))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
Task Force 34, Between Af'El and Frong, Moons of Ord Uatol, Neshorino System, Carnificial Causeway
)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
"We should have invaded fuckin' Kelshan by now." Commander Romano groused as he sipped his coffee and stared out at the moons slowly rolling away to their port side.
"We'll get there. Once the Admirals pull that stick out of their asses and set us loose." Captain Justin Mallory of the Ragnarok replied. Inwardly, he had his doubts. He'd seen the intelligence and scouting reports the fleet was disseminating to all of its ships every twelve hours. The Empire didn't have anything larger than a Venator this side of the Kuat Spur Route and everything they did possess was hauling tail down to wherever they would finally decide to make a last stand. Space Force couldn't chase them fast enough and as a result, millions of Imperials were getting away coreward.
"Yes, it seems like they've wanted us to stop and capture every gas station, residence, warehouse, farmhouse, henhouse, outhouse and doghouse for the past five hundred light years." Romano grinned and handed Mallory his own cup of java.
Mallory chuckled. "Tommy Lee Jones? My grandpa loved that movie."
"Of course, its translation was off the first time I saw it back in Italy but Jones's delivery was perfect. I hear they never learned what became of him."
"They never learned what happened to a lot of people living in LA when the Empire invaded. I guess we're paying them back now." Mallory said.
"Won't do Jones any good. I wonder what all the people we lost back then would think of our current situation." Romano pondered while the moon Af'El finally vanished from the bridge's forward window.
"They'll think we're running late. Secretary Akfar's time schedule has been shot to shit." Mallory leaned over the radar operator's shoulder and studied the technician's monitor for signs of Imperial activity. The crew of the Ragnarok had long grown accustomed to the senior officers of the ship including them in their conversations.
"I bet it was Titan that made him throw away the battle plan." Commander Romano opined.
The Italian XO's latest view point wasn't one Mallory had heard before. And after two years of service together he had heard quite a few off-the-wall ideas from the European. "Titan? You mean that base on Jupiter? That wasn't even us and from what I hear the First Order had a cake walk taking the place."
"Yes, those weird little Ugnaughts surrendered their factory the second the first transport set down on their orbital station. I think it was odd the First Order insisted on capturing the place and how readily the President agreed to it. The Sol System belongs to Earth. Isn't that what he's always saying?"
"He says you can't ever trust aliens. Pretty much the motto of the nightly news from CNN." Mallory took a drink from his coffee and yawned powerfully. He'd been awake for the last three watches and the beverage was having little effect on him, but he wasn't about to start popping amphetamines like many other Space Force officers were permitted to do. The campaign, so far, produced long and stressful hours but he was determined to handle them. "And yet, here they are, our number one allies."
"They say never look a gift horse in the mouth, but something smells fishy about our new friends." Romano lowered his voice and looked around. It was highly suspected that the Confederate Intelligence Agency had informers disguised as crew aboard nearly every vessel in Space Force. In the early days of the space navy's history many officers who had been critical of President Harris had been arrested and then simply vanished, never to be seen again.
"The Rok," Mallory referred to the crew's nickname for their ship, "Wouldn't be the same ship without the First Order. Hell, she's not the same ship she was a year ago.
The Ragnarok had received top secret orders to report to a drydock facility in Canada for three months last year. That had been the first time Captain Mallory had ever heard of or seen the First Order. They had brought many ship systems to be copied and reverse-engineered by the Ministry of Improvement to refurbish and upgrade the Space Force, so that it might one day stand up to the Imperial Navy. The Ragnarok had most of her titanium armor removed and replaced with a low-grade durasteel facsimile, her shields had been replaced with a new type modeled after what the First Order used on their shuttle craft. Not their top-of-the-line models but it was better than the nothing the Space Force had during the inter-war years. Her biggest upgrades were her hyperdrives and sublights. The Ragnarok's engines could now keep pace with most Imperial vessels in sublight and her hyperdrives had been upgraded from class 5s to class 2s with an increased range of thirty parsecs before needing to refuel. Armed with new proton torpedo launchers, the thing that impressed Mallory the most was that his forward battery had replaced its archaic beam tube with an actual laser battery. Not a turbolaser. Not yet. But the Confederacy was closing the gap.
"No, she wouldn't." Commander Romano agreed. "Nor would we have the Eiffels or the Narutos or even the Spielbergs. It's just that, while you were away to Confederate Center because everyone wanted to be introduced the Hero of the Confederacy . . ."
"Oh, come off it." Mallory brushed off the hero worship the Confederacy insisted on heaping upon him. He loathed the attention he got for simply doing his job while others had died.
