A drop of sweat ran down the back of Lieutenant Commander Nathan Chatterjee’s neck, and moistened the black collar of his black and gold uniform inside his C-suit. The brim of his white beret was already wet and stuck to his skin and hair. He shifted in his crash chair, wiping more sweat from his brow as he tried to make sense of the cacophony of reports coming in over the ships’ inner communication system. He bitterly noted that the harsh red hue cast by the emergency lightning was fitting for what was happening on board Hibbie. No one in the Action Information Centre had heard anything from the Captain or the bridge in over twenty minutes, and the comms were awash with reports from the Damage Control teams trying desperately to put out a series of fires that were cascading down all the decks of the bridge superstructure. Gun crews were screaming for more ammunition, while magazine techs were complaining that shell feed winches were jammed, or bulkheads had to be closed because of the danger of backwash fires.

“DC Five, we’re cut off from Causeway BC-4, we’re circling back through BC-1–”

“Fusion Room 2, there’s overloading on the secondary cooling units to the fusion bottle, we need to divert power from–”

“Royal Marine Team Thirteen, we have established a triage station on Deck F-8; all wounded from Boat Bay, Batteries 3 through 9, and Steward’s Division, are to be collected there.”

“AIC, Lieutenant Crowe, liquid coolant for the railguns is running dangerously short; my lads will have to resort to pissing on the guns to keep them from blowing up if this isn’t solved soon.”

Her Auroran Majesty’s heavy cruiser Highbury Vale was bleeding, the ship herself metaphorically; the crew who were her life’s blood, literally. All the officers and techs in the AIC knew tacitly that the bridge was gone, the Captain and most of the senior officers on board with it, and the First Lieutenant had been vented into space when the Forward Fire Director had been blown apart by a torpedo earlier in the battle. Lieutenant Commander Chatterjee was probably the most senior officer left on board, or at least the one in the best position to assume command, since he was located in the tactical and operational hub of the ship, deep in its core. It was his responsibility to save what was left of the Highbury Vale and what remained of the eighteen-hundred men and women that had been on board at the start of the battle. But I’m only the Tactical Officer, for fuck’s sake, I don’t know if I can–

The whole room shook violently, and hadn’t they all been strapped into their crash chairs, they would have been thrown to the ground, and a few slammed their heads into computers or monitors.

“Sir,” a tech sang out, “our primary sensor bank has been hit, we’ve lost thermals, along with long range communications.”

“Not to mention a lot of people,” someone commented behind Chatterjee, and he suppressed the urge to turn around to see who it was and give them an earful.

“We’re down to just LIDAR then,” Chatterjee said instead, his heart sinking like a stone in his chest, “since grav-pulse went with the bridge. Fan-fucking-tastic, we’re practically blind.”

The ship shook again, not as violently, and Chatterjee corrected the placement of his monitor, which displayed a dizzying array of numbers, overlays of the ship and its decks. Highbury Vale was dying a slow death; her bridge gone, Boat Bay hit and venting air, sensors down, and the fusion reactors were running way hot. But they were still spitting their defiance, broadside railguns still firing back at the enemy, the gunners running the risk of overheating and cooking off their munitions just to revisit the same pain on those causing theirs. The massive railcannon turrets, basically blind after losing their fire directors, were blasting away with regular intervals, sending shells the size of groundcars out into the cosmos, the by now familiar shaking of their discharge a grim comfort to the Aurorans. Highbury Vale and her crew would not go down without a fight.

“Sir, message from Hartcastle and Flag,” the communications officer reported, grasping her headset tight, knuckles white, “line of battle is rotating to spread out the damage dealt to the lead ships, we’re to switch screen and defensive net from Royal Sovereign to King Edward IV.”

Chatterjee’s jaw tightened and he grasped the armrests of his chair tightly.

“Do they know that we’re practically blind? We can’t screen for bloody shit in our current condition, we can barely see what we’re shooting at here!”

“Sorry, Sir, I don’t think they’re aware,” the comms officer replied, resignation in her voice.

Chatterjee groaned in exasperation.

