“Tightbeam link established,” her subordinate confirmed after several minutes. “Relay link set up with the fleet. We’re getting their telemetry; they’re getting ours.”
“Good. Time to eclipse?”
“Five minutes and counting.” Milhouse shook his head. “If I were being paranoid, I’d be worrying that they were going to jump us while no one else could see.”
“That’s part of what I’m worried about, yes,” Kelly agreed. “Bring the ship to battle stations and go to full stealth. We can run the heat sinks for an hour. Let’s make ourselves invisible.”
The lights dimmed slightly as her staff executed her commands. The lighting aboard a starship didn’t consume much power, but in full stealth mode, every joule of energy—and the associated waste heat—mattered.
“And…eclipse,” Hilton announced from navigation. “We no longer have a clear line of sight to anybody. Welcome to the dark side of the moon, people.”
Kelly snorted. “The dark side of the moon” wasn’t a place very many humans visited in this day and age, a poetic metaphor for being out where planets blocked almost all communication.
“Scanners are clear?” she asked.
“Scanners are clear,” Milhouse confirmed. “Calibrations are aligned for full stealth; we are drinking starlight and asking questions. Link to the fleet is intact.”
“Thank you, Guns. Now tell me…what do our invisible eyes see?”
He shrugged.
“Starlight and shadows, mostly. The Ardennes System’s colonization and industry ends on the inside of Cherbourg’s orbit. There’s nothing out here but u—JUMP FLARE!”
Milhouse’s snapped report echoed through the bridge like a falling anvil, and Kelly swallowed a curse as she saw the scanners. Her hand unconsciously went to the silver pentacle around her neck, and she murmured a silent prayer to the gods.
The entire Republican fleet had just jumped back in—on the dark side of Cherbourg, where no one would see them…and barely eight million kilometers from Rhapsody in Purple.
“Xi,” she said calmly, opening a channel to her wife. “I need a Mage on the bridge now. Every stealth spell you’ve ever learned.”
A moment of silence.
“How on top of us are they?” Xi asked.
“We’re in missile range. Well in missile range. Please come make us invisible.”
“I’m on my way. What do we do?”
“We disappear…and then we tell Lord Montgomery exactly where to find his enemy.”
49
“Well, that is sneaky,” Medici said grimly over the conference link. “They’ll hit the refueling station in just under eleven hours, and if Rhapsody hadn’t been out there, we wouldn’t have seen them for at least ten.”
“How bad will that be?” Damien asked. He had a pretty good idea, but with half a dozen Admirals on the call, someone needed to make sure they were all on the same page.
“There’s both civilian and military cloudscoops, plus a large Transmuter station,” Vasilev told them. The Ardennian looked even more tired than the rest of them. “There are some defenses, but it’s traditionally a Navy facility with Navy defenders.”
“And right now we’ve got three destroyers out there,” Mage-Admiral Medici observed. “The Republic will run right over them and obliterate everything. There’re no missiles out there anymore, but that’s the only thing we’ve used up.
“There’s enough fuel and other consumables to maintain this entire combined fleet for six months. With the cloudscoops and the Transmuter station, combined with Ardennes’s industry and agriculture, we could support a fleet of almost any size indefinitely.”
“That logistics base is part of the key to Ardennes,” Damien said. “Without it, our intention of using Ardennes as a launch pad against Legatus becomes much harder.”
Not impossible. Far from impossible—but they’d have to bring in a lot of infrastructure and supplies from the rest of the Protectorate. It would cost them time…time he wasn’t sure the Republic of Faith and Reason would give them.
“Rhapsody in Purple reports they’re pushing three gees, relying on Cherbourg to hide them from everyone,” he continued. “If they sustain that for ten hours, their crews are going to be hammered. They also jumped in closer than normal to try to keep themselves hidden. Unless their jump tech is superior to two hundred years of Mage experience, I doubt that was easy on their crews, either.
