EMPIRE: Conqueror (EMPIRE SERIES Book 6)

by Richard F. Weyand

  “Yes, Ma’am. But only with the hypergate-equipped cruisers. Not the battleships. The mass is too high for the small projectors.”

  “I love this. I really do. Have we been drilling this, Amie?”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” Rear Admiral Amie Forrest said. “All formations have been drilling the exercises from the Imperial Navy tactical department on Sintar, and they have a whole array of battlespace tactics like that using this new capability.”

  “I’ve been back and forth through that set of maneuvers. I think it’s going to be really important against the Democracy of Planets, and something they won’t be expecting, which is always nice. Have our flag officers and their tactical officers been studying those as well?”

  “Yes, Ma’am. The flag tactical officers have all reported their commanders are up to speed on these maneuvers.”

  “OK. Good. Let’s send out a reminder to everyone to review them, now that all our ships are upgraded. Remember, the latest advice from Sintar is a war warning. We only have a couple weeks before this whole thing goes up.”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  The DP Prepares

  Harold Pinter, prime minister of the Democracy of Planets, was meeting with his defense minister, Pavel Isaev. The Parliament was due back in just over a week, and Pinter’s government couldn’t delay the war vote any longer if they wanted to stay in power.

  “Where are we at, Pavel? Are we ready?” Pinter asked.

  “Yes, Harold. We’re all set. A couple of formations are still a day or two out from their debark points, but they have plenty of time to get in position and topped off.”

  “You’re not worried Sintar will hit our formations at their debark points?”

  “No, because the war vote hasn’t happened yet. The Emperor didn’t hit the Alliance until after the war vote was taken. He also didn’t hit Admiral Ito’s force until after it crossed the border. So far he’s been pretty scrupulous about stuff like that. So I think he won’t cross our border until the war vote passes. After that, though, it’s open season.”

  “And you’re far enough back from the border our formations will be in hyperspace and under way before they can get there?”

  “Yes. No problem there.”

  “And what’s our overall situation? I know you’ve told me most of it, Pavel, but I want to hear it again. All of it.”

  “Sure, Harold. We have six and a quarter million new-design warships, plus about one million four hundred thousand old-design warships. That’s down by the hundred thousand ships Admiral Ito lost in Jasmine.

  “Sintar, as far as we know, has all their one million four hundred thousand old-design warships remaining, plus they have been building new-design ships for four and a half years now. If they are building a million ships a year, they should have about six million warships total, the old-design ones they started with plus four and a half million new-design ships.”

  “So we match them on old-design ships, and we outnumber them on the new-design ships?”

  “By about forty percent. Yes. Also, we think their new-design ships are smaller than ours, class for class.”

  “Why do we think that? We haven’t seen their new ships yet, have we?”

  “No, but what we also haven’t seen is a huge recruiting push for additional spacers. Sure, they advertise ‘Join the Navy’ and that kind of thing, but they’re not offering incentives like we are. So they don’t have our manpower requirements.”

  “Which means their ships are smaller.”

  “Exactly. It also means their new-design ships probably don’t have multiple impellers. We have them outgunned, all across the board.”

  “What about those box launchers, Pavel?”

  “Well, we’ve copied that, and we have box launchers, too, now. We would most likely use them in the missile defense role, and use the impeller missiles to target ships. The faster impeller-launched missiles are harder to defend against, and that’s all there is to it. Our impeller-launched missiles against their slow box-launched missiles? Not a problem. Don’t forget all the additional point-defense lasers in our new construction.”

  “What about reports they have some sort of ECM on their missiles?”

  “We actually got some recordings of what they were doing when they attacked the mustering points and Alliance capitals. Those ships the Alliance bought from us were broadcasting info to us before the ships were destroyed. Our guys have figured out Sintar’s ECM and they re-jiggered the software to sidestep it. It was some pretty simple stuff when you get down to it.”

  “OK. Good. I worried about that. And their super weapon?”

  “We have that one figured out, too. It’s the damnedest thing, Harold. When you down-transition really close to a planet, atoms that are normally stable just come apart. Anything farther down the periodic table than iron or so, the nuclei become unstable and break apart.”

  “They fission?”

  “Yes. Even atoms that aren’t considered fissionable under normal circumstances. They all just come apart. That’s where the energy comes from. So we have that weapon now as well, though I don’t suggest we use it.”

  “Why not?”

  “To most reasonable people, it would be considered a nuclear weapon, which means it’s a Treaty of Earth violation, at least when used against planetary or commercial targets. Sintar didn’t violate the treaty during the Sintar-Alliance War except with regard to Annalia, Berinia, and Garland, and that was after they had voluntarily withdrawn under the first-use provision. So if we make no first use, I don’t think he will either. Besides, they’re a bugger to defend against.”

  “That makes sense.”

  Pinter stared at the coffee table in his office as he consulted his notes.

  “You didn’t mention the picket ships, Pavel. What about those?”

