Imperative - eARC

by Steve White

  *

  “As predicted, Destoshaz’at, the griarfeksh survivors are withdrawing toward the warp point where they intend to escape.”

  “Naturally.” Zum’ref studied the system-scale plot. The local sun still lay well ahead and to the right, as he viewed it, with the enemy’s escape-hatch warp point dead ahead, still at a distance of five-sixths the total separation between the two warp points. Given the pace at which they were herding the demoralized rabble that had been a fleet, it would be a while yet before he surprised them by changing his van’s course. That surprise would be nothing, he thought, compared to the surprise that would follow.

  The plot sparkled with the icons of warp points and planets. The humans, of course would have similar displays. But his eyes lingered over an icon that would be absent from theirs…

  *

  Home Hive Two A now shone whitely to starboard at a distance of only ten light-minutes. Almost directly opposite, though dropping astern, was the system’s third planet, once a pullulating mass of Bugs. It was so close—less than two light-minutes—that its moon was a naked-eye object.

  Chandra Konievitsky had eyes for neither. She sat slumped in her command chair, worn down by strain and exhaustion and nerve-shattering intervals of battle, bowed under the weight of unanticipated responsibility.

  She was struggling to resist the siren song of lethargy when her flag bridge’s communications officer spoke up excitedly, in tones she hadn’t heard from anyone in Second Fleet in a while.

  “Admiral! It’s a hail from the Orpheus-1 warp point. Admiral Trevayne has entered the system!”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  TRNS Li Han had barely transited from Orpheus-1 to Home Hive Two when Ian Trevayne became aware that something had gone horribly, impossibly wrong.

  His advance guard had already picked up disjointed, almost hysterical signals that had winged across more than twenty light-minutes, and now Trevayne received a flood of reports. Cyrus Waldeck dead…Second Fleet’s awesome array of devastators and superdevastators wiped out…the rest of the fleet trying to fight back in the teeth of unimaginable disaster, under what was left of a decapitated command structure…

  “I want the rest of the fleet through the warp point slightly more quickly than possible,” he snapped to Captain Elaine De Mornay, his chief of staff, in a voice he hoped would dispel the pall of shock on the flag bridge. “Scrap all safety guidelines for transits except the ultimate emergency ones. And,” he added, turning to his Intelligence officer, “Andreas, I want a full briefing as soon as you can sort out all these reports and make sense of them.”

  “Uh, yes, Admiral,” said Andreas Hagen in an unsteady voice that gradually firmed up. “I’ll get right on it.”

  “And,” Trevayne continued, turning back to the chief of staff, “have communications raise this Vice Admiral, er, Konievitsky. I want to personally assure her that we’re on the way.”

  *

  There was, of course no time to bring the various senior admirals aboard in the flesh for the briefing. But Li Han’s Intelligence center included a briefing room set up for multiple holographic hookup. So Trevayne, De Mornay, and Captain Hugo Allende, the flag captain, sat as part of an audience otherwise composed of images from other ships.

  One of the latter was his wife. There had been much reorganization over the past several months. Originally, Li Han had served triple duty: Trevayne’s flagship as overall fleet commander, Magda’s as commander of Task Force 14.1, and Adrian M’Zangwe’s as commander of the Terran Republic’s component of the task force. After Waldeck’s departure from Tangri space with Task Force 14.2, Trevayne had split off a second task force, with Magda commanding it from the monitor TRNS Hangchow, and M’Zangwe commanding a Terran Republic task group under her. The reorganization had proliferated enroute as the Terran Republic/Rim Federation TF 14.1 had collected elements of the PSU navy and its Ophiuchi allies that had been too late to join Waldeck. As the bureaucracy had more pressing matters on its mind at the moment than rearranging organization charts, Trevayne had taken a high hand in doing it on his own, and had taken to referring to his swollen command as “Combined Fleet.” At least the passage had given him time to shake it all down into a cohesive fighting force—or so he hoped.

  He would have liked to have had Magda, and not just an electronic wraith of her, sitting beside him just now.

