by Aer-ki Jyr
For the quicker combat, which in naval terms was still painfully slow, the smaller ships ruled, making the tiny cutters the nimblest craft after combat drones, which the Turok also carried in its hangar bay, stacked up like crates for deployment if and when the Captain warranted it.
One of the destroyers also had a carrier mod, adding a dozen more drones to Voss’s arsenal, but their range was limited, so most of the hunting/hounding duties were going to be the domain of the cutters, unless the enemy ships turned out to be slugs, in which case the heavier capital ships would come into play, but he knew the Turok wouldn’t, given its size, so he was going to have to manage this operation from afar unless the enemy was stupid enough to come to him.
With his battleship and its 13 escorts headed in towards Earth, Voss began pouring over the data files Paul had transferred to him, trying to gleam anything of use from the Leo’s sensor logs and the Archons’ analysis tags. With his fleet being just over 1 million km from the Earth it was going to take him at least 5 days to get to the search area and he wanted to be as prepared as possible for their first potential engagement, for the way this whole operation went down would set the tone for years to come with regards to Star Force, their military, and international relations.
What took place in the coming days could potentially start World War III…or prevent it. Either way the time for hiding their military might was over. The big dogs were on the prowl now and the pups were going to have to learn their place, one way or another.
Harper and the Mjolnir were much closer, parked just outside the massive military shipyard that had constructed their entire fleet. The battleship was half the distance to the Earth at 580,000 km, standing guard over the 9 partially constructed ships in dry dock and the invaluable crews that were building them at a feverish pace. Twelve support ships floated nearby in parking orbits, pacing the station as it slowly meandered its way around Earth once every 50 days. On orders from Harper those ships awakened and followed the Mjolnir as it accelerated away from the station, leaving a pair of destroyers to guard the yard as well as the command slip some 250 miles away.
Spindly in construction but far larger than the neighboring shipyard, the command slip was a specialized shipyard designed for one purpose…to build the gargantuan command ships, of which only one had been constructed. The 2.2 km wide Orion sat ten miles away, watching as the slip began initial construction on a second ship, slated to be completed 8 years down the line if sufficient resources were allocated. The Orion massed more than any ship or station in Star Force’s fleet, looking for all the world like a gigantic jelly donut.
Inside was a core section of living quarters capable of housing hundreds of personnel from crewers to techs, medics, Knights, scientists and whoever else they wanted to take along for the ride, including Archons, for which they had a full sanctum built inside the ship. Given that the warship was basically being parked for lack of use no Archon had taken up command there, but the ship was a fully operational outpost/battle station with more weaponry than the rest of the fleet combined.
The bulk of the ship was automation, with an insane amount of redundancy designed to keep the ship flying and fighting even when the enemy was poking holes in it. It had engine vents spaced around the entire hull, allowing it to fly in whatever direction required, as well as mobile rail guns that could turn themselves on the surface of the ship rather than having the behemoth try to move for targeting. Add in thousands of laser batteries and missile clusters, along with hangars full of drones, transports, and even the occasional capital ship and the Orion made for a Death Star-esk presence…which made it completely useless for a hunting expedition.
Minsk kept the ship where it was, but had his pilots remote fly its small escort fleet of 7 cutters and 6 corvettes on a pacing track with the Mjolnir, to be taken control of the 2 battleships later as the distance increased and the signal lag became inconvenient. Altogether 38 of Star Force’s 41 warships headed in towards the planet to begin the search for the rogue warship and its birthplace, not knowing who or what they were looking for, but confident that they were more than a match for whatever they would face.
The real question was, would they find the enemy ship before it struck again.
6
November 8, 2059
“They’ve got something,” the Mjolnir’s 2nd officer said from the ops station, relaying a message from Atlantis.
Harper’s attention was immediately caught. “Where?”
“Zone 7,” he relayed, pulling up the appropriate location on the battleship’s main display. An image of the Earth and all her orbital infrastructure was laid out, sectioned off into orbital zones. Zone 7 was a band of middle orbit running from 100,000 km to 175,000 km altitude with an ever growing number of orbital habitats, though the most populated areas were still zones 2-5, with lunar traffic traveling in and out from the populous zones up to zone 10 which encompassed the moon’s orbit.
“Another attack?” Harper asked.
“No, but they think it’s the ship that hit the Indian transport yesterday. One of our stations picked up a faint radar signal as it nicked the edge of their cover zone. Whatever it was wasn’t carrying a transponder and we’ve got an approximate trajectory dated as of 14 minutes ago.”
Harper looked over the map, frowning. His fleet was now stationed in zone 8, but on the wrong side of the planet. Voss’s fleet still hadn’t made it inside lunar orbit yet and the target was in his patrol zone.
