Defying the Prophet: A Military Space Opera (The Sentience Trilogy Book 2)

by Gibson Michaels

  The Alliance Planet Minnos

  June 12, 3863

  Already intimately familiar with the system layout, OverFleet-Master Tzal transitioned his massive fleet-of-fleets just inside the asteroid field of the alien world and initiated full active scanning. Units positioned at the edges of the monstrous formation of over 1,000 Rak warships began peeling away after inbound and outbound shipping, firing their weaponry at their helpless targets, just as soon as they came into range. All had been warned to especially look for the aliens' incredibly fast-moving transport vessels and to target them first, at all costs. Tzal didn’t want any of them escaping to warn other human planets of the Rak attack.

  * * * *

  “Holy shit! I’ve got bogies inbound… looks like over a thousand of them,” screamed the duty controller at Minnaplis Interstellar Spaceport. “Alert the Fleet and the Planetary Guard that we are under attack — I repeat — We are under attack by over a thousand inbound bogies!”

  The Alliance Fleet only had a small cruiser/destroyer squadron stationed at Minnos. One heavy cruiser, two light cruisers, four frigates and six destroyers to face down over a thousand attackers. Within 10 minutes of first notice, the gallant little squadron boosted out of planetary orbit to confront the enemy. Half of the planet’s in-system fighters had been withdrawn during their recently concluded war with the Confederates, but within 12 minutes, the 125 Cobras remaining at Minnos lifted from their planet-side bases and screamed towards the enemy carrying mixed loads.

  * * * *

  “OverFleet-Master Tzal, there are over 100 tiny fast movers lifting from the planet’s surface towards us,” called the scan operator on Tzal’s flagship at the rear-center of the great globular formation.

  “Bah,” said the flagship’s ship-master. "What can those tiny little ships do, but try to escape and give warning?”

  Tzal thought otherwise. Those tiny ships weren’t vectoring to escape. They were coming directly after his ships! Whatever they were, the humans obviously thought of them as effective weapons platforms.

  “All ships, fire at those small fast movers as soon as you’re in range!” Tzal yelled into his command net.

  Only a few of the Tzal’s ships got within range to fire on the strange little enemy ships. Most of their fire-control scanners could not track the high speed and incredible maneuverability of the tiny craft. A few Raknii ships did score hits, as, other than active electronic-countermeasures, the Alliance Cobras had no defense against the Rak energy weapons.

  * * * *

  The Cobras came into firing range of their anti-ship missiles first and launched a barrage for which the Raknii had no countermeasures. Missiles were an entirely new experience for the Rak, and not one they necessarily enjoyed. After the Cobras' second salvo, over 185 Rak warships had been destroyed in just the first few seconds of the engagement. Some Cobra pilots got close enough to light off their anti-fighter missiles at the enemy, only to watch sadly as their low-yield warheads bounced off of the enemy’s armored hulls. As this new enemy had launched no fighters, the Cobra pilots recognized that they needed full loads of anti-ship missiles to be effective, so they dived back towards the planet to rearm.

  * * * *

  Tzal was stunned when almost 20% of his gigantic fleet was destroyed, before the fast movers turned back towards the planet. Tzal had seen weapons like these once before — the Trakaan, self-guided explosive weapons that had annihilated the Rak fleet at Jarp’s Folly. Tzal instinctively knew these tiny fast movers must only carry a few of these weapons, but he could not allow them to rearm themselves on the planet’s surface. He immediately called for 75% of his remaining fleet to track where those fast movers landed and to destroy them on the ground. The last fourth would take out those few large ships that were approaching… or so he thought.

  Another barrage of anti-ship missiles, for which the Rak warships had no defense, came barreling in from the alien warships. Then came a second wave, wreaking large-scale destruction on their fleet. Only 142 of the warships designated to engage the enemy warships actually made it into range to fire their energy weapons. Tzal’s flagship targeted the largest, and he watched despondently as his energy weapons seemingly bounced off the heavy cruiser without effect. Tzal was aghast when the cruiser’s huge 11-gigawatt pulse lasers tore through his ships as though they were made of paper.

