by Ian Douglas
"Looks like the welcoming committee's on its way to meet us," Van said. He looked, but he saw nothing that might have been Alyan starships maneuvering behind the enemy ships.
"You've got that right, Three-five," Cole replied. "Current plan calls for a four-squadron release in . . . one hundred thirty-two minutes. In the meantime—"
"We're gonna run sims," he interrupted.
"How'd you guess?" That was Sublieutenant Gerard Marlo, Three-seven.
"Hey, if we have time to kill, let's do some flying."
"Yeah, we're hot," Sublieutenant Lynn Kosta, Van's wingman, chimed in. "Let's burn some mass!!"
"Here comes the feed," Cole told them. "We'll start with polishing our close-assault SCM."
And he was in space, bearing down on an Imperial light destroyer.
Chapter 15
Though the term "military intelligence" has been considered an oxymoron ever since it was first coined, the fact remains that the gathering of intelligence—about terrain, climate, enemy strengths and dispositions, and anything else of either strategic or tactical value—remains the most important facet of military planning. Without solid intelligence, the best generals keenest evaluations remain guesswork, his shrewdest guesses little more than wishful thinking.
—Juggernaut: A Brief History of Armored Combat
Chujo Aiko Hayashiya
C.E. 2525
Still linked with Commander Duryea and the probes' data simulation, Dev watched as the globe of ShraRish expanded in his vision, as complete and as gloriously complex in the details of cloud patterns and mountains and rugged, islandedged coastline as it would have been had Eagle already entered low orbit. The tracks of a number of probes showed as green lines curving in toward the cloud-wreathed sphere. Special targets were known DalRiss cities, as well as any clusters of buildings, nuclear power plants, grounded ascraft, or other anomalous structures that would indicate the presence of humans on the planet's surface.
The lead group of probes, the ones that had slammed through the Imperial fleet, were all destroyed now, or else they'd long since passed the Imperial squadron and were headed now into deep space, out of fuel and beyond the range of their jacker links. The second group, however, had been decelerating for some time now, until their speed was measured in only kilometers per second . . . instead of hundreds of kilometers per second.
As the second wave of RD-40s neared ShraRish, the almost featureless globe in the data simulation began to take on more and more detail—a rugged band of upthrusting mountains stretching along the equator between two golden seas, a vast expanse of red-ocher desert near the south pole, gleaming pinpoints that might be DalRiss cities, the precise positions—and, moments later, as their movements were assessed, the precise orbits—of all of the Imperial ships. The remote probes were programmed to assimilate a wide range of data, including scans of every available electromagnetic wavelength, of neutrino flux, and of mass and gravitational anomalies such as those linked to QPT plants. RF leakage from communications systems and computers gave hints regarding the Imperial commander's tactical frequencies, his weapons status as lasers powered up and missile batteries were readied for firing, and his ships' engineering status as fusion power plants were brought to full output. Both of the Yari-class destroyers were tracked as they broke orbit, and the telltale gravitational ripples emanating from them indicated that they were bringing their power taps on line.
Faster and faster, the probe data rippled through the simulation's framework, expanding, adding detail, revealing new targets of opportunity. The globe representing ShraRish grew from empty translucence to a globe as clear and as detailed and as beautiful as any visual image of the real thing seen from orbit, complete with swirling clouds and the eye-aching glare of sunglint off the surface of a gold-brown sea.
"We're starting to get some good feeds from inside the atmosphere, Commodore," Duryea told Dev.
"How many do you have targeted on the main Imperial base?"
"We had three, but only one's made it through. Five-nine."
"We're going to need that download, top priority."
"Yes, sir. Ah! Looks like the Dojinko feed's coming through now. Pull down a window and enjoy the show."
Dojinko . . . the DalRiss city where the primary Imperial surface base had been attacked. The scurrilous name grated at him, but he uplinked the appropriate codes, then watched as a secondary ViRsim display opened inside his mind, overlaying his view of ShraRish. This new scene was a feed from Probe Five-nine, now at an altitude of less than fifty kilometers and angling steeply down toward Dojinko.
