The Ascendant Stars - Michael Cobley [156]
All the Hegemony ships were breaking formation now, frantically trying to spread out and make less obvious targets. At the same time they were managing to keep up the attack barrage, much of which was now directed at the Retributor. Missiles, hull-leeches and swarmers converged on that particular spot in the flank of the defenders’ formation and the nearby warships managed to intercept nearly all of them. Beam weapon bursts and particle pulses were harder to neutralise and the first time a string of them struck the rockhab Greg felt his mouth go dry.
Shattered rock and clouds of grit and dust erupted here and there, and a couple of times an assembly housing or external pipe junction was hit, resulting in a flare of vaporised metal burning up. Greg started to realise how much punishment a big asteroid could absorb.
But now it was the defenders’ turn to become an easy target. Crowded together in a comparatively slow-moving teardrop formation, this allowed the enemy vessels to concentrate their fire – but even Greg knew this couldn’t go on. Minutes later Ngassa was back on the big screen with a new plan – divide the combined fleet in three, a command group based on the vice-admiral’s flagship and the Retributor, and two support groups based on the Imisil and Vox Humana vessels respectively, strengthened with Earthsphere units.
The Imisil commander, First Proposer Conlyph, nodded emphatically, his facial markings shimmering an impatient silver.
‘Dividing our numbers adds to our manoeuvrability while dividing the enemy’s firepower.’
The Vox Humana admiral, Olarevic, was unconvinced but Ngassa’s promise of five Earthsphere heavy cruisers brought her round. Ash had Berg in the Starfire and Braddock in the Vanquisher go with them too, while deciding to commit the Silverlance to the Imisil group.
‘Our strategic goal,’ Vice-Admiral Ngassa said over the group-channel visual, ‘is to locate and destroy the Hegemony flagship, thus removing the Supreme Overcommander.’ The image of a bulky, carrier-sized ship bristling with weapons appeared below his face. ‘Clear skies and good hunting!’
Greg raised an eyebrow at Ash. ‘So, my idea wasnae so dumb, after all, eh?’
‘It depends on how you define the word.’
‘What – define “dumb”?’
‘No – “idea”.’
But the task ahead, spiritedly depicted as formidable or even challenging, soon showed its true face. The enemy ships were too numerous and the collective potency of their weapons was too strong for overloaded, overstretched shields and weakened hulls. Formationless, the Hegemony vessels converged on the three groups of defending ships, imposing carriers unleashing hundreds of interceptors that fell upon them in wave after wave. On the control screens in the Silverlance’s engineering deck, Greg watched the attack runs against a Vox Humana light assault cruiser which had become separated, explosive rounds stitching lines of fire along its hull, the bursts of argent violence as generators or fuel stores ignited, the pale outgassing from a hundred breaches, the ragged gaping crater where an out-of-control enemy craft had rammed the ship and exploded. And dozens of escape pods jetting away, location signals pinging on the emergency channels.
Greg saw similar ship deaths played out on the screens, a repetition of desperate tragedy. Half an hour after Ngassa’s stirring send-off, their combined numbers were down to eighteen at the last count. Braddock’s Vanquisher was a drifting hulk, its captain missing. The Vox Humana’s Admiral Olarevic lost her flagship but transferred to one of the Earthsphere cruisers. Including Berg’s Starfire, their own group was down to four.
The Imisil group were numerically better off – two Imisil cruisers, three Earthsphere attack cruisers and Ash’s Silverlance – but the damage sustained was widespread and serious. The Imisil commander had decided on a tactical withdrawal out past the