Derelict 3, Chapter 11.

Chapter 11.

Braeton System, Taskforce 14.

USS Phoenix

“Sir, the Chinese taskforce is in position,” comms advised.

“Set a course back the fleet,” Commodore Horne ordered. His reduced taskforce began to pull away from the defense stations they had been covering, heading back to join the growing fleet that was gathering nearby. His command had been stripped down to the Phoenix and three of his original destroyers, the rest of the ships had been parsed out among the other formations that were being created.

“Odd to see the Chinese fleet as friendly,” his XO, Commander Wainwright, said.

“Yes, I’m glad we’re not about to blow each other into space, but I wish it didn’t take a threat to the entire human race to bring us together,” Horne replied. He keyed in a modest level of thrust to bring them back to the main fleet, there was no immediate threat and while they could fabricate much of the replacement parts the ship needed, a new drive was something that would require a shipyard to replace. The Phoenix was getting long in the tooth and was due for a major refit, but with the threat of the Gargonth, every ship that could move under its own power and still fire a weapon was being pressed into service.

“Sir, Admiral Lackland is on the line,” Comms advised.

“Good, patch him through to the ready room, I’ll take the call there,” Horne replied. It was time for their weekly debrief, something the admiral did keep all his captains appraised of the overall picture. As more ships arrived to take up the defense of the sector, the meetings had begun to drag on. Between valid concerns with their hastily gathered force, to ambitious captain’s trying to curry the admiral’s favor, Horne had found his concentration drifting as each of the ships of the US contingent gave their status. It was something that could be easily done in a report, but the admiral still saw the value of doing it live, he said it gave him a chance to get a better feel for the fleet’s readiness, something that a text report couldn’t always convey.

“Sir, the taskforce is reporting ready for action. There are lingering maintenance issues that can’t be resolved during deployment, but nothing that is critical. Consumables are in good shape, and we only need to top off our rations from the fleet supply ship once we rejoin you. As you know, everything is quiet at the jump point,” Horne replied.

The admiral nodded at him, not feeling the need to dig any deeper into the status of his small force, a gesture of respect that Horne appreciated. Some of the newer officers could expect a barrage of questions from the admiral, zeroing in on every detail to see if the captains really knew the status of their ships or if they were just going through the motions. A few more captains finished up their review before Admiral Lackland gave them an overall update on the fleet status and what was going on in the rest of human space.

“Well done everyone, I think we’re as prepared as we’re going to be. As far as our orders go, nothing has changed. The United States Navy is continuing to fortify both our own systems and send everything we can to bolster Earth’s defense in case something goes wrong here. Of course, we’re going to see that nothing goes wrong. When that Gargonth ship pokes it nose into the Braeton system, we’re going to chop it off and push them out of human space,” the admiral said with a confidence that Horne didn’t necessarily feel.

He and the ships of his taskforce were some of the few that had seen the Gargonth in action. A small multi-national force had been assembled after his warning, a token effort that was put together more to try and keep the peace between several warring nations that it was to defeat the new threat to humanity. The taskforce had met with disaster, the entire group of twenty ships from various nations had been destroyed minutes after engaging the Gargonth, hardly slowing down the giant ship as it continued deeper into human space. Only a single destroyer left at the jump point survived to spread the tale.

After the destruction of the multi-national fleet, the other nations began to take the threat seriously, well, at least most of them had. The SAC, decided to ignore the threat and fight their border conflict with the Russian Confederation, who were glad to oblige. The continued conflict among those two groups had led the others to keep large forces back from the defense of Earth, instead, they were using the bulk of their forces to defend their own colony worlds. It didn’t matter that the Gargonth were nowhere near their territory, they were determined to take care of their own before they worried about the rest of humanity.

“Sir, are there any additional forces coming to join or fleet?” Horne asked. They had at his last count, sixty-seven ships in the combined fleet, but they were mostly older vessels and ships the various nations didn’t mind sending away from their territory to defend a system they didn’t own. Despite that, it was a powerful force and one that should, based on the raw tonnage, be more than a match for the single Gargonth ship. Still, Horne remembered how quickly the Chinese taskforce was torn apart, without hardly scratching the enemy vessel.

“We are it as far as the US contribution is concerned. There are a few more ships arriving. We expect some Indian and a few more Chinese vessels to arrive in the next seventy-two hours. Other than resupply for the fleet and the transports ferrying the rest of the drone squadrons for the new defense stations, we have all that we’re going to get,” the admiral replied.

