Trial by Fire - eARC

by Charles E Gannon

Alnduul was still at Richard’s elbow, despite the light bucking as the VTOL encountered a thermal. “Do you conjecture they are ready to negotiate, Downing?”

  Richard frowned. “I doubt it, but the time has come to let them know that negotiation is an option.”

  “So that they might soon talk with you again?”

  Downing smiled. “So that they might soon start arguing with each other. Are the delivery assets for Case Timber Pony in optimal striking distance?”

  “Only Riordan is within optimal range of a susceptible target at this time. Our EMP strikes have disabled many of the Arat Kur computer systems that the other assets might have exploited.”

  Downing sighed. So. It all came down to Riordan, after all. Odysseus had not only inspired Case Timber Pony, but would likely be the means by which it was executed. “Well, there’s nothing for it. Mr. Rinehart, use the relief coordination frequency to contact the Arat Kur leadership. It’s time we had a chat.”

  Presidential Palace, Jakarta, Earth

  Darzhee Kut was frankly relieved when the senior communications technican announced, “Esteemed Hu’urs Khraam, I have a representative of the Earth Confederation on our human interface channel. He requests to speak with you.”

  “Is it Ching, or another Confederation consul?”

  “No, Hu’urs Khraam.”

  “Then Urzueth Ragh shall speak with him.”

  Urzueth Ragh started, moved over to the communication console. “This is Administrator Urzueth Ragh of the Arat Kur Wholenest. What is the intent of your communication?”

  “We wish to determine if you are now willing to renegotiate the terms for your withdrawal.”

  Urzueth Ragh looked to Hu’urs Khraam who snapped his claws downward. Urzueth relayed the response. “We have no interest in renegotiation. We will consider a truce and cessation of hostilities, however, if you wish to reconsider accepting our terms.”

  “I must point out that your position is grave.”

  “We do not agree. At the rate you are losing missiles and now planes, we think it is your position that is quite grave.”

  “You obviously had reasonable prewar intelligence on the military stockpiles of this planet. You must know that our current losses are negligible.”

  “You may see it so. But we stand by our terms and conditions for withdrawal.”

  There was a pause. “Very well, then I have no choice but to issue the following directives. Please look at your sensors.”

  Darzhee Kut looked over. The airspace on the islands around Indonesia, in a broad, arch from Sumatra to Perth and then up to Bali, was filling with new contacts, so many in number that he could no longer distinguish individual returns. It was like a white wave, already discernibly contracting inward toward Java, albeit more slowly than the rockets had.

  “You will note the previously hidden air assault forces that are now converging on your position. We have measured your orbital interdiction capability and know that you cannot stop them all. However, if you attempt orbital interdiction against any of these units, we will launch a nuclear attack directly against your two major compounds in Jakarta and Surabaja.”

  “Your earlier nuclear strikes were made while your decoys were disrupting our sensors. You will not succeed in such an attack now.”

  “You are incorrect. Our sensors show that, in addition to lacking sufficient orbital interdiction assets, more than fifty percent of your PDF systems are no longer functioning. So I reiterate: do not attack our approaching air units, or we will launch a nuclear attack.”

  Urzueth bluffed well. “You will excuse us if we dispute your statistics and find your threats of a nuclear attack less than convincing.”

  “Then perhaps this will convince you. Look at your sensors once again—”

  SSBN Ohio, Java Sea, Earth

  “Captain Tigner?”

  “Yes, Alvarez?”

  “The boys banging sticks in the Australian surf have sent the word. All subs go to phase two.”

  “Any new wrinkles in the plan?”

  “None at all, ma’am. Just like we drilled it.”

  “Very well then. Mr. Vinh, blow all tanks and give me full fans to the surface. Mr. Alvarez, signal that Ohio has received, understood, and is on the way up. Ms. Kayor?”

  “Aye, Cap’n?”

  “Deploy remote ADA packages with neutral buoyancy set for twenty meters. And dump all our countermeasures now. Set them for remote activation, arrayed to cover a straight dive pattern.”

  “We dump all the countermeasures, without presumption of evasive action, Skipper?”

