EMPIRE: Warlord (EMPIRE SERIES Book 5)

by Richard F. Weyand

  “Oh, I don’t like the sound of that.”

  Pinter was drumming his fingers on the table. He looked down at them curiously, and ordered them to stop.

  “What are our options, Jules?”

  “Well, if the Alliance surrenders, there is a period of vulnerability while Sintar gets its feet under it. The Alliance is a pretty big chunk to swallow, and Sintar will be spread thin. If we were going to do anything about it, that would be the time.”

  “Hmm.”

  Pinter’s fingers were drumming again. He let them go.

  “Pavel, we should have several plans of things we might do. Just in case. Have your people work them up for me, will you?”

  “Of course, Harold.”

  Imperial Navy picket ships and their hypergate cruisers returning from the first- and second-wave attacks did not space back to Sintaran territory. Instead, they returned to their sortie points, where the conventional warships and the supply freighters waited.

  “All right. Let’s re-arm and restock,” Admiral Maria della Espinoza said. “We only have a week before we need to space again.”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” said her chief of staff, Vice Admiral Kim Jae Seong. “We’re on it.”

  It was almost a week after Sintar’s attack on the Alliance’s mustering points when the GNS Predator and her squadron-mates down-transitioned into the Wingard mustering point. They made for the planet at one gravity acceleration, aiming for high orbits equally spaced about the planet.

  The extent of the Alliance disaster became apparent as they approached the planet.

  “Mother of God! Look at that, Sir,” Commander Robert Murphy said to Captain Jonas Whitney.

  “Well, we were right, Rob. Somebody got their ass shot off all right. A whole lot of somebodies.”

  Whitney sighed.

  “Where do we even start? I guess the first thing to do is see if we can’t make radio contact with anyone.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  They put out a call for any surviving ships to respond. The first response they got was from Gertrude Winger.

  “Boy, are we glad to see you guys. We’ll trade a whole shuttle load of reaction mass and stores for one hot shower and a lift home. Whadda ya say?”

  A medical triage team was standing by when Gertrude Winger and Larry Stonecipher came aboard the Predator. They had already used their cargo shuttle to swap out containers, putting the Predator back at one hundred percent on reaction mass and stores. That done, they had docked to the Predator, left their battered shuttle, and then triggered a remote undocking. The shuttle moved off at ten percent power to join the rest of the debris orbiting the gas giant.

  They were more than a bit gamey but in good spirits when they came aboard. They brushed off the medical team.

  “Nah, we’re good. No injuries, and we were only halfway through our emergency supplies. We’re slept and hydrated and everything. We just need a shower and a change of clothes. Please.”

  She emphasized that last word, and Murphy, there to greet them, chuckled.

  “We can arrange that, Petty Officer. Welcome aboard.”

  Winger noticed him for the first time.

  “Oh. Sir. Sorry, Sir,” she said as she saluted. “Petty Officer Second Class Winger, reporting aboard.”

  Murphy nodded to her salute.

  “No problem, Ms. Winger. You seem to be remarkably organized for castaways. A shuttle load of supplies, for instance.”

  Winger shrugged.

  “Someone had the idea, and it gave us something to do, Sir. We all stayed in touch by radio. And we took census. You have one hundred seventeen thousand three hundred and fifty-four survivors in orbit. All shuttle crews. Most are mobile.”

  “Excellent, Ms. Winger. That will help a lot.”

  “The other thing that might help, Sir, is better comm with the shuttle crews. Larry and I came up through Shuttle Traffic Control. We’d be happy to set up STC ops here. Help get all our friends picked up.”

  “That’s an excellent idea. I’ll bounce it off the captain.”

  “Happy to help, Sir. But after a shower and a fresh shipsuit. Please.”

  “Absolutely, Ms. Winger.”

  The ship’s senior non-com was there as well.

  “Senior Chief, can you see that they get fresh clothes and a shower? Oh, and assign them bunk space.”

  Murphy turned back to Winger.

  “We’re all hot bunking until the passenger liners get here, Ms. Winger.”

