Citation Series 1: Naero's War: The Annexation War Read online

  None of what they just witnessed firsthand made any logical sense.

  “Sir…all twenty enemy fleets have…they’ve fled the field. Wait…now we’re picking up two new enemy fleets jumping in. One close and about to engage, the other farther out and advancing rapidly to join the fight.”

  Two fleets–still better than twenty.

  “Varcus, this still doesn’t make any sense,” Naero said.

  She consider everything for a short moment.

  “Were these two fleets part of the other batch?”

  Varcus double-checked. “Negative, sir. Different and apparently–completely unrelated. The closer fleet is the 7th Khaido, the other the 3rd Khaido. The 7th is firing at us from extreme range. The 3rd will be on us in 12.4 minutes.”

  “Very well, then. All ships, come about. Let’s deal with the fight at hand. Mysteries later. Sierra-Zulu-7, Wolfspider assault formation. Defensive fighter screens wheel in front and tight. Let’s take down their heavies first. Accelerate to attack speed. Concentrate all batteries on these lead elements, in these optimized targeting profiles.”

  Her hands and fingers flashed on the battle displays, pweaking their attack vectors and firing profiles as her fleet roared into battle.

  The 7th Khaido came at them in Bravo-Victor-4 block formation, with their big guns all blazing out in front.

  A sound strategy. This Triaxian fleet captain knew his business well.

  But Naero needed to shatter the 7th quickly, and put them down hard and fast, before the 3rd swept in to rip Strike Fleet Six’s heads off.

  “All fighter wings—in-and-out in rearward spin, punishing spirals. Continue to soften up their shields.”

  They closed and exchanged initial salvos at long range.

  Only their battleships could hit each other like that.

  The Hippolyta endured the brunt of the enemy strikes focused on her.

  Let them do their worst. The amazon could take it.

  Light damage on her other four bigs, slightly reduced shields.

  “Helm, line up to rake all of their battleships with rapid disruption fire. Keep on them as they try to disperse. Weapons, coordinate firing profiles as we spin and weave. I want their shields down on all five battleships. Concentrate on their weak points and exploit them.”

  The Hippolyta’s big guns punched across two or three warships with every shot, moving to keep them under heavy patterns of fire.

  Strike Fleet Six’s bigs moved and fought with them, adding their precise fire to the mix. Their sixteen, 12 meter batteries blasted the Triaxian battleships in rapid, consecutive order.

  The rest of the strike fleet did their best to defend and go on the offense where they could.

  “Scanning…report.”

  “Sir. Shields down on enemy flagship, The Enfield, The Kentucky, The Brown Bess, and The Remington. The Springfield is on fire and withdrawing, falling back.

  They had them; Naero already knew it.

  She called to her bigs, all of which still had shields eighty-percent or better.

  Light to moderate damage on a few other ships.

  “Python, Athena, Choturri, Wombat–take those bigs down. We’ll soften up the rest. Get ready for their mates sweeping in.”

  Naero’s four battleships closed with the enemy bigs and started to bust them up. Kentucky soon floated helpless. Enfield still fought. Springfield continued to evade and burn, apparently unable to jump. Brown Bess got swarmed on. After multiple explosions, she broke up. Bess’s crew shot away in life pods where they could. Remington jumped out with heavy damage.

  The enemy bigs that could still move pulled further back into their screen of smaller warships and fighters, in a more defensive mode.

  They trying to buy time for the 3rd Khaido to sweep in and turn the tide. All five enemy carriers jumped out with light to moderate damage.

  They had already held back to the rear. Yet jumping away would strand many of their fighters–if the third couldn’t collect them.

  Her strategy remained ferociously efficient. Naero’s adept hands flew over the battleholo displays like a sorceress casting spells.

  She continued raking the enemy lines with disruption fire, now focusing on the enemy cruisers. Then the enemy destroyers and lesser ships. The Hippolyta swept through the enemy lines or circled about, nailing several of the smaller enemy warships with each blast, continuing to line them up.