"Well, me and a couple of other ships' officers pulled a few of those First Order engineers aside one night. Got them drinking in a pub in Winnipeg. You know Canadian beer is like moonshine."
"I am well aware." Mallory recalled a few unpleasant mornings after spending the night in Canadian bars while the Ragnarok had been refitted.
"It was the X-1s, our superiority fighters. Only they call them X-wings like the Imps do." Romano recalled.
"Someone, some day, is going to have to sit me down and tell me why the First Order and the Imps are practically clones of one another, yet hate each other's guts. Cause the government hasn't said a peep about it."
"Sibling rivalry is my theory." Romano smiled and continued with his story. "They hate our X-1s, asked me several times why Boeing couldn't cancel the line. We get a few drinks into these First Order fellas and they give us a little more meat to chew on. Seems like some enemy of theirs used the X-1 back wherever they and the Empire came from. Used them really well, too, from what I could tell. Gave these guys the sweats."
"They never gave us any improvements for our fighters as far as I know. We had to develop our own blasters for them and their phasers are still not quite up to par with a TIEs."
"The First Order didn't want to touch them. Demanded to know where we got the idea for them from. I told them to go ask the Ministry of Improvement or shove off." Romano smirked at the memory. Mallory didn't say anything, instead his mind wandered back to the last war and the vision of the black clad Major Eritech who had revealed himself to be an Imperial turncoat. Mallory had never revealed how much he had overheard Eritech say on the bridge of the Ares, especially after the bastard had revealed he was involved in a conspiracy that had included President Harris himself.
"Do you think the X-1s back in their Galaxy can outpace our own?" Mallory asked. His kid sister flew an X-1 attached to the Ragnarok and had been assigned numerous reconnaissance missions since the war began. As of yet, she had not had to go up against Imperial fighters, but Mallory doubted that would last forever.
"I got the impression they surpassed whatever the First Order had. It sounded to me like they had hyperdrives and energy shields of their own."
"On a starfighter? I wasn't aware they made equipment like that for such small craft." Mallory exclaimed.
"Each of those First Order engineers confirmed it in their own way. Sounded to me like they're holding out tech whenever it suits them. That's why I don't trust them doing whatever it is they're doing on Titan." Romano stated.
"The Ministry of Improvement was good for one thing though." Mallory clamped onto the previous point about reverse-engineering. "They warped those engines on the X-1s and Y-3s beyond what anyone could imagine. "
"Of course, our fighters and bombers can hit a target a system away and return to base all within a day's flight time. Neither the Empire nor the First Order can do that. Probably neither can New Mandalore, if they still exist." Romano said. News from back on Earth had covered New Mandalore briefly in the days following the invasion of Mars but then had gone strangely quiet. In the Confederacy that usually meant something had gone wrong on someone's end.
"We've got better proton torpedoes than anyone else too. Well maybe not more powerful but our lab guys figured out a way to push them further than anyone else's. Nearly a million mile range now. Let the Empire rely on its big guns. Our missiles can blow holes in their shields and armor from every direction."
"Wonder why the First Order never bothered to give us proton torpedoes. We had to copy those ones we found at the bottom of the sea." Romano scratched his cheek in contemplation.
"You keep watching our back, Commander. Worry about what the guy next to us is doing and I'll fight the guy in front of us." Mallory put an assuring hand upon the Italian's shoulder and squeezed.
"They haven't been all bad. They did help us at New Ryloth two weeks ago and, if you believe the news, they did something really big at that Nal Kuat place." Romano changed the subject only slightly.
New Ryloth had been just another step in a campaign that rightfully had kicked off more than a year ago, shortly after the First Order, those trumped-up Imperial clones, showed up on Earth with a plan to crush the Empire. In Mallory's opinion that was all it took to get President Harris on board. In his public speeches Harris always said they owed it to the two billion war dead and the billion that starved after the war to pay the 2nd Galactic Empire back for what they did to us during the Earth-Empire War. The President had the Senate and military along with the 1st and 2nd Class citizens on his side, and in the Confederacy that was all that mattered.
The First Order never brought one of their big warships into the Sol System, preferring to sneak small shuttles in while Mars and Jupiter were on the other side of the sun from Earth. If the Empire had detected the First Order's presence the gig would have been up and the CIA did everything it could to distract and pull the wool over the Empire's vassal New Mandalore while they put their plan into motion. Space Force pulled in the Revenge corvettes and the Europe Frigates for First Order refits and with every one that launched it towed and masked four more from Mandalorian and Imperial sensors. The Ragnarok, as well as a fleet of other ships, rendezvoused with the twenty-three warships of the First Order rimward of the Sol System and stood to. Bigger ships like the Eiffel and Naruto cruisers were buried in massive underground hangars and waited . . . they all waited . . . for Nal Kuat.
