“The Palm Beach has nearly finished its analysis sir and will be ready to start its jump calculations soon.”
“Tell them they’re doing good work as always Haley,” Vice Admiral Oliver McKinley said, his eyes moving up from his console, “We’re just a few weeks off of finishing our six-month deep space deployment so don’t get sloppy now!”
“Aye sir!”
“Admiral, do you want me to start the calculations for our next jump or do you want to wait for the results to come in?” The chief navigator asked. He was a bookish man with reinforced square spectacles of the sort that went out of style fifty years ago, yet he never got the memo for someone only two thirds of that age.
“I think we will continue to our pre planned destination. I doubt the scan will have revealed anywhere we need to check out.”
“Got it sir, starting jump calculations and charging the drive capacitors.”
Across the command console Commander Skylar Read squinted at her screen with her slim brown eyes, “They have five systems for far only a few lightyears from our own, I hope we don’t find anymore, or we’ll be in a little too target rich environment.”
“It’s only worrying Commander if they’re competent. Anyway, a major fleet expansion is here and with that I feel like they need to vary the names up a little.”
Skylar raised an eyebrow, “Vary the names how McKinley?”
“The Theseus class is all named after heroes, and I feel like they could put in some more modern ones. Maybe John Brown, Eisenhower or John Paul Jones? Those are good names. Good, good names.”
A small chuckle escaped Skylar’s lips, “It’s mythical heroes they’re named after like our dear Gilgamesh here.”
“You mean to say they were real!?” Oliver asked in mock amazement, “I think you’ve made my day yet again Commander!”
“No problem at all sir. Though if we were to get jumped…”
“We’d have some good chances. Four King Class destroyers with full ECM drone launchers, three Undaunted Class light cruisers, our dear Theseus Class Gilgamesh and the Gold Star all in our fleet.”
“I would count the Gold Star if that old, converted cruiser had anything in the way of firepower.” She sniffed, “Because as it stands, the only fangs it has are some EWAR capabilities and some PDW weapons. The only other thing it has is its sensors.”
“Every gun and jammer helps in a battle.”
“But there is only so much it can do. I’d put my bets more on the Kings. Dewey, Taylor, Ingersoll and Edwards have good crews and designs.”
“Good admirals.” Oliver muttered.
“Then the Undaunteds have a few nuclear tipped missiles and a few more drones as well. Their names are tempting fate though, calling ships Undefeatable, Unbeatable and Fearless is just going to lead to irony.”
“And with those three here we cannot lose! Brighten up, our potential enemy has a fleet that seems to be more concerned with aesthetically integrating their systems rather than combat prowess.”
“That may be true sir, but a railgun is still a railgun, even if the radiators might have been placed awkwardly to make the ship look a little nicer.”
Oliver slowly nodded, leaning against the console as he looked to the back of the flag bridge with a small copy of the ship’s insignia. Gilgamesh, the Sumerian hero, standing upon a planet with a spear raised up high. A rather bold symbol he thought, and a fitting one for such a mighty warship.
“Uhh- Sir!” Haley stammered, looking up from her console.
“What is it Lieutenant?”
“The Palm Beach is reporting indications of approaching radio chatter in it’s data! It’s faint but they’re quite sure about it.”
Skylar’s eyes widened, “Another ship this far out from the nearest star… We’re barely within its magnetic field…”
“Commander, lieutenant,” Oliver barked, “tell the fleet to get to battle stations and tell the captain to get our fighters on standby. Also, I want an update on if Palm Beach has process all of its data and if it can get its dishes on wherever the hell they got those transmissions from?”
“Yes sir! Palm Beach, status on your data processing- They’ve done it!”
“And the dishes?”
“They can get them to turn around right away.”
“Do it! Fighters!?”
Before Skylar could open her mouth a soft red flash briefly filled the room as the red alert claxon sounded over the intercom, “Action stations, action stations, all crew to action stations. Red alert has been set. This is not a drill, all crew to action stations. Unidentified vessels are inbound.”
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
“They’ve been put on alert sir.” Skylar said simply.
“Admiral! Palm Beach confirms that multiple vessels are inbound X-1-0-2, Y-0-9-8, Unknown speed!”
His eyes flicked straight to the RADAR screen, his mind quickly forming a mental image of their approach. “I want the fleet to form up! Destroyers in a loose square up front with us and the cruisers behind them to shield Palm Beach and Gold Star. I also want a drone from each destroyer up.”
“Aye sir!”
The Gilgamesh suddenly jolted as it began to rotate, moving to both shield the space behind and bring eight of it’s twelve guns to bare. All of the other ships were doing the same too, firing their manoeuvring thrusters at full power to bring themselves into position long before-
“Contact, ripple bearing X-1-0-2, Y-0-9-8 from the Gold Star. Contacts are not accelerating and are approaching us with a velocity of three hundred meters per second, distance three hundred kilometres.”
“Admiral!” Called the chief navigator, “We are still calculating for the jump point for our next survey point. I can change the calculation for a jump into our space, but we can’t charge and calculate for the jump at the same time as sending a message and command is going to want to hear about this!”
“And even if they attack us, we will make it back with the message rather than the transmission being our final act. Make calculations for our jump back to IFC space, now.”
“Aye admiral!”
