Derelict 3, Chapter 34.

We're closing in on the end of Derelict 3, a couple more chapters to go.


Chapter 34.

“Jump complete, sensor readings coming in,” sensors announced. Slater watched along with the bridge crew as the system they were in resolved on the screen. If the SAC forces tried to engage them here, Slater would have little choice in the matter, there were too many defenders to allow him to sneak through without firing a shot.

There were extensive defenses around the jump point, four moderately-sized defense stations were already launching drones, while a force of six gunboats moved in to support them. Deeper in the system another, much larger, battlefleet was approaching. A battlecruiser led a force of six heavy cruisers and eight destroyers. It was a sizeable force, and they would arrive about the time he pushed his way through the ring of fixed defenses guarding the jump point.

The other fleet would hit him just when his shields were depleted from the battering the forces at the defense stations would undoubtedly give him. He couldn’t afford to let Franklin become damaged, and he would take damage in the fight. While he doubted the fleet could burn through his hull, they could strip off gun turrets and damage scanners, shield projectors, and missile launchers, which would take more salvage than he had on hand to replace. This time, the SAC was going to force him to draw blood if he wanted to be intact for the coming fight for Earth. Slater already might be too late, and he severely doubted he would have time to gather resources and repair the Franklin before the Gargonth arrived.

“Incoming hail from the SAC fleet, the defense stations have locked weapons and are launching drones,” Guzman advised.

“USS Franklin, this is Admiral Molina of the Atlantico, you are trespassing into our space, please heave to and prepare to be boarded,” the admiral ordered, giving the same command he had heard in the other systems.

“New contacts entering the system,” scanners advised. Slater watched as two frigates jumped into the system from the gate leading to earth. They hailed the SAC fleet, but Slater was too far away to hack into their conversation.

“Admiral Molina, this is Captain Guzman of the Franklin, we request you let us pass to Earth, we are needed to defend against the Gargonth,” Guzman pleaded. There was a desperate note in his voice, the old captain knew that this encounter would likely lead to bloodshed with the navy he had served in for so long. Slater ordered his MOBS into position, just in case the human crew proved to be a problem. He was reasonably sure Guzman was with him, but what they were about to do might be too much for some of the others. Given that Diaz was in charge of the marines, Slater wanted plenty of firepower nearby.

“Wait one, Franklin,” Admiral Molina replied. Waiting was fine with Slater, the longer the SAC delayed their attack the further he made it from the defensive stations. If they waited too much longer, he would be out of range of their main batteries, allowing him to try and avoid the fleet instead of fighting them to the death. Two minutes passed, and just as Slater was about to exit the range of the station guns, the admiral replied.

“We’ve just received word from Earth. The Gargonth ship has arrived, and things are going poorly for the defenders. My flotilla has been ordered to stand ready to defend this system, but it would take too long to get a message home to rescind those orders. Captain Guzman, if you truly are at the helm of the real Franklin and if Commodore Slater is with you, my fleet stands ready to assist you in the defense of Earth,” Molina told them.

“Admiral Molina, this is Commodore Slater,” he said before Guzman could reply. I would be honored to have your fleet join me. The council was defeated with brave captains from the SAC at my side, It’s only fitting to fight with you once more as allies. Let’s get home and teach the Gargonth that they attacked the wrong race,” Slater said.

“I’ll turn the fleet around and meet you back in the home system,” Molina advised. They had been burning hard to intercept the Franklin and it would take them some time to make it to the jump point. Slater was already heading in the correct direction, and given the impressive power of his engines, he would reach the jump point sometime before the SAC ships were ready.

“Once we arrive, I will be operating independently, I have several new weapons that should give the Gargonth a headache,” Slater advised.

“Excellent, I’ll forward everything we have on the state of the current battle,” Molina told him. Apparently, the frigate that jumped in had been part of the minuscule SAC contribution to Earth’s defense, having returned to report the dire situation in an effort to get fleet command to cut loose more of their forces to help.

