“Fuck!” he exclaimed, rolling onto his side, rubbing his nose.
Beyond him on the wall, there was no outline of a rift down to the hangar deck, like we’d had on Long Water. As he sluggishly made it back to his feet, I looked up where his fighter was located, and put a rift in place to take him directly there. I made it more than normal outlined as a door. He looked at it suspiciously, put his hand through, and then stepped into it. Needless to say, he was last popping up on the console, with even his eagle faced co-pilot beating him.
“Ready,” said Jill, from the other side of the console, rapidly followed by the rest of my squadron.
“Go,” I said, and all thirteen ships first jumped into a line astern formation in front of the rift, we powered through, and once Jill on the end was through, we began jumping again.
In under a minute, we appeared near to a jump point, but well above it, where below us a fleet of Rawtenuga battleships had staked it out, still in their normal wall formation.
“How the hell did they get there?” asked Gitte.
“They must have discovered a short cut,” suggested Mel.
“Very likely,” said Tamsin.
“Orders?” asked Woof, cutting off that discussion.
I’d been looking down on the formation, and at the other side, where there was indeed a half dozen ships and two hundred fighters approaching the jump point. We didn’t have long to do something.
The fastest thing to do was close the jump point, so it was done as soon as I thought of it. At the least, it would stop either side running into the others. I added extra intent to the other side so ships would come back out in a way they wouldn’t collide with any still going in. All the same though.
“Tamsin, send the traders on the other side of the jump point a message to not approach the jump point until told it’s clear to use. Inform them a Rawtenuga fleet is staking out the other side, and even when dealt with, the jump point will be too dangerous to use until any mess is cleaned up.”
“Sent.”
Below us were sixteen battleships, all identical looking, and three times as big as Judge in terms of length and width. The obvious way of dealing with them was a rift dragged across their nice neat wall formation, but that wasn’t going to keep the pilots happy. We had thirteen capital ships, and sixteen squadrons, for sixteen targets. It made the math easy.
“I want wall formations by squadrons, the shape of each wall so all fighters will fire direct into the front end of a battleship, without needing to strafe. Shift formation now.”
I didn’t bother looking to see what they did.
“Tamsin, I want jump-to locations for each squadron, and their destroyer. The squadron hits the front end, the destroyer hits the rear end. Judge gets three rapid jumps timed to torpedo fire rates, and three of the squadrons with fours attack synced to us.”
“Confirmed.”
“Formations completed,” said Eagle.
“This is a one hit jump, people. We jump in, hit them with everything, and jump out within a second. No-one takes the time for a second shot.”
“What if a second shot is needed,” asked one of the new squadron leaders.
“Then we take the time to reassess back here, and then someone does it as a deliberate strike. There is to be no improvisation in this attack. Clear?”
“Clear, sir.”
There wouldn’t need to be a second attack, I was pretty sure of that.
“Ready,” said Serena.
“Jump in ten, except for the two squadrons syncing with Judge,” said Tamsin.
We jumped, Judge suddenly behind the engines of a battleship. Serena fired everything, and we jumped again, fired again, this time just torpedoes, and again jumped and fired torpedoes. The last jump put us back where we started from, and Serena accidently fired a fourth salvo of torpedoes before she could get her finger off the button.
The ships below us were in varying states of devastation. The first one Judge had hit was gone, with the other two missing most of their rear ends, and chunks of their noses. The ones the fives had hit were nothing but debris, while the ones the fours had hit still had damaged front ends, and intact middle sections.
Only one ship looked like it still had power. I put a rift in front of the departing torpedoes, with the other end against the middle of the only ship with still moving gun turrets. They stopped moving when most of the middle of the ship vanished.
“Damn,” said a pilot. “No second run.”
“Not today,” said Eagle. “All squadrons, home jump.”
In a blink, they all vanished from the navmap and HUD.
“Salvage droids?” asked Loren.
“No need,” said Gitte. “Bud will send what’s left to join the other fleets we disabled the other day.”
And so I did. The interesting thing was, where I sent them now had what looked like Rawtenuga support ships trying to salvage what they could. There was a line of damaged ships being pulled by tugs in the direction of the nearest jump point. But I noticed they were only towing ships they must have thought they could repair. The rest, some with a third of their length missing, or the middle missing, were being ignored.
With no debris left in this system, I reopened the jump point, and nodded to Tamsin to send the traders the news. Nothing had come back from the previous message, and none came back now either. The ships also hadn’t stopped either, and were almost to the jump point.
“Put us in front of the jump point in a line abreast formation, Judge in the middle, but back out at titan range, so even if their fighters shoot at us, we get plenty of warning.”
Serena nodded to the mirror she had in front of her so she could see me without turning, and then Tamsin turned and nodded to me as well. We jumped again, now facing directly at the jump point.
The wait for the small convoy was something of an anti-climax. When they finally popped in, the fighters did indeed fire at us, from outside effective range. Leanne had a channel open before I could ask, since I was putting up a shield at the same time.
“My Imperator’s complements to the Trixone fighters. You fought a great battle, you survived, and managed to avoid the Rawtenuga fleets on your way here. Alas, they beat you here, and waited in ambush. We’ve removed them for you. Have a good journey to your destination.”
Their cruiser fire weakly hit my shield at that point, way beyond its effective hitting range. I let it flare as if being badly hit, and then dropped it, leaving us sitting there undamaged.
“Jump us out of their path,” I ordered, and a blink later, were well above them.
They hadn't slowed down, which had we been ordered to take them, would have been suicidal. They hadn’t fired a second time. Finally, a bridge showed up on the main screen.
“The warriors with us will not respond,” said a white rat, in the center chair. “But on their behalf, we thank you for the consideration. We were not aware of any force being in front of us, but we have confirmed a fleet’s worth of debris has appeared suddenly in another system behind us. That may sound contradictory, but there are holes in local communications now. In any case, we thank you for your help.”
“You’re welcome.”
The channel closed.
“Jump us back to the rift we came through,” I ordered.