"Not now," More said. "We're outgunned. His ships are fresh. He's got a battleship."
"Then we are leaving?" Heyward asked
"We have no choice."
Aboard ATS Triumph
Donner walked briskly back to his cabin. There were lifts and shuttles that sped his journey, but it was still a lengthy trek down seven decks and then across the width of one more. He had been given one of the few passenger cabins that had been reserved for VIP's that were sometimes embarked on the Triumph. Upon entering, he shut the cabin door behind him and keyed the lock closed. He was still fuming at how his logical suggestion had been summarily dismissed by Captain Acton. This neglect of proper communication protocol was precisely what Admiral Otis had warned him about on Victory Base before he had shipped out twenty-eight days ago. A naval officer of the Armada had been taken prisoner by the RHN and was saying that he had been involved in an illegal mining of Memnonian space. The king had to know what was going one without delay. Yet Acton was going to keep that bit of information under wraps for some indefinite period of time. Donner began to wonder what actually went on when warships went abroad in space and whether the Admiralty every received the full truth when reports filtered back from the Armada's captains.
Donner pulled out the plasteel briefcase that Admiral Otis had given him and placed it atop his bed. Its weight never ceased to surprise him. A powerful communications suite was installed within, but that should not have made it so heavy. He opened it and turned it on. The device continued without further input required of him with the start-up procedure.
In a few seconds, a voice spoke. "This is Gazelle. Go ahead."
"This is Lieutenant Arjuna Donner," he began. "I have orders to transmit a message to you."
"From the admiral, yes. Please begin."
"Well, you see, we've made contact with RHN warships."
"We can see that too, lieutenant. They're pulling away. Has anything happened that the admiral should know about?"
"They have one of our own," Donner declared.
There was an extended silence. "Say again, lieutenant."
"The Halifaxians. They have taken captive one of the crewman from Black Moon. He claims to be one Ensign Jonah Lawrence. He's confirmed all that we feared about the Memnon incident. The Black Moon was mining the system. The RHN has him, and has debriefed him. They know everything."
There came another period of silence. At last, the voice said. "I see."
"What should I do?" Donner pleaded. "Captain Acton does not see the need to inform Tartarus of what has happened here."
"That was what the admiral expected," said the voice. "Do nothing else. Just sit tight and await further instructions."
Donner had so much more to say. "Gazelle, are you still there?"
There was no answer. "Gazelle," Donner called again. "Come in, please."
Inside the briefcase, several sets of instructions were received by the device from the Gazelle. Within five milliseconds, the first of three hyperspace containment fields fell away, followed by the second, and then the third and last. Containment fields functioned in much the same way as hyperspatial shields, though they served to keep things sealed in, as opposed to out. Once the fields had dropped, ten grams of antimatter fell in the direction of the artificial gravity that the grand battleship Triumph generated to give her crew a conventional sense of up and down.
Within twenty milliseconds of receiving the instructions, the ten grams made contact with the normal matter of the communication device. It would not have mattered what kind of matter it was. When antimatter touched ordinary matter, both substances annihilated each other. Within twenty-one milliseconds, the briefcase, the cabin, and Lieutenant Arjuna Donner of the Armada of Tartarus had been consumed in a gargantuan eruption of energy.
Donner had not even had time enough to blink.
The explosion tore an enormous chunk out of the Triumph as every last atom of antimatter and its normal matter partner were converted directly into energy. Though the amount of energy that a single atom might release was minimal, this reaction occurred many quintillions of times. The total power output was more than enough to vaporize an enormous section of the majestic battleship's port side. Triumph entered into a flat spin as it tumbled through space. Fires hotter than the surface of a star roared through the corridors of the ship, ignoring the blast doors that provided paltry protection against the antimatter-fueled storm. The plasma fire reached the main reactor spaces and engulfed them. Taken out also were the flight decks that stood just aft of the reactor spaces. The pilots of the Triumph's embarked fighter squadrons perished in a fleeting instant. The aft missile bays were consumed, together with most of Triumph's primary shield generators. Onward the plasma plunged until it had transformed hundreds of thousands of tons of titanium, reaction mass, and human flesh to a high-temperature gas.
