Guns against guns, in a vacuum.
The fleet resembled a 20th century aircraft carrier group. A massive screen of Exhorder destroyer-class ships and Hammerhead frigate-class ships, protecting a nucleus of five or six main battle ships. But it had extra wrinkles that naval combat had never had in the past. A third dimension. The ability for ships to strike at close to lightspeed. A kamikaze attack in the right place could rapidly annihilate scores of ships.
In the main bridge of his command ship, SOL-745, Rodensis reviewed the stream of intel. It was a dull game, but as soon as things started to happen, they'd happen very quickly.
There was an air of unease among his service staff. Out of all the close escapes they'd had since the war began, this seemed like the one most likely to be more than a phantom.
Mars was sweeping around. A few more weeks and it would begin heading towards its aphelion, and the Sane would have lost their opportunity to capture a world.
"We need more ships," Rodensis muttered to himself. "Goddamn idiot wants us to wrestle a gorilla, but he’s feeding us like a monkey."
Rodensis was beginning to sour on Sarkoth Amnon. Dislikeable pricks become exponentially more dislikeable when they're also incompetent.
He'd steamrolled his way into power on a wave of patriotic sentiment. His return from Caitanya-9 was a stirring example of Solar Arm military capabilities. It was the first full army to be fully dehydrated by Black Shift technology, and even if nobody had ever figured out what he was doing out there, it was proof that war could be fought at such distances.
Almost immediately, cracks had started appearing in Sarkoth's porcelain reputation. Wild conspiracy theories. An odd difference in weight of one of the ships. And as soon as the space station had appeared, it had destroyed much of the army's morale.
What's going on out here? Everyone wondered. What are we not being told?
All of that was a civilian concern, and Rodensis prided himself on being above that. What stuck in his craw was this new antimatter defense system.
Sarkoth was convinced that they would soon become targeted by an awesome new extrasolar threat. The missiles were expensive. Trillions in national defense spending were being siphoned away to build, at a time when they needed to be on full war footing.
“And don’t you get it?” He’d argued until his throat was hoarse. “We only control out to the Asteroid belt! That’s tiny, compared to the rest of the Solar System. If we detonate a device inside that narrow sphere, there’s going to be blowback onto Mars, Terrus, and Selene.”
Sarkoth hadn’t seen it that way. As far as he was concerned, this was an existential threat and warranted nothing less than an existential response. Several probes equipped with warheads had already been deployed, and countless more were being commissioned. And it was money down a sewer.
“Anything new on the situation?” he asked over comms.
“Negative.”
Hours ticked by, as excruciating as notches on a rack. With tens of kilometers between each individual craft, he had to control them with complex positioning equipment. It was eerie, and mind-scrambling, trying to remember which patch of utter black held his forces, and which patch of utter black was enemy territory. Soon, there would be another patch of utter black attacking them.
He ran through likely attack models the enemy would use, and decided they’d come like the point of a spear. A sudden thrust, aiming for penetration rather than destruction.
With his fighters arranged, he had a firepower advantage over any force coming through the enfilade. They would probably try a massive drive against a single point, in the hopes that his forces would buckle around it, folding inwards like a piece of metal. That would be their only chance of neutralizing the Solar Arm’s advantage.
“Update on that. No longer negative.” one of his point scouts said.
“We’ve got company?”
“Oh, yeah.”
Several of their scouts were positioned around the mouth of the hole. Their task was to shoot pings off everything coming through, and convolve it into a 3D picture of the attack. They were a vital part of the battle. Without their eyes, he was all but blind.
“Damn it, they’ll in visual range. Estimating 200 kilometers and closing.”
Bright orange specks started to populate the holographic viewscreen. Hundreds and hundreds of ships.
“This doesn’t look much like a peacekeeping envoy.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“Fire.”
A blistering storm was unleashed on the enemy as they they crossed the threshold. From the pings on his equipment, he knew that they were shooting back. The Hammerheads fired high-speed railgun accelerated slugs, while the Exhorders launched batteries of target-seeking thorium missiles.
He had them where he wanted them, funneling through a narrow point.
In this moment, all of the individual craft had to stop thinking of themselves as people, and imagine themselves as a unified resistance. Soldiers don’t work as atoms, they work as waves. Some soldiers could manage it, others never could. The task of the commander was to rinse out the failures, as best he could.
The field of fire was so wide, shots coming from so many targets, that it was almost like an impenetrable wall.
Dozens of Sane ships were blown apart, but more made it through, weaving through the fire by skill and by luck.
Rodensis’s screens lit up with activity.
With a high-density thrust of light and fast Hammerheads, the Sane ploughed deep through the protective screen of destroyers and frigates, crossing dozens of kilometers per second.
Damn it, he thought. They’re angling towards the 51th unit. Undermanned to fuck. Just my luck, that they’d strike at a weak point.
Thinking quickly, he re-allocated several hundred craft from the flanks to the weakened area, hoping that the penetration attack would fail.
