Books One to Three Omnibus (Armada Wars)

by R. Curtis Venture

  “I’ll sort it out on the way,” Betombe said. “Come on.”

  The corpsman followed him obediently into the passageway, turned left after him, and halted in his tracks. “Auxiliary command is this way, Admiral.”

  Betombe turned on his heel, and felt his brow gingerly. “Perhaps you had better lead the way.”

  They set off again, the corpsman in front this time.

  “How did we end up here?” Betombe asked, as they hurried through the ship.

  “From what I’ve been told, our fleets retreated here from Gousk shortly after you were knocked out of action. When we arrived, we picked up more Viskr forces.”

  “They were already in the system?”

  “That’s what I hear.”

  “For what reason?”

  “I have no idea, Admiral. I’ve only been given a few scraps of information while I’ve been patching people up.”

  “Did we lose many?”

  “There are three on ice. Two others I don’t expect will pull through.”

  Betombe grimaced. “And on the other ships?”

  “I’m afraid there hasn’t been time for me to confer with the other medical officers.”

  “I see.”

  Betombe stayed silent for the rest of the way, musing on the small amount of information he had gleaned. The last thing he remembered from Gousk was seeing Viskr ships burst from a chain of wormholes, barrel past their damaged siblings, and hurl themselves viciously at the Fourth and Sixth fleets of the Imperial Navy.

  After that part he was a little hazy on the details.

  Whatever had happened to his beloved ship, it must have been a heavy blow indeed to reach deep inside the body of Love Tap and so decisively damage the command deck. The dreadnought was not exactly what he would call a soft target.

  Then of course, there was the question of how the Viskr were able to bring in such effective reinforcements in the first place. Operation Seawall, planned around the latest information from the Perseus arm listening posts, was supposed to have accounted for all enemy naval movements near the border. Each and every one of the Viskr fleets within range was meant to have been kept occupied by an Imperial force of equal or greater strength. But at Gousk…

  He realised they had arrived at auxiliary control.

  “Admiral on the deck,” came a call from inside the cramped compartment. The crew stiffened.

  “As you were,” Betombe said. “Who has the conn?”

  COMOP was the first to answer. “The XO, Sir.”

  “I’ll take it from here, Commander Laselle. Thank you.”

  “Aye, Sir. You have the conn.” She turned to the woman at the COMOP station. “Let the ship’s log show that the Admiral is back in command.”

  “Bring me up to the present moment, Commander.”

  “Sir. Shortly after the Viskr reinforcements arrived at Gousk, Love Tap took a glancing blow from a cutter. The starboard hull was breached, resulting in the explosion of a primary power coupling under the command deck and a substantial loss of atmosphere.

  “You were knocked unconscious, so I made the decision to retreat to the nearest friendly system. We therefore jumped to Hujjur, which is our present location.”

  “I’m aware of our location,” Betombe said. “I need to know our situation.”

  “Shafted, Sir.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Explain.”

  “The gate wasn’t responding, so we were forced to jump to the system periphery. When we arrived we briefly detected Viskr ships in orbit of Blacktree. We tried to make a short jump to reinforce the planet’s defence cordon, but our coils stalled.”

  “Someone’s interdicting?”

  “Yes, Sir. No outgoing wormholes. We can’t jump in towards the planet, we can’t jump back out of the system, and we can’t call in reinforcements.”

  “Any reinforcements already coming?”

  “Nobody knows we’re here.”

  He placed a hand to his brow. “What have we lost?”

  “Another three ships went down after the Gorgon, and five more are no longer in any condition to fight. We’ve taken some moderate damage ourselves; you probably already felt the results.”

  “I certainly did,” he said. “It’s been a while since I was in this neighbourhood. Refresh my memory: what are the system assets?”

  “Blacktree is the only populated planet in the system. It has a small number of orbital platforms, and a cordon comprising three battle groups; mixed cruisers and destroyers, if memory serves.”

  “Have you made contact?”

