Kalis laughed and slapped Ben on the shoulder. “You’ve made your bed with Dorothy Fletcher, Ben. Guess you’re just going to have to lie in it.”
“Admiral, please… please don’t use the terms ‘bed’ and ‘Dorothy Fletcher’ in the same sentence again.”
* * * *
Chapter-24
The art of war is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike him as hard as you can, and keep moving. -- General Ulysses S. Grant
Golgathal System
July 3rd, 3865
Confederate Infiltrators had already located the emergence points generally utilized by the cats as they brought in reinforcements and supplies from deeper within their empire. They were at remote points in the system, obviously selected as empty areas where large incoming ship formations could safely emerge into normal space, with no danger of collisions with any of the tens of thousands of other ships coming and going from the largest military buildup that either side had ever seen. The allied combined fleet had been combined, intermixed and divided up according to ship-type, and how each entered into Kalis’ overall battle plan.
The first human ships to be detected entering the Golgathal system showed on Raknii traffic control scanners as indeterminate blobs, about 63 light-minutes out — not an unusual occurrence whenever large formations were still at range and scan resolution unable to differentiate individual ships in tight formation. The human combined fleet had swung beyond the target system in order to loop back and approach from a direction normally used by incoming cat ships, so they emerged within the same area of space on vectors the cats commonly used.
Bored Raknii traffic controllers on duty at Golgathal Station, lulled by multiple cycles of endless arrivals of Rak ships, failed to notice that this latest knot of incoming ships were traveling inbound somewhat faster than Rak warships were capable of traveling in normal space. The first indication anything was amiss was when routine arrival messages from those ships failed to materialize. Just as the chief Raknii traffic controller was beginning to broadcast his interrogative, requesting the incoming formation to identify itself — his universe exploded.
* * * *
Five of the Confederate Infiltrator-class vessels normally reserved for intelligence gathering purposes were loaded for bear, each carrying full loads of 16 of the new high-yield, short-range missiles that Commander Diamond, captain of CSS Ghost had suggested after the Battle of Nork. Neither Diamond nor Ghost was present at Golgathal on this momentous day, but CSS Specter, CSS Wraith, CSS Phantom, CSS Shade, and CSS Spirit drifted invisibly in a loose semi-circle, along one side of the massive enemy station / shipyard / base. The five Infiltrators had practiced the coming maneuver relentlessly, after first being proposed by Fleet Admiral Kalis, and all five crews were absolutely thrilled to have the opportunity to play an active role, firing the first shots in the mankind’s opening offensive against the treacherous aliens who surprise-attacked Minnos two years earlier.
Spirit waited for the first transmission from the station after the timed emergence of the combined fleet, and promptly launched a high-yield, short-range ship-killer missile directly into a knot of cat ships docked at the massive station. A half-second later, she launched a second missile directly into the massive hole she’d just blown in the station. With her second missile away, Spirit closed her launch tube doors and sped away from the station on a predetermined course towards her next firing position. Five seconds after the second explosion caused by Spirit’s follow-up missile, Shade launched a third big missile towards the station at approximately 20° around the edge of the station from the double explosion caused by Spirit’s two missiles.
Each of the Confederate Infiltrators launched in their turn, causing a ripple of massive explosions that worked their way around the edge of the station, mimicking multiple secondary explosions, each apparently caused by the explosion preceding it. One by one, the explosions walked their way around the edges of the station, looking all the world like she was being subjected to a gigantic, old-fashioned can opener. After making her second launch, Phantom was just turning away to assume her next firing position when she was caught by a real secondary explosion of truly epic proportions, which blew massive chunks of the station directly into her side.