The image was trembling violently despite the system's valiant attempts to hold it steady. Warning discretes flashed and scrolled at the edges of Dev's vision. Despite the deceleration, the probe still had tremendous velocity, was still traveling so fast that the outer layers of its duralloy hull were vaporizing, creating an ionization trail that made holding even a lasercom lock with the craft difficult.
Too, the high speed of approach guaranteed that its initial transmissions would mean little to human viewers. To Dev, the probe's motion rendered the view little more than a confused and vibrating blur of color, the white of clouds, the gold and russet and ocher of what might have been vegetation or simply desert sand . . . and then the picture tilted wildly and vanished in a burst of static.
"Probe Five-nine destroyed," Eagle's AI reported. "Probe Seven-eight destroyed. Probe One-two destroyed. . . ." The list was growing longer, the reports of destruction coming in now faster and faster. According to the tally board, fewer than two dozen of the RD-40s were still transmitting.
"That went by too fast for me to make anything of it," Dev admitted. "Can I have a playback?"
"Absolutely. Set time factor at fifty to one."
This time, Dev could see the clouds and the wrinkled expanse of golden ground clearly, surrounded by the glowing haze of the probe's reentry trail. As the probe plummeted toward the ground, he became aware of terrain features spread out below him like a map, while the horizon curved gently away beneath a gold-and-violet haze. The AI added graphics to orient him. There was the Imperial base, a tiny, quadrangular gray scar against the golds and browns of the surrounding landscape. A pair of brackets winking just to one side of the quadrangle marked where the DalRiss city ought to be.
"Enhance," Dev said, staring hard at the brackets to tell the AI what he was interested in seeing. "Max resolution." The quadrangle seemed to rush toward him, expanding to fill half the display, edges blurred by distance and atmosphere suddenly sharpening into computer-drawn crispness of line and detail.
The terrain within the brackets was pockmarked and broken, but otherwise empty. Abruptly, the scene rolled away to port, was replaced by a brief flash of sky, and then the display filled with static. According to the transmission data, Five-nine had not been hit by enemy fire but had simply broken up in the atmosphere during the final, fiery instant of reentry.
"Odd," Dev said. The DalRiss city wasn't there anymore. He ordered a repeat of the imaging sequence, shifting his attention this time to the Imperial base.
The facility looked fairly typical and had probably been grown on the site from standard nanofabrication programs. The pavement had most likely been laid down with Rogan molds, while the gun turrets perched on their ten-meter towers looked like ordinary ship weapons installed in standardized hardpoint mounts. Two big transport ascraft were parked on the black surface of the landing field that roofed over the large, central structure. A perimeter fence—a high-voltage, high-amp barrier fence to judge from the design of the support struts—surrounded the entire facility.
No . . . that wasn't quite accurate. The fence encircled the base perhaps halfway, but as Dev froze the display in place and again enhanced the resolution, he could see that the entire eastern and southern sides of that barrier had been knocked down. Checking the data readouts, he noted that the probe had detected no power flow through the barrier; the thing was dead. Mixed in with the wre
ckage were a number of bulky, gray-white, and wrinkled objects that he couldn't resolve well enough to identify. DalRiss buildings? Plant life of some kind? Vehicles?
Interesting. Some of those objects had obviously broken through into the perimeter, and they'd brought some of the gold-brown-ocher ground cover with them. The vegetation had spilled through the wreckage and taken root on the pavement inside, giving the facility the look of age-old ruins abandoned by its builders long before. Some of those buildings, he saw now, showed extensive damage. A lasercom mast leaned at a drunken angle, and a gun tower had been snapped off near its base and now lay full length on the pavement where it had fallen, the quad barrels of its 80mm lasers pointed uselessly at the sky. Nearby, an outlying dome had been torn open and its contents scattered. Dev couldn't get resolution enough out of the system to make out what those contents might be, but they looked like crumpled paper or rags. Bodies? He couldn't tell. Probably not . . . unless fighting had been going on recently. He had to remind himself that the original reports of fighting on this world were now eight months old.