By virtue of his nation committing the lion’s share of the ships gathered for the system’s defense, Admiral Sun from the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Space Force was in overall command. Horne still found it strange how the Chinese named the branches of their armed forces, they had stuck to tradition, even when it didn’t always make sense. Admiral Lackland wasn’t too happy with the choice, but even as godlike as an admiral’s power was in space, the politicians at home still were in charge. It wasn’t an irrational choice, Admiral Sun seemed to be a skilled commander and anything to help prevent a shooting war between the two nations after the Gargonth were dealt with was a good thing.

The Braeton system made a great spot to try and stop the Gargonth. It had only two jump points, the one that the Gargonth would enter from, and the one that led deeper into human territory. They would have to face the might of earth’s navies or turn tail and run, lacking the option to slide into another system to avoid a fight. The downside was that the system was home to one of the United States colony worlds. Over a half million colonists were trying to scratch out a life on the second planet from the sun, a world named Harvest. Extreme temperatures and a low-oxygen atmosphere made things difficult for the colonists, but they were determined to make this world work. The other three planets in the system were uninhabitable but offered some potential for future mining operations. Braeton didn’t have much in the way of defense, it was considered too deep inside human space to need protection from alien forces and it wasn’t close to any potentially hostile human neighbors.

When it became clear that the Gargonth were heading on a path that would lead them eventually to Earth, Braeton became a natural choice for the first real effort to stop them. The call had gone out to the various nations to gather forces for the defense of the system. Other than China, who were looking for some payback for the forces they had lost in the first battle with our new enemy, the other nations had contributed only token amounts. Several had pledged more support for a defense of Earth itself but didn’t want to detach precious naval forces to help defend what they saw as someone else’s system.

In the end, the defenders had scraped together sixty-seven warships and a handful of support vessels. A pair of defense stations were under construction at the jump point but were not yet fully operational. For now, Admiral Sun had opted to keep the fleet several hours from the jump point. The exact spot a ship would transition into a system was unknown and they could appear over a wide area, necessitating the need to keep some distance to cover all possible approaches. To give them some advance warning, a pair of frigates were left in the system the Gargonth would approach from.

This new enemy operated unlike any fleet that Horne had seen. A small screen of recon ships had been following its progress through human space and noted that the enormous ship would sometimes stop for no reason, its engines going silent for a time as it drifted across the system. Normally a warship would want to cross potentially hostile space as quickly as possible, but not this foe. Perhaps the earlier battles had damaged them more serious than Horne thought.

Horne’s taskforce soon reached the rest of the gathering fleet. It was an impressive sight, despite knowing the majority of the vessels were like his own, a bit long in the tooth. They had a main battle line of six battleships, three Chinese, two American, and the sole battleship possessed by the fledgling Indonesian navy. To supplement the heavy fighting power of the battleships were an equal number of battlecruisers. Two fleet carriers and four light carriers provided their drone component, their numbers would be supplemented by the squadrons that would eventually be stationed on each of the two defense stations. Ten cruisers rounded out the list of capital ships and the rest of the fleet consisted of destroyers and frigates.

“Sir, there’s a ship transitioning at jump point one,” sensor’s announced. Jump point one was where they expected the Gargonth to arrive from and as the sensor returns cleared up, it appeared to be one of the frigates left behind to monitor the next system over. The Gargonth had entered the next system and were heading this way at full burn. They should be ready to jump into Braeton in less than a week.

The fleet was ordered toward the jump point, waiting to see when and where the enemy would appear. Five days passed as they all waited for the coming conflict. That was the most difficult part of space combat, the waiting. It was early morning shipboard time and Horne was just about to dig into one of the tasteless ration bars he kept at his station when alarms began to ring.

“Transition detected, it’s big, looks like the Gargonth have arrived, sir,” sensors reported.

When a ship jumped into a system, you never knew exactly where they would appear. The area was so vast that defense stations, like the pair assigned to cover this jump point, relied on their drones to do any damage. It was also the reason that the fleet had stood off so far, they didn’t want to be caught out of position if the Gargonth appeared at an unexpected location. This time, the Gargonth appeared almost on top of the defense stations, plasma already lashing out at the defenders while drones poured from a score of launch bays placed across the hull.

“They don’t stand a chance,” the XO muttered as the swarms of drones formed up and attacked not only the stations, but also the screen of Chinese destroyers covering them.

The Chinese sailors were brave, fighting back against hopeless odds as the main fleet pushed forward to assist. Light, five-inch railguns fired into the behemoth of a ship as the smaller point defense weapons began to engage the swarm of drones heading toward them. Normally, they would have the support of the defensive stations, but they hadn’t received their drone allotments yet and only half of their point defense and main batteries were online and functional. Knowing they wouldn’t have time to complete them, Admiral Sun had ordered the crews taken off and had set the weapons to automatically engage anything designated as hostile.

