EMPIRE: Conqueror (EMPIRE SERIES Book 6)

by Richard F. Weyand

  “Bobby, I keep hearing all these operation names, and I haven’t inquired too much what’s what and which is which. I mean, I know the strategy generally, but what are these operations? Cupboard. Houdini. The rest.”

  “Operation Cupboard is to hit them behind the lines. Strike at their logistics. Keep them from being resupplied.”

  “OK. And Operation Houdini?”

  “The Imperial Navy disappears. We know where their forces are and where they’re going, so we just stay out of their way.”

  “And let them space around in the Empire?”

  “Of course, Amanda. What are they going to do? They can’t destroy civilian infrastructure, that’s against the Treaty of Earth.”

  “What about the spacedocks?”

  “Private commercial spacedocks, you mean? The Imperial Navy has no spacedocks.”

  “What about the fleet bases?”

  “Those are on the planet. They can’t bombard the planet, either. That’s against the Treaty of Earth.”

  “But they have no ships, Bobby. What do they do? Surrender?”

  “Of course. Prisoners of war are a burden on the enemy. They can’t just kill them. And they can’t move that many people. But they have to guard them.”

  “OK. So what’s Operation Leeches? There’s really like four operations, right? Roaches, Sitting Duck, Flying Duck, and what’s the other one?”

  “Pot Shot. Right. They’re all different ways we can bleed them.”

  “So what’s Operation Roaches?”

  “We take out their freighters. Anywhere and everywhere. We don’t let any supplies move forward to the fleets.”

  “Won’t they just use our supplies?”

  “They can’t, Amanda. First, the missiles aren’t compatible. Second, we don’t stock space-prepped food anymore. With no crews in space other than the carriers, why would we? And as far as missiles and reaction mass, we’ve been stockpiling all that in unnamed systems for months. There isn’t any of that stuff left at any of the fleet bases for them to appropriate.”

  “And Operation Sitting Duck?”

  Any time they detach a couple of squadrons – to hold a planet, say – we just wipe them out. Wave of picket ships, and they’re gone. No warning, no follow-up. Just ‘Where the hell did they go?’ Any time they dispatch a smaller force, we wipe it out.”

  “Ouch. That means every little job has to have a sufficient force to defend itself.”

  “Correct. Which means only the big jobs will get done. And even then, we will be whittling away at their attack forces.”

  “OK. And Operations Flying Duck and Pot Shot?”

  “Flying Duck is when we start attacking their forces in hyperspace. Some force is moving from here to there, we attack it in hyperspace with picket ships. We think they must have some sort of defense after watching the recordings of the Battle of Jasmine, so we have to figure out what that is and how to counter it.

  “Pot Shot is similar, but in normal space. We drop in on one of their forces, pop a dozen or two dozen or a hundred ships, and then we scoot out of there. But we don’t engage in a stand-up battle. Not without more information.”

  “So, what else is left. Oh, what’s Operation Hammerblow? Is that what I think it is?”

  “Yes, but only if they break the Treaty of Earth.”

  Dunham got a distant look for a moment, then was back in the hear-and-now.

  “OK, that was Leicester. The DP attack forces are moving out of their mustering positions and heading this way. He’s given the orders for our response.”

  “And now what?”

  “Oh, it’s a couple weeks before anything happens at this point. Everyone is in hyperspace moving to the attack, but none of them will be in position to do anything for weeks.”

  “Well, in that case, I’m going to bed.”

  “All right, Jay,” Fleet Admiral Espinoza said, “there it is. Here we go again.”

  “A rather different strategy this time, though, Ma’am.”

  “I’ll say. Last time we went after them. This time we’re playing hide-and-seek. So let’s get the orders out and get our formations moving.”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  All across the frontier with Annalia, Berinia, and Terre Autre, Imperial Navy formations formed up behind their projector ships and transitioned into hyperspace, leaving the inhabited star systems of the Empire for points unnamed and unknown.

  The new-design heavy cruisers were the only ships not to form up behind the big projector ships. They simply projected their own hypergates behind themselves, then drew their hypergates over themselves and disappeared.

  Freighters, too, both military and commercial, stripped the planets of the Empire lying along the invasion path of all the missiles and reaction mass available, and used the big commercial hypergates to transition into hyperspace and disappear.

  There were two other groups of Imperial Navy vessels under way once the war vote passed and the DP started moving.

  Four million picket ships, accompanied by a hundred thousand old-design light-cruiser tenders, had positioned themselves right on the border with the Democracy of Planets, in Pannia, Estvia, Cascade, Celestia, Nederling, and Preston. The picket ships lined up behind the light cruisers, which projected their hypergates for the picket ships to transition into hyperspace. The light cruisers then drew their hypergates over themselves and disappeared after them.

  The other group was more curious. At twelve widely dispersed locations up against the border, a single hypergate projector ship, with an escort force of five thousand picket ships and a hundred old-design light-cruiser tenders, also got under way. At each location, first the picket ships, then the light cruisers, and finally the hypergate projector ship transitioned into hyperspace and started forward into the Democracy of Planets.