“Fine then, we’ll switch to King Edward IV. Helm, lay us over, yaw oh-six-oh, pitch correction as necessary, and for God’s sake try to give the Greens the top side of Hibbie’s hull, so at least their rounds hit the best protected part of the ship. Ops, update the point defence SAI and tie us into the defensive matrix of Edward IV; I want the electric shielding and disrupters up before we affect course change. EW, launch another volley of jammer drones and set them to noisemaker pattern, shake up the targeting and guidance systems of the Greens’ torpedoes.”

“Aye, Sir, laying over on yaw oh-six-oh, correcting pitch as required,” the helmsman (really only a Sailing Master’s Second Mate, since the real Sailing Master and First Mate had been on the bridge) replied in the affirmative, and adjusted the ship’s heading and acceleration by manipulating a baffling number of levers.

The nine-hundred and sixty metre long Town class heavy cruiser, with its flattened top and bottom with elongated flanks, and its once proud and tall bridge superstructure, now decapitated by a gruesomely accurate railgun shell, flared five of its still functioning ion engines. Trailing smoke into the void, she did what her human masters had designed her for, and switched position to protect the even larger battleships in the massive line of battle that numbered in the dozens, her broadside contumaciously firing intermittent bursts of white-blue electromagnetic discharges.

Captain Johanna McClure had bit away most of her fingernails, and was in the back of her mind trying to figure out what she was going to nibble on when she was done with her fingers, the lap of her cream-white officer’s uniform littered with bits of nails and bloodied skin. She had long since blocked out the repetitive sound of the alarm klaxons.

“Ma’am, the Adrianople is taking heavy fire, heavy casualties on her gun decks, about forty per cent of her port broadside is out of action.”

“Ma’am, message from the Montezuma, she’s reporting massive fires in her engineering section, six out of fourteen ion engines are down and Captain Nguyen believes she cannot hold her place in the line of battle for much longer.”

“Charlemagne is dropping away from the line of battle, citing excessive damage and high casualties; the Yangtze and Carlsruhe are diverting to cover her withdrawal.”

The bridge of the Independent Systems Alliance battleship Stepan Derfflinger shook, and a few of the bridge officers cursed. Someone let out what sounded like a sobbing cry.

“Battery Eighteen is gone,” the Operations Officer reported through gritted teeth, “all hands lost, the entire battery vented into space.”

“Seal off the area and send in a DC team to ascertain if there’s any rollback fires that could threaten the magazines,” McClure replied in a flinty tone, taking a momentary pause in her nail-biting.

This was bad, really fucking bad. The Alliance fleet was not winning, that much was obvious. The fleet communications channels were a total mess of situation reports, increasingly desperate and unrealistic orders from Flag, and the occasional bursts of curses from officers on the verge of breakdown. They were on home turf, in the Mordecai System, home to one of the largest and most important worlds in the entire Independent Systems Alliance, and they were being chewed apart. The Auroran and Alliance fleets were comparable in size, at least in tonnage, but somehow the Alliance ships were being ripped apart whereas the Aurorans seemed to weather the storm. And ripped was the appropriate adjective, because few–

“Oh Gods, the Oliver Hazard Perry,” someone shouted in a panicked voice, “the Oliver Perry is going down!”

McClure turned her head quickly to look at the large holographic tactical display at the centre of the bridge and could see the expanding cloud that had once been a modern, sophisticated battleship that had taken years to build, crewed by thousands of men and women. The chief communications officer ripped off his headset with a yelp, and the bridge officers and techs seated near him, including McClure, could hear the screams and shrieks of the crew of the dying ship’s bridge. A comms tech leaned over and switched channels. McClure’s initial thought had been that surprisingly few ships had outright been sunk, but casualties and damages were mounting. The Stepan Derfflinger had a crew of around five-thousand six-hundred, and judging by the amounts of damage reports flooding the internal ship’s net, close to a sixth of them had to be either dead, wounded or incapacitated at this point, the reaper’s scythe claiming its due especially among the port side gun crew. The Aurorans’ gunnery was almost uncannily precise, despite both sides using the same style of broadside railguns, and although rounds were partly computerized and aided by advanced targeting software to increase accuracy across the ridiculous ranges that warfare in space was conducted at, they were scoring a lot more hits than the Alliance’s gunners. Hits and kills, McClure thought bitterly.

