And when you were firing antimatter warheads and directed positrons, it didn’t take that much more firepower to kill a capital ship than a starfighter.
Worse, capital-ship weapons systems were designed to target other capital ships. The risk of being accidentally obliterated by your own side was significant.
“Formation CD-5, everyone. Bombers forward,” Lakatos ordered, earning an approving nod from Elysium’s CAG. “Conical donut 5” was exactly what the full name described – a cone of starfighters and bombers to help protect the starships with a hole at the “tip” for the capital ships to fire through.
It started with capital-ship missiles, the massive weapons larger than even the torpedoes the bombers carried. They blazed through the gap in the formation, charging down the gravity well toward the Commonwealth starfighters.
Six salvos of full-sized Jackhammer VIIs passed through the gap in the fighter formation, over a thousand missiles now leading the way.
“Bombers stand by.”
Seconds turned to minutes and the first capital-missile salvos struck home. The Jackhammers were smarter and more capable than any other weapon in the arsenal—and priced to match!—but charging into the teeth of over six hundred starfighters was a worst-case scenario for them.
A thousand missiles killed perhaps a hundred starfighters—but then the bombers launched, a second wave of twelve hundred missiles sweeping toward the enemy.
Those hit at the same time as the battleships and battlecruisers entered range. Their massive positron lances tore through space, lighting up the gap in the Alliance formation as they tore into the Commonwealth fighters. Dozens of starfighters died to the torpedoes. More died to the battleship beams as they cut into space.
Then the rest of the capital ships entered their own range, more and more beams of pure antimatter cutting through the void at the speed of light.
And then, finally, the Terran fighters finally reached their own range. Over half of their number were gone, but three hundred starfighters still salvoed over a thousand missiles back into the Alliance’s teeth…and the Alliance starfighters fired six thousand in reply.
“Break formation, maneuver independently,” Lakatos ordered. “Defensive patterns. They’re gone, but they’re going to launch twice more before they die. Don’t join them.”
The starfighters scattered, pulling the incoming missiles after them as their neat conical formation disintegrated into a confusing swarm.
Michelle rode that chaos, her mind linked intimately into her fighter’s and her subordinates’ computers. Random as the whirlwind her starfighters now moved in appeared, she and her people were in full control of it, creating a series of carefully calculated vectors and angles.
No missile was going to come near any of her ships without running through the defenses of at least a dozen of them. The whirling dervish of death and survival cut across space, dodging around the incoming fire and hitting the missiles from a thousand angles.
Three times, the Commonwealth missiles swarmed the Alliance formations. The first was the deadliest, with their motherships still intact to guide them in and provide computer support.
The second and third salvos were on their own.
Michelle breathed a sigh of relief as the last missiles died. None of Elysium’s starfighters or bombers had been hit. As she let her attention expand, she could see that the rest of the fighter force hadn’t been that lucky.
It wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Sixty, maybe seventy starfighters lost. Some of those crews would have ejected before the fighters died, and the logistics ships had the spares to fabricate new starfighters for them.
Most of them were gone forever. Not even a tithe of Forty-First Fleet’s fighter strength, but they had no replacement crews till they went home—and that wouldn’t be until the mission was done.
The Commonwealth starfighters hadn’t been nearly as lucky. There was a reason the Alliance hadn’t launched a second salvo—after the torpedoes, the starship missiles and the heavy beams, only three hundred fighters had remained to face the six thousand missiles that had come at them.
“Well done, people,” Admiral Roberts’s familiar voice echoed over her implants. “Now do me proud and make sure we flag every survival pod the Commonwealth launched. The fight’s over. Let’s make sure no one dies who doesn’t have to.”
KYLE STUDIED the sensor feed for several long seconds. Every threat in Starkhaven had been neutralized. Three capital ships and twelve defensive platforms destroyed, along with over six hundred starfighters. Two more capital ships driven from the system, with a hundred bombers aboard.
No capital-ship losses. Not even a scratch on any of his starships. Enough starfighter losses to be painful, but not enough to materially impede the fleet’s combat strength. Search-and-rescue shuttles were already swarming the debris from the battlespace—and Magellan was on her way back to Kirkwall to pick up the S&R shuttles they’d left there.
Magellan would also bear the responsibility of finishing the job of destroying Kirkwall’s infrastructure.
He sighed.
“Do we have a comm channel with Governor Chae-Won?” he asked.
“We have a frequency and a receiver, yes,” Sterling told him.
“Get a Q-probe in place for a real-time conversation,” Kyle ordered. “Let me know once it’s done.”
“We already have one in Ferelden orbit,” Aurangzeb replied. “Give me sixty seconds and I’ll have it lined up.”
The Vice Admiral waited patiently until his operations officer gave him a thumbs-up, and then opened the channel.
“Governor Chae-Won, this is Admiral Roberts. Please respond.”
It only took a few seconds for the tiny woman to appear on his screen. She looked exhausted, her complex piled hairstyle fraying around the edges. She’d almost certainly been running since his arrival in the system twelve hours ago.
