The Ajax Incursion

by Marc DeSantis

  “Ready to go, captain,” said Urant.

  “Good. Hard burn starting in thirty seconds.”

  “Aye, captain.”

  Pran sat down in his chair, with Arles Station, wounded, but still looking somehow proudly defiant, shining brightly on the forward screen. Savor the Moment accelerated, pressing him into his seat. He watched the orbital until it was a small speck, and then disappeared entirely.

  *****

  Aboard RHS Albacore, Aquitaine system

  Howell stood in front of the displacement drive, trying to explain to his guests just what had gone wrong with the vastly complicated device that was expected, and most often did, work perfectly.

  “Julius, this is a multimillion obol piece of machinery, even if it is a civilian-grade model,” More huffed. “You're telling me that there’s nothing to be done about its memory?”

  “More or less,” Howell said, defensive now that his explanation was being questioned by his superior officer. “There are data punctures everywhere, they are getting bigger, and more numerous, as we speak.”

  “Isn’t there anything you can do to stop it?” asked Kim. “Doesn’t this thing have multiple redundancies, even for its memory?”

  Howell nodded. “It does, lots of that, but the problem lies with the sheer amount of stress that we’ve been putting on the drive and its systems. Memory has been overtaxed for too long. We’ve jumped too many times, too soon, and then taken too much damage. A single jump requires vast amounts of memory to calculate properly so that we don’t misjump. Something’s gone wrong with our units. We’ve cannibalized memory units from every system that could afford to shed some and that hasn’t helped much. My diagnostic programs haven’t been able to tell me much more than that everything is deteriorating in a hurry.”

  “What would it take to fix the drive?”

  “At least a week in a proper spacedock for a complete overhaul, with brand-new memory units,” Howell said. “Data punctures mean the drive is failing to hold the calculations it’s core processing unit is running in its head, so to speak. There’s a lot more wrong with it that I’d like to fix too. Many other parts are close to failure, there’s been a cascade of failures, but the memory situation is the biggest problem right now.”

  “We won’t be close to a spacedock for many weeks, if we’re very fortunate,” Kim said.

  More folded his arms. “What could you do if I turned over every system on the ship to you besides the shield and life support? Weapons, antigravity, astronavigation, botany, food dispensers, the chess program, every single system is made available to do your DP mathematics. Then what?”

  “Then I could get you a single jump inside twenty minutes,” Howell said. “Anywhere in the system, but no farther. And after that, it could be the end for the whole unit.”

  “The Garnets were built to be cheap. Albacore has already been taxed far beyond what the Navy’s planners expected of it.

  “I know,” Howell said. “I was there when we glued them together. Push-fit in some places too.”

  “Point taken,” laughed More. “The rigor of prolonged combat has gotten to her. The hull’s holding together, but her innards are deteriorating. So we can get one more jump out of her. I want to make it to Arles Station. Once there, we lend our aid to the rest of the squadron, which ought to be there still.” Then he added quickly, “I hope.”

  The Cawnpore will follow us,” Kim said. “Once she arrives, it will mean victory for the Jaxers.”

  “I can’t help that. We’ve kept them occupied at Pessac, and chasing us around the system, so they’ve taken their time. Now they are getting around to it. Cawnpore will discover eventually that she’s been in hyperspace longer than expected, and make the jump to Arles as soon as she is able. I think that will be very soon.”

  “We could jump elsewhere,” suggested Kim. “Maybe Cawnpore will follow us if we leave a few breadcrumbs to follow.”

  “To what end?” asked More. “There’s not much juice left in the DP drive and we will likely be stranded wherever we jump to. We ought to make it close to where we know friendly forces are located. They can take Albacore’s crew aboard their ships. And if we jumped anywhere but Arles, Cawnpore might not follow us, and head for the orbital anyway, while we drifted on our port maneuver drive for who knows how long before someone nasty found us.”

  “This is the end, then,” Kim whispered. Her eyes widened. “You aren’t planning anything foolish, are you?”