The system scans from the frigate showed the Gargonth jump into the system at the predicted jump point. A dozen defensive stations attacked, along with thirty gunboats in support. Fire raked along the Gargonth’s hulls, the creature responding by opening fire with its plasma weapons and releasing flocks of drones to attack the human defenders.

While the jump point defense gave a good accounting of themselves, the Gargonth was too powerful to be stopped. In a frightening display, the ship destroyed all but one of the stations and a pair of gunboats, using tentacle-like appendages to grasp onto the damaged vessels and pull them closer. As it fed on the doomed crews, the damage inflicted by the jump point defense began to heal, leaving a fully functioning Gargonth to push deeper into the system.

The main fleet then engaged the creature, a powerful line of twenty-five battleships and battlecruisers, along with their escorts, fought through the swarms of drones to get into gun range. A dozen fleet carriers and twice that number of light carriers launched drones to counter the Gargonth hordes. The human drones killed their foes at better than three to one, but once they expended their missiles, they fell prey to the impossibly large number of Gargonth drones. Slater counted that over fifteen hundred of the biological drones had been launched in the first wave, followed by four other waves of equal size.

The human main battle line was protected by scores of cruisers and destroyers, giving them an impressive amount of point defense. Sadly, the Gargonth drones still broke through, diving to their doom as they detonated on the human ships. Corrosive material ate through hulls and plasma sought out delicate systems, taking ship after ship out of the fight. Human battleships of various nations entered main gun range and opened up on the foe. Railgun rounds as large as sixteen inches began to strike the hull of the Gargonth, tearing deep into the fleshy armor of the monster.

Even given its size, Slater could tell the Gargonth was hurting, but continued to fight, pumping out more and more plasma blasts that collapsed shields already weakened by the drones. The human firepower started to wane as the battleships and battlecruisers began to succumb to their wounds. It was then that the frigate jumped out, cutting off the feed. It looked like the human fleet was on its last legs, causing Slater to push even more power into his drives to get into the jump point and into the fight. As he had calculated, Slater reached the jump point before the SAC fleet, and given the dire situation, he didn’t wait for them, instead choosing to jump as soon as he arrived.

“Jump complete, sensor data incoming,” sensors advised. Slater watched as the current situation resolved itself. Thankfully, the jump point from SAC space to Earth was much closer to the planets than the jump point the Gargonth took, placing Slater closer to the fight. A fight that didn’t look like it was going too well for humanity.

As the sensor data came in, he could see the Gargonth had broken through the main fleet as was closing on Earth itself. A final, hasty defense was being organized with whatever was left, but it wasn’t going to be enough. A dozen battered cruisers and a score of destroyers had outrun the Gargonth and were holding just out of orbit, counting on the defensive satellites and stations orbiting Earth to aid them. It was too risky in Slater’s eyes; the humans didn’t realize the monster planned to dump something in the atmosphere that would eradicate all life on the planet.

The only good news, if he could call it that, was the fact the Gargonth vessel had stopped its advance to feed. Large wounds had been gouged out of the monster, a testament to the fight that humanity had put up against it. A battleship and a cruiser were caught in the monster’s grasp as it feasted on the crew inside. Slater set a course toward the Gargonth at his best possible speed, trying desperately to get into weapons range before it finished its meal. Even now, some of the wounds looked to be healing over.

“Unidentified vessel, please state your intentions,” A tired voice called out over the comm link. I was coming from the largest remaining ship, a battered heavy cruiser.

“This is Commodore Slater of the USS Franklin. As for my intentions, I’m here to kill that Gargonth,” Slater said.

“Please confirm, the Franklin was destroyed struck from the rolls over a hundred years ago, and even then, it didn’t resemble your vessel.

“Sorry I’ve been gone so long, but I wasn’t destroyed, only injured, and it took me this long to rebuild and return home. As far as the Franklin not looking like you remember, I’ve made some improvements,” Slater replied. He let Captain Guzman talk with the human fleet, he might be better positioned to convince them that the Franklin and Slater were who they claimed to be.