A sizeable detachment of the First Order's fleet had left the rendezvous point under their calculating Admiral Jethran and worked their way down an abandoned route from the last war and through the Almuhit Maelstrom. From the way the Empire's hyperwave signals screamed the First Order had hurt them, hurt them bad too. The only two Star Destroyers left rimward of the Kaut Spur had been the Limbo and the Purgatory which had both greatly underestimated the Earth's abilities and new toys. Now both of them were wrecks floating back around Earth's moon.
While a dozen or so Legions and Army Divisions had been thought enough to fight the full sized 212th Legion on Mars, the fleet that had been gathering at the secret rendezvous point had launched with nearly six hundred ships towards the first colony world of the Empire; New Ryloth, which if the rumors were true from the Space Force ships left behind to subdue the place, it was defended by a mere battalion of the 501st. The Confederacy had dropped two Legions and four Divisions on the Twi'lek colony. Supposedly the Imperial unit there had abandoned the main city settlement there and had already started a guerilla war fought from the mountains overlooking the regional capital.
Another Division apiece were deployed on New Ryloth's moons Bright and Night despite them being lightly populated and guarded with nothing more than a local police force. Heavy equipment was unloaded and empty transports raced back to Earth to pick up mountains of construction equipment to start digging in. Eventually a million settlers would be brought in to displace the Twi'leks but that was not Mallory's concern.
His concern were the raids light and nimble Imperial ships inflicted on the fleet. Striking from unknown space lanes and uncharted asteroid fields they struck again and again, causing little damage before being overwhelmed, but causing the timetable to be shot to hell and gone. Secretary Akfar, now acting under his resumed rank of full Admiral and operating from his command ship the cruiser Eiffel in orbit around New Ryloth, ordered the fleet split into two.
The decision to split the fleet had already been long decided and didn't defy conventional wisdom. The Bloodstripe Run, as the main Imperial hyperroute that ran from Mars to Palpatine Prime split into two parallel branches at New Ryloth all the way down to the start of the Kuat Spur at Kaffrene Outpost, where it once again became a single strand that continued on its journey coreward to the Imperial capital. The two branches of the rimward Bloodstripe were named the Gallivanter Run and the Carnificial Causeway by the Empire and Eastern and Western branches by the Confederacy, for no reason Mallory understood. There was no east or west in space and besides the two branches spun around each other like a double helix, with dozens of interconnecting sub-routes, and at times one was more rimward than the other and then three or four parsecs down the line the other was more rimward. Mallory hoped they came up with better titles after they conquered the place. Leave it to the Empire to be more poetic when it came to naming things.
The Ragnarok had been assigned to one of the strike task forces driving down the Carnificial Causeway. They had arrived at Quarzite II, with its Kage colony, several hours after a large Imperial transport fleet had evacuated thousands ahead of the Confederate advance in what became a repeating story as Space Force advanced. The Ragnarok caught glimpses on its long range sensors of Nebulon Bs and Munifex cruisers jumping to lightspeed at the Confederate arrival. Once again the fleet was deployed, several First Order heavies moved in to offer perfunctory orbital bombardment before they spent nearly three days landing two more Legions and five Army Divisions planetside while mopping up small detachments of the 501st on a dozen orbital satellites the Confederacy hadn't even been aware of before their arrival in that system.
Their delay woes continued and multiplied at Ord Vairecant and Yereda II, where a full assault was made on the unoccupied Yereda III by the 21st Confederate Legion. More territory in the forms of moons, large asteroids up to planetoids and gas giants had to be occupied. The Empire had stationed listening posts, fuel refineries, mines, farms and a thousand other operations all across each system. For every one that was occupied a dozen more were discovered. Legions slated for further coreward advancement down the Bloodstripe were rerouted and sent to these small outposts. All for the glory of the CEN.
And why? Because the First Order had taken Titan after giving the Empire the hardest blow in the war so far. The President and Admiral Akfar wanted to conquer every bit of territory, not just to deny them to their ally, but to drown the First Order in their long list of victories and conquests. Even when those conquests were no more than a full regiment taking the surrender of four local deputies of some no-named moon in the back water of Ord Uatol. That's where the Ragnarok was today, stalled by endless diversions and dogged by a retreating Imperial Navy that acted more like a phantom menace than a military force that was supposed to be defending its Empire's civilians. According to the original plan, Space Force should have been three systems ahead at Kelshan.