  “You heard a-right, Lieutenant. If we have to dive to the dark, the only two things that are going to matter are speed and having the countermeasures already in the water and waiting to go. And if phase two doesn’t work, we’re out of the game anyway. No reason to keep the toys in the hull.”

  “Aye, aye, ma’am.”

  Vinh half turned his head. “Captain Tigner, we’re coming up through one hundred meters.”

  She hauled down the old hardwired shipwide handset. “Stand to general quarters.” She heard her rather girlish voice echoing back through the long hull. “We cannot afford any failure, any hesitation. History, and all humanity, will judge us by this moment.”

  Vinh told her what she already knew from the way the deck seemed to bounce beneath her feet. “Decks awash, tubes open.”

  Commander Tigner leaned toward the periscope.

  The weapons officer looked over. “Orders, ma’am?”

  “Nothing yet, Ms. Kayor. We’re going to give them a good look down the barrel of our loaded shotgun before we pull the trigger. Maybe they’ll blink first, save us the trouble of shooting.”

  “If not, ma’am?”

  “Keep present target selection and dispersion setting. Set warheads for one-hundred-meter airburst. And if I give the word, Donna—”

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “Don’t wait for details. Salvo ’em all.”

  Presidential Palace, Jakarta, Earth

  Darzhee Kut stared at the map in disbelief. Twenty seconds ago, there had been a wave of white slowly converging on Java, but now the island itself was outlined by a snow flurry of new, coast-hugging contacts. Contacts that faded in as they emerged from the benthic depths of the surrounding seas, shelfs, reefs.

  Hu’urs Khraam had collapsed back into his couch. “How many did you say?”

  “Fifty-four submarine contacts. Optical sensors show all missile tubes open. High power radar arrays are now active in Australia, Sumatra, Singapore, Philippines, scanning the airspace above us all the way up to low earth orbit.”

  “So if we attempt to interdict the submarines with orbital munitions—”

  “The human sensors will detect their descent and signal the submarines to salvo.”

  “Orbital lasers?”

  Urzueth Ragh’s mandibles made a grating noise. “The hull of these submersibles is akin to very thick armor. Our standard interdiction lasers are not powerful enough to reliably destroy or disable them before they can launch. A non-UV spinal laser would work, but we have retained very few of those older systems in our inventory.”

  “So we have no way to destroy them before they can salvo.”

  “Not all of them, and any one of those submarines carries enough warheads to destroy us. And with the short flight times from those offshore positions—”

  Hu’urs Khraam turned to Darzhee Kut. “I seek your advice, rock-sibling:…”

  —Darzhee Kut blinked at the unprecedented, almost familial, intimacy of the address—

  “…when I forbade renewing negotiation with the humans, was I too hasty?”

  Darzhee Kut was wondering how he could tactfully reply to such a question when Urzueth Ragh announced, “I have initial images of the engagement with the first echelon of the human fleet.”

  Hu’urs Khraam motioned Darzhee Kut toward the plot. “I am told your experiences at Barnard’s Star greatly enhanced your knowledge o
f fleet actions, Speaker Kut. Please provide details of what we are seeing.”

  Darzhee Kut would normally have demurred having his name associated with expertise in military matters. However, in a species which had not known war in many generations, and which reviled the disharmonious existence that was its necessary precursor, it might well be that he understood war—at least this war with the humans—as well as any other rock-sibling present. He turned to Caine. “In describing the actions and implements of your fleet, you will correct me if I misspeak, Caine Riordan?”

  * * *

  Caine thought about that request and what it might imply. “I will, if my duty to my own race is not violated by what I share.”

  “Then join me at the holotank, if you would.”

  Caine approached the Arat Kur holotank. The once tidy masses of red and green motes were thoroughly interpenetrated, the formations of both having diffused into badly smudged approximations of their former geometric shapes.

  Hu’urs Khraam shifted restlessly. “I am surprised that our engagement with the first echelon of the human fleet has already compromised our formation. Why did this occur?”