  “Of course not. What would make you think that?”

  *****

  Howell slammed a memory unit into place as Ensign Stewart shoved a fresh power coil into the DP drive. Stewart exhaled loudly.

  “It’s almost completely shot,” he said as the coil came online. “This won’t last.”

  “It just has to work once,” Howell assured. “If we can get to Arles, the other ships there can take us aboard. The Albacore’s reactor will be set to overload, and that will be the end of her.” Howell straightened. “Funny how many times I’ve been on a ship that is ready to go kaboom. I wonder if it’s me.”

  “Not you,” Stewart said with full certainty. “You’re a legend among the crew. ‘Unkillable Howell.’ That’s what they call you.”

  “I have a nickname?” Howell would have bet his last obol that it would have been something far less flattering.

  “Yes. I thought you knew. You’re the ship’s good luck charm. You’ve survived each time, as have the crewmen aboard with you, so we think we’ll make it too.”

  “Even if the ship doesn’t?”

  Stewart nodded. “Even if the ship doesn’t. You made it off Cordelia. You escaped Morrigan. The crews survived both of those. Albacore won’t be any different.”

  “Right. That’s it exactly.” Howell wished he could share in the younger man’s belief. He wasn’t superstitious, but sailors like Stewart, even the officers, were. Maybe they had to cling to something, anything, no matter how implausible. Space was vast and thoroughly hostile, and a good luck charm in human form, one Julius Howell, would serve as well anything else, when confronted by the threat of personal extinction.

  “I wish there was some way that we could reverse the problems with the DP,” said Stewart. The drive was crankier than ever, and slow to form displacement envelopes, and getting slower each time.

  Howell ran his hand along the sleek flank of the reactor. “Overuse,” he muttered. “Overuse,” he said again, this time loudly, reflecting the anger he felt. He rapped the interior wall of the reactor space with his knuckles. “These Garnets weren’t supposed to be used up like this. Escort duty. That was what they were for. Not repeated jumps over short ranges. Too frequent. The drive should have either been overhauled or replaced by now. She wasn’t meant for service in a theater where she couldn’t be repaired.”

  “This isn’t the war I thought I’d be fighting when I graduated from Cold Bay. “I thought I’d be seeing a lot more of the Tarts.” Stewart shrugged. “Not that I mind killing Jaxers.”

  “The Tarts aren’t the only enemy we have to watch out for these days.” Howell smiled. “You must have been special in some way,” he continued. “Admiral More had to have approved your assignment to this ship personally. He wouldn’t have accepted anything less than the best for her. He knew she was going to be his flagship.”

  “I did well in the Academy,” Stewart acknowledged. “Being out here now, I see that academics and real war don’t have all that much in common.”

  “You’re performing well,” Howell assured him. “I didn’t go to Cold Bay, but I can imagine they tried to prepare you as much as possible for whatever the galaxy might throw at you. Stuff happens, and there are always situations that don’t fit whatever scenario was presented to you in a sim or a thought experiment.”

  “Admiral More told us that it was a better thing to learn how to think about a problem. We could never carry around all of the answers in our heads, because there’s no way we could anticipate every eventu
ality. So we have to be able to think things through on our own.” Stewart patted the drive affectionately. “I never saw myself as being command track, but I love these machines so much, I figured I’d be safe and happy in engineering, and never have to trouble myself with any weighty decisions.”

  “One never knows. When I joined Admiral More, out in Memnon a while back, I didn’t think it would result in all the fuss that it did. Then I had to make decisions on my own. It’s good that you learned to think for yourself. It may be necessary one day.”

  “Hope not,” Stewart said. Then after a moment had passed, he said, “Still, I’ve given some thought to this, all this, and what we’re doing here. If I had to decide what to do, I think I would say we should cut our losses and leave. There’s a bigger war going on, and here, we're just fighting an adjunct to it. This is not the main event.”

  “That would leave the Aquitainians in the lurch,” Howell said, though he had thought the same thing many times before. “They won’t stand a chance against Ajax without our help.”

