EMPIRE: Warlord (EMPIRE SERIES Book 5)

by Richard F. Weyand

  “Yeah, I guess. And?”

  “Normally they just go round and round, mapping hyperspace. We been using ‘em in normal space like bullets, ramming Alliance warships. But what’s to keep them from doing both? Mapping the Alliance ships in hyperspace, then going out there and ramming them in hyperspace?”

  “No shit.”

  “Yeah. Then the warship’s engines stop, and since it’s not accelerating anymore, all that crap falls out of hyperspace into normal space.”

  “So what?”

  “So the other picket ships, the ones that miss their targets, remember where all that crap falls out so we can go out there and figure out who it was if we have to.”

  “Ah. Then the Emperor can send them an appropriate thank-you note.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Why don’t we use the container missiles for the attack, Chief?”

  “In hyperspace, we can’t use container missiles, and they can’t use impeller missiles.”

  “Why not, Chief?”

  “What’s the acceleration of a missile before it lights off its drive, Staski?”

  “Well, zero, right? Oh! I get it. Launch a missile and all it’s gonna do is fall out of hyperspace.”

  “Right.”

  “So what about the ships that miss on the ramming attack, Chief?”

  “That’s the really good part. So they try to ram an enemy ship, right? And the enemy ship evades them, say. So the picket ship goes on past them.”

  “Yeah. So what good is that?”

  “The picket ship turns around and comes after them.”

  “Yeah, but in hyperspace, everything moves at the same speed, Chief. They can’t catch ‘em.”

  “No, but they can follow ‘em. And when the enemy ships cut their engines and drop out of hyperspace, the picket ships can drop out right behind ‘em and take another shot at ‘em, except now we’re in control.”

  “Oh, now that’ll be fun.”

  “Yeah, Staski. Yeah, it will.”

  Rear Admiral Dorothy Conroy stared into the hyperspace map. She ran time-lapse and projections, measuring the progress of the Alliance forces heading to Estvia. They were definitely making for the bulge in the border, which would add a day to their travel time. It also gave them a slightly different course once in Sintaran space. She mapped their likely course, estimated times and transmitted that information to Imperial Admiral Leicester.

  “OK, so they took the bulge, Jack,” Fleet Admiral Natalia Shvets told her chief of staff. “It’ll be a day longer. And we now have their border-crossing time.”

  “We’ll get working on planning our launch times, Ma’am.”

  “Leave a couple hours slack. I don’t want anyone complaining we hit them in Annalia space. Who knows? Maybe they veer off when they reach the border.”

  “I’m not expecting that, Ma’am.”

  “Neither am I, but I don’t want people complaining they might have. Hit them on this side of the border, Jack.”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  “And I have some ideas for how to hit them to make it the most disruptive on their crews. The less sleep they get, the sloppier they’ll be.”

  The Battle of Estvia

  Fleet Admiral Steiner was on his flag bridge for the border crossing.

  “We’re crossing into Sintaran space now, Sir,”

  “All right, everybody,” Steiner said. “Stay sharp. We don’t want to get surprised.”

  “But we’re in hyperspace, Sir. Can they attack us in hyperspace?”

  “Do you want to bet they can’t, Art?” Steiner asked his chief of staff, Admiral Arthur Beck.

  “No, I suppose I don’t. They sure have surprised us before.”

  “Exactly. I expect if they have a way to attack us in hyperspace, they will.”

  “Sir, I’m picking up what looks like some kind of fog ahead.”

  “Fog? In hyperspace?” Steiner asked.

  “Well, I don’t know how else to describe it, Sir. Hyperspace is always indistinct and swirly. This just looks like it’s more so than usual.”

  “All right.”

  Steiner thought about it for a moment, then called Beck over.

  “I think we should go to general quarters, Art. Or battle stations.”

  “Well, that’ll just be this one ship, Sir. We can’t communicate with anyone else.”

  “Understood. As long as we’re in hyperspace, it’s every captain for himself. Still, let’s suggest it to Captain Sikorski.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Status change, Sir. That fog has resolved into picket ships. Sintaran design. Five thousand incoming. Arrival in ten minutes.”

  “Point-defense free. Evasive maneuvers,” Captain Ivan Sikorski said.

  Sikorski had gone to battle stations at the suggestion of the flag, and was now glad he had.

  “Yes, Sir. Point-defense free. Evasive maneuvers.”

  The lights dimmed to give the point-defense lasers the priority on the ship’s power. The lights wavered as the point-defense lasers fired again and again.

  The gravity also acted crazy as the ship dodged and weaved, flipping first in this direction, then that, in an attempt to evade the oncoming attackers.

  And then they were past, and the flagship, ANS Dominance, had survived.

  “Status?” Steiner asked.

  “We’re counting hyperspace traces, Sir. It looks like that attack destroyed close to three hundred ships of our force.”

  “We’re lucky to have done so well, Art.”

  “I agree, Sir. One other thing, though. The picket ships that broke past us flipped ship and are following along behind.”

  “Oh, that’s not good.”

  “But they can’t catch us in hyperspace, Sir.”

  “No, but what do you think they’re going to do when we down-transition?”

