EMPIRE: Warlord (EMPIRE SERIES Book 5)

by Richard F. Weyand

  Winger was watching her navigation display, keeping an eye out for crossing traffic when she saw it happen, right in front of her eyes. Hundreds of ships down-transitioned just outside their own high orbit of the planet. They were squawking their IDs, and they were all Sintaran picket ships.

  Winger rolled her ship hard, and set off in the opposite direction, toward the planet. Her loadmaster, PO/3 Larry Stonecipher, was thrown against his harness.

  “Hey!”

  “Sorry, Larry, but I got several hundred Sintaran incoming on my screen, which means I’m goin’ the other way.”

  “Forget I said anything. For real?”

  “Oh, yeah!”

  “Well, stay away from the battleships.”

  “Why?”

  “If you’re Imperial Navy, and you got a choice of targets, why wouldn’t you pick a big one?”

  “Good point.”

  Winger dodged to the left at the next opportunity, away from a squadron of battleships to the right. She kept running for the other side of the formation, away from the incoming Sintaran attackers, but a shuttle could only move so fast, and the shock front of the battle was quickly catching her from behind.

  Then all hell broke loose. The point-defense guns of the ships all around her started firing. She was squawking her identity, and the guns should miss her, but she was maneuvering wildly to get through the formation without hitting anything.

  WHAM!

  “Oh, that was close.”

  “Are we hit?”

  “No, we just caught the edge of one.”

  The battleships off to her right started exploding as Sintaran picket ships slammed into them. They were aiming for the plasma bottles, and when those let go the whole ship exploded. Showers of explosion-driven debris knifed toward her, but she coasted along the lee side of a heavy cruiser and let it take the brunt of the battleships’ debris as she cowered in its shadow.

  She was moving fast now, for a cargo shuttle, and she soon came out of the shadow of the heavy cruiser into a shower of smaller debris from the explosions. Smaller was a relative term, though, and her shuttle was pelted with bits of steel, plastic, and bodies. Proximity alarms screamed constantly as she tried to avoid the bigger pieces.

  Then she was past it, the slower debris coming in at an angle from behind her now. Her engines shoved that out of the way as it neared, and they had no more big hits.

  For all the hits they had taken, Winger had missed the big ones, and they were intact. They came out the back side of the formation and she cut the engines and spun the ship around to look back the way they had come.

  “Oh, my God,” she whispered.

  It looked like half the battleships were simply gone, replaced by a maelstrom of shattered sections of hull and smaller debris that occasionally pelted the remaining ships of the formation. Most of it just sailed off into space through the large gaps between ships.

  “We’re getting orders from Jimmy Rigg,” Stonecipher said. “We need to report back. We’re doing emergency loading of ships so they can make way to another location. We’re all getting out of here.”

  “I can sign up for that. Who knows where the rest of the Imperial Navy is? We don’t know where they are, but they sure know where we are!”

  “Yeah. That was bad enough. I’d just as soon be out of here before their friends show up.”

  First Reactions

  The attacks had been nearly simultaneous, but Dunham and Peters had watched them sequentially in VR, beginning when the first one started. Each had only taken a few minutes.

  “Well, that was harder to watch than I thought,” Peters said. “I feel like I should be cheering for our side, but I don’t feel like it. Such a waste.”

  “I have to protect the people of the Empire,” Dunham said.

  “Oh, I wasn’t complaining, Bobby. Not about that. I’ve been with you the whole way on that, and we’re agreed. But the whole Alliance War is such a waste. How many people do you think died in those attacks?”

  “About a hundred and twenty million in each attack, in the successful ones. And there was that attack that was half successful in Nederling, and two clean misses in Cascade and Phalia. So, seven hundred fifty million. Could be eight hundred million. It doesn’t matter, Amanda.”

  “Why doesn’t it matter?”

  “Because in another couple of hours, they’ll all be dead. All five billion of them.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  Peters shivered.

  “It’s just such a waste. For what? Because we won’t let the Democracy of Planets prey on our shipping?”

  “And they did, Amanda. The Alliance nations. They did let the DP prey on our shipping.”

  “I know. And now five billion spacers are going to die because the DP is a bunch of bastards and the Alliance nations’ rulers are too stupid to see how they’ve been manipulated. The wrong people are paying the price, Bobby.”

  “So far, Amanda. So far. Their time will come.”

  It was five o’clock in the morning when the VR alert woke Queen Anne of Phalia. It was marked at the highest priority.

  She got out of bed slowly, trying not to wake her husband Cordell, the Prince Consort. She put on a housecoat from a side chair and walked to her study next door. She sat in the armchair and logged into VR.

  Queen Anne opened the message and selected the designated channel. She popped into the meeting room at the head of the table where her prime minister, Bruce Mallory, her defense minister, Darrell Dunning, and her head of naval operations, Admiral of the Navy Frank Keller, waited for her.

  They all stood when she arrived.

  “Be seated, gentlemen. What can I do for you this morning?”

  Mallory nodded to Dunning.

  “Your Majesty, Sintar has attacked our mustering points,” the defense minister said.