  Stewart kept his eyes on his shoes. “I agree. I’m not pleased about that. But how long can we keep this up before our ships fall apart and we have to high-tail it out of here anyway?” He spread his arms wide. “Just look at Albacore. I was shocked to see how much of the equipment aboard her is civilian grade. Running a passenger ship’s reactor and drives weren’t part of the curriculum at Cold Bay. If this DP were a proper military unit, each part would be a lot more robust.”

  “And correspondingly higher-priced,” Howell snickered.

  “Naturally, but it would absorb punishment better.”

  “No doubt.” Howell depressed several floating icons with a series of aerial finger taps. The DP drive came alive with a reassuring hum. “That’s the best that we can do. One jump. One more lousy jump. Then it’s anybody’s guess as to what happens comes next.”

  *****

  “Fighters launched,” announced Ensign Hu, her eyes intent on her personal vidscreen. “Three squadrons. Two strike, one space superiority.”

  “They’ve made their move,” Kim said.

  “Standard tactics,” replied More as he watched the icons representing twenty-four Ajaxian fighters hurry toward Albacore. He pointed to the forward screen. “They are already forming a DP bubble. They’re confident that they’ll be finished with us soon. They must also know by now about the fight at Arles.”

  “Confident bastards,” snapped Kim.

  “They believe we’re crippled. That we can’t escape. We can make use of their certainty by showing them exactly what they expect to see next.”

  “And what is that.”

  “We’re going to blow up Albacore.”

  There was total silence on the bridge as the crew, as one, looked up from the screens at their stations.

  “Oh, not for real,” More said. “I’d get you all off first if that was truly in the offing. Honest. Just watch.”

  Kim frowned. “Do we have a choice?”

  “No.”

  “Well that settles it then. What do you have in mind?”

  “Howell’s worked some magic. We can jump as soon as the DP envelope is up. It’s starting now.”

  Kim tapped the holo in front of her station. “So it is. I didn’t think your cousin would get it together in time.”

  “He’s a smart one. He gets his brains from my side of the family.”

  “I’m sure. So now that we have less than five minutes before those fighters are within missile launch range, what do you propose to do?”

  “We wait, and let the missiles come to us.”

  Kim offered a quizzical look. “Any measures of our own.”

  “Not offensive ones. We’re going to take what they throw at us. Standard Ajaxian procedure will be launch their birds at us, oh, right about now. Then they wait to see what happens.” More traced a finger along the red icons representing the Ajaxian fighters. Smaller orange icons, denoting antiship missiles, appeared to birth themselves from the larger reds. “See. Right on time.”

  “Sixteen antiship missiles launched,” Hu declared, her voice cracking nervously. “Ally’s identifying them as Firebird heavy space interception types.”

  “They are fast and pack a punch,” Kim said.

  More settled more deeply into his chair. “Good.”

  “Good?” questioned Kim.

  “Yes. The Ajaxians like to play dirty. Literally at times. They pack some extremely potent radioactive elements into their space interception missiles. Their thinking is that, if it gets past the shield, but doesn’t take out the enemy vessel altogether, it will still be plagued by the coating of radfoulness that the warhead douses it with. That gives us an opportunity.”

  Kim sat silently in her chair, thinking about More’s opaque reasoning. Then it dawned on her, and she laughed. “Ah, they will detonate, but the explosions will also blind their sensors to what is going on?”

  “Exactly. But we will have to time this perfectly. If we are to convince them that they’ve destroyed us, we have to jump just as we’re taking hits from them. It’s not something I would prefer to do, since it might toss off our displacement accuracy, but under the circumstances. . .”

  Hu cleared her throat. “Begging your pardon, admiral. If we jump away and we let them think they’ve gotten us, how does that help? They will simply move on to Arles right after we do. We’ll beat them there, but not by very much. Why not jump as soon as the envelope is stable?”

  “Not a bad question, ensign. That’s where my next trick comes in,” More said. “Ally, how’s the DP bubble?”

