Setosha - the Beating Heart
Copyright© 2010 by Prince von Vlox
Chapter 24
Setosha System Hyperjump Limit
Gabrielle Edwards watched the convoy of merchants adjust their formation and shape a vector towards Setosha. The eight slow, fat Imperial transports had just popped out of hyperjump right in front of her. They were escorted by four frigates and a light cruiser, more juicy targets. The escort was more than a pair of fighters could be reasonably expected to take on, but that was half the fun. She imagined swooping down on them in her fighter, gutting the escort and forcing the merchants to surrender. She imagined swooping down on the merchants, chopping them up and racing away before their escorts could do anything to stop her.
She imagined ... She sighed mentally. She imagined obeying her orders and watching, frustrated, as eight slow, fat Imperial merchants and their escorts sailed past her nose, ignorant of the hungry eyes tracking them. She stifled those thoughts. There was no satisfaction in such thoughts, or in her orders. Convoys going to Setosha were not to be bothered. The only convoys she and her Second were allowed to stop were the ones trying to leave the system.
“Big, fat, slow,” her Second teased softly. “They’d never miss such a little convoy.”
“Hush, Amber,” Gabbie told her Second. “Orders are orders.”
“We could scare them without stopping them. That would be fun.”
“True,” Gabbie said slowly, tasting the idea and liking it. “Our orders don’t say we can’t scare them a bit.” She drifted forward on her reaction thrusters. Right now they were five light seconds from the convoy and essentially invisible. It wouldn’t take much for them to scream in at high speed, lose a few long-range shots at the escort, and then run. That would be only a little risky, and a whole lot of fun for everyone. It would be good training, too. Gabbie had a new Second to get into shape, and she was supposed to seize any reasonable training opportunity that presented itself.
She plotted their approach and course while her weapons warmed up. She could have warmed her weapons during the run-in, but this gave her something to do while the convoy approached and she reconsidered just how stupid this joyride probably was. Her course plotted, she cross-loaded it to Amber, who caught it on the first try and repeated it back perfectly.
Amber was a good kid. She had a natural flair for maneuver and a beautifully delicate sense of timing, but she needed more experience with gunnery and a few more fights for seasoning. Too many times she had wasted valuable seconds playing with her kills instead of finishing them off. Experience would teach her the folly of that.
“Ready, kid?”
“Let’s go have fun, Gabbie.”
They had just barely started to move when the large purple blotch of a hyperjump footprint appeared near the upper end of her gravity scan and within one light second of the convoy. Instantly they both changed course and shut down.
“Did they see us?” Amber underlined her question with a subtle vector change, then another. Gabrielle matched her Second’s maneuvers, happy to see Amber remembered that little trick. Detected or not, neither of them would linger near the spot where they had so briefly run up their drives.
“Probably not. If they had, at least one of those frigates would be on their way over here to find us. Let’s keep moving just in case. I’m more concerned about that incoming. Think it could be ours?” Gabbie ran through the information they’d been given in their preflight briefing back on Suffren. “Nobody said anything about other ships in this sector.”
“Maybe it’s one of the Children. Five days ago, one of the girls in First Squadron spotted three of them in her sector. The talk is if you see anything strange going on, it’s probably them.”
“Only one source jumping in,” Amber said. “I thought they operated in threes.”
“Look again, Amber. I have another footprint right behind the first one. See it? There are two coming in.”
“Now I do. It was blocked, boss. I didn’t know you could do that.”
“What do they teach you in Flight School these days, kid?”
There was nothing they could do after that but watch. The convoy’s escort, also sensing that hyperjump footprint, formed quickly to face the unknown inbound ships.
Two ships popped out of hyper, powered up, and accelerated at the convoy in what was clearly an attack run by combat veterans who knew what they were doing. Gabbie had to look twice and then check her instruments. Her first identification had been ridiculous, but a second only confirmed it.
“Those are Idenux, Gabbie! Aren’t they?” Amber recognized the attacking ship’s speed and maneuvering characteristics, even as her Flight Lead worked through a detailed confirmation of the R/F signatures of the new ships’ drives.