The two fleets, formed into traditional lines of battle abreast, had over the course of the two hours or so the battle had lasted, turned into a continual spiral of death, with the large battleships slugging it out with each other, pummelling their metres-thick titanium armour with hundreds of broadside guns; all the while the smaller cruisers and destroyers were fencing and trying to break through the opposite screens to conduct torpedo- and close-in gun runs on the lines of battle. So far the Aurorans were winning in that regard as well, swatting away many of the Alliance destroyers. And then there was that damnable–

One of the computers in the Highbury Vale’s AIC bleated out a positive tone, and the Electronic Warfare officer thumped his keyboard in triumph.

“Sir,” he called out, and Chatterjee spun his chair around to face him, “the EW SAI has cracked the battleship opposite’s recce drone frequency again, they’ll be blind in a moment once the SAI transmits the kill order and fries the drones’ cores.”

And sure enough, the holographic display at the centre of the AIC, toward which most of the computer stations were turned, which had been displaying a close-up of the immediate surroundings around Highbury Vale (they couldn’t see anything not in their direct line of sight since their only “eyes” were LIDAR at this point), suddenly blinked and the tiny icons that denoted the swarm of drones that served as forward sensor platforms and used to correct fire by the artillery SAIs, popped out of existence.

“Alright, people,” Chatterjee half-shouted, something akin to hope kindling in his chest, “this is an opportunity we’re not letting slip out of our hands.”

He hit one of the buttons on his command chair armrest, and spoke into the mic on his headset, which ran over his white beret, adorned with a golden crowned anchor and seven stars.

“AIC, Gun Captain, hold your fire, I repeat, hold your fire. We’ve temporarily blinded the battleship opposite,” he stole a sideways glance at his console to make a note of the electronic signature of the ship, “that would be, courtesy for the logs, the Stepan Derfflinger; the cruiser escorts for that particular part of their line is busy covering the retreat of another battleship. I want all batteries and turrets to hold fire, and we’re going to slingshot past into pistol-shot range. On my command, I want every gun to roar as one, a single massive broadside.”

A predatory grin crept up in his face, and Chatterjee’s eyes were fierce and determined.

“If Highbury Vale is going down, we’ll at least drag as many of the bastards as possible with us into the Underworld, kicking and screaming.”

As he cut the link, the AIC crew gave a shout that was part hungry growl and part defiant cheer.

“Comms,” Chatterjee said as it died down, “inform King Edward IV that we’ll be departing her screen and ECM bubble and conduct an attack run on the Stepan Derfflinger, and politely ask Captain Gardner to wish us ‘good hunting’. Afterwards, try to hail Rear Admiral Holland and ask for one of her light cruisers to swoop in and take our spot, lest the Greens try the same on Edward IV.”

“Helm, take us about, keep our profile limited and present our broadside as you lay on; course, two-niner-niner by oh-eight-four, try to bring us about to cross that battleship’s T.”

He grabbed the helmet to the grey and navy C-suit that he wore over his black and gold uniform, and put it on, the seals snapping shut and the internal oxygen supply kicking in.

“Ops, order all hands that haven’t already done so to secure their cee-suits. This might get choppy. And brace for multiple impacts.”

A series of warning lights came to life on the main console of the Electronic Warfare officer on Stepan Derfflinger’s bridge and she cursed loudly.

“Ma’am,” she said, turning to face McClure in her centrally placed command chair, “the Aurorans have cracked the encryption codes for our reconnaissance drones, and they’ve flipped the kill switch. Apart from LIDAR, we’re blind on our port side, grav-pulse is useless in this soup of debris and munitions.”

“Brilliant,” McClure retorted, leaning forward in her chair. “Guns,” she said, turning to her Tactical Officer, “grab another box launcher of recon drones and get them out there into the fight as quickly as you can, your gunners are reduced to firing using their direct-fire gun scopes until they can get SAI assistance from the fire directors, and the fire directors can’t see without the drones.”

