TFS Navajo: The Terran Fleet Command Saga – Book 3

by Tori Harris

  “No, Ragini,” he replied with a weary sigh, “I am afraid it is far too late for that at this point. You heard Naftur as well as I did. Even after generations of relative peace and prosperity under the banner of the Sajeth Collective, Graca’s participation in the alliance has never been particularly popular among our people. A great majority of them favor a return to home rule, and we would have certainly seen that come to pass many times in the past were it not for the tacit support of the dynastic houses. Regardless of what you may think of Rugali Naftur, he is precisely the kind of leader who could unite the houses in coalition.”

  “And you believe he would end Gracan participation in the Collective?”

  “I believe he will do much more than that, Commander. The Sajeth Collective was little more than a loosely organized economic development and trading partnership prior to Graca’s accession. Even now, there is little chance that it would survive Graca’s withdrawal. In fact, our world’s exit from the Collective will be so catastrophic that it would not surprise me to see several of the remaining members declare war in a last ditch effort to protect their interests.”

  “If they do, they will surely be destroyed,” Freyda declared flatly.

  “In the case of open military conflict, that is almost certainly true,” Sarafi replied, as exclamations of dismay and anger erupted from various locations around the Gunov’s bridge.

  Both officers glanced up at the display screen just in time to see SCS Zhelov — fire belching from the open wounds caused by over one hundred impacts from the Terran cruisers’ main guns — flare brilliantly as her drive section exploded. Both officers observed silently that the primary source of the blast’s destructive power must have been the ship’s propellant storage tanks. Perhaps due to their arrangement deep within the hull, the resulting blast wave traveled in a rapidly expanding “V” shape as it struggled ferociously to break free of its confinement. Watching from the Gunov’s position, it was as if the hands of a colossal giant had grasped each end of the battleship, then snapped it into two pieces like nothing more than a dry, brittle twig. The entire bridge crew stared at the screen for a long moment, transfixed as the two halves of the enormous ship tumbled away in opposite directions. Judging by the state of the three remaining battleships, every officer in the room knew that they too would be destroyed in short order.

  “As I was saying,” Sarafi continued in a strangely detached tone, “conventional military operations are of little utility against a superior enemy force. This will obviously be the case if the less powerful members of the Sajeth Collective seek to force Graca to remain in the alliance. I believe that it is now also the case for our struggle against the Terran puppets of the Pelaran Alliance. History has repeatedly taught us that when situations like this occur, the less powerful belligerent is often forced to resort to some form of asymmetric warfare.”

  Freyda felt a chill travel the length of her spine as she realized the commodore’s intentions. She had, of course, known from the beginning that deploying the Sazoch delivery system was a potential option, but she never truly believed that it would come to that. Like most Wek officers who had volunteered for the Resistance task force, she had always assumed that any military conflict with the Terrans would be short-lived. The powerful Sajeth Collective would simply deal with the Terrans, then just as quickly find a means of dispatching the Pelaran Guardian. The entire conflict would be over in short order, with the Sol system coopted as a new, albeit involuntary, associate of the Sajeth Collective.

  As one of the two remaining Rusalov battleships was declared combat ineffective by the Gunov’s battle management AI, Freyda was forced to acknowledge how utterly naive she had been from the outset. “We do not have to do this, sir,” she began again.

  “You are correct, Commander. We do not.” Sarafi smiled. “Just as the destruction of the disabled Terran vessels at the secondary rally point was my responsibility alone, I also bear the burden of the decision on how best to complete our mission. You are a good and moral officer, Ragini, so it is only natural that you would be uncomfortable with being forced to make such a difficult decision. Consider, however, how far the Humans have come in a relatively short period of time. Granted, if a larger portion of our fleet had been here fighting alongside us today, we would almost certainly have made short work of their relatively small force. But the question you must ask yourself is whether that will still be the case a year from now — even if we assume that an opportunity like this presents itself again. No, Commander, this is our one and only chance. We must deliver the Sazoch weapon and then depart immediately for Damara.”

  TFS Theseus

  (2.5x106 km from Earth)

  “Sir, the last of the Rusalov-class battleships has been destroyed,” Lieutenant Commander Schmidt reported from Tactical 1.

  The sense of elation experienced by the bridge crew while watching TFS Cossack, Shoshone, and Chickasaw go about the methodical, almost businesslike elimination of the Resistance warships had been short-lived. Each now took a moment to glance up with conflicting emotions at the destruction their forces had wrought on their enemies while at the same time looking forward to finally putting this battle behind them. On the view screen, several huge pieces of the once-mighty Resistance battleship rotated at varying rates as they moved steadily away from one other — each one riddled with dimly glowing holes where artillery rounds had either penetrated or exited her armored hull. At her peak rate of fire, the fully-upgraded cruiser Cossack had achieved nearly eight salvos per minute — a total of sixty-four shells — each of which had slammed into her targets with a shocking level of accuracy and destructive power. Out of curiosity, Commander Reynolds had placed the newest cruiser’s hull impacts counter on the tactical plot, just below that of the Theseus. In spite of the massive volume of main battery artillery and energy weapons fire she had received, the ship’s AI had registered only four hits — none of which had caused any significant damage.