“They’re not trapped in Cherbourg’s gravity yet, but give them a couple of hours and they’re not getting out of there easily.”
The Admirals were silent.
“You have a plan, my lord?” Vasilev asked slowly.
“Several,” Damien said with a chuckle. “But they all boil down to one basic concept: let’s pin the Republic fleet against Cherbourg and smash them to pieces.”
“They’ll run,” Casanova noted. “We don’t have enough force to cut them off—not to mention they’ll see us coming hours away. Even if the entire fleet could pull the same acceleration as the Navy ships, we couldn’t get to Cherbourg before they could run.”
“The same gas giant they’re hiding from us behind will hide us from them,” Admiral Phan replied. “We could sneak up on them with relative ease. A high-velocity pass, without decelerating, would negate many of their advantages over our forces—and then we could jump back to Ardennes once we were clear.”
“And any of them that survive are completely unopposed while we decelerate to do so,” Vasilev said. “We’d hurt them, yes, but they’d be able to complete the destruction of the logistics base and seize control of Ardennes’s orbitals. We’d take a handful of pawns and hand them a checkmate.”
Damien met Grace McLaughlin’s gaze and realized she’d picked up at least part of his plan. He smiled.
“Ladies, gentlemen, you’re all missing one key part of my plan,” he told them. “Two hundred years, people. That’s how long Jump Mages have been teleporting starships around. We know this game, better than they do.
“Most of our ships only have civilian jump matrices, not amplifiers, but every Mage in your forces is a fully-qualified Jump Mage, at the very least. Many of you employ Mages that are on par with those of the Navy for power and training.
“We can do things no other force in the galaxy can. I don’t care what technological solution the Republic has developed. It seems to run on the same rules as our jump spells—which means I know we can jump circles around them.”
Damien’s smile got colder.
“And most importantly, people, we can jump directly from Ardennes’s orbit to behind the Republic fleet.”
Five Admirals started arguing across each other, while Grace and Jakab both just waited quietly.
Damien held up his hand.
“We all know it can be done,” he told them. “The Navy trains for it and that’s the difference, not the amplifiers. To pull off a short jump like this, especially into a gravity well, we’ll need detailed scans of our emergence points’ gravimetric status.
“But we have Rhapsody in Purple in position to do that already. We’re already getting detailed information from Captain LaMonte’s ship. They can get us the gravity data we need to finalize the calculations—and we have time, people. We’ll want to give the Republic at least two to three hours to get deeper into Cherbourg’s gravity well.”
“We can’t come in that close,” Darzi finally objected. “I’m not sure we can even risk coming in as close as they did.”
“We don’t need to,” Damien told him. “They came out at eleven million kilometers and we want them inside about nine and a half million klicks to keep them trapped. If we jump in at twelve million, they’ll be within amplifier range of our capital ships and laser range of everybody.”
Everyone on the conference except Damien winced. That meant he was probably overestimating the ability of the Militia crews, since he knew most of the Navy crews could do it.
“Fifteen,” Medici countered. “I don’t t
hink we could do it closer than that.”
“We can do closer,” Casanova said with a sigh. “My mercenaries practice for the closest insertion they can get, and our missile ranges suck. If we can come in at thirteen million kilometers, we’re in missile range, but…”
“My people can’t do it,” Darzi said flatly. “Even if they could, my orders from my Prince are not to risk my fleet more than necessary—and jumping in closer than is safe to allow for these mercenaries to range on the bastards definitely counts as unnecessary to me.”
“We can do the calculations for everyone,” Medici said. “My people are practiced and trained at that, but we can’t make a Mage jump closer than they’re prepared for. We’ll end up with a mess of a formation.”
“We’ll lose the decoys as well,” Vasilev noted. “They’re just cargo containers. They can’t jump.”
“We can bring them with us,” Grace pointed out. “They’ll lose some effectiveness, as we’ll have to launch them after jump and the Republic will have the data as to where the jump flares were, but we can play some games to screw with that.”