  The hypergate projector ships were sluggish, being able to sustain no more than three-quarters of a gravity of acceleration. That was because they were running at their maximum loaded mass.

  Those twelve hypergate projector ships each carried, in nine containers latched to their stores racks, thirty thousand tons of sintered depleted uranium.

  Rear Admiral Conroy looked into the hyperspace map in awe. Never had she seen anything like this.

  There were the massive hyperspace traces of the invasion by the Democracy of Planets. Still crossing Annalia, Berinia, and Terre Autre, two hundred and forty billion tons of DP warships split among two hundred different hyperspace traces bore down on the Sintaran Empire.

  In front of that massive wave of warships, inside the Empire, tens of thousands of hyperspace traces scattered from the inhabited systems of the Empire.

  And there, on the border, a fog of tiny traces, barely visible even with the high density of scanning picket ships along the border, moved into the Democracy of Planets like smoke on a light breeze, dissipating as they passed out of view.

  She tore herself away from the view and faced her staff.

  “All right. Let’s get working on those freighter traces. I know we can only see them in groups of four or more, at least when they’re running light, but let’s start nailing those down. And look for the loaded ones, too. We might be able to see singles of those.”

  This meeting was in VR, in the small conference room simulation. With a war on, it was important to preserve as much of Admiral Leicester’s time as possible. Despite his location in the capital, in-person meetings would be few and far between for the duration.

  “Our status, Admiral Leicester?” Dunham asked.

  “In progress, Sire. All our forces are moving out of the way of the DP advance, while Operation Cupboard and Operation Roaches have set off.”

  “Excellent, Admiral Leicester. Are you getting what you need from Admiral Conroy?”

  “Yes, Sire. Data is coming in constantly now.”

  “And Operation Hammerblow, Admiral Leicester?”

  “Assets are moving into position in case of need, Sire.”

  �
�Excellent. I’ll let you get back to your business, Admiral Leicester.”

  As the Sintar border came inexorably closer, Democracy of Planets scanner crews were carefully monitoring their systems, searching for that hyperspace fog that would presage a Sintaran attack. The crews stood by to go to battle stations on a moment’s notice. No one wanted to be unprepared when the inevitable attacks came.

  The Imperial Navy, meanwhile, with all its assets on the move in hyperspace and at least ten days before any of the ships down-transitioned, gave its crews a week’s leave to visit home and relax before the conflict really got under way.

  All except for some of the Operation Cupboard and Operation Roaches crews. Their ships would down-transition in only days.

  When Kowalski came back from his week’s leave, the battle ensign of the Sintaran Empire was once again hanging in the enlisted mess.

  “I hate that damn thing,” he muttered to no one in particular. “It gives me the creeps.”

  Operation Cupboard

  The picket ships of Operation Cupboard headed into the Democracy of Planets along thousands of different routes. There were eighty thousand planets in the DP, and several thousand of them had orbital military facilities. These were the targets of Operation Cupboard.

  The first targets were encountered early, mere days into the war, while the DP invasion force had yet to even cross the Sintaran border.

  In the DP system of Caronne, a couple of divisions of old-design DP cruisers were on patrol, one of heavy cruisers and one of light cruisers. Well outside the normal transition distance for traffic coming into the system, and above the ecliptic, a single Sintaran light cruiser dropped out of hyperspace. It mapped the system, sent that map to its companion light cruisers half a light-year away, and then projected its hypergate, drew it over itself, and disappeared.

  “Go to battle stations,” Rear Admiral Brent Moore said.

  “Yes, Sir,” his chief of staff said.

  “And let’s go to maximum acceleration toward each other. Combine our forces sooner.”

  “That’s still going to take a while, Sir.”

  “Understood, but the closer we are to each other, the more we can support each other.”

  Moore thought about it a while longer, then decided.

  “Call our people back from leave. Let’s get the other two divisions active as well. As soon as we can.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  With the orders given, both of his divisions – the light cruisers and the heavy cruisers – went to 1.5 gravities’ acceleration toward each other. It would be hours before they were close enough to support each other with missile fire on an enemy, but you made do with what you had. He had just rotated one division out for R&R, and the new light cruiser division on patrol hadn’t rendezvoused with his heavy cruisers yet.

  On the planet, the crews of his other light cruiser and heavy cruiser divisions were being called back to their ships. Moore hadn’t yet gone to a war footing – keeping all ships in space – because there had been no action anywhere near Caronne, and no hyperspace traces headed for the planet picked up by his planetary scanning.

  “You think we’re going to have company, Sir?”

  “You saw that light cruiser pop in and back out. No transponder active, but he wasn’t one of ours, and there aren’t a lot of candidates left. I think he mapped us and sent that on to somebody, and the only reason to want to know where we are is to drop in on us. So let’s be somewhere else by the time they get here, and have all our forces in space.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  The Sintaran forces, however, were only half a light-year away, having snuck into position behind the hyperspace fog of several thousand picket ships. It was barely twenty minutes later that a hundred picket ships dropped out of hyperspace in two groups of fifty. Each group launched eighty missiles at one of Moore’s divisions. The DP crews fired missiles at the incoming missile storm, and destroyed many of them with point-defense lasers, but the DP defenses were ultimately overwhelmed and the DP cruisers destroyed.