“So they are,” Gabbie said finally. Laughing out loud wasn’t really possible when you were immersed in the cushioning fluid of your Personal Capsule, but this was almost torture. Amber’s trills of humor echoed briefly in Gabbie’s ears as she watched the Idenux cruisers attack the Imperials.
Every instinct, honed by years of combat experience, screamed at her to attack the Idenux. Not today. Today she would only observe and laugh. Oh, it shouldn’t be a laughing matter, but seeing Idenux attack Imperials was funny, especially for a member of the Families. This film was going to be very popular back on the Suffren.
“Aren’t we going to do something, Gabbie?” Amber’s voice was mournful.
“Such as what?” Gabbie watched a half-dozen fighters detach themselves from each Idenux cruiser. “If we did attack, which side would it be? I’m open to suggestions here, kid. Meanwhile, flip your cameras on and watch them work. Maybe we can learn something.”
Amber didn’t say anything more, which probably meant she was pouting or thinking. Thinking would be good. Sometimes it was hard to tell with the girl. Gabbie hoped her new Second was paying close attention to the fight. This was a priceless opportunity to learn more about Idenux and Imperial combat tactics without any risk.
She made sure her own cameras were recording, and then settled back to enjoy the show. The Idenux, thieving, murdering enemies for almost 60 years, and the Empire, their current enemies, and until recently the power behind the Idenux, were trading shots. This was rich. A front-row seat at this performance was more fun than a girl should be allowed to have.
In many ways, watching the attack was every bit as instructional as she’d hoped. The Idenux cruisers concentrated on the Imperial light cruiser, weaving back and forth and jamming heavily to throw off the cruiser’s fire control as both sides lobbed missiles and energy shots back and forth. Through her sensors, she could see the jamming as a yellowish haze that radiated from the Impie. Hits from energy bolts lit ships with a searing blue, and the stand-off warheads were a lingering white flash. Hits showed red on each ship, sometimes just a quick flicker as the shot hit ablative armor, other times a deep, sullen red that seemed to pulse and grow before slowly fading.
The Idenux fighters concentrated on the Imperial frigates. They ripped in and out, gutting those ships with their strikes. “Tsk, tsk, somebody needs more close-defense mounts,” Gabbie said. It was a slow and brutal fight, and not at all one-sided. At the end of 15 busy minutes, three Idenux fighters were smashed, and all four Imperial frigates were badly hurt. The Imperial light cruiser, thoroughly battered, could still move but was out-gassing so badly that it was militarily useless.
The freighters hadn’t even tried to scatter. There was no way they could escape the Idenux cruisers. Most could probably muster between 20 and 40 Gs, and a civilian hyperdrive took so long to recharge that they couldn’t flee into jump. They were still quite close together when the Idenux cruisers turned on them.
The surviving fighters disabled the freighters’ drives, and one of the Idenux cruisers dropped off a shuttle to stand guard and keep an eye on the wrecked escort vessels. Satisfied, the two Idenux cruisers finally closed and docked, each of them taking a freighter. They separated from the rest of the convoy and then jumped out with their prizes.
“Amber, get back to the rendezvous point as fast as you can,” Gabbie ordered. “I’ll stay here and watch. Bring me at least one ship with hyperjump capability, someone who can dock with one of those freighters.”
“But we aren’t supposed to stop freighters,” Amber protested.
“We’re not. The Idenux stopped them for us. This is priceless information, Amber. Who knows what we might find out?”
“But, ma’am--”
“Amber, go get someone now!” Gabbie pitched her voice to the tones she had learned Amber would most likely obey. “I don’t care who. I don’t give a rip about Impies falling captive to the Idenux. As far as I’m concerned, they deserve each other. We’re out here on a scout, and this is information. Admiral Bridges will want to know this. Get! Hurry!”
Amber accelerated away. Gabbie returned to watching. This was Amber’s first real combat deployment, and she had to learn that fighter duty involved a lot of snap decisions based on little more than hunch and instinct. The solutions the instructors drilled into a pilot during training were right for 90% of the things she found. Today was one of those times when a veteran pilot ignored the book solutions, ignored her orders, and backed her instincts.
