The Code

by Doug Dandridge

  “Then let’s plan our campaign,” said Beata, smiling.

  * * *

  “Do you think you can pull it off?” asked Sean, looking out of the holo at his front commander.

  “I believe so,” said Beata, nodding. “I could wish for some more ships. If the fleet that the dictator has folds at first push, we’ll be fine. If they stand up for their ruler, it could be a blood bath. Oh,” she said quickly as she saw Sean was about to speak, “we’ll still win. We have wormholes, warp fighters, much better tech. And the ships of Admiral Goran still have what we gave them.”

  “And this Kessarlja is going to work out?” asked Sean, raising an eyebrow.

  “I don’t see a downside to him. He’s the most forward thinking of their system rulers, and he’s well respected by his peers.”

  “Your timetable?”

  “I already have ships heading toward the capital,” she replied, sending a holo projection to the Emperor over the com. “All of my wormhole equipped vessels and most of Goran’s fleet. The rest will gate in when we’re ready. Say a week from today.”

  “I'm sending General Wittmore to you to lead your ground attack,” said Sean, smiling.

  “Thank you,” said Beata, feeling a bit better about the leadership of her planetary assault. She had general rank officers, the highest a two star. They were all Marines, and though as a naval officer she thought the Imperial Marines were superior troops, the Imperial Army had more experience with large scale ground operations. Also, Wittmore knew the region and the Klassekian troops that would make up a significant part of the assault force.

  “We're also sending you Hunter,” said Sean, frowning just a bit. “Just in case you need to mount a special operations mission.”

  “Again, thank you, your Majesty,” she said, feeling even more gratitude. She knew how protective the Emperor felt of that man, but he was a weapon, one of the best in the special ops community, and she felt much more comfortable with him to lead any contingency plans. “We'll get those people slotted in and ready to go.”

  “Sounds good,” said Sean, smiling again. “And when you’re through there, I’ll want you and Mara back with the main fleet, where you belong.”

  Beata sucked in a breath. She had always dreamed about joining the fight against the Ca’cadasans. Before her assignment to this front her career was at a dead end. Now she was looking at a fleet command assignment. Under Mgonda or Lenkowski, either would do. But…

  “I don’t want to leave here until I’m sure everything is under control and moving in the right direction. I know that’s up to you, your Majesty, but I would feel better if I knew I wasn’t leaving a trash fire behind.”

  “We will make sure everything is going according to plan, Beata,” said Sean, still smiling. “But you are on a timetable as well as far as organizing that region goes. We will be moving on the Ca’cadasans in three months. The fleet is resting and refitting now, but I don’t want to take the pressure off them. I want you in command position at least a month before the offensive kicks off. So you have eight weeks from now, Admiral. Think you can get it done, or do I have to give that command position to someone else?”

  “Can do, your Majesty,” said Beata, still having her doubts, but wanting that command in the worst way. The war against the Cacas might go on for years, or this might be the offensive that kicked the door in. She didn’t want to miss out. Which meant she had to work hard to make sure everything was in working order out here.

  * * *

  GORGANSHA HOME SYSTEM. MAY 30TH, 1003.

  “We’re picking up ships in approach through hyper, my Lord.”

  “How many?” asked Hraston Gonoras, the first tremors of fear running through his body.

  “Several hundred so far, my Lord. With more appearing every second.”

  “Get me Fleet Commander Kerg.”

  A moment later the holo appeared with the face of his home fleet commander, newly promoted to CIC of the entire Gorgansha navy. Or at least what the dictator still had control of.

  “I want you to destroy them, Fleet Commander,” the dictator told his subordinate.

  “I’m not sure we can, my Lord,” said the officer, his eyes downcast.

  “I will not have talk of defeat among my officers,” yelled Gonoras, shaking his three fists in the air. “Now, you will fight them, you will defeat them, or you will not come back. And then others will pay the price of your failure.”

  The fleet commander looked stricken when he heard those words, and the dictator smiled. He had made sure, this time, he had the families of his higher-ranking officers in hand before he sent them into battle. If they loved their spouses and children they would fight their hardest, for him.

  “That appears to be all of them, my Lord,” reported the officer watching the incoming fleet. “Over seven thousand of them, mostly ships from our fleet. With maybe sixty human vessels.”

  And those would be their wormhole equipped ships, here to lend fire support, thought the dictator. Those sixty might be able to take out his entire home fleet if they kept the range open. And if they took out his fleet, he had another surprise in store for them.

  “All planetary defenses are manned, my Lord. All army units are deploying.”

  That wasn’t the surprise, but it would slow them down enough to let them slip their heads in the noose.

  * * *

  “We’re getting ready to drop back to normal space, Admiral,” reported Fleet Commander Soranka Goran through the wormhole com.

  His flagship had been equipped with one of the wormholes, along with several more of his battleships. The other twenty-four wormholes were still assigned to Earth ships, all battleships.

  “We’re ready to go, Fleet Commander,” said Beata from her flagship.