  “All nine of them?”

  “Yes, Ma’am. Admiral Keller can brief you on the specifics.”

  Keller briefly outlined the activity in each of the nine mustering points.

  “So they knew the location of each of our mustering points, in terms of which system it was, but not where in the system the ships were mustering, Admiral?”

  “It appears that way, Ma’am. And sometimes they guessed wrong.”

  “And what were the Alliance’s total losses, Admiral?”

  “Approximately two hundred sixty thousand ships, Ma’am. Two hundred thirty-five thousand of those were battleships, the rest were heavy cruisers.”

  “So they targeted the heavier ships.”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  “And personnel losses, Admiral?”

  Keller looked at Dunning, and Dunning nodded.

  “Seven hundred and eighty million, Ma’am.”

  Queen Anne closed her eyes in pain. King Michael of Estvia had warned them the loss of sixteen battleships would sound quaint in the wake of the destruction Sintar would bring down on them. His words rang in her ears now.

  And then she realized. It wasn’t over. She had met this Emperor. This wasn’t his big play. This was his opening gambit. They hadn’t known where in each system the mustering point was, but they did now. And his forces weren’t over the borders, a week or more away. They were already in Alliance space, mere hours away.

  Queen Anne opened her eyes and a tear ran down her cheek. She ignored it.

  “The invasion force commanders are expediting the relocation of their forces, Your Majesty,” Dunning said. “They’ll be out of those systems within eight to twelve hours.”

  Queen Anne looked at him incredulously.

  “Do you not understand, Mr. Dunning? This battle was not the Emperor’s big attack. This was merely a reconnaissance in force, to find out where in these systems our ships were. The big attack is still coming, and it isn’t coming from Sintar. It’s already here, in Alliance space. It won’t be four hours before his main force attacks our positions.”

  “But the Sintaran forces of this attack numbered four hundr
ed and fifty thousand ships, Your Majesty.”

  “His main attack will be ten times that large. Did I not warn you about wrestling with honey badgers, Mr. Dunning?”

  “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  There was silence for a few seconds, then Mallory cleared his throat.

  “There is also the matter that this attack was made without a declaration of war, Ma’am,” Mallory said.

  “Would you stand and wait while your enemy loads his pistol in front of you, Mr. Mallory? Once he knew we were mustering, that was all the justification he needed. And he knew we were mustering, what systems we converged on, but not where in the system our ships were. What does that suggest to you? Mr. Dunning? Admiral Keller?”

  There was a few seconds’ silence while they thought, then Admiral Keller looked up suddenly.

  “They have a new hyperspace scanning capability. They saw our forces converging, and where, but not where in normal space within the system they would be.”

  “But this deep into our own territory? Is that even possible?” Dunning asked.

  “Clearly it is, Mr. Dunning, for they have done it. I will let you consider the implications of that ability for the future. Right now, I am going to speak with my cousin. I will no doubt be seeing you later, gentlemen.”

  Queen Anne dropped from the channel.

  Queen Anne was waiting in VR when King Albert of the Rim arrived. They were second cousins, as their grandfathers had married sisters. It had ended decades of skirmishes between the two formerly rival nations. They were sitting in leather club chairs in an otherwise featureless room.

  “Thanks for coming, Albert.”

  “No problem, Anne. I assume this is about Sintar’s attack on our mustering points.”

  “Yes, and the main attack that will come later today.”

  Albert raised his eyebrows at that.

  “You expect another attack so soon?”

  “Yes. For these first attacks, it’s clear they didn’t know where in the system we were. They made some pretty good guesses, but they got surprised in a couple.”

  “You’re thinking of Cascade and Phalia.”

  “Yes, and Nederling and the Rim. They didn’t know where our forces were, but they do now. That was the point of these first attacks, I’m afraid. The main attack will come shortly.”

  “And how big do you think that will be?”

  “More than large enough to completely destroy the Alliance forces. This Emperor does nothing by halves. Which leaves us with the question, Now what do we do?”

  “Can we carry on a fight with Sintar, assuming all the mustering forces are destroyed?”

  “No. What we will be left with is our own home-built ships, which are no match for even the Emperor’s old warships. We haven’t seen any of his new construction yet. This first round was carried out with nothing more than picket ships.”

  “Which leaves us with what options?”

  “Negotiating a separate peace. James will never admit defeat, never surrender. He will go down swinging. I don’t want to do that. Which means the Alliance will break up. The question is, What sort of deal can we negotiate?”

  “Can we still get a deal as good as Pannia got?”

  “I don’t know. If this Emperor is really looking at the long term – and I think he is – then we may be able to do that, for our people at least. You and I may be lucky to end up merely retired.”

  “That would be acceptable to me.”

  Albert sighed heavily.

  “It’s too bad we couldn’t negotiate something sooner,” he went on, “before all this death and destruction.”

  “We couldn’t. At least, I couldn’t. I would have been removed in a coup. The Navy really wanted to fight Sintar. They should have been more careful what they wished for. It’ll leave the Navy gutted. What that does, though, is clear out most of the hawks and discredit the rest. It gives me a free hand to negotiate something good for everyone.”

