Operation briefing
"Attention on Deck!" Becca Huggins walked through the forest of suddenly standing men and women. She motioned them to their seats, and brought up the hologram. "There are three ships in system, one Antilles class freighter, the St Kitts. She is definitely a Jessyk Combine ship, so she's our meat. The other two are dispatch boats. One of them is not squawking a transponder, but the other is a Battle Fleet unit, Number 17521.
"The prison has been moved by whoever occupies it now. Since we cannot be sure that they are slavers or even connected to Mesa, we can't just blow it to hell, so we get the fun job of slipping in like mice, and biting them on the balls to get their attention. So we're splitting into flights, and each of us has our own target.
"Sam." She looked at Roberts, commanding HMLAC Panther. "You'll take Sloan in Otter and Mordechai in Michael, and move around, cutting the Sollie dispatch boat's escape. Abe," she looked now to the commander of GSNLAC Gabriel. "You get Bob and Harry to take out the other dispatch boat at need." Bob Windom of HMSLAC Sabretooth and Henry Carstairs commanding HMSLAC Wolverine both nodded.
"Mark, you and I get to split the remaining newbies. Stacey and Wanda are yours to corral the merchie. Pin her against the station so she can't just run." Quintain was nodding as he made notes. Stacey looked nervous, but ready, and Wanda's half closed eyes looked like she was ready to chew that ship up and spit it out in tacks. "I'll have Ed and Marv with me targeting the prison.
"We're going in under stealth, slowing to 500 KPS before we get within half a million kilometers, and everyone will get into position before the balloon goes up. When you light off your wedges and targeting, watch for an attack or attempt to escape. We don't want to blow anyone away that we don't have to. Those watching the ships, you can shred them using just your point defense; so there's no need to pop off any missiles or main guns Shrikes and Katanas, unless you feel your craft is in danger. Prisoners are what we want, and like the old pirate saying goes, dead men tell no tales. Well the Captain wants to hear their tales. Let's not disappoint her." She turned off the holo. "Questions, comments, concerns?"
"Skipper, won't they be spotting us at around that half million kilometer mark?" Quintain asked.
"Yes and no. You see, the Witch herself is going to come cruising in bold as brass so they can see her. We'll already be close enough that we can stop them from reacting if necessary, since we'll be at about in position when she does. We'll announce ourselves, and they will be under our guns every second from then on. When we do, the captain will deploy all of the marines in the pinnaces and small craft. We will keep the pins in long enough for them to capture the ships. Two cutters, Broom and Black Cat will be detached from the striking party to board the dispatch boats before they reach us."
Becca gave them a feral grin. "We know correspondence is technically a diplomatic problem. But we need to know who sent those boats and why, so we'll just take a quick look in their mail queues for anything that will be proof of what we want to know." She shrugged. "The captain will take the blame if we really find something the Sollies consider secret but we don't really need to know, but that second boat doesn't look like she's a Sollie, so unless she belongs to a neutral, she's going to be vacuumed out. Be careful, and good hunting."
Ten minutes later, the LACs backed away from their silent mothership, spun on their axes, and plunged forward like a school of piranha that had just spotted a stupid cow. As they passed from view, HMS Witch Maiden slid after them.
Malcolm Witznowski, captain of the ex-Mesan Navy Fleet Collier St Kitts glared at the tactical display on his chair. He should have never have taken this job. The pay had been more than he would have hoped for. But the mission...
He snarled to himself. A Silesian by birth, he had made a lot of money in the Chalice Cluster when Andre Warnecke had been running it, commanding one of the colliers that had supplied the Rebellion of almost two decades earlier. He'd been caught once by the Manticoran Navy while transporting supplies for the Liberation Navy, but had been turned over to the Governor of the Sachsen Sector, where he'd loaded his cargo. Of course as soon as the Mantie Cruiser had left, he'd been returned to command and completed the mission.
He had been with Warnecke when he fled, and spent a few years shuttling prizes to the League for sale. He had skipped out with a lot of money instead of returning, but when Warnecke met one Honor Harrington, that had become a moot point. But what was a lot of money back home was chump change here in the League.
He'd gone to work with Haicheng Ringstorff until that mess in Tiberian, transporting missiles for what he had thought was merely a slightly better equipped Silesian pirate cruiser squadron. But it turned out to be a Mesan cover operation, an operation a single Mantie heavy cruiser had shredded. Ringstorff had the bad luck to run into that same cruiser bolstered by the Audobon Ballroom, and ended up stuck on Torch, where he'd be lucky if one of the native animals ate him. Otherwise the Ballroom might saute his privates in a white wine sauce and make him eat them when he stopped supplying them information.
