Battle Group Epsilon

Chapter 14

Chapter 14

April 6 2184, 05:53 Hours (Standard Solar Time)
Aboard USNI Destroyer "Thermopylae" En Route to Mars

"Electromagnetic Sensors are picking up a lot of residual radiation, Admiral," Walker said.
Had they used nuclear weapons? Sheffield couldn't imagine that they had already needed to resort to such a last resort. Or had it been the Fist of Jupiter that used them? He cleared his mind and got his head straight. "Residual from what, Ensign?" he asked. "Was it a nuke?"
"Negative," she said.
He sighed mentally, but gave no outward sign of relief. He was an Admiral now he reminded himself. He kept his poker face on.
"It looks more like an exposed nuclear core, sir."
Sheffield wasn't sure if he liked that any better. It had already been established that the enemy didn't use nuclear fusion to power their ships. That meant if there was an exposed core, it was from a friendly ship. Instead of a nuclear firefight, it just meant there was a downed USNI ship nearby.
"What's our ETA Walker?"
He watched as she checked their time on her terminal, did a quick calculation on a pad of paper and said, "We'll be in Martian System in thirteen minutes. Beginning deceleration burn now." Sheffield held on tight as they began to slow down. Ahead on the screen, Mars was a red circle the size of a quarter.
Sheffield rechecked the Battle Net and looked over the forces in orbit around Mars. There were two separate Carrier Groups nearby. Each group had a carrier, a frigate for escort, and various smaller support ships. Both Groups were stationed at the Edinburgh Orbital Base along with a destroyer and a third carrier that wasn't attached to either Group. As a military base, it was something of a joke among the Navy. Unlike the Germania and Alamo which were fortresses, the Edinburgh was more of a glorified dry dock. There were no rail gun turrets and its point defenses were intended to be handled by nearby ships. There were usually a few squadrons of Marauders stationed there but was otherwise, quite vulnerable to attack. The Fist of Jupiter knew what they were doing.
They were fortunate that his Battle Group just happened to be passing by. He had heard their distress signal a few hours ago. He had only been a hundred million kilometers away; practically just down the block.
"Sir," said Baldwin. "We're being contacted by the fleet."
"Put them through Lieutenant," Sheffield said.
The main view screen split into two. One half showed the steadily growing picture of Mars and the other half showed an Admiral. It was a full Admiral, a superior of Sheffield. The man had thinning white hair and dark eyes. His face was lean and narrow. He recognized the man as Admiral Turner. He blinked at the camera and said, "It's damn good to see you Admiral. Get your fleet over here as soon as you can." He sent them a set of coordinates that appeared as a waypoint on the other half of the screen. "Mobilize your ships here and give them hell." The screen of the Admiral snapped off and the one of Mars filled the entire display.
"You heard him Lieutenant," he said to Walker.
"Cut engines to fifty percent power and begin charging the main cannon. Keep the Marauder pilots on alert but don't deploy them until I give the word." He wasn't going to send them in until he knew what he was sending them in to. He sat down in front of his own terminal and tried to see what the Admiral's strategy was. It looked like he had pushed the enemy's forces into a tight orbit around Mars with the fleet pursuing at their heels. With Sheffield in position, he'd catch them from behind and be able to outflank them.
The enemy ships didn't come up at first but he soon saw the lances of energy flash across the screen. After that it was just a matter of tracing them back to the source.
There were two ships and what looked like remnants of at least one more. The smaller one was long and sleek. He took it to be a frigate. The other was very similar except that the underbelly was swollen where the other was boxy the entire length. It must have been a carrier.
"Lieutenant, put us into a tight orbit around Mars on the far side from that battle. Then circumnavigate us to that waypoint," he said.
"Aye aye, sir."
Putting themselves so close to the planets gravity well was a risky maneuver. Like fighting with you back against a wall, they would have a difficult time getting out of there quickly if they needed to. He didn't want them to detect him though or else they would reposition and the initiative would be lost.
He marked the two enemy ships as targets Alpha and Bravo. He sent orders to the Captains of his two frigates and told them to concentrate fire on Bravo, the enemy frigate. He would deal with the carrier.