  Andreas Hagen cleared his throat and began. “Admiral, we’ve been able to reach certain conclusions about what has happened to Second Fleet—although I frankly can’t even speculate as to how it happened.

  “First of all, Second Fleet’s entire complement of devastators and superdevastators was wiped out at an early stage of the battle.” He paused to let that sink in. The rumor had, of course, already gotten out, but no one had really believed it. “Whatever destroyed them was undetectable until it stuck, and when it did strike, the target ship was simply consumed by an internal explosion of devastating force.”

  “Sabotage?” speculated M’Zangwe. Seeing some of the looks he was getting from his fellow holo images, he continued a bit defensively. “Well, Admiral Waldeck did have Arduan personnel in his command. And we know about their indifference to death—or discarnation, as they regard it.”

  “It seems highly improbable, Admiral,” said Hagen. “Arduans of the original Dispersate are hardly likely to feel any attachment to the Kaituni—who, as our information from Zephrain makes clear, regard them as traitors and heretics, fit for extermination.”

  “But,” M’Zangwe persisted, “we know there’s been an ongoing investigation into the possibility of a fifth column among the First Dispersate Destoshaz.”

  “True, Admiral. But according to our latest communications, Captain Wethermere is inclined to skepticism about it. Furthermore, the only leads he had pointed to the Rim Federation and possibly the Terran Republic. There was no indication of any penetration of the PSU.”

  “Quite,” said Trevayne firmly. “I’m going to rule that out. Continue, Andreas.”

  “Secondly, it was only the devastators and superdevastators that were destroyed in this manner. All of Second Fleet’s subsequent losses have resulted from combat of a conventional nature. The Kaituni evidently have been targeting the supermonitors, our largest remaining ships—but they’ve been doing it as you’d expect, with their heavy superdreadnoughts and suicide fighters.”

  So, thought Trevayne, our largest and strongest ships are also our most vulnerable ones. It makes no sense whatsoever. For now, I must simply accept it as a fact, and try to wring whatever advantage I can from the knowledge.

  “Thirdly,” Hagen resumed, “there are indications that in the subsequent fighting the Kaituni have withheld certain of their monitors. From this, we infer that these ships are particularly valuable.”

  “Or,” said Magda, “that they’re less useful against Second Fleet’s surviving ships. Which suggests to me that they’re somehow connected to the weapon that…did what was done to Cyrus’ biggest ships.”

  “That occurred to us as well, Admiral. The data from the battle are understandably somewhat confused and incomplete. But our analysis of those data suggest that the destruction took place when the devastators and superdevastators were within heavy missile ranges of the Kaituni monitors—which, in fact, they were subjecting to a long-range bombardment—but outside gee-beam range.”

  There was an interval of glum silence. Then Allende turned to Trevayne and cleared his throat.

  “Admiral, may I make a suggestion?”

  “Certainly, Captain.”

  “I respectfully recommend, Admiral, that before we come into contact with the enemy you transfer your flag.”

  For an instant, everyone but Trevayne looked stunned. It was an extraordinary thing for the captain of an undamaged flagship to say to his admiral. But Trevayne only nodded. The thought had been at the back of his own mind for several minutes.

  “The point is well taken. I will do so forthwith—to a smaller
ship. In the meantime, I have new orders for you, Commodore Allende.”

  “Captain Allende, sir.”

  “Commodore Allende,” Trevayne repeated in the tone of a man who didn’t expect to have to repeat himself again. “You will assume command of a special task group consisting of all of Combined Fleet’s devastators and superdevastators, and take them back to Pesthouse posthaste, there to await further orders.”

  A flabbergasted hubbub arose. Trevayne silenced it with a raised hand. “Yes, I know how much firepower they have. But we have to wake up to the fact that their firepower has just become unusable.”

