a loose end was something that Cornelius Crow was in no way used to. Valdek was the highest authority when it came to the fleet, but the Admiral had been given a very specific set of instructions as part of that command, and one of them had been to avoid a firefight unless it was absolutely unavoidable. So to see an Imperium fleet on the main screen and the Admiral seemingly taking the offensive was something that needed an explanation sooner rather than later.
“Ah, General, welcome to the party,” Valdek looked over his shoulder at him with a grin. “Some Sys-Def commodore got lucky with a few interdiction mines, yanking us out of Hyperspace and into a very neat little trap. I don’t think they are expecting us to shoot our way out of it, though.”
“Is that wise? Shouldn’t we try to escape?”
“Well, their interdiction buoys are still active, so we can’t run. I didn’t think that immediate surrender was quite your style, and sitting here and waiting to see how long those battlegroups take to get here didn’t sound wise, either, so I thought it best to blast our way out of this little trap before they do the same to our fleet. Besides, some live fire training will be good for the crew. Oh, and we’re about to be boarded, too.”
Crow blinked. “Is ... is that part of the plan?”
“Being boarded?” Valdek frowned. “I’m not sure that matters, General. We’re being boarded whether it’s part of the plan or not. Probably best to just deal with the problem before contemplating the grander questions of it all.”
Crow blinked again. Valdek seemed like he was having a little too much fun with this, and anyone who took the lives of his men with any sort of cavalier attitude was someone who shouldn’t ever be allowed to lead them. However, he had spent enough time with Valdek since he had joined the rebellion to know that the lives of his men were the one thing that the Admiral valued above anything else. Crow just had to assume that he was one of those rare people who genuinely relished being in combat. Crow had met them before, even if he wasn’t one himself; they were the sort who became increasingly focused the more pressure was put on them, and there was no pressure heavier than leading men in combat. It was a battle of wits and cunning; everyone knew that Valdek was a grandmaster, and perhaps he was just reveling in the opportunity to flex his metaphorical muscles.
Valdek chuckled and nodded to the chair next to his. “Why don’t you take a seat, Cornelius? The Colonel and your favorite Marine captain will take care of the boarding parties; we’re currently rolling the ship to make sure they all dock in some nice, convenient locations for the Marines to mop them up, and while they are doing that, our big guns will be making a mess of their commodore’s admittedly beautifully laid trap.”
“You sound like you admire him,” Crow frowned as he took his place in the XO’s vacated seat.
Valdek shrugged, “It’s not an easy thing to pull off, springing a trap like that. If we were pirates, we’d be fucked right about now; it’s only because I helped design the protocol he is using that is keeping us from...”
“They’re getting ready to fire, Sir!” The tactical officer interrupted his explanation.
Crow had just enough time to pull his eyes from Valdek and lock them onto the main viewscreen before the action erupted. The Sys-Def fleet was arrayed in a ‘net’ formation, a wall of evenly spaced ships resolutely facing the impending threat of the rebel armada. Though Crow was no expert on naval vessels—unable to dissect individual ship classes by their mere silhouettes—the sight before him was unmistakable. The enemy’s larger behemoths huddled at the heart of the net, a concentration of power, while smaller, nimble ships flanked them, poised for flanking maneuvers.
Fractions of seconds stretched like an eternity as anticipation crackled in the air. From a solitary titan at almost the center of the formation—a colossal ship that dwarfed the rest—a pinprick of red preceded a brilliant ribbon of crimson light as the enemy flagship fired its first salvo. It streaked across the void, a harbinger of destruction, before crashing into the Hyperion’s shields with a violent shudder. The impact resonated through the ship like a thunderclap, igniting a storm of adrenaline within Crow’s veins. Of course, it wasn’t just a single shot; it was just that the concentration of turrets on that massive ship was so close that all of the dozens of individual particle beams seemed to blur and blend into a single violent outpouring of power. Just as he processed the hit, the rest of the Imperium fleet joined the fray. A symphony of weaponry unleashed its fury and, in a testament to the skill of the enemy gunners–a skill Crow knew to be infinitely more difficult than terrestrial gunnery, every shot found its mark. Some ships had locked on to the Hyperion, but the majority targeted other rebel warships, their intentions clear: total annihilation of his armada.