Automated operation of weapons systems was a poor substitute for a trained crew and the hit rate for the defense stations was much lower than that of the accompanying destroyer squadron. It didn’t matter as first one, then the other defensive station went up. They were too close to the main guns of the impossibly large enemy ship. The destroyers lasted a bit longer, having the ability to evade along with an integrated point defense. In less than three minutes, the initial skirmish of the battle for the Braeton system was over. The Gargonth had destroyed a pair of unfinished defense stations and a squadron of four destroyers.

“Sir, new orders coming in, we’re being asked to provide additional point defense for the carriers,” comms announced. Horne ordered his taskforce back from the main line and back toward where the carriers were positioned. Lacking much in the way of armor, the carriers were typically placed out of harms way, relying on their drone squadrons to reach out and hit the enemy. As the main fleet moved in, the carriers along with their escorts held back. Even now, the drone squadrons were launching, forming up around the carrier before being sent to cover the main fleet.

The first missile volleys blasted out of their launchers and headed toward the Gargonth ship. Most of the enemy drones now converged into a single mass and flew toward the fleet while the newly launched Gargonth drones headed to intercept the missiles before they entered point defense range. Even as the missiles and drones closed in, the capital ships began to fire at their foe. The distance was too great to score many hits, even simple maneuvers would dodge all but the luckiest of shots, but it looked like Admiral Sun wanted to pull out all stops in damaging the foe early in the fight.

“Sir, we have over 1,200 Gargonth drones active and more are launching every second,” sensors advised. It was truly a staggering number considering the two fleet and four escort carriers could only field a total of twenty-four squadrons, giving them just over 300 drones. With such a numerical advantage in drone support, Horne would have figured on the Gargonth ship keeping out of main gun range while it whittled down the human fleet with drone attacks. Instead of doing what Horne expected, the Gargonth were accelerating toward the main fleet, plasma guns blazing.

“First missile wave has been shot down, enemy drones are closing in on the fleet,” sensors announced. Horne watched as the human drones tore into the strangely shaped Gargonth ones. Like their previous encounter, the human drones proved more effective in the fighter role. With anti-drone missiles, better targeting, and more maneuverability, they scored the first several kills. Weight of numbers then began to take effect and despite a two to one kill ratio in the dogfight, the humans ran out of drones long before the Gargonth did. Just over three hundred enemy drones survived the engagement with their human counterparts, resuming their attack on the fleet.

“That’s something new,” Horne said as fresh drones launched from the Gargonth ship along with some larger vessels. Was it a bomber variant to target the larger human ships, or something else? He could do nothing but watch as the remains of the first enemy drone swarm attacked the human fleet. Completely ignoring their losses to point defense, the drones dove straight into the closest ships, crashing into shields and once those were overloaded, into the ship’s hull. By the time the last of the first drone swarm were destroyed, the human fleet had lost a dozen frigates and destroyers, stripping away valuable point defense for the next wave of drones that were even now on their way to attack.

“Commodore Horne, the carriers can hold their own for a while, I want your ships up here to supplement our point defense,” Admiral Sun said, calling him directly.

“Aye, sir, we’re on our way,” Horne replied as his small flotilla burned their way toward the main fleet. He felt bad leaving the carriers with no cover, but so far, the enemy had been focusing on the nearest ships, ignoring the carriers. It was a smart move, now that their drones had been destroyed, the human carriers had nothing to offer other than their own point defense weapons. They must have been ordered away, Horne watched the carriers flip over and burn toward Harvest.

The second wave of enemy drones numbered just under a thousand, but this time there were no human drones to counter the threat. Drone after drone charged into the outlying picket ships, bringing down the lightly armored and shielded frigates and destroyers. Horne’s taskforce made it into point defense range just as the drones began attacking the larger vessels.

“We’ve lost point defense coordination with the Shenzhen,” weapons announced. That was bad news, the fleet flagship, the Chinese battleship Shenzhen was being hammered by a nonstop barrage of drones, even its impressive armor scheme wasn’t proving up to the task of protecting her.

“Assume local control of the taskforce,” Horne ordered. While less effective than tying in with the whole fleet, his ships would at least fight together in their little group.

“Admiral Lackland on the Ohio is assuming command of the fleet, we’re being ordered to sync to his weapons net,” Comms advised. Horne switched his control from local to fleet, watching as the networked ships worked out the optimal firing priorities in their defense against the Gargonth drones.

“Weapons, we’re in range, engage the Gargonth,” Horne ordered. At least they were going to get their licks in on the enemy capital ship. The Phoenix and her battery of twelve, six-inch railguns were nothing to sneeze at as she added her firepower to the barrage crashing into the enemy ship.

