The Ascent

Chapter 38

The fleet approached in a concave lens with the intention of englobing the battle cruiser. A fountain of attack craft erupted at us from the target. Our own FACs, having been slotted in between the heavy battle cruisers darted forward, forestalling their hit-and-run tactics. They either drove the aliens off or held them in place until our battle cruisers could finish them. We turned back wave after wave of attacks as we approached and began surrounding the battle cruiser. Then the aliens piloting the attack craft, fearing entrapment, all fled back to the planet.

Even without their escort, that one battle cruiser had the power to threaten the entire fleet. A stunning number of missiles lashed out in all directions, nearly overwhelming the D-RATS system. As our point defenses struggled to keep up, the remotely piloted attack drones slipped in to rake our ships with energy weapons and smaller ship-to-ship missiles.

Our own FACs and LCs boosted toward the cruiser on reaction drives, providing cover for our handful of gunships who accelerated towards their target to add extra momentum to their payloads. They approached from opposite directions, pinning the battle cruiser in place. After blasting through the enemy's defenses, the FACs and LCs separated and the gunships fired their payloads of depleted uranium. When those same payloads punched through the cruiser and flew out the far side, the FACs and LCs were forced to swerve away sharply to avoid being hit by their counterparts' projectiles.

The lights of the super heavy battle cruiser flickered and died. The energy weapons stopped firing and the missiles stopped launching. Even the remotely piloted drones ceased their attacks and continued accelerating away into the distance along whatever vector they had been following.

"Do you want to send boarding parties?" Harlow asked.

It would make a good prize, I thought. But then there would likely be other opportunities for capturing one of these. "Have they offered to surrender?"

"Not that we can tell."

"Then destroy them."

Perhaps they were too busy trying to repair critical systems, but not a single escape pod launched. Our missiles slammed into the hulk perforating it into fancy lacework, almost certainly killing the crew well before their anti-matter storage failed and vaporized the rest.

"Have the fleet form up in a defensive sphere," I told Harlow. "Let's check out this home world."

The planet surrendered immediately.

The new owners were generous with their newly acquired supplies and soon we had half the fleet in dock performing long-neglected repairs and resupply. The docking clamps had just locked down onto the Phoenix when the alarms sounded and FAS-Delta flashed on the alert panels. While Commander Brennon howled at the station's pilot master to release his ship, I flash messaged sub-commander Debbie Fowler who had C&C duty at the time. "What is it?"

"Another of those super heavy battle cruisers just transited into the system."

"Is he headed this way?"

"He's gone FTL and will be here in about ten hours."

"Recall all the crews and let's get into a higher orbit."

* * *

The new battle cruiser turned out to be loyal to the new rulers of The Strong High Dwellers—or at least it's commander decided to pledge his loyalty to them.

We stayed several weeks, our engineering crews working round the clock to repair all that they could. The Strong High Dwellers had a strange mix of technologies from a variety of worlds, supplying some rare parts we needed and, inexplicably lacking other more common items. We mostly traded technology for the supplies we needed when we weren't fighting their enemies.