  “Eighty-seven percent and rising,” the Albacore’s shipbrain said with emotionless clarity. “Jump readiness in thirty-eight seconds.”

  “Observe.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Aboard DNS Cawnpore, Aquitaine system

  The Cawnpore was a brutish leviathan, bristling with weapons, designed by Ajax’s naval architects to deliver massive amounts of devastating force in the briefest possible span of time. Her primary armament was a battery of twenty twin electromagnetic cannon turrets slinging nuclear fusion shells. Elsewhere, along her hull were embedded thousands of fusion warhead-tipped antiship missiles, each one waiting for the command to launch. Around these massive weapon systems were many lesser ones, chief among them the defensive weapons meant to claw incoming missiles and enemy fighters from the void before they could get close enough to do harm. Toward the stern were the launch bays for the battleship’s embarked fighter squadrons.

  It was a hulking vessel, and almost defiantly unlovely. This characteristic was not unsurprising given that no one in the Domain had given much thought for aesthetics as she was conceived on the drawing screen. Apart from raw firepower, defense had mattered. Not looks. Her flanks were clad in meters-thick titanium alloy. Within her outer hull nestled not one but two concentric inner hulls which were composed of similar thicknesses. Paired with a shield of immense strength, Cawnpore could shrug off punishment that would instantly atomize a lesser ship.

  Admiral Ronner smiled. He’d watched the progress of his fighters as they chased after the fleeing Halifaxian destroyer for several minutes. The fugitive stood no chance. His strike fighters had already launched their missiles and there was no miracle in this universe that could save the little tub now.

  He grudgingly gave her captain credit. The attack on the fleet at anchorage above Pessac had been a clever, daring, even brilliant, move. The Domain Navy’s losses had been stinging, but the fleet had enough assets in-system to accept them and go on to victory. Small-scale triumphs mattered little, in the final balance of war. What tipped the scales in the direction of victory was material superiority, and there, Ajax had the edge.

  Ronner grimaced. Would that it was always so! What I could achieve had I even half the resources to hand that the Republic of Halifax did! Instead, the parlous condition of the Domain was such that it had to husband what it had left to it, and expend it with maximum frugality. />
  At least within Pessac he could maintain a local superiority. That was due exclusively to the RHN’s preoccupation elsewhere. Bless the Sphinx and his alien-loving heart! If King Evander wished to engage the most powerful state in the Great Sphere all on his own, then by all means, let him do so. In the meantime, Ajax could devote its limited forces to recapturing what it had lost in earlier wars.

  Ronner remembered the good old days fondly, when DN warships had struck terror into the hearts of planetary inhabitants simply by displacing into a star system. Such things occurred less often now that the fleet had been, there was no better word for it, thrashed, first by the RHN and then by the Armada of Tartarus. Just wait, Ronner promised silently as he kept watch on the Cawnpore’s forward screen. Just wait. The day would come when miserable foreigners on their balls of rock and dirt would cringe again in fear when a DN warship made its presence known.

  The current strategic outlook was not as bad as initially thought. The ships damaged but not destroyed over Pessac were already being repaired and would soon be returned to the fight. The Pessac strike had been a sharp rebuke, not a complete dismissal. The Halies had also done him a favor by ridding him of that strutting peacock of a fool Giselher Heddrik. A month of fruitless chasing of raiders across the length and breadth of the Aquitaine system and he had failed to bring them to book. Fewer than a dozen enemy RHN ships had come close to severing the supply lines from Ajax into Aquitaine. Good riddance!

  Ronner would have gladly relieved Heddrik weeks ago but the younger officer had relatives in high places in the Domain Navy, and they would not have looked kindly on their nephew’s removal. No need to earn their ire, he thought. He needed allies, not enemies. Though a rear admiral, the rank of vice admiral beckoned to Ronner. He required the approval of his superiors, and some of these were fans of the now-deceased Heddrik. If he could find the RHN captain who relieved him of the problem that was Heddrik he would pin a medal on his chest before blowing a hole in it with his gauss pistol.