“Multiple contacts! Close in! Vampires!” The sensors tech shouted in a near scream. “Activating defensive systems!”
Snapping his head up to the main screen, Captain Simms nearly confirmed activating the automatic defensive lasers before catching himself, “BELAY THAT ORDER!” he shouted at the same time activating his override, “Do not energize sensors!” Seeing the weapons tech reaching for the activation of the ship’s automated defense systems, the captain did the one thing only captains can do on a human combat ship, and then only while in a virtual reality command bridge: he pressed the Captain’s Override.
All commands given to the ship by the crew while the captain had an activate override were placed in a buffer on the captain’s display so he could accept or reject the commands prior to the ship’s systems acting on them. It was an unworkable mode of operation outside of a virtual environment.
“Passive sensors, report!” ordered Captain Simms, maintaining the override.
Unable to put his panicked observations into words, the sensors tech changed the view of the main screen to local space. The surface of the moon popped up on the main screen, along with the three green icons of the Atlanta, Oklahoma, and Singularity. Coming around the horizon of the moon from seemingly all directions were red flashing track lines of Chzek-kin missiles arcing around the curvature of the moon. By this time the veils deployed several hours prior had settled to less than fifty miles above the surface of the moon and were providing an effective cover for the three ships.
Captain Simms looked to the young sensors tech sitting in the tactical chair next to the sensor officer and asked, “Are we being actively tracked?”
“Sir, the vampires are all active and searching, but none are locked on us,” the tech replied.
“Are any of the vampires oriented on us?”
“No, Sir.”
“Very well,” replied the captain, selecting the activation order for the laser defense systems and dismissing it from the buffer of crew commands waiting to be implemented by the ship, along with an order from the tactical station to activate the ship’s inertia dampening shields. Activating either system would have caused the ship to activate several energy sources, either in the tracking systems for the lasers, or the high energy inertia dampener systems human ships used for shields. Both would give away the ship’s position without the need for the Chzek-kin missiles to gain their own sensor locks. The enemy missiles could have simply flown to the ship’s active emissions.
Thinking through what happened, Captain Simms realized he missed a report. “Repeat your last,” he announced generally, not knowing who made the report.
“It’s the Oklahoma, Sir. She’s activated her defense systems and activated her shields,” reported one of the sensors technicians. At the range the missiles were, the veils were unable to block the electromagnetic emanations from the ship.
“Bloody hell,” whispered Admiral Nelson. “On screen!” After witnessing from his location in the fleet combat information center, and not seeing or understanding what just happened with Captain Simms using his override to abort the activation of the ship’s defenses, the admiral nearly countermanded Captain Simms’ order to not activate Atlanta’s defenses. Oklahoma activated her defenses and shields and he agreed with their action. Then uncertainty set in as to what should be done, though he did not interfere with his Flag Captain’s command of his ship. There was nothing to be done; it was too late to tell Oklahoma to maintain stealth. The lack of cooperation and consistency in the two ships responses to the incoming missiles were a testament to the fleet and the admiral’s inexperience.
Chapter 11: UES Oklahoma, Rheas System
The largest non-carrier combat ships in the UEAF fleets were the Saturn Class Cruisers. UES Oklahoma was the fourteenth of the cruisers to be built, and the first to be built with the Block I design upgrade which corrected several features of the Saturn Class ships that either failed to perform to expectations or were determined to be missing from the original design. One of those upgrades was to the laser defensive systems. The lasers were not powerful enough on the Block 0 ships to be used for anything other than point defense. The Block I design traded quantity for lethality, creating a dual purpose laser that could be used for both offensive mid-range (for energy weapons) attack and as a defensive system. The other upgrade, relevant to the moment, was in the additional power generator added to boost the inertia dampening shields.
