“Skipper,” Ensign Ivanova says, motioning toward the tactical display on the Clary’s bridge, “those ships…”

“I see them,” Evans replies, noting her use of the term ‘Skipper.’ No one had ever used the term with Morris because he had never bothered to earn the crew’s trust or respect, only their fear and loathing. It’s a small thing on the surface, only a single word, but it warms Evans and helps her find the confidence to get past her insecurities as she commands the Clary.

There is so much she doesn’t know, so much that could get them killed, but as she tells herself over and over, she doesn’t have a choice. None of them do. On the display, they watch as four Alkarin ships break off from the main group and head on an intercept course for a small cluster of six Commonwealth frigates supporting each other.

It’s almost impossible to tell exactly what class they are using only the passive sensors, but the emissions signatures from their engines indicate that they are likely to be capital ships. The devil of it is that Clary is probably the only ship close enough to intervene. The raging battle underway between the Commonwealth fleet and the Alkarin has now spread out over some 100,000 cubic kilometers and reaches much farther away from the moon. Going by the chaos displayed on the sensor board, it would be extremely hard for any of the other ships to reach them in time to help.

As for the situation with her vessel, the Clary has managed to sail past the Alkarin formation in high orbit unscathed.

“Helm,” she says, “plot an intercept course at your best speed to bring us up behind those four Alkarin ships. Communications,” she says to Petty Officer Third Class Jaworski, a weapons technician whose station had been destroyed and is now manning the communications console, “see if you can open a link to one of the newcomers. Let’s see who they are.”

“Aye, Ma’am… I have the Trinity, Ma’am. It’s only voice, though. The link’s weak and staticky due to all the radiation in the area.”

“Trinity,” Evans said immediately, “this is the destroyer, Clary. You’ve got four Alkarin ships headed your way. We are maneuvering to intercept.”

“Roger, Clary,” a voice responds, badly distorted, “understood. We see them.”

“Can you tell us anything about the current situation?” Evans asks. “We’ve been out of communications for quite a while.”

“The fleet is engaged with the sixth or so reinforcement wave of the Alkarin fleet. So far, they’ve reinforced their fleet several times. Captain Manalo just called Admiral Abrams for reinforcements since we’ve taken a heavy beating over the last 16 hours.”

“If you’ll come to a heading of 244 by 156, we’ll cover you as best we can. Be advised, we’ve been heavily damaged.”

“Roger. Any help you can provide will be appreciated. Good hunting, Clary. Trinity, out.”

On the tactical display, Clary is cutting across space toward the four red triangles representing the enemy ships pursuing the frigates, but she begins to doubt whether they’d be able to engage them in time. They need to close the range much faster and get the enemy’s attention. By doing so, maybe they could draw off one or more of them. The frigates have defensive weapons roughly equivalent to a destroyer, but even so, they’re far more vulnerable. They might be able to defend themselves from one, possibly even two of the Alkarin capital ships, but not all four.

“Ivanova,” she says, “all ahead flank. Tactical, active sensors, please. It’s high time we let them know that we’re here.”

　◇ ◆ ◇ ◆ ◇ ◆ ◇

The Alkarin ships refused to yield. Outnumbered, outgunned, and facing an opponent who has everything in their favor, and still, they kept coming. Thousands of Commonwealth ships are heavily damaged and hundreds have been destroyed. But, that was nothing compared to what the Alkarin have lost in this God-forsaken, seemingly never-ending, engagement.

Shaking his head at the utter waste of it all, he still believes they’ve come out on the better end of the butcher’s bill. Fully 95% of the Alkarin ships have been destroyed, and all the rest have been heavily damaged. But the Commonwealth fleet wasn’t out of the woods yet since the Alkarin had, yet again, reinforced their battlegroups around the moon.

As some of his escort ships had to maneuver out of the way of heavily damaged Alkarin ships that were trying to ram them, the data-linked Commonwealth fleet around his supercarrier took them out one by one. The other Alkarin ships didn’t seem to care since they continued to fire and attempted to ram other ships, seemingly without a care in the world for self-preservation as they were hit repeatedly by antimatter weapons and heavy lasers. The beams of coherent light vaporized armor and hull plating, venting the crew spaces beyond to vacuum, and sometimes detonating the ship in a brilliant flash.

“Sir!” the flag tactical officer calls out. “Multiple new contacts, hundreds, across the sector. Identifying as probable boarding parties.”

‘Here we go again,’ Manalo thinks. “All ships,” he orders, “prepare to repel boarders,” then under his breath murmurs, “Yet again.”

On the bridge display, he sees Captain Breckenridge’s supercarrier, HMS Finlay, heavily engaged with a much superior force of Alkarin ships. Suddenly, the Finlay explodes in a blinding flash. Pressing his lips into a thin line and clenching his hands so tightly that the knuckles bled white, he states, “Comms, order the remainder of the Finlay’s battlegroup to consolidate with us.”