The incoming ships were totally forgotten, as station debris began ripping through the cloud of thousands of Rak ships in formation about the rapidly disintegrating station. Collisions by the hundreds occurred, as thousands of ships simultaneously attempted to escape the incoming blizzard of ragged metal being flung outward from the explosions. The Confederate Infiltrators repositioned multiple times, continuing their bombardment of the station at increasing distances; their missile fire becoming more and more uncoordinated, as they danced invisibly trying to avoid shrapnel flying from the disintegrating station and dodging alien ships trying to do the same. Within 27 minutes of the initial explosion, Golgathal Station was reduced to a marginally glowing chunk of metallic slag, one-third her original size.
Raknii command and control was decimated. Most of their senior masters, especially those with authority to command multiple warfleets, had been aboard the station. Over 5,500 warships and 8,700 transports had been destroyed outright, or heavily damaged by the station’s expanding debris field. The eleven surviving OverFleet-Masters who had been aboard their flagships conferred, established seniority between them and apportioned various areas of responsibilities for investigating the cause of the station’s destruction — that, and overseeing massive search and rescue operations required in the wake of this unimaginable disaster. Few speculated that the catastrophe was anything other than the result of some bizarre, horrendous misfortune. While rare, such calamities were not unheard of. Focused on immediate necessities, few Raknii in their massive fleet noted the overly large incoming blips were giving birth to thousands of swarming babies.
* * * *
The four remaining Confederate Infiltrators withdrew individually to empty areas of wilderness on the planet’s surface, to set down and initiate repairs to minor damage sustained from debris impacts. Those impacts had compromised their stealth capabilities to some degree, but amongst all of the multiple thousands of shards of debris providing competing scanner reflections, none of the cat ships had noticed them. Their crews were in good spirits as they worked and they ooh’ed and ah’ed at the spectacular meteor shower taking place over their heads. They all knew that the brilliant sky show weren’t really meteors at all, but flaming debris from the station, burning as it plunged down through the atmosphere. It gave them a feeling of extreme pride to know they were responsible for the destruction of the great alien station. None dreamed that one of the larger and more spectacular streaks of fire they were admiring was their sister ship, the CSS Phantom.
* * * *
Admiral Thorn ordered all of the combined fleet carriers and their escorts to execute a wide, sweeping turn, eventually reversing course as their fighter formations streaked away towards the gigantic alien fleet. Admiral Stillman maintained the fleet’s point position in his old-style, but thoroughly modernized “all-gun” battleship. Stillman led a formation of eight missile-battleships, 30 battlecruisers, 30 heavy cruisers and 45 light cruisers spread into a unique formation, designed to maximize protection of each other’s vulnerable drive tubes.
Fleet Admiral Kalis’ flagship, CSS Malice was positioned as the most rearward missile-battleship in the formation, from where he directed battle as a whole. Stillman was in operational command of all the battleships and cruisers in the flotilla acting as the “head of the spear” in the assault. Sextus Admiral Jim Hunter was in personal charge of the 75 frigates of their operational reserve, which trailed the main formation within maximum missile range of Stillman’s light cruisers. Alliance Vice Admiral J.T. Turner held operational command of the 120 destroyers guarding Thorn’s 45 carriers and the dozens of transport ships stationed in the far rear, ready to replenish the fleet’s expendables, as nece
ssary. As Stillman’s formation continued in towards the alien fleet at almost twice transition speed, massive swarms of fighters were passing all around them, on their way to reduce the number of targets the fleet was driving towards.
As each wave of fighters came into nominal launch range and their fire-control systems locked onto a target, they each loosed a single ship-killer missile and then peeled away in formation to give the next incoming wave a clear shot. Upon reaching the rear of the incoming fighter formations, they again reversed course to assume a place at the rear of the fighter waves. Focused upon their huge search and rescue operation after the disaster that had befallen their fleet with the destruction of their station, the cats appeared oblivious to the incoming missiles until explosions began rippling through the ranks of their warships. Each fighter wave methodically destroyed almost 200 of the small alien warships and, after an initial period of confusion, the cats eventually realized they were under attack and their gigantic fleet ponderously turned towards their human tormentors.