  “We think they’re building picket ships at about the same rate as the warships. A million a year or so. And they lost at least six hundred thousand of them in the Sintar-Alliance War and at Jasmine. So they may have close to four million of them left. We don’t have a similar ship, but we learned a lot during the Sintar-Alliance War about their vulnerabilities. Especially against coordinated point-defense. Again, don’t forget all those additional point-defense lasers in our new construction.”

  “What about in hyperspace?”

  “We have a little trick up our sleeve there, too. We figured out how to launch missiles in hyperspace.”

  “I didn’t think that was possible.”

  “It’s not, but it is. There are two issues. One is that when you launch a missile, until its drive lights off it’s at zero acceleration. Blip. It drops out of hyperspace. The second is that everything in hyperspace goes the same speed, no matter how hard you accelerate.

  “But that’s not quite true. It goes a little faster. Not much, but enough to build a bit of separation. In normal space you wouldn’t want something like that blowing up so close to your ship, because you would ram the debris. But the debris isn’t accelerating, so...”

  “It drops out of hyperspace before you ram it. Got it. What about zero acceleration before it lights off its drive?”

  “We light the drive while it’s still in the impeller.”

  “Can you do that?”

  “Oh, yes. It’s not good for the impeller, and repeated use will wear out the impeller tube much faster, which is why nobody ever does it, but it’s better than getting rammed and blowing up. If the war drags on, we’re going to have problems with impeller tubes, but we also have redundant tubes on the ships. Nevertheless, having the war not drag on would be good.”

  “OK. I can see that. All right. Thanks, Pavel. It makes me feel better about our chances.”

  “You’re welcome. And thank you, Harold, for holding up the vote as long as you did. It gave me time to light a fire under some people and get some of these issues addressed. Five or six months ago it would have been a very different story.”

  “I’ll be fine, Ma,” James Towne assure
d his mother as they stood outside the bus at the bus stop in downtown Pine Hollow. The downtown was only six blocks long along the main street, but it was all the downtown the small town needed.

  “I just worry about you up there, with a war comin’ and all.”

  “The war’s gonna be a long ways away from here, Ma. It took em’ weeks to even get there from here. That’s why I had time off to come home for a while.”

  “You take care, Jimmy,” Jeannie Jones said.

  His girl had come along with his mother to see him off. Jimmy had his free arm around her, and he grabbed her butt – on the side way from his mother, of course – as he kissed her goodbye.

  “I’ll be good, Jeannie. Another six months spaceside and I’m done, with enough saved up to get married. So you wait for me, girl.”

  “I will, Jimmy. I’ll be here.”

  “You see that you are.”

  “Let’s get aboard now, son,” the bus driver said.

  Towne got one more quick peck from both his mother and his girl before getting on the bus. It was four hours to Knoxville, the planetary capital of Lorne in the Fremd District of the Democracy of Planets. From the airport there he would take a shuttle up to the huge military supply station in orbit, where he was a civilian contract freight handler.

  They had been busy for months transferring supplies to the big warships, one after another, that stopped at Lorne. But those warships had all spaced for the distant frontier with the Sintaran Empire, and he had had two weeks off to go home. Now it was back to work. One last six-month stint, and then he would come home and marry Jeannie Jones in the little church down the street from the bus station.

  Space duty paid really well – much better than anything in Pine Hollow – and when he came back, he’d have enough for a down payment on a house, with enough extra to start his own business downtown.

  DPN Fleet Admiral Conrad Benton considered his tactical display with satisfaction. His ten formations totaled almost two hundred thousand ships, with each formation mustering in a different system to spread out the risk.

  More to the point, his fleet was just one of twenty such that would sail for Sintar as soon as the war vote passed. They would enter Sintaran space close enough to each other to be able to support each other’s operations, no more than four days’ spacing – about two hundred light-years – apart.

  The invasion route lay through Annalia, Berinia, and Terre Autre. Sintar would see them coming a couple days out, but that was OK. Maybe Sintar would see reason when they saw four million warships heading their way.

  If not, that was OK with Benton, too. These new ships were amazing. Half a dozen missile impellers, twice as many point-defense lasers in each ship class as the old designs, and they had the new capability of firing missiles in hyperspace.

  So if Sintar wanted a war, that was just fine with him. He’d been friends with Daisuke Ito. It was about time for some of these Sintaran bastards to lose a few friends and see how it felt.

  His chief of staff, Admiral Brian Grant, walked up alongside him on the VR flag bridge and looked into the plot.

  “Pretty amazing, isn’t it, Sir.”

  “I’ll say, Brian. Twenty thousand ships, times ten locations, times twenty such fleets. Four million warships. And all new-design units. What a sight.”

  “That’s like half our fleet strength, isn’t it, Sir? Are you at all worried we’re uncovered at home?”

  “The enemy’s out there, Brian. You can’t use ships you don’t bring along. There’s as many warships left at home as we had five years ago, and, unlike five years ago, most of them are new-design ships as well.”

  “Yes, Sir. Good point.”

  Rear Admiral Dorothy Conroy waited in restricted VR channel R-1327 for the Emperor and Admiral Leicester. She could see where the DP had mustered, knew their tonnages, and knew what their attack plan likely was. Time to brief the powers that be.