  “Sounds lovely to me, Sir.”

  “Yes, Sir. Shower, clothes, bunks. This way, Ms. Winger, Mr. Stonecipher.”

  Winger saluted Murphy again, as did Stonecipher, and Senior Chief Halstead led them off into the ship.

  The Alliance Leadership Council and Alliance War Council were in ruins. Recriminations and accusations shot back and forth in any joint meetings they tried to have. Ultimately, communications on a one-to-one basis were the only way to get anything done.

  They tried to pick up the pieces of their war plans, recasting them into defense plans against the further offensive operations of Sintar many of them saw coming.

  “Hey, Chief,” Kowalski said as he came into Fordham’s workspace in the HMS Raptor deployment building on Imperial Fleet Base Osaka.

  “Yeah, Kowalski,” Chief James Fordham said, looking up from his paperwork.

  “I been thinkin’. You know, we been out on the ship in the HARPERs and all. Don’t we have aft container rails on the warships?”

  “Yeah. For emergency supplies and stuff. Like extra reaction mass for long trips.”

  “Yeah. That’s what I thought. So couldn’t we put missile containers on those racks, too? How many missiles could we carry on a cruiser or a battleship if we used those?”

  Fordham looked at him a long minute, then sent a message in VR. In a couple of minutes, Senior Chief Fitzhugh walked into Fordham’s workspace.

  “Whatcha got, Jim?”

  “Listen to this, Fitz. Kowalski, tell the senior chief what you told me.”

  “Can’t we put missile containers on the aft rails of the warships, Senior Chief? How many missiles could a battleship or cruiser launch?”

  Fitzhugh just stared at him, then shook himself.

  “Damn,” Fitzhugh said. “I’ll see you guys later. I gotta go talk to the captain.

  “Well, I didn’t get in trouble last time, so I think I’m gonna do it again, Jay,” Admiral Maria della Espinoza said.

  “I agree, Ma’am. What a great idea.”

  “Find out whose idea it was for me, will you, Jay? That man gets a medal. And let Sintar know we need more missiles. Lots more missiles.”

  Rear Admiral Dorothy Conroy stood at ease before the real-time hyperspace map of Project Far Sight, running it in time-lapse. She saw the Imperial Navy ships spacing back to their sortie points from the Alliance’s mustering points. She saw the search-and-rescue ships spacing to the mustering points from various Alliance planets.

  She also saw something else. Major fleet movements from the outlying planets and bases of the Alliance members toward their capital planets. She nodded. The knee-jerk reaction of the elites: regime protection. She highlighted those movements in blue, then sent a message in VR.

  A few minutes passed, then Admiral Leicester and the Emperor joined her in the restricted VR channel for Project Far Sight.

  “Yes, Admiral Conroy?” Dunham said.

  Conroy saluted them both.

  “Your Majesty. Admiral. Note the blue traces in the map.”

  Conroy ran the map in future projection. Dunham looked into the map and saw the blue traces converging. When they had converged, the map stopped, and she pointed out the timestamp.

  “Your Majesty was correct,” Conroy said. “They are converging their forces around their capitals. Our current timing should work out nicely.”

  “Very good, Admiral Conroy,” Dunham said. “Well done. Let us know if anything changes.”

  “Of course, Sire.”<
br />
  And with that, Dunham and Leicester dropped out of the channel.

  The Third-Wave Attacks

  Garland

  King James of Garland had pushed for offensives against Sintar, even after the destruction of the Alliance invasion force. ‘If we attack Sintar, he has to keep his navy at home to defend his territory.’ But his argument had fallen on deaf ears. Some blamed him for the entire current situation, which wasn’t fair and they knew it.

  Most had decided to hole up on their capital planets behind the bulk of their remaining forces, hoping to weather the coming storm. In the end James had done the same.

  Around Garland was almost half of his surviving navy. Ninety thousand warships clustered around the capital planet. But these were not lying ‘at anchor.’ No, these were all spacing, on patrol, with their plasma bottles at full pressure, and ready to fight.

