Nor did the inhabitants of Earth know anything of the mighty fleet that glided across the plane of the ecliptic, transiting Jupiter’s orbit. The Intruder Fleet ignored Earth, believing the defenseless state of the Solar System indicated their bold strike had achieved complete surprise, but their sensors had deceived them. Jupiter’s powerful magnetosphere, fourteen times stronger than Earth’s, concealed dozens of tiny sensors disguised as rock and ice fragments hidden within the gas giant’s thin planetary ring. The hidden sensors listened for the distinctive distortion of massive ships under high acceleration. They reported the invaders’ progress via tight directional beams that reached down into the swirling clouds below, where hundreds of tiny gravity wakes rippled deep beneath the gas giant’s swirling hydrogen clouds. The armada had gathered at this location because of intelligence passed to them by a resistance cell from one of the Intruders’ subject species. The cell that had found the course to be followed by the invasion fleet had passed the information to Alliance spies in the hope that they themselves would one day be free.
When the Intruder Fleet was almost within range, the waiting armada rose from Jupiter’s depths on a tidal wave of expanding spacetime. The Intruder Fleet immediately detected a disturbance in the shape of Jupiter’s immense gravity field, recognizing it for what it was. While the crew and passengers of the fleet slept, the monolithic Inter-Command Nexus, the sum total of each Intruder ship’s artificial awareness, wheeled the circular formation toward Jupiter and powered weapons. Before the enemy ships had cleared Jupiter’s outer moons, the Intruder Fleet had analyzed the attack, worked through dozens of tactical scenarios and devised its plans.
There was never any possibility of truly surprising the Intruder Fleet in a military sense, however, the Inter-Command Nexus knew the Matriarchs would be surprised in a political sense, for they no longer faced a single enemy, but a grand alliance. Many ship types were arrayed against them, most belonging to races the Intruder Civilization had been at peace with only moments before. Where one great civilization had opposed them, now dozens stood united against them. Of the ships from the Orion Spur, only those from Tau Ceti were of the highest order, although their crews were inexperienced in battle after eons of peace. The remaining Orion ships were from lesser civilizations whose technology was still relatively primitive. Some, like the vessels from the Syrma and Merope Systems, were little more than slow transports hastily fitted with weapons, while the feeble ships from Ascella lacked both shields and armor. The Ascellans were the weakest members of the Alliance, barely ten thousand years ahead of Earth’s civilization. They knew entering such a contest was tantamount to suicide, yet they joined willingly because of the seriousness of the threat. Other Orion ships, like those from the Minkar System, were fast and well armored, although still vastly inferior to their adversary. Collectively, the minor civilizations knew if Tau Ceti fell, their homeworlds would quickly follow.
The Intruder Inter-Command Nexus rapidly scanned every enemy ship, discovering that even the most primitive Alliance vessels were equipped with advanced weaponry, indicating mass transfers of technology had taken place. Even the few surviving ships from the Perseus Arm, the last vestiges of fallen worlds, had been upgraded. Most of the gifted technology was from Tau Ceti, but strangely, not all. The idea of an ancient civilization like Tau Ceti giving its knowledge freely to its juniors was completely alien to the Intruders, who jealously guarded every secret they possessed. It told of the desperation of their adversary and of a unified determination to resist they’d not previously encountered.
Even more alarming to the Inter-Command Nexus was the discovery that the alliance had spread far beyond the Orion Spur and the Perseus refugees. It detected a small number of ships belonging to great and distant civilizations who’d had almost no previous contact with the Intruders. In the center, supporting the Tau Cetins were a handful of ships from the Cygnus Arm. Somehow, they’d crossed the Perseus Arm, skirting conquered territory, to lend their support to the beleaguered forces of Orion, while commanding the right flank were nine mighty warships from the outer reaches of the Scutum-Crux Arm on the far side of the galaxy. Never before had the Intruders faced so many opponents, some of whom were their equals in technology, if not in military efficiency.
