After that, the day whizzed by. At some point in the afternoon, Aline dragged me into my suite for an hour. It wasn’t enough, but we used the time we had well, although we should have been sleeping, as many others were doing. We ate rapidly at dinner time, and by seven thirty, Relentless was formed up at the jump point.
We'd planned a completely different formation this time. There were no ships in the locations we'd been at last time. If the aliens came through expecting to fire at us there, they'd be wasting their fire.
Instead, we were in a three tired arc only ten degrees above the down jump lane. Redoubt had the middle, with Relentless on her right, and Dauntless on her left. Four Guardians were on our right, and three on Dauntless's left. The remaining Pocket Battleships were on the ends of each side of the arc. The Cruisers were in a similar arc above us, with Unassailable in the middle, and the Destroyers on each side. The Corvettes were in the lower arc giving them room to dance around if need be. Galactica was in the center of the Corvette line, with Enterprise on the right, and Prometheus on the left. I hoped the big ships would take fire away from the smallest ones.
All ships but Redoubt were face on to the jump point, and she was at a slight angle, so all her topside guns could fire. Her missiles from the rear side would take a little longer to get there, but I couldn’t see this being an issue. The Privateers and fighters were also arced so every ship faced the jump point. Lacey was formed up with the Destroyers I noticed, which was good, since it meant his mindset was changing with the bigger ship.
The two Dreadnaughts now had full thirty six Battleship gun broadsides, but we'd be firing them twelve at a time, one turret from each side of the ship, so they staggered across the jump point properly. There was no longer any need to roll.
Below us was the War asteroid field. We were positioned very deliberately in relation to it.
Alison and some of the team had decided to gather in the Mess. I didn't blame them. They were out of their element, and short of being needed to board a ship on no notice, there wasn’t anything for them to do but watch something they'd already seen too much of.
The first enemy ships were already on the nav map, converging on the jump point. As I'd thought, it was just a trickle of ships, those which had won past us early in the battle.
The first one arrived a few minutes before nine thirty. It stopped in the middle of the jump lane, just short of actually jumping.
Once again, we had a comnavsat placed above the jump point, and another on the further side, both well outside of their sensor range, and away from where their ships were searching. They'd missed several other ones along the way, also placed high and low in the system plane, so we could see where the main forces were. Not all of them, but enough.
"Prepare the first surprise," I said to Jane.
Thirty
By ten, the cylinder on the other side of the jump point was forming up nicely, and was about a half kilometer long. I was getting looks suggesting now was the time to send the nuke in, but I had other plans. At last I gave in.
"First catapult Jane, if you would please?"
I grinned at her, and she grinned back.
"Confirmed.
"Catapult?" asked Dick, looking confused.
"Watch," I said, grinning at him.
In front of us rose a giant asteroid. The tug pushing it, was the biggest I'd ever seen, and it brought the roid to a stop in the jump lane. It detached, and moved to the point where it would be able to push it in. Once in position, the asteroid began to move. The tug gave it as much push as it could, and detached before the asteroid jumped. Job done, it headed down for another one.
On the other side of the jump point, the cylinder disintegrated as the asteroid blasted its way down the length. Ships towards the back began to peel away, but the central core had no chance.
"Nice," said George, from the Bridge of Fearless.
The ships on the other side were buzzing again, as were those further out.
"Phase two catapults," I said to Jane.
"Confirmed."
A group of one hundred salvage droids with huge mounds of rock and debris on their grav sleds, moved up to the jump lane, and began hurling their loads through the jump point, none of them following the same trajectory. Going faster than the asteroid was, the debris struck ships all around the jump point, and then continued on balistically. Further out, some ships were able to evade, but not all of them. What remained intact would eventually cross the whole system, and I was hoping some unaware ships were hit, since the system was supposed to be empty, and they should know that by now.
Another group of a hundred followed them, and continued to send debris through the jump point. By the time they were finished, the first group were back again.
"How long can we keep this up?" asked Annabelle.
Amanda looked about to answer, but suddenly didn’t.
"In theory," I responded, "indefinitely. But in practice, I give them less than half an hour before they show up with another cylinder already built. Once they start jumping in, the droids will stop throwing them through, and start throwing them at the jump lane."
I was nearly right. It was approaching eleven when the next cylinder, looking to be five kilometers long and growing exponentially, appeared ready to jump. The interesting thing was they used their own ships to shield the cylinder from the debris, so it could hit the jump point fully intact. Even if I'd thrown another large roid at them, I think this time they would have deflected it. Another point for the aliens being intelligent.
"Make the wall," I ordered next.
"Confirmed."
The salvage droids stopped throwing debris. Another hundred of them came up from the asteroid field pushing as large a chunk of rock as each one could. They started assembling a wall starting from the middle of the jump lane, about two hundred meters from the forced jump limit. It assembled rapidly. As each one left to go back for another, its place was taken by yet another one, until all three hundred salvage droids were building the wall as fast as they could. When about two thirds of the width of the point was covered, half of them started making the wall thicker. Once the center was done, the tug moved another giant asteroid into position dead in the middle, and headed to dock with Redoubt.