Suddenly Haley tensed up as her eyes darted to Oliver, “Sir, we have an incoming transmission from the other fleet and it is a Directorate one.”
Oliver groaned, “Alright, let’s see what they want.” He muttered as he picked up the phone, “Vice Admiral Oliver of the IFC First Expeditionary Fleet receiving. We are observing that you are on an aggressive and direct intercept path with us, what is going on?”
The line remained silent for a moment, before a gravely and vaguely familiar voice crackled down it, “IFC fleet, you are in breach of our territorial integrity and the Directors have demanded that you must surrender yourself and prepare to be boarded.”
Across the table with the mouthpiece and eyebrows covered Skylar mouthed, “What in the god damned fuck?”
“Directorate fleet, as far we understand we are not impeding on your territory, and you have no right to take any sort of punitive action.” He swallowed, “Any attack against us will be considered a declaration of war. Stand back and let us return back to our space.”
There was no hesitation as the response came, “The Directors orders are clear, your fleet and crew will be apprehended. We are the true nation of humanity, we are its future and its saviours. Aurora sumus.” Then it fell dead.
“They’re not slowing down sir, and they’re also not firing yet.” Skylar muttered.
Oliver felt his jaw tighten, “They’re trying to get us to be the ones who fire first but they are coming for us alright… Tell the cruisers and the destroyers to get firing solutions for their missiles and railguns ASAP and load our coil guns with flack rounds, it’s time to launch our fighters. They’ll have to take us as stone-dead corpses if they want us.”
Skylar nodded, flicking a switch on their console before bringing her phone up, “Captain, launch fighters, the fire is coming to us.”
----------------------------------------
Flakes of dry ice and space dust, that had been accumulated over months of deep space travel, started to crack away as the Gilgamesh’s heavy dual coilgun turrets started to move. The light railgun turrets on the three light cruisers, and all the PDW turrets all across the fleet doing the same as they all pointed toward that distant fleet.
Reactors started to flare up as capacitors charged. Ammo belts whirring to life as rods of tungsten and steel slugs were brought to their guns. Everything was ready, all just waiting for the triggers to be pulled 257 kilometres, 256.7 kilometres, 256.4 kilometres away…
Puffs of dust and air started to shoot out of tubes inlayed along the top of Gilgamesh’s hull. Along with them came the ship’s fighter complement, Condor Space Superiority fighters armed with interceptor missiles contained in sealed compartments, and along every spare slot along their hulls. Their odd ellipsoid shapes with dual engine pylons sticking out from their middles about as far from the look of an aerodynamic terrestrial fighter as possible.
Sleeker drones floated in the space just in front of the destroyers that stood silently like guardians to the gate towards the main battleline.
217 kilometres.
Far out in the distance a fleet of the pincer like Directorate ships approached. Two frigates, five destroyers, two light cruisers and one heavy cruiser. The destroyers and light cruisers had been seen before, but the other two… The frigates were far blockier than the other ships with a far less distinct pincer shape and the heavy cruiser might have been better called a pocket battleship. Dual spinal railguns, four twin medium railgun turrets, two on each pincer, and sides just bristling with interceptor missile tubes. The space between it’s pincers however was filled with struts that supported two large missiles, packed together for some unknown purpose.
Then the parasite craft along the sides of the light cruisers detached, drifting into arrow like formations as-
200 Kilometres.
All the missile tubes and guns across the fleet fired. The ships quickly turning on their retro thrusters and commencing a light deceleration burn as their rounds, missiles and fighters flew ahead, rapidly barrelling towards the IFC fleet.
----------------------------------------
“Vampir- Shit! Everything they have is incoming towards us sir!”
The edge of Oliver’s mouth curled, “Fire flack batteries straight into that missile swarm! All lasers try to target their railgun rounds and every CIWS gun we have fire now on their fighters and missiles! The current orders for our fighters remains for them to intercept anything that gets too close.”
“Aye!”
----------------------------------------
Moments later the ink black silence of space was interrupted by the sudden flash of flack rounds and the explosions of shredded missiles, thousands of flechettes ripping them asunder and detonating warheads.
Only to be followed by the railgun rounds impacting the IFC fleet. A round lanced straight through an engine of the destroyer Dewey, ripping apart it’s combustion chamber in an instant. Another impacted right into Gilgamesh’s starboard bow, only the ship’s thick armour stopping it from completely cutting through itself. And yet another impacted the cruiser Fearless through it’s drone bay, obliterating the craft inside, and its impact nearly dissecting off the vessel’s sensor tower. The rest of them luckily being knocked off course by the lasers or whipping past their targets at their incredible speed.
But the Directorate vessels were not left unharmed.
Many of the flechettes from the flack rounds continued on, dawning on them like a hailstorm. The metal darts sliced into insulation, antennas, radiators and even cracked engine bells.
All as even more of their missiles were shot down by the storm of CIWS rounds and interceptor missiles. The last few that made it through being thrown off course by the jamming of EWAR drones, scrambling their RADARs and causing them to fly wildly off course into the depths of space.
And as the Directorate fleet continued their course, seemingly stunned by the deflection of their barrage, the 1st Expeditionary Fleet struck back.
Racks of missiles were ejected out of their VLS tubes aboard the cruisers, turning slowly towards their targets before their main engines engaged as the guns of the fleet fired.