The remnant of the stern of the Triumph, which would have constituted about one-quarter of the mass of the ship when intact, separated completely from the rest of the ship, and was flung off into the darkness. The forward portion, including the bridge, was driven forward and down relative to the rest of the Tartarean squadron.
On the bridge, Captain Acton dragged himself to his knees. The lights were dim, powered only by auxiliary reactors distributed around the ship. He touched his face and then examined his hand. Blood covered it. He searched for Levine, and found her lying prone on the deck. Her head had been smashed open by an impact with one of the walls of the bridge. Struggling to his chair, Acton banged his hand on its arm. "Tricia," he croaked. "What happened?"
Triumph's shipbrain was slow to respond. "Catastrophic damage," she said. "Massive explosion on eleven decks. The stern is gone. Shields are down."
"We're without main power?"
"Yes, captain. Gazelle is gone also."
"So this is how he did it," Acton slurred. His head throbbed with pain. "I wonder if Wu was caught by surprise too."
Acton looked out across the bridge and coughed, spitting up blood. Several of his people were dead, but most had been spared. "We're not going down without a fight," he promised. "Halifax wants a war. They've got it. All weapons, fire at will. Missiles, target the ships of the RHN squadron. Let's teach them what the Armada is made of."
Chapter Thirty-Six
"Boarders!" Cone called out. "We've got boarders!"
Jenkins was next to the sergeant in an instant. "Close the shutters." Thick titanium alloy doors descended over the blastglass windows on the bridge. "At least this part of Morrigan is still working." Jenkins did a quick count of the Memnonians as they approached. "Twenty assault boats. You have to admire them, they're not going down without a fight."
"What have they got to lose?" Cone asked. "They've got this ship hanging in space above them. Don't know what she's about. They're trying to protect themselves."
"They follow our tactical doctrine," Jenkins said. "Eight men per boat. Twenty boats. That's too many for us to handle."
"We'll have to hold here. The others?" Cone nodded towards the Navy crewmen drawn from Steadfast, Kongo, and Cormorant. "Not much help."
"No, they won't be," Jenkins said. "We have no weapons for them. A few have sidearms. Won't be particularly useful against huscarls."
"We have some explosives. We can lay some surprises for them."
"Let's do that. It won't be enough to stop them forever."
"Forever is a very long time."
"Long enough. But what do we do about the rest? This place is about to become a shooting gallery. They'll all be minced by gauss pellets if they don't leave." Jenkins motioned to Chandler and Howell. "Lieutenant Chandler, Mister Howell. I'd like a word with you."
"We can fight," Chandler assured. "If you have weapons for us, we can back you up."
"No you can't," said the marine, "and we don't have any to give you even if we were so inclined."
"So what do we do?" queried Howell.
"I want you to run. Hide near to the landing bay y
ou left your shuttles in."
"Will that be safe? asked Chandler.
"Safer than staying on the bridge. We'll have limited control over some ship systems while we're here. I would not be surprised if the bay doors will open now that Morrigan seems to be distracted."
Chandler looked uncertain. "Should we try and run?"
"I wouldn't recommend that," answered Jenkins. "Outside Morrigan, you'd be easy pickings for whatever small craft Memnon has left. I would also prefer that our presence here remain undisclosed for as long as possible."
"The Memnonians will be here in minutes," Howell said. "What do we do once the shooting starts."
"Hope that we can fight them off. But I'm not optimistic. Marines are trained to fight to the last. We're also trained to understand when we are doomed. We're going to be heavily outnumbered. By dispersing, I don't expect you to remain hidden forever. I want to give Morrigan time in which to wake again. Perhaps she will jump again to someplace where you can then leave safely. If not, then you are to surrender yourselves to the Memnonians. There is no need for you to go down with the ship."