  Her force was in the Black Hole system, sitting outside the two gates that would soon lead to the capital of the Gorgansha. Her force had no assigned wormholes. They could not go through the gate without causing mayhem. Hopefully they wouldn’t be needed, and there were a number of launcher equipped ships ready to send missiles through the gate.

  Beata took a quick look at her order of battle. She was going with eighteen battleships, forty cruisers, heavy and light, and seventy destroyers for missile defense. Along with them were seven fleet carriers and nineteen assault ships, given to her by Sean from Mgonda’s battle fleet. Those might be the most important ships in her force.

  The two wormholes they would jump through were still miniature constructs of gates, sitting close to the planet, but not too close. They were out of close beam range, and would project extremely powerful electromag fields when activated. Missiles fired from the planet or its orbital platforms would take minutes to reach the gates, and the defenses would be in place before they got there. Hopefully.

  The folded gates were waiting, already attached to the structure on this side, ready to push through and unfold on the other side. Everything was ready to go. If the enemy did everything as expected, this battle would be over as soon as it began. Of course, an admiral that expected everything to go her way was a fool.

  “We’re in normal space, Admiral,” came a com from Admiral Timothy Hahn, leading the human support force of the Gorgansha rebel fleet. “Nothing was waiting for us at the barrier. We are, however, picking up the home fleet heading out to meet us. Estimated one light hour out from the capital planet, boosting at three hundred gravities, velocity thirty-three thousand kilometers per second.”

  Just where we want them to be, thought Bednarczyk, smiling.

  “Have they opened fire?”

  “No launches yet,” said Fleet Commander Goran, his voice joining in on the com. “And I would prefer not firing on them. They are our people, after all, and they are just following the chain of command they have pledged to follow.”

  Unlike you, thought Beata, pushing that thought down as unfair. She was happy they were rebelling against their leader. Otherwise, she would have to fight their entire fleet with no hope
of getting them to stand down.

  “Agreed,” said Beata. “But if they engage, I want you to fire back.”

  That was a major part of the plan, getting the enemy to concentrate on what they could see coming at them. They didn’t know there were still wormholes in the system, so the only thing they were thinking about was what might pop in from interstellar space.

  “We are prepared to engage, just in case,” said Goran, frowning. “When will you be coming through?”

  “Give it another fifteen minutes, Fleet Commander. I want to make sure they can’t turn around and come back before we accomplish the mission. Understood?”

  “Understood. Goran out.”

  Beata looked over at the timer that had set as soon as she had given the time to the Gorgansha leader.

  “Get me General Wittmore.”

  “Wittmore here, Admiral,” said Lt. General Travis Wittmore, popping up on the holo.

  The commander of the Klassekian home world had been picked for the land combat part of this mission, since he was familiar with the circumstances and was the highest-ranking Imperial Army officer in the region. He had a Marine Assault Division and five Imperial Army divisions, all heavy, two of them armored divisions. One of those divisions was made up of Klassekians, with a smattering of human advisors. There were also three Ranger battalions and several companies of Fleet Commandos, giving the general a hard-hitting force. They would of course be outnumbered, but the tech advantages were on their side.

  “Your people ready to go?”

  “Ready to go and chomping on the bit, ma’am. We want to get our boots on the ground and get this thing done.”

  And you want to get as many of your people home as possible, thought Beata, looking into the eyes of the general. She knew that the general had fought many battles against the Machines on the Klassekian home world. He had yet to face the Gorgansha, but she had no doubt he could handle them.

  “When we give the word, launch. I want your people on the ground within a minute after leaving their ships.”

  “That’s a tight window,” said Wittmore with a whistle. “Don’t worry. We’ll push it and get them down.”

  “We’re going through in eleven minutes,” she said, checking the timer. “From inserting to the system, we’ll be in launch range in forty-three minutes.”

  Beata terminated the com, turning back to look at the plot as sent through the wormhole by the force at the edge of the system. Not every ship in the system was in that one mass heading out for her bait. Only about ninety-five percent. There were other small groups of ships scattered about the system, including a squadron of cruiser class close to the planet.

  Wish they weren’t there, but we’ll just have to deal with them, she thought, glancing again at the timer.

  “Starting gate insertion,” called out Captain Lindsey Quan, sitting at a station on the flag bridge.

  “Proceed,” ordered Beata, feeling the slight tremor of trepidation she always experienced before battle.

  A smaller holo near the main tank showed the procedure. A couple of arms, each a few meters long, were inserted into the portal. As soon as they were on the other side, less than a second, they unfolded and attached, linking into the miniature gates and becoming larger. Negative matter injected through. A second later the next section went through. In twelve seconds it was over a hundred meters across, and the first of the probes went through. They moved into position and started scanning.

  Uh oh, thought Beata as she saw a frigate class ship within beam range of one of the gates. “Take that out.” She hated to do that to someone who could someday be an ally again, but she couldn’t take the chance.

  Two missiles went through the gate, barely moving. They oriented, then took off at twenty thousand gravities, heading for the frigate, which started to maneuver frantically. The admiral really didn’t care if the missiles hit or not, as long as it captured the ship’s attention. They seemed to be doing that.