Captain Breckenridge’s battlegroup has been the tip of their spear since they jumped into the middle of a huge force of Alkarin ships and have given out much more than they took. Even so, they’ve been slowly whittled down as the engagement drags on endlessly.

He’d tried many times to reinforce his friend, but the Alkarin always managed to tie them up, and in the end, it’s been everything he can do to merely defend his battlegroup.

The clouds of targets, which have by now grown to several thousand tiny icons on the tactical display, now flow around and through his battlegroup. The CIWS are again being retasked by the AI’s to engage them. Regardless, many of his ships will again be on the receiving end of boarding attacks. Thank God for the Marines.

“Have the twelfth Destroyer squadron move closer in. They’re drifting too far from the battlegroup,” he tells the comm officer as he highlights a point on the tactical display along the flank of the battlegroup that is in the heaviest part of the fighting, “they need to give these carriers some more protection.”

Nodding, the communications officer relays the order to them. Less than thirty seconds later, the half dozen destroyers weave quickly back into the formation to take up station between a group of cruisers and the rapidly approaching cloud of attackers.

　◇ ◆ ◇ ◆ ◇ ◆ ◇

“We’re in range, Ma’am,” Ivanova states as the tactical display shows the effective range ring for the pulse cannon now intersecting the Alkarin ships that were gaining on the small group of frigates.

“Chief,” Evans calls to Chief DeFalco in engineering, “I’m going to have to use the pulse cannon.”

“Go ahead, Skipper,” she says. “The damn thing should work. The only thing I’m worried about is the structural damage we’ve taken. Running the ship at flank speed is beginning to stress what’s left of the keel in the damaged sections. I’ve double-checked the alignment of the central conduit where the pulse cannon is mounted, and it looks okay for now, but I can’t guarantee that we’ll hold together if we have to evade.”

“I’ll keep it in mind, chief,” Evans tells her. Then, she announces to the bridge crew, “Stand by to engage.”

They’re tailing the enemy ships now, gaining on them fairly quickly as the Alkarin slowly close in on the frigates. ‘It’s going to be close,’ Evans thinks. With no one available to man the tactical station, she’s having to take care of the weapons herself.

“Pulse cannon, target, designate,” she announced. Aligning the targeting pipper of the pulse cannon with one of the enemy ships, the Clary turns slightly to starboard. Unlike that moron, Captain Morris, Evans waits until the ship has steadied and the targeting computer confirms the target lock. “Firing.”

As when Morris had fired, the ship thrums as the energy buffers dump their stored power into the pulse cannon, drawing on every non-critical system in the ship to feed the power-hungry weapon. The lights again dim as the Clary is joined for the barest instant with the target ship. Unlike when Morris fired, Evans’s shot hits the intended target right between the twin flares of its engines. Designed to pierce the armor of a dreadnought’s hull, the emerald beam instantly vaporizes tons of metal in the enemy warship’s vulnerable stern. The resulting explosion obliterates the entire engineering section, sending what’s left of the forward part of the ship tumbling end over end, spewing air, debris, and bodies as it quickly falls behind the other three warships.

As she watches the enemy ship break apart, another opens fire on the frigates, striking one of them directly in the engines. Not long after, escape pods begin streaming from the ship, and she watches in horror and fury as the Alkarin warship begins ruthlessly firing on the unarmed pods.

“What the fuck?” she screams, enraged by the Alkarin slaughtering the helpless Commonwealth sailors. “Stand by for Gatling guns!” Evans snarls.

They had only been able to repair the turret for the Gatling guns because the 50-centimeter laser turret is a lost cause since it took a direct strike from a 200-millimeter kinetic weapon. At least, until they can make it to a repair yard.

“Firing!” she growls out the warning, as she taps the fire button. The ship vibrates with the heavy thrum from the Gatling guns. The twin guns fire for ten seconds, throwing thousands of 50-centimeter antimatter rounds at the Alkarin ship that fired on the pods. A few seconds later, the battlecruiser virtually disappears amidst thousands of overlapping flashes from the 500-kiloton explosions, followed moments later by another much larger and brighter flash as the battlecruiser explodes. ‘That’s two down, two more of these murderous bitches to go,’ she thinks viciously.

Smiling in satisfaction, she designates the next target on her console and as the turret moves to align with it, a loud, screeching, shudder flows through the hull.

“Captain!” DeFalco suddenly shouts over the ship’s intercom from engineering. “The keel is failing! I’ve got structural warnings on every frame from forward engineering to the bridge. If we don’t reduce speed, we’re going to lose her, and for the love of God, don’t fire the Gatling guns again!”

“Can we fire the pulse cannon?” she asks her, ignoring her warning to slow the ship. The weapon display indicates that the energy buffers are still cycling. Another five seconds and they’d be topped off again.

For a moment, DeFalco’s silent. “Ma’am,” she says quietly, “the ship is going to break up if we don’t slow down. Doing anything else is about as smart as allowing the Alkarin to hit us with a missile amidships.”

