Trial by Fire - eARC

by Charles E Gannon

  “Exactly. They’re going to draw down this salient’s security complement to come out after us, try to take us out on the streets, before we can conduct a frontal assault.”

  “But you said we’re not going to be assaulting frontally—”

  “Because we’re not even going to be on the streets. While they’re out looking for us, we’re going to be in the conduits under the streets, and under them. All the way into the heart of the Roach motel.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Presidential Palace, Jakarta, Earth

  Darzhee Kut bobbed when Urzueth Ragh pointed out the relayed sensor readings. “The human fleet is preparing to engage our own in cislunar space.”

  First Delegate Hu’urs Khraam swiveled towards him. “It is the expected melody, but how can you tell?”

  “They have discontinued the centrifugal spin of their habitation modules and are retracting the booms.”

  “Earlier than at Barnard’s Star. Do our tactical analysts anticipate differences in this engagement?”

  “Several, Hu’urs Khraam. Firstly, the human force is much larger than ours on this occasion, and the ships are not second echelon or decommissioned craft. It is the gathered cream of their several fleets, both in terms of hulls and personnel. Secondly, this time they are moving faster than we are, yet their trajectory will allow them to use Earth’s gravity to pull them tight around the planet and strike us again. Or, by changing when and how much they boost, they could use that gravity to slingshot them out of cislunar space at extreme velocity.”

  “So they have far more control over whether there will be a second firing pass, a second phase to the engagement.”

  “Your pitch is perfect, Esteemed Hu’urs Khraam. They can either run and minimize their losses if things do not go well—”

  “—Or come around to finish us off if the first engagement has gone in their favor.”

  “Regrettably true, First Delegate. But I do not impugn our planning. We presumed that they had no such forces left. There was no reason for us to fear or refrain from being so deep in Earth’s gravity well.”

  “You sing a soothing song, and I appreciate it, Urzueth Ragh, but I will have no lullabies. This was my doing. I was not cautious enough in our deployment. I split the fleet, and allowed us to sink deep into this gravity well, for which we will now pay. The force we have sent to meet the humans labors against Earth’s pull, while the rest of our ships must remain in close orbit, held fast by the planet’s heavy claws. Easy targets, should any of the human craft manage to engage us.”

  Darzhee Kut raised an objecting claw. “With respect, Hu’urs Khraam, your deployments were optimal for forcing a swift conclusion to a war of occupation—”

  “Perhaps, but those deployments were still wrong. Darzhee Kut, if you should find yourself burdened with the cares of the Wholenest in the years to come, I offer you the counsel of this day: in war, there is no surety. Now, no more on this. What other differences does the human fleet exhibit this time?”

  “It is early to tell, but sensors indicate a far higher ratio of drones. Almost five times as many as the humans had at Barnard’s Star.”

  “None of these differences sing in harmony with our hopes, Speaker Kut. How do you expect they will attack us?”

  Darzhee looked over at Caine, who was pointedly absorbed in the act of tying his left shoe; no help there. “We cannot be certain, Hu’urs Khraam, but we expect that they will salvo missiles at long range, probably several flights of them in close sequence. As we come to shorter range and pass each other, missiles launched then will be less effective, because they will have less time to acquire targets, maneuver, and track. This is when we can expect our greatest advantage.”

  “Because of our superior lasers?”

  “Yes, Hu’urs Khraam, and particularly because of the X-ray lasers that form the spine of our shift-cruisers. If we elect to spend their drives’ antimatter reserves to fully charge those spinal weapons, they will have a devastating effect upon the human ships, particularly at close range.”

  “And we are confident that the humans have no such system?”

  Again Darzhee Kut looked at Caine. The human’s right shoelace was now the object of his undivided attention. “Not within their hulls, Hu’urs Khraam. They do not have the engineering acumen necessary to generate and sustain the necessary power levels. However, as we saw at Barnard’s Star, they do have a special form of drone that can briefly mimic our spinal weapons: their single-use X-ray laser missiles.”

  “True, but our intelligence tells us that they do not have many of these systems. A handful at most. Five years ago, the human nations signed accords severely restricting the deployment of any weapon system that either uses nuclear weapons as warheads, or as power sources, as is the case with their X-ray laser drones.”

