2952-08-07 – Tales From the Service: The Oddball Ambush
Ernest Espinoza had been burning at maximum drive power toward Hausen’s World for almost four hours when the board began to light up with orange blips. The strike screen far ahead had finally encountered enemy resistance – considerable resistance at that.
Captain Coretta Fuentes, who had just surrendered her post to her XO forty minutes before, rushed back up to the bridge as soon as word was passed. Lieutenant Commander Namgung was competent to handle the ship if anyone was, but that didn’t mean she intended to let the fate of everyone aboard be decided while she fretted in her cabin.
The escort force had already moved ahead of Espinoza, Fernand, and Ozolina by the time Coretta arrived on the bridge, and the comms chatter indicated that Admiral Donnell was not particularly worried. The enemy force was, according to the tac-net, composed of rear-echelon frigates and strike formations – exactly the sort of units which would be expected if the enemy had no idea they were coming.
Despite this good news, Coretta remained uneasy, hanging around the rear of the bridge while the lopsided battle far ahead played out. Being a former mining ship, Espinoza at least had plenty of spare seating on the bridge, with benches along the aft bulkhead and a few pieces of deck-mounted furniture on either side of the lift doors. A few other off-duty spacers arrived to take advantage of this and listen to the comms chatter on the bridge sound system, but they all avoided their commanding officer. Even on a temporary crew like Espinoza’s, a broad gulf separated commander from subordinates; only when their duty was complete could it be crossed.
The strike craft engagement, the earlier and most evenly matched part of the engagement, dragged on for more than forty minutes, with a steady stream of damaged Magpie gunships limping back toward the ready hangars of the flotilla all the while. With only Sundiver among the escorts having a hangar of any significance, some of the cripples lined up instead on the wide civilian-style hangars of the three former mining ships. Coretta listened patiently as her second in command ordered medical teams to the hangar even before the first Magpie started its docking approach. Even if Espinoza couldn’t repair the gunships themselves, its crew could at least treat the wounded and keep them safe until a new gunship was ferried over from the supply ship.
As Sundiver and the handful of other warships in the escort force brought the enemy frigates under fire, Coretta couldn’t shake the sense that something was wrong. Things were going according to plan, and she wasn’t used to that. Nate rarely if ever played by the battle plan; even when his only available forces were a patrol squadron of long-range, lightly-armed frigates and a smattering of strike assets, he should have some sort of surprise. Perhaps Operation HELLESPONT had really caught their foes off-guard and there was no surprise this time, but how likely really was that?
Evidently, Alexi Namgung had the same intuition at nearly the same time. “Run a full-sky active sweep.” He told the ensign at the sensor console. “There could be more of them.”
“Aye.” The ensign from the second-shift bridge crew, Coretta realized, wasn’t a day older than nineteen T-years. Had she herself ever been that young?
“Frigate group is scattering.” One of the other officers pointed to the tactical plot. “Donnell’s got them on the run!”
There was a murmur of approval, nothing more; the contest between nine light frigates and a squadron built around a full-scale battlewagon could have no other outcome. Sundiver, old though it was, could easily see off the entire Incarnation force by itself, and do so without allowing the frigates to get close enough to do any real damage to itself.
That was, Coretta realized, what was bothering her. Why hadn’t the enemy force retreated the moment they knew what they were facing? They couldn’t hope to do enough damage to justify their sacrifice, unless they knew something Donnell didn’t.
Donnell probably had the same thought; two of his destroyers were already cutting thrust and falling back to let the the mining ships pass them. It wasn’t the rear that Corretta was worried about, though. Anything that was going to overtake them would have to do it under power, and they’d have detected the gravitic signatures of those drives long ago. A ship going dark could be placed on a ballistic intercept course more easily from a perpendicular direction, assuming the course of the target was known ahead of time, but the easiest intercept course to arrange on shorter notice would be head-on. It would also be the easiest to detect – that is, if there wasn’t a battle going on in between until the last possible instant.
“Relieving Mr. Namgung.” Coretta jumped up and strode forward, holding up an apologetic hand to her XO. Alexi would understand. “Get me comms to Fernand and Ozolina.”
The young ensign saluted, and a moment later gave a thumbs-up. “Channel established, Captain.”
“Both of you listen to me.” Coretta was glad that she was senior most of the three special mining-ship captains. “Those frigates are a blind for something else. Something on a dark ballistic run right for us. We scatter outwards now and whatever it is has to light a drive to chase us.”
“Aye.” Ozolina’s skipper said simply. “Radial thirty degree divergence.”
“Diverting.” Fernand’s captain sounded uncertain. “What do you think it is, Fuentes?”
“Something big enough to put a hurt on us, or they would have all run for the jump limit.” Coretta nodded at her own helmsman, who started executing their own part of the scatter maneuver. “We’ll see in a few minutes. Or we won’t, and we’ll be a couple minutes late into orbit.”
Operation HELLESPONT’s success has gone far to relieve pressure on Sagittarius Gate, but the fortification of Hausen’s World was by no means a sure thing when it was launched. Many potential pitfalls were averted, including the one reported by Captain Fuentes in her account of the operation. I wonder if she over-emphasizes the role her own educated guess played in avoiding great harm to the former mining ships used to ferry defenses to the system, but that an attempt was made similar to the one described is not in doubt.
The force on a dark ballistic course turned out to be a damaged Tyrant-type cruiser thrust onto this orbit despite it having nearly destroyed gravitic engines itself. Had it gone un-noticed, it could have easily torn the “oddball flotilla” to pieces, ruining HELLESPONT.