Eight months, and the Imperials had not rebuilt the fence or repaired the damage to the outlying buildings. Dev searched the image for signs of recent repairs or building but found nothing obvious.
He did see four warstriders, two Katanas and two smaller Tachis standing in what might be guard positions close by the central structure's surface access lock. He saw no other sign of life, no workers in E-suits repairing exterior damage, no legger infantry on patrol, nothing but gray buildings, gray pavement, and the four jet black combat machines standing guard.
Dev emerged from the secondary imaging window. "I'll want everything you have on that base," he told Duryea. "I'm probably not picking up on more than a fraction of what there is to see here, and I'll need time to study it in detail. Have you picked up any other Imperial facilities on the planet?"
"No, sir," Duryea replied. "Not operational, anyway. There are some structures about five thousand kilometers to the northwest that were erected three years ago by the Imperial Expeditionary Force, but they definitely look abandoned."
"And the base they call Dojinko? It looks pretty badly used."
"It's still operational, though. No power to the perimeter fence, but we've got power usage inside the main building and the weapons are charged and ready. IR plumes from their heat vents show their air conditioning is running full blast, and their nuclear reactor is at about fifty percent of max output. Two of their lasercomm towers at least are operational, and there was a fair amount of radio traffic. No, sir, I'd say that, whatever happened down there, Dojinko is still very much alive and operational."
Dev was going to need to go over the scene with Katya. If there were intact Imperial units on the ground, her people would have to go down and root them out. He wished, though, that Probe Five-nine had revealed more of the current status between the Imperials and the DalRiss. Except for those enigmatic gray lumps scattered about the base perimeter, which might or might not be DalRiss vehicles or structures of some kind, there was no sign of the aliens. Hell, their entire city was simply missing. He knew individual DalRiss buildings could move . . . but a whole city? Or had the Imperials destroyed the city, or tried to, and thereby instigated the attack?
"Commodore?" a woman's voice through the link interrupted his thoughts. "This is Canady."
"I'm here, Commander. Go ahead."
"The Impie fleet is definitely deploying to meet us. Looks like they want a fight. If we hold to four Gs' acceleration, our projected intercept will bring us within maximum missile range in another forty minutes. Thought you'd want to know."
"Thank you, Commander. I'll shift over to Battle Ops in a minute."
"Yes, sir."
"Have your people start analyzing the data in ViRsim," he told Duryea. "If you find anything more of tactical significance, patch through to me in Ops and download it, fast."
"Absolutely, sir." He sensed the man's grin. "That includes any DalRiss stuff we find?"
"Especially any DalRiss stuff," Dev replied. That, he realized, was partly what was nagging at him. The DalRiss had enormous cities, vast living structures of unknown purpose . . . hell, they had starships, weirdly shaped hulks a kilometer or more long. Where were they?
So far, there was nothing to indicate that there were any DalRiss left on the planet at all.
The Imperial squadron was clearly in serious trouble from the start, if only because the Confederation's Eagle was half again larger and carried more than twice the mass of either Asagiri or Naginata. Eagle's laser and particle accelerator batteries were more powerful and had greater range, and the big Confederation destroyer's fire control systems allowed her to remote link with many more teleoperated missiles at a time. Since space combat was basically a matter of overwhelming the enemy's defenses with sheer, raw firepower, the Confederation force possessed an enormous initial advantage.
On the other hand, advantage in space combat could be fleeting. Eagle was certain to be identified as the most dangerous of the Confederation warships approaching ShraRish, and she would be targeted accordingly. The Imperials could afford to ignore the frigates, corvettes, and converted freighters for a time in an all-or-nothing attempt to knock Eagle out of the fight. Constellation would be targeted next, but if the Asagiri and the Naginata could destroy or cripple Eagle without suffering critical damage themselves, they would have the Confederation light destroyer at a two-to-one advantage in mass and firepower; the rest of the rebel fleet could be mopped up more or less at the Japanese squadron commander's leisure.