Captain Rodney Boone stood in a vacant, round room. Everything was black, except several monitors and a 3D holo-imager taking up a large proportion of the room. Boone did not use an avatar or a virtual bridge. He could not see a virtual representation of the other members of the bridge crew. This was how he liked it; there were no distractions like those found on the virtual bridges of most ship’s captains. When the Chzek-kin missiles started coming over the horizon of the moon the three ships were hiding behind, he was able to see them break the horizon on the passive sensors attached to the veil almost as soon as the sensor techs.
The sensors tech’s disembodied voice shouted into Boone’s mind, “Multiple contacts! Vampires inbound! Multiple vectors!” The tech, like everyone in the fleet, had never seen real combat. Boone spent the last eighteen months of his command drilling his crew to react properly to almost any situation, including last-second detections of incoming missiles.
Reacting exactly as he trained his crew, the weapons officer, Lt. Greg Winn, using the authority granted him by the captain to act when the ship was exposed to an imminent threat, immediately activated the ship’s point defense systems into automatic mode. The ship’s defensive lasers and the ship’s inertia dampening shields sprang to life and sensors began active scanning. “Auto defense activated! Shields up!” Shouted the weapons officer, praying he acted in time and the lasers would be successful in shooting down the incoming missiles.
None of the lasers fired as they scanned the environment under the veil and no targets were detected. The weapons were not linked to the veil’s passive sensors. Captain Boone immediately approved of initiating the defensive lasers and shields. Weapon’s actions were exactly what he was trained to do and the captain felt the comfort of that familiarity and confidence in the capabilities of his ship.
The captain’s approval faltered within a few seconds as he watched the missiles, all streaking across the moon at between a hundred and a thousand miles above the surface as they came around. He only questioned the decision when the course tracks of the missiles began to shift toward Oklahoma as at the extemely close range even the veils were unable to block all of the ship’s emissions. The ship’s quantum computer analyzed the two hundred missiles and changed their red icon’s intensity according to their threat level. Fully two-thirds of the missiles maintained a light red threat reading, giving some indication they were not an imminent threat as the quantum computers determined they were unable to change their vectors in time to redirect and intercept the Oklahoma. Most of the missiles slammed into the moon’s surface miles from the ship; tearing up magnificent plumes of moon dust and rock and throwing it into space in a massive circle centered on the ship. Others flew over the horizon and out into space as they arced wide to continue around to the far side of moon.
Seventy missiles had their threat icons increase in intensity to a harsh red imminent threat. The ship’s lasers began firing once the missiles penetrated the veils and shipboard sensors were able to get a lock. The lasers were able to tear through missiles in milliseconds, causing the missiles to explode prematurely.
Missile after missile was destroyed. Each of the six defensive lasers accounting for at least four missiles over a period of less than a second, leaving four other missiles to make it through the laser fire and impact the ship’s inertia dampening shields. Four twenty-eight megaton nuclear warheads, all set to detonate on impact, slammed into the ship. The conventional explosives wrapped around their atomic cores detonated on impact as they were designed.
Upon detonation,
the energy of the conventional explosives compressed the enriched radioactive cores to trigger the nuclear explosions, except the massive nuclear explosions never occurred. Instead, the inertia dampeners humans adapted into shields slowed mass at a molecular level and robbed energy from the conventional explosive force attempting to collapse the cores of the nuclear warheads to a non-critical explosive force. The nuclear cores, rather than detonating into a massive nuclear explosion, were turned into radioactive molten metal blobs. Each of the molten cores punched through the inertia dampening shields and through the one inch of depleted uranium outer hull of Oklahoma.
One of the warheads tore through the ship and destroyed a nest of EGG Habitats, instantly killing eight of the crew, including Lt. Winn. The Oxi-Flo fluids the crew lived in, along with the crewmen, were instantly vaporized and exploded, blowing out the bottom of the ship and into the moon fifty feet below.
Another warhead tore through engineering, destroying the number three engine by disintegrating it and blowing it into the number five engine. The two remaining warheads plowed through non-critical areas. Although it survived, the hits brutalized the ship. The ship could survive and continue to fight with the damage that was taken. At a minimum, most of the crew would survive.