“Damn it, they’re going to get away again,” he said, referring to the three subsequent attacks in the previous four days. After the initial loss of the Taiwanese freighter Mexican, German, and Indian transports had been hit at seemingly random points around the planet, but all were carrying economic cargoes, either ores coming back from Luna or processed materials/products from orbital factories.
After the German loss went public the story broke and the nations with military forces in space began mobilizing to defend their interests, yet none of the big 5 had yet been targeted, though there was considerable backroom finger-pointing going on amongst them, but no one had any proof to who the culprits really were.
At this point it had become clear to Harper that they were dealing with more than one phantom warship. The distribution pattern of the attacks was too widely spaced to have been the work of a single ship…unless it was ridiculously fast, which the Mjolnir’s captain doubted. By his guess the enemy had nothing faster than one of Star Force’s destroyers, and using that as a benchmark he’d been trying to narrow down their range of operation, but this was the first hard piece of navigational evidence that he’d been given to work with.
“Calculate distance from the most recent attack,” he ordered calmly to his bridge crew, which consisted of 5 at the moment, with only two remote pilots keeping watch over his now 26 escort ships, all of which were gradually spreading out into patrol zones to begin sweeping a swath of ‘dark’ space with their radar where none of the stations’ could reach. A portion of those ships were to be transferred over to the Turok’s control once it arrived, and Harper intently wished it was already here, because there was no way his ships could track down the fortuitous radar contact given how far out of position they were.
“32,000 km,” the Star Force officer reported.
Harper started doing the mental math. “15 hours puts it at 2,000 km per hour, which is in the 500m/s range, assuming it left immediately after the attack. Does that sound a little quick to you?”
“Not for us, but for what the other corporations are producing I’d say they were hauling ass to get away as fast as possible.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Harper confirmed. “Which means they probably burned up a lot of their fuel load…so they were traveling in a direction which would lead them to, or near, a resupply point, either a station or rendezvous. Damn, I wish we were in position!”
“If there is more than one ship, we’re still probably in the vicinity of the one that took out the Mexican tr
ansport,” the officer argued. “I hate to say it, but our best bet is to keep combing this area until it strikes again.”
Harper shook his head in agreement, staring down at the glowing map. “Where are these bastards hiding? They’ve got to have an unregistered base out here somewhere, otherwise their pathetic engines would run dry.”
“Do you think they could have repurposed some of ours?”
“We’ve already taken an inventory of all ships sold. They’re still flying. None have been decommissioned or scrapped.”
“Copied?”
“I’ve been assured that hasn’t happened,” Harper said, not confident in that being true or how Star Force could even know that.
“What’s the move then?”
“Stick with the patrol assignments for now,” the Captain said, not happy with the situation. “When Voss gets here we’ll have some more options.”
The Turok didn’t arrive inside zone 10 for another two days, during which a 5th ship was hit, this one belonging to the Australians and making a routine supply run between stations all the way down in zone 2. With Star Force’s fleet positioned so far out they weren’t in position to respond, but with better radar coverage in the area the attack didn’t go completely unnoticed. The attacker crossed two radar ‘halos’ as it fled, giving the Archons a decent idea of the direction it was heading thanks to the numerous stations and ships in the area that it had to maneuver around to avoid further detection, thus narrowing down the possible ballistic flight paths.
The optimal search areas were revised as a result, with Voss’s fleet spreading out to scan the regions around the heavy traffic lanes, augmented by part of the Orion’s support ships, sent round the planet by remote and picked up by the Turok’s controllers. Between the two battleships and their escorts, Star Force’s fleet was spaced out around the most populous areas, running with no transponders and themselves staying out of the radar halos of orbiting stations and passing ships, waiting and watching for any more sign of their quarry as they methodically searched through the dark zones of the orbital grid.
A day and a half after the most recent attack a corvette in Voss’s fleet picked up a radar signature with no corresponding transponder signal. The hit was transmitted to both the Turok and the Star Force communications network, making it back to Atlantis and subsequently the Archon sanctum within seconds.
“Roger,” Levi said as the sensor data reached them.
“I see it,” the trailblazer said, already looking at the screen. “Calculate trajectory.”
“Not much signal yet,” Levi said as the tracking data began trickling in. “Got a signal from the Turok.”
Roger took three steps to the left and activated a secondary screen. “Captain?”
A laggy nod returned his greeting. “We’ve picked up another contact with no transponder.”
“Yes, I know. We’re monitoring your telemetry.”
“How do you want us to proceed?”
“I need a course projection first,” Roger insisted.
“Hold on a minute,” Voss said, turning to one of his bridge crew and issuing orders. A few moments later the radar signal intensified as the corvette switched from spherical scanning to a more narrow and powerful beam. Likewise the tracking data altered, offering more precise numbers.
“Got it,” Levi said, shifting the calculations to the main map where it appeared as a heavy red line that intersected with nothing.