But that series of debacles was why he was here. The paymaster who paid Ringstorff, who paid him, had come and told him to take command of this rustbucket. Just transport the cargo to the Inferno prison, wait until the ships that would take it off his hands arrived, transfer his cargo, then go back, collect the rest of his pay, and go where he pleased. He'd thought he had hit the jackpot; Three full cargo holds of the brand new missiles Mesa had been slipping to the Sollies; 8,000 Cataphract A and B models that would fill the magazines of a dozen SDs and the same number of battlecruisers and 150 missile pods carrying the C model capital missiles.
He'd been sure he could do it. Jessica Schu his exec was like him Silesian, they knew the value of missiles that outranged everyone that wasn't in the Haven Sector. But half an hour after going over the Hyper wall from the Nantucket system his personal databank opened, and he'd read the terse warning left by his paymaster.
YOU DON'T HAVE THE ACCESS CODES TO ACTIVATE THE MISSILES. AND WITHOUT THE CODE TO DEACTIVATE IT, THE 78 MT NUKE ATTACHED TO YOUR HULL WILL BLOW YOU AWAY FOUR DAYS AFTER YOUR DATE OF RENEDVOUS.
COMPLETE YOUR MISSION, OR DIE.
So he had gone where he was told to go, and waited. Less than twenty hours before it was supposed to go off, the Mesan Dispatch boat had arrived. His paymaster at least had warned him the Sollies would be late, and reset the self destruct to give him another two weeks on station.
Then the Sollie dispatch boat had arrived to tell him the ships coming were delayed even more, so he was counting down to eleven days before his ship went up like a failed star anyway. As soon as he was-
"Contact." Schu called from where she stood behind the Tac officer. She raised her hand, then turned, shaking her head. "A single freighter, Moving at 12,400 KPS, and decelerating at 2.5 KPS. Reads as 7.25 megaton, either a Mantie Caravan or an Andermani Dragon. "
"And what would either of them be doing here?" Witznowski asked sourly. "It's not like we're on the shipping lanes after all. When did she hyper in?"
There was a long moment. He started to snarl but the tac officer turned. "Sir, if they hypered in, they did it beyond spotting range."
Witznowski turned to look at the man. That made no sense! The only reason for coming out of hyper early was if you had an alpha node that was going bad, and dropped out before it did. But that would only make sense if they came out closer. The Inferno system was in the middle of the Warsaw grav wave that ran from Smoking Frog to the League. Not very long, but very wide. It would take a month at even .6C to get beyond it if their sail was down. But 2.5 KPS was standard for the newer design merchant ships, not an old Caravan, though they could have upgraded their inertial dampeners. If they'd lost an alpha node, it would be sheer luck if they didn't damage the two beta nodes to either side of it, so they should be moving slower. That suggested nothing was wrong with her. But why would they- "Jessica, wasn't there a report that the Manties had retained some of their merchant cruiser conversions from the first part of the War with Haven?"
"They did, sir. Eighteen of them were converted to fleet colliers by removing their pod launch capability and the LACs they used to carry." She turned to look at him. "You don't think-"
"I have a feeling in my gut that is exactly what's coming to visit. If I were in command of a merchant cruiser, and I'd been sent to check out a wild rumor, I wouldn't drop in close enough to be spotted. I'd drop out forty odd light minutes away, and send in recon drones first. That means they know what we have, and think they can take us." He hit the intercom. "Engineering, I want the wedge up as fast as possible. Start charging the capacitors for the broadside weapons. Comm, let the dispatch boats know."
The crew sprang into action. It would take almost an hour to warm up the impellers, but that ship shouldn't know they were getting ready to-
Suddenly there were a rash of impeller wedges. A dozen of them close enough to blow his ship away! The comm officer turned, then instead of reporting, put the hail on the speakers.
"Jessyk Combine ship St Kitts, this is HMSLAC Legate, Lieutenant Mark Quintain commanding. We have detected the power surge from your warming up your impellers. You will cease charging them immediately, or we will blow your impeller rooms. You have thirty seconds to comply. No data bases will be dumped. You work for a company that carries slaves for Manpower, so remember, the Deneb Accords do not apply. You survive from this moment on only due to our forbearance."