More than four hundred ships fanned out into the void between Jupiter and the Intruder Fleet. The Alliance ships swarmed forward in a loosely curved rectangular formation that revealed how unprepared they were for cooperative action, yet they drove toward their enemy with a fierce will to resist. For a few moments, the fleets raced toward each other, then at a range of over twenty million kilometers, the massive Intruder ships opened fire.
The smaller Alliance ships dodged and weaved to avoid the withering blasts from the Intruder behemoths. Many of them lacked regenerative armor or were equipped only with light shields. Several hits and these improvised escorts exploded, or were battered into glowing wrecks. A few crippled hulks managed to limp out of range, but most did not. In less than a minute, the entire Ascellan fleet had been annihilated, while the more modern cruisers from Gienah and Cor Caroli were driven back before their weapons ever came within range. They’d served their purpose, however, dividing the Intruder’s fire for valuable seconds, giving the purpose built Alliance warships a chance. The advanced Tau Ceti attack cruisers, supported by their new found allies from Cygnus and Scutum-Crux raced though a searing bombardment from Intruder super dreadnoughts, desperate to close the range.
The Inter-Command Nexus quickly discovered how poorly the converted ships were protected. Their transplanted weaponry posed a serious offensive threat, but their inability to withstand direct fire made them extremely vulnerable. It decided to destroy the modified ships first, eroding the Alliance’s firepower and isolating the enemy’s main fleet units for later destruction. In contrast, the Alliance focused on the massive assault transports which housed the invasion force. The refugees from the Perseus Arm had warned them, that was where the real threat lay. They’d told horror stories of their own worlds, how the motherships had landed, quickly fortified impregnable bridgeheads then produced massive forces that had overwhelmed them. Unlike most races, who treasured life, had long life spans and low birth rates, the Intruders had no regard for casualties because they could replace losses so fast. The Intruder way of war was truly alien to how civilized races approached life, and that was what made them so formidable.
The fleets closed upon each other until, one by one, the shorter range Alliance weapons began to fire. Radiant points of light streaked between the two fleets, reds and oranges flashing back and forth across the blackness of space, bursting in dazzling white flashes against shields and hulls. The weaker Alliance vessels exploded with frightening regularity, hurling radioactive debris over the shields of nearby ships and creating a growing array of contaminated hulks adrift in space. With growing desperation, the Tau Ceti Commander ordered the Alliance Fleet’s strike ships to focus on two of the massive assault transports. They launched waves of relatively slow moving, antimatter torpedoes, which swept toward the Intruder Fleet like a swarm of glowing insects. Before they reached the gray leviathans, tens of thousands of tiny point defense beams licked out from the Intruder ships, slicing the torpedoes apart and filling the blackness with thousands of starbursts. Not one torpedo reached its target, for the Intruders had done their homework and were prepared to defeat their enemy’s most deadly antiship weapon. Only the Alliance’s directed energy weapons reached the Intruder ships, slowly overloading the invader’s powerful shields, but failing to penetrate their enemy’s triple neutronium armored hulls.
It was then that commander of the Scutum-Crux squadron, a fragile looking Ornithoid more than two thousand years old, ordered his nine ships to attack. These were the most advanced vessels in the Alliance Fleet, even more powerful than the Tau Ceti ships, although of radically different concept. The Tau Ceti ships were sleek silver darts, while the Scutum-Crux ships were dark-hulled spheres covered in black
spine-like emitters that generated incredibly resilient shields. Their main weapon was immensely powerful, but extremely short range, hence their need to withstand the heaviest fire as they closed upon the enemy. Each of the nine ships could fire only one blast every few seconds, and could not use any of their other weapons when they did, so great was the energy required to fire. The weapons appeared to be torpedoes moving at relativistic velocities, but when they were still well outside the range of the Intruder Fleet’s point defenses, they detonated, inflating into glowing spheres far hotter than the core of any star.