  Exactly two hours later, there was a second attack. The Alliance ships poured point-defense fire into the attacking picket ships while corkscrewing madly to evade them. Once again, ANS Dominance survived. One hundred and ninety-two of the Alliance warships in Steiner’s force did not.

  Exactly two hours after that, another attack destroyed a hundred and fifty-three of the Alliance ships.

  The declining loss numbers were due to the fact that the ship’s captains who survived had been those who were more likely to take the proper actions to avoid the attacks, and they were learning with each attack, while the picket ships were running the same attack software for every wave.

  “It’s been six hours since the last attack, Sir. Do you think they’re done?”

  “No,” Steiner said. “They’re letting everybody think it’s over so they can hit us again.”

  The battle stations alarm sounded yet again.

  “Speak of the devil.”

  The lights dimmed to provide maximum power to the point-defense lasers. The ship lurched this way and that, yawing and pitching crazily as the helmsman tried to evade the incoming attackers.

  And then they were past. ANS Dominance had survived again. But another hundred and forty-seven of her consorts had not.

  The next attack came only ten minutes after they had stood down from battle stations from the prior one. The Alliance crews had gotten used to the two-hour intervals, and it was touch-and-go getting back to battle stations in time.

  Worse yet, this attack didn’t use the same software as the prior ones. Admiral Shvets had thrown a ringer at them. It was an earlier, and less capable, version of the attack software, but every time an attacked zigged instead of zagged, it caught the Alliance crews by surprise.

  Two hundred and thirty-seven more Alliance ships dropped out of hyperspace as their drives shut down. Admiral Steiner assumed they had all been lost with all hands.

  His force was now down to a bit more than two thousand ships.

  “How long to Estvia now?” Steiner asked.

  “Another two days, Sir.”

  Steiner just nodded.

  “At
this rate, will anyone make it, Sir?” Beck asked.

  “It only takes one, Art. It only takes one.”

  Ten hours passed without an attack. Everyone was just beginning to think it may be over when, again on the even hour, another wave of picket ships attacked the formation. The crews reactions were slowed by not knowing which attack software they faced this time.

  ANS Dominance shook with an impact.

  “Hit on the number three radiator, Sir. We’re streaming coolant.”

  “Isolate radiator number three,” Sikorski said.

  “Isolated, Sir. Topping off coolant from reserve. Temperatures on other radiators stabilizing.”

  “That was close, Sir.” Beck said.

  “Yes. I wish we could communicate with the other ships.”

  “How would that help, Sir?”

  “There are some things we might do, Art. We could drop out of hyperspace, maybe. Let the next wave pass us by.”

  “And then the thousands of surviving picket ships chasing us would drop out on top of us, Sir.”

  “There is that.”

  Steiner sighed.

  “I guess the only thing to do from here is to keep on and persevere. Somehow.”

  Two hours later, with the crew tensing for it, there was no attack. Instead, the next attack took place on the odd hour, three hours after the last.

  “Whoever is commanding over there, Sir, they know how to psychologically play with the crews,” Beck said.

  “Natalia Shvets. I read up on her. She’s always been good. Wouldn’t play the game, though, so she didn’t get into higher command positions until this new Emperor changed their promotions scheme.”

  “It is Admiral Shvets, then, Sir? Well, that explains a lot.”

  In the end, two hundred and twenty-seven Alliance ships survived the gauntlet of the hyperspace run to Estvia. ANS Dominance was not one of them. She had been hit amidships by a Sintaran picket ship just twelve hours short of Estvia.

  They turned toward the planet before they cut their engines, so they dropped out of hyperspace facing the planet. They immediately fired on the planet, with the intent of updating their targeting solutions once missiles were away.

  Ten thousand of the surviving picket ships, which had been following along behind them in hyperspace, dropped out of hyperspace and swept through their position. These picket ships attacked under human control, not under software algorithm.

  After that wave of picket ships washed over the Alliance position, there were no Alliance ships remaining. All three thousand of Admiral Steiner’s initial force departing Annalia had been destroyed. That conclusion to the chase came so rapidly that no ship got off a second launch at the planet, and most of the first launch had no updated targeting. They were headed for the planet, they were aimed in the direction of the capital, but their targeting was incomplete.

  The rest of the picket ships following Admiral Steiner’s force had been pre-programmed to drop out of hyperspace at multiple locations between Steiner’s force and the planet. The Alliance ships had dropped out of hyperspace as close as they dared, but the durable little picket ships could safely drop out much closer.

  Thirty thousand picket ships attacked the incoming missile launch, but the missiles were programmed for evasive maneuvers and were very hard to hit. Sixty-three of them survived.

  Shvets’s next line of defense was two hundred thousand picket ships in orbit about the planet. Those within range of the incoming missiles accelerated towards their targets and dropped their own missiles from the containers latched to their backs. Thirty thousand missiles swarmed out after the sixty-three incoming Alliance missiles.

  Those thirty thousand missiles were programmed for proximity detonation, and hundreds of nuclear explosions blossomed across the sky above Estvia.

  In the end, two of the Alliance missiles somehow escaped that onslaught and successfully targeted the planet.

