Center of Gravity

by Ian Douglas

  Among other things, that meant that AIs could think extremely quickly, by human standards. They could, in essence, speed up their processing of incoming data in such a way that time, for them, seemed to run slowly. What passed for a human in less than the blink of an eye could stretch on for seconds or minutes or even hours for a fast computer.

  CBG–18, the individual ships already positioned and aimed in different directions, passed through the sphere of Turusch warships. A few seconds before reaching Al–01, they passed through the outer shell of waiting enemy ships.

  The frigate Knowles was hit going in by an enemy proton beam that chewed through its shields and punctured its shield cap, spreading a cascade of water droplets across the sky. The hit was off center, the impact enough to put the Knowles into a tumble. Before the ship’s AI could get the ship back under control, the Knowles slammed into one of the Turusch ships, a Tango-class cruiser, and the fireball momentarily illuminated the scattering of disk debris below.

  Turusch ships opened up then with everything they had. At some point, the enemy commanders realized that the Confederation ships were not slowing to engage the factory, but that they were passing through at high velocity. Missiles and KK projectiles were too slow at this point; proton and electron bolts and high-energy laser beams snapped silently across emptiness, seeking targets.

  CBG–18 passed the outer defensive layer of Turusch ships, one light second from the factory. And three seconds later . . .

  Close passage.

  Gray

  VFA–44

  Alphekka System

  2018 hours, TFT

  Gray had found a way to protect his weakened fighter during the passage. He’d slipped his fighter in tight behind the black curve of America’s huge shield cap.

  The star carrier had rotated so that it was traveling backward along its line of flight, so that the twin launch tubes, their tiny, open ports visible at the center of the shield cap dome, would be aimed at the vulnerable rear half of the orbital space factory once it had hurtled past. Gray was hugging the surface that normally would have been the leading side, designed to protect the carrier from micro-impacts at high velocities.

  America’s current velocity was less than three tenths the speed of light. Gray was following the shield surface, maintaining a distance of less than one hundred meters. The carrier had ceased deceleration for the passage of Al–01; once it started decelerating again, Gray risked slamming into that surface at a relative acceleration of five hundred gravities. From his perspective, when her drives switched on again, America would leap toward him at five kilometers per second squared.

  For the moment, though, this slot offered safety from the bits and pieces of debris that filled this area of space—the hurtling wreckage and debris from enemy ships hit by the fleet’s initial bombardment, and the first sharp-ticking dust motes of the protoplanetary disk beyond. America’s kilometer-long bulk swept along through space, leaving an empty, swept-out zone in her wake.

  For now, both Gray and America were in free fall. Some of the other fighters tucked in with Gray as well. The others were spread through the fleet. Beams from enemy ships stabbed and probed, invisible to the naked eye but drawn by AI graphics on Gray’s tactical screens and in-head display; America was hit three times, but her screens absorbed the strikes, which were attenuated by distance.

  The frigate Reasoner took a direct hit that burned through her shield cap, crippling her.

  They passed the outer shell of the Turusch defenses, just over one light second from the factory. Almost at the last possible instant, the fighters loosed a Fox-Two volley of AS–78 AMSO missiles, sending expanding, high-velocity clouds of sand sleeting through battlespace.

  But across a fire-laced sky, Confederation fighters were dying. The heart of a general fleet action was a deadly environment for small and relatively lightly protected fighters. As the CBG approached the factory, large numbers of Turusch fighters began accelerating to match velocities with the fleet, merging with it to attack individual ships. The Confederation fighters, fulfilling their space combat patrol function, engaged the Toads. Point-defense fire from the Turusch capital ships hammered at the human fighters, smashing down shields, overloading energy screens, and ripping the Starhawks to pieces.

  The Starhawk piloted by Lieutenant Georg Kirkpatrick slammed into a fast-accelerating Toad and disintegrated in a glare of expanding hot gas. By the time the CBG passed the factory, nine Starhawks had been destroyed, and there were only fifteen left.

