Time Commander (The First Admiral Series) by William J. Benning Page B

attack. All told, Billy estimated that it would be around another fifteen minutes until First Fleet was able to make any significant impact on the battle unfolding on his War Table before him. Fifteen minutes was a long time for Third Fleet’s surviving Eagles to hold out in the cramped passageways between the towering Ganthoran warship hulls.
    Every minute that those Eagles could buy would keep the Ganthorans away from the vulnerable larger ships of Third Fleet’s defensive formation. Slowly, the Ganthoran formation seemed to be dividing into three distinct parts. On the War Table’s three-dimensional image, a large group of Cruisers and Destroyers were gathering in front of the Ganthoran position to make an attack on Third Fleet. Admiral Parbe’an would, no doubt, also be monitoring this particular development closely. In the ruined centre of the Ganthoran formation, the Alliance Eagles were fighting the desperate battle for survival against the hordes of Axe-Blade fighters.
    However, it was the developments around the Ganthoran “Six-Cigar” Carriers that drew Billy Caudwell’s attention next. Having split up the large vessels in the invasion force, the Ganthoran General was now pulling back Axe-Blade fighters to form part of the defensive screen around his Carriers. Having damaged or destroyed almost a quarter of the attacking Eagle force, the Ganthoran General seemed confident enough to consider that the main threat from the Alliance Eagles had been contained. For the loss of over one thousand Eagle fighters, the Ganthorans had lost ten times that number of Axe-Blades.
    This new development presented Billy with a whole new set of circumstances. The Ganthoran General was completely unaware that another Alliance Fleet was less than thirty minutes away from joining the battle against him. With the Alliance Eagles apparently contained and with a large force developing to his front to attack the rest of Third Fleet, he was feeling confident enough to leave his Carriers slightly more vulnerable. Looking at the defensive screen around the “Six-Cigar” Carriers, Billy could see five Cruisers, a dozen Destroyers, and around two thousand Axe-Blades. It was still an impressive defensive screen, but Billy Caudwell was sure that they could not fend off a large force of Alliance Eagles.
    In his mind, Billy Caudwell began to work out the permutations for a full-scale Eagle attack on the Ganthoran Carriers. There were still, however, too many variables for him to consider at such an early moment in the battle; however,the germ of an idea was already forming in his mind.
    On the three-dimensional War Table image, Billy could see over two hundred Cruisers and five hundred Destroyers forming up. More importantly, Billy also saw the twenty-five thousand Axe-Blades that the Ganthoran General was about to commit against the Third Fleet formation.
    Working on the correct assumption that Admiral Parbe’an had committed all of his single-seat fighters to the first attack, the Ganthoran General was using one of the fundamental maxims of aerial warfare. The Ganthoran General was following the universal maxim, that if you have a fixed defensive position to attack that does not have fighter cover, then you deploy your own fighters to soften up the defences. When the defences are sufficiently weakened, you send in the heavy bombers to finish it off. Admiral Parbe’an was well aware of that particular maxim, and had deployed full Force Shielding all along his front.
    Watching both the War Table image and the Timekeeper numerals at the side of it, Billy Caudwell was aware that it was just over two minutes until the Alliance First Fleet would be able to use the Trion Drive to reach Third Fleet. Already in the Engine Rooms of the First Fleet’s warships, the huge amount of power required to initiate Trion Drive was being drawn from the Proto-Star reactors. In a few minutes, the Trion Drives would be generating the massively energy-expensive