  “Thank you, Schmidt,” Prescott replied after a long pause.

  “The Sajeth Collective — the Wek in particular — have been building starships for hundreds of years,” Reynolds observed quietly, in awe of what they had all just witnessed on the bridge view screen. “I would never presume to tempt fate by making comments about a battle that has not yet been won, but does it not seem strange that the Pelarans would have provided weapons technology that is far in excess of what they believed we truly needed?”

  “I don’t suppose I’ve ever thought about it that way before. So you think they expect that we will ultimately be facing more dangerous enemies than the Sajeth Collective?”

  “Maybe … then again, they didn’t provide all of the technology that has gone into our warships. But I can’t imagine they would ever want us to have access to more military capability than they thought absolutely necessary. Why set us up as a potential rival before we’ve even joined their alliance?”

  “Lieutenant Commander Schmidt,” Prescott continued without further comment on the subject, “I expect Admiral Patterson will clear the cruisers to open fire on the Gunov shortly. When that happens, he believes she will transition to hyperspace immediately. The question is whether she will retreat or press on with her attack on the Earth itself. Watch her closely and report any changes immediately.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Helm, if she decides to attack, we expect she will jump directly into low orbit — perhaps even just inside the upper atmosphere. Can you plot an atmospheric C-Jump from our current position?”

  “Yes, sir. In fact, I’ve already got several rough-plotted, just in case. With your permission, however, I’d like to put us in a little better alignment. That way, once she jumps, we’ll be just a few seconds behind her.”

  “Excellent, do it. Once you are satisfied, pass the data along to the other three ships in our reserve squadron. I’d like them to follow us in, if possible, but we don’t need them transitioning inside our hull when they do.”

  “Wil
l do, Captain.”

  “Tactical, our primary objective is not to attack the Gunov herself, but to intercept and completely destroy the Sazoch. The intel we have on the biological agent involved leads us to believe that it may be susceptible to heat, so once we find it, we will engage with energy weapons only.”

  “Aye, sir,” Lieutenant Lau replied, “… if we can find it.”

  “True enough,” Prescott sighed. “I wish I had more to offer you on that subject, but there just hasn’t been enough time for our Science and Engineering Directorate to develop anything like a ‘sure thing’ detection strategy. All I can tell you is to hammer the hell out of the area with every active sensor we have and hope that we find it in time. The flagship will be attempting to coordinate with some ground-based detection systems as well, but …”

  “But there’s not a lot of time for that kind of thing, sir,” Schmidt offered.

  “No, I’m afraid not, but if Fisher puts us right on top of the Gunov immediately after she jumps, I have to believe we’ll see something.”

  “There she goes, sir!” Lieutenant Lau reported excitedly as the Tactical console emitted a series of urgent-sounding warning tones.

  Four and a half million kilometers away — with Serapion now in her death throes and TFS Cossack maneuvering to begin her attack on the Resistance flagship — the Gunov transitioned to hyperspace once again.

  “Fisher?” Prescott said expectantly.

  “Almost there, sir. One zero seconds.”

  SCS Gunov, Low Earth Orbit

  (Approaching the Philippine Islands)

  “Hyperdrive disengaged,” the Wek helm officer reported, although he need not have done so with Terra’s largest ocean now completely filling the bridge display screen. “Deceleration burn commencing,” he continued, as the destroyer’s forward-facing retrograde engines quickly deployed and engaged at their maximum rated thrust.

  “Confirming launch commit of the first Sazoch delivery vehicle. Firing in ten seconds,” Commodore Sarafi said, mostly to himself out of force of habit as he entered the required launch authorization codes at his Command workstation.

  Sitting less than two meters away, Commander Freyda felt paralyzed by indecision. Since unexpectedly hearing Prince Naftur’s voice addressing the Resistance task force upon their arrival, she had been silently replaying his words over and over again in her mind: “… it is still not too late to end the bloodshed … end it now before our world is forever darkened by a shame so heinous that we shall never again regain our honor.” But it truly was too late now, wasn’t it? The first Sazoch weapon would be launched regardless of any actions she chose to take at this point. The sense of inevitability that accompanied this thought caused a wave of relief to wash through her mind — relief that, for better or worse, she was now freed from any personal responsibility for what was about to happen.

  But you know that to be a lie, do you not? she asked herself. A convenient lie of self-deception told in silence by every witness to such atrocities throughout history. All of them cowards who had the opportunity to take action, but were too weak and afraid to do so. As her own thoughts echoed in her mind, the bitter sense of relief she had felt ignited a white hot rage deep within her chest. With no time for further contemplation, she was spurred into action by the fundamental conviction that she could not allow herself to indulge in the denial of her own role in what was happening around her. I am Ragini Freyda, she thought, as her fingers flew over her workstation’s touchscreen, child of Graca … born of the house Jelani … and I am no coward.

  As she finished entering commands, she looked up at Commodore Sarafi wearing an expression of anger mixed with a vague sense of pity. Although she felt somewhat vindicated in the knowledge that she might well have saved the entire Human species from extinction, she knew with almost absolute certainty that she would pay for her actions with her own life, as well as the lives of many honorable Wek officers aboard her ship.