  “But Ian,” Magda protested, “if Captain Hagen is right about them being safe from this…superweapon at extended missile range—”

  “—Then they may still have a role as stand-off missile platforms in warp-point defense actions,” And what an end for the proudest space warships ever conceived, Trevayne thought sadly. Glorified orbital forts! “But in a fluid action such as we’re going to be fighting here, we can’t rely on them maintaining that safety margin. And if they transgress it, they’re nothing but death traps for their crews.” He turned to the almost mutinous-looking Allende with a smile. “Yes, Hugo, I know how it seems: I’m ordering you to turn tail and run. That’s precisely why I’m putting it in the form of a direct order. I know you’d never do it otherwise. And it has to be done. Until we learn how to cope with this new weapon, those ships and their thousands of personnel can’t be put at risk.”

  “Understood, sir,” said Allende, subsiding a little.

  *

  The Terran Republic’s Olympia class of command superdreadnoughts was one of several classes, in three different space navies, named after historic wet-navy warships. TRNS Zeven Provinciën was the namesake of the legendary flagship of Michel Adriaanszoon de Ruyter, one of Horatio Nelson’s few challengers for the title of greatest fighting admiral ever to sail Old Terra’s seas. At any other time, that thought might have brought a wry smile to Ian Trevayne’s face as he was piped aboard her. Under the present circumstances, the only concern he could permit himself was whether her command-and-control facilities would be up to the task of welding the remains of Second Fleet into the already large and disparate force he led, and coordinating the entire agglomeration in battle.

  Hardly had he and his staff settled into the flag spaces—cramped compared to those to which he had become accustomed—when he ordered De Mornay to plan a holding action after contact with Second Fleet was established. The chief of staff—a dark-haired woman in her forties, no beauty but not unhandsome—frowned, and spoke with the upper-class accent of her homeworld of Lancelot.

  “Certainly, Admiral. But may I ask: why just a holding action? Between Combined Fleet and the remnants of Second Fleet, they have only a small edge over us in numbers. And even without our devastators and superdevastators, our supermonitors are heavier than anything they possess. And Combined Fleet hasn’t expended any of its depletable munitions. This could be a chance crush them—to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, as people say.”

  Trevayne smiled inwardly. Lancelot’s nobility produced more than their share of the Terran Republic’s military officers, and their élan could never be faulted. Indeed, it sometimes had to be reined in. “Two reasons, Elaine. First of all, the Second Fleet elements are going to be operating below maximum efficiency due to demoralization, weariness, shredded chains of command, and the disruptive fact that they’re going to be in the process of being integrated into Combined Fleet’s organization. Second, and more importantly, I think Cyrus Waldeck was correct in his supposition that he was only facing part of the Kaituni fleet from Alowan. If there’s any truth to the intelligence reports on the size of that armada—seven Dispersates’ worth—then there simply isn’t enough here to account for it. Less than half, in fact. There must be more of it on the way. A great deal more. And if I were the Kaituni admiral I’d feign a retreat to lure us toward the Bug 06 warp point, so we’d be more than thirty light-minutes away from our own warp point of egress when the rest of his fleet arrives. No,” he concluded. “At the rate Second Fleet is withdrawing and we’re advancing, we should link up with them about here.” He used a light pencil to indicate a point on a system display, about twelve light-minutes from the Orpheus-1 warp point from which they’d emerged. “I have no intention of leaving this system until I have to, and I want to inflict as much damage on them as I can while we’re here. But I want us to be able to get out if we suddenly find ourselves faced with more than we can handle.”

  “Understood, sir.” De Mornay sounded only slightly wistful.

  *

  By the time the leading elements of Combined Fleet joined the running battle, Chandra Konievitsky was dead, immolated when a kamikaze fighter had smashed into her flagship.

  Trevayne wished he had known her; she had been thrust into an impossible situation, and had performed as honorably as anyone could have under the circumstances. But he could only make a note to recommend her for a posthumous decoration, and coordinate with Second Fleet’s senior surviving officer—a very junior Orion Great Claw of the Khan (rear admiral equivalent) named Threeenow’hakaaeea—as he flung Combined Fleet’s assets into the battle.