But as Von Moltke had said, no plan survives first contact with the enemy. Mallory hoped that Space Force fared better than the German armies Moltke had built.
Currently the Ragnarok was part of a thirty-five ship task force overseeing the landings of the 19th Legion as well as the 71st Infantry and 4th Armor Divisions on Ord Uatol. A planet which allegedly was the home of forty thousand aliens from a species called Abednedo who were in the current process of wrecking their vast network of dolovite mines and refineries owned by the Lant Mining Core Corporation. Nearby a bright spot burned over the moon Frong where retreating fuel workers had set ablaze the great orbital hypermatter refueling depot before fleeing with the rest of the Imperial Navy coreward. Failure to capture it limited Space Force once again to its hypermatter refinery at Venus and whatever the First Order started pumping out of Titan.
And that's where they had been stuck for nearly three days, confounding and frustrating Mallory who felt as if Space Force was throwing warships to the winds. Ships like his were pushing into Imperial controlled territory without knowledge of the local territory or the support they needed to complete their missions. Except for the X-1s attached to the hardpoints of his and nearby ships the task force hadn't had air cover in four days. An enemy strike out of some unmapped planetoids back near Ord Vairecant had side-tracked four squadrons of A-1s and X-1s from their assigned advance. The attack had been repulsed with the destruction of twenty TIEs but the fleet had to dispatch another thirteen warships and transports to occupy the planetoids the TIEs had launched from. More space fighters and bombers were slowly moving forward, hopscotching from one planet to the next as they made their way down both branches of the Bloodstripe Run. They carried what ammunition and fuel they could as Magnificent class transports stretched the limits of the fleet's hypermatter reserves rushing to Earth and back to bring forward ground support personnel and supplies to support the massive air wings. More was always needed. Radar and long distance sensors were still back on Earth, so was most of the equipment required to carve out large air bases. The Space Force was moving forward and fighting nearly blind out here and Mallory feared it was only a matter of time before they stumbled into an obstacle that smashed their face in.
The weight of the campaign's stress contributed to a lot of long hours, and it must have showed. As Commander Romano aired his frustrations with their odd allies, Mallory started to only catch one word out of three from the other officer. "Captain, perhaps you should catch some rest. The 19th is already planetside and it will take another day to get the 71st down from orbit. God, only knows how they'll screw up getting the 4th's walkers down there. You should take the chance to rack out."
"I think you're probably onto something." Mallory could feel how right he was in his bones and sore eyes. He held up his coffee mug. "This stuff isn't even touching me anymore."
"My watch is over as well, so I'm going to grab some shut-eye. Lieutenant Avery can man the bridge until my next watch in four hours." Romano said, indicating the ship's Communication officer Lieutenant Avery who was the third in command of the Ragnarok. The Lieutenant rose from his station and approached the Captain. Mallory thought the recent Space Force Academy graduate still looked like a kid, forgetting that he had been two years younger than Avery when he had gone into the Battle of Los Angeles two decades ago.
"You have command, Lieutenant." Mallory told him.
"Aye, aye, Captain." The young officer replied.
"Come and get me if anything, and I mean anything, develops." Mallory warned him.
Romano eyed the junior officer, "Just make sure it's damn important before you wake the Captain. And if you're unsure come and get me and I will tell you if it is or isn't."
Avery nodded and then gave a crisp salute, which Mallory unenergetically returned.
The Ragnarok may not have been the biggest ship in the fleet, but Revenge class corvettes weren't exactly small either. Three hundred commandos had been crammed aboard one of them once upon a time, and the President only knows how many colonists were aboard those three lost ships that vanished at the end of the last war. As it were, the Ragnarok sported several suites for its officers, the largest of which, was reserved for Mallory.
He didn't bother taking off his royal blue service uniform. Due to service tradition it was still called his khakis despite no resemblance to the color. He only took his shoes off before swinging his feet into bed. He was out like a light seconds after his head hit the pillow.
The soft pounding on the door woke him some time later. To his disappointment, when he looked at the small clock next to his bunk, it had only been three hours since he had fallen asleep. He slowly sat up in his bunk and looked to the thin plastic door that separated his cabin from the corridor outside. "What is it?"
"Priority message from the Eiffel, sir." Mallory recognized the voice of one of his sailors through the door. The enlistee was a 3rd class citizen from Senegal with a thick West African accent. "Commander Romano and Lieutenant Avery request that you join them on the bridge."
