Orion Rising: A Military Science Fiction Space Opera Epic (The Orion War Book 3)
Page 19
She was glad to see that at least the TSF Admiral named Greer had his fleet group boosting hard for Carthage. At their current speed they’d reach it before her mother’s ships, but also not before the Trisilieds. Further out in the system, her father’s fleet, and the one commanded by Admiral Sanderson, were holding their position, each half an AU from the systems two largest gas giants.
Saanvi replied.
The Illyria finished seeding its missiles, and Symatra directed them to take up a position in the inner ring of ships orbiting Morocco. Cary couldn’t help but notice that their ship would be hidden behind the moon when the Trisilieds finally came into firing range.
Apparently, the AI commander was going to keep them out of the thick of things as much as she could.
Cary and Saanvi passed the time reviewing the ship’s systems in further detail and ensuring that automated repair drones were pre-positioned in any critical areas. With no human crews aboard, the drones were their only repair options if the ship took damage.
Saanvi turned and gave her sister her strongest glare.
Cary was surprised at her sister’s vehemence and consequently pulled herself back to the chair and refastened the harness. She realized that Saanvi was scared—really scared. Maybe she should be, too, and her reluctance to use the suit’s facilities was just her way of trying to pretend that they wouldn’t be fighting for their lives before long.
She suddenly hoped she wouldn’t throw up when the fighting started. The clear helmet was a poor choice in that regard. The skintight ones ran tubes into the wearer’s stomach and lungs, preventing any messy incidents of choking and dying on your own vomit.
She shook the image from her mind. That was no way to think.
On her right, she saw Saanvi had the feed tube in her mouth and was sucking up some paste. She decided if her sister was doing whatever was necessary to prepare, then she should, as well.
* * * * *
Cary had just finished ‘eating’ and using the suit’s facilities when the ship’s scan threw an alert. FTN showed an incoming volley of kinetics from the Trisilieds ships. Fleet’s scan tracked the vectors and highlighted the targets.
Saanvi’s words were certain, but her mental tone was not. Both girls watched as the rail platforms began firing fine grapeshot toward the incoming rounds, before moving to new positions. Some of the platforms had already been equipped with massive fusion engines for emergency repositioning, but most were pushed by tugs.
Scan picked up hundreds of kinetic rounds being shredded by the rail platform’s grapeshot, followed by automated drones targeting the debris with lasers, melting the debris clouds as best they could.
Yet, some rounds made it through.
Most harmlessly streaked past the prior locations of the rail platforms, but then one platform was struck by an enemy round and its stasis shields flared as the slug hit and shattered into a billion pieces. The ship’s scan registered the impact at over twenty exajoules of energy. The strike wasn’t nearly enough to break through the stasis shields, but the rail platform’s incomplete engines struggled to maintain its orbit around Carthage. Slowly, the platform began to slip toward the planet.
Two tugs disengaged from other platforms, and boosted toward the failing structure. Just as the first tug arrived, and the platform lowered its stasis shield to let the tug make grapple, another round hit.
Cary added.
Two more platforms were lost as the enemy continued to advance, but Cary knew the tables would soon turn once the Trisilieds ships reached the field of RMs.
Though the enemy fleet had spread wide in an effort to avoid the kinetic rounds Carthage’s rail emplacements were firing, they were still mostly within the seeded field.
Cary knew that her people had done amazing work in eighteen years, building up a military that could rival that of many stellar nations, but she worried it would still not be enough. With the Trisilieds fleet bearing down on them, and Fleet Group 5 manned by skeleton crews and a few AIs, the battle would be short and decisive when it was ultimately joined.
Cary realized she was chewing on her lower lip as she waited for FTN to register the RMs activating, and she forced herself to stop and breathe slowly. The more she thought about it, the more she realized how foolish wanting to be on this ship was. There was no glory in the slow surety of a battle they could not win.
She was trying to distract herself with crosschecking the ship’s weapons systems when Saanvi called out.
Cary hoped that she had done well with the patterns and placements of the missiles the Illyria had deposited. Symatra’s tactical plan showed that she hoped to eliminate at least four thousand of the Trisilieds vessels. Any fewer and there was no plan on the books that would save Carthage from the enemy fleet.
Their holotank began to show the leading edge of the Trisilieds ships jinking wildly, and she knew they had picked up the RMs. Now only time would tell whether it was enough.