  The Emperor and Admiral Leicester popped into existence in the hyperspace map room.

  “Good afternoon, Admiral Conroy,” Dunham said.

  “Good afternoon, Sire. Admiral Leicester. I have a final disposition for you now.”

  Conroy turned to the map.

  “Enlarge one-oh-two.”

  Annalia and Berinia, and Terre Autre to their south, moved to the center and enlarged to fill their view, then rotated so they were looking through the border toward the Democracy of Planets, rather than it being on the right.

  “Highlight DP debark points.”

  Two hundred points glowed in the map, more or less evenly distributed behind the DP’s border with its satellites.

  “They have divided their forces across these two hundred systems. The tonnage numbers are about equal for the two hundred systems, near as we can tell. Those tonnage numbers would suggest forty thousand ships in each location, for a total of eight million warships. If we assume these are all new-build warships, and we correct those numbers by a factor of two for the larger ship designs we suspect, then we get about twenty thousand ships in each location, for a total of four million warships.”

  “It looks to me, Admiral Leicester,” Dunham said, “as if they have closer to the high end of our estimates – eight million warships – and have committed half of them to their opening offensive.”

  “Agreed, Sire. That would make sense. Why would they attack us through these other nations, though? Granted, they’re occupied now, but why sit that far back when they could be closer?”

  “Why attack through their satellites, Admiral Leicester? One reason is if we push them back, we’re not fighting in their territory. Their systems don’t get tore up, these guys’ do. Another reason is maybe they figure we’ll see them coming anyway, so it gives us more time to decide whether we really want a war or not. Given they have offered us no way to disengage, though, I don’t see how that is supposed to work.”

  “Indeed, Sire. I guess they expect us to come begging to them for peace.”

  “Fat chance,” Dunham said. “OK, Admiral Leicester. Let’s implement Operation Houdini, Operation Cupboard, and Operation Roaches as soon as they have the war vote – assuming it passes – and their ships begin moving out of their mustering points.”

  “Admiral Conroy, you’ll need to let us know when they move, as well as keep us abreast of the relevant ship movements for Operation Houdini and Operation Roaches.”

  “Of course, Sir.”

  “And let’s issue spacing advisories, Admiral Leicester,” Dunham said. “No sense letting our merchant marine hang out to dry.”

  “Of course, Sire.”

  “Very well, Admiral Leicester. You have the required Imperial authority for those operations. I will send you the necessary Imperial Decrees to that effect. Keep me informed of events.”

  “Of course, Sire.”

  With that, Dunham dropped off the channel.

  Leicester turned to Conroy.

  “Nice work, Admiral Conroy.”

  “Thank you, Sir.”

  Then Leicester dropped off the channel.

  Harold Pinter was winding up his speech to the Parliament, re-convened after the summer break.

  “And so, my fellow members, this government will support the war vote. Now that we have the Navy that this government has strengthened in response to Sintar’s aggressive moves. Now that our Navy has technical superiority. Now that our Navy has numerical superiority. Yes, now we will support this war vote, so we might teach Sintar the consequences of its actions, the price it must pay for its national delinquency.”

  He sat down to cheers, and the war vote was taken. It passed overwhelmingly.

  The signal went out to the fleets.

  First Moves

  Fleet Admiral Benton reviewed his orders. All as expected and briefed, nothing new.

  “All right, Brian,” Benton said to his chief of staff, “let’s get us under way. And make sure everybody gets a reminder before transitioning into hyperspace to watch for those picket ship attacks.
We have the sensor recordings. Everybody should know what they look like now.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “And ask them to review the response options now. There won’t be time to do it later.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  The war vote of the Parliament of the Democracy of Planets was public in the DP, and the Imperial Palace got word of it. Rear Admiral Dorothy Conroy had heard about it, and it was all hands on deck in the hyperspace map room.

  Conroy saw the hyperspace trails begin from the two hundred mustering points of the DP forces behind the Annalia-Berinia-Terre Autre border with the DP.

  “All right. Let’s get mapping started on those forces. Let’s also see if we can follow the freighters outbound from those mustering points. I want courses, destinations, times. It’s OK to put big uncertainties on things early, but let’s not just say we don’t know yet. All right, everybody?”

  Conroy sent mail to Leicester. The DP forces were on the move.

  Leicester was waiting for Conroy’s mail. It was two in the morning in Imperial City, but that didn’t mean he was asleep. Not tonight.

  When the mail came in from the hyperspace map room, Leicester sent it on to Fleet Admiral Stepan Cernik, the head of the Imperial Navy tactical department. He also sent a mail to the fleet communications center.

  The orders went out.

  Operation Cupboard. Operation Houdini. Operation Roaches.

  The orders also went out to move forces into position for Operation Hammerblow.

  Just in case.

  Leicester also sent a mail to the Emperor.

  The Emperor and the Empress were also up. Dunham and Peters sat in their private living room, he in his normal position on one end of the sofa, she on the other end. They knew the DP had voted for war – that news had come early this evening. Now they were waiting to hear the DP forces were in hyperspace and heading for the Empire.