  “The first Sazoch is away, Commodore,” the tactical officer announced.

  “Sir, the ship is no longer responding to control inputs,” the helm officer reported in an urgent, but controlled tone.

  Sarafi looked up from his own screen and immediately noticed his XO’s stare. “Manual override,” he ordered, sensing that things were by no means as they should be.

  “Our shields are down!” the tactical officer bellowed.

  “Alright, everyone,” Sarafi said, raising his voice in a calm but firm tone, “let’s work the problems one at a time. The AI will manage the helm momentarily while we sort out the control problem. Regarding the shields, a couple of overlapping emitters get taken offline during a weapons launch. Perhaps this is what you are seeing.”

  “No, Commodore,” the Wek officer replied, still rapidly entering commands in an attempt to isolate the problem. “Immediately after the Sazoch launch, rather than bringing those emitters back online, the entire system disengaged. Our shields are completely down.”

  Sarafi turned to look his XO directly in the eyes. “Oh, Ragini,” he whispered, “what have you done?”

  TFS Theseus, Low Earth Orbit

  (North of Papua New Guinea)

  “Transition complete, Captain. Range to the Gunov, one zero kilometers dead ahead,” Ensign Fisher reported from the Helm console as their quarry appeared in the center of the bridge view screen.

  “Nice job, Fisher, just hold this position,” Prescott replied. “Tactical, give us an active spherical scan at maximum power. With the exception of the Gunov herself, take out anything you don’t recognize as a friendly target.”

  “On it, sir,” Schmidt replied. “Nothing so far.”

  “Captain,” Lieutenant Lau said excitedly, “they just dropped their shields!”

  “By all means, fire!” Prescott said with a spontaneous involuntary laugh in spite of the urgency of the situation.

  “Firing all weapons,” Lau replied, entering commands as fast as possible in a near frantic effort to keep up with the rapidly changing situation.

  “Contact!” Schmidt bellowed from Tactical 1. “Not a Sazoch, Captain, it’s the Gresav … thirty kilometers to starboard. She’s firing as well.”

  On the view screen, Theseus’ three remaining forward plasma torpedo tubes as well as all available railgun and energy weapon emplacements opened up on the Gunov’s fully exposed drive section. At almost precisely the same moment, the Gresav’s heavy keel-mounted energy weapon fired — its enormous stream of focused energy stabbing through the darkness to pierce the Resistance flagship directly in the center of her sublight engine cluster. With her shields offline, the Gunov never even had the opportunity to return fire. In a scene eerily reminiscent of the Battle of Gliese 667, the Gresav’s energy weapon appeared to maintain a single discharge until its beam had literally burned its way through the entire length of its target to exit near the ship’s bow.

  Knowing all too well the danger posed to the Terran population below from the dreadful weapons the Gunov had been carrying, Admiral Naftur had intentionally placed his shot in an effort to initiate an antimatter release. As the hellish, orange-tinted beam penetrated the destroyer’s reactor containment unit, nearly six kilograms of antihydrogen — stored in the form of ice crystals — flash vaporized before coming into contact with the surrounding normal matter. The resulting annihilation event had an explosive yield exceeding ninety megatons of TNT, completely obliterating the Gunov and sending a massive cloud of superheated debris tumbling into the Earth’s upper atmosphere from the Solomon Islands to the Antarctic Peninsula. At the same time, gamma rays produced from the explosion interacted with the Earth’s magnetic field, generating a significant electromagnetic pulse. Although both warships were hardened against its effects, a roughly three-thousand-kilometer-long stretch of the South Pacific Ocean suffered power outages and widespread damage to electronic equipment as a result. Fortunately, the relatively low altitude of the blast confined the worst of the damage to one of the least populated se
ctions of the planet’s surface.

  “The Gunov has been destroyed, Captain,” Schmidt reported evenly. “We never detected any sort of weapons launch. If they did get one off, there’s so much debris in the atmosphere right now that I doubt we’d ever see it.”

  “Understood, but keep trying. Comm, signal the rest of our ships to fan out and continue the search. We will also need to update the Flag on our situation shortly.”

  “Aye, sir,” Lieutenant Dubashi replied from the Comm/Nav console. “Also, Admiral Naftur is hailing us.”

  “Thank you. On-screen, please.”

  “Aye, sir, opening channel.”

  A window opened on the left side of the view screen to display an exuberant Rugali Naftur.

  “Once again, I have the pleasure of being the first to wish the two of you joy of our great victory, Captain Prescott and Commander Reynolds,” he greeted warmly.

  “To you as well, Admiral. We arrived in low orbit less than thirty seconds after the Gunov, but detected no Sazoch weapons being launched.”

  “Humph,” Naftur growled. “They are exceedingly difficult to detect, but Sarafi would most likely have been entering the required authorization commands himself, so it seems unlikely to me that he would have had time to complete a launch sequence. In any event, we will, of course, assist you in your search. The Gunov herself, however, experienced temperatures exceeding twenty million kelvins, so I do not believe your people have anything to fear from any devices that remained onboard.”