“You entrusted my life to an enemy alien?”
Drix snorted. “Why not? You were ordering me to kill you anyway. Where there is life, there’s hope, and even a slight hope is better than no hope at all.”
“Why did you not tell me of this before? Before I ordered my own death and relinquished the supreme-mastery?”
“Hal told me that his new drugs would leave you incapacitated, as you’d be very weak and your mental processes degraded,” replied Drix. “He said that arresting the disease would require long periods of almost total rest and that stress had to be minimized for the treatment to work. He believed that the continuing burden of your office would aggravate your condition and threaten the effectiveness of the treatment.”
“Understandable,” mused Xior, nodding. “You knew that I would have never neglected my duties, even to save my own life.” Xior paused a moment and shook his head before continuing.
“Still it was a bit of a shock, momentarily thinking I had woken up ‘on the other side’ and discovered that Dol looks just like Varq.”
Drix laughed. “Yes, I can see how that might have been somewhat disconcerting for a moment. Are you feeling up to having visitors?”
“Visitors? More of the OverMaster brotherhood?”
“Not quite,” chucked Drix. With that, he nodded towards Varq, who then opened the door. N’raal entered carrying little Eryx, who immediately squirmed out of his dam’s arms and scurried into his grand-sire’s lap.
Xior laughed with unabashed glee, as he roughhoused with his grand-cub, but was startled when N’raal approached and said, “It is good to see you feeling better, sire of my mate.”
“You can see me?” Xior asked in astonishment.
“Of course I can see you,” N’raal stated, perplexed at such a ridiculous question. “Why would I not see you?”
“But that means…”
“Yes,” chuckled Drix. “Exactly... she’s always been able to see Varq too. That little surprise almost got me killed, the night Eryx was conceived.”
* * * *
Chapter-19
The enemy is here and if we do not whip him, he will whip us. -- General Robert E. Lee
The Slithin System, Raknii Space
May 17, 3868
Computer enhancements of those blurred areas inside the cavities within the lumps on the asteroid’s surface gave the merest hint of straight lines, but Tzal knew what those had to mean.
Weapons barrels.
As fantastic and unbelievable as it sounded, those huge asteroids were actually gigantic warships, each bearing an incredible number of energy weapons. He had already had his staff develop attack plans, just in case his instincts proved correct. All he had to do was give the order, and 50,000 fighters would rise to swarm the attackers and over 9,000 heavy cruisers would lift and engage.
Tzal gave that order and prayed to Dol that they would be enough against those three monstrous ships. He also sent a message back towards Slithin for Planet-Master Paeb to send him what old-style warships remained in orbit around the planet. Tzal was relieved when he finally received a confirmation message from Paeb, informing him that he had received confirmation from multiple reliable witnesses that Blug had apparently spontaneously combusted when Slithin Station exploded and was a smoldering pile of ash, the last anyone saw of him. As Tzal was now confirmed as ranking master within the system, Paeb was immediately sending him approximately 20,000 of the old-style warships, per his earlier request.
They’ll at least provide decent decoys for my real warships.
* * * *
When heat signatures by the thousands began suddenly appearing within the asteroid belt and heading towards the asteroid-battleships, CSS Apparition responded to her standing orders and accelerated to up jump speed, to call for the cavalry. CSS Phantasm fired off a laser squirt towards Rear Admiral Irwin’s flagship, CSS Behemoth, to give her warning that the enemy was on the warpath, and CSS Banshee took up station between the asteroid belt and the planet Slithin.
* * * *
“Admiral, incoming message on the spook channel… ‘The bees are swarming.’ I repeat, ‘the bees are swarming.’”
“All right, ladies and gentleman, time to earn our pay for the month,” said Rear Admiral Stacy Irwin. “Captain Cameron, call the squadron to general quarters and light off the scanners… let’s see what’s what, out there.”
“Aye, aye, Admiral!”
