Chapter 6

Admiral Korina noted the success of her fighters and banished one small worry from her large collection. There really hadn’t been much chance they would lose against the Imperial fighters, but they certainly could have been badly hurt while winning. That outcome seemed more and more unlikely with each passing minute.

Good. She had other concerns. The main Impie fleet was still closing, and there were no more shuttles coming up from Medina. She had ordered the second group to stay down. Nobody should risk missiles from the Impie fleet. She had also ordered two escorts to stay near Medina. They could provide some defense in case the Impies decided to split off a force to bombard the planet, or if somebody tossed a few missiles in that general direction. That gesture had weakened her own fleet’s defenses a little, but she could now see it had not been worth worrying about that, either. Her fighters would more than make up the difference.

Right now, she was trying to put distance between her and the Impie main fleet by sliding up above the ecliptic, away from Medina. She had to admit that those battleships focused her attention. She could appreciate what Corey Andersen had done even more, now that she was faced with much the same thing.

I guess I’ll get the chance to see if her first plan would have worked, she thought. Mohacs and Eckern had none of the small antimatter warheads Corey had used at Setosha. All that Adana could arm her fighters with were the imploder warheads Corey and Leah Bridges had considered and then passed over when antimatter warheads arrived just in time. Adana did not have a thousand fighters to throw at the Impies, either. Of course, she only had four enemy battleships to deal with, not the 30 Corey had faced.

“Big things,” she said idly, gazing at the Bridge scan.

“Aye, Ma’am. Like those forts in that last system we hit, but with engines.” Captain Abakumova was not sure whether to worry. They had killed those forts. Rather more easily than expected, actually. Could this encounter be like that?

“I’m tempted to try the same thing Corey Andersen did at Setosha. She massed her fighters and launched simultaneous strikes from several directions while engaging the Impie battleships with her main body from another direction.” Admiral Korina twisted her lips in a wry smile. “Corey showed the Impie Admiral what he expected to see, and then she did something else.” The Admiral sighed. “I’m not so sure that will work again. She had him off balance and reacting through the entire fight. Today we seem to be the ones reacting.”

“You have an idea.” Captain Abakumova recognized that look on the Admiral’s face.

“I have the beginning of an idea,” Admiral Korina replied cautiously. “This situation is different than the one Corey faced. She needed a battle of annihilation. The situation at Setosha forced that on her. We don’t have to fight that kind of battle. We just need to make the Imperial Fleet go away.”

Renae frowned. “What about Medina?”

“That’s the element I can’t ignore, Renae. If this was just a lifeless planet, say a gas giant with an extraction facility, I’d pull out and let the Impies have the place. We can’t do that. Not only would Eldest Marie expect us to defend Medina, but I feel bound to stand between the Imperial Navy and any inhabited planet. We know what they’ve done in the past, and not just at Setosha.”

“If we don’t destroy them all, Ma’am, they’ll be back.”

“Are you sure?” The Admiral shook her head slowly. “Maybe, but I’m not convinced of that. We left enough chaos behind us. I think our Imperial Admiral over there may have a long way to go for rest and supply. He might not be able to get back after today.”

“Medina may be one of those calls on his time, ma’am.”

“Sooner or later, we have to do something about helping the Medinans defend themselves. If the Emperor doesn’t understand that they’ve changed sides, he will soon. I wonder what Volyn has in mind for that? Maybe we’ll find out when she answers our last courier.” She shook her head, dismissing that line of thought. “We’ll deal with that problem when we come to it. Today, we don’t need anything spectacular; we just want to make them go away. Remember what Setosha cost us. Do we need to pay that price today?”

Eldest Korina thought not. She rubbed her chin, staring at the scan, then made her decision and opened a channel through her shunt. “Kelly--Adana. What fighters do you have on hand, and how fast can you re-arm them?”

“I have the spares, ma’am, plus a squadron inbound from the outer system and another squadron cycling right now. Everyone else is after that Impie carrier.”

“Get everyone you can turned around as fast as you can. When you recover the strike on their carrier, get them re-armed and sent off as well. Brief your fighter directors. We’re going to start harassing the Impies. Don’t bother forming up in coordinated strikes. Flights and squadrons will do so at the discretion of the Fighter Directors. What I’m after is a series of constant attacks from the fighters from all directions. I want to stretch their formation, weaken it, and maybe loosen things up a bit.”

“It wouldn’t take that long to gather all the fighters together first, ma’am. One big attack would certainly be more effective.”

“Not right now. Let’s not show him that yet. I want this fight to be a running sore. I want him confident that he has our measure. I’ll be maneuvering the fleet to continue to draw him away from Medina; that is, if he’s willing. But I want the fighters to be constantly nibbling at him. Don’t use the imploder warheads yet. We don’t have enough of those to spare. Use the chemical warheads and the small nukes instead. Get started now.”

She blinked, focusing, first on her bridge, then on her Fleet Astrogator. “Sammi, I want to set it up so the Impies will have to pass between us and the planet. I want it to be done slowly, like we’re trying to do something sneaky and catch them between a minefield and us. I know we didn’t put any mines there, but we don’t have to tell them that. They’ve seen mines in every other system we’ve attacked; maybe we can convince them they see some here, too.”

