The Phoenix Requiem (The Phoenix Conspiracy Series Book 7) (30 page)

“God damn them,” muttered Ravinder under her breath. “And God damn me for putting them there.”

The enemy attacked in earnest then, striking not just at the
Hyperion
, but at the rest of the Third Fleet as well. Perhaps the ease with which they had dispatched the
Genesis
and the
Harlequin
had changed their minds from focusing solely on the
Hyperion
, and instead shifting tactics to eliminate these weakened, frailer vessels. Vessels which, until they were destroyed, continued to fire upon them, sending toward the Dread Fleet’s battleships whatever missiles and gunfire the Third Fleet could muster. Ravinder considered ordering a retreat, but knew there was no longer time; perhaps the
Hyperion
, with much of its strength restored, could survive long enough to slip into the back ranks of the defensive formation, but none of the other ships had any hope of surviving. They were equally doomed whether they stayed, fighting and swinging until the end, or whether they turned tail and fled, showing the enemy their sterns, most of which were weakened and damaged, like targets asking to be fired upon and destroyed.

No, thought Ravinder, as much as she regretted it, as much as it pained her to give the order to remain, to stand ground and continue fighting, that was the command she gave them. “We fight and we fight, defending the
Victory
with everything we’ve got, until we cannot do so anymore,” she had said, as part of the order she transmitted.

The enemy battleships began to fall, one by one destroyed by the concentrated firepower of the Third Fleet acting in perfect unison; together they fired everything they had, with everything to fight for and nothing to lose. They were as good as dead, especially when more enemy battleships arrived to replace those that had fallen. And, as soon as they did, the firefight between the warships so intensified that, for a moment, it seemed to be a total chaos of missiles, gunfire, and beam weapons, all reaching across the short expanse of space that separated the foes; it took seconds but felt like minutes, hours even, as, one by one, the rest of the ragtag Third Fleet—the bold ships that had begun this battle as the vanguard—were rapidly destroyed.

They took as many enemy warships with them as they could, but the host of battleships that had come to engage them had them vastly outnumbered, outgunned, out-armored, and were in far better fighting condition. The only ship they could not match was the
Hyperion
, an alpha-class dreadnought, and, though the
Hyperion
exposed itself as much as the others of the Third Fleet, and fought right alongside them, with Fleet Admiral Ravinder barking orders and issuing commands, desperate to fend off or destroy their enemies, as many as possible, as quickly as possible, ordering the missile launchers into a near constant state of firing, it did not matter. By the end of it, when finally more allied capital ships had arrived to help shore up this the weakest part of the defensive formation, no doubt finally arriving at the insistence of Sir Arkwright himself, only one ship of the Third Fleet’s original two-hundred remained. The
Hyperion
itself. All the rest had been destroyed in battle, along with all hands aboard each ship.

In total, that had been a hundred and ninety-nine capital ships, along with nearly a hundred-thousand men and women who had crewed them. Alive, healthy, and intact yesterday. Today,
gone
. Ravinder blamed herself for those losses. She had shouted herself hoarse giving orders, demanding the ship fire more missiles and guns, hurrying to coordinate new targets as each enemy they focused upon was destroyed. She had allowed herself to be so drawn into the battle, it had been as though she’d believed that by demanding more from her crew, and her ship, she could somehow, singlehandedly, turn the tide of the battle and save the lives of those many tens of thousands of people under her command. But, if it had been her job to protect them, or even to spend their lives sparingly, she had failed miserably, making her perhaps the worst admiral of the entire defense force, or so she felt. And when allied ships did finally arrive, joining the engagement, just in time so that the
Hyperion
, which had lost its shields again and much of its armor in the action, did not have to share the fate of the rest of the Third Fleet, Ravinder felt herself overwhelmed with survivor’s guilt.

She cursed under her breath, the foulest words she could think of; then, after several deep breaths, returned to her seat at the command position and refastened her restraints. She examined the tactical display and then asked her Comms department to make a check with the other Fleet Admirals and then deliver her a report. At least then she would have a better sense of the situation, much more than the simple blue, green, and red lights the tactical display had to offer her.

The report came quickly, much more so than she had expected. It brought good and bad news, but none of it made her feel any better, nor any worse. The reinforcements that had arrived at their position had successfully pushed back the enemy—for now—and restored the formation on the forward portside of the ISS
Victory
, and that position was now reinforced by forty-five capital ships, each in near-perfect fighting condition. Not to mention the
Hyperion
remained at those coordinates, offering additional strength, if it proved necessary. Yet the thoughts that came to her, upon learning of these forty-five new arrivals, the same ships that had probably saved the
Hyperion
from annihilation, were that these ships had arrived far too late and brought too little. They were enough strength that they might have saved some, if not all, of Ravinder’s battered thirty-seven weakened, damaged, unfit warships that had been forced to do the undesirable and dangerous job of reclaiming the broken portside formation front, and then bolster, hold, and defend that position, until a proper force could arrive.

That task should never have fallen upon her and her beaten down, barely operational fleet remnants; where were these damned forty-five untouched, unblemished warships when the portside flank had initially collapsed? They should have been the first to respond. They should have been the ones to trade fire with the squadron of battlecruisers and, eventually, the column of battleships. But, no, somehow that task had fallen upon her shoulders, and the shoulders of her subordinates, no matter how ill-equipped they were for the job, and yet none of them had shrunk from it, nor made any excuses; instead, they had all fallen into line, doing whatever they were told, and eventually they had fought, hard and long, to the very last man. And now all of them were dead. And for what? Because these damned forty-five sparkling new warships had to get a wash before they could be bothered to join the battle?