“We’re running short of drones, Ma’am,” the lieutenant commander replied, a tinge of worry in her voice, “Munitions is down to three box launchers left, that’s only one-eighty drones in total, and the Aurorans have managed to crack our drones’ DAI encryptions four times now.”

“Well, it’s either we lose all of our drones while giving our gunners a decent fighting chance, or we’re reduced to basically spraying and praying, Lieutenant Commander Medvedev, and I for one know what I prefer. Now give my fire director officers the ability to actually see something, if you please.”

The Tactical Officer looked like she wanted to protest, but instead started conferring with her second in the Stepan Derfflinger’s Combat Information Centre about running a diagnostic on the drones’ electronic shielding, and refreshing the DAI’s encryption generators.

McClure made sure the tactical team was underway before turning back towards the holographic plot. The greenish blue 3D hologram of the battlespace was hazy and unfocused, the grav-pulse and thermal sensors struggling with picking out what were actual combatants, what was munitions in flight, flights of decoy drones deployed by both sides to mimic warships. The Stepan Derfflinger benefited from being tied into the fleet’s main sensor network, where light cruisers on detached scout duties fed the rest of the ships with information, but sometimes they had to approach dangerously close to the main action to get solid readings, and both the Purpose and the Umbra had been lost when they had ventured too close to the Auroran screen.

Still, McClure could make out that the Derfflinger’s squadron (what remained of it anyway) was engaged with the Auroran battleships King Edward IV, Royal Sovereign, Invictus, and the almost as large and even better armed battlecruiser Revenge. Behind the Derfflinger, Montezuma and Adrianople were hanging on by the skin of their teeth, bulkhead after bulkhead sheared away by vicious railgun fire, and in front, the Alfred Mahan was gallantly holding her own against the much larger and better armed Invictus. Of course, this was only part of the overall battle, some six battle squadrons per side were engaged, in addition to heavy cruiser squadrons, and light cruiser and destroyer flotillas. Carlsruhe and Yantgze had trailed off to cover Charlemagne as she withdrew, shielding the wounded capital ship from the vultures that were the Auroran destroyers that lurked, ready to pounce with torpedo strikes if the Alliance crews were sloppy, leaving only the light cruiser Campo Grande to act as screen for Derfflinger, but she had veered off to cover Adrianople's exposed flanks.

But as McClure studied the plot, bracing against its railing as the ship shook again from a railgun blast that blew apart one of the few remaining sheets of reactive hull armour, she noticed something odd in the holographic haze. An Auroran heavy cruiser had left her charge all alone, and was diverting at a steep near perpendicular degree away from the King Edward IV. She sucked in breath, realising an opportunity was presenting itself.

“Nav!” she shouted over the frantic chatter of the bridge, “take us about, oh-niner-two by oh-six-five degrees, steady as she goes!”

The Navigation Officer didn’t react immediately, instead looking at the captain with confusion written in his face.

“Ma’am? What’s going on?” the Operations Officer asked, functionally the second in command to the Captain since the Executive Officer was currently running the CIC, “Why are we leaving the line of battle? We have not received orders from Flag to deviate from the ordered course of the line.”

McClure made a dismissive gesture at the lieutenant commander and pointed to the holographic plot.

“For the benefit of the logs, call it demonstrating independent action when presented with favourable circumstances in the battlespace. Take a look, Goodman, that’s the Highbury Vale, a Town class heavy cruiser, and the ECM and EW suites on those are specifically designed to protect the capital ships of the line. She’s currently pulling hard away from her charge, Edward IV, and by the looks of things, she’s left her in the lurch with no replacements above destroyer size; only the Redgauntlet and Exemplar and possibly that Canterbury class light cruiser over there are left to cover the Edward IV. If we pull hard to port now and increase our acceleration, we can cut behind the King Edward IV and the Revenge and rake them from both the stern and the bow respectively!”

Lieutenant Commander Goodman looked back and forth between the plot and the Captain, brow furrowing in thought, until he finally nodded.

“Nav,” McClure said loudly, “carry out last course corrections and increase acceleration by two-forty gees.”