Now it was a race to see if they jumped before we finished. It was going to be close.
We'd delayed them an extra hour already, without needing to fire a shot. But I could see they were ready to jump. I called back most of the salvage droids, with the exception of the ones which now took up a position behind our barricade in an attempt to hold it together with gravity once things started hitting it. There was no point in losing most of them if it could be avoided, but the ones left out there did have a chance once the barricade came apart.
"All ships hold your fire," I said into ship coms.
I’d decided to leave ship coms off, and manually hit the button every time I gave a wide order. It was easier than trying to suppress idle chatter in the CCC. Especially mine.
The front end of the cylinder jumped.
The resulting pile up was nothing if not spectacular. The aliens came through at the same rate as before, around one hundred a second, and smashed themselves to pieces. Even the ones to the outside of the cylinder were destroyed by the resulting debris.
The wall lasted twenty minutes before the constant battering reduced the first layer to smaller chunks, which started to fly off in all directions. The second layer was smaller, and ships started making it past.
"Throw the wall."
"Confirmed."
The salvage droids now changed their gravity to push the wall towards the jump threshold. The remaining asteroids moved slowly towards the jump point, where most of them shattered before they could jump. The droids then shifted to the remaining really large asteroid, and hurled it into the jump against the flow of ships. Debris went everywhere, and the remains of the rock vanished. On the other side, it mowed down a long stretch of the cylinder, before t
hey adjusted its position to avoid it.
"That’s what twenty gees can do with a rock," said Jane idly.
The salvage droids turned now to return to Redoubt.
"All ships fire," I commanded.
We lost most of the last group of salvage droids, between enemy fire, debris, and friendly fire. It'd bothered me when I first came up with the idea, but Jeeves assured me the ones most likely to not make it, would all be volunteers. I didn’t like losing droids as much as I didn’t like losing people. It felt like I'd violated my no suicide mission's directive.
The defense proceeded much the same as we'd done in Famine, only with the structural changes in ships changing tactics slightly. With the bigger ships now facing the enemy, we took less hits as more of the enemy shots missed.
Jane spent the first half hour analyzing our firing patterns, and started issuing orders. Torpedoes began to be fired into the small gaps between gun firings and missile launches.
The first ship to get by us made it just on midnight. Jane estimated a sixty three hour passage across War.
I kept my eyes on shield values, especially the vulnerable Corvettes. I needn’t have worried. Admiral Sato ordered all of them to retreat the moment the first shield dropped below fifty percent. They turned as one, and powered off towards the waypoint.
The squadrons of fighters rotated through Yorktown, the two Escort Carriers, and Redoubt, in an orderly re-arming sequence. The Hives also rotated back to Unassailable to rearm.
As the Privateers began to run out of ordinance, the Corvettes returned and took their place in the arc again, shields restored.
The hours passed. Twice more Sato took the Corvettes away to regenerate shields, and returned. As a tactic, it was effective. None of the ships took damage, and they were much more effective this way in the longer battle. Having an Admiral command a class he was completely used to using, proved to be a big advantage.
By two in the morning, those of us left in the CCC were feeling the effects of fatigue and strain. Once again, Sato called for a withdrawal, and this time I ordered them to the waypoint, and sent first the Destroyers after them, and very shortly after, the Cruisers as well. At the same time, I ordered all the fighters to land, and the Privateers to land or dock.
Once all the small ships were landed, I ordered the Carriers to withdraw, followed by the Missile Cruisers, and all the Pocket Battleships.
The two Dreadnaughts were nudging fifty percent, and Redoubt was at sixty five, when I ordered us to leave as well.
The aliens took their best shots at us as we left, but our shields easily held this time. We bugged out just before three. We'd be in Last Hope sometime before ten. I was too tired to be precise.
I felt a lot happier this time. We'd managed to bleed them as badly as last time, and while the battle had lasted longer, it'd started slower. It boded well for future defenses.
I sent everyone to bed, and zonked out myself without even shifting my suit.
Thirty One
Jane let me sleep right through the passage across War. Even so, I was bleary eyed when I hauled myself into my chair in the CCC for the jump into Last Hope. Aline hadn't even stirred, but Angel wasn’t there. Jane told me she was playing with Nut and Max. BA was apparently the only other person up, and was currently running laps of the Cargo Deck.
The jump in was routine. The Treasure Chest station was also here, and most of the smaller ships were docked to it, and stocking up. The same freighters as had met us in War were also here, and the ones not already docked to the larger ships, started to dock with Redoubt as soon as she stopped moving.
I went back to bed.
I woke up starving hungry just before three in the afternoon, feeling like I’d slept too much now. I found everyone in the Mess, at various stages of eating. Jeeves put food in front of me as soon as I sat at the table, and I shoveled it in without paying much attention to what it was.
"How long before we battle here?" asked Amanda.