  The capability to rapidly degrade or completely eliminate enemy shields proved decisive, time and time again.

  Her people knew how to maximize and pinpoint attack damage. With Naero’s help, they coordinated their fire on the enemy cruisers, ganging up on them three and four at a time.

  Once the enemy battleships were all finally neutralized, Naero’s four bigs added their cannons to the rapidly progressing gun battle as well.

  Ten enemy cruisers: two destroyed, six burning and listing, two fled–in minutes.

  Naero’s fleet continued to chew through the remaining destroyers and lesser warships, just as the second enemy fleet swept in to attack.

  In the resulting chaos, Naero first withdrew in several directions to cause confusion.

  Some of the enemy held back, some attempted to pursue.

  Naero pulled them in several directions, off balance and out of formation.

  Her fingers jabbed at and punctuated the battle screens.

  “Alpha-Charlie-2 Cloud attack! Collapse back in on them. Take the bigs down first, then the others. Hit them ship-to-ship in-close with all batteries. We’ll continue to disrupt shields on their lines, and wear them down.”

  This became tougher, because the new enemy fleet was fresh and undamaged, providing the foe with a temporary advantage.

  Naero quickly scanned her own roster of ships, checking the battle status of each one.

  “Wombat, withdraw and jump if pursued. You’re too beat up.”

  Wombat Captain Blue Ryan protested. “We can still fight, sir! Let’s finish this.”

  “Negative, Blue. Your shields are at eight percent and two of your engines are on fire. Jump out while you still can. That’s an order. Acknowledge.”

  “Yes, sir. On our way.”

  “These ships, I’m ordering you out of the mix as well. Jump back to the Alliance and report to the fixer clouds. We’ll re-join you, as able. Panther, Vulturo, White Cat, Thunderbolt, Gray Typhoon, Duelist, Toparra, Lightning Bug, Star Witch, Hammerhead, Marauder, and The Seraph. I say again, withdraw at once. Stay together. “

  All dozen of them pulled out, withdrew further, and jumped–some of them quite heavily damaged.

  Two of them had to be towed into jump by others.

  Her ranks reduced significantly, Naero continued the fight.

  Within seconds of the initial engagement, the five fresh enemy battleships gave her forces a very hard time of it.

  Concentrated enemy fire quickly degraded her remaining bigs and the cruisers that formed up to support them.

  The Hippolyta spun on her axis and charged in.

  She quickly directed all four of her massive main batteries against each of the Triaxian battleships in turn.

  The Hurricane, shields down, moderate damage.

  The Tornado, shields down, re-positioning, still fighting.

  Ensign Yon Cherokee called out from his Shielding station on the bridge’s third ring. “Hippolyta shields down to forty-three percent, sir.”

  All five enemy battleships suddenly pushed in close, concentrating all their fire from their primary and secondary batteries straight at The Hippolyta, pummeling her, beating her up.

  Other lesser enemy ships joined in, trying hard to take her down.

  Naero sneered and kept firing, right into their packed ranks.

  “Bring your worst, scum! My girl can take it. Better than you have tried to take us down, and gone up in flames. All ships, cut them to pieces while they’re focused on us!”

  “Shields at twenty-six percent…fourteen…”


  Hippolyta’s next four gun salvo blasted the enemy flagship, The Hurricane completely to dust, damaging all ships close to it—whether friend or foe.

  “Shields gone, sir. Hull armor on bridge blast screens rapidly failing.”

  Combined main battery fire from three enemy battleships: The Tornado, The Dark Typhoon, and The Maelstrom struck The Hippolyta bridge blast screens and finally punched through.

  Enemy firepower enveloped the bridge and each of its shielded stations in a firestorm.

  Naero felt her shields fizzle and fail. A powerful force smacked her down. Burning pain erupted across her upper left arm.

  3

  Automated damage and fire control protocols took over. Emergency shields sealed the breaches, for now.

  Naero scrambled to her feet, attempting to stabilize and control her flickering battle displays and holo readouts. All she could smell at first was ozone in the ionized air and smoke.

  What shape were they in?