  He had sent his carriers ahead at their best speed, escorted by task groups of equally swift battlecruisers and heavy cruisers. His order of battle in the Tangri Pacification Force had included an ample carrier component, for dealing with the swift and elusive horse-head raiders. That, and the Ophiuchi task force that had joined him, gave him a very substantial fighter component, and even before his capital ships came up he ordered it into action. The Ophiuchi pilots lacked combat experience, but their innate aptitude made up for it. And the human pilots of the Terran Republic and the Rim Federation came from Tangri space as battle-hardened as any in existence. Between them, they used their rapid-firing energy torpedoes to slash through the Kaituni suicide fighters. Then he ordered mixed strikes that included heavy missile-armed fighters, against the Kaituni ships, with emphasis on the monitors.

  By this time, Combined Fleet’s capital ships were within extended missile range, and Trevayne ordered the supermonitors to commence barrage-firing with the salvo-capable missile batteries which they, alone among the ships he now had, were the only ships to mount. But he had relatively few supermonitors, for the same reason he had had relatively few of the devastator classes: they hadn’t really been the thing for chasing Tangri. So he ordered his lesser capital ships in closer, into the ranges where heavy ship-mounted energy torpedoes were most effective.

  It was that word “ranges”—plural—that was the basis of Trevayne’s tactical calculations. The repeating energy torpedo had become the dominant weapon for all ships below devastator size precisely because of its versatility. It assumed the functions of standard missiles, medium-to-short-range beams, and point defense, all in one relatively compact package. With modern datanets, the smaller ships were able to coordinate fire without having to juggle different weapon systems.

  And Trevayne was almost uniquely able to do so to best advantage, for his “first life” had been spent commanding ships no larger than monitors. To a greater extent than the current generation—or even relative old-timers like Cyrus Waldeck—he was not wedded to the concept of everything other than devastators and superdevastators as auxiliaries to those mammoth bombardment machines. As the battle wore on, and the space between the combatants became trellised with the blinding trails of star-hot plasma packages fired at various and ever-changing ranges, it was almost a homecoming for him. Like a boxer, he “bobbed and weaved,” keeping the Kaituni off balance by constantly shifting his increasingly well-coordinated base of unified firepower and engaging from whatever range would minimize his own vulnerabilities.

  Whenever a lull permitted, he communicated with Magda, whose appraisal of the situation was cautiously optimistic. “Our losses continue to mount, but the Second Fleet survivors have steadied, and the Kaituni losses are even heavier.”r />
  “I know,” Trevayne acknowledged. “But something keeps gnawing at the back of my mind.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The Kaituni aren’t trying to draw Combined Fleet back toward the Bug 06 warp point, through which I’m still firmly convinced that the fleets of at least four Dispersates must eventually come. I keep asking myself why. And I somehow doubt I’m going to like the answer.”

  *

  Zum’ref studied the system plot with satisfaction. The emergence of the second griarfeksh fleet into Home Hive Two had occurred much earlier than projected, suggesting that its admiral possessed the seniority and aggressiveness to cut through his species’ typical stultifying bureaucratic pomposity and delay. But its premature arrival had not seriously interfered with his plan. The first, ravaged fleet had continued its fighting withdrawal until it could join hands with what it imagined to be its saviors, so his own fleet was now where he had intended it to be at this point. Granted, his fleet was suffering losses at an unanticipated level, but they were expendable. And, Illudor willing, the new arrivals would in the end simply swell the Kaituni game bag.

  So his thoughts ran as he gazed at the icon which did not appear in his enemy’s system displays. It lay ahead and to the right at about ten light-minutes, forming a scalene triangle with his own fleet and the Oprheus-1 warp point.

  His ha’selnarshazi Intendant approached diffidently. “Destoshaz’at, has the decision been reached? The latest loss figures—”

  (Dismissiveness.) “Yes, I have decided.” He indicated the icon. “If we send only a few ships, as some have suggested, they might not draw the attention of the griarfeksh admiral. Conversely, if they did draw his attention, they wouldn’t have sufficient strength to prevent him from interfering with the plan.”

  “Which would only occur if he deduces what the plan is, if only in general way,” Inzep’fel demurred respectfully.