  “Necessity, Hu’urs Khraam,” answered Darzhee Kut. “Being so heavily outnumbered, and further threatened from the rear by the drones from Earth, our commanders had to choose between maneuvering to optimally realign their overlapping fields of defensive fire or holding formation and reducing their ability to protect each other from the threats now present in all parts of our battlesphere.”

  Hu’urs Khraam shifted again. “Continue.”

  “The choice they made—to adjust position to optimize defense—has substantially reduced our losses, but has not prevented them. These images show the state of the combat currently.”

  The screen over the holoplot brightened, revealing a human cruiser, launching missiles from its amidships bays, the red activation rings glowing around the small aperture that was the business end of its spinal UV laser. Then, with terrible suddenness, part of its belly vomited outward in shower of tumbling white debris. The main weapon’s red activation warning rings winked spasmodically and went dark, just before flickering flame-tongues danced within the ship’s gaping belly wound, licking hesitantly at the blackness of space. The rear of the ship was now limned by a blue glow. The fusion plant and main thrusters were being pushed to maximum burn, probably in an attempt to rush the ship out the other side of the engagement zone.

  Its escape attempt was futile. Two seconds later, the unseen agency of pinpoint destruction went back to work. A cyclone of debris and ruin traced a long jagged line down the cruiser’s flank, as if the hull was an immense technological fish being gutted by a dull knife. As the beam—almost certainly a shift-cruiser’s spinal-X-ray laser—blasted its way aft, secondaries inside the human cruiser went off, bursting more of the hull outward from inside. Then the missile bay exploded, tearing an immense chunk out of the ship’s side, which was immediately followed by a blast of blinding whiteness that blanked the screen.

  The view changed. That same, blinding whiteness was now a small sun, expanding in the background, the foreground dominated by two Arat Kur ships that were experiencing difficulties of their own. The larger one, a distinctively streamlined shift-cruiser, was struggling to maintain attitude with her plasma thrusters. Her main engineering decks were slashed open to space, intermittent jets of flame vying with actinic power arcs that looked akin to a collection of Van der Graaf generators gone mad. But, although she was nearly motionless, her hyperactive defense batteries briskly annihilated the nearest threats from a steadily converging hemisphere of human drones and occasional missiles, one of which bloomed into the bright white sphere of a tactical nuclear device.

  In addition to protecting herself, the shift cruiser was clearly trying to extend her active defenses to shield a Hkh’Rkh destroyer which was maneuvering alongside in an attempt to tow the larger, stricken ship to safety. But a covey of passing human drones retroboosted, tumbled, burned hard to side-vector into an approach trajectory that the cruiser could not interdict because the destroyer was in the way of its PDF batteries. Small hits began peppering the starboard side of the destroyer: single shot, chemical lasers from drones that then dove in afterward, attempting to kamikaze against the destroyer. One slammed into the modular fuel tank nestled in its lower starboard quarter, where the keel-trusses joined the rest of the ship to its engine decks. Fragments of the tank blew outward. The destroyer’s drives faltered as her own PDF batteries swiveled wildly—right before a pattern of spinal rail gun projectiles tore her bridge and forward sensor cluster into silvery-white streamers of debris.

  The destroyer was now more of a danger to the shift cruiser than a help. The Arat Kur heavy rotated her thrusters to get what distance she could, lest the destroyer’s drives go up and take her along with them. Her PDF batteries spun smartly into new configurations—just as an invisible beam cut down across her aft section, a blizzard of hull panels and bulkheads flinging themselves out into the void for one brief second before the shift cruiser vaporized in a blue-white ball. Darzhee Kut froze the image on the screen.

  Hu’urs Khraam spoke slowly, heavily, it seemed to Caine. “I am sure you could have chosen many such scenes of destruction, Darzhee Kut. Why did you select these two?”

  “Because they are the most instructive, Hu’urs Khraam. You will note how the human cruiser was destroyed: by a small number of hits from a single weapon. This is how we are typically inflicting losses on our enemies: by striking them with superior weaponry that enjoys superior targeting at distance.

