Figure three to five actions before I can’t fill open slots even with pogues from support elements. Then the job becomes trying to do the job of two hundred Marines with a hundred and ninety. And take more losses because of it.
His own experiences, combined with combat statistics accumulated after a century and a half of constant warfare made foreseeing the outcome almost too easy. After twenty ground assaults or boarding actions, even if things went as well as possible, he’d be down to two platoon equivalents from the original four. And all the while, the odds of failure would keep increasing. One bad mission, and he wouldn’t have enough living Marines to bury the dead.
A rational army would run. Heather had quoted that during one of their first nights together at Kirosha. Reason was in short supply everywhere in the galaxy, in no small part because rational peoples didn’t win many wars.
* * *
The Death Heads led the way on what promised to be a rough ride.
Transition.
It’d taken a while to get used to sensing tens of thousands of minds at once. Practice made perfect, however, and Lisbeth was now able to watch over the entire fleet like a shepherd dog. The rest of her squadron wasn’t quite as adept, except for Grinner, but they were learning.
The American starships looked like blobs of pure white in a rainbow sea, their brightness and apparent size determined by how many living minds they contained. By contrast, the Kraxan ‘gunboats’ looked the same inside warp space as they did in the physical realm; they belonged to both places.
Of course, looks meant nothing in a universe where eyes or any other photoreceptors didn’t work. Everything she was seeing was a product of her mind’s attempt to make sense of her surroundings. Thanks to her gifts and the Marauders’ technology, she could perceive more information than the average visitor to the Starless Path, who spent the entire trip enshrouded in utter darkness broken only by nightmarish hallucinations. Conventional wisdom was that the standard three-dimensions didn’t exist in warp space, and yet there were such things as distance and movement; they just didn’t work in the same way.
For instance, all the human vessels were arrayed tightly together, even though they had been spread over tens of thousands of kilometers when they jumped into warp. Their closeness was a matter of kinship, or mental similarity. Emotion and elements that one might consider spiritual or at least psychological became a physical dimension here. Her rational mind hated those nonsensical notions, but she’d found they were useful tools to getting things done. In the end, results were all that mattered.
“We’ve got incoming. Lots of Foos,” Jenkins called out. “Just like Grinner called it,” he added with a touch of awe in his voice.
Case in point. If distance didn’t exist here, how were the Warplings moving towards them?
“Don’t overthink it, Christopher Robin.” Atu told her. “These aren’t friendly ghosts and goblins, and we may need to resort to harsh measures to restore Balance.”
A long-range transit usually didn’t attract many Warplings, but as Third Fleet prepared to depart Mellak, Grinner had one of her visions of the future, warning her that trouble was ahead. Lisbeth, already worried about Genovisi’s encounter with the Flayer, had asked to deploy the Death Heads instead of riding transit inside the Laramie. Admiral Givens had granted the request, although Lisbeth was beginning to wonder how many more chips she had left to cash with CINC-Three.
And there were a bunch of NSSs dead ‘ahead.’ They weren’t minor critters, either: a few of the dark shapes were larger than any of the human ships who sailed the rainbow seas, blissfully unaware of the danger. The rest were smaller but still dangerous. Third Fleet was in the middle of a thirteen-hour jump, which would give the entities plenty of opportunities to snatch a few victims. If a ship’s navigation department was among the casualties, that ship would not come out of warp. NSSs didn’t usually venture on this level of warp space; long-distance transits occurred in a relative ‘shallow’ portion of the Starless Path. This many entities were not only unusual, but could do a lot of damage. Third Fleet might lose more vessels during transit than in combat. Unless Lisbeth and her merry band took care of business.
“Weapons free, boys and girls. Splash me some bandits.”
“Tally-ho, motherfuckers!”
“Looks like the Flayer’s gang wants to come out and play,” Lisbeth said as the Death Heads started firing. It’d taken some time, but Atu had taught them how to focus their minds to turn the Marauders’ nuisance weapons into something that could actually kill a Warpling.