“Admiral,” she said flatly. “I allow myself no illusions. We are beaten. What do you want?”
He raised a hand.
“I have neither the soldiers nor the desire to invade or occupy your worlds,” he told her. “Nor do I intend to permit Marshal Walkingstick to catch me, Governor Chae-Won.
“I also have no desire to inflict any casualties beyond what is absolutely necessary. My objective here is the destruction of your system’s orbital industry. You have forty-eight hours to evacuate all of your civilians to designated residential platforms.”
He gave her an intentionally flat smile.
“Understand that we will validate your designation of platforms as residential,” he noted. “My intentions are to carry out this destruction as cleanly as possible, but I will not be manipulated or deceived. Do we understand each other?”
Chae-Won bowed her head in silence.
“Governor?” he asked softly.
“I understand,” she finally allowed. “You’re talking decades of work. Millions of people’s livelihoods. How can you be so damned casual?”
“Because I was at Kematian, Governor,” he told her. “Where a Terran officer bombarded a world. Because I was at Hessian—where the spaceborne industry was destroyed with the workers aboard. Because my nation, Governor Chae-Won, did not choose this war.
“There are consequences for what the Commonwealth has chosen to unleash. My own honor requires they be administered…cleanly. But I will see the Commonwealth punished for bringing war to my worlds regardless.”
“The evacuations will be carried out as you order,” she finally said stiffly. “I do not know if there are any purely residential platforms in Kirkwall orbit at all, though.”
“Then you will evacuate to the least industrialized platforms,” Kyle noted. “We will be as reasonable as we can, Governor, but our duty remains.”
“Fuck your duty,” she snapped. “We will do as we must.”
“As will we all,” he told her. “As will we all.”
22
Niagara System
08:00 September 19, 2737 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
BB-285 Saint Michael
FLEET ADMIRAL JAMES CALVIN WALKINGSTICK, Marshal of the Rimward Marches, chosen champion of the Terran Commonwealth, commander of over a hundred starships and, by any of a dozen measures, among the most powerful human beings alive…stared at the shattered plant pot resting against the wall of his office.
The little plant had been a gift from his staff, a small piece of life from his homeland on Earth to brighten up his working space. It had also been the only thing to hand when the final reports from Starkhaven had come in.
He’d liked the potted fern, a memory of a continent he hadn’t set foot on in twenty years. But everything else in his office was virtual or built-in. Nothing else had been easily grabbed.
Another star system’s industry destroyed. Three capital ships lost—and the only reason it hadn’t been five was because he’d directly ordered Commodore Freeman to withdraw. The man had been perfectly willing to die standing in Starkhaven’s defense.
“Sir?” Andrea Messere’s voice pierced his thoughts. His secretary was standing at the entrance to his office. “Are…are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” James said slowly. “Just a lovely cascade of bad news. Any updates?”
“Roberts and his fleet just entered Alcubierre-Stetson drive,” she told him. “Starkhaven is no longer occupied, but our closest force is still four days away.”
“And they still need to go play relief.” James crossed over to the plant, kneeling down to try and pull together enough dirt around the fern’s roots to keep it alive. “Can you get me a new pot, Andrea? I’d like to save the plant if I can.”
She didn’t say anything aloud, but he saw her nod in the mirror.
“Where’s Freeman?” he asked.
“Five days from here,” she confirmed. “He’ll arrive on the twenty-fourth.”
“We’ll assign him to Vasek when he gets here,” James concluded aloud. “Set up a conference with him and my tactical team. Include me. We need to try and get a handle on what Roberts is doing—Vasek’s fleet isn’t helping anyone, arriving a week late every time.
“We need to get ahead of the ball with this bastard.”
“Of course, sir. I’ll set it up.” Messere paused and James finally turned to look directly at his attractive blonde aide.
He sighed.
“Drop the damn shoe, Andrea,” he ordered. “What is it?”
“Senator Burns has requested a q-com call as soon as possible,” she told him. “He didn’t sound happy.”
James sighed again and nodded.
Senator Michael Burns headed the Committee on Unification. More than any other person, he was responsible for James Walkingstick holding his current command—which made him the closest thing James had to an actual boss.
“Help me clean this up,” he said, gesturing at the plant, “then connect him through.”
SENATOR MICHAEL BURNS was a heavyset black man with pure white hair, the elected representative of the Alpha Centauri System. His holographic image paced across the floor of James’s office—just as Burns was pacing across his actual office in Sol.
“James. Please tell me you have a plan,” he said without much in terms of preamble.
James chuckled.
“Hello, old friend,” he said dryly. “How’s your wife and kids?”
Burns snorted.
“My latest ex-wife hasn’t spoken to me in three years—which you damn well know,” the Senator pointed out. “My kids are busily turning Daddy’s millions into their own billions. I see them at Christmas. Most years.
“If you want pleasantries, we can do them, but dammit, James, what is this mess?” Burns demanded.
The Marshal shook his head silently. It wasn’t like he had a wife or kids of his own. The Commonwealth was his life, just as it was for Burns, and the Navy had never left him time for even the Senator’s failed marriages.
