Admiral’s Fall – Sneak Peek Chapter 1

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Admiral’s Fall – Sneak Peek Chapter 1

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Admiral’s Fall: Book 13
(A Spineward Sectors Novel:)
By Luke Sky Wachter

Chapter: Mopping Up

We may have won the war but the battle had yet to reach its final resolution.
This realization left me momentarily dumbfounded but I got over it quickly.
“How long until the last major contingent of the Confederation jumps out of this star system?” I asked my navigator.
“Depending on hyperdrive charge rates we’re looking at anything from a half hour to an hour from now, Admiral,” my Navigator said helplessly.
I looked back at the main screen where the Bug Spheroid along with the surviving imperials and confederations ships that were unable to maneuver or were still trying to stave off bug boarders were still active.
“Give me a count of Bugs and Glorious Fleet ships still listed as hostiles,” I instructed as a series of orbital turrets and pop up missile launchers went active opening fire on every remaining bug ship in their range.
“I’m still reading around twenty battleships in various states that have refused to surrender. The majority of them imperials. As for Bugs, it looks like everything of significant size has been destroyed except for the Spheroid. All that are left are around eighty scouts and scout marauders,” reported Tactical.
“It doesn’t seem like those bugs are going to last long,” I commented as the turrets and missiles started to whip out the remaining bugs.
“Determine if they’re not contacting us because of genuine battledamage or because they’re feeling intractable. If they refuse to speak redirect a few of our turrets and open fire until they do. After you’ve figured that out contact Spalding and inform him we’re going to need another demonstration,” I said coolly, “I think after losing a few more heavies they’ll find reason.”
With their forces broken by the mine field and the imperial command carrier out of action the imperial and old confederation forces had no way of putting up an effective resistance to the Lucky Clover.
Despite the turrets the Clover fired twice more and two broken battleships later, the remainder of the Glorious Fleet was ready to surrender. It would have been one thing to lead a death defying charge into the teeth of the superbattleship. But it was another to sit there in a ship with broken engines and scream defiance until the Clover got around to annihilating you and your crew with one well placed shot.
No sooner had we taken their parole and thus in effect promised to protect them from the Bugs while they were in our theoretical custody than the Spheroid decided to make its presence known.
Appearing agitated by the mine field blast and showing enormous gaping wounds on its hull the Bug Mothership finally decided to stop munching on the hull of the Command Carrier. Releasing the Mighty Punisher in a way that almost seemed like it was spitting it out the giant, moon sized, Bug Spheroid floated away.
Minutes after letting go of the broken command carrier its mouth started writhing.
“That can’t be good,” said Commander Snyder.
“Don’t jinx it,” Lisa Steiner my chief of staff muttered.
As if words of prophetic wisdom had just been spoken the puckered, battle damaged ‘maw’ of the Bug Spheroid once again opened and…. out slid a pair of heavy harvesters.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said with a flash of anger. The battle might be over by the agreement of all human parties in this mess but apparently the Bugs disagreed.
“I’m sorry, Sir. But the sensor read out is accurate,” said Commander Snyder.
“That’s fine,” I cut her off and turned to com’s, “tell the Commander he is to switch his targets. We need to whittle down that Spheroid sooner rather than later. Let’s see what a couple of HPC rounds do to it.”
The com-officer nodded and relayed my message. He listened and then turned back to me. “Commander Spalding asks to speak with you.
“Put him on,” I said blinking with surprise.
“Terrance Spalding here and it’s good to see you, Sir,” the old Engineer said happily.
“Good to see you in one piece, Commander,” I nodded letting loose a smile before turning serious again, “we’re going to need some help with that Spheroid, as you can see she’s still sending out combatants. I’d like the Clover to put a few rounds in her.”
Spalding laid a finger alongside his nose.
“That won’t be necessary, Sir,” he winked, “why don’t you let me focus on trimming down Harvesters until those runners from Glorious Fleet are gone. After that we can turn that Bug Moon into hash on command. The droids put a few, let’s call surprises, inside the Moonlet of Mayhem. One transmission and boom! It’s gone,” he said slapping his hands together with a crack.
“Spalding you’re a wonder,” I said with fervent appreciation. “However I’m not sure we can wait that long. We’ve already taken paroles and that Moon’s already proven to be surprisingly mobile for something of its size.”
“Not a problem, Sir,” the old Engineer said seriously, “I’ll get the droids and see what we can do.”
“Then I’ll leave the matter in your capable hands,” I said.
Several minutes later and sensors registered a small seismic episode that shook the hull of Spheroid just enough that our sensors could register.
From that point onward the Spheroid didn’t move again.
After that it was simple matter of cleaning up the battlefield. Sending lancers over to help our beleaguered former enemies, those that we could reach in time anyway and putting prize crews aboard those ships that were still somewhat functional.
In total only a couple dozen undamaged ships actually surrendered. The rest all had some form of battle damage.
All in all a good days work.

