BSE Chapter 3-54

On the shuttle ride up to his ship, Alexander did his best not to worry about Yulia. He had prepared her and the people of Eden’s End as much as he possibly could. He needed to have faith that they could handle things if a ground fight occurred.

Alexander needed to focus on doing his part, keeping Harlow’s fleet away from the planet.

He did manage to read the report Pembrooke had prepared for him. Just over eight hundred people had fled the system after his announcement. It was more than he had realized. Most of those were refugees but there were some drifters mixed in as well.

The report also indicated that some of the captains who took on passengers demanded exorbitant rates or simply every single credit those fearful people had to their names.

Alexander understood fear could make people do crazy things, but trying to profit off of it was disgusting. He sent Theo a note to blacklist those captains and their ships from Unokane permanently.

Their budding society didn’t need people like that.

Soon enough he arrived at Wayward Soul. There had been some debate about whether or not he should command a flagship during this battle, but Char was the one to shut down any concern over his lack of combat experience.

It likely had a lot to do with the fact that Krieger was in overall command of Alexander’s fleet, while Char was in command of the entire battle.

He would have been fine being pushed to a less important role, but it seemed like Katalynn wanted him to be seen leading.

As Alexander made his way to the bridge, he passed more than one group of people hurrying about with carts full of ammo for the ship’s railguns. Railgun ammo was one thing Alexander had in great supply and every available space was being filled with the sabots to ensure the ships had no need to restock or limit their use of the weapons.

The other ships in Char’s fleet were getting the same treatment, only with Gauss rounds. They were essentially the same thing without the sabot coating. Resizing was the only change that had to be done as the Asgardian guns were of a smaller diameter than his own. Some form of standardization would need to happen after this battle was over.

He made a mental note of that to help keep his thoughts off of what was to come.

“Captain on deck!” one of the Hawks yelled to alert everyone of his arrival.

“At ease,” he said as he made his way over the cage designed to hold him in place during battle.

Alexander wished his body wasn’t so bulky so he could simply sit in a normal chair. “How are our preparations?” he asked his second in command.

He didn’t recognize the man, but that wasn’t a surprise. People had been shuffled around over the last few months until they were in the roles that fit them the best.

“We have enough stockpiles of food to last us four months if necessary. Our fuel is topped off as well,” the man added.

Alexander nodded at that. The four pirate ships had been converted to fuel cores when they first arrived. For whatever reason, Arkonis’ people had fitted them with heavy water fuel supplies. It was a good thing Alexander had been able to replace the outdated fueling method with the newer style.

If it hadn’t been for his need to build the fishbone ships, he might not have gotten around to building the enrichment plant attached to the refueling station. The process of creating the fifty-year cores wasn’t all that difficult, but it did require a lot of steps to get to the end product. It was similar to how raw uranium was turned into a viable fuel.

“We have over two hundred percent of our normal capacity on ammo and that is expected to rise to nearly three hundred percent before the day is over. Our missile magazines are also full, but we had to make do with mostly Asgardian missiles,” the man admitted.

The Asgardian fleet had two resupply ships that moved ahead of it normally and which had joined the fleet before their arrival. Those ships did not have an endless supply on board, however. They had been nearly depleted in the Asgardian’s attempt to slow Harlow down.

From what Alexander understood, the supply ships would normally retreat to the nearest resupply base and then return, but there wasn’t anything on this side of Asgardian territory other than Unokane.

The rest of the ship’s supplies were quickly divided up between the fleet and the two supply ships jumped out of the system, their work done. They would be resupplying but they would not be returning here. If this defense failed, the remaining Jarls would gather to defend Asgard and the other Asgardian worlds. If they did enough damage to Harlow’s fleet, they may even attempt to chase the pirate down as he fled back to his space.

Alexander took it all in stride. Either he would win here or go down fighting, there was no other choice unless he abandoned everything he built and ran for it.

***

Over the next day and a half, the frantic activity started to die down, at least aboard his ship. He had received more than one comm message from Katalynn and Captain Krieger about when the technicians would be done and off their ships.

The only reply he had was for them to bear with it.

While the activity had slowed, the anxiety had risen. He could see it in the crew’s furtive glances and overall twitchiness.

Everyone knew Harlow would arrive soon. The fleets had been split into two and orbited on opposite sides of Eden’s End, far enough out that they could jump and maneuver as needed.

It was not the most ideal situation since Harlow outnumbered their entire fleet, but they couldn’t have the man jump in on the opposite side of the planet. That would give the pirates uncontested access to the world until the fleet could reposition.