“Drone hit, shields are down to twelve percent,” the XO announced. A blow to the shields wasn’t felt inside the ship, but the gentle shake of a second hit announced their shield failing.

“What just hit us?” Horne asked.

“A second drone hit the bow, taking down the shield. Damage control reports we’ve lost the forward main battery and three-point defense weapons. One of the barbette mounted six inchers has a damaged loading system, but they can get that fixed as soon as the battle is over,” the XO advised. Their scanners went out as another pair of blows hit the Phoenix.

“What was that? Confirm weapons are still active,” Horne ordered.

“Sir, we’ve lost more point defense and have hull breaches aft, damage control is responding. Sensor net is down but we’re should be able to piggyback of another ship momentarily,” the XO announced, keeping track of their mounting damage.

“Damage control is reporting they are under attack, enemy boarders at the aft hull breach. It was one of those larger drone ships that hit us, they must have been transports of some kind,” the XO advised. Horne hit the 1MC sending his next announcement through the entire ship.

“All hands, prepare to repel boarders,” Horne said.

“Automated defenses are activating,” XO said. Horne pulled up the internal feed, wanting to get a look at the enemy, but not believing his eyes. One of the cameras near the hull breach showed the enemy boarding transport. The ship that had breached the Phoenix’s hull was nothing like what he expected to find. This was no mechanical drone or a piloted transport, this vessel looked like it was a single living organism. Large, tentacle-like appendages pushed their way into his ship, the tips of each had a crystalline cap at the end. A gooey substance sealed the breach in the hull, stopping any further atmosphere loss. The ends of the tentacles began to glow as even more started to snake their way out of the boarding ship.

Horne could see the bodies of his damage control team lying on the deck, torn to bits. As he watched, one of the tentacles began to pull the body parts of his crew back into the alien craft. The camera feed cut out as the glowing tentacle released a burst of plasma, burning through the hatch leading deeper into his ship and destroying the camera mounted above it.

Human warships were well prepared for boarding operations. At every passageway intersection, automated weapons platforms were placed, the small turrets looking for any unauthorized intruders. Every crewmember was required to maintain proficiency with small arms and weapons distribution points were placed at several points in the ship. In a matter of minutes all 868 officers and sailors aboard would be armed and ready to defend their stations.

While humanity was used to fighting aliens, these Gargonth were unlike anything he had seen before. The tentacles continued their way into the ship, burning through sealed hatches with their strange biological plasma weapons. Automated weapons and armed crew engaged them, but for every appendage they damaged another appeared to take its place. The most disturbing aspect was watching as the enemy dragged away the bodies, something horrible was going on inside that boarding shuttle, something that was using his own crew to replenish itself.

“Comms, send our internal sensor data to the Laffeyand get confirmation they’ve received it,” Horne ordered. The USN destroyer Laffeyhad been stationed at the other jump point in case of disaster. They were to gather any data on the fight and get it back to headquarters if the fleet was defeated. Sadly, defeat was looking like the inevitable conclusion of the fight.

Horne watched the space battle, unable to participate as enemy stripped his weapons from the hull. Abandoning their kamikaze attacks, the Gargonth drones had settled for destroying any active weapon systems on the ships that had been boarded. From what he could tell, at least a dozen ships had fallen prey to the biological boarding pods and the rest were being blown apart, one by one. The giant enemy vessel hadn’t gone unscathed and several sections of the bow were showing as critically damaged with the strange fluid was leaking once more into space. While the damage to the bow of the enemy ship was severe, it didn’t seem to hamper its ability to fight. If anything, the number of plasma weapons engaging the remining human fleet were increasing.

“Main power is down, switching to emergency power,” the XO advised as several of the main power conduits were severed.

“Hatchway defenses are engaging the enemy,” Horne heard called out from one of the crew just as the hatch to the bridge glowed and melted. He reached for his sidearm, trying to get a bead on the tentacle that was entering his bridge. Before he could line up his weapon, the tip of the tentacle glowed blue again and intense head filled the bridge.

***

The Gargonth barely noticed the jump drive signature of one of the small human ships leaving the system. It was insignificant, it was prey he would catch eventually. Pain sensors registered damage, but it was minimal. Given the resources aboard the human vessels, not to mention the rich harvest waiting at the nearby planet, he had more than enough to replace his losses and even grow his vessel should it be warranted. Delay must be kept to a minimum though, the Prime had ordered the destruction of the human homeworld and that task must take precedence over his own gluttony. He would pause briefly to heal and prepare for the coming battles. These humans fought hard, but he now had a feel for their weapons and tactics. He would adjust his form and his weapons systems accordingly.