  Eventually the Rak ships got into position to strike the human ships’ vulnerable drive tubes from astern, and the monsters were pounded down — but only 52 of the over 200 Rak warships Tzal had assigned to engage survived their encounter against the human ships. Less than a single fleet survived out of almost three full battlefleets, just to take out a mere thirteen enemies. Tzal was stunned. He had never seen such monstrous and heavily armored warships such as these aliens possessed.

  Thank Dol, they didn’t have more of them.

  The 800+ warships that Tzal assigned to pursue and destroy the fast movers on the ground discovered another unpleasant fact about these humans. As they approached the planet, a cloud of hundreds more anti-ship missiles spewed from the four large installations in high orbit around the planet. Massive plasma bolts from 16-gigwatt and 5-gigawatt pulse lasers tore through the Rak fleet with devastating results. The Rak then realized the four orbital installations were heavily armored defensive installations, and their energy weapons were having no more effect on them than spitting on a wall.

  Finally the fort on the near side ran out of missiles to throw at them and the Rak warfleet found that positioning themselves between the fort and the planet granted relative safety — as they were hidden in the planetary back-scatter from the fort’s probing fire-control scanners, and they were also hidden from the other three forts by the bulk of the planet itself. That safety was only relative however, as clouds of missiles rose to greet them from the planet’s surface.

  Half of the Rak ships dove to take out the missile batteries and the other half went after the fast-mover bases that had been located, but suddenly found themselves having to cut through a Dol-awful lot of tiny atmospheric-type warcraft, just to reach the fast mover bases and missile batteries. These atmospheric warcraft weren’t quite so fast or maneuverable as the fast-movers they’d encountered in space, and so were somewhat easier to hit with Rak energy weapons, but at least 50 Cobras made it back into the air with full-loads of anti-ship missiles.

  Fortunately for the Rak, those missiles were not designed for atmospheric combat and couldn’t maneuver and track as they did in space. By the time that all of the enemy’s missile installations, fast movers and atmospheric warcraft had been eliminated, only 186 Rak warships remained of those sent down to fight in the planet’s atmosphere. Only 238 out of the fleet-of-fleet’s original 1,024 warships remained. It was incredible — never had the Raknii experienced losses on such a scale.

  Tzal pondered his position. He’d been told of the prophecy’s description of these humans as incredible predators, but he’d never dreamed of such weapons as he’d faced here. Should he call for the assault fleets? He knew that with only 238 ships left, he could not hold the planet against a concerted counterattack, but he needed to learn more about these humans.

  In the end, he sent a scout ship out to call in the assault fleets parked just outside the outer edges of this solar system. Tzal also ordered copies of all 238 of his ships’ recorded combat logs, recorded emissions logs and then he recorded an after-action report, that included everything they had learned so far, and sent them off to Drix at Golgathal. He was going to gather more information about these humans if it killed him. From what he’d seen so far, it probably would.

  * * * *

  Commander Kathy Edison was lucky. She sat out the recent war against the Confederates, assigned as the Executive Officer aboard the light cruiser USS Cheyenne, here on guard duty at Minnos. Most of her fellow officers groused at “missing the war,” but from what she’d heard, the war had not been a very healthy place to be for Alliance fleeties. No sooner had that war
ended, than someone brought her another one and dumped it right into her lap.

  She’d continued to fight her ship against these strange invaders, after Captain Robinson was killed by a disabled enemy ship, which intentionally threw itself into the Cheyenne’s bridge compartment. Edison was finally forced to announce “abandon ship,” after enemy bolts went up Cheyenne’s drive tubes and overloaded her #2 reactor — which promptly went into thermal runaway. Edison had done everything by-the-book. She verified the surviving crew got off, set the auto-destruct charges herself and was the last one off. She’d watched with some satisfaction as her life pod sped away from her doomed ship, as the destruct charges took out another enemy ship that got too close, trying to stick another energy blast into the old girl’s butt.