  “This is indeed what our intelligence told us.”

  “You are unconvinced?”

  “I am—uncertain, Hu’urs Khraam.”

  “Why?”

  “Because every time the humans make such accords with each other, they immediately begin violating them in secret.”

  “Agreed. But our information on these matters came from their own megacorporations. How could they be wrong? Do not the corporations produce the very drones of which we speak?”

  “Hu’urs Khraam, the weapons of which we speak are produced by a special subgroup of megacorporations, called the industrials.”

  “I cannot follow the melody you are trying to sing for me.”

  “First Delegate, there is antipathy between the industrials and the megacorporations that have allied with us. It is conceivable that our collaborators were mislead, deliberately provided with false information via the industrials’ counterintelligence efforts.”

  Hu’urs Khraam bobbed. “Darzhee Kut, you are learning the prime lesson of this day well: question everything. But our human sources took great pains to gather accurate data, for if we do not succeed, they will be executed as traitors. This is one set of data that we may trust.”

  Or maybe not, Darzhee Kut thought as he bowed a deep acquiescence. We cast eyes back upon our path and realize that, since Barnard’s Star, we thought we were manipulating the humans—but all along, they were manipulating us. They play the linked games of war and deception better than we do. And the reason lies before us. They spend most of their time imagining how we would best fight a war against them, rather than how they would like to resist us. So of course they knew how to show us what we wanted to see, what seemed reasonable outcomes, gave us logical decision paths. All so that we would follow a course of action that they could predict, which would deliver us to this moment and this place where they would spring their carefully laid traps all at once. Darzhee rose up higher, one claw raised to signal that he must share this last point—

  But Darzhee Kut felt the pressure of a gentle yet firm claw clamp over his own, kept it from raising. He swiveled to the side, saw Urzueth Ragh, who lowered his eyes and diddled his mandibles. “Let it go, brother.”

  Darzhee Kut considered, looked after Hu’urs Khraam, who was already deep in a teleconference with Tuxae Skhaas, the senior sensor coordinator for the command ship of the orbital flotilla. And with that brief pause, the moment to speak had passed. If Darzhee Kut brought up the issue of CoDevCo’s questionable reporting to the First Delegate once again, it would signal a much more serious, and possibly insolent, questioning of Hu’urs Khraam’s judgment. But, still…

  Urzueth Ragh seemed to read his mind. “I know what you mean to do, to say, and I tell you it will be a tune sung to insensate antennae. You are right, of course. How can we be certain of the reliability of the human intelligence? But if we begin to question all our data, we have no basis for action, must lie on our claws, might as well concede. So, either way, we must make our best conjectures and move on. We must act rather than reflect. Alas, it is a hurried process that I like it no better than you. It is not our way.”

  “No. It is war.�
�

  Urzueth Ragh bobbed his agreement. “As I said, it is not our way.”

  Flagship USS Lincoln, Sierra Echelon, RTF 1, cislunar space

  “So what’s it going to be, Skipper?” asked Commander Ruth Altasso. “A stand-up brawl or a drive-by shooting?”

  Admiral Ira Silverstein smiled at his XO, found his brain running on two tracks simultaneously: a blessing, or curse, amplified by Talmudic study.

  Track one: Commander Ruth Altasso was a fine XO and knew her business well-enough to know that her question was no question at all. All three echelons of the fleet had stopped hab rotation, tucked in their booms, and were maintaining acceleration typical to interplanetary travel: they were going in hot. However the battle might unfold against the Arat Kur, it would be sharp, savage, and so fast that even if one wanted to give or call for quarter, there simply wouldn’t be the time. Today, there would be two kinds of combatants: the quick and the dead.