  Three more seconds . . .

  CBG–18

  Alphekka System

  2019 hours, TFT

  Close passage.

  The roughly spherical deep-space factory was 112 kilometers across. The incoming fleet was traveling at 37,000 kilometers per second, which meant the human ships flashed past the factory in twelve one-thousandths of a second, far too swiftly for human reflexes to act. At a precisely calculated instant, every human ship carrying weapons fired, with beams and missiles and KK projectiles lancing out in all directions.

  A very great many things happened, all at once. From the points of view of the fleet’s AIs, however, each action, each event, unfolded with crystal clarity and slow deliberation, as an avalanche of fire erupted around them.

  Most of the battlegroup’s fire was concentrated on the Turusch factory, especially at the vulnerable rear open section hidden behind the gaping, armored maw forward. Beams, traveling at c or near-c had distances of only a few hundred or, at most, a few thousand kilometers to cross, and struck almost instantaneously. Missiles and KK rounds took longer; by the time they reached their targets, the battlegroup would be gone.

  The railgun cruiser Kinkaid was aimed almost in the opposite direction of its line of flight. Its target was the unprotected back side of the factory, and as soon as the massive magnetic spinal gun was lined up, it fired, and then continued to fire, cycling off a round every two and a half seconds.

  America, too, had been rotated to face almost directly back along its incoming path, positioned so that it could use its twin launch rails as KK cannon. They weren’t capable of the same acceleration as the Kinkaid’s main armament, which ran along over half the length of her spine, but the two projectiles carried a considerable punch in raw kinetic energy. America was farther from the target than the Kinkaid, and its projectiles were slower. The factory shuddered as the railgun cruiser’s rounds struck first. Seconds later, America’s volley ripped through the target’s struts and structural supports and slammed into the collection of Turusch ships moored inside.

  The heavy missile carrier Maat Mons was also targeting the factory, loosing swarms of multi-megaton nuclear warheads as she penetrated the Turusch defensive sphere. Designed as a bombardment ship, the Maat concentrated half of her missiles against the Al–01 factory, but had programmed the rest to seek out Turusch ships by their characteristic energy emissions and home on them. Only a few of those missiles made it through the defensive fire of enemy ships, but the fact that they were knocking down Maat’s missiles meant, for the most part, that they couldn’t lock on to the Confederation capital ships as they flashed through.

  Nuclear violence erupted through the defensive sphere. Several Confederation ships took damage simply from overloaded radiation screens as the sky around them flared with a brilliance rivaling a swarm of nearby suns.

  Maat expended about half of her large store of nuclear missiles within the few seconds of passage.

  The heavy cruiser John Paul Jones had as its target a Turusch Alpha-class battleship, and at the firing point it loosed every weapon that would bear, a swarm of nuclear missiles, lasers and PBP fire, and magnetically accelerated kinetic rounds, all slamming into the converted planetoid as the John Paul Jones hurtled past at a range of less than twenty kilometers.

  Close behind the John Paul Jones was a second cruiser, the Isaac Hull. Working in close conc
ert with the John Paul Jones’ AI, the Hull targeted those portions of the enemy’s artificial structure, the domes and turrets visible above the solid rock, that were taking hits from the first cruiser’s salvo. Shields failed, turrets blasted open in the nuclear inferno, and the incoming volley of missiles slashed deep into the Alpha’s heart.

  The Mexican destroyer Tehuantepec had been set to fire into a Turusch Gamma-class warship, a vessel that Confederation ONI had equated with a heavy battlecruiser, but the target had moved within the past several moments, and was now masked by the enemy factory. The Tehuantepec, then, had retargeted, adding her fire to the salvos being loosed at the factory. Sweeping toward the factory, while still 100,000 kilometers out, she loosed Krait missiles from every available tube, twenty of them. One second later, as she passed the target at a range of just under 12,000 kilometers, she opened up with lasers and PBP fire.