  Fortunately, her life-pod’s reentry system worked as advertised, and she safe-landed near a pig farm on the night side of the planet. Her satellite communicator had stopped working. The whoever-the-hell-it-was that was attacking them had probably knocked the satellites down. From what Edison had seen, they were shooting at anything that moved up there. She’d even got a glimpse of some atmospheric fighters tangling with the invaders’ surprising little ships, just before her pod crossed over into night and began its landing cycle. A half-mile hike and a brief, but intense moment with a frightened pig farmer holding a shotgun, and she’d been on the farmer’s landline communicator to Fleet HQ in Minnaplis. A rotary winged rescue vehicle picked her up an hour and a half later, and whisked her back to HQ for debriefing.

  “They had the strangest warships I’ve ever seen,” Edison stated. “Almost destroyer class, but not quite — more like what you’d get if you bred a destroyer to a cutter. Guess you’d have to call them the equivalent to the old corvette class. Didn’t see any variations either... like they all were made from the same mold, like cookies. No variations in class that I could see, whatsoever. They looked… uh, cramped. Really cramped. I’d really hate to try standing up in one of the damned things.

  “They launched no missiles at all, that I saw,” Edison continued. “Just energy weaps and small ones at that. Looked to be about the equivalent of two, twin three to 3.5-gigawatt pulse lasers up front, with a single twin mount at the stern.

  “Their armor appeared to be similar to destroyer class. Even medium-yield anti-ship missiles took 'em right out. Didn’t seem to have any ECM either. Virtually every missile we fired, hit. We were kicking the hell out of them until they got behind us — just too damned many of them. Couldn’t maneuver to keep them off our tail. They were everywhere.”

  * * * *

  Elite Rak demolition specialists wearing space armor soft-landed upon the outer surface of the human’s orbital fort, and blasted their way past the fort’s airlock doors with shaped demolition charges. Hundreds of Rak assault troops stormed inside, only to be met with significant resistance from the station’s human crew. Eventually though, numbers won out and with the fall of the orbital fort, a narrow arch existed where the assault fleets could approach the planet with relative safety.

  Ten full assault fleets, filled with over 500,000 of the large Raknaa warriors, a sub-breed of the Raknii race, had accompanied the fleet-of-fleets to the human planet. Only six of those assault fleets survived the gauntlet of missile and pulse-laser fire from the two forts able to target their approach. They positioned themselves and began raining Rak shock troops down onto the planet’s surface. Assault shuttles by the thousands blackened the skies above human cities. More atmospheric fighters rose to oppose the landing, destroying hundreds of shuttles, but Tzal’s surviving warships finally took them out, after their bases were located.

  As the surviving 215,000 Rak assault troops began pulling themselves together into fighting organizations to occupy the planet, the humans pulled yet another surprise from their playbook — artillery rounds began driving the lightly armored Rak infantry vehicles off of the roads. The Rak were unfamiliar with indirect fire and their advance was slowed significantly until Tzal’s warships located and destroyed the strange tube-like weapons that were lobbing high explosives across absurd distances, to land with incredible precision amongst the Rak assault troops.

  Even as the Rak regrouped and began their advance towards the cities, tracked, heavily-armored land vehicles carrying mammoth explosive projectile tubes, began firing direct-fire, anti-armor and anti-personnel explosives, which chewed the approaching Raknaa to pieces. Only Tzal’s warships had sufficient firepower to destroy the armored monsters, but there were too few left of them to prevent massive Rak casualties.

  The Raknii were baffled by the aliens’ behavior. These humans just didn’t seem to realize that whoever controlled space, controlled the planet — so either humans were too stupid to understand when they were beaten, or they had more strangeness awaiting the advancing Rak. The latter turned out to be the case.

  When the Rak warships descended low enough to engage the human’s armored vehicles, clouds of mobile, shoulder-mounted missiles having armor-piercing warheads rose to meet them from formations of human ground troops supporting their armor. By the time Tzal’s warships finished off the last of the armored behemoths, only 106 Rak warships remained and over half the Raknaa assault force had been destroyed, in just the first four turns of ground combat.