  Fleet Admiral Natalia Shvets watched the defense of Estvia without comment. There was no time for changing orders, for reacting to events. She had set up the defense in multiple layers – the multiple attacks in hyperspace, the attack on the Alliance ships once they dropped from hyperspace, the attacks on any missile launch by the other pursuing picket ships, and then the last-ditch orbital defenses with missiles operating in counter-missile mode – and all there was to do now was to watch it play out and see how well she’d done.

  When she saw two of the Alliance missiles penetrate her defenses and survive to explode on the planet, she quietly said, “Damage report when available,” and waited on the news.

  The first missile to strike Estvia detonated five thousand feet above the surface in the mountains forty miles north of the city of Kehala. The mountains around it directed the force of the explosion through the mountain passes, but mostly back up into the atmosphere. Several thousand people who lived in the mountains, including the entire population of one ski resort community, died in the explosion.

  The second missile to strike Estvia detonated five thousand feet above the surface and one hundred fifty miles southwest of Kehala, near the city of Goldwing. The city’s entire population of twenty-six thousand three hundred died in the explosion, as well as several hundred farmers living within thirty miles of the explosion.

  “First estimates are thirty thousand dead, Ma’am. We’ll be refining that data, but it should be pretty close.”

  Shvets relaxed in her command chair. She had been even more tense than she had realized as the attack had drawn closer. After two weeks of increasing tension, the relief was almost painful.

  The ultimate result: not a perfect score, not a completely effective defense, perhaps, but good enough. The attacking forces had lost three thousand ships in all classes – perhaps five million spacers – to effect casualties of thirty thousand. That wasn’t the sort of exchange ratio they would be willing or able to maintain for long.

  “All right. Let’s go with Relief Plan Seven. Coordinate with surface agencies.”

  “Relief Plan Seven. Yes, Ma’am.”

  “Analyze the sensor readings we got on the Alliance ships to determine nation of origin. Those were home-built ships, not DP purchases. We should be able to identify them.”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  “And let’s get the salvage crews out there to confirm the nation of origin of those ships. We need to be absolutely sure who decided the Treaty of Earth didn’t apply to them.”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  The battleship HMS Leopard inched its way toward the debris field.

  “OK, Chief Carrey. This is as close as we’re going to be able to get. You’re on.”

  “Yes, Sir,” Carrey said.

  He switched radio channels.

  “All right, Staski. You’re good to go.

  “OK, Chief.”

  Staski opened the door of the HARPER unit container and walked his unit out on the deck of the Leopard. He looked up and saw the drifting debris of an Alliance battleship slowly spreading out above him. He cut the tread magnets briefly and launched his HARPER off the deck with the propulsion unit.

  “I’m away.”

  After an hour poking about in the debris field, Staski reported back.

  “Hey, Chief. You won’t believe what I found. An unbroken china plate from the officer’s mess.”

  “No shit. How weird is that?”

  “Yeah, no kidding. Also ANS Perseverance. ANS. That’s Annalia, isn’t it.”

  “Yeah, that’s Annalia. All right. I think we got enough. Head on back, Staski.”

  “On the way.”

  In addition to the plate, Staski had brought back an undamaged ANS Perseverance unit badge from an officer, removed from the uniform of his drifting body. The officer had been facing away from the explosion, and that had shielded his insignia.

  “Solid IDs from the sensor logs, Ma’am, now confirmed by the salvage operations,” said Shvets’s chief of staff, Admiral John Yackley. “Annalia, Berinia, and Garland. No ot
her nation of origin found.”

  “And we have the sensor logs and the physical evidence?” Shvets asked.

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  “All right, Jack. Let’s get that all packaged up – sensor logs, photos of the evidence, all of it – so I can send it to Imperial Navy Headquarters Sintar.”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  Decisions

  Dunham and Peters appeared together, already seated, in the VR meeting room. Consul Geoffrey Saaret, Sector Governor Michael Roberts, and Imperial Admiral Howard Leicester stood.

  “Be seated, gentlemen,” Dunham said.

  “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  “Sector Governor Roberts, you may begin.”

  “Yes, Sire. There were two nuclear strikes on Estvia, one in the mountains north of Kehala, and one on the plains to the southwest. These were airbursts and resulted in minimal fallout that did not carry over the capital. The mountain strike killed several thousand people at a ski resort and in the nearby valleys, but most of the force of the explosion was channeled back up into the atmosphere by the mountains.

  “The second strike destroyed the farming community of Goldwing and nearby villages. The total death toll there is expected to reach twenty-seven or twenty-eight thousand people. It was farther from Kehala, and did not result in any damage or injuries in the capital itself. There are some cases of blindness in closer communities. We hope these are temporary. The explosion itself was below the horizon for people in Kehala, so we aren’t seeing a lot of cases.

  “The Imperial Navy dropped supplies and medical personnel immediately after the attacks, and we are getting on top of the situation in the non-fatal injury area. It’s sparsely populated there, except for the town itself, and so we got lucky.”

  “Thank you, Sector Governor Roberts. I will let you get back to the relief efforts. You are to let me know personally if there is anything else you need. You are dismissed.”