But with more and more attack craft rushing through the gap, they were having trouble stopping the leak. His defensive formations weren’t exerting the massive fields of fire required to shred the Hammerheads pouring through, nor were their ranks dense enough to fully pick off the survivors. Soon, enemy fighters were weaving right through his entire formation.
The battle devolved into something every general dreaded.
Uncontrollable, unpredictable dogfights.
He saw dots on his screen go from green to red, each one representing a ship lost. It was complete carnage out there, Hammerheads banking and swerving around each other, angling for blind spots. And all the while, hundreds of reinforcements were coming through.
“General, they’re clearing another hole through the asteroid belt. Here are the co-ordinates.”
He re-allocated troops, trying to set up a second choke point. He was well aware of how thin his forces were being spread, but hoped that the Sane attack was at its highest ebb.
One of the advantages of the split being mere weeks old was that they still had relatively up to date information on the Sane’s military capabilities. They knew what to expect.
His defensive emplacements blasted away, reducing dozens of enemy ships to scrap. And the Hammerhead railguns were doing a good job of sniping Sane ships that attempted to dogfight. But soon, Rodensis found himself pressed hard. Too many enemy fighters were slipping through the net, ripping holes in it as they did.
As more and more dots went from green to red, he tried to think about how to save his crumbling fleet.
His options were running out. Each casualty he took diminished his firepower, in accordance with Lanchester's cube law. He needed tight webs of fire shredding enemy ships, and instead it was patchy, failing more and more with each second.
As the situation continued to deteriorate, it took him a long time to accept that they would be defeated.
The battle would be lost.
“General? We can see two more holes appearing in the asteroid field. Awaiting orders.”
“Contain them as best you can. We’re
receiving eighty ships from Deimos and forty from the Phobos steelworks. That should staunch the bleeding.”
Those ships had already arrived and been deployed, but he needed to put some fresh hope into his battered men.
He saw on the telemetry that huge Yakulst carriers were coming through the hole, with heavy-grade field disruption weaponry. Once they were in position, they would level devastation on his remaining ships. If he had more ships, he could have repulsed the screen of fighters and nailed the carriers. But now that they were sure they had a beachhead, The Sane were safely deploying their strategic crown jewels.
How did it all come apart so quickly?
The battlefield was a chaotic three-dimensional chess game. Eerie fireless explosions tore apart ships. Hulls crumpled as railgun slugs pierced through them, flattening them with sheer velocity. Swirling clouds of debris obscured the field, limiting visibility but providing no cover.
Private Korta Lemuel angled his Hammerhead’s thrust vectors away from the hordes of Sane fighters, ignoring all comms from his commanders in the Solar Arm. They’d commanded him to make run after run at the encroaching mass of enemies, and something in him had snapped.
No more.
He was now utterly sure that he was regarded as cannon fodder – just another leaf blown by the wind of the wildly successful Sane offensive.
Automatic targeting systems locked on to set of targets, and he blazed away. Hyperspeed railgun slugs blasted at them, rolling the Hammerhead in space. One shot got lucky – it blasted the wing from a Yakulskt carrier, eighty kilometers away.
The crippled carrier yawed. He wasn’t able to stay in the firing zone long enough to complete the kill.
He disengaged, and started speeding towards the safety net of Mars. He saw countless pinpricks of light joining him – this was no organized retreat, this was a rout.
They’d been outplanned and outmaneuvered. Whoever controlled the Sane armies was either a tactical genius, or possessed a crystal ball. Wherever there was a weak spot, there was a concentrated attack to exploit it. No matter what they tried, there were Sane Exhorders and Hammerheads to counter it. The Sane were thinking six steps ahead.
He presumed that Rodensis would now fall back, and attempt to defend Mars against attack.
Korta wished him the best of luck. I’m going to save myself.
He was almost out of the danger zone, when suddenly his guidance systems were scrambled to white noise by an extremely strong source of electromagnetic radiation.
What?
He tried to regain control of the craft, but there was something out there, something large interfering with his system. Wondering about some exotic superweapon the Sane had unveiled, he brought up optical guidance.
What he saw was too strange to believe.
There was a new planet in the solar system.
He had it on visuals, about two million kilometers distant. It was about a third of the size of Terrus, and an ophidian purple. It was orbited by two jet black moons.
He couldn’t believe it.
Caitanya-9, the great mystery planet. Somehow, it was here.
He just stared into that vast unblinking eye, until a Sane Hammerhead fell into his blind spot and destroyed him.
The Atrium – Selene – Jun 5, 2043, 1400 hours
The Atrium was deserted. Nothing breeds politicians like peacetime, or winnows them out like war. The massed marble seats that had once held more than a hundred people now stood empty, like tombs to times and people now past. Only Sarkoth Amnon and his Defense Minister were left.
They’d heard the news. Rodensis had been smashed in battle just beyond the asteroid belt. His location and status was still unknown, and Raya Yithdras was pouncing upon Mars.
But now they had news that utterly overshadowed everything else.
Caitanya-9 – and Andrei Kazmer – had returned.
He had a decision to make. And a button to push.
Minister Agamune and he conferred quietly. “You see how it stands,” she said. “There's a planet sized weapon here, with an ability to create wormholes at will. The graves are dug, right on schedule. Let me ask you...do you know anything about this that I don't know, and should?”
