Legends of Galactic Heroes - The Sleeping Dragon

Chapter 29

Battle of Fenris: part two

After the 1st part of the battle ended, the Imperial armada were angry. The main reason why is because the death of 3 vice admiral, 3 fleets, and the Black Lancers nearly with 15% casualties and its commander; Vice Admiral Bittenfeld missing from action. Nor has the Konigstiger been found or even a wreck of said ship. But with the work of Reuenthal and Mittermeyer, the overall losses for the Alliance was about 15-15.5% casualties. And then it all started to look up again for the imperials and down for the Alliance after the arrival of Siegfried Kircheis.

After the bloody nose and shiner the imperials had only one word hanging for the imperials in order to beat the Alliance: Invincibility

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Fenris Starzone
Meeting room, 5th Fleet flagship Rio Grande

The admirals met again. As they all had before the battle, but things were different. Lefebvre dead, verdone in charge and with the Alliance also on the back foot and were losing supplies and even half of the overall transports they have are all expanded of energy, food, fuel, and even ammunition.

"Well, gentlemen, it's time to decide how we'll flee this Starzone." Bucock said seriously as he stared at the people seated in the room. Unlike the last meeting, only the fleet commanders were present. Which, in the current event, happened to be nine vice admirals and one rear admiral.

Erik Verdone looked a bit overwhelmed by the meeting, which wasn't all that surprising. A day ago, he had been vice-commander of the Third Fleet, and now found himself as acting commander. There was nothing fun about the sudden, even jarring, transition. Yang had experienced that for himself at Astarte.

Lefebvre, gone. It affected everybody, and yet nobody showed any overt sadness. This wasn't the time. Grief would have to wait until they could afford it. Yang had become an expert at dealing with it over the years, and could only concur. Grief was a private thing, not to be shown to others.

"We've inflicted quite a bit of damage on them." Borodin pointed out, but his tone clearly did not announce it as encouragement, he was merely stating a fact.

"About the same amount they inflicted on us." Al-Salem mused in turn. "And that's because of what happened to the Bittenfeld Fleet and the other 3 with their commanders dead." He gazed at Yang and Ulanf, nodding. "Great show on the part of the Tenth and Thirteenth, by the way.'

"I just riled them, its Yang's forces that cut them apart. That stealth attack took a lot of skill and guts to pull off." Ulanf replied. The other commanders nodded appreciatively at that, and Appleton actually reached out and patted Yang sharply on the back.

This wasn't something he was used to, being praised for having effectively killed hundreds of thousands of men. It wasn't something he liked, either. On the other hand, none of the men here meant anything wrong by it, so he just defaulted to his usual reaction: he grinned, scratched his head in a semi-nervous automatic gesture, and did his best to deflect the praise. His promise to Jessica, to be more assertive, didn't include having to bask in the so-called glory of the kill, whatever nonsense that was.

"It was a team effort. I'm glad it worked out." That was true enough, he supposed. "And I agree with Vice Admiral Bucock. We should prepare to leave. Even if we do manage to hold our own, they'll have us through attrition."

"Or simply because our supplies will run out." Appleton noted. Yang, as well as Borodin and Hogwood, gave sharp agreement.