“Aye aye, Ma’am, setting course to oh-niner-two by oh-six-five, increase accel by two-four-one gees,” the Navigational Officer reported, carrying the hulking Statesman class battleship away from from her duel with the Royal Sovereign and onto a confrontational heading aimed at the middle of the Auroran battle squadron opposite. As the ship changed course, a gun port was opened and a box launcher of recon drones was rolled out, discharging sixty Dumb Artificial Intelligence drones into the ether. However, because of the Derfflinger’s sudden course change, the drones were launched aimlessly towards where her port side had been, now behind her, and despite the drones’ DAIs trying to compensate by spooling up their drives and RCS, they were left in the proverbial dust as their mothership charged ahead. McClure was too enraptured to notice.

“What the hell?” Lieutenant Frederick Spencer, the Highbury Vale’s AIC Operations Officer, said as he tried to figure out what the Alliance captain of the Stepan Derfflinger saw in the display of the battlespace that he couldn’t. He came up short.

“Sir, this is damned odd.”

Lieutenant Commander Nathan Chatterjee nodded in agreement.

“Either they’ve gone stark raving mad, or the Derfflinger’s captain is a goddamn Lord Nelson reborn.”

“They’re lining up perfectly for us to give them a raking broadside of their exposed port side, and they’ve even launched their newest drone swarm in the wrong sector; their gunners and fire directors are completely blind, and their grav-pulse is next to useless at such a short range.”

Chatterjee nodded eagerly, sitting up straighter in his chair. The ancient Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte had once said to not disturb your enemy while they were in the process of making a mistake. And Nathan Chatterjee was a fan of the classics.

“Helm, roll on our x-axis, I want our starboard broadside to line up with the Derfflinger’s port side, that’s where the Royal Sovereign had concentrated her fire. Commence roll in t-minus… forty-nine seconds.”

“Aye, Sir, roll on x-axis to present starboard broadside in t-minus forty-six seconds.”

The math might not be completely correctly, he had done it roughly in his head instead of consulting his computer, but even by his raw estimate, it should work. The Derfflinger was accelerating at something close to two-hundred gees, while the Highbury Vale was firing her counter-thrusters to reduce overall speed. The Highbury didn’t have the same size calibre guns as the large battleships, but they were still more than enough to crack through the dozens of inches of titanium battle armour if they were close enough and aimed precisely enough.

“Gun Captain Crowe, this is AIC,” he said into his mic, voice like liquid helium, “on the up-roll, open fire.”

The first to notice the imminent danger on the Stepan Derfflinger’s bridge, was the junior Electronic Warfare ensign, who was in charge of drone management, and she was having a hard time trying to redirect the newly launched wave of recon drones to get into any sort of semblance of order and get them to where they could provide any sort of help. With a smaller version of the holographic plot on a 3D projector next to her console, she hiked up an eyebrow as the sensor feed read another data packet sent from the detached scouting cruiser Ravenna.

“Sir,” she asked her senior, the lieutenant in charge of the EW operations, “was the Highbury always on a y-axis course of oh-eight-four?”

“What?” the lieutenant was barely paying attention, using everything his training had taught him to fight through the almost human-like complaints of the Electronic Warfare Smart Artificial Intelligence computers that operated the jamming, disruptor, and decoy drones.

“Yeah, no, not sure, ask Lieutenant Commander Goodman or Lieutenant Commander Stranger.”

“Sir,” the ensign asked, turning to look at Operations Officer Goodman, “was the y-axis course of the Highbury Vale previously oh-eight-four?”

“No, it’s an even one-twenty, Ensign, she’s way below our current level in the battlespace, missing us by some eighty-thousand kilometres, inside torpedo envelope for sure, but outside effective penetrative range for her smaller calibre railguns.”

“No, Sir,” the ensign protested, “the data from Ravenna says she’s on oh-eight-four and decelerating.”

“That’s impossible; for one, it would show up on the main plot, and two, our grav-pulse and LIDAR would have picked up on it, because that would mean she would be practically alongside…”

The lieutenant commander didn’t finish his sentence, because the main holographic plot chose that exact moment to flash briefly, before showing the angry orange contact bearing the name and electronic signature of Highbury Vale on a perfect parallel course to the Derfflinger, slightly “above” her damaged port side.