The Inter-Command Nexus came as close as it ever had to a fleet-wide state of panic. The Intruder Civilization had theorized about the possibility of nova weapons, but had been unable to solve the tremendous scientific challenges involved in controlling a nova explosion. Never in their long history had an Intruder ship ever been fired upon by a weapon beyond their technological reach. The Intruder ships immediately turned their weapons upon the glowing spheres speeding toward them, but their attacks only reduced the sphere’s circumference by a few percent. The nova weapons struck the two Intruder assault transports again and again, burning through their massive armored hulls like butter. They passed right through the enormous ships, wreaking terrible destruction, then flew on for several seconds until their cohesion cores collapsed and they turned into expanding superheated fusion clouds heading out of the Solar System at a high fraction of the speed of light. The two crippled assault transports broke formation as they lost power and guidance, while the Scutum-Crux nova ships kept up a steady, if slow bombardment. One of the assault transports exploded, sending huge slabs of armor and superstructure spinning in all directions. Nearby Intruder ships evaded the wreckage by accelerating away from the stricken ship, leaving the second crippled mothership behind. The second assault transport tumbled out of control, venting atmosphere with no power and almost no life signs.
The Inter-Command Nexus immediately directed all its available weaponry against the nine nova ships. The Scutum-Crux breeder shields had already endured terrible punishment, and were beginning to overload from the intensity of the bombardment. When the third nova ship in line exploded, and four others were approaching the same fate, the Ornithoid Commander signaled the Alliance ships that they had to withdraw, or be destroyed. Almost immediately, the Tau Ceti Fleet Commander ordered a general retreat. The surviving, weaker Alliance ships fell back in disorder, leaving many glowing lifeless wrecks behind them. The advanced ships from Tau Ceti and Cygnus covered the withdrawal, while the nova ships from Scutum-Crux ceased firing in order to power their failing shields and overheating propulsion systems. Before the nova ships had made good their escape, another of their number suffered a catastrophic shield failure, and became a miniature nova itself.
Twelve minutes after the first shot was fired, the battle was over.
Following the retreating ships were thousands of life pods filled with the survivors of derelict ships. The life pods were ignored by the Intruder Fleet, which chose not to pursue the retreating enemy because the Inter-Command Nexus calculated that was what the Alliance wanted, to buy time. Instead, the Intruder Fleet resumed its course towards the edge of the Solar System where it could commence the short flight to Tau Ceti.
Thirty degrees away from the Intruder Fleet’s trajectory, the surviving Alliance ships limped towards the orbit of Pluto. It was clear to all that the Alliance Fleet had been soundly defeated, with more than half its number lost for the destruction of only two of the Intruder Fleet’s ten assault transports. All of the twenty escorting Intruder battleships were fully operational, even though most had taken light battle damage.
To every member of the Alliance Fleet, it meant disaster for Tau Ceti’s ancient civilization.
From their distant vantage point, the Alliance commanders watched thousands of maintenance drones crawl over the departing Intruder ships like ants, repairing battle damage and readying them for superluminal travel. They calculated how long it would be before the Intruder Fleet would be ready to assault the Tau Ceti System, finding the margins slim indeed. They’d bought time for other allies to gather at Tau Ceti, and to send a request pleading for intervention from an immensely powerful First Civilization rumored to have a presence somewhere in the Virgo Cluster, fifty-four million light years away, yet the Alliance commanders feared it would not be enough.
The Intruder ships had proven their power and now knew they faced an alliance. They would be ready to deal with the nova ships, and the large number of weak escorts when next they met. It was doubtful whether Tau Ceti’s allies could assemble a force strong enough to defeat the Intruder Fleet, and even if the enemy were driven back, they could return with a much larger, more powerful force within weeks. The hope of intervention by a First was even more forlorn. Even if one of the hundreds of diplomatic ships sent searching for them among the nearly two thousand galaxies of the Virgo Cluster found them, they may refuse to become involved in what they would surely view as a minor squabble among primitives.