We aren’t just prey anymore. We have power here.
The Kraxans had a stronger connection to warp space than humans, but they’d never quite figured how to fight NSSs. Instead, they had concentrated in placating them with a steady diet of victims. The older and more powerful Pathfinders had learned that sophonts could turn their will and imagination into weapons. The very energy Warplings craved could be turned against them. The squadron’s resident Pathfinder ghost had been busy showing humans how to do it.
Marauder weapons could damage weak warp critters and inflict pain on the greater ones. Turning them into something that could kill wasn’t easy. Lisbeth managed it: her shots ripped their targets to shreds. Grinner and Kong scored kills as well; the rest of the Death Heads weren’t as effective, but they were still hurting if not destroying their targets. Dozens of lesser Warplings and one of the big mothers ceased to exist, their dark substance dissolving in the rainbow sea. Each death sent powerful echoes through Lisbeth. It felt as if she was inside a cathedral’s ringing bell. It wasn’t pleasant, but she didn’t mind. The waves of utter surprise and sudden fear from the rest of the Warplings was worth any discomfort.
“There’s a new sheriff in town!” she shouted at the now-stalled army.
Vlad and Atu fought by her side. The Pathfinder glowed with energy and radiated sadness at the carnage it would inflict. The Marauder boiled with furious glee; Vlad had become a devoted follower when he discovered he could actually kill the gods he’d lived in fear of. He still wasn’t great company, mind you, but at least he was on her side.
The Warplings fled after another big fish got taken out. Wimps.
“All right, people, take a break,” Lisbeth said when the Death Heads had stopped cheering. Beating an army of galactic bogeymen was great, but she knew that was just one victory in what would be a nasty war. The NSSs had expected a hunt and found themselves in a fight. Next time they would be prepared.
She left Vlad on guard duty and met her squadron in their virtual O-club, something their collective minds had created inside warp space. They were joined shortly by the pilots of the 25th CVW, a handful of NIO pukes with t-wave implants, and two dozen off-duty warp navigators. Colonel Brunden had been invited to the shindig but had been unwilling or unable to attend. He’d made sure to let it be known that what Lisbeth had to say had his seal of approval, though.
Smart of him, she thought, making sure she veiled her opinion from everyone else. He’s figured out that he can’t hide his incompetence inside warp space, t-wave shields or not. And he still gets the credit for everything we do. Lisbeth was now in effective command of all warp Adepts in Third Fleet. As long as she was in charge, there would be no deals with the devil, no trading of sophont souls in exchange for survival.
“I hope you all got a good look at that,” she said to the gathered spacers and Marines.
Everyone nodded. They hadn’t been able to participate in the fight, but their enhanced senses were sharp enough to watch the Warplings get routed. The mood in the O-club was equal parts amazement and eagerness.
“It’s going to take work, but eventually all of you will be able to kick some Foo ass.”
The cheering that followed had an edge to it.
“We have some transit time to kill, so we might as well continue your lessons. Allow me to introduce you to your instructor in null-space combat: Atu the Path Master.”
“Greetings, ge
ntlebeings. I will be happy to help you develop your inborn talents to bring Balance to any Warpling who has fallen prey to the Dark.”
Lisbeth grinned as her spirit friend began its work. They’d been training the fighter crews on the basics of null-space tactics, but this was the first time they would learn how to fight back. It wouldn’t be easy: so far only three of the Death Heads could reliable take out a NSS. But every pilot who could at least defend himself would be one less victim who might be tempted into making a deal to survive.
We’re still going to take losses, and we may lose, but it will be a fight, not a slaughter.
Ten
Imperial Star Province Kezz, 169 AFC
“We have thirty-six Sierra-class contacts, ma’am. Eight orbital fortresses. And three hundred unidentified contacts.”
