Chapter 53

Deep Space

Divinium Mine

Sarah stared in horror at the display, before shaking herself.

"Go to combat acceleration, intercept course with that cruiser! Crank our ECM and evasion to maximum! Connie, I need a direct line to Soliensky and I needed it yesterday!"

"Yes ma'am!" Yelled out everyone on the bridge.

Sarah sat back in her command seat, quickly pulling up what data they had on the enemy ship, and perusing it.

It wasn't good. The class identification Elteria had was only with about 80% certainty, but it was going up every second. And according to both their scans and files, the enemy ship had twelve railguns, six on each broadside.

Which was a huge problem. Back in humanity's home dimension, kinetic weapons were a short range affair at best. If the weapon couldn't adjust course it was useless beyond a million kilometer or so because of the speed of light limiting them. But here there was nothing to keep a physical object below that threshold.

And those railguns were taking full advantage of that. Their scans indicated that the enemy's railgun slugs were about 400 grams. Probably the standardized tungsten slug fifteen centimeter long and one point five wide. They also had a velocity of five c, or one point five million kilometers per second, which in effect meant that they carried the force of a hundred megatons of TNT, and would reach the Dominion fleet five seconds after they were launched.

And the enemy's railguns were firing like stars damned machine guns, sprinkling the Dominion's fleet with their high velocity slugs. Which must look surreal because at that velocity the slugs had to literally be burning their way through the low density gas around them, looking like lasers or 'death rays' in bad holo films, leaving a trail of superheated plasma behind them. Part of why they had so much data on them, incidentally.

"I have admiral Soliensky!" Called out Connie.

"Put him through!"

Connie didn't even say anything, and Soliensky's image appeared on the display.

"Captain Sarah." He said without preamble. "We have managed to scan the projectiles, it appears-"

"I know, supralight railguns." The term 'supralight' was an old one to designate things that moved faster than Terra's old speed of light in realspace. Hypervelocity would have probably been a better fit, but in terms of naval weapons that term was reserved for some seriously dangerous armaments that made those pale in comparison. "Six of them, rapid fire, I think one slug every half second, one hundred and twenty rounds a minute." Which was a lot of firepower to throw downrange. A single one of those slugs could take out a Dominion gunship. A hundred would shred even a heavy cruiser. Part of it was how small the slugs were, with that much energy concentrated in such a small package it could penetrate shields and armor like virtually nothing else. "If we get too close..."

"We're fucked." Soliensky winced as Elteria yelled out 'Vampire!' and someone mirrored her on the admiral's bridge, off-camera. "We might already be screwed anyway. They've just launched another volley of cruise missiles and their light cruisers are accelerating to meet us with the drone screen. I'd bet on them launching in sync with whatever short range missiles the asteroid has, and the cruise missiles matching velocity with them for a coordinated salvo."

Sarah nodded.

"That's probably their plan, yes. But we knew they would try something like this."

"Indeed. And we could have handled it. But I can't fight this battle with those railguns harassing me. I'm going to order all of my ships to fire at that Mid Verge light cruiser and hope for the best."

Sarah took a deep breath, and made her decision. She could try to jump away, but they were too close to the asteroid to make it a safe option. Plus, they had come too far to run away now.

"Don't. Focus on the small fry, and keep those bastards off our backs. Me and my crew will take care of that cruiser for you."

Soliensky opened his mouth to protest, then met Sarah's gaze, and froze.

It wasn't the gaze of a merc boasting about their prowess. It was the look of a woman that had once glassed an entire planet.

"Very well captain. May the stars be with you."

Sarah smirked.

"Thank you admiral. We won't need it."

They both nodded, and the transmission cut off. Sarah turned towards the rest of the bridge.

"Status?"

"They've definitely noticed us. We jumped ahead of the Dominion, and we're separating from the rest of the fleet. They don't seem to be quite sure what we are, but they've dedicated three of their railguns to nail us. No luck so far. The Dominion fleet has stopped decelerating as well, and is going to meet the guard ships head on." Answered Elteria.

"Is the Khopesh moving to join the others?"

The AI shook her head.

"No, but they detached almost a quarter of their drone screen to cover it. That's at least two point five thousand drones."

Sarah winced.

"We're not getting missiles through that, are we?"

"No ma'am. They have enough firepower to just brute force a hit. Even the Freelancers would get shredded."

"Could we target the drone cloud instead?"

"Yes, but it's very dispersed, and even a Freelancer's warhead doesn't have enough firepower to knock out many of them, even if it made it through."

"What about the hyper-missiles?"

Elteria suddenly looked very thoughtful.

"This close to the mine? We might lose some of them. Especially with this mess around." The AI gestured vaguely, indicated the radioactive gas cloud they were currently in. "But they would bypass the drones, if I do it right. Their hyperdrives are cycled but I don't have good enough targeting data to pull it off yet. They also won't do much against a shield that powerful."

Sarah nodded, and checked the display.

"Alright then. Load counter missiles and target the battle laser, but prepare the hyperspace missiles to be loaded and fired at a moment's notice. Time to send these bastards back to the scrapyard they came from!"

Sarah smiled as her crew bellowed a war cry.