"On my way." The Captain replied slipping his shoes back on. He was out the door thirty seconds after waking up.
Mallory was sill groggy when he stepped back onto the bridge. Ahead of the Ragnarok was the Imperial colony world Ord Uatol. Dozens of shuttles were flitting back and forth from the fleet's Magnificent transports. The Abednedo colony had sabotaged its landing areas with gravity traps preventing the larger transports from landing on the planet's surface. "We need to requisition a Starbucks on our next refit."
Romano and Avery chuckled at the Captain's tired attempt at levity. Romano handed him an encrypted message. "Akfar is reassigning us to Task Force 65."
"They've gotten up to sixty-five already, huh?"
"Apparently. Sounds like the Imps made an appearance at Ithellir. Pair of Venators and a Lancer hit Admiral Petrova's Task Force 15 while they were making their initial landings." Romano paraphrased the gist of the message.
"How bad?" Mallory asked.
"They destroyed a Magnificent and one of our Spielberg minesweepers, before Y-3s from the Big Ben chased them off. Sounds like they damaged one of the Venator's turrets before they escaped. Didn't save those troops on that transport though. Rumor is half an Infantry Division went down with her."
"Jesus. Why doesn't Admiral Petrova take after them?" Mallory asked.
"Ithellir is a water world. Its home to a Mon Cal colony with a bunch of floating towns. So Petrova's Task Force is busy offloading a bunch of Navy patrol boats and subs." Romano explained.
"I heard they've got a pair of naval destroyers loaded aboard their convoy." Avery added.
"So he's not willing to commit his escorts to a pursuit?" Mallory asked.
"Not at the moment. He's stuck guarding those transports. He reported the Imps are running towards Plympto Blight."
"We should have already taken that place. Petrova is the tip of the spear and he's a whole system behind." Mallory thought for a second. "So Akfar wants us to catch them and finish them off. Who's he putting in charge of this new Task Force?"
"Rear Admiral Mengyao is coming up from Ord Vairecant."
"Ah, that will give us the Giza at least. About time we see if our Eiffels can stand up against their Venators. Where is our rendezvous point?"
"Some place called the Herglic Asteroid Belt. It's just outside of the Plympto Blight system. Preliminary scans show it's got some large hazards but rather navigable." Avery replied. "We are supposed to report to the location in fifty minutes, Captain. I already checked and we have the required hypermatter for the jump."
"I would say so, Lieutenant. We topped off at a tanker three days ago." Mallory didn't want to snap at the young man for stating the obvious but he was still feeling the loss of sleep rather heavily. Romano must have noticed because he handed Mallory back his favorite mug filled to the top with a strong brew. "Set coordinates and engage as soon as you're ready." Mallory told the bridge crew. Anticipating the command the coordinates were already firmly set in the Ragnarok's Navicomp.
"Ready, Captain." Romano reported.
"Engage."
The Ragnarok left Task Force 34 behind to complete its mission as they flashed away deeper into Imperial territory. It took them ten minutes to cross from Ord Uatol to the Herglic Asteroid Belt. They weren't the first to arrive. Several other Revenge class corvettes were already on station, as well as a pair of Naruto light cruisers and Mallory was happy to see, Taj Mahal. The Taj Mahal was another Eiffel class Heavy Cruiser who could add another fifteen fighters or bombers to their Task Force. Several minutes went by before the Giza arrived along with the last of fourteen Revenge Corvettes.
As soon as the Giza arrived every ship reported in. Rear Admiral Mengyao wasted little time ordering the fleet into double columns with the Giza and Taj Mahal at the respective head of each column. The Eiffels launched several Y-3s ahead of the formation as scout craft and within minutes they relayed long distance sensor data that showed the presence of enemy ships ahead. The Confederate fleet immediately started jamming the Imperial ships with their new gear that had been provided by the First Order for just such an occasion.
The Y-3s continued to transmit spotting reports back to the advancing Confederates. The enemy fleet consisted of the two Venators that had struck at Ithellir, the Tide and the Battle of Kabal, three Carrack light cruisers and nine Lancer frigates. It was the largest sighting of Imperial warships since the destruction of the Limbo and Purgatory back at Luna.
Well before they made direct visual contact, Admiral Mengyao and by association, Mallory, knew the Imperial's speed and course, as well as the computer recognized identities of the entire enemy force. Mengyao ordered the cruisers and corvettes toward the enemy at high sublight speed.
"One Piece is reporting they've sighted the enemy." Lieutenant Avery reported.