Alarms clanged and horns hooted, as the crews of all three gigantic asteroid-battleships ran towards their battle stations. Crew personnel all changed into hardened, self-contained battle armor. Secondary and tertiary systems were powered up, calibrated and synchronized with their primaries. Battle-shorts were enabled on all vital systems. Armored doors on the weapons blisters opened and weapons were run out into firing position. Turrets were rotated and weapons were run out and elevated to check for functionality. Search and fire control scanner masts elevated and began searching surrounding space for enemies. Internal armored doors sealed and damage control parties readied their equipment.
Time to party!
* * * *
The Rak troopers who had been crawling around on the surface of CSS Leviathan for several sub-turns howled in horrified astonishment, when the “lumps” they had been investigating suddenly came to life all around them. Incredibly thick doors opened and impossibly large weapons extended. One moment they had been standing on the surface of a relatively barren asteroid, and the next they were virtually surrounded by a forest of 21, 14, 11, 8 and 5-gigawatt pulse laser tubes.
Horror quickly turned to anger as they watched their ride home lifting away from the asteroid, trying desperately to escape the deadly transformation going on all around them. But that anger was short-lived... turning to bleak despair as they watched helplessly when just one of the smallest of those weapons suddenly discharged and blew their escaping new destroyer to atoms, at virtually point-blank range. With nothing left for them to do, they simply gathered together and began singing their death chant — which was the Raknii version of kissing their asses goodbye.
* * * *
CSS Defiant, just outside of the Slithin System, Raknii Space
May 17, 3868
“Admiral, incoming message on the spook channel. ‘The bees are swarming.’ I repeat, ‘the bees are swarming.’ Wait one… another message follows. Admiral, it says the cats have fighters… I repeat… the cats have fighters!”
“Acknowledge receipt of the message and give them our thanks for the heads-up,” said Admiral Ben Stillman.
“Aye, aye, Admiral.”
“Damn,” said Captain Dorothy Fletcher-Stillman. “Our carriers don’t have any anti-fighter missiles aboard.”
“Comm, send to our carriers and advise them that the cats reportedly have fighters and to make sure their birds all have full loads in their chain-guns before they launch,” said Stillman. “Advise we’ll give them one hour to finalize their preparations before we jump into the Slithin system. Also, advise the fleet to accelerate to jump speed and to break out the stimulant injectors, as we’re gonna have a short jump.”
“Aye, aye, Admiral.”
Ben then turned to his beautiful wife and said, “Fighter combat will be new to the kitties, and I doubt seriously if their first attempt at building them will even begin to approach the sophistication of our birds. Besides, what could cats possibly know about dog-fighting?”
* * * *
The Slithin System, Raknii Space
May 17, 3868
Tzal sent in his fighters, in fifty waves of 1,000 fighters each. They each carried a single, heavy-yield, medium-range missile with rudimentary onboard scanners having both target acquisition and tracking capabilities. Over the next few hours, a repetitive pattern developed. The attacking Raknii fighters were subjected to fire from the hundreds of 5 and 3.5 gigawatt pulse-lasers from each of those massive ships, having interlocking fields of fire, so about 2.5% were destroyed before they got within f
iring range to release their missiles. Once launched, about 10% of these new Raknii missiles tracking systems failed to acquire a target at all. 60% of those missiles that did acquire a target had their initial target-locks broken by active electronic countermeasures from the gigantic human warships, so they had to reactivate search mode after being drawn off-course by the enemy’s deceptive signals. Only half of those missiles reacquired a target before running out of fuel. Fully half of those that reacquired targets a second time were again drawn off-course by the human electronic countermeasures, and ran out of fuel, to go drifting off in space along with their earlier brethren.
Half of those that managed to hold target-lock in spite of the humans' ECM, fell victim to another new weapon the Raknii had not encountered before. Hundreds of various types of point-defense weapons like lasers, charged particle beams and Hail Storm defense systems that utilized chain-driven, rotating, multi-barrel shotgun type projectile launchers spitting thousands of tiny kinetic penetration pellets, produced a cloud of outgoing metallic particles between the ship and incoming missiles.