“Oh my God,” Lieutenant Commander Francis Goodman uttered breathlessly as the implication hit home. He quickly looked around the bridge. None of them wore their G-suits, that hadn’t even crossed Captain McClure’s mind, that the bridge might be in that sort of danger. Most of the crew would be wearing them, hopefully, but in a few moments, that would matter little. The captain was entranced, gripping the railing of the 3D plot hard, a hungry smile on her face, her mind already picturing how they were going to break the Auroran line of battle and cross the T of two capital ships. Goodman had to take matters into his own hands. He rushed over and grabbed the captain’s abandoned headset.

“All hands,” he shouted into the mic, “brace for impact!”

The Highbury Vale was about half the length of the Stepan Derfflinger, with perhaps a quarter of her tonnage and a third of her broadside, composed of considerably smaller calibre railguns. But what Highbury did have, was a clear line of sight aided by their own properly deployed recon drones, the added firepower of the railcannon turrets that the Independent Systems Alliance had yet to produce an answer for, and –somehow– the element of surprise. As the turn on the x-axis was completed, the two ships passed each other at five-thousand kilometres, which was considered close combat by the standards of space warfare. Highbury had been flushing her emergency counter-thrusters to give her as much time as possible to deliver her broadside, and her gunners did her proud.

The broadside railguns were run out of their reinforced gunports, their computer-assisted swivel mounts adjusting for speed, heading, and angle, and the massive railcannon turrets trained down to lock on to the exposed upper part of the Derfflinger’s port hull. All the reactive armour had been shaved off over the course of the battle, leaving the titanium plating beneath exposed. That exposed plating was still twenty-six inches thick, but in a few brief seconds, that would hardly matter.

The entire surviving crew of the Highbury Vale felt the ship buck and writhe underneath them as every single gun in the hitherto largely undamaged starboard broadside unleashed their electromagnetically powered fury, as well as the muted roar of the railcannons reverberating through the walls and bulkheads of the ship. In fact, the massive broadside proved too much for the battered heavy cruiser, and several central loadbearing ribs snapped under the sudden pressure. This was most keenly felt in the rear section of the ship, the one containing the engines, engineering, and the reactors. The aforementioned Fusion Reactor 2 that had been experiencing cooling problems suddenly cracked directly off of its welded joints, and immediately short-circuited. This sudden power backwash blew apart the entirety of Fusion Chamber 2, instantly killing all the forty-seven engineering staff in the chamber. The result could have been a fusion explosion, which would have engulfed the entire ship, but luckily the computer failsafe kicked in, and even as the fusion-fuelled fireball was expanding, the chamber was flooded with a mixture that was fifty-fifty water and salt, stopping the fusion reaction instantaneously. However, this was nothing compared to what transpired on the Stepan Derfflinger.

The broadside hit home and it hit hard. With next to no reactive armour left to divert the incoming munitions, and without effective vision for the point defence laser clusters to see the rounds, and no screening ships, the Derfflinger suffered. And the men and women on board suffered even more. The already heavily damaged port side was ripped to shreds, as batteries, bulkheads, hallways, compartments, and causeways were reduced to scorching shapes of twisted metal, completely open to space. The human beings who had been inside the compartments directly affected were either reduced to pink mist, or blown out into the void. But the carnage did not stop there, for exploding metal and interior modules produced a tidal wave of deadly shrapnel of all sizes, which with terrifying speed and force burrowed through walls, bulkheads, internal armour, piercing modules, wiring, bunks, lockers, furniture, flesh. The rollback fires from electric wires catching ablaze, power with nowhere to go, licked up and followed the rapidly vanishing trail of oxygen as emergency blast doors closed shut. Most of the fire died out as oxygen vented into space, but much of it followed in under the doors as they slammed down, and conflagrations erupted all over the parts that should in theory had been safe, engulfing the crews who had been on the “lucky” side of the blast doors. The intense heat of the fire, combined with the sudden drop in pressure, popped the G-suits of the crew who wore them and turned them into human torches, or horrifically burst the bodies of the ones who did not wear them. It was a charnel house worthy of the inner circles of Hell itself.