“‘This mess,’ as you so eloquently put it, was the inevitable consequence of my not having enough ships to end this damn war a year ago,” he said quietly. “Sooner or later, the Alliance was going to launch a real offensive into our own space.
“I’m honestly surprised it took them this long. Their insistence on closing ranks and liberating worlds we took away from them has worked thoroughly in our favor to this point.” He shrugged.
“They’re being damned careful about it, too,” he pointed out. “Hitting systems they know are weak with overwhelming force. I don’t think they knew Rear Admiral Ngô was in Starkhaven, so they were expecting to face two capital ships with ten.”
“Admiral Ngô’s task force certainly didn’t change anything!” Burns snapped.
“No. Because Roberts was in command, and while he’s no demon, he is certainly a superior tactician,” James concluded. “I’d give my right arm to have that man under my command, Senator. I’ve Admirals who are his peers, but none who are his equals.”
The Marshal smiled thinly.
“Except myself, of course,” he admitted. “That flair for the dramatic and sense of when to go for the jugular reminds me of my own early commands.”
“I don’t care if he reminds you of yourself,” the Senator told him. “I care about how you plan on stopping him!”
“Carefully,” James replied. “He has too powerful a force under his command for me to disperse my fleets in penny packets across every potential target. I have assembled a strike force under Admiral Vasek, but…they need to know where he’s going, and I don’t know that.
“If you want to light a fire under Intelligence, that would make my life a lot easier,” he concluded.
“I’ll do what I can,” Burns promised. “But that’s no guarantee, you know that. Not if they’ve got half a clue on OPSEC—and I’m hearing rumblings out of the intelligence community that a lot of their networks are getting rolled up right now.
“The Da Vinci operation seems to have set them to running.”
James smiled grimly.
“Let them run. Michelangelo and Raphael are next up. Tasker and Gabor are ready.” He shook his head. “Leonardo will depend on how bad their losses are, but if all goes well, the Renaissance Trade Factor will be out of the war in a month.”
“Be careful, James,” Burns advised. “I don’t want to interfere in your operations, but if Roberts keeps smashing systems with Senatorial representation…the Senate does have the authority to give you orders.”
“Keep the damned politicians off my back, Michael,” James replied fiercely. “The Senate has cut my feet out from underneath me too many times already. All you ever needed to do was give me enough ships and get out of my way!”
“I am one of fifteen on the Committee,” Burns reminded him. “One of over a hundred in the Senate and over a thousand in the Star Chamber. I trust you, Admiral. I respect your skills.
“But when the skies above our worlds burn, the Senate must look to protecting our citizens first!”
“WITHOUT SOME KIND OF EVIDENCE, we need more than two data points to know where to send your fleet, sir!”
Commander Seamus Bousaid was a slim, dark-skinned man with flaming red hair tied back in a neat ponytail. He was the most junior man in the call, but the analyst faced Admiral Vasek levelly as he spoke.
“The Starkhaven System is one of Niagara’s key supply points, but Aswiri is, well, frankly militarily and industrially valueless,” Bousaid continued. “And if Roberts knows our key supply points, he traveled right past the Calibri System to get to Starkhaven—and Calibri is equally important to our logistics situation.”
“So, you’re saying we need to let this son of a bitch burn out another Commonwealth system before we can intercept him?” Vasek asked. The newly breveted Vice Admiral sounded grouchy. James couldn’t blame her—taking down the Stellar Fox would guarantee that she’d get to keep the extra star, but every system Roberts raided was a massive black mark on every officer in the Rimward Marches.
“That said, we’ve done some guessing,” she concluded dryly. “If you’re interested, sirs?”
“Lay it out, Anjali, Seamus,” James ordered.
An astrographic chart appeared in the holographic conference, showing the entire sphere of Terran Commonwealth space.
“In theory, there’s nothing stopping Roberts from driving even deeper into the Commonwealth,” Bousaid noted. “Restricting that are two things: time and his actual objectives.
“Our assessment is that his objective is to cause political chaos and pressure for us to divert from our offensives,” he continued. “That means he won’t go for any deep strikes but will almost certainly focus his operations in the area of the Commonwealth that’s considered part of the Rimward Marches—and hence our area of responsibility.”
The chart zoomed in, focusing in on the border between the Commonwealth and the Alliance.
“Depending on how we draw that line, it includes between twelve and nineteen star systems, including Niagara and Via Somnia,” Bousaid noted. “Six of those star systems are key to keeping the Niagara fleet base supplied and operational.
“While we’ve tried to keep which systems are important for that under wraps, it’s unlikely that Alliance Intelligence isn’t aware of them. That tells me that Roberts is hitting other systems to make us think that he doesn’t know—but almost certainly does.”
“That would fit,” James agreed. “It’s what I would do.”
Corna shook her head.
“My staff and I guess”—she stressed the word—“that Roberts is only going to hit our key systems every two or three attacks. That means we can eliminate five systems from our potential targets.”
Operation Medusa (Castle Federation Book 6) Page 15
