New Frontiers (Expansion Wars Trilogy, Book 1) by Joshua Dalzelle

Sierra with the record of the engagement for CENTCOM to view.
     
    ****
     
    “The Icarus made an emergency warp jump out of the system.” The sensor operator turned in his seat. “That’s the last taskforce ship to get clear.”
    “Not all got clear,” Agent Uba said, pacing the cramped bridge of the CIS Prowler. He’d had to pull rank and, against the Prowler captain’s protests, had ordered them to stay on the edge of the Xi’an System with stealth protocols enabled. The small ship was now sitting just inside the orbit of the outermost planet, just a dark hole in space, her passive sensors soaking in and cataloging every detail, every emission.
    It had not been pretty. The Vought had been easily run down and had exploded brilliantly when the hull had been pierced by some type of energy beam. The Leighton had been disabled by the same type of weapon and then grappled up against one of the enemy ships before both vanished from the system. Hovering above it all was what Agent Uba considered to be the gross incompetence of one Senior Captain Celesta Wright, Hero of the Phage War.
    She’d led her taskforce into a slaughter, not for a moment thinking that there could be something else in such a notorious region of space other than some prank by the Asianic Union. Then, when the shooting started, the vacuum created by her lack of coherent leadership caused the other commanders to falter and hesitate. He’d been one of those who regarded her as one of the Fleet’s few true warriors, the exact sort of captain you wanted in a situation like what had just happened. Her performance during what he was calling the Fourth Debacle of Xi’an in his head made him question everything he’d ever heard about her.
    “We do have some good news out of all this,” the captain said.
    “Do tell, Captain Edgwin.” Uba turned and walked over to the sensor display.
    “Our weapons seem to be quiet effective,” Edgwin said. “The Icarus fired eight Shrikes and four Hornets prior to their emergency jump. The result is two destroyed enemy ships and one that appears to be badly disabled.”
    “What?!” Uba exclaimed. He hadn’t even been aware Wright had fired a shot. “Show me.”
    “The Icarus is being pursued by four of the enemy ships here,” the sensor operator pointed to the icons on the display. “You can see they begin to redeploy and stagger their formation, we think in response to the Icarus firing a full spread of Shrikes.”
    “I see that,” Uba said.
    “Then the trailing two reversed course and disappeared, coming in right behind the Icarus ,” the operator continued. “Captain Wright snap-fired four Hornets and then the ship transitioned out of the Xi’an System.”
    “Which means Wright had already initiated the emergency jump protocols.” Uba straightened. “Somehow she knew exactly what it meant when two of her pursuers broke off and reversed course.”
    “Yes, sir,” Edgwin nodded. “Then the four Shrikes still actively tracking impacted here, and here. One target was obliterated and the other was torn nearly in half. The Shrike is a penetrator missile designed to be used against organic Phage hulls, but it appears to be quite effective against metal alloys as well.”
    “So it would appear,” Uba agreed. “And then Wright’s snap-fired Hornets also found their mark?”
    “Yes, sir,” the sensor operator said. “They must have launched under an auto-target protocol and all four went after the same target. It was adrift and tumbling along the original course before two other ships grappled onto it and disappeared.”
    “So they have tech that’s quite a bit ahead of ours, but their ships can’t take a punch,” Uba said, tapping his upper lip with his index finger. “It seems both sides have learned something from this engagement. What’s left in the system?”
    “The wreckage of the two ships the Icarus destroyed, the wreckage of the Vought , and us,” Edgwin said. “What are your