Blockade

by Chris Hechtl

  "Not your fault Elvira, I know. I was just shooting in the dark. Which is pretty much what our people will end up doing if we can't find the bastards and do something about them."

  Elvira nodded. Every moment the enemy had a ship in the star system meant they were amassing tons of precious intelligence data. It was also a morale hit to everyone who knew.

  She was pretty sure just about everyone in the military knew by now. So far word hadn't leaked yet though.

  "All right, do what you can with what you've got my father taught me. Which is what we'll do. Any ideas on how to handle their intrusion?"

  She frowned thoughtfully. "If you could put ships out behind them, you might be able to see inward. I assume Admiral Post has launched every recon drone possible?"

  Malwin nodded. "No luck. We can practically walk across the damn things plus the arrays, but we still can't pick up a thing. Neutrinos are out too."

  She shook her head. "They've got heavy stealth shielding around their power plants, no doubt standard on all prowlers. How are they communicating?"

  The admiral frowned. "Most likely by laser."

  "If they are doing that, then we can pick them up if we have a ship or drone between the laser and the target. But we've got to find a way to do that. She scratched her head and then remembered something from her defensive studies. "We can dump flash or even water ice or other materials in gas form. You'd need a general idea of where the ships are, but if you set a cloud out you might get the laser to show up."

  Malwin nodded and made an unseen note on his tablet. "All right, thank you, I'll pass that tidbit along. Anything else?"

  She thought about it but then shook her head.

  "If you can think of anything, even out of the box stuff, don't hesitate to let me know right away. Me or Lewis, any time, day or night," he said. She could tell he was worried. It took her a moment to realize why. It wasn't just the invasion, but it was also most likely his head on the chopping block. They had to succeed.

  "I'll do what I can, sir," she said softly.

  "I know you will. Keep on it," Malwin stated with a nod as he cut the channel.

  She sat back and thought about the future. She wasn't sure she liked it at all if anything were to happen to Malwin.

  -~~~///^\~~~-

  Admiral Post rubbed his brow tiredly. He had a headache, another one. It was becoming a daily thing, and he had thirty-six reasons why.

  No, make it thirty-seven he thought with a quick glance to the image of the emperor on the wall. The stern gaze glowered at him. The emperor was like the sword of Damocles hanging over his head. He couldn't get rid of it. He really wanted to get stoned and drunk off his ass. Just do it and frack the star system. But his stubborn pride and sense of duty, not to mention the needs of his family and colleagues and oh yes, people, couldn't forget them, were all there, weighing on his shoulders.

  Too much was riding on him he knew. His shoulders were straining under the pressure. But he flat out refused to yield.

  The good news was that Elvira's suggestions had yielded some fruit. Not a lot, but some. They'd picked off a few buoys and recon drones. He wasn't sure if it was enough to mollify the emperor. Most likely not. At the moment it was all they had. Every damn time they found a laser line, the ship on the other end was smart enough to cut the signal and change course.

  It was like hunting ghosts.

  -~~~///^\~~~-

  Irazabeth and Jezebel put on a show of keeping to their established schedules. They knew that others knew something was going on. The rank and file probably felt it or knew from back channels. But they had to keep up appearances.

  Even when they wanted to charge into the Admiralty and start beating some sense into people to see some results. It was all they could do to keep Piotr from doing that himself. They needed results not a massacre. Besides, most of the people in charge were their loyalists. Taking a broom to them would be a very bad thing given what they had left to replace them with.

  No, it was a waiting game, pure and simple. Hopefully, it would end in a week or so.

  -~~~///^\~~~-

  Catherine noted everyone's preoccupation. It was time; she made the final arrangements during the distraction. She still wasn't sure it would work out, but she'd give it her best and let the chips fall where they may.

  -~~~///^\~~~-

  Over the course of the following week, the prowlers gathered intelligence.

  There were five shipyards so far identified, which matched their intelligence. Only three were building yards, one was a repair yard, and the last was some sort of civilian affair.

  There were dozens of bone yards and reservations. Dozens of orbital habitats. Orbital fortresses and warehouses galore, they were marked out with buoys. From the look of the gaps in the prize yards, they had been curiously picked through recently, most likely they'd been making headway in rebuilding the ships while also drawing civilian ships out to run away.

  There were lunar colonies galore. There were gas giant refinery platforms all over the gas giants in the star system. Giant fuel farms were in polar orbits. The entire star system seethed with traffic.

  The planetary orbits were saturated with satellites, fortresses, space stations, and warehouses. It was a seething madhouse of activity. There was a fleet there, covering them. Other fleets were stationed around the jump points and yard. The entire star system was a writhing hornet's nest of military and civilian activity.

  The A.I. were having a ball making sense out of all of the transmissions and sensory data. Once a day they managed to find a way to dump their logs to each other to compare notes.

  In the inner star system, between the star and the innermost planet there were arrays of satellites and millions of solar panels arranged in solar farms. No doubt they'd been stolen from star systems across the galaxy. They made for an impressive array.

