Star Freedom

by D. R. Rosier

  Vik said, “Get on that defense, I want us ready for those bastards when they get here.”

  I sighed, then stop asking questions maybe?

  I got back to work…

  Chapter Fifteen

  Vik asked, “What do you have?”

  It was four hours later, and late evening. We were sitting around the dinner table, and had just gotten done eating.

  “I designed a new gravity shielding system for the ships under development, it will be quite effective. Unfortunately, that doesn’t help us right now. For what we face now, I had to use a combination of current technologies we already have, which won’t be as effective, but should still buy us the time we need to wear down their shields with plasma, and destroy them. But… the ships’ hulls will be degraded, it won’t be able to stop all the DE from leaking through. Just not in high enough concentrations to cause immediate dissolution of matter.

  “Simply enough, we’ll be using the ships deflector shield technology, which currently creates a gravity gradient around the ship to deflect any matter, so we don’t run into it. DE is the opposite of matter, so we actually have to reverse the deflectors gravity field to pull matter towards the ship. The ship’s hull is strong enough to take a little dust, but it will make the hull look ugly and pockmarked. Still, I’d advise not running into anything larger than dust.”

  I shrugged, “That will push any dark energy from the ship, like those small concentrations from leakage we talked about, but it will increase the beams leakage and ablate the damage. But against a highly concentrated beam it will only ablate the damage by about twenty percent.”

  Vik said, “That won’t be enough.”

  I shook my head, “No, not on its own, which is where the second technology system comes in. The impulse drive. It’s a stronger gravity field, and larger. I’ve updated the control software, its original design and intent to be tightly contoured the ship, with the new software I made it so the field would expand in the opposite direction of the ship’s movement by almost an eighth of mile. The impulse field will be pulling the ship forward, and in equal facility repel DE and destroy the integrity of the beam from an eight of a mile out. The catch there, is we have to be traveling away from the enemy for it to work. The faster our acceleration profile, the more dark energy will be repelled. Of course, that’s a tactical nightmare, to be fully effective we’d have to be running from them at two hundred gravities, while they chase us at two hundred gravities so they’d stay in range.

  “The new system I built for the new scout-destroyers, and new versions of the cruiser and battleship will have the ability to create that two hundred gravity gradient around the whole ship, which will essentially block the beam, at least at the power the Suaterans had been using it at. All without interacting with our impulse gravity field. It also has the ability to create holes, so that when we launch our multi-function orb missiles, they won’t be trapped in the field. But the impulse drives on the destroyers simply aren’t capable of doing that.”

  “What about the plasma weapons? On the new ships, won’t gravity…” he trailed off.

  I nodded, “It would, except our plasma weapons use the blue giant and dimension ports, we can just open a port past the effective gravity field and fire from there.”

  He closed his eyes, and I realized he was really stressed, and felt stupid asking that question. He already knew that, or should have. I pretended not to notice. The loss of a hundred and twenty-one ships was a hell of a blow to me as well, but they hadn’t been my responsibility. It was obvious he was taking it very hard.

  He sighed, “Tactics, how do we lure them into plasma and DE range, and then get them to chase us.”

  I frowned, “It isn’t quite that limited, well it is, but it isn’t. Relative velocity, vector, and acceleration aren’t the same. If they appear right in front of us in range, we can immediately run and fire our plasma weapons. In that case we’ll hope they’ll chase us, simply so they can stay in their effective firing range.

  “If they appear farther away it’s even better, we can charge them at two hundred gravities, and when we reach weapons range we can reverse. That way we’d be accelerating at two hundred gravities away from them, but our actual vector and velocity would still be toward them until we slowed, stopped, and then finally started to move away from them. Even though we’d still be moving toward them all that time, as far as the shielding goes it would be at its maximum effectiveness. The shielding is directly related to our acceleration, not our absolute direction. That would take time depending on how much speed we’d built up, but we don’t need a lot of time. If we quadruple up on their ships, it will take less than ten seconds to blast through their shields and take them out. That’s thirty-seven enemy ships at a time given we have a hundred and fifty here. They have ninety left, so less than half a minute to take them all. That will give them plenty of time to skip, or retreat though.”

  He groaned, “Of course, basic space flight, but I’ve never tried to incorporate that into my battle plans, at least not in this way. Okay, thirty seconds, and how long before their weapons could destroy us through the gravity?”

  I said, “We’ll have explosions on the hull, no doubt, but they won’t be able to destroy our whole ship or cut it in half, not with their beam degraded by eighty or so percent. Engineering and the bridge are too well insulated for hull explosions to have an impact, at least in the short term. They’ll have to focus it on the hull in one spot for a few seconds to break the bonds of matter.”

  He sighed, “So we’ll have a degraded hull on all the ships, or ninety of them, and there are two more fleets.”

  I nodded, “I’d also expect them to open up with their four plasma weapons as well, once they figure out we’re partially shielded from dark energy weapons. I don’t think that will be an issue though, they’d have to gang up on our ships twelve to one to have the same effect we’ll have on them.”