  “The death-images of our own ships are no less revealing. They illustrate how the humans are typically destroying us: by overwhelming our defenses. They harry us with drones, degrade our vessels by disabling one subsystem after another, and then—with our defenses dedicated to eliminating the most proximal threats—they strike their killing blow from longer range.” His claw-embedded laser pointer traced a bright line from the exploding shift cruiser to a small, bright, white sphere in a corner of the starfield. “What you see here, so small in the distance, is the detonation of what the humans call a ‘nuke-pumped’ X-ray laser. These are their ship-killers, Hu’urs Khraam, the ones to which our human collaborators alerted us. They are fabulously expensive and wasteful weapons, mounted on an overlarge drone and easily distinguishable from regular drones at close and medium ranges. But as our scanners become overwhelmed by the unprecedented number of human drones and decoys, they become unable to find all of these long-range threats in time.”

  “Still,” objected First Fist, “you are destroying at least two ships of theirs for every one of your own. You are prevailing.”

  “For now, yes. But we cannot retroboost and match vector with the first echelon to capitalize upon our successes, because the second echelon is following close upon it. And I warn you, Hu’urs Khraam, I suspect that the first echelon was merely the chisel; the hammer is only now approaching.”

  “Why do you say this, Speaker Kut? Because there are more ships in the second echelon?”

  “That is the lesser part of my worry, First Delegate. Our analysts have been monitoring the rate at which the human first echelon has been expending these X-ray laser missiles I have just shown you. Since they did not lose these munitions at Barnard’s Star and we conjecture that some of the concealed drones launched from hidden sites on the Moon must be of this kind, we expected our enemy to employ more of these than he has.”

  Yaargraukh’s rumble was grim. “So, you suspect that it is their second echelon which shall deploy this increased firepower.”

  “Precisely.” Darzhee Kut turned, pointed to the second, vast wave of red blips in the holoplot. “The second echelon is much larger than the first. It has many more platforms from which to optimally launch and control such missiles, and more drones to confound and overwhelm our defenses. And they have two other profound advantages that the first echelon did not enjoy.”

  Yaargraukh pony-nodded.
“They have broken up our formation and, at the same time, may be relatively sure we have no new tricks or technologies with which to confound them. For we would certainly have used them to ensure a more favorable outcome with the first echelon.”

  “Exactly,” agreed Darzhee Kut, who then turned to stare at Riordan. “I suspect this was the strategic intent of the humans’ three-echelon battle plan. Does that sound correct, Mr. Riordan?”

  “I cannot say. Obviously, I was not involved in, nor made privy to, any of the military planning for this counterattack. However,” and he let a slight smile slip, “your conjecture is eminently plausible.”

  Hu’urs Khraam shifted on his platform-couch. “So. We have scored a marginal victory in space, but have yet to fight the much larger of what will be at least two battles. And here on the planet, we now find ourselves ringed by submersibles equipped with nuclear weapons which the humans have proven they will fire at their own possessions and populations, given sufficient provocation.” He turned to face Darzhee Kut directly. “And so I ask again, Speaker Kut. When I forbade renewing negotiations with the humans, was I too hasty?”

  Caine watched Darzhee Kut seem to contract as every exosapient eye in the room turned toward him. In the Arat Kur’s position, Caine was quite sure he would not enjoy the sensation, either.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Presidential Palace, Jakarta, Earth

  Darzhee Kut felt all the eyes upon him as he offered his counsel to Hu’urs Khraam. “Esteemed Hu’urs Khraam, you were not rash to refuse to negotiate with the humans, given what we knew then. But perhaps this new information must make us reconsider speaking with them.”

  Graagkhruud’s interjection was, quite literally, a snarl. “We should only be speaking to them to demand their immediate surrender.”

  “First Fist Graagkhruud, why would they surrender at this moment? We are unable to intercept all their missiles and air vehicles and submarine launches. Whatever we choose to do, they will still have options remaining which might defeat us. They attritted our PDF intercept capability so that our groundside forces have to rely on orbital interdiction support for survival—and now, with half our fleet off to engage the human fleet, we simply do not have enough assets to do so.”