"Lieutenant Hill, remove safeties on missile tubes A through D and get a firing solution that targets their carrier as soon as it's in view."
Lieutenant Junior Grade Hill typed away at his keyboard as the Thermopylae entered into orbit. A timer came up on Sheffield's screen. It counted down from three minutes.
His Group was traveling with his destroyer taking the lead and one frigate following to either side. It was a standard formation they had practiced back at Luna and was how they had traveled while in the asteroid belt. He sent them new orders that grouped both frigates together above his ship. They were targeting different ships and in a few minutes they would launch several hundred missiles. The last thing he needed was for them to crisscross and collide in midair.
"Thirty seconds until visual contact," Lieutenant Walker called.
Sheffield stood up and gripped the brass railing between him and the screen. He counted his heart beats but they were too fast. He looked down at his computer's timer and then back at the screen. The battle slid into view. The enemy ships were backing away with their flanks exposed while single fighters engaged in dogfights all around them. "Send the Fist of Jupiter back to Pluto," he said.
The missile tubes opened up and sent a combined one hundred twenty missiles toward the carrier. "Missiles away, sir," Hill called. He felt the impact on the hull as they launched and the Thermopylae's engines worked to compensate for it.
They saw Sheffield's ships when the missiles were halfway there. They turned so that their sides would take the brunt of the assault. He saw that the frigate had a pair of laser turrets on the top of the ship. They began to turn toward his fleet. He was impressed to see that the carrier had a pair as well. They kept firing at Admiral Turner's ships while the frigate engaged his. The turrets fired individually; one swiped through the incoming missiles, destroying two dozen while the other hit the Pegasus. The beam boiled through the ships half meter of armor in an instant while explosive decompressions put it into a new trajectory. The ship turned dangerously close to the planet and had to devote all of its power to pull out. The ship wasn't out of commission but it wouldn't be fighting anymore until it could get into a safer trajectory.
The missiles struck. The carrier was hit first. His Trident HE missiles struck the underbelly that was presumably where the single fighters were stored. The explosions enveloped the majority of the vessel and obscured it from his view. When the flames died down he saw the wreckage. The lower half of the ship was gone. The rest of it, whatever had remained in one piece was tilted to the side. The same had happened to the frigate. It was surrounded by debris and chunks of metal.
Then something unexpected happened. Both ships began to right themselves. The frigate fired again, both turrets combining power into a single beam that hit the Pegasus again. It hit amidship and went clean through, bursting out the other side. The carrier fired at him. It hit the nose of his ship and the main screen went black; the camera had melted. Walker fired the starboard emergency thrusters before he could even give the orders. The force knocked him to his knees. He heard an explosion and the bridge became noticeably hotter.
"Hull breech!" Rivera shouted. "There's fires on decks three, four, and five."
"Is anyone on those decks?" he asked.
"Negative," she said. "They were cleared before we engaged."
"Vent the atmosphere from them."
"Aye sir," she said. "Venting now."
The temperature on the bridge returned to normal and Sheffield stood back up. "What's going on out there? Get me a visual," he demanded. "Is the main cannon still operational?"
"Aye sir," Hill said. "It's at seventy percent and holding."
"Redirect all power to charging it and take out that carrier," Sheffield said. The screen came back on and showed their enemy, they weren't centered on the screen though. Walker turned them around so that they were pointing straight on at the carrier. Sheffield pulled up a rough blueprint of the ship and it showed the condition. The laser had hit them right in the nose. Had it hit them a few meters lower, their rail gun would have been taken offline.
"Firing!" Hill yelled.
The entire ship trembled as a five hundred ton slug ran along the magnetic rods of the ship and left the prow going a quarter the speed of light. He watched it hit the carrier and he thought for a moment the force might snap it in half. It went clean through and rocketed out the other side. The starship started spinning out of control. It was done for, nothing could withstand a direct hit from a rail gun.
He checked the frigate on his screen. Admiral Turner's ships had hit it with another missile barrage. It was entering the Martian atmosphere though the engines were trying to pull them out. It was a losing battle. Physics always won. The structural integrity of the frigate failed all at once. It tore apart under its own weight. The fragments of it streaked across the atmosphere in a magnificent fireworks display.