This way at least they could engage the man while the other half of the fleet jumped away and reoriented to jump back.

An alert went through the fleet a few hours later. Lucas’ sensors had picked up a jump contact far outside the system.

The sensor contact could have been hours old, but now they knew Harlow was probing the system for his attack.

As agreed upon during the tactical planning, the fleets shifted their orbit to the north and south of the planet instead of around the equator.

At preplanned times, they shifted again, ensuring Harlow’s scouts would not get a good read on where they might be at any given time.

That randomness must have spooked Harlow because the pirate fleet jumped in well outside the current orbit of the BSE fleet.

It seemed like Alexander’s group had drawn the short straw here as they repositioned to face the large pirate armada.

At least that was what they wanted Harlow to believe.

After turning about twenty degrees, their fleet jumped until it was perpendicular to the pirate fleet.

Alexander had to thank the supercomputers aboard the Eden ships and Vanguard for being able to process the jump point so quickly.

They fired their turrets at the pirate fleet before jumping once more. They could only do that a few more times without risking the jump drives overheating and burning out.

The initial goal was to annoy Harlow into giving chase away from the planet.

When they arrived at their second jump, Alexander saw that one of the enemy ships had drifted off, while the rest of Harlow’s fleet continued their ponderous turn.

The pirate quickly figured out their plan and didn’t stop his fleet’s turn as Alexander’s fleet reached their next jump point.

It was too bad for them that they thought wrong. The BSE fleet quickly turned toward the pirate fleet and fired volley after volley of railguns, missiles, and lasers while the pirate fleet tried to readjust.

The pirates didn’t just sit there though. Railgun rounds and autocannons fired back, along with missiles.

Their odd angle made the enemy missiles take an arcing route back, which made them much easier targets for point defense systems, and Alexander’s fleet had some of the best.

Hundreds of PDLs struck out, eliminating the enemy missiles.

The Soul shuddered as projectiles slammed into its armor. Alexander did his best to keep track of the damage, but the outdated systems on his ship simply weren’t up to the challenge.

He had to hope that it held together.

Soon the BSE missiles arrived, avoiding almost all of the enemy point defense to strike deep into the enemy lines.

Alexander would have focused all of his attacks against Harlow’s dreadnaught, but Vyrik Thorvund, Katalynn’s tactician had said that reducing Harlow’s fleet numbers would be far more beneficial to overall victory.

The main concern was that the dreadnaught armor would simply be too thick for even their anti-ship missiles to penetrate, requiring multiple strikes in the same spot to get through.

That didn’t mean the ship wasn’t a target.

Vanguard’s laser flashed out time and time again, leaving huge glowing craters on the massive vessel’s forward armor.

Their luck had run out though. A lucky shot took out one of the Hawk’s frigates and three of the automated gunships before Katalynn’s fleet jumped in behind the pirates.

Harlow’s fleet quickly jumped away, leaving the first win to Unokane’s protectors. Alexander knew it wasn’t over though. With all the surprise they had managed to bring to the fight, they had only taken out four of Harlow’s ships. Two corvettes and two gunships were all they were able to take down during the short engagement.

Alexander called out one of the control ships to pull the Hawk’s disabled frigate back to the safety of the orbital defenses so rescues could be made.

They would do it here and now, but they couldn’t trust Harlow not to jump in while they were in the middle of rescue operations.

The ships returned to their silent vigil and the people aboard Soul let out a collective sigh of relief at surviving the first battle.

The automated repair robots were already crawling over every ship in the fleet that was damaged, making quick and dirty repairs to keep them in the fight longer next time.

***

“Report!” Harlow demanded, fuming after he had been forced to retreat when a weaker force had somehow pincered him.

The man forced to give the report gulped audibly. “We lost a few insignificant ships, your eminence, but we took out an equal number of theirs.”

“I don’t care about our other losses!” he roared at the man, spittle flying from his lips. “Tell me about my ship!”

“I- Uh… We took significant damage to our front armor and one of the missile tubes was damaged by enemy laser fire. Crews are working on repairing it now.”

“How long?” Harlow growled.

“A day at most, your eminence,” the man swallowed thickly. “We need to pull new armor panels from the supply ships to weld into place.”

Harlow stood up and the man flinched back. “Tell them they have twelve hours to get it done. Pull crew from the other ships if they have to, I don’t care.” With that statement, he strode from the bridge before he lost control and smashed the man’s face in.

Where the hell had Char gotten her hands on lasers that powerful?

“It has to be Kane,” he muttered as he entered his quarters. “That whore has taken possession of my engineer.”

He would not let this slight stand. Kane belonged to him.