Her next thought was that, although the forty-five capital ships, combined with the
Hyperion
dreadnought, had proven enough to drive back the enemy’s push against the
Victory
’s portside flank, that had only been because of the serious damage the now deceased Third Fleet had already inflicted upon the enemy by the time reinforcements arrived. When the enemy came again, should they cling to the same goal, they would come in far greater numbers with many more battleships, so many that forty-five capital ships, no matter how shiny, and one dreadnought, would never be enough to hold the position. If the defense force was serious about holding that position, especially since they now knew that the enemy had it in its sights, then Sir Doran would have dispatched his entire Second Fleet to defend that position, and probably asked Sir Arkwright for some fifty capital ships from the First Fleet to join them, as well as, at minimum, one of the Rotham flotillas. Then, and only then, could they hope to keep the formation together at that weak position. Not with this inadequate force of forty-five capital ships that Sir Doran had gone to “great effort” to spare from his precious Second Fleet, whose primary duty was to protect the entire formation’s port flank anyway—including the portion adjacent to the command ship. It was enough for Ravinder to roll her eyes at, but she kept her composure and her silence, and did not react in any way.

Her Comms staff, in delivering the report, made a grand to-do about the fact that the portside flank near the
Victory
, at the front of the defense formation, had been reclaimed and “fortified,” no doubt Sir Doran’s words, not theirs, and certainly not Ravinder’s. And that, she was told, was the “good news.”

The bad news was the number of casualties the defense force had already sustained, and the count was still increasing at a terrifying rate. All seven fleets, as well as each of the seven Rotham flotillas, had sustained casualties, and the list of ships destroyed, or seriously damaged, was a long one, too long for her Comms staff to repeat, so they gave her numbers rather than names.

But, as Fleet Admiral Ravinder listened to her officers delivering the report, she continued to hold her silence, not even speaking when they seemed to expect her to. Her officers continued, giving her specific details of the allied and enemy losses, but all she could think about was the fact that, while each of the seven fleets had taken losses, none had taken anywhere near so many casualties as those sustained by the Third Fleet.
Her
fleet. For all intents and purposes, the entire fleet had been eliminated. The fact that the flagship remained, and, as a dreadnought, was still useful in the battle, meant very little to Ravinder. She did not wish for death, but she felt that something was wrong about the universe when so many had died, either due to her inaction, or the orders she gave, or didn’t give, or had otherwise been under her watch, and yet she was still allowed to draw breath and feel her heart beating. It just seemed
wrong
.

She had been the commander of the First Fleet at Centuria V, where she’d failed to defend the billions of lives there, all of which had been lost. Yet, rather unjustly, she had survived. And now, she’d been entrusted with a fleet once again, personally, by the queen herself, the Third Fleet, and what had she done? She’d destroyed it, every bit of it, all the way down to the last officer on the last ship, they had died, following her commands. One-hundred and ninety-nine ships, along with all hands, and, included in that death toll, were about fifteen crew from her own ship, which she hadn’t even known of until now.

I am a Fleet Admiral without a fleet
, she thought, feeling broken inside.  

The Ops chief interrupted the report, which her Comms staff had been delivering at her request; he spoke urgently, “Sir!” he said, his voice cracking. “The enemy has reorganized its local squadrons and they are bearing down on our position, in very tight formation. They’ll be in firing range in fifteen seconds.”

Ravinder had expected this kind of news; it was inevitable, especially considering the insufficiency that forty-five capital ships and one dreadnought represented to a better equipped, more numerous, and frighteningly-determined enemy that seemed hell-bent on breaking the defensive formation at that very exact spot and from there, very probably, do whatever it took, regardless of loss of lives and ships, to destroy the ISS
Victory
. And, in an ironic way, should the enemy successfully take away the
Victory
from the defenders, then actual victory, for the Dread Fleet, was all but assured.

Ravinder ordered her Comms staff back to their posts, and for General Quarters to sound once more throughout the ship. Technically, she had never released her crew from action stations, and so everybody should still be in place, making the sounding of General Quarters
again
redundant, but she decided it would not hurt, just in case.

The klaxon sounded, the emergency lights sprang back to life—she hadn’t even realized they’d been turned off—and her officers each took to their posts.

“Clear for action,” said Ravinder, as one final measure to ensure the
Hyperion
was ready for battle. One that promised to be far bloodier than the skirmish they had just experienced, despite the total loss of their remaining fleet. If she knew the enemy as well as she thought she did, the previous efforts had been mere probing to see how the defenders responded to pressure against their formation at this position. Now the enemy knew exactly how well—or rather, poorly—the defense was at these coordinates, and the Dread Fleet would send an overwhelming force to take it away, once again breaking the defense formation, causing it to partially collapse, and, perhaps worst of all, exposing the ISS
Victory
to assault from another, much deadlier angle.

“All stations report ready for action,” said the Comms chief.

Ravinder nodded. “Now tell me, what have we got?”

She could make little sense of the colored lights on the tactical display; there were far too many, and the zoom far too outward, for her to recognize even her own ship amidst the vast hordes. So she used it only to give her a general sense of the relative forces of each side, and got the specifics from her Ops department.

“I count a combination of battlecruisers, destroyers, battleships, and frigates, all in a compact, wedge formation; I’m unable to get an exact count, but I estimate a minimum of one-hundred capital ships, heading directly for us. Firing range imminent!” said the Ops chief.

“Defense, what is the status of our shields and armor?” asked Ravinder, wondering how well the
Hyperion
could withstand this attack, and, if poorly, wondering if she should withdraw the ship. There was little use in standing ground she knew she could not hold.