"Then why should you?" Howell demanded. "You can act all gung ho, but this is out of your control now."
"I have my orders," Jenkins said. "I'm going to follow them. I can't allow Morrigan to come under the control of a foreign power."
"This does not look good," Chandler said. "Can't you reconsider?"
"I'm hoping that Captain More finds us before we're dead. That's all I'm hoping for now." Jenkins inclined his head toward the exit on the bridge. "You and Howell, take your people. Get going."
Howell and Chandler gathered the exploration crews and led them off the bridge. From there they dispersed to other parts of the ship, all far from where the marines expected the Memnonian huscarls to challenge them for control of the ship. Howell let out a dejected sigh. Men would soon be dying for control of a ship that could not be controlled. Perhaps some lifts and blast doors might be opened from the bridge. Not much else. Morrigan decided when the ship would move and where. Weapons were offline. Shields were inoperable. Had those been working, the Memnonians could never have hoped to land assault boats on Morrigan's hull, and there would have been no need for the Halifaxians to scurry and hide in the depths of the great ship. Morrigan had awoken for just long enough to put herself and her unwilling guests in a terrible predicament. She had once again faded from the picture. He hoped that Venn would be able to reestablish contact with her, or else they would find themselves sitting in Memnonian prisons for quite a while.
Aboard RHS Steadfast
The light of a titanic explosion briefly overwhelmed the image sensors aboard the Steadfast, causing its viewscreens to become an almost incandescent white as the heavy cruiser traveled away from the Tartarean squadron.
"What was that?" More called up several sensors that scanned in non-visible wavelengths. All had been blinded by a huge surge of energies across the electromagnetic spectrum.
"Triumph, Captain More. She's suffered a massive explosion," Feeney said, examining her screen. "She's in two pieces!"
More opened his squadron commchannel. "Did anyone see anything?"
The other captains, one by one, demurred. "It wasn't us," Tommasina Carey said. "I was keeping watch personally on Triumph. She just exploded."
"If we did not fire on her, then who did?" asked More.
"That doesn't matter," Matt Heyward said. "Triumph, what's left of her, has just launched nearly every missile she has left at us."
Kongo was the trailing ship in the squadron, some one thousand kilometers behind the Steadfast at the head of the line. The radar returns of the Tartarean Brimstone antiship missiles were running hard toward the Republican ships. Behind them, the rest of the Armada squadron was closing fast. More counted several dozen fighters had launched from the light carrier Noble Heart.
"We've scarcely got any velocity," Tyler Rahal said. "They'll be on us before we can displace."
"I'm ready to launch my remaining missiles," Carey said.
"Just say the word, Andrew," Heyward asked.
"We form a defensive perimeter around Golden Lion and Adonis and run with them. We stay at range for as long as possible. The more distance we put between us and Triumph the better. She won't be able to move, but with her guns and missiles we'll have to deal with her for a while."
The ships of the 34th Strike Squadron formed a loose sphere around Golden Lion and Adonis. Dozens of fighters launched from the light carrier and raced to meet the oncoming Tartarean fighters. They were joined by the Golden Sabers flying from the Steadfast.
"I was expecting a full rest period followed by a good breakfast, Witch," Lieutenant Percy complained. "I didn't even get a chance to change my flight suit."
"I can smell you from here, Hammer," Lieutenant Yee joked. "That's why I'm keeping my distance from your Wildcat."
Percy sniffed loudly several times. "You know, Salad, I can almost believe you can."
"And please don't get that machine messed up like you did the last one," advised Lieutenant Collins. "We've only got one spare machine left."
"Good to know that my pilots can laugh in the face of impending Armageddon," Imagawa said. "You might also want to prep your Iron Lances for launch," she suggested. "It would be a good thing if we don't allow our ride out of this system to get nuked."
Percy was immediately chastened. "Point taken, Witch." He acquired four target antiship missiles for interception by his own. "I've got four. Sending their id's over datalink now. There's enough for everyone."