“Nobody likes surprises,” Sondra Givens muttered as she glared at the holotank. The data wasn’t intimidated into compliance, unfortunately, and the small question marks on display refused to give up their secrets. Passive sensors could only detect so much from eight light-hours out, which didn’t help. The Imperium fleet was arrayed in a tight defensive pattern around Kezz-Three, a full-goldie planet that held most of the system’s nine hundred million inhabitants, as well as its shipyards. Three warp ley lines opened up some two light seconds from the planet: one led to Butterfly territory, the other two reached further into the Imperium. One of them was only five transits away from Primus System. The capital of the Imperium and their ultimate goal.
“The bogeys have no warp drives. Heavy power signatures, but no apparent propulsion system; they are being towed by starships or are slaved to orbital facilities. They have shields, though: battlecruiser grade at least.”
“A bunch of hard, mostly immobile targets. Missile platforms?”
“That’s the most likely possibility, ma’am. And you can power up a lot of shields and weapons with those energy signatures.”
Cheaper to produce in quantity, and their crews don’t have to be warp-rated, so they can draft anybody to man them. Cheaper than monitors, too. Necessity is the mother of invention, and the Gimps are in dire need of some inventiveness.
The Galactic Imperium had lost a staggering amount of ships during its thrust into American territory. Those destroyed fleets couldn’t be replaced in a few months, or a few years: even if there were enough shipyards around to do the job, finding and training crews would take time, and a significant percentage of the Gimps’ warp-rated population had been killed in the course of several massive fleet actions.
Building lots of immobile fighting satellites was a solution for a heavily-industrialized polity, as long as it didn’t mind neglecting the needs of its civilian population. At this point, the average Imperium citizen must be living pretty rough, relatively speaking. War-boom theorists to the contrary, economies didn’t prosper by building huge stockpiles of military gear and destroying it on some battlefield, along with its operators. Wars were wasteful, terrible things, to be avoided unless there was no reasonable alternative. Anybody who’d seen war first hand would agree, except for the few psychos that actually got off from hurting others.
“Very well. We’ll make our final emergence at four light-seconds and proceed from there. Once we have a better idea of those bogeys’ capabilities we’ll vector our fighter strikes accordingly.”
Zhang had all but guaranteed Third Fleet’s fighters would be able to make ghosting sorties with minimum losses, provided they had a gunboat providing close support. That would reduce the Death Heads’ number of attack runs, but protecting the fighters was worth it. Her other vessels would have to survive unending waves of missiles while her long-range assets battered the enemy into scrap. It was a throwback to pre-Contact wet Navy tactics, back in the days when the carrier group had been the undisputed ruler of the seas.
Even then, the enemy eventually discovered ways to counter that, she reminded herself. Starfarers weren’t big on innovation, but they could come up with engineering solutions to tactical problems just as well as humans. In any case, she only had one Space Wing, a little over a hundred fighters plus the five miracle gunboats. Her capital ships would still have to close to two light-seconds and use their main armament to finish the job.
“Engage.”
Her dead grandson greeted her in warp space.
“You’re making a mistake, gran-mama.”
He hadn’t called her that since he’d been eleven. She remembered that birthday party vividly; it had been one of the few celebrations she’d been able to attend.
Her viewpoint shifted and she was back there, enduring the blazing summer solstice on New Louisiana-Four, its primary sun aided and abetted by the secondary star in the system; that year it made the closest pass it would in the next three centuries. The air had been still and nearly unbreathable, and Sondra had wished she could wear a haz-con suit without offending anybody. The children playing around the yard seemed comfortable enough, but they’d been bred to endure the harsh conditions of the colony. The trip had been worth it, though. Young Omar’s smile when he saw his grandmother had melted her heart.
The ghost child wasn’t smiling. He regarded her with cold hostility for several moments. Sondra didn’t respond. No sense in engaging a manifestation of her own mind.
“You are making a mistake,” he repeated. “You are listening to Zhang. The woman who got me killed. She’s going to lead you to disaster.”