She glanced at her Flag Captain. “Renae? Tell those two escorts we left behind to dump some missiles in orbit, everything they have that can be activated remotely. Then tell them to get down deep in the atmosphere. There’s no point in losing them. Whatever happens, make sure we can use those missiles remotely. They will look like and act like mines, and they will be useful later if the Impies get stubborn about closing with the planet.”

“What if the Impies try to bombard the planet?” Captain Abakumova’s face showed what she thought of that idea.

“We’re trying to keep them too busy to think of that. If they try, we’ll have to kill them quickly before they can do much damage. That will cost us dearly. I’m counting on this Imperial Admiral thinking we’ve set some sort of trap for him. If he’s the one who has been chasing us, then he’s had a lot of experience with our mines. He’ll want our ships more than he’ll want Medina. He’ll know that once our ships are gone, he can do whatever he wants with the planet.”

A thought intruded. “He’s been chasing us for a while. For all I know, he still thinks Medina is his friend, so he might see getting between us and the planet as a good thing. But I can’t believe that. I have to keep him chasing me until I show him who really has the initiative, and he only has one choice left, and that is to run.

“Unlike the Imperial Admiral that Corey faced, I’m counting on this one not having target fixation. He’s in command of four of the Emperor’s last battleships. He’s going to be careful with them. What would you like to bet he’s under orders not to get them scratched? He knows we can beat him. We did it at Setosha, but he might not know how.”

“And we won in every system we hit during the last six months,” Captain Abakumova said, nodding. “He just doesn’t know how. Our vids never showed that.”

On the scan, a squadron of fighters lifted away from Mohacs and headed towards the approaching Imperial heavy ships, breaking up into individual flights, each on a different vector. The Admiral and the Flag Captain both smiled. Perfect.

“Course plotted, Ma’am,” the Flag Astrogation officer reported.

“All ships, new course from Flag Astrogation. Execute in three minutes.” Admiral Korina watched as two of the ships escorting the enemy carrier vanished off the scan. One was replaced by the symbol for debris. The other was already an expanding cloud of plasma. Some fighters were returning from that strike. As they came close enough, their Fighter Directors began sorting through them, organizing them, and shuttling out replacements for those that had taken damage.

The worst-damaged came in first; some pilots were out of today’s action. Other pilots would swap into spare fighters waiting armed and ready for them in the hangars. Next, the least damaged fighters would come in to re-arm as quickly as possible. This was the true secret to carrier warfare, the ability to speedily recover, re-arm, and re-launch fighters during combat. It had taken the Families Navy 20 years of hard, bloody experience in the Frontier Fleet to perfect the necessary skills.

Her ships altered course, accelerating quickly, the carriers maneuvering to keep the bulk of her fleet between them and the Impies. Fighters continued to land. When there was a full squadron assembled, it was sent off. The two fighter directors worked out a rough coordination between them, harassing the Imperial ships with a random spattering of missiles from several directions. The Imperial ships took damage and shifted their formation around to better protect themselves. Adana nodded at that, pleased at the reaction she was drawing.

The Imperial Admiral sent a few ships in towards Medina just as Renae had feared. Adana wondered briefly if he was testing her, hoping for some reaction that would help him plan how to defeat her. She wouldn’t give him that reaction. Then he lost one of his probing ships to a salvo from the missiles her escorts had left in orbit. Another of his ships exploded in a pyrotechnic brilliance she had not seen before. Perhaps the Medinans had some teeth after all. This close to their home planet, and after their recent experience, that made sense.

After those losses, the Imperial Admiral quickly pulled back his probing ships and swung away from the planet, just as he had wanted. At first, he attempted to close with her ships, but he didn’t have the acceleration to catch her unless she wanted to be caught. He seemed satisfied to let her keep him at her extreme missile range. That was well within the range of his cruisers’ and battleships’ missiles. Some of those were getting through, hurting Families cruisers and escorts and, occasionally, a carrier. He must be aware of the debacle his fighters had suffered. Other than that, he ought to believe he was slowly driving her out of the Medina system.

Her fighters must seem like an annoying nuisance to him. Except by chance, they only destroyed one of his ships, and that was a small one. She couldn’t be certain, but from his actions, it looked like the damage to his biggest ships was mounting slowly. He might be a little more cautious, keeping the range more distant, looking for some advantage, no longer certain of the invincibility of his battleships.

Damage was mounting in her ships, too. The cats caught most of the incoming missiles. Most of the Impie missiles that got past the cats were speared by point defense clusters on each ship, but a few got close enough for their warheads to fire. Most of their fury fell on the escorts. Two of those were damaged enough that Sanura rotated them to the far side of the fleet, where they had some protection against further missile hits but continued to give protection to the carriers.

After two hours of steady, inconclusive, long-range bombardment, Admiral Bradermann was frustrated and beginning to worry. “Her damned fighters keep tearing pieces off us,” he muttered. “What’s the latest count?”