  Could they still fight?

  Enemy cannon beams had penetrated The Hippolyta bridge defenses and wrecked havoc. Multiple dead and wounded on the bridge and in other areas on board. Remaining crew moved efficiently to assess and control the damage and give assistance.

  Weapons still online and firing. Surviving bridge crew continued to operate their stations.

  Engineering had their shields back up at eight percent.

  Hippolyta shuddered again as the enemy battleship The Tornado exploded .The Dark Typhoon burned out of control. All ships pulled away from it.

  The Maelstrom attempted to withdraw, found itself trapped, and promptly surrendered.

  The Vortex turned and fled in panic, along with the last few surviving enemy vessels.

  Naero’s fleet had indeed shredded the enemy, while they had focused all their firepower on The Hippolyta.

  Once four of the five enemy battleships from the 3rd Khaido Fleet lay defeated, the battle was primarily won. The few remaining enemy warships that were able, broke off and attempted to flee.

  “All ships, stay on them,” Naero shouted. “Keep at them! Don’t let them jump. Take them down as they run.”

  Naero opened a channel to the enemy vessels.

  “Triaxian forces. This battle is over. Enemy warships, power down and surrender–or be destroyed. There is no need for further loss of life. Stop fighting, come about, and give up. All prisoners will be treated fairly and with honor.”

  The enemy ignored her and kept fighting and fleeing.

  Naero and her fleet gunned them down on the run, leaving a trail of floating, burning wrecks behind them.

  The rout became both desperate and deplorable.

  Once enemy ships were clearly taken out of the fight, Naero’s people stopped firing on them and simply pushed on to gang up on the next target.

  The Hippolyta opened its battered blast screens slightly at the flick of one finger. Naero focused intently on the remaining elements of the fleeing Triaxian fleet directly in front of her forces.

  By now she wore a small, slap-on medpak adhered to the painfully scorched and formerly bleeding wound on her left, upper arm.

  The enemy fire that had penetrated the bridge killed two bridge crew outright–Ensign Draeden Khyber, Engineering and 2nd Leftenant Jisa Flynn, Life Support control stations, and one of her Marines guarding the lifts–Lance Corporal Zhon Keller.

  Ten others endured various light to moderate wounds, like her own.

  Like their captain, they all still served defiantly at their posts.

  Their comrades’ corpses lay at hand within body bags, placed off to one side.

  Naero had only known them for a few months, but they had already become her family.

  They lived, worked, and fought side-by-side.

  Each loss of one of her bridge crew felt like a dark knife, stabbed through her already troubled heart.

  Back-up crew already came up to run their stations.

  If any of them fell–including herself–others would step in to assume their duties.

  Even if the main bridge was wiped out, her XO–Commander Jaylen Maeris–waited to take over command of the ship within the separate backup bridge, well below them, in the most heavily protected core of the ship. This remained Alliance SOP on all primary warships.

  Naero’s nostrils flared. Her battered strike fleet pursued the remnants of the Triaxian fleets they had broken around Beleron-4.

  Most of the enemy forces they engaged lay scattered and burning behind her.

  In the wake of the relentless Alliance advance.

  Holo readouts of each retreating vessel floated before her. Designation. Current status and heading, speed, damage reports. How close they were to jumping free of the battle to get away.

  Her bridge crew fed her a continual stream of updated battle info.

  One enemy fleet carrier, a pocket carrier, one G-Class battleship, two cruisers, three destroyers, thirty-one fighters and assorted transport, supply and support vessels.

  After the mauling they endured, half of the enemy ships were still on fire. And one way or another, half of those would never make it into jump.

  Warnings flashed critical for a split instant

  The enemy pocket carrier, The Aspen, suddenly went nova. Its shattered fusion drives, power core, and remaining ordnance detonated. The blast damaged the larger carrier, The Cottonwood and the G-Class battleship nearby, The Vortex, even further.

  Naero called out over the open channel.