  Within a minute the gates were almost to full size, and the destroyers went through four at time, arranging themselves between the portals and any potential threat. Thirty-five through each gate, forty arranging themselves between the gates and the planet, the rest spreading around to protect the other avenues of approach. They boosted out at high acceleration, then slowed just as fast. The cruisers, fifteen heavy and twenty-five light, followed, taking a couple of minutes to transit. The cruisers fanned out to form an inner circle around the gates.

  Batteries in orbit fired missiles, thousands of them, heading for the gates and the ships protecting them. They were boosting at four thousand gravities, Gorgansha capabilities prior to being improved by the Empire. Of course, that tech was gone, so all they had was what had been available before the humans arrived.

  The Imperial ships started cycling counters at the missiles, reaching out at twenty thousand gravities. The Imperial ships had not only their internal launchers, but hundreds of box launchers on each hull, giving them thousands of extra counters. Any missiles that got through the counters faced hundreds of laser rings that could take out a missile each in less than a tenth of a second. The missiles were traveling over a distance of a little more than a score of light seconds, and could not build up to the killing velocities typically encountered in missile duels between fleets.

  Beam weapons fired from platforms, a few from the surface of the world. It was a half a light minute away, well outside the effective range of those kinds of weapons with Gorgansha tech. Even with the effective grav lensing of human tech they spread too much, and the target could move before they reached it. Unfortunately, even diffuse beams in mass could melt alloys, and they were all aimed at the gates.

  The ships were in the lanes to intercept, their electromagnetic fields strengthened on the sides facing the lasers. Still, some energy got through, and hulls were hit, alloys vaporized, and damage alarms went off.

  Next came the battleships, nine through each gate, one every five seconds. They immediately headed straight for the planet, intercepting beams, launching counters, generally taking the brunt of the Gorgansha assault while heading straight into the action.

  Beata sat her chair, watching the plot that was now populated with everything in the space around her. Missiles still coming out, many intercepted and destroyed. Beams striking fields, ships taking damage.

  “Get us targeting profiles for those beam weapons. I want them taken out right away.”

  Quan nodded and went to work on her board. She took the feeds from the other ships, prioritized targets, her computer set to work with her at high speed. Locking targets, the computer sent them to the other ships. As soon as they received targeting information they fired, lasers and particle beams reaching out to link the ships with the targets. They were still just under a half a light minute away, but the targets were moving in predictable paths, and the weapons of the battleships were very powerful, with state of the art grav lenses and powerful particle accelerators. Thirty some seconds after firing they hit, blasting through the armor of orbital platforms and forts.

  The ship bucked slightly as it fired its missiles. They were smaller than normal, taking a lesson from the machines. Thousands, heading for targets in orbit and on the planet, they would be traveling fast enough to deliver their warheads, but not with enough velocity to produce killer kinetic effects if they hit the surface.

  The carriers came through right on the tails of the battleships. Normally they would have taken up positions using all the other ships as cover. Here they had their own part to play in the defense, and they followed the battleships. Shoals of small craft launched, not the normal space fighters or even the warp variety. Each ship carried over two hundred orbit to ground attack fighters, ships that were space capable but not useful very far from a planet. Fourteen hundred fighters, each armed with many short-range missiles, sped off toward the planet at five hundred gravities, targeting information coming in through links to their mother ships.

  Last of all came the
assault ships, also carriers of sort, releasing their own fighters. The rest of their hangar space was filled with assault shuttles, already packed with battle armored soldiers and Marines. The battle for the heart and soul of the Gorgansha home world was on, one side had made its first move, and now it was up to the defense to react.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  There is no fool like a careless gambler who starts taking victory for granted. Hunter S. Thompson

  GORGANSHA HOME SYSTEM.

  “Where the hell are they coming from?” yelled the dictator, staring at the viewer that showed the developing battle thirty light seconds from the planet. Actually right at the planet, as the weapons of the humans were striking assets in orbit and on the surface.

  “They had their wormholes hidden, my Lord,” reported the general in charge of planetary defense.

  “How? How did you let this happen?”

  “My, Lord.” The general stammered, not sure what to say.

  “Order our fleet back,” yelled the panicked dictator. “We need them here.”

  “My Lord,” said the stricken planetary defense commander. “It will take them over three hours to just to come to a stop before heading back in.”

  “Order them to accelerate at a higher rate.”

  The planetary defense commander looked at his monarch with a stricken look on his face. Gonoras was about to continue screaming, when the reality of the situation hit him. There was no way he could change the laws of physics, no matter how much he wanted it.

  “Prepare to repel their invasion. I want all of their landings met with force and destroyed before they can consolidate their positions. And order the fleet to fire missiles at the humans near the planet.”

  “That will risk hits on the planet, my Lord.”

  “Then they will hit the planet. I want the humans destroyed. So do it.”

  “At once, my Lord.” The relieved male disappeared from the holo.

  I wonder how relieved you would be if you knew what’s about to happen if you fail. The dictator grinned, almost ready to laugh. Not that this situation was anything to laugh at. He was likely to fall this day, to lose his position. Maybe even his head. But if he was going to fall, so would his world.