Sondra had thought she’d buried the hatchet with Zhang, but if this ghost was a reflection of her own doubts and fears, she might not have buried it deeply enough. She suspected this was something else. Warplings might have been scared off, but they could still communicate with sophonts through dreamlike visitations.
Omar changed the child grew larger and older, shifting to the now-familiar form of a dead junior officer, his uniform torn and covered in blood. They said you forgot most of what you experienced while in transit. Hopefully she wouldn’t remember this ghastly apparition; she’d seen it too many times already.
“You’ll remember, gran-mama. And you will regret not listening to me.”
Emergence.
She blinked and shook her head, but the image of dead Omar lingered for several seconds, longer than normal for a brief jump. By the time she recovered, everyone in the fleet bridge was hard at work, firming up real-time sensor data and comparing it with the observations they’d made from eight light-hours away.
The towed platforms came into view. Their starkly utilitarian lines showed they’d been rushed into production; the Imperium loved to mix aesthetics with engineering, and only desperation would explain these hastily-assembled structures. As expected, they were crammed with dozens of box launchers, each capable of disgorging five to eight hundred ship-killing missiles. There were other attachments protruding from the ungainly pseudo-ships: lots of point defense turrets, a couple of battleship-grade gun emplacements, and what appeared to be several shuttle hangar bays.
Shuttles? Are they going to try to send them out against fighters?
The idea seemed ridiculous: ordinary shuttles could fly at only a small fraction of a starship’s speed. Then again, if American engineers could cram enough thrusters in a War Eagle to let it keep up with a warship, the Imperium’s designers could do the same. What they couldn’t do was give those vehicles enough force fields or armor to survive an engagement, not without warp shields.
“The platforms are deploying smaller vehicles.”
Her initial suspicion was quickly confirmed. A display zoomed in to reveal dozens of small fliers departing from those hangar bays. They were modified shuttles, with outsized thrust generators nearly as large as their main hulls, and equally massive gun mounts. Somebody had been ‘inspired’ by the War Eagles.
“We’re picking up a large number of contacts, classified as STL fighters, designated Foxtrot contacts. Two thousand so far, with more deploying.” The Tactical Officer paused for a moment. “The Foxtrots are deploying stealth systems. We’r
e losing track of them within seconds of their deployment. Deployment has stopped. Minimum of three thousand Fox contacts, maximum of five thousand.”
Now it gets interesting.
“Maintain course. Belay all fighter and gunboat sorties. Have point defense sections start acquiring targeting solutions for the Foxtrots.”
The original plan called for the CVW 25 to start hitting the Gimps as the rest of Third Fleet closed the range. Like most such plans, it hadn’t survived contact with the enemy. Those three thousand bogeys changed the equation in unpredictable ways. Not only did the little ships have the potential to increase the enemy’s firepower by an order of magnitude, if they spread out throughout the formation their sensors might pick the War Eagle’s arrival earlier than the main fleet. Even a second or two of extra warning would let them open fire on their emergence points. Even ghosting fighters could take damage if enough energy struck them.
On the other hand, even with stealth systems those improvised fighters were going to be slaughtered as soon as her warships got into range. An anti-missile laser would tear a shuttle apart in one or two hits; the little craft couldn’t mount enough shields to increase their survivability by any meaningful measure. And American point defense had gotten extremely good after years of experience dealing with Sun Blotter swarms.
And I’ve run out of hands. There was the small matter that any light gun battery tasked with hunting for Foxtrots would not be able to shoot down incoming missiles.
We could actually lose this fight. Or win a Pyrrhic victory, which for a force behind enemy lines with no quick or easy way to resupply meant the same thing.
Withdrawing meant failure but would keep her command intact. The way back was largely unobstructed; any fleet nimble enough to ambush Third Fleet on its return trip wouldn’t be able to deploy those platforms, or as many STL fighters. She could fight her way back to American territory. But that just meant a slightly-delayed defeat.
Warp Marine Corps- The Complete Series Page 139