Of the few that survived that gauntlet, a full 30% experienced either premature magnetic arming failures, or failed to arm their warheads at all. Thus it was that for every 1,000 missiles the Raknii fighters carried out on the attack, only about 20% of them actually impacted on the human warships and exploded, as designed. Unfortunately the Raknii had not yet developed effective armor-piercing warheads, and depended entirely on shaped explosive yield for penetration power. So each missile explosion that actually impacted on the surface of the huge asteroid-warships produced only a small crater in the humans' hardened alloy surface armor that was about two body-lengths across, to a maximum depth of only about a quarter body-length.
* * * *
Confederate Captain Michael Diamond couldn’t believe his luck. When his stealth cruiser CSS Banshee arrived at her assigned patrol station prompted by the cats’ massive launch, he found that the cat commander had positioned what appeared to be almost a thousand light carriers planet-side of the asteroid field, to shield them from scan view of the asteroid-battleships still inbound — right in Banshee’s lap. Diamond couldn’t imagine any culture that was capable of designing, building and fielding a thousand light carriers from scratch, less than five years after Minnos first introduced them to the concept of fighters, but somehow the cats had done it. He imagined the cats were having quite similar thoughts, and were shaking their furry heads at the bizarre idea of anyone turning nickel-iron asteroids into massive weapons platforms, too.
At any rate, with a thousand juicy targets to pick from, Diamond and his crew felt like kids turned loose in the galaxy’s largest shooting gallery. Diamond preprogrammed a random figure-8, racetrack course just within range of the cat carriers into their navigation computer and then slaved their master fire-control system to it.
11-gigawatt pulse-lasers did terrible things to lightly armored carriers and Banshee carried six of them, mounted in three twin turrets. Independently targeting different carriers with each of her turrets, Banshee’s three 11-gigawatt twin turrets literally destroyed a different carrier with each firing pass, as she fired and moved, fired and moved —in a random path designed to frustrate any kitties trying to draw a bead on her.
Several hundred fighters came back their way, searching for their tormentor, but Banshee’s compliment of twin 5 and 3.5 gigawatt mounts swatted them away at longer range and her point-defense weaponry knocked down the few who inadvertently managed to wander within their much shorter range.
* * * *
Tzal was astounded that the humans had somehow managed to make an undetectable warship at all, but the incoming fire that was destroying his carriers so efficiently appeared to be at least as large as his biggest new weapons aboard his heavy cruisers. It was terribly frustrating for his pilots trying to locate the invisible monster that was slowly eating away at his carrier force, like a disease. They couldn’t hit what they couldn’t see. Tzal was just glad the humans didn’t appear to have a whole fleet of them.
But Tzal couldn’t worry about his carriers at the moment. He’d lost over 6,000 fighters in the five attack passes they’d taken at the monstrous asteroid weapons platforms. He’d been disappointed at their poor 20% success rate of actually hitting the great beasts with their first generation fighters and missiles... disappointed, but not surprised. If the thousand hits they’d accomplished had been targeted at much of anything besides these great armored behemoths, they’d have probably been very effective.
His 9,000 cruisers were approaching firing range, and it was time to see what his other new toys could do against these monsters. If only he was up against the kind of ships that had attacked Golgathal, he felt like he’d be doing all right. But unfortunately, he wasn’t. In every battle it seemed these humans always had something new up their sleeves — something virtually impervious to the best weapons he had at hand.
These damned humans just don’t fight fair!
* * * *
Long before Tzal’s cruisers got into firing range, Confederate Rear Admiral Stacy Irwin unleashed her squadron’s monstrous 21-gigawatt main guns on the approaching Raknii warships. Those powerful plasma blasts tore through the cat’s heavy cruiser grade armor like it was tissue paper, often destroying multiple warships before the energy finally dissipated. As the range closed still further, she opened up with her 14-gigawatt battlecruiser-sized secondaries, still more than sufficient to devastate virtually anything they hit. By the time Tzal’s 2,500 heavy cruisers could open up with their 11-gigawatt main armament, their numbers had already been reduced by about 500, with additional losses of another 1,500 smaller cruisers and destroyers. Unfortunately, by the time Tzal’s cruisers came into firing range of their heaviest weaponry, they also came into range of Irwin’s 11-gigawatt heavy cruiser grade secondaries as well.