Gabbie added a trickle of power to her engines, withdrawing a bit. She didn’t want to be in the way if the Idenux brought back friends to help clean up the remaining Imperials. If they didn’t, there was a good chance Fleet could capture a relatively intact Imperial light cruiser with all sorts of information still running in their computers. And who knew what you could find from their officers and crew? It was a good thing Gabbie was already surrounded by fluids. It wouldn’t do to have Amber catch her drooling.
While she waited, the Idenux shuttle busied itself rounding up survivors from the action. It was still doing that two hours later when the same two Idenux cruisers popped in to pick up another pair of captured merchants.
Good, Gabbie thought, just the two of them. Either they’re working alone or they’re greedy, or both. This could work. An hour after that Amber showed up with three of the Children.
“They’re all I could find, Gabbie,” Amber said.
“Thanks, kid. I think these are the best you could have found. Gabrielle Edwards,” she addressed the silent trio on a tight beam, identifying herself. “B Flight, Second Squadron, Suffren.”
“Tazra Holmes,” said one of the Children. “These are Mary Duryea and Tatum White. Did I hear right? Idenux and Impies fighting each other?”
“I’ve got film of it,” Gabbie said. “The Idenux cruisers were back an hour ago to pick up two more of the freighters. They seem to be on a two-hour turnaround. I thought we could steal the leftovers for ourselves right after they pick up the next two. That should be in about an hour.”
“Oh, that’s too good,” Tazra said. “I like that idea. Mary, Tatum, when those Idenux cruisers are done, you grab one merchant each.”
“What about the light cruiser?” Mary asked. The Imperial light cruiser was still outgassing, but it was no longer glowing so brightly in the infrared. The surviving damage control teams were probably managing to get things repaired. They had probably tried to signal for help, but any rescue was still several hours away. Did they have any weapons working? It was possible, but not too likely.
“I’ll take care of the cruiser,” Tazra said to Gabbie. “You and Amber take care of that shuttle. We’ll have to be satisfied with whichever two freighters those Idenux leave behind. They’ll know somebody took them.”
“They may think the Impies managed to get under way again, or that some other Imperials came along and rescued them,” Gabbie said. “Anyway, if we take them, what can they do about it?”
“Not much,” Tazra admitted. “I have no idea what the Admiral is going to do with a handful of Idenux from that shuttle, but I’m willing to find out. Try not to kill all of them, if you can avoid it. Something tells me she’ll like this present.”
An hour later, the two Idenux cruisers reappeared again, right on time, docked with two of the four remaining freighters, and jumped out while the shuttle continued to stand guard. Right after that, the Children closed with the last two freighters. In less than five minutes, they latched on, accelerated, and jumped. Tazra approached the light cruiser cautiously; no sense in taking chances. But it didn’t launch any missiles or fire any beams, and no fire-control tracked her. Gabbie and Amber headed towards the shuttle. Gabbie, remembering that some Idenux shuttles were armed, circled it cautiously.
The shuttle tried to flee. Gabbie ran up alongside it, fired, and disabled its drive.
“When will they learn?” she asked rhetorically. “You don’t outrun a faster ship.” She locked on to the shuttle. Amber spiraled in next to her. Together, they towed it back to where Tazra was attaching herself to the wrecked light cruiser.
“How are we going to do this?” Amber asked. “Fighters don’t have a jump drive.”
“Dock with me,” Tazra said. “That’s the only way.”
The two fighters latched on to Tazra. Squeezed between the two bigger ships, Gabbie felt like she was the filling in a sandwich. “All right,” she said after she double-checked her landing clamps. “I think that’ll do it.”
“Right, then. Hold on tight,” Tazra said. She turned until they were aimed towards the Fleet, and then juiced her drives carefully until she achieved enough velocity to jump.
Families Fleet Rendezvous Near Setosha
“They did what?” Admiral Bridges asked. She dropped the pen she was holding and stared at Captain Kelly Poole. “Did I hear you right?”
“Two of my pilots, and three of the Children, captured a pair of Impie freighters that the Idenux had just taken,” Captain Kelly Poole of Suffren repeated, grinning. “Not satisfied with that, they also contrived to bring back a smashed-up Imperial light cruiser that had been part of the merchants’ escort, and added a shuttle full of Idenux for spice. I sent my Marines over, but the Idenux disappointed them. They surrendered without a fight. The crew of the light cruiser was too busy with damage control to offer any resistance.”