  These warships were all the older-technology, Garland-built ships, but you couldn’t have everything.

  “So it’s back to battleships this time,” Senior Chief Fitzhugh told the assembled chiefs and senior chiefs in the Chief’s Mess of the HMS Raptor’s deployment building.

  “It’s gonna seem slow and clunky after racin’ around in those little picket ships. But just wait until we launch missiles. I been talkin’ to Guns, and they’re not even gonna try controllin’ individual missiles. They’re gonna control ‘em in flights of eight, with one ECM bird per flight.

  “This idea is bein’ used fleet-wide. La Loba herself told everybody else the idea, and everybody’s usin’ it. And it came from one of our own guys, Kowalski. Yeah, yeah, I know, but it was Kowalski’s idea. The guy’s got a screw loose somewhere, but sometimes that’s what you need to come up with somethin’ that good.

  “So we can launch a hundred and twenty-eight missiles at a time, and we can do that three times if it comes to that. Just our squadron can launch a thousand missiles per salvo. I think you can all agree with me that I would much rather be lookin’ at the drive end than the warhead end o’ that salvo.

  “But none o’ that means we can afford to be sloppy. These guys are fightin’ for their home worlds now. They’re not sittin’ around all fat and dumb and happy, restockin’ and shit. They’re gunnin’ for bear, so let’s make sure we’re not the ones goin’ in there all fat and dumb and happy, OK?”

  “Ma’am, we have sort of a strange order here,” Vice Admiral Kim said.

  “What is it, Jay?” Espinoza asked.

  “Direct from Sintar, Ma’am. We are to detach thirty-two picket ships, ECM not required, and dispatch them on specific courses when we launch the attack. The courses are rather convoluted, are strictly timed – we have some choices of specific times, depending on what works for us, and a different course for each time – and there is a very strong warning about tampering with the courses. It has all the flavor of a Treaty of Earth warning.”

  “That is strange.”

  “Yes, and the ships are to down-transition a hundred miles above the target planets,” Kim said.

  “They’ll be torn apart.”

  “Yes, Ma’am. The orders require the commanding officer’s reply in the affirmative that the orders were received and will be complied with. And they’re counter-signed by the Emperor himself.”

  “Are you sure?” Espinoza asked.

  “Oh, I’m sure, Ma’am. Imperial signatures are kind of hard to miss, and it’s a capital crime to counterfeit one. And your reply is to be copied to the Emperor.”

  “I think we probably ought to comply then, don’t you, Jay?” Espinoza asked drily.

  “That would be my recommendation. Yes, Ma’am,” Kim replied in the same tone.

  “OK, let’s get that off, then. Send it to me so I can digitally sign it.”

  “Yes, Ma’am. The orders also include two ‘no space’ zones for the planet Garland, which are different for each of the alternate picket ship courses.”

  “Well, let’s figure out which time is going to work for us and then get the correct no-space zones out there to our commanders so they don’t blunder into them.”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  Just a light-year from Garland, their approach having been shielded by the hyperspace fog of tens of thousands of picket ships, the Imperial Navy forces formed up behind their projector ships. The picket ships were strung out in flights of four behind their hypergate cruisers, while the warships were strung out behind the big hypergate projector ships. They made way toward Garland, ready to up-transition.

  All they needed was the system map.

  Four hypergate-equipped Sintaran light cruisers down-transitioned into Garland space, at the four compass points of the planet – sunward, anti-sunward, in front of and behind the planet in its orbit – at a distance of sixty light-seconds. They sat there for fifteen minutes, then drew their hypergates around themselves and disappeared.

  “Order all ships to battle stations,” Fleet Admiral James Fulbright ordered. He was in the Garland Fleet Operations Center on the Garland fleet base twenty miles west of downtown Flower.

  “All ships to battle stations. Transmitted, Sir.”

  “All formations to outbound vectors. We know they’re coming, so let’s build some velocity towards them.”

  “All formations to outbound vectors. Transmitted, Sir.”