She didn't even blink however, when Elteria established a private communication channel, and the AI's voice popped into her head.

"Sarah, this is suicide! We can't take a Mid Verge light cruiser on and you know it! Their missiles alone-"

"If they had Mid Verge missiles they'd have already fired. They probably only have old generation Raptors, like their comrades." Mentally answered the captain. "And push comes to shove, we can still jump out after trying to take them out. As it is, I like my chances punching through them better than with an emergency hyperspace jump in this mess so close to that fucking planet."

It wasn't exactly a planet, more like a big moon or planetoid, but it got the point across. The AI transferred a determined nod through the communication channel.

"Aye aye captain. I'm with you all the way. We are all with you all the way."

Sarah chuckled. That meant the AI had been in communication with the rest of the crew. Unsurprising, the rest of the bridge, hell, most of her crew in general, could make the math on how the engagement would go as well.

"Thank you." Said Sarah aloud. "Now, let's kill these bastards."

Elteria nodded, and Sarah went back to watching the display while her mind went over her options. There weren't many, and all carried risks, but at this point it was either go all in or go home. And there was no way she was running from these mass murdering scumbags, let alone giving up on her biggest paycheck yet.

*****

Like clockwork, the Khopesh fired its missiles the second the Eternal Seeker crossed the 7 million kilometers mark, roughly four minutes after Sarah's conversation with Soliensky. Sarah made a mental note that their tactical crews must be green as well. Or...or maybe just not good at all. After all, this was one of the most secret installations the TRF had, and this Mid Verge light cruiser had to be one of their most prized assets. In an organization like that, loyalty trumps competence every time, and that went double for such sensitive installations and ships.

"Vampire! Missile launch! 1.2 thousand incoming! 7 000 gs acceleration, grav drive propulsion, impact in 6 minutes!" Elteria turned towards Sarah. "Dominion Raptors, like you predicted ma'am."

Sarah nodded.

"Fire counter missiles!"

"Firing counter missiles!" Six missiles leaped from the Seeker's launchers at 18 000 gs. "Intercept in four minutes!"

"Good. Time to battle laser range?"

"Three minutes. They're accelerating towards us at 150gs, must be their combat accel as well."

"Well, it looks like we're going to give them a bloody nose before their missiles ever arrive. Railguns?"

"They diverted two of the railguns targeting us, they must think we're not that big of a threat. The last one remaining is pretty easy to dodge. But they're giving the Dominion a run for their money."

"Can't change that until we garner their attention again. And I'd rather do that by actually hurting them."

Elteria nodded, and they went back to watching the display.

It was a tense three minutes, watching Dominion ships wink out one by one as the railguns found them, and then the screen filling with missiles as the guard ships and the Dominion ships engaged each other. Soliensky had guessed correctly, the cruise missiles matching velocity with the missiles fired by the guard ships, who themselves were synced to a new volley fired from the asteroid. In total there was almost half a million missiles in flight. And every forty five seconds, the Eternal Seeker fired, and so did the enemy ship. Their counter missile salvos were targeted on the future salvos rather than massing them all against the first one.

But finally...

"We are in range! Battle laser charged and target locked!" Barked Elteria.

"Fire!" Yelled out Sarah.

The ship shook around her as the battle laser fired.

Fusion fuel was pumped in, and the containment field spun to life as the gravity generators and ignition lasers activated.

The gigaton detonation was redirected, and forced through the laser converter, and a single, unified beam of light reached out. The endurance shields of the Khopesh-class light cruisers were good. But they weren't 'stop a one gigaton bomb-pumped laser beam' good. They failed, the shield collapsing around the beam, opening a hole through its protective bubble. But it did its job, attenuating the beam. Then the armor was hit, and it exploded outwards as the energy transferred. But once again, it did its job, especially as the beam travelled down the length of the entire ship, due to targeting issues and the ship's own motion, spreading the damage.

"Holy shit!"

Sarah looked at the display, and swallowed as the data came flooding in, and she saw the gash alongside the other ship's entire broadside.

"Status?"

"We...we hit them. But their shield and armor took the brunt of it. Damn. I don't think we even penetrated past the outer hull. All of their weapons are still active."

"Recharge and fire again, full power!"

"Aye aye ma'am! Full recharge in three minutes!"

Sarah looked at the display, and smiled grimly as the Khopesh ceased fire for a few seconds...and then focused all six of its railguns on the Eternal Seeker.

Yeah, they had their attention all right.

She waited for the enemy to spin around to present their other broadside, but nothing came. It was traditional in ship combat to present the other broadside when the one currently in use was too damaged, but evidently the enemy commander either didn't consider the damage extensive enough to justify it, or was too inexperienced to realize he should be doing it. Although, to be fair, since most ships couldn't power the non-missile launcher weapons on both broadsides at once, it would take a bit of time to prepare the second broadside for battle if they hadn't expected something like this to happen. Plus they hadn't truly done damage yet, just stripped the armor and seriously screwed up the shields.

Well, time to educated them on their mistake.

"Missiles preparing for intercept...Interception!" Yelled out Connie. "We took out forty of them!"

Sarah nodded. A very good kill count, even against lower tech missiles. Unfortunately they had over a thousand friends still coming.

"Stand by point defence!"