  Track two: Ruth was almost a good enough actress to pull off the precombat bravado shtick. Almost, but not quite. She had never been in real combat before. Hell, none of her generation had. It had been almost twenty years since a US vessel had fired a shot in anger, more than thirty since a formal, brief, and almost wholly inconsequent declaration of war in the last of the many desultory posturings known collectively as the Sino-Russian Belt War. The training sims were realistic—nearly made Ira wet his own pants—and no one did a better job than the Commonwealth at creating authentic field training environments. But as any soldier knew, training was no substitute for paying your penny and seeing the elephant that was war, up close and personal. And the few recent veterans who had earned that distinction by both fighting and surviving at Barnard’s Star were now stuck in that system, so there were no “blooded” ratings to sprinkle among the hulls of Admiral Lord Halifax’s fleet. Now arrayed in three tandem echelons, it was, collectively, the hidden weapon that had been slowly forged via the covert sequestration operation code-named Case Leo Gap, but now known simply as RTF 1 or Rescue Task Force One. However, as will happen with acronyms, a rival label had become popular in the multinational armada: “Rag Tag Fleet Number One.”

  And it was, on the surface of it, an extraordinary hodgepodge of craft. The unit was top-heavy with capital ships, all carrying five times the normal combat loads of nuke-pumped X-ray drones and two-hundred-kiloton close-kill missiles. Arrayed in front of the escorting destroyers and frigates, the control sloops and their attendant flocks of drones were so dense that it made navigation a genuine hazard. It was the first time Ira had seen that kind of free-space crowding in his thirty-five-year career. Spec ops corvettes, the only hulls really designed for fast atmospheric entry, were still attached to the shift carriers, as were the troop transports. All the millions of metric tons of ordnance, vehicles, and cold-slept elite planetary forces that had been siphoned out from Earth over the past two years rested there, inert, waiting for the summons to return home—with a vengeance.

  “Skipper?”

  “Sorry, Commander. Breaking my own rule, I’m afraid.”

  “Which rule, Skipper? You’ve got a lot of them.”

  “‘When you bring your hab mods in close, bring your thoughts in with ’em.’ No time for daydreaming now, not right before a drive-by shooting.”

  “Thought so. How’s it going to go down?”

  “I don’t know, Ruth. We’ll wait for Lord Halifax to call the ball. My guess is he’s waiting for a sitrep from the Big Blue Marble. At this point, it’s all about the drones.”

  “Ours?”

  “No, at least not the ones we have with us.”

  Altasso frowned. “I’m not following you, Skipper.”

  Poor gal, how could she? “Secrecy was an operational necessity, Ex. Part of the op plan from day one was that if and when threat forces showed up around Big Blue, neither the Earth nor the Moon was going to deploy more than a token force of their drones. And only old ones, at that.”

  “Why?”

  Ira smiled. “So that the rest of the drones would be ready and waiting to join us today. Twice our current striking force is waiting here, at home in the garage.”

  Ruth’s frown went away, came back more furrowed than before. “Well, that’s nice—except how will the dirtside folks manage to get them past the Arat Kur orbital interdiction?”

  Ira ran his upper teeth along the side of his index finger. “I imagine they’re working on the answer to that right now…”

  Wholenest flagship Greatvein, Earth orbit

  “Tuxae, the Fleetmaster is not ready to hear another problem. You can see it. Watch his mandibles.” H’toor Qooiiz’s normally jocular buzz was gone from his voice.

  Tuxae did not speak until he could be sure of a patient tone. “I harmonize, rock-sibling, but shall I tell the humans to stop what they’re doing, to give him more time? The Fleetmaster must be told, and he must act.” He turned away from H’toor Qooiiz and toward R’sudkaat. “Fleetmaster, I must trouble you again.”

  Judging from the slow, patience-labored turn of the Fleetmaster, Qooiiz certainly seemed to be right about his rapidly waning equanimity. “What is it now, Tuxae Skhaas?”

  “The humans have deployed a wave of diverse air vehicles from around the Pacific Rim. Between the rocket-carrying freighters, and this new mass launch, we are unable to achieve better than fifty percent orbital interdiction.”

  “What kinds of air vehicles have been launched? Which are the most numerous?”

  “Almost a thousand are medium-range free rockets.”

  “How are they armed?”

  “They are not weapons, Esteemed R’sudkaat. They are deploying chaff, drones, or small sensors between ten and eighty kilometers from the Javanese coast. Well out of the range of our ground-based PDF batteries.”

  R’sudkaat’s antennae twitched anxiously. “What kind of small sensors?”