  “That’s another problem,” Laselle said. “The gate appears to have been either disabled or destroyed. The system’s nexus is now so unstable that comms are suffering significant lag.”

  “And no doubt hampering our sensors?”

  “Exactly. Data on enemy movements is becoming less reliable by the minute. We just have fragments, and they aren’t very clear. All we can be sure of is that there’s a battle going on in the system interior.”

  Betombe went silent for a moment, putting the information in order.

  “You made the right choice, leaving Gousk. How long to get to Blacktree at best speed?”

  “Under conventional thrust, factoring in acceleration: just under two days.”

  “Ouch. How long to get out of the system?”

  “Six hours. The battle could be over by then.”

  “Shafted, as you said.”

  Betombe bit his lower lip thoughtfully, and picked his way through the cramped compartment until he reached the central command station. Sitting down, he activated the station’s holo and identified himself to it.

  “Do you have orders for the crew, Sir?” Laselle asked.

  He looked at her for a moment, a frown of concentration on his face. “Not yet. Put together a battle map. Use the sensor readings you think are the most reliable, then apply the most likely movements the enemy will have made since the data was gathered.”

  COMOP interrupted. “Admiral, Hydra Actual states she has taken too much secondary damage after the battle at Gousk. Fire in main engineering, apparently. She will have to bow out from any engagement in this system.”

  “Instruct Hydra to leave the system at best speed, along with any other ships that aren’t battle-worthy. As soon as they are able to open a wormhole, I expect them to retreat back to Laeara.”

  “Sir.”

  “The battle map is ready, Admiral.”

  Betombe rotated his chair to look at the holographic volume his executive officer was manipulating.

  “Based on the last good sensor reads we were able to get, there is most likely a Viskr battle group moving along this path.”

  She traced out a short arc with her finger: close to the distant planet, moving away from the position of Love Tap in sympathy with Blacktree’s orbit of the Hujjur star.

  Betombe leaned forwards. “Then the interdiction radius will be receding with them, away from us.”

  “It should be, yes. But it could take hours for the edge of the field to pass us by.”

  “True, however with this data you can work out the optimal route to get us beyond the interdiction field. It’s not much, but it will shave off some time.”

  “I’ll start on that right away, Sir.”

  “Once you have a navigation solution, pass it to the rest of the fleet. Including Hydra and her group.”

  “Understood.”

  While his XO returned to her work, Betombe sat back in his chair heavily. He had not realised that he was leaning forward, that he was holding his body tense. Fatigue overcame him without warning, and a dull pain turned his forehead to frozen stone.

  “Are you all right, Sir?”

  Betombe looked to the side, his eyes half closed, and he saw the corpsman standing beside his chair. He had completely forgotten the man was still with him.

  “For the moment,” the admiral replied.

  “If there’s nothing more to be done here, Sir, I’d like yo
u to return to sickbay.”

  “I can’t do that, Doc,” said Betombe. “I have hours of logs to review.”

  • • •

  Betombe’s body jerked, and he realised he had been adrift in a sea of thought. Exactly what he had been thinking about, however, he could not quite remember.

  “Back with us, Sir?”

  He looked up and saw the corpsman still standing over his command station, pointing a sensor at him. “I think I lost my concentration there for a moment.”

  “You did. Have you ever been diagnosed with any kind of apnoea, Admiral?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Your breathing slowed considerably. I’d like to run a few quick tests, in case it’s related to that bang on the head.”

  Betombe was about to respond when COMOP interrupted. Good old COMOP.

  “Incoming wormhole, right on top of us… point of origin is outside the system.”

  Betombe waved the corpsman away. “Tactical, stand ready.”

  “Message from Hydra. They’ve crossed out of the interdiction zone, and opened this wormhole for the rest of us to join them.”

  “Excellent! Team-player points for Hydra Actual. Have the rest of the fleet jump to join her, and make sure they’re battle-ready. We’ll jump back in again immediately, and join the fight at Blacktree.”