  The surviving 125,000 Raknaa again regrouped and engaged the 20,000 Alliance Fleet Marines and Planetary Guard troops in some of the nastiest infantry combat in recorded Rak history. The human troops appeared to be using some kind of projectile weapons that did terrible things when they impacted on the bodies of the unarmored Raknaa. Of course, the Rak energy rifles produced similar effects on unarmored human bodies as well, but most of the human warriors appeared to be wearing some kind of resistive body armor, the likes of which the Raknii had never seen. Automatic weapons spat an unimaginable amount of deadly projectiles that shredded the Rak assault troops. Machine gun nests took a terrible toll on charging masses of Rak warriors, reminiscent of ancient Japanese banzai charges.

  Tzal’s remaining warships aided with fire support wherever especially well-entrenched defenders needed removing, but the humans were actually employing thrown explosive devices — another idea that utterly amazed the Rak. Then the humans first introduced the Raknaa to indirect mortar fire. Tzal’s remaining warships were often unable to locate the small, mobile launch tubes and thousands of Rak warriors fled from the inexplicable rain of death, coming from Dol only knew where. These humans were absolutely enamored with explosions, and had devised an incredible number of ways of creating them!

  But it was when the Raknaa first engaged the humans in actual hand-to-hand combat, that the truly alien nature of this new enemy was fully revealed. Most humans were 30% larger and had twice the body mass of even the over-sized Raknaa — literally twice the size and three times the body mass of their Raknii officers. No one could have suspected it beforehand, but these humans were giants! Savage giants at that — bayonets, combat knives and martial arts all came as nasty surprises to the Rak warriors tasked with subduing these aliens… aliens who even used their weapons as blunt clubs, when necessary.

  But it was probably the Rak who landed in rural areas not actively defended by human military troops as they were near the cities, who discovered the biggest shock of all to Raknii dreams of subduing this human planet. Even the human civilians were armed — large canine creatures with fangs, farmers with hunting rifles, children with shotguns, and housewives wielding butcher knives. Dynamite and homemade gasoline fire-bombs welcomed the Rak from every shadow. These gigantic aliens were crazy!

  * * * *

  “Sergeant-Major! Malone’s squad is coming in with prisoners.”

  Prisoners? Fleet Marine Sergeant-Major William White turned towards the opening of the bunker and shouted, “On my way. This I’ve gotta see!”

  White climbed the steps leading out of the bunker, gliding past the double dog-leg design of the entrance that provided cover from shrapnel, concussive blast and other rude occurrence
s normally found in ground combat situations. By the time his head cleared the low hanging entrance, White saw his first six ridiculously small invaders ringed with Marines, with their hands (paws?) pulled behind their backs and tied with strong plastic cable clamps that marines carried with them for just that purpose.

  They were definitely not human… not by any stretch of the imagination! Humanoid maybe, as they were all bipedal, having the proper number of arms, legs and heads. But then, there was that tail to consider. They were basically feline in appearance. Five of the six were larger, approximately 4’6” to 4’8” tall and looked a bit like an Old Earth cougar, with corresponding fangs and claws. Unlike real cougars, they had thumbs, opposite three muscled “fingers.” Their coloring ranged from a light blonde to a dirty shit-brown. One even appeared to have faint stripe markings on its back and facial area. All but the smallest were dressed in identical crossed-belt combat harnesses, above tough leggings of undeterminable color. White blinked at the boots. He’d never thought to see a cat wearing boots.

  The smallest one was obviously a different breed altogether. About three feet tall and having a mane haloing its head, looking for all the world like an Old Earth African lion… a very small Old Earth African lion. This one’s fur was a golden color, with a mane that was almost black. Unlike the larger ones, the smallest one wore a loose, blousy shirt that shone like silk. White silk.

  What kind of creature goes into combat wearing white? Oh yeah… I remember reading the French army once wore white uniform coats into combat. Almost as ridiculous as the bright red ones that the British still wear as dress coats. Pfft, can’t see the blood — my Great Aunt Matilda’s hairy fat ass!

  “How’d you end up with these?” asked White.

  Corporal Betty Malone stepped forward and said, “Tossed a flash-bang grenade down one of their hidey holes and there they were… all stunned as shit at the bottom. Got the cuffs on them before their world came back into focus. Thought I’d bring them to you as an early birthday gift, Sergeant-Major.”