"Sir," Walker called, "Look."
He looked up and saw the carrier. It had stopped spinning and its engines flared to life, though much duller then they had been before. It was leaving the battle. How could it not have been destroyed? He was caught between an awkward mix of frustration, admiration, and fear.
"Orders sir?" Walker asked. The rest of the bridge was looking at him expectantly. Would he tell them to pursue?
He looked back down at the structural layout of his ship. It appeared glowed green while areas that were damaged or disabled in red. The one attack had boiled through a meter of armor like it was nothing. He didn't know if they could take another. The Pegasus was not going anywhere fast. The Captain had already sent him a report. His rail gun was not functioning and he could only safely push his reactors to twenty percent. The Cyclops was fine but that was the only good news.
"Do not pursue. We've won this battle, there's no honor in destroying a fleeing enemy." He was lying of course; it was a question of if they even could beat the carrier, not about honor. The latter was better for morale though.
"Rendezvous with Admiral Turner's forces," he ordered. "Send repair teams to decks three through five and have them do what they can."
"Sir, we're receiving an incoming transmission," Baldwin said.
"Admiral Turner?" he asked.
"No sir, it's coming planetside," Baldwin explained. "It's Washington Military Base. They're under attack and are requesting reinforcements."
"Send in the Marines, Lieutenant." Sheffield said. "Load up one of the dropships with a Longbow as well."
"A Longbow, sir?" Baldwin asked.
"We need to protect every military installation from the Fist of Jupiter. And short of that make sure the enemy doesn't get their hands on any." If there was one thing that he understood about the Fist of Jupiter, one thing that was constant and unchanging about their tactics thus far it was this; they wanted information about the USNI and more specifically their ships. If they knew how they were constructed, they could better understand how to beat them. It was his job to make sure that didn't happen.
After a few minutes Rivera said, "MAKOs away sir." He switched to the aft camera and saw a miniature fleet of thirty dropships heading planetside. They had been deployed from all three of his ships, still leaving marines onboard of each incase of a boarding action. He didn't see that as likely but he was past the point of taking chances.
"Get us back to the main fleet and hail the Admiral." It was more bad news. He saw what remained of the two Carrier Groups. It wasn't pretty. Of the six capital ships that had made up the fleet, only three remained; a frigate, destroyer, and one carrier. All of them looked like they had been chewed up and spit back out. They were marked with black scars from where laser fire had struck and were venting atmosphere in numerous spots.
"Sir," Baldwin said hesitantly. "The Admiral's flagship is not among the surviving ships. Captain York is responding to our request. He says he's the next ranking Officer."
Sheffield shook his head. It was too early in this war to be losing Admirals. "Tell him that I will be assuming command of the fleet."
"Aye sir."
He sat down in his seat and began filling out a report to send to Fleet Command. He described what happened, the outcome, and his personal analysis on the situation. He attached the video files of his ship and the others and sent it back to Earth.
Between reviewing status reports on repairs from the ships that he got every fifteen minutes and updates on the combat on Mars, he was busy for over an hour. That was when their situation took a turn from bad to worse.
"Sir," Lieutenant Walker yelled out. "We've got contact. A group of Fist of Jupiter ships are mobilizing at the edge of the Martian System."
"How many ships are there?" he asked. When she told him, he wished he hadn't.
"I'm reading thermal signatures from at least a dozen ships with Class III masses or higher," she said. Her voice started to crack at the end.
Command came with a lot of benefits but it also came with a lot of responsibility. Since he had been promoted he had been required to make difficult decisions everyday. He always had to weigh the pros against the cons. He had to weigh the safety of his men against the necessity of their mission. He had to compare the value of success versus the impact of loss. Now he had to measure the value of human life and sacrifice. How could he compare the lives of innocents against his own soldiers?
He had been told that every simple question had a simple answer. He could stay and fight, sacrificing his people and lose or he could save as many as he could to the same end. He knew what he had to do but it made it no easier.
"Contact the Edinburgh," he said. "Tell them to wipe out their mainframes and abandon ship. We'll pick them up shortly. And get a hold of the ground teams. Get them back up here ASAP. We're going home."