Perhaps we should have bought that battlecruiser after all, he thought wryly. We’d only have to hire thousands of extra crewmen and spend vast sums on her upkeep.
“The intruder will enter engagement range in one minute,” Patti said. “Sir?”
William frowned. It was definitely starting to look as though the intruder was alone, unless there were two ships flying in tandem. He hadn’t seen anyone try that outside the war, and even then they’d been pretty desperate to consider it. Normally, the risks of one ship colliding with another were minimal, but flying in tandem magnified them. He couldn’t imagine the Theocracy taking the chance. They wouldn’t be getting any replacements if they accidentally destroyed their own ships.
He reassessed the situation rapidly. “Take us out of stealth when they enter engagement range,” he said reluctantly. There was something to be said for waiting until the enemy got closer, when they’d have less time to bring their point defense online before his missiles struck home. But that worked both ways. His ship needed time to prepare too. “And send the challenge.”
“Aye, Captain,” Patti said. There was a long pause. “Leaving stealth . . . now!”
“Active sensors coming online,” the sensor officer added. He let out a gasp. “Captain, she’s a Class-XI destroyer!”
Theocrats, William thought. The Theocracy might have lost a destroyer to pirates, but it wasn’t too likely. There had never been many pirates within the Theocratic Sector. The Theocrats had paid pirates to take themselves, their ships, and their depredations into the Commonwealth. It had proved quite effective in the early days of the war. They have to be Theocrats.
“No response to our challenge,” Patti said. “They’re dropping their cloak . . .”
The display sparkled with red icons. “They’re opening fire!”
“Return fire,” William snapped. The enemy CO had external racks. He cursed under his breath. If he’d known the system was going to be attacked, he would have made sure to fit external racks to his ships too. As it was, the enemy had an advantage in the opening round. “And bring point defense online now!”
Dandelion lurched as she emptied her missile tubes. The other ships dropped out of stealth a moment later, adding their firepower to the engagement. William watched the enemy ship alter course, trying desperately to get out of the combat zone before it was too late. The enemy CO had reacted quickly, but clearly he’d been caught by surprise. He needed time to get his shields and point defense online . . . time he no longer had.
A pity we didn’t dare fire until we were sure of our target, William thought. We could have blown the enemy to atoms without risking ourselves.
He forced himself to watch as the enemy missiles closed in on his ship. They were dumb, too dumb to be easily decoyed; he wondered, absently, if that was a deliberate precaution or simple bad luck. Probably the latter, he decided. The enemy missiles weren’t trying to evade his point defense either. His defense was racking up kills as the missiles entered attack range. If there hadn’t been so many of them, he would have regarded the engagement with complete satisfaction.
A missile slipped through the defense grid and slammed into his shields. Dandelion rocked. William checked the display a moment before a second missile struck home. The shields held, thankfully. Dandelion had been shaken badly, but there was no real damage.
Everything will have to be checked, of course, William reminded himself. Something important could easily have been shaken loose by the impacts. The shield generators might even need to be replaced. Someone might even have been injured.
“The enemy ship has been seriously damaged,” Patti reported. “She’s losing power.”
“Streaming atmosphere too,” William commented. He doubted the Theocrats could repair the damage in time to matter. Their maintenance standards were so poor he was surprised they’d managed to build an interstellar empire. “Keep us back. See if they . . .”
The enemy ship went dark. “She’s lost power completely,” Patti said. “Sir?”
William hesitated. If he’d had a marine contingent, he wouldn’t have hesitated to try to board the powerless hulk. Taking the ship intact, or as close to intact as possible, would give him a chance to recover priceless intelligence, including perhaps the location of the enemy base. But a boarding party consisting of spacers might walk straight into an ambush . . . or die, when the enemy hit the self-destruct. They might no longer be able to blow the fusion cores, but there were plenty of other ways to destroy a ship and an enemy boarding party.
“Request volunteers for a boarding party,” he said finally. Did they have time to go back to the planet and pick up some militiamen? The idea was tempting. His crew knew how to handle themselves on a ship, but none had fought on the ground before. “And monitor the enemy ship closely.”
“They might be dead,” Lieutenant Tim Arthur pointed out.
“They might be,” William agreed, although he doubted it. A competent CO would have made sure his personnel were in shipsuits, ready to put on their masks if the hull was breached. But the Theocracy rarely used shipsuits. They regarded most of their crewmen as expendable. “We won’t take chances. Someone could have managed to don a proper spacesuit before it was too late.”
“Yes, sir.”
He sat back and waited as the boarding party was assembled, then dispatched towards the enemy hulk. He’d seriously