Tzal ordered his cruisers to concentrate their fire on the lead asteroid, so on their initial volley, the cats sent 12,000, 11-gigawatt plasma balls screaming towards Irwin’s flagship, CSS Behemoth. The great asteroid was virtually too big to miss, even at extreme range, so over 10,000 of those initial blasts registered hits on the great beast. When the range closed enough to allow for Tzal’s 8-gigawatt and 6-gigwatt weapons to engage, things got really interesting.
* * * *
CSS Phantasm also jumped back to the rendezvous point and arrived in time to give Admiral Ben Stillman’s Confederate 2nd Fleet updated coordinates which allowed his cruisers to emerge almost on top of over 900 Raknii carriers. Stillman’s carriers emerged two light-minutes farther in towards the planet, along with their accompanying frigates and destroyers, and began launching Demons, followed by Raptors, until all 690 of 2nd Fleet’s fighters were space-borne and moving to the attack.
Admiral Stillman’s flagship, the battleship CSS Defiant opened up on the cat carriers with her 16-gigwatt mains immediately, as did the 14’s, the 11’s and the 8’s from her accompanying cruiser squadrons. The Rak carriers were in the process of retrieving returning fighter squadrons and re-launching others, which had just been refueled and rearmed with the single big anti-ship missiles they carried. Pandemonium reigned when the massive plasma balls began ripping through the carrier formations and many collisions ensued, as the Raknii ship-masters desperately tried to maneuver in efforts to evade the powerful incoming fire.
The crew of the stealth cruiser CSS Banshee initially cheered heartily when the 15 heavies of 2nd Fleet emerged within firing range of their big main guns and began destroying cat carriers wholesale, which Banshee had been picking off in twos and threes for hours. There followed a feeling of mild disappointment, that their part on the great turkey-shoot was over, but they’d already destroyed over 90 enemy carriers single-handedly. All in all, not a bad day’s work.
Even without specific orders, Captain Diamond knew where his primary duty now lay in this scenario, and he reluctantly ordered his undetectable cruiser to pull away from the melee to take position be
tween the planet Slithin and Stillman’s carriers, to guard their backside against anything unexpected that might be coming out from the planet.
Returning cat fighters were low on fuel, but many tried to engage the incoming Demons making their attack runs against their carriers, as they each carried two medium-range, scanner-guided anti-fighter missiles and two short-range infrared, thermally-guided anti-fighter missiles. The Rak pilots were angered and disappointed to see the vast majority of their missiles swerving away from their intended targets, when the Confederate pilots released scanner reflective chaff, phosphorus flares and lit off their own onboard active electronic-countermeasures systems. Several hundred newly refueled and rearmed Rak fighters aborted their attack run against the asteroid ships, and doubled-back to attack the human warships that had unexpectedly emerged in the rear of their carriers.
With minimal evasive action required to avoid the cloud of cat anti-fighter missiles coming at them, the attacking Demons targeted four of their six medium-yield ship-killer missiles against each carrier, to ensure that they achieved kills with weapons not actually designed for use against such large targets. The last two, they used to finish off cripples. The Rak carriers fired off their own chaff and flares, as well as their 1st generation ECM, which were moderately successful, but in their first pass alone, Stillman’s 345 Demons left over 280 Raknii carriers behind as flaming wreckage, before they turned back to rearm.
Stillman’s cruisers weren’t carrying their normal allotment of anti-fighter missiles aboard, to make room for more medium-yield anti-ship missiles, as that was all they’d needed in every conflict with the cats prior to this one. The battleship and cruisers opened up on the incoming fighters with what 5 and 3.5-gigawatt mounts they carried, popped chaff and flares and employed active ECM to minimize their exposure to the cats’ big incoming missiles as much as possible.
Wrath of an Angry God: A Military Space Opera (The Sentience Trilogy Book 3) Page 21