  Across Garland space, Garland navy ships turned to a vector away from the planet and started building velocity toward the enemy they knew was coming. Crews settled into their battle stations, loaded their impellers, and warmed up their point-defense systems.

  “Down-transition in two minutes,” the speaker announced.

  “All right, you guys,” Senior Chief Gunderson said to his missileers. “As soon as we make our U-turn, we’re going to launch. When I get notice, I’m just gonna launch. So be ready for it.”

  Admiral Espinoza had brought twenty-four thousand conventional warships to Garland, seven hundred and fifty squadrons each of battleships, heavy cruisers, light cruisers and destroyers. They were outnumbered almost four to one by the Garland forces arrayed around the planet. They down-transitioned quite a distance from the planet, and started building velocity toward Garland at their maximum acceleration of 1.5 gravities.

  “I think we may have them, Sir. I don’t think they anticipated our buildup around Garland,” said Admiral Anthony Jessen, Fulbright’s chief of staff.

  Fulbright turned to him with a raised eyebrow.

  “Really?”

  “Well, yes, Sir. We outnumber them four to one.”

  “And yet they come on. Don’t you find that curious, Tony?”

  “What else could it be, Sir?”

  “That there’s another shoe yet to drop.”

  As the two fleets accelerated toward each other – the expanding inner sphere of ninety thousand Garland ships and the contracting outer sphere of the Imperial Navy’s twenty-four thousand ships – missileers on both sides started setting up their solutions. Computers aided them in divvying up the other side’s targets among their side’s missiles.

  “We’re starting to come into their missile range now, Ma’am,” Kim said.

  “Wait for it,” Espinoza said.

  “We’re in missile range with all ships now, Sir,” Jessen said.

  “All ships launch and go to maximum rate fire,” Fulbright said.

  “Missile separation, Ma’am. We have ninety thousand incoming.”

  “Fleet orders. All ships reverse course and launch missiles,” Espinoza said.

  “Transmitting, Ma’am.”

  “Fleet orders, Sir. Reverse course.”

  “Helm. Bring us about,” Captain Volkov said.

  “Reversing course, Sir. Coming about.”

  The seconds ticked by as the big ship came about.

  “Maneuver complete, Sir.”

  Senior Chief Gunderson was monitoring the bridge in missile control. As soon as the helm announced ‘maneuver complete,’ he pushed the Launch button on his VR console. The doors on t
he last sixteen containers on the HMS Raptor’s aft container rails opened, and one hundred and twenty-eight missiles fell out of them.

  “Missiles away,” Gunderson said to the bridge.

  Gunderson pushed the Ignite button, and Raptor’s missiles engaged their drives.

  “Status change, Sir. The Sintaran vessels are all reversing course.”

  “He’s opening up the engagement window for his point-defense,” Jessen said.

  “Yes, but wouldn’t you expect him to fire one round of missiles first?” Fulbright asked. “No sense coming all the way out here if he’s not going to shoot at something.”

  “That’s true. I wonder what he’s up to.”

  “Missile separation, Sir. We have– But this can’t be.”

  Fulbright’s staff tactical officer turned around at his console.

  “Sir, CIC reports we have two million missiles incoming.”

  Fulbright just stared at him as the bottom dropped out of his stomach. He recovered enough to give the formulaic – and woefully inadequate – response.

  “Re-target to incoming missiles.”

  “Transmitting, Sir.”

  The massive wave of Sintaran missiles washed over the outbound Garland missiles, wiping them all out on their way through. Again and again the Garland ships fired at that impossible tsunami of missiles. They whittled it down, ninety thousand missiles at a time, but still it bore on.

  “Down-transition. We have one hundred thousand point sources, Sir. CIC identifies them as Sintaran picket ships. They’re outside the current Sintaran formations, now accelerating toward the planet at ten gravities.”

  “Missiles are approaching their point-defense envelope now, Senior Chief.”

  “Engage ECM,” Gunderson said.

  Two lone picket ships spaced through hyperspace on their precisely defined course. It was a bit circuitous, in order to get the right angle. When each reached its appointed spot, it down-transitioned out of hyperspace.