"Damn." Mancuso breathed. Tactical had named the aggressor ships Pirate Fleet A, and Pirate Fleet B, in order of their appearance, just like he'd taught them to. Both Fleets were huge, small navies more than any pirates he'd yet heard of, but Fleet A was about what you'd expect, a hodgepodge of whatever could be scrabbled together, all old ships with different drive speeds and everything else that could be named.
Fleet B scared him. There wasn't anything amateur about this crew. They were coming to party.
Captain Mancuso turned to his pilots, face expressionless, every inch the professional. "Right full rudder, thirty degree down angle. Helm, give her an axial rotation. Give me a barrel roll. Comm, signal Tapani he's to get his ass and those transports out of here. We'll buy him time."
"Aye, aye, sir." A steady hush filled the bridge. They were going to die. Everyone went about their jobs professionally anyway.
===========
Shampoo's Flamberges were easily the best, most modern ships in the fight. They also had speed no other ship there, not even Nabiki's fast escorts, could match. And she had nearly caught up to the fleeing convoy, while her turbolasers lashed out, trading fire more or less equally with the other pirates.
She was almost in position. A massed ion barrage at short range would disable the cargo vessels, forcing their escorts to turn and fight or continue fleeing, either way would provide her gunners the opportunities they'd need to finish them at will.
Suddenly the escort Dreadnought, which had pulled a high position alongside its convoy, allowing it to unleash those turbolasers it had on both sides to tickle both her and the rival navy, pulled what for a cruiser was a sharp turn, heading in her direction. The nose of the ship dipped and it began to spin along its engine line, twirling like a corkscrew as it made its approach head on.
Why became clear a moment later. This odd approach gave it free angle of fire on every weapon it had. Where most captains would slide up alongside an enemy to trade energy broadsides, using only a fraction of their ship's total armament, the dipped nose plus the spin gave this guy a chance to shoot every laser on its nose, top, sides and belly as each spun into view. And by the time the spin was repeating the other sides had recharged for another volley.
it would be hard on the gunners to maintain accuracy, but this guy had pulled a trick that gave him as much oomph as four ships of his class would with conventional tactics. Temporarily.
===========
"Navigaton, have you got that hyperspace course plotted yet?" Bart Mancuso was not a man to take defeat lying down. Sure, he'd engage the enemy, but suicidal charges went better if they weren't suicide. His crew had perked up markedly when he'd shown that he'd intended to hold the enemy for a certain length of time, then warp out under them. It'd be hell trying to find out where they'd gone. But so long as they weren't flying space debris, he'd trade a few weeks returning to charted star courses for that.
The ensign at navigation opened her mouth to reply when suddenly the ship shuddered. Ion shielding wasn't around when this ship was new, and never retrofitted. The barrage of ion guns slid through his ray shielding and pounded his hull, setting off arcing charges that disabled power in a heartbeat and continued to play across the hull in an eerie light display.
Before he could comment on the power of that ion barrage, or make some solid statement to prepare his crew for the follow-up turbolaser volley that would cut through them now they were without shields, the spinning command deck caught a view of the fleeing convoy.
"Damn it, Tapani! All you've got to do is stay close to the transports! They won't dare fire heavy with you that close to the money. All you've got to do is take a few hits and you'll be out of here with the cargo ships!"
===========
Nabiki's face hid her fury as she saw what the enemy (not the convoy, they were just prey, this was a RIVAL!) had done. Enough firepower just on ion guns to reduce a Dreadnought to a paralyzed mass of metal in a single volley - and they'd been trading turbolaser fire with her on equal terms.
Just then the Tapani class frigate started pulling sharply away from its transports, opening a hailing frequency and transmitting their desire to surrender across all codes and bands.
Her face was tight as the Moff turned to her stunned subordinates. "Captain, signal the Tapani. We accept his surrender on terms that he continue the fight against our mutual enemy, then switch all fire concentration to our rivals. Ignore the convoy."
Her voice suddenly galvanizing the crew, she turned to another target. "Admiral, those two luxury liners are fitted with ion shields, as well as the Tapani. Use them to protect our flanks so they don't paralyze our Dreadnoughts."
Flank was exactly the wrong term to use, as this was nearly a head-on engagement, but her admiral got the idea. He began to give the proper orders, and her ships floated into a new formation as they closed the range with their enemies.
"And somebody give the order to our small craft! Head toward the transports and begin to deploy boarding parties immediately! I want that money and I don't want it to get away!"
Her face was like flint. "And signal the bulk cruiser. Ramming Speed!"
===========
Blue-white flashes from the ion guns turned one after another of the fleeing freighters into drifting masses of weight in quick succession. Six bulk freighters and one larger, specialty tax transport about double their size all failed within moments of each other, the tax transport in spite of its heavier armor.
One Flamberge deployed to link to the spinning hulk of the paralyzed Dreadnought, using tractors to steady it while they positioned to extend boarding tubes. Others sent masses of shuttles in among the freighter fleet for much the same purpose, but the freighters required much smaller crews and therefore not nearly the same size boarding forces to capture.
The remainder of Shampoo's ships turned, like lions guarding their prey, to face the other assailants.
See other episodes by Lionheart
(Posted Tue, 23 Mar 2004 22:21)
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