She caught Saanvi’s eye and could see that her sister was just as worried that too many of the enemy ships would break through, whereupon it would fall to them and Fleet Group 5 to shield Carthage. Neither girl spoke as they watched the first of the missiles hit, the information lagging by the seven light-second delay between them and the Trisilieds fleet.
Cary nodded wordlessly. The FTN tally showed that only two thousand ships had been disabled; it would take another volley, this one at close range to reduce the enemy’s advantage and even the playing field. Both girls knew that would put the Illyria in the thick of the battle, given that their ship still had one of the largest supplies of short-range RMs in the fleet.
As she was nervously considering what would happen next, a message from Admiral Symatra arrived.
Cary looked at the three enemy carriers assigned to their squadron and let out a long breath.
Symatra closed the connection, and Saanvi queried Cary.
Cary relayed the orders to her sister, watching the disbelief grow on Saanvi’s face.
Cary did just that, looking at the loadouts on the ships Symatra had put under their command. The Admiral had been generous; all the ships had railguns, lasers, proton beams, and a small compliment of RMs. Their generators were fully operational, and the SC batteries were at max charge. Saanvi positioned the squadron in a flat V-formation and Cary worked with her to ensure that the vessels with the most proton beams were in the fore.
Though they were mostly functional, none of the ships in Epsilon Squadron were the same class as the Illyria—a Mark II Claymore class ship, which was a modified form of the original Claymore ships built back at the Victoria colony, the Orkney and the Dresden.
Eleven of the ships were Elizabeth Class cruisers, similar in composition to the Andromeda and close to her size with seven-hundred-sixty-meter-long hulls, but they did not yet have their stealth systems installed. Seven of them were the ones with the proton beams, situated at the leading edge of Saanvi’s flying V-formation.
The other nine were smaller, Triton Class destroyers—a new design of ship based on a Scattered Worlds Alliance destroyer design from Sol. These ships were the weirdest looking things Cary had ever seen. They were two rings, one slightly smaller than the other, and tucked inside the first. The inside ring was able to change its angle as far as ninety degrees and reposition it perpendicular to the first ring.
The rings were particle accelerators, but the particles they accelerated were one millimeter pebbles of spent uranium. Once powered up, the rings could maintain a million pebbles moving at over a quarter the speed of light. The pebbles could exit the rings from hundreds of apertures, allowing the rings to fire in almost any direction on the ring’s plane.
In essence, the strange-looking ships were rail machine guns capable of firing their million-round magazine in seconds, if needs be.
Cary grinned at her sister.
Saanvi’s face split into a wide smile.
While her sister set to modifying the NSAIs to fit within the fighters, Cary continued to examine the T’s fleet.
Still over nineteen thousand ships strong, the enemy fleet was a juggernaut unlike any she had ever imagined. A tenth of the fleet were massive dreadnaughts similar—though a few kilometers smaller—to those the AST employed, while fifty percent of the fleet consisted of thousand-meter cruisers. Unlike the AST, who seemed to prefer brute
force in all things, the T’s had then rounded out their fleet with thousands of destroyers.
The carrier ships, designated Halcyon Class by FTN, only made up a tiny percentage of the fleet—though there were still twelve of them in evidence. These ships were over fifteen kilometers in length and analysis on FTN suggested that it was possible for them to contain a hundred thousand fighters—more if they were drones and not human-piloted ships.
That explained why Symatra was willing to expend some of her best ships to take out three of them.
A dozen of the Dreadnaught class ships escorted each of the carriers, along with a hundred or more destroyers. It looked like an impossible task, but Cary knew that Symatra was no fool, and certainly wouldn’t expend the Governor’s children on a suicide mission.
She reviewed the updated tactics the admiral had provided, and saw an option that she knew they could execute on.
Saanvi replied absently as continued to work on loading the NSAIs into the fighters,
Cary watched scan as they drew nearer to the T’s, smiling with relief when Saanvi successfully executed the maneuver to hide the Illyria. The T’s would know one of their squadron’s ships had gone missing, but she hoped they wouldn’t expect it to move completely out of the formation.
She flipped to fleet-wide scan, looking at Symatra’s strategy as she organized the ships of Fleet Group 5 into a ring a hundred thousand kilometers in diameter. In the center of the ring lay Hannibal, Carthage’s largest moon.