  The energy weapons struck the target immediately behind the UV laser salvo fired by the Canadian frigate Huron, burning deep into the disintegrating structure. Eight thousandths of a second later, Tehuantepec slammed at 30,000 kilometers per second into an oncoming tumbling fragment of a Turusch Romeo-class cruiser massing nearly nine thousand tons.

  Half-molten debris sprayed out along Tehuantepec’s forward vector like the blast of a shotgun, causing damage to two other Turusch craft.

  Her missiles slammed into the factory nearly twenty seconds later, each nuclear detonation building upon the last in a cascade of searing fireballs burning ever deeper into the structure.

  The destroyer Drummond loosed its volley at a Turusch Sierra-class cruiser, then took two direct hits from a Tango 80 kilometers away. The enemy beams sliced into the Drummond’s power plant, freeing the artificial singularity trapped inside. In a flash, Drummond whipped end over end, then crumpled into nothingness, its ten thousand tons of non-singularity mass crushed into the event horizon of a small but voracious black hole.

  The Tango died in almost the same instant, as three Krait missiles fired by a Black Demon Starhawk during the approach moments before detonated alongside.

  Within the space of a couple of heartbeats, three human capital ships and nine fighters had died, along with some fifteen hundred human naval personnel.

  Enemy losses were unknown.

  Gray

  VFA–44

  Alphekka System

  2019 hours, TFT

  Two Toad fighters vectored in toward the America in the final seconds of her approach. Alerted by his AI, Gray passed control of his fighter’s attitude and weapons system over to the computer. The fighter rotated sharply, the suddenness of the maneuver threatening to slam Gray into unconsciousness. His PBP beam fired twice, and then two Krait missiles streaked from his ship, erupting in intense and death-silent flowers of light; an instant later, America and Gray’s trailing Starhawk zorched past the enemy factory.

  His fighter’s sensors noted the firing of America’s two railguns. A powerful surge of magnetic fields grabbed at the ferrous components of Gray’s Starhawk and threatened to put him into a helpless tumble. His AI, still in control, recovered. Through his palm implant, Gray ordered the AI to begin increasing the distance from America. The carrier would begin decelerating again very soon, and it would be best to put some distance between his fighter and that vast black wall in front of him.

  More Toads were coming in fast. Gray accelerated to meet them, leaving the shelter of the carrier’s wake. He opened up with his KK cannon, rolling as he hurtled past, and the Toad came apart in fragmenting pieces.

  “Dragon Nine!” he screamed over the tactical channel! “Kill! . . .”

  Ryan

  VFA–96

  Alphekka System

  2019 hours, TFT

  Ryan flinched as Lieutenant Forrester’s fighter flared to port like a tiny sun gone nova and vanished, speared by a gigajoule bolt of laser fire that burned through his energy screens and hull shielding and turned the arrogant, risty fighter into a brief-burning cloud of expanding plasma and debris. Pieces of hull metal struck Ryan’s Starhawk with a sound like a fistful of rocks hurled against sheet metal, clattering through the tiny ship’s interior. Her Starhawk lurched and trembled, but remained intact. A quick check of her damage-control panel showed that she was still in one piece.

  She left the overall control of her fighter under her AI. Her sky was filled with incoming targets—Toad fighters and missiles and hurtling bits of debris. Things were happening far too swiftly for her to determine which potential targets posed the greatest threat, or to direct the SG–92 to aim, track, or fire. She was able to single out one Toad that had slipped through America’s inner point defenses and tell her AI to take it down. Her Starhawk dropped onto the enemy ship’s tail as it hurtled scant meters above America’s aft hull, headed for the turning hab modules forward. A precisely targeted proton beam devoured the Toad from behind, sending a spray of hot fragments cascading more or less harmlessly into the aft side of the carrier’s shield cap.

