Breakaway (Expeditionary Force Book 12) by Craig Alanson

Breakaway (Expeditionary Force Book 12) by Craig Alanson

Author:Craig Alanson [Alanson, Craig]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: UNKNOWN
Published: 2021-05-31T16:00:00+00:00


Zhao planned for the 1st and 2nd Fleets to coordinate their actions, but to operate and be commanded independently. He had to know how both units handled themselves, because the fleets could someday be assigned missions many lightyears apart.

Both fleets jumped in at the same time, appearing in orbit as intense gamma ray bursts. The ability of the ships to focus their gamma radiation was something we wanted to keep secret, and Zhao wanted all eight hundred million Thuranin on the planet below to know the United Nations Navy was knocking on their door. The heavy ships jumped into low orbit, with the destroyers forming a sphere around the planet, to saturate the area with damping fields. The 1st Fleet, led by the battlecruisers Amazon and Volga plus three cruisers, concentrated their attack against the orbital shipyard and the nine enemy ships in that area. Admiral Chatterji took his battleship Atlantic, the battlecruisers Thames and Loire, and four cruisers to surround a formation of ten enemy ships on the other side of the planet. When I said our ships jumped into low orbit, the 1st Fleet really was moving much faster than escape velocity, they would be in weapons range of the shipyard for less than a minute, before the planet’s gravity caused them to slingshot around to the opposite side, where they could intercept enemy ships that escaped the 2nd Fleet.

Chatterji’s force actually was in orbit, his ships had slowed to just slightly faster than the ten-ship enemy formation that was their target. Of the two units, the 2nd Fleet had the tougher assignment. While they coasted along at orbital velocity, they would be exposed to fire from the satellites of the strategic defense network. That was why the enemy ships were caught totally off-guard. Only fools jumped into a zone covered by an active SD network. The math was brutally simple. For the cost of one starship, a dozen or more strategic defense platforms could be put into orbit, and an SD satellite was much less expensive to maintain over its service life. That is why any attacking force with even half a brain engaged warships beyond the range of the SD coverage, or conducted hit and run raids to knock back the planetary defenses, before making any move into orbit. The initial reaction of the Thuranin defenders was of course stunned surprise. Immediately after, their reaction was to question the competence or sanity of whoever was aboard the unidentified warships.

When the attacking ships identified themselves as belonging to a human force, the Thuranin could not believe their luck. The humans were either stupid or suicidal, but they certainly were not coming away from the battle without major losses.

Or, as Skippy likes to say, shmaybe not…



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