“What about any survivors from the rest of the escorts?”
“The shuttle had picked up some, ma’am, but I was going to send someone back to check for more survivors, unless, of course, you want to leave them to the Idenux.”
“I’m tempted, but it wouldn’t be right.” Admiral Bridges nodded. “You never know what surprises we may find while being good neighbors. Go ahead and take care of that.”
Admiral Bridges looked at Captain Lacey, but the latter shook her head. “I don’t know what to tell you, Kelly,” Admiral Bridges said. “Idenux preying on the Impies. I suppose there’s some sort of justice in that. Did the prisoners say anything? The Idenux, I mean, unless you got something out of the Imperials.”
Captain Poole laughed. “Only that they were scared spitless when they found out they’d been captured by us. They didn’t think they’d run into us here. Someone told them the Empire controlled this system, so they thought they’d snap off a few Imperial convoys.”
“What if they’d found our ships instead?”
“It seems they’re under some sort of general order to steer clear of us,” Captain Poole said.
“My family does a lot of herding,” Captain Lacey said quietly from where she was sitting. “Cattle, sheep, other ruminants, and we breed genetically enhanced working dogs. One of the theories about training dogs is that you have to teach them what not to do, reward and punishment, sort of like what you do with children.” She chuckled ruefully, shaking her head again. “It’s taken us 30 years, but I suspect we’re finally seeing results with the Idenux.”
“I hope so,” Admiral Bridges said. “What was on those freighters, Kelly? Is there anything we can use?”
“Depends, ma’am.” Captain Poole motioned to another officer who handed her a checklist. “According to the Marines, it looks like heavy equipment used by ground troops. According to the prisoners, the convoy was carrying an Imperial armored brigade to Setosha. There were a few caretakers on the ships we took, a handful of troops, and some administrative types.”
“Well, we’ve spared our kin that much,” Admiral Bridges said. “Wait a minute. If we got the heavy equipment, then that means the Idenux got the troops.”
Captain Poole’s grin grew even broader. “Aye, ma’am, that they did. Should be a real interesting boarding action, don’t you think?”
“The Idenux Ship Lord won’t put up with that for long,” Captain Lacey said, laughing. “At the first sign of resistance, he’ll put a hole in their pod and order them to surrender. If he’s really feeling cheated, he’ll just blast them all to shreds.”
“I wonder what he’ll do with the survivors?” Captain Poole asked. “I know, that’s a rhetorical question. He’ll probably feed them to the Imperial flesh merchants. What goes around comes around, or something like that. I have an aunt who says that all the time.”
Admiral Bridges chuckled at the thought. “Well, at least this is a problem of a manageable kind. Enemy of my enemy, you know how it goes, however distasteful. Send the Idenux back to Home and let someone there deal with them. I’ll recommend that they be put on a captured merchant and let go. Maybe Volyn can ship them to a neutral station or someplace like that. If they don’t want to raid us anymore, I’m not going to do anything to change their minds. Reward and punish, eh? Living through an encounter with us should be reward enough. Somebody might mention that to our, um, our guests.”
“I already did,” Captain Poole said. “I told them to consider themselves lucky. I’ll have a complete inventory of those two captured transports’ cargoes in 20 hours or so. But the preliminary list shows there’s enough ammunition and weapons on them to keep us busy counting for quite a while.”
“We have a convoy headed Home in a few hours,” Captain Lacey said. “I’ll make the arrangements to send the prisoners back that way. We’re sending all of our critically wounded back, too. There’s got to be room to stuff these prisoners in an odd corner somewhere. We could probably ship this equipment back with them.”
The smile slipped off Admiral Bridges’ face. “Wounded. Yes. Thanks for reminding me. Do we have a final number?”
Captain Lacey nodded, her expression serious. “We had 25 dead and 28 wounded from 4th Cruiser Squadron. There were a few broken bones among the Marines they picked up, but they don’t seem to mind. Last I heard, they’re still laughing about it.”
“They would,” Captain Poole said. “How in the world did those girls manage to take prisoners?”
“I have no idea,” Captain Lacey looked pleased. “But we have 15 of them. Turns out it was an ambush all along, just like Corey said. The Impies had one set up at each of our bases.”