“Answer the question, chief,” Evans orders her while glancing at the weapons status. None of the remaining ships have reacted to the death of their sister vessel, seemingly intent on engaging the frigates. Waiting on the chief’s answer, she already has the target cursor hovering over another enemy warship.

“The cannon should fire properly, Ma’am,” DeFalco says stiffly. “But it’s likely the keel will fail once you do, and we’ll lose the ship. Should I pass the word to prepare to abandon ship?”

“Stand by to fire,” Evans states while ignoring her admonition. Ivanova and the others glance at her as if she’s slightly mad. “Those frigates don’t stand a chance unless we even the odds for them,” she states matter of factly, explaining her reasoning. “Firing,” she said, as she taps the commit button. Again, the emerald beam flares from the Clary’s bow, and again it takes the next target directly in the stern. The pulse cannon hit one of the battlecruiser’s engines, resulting in a massive fireball that sends the ship tumbling uncontrollably around all three axes. She isn’t sure it’s a fatal hit, but it’s enough to take her out of the fight, and that’s all she cares about.

Another more violent shudder makes its way through the hull, and a multitude of alarms begin to blare on the bridge.

“Multiple hull breaches!” a crewman manning the life support section cries out. “The missile room is in vacuum. Containment alarms in tubes one through nineteen!”

“Damn it,” Evans says through gritted teeth. She was hoping to use the missiles to take out the last battlecruiser if the pulse cannon failed. But the hull has wrenched itself out of alignment enough that the launch tubes themselves have become warped, and nineteen of the missiles have been ruptured in their tubes. “Can we jettison them?”

“Negative, Ma’am,” the crewman says. “I’ve tried. The outer hatches are jammed.” The hull vibrates and shakes so hard that Evans bites her tongue.

“Bridge!” DeFalco’s panicky voice calls out. “We’re losing everything forward of frame fifty-eight! Get the fuck out of there!”

“All stop!” Evans orders, ignoring the blood streaming from between her lips from her bitten tongue. Hitting the control to open a channel to the entire ship, she announces, “Crew, this is the Captain. Move aft of frame fifty-eight! Now!” With that, she unbuckles herself from her combat chair and orders the bridge crew out the door and down the passageway aft.

“Ma’am, look!” Ivanova exclaims as she turns to look one last time at the tactical display. The last Alkarin ship flashes from stem to stern on the ventral side, then explodes. ‘Well, at least someone got her,’ Evans thinks as she smiles grimly with blood-smeared lips. ‘We’ve done all we can. We’re out of this fight now.’

　◇ ◆ ◇ ◆ ◇ ◆ ◇

Captain Breckenridge watches the tactical display with quiet admiration as the Clary takes down three of the four Alkarin warships that had gone after the out-of-position frigates. ‘Morris,’ he thinks about the ship’s captain, whom he’d had the displeasure of knowing from a previous command, ‘you’re a fuckin ass, but I’ll be happy to pin the Medal of Honor on you myself for pulling off that stunt.’

He hadn’t even realized that the Clary was still with them until their sensors picked up her drive signature not long after the destroyer had quietly sailed behind the Alkarin warships. He had wanted to contact the Clary but had decided not to risk drawing any more attention to her than necessary after it became clear that she was heading to engage the Alkarin battleships chasing down the frigates. That would have been what he would have ordered Morris to do, anyway.

“The next wave of Alkarin ships will be in range within two minutes, Captain,” his XO reports quietly.

On the tactical display, the two opposing fleets race toward one another, in what he expects will be a final orgy of fire, death, and destruction that will decide the outcome of the battle.

He knows he’s taking a huge risk since he’s under direct orders not to lose his fleet as a fighting force, but he’s counting on more than a little luck to favor him in this engagement. Neither he nor the other Captains are about to abandon this battle. His only real concern is the ammunition stocks. After such prolific expenditures, they don’t have much left, and they haven’t been able to take the time to jump out to rearm. So, once again, his supercarrier is in the center of the wedge that is arrowing for the enemy formation’s heart.

“Don’t bother with anything fancy,” he told his staff officers as he had quickly sketched out the maneuvering orders to consolidate the battlegroup after they had jumped into the middle of a very large Alkarin fleet in high orbit. “We sail through their formation doing as much damage as we can. All ships are to fire at will as soon as the enemy’s in range. Then we’ll see where we stand.”

‘And how many of my ships are going to be left after this?’ he asks himself as the leading edges of the fleets once again collide in fire and destruction.

It seems this is the last time the Alkarin can reinforce their fleet defending the moon. Even so, it takes another four and a half hours to completely destroy their remaining fleet, fighters, and troop ships surrounding the moon.

A couple of hours later, the carrier, HMS Sejong, docks with the Clary, taking its crew onboard. Once they’ve moved off to a safe distance, Evans and the remaining crew salute as they watch a dreadnought fire on what’s left of the Clary to destroy her.