  “There’s still the problem with the gate.” Commander Laselle spoke softly as she stepped in towards Betombe, not wanting the others to hear. “Without a gate to target our arrival precisely, we run the risk of enmeshment.”

  “Don’t worry,” the admiral said. “We used to do this all the time towards the end of the Perseus conflict. We’ll open a wormhole as close to the battle as we can and send a probe through first. It’ll be fine.”

  “If you say so, Admiral.”

  “And I do.”

  “We’re ready to jump, Sir.”

  “Take us out of the system, Helm.”

  Love Tap entered the wormhole, and immediately dropped out again. The Hujjur star was now almost indistinguishable from the rest of the firmament.

  “All ships reporting successful jumps,” said COMOP.

  “Good. Helm, calculate for the vicinity of the battle. Commander Laselle already extrapolated the likely movements of the ships; take their positions relative to the planet’s orbit into account, and try to get us ahead of them. That should minimise the chances of running into debris.”

  The Helm officer stared back blankly.

  “Here, let me help.” Laselle leaned over to share the holo at his station. “He doesn’t ask for much, does he?”

  “No, Ma’am.”

  “It’s not pretty, but it will get us there,” Laselle said, finalising her calculation.

  Far outside the reach of the interdiction field, Love Tap was free to open a wormhole safely. His huge gravity needle generator thrummed into life, rapidly built up a store of power, and plucked a passage out of the nothingness of the universe.

  “Launch a probe,” Laselle ordered.

  COMOP nodded and tapped at her controls. The moments crawled by as a solitary probe streaked through the event horizon and started to send back data.

  “Measurable debris is at relatively low levels,” COMOP said eventually. “Combat is about two light-milliseconds away, as far as I can tell from this data.”

  “Good enough,” Laselle said.

  “Ready?” Betombe asked.

  “Ready.” She returned to her station and opened a channel across the ship. “All crew to general quarters; this is not a drill. Prepare for immediate combat jump.”

  “COMOP, signal the rest of the fleet. Helm, take us to Blacktree.”

  The ships moved forward as one, and transited through the wormhole in a brief flickering of twisted light.

  “We’ve lost Dragon… enmeshment.” Tactical was shouting immediately, the moment Love Tap emerged in high orbit of Blacktree. The hull was already ringing with the sounds of low-energy impacts. “More small debris than the probe suggested.”

  Betombe stared at the battle map intently, his eyes darting left and right, taking in the data as quickly as he could. At the leading edge of his battle group, the icon representing the ICS Dragon had turned yellow. He took it all in, his eyes skipped away to the next data-point, and then—

  “What in the darkest Deep is that?”

  “Unknown vessel,” COMOP replied. “Configuration not recorded. They’re not flying colours, Sir, and there’s no transponder I can identify.”

  “Look at the size of it!” Laselle gasped.

  Betombe stretched out the holographic glyph, and switched it across to enhanced view. A vessel snapped into focus, visible light imagery annotated with edge overlays and data readings.

  The ship was vast. As a dreadnought, Love Tap was big. But the unknown vessel dwarfed his hulking frame. Oriented almost at right angles to the other ships, carving through the outer atmosphere of Blacktree, it spat out missile after missile from launch tubes which riddled its entire length.

  “Thirty kilometres,” Betombe breathed. “It’s over thirty klicks long! Is it a ship, or a station? What a beast!”

  “Admiral,” Tactical said. “The other ships — ours, and Viskr too — they’re all firing on that thing.”

  “Time to range at hard burn?”

  “Four minutes.”

  As he watched, a group of three Viskr frigates dropped almost into the same plane as the unknown vessel, slicing vertically through the atmosphere and unleashing multiple salvoes against the flank of the intruder. But the missiles streaked away, became smaller and smaller, dwindled to points, and finally all but disappeared. Betombe’s stomach knotted itself when he saw the faint specks of explosions spattering uselessly against a dark expanse of irregular, onyx hull.