* * * *
Unbelievable... humans were here at Golgathal and they were attacking! Never in recorded history had prey attacked Raknii, as these humans were doing. The Rak had 43,000 warships in this system — the greatest single accumulation of Raknii military power ever gathered at any one place. These aliens obviously had no idea what they were up against. Either that, or they really were crazy, as many of the assault troops who had actually been down on the human planet with Tzal’s OverFleet claimed. While Tzal had learned much in his costly assault on the human world two cycles earlier, much about these humans remained an enigma.
Rak warriors were infinitely courageous, but they weren’t stupid or suicidal. The Rak simply couldn’t comprehend an enemy audacious enough to attack such an awesome concentration of power with only a couple of hundred warships. What these humans were attempting was akin to purposely charging headlong into a star. It boggled the mind! What kind of creatures would do that? Perhaps they really were insane, but, insane or not… they were all about to die.
* * * *
The Raknii warships had no chance of getting into range of the human fighters before they pulled away, after launching yet another wave of missiles that were all eerily accurate and consistent at peeling away yet another thin layer of Rak warships. When the 1,000 Raptors involved finally expended all four of their anti-ship missiles, they headed back to their carriers to refuel and rearm. The 1,000 Demons each carried two more missiles than the Raptors could hold, so they each made a couple more passes before they, too, had to head back, but by the time they did, over 9,300 of the small Rak warships were flaming wreckage… a staggering loss, but barely noticed by the battle-crazed cats as they continued their inexorable headlong charge directly towards the human assault flotilla.
* * * *
When the first wave of Raptors completed two passes at the enemy, expending half of their four missiles, a tight-beam laser message shot out from their wing-leader, to inform Admiral Thorn they would begin returning shortly. Upon receiving that message almost an hour later, Thorn immediately ordered half of her remaining 1,500 fighters launched to act as a screen for the main fleet while the initial strike force was recovered and rearmed.
Although the initial human assaults on the Raknii fleet had been incredibly successful, over 28,000 angry Rak warships still remained and were now bearing down on the 105 ships in Stillman’s assault flotilla. Long before the leading edges of the cat fleet came into firing range, the Rak were aghast when the nine largest human ships unleashed incomprehensibly powerful energy fire, from an unbelievable distance. Their six frontal 16-gigawatt pulse-lasers tore through the comparatively flimsy Rak ships like they were paper, often destroying four or five before the bolts dissipated down to a level where they only damaged one or two more. As the range closed further, the humans' 30 battlecruisers all added fire from their six forward 14-gigawatt pulse-lasers to the destruction. Later, the 30 heavy cruisers opened up with their 11-gigawatt pulse lasers, and finally the 45 light cruisers added their 8-gigawatt main batteries to the carnage being wrought on the approaching Rak fleet.
* * * *
For probably the first time in weeks, Ben Stillman wasn’t thinking about Dorothy Fletcher. Wrapped up tight in his self-contained combat armor, Ben sat in his command chair in Defiant’s Combat Information Center and watched the tactical scan display flaring with hundreds of hits within the approaching cat fleet, caused by his flotilla’s massive main armaments. Ben had never dreamed of such a target-rich environment.
Per Admiral Kalis’ standing battle orders, Ben ordered his entire flotilla to use only their big main weaponry as they came into extreme range, and to hold all missile and secondary armament fire until they finally came into range of the cats’ weaponry. Had he been consulted on the matter, Ben would have preferred to use everything they had, at as long a range as possible, to minimize the number of enemy ships that ever got into range in the first place.
But Kalis wanted the cats to see, with their own eyes, what kind of punishment battleships could stand up to. He wanted the enemy to know they couldn’t hurt the human fleet. He wanted them to feel utter discouragement. Ben didn’t quite see things that way, but the old Gray Fox got paid the big bucks for making decisions like that, and he hadn’t lost one yet.