  The DP cruisers were collateral damage, however. The crews of the picket ships turned their eyes to the big prizes, the military space station and large military spacedock in orbit about Caronne.

  The picket ships turned toward Caronne and accelerated toward the planet at their full ten gravities. Once in missile range, they fired their remaining six hundred and forty missiles. They targeted the one hundred new-design DP battleships under construction in the spacedocks, the four light cruisers and four heavy cruisers of Admiral Moore’s other two divisions docked at the station, the residence wheel of the spacedock, the spacedock structures themselves, the residence wheel of the massive space station, and the slower-rotating docking wheel of the space station.

  After that wave of missiles slammed into the orbital military facilities of Caronne and detonated, there was nothing left in their orbits but crazily spinning debris, large chunks of smashed ships, and bodies.

  Their work done, the picket ships accelerated away from the planet. The Sintaran light cruisers that had accompanied their charges projected hypergates for the picket ships to up-transition, then pulled their hypergates over themselves and disappeared.

  Half a light-year away, their Operation Cupboard attack group also transitioned into hyperspace, and they headed for their next destination.

  The geometry of the orbital military facilities in the Galad system was different than that in the Caronne system. The facilities were in a lower orbit, within reach of the total-fission weapons.

  One day, with no warning, the space station and spacedock facilities there began to glow, nearly red hot, then the residence wheels came apart under the stresses of their own rotation. As they broke up, the wildly unbalanced mass of the spinning partial wheel twisted and pulled at the spacedock structure until it, too, began to break up.

  The hundreds of incomplete new-design warships in their cradles were junk, the temper gone from their armor and structural members.

  Eventually, Operation Cupboard reached Lorne.

  Jimmy Towne was working when the attack came in. It was his job to move the twelve-foot by twelve-foot by eighty-foot containers out from the station and mount them on the ship in dock, or conversely to bring them in from re-supply freighters or planet-based shuttles that brought the supplies to the space station in the first place.

  Towne was out in his loader when the alarm came over the radio. The loader ran out on booms extending out from the docking wheel, alongside the ships in dock. He necessarily worked in vacuum, so the loader’s control cab was sealed, and had its own bottled air supply.

  The alarm didn’t say anything about what was going on, it was just an alarm tone. As he had been taught to do when an alarm sounded, he stopped his progress along the boom and clamped down on the rails so he wouldn’t come free. Whatever was going on, it was probably better staying with the station.

  Towne was looking out of the cab trying to figure out what was going on when the attack came in. The smallest ships he had ever seen, with an evil-looking front point. Where had he seen that before? A cross-point! That was the kind of arrows he used for hunting. Oh, this was going to be bad.

  The cab shook hard as one of the arrow-ships hit the residence wheel above his head. Then more impacts. Towne saw the residence wheel starting to come apart, then realized his own wheel, the docking wheel, was coming apart as well. Then an arrow-ship hit the ship he had been loading, several hundred feet down along its side. If its plasma bottle had been at pressure, the whole ship would have blown up, but instead it broke up in front of him.

  Towne turned and looked around. He was being thrust to one side now as the part of the docking wheel he was on was spinning away from the center of the debris. The universe spun around him every several seconds as the chunk of station he was on rotated.

  The hell with this. Time to get out of here.

  Towne released the clamps and moved down along the boom to the end. The force was grea
ter here, further from the center of the chunk of debris he was riding. Now, when to let go? More altitude and more velocity was better. he waited until the rotation had him swinging up away from the planet and in the orbital direction, then let go of the tracks completely. The loader was flung out and forward from the spinning chunk of debris that had been his portion of the docking wheel.

  The loader was still spinning a little, with its angular momentum from the spinning chunk of docking wheel. Every several seconds Towne had a view back toward the disintegrating space station. It was a fascinating and horrible scene. Millions, he knew, had died or were dying as he watched.

  And then he saw the missiles coming in.

  “Shit!”

  He ducked down into the bottom of the cab, to shield himself somewhat from the radiation. Blast wasn’t a big issue in vacuum, but radiation could be. It depended on how far he was away from the explosions. He had quite a velocity away from the main chunks of debris at this point, but it had only been twenty minutes or so since he let go of the boom.

  Flashes like lightning lit up the cab above him as the missiles went off. He stayed hunkered down until he was sure they had stopped. Once they had, he climbed back up into his operator’s seat and looked back at the station as it came around in his view again.

  All the bigger chunks of debris from the station were gone, shattered into pieces, including the piece he had been riding before he let go. He continued to watch for several more minutes, but the attack seemed to be over.

  Now what the hell did he do?

  Grimly, he turned the radio from channel to channel, but there was nothing on any of the channels, not even static. Hell, he didn’t even know if the thing was still working. He turned it to the emergency channel.

  “Hello? Is anybody out there? Anybody?”

  “Hello?”

  “Mrs. Towne. This is Jeannie Jones. Did you hear the news?”