  There were also fusion reactors detected on the planet and in many of the stations and throughout the solar system. The Horathians were lousy about shielding them though. A detailed account of what was where was still ongoing.

  Captain Hough flicked his ears as he noted that the A.I had again pointed out that the emperor nor the Admiralty had announced their presence in their domain. Were they being ignored? He was pretty sure from the reports of ships hunting for them that wasn't the case.

  Mining ships were out in the belt feeding rocks to mother ships. There were smelting stations and factory stations all over the place. Some seemed to be operating at only a partial capacity.

  They already had a target criteria and the A.I. had been busy inserting their viruses and bots wherever they could. So far, they had only lost a few buoys and recon drones.

  He decided to give it another day, possibly two before he finalized the plan and transmitted it to the other ships. He did realize that with the civilians in the dark, when they announced their presence as planned, it would have a devastating effect on their morale. And it would seriously undermine the credibility of the emperor.

  He couldn't help but feel anticipation over that.

  Chapter 55

  The Office of Naval Intelligence came into its own when the prowlers launched their attack.

  The first part of the attack was a full cyber-attack. They took everything they'd learned from the wraith attacks and everything A.I. had learned over the centuries of their species existence and put it to their own use.

  Information that had been carefully gathered, processed, sifted, corelated, and confirmed over the course of the war was put to use. Email addresses were hacked, web servers targeted. Passwords were used to enter seemingly secure networks.

  Thirty-six smart A.I. inserted time delay worms and bots through the recon drones and messenger buoys and into the enemy's military and civilian networks. All of the ships had a smart A.I. with a large database to draw upon. But the cyber-attack was mostly handled by the unarmed Zepyhrs.

  Some of the attacks were immediate; some were subtle and wouldn't be
noticed until much, much later. Fuel farms were vented or destroyed. Refineries were crippled. Industry both civilian and military were targeted in various ways. The cyber attack was the single largest such strike in ages.

  The Poltergiests however were not unarmed. They were the ghosts that really did go bump in the night. And when they bumped, more than bruises were caused.

  These ships launched weapons on ballistic courses at targets of opportunity. They fired torpedoes at enemy shipping and fixed locations. They let drift warheads that would eventually get into a target's range and go off. Drones were launched to carry out their own missions.

  Some laid mines in the commonly traveled space lanes. Others fired off an entire magazine of KEW shots at prime targets, all timed to impact when the warheads did.

  Almost everything was time on target and fire and forget.

  Well, that wasn't quite true. The weapons didn't need to be controlled, but no one would forget their impact.

  -~~~///^\~~~-

  Captain Hough smiled as the last of the first group of targets were engaged. They had less than an hour, barely fifty minutes before things began to get hot. As soon as the weapons were all gone, each ship had to get clear of the launch area. Sometimes that was easier said than done.

  No doubt the enemy would see the incoming fire, at least some of it. What they did about it was the problem. The ships couldn't hack the military side very effectively. Every warship and fortress had been shielded with layers of firewalls and cyber intrusion protection. According to the A.I., it was better than what they'd experienced before.

  Not that those ships were the real targets.

  -~~~///^\~~~-

  Captain Vought was frustrated by the lack of progress but that ended when CIC reported a stream of something coming out of the void.

  "Define a stream of something," he said testily from the wardroom.

  "It looks like rail gun rounds, sir. It doesn't make sense; prowlers don't have weapons," the CIC tech said puzzled.

  The captain was reacting in alarm though as was his officers. "Sound general quarters, you idiot!"

  "Oh, it's not coming towards us, Skipper; that's the other odd thing," the tech said as the alarm klaxon went off. "It's headed to the inner star system.

  "Let them know damn it!" the XO urged as the officers made a mad rush to the door.

  "And get someone to backtrack to the source of that fire! We need to bracket it and hit whatever is firing now, damn it! Now!" the TAO urged.

  -~~~///^\~~~-

  Once it was clear, some of the enemy knew that the attack was on, the prowlers activated buoys left in the outer star system. These buoys sent out spoof calls and triggered decoys to simulate hyperspace arrivals to make the pirates think a phantom fleet was attacking. The A.I. had set up systems to record results and observations, but their primary concern was on the main attack.

  A “banzai” war cry on the Horathian emergency broadcast channels triggered the cyber-attack. Bots began to fill the air waves with chatter from previous battles, all with viruses embedded in the signals.

  The cyber-attack wasn't designed to strike at the military units since they were prepared for it. Instead the attacks were geared to mask the incoming strikes while also striking at the computers in the yards, industry, and civilian nets. Communications went down to hamper command and control while systems were hammered. Power and life support were prime targets, but the viruses also rewrote firmware, turning machines berserk or into so much useless junk.

  On the planet viruses struck at infrastructure there too, starting with the power grid. Blackouts and other problems sent the bewildered population into a panic.