8 comments

  1. dragon723 - May 2, 2018 3:14 pm

    Nice, sounds like they gain a few imperial-level battleships (18 imperials or just 18 total?) + lots and lots of parts to replace/ supplement/ upgrade some of their old spine-built ships. The combined fleet has to be pretty broken at this point though, especially the idiots that broke out of formation and formed their own “wings”, so they’ll need the ships to make up at least some of their loses.
    Also the MP can’t go on hijacking the ships of others and repairing/restoring them, – especially not when they have access to imperial tech, spalding and a hidden shipyard. Just a matter of building some more slips (+ every other piece of industry needed xD) and start construction on their own ships – so another 2-3 books before we see the first capital ships being built for the mp?

    Finally, is the command carrier repairable? Could make for an awesome addition to the fleet since it is basically the second most powerfull ship in the spine, might even be the second most powerful ship in the entire confederation.

    Reply
    • Joshua Wachter - May 2, 2018 4:16 pm

      All great thoughts Dragon! I do need to address the building and laying down of new hulls. Hrmm. I think I might be able to do something in two books. Especially considering I’m writing Admiral 14 right now ;).

      Keep the thoughts coming!

      The Deposed King

      Reply
  2. Darion X - May 6, 2018 8:11 am

    IMO the most important thing to do is catching the fleet Train before it can run for the hyper boarder. There are 3 to 6 constructor ships with the newest in imperial or confederation tech there and a lot of freighter with tech and ressources.

    These are in the Long run more important then all the battleships they could conquer.

    Darion X

    Reply
    • dragon723 - May 8, 2018 7:03 am

      Agreed, longterm that would be far superior, especially since they can use those to help expand the shipyard, possibly even start building some smaller yards somewhere (possibly outside or close to the sector border), so they don’t have all their eggs in one basket. Everyone already knows Jason has to have facilities somewhere, so i doubt he can keep it hidden forever.

      The major drawback would be that it might call down the imperial warfleets in a way killing off an entire fleet diden’t, The imperials might not care that much (at least not immidiately) about a relatively tiny segment of their navy being killed off, especially not if they get caught up in political infighting over the late senatora political powers (not to mention deviding his house and its wealth amongst themselves).

      Stealing their tech (or at least making them aware that you did so, since jason already has access to most of it), one of the major advantages they have over every other power in the galaxy, including the fading/ dying old confederation, would be a massive loss for them though, and something that would draw an immidiate response.

      Reply
      • Joshua Wachter - May 9, 2018 2:58 pm

        All interesting thoughts!

        Reply
      • Darion C - May 10, 2018 4:56 pm

        Dragon

        on a general POV I would agree with you but there are some more points to be thought off.

        a.) The empire is been hard pressed on the other front. They are winning but they can’t draw to many troops there. Now there will be enough inside the Empire but

        b.) The LA. has used WMD (bugs) and could bring them directly to your front door. Why should he not do so again and jump directly to some of there main world and Military stations.
        They don’t know for real what the LA can do and can’t do so for the time being they have to be careful.

        On top of the WMD he got some hundred of new Military ships including a whole bunch of modern empire one. Hios miltitary power has rising by at least 3-400 %.

        Crushing the NC will not be as easy as thought – meaning the Empire will not go out quickly. Also there is the Point of internal infighting.
        Who will get the right to crush that imposter out there and who works against that person. There is a lot more in the Empire which will get them to take their times instead of making a new attack.