"I'm reading big energy spikes from the Triumph," Yee said. "I can't believe it's still able to fight."
"It's bringing its secondary reactors online to provide power to its guns," Imagawa explained. "Multiple redundancies all over the ship. She can't displace, but she'll have enough for most of her remaining weaponry."
Killing a battleship was notoriously difficult. The survivability of capital ships clad in several armored hulls, backup life support systems, and a large crew meant that the battlewagons usually survived even losing encounters, and tended to be, because of their toughness, some of the oldest ships in any navy. Smaller warships could not sustain the punishment meted out by modern missiles and guns, and when hit, had a tendency to either be destroyed completely or be damaged beyond the point where a rebuild was worthwhile. Triumph was a new ship, but many other battleships in service with first-line battlegroups and fleets were centuries old, with periodic refits with up-to-date weapons and more capable propulsion systems keeping them viable as major combat units.
"Launch at will," ordered Imagawa.
Forty-eight Iron Lance missiles rippled in four ragged salvos from the accelerating Wildcats. Their targets were the incoming missiles that had been flung by the stricken Triumph and her squadron mates. It was standard procedure to ensure the destruction of enemy antiship missiles before that of enemy fighters. These Iron Lances were backed up by hundreds of additional Iron Lance interceptor missiles launched from the warships of the 34th Strike Squadron and the fighters operating off of Adonis.
"Counting 822 Brimstones heading our way," Collins announced.
"Thank you, Coffee," Imagawa replied. "I'm honored they haven't decided to stint on the fireworks for these festivities."
"That must have been almost everything Triumph had left and most of the missiles on the other ships," Percy said. "I don't think Triumph expects to make it out of here."
"They're fighting with all they've got, Hammer," Imagawa agreed. "They have to think we pulled a fast one on them. They intend to go down fighting."
The nose of an Iron Lance missile was packed with the most extensive sensor suite to be found on any missile in the Great Sphere. It could scan a volume of space over fifty thousand kilometers in diameter to detect emissions across all wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum, in addition to gravity waves, magnetic anomalies, displacement emissions, field disruptions, and other technologies, including advanced im
age recognition. These sensors cost a fortune, and would be reduced to atoms once the weapon they rode in struck its target. No matter. Intercepting that target was what the Iron Lance had been made to do. Each missile, as it closed with one of the onrushing Brimstome missiles, armed its own warhead. Depending upon the mission, the Iron Lance could be fitting with a conventional antiship warhead of 500 kilograms of magnapex high explosive. For fleet defense, the warhead was replaced with a canister of twenty thousand high explosive pellets. When the missile came within lethal range of an enemy antiship missile, it would detonate, throwing out a cloud of pellets. These would almost invariably ruin the enemy antiship missile before it could come within range of the ships of the fleet. The cost of the Iron Lance to the Halifaxian treasury was enormous - some fifty million obols - but the effectiveness of the missile and the threat that it combated - a nuclear-armed missile - made it worth the price.
The Iron Lances, directed by their own autonomous guidance systems, closed to within five hundred kilometers before unleashing their payloads of pellets. These spread within the surrounding volume of the void like hail, presenting a nearly unavoidable obstacle to the Brimstones. Dozens of the Tartarean missiles erupted, their thin bodies breached by the pellets and their engines holed. Many more Brimstones were claimed by the Iron Lances launched by the Republican warships. The space between the two squadrons became littered with the detritus of missiles and hypersonic pellets.
But hundreds of Brimstones still made it through the curtain of fire and metal thrown up by the Iron Lances. These were attended to by CIWS rapid-fire lasers, whose pulses melted their way through the noses of the Brimstones and detonated the fusion warheads within them. Gauss pellets were slung at the missiles too, guided by onboard sensors so that the streams of the electromagnetically-accelerated projectiles intersected with the projected path of the incoming missile.
The Memnon Incident: Part 4 of 4 (A Serial Novel) Page 5