  The unknown was like nothing he had ever seen, in both form and construction. Oddly shaped, according to a design plan he could not even guess at, its colours were suggestive of materials other than simple plates of metal; the nearest fit he could imagine was that the hull was something like polished basalt. The nature of the lurid orange glow from what appeared to be reaction engines was a mystery, as was the purpose behind them being mounted in a helical arrangement around what he assumed to be the blunt forward end of the vessel. Where he would have expected to see the main drives, to the stern end, was an asymmetrical and forking tail of tapered shafts. He could only guess at their function, and came up empty.

  Betombe became aware that the frigates were now tumbling through the atmosphere in pieces. A battleship which had followed them in tried to turn away, slowly and painfully fleeing a barrage of return fire that looked as though it had already done its work.

  He balled his fists and squeezed until they were white. “Analyse all the remaining assets.”

  Tactical and COMOP pushed their holos together, and worked side by side. They swiped and tapped quickly, flowing around each other’s movements.

  “Imperial forces all identify positively as Blacktree defence cordon,” COMOP said. “Seven ships left, all destroyers. Every cruiser is gone. The Viskr have a large-frame capital ship drawing most of the bogey’s fire, at bearing zero-three-five, elevation negative zero-one-one. Looking at these readings it’s almost all they have left now.”

  “Defence platforms are gone too,” Tactical added. “There’s debris everywhere in the low orbital range.”

  “Small amount of chatter going on out there,” COMOP continued. “Imperial and Viskr. Looks like there’s some kind of temporary alliance. There are several jamming signals. Message fragment from one of our cordon ships: just says ‘…the big one’.”

  “Who’s interdicting?”

  “I think it’s the Viskr, Sir. Hard to tell.”

  “I’m reading possible e-warfare signatures. Countermeasures are running on our sensor palettes and comm systems.”

  “One minute to range, Admiral.”

  “Inform all commands: we’re going to join the fight. Weapons free; shi
ps will target the unknown vessel and fire at will. We’ll worry about who they are later.”

  “Forward auto-cannons primed,” Tactical said. “I have a firing solution.”

  “Target with all rails as well,” Betombe ordered. “Don’t just use flash lasers to blind them; you see anything that looks like a sensor palette, you hit it with something solid.”

  “Yes Sir.”

  “What’s our drone complement?”

  “Forty-six remaining.”

  “Launch them all. Same for the rest of the fleet.”

  “Effective targeting range reached.”

  “Then you may indulge yourself. Full salvo.”

  Tired and battered from their struggle at Gousk, the remains of Betombe’s battle group released what munitions they could at the intruder. Slugs and missiles rained across its hull, for all the worlds appearing ineffectual. Even the forward cannons of Love Tap failed to pierce the beast’s thick hide.

  “We’re taking return fire,” Tactical said. “Slugs and flechettes. Turrets are holding up so far, but that’s mainly because the gravity well is working for us.”

  “I’ve lost the transponder signals for Satyr and Friendly Crack,” COMOP warned. “Status unknown.”

  “Keep firing,” Betombe muttered.

  “Sir, we’re going to lose more ships.”

  “KEEP FIRING!”

  COMOP and Tactical exchanged worried glances.

  “Turrets are five percent over-capacity; we’re starting to lose flak coverage.”

  “Here come the missiles!”

  “I see them. Laser interceptors are firing free.”

  “The last destroyer from Blacktree just went down.”

  “Most of the Viskr ships are gone,” said COMOP. “It’s just their cruiser, and a handful of support vessels.”

  Laselle bent down towards Betombe, and spoke as quietly as she could over the noise. “Sir, we can’t stay here. That thing is going to be the end of us all.”

  “Tactical, what’s the status of the unknown?”

  “A lot of our ordnance is getting through, Admiral,” he said, “but it’s having little effect on that armour. Our ship-to-surface missiles would probably do some real damage, but I’m afraid at this range they’re too slow to get past its defences.”