"Aye, report we have them in our sights as well." Mallory said. Light from the local star was starting to glimmer off several objects in high orbit around Plympto Blight. "Have Moxxi flight stand by to launch on the Admiral's orders." Mallory ordered. He had already ordered his sister, Lieutenant Mallory and her wingman Lieutenant Moon, to stand by in their X-1s as soon as the fleet emerged from lightspeed. Prime the torpedo launchers."
"Priming torpedo tubes. Ten minute flight time to target." Romano reported. "Moxxi Flight reports Ready Launch status."
"Fire all forward tubes." Mallory watched as the fiery projectiles raced ahead of his and every other corvette in the fleet. Nobody in the Empire knew the extreme range of the Confederate's weapons. Well, they were about to find out.
The two fleets closed at an oblique angle. At a range of twenty-eight thousand miles the Confederate heavy cruisers both opened up with their 8 cm phasers. Streaks of bright red laser fire zipped through the Imperial column, but the range was too great for accuracy, and none of the heavy bolts made contact. As the range closed the Y-3s circled the Imperial fleet and radioed ranging information to Mengyao's cruisers, and the salvos began creeping steadily closer. To avoid being raked fore-and-aft, the enemy commander ordered a 20-degree port turn, a maneuver that put the Imperials more nearly on a parallel course and allowed the full broadsides of his Venators to bear on the Confederates. A few minutes after the course change the Battle of Kabal and the Tide opened fire. Green turbolaser fire straddled the Confederate column, but no hits were scored.
Suddenly the Tide was struck amidships by an armor-piercing bolt fired by the Taj Mahal. It penetrated into the fusion reactor causing a large explosion, destroying several of the Imperial Venator's hypermatter annihilators. She immediately lost about half her power, and turned out of the line to limp back to Plympto Blight at reduced speed. The Battle of Kabal, following in her wake, also turned to avoid a collision, and as a result the Imperial column was now thrown into confusion.
Amidst the enemy's muddle the corvettes' proton torpedoes finally reached the Imperial line. Suddenly, a Confederate torpedo that had been fired at long range several minutes earlier struck the Carrack, Lord Hoth, which went up in a great flash of light. She broke in two, jackknifed, and exploded, taking all hands with her.
"That was one of ours!" Commander Romano swore. Mallory wanted to agree, though at this range it was hard to tell whose torpedoes were whose. The way Admiral Mengyao had arranged the column it could have easily had been a proton torpedo from Boyne or the Caracas immediately ahead and behind the Ragnarok in the battle line.
The Imperial Lancers counterattacked with a spread of forty proton torpedoes, but the confusion in their line left their attack poorly aimed and all of them missed their targets except for a rare dud which deflected off the Giza's new shields. Now Confederate torpedoes were slicing through the space all around the Imperial starships, and several exploded automatically upon reaching the ends of their runs. Lookouts on the Imperial warships, ignorant of the increased range of the Confederate weapons thought their fleet had come under air attack from the circling Y-3s, throwing their flotilla into further confusion.
The Lancers immediately started making a smoke screen to cover the retreat of the Venators and Carracks, who broke off and tried to flee coreward, past the dark side of Plympto Blight and towards the hyperlane that led deeper into Imperial territory. For the next several minutes, the Imperial fleet ran east along Plymtpo Blight's equator, but then doubled back and ran at high speed towards the west to confuse the Confederates emerging through the smoke screen they had left behind. The Imperial commander must have thought his ruse would have fooled his pursuers into losing track of him, but without air reconnaissance he would have needed an amazing stroke of luck to do so. The Y-3s bore in, dropping tracking flares all around the Imperial vessels in hopes of illuminating them for the heavy phasers of their fleet. The Narutos fired star-shell missiles and shined LED arc lights across Plympto Blight's orbit, but could not bring the enemy into effective range before they crossed the horizon.
But just as it looked as if the Imperial ships would make it to safety, their commander changed course again and ran towards Plympto Blight's nearby moon, which went by Phemiss on the Ragnarok's latest star chart. The information had only come in the last few days from captured BOSS maps on Mars and transmitted to Earth's forward units. Four of the Lancers broke away from the main Imperial column and hyperjumped out of the system. It wasn't a moment too soon as the corvette Poitiers risked an amazingly lucky long range shot from its launchers. The lone torpedo struck a Lancer marked as the Lurdo, erupting in an explosion which resulted in an implosion several minutes later as one ship system after another on the Lancer failed to stop the cascading catastrophe.