  Seconds later, the Confederation fleet emerged from the far side of the Turusch defensive sphere, still firing with devastating, computer-guided precision at every target within range. The Turusch continued to lash back, following the intruders out of the sphere, but the sheer savagery of the human strike had rattled Turusch gunners and swept away a large percentage of their targeting sensors.

  By the time the CBG passed the factory, nine Starhawks had been destroyed, and there were only fourteen left out of all four squadrons.

  CIC, TC/USNA CVS America

  Alphekka System

  2021 hours, TFT

  Admiral Koenig was watching the CIC’s viewalls during close passage. There’d been little to see during the Al–01 close engagement, an instant’s blip of light, followed by darkness and unmoving stars.

  “We’re bringing the ship back around on a normal heading, Admiral,” Captain Buchanan said over the com link with the bridge.

  “Very well.”

  He took a moment to study the after-combat telemetry, as the ship AIs correlated and compiled combat statistics. It could have been worse . . . a lot worse. Casualties were high among the fighters that had been outside, but he’d expected that. Three capital ships—Tehuantepec, Drummond, and Reasoner—had been destroyed, though there were still personnel alive on board the Reasoner. The Lewis would be attempting to grapple with the hulk and get them off.

  The tallies coming through on the enemy fleet were a lot more vague. There’d been forty-three enemy capital ships in that battlespace. The savage human attack had destroyed or damaged perhaps half of them. How many were destroyed and how many were damaged but still in the fight was unknown.

  “Commander Craig. What’s the range to the nearest group of enemy ships other than the ones at Al–01?”

  “Fifty-one light minutes, sir. And an hour twenty to the next nearest beyond that.”

  “No movement from either of them?”

  “No, sir.”

  There likely would not be, either, until the EM wavefront bearing the outcome of the close passage crawled out to meet them, and the images of their response crawled back. They were probably waiting to see what CBG–18 would do next before committing themselves.

  Fleet combat tended to be a drawn-out affair.

  By any standards, the close passage of Al–01 had been a victory, with the human forces scoring hits at a seven-to-one ratio over the enemy. Koenig’s ruse, letting the Agletsch pass on disinformation to pull the enemy ships out of position, had worked better than he’d dared hope. CBG–18 was still badly outnumbered, however, if you counted all of the other Sh’daar ships remaining in the Alphekka system. And Koenig needed to decide now what he was going to do about it.

  A shudder ran through America’s deck.

  And then another . . . and then yet another.

  It took him a moment to realize what was happening. Chun
ks of debris, probably meteoric bits of rock, had struck America’s shield cap. Her gravitic shields had diverted most of the impact, but enough had leaked through to cause a slight change in velocity. Field dampers had absorbed the excess force—if they hadn’t, any personnel not strapped down would have been slammed into the ship’s forward bulkheads at a velocity equal to that by which America had just been slowed—but the impacts had still sent ripples through the ship’s structure.

  They were entering the main body of the protoplanetary disk.

  “Shields to maximum!” Buchanan yelled. “All personnel, strap down! This is going to get rough!”

  Koenig needed to make a crucial decision within the next several hours.

  Where fighters could throw out artificial singularities to one side or the other to pull the fighter into a tight, free-fall turn, capital ships were far more restricted in their maneuverability. Like fighters, they could project maneuvering singularities to their sides. Most of them, the larger vessels like America and the two Marine carriers, could not make a turn without risking serious damage from tidal forces. Their sheer lengths required that they make turns only at relatively low velocities . . . no more than a few tens of kilometers per second. The smallest of them, the frigates, each some two hundred meters in length, had more leeway, and could turn at higher velocities, but they could rarely exercise their maneuverability in combat. Frigates would not last long against larger enemy combatants, and generally stayed with the main fleet in a scouting or anti-fighter role.

  The only way the battlegroup could reverse course—the only way they could return to the space factory and resume the battle—was to resume deceleration at five hundred gravities, slow to zero relative velocity, then begin accelerating back once more.