  He grunted, “And if they do that, we’ll lose at least seven ships, and four more in the second round of plasma exchange.”

  I frowned, “They’ll hurt us, no doubt, but we’ll beat them by a wide margin this time. Maybe not like the Stolavii, but close.”

  “Unless they manage to pull out another surprise, suppose half their fleet skips and surrounds us. Then no matter what direction we run in half their fleet will be taking out one of our ships ever few seconds.”

  Well, fuck, I hadn’t thought of that. Hopefully the enemy won’t either, in the heat of battle they might not notice how limited and defined our protections are.

  Planning on hope was a terrible idea, but the only other option was to sacrifice our ship yards, and take the fight back to them in two weeks once our secret build system had finished sixty scout-destroyers.

  Shit.

  I said, “If that happens, we’ll cloak and run, and hide the fleet from them for two weeks. When our scout-destroyers are finished building, we’ll kick their ass. I hate to sacrifice another third of our building capacity, but we’ll lose them anyway if our fleet is destroyed. We can always rebuild them once we have those thirty scout destroyers, and that will put our current building plans for the fleet another three months behind, but that’s better than sacrificing lives for no reason. We’ll just have to hope they don’t think of that in the heat of battle, after all, they don’t know how limited our defense options are, not like you do.”

  We were already a few months behind having to rebuild the yards around Vehiri once the danger had passed, if the danger passes. It would be a few months more. Still, we’d still have our fleet of six battleships, fifteen cruisers, and six hundred scout-destroyers, it just wouldn’t be in two months anymore. Even just sixty scout destroyers would solidify our defense against anything or anyone else in empire defined space.

  I just hoped that didn’t happen, and we didn’t lose here, even if we could expect some casualties. Maybe the Suaterans would even talk to us again and be reasonable if we won this round, but I didn’t thi
nk I was that lucky. Lucky in love, but it had always been perseverance, tactics, and ability that kept me alive in violent situations.

  Fuck!

  “Orbs.”

  Vik raised an eyebrow, and I laughed.

  “We’re using them as a few hundred fake ships right now only, because we thought the shielded missiles were all the edge we’d need. But, we have thousands of orbs, and over two hundred A.I.s now without a ship. The orbs can close with the Suateran ships, and only uncloak and explode when they’re just a second or so from impact. Think of them like shielded missiles, but with a cloak of their own.

  “So, we run, and fire our plasma weapons, same plan as before, but add in thousands of multi-function orbs and we can annihilate them in few seconds, instead of almost a full thirty seconds.”

  Vik frowned, “They have two more fleets out there, what do we do next time?”

  “What do you suggest?” I asked.

  “Let’s go with our last plan, I think you’re right, they may not divine how limited our protection is in the thirty seconds of battle that we’re anticipating. But, just in case they do, we’ll put a few thousand cloaked orbs around the shipyards, and if they do think to surround us we’ll cloak and run. They won’t be expecting further trouble when they move in to destroy the shipyards. If, and only if it gets to that point, will the orbs be used. Otherwise we should hold them back for if there are further attacks.”

  I nodded, “That makes sense, if our plan does work this time, it’s a one-time thing. The rest of their fleet will analyze the data, and figure out how jury rigged and limited our protection against DE beams are on these ships. The next fight they’d definitely surround us with skips, we’ll need the edge of the orbs if it comes to another fight.”

  Vik said, “Exactly, let’s get some sleep, and go over our plans again tomorrow. Maybe with a fresh look and being rested we’ll figure out something else as well.”

  I couldn’t argue with that, nor did I argue with Vik when he grabbed my hand, and pulled me into his quarters…

  Chapter Sixteen

  “You’re beautiful my love, you know that?”

  We’d just spent the night together, not to mention the wakeup call he just gave me. I was currently pasted against his side with my head on his shoulder. I felt warm, content, and my body was humming with post-coital bliss, even the soreness felt delicious.

  I smirked playfully, “I’m already in your bed, remember?”

  He snorted, and stole a soft lingering kiss that made my body melt against him, and my heart soared.

  “Thank you,” I blushed, “What brought that on? Not that I mind.”

  He shrugged, “I don’t tell you enough, just how much you mean to me.”

  I kissed his shoulder, and said softly, “I love you too.”

  I giggled, when he slid off the bed, pulling me with him, and scooped me up and carried me to the shower. He was affectionate, and loving as we cleaned each other up, and then it all ended as we joined the others for breakfast. I understood though, out here he was the admiral of the fleet, and in charge. It could have been worse, at least he didn’t demand formality.

  The first thing we did after breakfast, was recap the plan we’d come up with, late night yesterday.

  Vik asked, “Any other ideas, or changes that might be better?”

  I shook my head, “No, but we should team up our people in fours this morning, and have the A.I.s create a few simulations. It’s an entirely new tactic, a little practice wouldn’t hurt. Then we can let them rest about six in the evening until the enemy arrives. Which should be the middle of the night if they don’t slow down.”