“Course projections for the tagged ships,” Roger said.
Levi hit three buttons and a myriad of lines appeared for all the nearby ships. Roger swung the 3d map around with a toggle switch, seeing if any of the lines intersected. One came close.
Levi pulled up another program and gave ETAs for both ships, showing that they would pass near to the same spot within 15 minutes of each other.
“We’ve got something,” Voss said. “Looks like it’s headed for a French ship.”
“We concur,” Roger verified. “Can you intercept?”
Voss conferred with his pilots for a moment. “Yes.”
“Go,” Roger said without hesitation. “And bring in more than one. I want options if this one slips away.”
“I’ve got two cutters and a frigate nearby, but not close enough to get there before intercept,” he offered.
“Just get them close, and push the corvette’s engines as hard as you have to. Whether this is a warship or unmarked cargo ship, I want it stopped before it reaches the French.”
“Already underway,” Voss said as the motion statistics for the corvette in question began to alter as it accelerated toward the calculated intercept point. Thanks to the control signals being transmitted to and from the support craft, Roger had clandestine transponders for all of their ships in the field, though their power settings were set to low, making the return signals only visible from a certain range. Voss was actually using additional Star Force infrastructure to route some of the signals through in order to maximize dispersement while keeping their locations secret.
Granted, even the long range control signals were difficult to detect if you didn’t know what to look for and were vastly different from the transponder beacons that broadcast loud and constant signals, literally shouting out their presence while the control signals were different in frequency, conical transmission, and intermittent cluster bursts, thus decreasing signal saturation and shortening detection range.
The radar the ships were broadcasting could and should have been enough to give away their position, but with so many radar signals in orbit, many of which were Star Force owned and in constant operation, there was a bit of neighborhood clutter to disguise their presence, but had anyone been monitoring and comparing the radar signatures to transponders they would have easily noticed the discrepancy.
The target ship in question should have sensed the much stronger radar beacon nearby, but no visible response in trajectory was noted, meaning either they didn’t see any point in running or that they weren’t set up to detect such things, which Roger found likely. Star Force starships were all equipped for such situational awareness, but at a cost…and given that this ship was not of Star Force build he doubted the designers had been that thorough. Also, if this ship was predisposed for stealth, then detection was something it wanted to avoid rather than be engaged in, meaning it probably had limited navigational ability and was flying off transponder signals alone.
There were several hours before the anticipated intercept, with the corvette accelerating at a furious pace before coasting then hard breaking towards the climax and interposing itself in between the French transport, this one also of Star Force manufacture and Leo-class, and the transponderless starship about 1,000 km out. There the corvette waited as the enemy made some last minute adjustments to its course to precisely line up its approach to the French ship.
“They don’t see it,” Paul said as he watched the telemetry. Both he, Liam, Jason, and several other trailblazers had come down to the control room to watch the intercept unfold. “They’re going straight for the transport.”
“We concur,” Voss said a few moments later. “What are your orders?”
Paul exchanged glances with Roger.
“Captain,” Roger said evenly. “Make your presence known, but under no circumstances let them get within missile range of that ship.”
Voss nodded to the screen, then looked over to the starboard line of control stations to the pilot of that particular corvette. “Turn on your transponder and give me a local broadcast…just powerful enough for the two ships, I don’t want to transmit to the entire planet.”
“Transponder going hot,” the pilot said, with a white icon pulsing on the Captain’s navigation map, replacing the dull blue that had been marking the ship’s location. “Comm line link established and routed to your chair.”
Voss slid his hand over the transmit button and let it hover there, watching for a reaction to the sudden appearance of the nearby transponder signal. After a long p
ause and no response from the quickly approaching ship he pushed down the button and began to speak, but before his first word could come out the corvette’s radar picked up four quickly accelerating contacts leaping from the target.
Voss clicked the comm closed again. “Missiles!” he warned, although the pilot had already seen them coming and began to reorient the corvette to engage the target.
7
“I see them,” the pilot said, spinning the ship around and beginning to accelerate towards the French ship and away from the target, slightly slowing the intercept time for the missiles but more importantly beginning to match the approach speed of the enemy as he activated the anti-missile laser system.
The H-shaped warship had a large laser mod with cupolas on one side and a missile rack in the other. All power for the laser mod was channeled into the two cupolas as the pilot pointed the ship square on so that both mounts could target the incoming missiles at range. With the corvette’s active radar tracking the missiles the pilot tagged each of the four as targets and let the ship’s auto-fire program handle the defense.
When the missiles passed the 50 mile mark the auto-turrets began peppering the area with rapid-fire laser shots, invisible save for when they hit, which first occurred at 38 miles out and the small damage incurred began to add up, taking down the first one at 22 miles when a small section of the guided missile’s fuel supply was hit during drift mode, causing an erratic lateral acceleration that sent it careening off target.