        Darion X

        Reply
        • dragon723 - May 11, 2018 8:14 am

          I agree they have time on their side in regards to the empire, probably several years before they have to contend with an actual imperial warfleet, which i assume could be truly massive given their industrial powers, not to mention huge, dedicated population. Tons of potential to use to beat the fractured spine with.
          An important point i feel should be made here is that while, military victories are great and all, Jason really needs to start turning them into political ones too,, to build political capital so to speak, if he is to have a real chance to hold the empire/ old confederation off longterm.

          As for the threat of using wmd’s against civilian/ shipbuilding worlds i seriously doubt Jason would go for it as he has a bit of a hero complex (besides its one thing to use a nonviral bio weapon to destroy the opponents military capacity during wartime, the moment you start using it to destroy civilian populations it gets a bit dark and you start to lose traction politically 🙂 ), but at the same time the imperials cannot know that at so its certainly something they have to consider before acting.

          As for major military bases, most of those are probably protected by some fairly powerfull battle stations (main cannon on a class 1 comparable to the lucky clover’s main weapon, are there higher classes protecting major shipyards and bases? Even the oldfashioned one protecting a spine core-world was capable of holding off multiple battleships, and i assume that was just a local version based off of old confederal tech) not to mention small mobile fleets, so they probably aren’t that worried about strikes against them – they might even hope for it as a single lucky shot on the clover could leave whatever forces jason sends stranded in imperial space. Getting their hands on the clover and its technical secrets would be a priority for the empire.

          The potential growth of his military power by 300-400 percent – once he gets the ships repaired and crewed – would speak in favor of “quickly” dislodging a second, larger fleet from its duties on the gorgon front, before a significant percentage can be repaired and put to use in the MSP. Its not like jason has the repairfacilities or manpower to even begin to get all of them repaired, nor will he have them in short order.

          At best the MSP will need to repeat the late senators move and replace most computers onboard, to ensure that there aren’t surprised hidden in the code somewhere, and of course most of the new ships will need other repairs before being usefull as anything but parts. Add to that the fact that his current fleet is beaten up, that he is in fact weakened in the short term, and this could be an opportune moment for his enemies.

          Overall, jason needs time, maybe as much as a year, before the MSP can become the uncontested number 1 military force in the spine. Of course, since we know the next book is titled admirals fall, it seems unlikely he will be gven said time,

          Looking back this has turned into a massive wall of text, so ill just cut it off here XD

          Reply
          • Darion X - May 12, 2018 6:49 am

            Dragon

            on 1.) I fully agree with you. One reason I think he needs the Constructors.

            You are my friend, sure you will get first time slot for build up.
            You are speaking ill of me, oh, yes there is a space at the back off the line. Await some time in the next teen years or a little later on the Constructors. Possibly by than we would have to send them back where they came from, but fair is fair.

            And yes, that will also have some backslash on that worlds on the back but overall that will have a positive spin for the LA. The worlds which are ill speaking are against him from the beginning so he has to build his own basis by looking for his own people first and the ones who are on the border to jump let or right .

            The ones against him have to wait their time.

            On 2.) and the use of WMD you misunderstood me. Jason will not say he will use them if the Empire is attacking but the Empire will await him to do so anyway. He is the worst guy out there ever heard about, all the News are reporting on it for years.
            The Empire is using WMD and not declaring so, most likely they are the ones cry foul the most about the use, but using that weapon is a great way to go from their POV.

            Clearly written in the last book, so they will await Jason to do the same. They are forwarned: he used them so why not do the same again — that is their thought pattern.

            On the defense of major fleet bases and shipyards you are correct about the battle stations but will that be enought with about 2.000 bug ships and a fleet following in.

            The LA only needs to destroy them, not conquer. They have to think about it that way. So only some battle Station will not do itm there has to be a defense fleet there, too.

            On top they will have to calm down their population which will know that their is someone out there completely evil who can at any time send in a WMD into their home system.

            As the admirals from the Confederation want to safe their own asses they have to make the treat bigger and bigger to explain why they lost against that little fleet and why the Empire lost, too.

            So the treat, by the POV of the simple guy on the street, will be much bigger then it is for real. They will ask for security.
            It is not different from the NC where every world was demanding safeties against the pirates in the first books to complain if they don’t get them.

            There are families and Senators in the Empire who own whole worlds and they will demand safeties for their Holdings for their votes.
            The world of that guy over their can burn but my has to be safe, so if you want my vote, what can you do for me.

            I hope that clarifies my thoughts better.

            Darion X

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