  “Enemy vessels. This is your last chance; I say again–there is no need for further loss of life. I repeat. Come about and lower your shields. Power down your weapon arrays, and prepare to be boarded. Refuse, and we will resume our attack. Instantly.”

  Seconds passed. Some of the smaller enemy ships pulled ahead and jumped, if they were able.

  Naero’s fighter waves stood poised on the enemy’s heels, ready to roar in and help finish them off.

  Let alone Naero’s white hot big guns on all of her main ships.

  The limping enemy battleship came about.

  But its captain’s message to her roared defiance.

  “Filthy, bloody, spacks. We’ll die in flames before we let you enslave us. And we’ll take you with us. For Triax! Death to the Alliance!”

  The link broke off.

  “All ships, dispersal formation Kilo-November-4!”

  Her sharp new pilot, Enel Maeris, broke in from the helm.

  “Captain, enemy shields full front. Powering jump drives!”

  Naero snapped in sudden anger. “I see it. Emergency wide dispersal, Kilo-Oscar-9. All weapons, fire at will. Cut that ship down!

  She rounded on her subordinate. “Ensign…interrupt me again when I am calling orders in a fight, and I will kindly shoot you in the goddam head.”

  Her new pilot paled and began to apologize.

  Naero stopped him with one raised hand.

  “I can see what they’re doing. Let me run things.”

  “Y-yes, sir. S-sorry, sir,” Enel muttered.

  Just before The Vortex activated its jump drives close in to commit suicide—and blast a path of destruction through them—an intense barrage of concentrated Alliance naval fire punched into it.

  Direct hits tore the enemy ship apart and stopped it in mid-charge.

  Then the gigantic quad guns of The Hippolyta finally cut loose.

  All four 16 meter beams lit up the entire sector, blinding blue-white.

  And blew the enemy battleship and its crew and captain straight to perdition.

  Only two lesser enemy ships staggered away into jump.

  All the rest came about and stood down, crying out in panic to surrender.

  Naero glanced back over at the body bags on the bridge.

  And they was just three KIA.

  Naero clenched both her fists. It was all she could do to resist the urge to wipe out all of the enemy at their mercy.

  Such was her contempt for Triax and the ways it conducted itself
and its forces during the campaign.

  They attempted to question the prisoners about the bizarre, twenty enemy fleets that had jumped out just before the other two fleets arrived.

  The remaining officers of the 3rd and 7th Khaido fleets stared and blinked at them in confusion.

  They obviously knew nothing about the phantom fleets, or what such large enemy forces had been doing in the middle of nowhere.

  It would have been a different story completely if Naero and her fleet had lost the battle.

  Unlike the Alliance, Triax took no prisoners.

  They brutalized their own worlds and were not above sacrificing them and their populations, for little reason–just like they did at Heaven-7.

  Anything to slow the Alliance advance.

  To her mind, after all that Triax had done to her people, their allies, and especially her family and her Clans–they did not deserve consideration. Let alone the crimes against their own people. Triax could not be crushed hard enough, or fast enough for Naero’s liking.

  And she remained hell-bent and determined to see that mission through to its bloody conclusion, whatever the costs.

  Triax, the first Gigacorporation, and by far the worst of its vile kind, desperately needed to be wiped out of all existence. That purpose never left her thoughts.

  Yet she had to continually remind herself that many of Triax’s long-suffering people were little more than pawns, dupes, and slaves themselves. Taught for generations to fear and hate ‘spacks.’

  That very term was an ultimate affront, a guttural, racial smear against Spacers from the days of the first, desperate Spacer War.

  Most of the landers probably didn’t know any better than the lies fed to them. Most landers never even met a Spacer. Yet they couldn’t all be rabid fanatics like the captain of that battleship.

  She wondered how his crew felt, being dragged into suicide with that lunatic, corporate zealot.

  Damn it. All of those people could have lived.

  Spacers upheld the laws of war, and took prisoners who surrendered.

  That crew could have all survived the war and gone home to their families afterwards.

  Hundreds. Such a waste. Poor people.

  “Captain Maeris,” Leftenant Surina Marshall called out from her com station.