As he closed the distance, the Gargonth finally reacted to his presence. It was strange, Slater could almost feel the monster in his head, he could feel its hatred of humanity, and oddly enough, of him. There was recognition in the monster, it knew who, or perhaps, what he was, and it didn’t like it one bit. The feeling got stronger the closer he got, and instead of pondering what it meant, Slater got to work. His drone’s losses had been replaced and their munitions resupplied. He launched them, positioning them outside of Franklin’s point defense envelope, ready to engage the Gargonth drones that were even now pouring from the monster.

“I’ve got seven hundred plus contacts inbound,” sensors advised. It was a much smaller attack than the human fleet had weathered. Franklinhad interrupted the Gargonth’s meal before it had enough time to rebuild its depleted drone fleet.

While they waited for the range to close, Slater reorganized his MOBS, directing the construction drones throughout the ship to handle damage control and forming the others into squads. Each squad would have ten MOBS, eight cyborks, and two kobots. The gnomechs would be used in support, equipped with a variety of weapons. He wasn’t sure exactly what the Gargonth had as far as internal defenses, but if the keel gun didn’t take it out, Slater planned to ram the monster and kill it from within.

His drones charged forward to meet the enemy, launching their missiles in volleys as the range closed. The Gargonth drones didn’t seem to care as more and more were killed by the long-range weapons. They must have counted on their numbers overwhelming an enemy, but this time, they had been worn down by the long fight with Earth’s defenders. By the time they entered dogfight range, another batch of five hundred drones launched from the Gargonth, but Slater had the distinct feeling that the enemy was now finally out of drone reserves.

Between the missiles and the dogfight, his drones took out over five hundred of the first wave, the remainder shouldn’t give his point defense much trouble. As they entered his point defense envelope, over two hundred weapons opened up, far more than any other human ship, and these weren’t guided by human gunners or some AI, these weapons were guided by Slater himself. The attackers melted away, impaling themselves on his defenses. A dozen or so did manage to slip through, slamming into his shields and dropping them down to fifty-eight percent before the last one was shot down.

The other group of five hundred drones would likely meet a similar fate, but Slater estimated they could do considerable damage to his main guns, and perhaps even inadvertently damage the keel gun. To prevent that he fired his vertical launch tubes, hurling anti-ship missiles at the drones to thin their numbers. I was a waste of resources, but his twenty anti-ship missiles would have had a tough time breaking through the Gargonth point defense. At least this way, he might prevent damage to the more valuable main gun turrets.

Like the first wave, this second group of drones didn’t react to the incoming missiles, continuing on their least time path toward the Franklin even as the second volley of missiles were loaded and launched. Slater estimated he would get the third volley off before they were too close to target effectively. The first twenty were guided where they could do the most damage, right in the middle of some of the densest drone clusters. Explosions dotted space as each missile took down multiple attackers. One lucky hit accounted for twelve drones all on its own.

The follow-up volleys were still deadly, but less effective than the first which had taken out the juiciest targets. By the time the third volley had hit, their numbers had been thinned down to three hundred and sixty. Like the previous attack, his point defense ripped into the attackers, swatting them from space even as they dove for his ship. The shield had recharged to eighty-four percent by the time the first drone slipped through his defenses and detonated.

Hit after hit accumulated even as the point defense tore them to pieces. After the tenth hit, the shields collapsed, and the remaining drones landed their first blows against his hull. Slater could feel the impacts, but thankfully, it appeared they weren’t targeting anything in particular, just trying to ram through the armor of his hull. While this strategy had been very effective against the rest of humanity’s fleet, Slater was a Derelict, and his hull was stronger than anything in space. The final damage was minor, only a couple of five-inch guns were taken out, along with some shield generators and a score of point defense weapons.

The last drone was destroyed, and Slater was still in good shape. His shields were out and wouldn’t recharge for some time given the hits he had taken. Shields didn’t matter at this point, the range to the Gargonth had closed and it was finally in gun range of the Franklin. Slater knew the monster was about to get a very big surprise from a very big gun.