The remaining missiles targeting Oklahoma were unable to make the final course corrections to make direct contact with the ship. They passed close-in to the ship, impacting the moon’s surface under the hull. One point one gigatons of force in the form of vaporized moon erupted back up into the sides and bottom of Oklahoma. Cameras from the UES Atlanta focused on the explosions and recorded a mountain of moon debris envelop and rip apart the doomed ship. Only a single whispered, “Dear God,” was heard on the bridge of the Atlanta in reply to the death of the ship.
The entire engagement, from the time the missiles crested the horizon, to the last missile detonation, lasted a handful of seconds. Admiral Nelson and the crew of Atlanta stared in awe at the millions of tons of moon rock and dust blasted a hundred miles out into space above the airless moon.
“Captain Simms,” the admiral said in a soft voice, “Notify the ambassador we are relocating to the edge of the veil. It’ll be on top of us soon if we don’t.”
Captain Simms didn’t immediately acknowledge the admiral’s order. He was still staring at the main screen showing the mountain of moon material erupting at escape velocities where the UES Oklahoma used to be, Captain Simms realized how close the Atlanta came to sharing her fate. “Uh, Yes. Yes, Admiral. Comms, let the ambassador’s ship know we are relocating to…,” Looking at a secondary monitor of a rendering of the veil’s position as it accelerated toward the surface under the gravitational pull of the moon, Captain Simms mentally selected a location at the edge of the veil between two mountain ranges and placed a navigation marker, “Nav marker M4.”
Then, turning to Navigation, he ordered, “Helm, make the move. Point-one percent thrust.”
Lieutenant Mario Fiennes, the captain of the destroyer, UES Perkins, spent the last fourteen hours standing on his virtual bridge. He spent his time watching the projected movements of the known enemy ships initially provided by the far more sensitive sensors of the XSS Cousteau, with whom they had since lost contact. His wait was soon to end. The Perkins was coasting through the outer system for weeks, ever since Third Fleet entered the Rheas System and was now on an intercept course toward the projected position of several enemy ships. Her engines, although primed, were still as cold as the surrounding space. Lt. Fiennes’ ship drew the short straw when it, and its sister ship, UES Perry, were assigned to take a deep orbital path to the opposite side of the solar system from which the Rheas Homeworld was located. The young lieutenant saw his ship’s assignment as almost a reprimand as they were about as far away from the newly discovered aliens as you could get and still be in the system.
Lt. Fiennes didn’t fall into either the gung-ho or the let’s get the hell out of here, categories so much as the middle road attitude of, “kill the enemy before they kill you so we all get to go home.” He was practical like that.
“Sir, we’re detecting a massive explosion on the surface of the Rheas Homeworld’s largest moon. It’s on the backside of the moon from the position of the Chzek-kin fleet.”
“Do we have visual?”
“Not yet,” answered the sensor technician, ST2 Dallon. “Wait, something is coming in now from the Atlanta.”
“Put it on the main screen.”
The communications watchstander broke into their exchange, “Captain, we have a force status update. The…Oklahoma, Sir! She’s been destroyed.”
Silence took over in the previously humming bridge and every crew member turned to look at their captain. Only the communications technician was still occupied in receiving the message. “Captain. Message from the admiral on your sideboard.”
Seemingly reaching into thin air, Lt. Fiennes made a virtual space grab of the message from his communications queue.
[FLEET UPDATE ENEMY CONFIRMED HOSTILE ALL SHIPS ARE REQUIRED TO ENGAGE AND DESTROY ALL CHZEK-KIN VESSELS IN SYSTEM 48269 \ FLEET TACTICAL UPDATE ENEMY SHIPS OBSERVED USING MULTI-MEGATON NUCLEAR ARMED MISSILES FIRED EN MASS ENEMY MISSILES OBSERVED HOMING ON ACTIVE TRANSMISSIONS MAINTAIN EMCON ALPHA WHEN POSSIBLE END TRANSMISSION]
“Damn. Sensors! Confirm status of ship emissions,” ordered the captain.