At the same moment, the dispatch boats and the few men Witznowski had left on the prison were receiving the same message. He heard the frantic calls from those boats, the prison...
He was dead. He had thought he was free and clear when the Manties had parked his ship in orbit and sent them down in chains to turn over to Sachsen. But the Marine captain who had waited for the Confed marshals had disabused them all of that.
Each crewman had been recorded in the Manticoran Naval database as having been caught in an act of piracy, or in their case, aiding and abetting an organization committing piracy. They would get a chance to face justice down on Sachsen, but if they were caught again...Well, let's just say they didn't need the noose when there was all that lovely vacuum just beyond the hull.
That was one reason he'd left Silesia. But now his past had caught up with him. He suddenly snapped around. "Engineering, stop charging the wedge, but don't dump the charge in the weapons capacitors."
"But sir, they'll detect that-"
"Not if we stop putting the extra charge in as we shut down the wedge again."
"But we'll only get off one, maybe two shots!"
"Maybe. But if we do this right, we're only going to need one shot."
The Marines formed on the deck in hold 2. They would need all three pinnaces and eight of the cargo shuttles for this, leaving two cutters for the dispatch boats. 205 men and women stood at attention as Captain Fitzhugh O'Hare inspected them. Then stood before them. "We're going to do this by the numbers. Gunners, watch for any attempts at escaping by small craft from the ship to the prison. Sergeant Valenzuela, mount 'em up."
Valenzuela snapped a salute. "Lance Corporal LeBeau, your fire team will go in Black Cat. Corporal Ryan, yours in Broom. You'll seize the dispatch boats with minimum breakage."
The remaining men and officers climbed aboard the pinnaces and shuttles as the two fire teams moved to the cutters. Chief Styles walked aboard Black Cat followed by Cao Mei. "We get the unknown boat, Cao Mei. Ready?"
"Yes, Charles." She looked up at a shout. Francis and Fengniao were running toward the boat, and she stopped to walk back through the half dozen marines already strapping in to catch her sister in a hug. Francis was there a moment later, hugging both.
"Be careful, Schatzie."
"Be careful, sister."
"Will you two go back to work? I'm busy here!" She laughed kissing both. "Now run along, or mama will have to spank you."
"I'm not ready to make up yet." Fengniao answered with the punchline from the joke, and all three laughed. Then the pair that was staying ran back toward the hatch into the ship.
"Does that mean I get a spanking to?" PFC Marcus Hill asked.
She looked at him for a long moment. "I will ask my sister. But only if you are very, very, bad, private." She walked up to the flight deck followed by the cat calls of the Marines.
"Down to 805 KPS. Moving to be at zero-zero at half a million kilometers. Small craft detaching." The tactical officer reported as the range dropped to just over a million kilometers. "Looks like three pinnaces, eight shuttles; cargo models, and two cutters." His fingers caressed the keyboard. "Right. Cutters moving to pass fore and aft. The pinnaces and four shuttles headed for us, the other four moving to pass over us inbound for the prison."
Witznowski nodded. The LACs watching his ship had slowed and were now only about 40,000 kilometers away, moving back and forth a few kilometers using their powerful wedges to move, stop, then return. The capacitors of the heavy cruiser graser mounts were at 30%, and they hadn't ordered him to dump the charges. It was enough for a single shot from each of the six weapons in her starboard broadside, and to fire every point defense laser only once. But with luck he could kill the small craft and get a big enough piece of the mothership to strand the LACs. Without a way to take them home, they'd have to surrender.
Or his ship would die. But if he did enough damage, they'd still be sitting here when the ships coming to get the cargo arrived, and they'd avenge him.
The captain over there was smarter than he had planned. About 1.5 million kilometers away, too far for a broadside mount, he had altered course so that his broadside guns wouldn't have an up the kilt shot. And they were keeping their sidewalls up. Though if he fired all seven missile tubes as well, maybe one of them might get through. "How many tubes in the starboard broadside are loaded?"
"All loaded and prepped." He thanked whatever god had sent Schu as his exec.
The four shuttles headed for the prison had passed them just a few seconds ago, still decelerating. As the cutters passed his ship, he shouted. "Fire!"
Sgian Dubh
In close infantry combat, they have what they call the Dead Man's Ten Seconds. It refers to an enemy so focused on killing you, that he succeeds even as he dies. It was much better known before long range weapons came into being; a swordsman charging a rifleman, and getting shot, yet still getting to the murderer and killing him before he falls.