  Jillintara nodded, “We can also assign all the targets to the different groups, so there’s no overlap in effort. The weapons officer on each ship will be fed a red enemy ship, the rest yellow until it’s destroyed, then their second target will turn red, and finally the third. They’ll know which one to lock onto and fire at. We can get that data compiled almost as fast as it comes in, so a second or two after they de-cloak.”

  Telidur asked, “Should we bother cloaking most of the fleet, will they fall for that a second time?”

  Vik tilted his head, “Can we set up a missile malfunction? One they’d detect?”

  I frowned, “A realistic one? Probably, why?”

  Vik said, “The best, or perhaps simplest plan, would be to sucker them in extremely close, so we can retreat and have several minutes, many times the amount of time we need, to blast them with plasma. Even if they don’t chase us. But… it’s not realistic, I don’t think that plan has much chance of success, not after the blitz attack that was tried and failed yesterday.

  “Instead, let’s show our whole force of a hundred and fifty ships, in a defensive formation a few light minutes in front of the planet and build yards. We don’t have to be too close to them, because we have the multi-function orbs as the last line of defense there. Now, the missiles will be powered down and impossible to see two light minutes further past us.”

  He paused a moment, to let us absorb that layout of assets.

  “If we simulate a missile failure of some kind, the Suaterans will assume we’re the bait, and the missiles are our hidden trap to be fired at them once they de-cloak right past there, to surprise them from behind. They’ll stop and de-cloak earlier, to take out the missiles, which we’ll launch at them as a distraction.

  “The real plan at that point, is we accelerate at them at two hundred gravities to go meet them, and as soon as we hit plasma weapons range, several minutes later, we start reverse accelerating for the rigged DE shields, and have plenty of time, more than enough time, to blast them all.”

  I nodded, “So the whole point is so they don’t de-cloak at the very edge of weapons range, where accelerating away would be detrimental and desperate, but still needed. After accelerating so long, we’d still be going towards them for quite a long time before stopping and actually moving away from them.”

  It wasn’t perfect, but it would have to do, given our limitations on shielding against dark energy beams. I could think of a lot of things that could go wrong, mostly because of that damned skip system, but if the plan failed spectacularly, I was confident the multi-function orbs would take them out easily enough.

  Vik grunted, “Exactly, we’ll have far more than the thirty seconds we need to overcome their fleet one of three pieces at a time, while at the same time having the best protection from their weapons.”

  He asked, “Anything else?”

  No one said anything.

  Vik ordered, “Good. We have a plan for the battle, and for training the fleet on it today, let’s go make it happen and disseminate the orders, and make the assignments. I’ll update the empress.”

  We all got up from the table, and went to the bridge. It was going to be a long day, and I’d need to run that simulation a few times myself.

  A part of me wondered, will we ever be done paying the price for Denik’s ambition and stupidity? A dangerous combination. On the good side, at least the Suaterans had no inclination to attack or try and rule over the planets themselves.

  Jillintara reported later that afternoon, “All weapons officers and pilots have completed the sims at least adequately. Some had alignment issues at first, and kept firing through the gravity field of other ships throwing off their targeting, but we got it worked out.”

  It was true enough, the protective field was long, and faced toward the enemy, with the plasma weapons on the sides of the ship and firing backwards at an angle. That meant we needed to set up complicated fields of fire to maximize effectiveness in a finicky situation. It was a pain in the ass, but not impossible, or even hard after a little practice. Of course, our own fields would blink off for the micro-second it took a plasma pulse to clear the field, that was already in the software for normal ship operations.

  Vik grunted, “Teams?”

  Jillintara said, “The battle will be fluid, and we may lose some ships and need to shuf
fle assignments. We decided to make the teams dynamic when we assign targets. That way everyone will only have to worry about their assigned targets, and keeping their own ship safe.”

  Vik nodded, “Alright, stand down the fleet until three in the morning, I want everyone as sharp as possible. As it is, we might be waiting a while after that anyway.”

  It was a long day, but we’d practiced, got it all set up, and were deployed how we needed to be deployed. At that point, all we had to do was wait for the enemy to show up, and hope our plan would work…

  Chapter Seventeen

  The battle was long on preparation and waiting, but very short once it finally rolled around. It was close to four in the morning when it started.

  Jillintara reported, “Sir, the Suateran fleet has de-cloaked five light seconds from the missiles.”

  Vik frowned and looked at me.

  I shrugged, so much for our battle plan, not even the first part went as planned.

  “They’re operators must have been asleep, or their sensors aren’t as sensitive as ours. Maybe they didn’t see the missiles until now.”

  Vik sighed, “Launch them. And get us moving forward.”

  “Aye, sir,” Telidur and Jillintara replied at the same time.

  Thousands of shielded missiles powered on and jumped for their fleet.

  Jillintara said, “Fifteen seconds until impact.”

  My board lit up with targets, most of them yellow, with one red one. That was pretty fast.

  Lyra said, “Assignments complete sir.”

  The Suateran fleet blurred two seconds before missile impact, I should have seen that coming. The crazy switch finally flipped, and I felt icy and extremely focused on the battle, instead of on all the things that could go wrong, or all the people that would die.