The sensors technician and others on the small bridge confirmed all ship’s transmitters were on standby, the ship’s engines were primed and cold, and the EM fields generated by the ship’s reactor, life support, and passive systems were fully contained.
Lt. Fiennes expected the answer he received, but still felt relief on hearing the ship was effectively a black hole in the empty blackness of space.
It was another ninety minutes before the boredom of the last sixteen hours was broken, “Sir, we have a backscatter analysis contact. Bearing minus four-two, mark one-seven,” announced Dallon.
“Do we have a range?”
“Not yet, Sir. We’ve shared contact information with the Perry and should have a triangulation with them shortly.”
“Very well. Let’s get the range and calculate a firing solution, alpha profile. Weapons, standby for targeting data.”
“Sir, the Perry is reporting five more contacts near the first. They’re in two groups of three. Working on a firing solution.” Thirty seconds later Dallon reported, “We have a firing solution! Alpha profile. Ready to fire on your command, Sir.”
“The Perry reports ready, Sir,” chimed in communications.
“I want a twenty-second countdown, synch with the Perry,” ordered Lt. Fiennes.
The time passed quickly until the weapons tech announced, “Firing!” as he pressed the virtual launch buttons to fire all missiles.
Lt. Fiennes immediately ordered, “Reload. I want multiple volleys. Put the time to targets up on number four screen.” A timer started a seventy-two-minute countdown on the side screen and the captain issued an order to protect the ship, “Full negative spatial compression as soon as we make the second missile launch. Notify the Perry.” By expanding the space in front of the ship, the captain slowed its approach to the enemy ships by 250 times. Missiles launched rapidly accelerated away and activated their own Epson Drives to compress the space in front of them. The captain’s hope was to destroy the enemy before they were detected or at least buy time to destroy the enemy’s ship’s counter-missile strike that was sure to come if they were detected first.
The two destroyers quickly had a separation of a half million miles from their missiles without the ships using a single engine; allowing the missiles time to close on the enemy without unnecessarily exposing the ships to early detection and counter fire. Now it was time to wait.
Chapter 12: Cruiser Conqueror, Chzek-kin Assault Fleet Nine, Rheas System (Outer)
Captain, multiple contacts! Enemy missiles!” reported the Chzek-kin sensors officer.
Captain Groken, well aware
the short time from detection to impact could be but a few seconds in a missile attack, had already placed the ship’s defenses in automatic with passive sensors only. Upon hearing the contacts were missiles, and knowing they were detected if missiles were so near, the captain energized the ship’s active sensors to allow the ship’s defensive systems the best chance of eliminating the inbound threat.
Thirty-two missiles were initially detected; split equally between his squad and Squad Three. They were spread out in time of impact, from eight time segments to forty-seven segments and new missiles were continuously added to the total number of missiles coming into detection range.
“Snap shot! Counter-fire on the inbound’s trajectory! All missiles, FIRE!” ordered Captain Groken., watching the incoming missiles. His only other command was, “Brace for impact!”
The Chzek-kin ships were spread out over an area of a thousand square miles; the six ships running roughly parallel to each other. Firing defensive lasers, the ships tore into the ten missiles closest to each of them. The Human Mk IV missiles detonated within microseconds of the defensive laser’s interception, but not because that was the time it took to destroy the missiles. Within the first microsecond the lasers struck, the missiles triggered their firing mechanisms to deploy the ordinance contained within the triple warhead.
The first section of the warhead in each missile blew out like a shotgun, sending four hundred, ten-pound slugs of depleted uranium along the missiles’ paths to intercept the ships they were targeting.
The second section split into ten, one hundred pound, kinetic darts with maneuvering thrusters to overcome enemy attempts at last second manuevering. Both the first and second warhead’s payloads were intended to be detected by the active and passive sensors of the target vessels in hopes of overwhelming defensive systems with the thousands of targets added for the enemy ships to defend against.
Earth Interstellar_Proxy War Page 10