Still, here he sat… right in the dead center of the bulls-eye. Defiant was on point, and so became the primary target in the biggest battle that humankind had ever fought — bigger than humanity had ever even imagined. Ben felt niggling little doubts trying to worm their way into his consciousness. It had certainly all sounded good on paper, but right now the theory, that literally thousands of 3-gigawatt pulse-laser hits wouldn’t penetrate or degrade a battleship’s armor, wasn’t really enough to prevent Ben’s balls from trying to escape what was coming, by hiding up his asshole.
At least if I’m going to die, I’ll do it sitting next to the most beautiful woman in the known universe.
Ben really wasn’t overly concerned about the prospect of his own death, but there was just something fundamentally wrong with the idea of a goddess being blown to atoms. Ben unconsciously glanced to his right and there, a mere four feet away, sat Dorothy Fletcher… ensconced in her own battle armor and looking for all the world like a queen to Ben’s king on their two elevated command chairs, uncannily resembling thrones. Ben couldn’t help but wonder whether she’d had to have her battle armor custom made to accommodate her magnificent…
Goddamn it, Stillman! Get your mind off Dorothy Fletcher’s tits and pay attention to your damn job! Watch the war, man. Watch the war!
* * * *
By the time the leading elements of the gigantic Rak fleet finally came into firing range, the human’s unbelievably powerful, long-range energy weapons had destroyed another 3,000 Rak warships. Few still believed the destruction of their station might have been an accident. None could imagine exactly how they might have accomplished it, but the entire Rak fleet was firmly convinced it was somehow the human’s doing. Enraged at the devastation they’d suffered at the hands of these audacious aliens, their initial volley was not well coordinated with fire discipline — almost a thousand Rak warships unleashed all of their forward weaponry… virtually all at the same target! A hellish barrage of thousands of 3-gigawatt blasts totally engulfed the monstrous human ship leading their formation, completely obliterating it from sight within a wall of flame.
* * * *
Ben thought he’d been blinded, as the entire Combat Information Center aboard Defiant suddenly disappeared in a blinding flash of yellow and orange. The entire ship rang like a gong being struck by a thousand air-hammers, and the blinding glare seemed to go on forever. That impossible sound made Ben feel like his head was inside a cathedral bell, as it summoned the faithful to mass. After a couple of seconds, which felt more like a couple of eternities, the filters in Ben’s faceplate finally polarized and he was extremely relieved that his vision actually returned…
…and was rather startled to find Captain Dorothy Fletcher at his side, clinging to his arm.
Ben flipped a switch on the arm of his chair and opened an internal comm channel and more calmly than he felt, said, “Well, if that wasn’t just the set falling out of somebody’s academy ring, it would appear that we’re finally within range of the kitties’ weapons and we’re still here, folks,” Ben said. “Secondary weapons free…”
Dorothy Fletcher dived for the switches on the arm of her command chair and yelled, “This is the captain… all batteries, fire at will. I repeat, all batteries — fire at will!”
Ben flipped another switch opening fleet communications and said, “Flotilla… this is Flotilla Control… missile release: authorization code zero, alpha, zero, six… FIRE!”
* * * *
Instead of being reduced to a metallic lump of flaming wreckage as expected, the massive human ship emerged from within the blinding glare of thousands of nearly simultaneous energy bolts, obviously singed and scorched, but amazingly unhurt. It immediately unleashed a spectacular energy barrage of its own, from 10 twin 5-gigawatt turrets and 16 twin 3.5-gigawatt mounts. The Raknii barely had time for their shock to register when the entire human flotilla unleashed a barrage of several hundred ship-killer missiles.
* * * *
The Rak warriors at Golgathal had all completed extensive training concerning what the survivors of Tzal’s OverFleet had discovered about the incredible capabilities of the human warships during their first attack on the human aliens two cycles earlier. All were fully aware that human warships possessed unimaginably thick armor, and they had been drilled repetitively that, only by getting behind them for a stern-shot, could they find a point vulnerable to the power of Rak energy weapons.
Defying the Prophet: A Military Space Opera (The Sentience Trilogy Book 2) Page 22