"Two days."
"Is this all there is?" asked Alison. "Fight until we have to leave, and fall back?"
"It's early days," said Dick. "It has to change here."
"Because there's a planet?" asked BA.
"Yes," he agreed.
"Shouldn't we be doing something about the planet?"
I looked towards Annabelle. She nodded, smiling.
"Briefing in one hour," she said.
It had all been planned, just not communicated. We had two days before the next battle. Then a day and half before the planet came under assault. I had mixed feelings about it. I knew those people were not going to move, and I knew they were going to die. I also knew I was going to watch them die. We did need to fight the aliens on the ground, but we still didn’t have a weapon which was effective against them. There was no point in putting regular troops on the ground here, because they'd be slaughtered. We had giant suits, and we would use them. I was leaving deployment to Annabelle, and concentrating on the next space battle. When the time came, I'd be down there, but for now, the team was perfectly capable of doing a ground op without me.
The teams perked up. Jane came in, and whistled at us. Jaws dropped, including mine.
"Can you lot vacate this ship please. I have work to do on it."
"Charming," said Aline quietly.
But we took the hint, finished up eating and coffee, and made our way onto Redoubt. I checked where Angel was, and Jeeves had already taken the cats to my suite.
I was pondering what to do for the next few hours, when Janet called me to my Ready Room. Admiral Sato was there, and I immediately congratulated him on his tactics during the battle. He bowed his pleasure, and left, having just needed to know his actions had been correct.
Jane came in a few minutes later, and threw a navmap on the wall.
"What do you see?"
"We still have a couple of comnavsats in Famine, and enough of them in War to get the signals from them."
"What else?"
I studied it for a few moments.
"We have a pretty good idea where their ships are in real time."
"And?"
"We can see the cylinder they are using for entering the War system, being created in the Famine system."
"Your idea worked."
"You made it work."
"So we keep laying them as we retreat?"
"Definitely."
"Confirmed."
She left. I spent some time studying the flow of ships into War. We still had a guestimate of three million ships coming at us.
Belatedly, I remembered I needed to do a vid.
"Marshall, Admirals, Generals. As the media have presumably shown you, our improvised wall tactic worked, and worked better than I expected. I recommend you work on more effective versions. If the worst happens and we fall, you can make them full fortifications which won't allow any ship to jump in. I’d prefer you let me and refugees fall back though, so making them mobile would be preferable. Think huge tugs, with major grav plating on the front. You need to move the wall into position, and then hold it there against the pressure of ramming. The only downside I can think of is too much debris may create a solid bond between incoming ships and the wall, and the whole thing jumps to the other side. You should test this. If it happens, it would be nice to be able to leave the debris there, and jump back."
"War was the only place we could improvise something, so we don’t have the luxury again. But as tests go, I’d call it successful. If you can build a full sphere around the jump point, with a door for us to jump through, it might hold for a long time. Once the last of our ships is through, the sphere could be rotated so the vulnerable part is on the other side of the jump point. I'll leave it in your hands. Hunter out."
I sent it to the British, American and Sci-Fi sectors. The Americans would pass it on to the Canadians. I pondered sending it on to the other sectors, but I couldn’t help thinking one of them might decide to lock everyone out permanently. A certain Earth Ad
miral came to mind.
Dinner was a peck at nibbles affair, since no-one was ready to eat a full meal again. The teams seemed in high spirits.
Aline and I spent a quiet evening together, interrupted periodically by Angel. In spite of amorous feelings, we opted for sleep.
Thirty Two
I joined training the next morning, and watched Fearless depart for Last Hope. Annabelle had two objectives. Persuade the locals to leave, and set up what defenses they could.
At one in the afternoon, Jane announced the modifications to the Dreadnaughts and Explorers was complete. We saddled up, and jumped back into War.
In line abreast formation, with the two Dreadnaughts between the Explorers on each side of Galactica who had the middle, we headed towards a midpoint in the system.
The idea was to find where the front line of enemy ships started, and then troll back and forth along and behind that line, destroying as many as we could. A variation of the old cavalry raid behind enemy lines tactic.
I sat the CCC alone this time. I’d even left Jane behind, to co-ordinate the completion of the modifications to the other ships. Time passed as we closed on the enemy.
Initially, things went well. We cruised across the system killing front runner ships with impunity. But for the time it was taking, we were not killing enough.
So I decided to make a stab towards the Famine jump point, and see if we could take out the first major wave. We turned inwards, and soon were firing all around us. It wasn’t long before I spotted a partial cylinder forming in response to our incursion, and altered course to intercept it.
I should have known better. We fired on it successfully, but it'd been a lure.
Before we knew it, we were being fired upon by tens of thousands of ships.
Enterprise went first, exploding after receiving a huge hit. Prometheus on the other side went the same way. Dauntless simply vanished. Galactica took a hit to her engines, and out of control, went down into the asteroid field where she was smashed to pieces.
Hunter Legacy 12: Hero in Darkness Page 14