Left behind by both fleets was a radioactive debris field drifting between the orbits of Jupiter and Neptune. In time, the radiation would disperse and the wreckage would be captured by the gravitational fields of the gas giants or drift out of the solar system altogether. Beyond the debris field, a lifeless Intruder assault transport drifted on a trickle of emergency power, spinning slowly toward the Sun. Tens of thousands of machine workers had been sucked into space, depriving it of much of its capacity for self repair, while its six million sleeping troops had been incinerated in the inferno of the sleep chamber by artificial novas. Perhaps worst of all, the ship’s own awareness, its Command Nexus, had been damaged. Its connection with the fleet’s networked awareness had been severed and its physical injuries had disoriented and confused it.
The mothership’s isolated Command Nexus, alone and nearly blind, knew its mental powers had been impaired, yet through its dazed state, its mission remained clear. It must unleash its armies upon the enemy, no matter what the cost. While it survived, it would never cease striving to fulfill that mission.
It was the purpose of its existence.
* * * *
Three quarters of the log room surfaces hissed with white noise, where hull sensors destroyed in battle no longer recorded imagery. The remaining surfaces were like windows into space, with stars drifting past as the mothership slowly tumbled end over end.
“They do get the engines working,” Dr McInness assured them. Overhead, a sheet of white noise blinked out and was replaced by a star field. “See, it’s repairing itself.”
Beckman paced alongside a wall of white noise to a functioning sensor view. He peered into space, forgetting for a moment he was looking at a flat surface, not through a window. “So where are those fleets going? Why are they at war? And why did they leave this ship behind?”
“I don’t know the answer to any of those questions, but I know they’re not at war with us.”
Beckman turned toward the scientist. “Then why do I get the feeling they are?”
“Paranoia?” Markus suggested.
“Fascinating, isn’t it,” Dr McInness said absently, “That a war is taking place right above us, a war between immensely powerful civilizations, and yet the human race is blissfully unaware of it?”
“I’m more interested in who wins,” Beckman said.
“Let’s hope it’s the good guys,” Markus said.
“But who are the good guys?”
“The bug-eyed guys with the white hats,” Markus replied. “The guys who have left us alone for the last few hundred thousand years.”
“I just want to get this over with,” Nuke said, “I don’t care who wins.
“You should,” Markus snapped.
“Why? So another bunch of twisted freaks can turn us into lab rats?”
“They may have kidnapped a few of us, to see how we tick,” Markus said, “but they haven’t conquered us, or exterminated us.”
“Yeah,
well there’s that,” Beckman said.
“If the political order out there is changing,” Markus said, “everything down here changes too.”
Virus remembered clouded memories. “He’s right. The Intruders will do whatever they want.”
“Hmm. ‘The strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must’,” Dr McInness quoted thoughtfully. When Beckman threw him a curious look, he added, “Thucydides. He said it almost two and a half thousand years ago. Looks like it’s a universal principle.”
“Which is why we want the status quo to remain,” Markus said. “The Local Powers have left us alone for a long time. We’re safe inside their borders. We don’t want that to change.”
“Hey man, I get it,” Timer said. “Earth is Yellowstone and we’re the bears!”
“Or Arnhem land,” Xeno added, glancing at Bandaka, “And we’re the aborigines.”
Bandaka thought for a moment, remembering his people had lived in a protected environment since 1931, a stone age culture safe within the borders of a modern nation. “It is better to be left alone.”
Xeno gave Markus a thoughtful look, remembering their conversation in the forest. “I guess you were wrong. You said there were no Nazi Germanies in space, but there are. There were a lot of different ships on the other side.”
Markus nodded soberly. “Yes, I noticed that.”
“So?” Beckman said.
The Mothership Page 34