Captain Johanna McClure, Lieutenant Commander Francis Goodman, and the rest of the bridge crew were thrown around as the broadside struck, the computer consoles of a few officers and techs short-circuited. The 3D holographic plot simply blinked out, the connection to the sensors lost, and the normal deck lighting gave out, quickly replaced by the orange emergency lights. They could hear the creaking in the hull, and the remaining internal comms channels were filled with shouting voices in the throes of panic and desperation, or the sickening gurgles and shrieks of the wounded and dying.

McClure’s face was deathly pale, and a crimson streak ran down her forehead from where she had hit her skull against the 3D plot’s railing.

“Abandon ship,” she whispered, and the crew around her looked at her dumbfounded, their capacity for rational thought momentarily halted.

“All hands,” Goodman shouted, dragging their attention to him, snapping them back to reality and their trained military reflexes took control, “abandon ship; that is an order. Relay all internal channels, all hands abandon ship.”

The Astrogation Officer’s console, among others’, had short-circuited when Fusion Reactor 2 had overheated, and in that poor lieutenant’s case, it had caught fire. Three Royal Marine sentries had jumped into action, two of them dragging the officer out of the crash chair and rolled her on the deck to put out the fire, while the third tossed a fire blanket over the console, killing the embers.

“Sir,” Lieutenant Spencer said once he was sure the Astrogation Officer was alright (thankfully the C-suit was fire-retardant), “we have multiple reports of breaches and structural failings from all over the ship. DC Eight reports multiple hull breaches on decks E-3, E-4, E-7, and F-1, while DC Five and DC Twelve are saying the bridge superstructure itself is about to detach completely. That broadside might have snapped our spine, Sir.”

Chatterjee heaved a sigh of relief as he saw the blinking icons denoting damage on the depiction of the Stepan Derfflinger on the holographic plot, and the stream of life pods that were escaping the crippled battleship.

“It could have been worse, Frederick,” he said, though not without a bitter tone to his voice, “it could have been a lot worse.”

“Sir, Engineering reports forty-nine dead and thirty-two wounded, Gun Captain reports nine dead and twenty-eight wounded, and at least thirty-five Royal Marines and Damage Control personnel are unaccounted for.”

“We must mourn the dead later, Frederick; right now we need to concentrate on getting what is left of this ship and her crew out of here. Helm, what’s the status of our engines?”

“Sir, four engines are still operational, but we’ve burnt through all our counter-thrusters, and with only one fusion bottle left to supplement the main reactor, I wouldn’t want to push Hibbie to more than thirty per cent of normal acceleration.”

“Fair enough, that will have to do. Change course by one-eight-oh on both axes, we’re out of this fight. Comms, inform Captain Gardner and King Edward IV as well as Rear Admiral de Lacy-Linnet, that Highbury Vale is in no condition to fight and we are striking our colours and will make our retreat out of the battlespace. Frederick, you contact whoever is left in charge in Engineering and start directing Damage Control. I think we’ll have to close the blast doors to the bridge superstructure in case it detaches completely.”

“I’m on it, Sir.”

Lieutenant Commander Chatterjee took his helmet off and took a deep breath of the stale and smoky air in the Action Information Centre.

“Ensign Dermott,” he said to the Junior Communications Officer, “make the following note in the ship’s log: At 15:34 shipboard time, 1 June 2880 CE Galactic relative, Her Majesty’s cruiser Highbury Vale engaged and sank the Independent Systems Alliance battleship Stepan Derfflinger. Add sensor logs, gun- and drone camera feeds to corroborate the log entry.”

He tapped the internal comms button on his chair again.

“My compliments, Lieutenant Crowe,” he said into his mic, a relieved smile on his face now that the adrenaline was subsiding, “that was gunnery done by the book, I will be asking for a commendation for you in my after action report if we get out of this alive.”

“Ah, Sir,” a voice he didn’t recognise replied, “Lieutenant Lucas Crowe was wounded during transit from the port broadside to the starboard.”

“Then who aimed and commanded the barrage then?”

“That would be me, sir.” The voice sounded very youthful and extremely exhausted.

“What’s your name and rank then?”

“Sir, Ensign Edward Heatherland, Sir.”