“I wish we’d known sooner.” Admiral Bridges sighed regretfully at the lost opportunity. “We could have whittled the Imperials’ strength down nicely in a few fights.” She thought a moment. “This would be a good time to try those long-range missile drones. We could put a few next to every station and see what happens. I don’t think we’ll get much, but it’s worth a try.”
“I’ll get someone on it, ma’am,” Captain Lacey said, slipping her hand into a shunt glove.
“I don’t expect we’ll catch anything,” Admiral Bridges repeated. “That Imperial Admiral is a cagey one. He’s probably already pulled his ships back. What about Meredith’s force? What are our personnel losses? We can replace the ships. It’s the people I hate to lose.”
“You’ve seen the list of ships lost?” Captain Lacey asked quietly. Admiral Bridges nodded. “Final count is 504 dead, 317 wounded, injured, and missing.”
Admiral Bridges flinched. “When I saw Breitenfeld go, I knew it would be bad,” she said after a long, painful silence. “I didn’t realize it was that bad. I expect this is another aspect of the battleship problem. They smash our ships so fast there is no time for people to escape.” She looked back and forth between the two captains. “I’m going to visit the Walter Reed. Before I do, I have an idea, and I want both your reactions.”
After hearing her out, both officers began to nod. “That’ll work,” Captain Poole said. “It’ll go over well in the fighter squadrons; one of their own reaching high command.”
“I was originally going to put her in charge of the cruisers,” Admiral Bridges said.
Captain Lacey shook her head. “I’d put Josie in charge of the cruisers instead. Your original idea would have been a logical match, ma’am, but with this happening, no. I like this better. She needs to have access to the gravitic transmitters. The receivers are on the cruisers, but only the squadron flagships have the transmitters, at least so far.”
“Draw up the orders,” Admiral Bridges directed her Flag Captain. “When I get back, I’ll inform her.”
An hour later, Admiral Bridges walked into the burn unit aboard Walter Reed, her posture stiff and her demeanor coldly polite. A medtech led her to a patient whose entire body seemed swathed in antiseptic gel. It wasn’t the first time she had met someone like this. She hoped she wouldn’t have many more such visits.
“Captain Macquarrie,” the admiral said quietly, addressing the injured woman. “I regret to see you are wounded. The doctors tell me that with proper rest and rehabilitation, you will regain full use of your leg and arm. Your hand won’t be so lucky.” Her left leg and left arm seemed the most severely hurt. Her right hand was only lightly bandaged, though two of her fingers were missing.
“Aye, ma’am,” Captain Macquarrie said, her voice thick. Drugs insulated her from the worst of the pain.
“I was studying the action that just concluded,” Admiral Bridges continued, settling into the visitor’s chair. “We lost Breitenfeld, Homuth, Ball, Hawker, Seafire, Hayabusa, and 16 fighters.” Her voice turned icy. “This was Meredith Lee’s command, not yours. Mind explaining your actions, Captain?”
Captain Macquarrie lifted her head from the pillow. “I disagree with your tactics, ma’am,” she said, her expression turning defiant as she looked the Admiral in the eye. “I believe that conducting hit-and-run raids around Setosha does not remove Imperial ships from the system. I saw an opportunity to inflict major damage on the Imperials, and I took it.”
“You mean you convinced Meredith to disobey her orders and stay and fight.” Admiral Bridges calmly returned the Captain’s hostile gaze. “You weren’t even supposed to be on that raid, Edita.”
“Captain Lee had never conducted an operation similar to this. I have. I offered her my assistance.”
“So now we’ve lost six ships, and have over 500 dead, including Meredith.”
“At least I tried, Admiral. That’s far more than you are doing.”
“More? More than I’m doing?” Admiral Bridges shook her head. “After this mistake, Edita, if you still can’t see what we’re doing, if you can’t see why we must be careful, then you are blind and I can only hope we don’t have others who see as poorly as you. I watched six ships and their crews die uselessly today. You traded them for a cruiser and two destroyers. Do you know how pathetic that performance was? You presented your ships to the Imperial battleships for target practice.” She reached into her pocket and removed two film canisters, placing them on the table beside her former Flag Captain.