  “First reports indicate they are small, automated quadcopters. They are quite primitive. They are equipped with passive sensors only, but they are arriving over Java and tightbeaming data back into Bali, the near Celebes, Sumatra, and Christmas Island.”

  “We must deny the humans intelligence regarding the combat on Java. Eliminate these sensors with a full-regional EMP strike.”

  “Sir, such a strike will wash over our strongholds, as well.”

  “You sing that note uncertainly.”

  “Such an extensive set of EMP bursts are likely to disable some of our own, more fragile systems.”

  “Nonsense. Our vehicles and arrays are quite—”

  “With respect, I was referring to unshielded infantry systems, such as thermal imaging and laser targeting scopes, even some of the smaller computing and communication devices. The Hkh’Rkh equipment is particularly vulnerable.”

  The Fleetmaster’s mandibles ground sharply, stopped, ground again. “It is unfortunate, but we cannot target the human sensors individually, and they must be eliminated. Order the EMP strike. Now, you said there were other vehicles?”

  “Yes, R’sudkaat. Mostly high-speed VTOLs, inbound from Sumatra, Christmas Island, Lombok Island, and from the decks of ships beyond the fifty-kilometer limit.”

  “Sink all ships that have launched any vehicles. Interdict the VTOLs.”

  “Sir, we are trying, but it is taking longer than anticipated.”

  Fleetmaster R’sudkaat was very quiet, the same way, according to suntimers, that the worst storms on the surface of a world are preceded by great, almost eerie, periods of great stillness. “Why is the interdiction taking longer than anticipated?”

  “The VTOLs are not conventional attack craft. They are electronic warfare platforms, managing the hundreds of rocket-deployed drones that are now creating false images electronically.”

  “Well, overcome their computing with ours and erase them from the walls of existence.”

  “We are trying to do just that, Esteemed R’sudkaat, but their programming is—challenging.”

  The Fleetmast
er’s retort was a sudden, shrill, warble-shriek that was loud in the silent bridge. “Then engage them visually! Use our look-down optical arrays and eliminate them. These VTOLs are the most important target. Belay all other orbital fire missions until they are eliminated.”

  “Including the rockets?”

  “Including the rockets.”

  H’toor Qooiiz rose up, alarmed. “But if we allow their rockets to reach Java in even greater numbers—?”

  “We have no choice,” Tuxae mouthed at his friend in a low, warning hum. “The VTOLs are making so many false images, it is impossible to tell which are the real VTOLs, the real drones, the real rockets, and Rockmother knows what else.” Louder, to the quivering Fleetmaster. “It shall be as you say, Esteemed R’sudkaat.”

  “See that it is. If we are to act effectively, we must have a clear picture of what is happening.”

  Tuxae turned to his console. As if we ever had one.

  Over the Sunda Strait, off Sumatra, Earth

  Thandla saw a flash, more like a single pulse of a strobe light than any beam or lightning. The closest portside VTOL underwent a hallucinatorily rapid set of transmogrifications. First it was tilting, listing down toward the water; then it was suddenly discorporated, as though it had been magically transformed from an intact hull to a forward-tumbling cloud of debris; and then it was an angry orange-yellow ball of fire that, along with a dull, faint blast, was behind them so quickly that, for a split second, Sanjay Thandla wondered if he had imagined the whole thing.

  But no. Their portside wingman was gone, destroyed by an Arat Kur orbital laser.

  It was the fifth VTOL lost from Dortmund’s flight. Thandla kept adjusting the signals, dancing from one EW protocol to the next, seeding misleading telltale signatures into the image-makers, trying to throw the Arat Kur off the scent of each successive signal iteration and how it might evolve in the next ten seconds. At the same time, he considered the odds: five out of eleven VTOLs destroyed. The first had been as much a casualty of chance as enemy intent. The Arat Kur had started with cluster bomblet dispensers from orbit. The first such barrage put its footprint on the northern edge of their flight’s inverted approach delta. Probably a failed Arat Kur attempt to get a lock on them and place a thick curtain of high velocity fragments directly in front of them. But the far left VTOL had picked up a few of pieces of shrapnel. Its airframe compromised, it folded up and flew to pieces like a child’s model plane struck by a sledgehammer.