What happened next took less ten seconds. It will take longer to merely describe what occurred.
Panels blew from either side of St Kitts and the point defense lasers fired. The Marines did not even have a second to realize what was happening before they were swept away by the fire. Of all of the small craft, only one cutter survived.
Chief Styles had, in his own words, been shot in the butt by people he thought was dead before, and as they had passed the ship, he had automatically rolled the cutter, putting her wedge toward it. Cao Mei had been teasing him about it, but paled as the point defense on this side shattered the four shuttles and the other cutter.
Missiles fired from the side of the ship facing Witch Maiden as the guns ran out. While they had been tracking her for over an hour, her position put her above the plane of the ecliptic enough that the guns had to be run out rather than merely firing, which took almost two seconds. Thanks to the FTL capability of her drones, that gave Witch Maiden only three seconds to react.
SRNLAC Shrew was in the center of Quintain's picket line, and she had been watching the enemy like a hawk. As Kramer saw the guns running out, she knew there wasn't time to warn the ship. She hit her own comm stud and screamed, 'Roll 90 degrees, now!" Her warning caused the other LACs on her line to roll automatically. So the hurricane of fire intended to shatter the trio of LACs hit their wedges.
Aboard Witch Maiden, two people reacted swiftly. As the Captain shouted 'Roll 90!" Abigail Carruther slammed the firing button flat. Her guns had been targeted on the enemy ship through the entire evolution, and eight grazers capable of ripping through the armor of a superdreadnought flashed a tenth of a second before the enemy fire hit them.
But she wasn't a super dreadnought herself. She was a merchantman and rolled like one, meaning she was still rolling when three heavy cruiser weight grazers flashed across the 300 kilometer distance of her wedge, slamming into her.
Only one things saved her. The old Janacek Admiralty, that had reported converting the old Trojan Horse ships to Fleet Colliers to Janes as a money saving measure to 'build the peace' had been as porous as a colander. The internal report had been copied by a Solarian agent, and that report gave anyone who wanted to know a blueprint for destruction. That report however only covered the first fifteen of them where they had ripped out the pod launch capability and LAC bays, leaving the 20 missile tubes and grazers of the broadside armament. The White Haven Admiralty had converted the last three, reversing the procedure so that missile tubes and their magazines had been removed instead, and only one of those still carried LACs. These three had not been part of the report. If they had been, Captain Witznowski would have aimed one of the beams at her stern, where 500 missile pods sat waiting.
So while damaging, the targets chosen were flawed.
The first beam blew through the 10 centimeter titanium of her hull, ripping into main engineering. On a merchant, this was collocated with the forward impeller room 100 meters forward of Fusion 1. An alpha node and three beta nodes exploded like kiloton sized fireworks. Her wedge dropped catastrophically as over sixty men and women in those two compartments died. Only the additional armored bulkhead between them and the rest of the ship stopped it from shattering the fusion room beyond.
The second punched into Cargo four, which had been the primary magazine used by the missile tubes; however this was now empty space. It blew upward through prifly and the machine shops used to repair the LACs also destroying LAC bays 1 through 4. Almost half of the men and women who worked there were scattered through the ship working with damage control parties when at battle stations. But the other half were not. So 'only' 150 more died as the decks became shrapnel, scything through them. The last compartment to be destroyed was CIC. Diedre Hughes, Phillip Zachary, Joshua Stanhope, and twenty-three others were ripped apart by the firestorm.
The last tore in below Mount 13, blasting the mount and eight man gun crew free of the ship. The two survivors didn't even have time to scream as the still rolling wedge slammed into them. The beam cut upward, aimed for #2 fusion room, but instead hit forward of it, smashing into the parts store forward of the main hyperdrive generator. The bulkhead between them shattered sending splinters the size of a man through the delicate machinery and some of them through the bulkhead between it and Fusion 2 before the beam exited through the starboard side.
Witznowski had a second to believe that he'd succeeded, turning to tell his com officer to demand her surrender when the riposte arrived. Eight beams ripped through her, and two of them smashed into and through her fusion rooms. St Kitts came apart like a badly built model as both blew within the same millisecond.
RSNLAC Succubus fired Mk31 counter missiles at the missiles charging toward the Witch Maiden. Only three survived to pass the LAC picket line, but none survived the second salvo.