  Wherever possible the prowler A.I. used codes and data from their ONI databases that had been painstakingly gathered from captured databases and prisoners to get into the networks and wreak havoc. Some of the passwords and codes were still viable, so they were able to load emails with bots and viruses to strike some sectors from within. Rabbit viruses sent out viruses to everyone in an address book. Even just opening the file without the attachments was sometimes enough to get hacked by a bot and then turned into a zombie to spread the plague.

  The primary targets of the prowlers were the most vulnerable in the star system. They were also somewhat defended since they were military in nature. That didn't matter.

  It was ironic that the most heavily defended locations were the pickets and the stations in orbit of the planet. They were the least valuable targets to the prowlers however.

  A civilian contractor ferry service which moved personnel around the yards and orbital habitats who had not updated their Wi-Fi found themselves hacked. Two of their ferries just went dark; their drives shut down as did their power plants and everything on board.

  One missed a critical maneuver burn and crashed headlong into a station module. The second drifted off into space dark. Her crew and passengers died from suffocation due to the lack of life support long before their absence was noticed.

  Too many air traffic controllers were busy elsewhere.

  No one noticed that the shipyards and infrastructure supporting them were getting hammered.

  Nukes went off in some of the reservations and slips, tearing them apart. Rail gun rounds peppered construction habitats and warehouses. Nanotech warheads hit ships and infrastructure. Gobblers tore apart ships, spraying the area with streams of molecular goo. They terrified many into abandoning the area.

  The Federation navy took a page from the Xenos and used every tool at their disposal to tear up their capital ships and yard.

  Within minutes the Horathian's ship industry was gutted.

  -~~~///^\~~~-

  There was quite the list of targets, both strategic and otherwise. The enemy's command structure was on the list but rather far down it. They were considered targets of opportunity only. Admiral Bradley was killed when his shuttle lost power and life support.

  Admiral Nuert died when her hacked pacemaker went wild, dumping all of its power into her heart muscles and then shutting off. One moment she was issuing orders, the next she was clutching at her chest and gasping for breath. Her heart spasmed to death, and she was dead before the paramedics arrived.

  Admiral Cartwright and a few others were fortunately to be in more secure locations.

  Some targets were very carefully avoided. For instance no habitat was targeted, even those with military personnel in it.

  -~~~///^\~~~-

  Just about every officer in Command Fortress 1 was dumbstruck by the reports coming in. They were getting hit all across the inner star system. "Where the hell is it coming from??" a lieutenant whispered.

  "All over," the admiral stated. She saw all eyes fall on her. Her eyes were intent on the plot. "From the look of this, they are focused on the yards, reservations, and the orbital infrastructure. Make sure we're at GQ. Order all ships to raise their shields. Also, change our encryption. Laser lines on all ships and stations from here on out. Reset our firewall with a new password and damn it, make sure it's hard to crack."

  The series of aye ayes were a balm to her bruised soul. They wouldn't be enough, but they might be enough to ensure the survival of her command.

  Maybe. Somehow, she couldn't be sure. She wasn't sure of a lot of things anymore.

  -~~~///^\~~~-

  Captain Hough noted that the active warships and fortress stations had raised shields and were protected from weapons fire. Ships immediately maneuvered to get out of any sort of line of fire as well.

  That was fine, they were distracted. They weren't the real targets anyway. His orders were to go for the soft underbelly, to rip and tear out as much as he could. Every bit of destruction he inflicted would make it that much easier to win later.

  He fully intended to wreak as much havoc and destruction as he could.

  -~~~///^\~~~-

  Elvira was in the habitat when the lights went out and the net went dead. Despite the risk she put her suit on and then headed to
the nearest real window. She had to see what was going on. She ignored the whimpers, cries, and wails from terrified people around her. Officers shouldn't be doing that, but some were from their families. She felt the occasional brush as people passed her.

  Flashlights bobbed behind her, but she ignored those too. She was intent on her own personal mission. It wasn't just the yard. She loved the yard, but it was also her concern for Catherine. Somewhere out there Catherine was exposed to all of that.

  "Hey! She's got a suit on!"

  "Good idea. Pass the word to get them on," another officer said.

  She put her hands on either side of the porthole and looked, really looked. She felt unshed tears at the damage. She could see her reflection in the window and shied away as explosions went off in the distance. At over a hundred thousand kilometers distant, they were bare pinpricks but the desire to shield herself was pure instinct.

  "Ma'am, Commodore, what do we do?" a voice asked. When another voice cleared their throat and a hand touched her arm, she turned.

  She stared at the worried faces around her. Others craned to see her or past her out the window. "Do?" she asked softly.

  "You're the ranking officer, ma'am," a commander said.

  She nodded, settling herself. She felt herself bounce on the deck slightly. Things were drifting. Emergency lights were on and a few people had flashlights. It was already getting cold. She thought about the problem and then nodded once to herself again as her shoulders squared themselves. "Get me a TOE. I need to know what we've got left and where everyone is. Find the habitat command structure. Work with DCC, we need to get power back on this tub. I'm betting the computers got hacked. If they did, we need to cut the central net out and boot from backups or route around them. Someone look into that now," she ordered.