“We can probably do fourteen million kilometers from Cherbourg,” Vasilev said slowly. “That would get us into position to cut them off, hit them with long-range laser fire and close into their teeth with the fusion missiles.”
“We could do that, but they’ll still be able to run,” Casanova noted. “I don’t know how deep the First Hand’s pockets are, but keeping the mercenaries here is going to cost a lot of money. I don’t think any of us want to be sitting here playing watchdog for Ardennes forever.”
“No,” Damien confirmed. “My pockets are deep, Admiral Casanova, but you’re right. We need a victory. Not just the RIN running with their tails between their legs, but those carrier groups smashed.”
“We’re not going to get that,” Medici said bluntly. “They’ll recognize any attempt to pin them against the planet. We can force an engagement, but we can’t force them to fight to the death. They’ll do everything in their power to avoid amplifier range.”
“If we can’t force them, then we’ll need to fool them,” the First Hand replied. “They’re not expecting us at all, people, not until much later in their approach. At the very least, we have surprise.
“Surprise begets panic. Panic leads to mistakes. I think I know what we need to do.”
50
The months of practice since the Antonius Incident paid off for the Sherwood Interstellar Patrol. Despite towing a dozen decoys apiece, all twelve of Grace’s frigates appeared exactly where she’d needed them to—fourteen million kilometers from Cherbourg and just over four point seven million kilometers from the Republic battle group.
A hundred and forty–plus decoys spread out from the hulls of her ships, and a full salvo of over seven hundred missiles blasted out moments later. Most of those missiles wouldn’t make it through the RIN’s defenses—and over a hundred of them didn’t even try. They blasted well clear of Grace’s ships and then detonated.
Sixty seconds after the Patrol arrived, the rest of the fleet arrived, led by the six twelve-megaton battlecruisers of the Tau Ceti Security Fleet. There was no screen or vanguard this time. There wasn’t even truly any organization to the defending fleet.
Almost two hundred starships flashed into existence around Grace’s command, the bigger ones towing more decoys. By the time the explosions from the Patrol’s salvo faded, the decoys had more than doubled the number of targets on the Republic’s screens.
Thirty seconds after the emergence of the rest of the fleet, a second salvo of missiles blasted into space. This wasn’t the paltry six hundred they’d sent hurtling ahead to get the carrier groups’ attention.
Almost three thousand missiles blasted into space, scattering the launches across the disorganized fleet with nearly random abandon. The salvo was concentrated together enough to overwhelm the Republic’s defenses but the flight pattern was random enough to prevent the Republic from picking the actual ships launching out from the decoys.
Long-range laser fire followed, and they finally saw the first response from the Republic. A dozen decoys disappeared as the Republic demonstrated that they’d mass-produced a battle laser, too.
A twenty-gigawatt battle laser, as powerful as anything the Martian battleships mounted. The mercenary heavy destroyer Red Fox took three hits from the massive beams and simply…vanished.
They weren’t alone. Four destroyers and half a dozen corvettes joined Red Fox—but the Protectorate fleet had lasers too.
Grace’s frigates didn’t match cruisers for guns, but their custom-designed beams outweighed anything a destroyer could carry. The twenty mercenary “monitors” had light missile armaments for their mass—because they were built around cruiser-weight lasers.
The Phoenix- and Dragon-class cruisers built by Tau Ceti carried their own weight, and dozens—hundreds of heavy battle lasers flared across the Republic fleet.
The big ships had withstood antimatter fire from Montgomery’s fleet before, but they had barely been evading. They hadn’t expected missiles, let alone lasers. They hadn’t been ready to be attacked yet.
One of the big fifty-megaton carriers came apart, and two of her escorting cruisers went with her. It was barely a tithe of the Republic’s strength, but the loss of one of their biggest ships clearly broke their nerve.