“Four direct hits. Shields holding at ninety-three percent, Admiral,” came Tactical’s voice, cool yet charged with urgency. “The Griffon took fourteen hits; their shields are down to fifty-eight percent.”
“Rotate that destroyer squadron to the center of the formation and order squadron six to take their places. Have all other ships reported in?”
“Yes, Sir. Their targets have been approved, and they are standing by.”
“Okay then. On my mark.”
Valdek turned to face Crow, his expression a feral blend of resolve and unyielding determination. The general had seen this look reflected on the faces of a thousand warriors on a thousand different battlefields—a chilling mixture of anticipation and zeal, a devotion to combat that thrummed in the very core of their beings. He was enjoying this.
At that moment, the tension was electric. The weight of every decision hung heavy in the air; each one had led them to this exact place at this exact moment. Crow had hoped to make it back to the Spiral Arm without a fight, but if it was going to happen, then the look of confident determination in his Admiral’s eyes was precisely the one he would rather be seeing. The moment seemed like it was crackling with urgency and danger, as if the fabric of reality itself had drawn taut, waiting for the pivotal moment that would unleash chaos. Crow’s heart raced; every second stretched, filled with the promise of violence, of sacrifice, and of glory amidst the maelstrom that was about to unfold.
“FIRE!” Valdek roared. The order, even though Crow knew it was coming, seemed to land like a physical blow, its echo bouncing off the walls of the bridge before, a second later, it was replaced by the high-pitched yelp of the Hyperion’s own energy weapons being fired. For a very brief moment, the screen took on the visage of a tunnel of light, with dozens of individual lines of red light lancing across space toward their targets. At the same time, every other ship in the rebel armada opened fire, or at least the ones on the outer edges of the formation did. There didn’t seem to be anywhere near as many of them as the Imperium had unleashed, but just like them, each of them found their mark.
“Target Shields down to thirty percent!” Tactical announced with that same ferocious glee as was in Valdek’s voice. “Shields on two other enemy cruisers have collapsed!”
“Hit them again! Order Destroyers to switch targets at their discretion. Target those two Cruisers with the MAC guns! ... Fire at will!”
For a moment, for the briefest flashes of time, Crow’s mind was transported back to a young private fighting beside him during one of the opening battles of the rebellion. They had been hunkered down behind a barricade on a battle-torn Cerberus street. Just like Valdek had done, a younger Colonel Crow had given the order to fire at will. The private, that same glint of passion in his young eyes, had turned to him with a grin and asked. “Will? Which one is Will? I’ve been shooting at Dave!” Crow hadn’t seen the funny side at the time and couldn’t laugh at the joke for years after that, not after finding the boy’s laser-riddled body a few hours later. But for some reason, here, on the bridge of a battlecruiser, with his mind unable to contribute to the fight in any meaningful way, that was where it wandered to.
He chuckled just as the second salvo flashed across the screen and smashed into the enemy ships, followed a second later by the deep shudder of the MAC gun’s vibrations jolting through the hull.
The rounds of the MAC guns thundered into the armored hulls of the two exposed cruisers, striking almost a thousand miles away, barely two seconds after they had been fired. The Loire, a light cruiser situated just to the right of center in the formation, bore the brunt of five MAC turrets from the Hyperion. The first hit slammed into the command deck with merciless precision, tearing a gaping hole the size of a small building through the outdated armor, slaughtering the ship’s captain and his entire command staff in an instant. With their viewscreen having been replaced by the shattered remains of the pierced hull, the vacuum of space eagerly sucked their bodies into the abyss.
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