The five remaining Imperial warships the two Venators and surviving Carracks turned rimward to cover the jumps of their smaller brethren, who looked to have expanded their fuel and fired all of their torpedoes.
Confederate Y-3s continued to stalk the heavier Imperial ships as the Confederate flotilla settled in for what looked like a long stern chase across the Plympto Blight System. Slowly, but surely, Rear Admiral Mengyao moved his ships in for the kill. Mallory could feel victory in the air as well as his crew. Their spirits were visibly lifted as they closed with their hated enemy.
From long range both lines opened fire and space was flashed with heavy Space Force phaser and rail gun fire and star-shell dispensing missiles. Giza and Taj Mahal, swung rimward and closed the range. It took them over half an hour to close within 8,000 miles and the two Eiffels launched a spread of twelve torpedoes. Seven minutes later, the Selene exploded with a mighty lightning flash of brilliance and broke in two. The fires aboard the Carrack quickly reached her tibanna magazine and set off a secondary explosion that briefly lit up the half the local system for millions of miles all around. The two separated halves of her hull slowly broke apart taking nearly four hundred Imperial sailors, including what Mallory would later learn was the Imperial Fleet commander, with her. Almost immediately thereafter another Carrack, the Massif also exploded near her bow and immediately halted. Life pods were launched as the pursuing Confederate raked the stricken warship as they sailed past. A few of her crew managed to be spared inside the life pods but the Imperial Carrack still went down with the loss of most of her hands
As they passed by the crumbling Massif, the Ragnarok's sailors shouted, "CEN! CEN! Harris! Harris!" Mallory got goosebumps remembering all the Vengeance Day parades and starved peoples who had led to this moment. The Earth's revenge was finally at hand. They merely had to kick in the door and the whole rotten Empire would come crumbling down.
The two survivors, The Battle of Kabal and Fondor's Shield broke contact covered by the destruction of the Selene and the Massif and turned rimward back towards Ithellir. Admiral Mengyao had been able to place his ships between the Imperials and a coreward escape. The Plympto Blight system was now a Confederate lake. Rimward the Confederates reigned supreme on planets and in space. For several minutes they exchanged long range phaser fire with the Imperials but after a pair of lucky strikes on two of the pursuing Y-3s contact was lost with the Imperial survivors.
Ironically the battle had come full circle and the Confederates found themselves lapping the handicapped Venator, Tide, which had been limping towards an escape near Phemiss with a pair of Lancers, the Vahl and the Humbarine II. Admiral Mengyao moved his warships in for an easy kill. A heavy phaser duel began at long range and several hits were soon taken by all three Imperial vessels. The Ragnarok was ordered forward and fired another effective spread with one of Mallory's torpedoes hitting the crippled Tide. She started to rolled over and over before losing power when her hull integrity failed, imploding several sections of her armor plates. The Vahl succumbed to several hits from the Death Note and One Piece and went down five minutes later. The Humbarine II, the last Imperial ship in the Plympto Blight system was methodically attacked by X-1s, including Moxxie Flight from the Ragnarok, launched from the corvettes and exploded twenty minutes later. Her survivors were picked up by the Agincourt and Boyne and were destined for prisoner of war camps back on Mars.
The Confederate ships searched for the missing two Imperials for hours to no avail and eventually had to be released to other duties. Most of them, including the Ragnarok, stayed in the system as Task Force 43 was due at any time with the planned landing force that was slated to occupy Plympto Blight and take it for the Confederacy.
Mallory watched as dozens of heavy transports started to drop out of light speed near the Nosaurian colony world. Some of the transports advanced on Phemiss as well, despite the fact that Mallory and his crew had detected no signs of life on the moon during the battle several hours before. It was the convoy moving towards the moon that stumbled upon the two hiding Imperials. The whole scene was illuminated by the full moon of Phemiss for Mallory and his bridge crew.
Mallory could almost read the Imperial commander's mind and had edged his ship towards the landing ships and drop barges. As such they were the first ship to see the Imperials emerge from the dark side of the moon.
The Confederates had overwhelming forces in the vicinity, seven Eiffels, ten Revenge corvettes and a Spielberg scout carrier, though most of those units were off closer to Plympto Blight. The Battle of Kabal and the Fondor's Shield opened fire on the transports, and at first only the Ragnarok could return fire. Mallory pounded his fist against his thigh in frustration as his launchers had been almost depleted in the previous engagement and had to fall back on the use of his medium phaser turrets and rail guns. Soon other Confederate warships rushed into the fray at flank speed and quickly overpowered the two Imperial ships. Three Confederate Eiffels and nine Revenges got into the action and fired no fewer than eighty-seven torpedoes at them. The battle developed into a general melee, all the more confused because of the smoke screen being laid by the Revenges to protect the bulk transports and the geometry of the action which involved a dozen Confederate ships converging from several directions simultaneously.