“They just tripled their acceleration,” Meadows reported. “That’s going to hurt…but they’ve got enough of a velocity advantage that they can break free of our beam range, at least. Fifteen minutes or so.”
He paused.
“A lot longer before they’re clear of the gravity well. Assuming they slingshot and keep going…a bit over four hours after they’re clear of beam range.”
One of the Condor guardships leapt sideways as a beam hammered into her flank. Her engines flickered and then cut out.
“Sky Burial is out,” a coms officer reported. “Her engines are down; she can’t keep up with the acceleration.”
As the Protectorate fleet sorted themselves out, they were stabilizing at ten gravities. That was all the Amber mercenaries’ ships could manage—and it was all the tow-cables they were hauling the decoys with could handle, too.
And if they lost the decoys, the Republic might start asking questions that Grace really didn’t want them to.
“Can we hold this up for fifteen minutes?” she asked. “Let’s get those decoys out as wide as we can and make sure everyone is maneuvering. Are they launching gunships yet?”
“Maybe; yes, sir; and no,” Meadows reeled off in answer to her rapid-fire questions and orders. “So far, only the bigger and, frankly, less advanced ships are taking real hits. We’re losing lighter ships, but that’s basically pure bad luck.”
“Pure bad luck” had half the Protectorate’s corvettes and heavy corvettes damaged or destroyed already, Grace reflected. Those were mercenary ships, not hers, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to miss those losses.
“Get them to tuck in behind the decoys,” she ordered. “Our bigger ships can at least take a hit. The sub-megatonners can’t.”
As she spoke, Rameses lurched in space as two lasers struck home. The Amberite cruiser seemed to hang in space for a moment, then brought her engines back online as she spiraled away from the hit. She was losing atmosphere, but she was still in the fight.
“There goes a battleship!”
Meadows was right. The focused fire of the mercenary hunter-killers wasn’t doing much on its own, but those dozens of five-gigawatt beams had just herded one of the forty-megaton ships into the crossfire of the entire Tau Cetan cruiser squadron.
It didn’t matter how tough the Republic built their ships. No one was surviving that.
“We have incoming missiles,” her aide reported a moment later. “And we’re half-through our magazines ourselves.” Meadows shook his head. “If we win this, it’s going to hurt.”
“They’re running, Commodore Meadows,” Grace said
levelly, watching as thousands of RFLAM turrets added their weaker beams to the chaos on her screens. “I think that means we’ve already won.”
“Well, we’re still here.”
Meadows’s voice was sardonic, and his comment was followed by a cough as acrid smoke wafted its way through the flag bridge of Robin Hood. A power surge had blown a series of the protective fuses throughout the ship, leaving a scent of burnt plastic throughout the frigate’s hull.
Their frigate was one of the lucky ones. Three of Grace’s frigates were just…gone, taking over four thousand of her people with them. Four more had been left behind along the way, along with an equal number of cruisers and over two dozen lighter ships. They’d only lost one cruiser, Himalaya, but over three dozen destroyers and corvettes weren’t going home.
“And the Republic?” Grace asked, watching the enemy fleet draw away from beam-weapon range.
“They’re down to three cruisers and they’ve lost over half the carriers,” Meadows replied. “But they’ve still got most of their battleships and two carriers. Probably four hundred gunships left, easy.”
The RIN hadn’t deployed their gunships in the vicious running battle over the last fifteen minutes. Grace had expected them to use the parasite craft for missile defense, but the Republic commander had clearly judged them too vulnerable for the risk.
Given that missiles had only taken out a couple of the cruisers, she could see the point.
“Do we have any missiles left?” she asked.
“We’ve got the Rapiers on the mercenary ships,” Meadows replied. “They’re even shorter-ranged than our lasers, but if we keep chasing the RIN, we’ll eventually get into range to use them. Of course, the Republic will almost certainly jump out of the system before then, given that we’re potentially talking days.”
She snorted.
“Do they have any missiles left?”
UnArcana Stars Page 29