  “Hopefully so. And what about the Democracy of Planets? They’re the ones who started all this.”

  “I don’t think we need to worry about them.”

  “We don’t?”

  “No. This Emperor won’t forget their role in all this. And they’ll pay. Eventually, they’ll pay. I’d bet on it.”

  King James of Garland was not happy. Garland had lost nearly half of its twenty-five thousand DP-built battleships in Wingard, and over thirty-five million crew had died with them.

  “It’s treason!” he shouted. “Someone told them where we were. That’s the only thing that makes sense.”

  “There’s some discussion that Sintar may have a new hyperspace scanning capability, Sire,” said his foreign minister, Francis Schmitt-deVries. “They saw the Alliance ships converging on their mustering locations.”

  “That’s not possible. Someone must have told them. Find out who knew all nine mustering locations. That’s how we find the traitor.”

  “No one knew all nine mustering locations, Sire. The systems were chosen by the host star nations, and transmitted to the ships in their orders. But nobody knew more than one.”

  “No one knew them all?”

  “No, Sire. That’s what gives the speculation about new scanning capability some weight.”

  “That’s actually worse. A lot worse. It means we can’t even remove our forces to a different location without Sintar seeing where they’re going.”

  “That’s correct, Sire. And a second attack is probably already on the way.”

  The Second-Wave Attacks

  Phalia

  Imperial Navy Admiral Maria della Espinoza waited on her flag bridge for the down-transition out of hyperspace. She was headed back to the Alliance’s Phalia mustering point with four hundred thousand picket ships, all carrying a container of eight missiles.

  Ahead of her lay three hundred fifty thousand Alliance warships, together with thousands of freighters of stores, ammunition, and reaction mass. A total of over five hundred million Alliance spacers, preparing to attack Sintar, were aboard them.

  Her picket ships were organized as one hundred thousand flights of four ships each, only one of which had ECM capability. That shouldn’t be a problem, because the ships themselves would not enter the point-defense envelope of any of the Alliance ships.

  The second attack wave had been reprogrammed when the missile capability was discovered. Rather than drop into normal space right on top of the enemy, inside their safe missile range, they would drop in much farther away, completely outside of the Alliance warships’ missile range. They would accelerate their missiles to launch speed, then drop them and veer off, running away from the Alliance missiles coming their way.

  At least, that was the plan.

  It was just over two hours since the first-wave attacks concluded.

  “We’re going ahead with the plan, Ma’am? Three-quarters of the birds on the first wave, with one-quarter held in reserve for clean-up?” asked her chief of staff, Vice Admiral Kim Jae Seong.

  “Yes. If we have some reserve capacity, we may be able to clean up without having to use any of the warships. We still have six warhead missiles per target. Even if they take out half of them, despite the ECM, that’s massive overkill.”

  “Will there be any clean-up to do, Ma’am?”

  “Oh, there’ll be the odd ship here or there that lucks out. We’ll take them out piecemeal.”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  Senior Chief Robert Fitzhugh stuck his head into HMS Raptor’s much-expanded missile control room in VR. Every single missileer in the crew – all three shifts – were there. They would still be controlling at least five birds apiece in their final attack runs.

  “Good shooting, Guns.”

  “Thanks, Fitz,” Senior Chief Nathan Gunderson said.

  “Massive down-transition, Sir. Scanning is making it four hundred thousand point sources. They’re Sintaran picket ships. Outside of missile range. Looks like formations of four. Three hundred thousand are ac
celerating to the attack. Making ten gravities. One hundred thousand holding station.”

  “Orders to all formations. Prepare to engage with missiles when they reach missile range. Concentrate on the leaders. Send that,” Phalian Fleet Admiral Joseph Dern said.

  “Transmitting, Sir.”

  His Alliance forces could launch three hundred and fifty thousand missiles in a single salvo. More than one per attacking ship. For the first salvo at least, though, they would try to overwhelm the leader of each of those formations of four.

  “We’re approaching our missile range, Ma’am.”

  “Not yet. Let them launch first. Closer range for us is better, and we have no reason to turn and run until they launch. They’re range is down because they’re not moving, but they still have impellers. We want to get some speed on our birds.”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  “Stand by for missile release,” Gunderson said.

  “Standing by, Senior Chief,” his crew answered.

  “They’re in our missile range now, Sir.”

  “Orders to all formations,” Dern said. “Launch missiles. Continue launching at maximum rate. Send that.”

  “Transmitting, Sir.”

  “Missile separation, Ma’am. We have three hundred fifty thousand incoming. Arrival time thirty minutes.”

  “All ships. Veer off and release missiles. Send it,” Espinoza said.

  “Transmitting, Ma’am.”

  “Orders from the flag, Sir. Veer off and release missiles.”

  “Very good, Mr. Olsen. Let’s veer off and run for it,” Captain Oleg Volkov said.

  “Beginning one hundred eighty degree turn, Sir.”

  All four birds pivoted around on their nose thrusters, their engines still at ten gravities’ acceleration.