“Since you were unable to join us for the after-action review, I have arranged for you to see copies of both of today’s actions, with commentary, mine and others. I expect you will find both of them enlightening. The Edita Macquarrie I used to know would learn something from these records.” She met the captain’s stubborn gaze with a steady one of her own, neither of them willing to bend. Finally, something dark flickered in the younger woman’s eyes. She turned away, blinking, tears streaming down her blistered cheeks. Admiral Bridges waved to a medtech, who carefully patted the tears away with a dry pad.
“In any case, Edita, you are too badly injured to continue in command of the Phormio Group. I’m giving that Group to someone else.”
“Who? That Andersen person?”
Admiral Bridges tapped her hand against her leg. She was 58 years old. She felt older. She didn’t want to be here, but Volyn Carter had been very persuasive. When she put herself in Volyn’s place, she could understand why she had had to come out of retirement. If only Corey could have been a little older...
Above and beyond acknowledging her old friend’s insight, though, this was now very much a personal matter. One of her students of tactics had failed the most elementary, the most fundamental test: Know your enemy! She decided she had to give Edita one more opportunity to learn.
“What do you have against Corey Andersen?” Admiral Bridges asked. “She’s the most talented commander I’ve seen, and that includes Adana Korina. I happen to believe Corey is better than Adana. Adana agrees with me, by the way.”
“She doesn’t have the experience she needs,” Captain Macquarrie said immediately. “She lacks critical experience. Her command record doesn’t show--”
“She’s had other experience, some of which is not on her official command record, and never will be, or at least the public part of it. You were at K-303, Edita. You saw what she did with the Children. Who do you think trained and commanded them? She’s worked with combined forces, carriers as well as cruisers, which most of our Carrier Captains have not. She spent time as Operations Officer of a squadron of PSK heavy cruisers. She’s been on both sides of the sort of monster energy weapons that smashed you to bits today. No other Families Captain has that experience. And she came up through fighters. We need all of that, Edita.”
“She’s too young.”
“Nonsense. We were all young once.” Admiral Bridges smiled thinly. “Some of us grow out of that. At least she obeyed orders and accomplished her mission.”
“She lost a ship on what should have been an easy in-and-out.”
Admiral Bridges swallowed the first words that popped into her mouth. She regarded her former Flag Captain with the cold disdain normally reserved for inadequate first-term tactics students.
“You may remember, Edita,” she said slowly, “that I am not normally inclined to explain facts that my students ought to discover for themselves.” Admiral Bridges exhaled slowly, pushing the anger away. “I will make an exception for you in this instance. Captain Andersen insists she failed to note certain key pieces of information that were not available in any record we had until after she returned. She also insists that she failed to anticipate what the Imperials could do, and that was how she was ambushed by a much larger force.
“By all rights, those Imperial battlecruisers should have blown her and everyone with her out of the sky. Her squadron was caught at a dead stop, with landers out and Marines engaged on the surface. The opposing force was easily twice her mass and had four times her firepower. By every reasonable measure, there should be nothing left of her or that squadron.
“She outthought and outfought the enemy commander. She returned home with her mission accomplished for the loss of one ship destroyed and three others moderately damaged. Somehow, in the process, she found time to recover her Marines, who quite rightly expected to be abandoned. Those maniacs even managed to bring back a handful of prisoners, though I’m not sure how. Two of the Children got lucky. They were in the right place at the right time to rescue the ship’s brain and most of the crew of Bader. Corey gives the Children full credit for that rescue. They picked up a handful of prisoners, too.
“While all of this was happening, Corey cut the Imperial force sent against her in half.” Admiral Bridges tapped one of the film canisters. “You will find her solutions, um, interesting. Please note that she gives full credit to her Marines for several warship kills, including at least one Imperial battlecruiser. The Marines, by the way, are too busy celebrating to pay attention to that.
“I reviewed your action, Edita, before the After-Action Review. Don’t try to tell me you were only advising Meredith Lee. Every ship’s brain in the Fleet knows who was issuing the orders in that fight. Remember, they talk to each other, and they talk to us! Did you know only three out of six of them escaped? Hyapatia refused to leave Meredith.
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