He was Shosho Kenji Hattori, a thirty-eight–year Imperial Navy veteran in command of His Majesty's Alyan Contingent. He was kokkyojin, a "Frontier-person," meaning he was Japanese, but born and raised off Earth. Originally from the Nihonjin colony world of Ebisu, he tended to be direct and less than subtle, with a bluntness that frequently bordered on rudeness. His Frontier manners had won him few friends within the Imperial nobility, and he was proud that he'd earned his present rank—the equivalent of rear admiral—through merit and sheer bullheaded tenacity. His family had been ocean nomads; Ebisu, named for the ancient Japanese god of fisherfolk, was largely ocean, with scatterings of islands and island continents and the floating city-ships of its colonists. When, at age twenty, Hattori had been sent to Japan to complete his education, it was only natural that the seafaring tradition in his blood find outlet with the Imperial Navy, navigating the seas of space and the K-T Plenum instead of the immense, hurricane-scoured oceans of Ebisu.
From his vantage point within the Battle Ops simulation aboard the light destroyer Naginata, Hattori had watched the rebels' approach with interest. Some of those ships matched the description of vessels reported to have attacked the Imperial shipyards at Daikoku; if they were the same, that one that looked like a tanker would actually be a carrier, with several squadrons of warflyers loaded aboard. The armed transport would be carrying the rebel ground troops.
The transport. Kill it, and the whole point of the rebel attack would collapse.
The rebels could have no reason for being here other than a landing. Presumably, they'd somehow learned of the trouble at ShraRish and had come hoping to exploit it. Hattori smiled to himself at the thought. Knowing what the enemy wanted in a battle was more than half of his defeat. It gave the planning of this battle a Zen-like simplicity and economy of purpose. That big Amatukaze-class destroyer—he thought it must be the Tokitukaze, the ship captured by the rebels at the Battle of Eridu. She was the key to the rebel formation. The light destroyer, corvettes, and frigates were no match for the Imperial squadron without the Amatukaze destroyer backing them up; the space wing aboard that converted carrier would be warflyers for the most part, and no match for the advanced interceptors carried by Naginata and Asagiri.
So, destroy the large rebel destroyer while using fighters to fend off harrying attacks by enemy warflyers, and then go for the transport.
That was Hattori's preferred appro
ach in all things . . . simple, blunt, and brutally direct.
"All ships!" he commanded, speaking over the Japanese squadron's primary tactical channel. "This is Hattori. Take formation One! Target on the big Amatukaze. Susume!"
The two battlefleets closed rapidly.
Chapter 16
Modern space combat can be broken into three major phases, the approach, the long-range battle, and the close-range battle.
The approach: the two respective forces are too distant to affect one another save by extremely long-ranged teleoperated missiles. The time is spent arranging the formation for maximum effect, to circumvent expected enemy strategies through tactical deployment, cloudscreens, and last-minute maneuver.
The long-range battle: at ranges of between one hundred thousand and one thousand kilometers, high-G missiles are the only effective weapon, though these can be countered by the point defense lasers (PDL) of target ships. The emphasis here is to overwhelm the targets' defenses with saturation bombardment. . . .
—Strategy and Tactics of Space Warfare
Imperial Naval War College
Kyoto, Nihon
C.E. 2530
Dev knew that the Imperial commander would have to take out Eagle before attempting anything else. She was too big to ignore, too powerful to pin or block with anything less than his entire squadron. Once Eagle was crippled, he would almost certainly attack Vindemiatrix. Since Mirach hadn't yet arrived in-system, the Trixie would be the only ship capable of carrying large numbers of troops. Her destruction wouldn't necessarily protect Imperial troops on the surface of ShraRish—a prolonged and pinpoint bombardment from orbit would wipe them out sooner or later without ever needing to land troops—but if the rebels wanted anything in this system more than simply annihilating the Imperial forces, they would need troops.