Several torpedoes overshot the two Imperial ships and struck the defenseless Magnificent transports in the background. Against such overwhelming force the Battle of Kabal and the Fondor's Shield were not going to last long. They were surrounded by enemy ships in every off planet direction, all pouring phaser fire into them. The last minutes were confused and utterly hopeless. The Imperials gave some punishment back to their tormentors, but took much the worse in the exchange.
In the general melee, five Confederate ships were hit with friendly fire. One of which, the transport Sumptuous, exploded and took all of the 6th Armor's heavy equipment and a thousand Confederate lives with it. With such a great number of torpedoes launched at the two Imperial warships in a relatively small area, it was perhaps inevitable that some would strike the anchored transports. As the ships were already in low orbit over the moon, a large percentage of the crews aboard still landed planet-side safely. A story would go around the fleet that the commanding General of the 16th Division crashed on Phemiss in a life pod completely soaked in liquid coolant from a leak aboard his sinking starship.
As the Confederate Space Force converged on the intruders, the Fondor's Shield took a direct hit from an 8 cm phaser. Shortly afterward she was struck by a photon torpedo on the bottom of her hull, and that was too much for her. She broke apart quickly. The Battle of Kabal was also pummeled by heavy phaser fire and three proton torpedoes. A few minutes after the destruction of the Fondor's Shield, a phaser penetrated the hypermatter annihilator and busted the hypermatter reservoir wide open, flash frying the engine room crew to death. Burning hypermatter ruptured through the deck and she listed heavily to starboard as she began her death roll. Immediately after broadcasting in the open that he was abandoning ship, the Battle of Kabal was struck directly in the bridge, killing her Captain. She rolled to one side and became caught in Phemiss's gravity well. As the ship plummeted to her fiery death on the moon's surface her crew abandoned ship in a spray of escaping life pods. Only about half her crew survived. Of the two final ships some six hundred from the Fondor's Shield and another three thousand from the Battle of the Kabal were picked up by Confederate vessels. They were fated to languish as forced laborers in the new POW camps being raised back on Mars.
Mallory sat down in his plush Captain's chair and watched the final moments of the Battle of Kabal's death spiral into Phemiss. Even his bones were tired at this point. His crew were at once elated in their victory and relieved that they had made it through their first major engagement without nearly a scratch on their own ship. In fact, as Mallory thought on the engagement, he couldn't recall any Confederate warships being hit.
Commander Romano confirmed it several minutes later with a congratulatory note from Admiral Akfar to Rear Admiral Mengyao and the ships of Task Force 65. "He says that it was truly a feat of superior humanity over the audacity of aliens, or some other political nonsense." Romano shared a smile with the crew. They all knew it had been their training and their commander that had brought them through. "That fate has decided to grant the possession of the Western Hypermatter Route to the ever-victorious Confederate Space-Force."
"Sounds pretty, whatever it means." Mallory commented on the missive.
Not a single Space Force warship had been struck but the casualties on the few transports that had been destroyed topped over ten thousand Merchant Marine, Legionnaires and Army soldiers which was about an even loss to the Imperial sailors aboard the ships that had tried to defend Plympto Blight. From high command there was almost immediate criticism that the Imperial commanders were outclassed and made rudimentary mistakes in ship handling and defense, though Mallory couldn't recall any overt errors on the enemy's side during the battle. Other than failing to flee when their fight was clearly lost.
"They sure were brave." Mallory told Romano and Avery
The Italian officer nodded in agreement. "They had to know they couldn't have won. We had more ships coming down the pipeline behind us. They were doomed to be overrun. They went to their deaths with a grim foreknowledge."
"A magnificent display of a very bad strategy." Mallory admitted though he felt he may have been a tad unfair in his judgement of dead men who did their duty attempting to defend their Empire. His eyes were growing heavy once again even as the Battle of Kabal impacted with Phemiss.
"I wonder how history will remember this fight." Avery wondered, though when the Captain didn't answer the Lieutenant turned to find that Mallory didn't care how history would remember him.
All Mallory cared about was sleep.
Sitting in his Captain's chair, Justin Mallory let out a soft snore as an Imperial fleet burned.
)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
Up Next- Sol for Solars only, except ...
)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
Updated the Ships of the line addendum up to and including the Battle of Plympto Blight