“I know too much,” he said. “Alright, here's as much detail as I'll go into. Ten years ago, I had reason to suspect that Caitanya-9 was more than just a planet. Let's just say my suspicions were confirmed then, and they've remained confirmed now. The question is, are we able to nail it with antihydrogen warheads?”
She took in a sharp intake of breath. “If by nail it, yes, we have a Daksha probe within firing range. I have granted a standing yes, and with your approval it will launch its payload.”
“And then?” he asked.
“A direct hit will obliterate ten to twenty percent of the planet's mass, trashing its structural stability. I make certain assumptions about the planet's size and composition. If it’s anything like a rocky planet, we will destroy it.”
“And then?” he pressed.
“Right now, it's twenty million kilometers from Terrus. First thing, we'll get hit by the harshest radioactive ever engineered by human hands. Second thing, we'll be bombarded with fragments of rock for centuries, some many kilometers across. Billions will die if you launch a missile. Billions and billions and billions.”
“Shit”, Sarkoth Amnon said, visibly deflating. “We're too close to use the missiles. Rodensis told me as much, and he was right. We sacrificed the war to build these weapons, and now we absolutely cannot use them.”
Agamune lifted his chin with a manicured hand. “Understand I have no viewpoint to put across here, I just want you to understand the options. If this is a weapon of astronomical destruction, then disabling it is an absolute priority. Better to lose ten billion to radiation sickness than lose our entire species.”
“There's something you're not thinking of, Minister.” Sarkoth said. “Humor me, please.”
She extended her hands. “By all means.”
“It has done nothing yet. If it has the power to eradicate us, it hasn't used it. Why? Have we misunderstood its motives? Does it perhaps not desire our destruction? Believe me, from what I know of this planet, if it meant to kill us we would not be having this conversation.”
“I confess that gives me little confidence.”
“It gives me more than I felt before which was none. We make a mistake in assuming it has clear-cut, readily understood motives. It might be controlled by squabbling political factions, just as we are, some desiring war, others desiring peace. And what are the implications of that?”
“I don't know.”
“If we attack it in any way, we will push it towards war. By deploying weapons against it, we might actualise the very outcome we seek to prevent. Wouldn't that be a sad tragedy for our species to go out on?”
Agamune stood up. “So your orders are not to deploy any weapons of planetary destruction? The same weapons we've crippled our war effort to build?
Sarkoth Amnon nodded. “Yes. Those are my new orders.”
She looked at him. “Thank you. On behalf of my family and everyone on Terrus, thank you.”
The Atrium security was depleted, large numbers of private security guards drafted into the reserves. At night, the central meeting floor had the sepulchral quality of an abandoned theater. But there were rooms and chambers above, to which Sarkoth Amnon and his staff retired after hours, and those still buzzed faintly with life.
Wilseth closed the door to the main chamber.
There was a slow drip drip drip from the two guards he had killed. Two poison flechette rounds. Quiet as a whisper.
Wilseth had an encyclopedic knowledge of pain and indignities he could inflict on living humans, but his true specialty was the dead. He had no equal. When it came to stopping the human heartbeat, Wilseth was the most successful agent since coronary thrombosis.
He padded across the floor, checking to make sure the security cameras were disabled. As Sarkoth's i
nterrogator, he was given a fair amount of trust and confidence. Since the building had cleared at the end of another fruitless day of war, he'd been busy abusing that trust. Scrambling camera feeds. Defeating security alarms and locks. Granting himself access to every room in the building.
His final orders from Raya Yithdras were buzzing in his head.
I don't care how you manage it. But a missile must fly at Caitanya-9. Get close to Sarkoth Amnon, and make him give the launch order.
Raya and the other Sons of the Vanitar had no clue as to why the Wipe wasn't being performed. This was the entire plan. Hold Sarkoth at bay while the entity on Caitanya-9 did its work.
For whatever reason, the work was still undone.
Ironically, Sarkoth's defense network might provide the key to triggering Caitanya-9 into action.
Wilseth was under no illusions that he would survive this. But it was an opportunity too valuable to miss.
Very rarely do individual men change the course of history, he thought, moving up the stairs. But when they do, the hand reaches from the darkest shadows!
His stride consumed the stairs.
He encountered a third guard, and a concubine of Sarkoth's. He slew them both with ghastly speed and efficiency. Everything in this plan depended on things going exactly right, and he would not allow himself to be the underperforming variable in the equation.
Higher and higher. Every door was unlocked, everything slid open as soon as it detected his approach.
Finally, he was in the communications room.
It was a vaulted chamber, every single surface crusted and panels with computers. Feeds from the battles raging out in space. Orders of combat from the front line troops. Urgent messages from the front. High-resoltuion 3D scans of Caitanya-9. All of these different streams of data, converging towards a neon headache.
“Prime Minister, enemy forces are converging on Mars. Dravidian supercarriers are deploying tens of thousands of ground troops…”
Extinction Level Event (The Consilience War Book 2) Page 20
