“Vengeance point defenses acquiring targets.”
“Anti-missile fire from final drone defense line. Some hits. Eighty-three missiles still locked on.”
Indiya gripped the interior handles of her couch. It was a natural reaction, not that it would do any good.
“Point defenses firing… now!”
Between them, the railguns, laser batteries, Fermi cannons and energy shields tried to envelop the Vengeance of Saesh in a protective layer for the vital second between the incoming missiles coming into range and striking the ship.
No one spoke. Everyone was waiting for Commander Trafiss, the XO operating out of the Ops Room who was in charge of damage control.
Here it comes…
“Damage report. Five warheads exploded on edge of energy shield barrier. Negligible damage.”
Indiya breathed again. But the enemy’s ordnance reserves were on another level to the Legion’s. She addressed the Vengeance’s commander directly. “Captain Xoomar. Point defense capacity?”
“Admiral, point defense munitions at 94%.”
Indiya didn’t have to explain the implications to her command staff. Plenty of munitions remained, but they’d consumed 6% in fending off just a single missile barrage. The mathematics of attrition worked in the enemy’s favor. The 3rd Fleet could stand back and wear down the Legion from a distance.
Commander Trafiss interrupted Indiya’s calculations. “Damage control update. The enemy warheads that got through were of a new type. They sent directed gamma beams through our hull. Our outer frames are all water flooded, and the water absorbed the worst of the gamma attack. No serious casualties. If the warheads had struck the hangars, though, damage could have been far worse.”
Of course. The hangars were open to the vacuum, their doors open. A gamma-burst missile in there would be deadly. And the human ships were not flooded with water at all… Their battle plan was already being stretched to breaking point; now it was in tatters.
A private call came in from Arun. Indiya sighed. McEwan and the battle computer Jotun scientists had grafted into his head had played a key part in this battle’s preparation. Now he needed to back off and let the Navy fight this battle. She ignored him while she considered the implication of these new gamma warheads.
Unless the Legion turns the tide in the drone fight, these new munitions look like a game changer.
“Legion drone losses at 63%,” announced Kreippil.
No salvation there, then.
Indiya growled. The future of the Human Legion was in her hands but… McEwan had too strong a reputation for causing trouble to safely ignore him.
Better get him off my back first. “Indiya, go.”
“Are we just going to soak up this damage?” Arun asked.
“Yes. Look, Arun, millions of human soldiers fell in ancient times, keeping to their formations while the enemy cannons or archers took their toll. We’re just the latest in a long martial tradition.”
“Understood. But taking it on the chin only makes sense if you’re pinning down your enemy while you’re readying your counter-attack. We’re about to run out of drones, our main fleet is being worn down, and we have only one means to counter attack. We must deploy the X-Boats now. That or run for it.”
“Negative, General McEwan. We are only facing an advanced force for now. We must reserve the X-Boats for the second phase of the plan. Leave this battle to me.”
“Admiral,” interrupted Kreippil, “I’m patching through a communication from 2nd Wing.”
That was the fighter-bomber wing based on the human carrier, the Lance of Freedom. Indiya’s spirits flooded with foreboding.
“Wing Commander Narciso here. The Lance’s hangars suffered multiple hits from gamma weapons. Two of my pilots are dead. Four won’t play any further part in this battle.”
“Do you have replacement pilots?” Indiya asked.
“Yes, for now. But that’s our reserve nearly exhausted. Admiral, I have my pilots in their boats, ready to take off at your order, but our instructions are to sit out this phase of the battle. If that’s still true, I should withdraw my pilots back into the hardened scramble shelters. My boats can survive more gamma bursts but the living tissue of my pilots won’t.”
“Stand by for an update, Narciso.”
Indiya closed her eyes, unknotted her tattered battle plan and retied it into a new shape.
Decisions made, she addressed the command channel.
“All X-Boat crews to withdraw to scramble shelters. First and Second Carrier Groups will advance toward the enemy drones and engage the enemy advanced force at long range. Carriers to the rear of each group, protected by a full deployment of picket ships. Make them hurt enough and… if we have the blessing of the gods we will draw them into the minefield.”
Indiya felt a flutter of illicit glee. She had never played the Littorane religious card before. Had she just blasphemed? She grinned, not caring.
She frowned. Where had her level head gone? She was actually excited! Having always regarded human Marines with suspicion, because they were military cyborgs bred to be consumed by an addiction to combat, did this combat glee of hers make her any better?
Embarrassed, she flicked a glance at Kreippil, but for once the big Littorane was ignoring her.
“All hands,” announced Captain Xoomar, “assume combat stance.”
The combat stance command drew upon an ancient Littorane tradition of melee combat, but its meaning was simple enough: brace for what could be a sustained 15g acceleration, or else be crushed until your pips burst.
Since the First Battle of Khallini, when she’d been knocked out of her command chair, she’d insisted on some serious upgrades to her station. The hood of her acceleration couch snapped overhead, encasing her. As soon as it bleeped to register a good seal, the water inside began to be pumped out, before being replaced by buffer gel. Indiya checked the 2D screen inside her couch was working – she might need it later as a backup – but then closed her eyes, shifting her center of consciousness deeper within herself. She opened her mouth to start swallowing the oxygenating buffer gel, and began to follow the course of the battle from the tactical feed beamed directly into her augmented brain.
Should have done this before, she thought, because now she could zoom through a 4D simulation of the battlefield, extrapolating time forward and rolling it back at the merest touch of her thoughts.
The two carrier groups were formed up out of their holding ring patterns around Khallini-4, the heavy cruisers to the fore.
By the time the groups had reached the drone vs. drone slugfest, the Legion drones had suffered 80% casualties and were now outnumbered four-to-one.
The New Empire made their numbers count, stripping off their excess of drones into local reserves and then unleashing them as a wedge to break through the fragile Legion drone lines. They did this repeatedly, extracting a merciless advantage from their superior numbers.
Then, for the first time, enemy drone spearpoints cut through the Legion drones and thrust at the carrier groups behind. They did not waste time with risky maneuvers. They had no need. They had the numbers and they were going to use them. The drones made a textbook frontal assault on the lead elements of both carrier groups.
The drones were essentially single-weapon gun platforms piloted by a crude AI, the White Knights having a phobia about full-AI control of military hardware, a phobia based upon a near-extinction experience according to the Reserve Captain. The first wave of drones swept around the leading cone formation of Legion battlecruisers, lancing them with Fermi beams to reduce any semiconductor-based control systems to gibbering lunacy, in particular the energy shield projectors. Then came the drones carrying neutron bombs that rained down in an attempt to degrade the outer frames of the warships, and in particular to melt the shield projector nodes beyond any hope of repair by damage control teams.
A third wave followed close behind, spraying the Legion warships with railgun fire, conventio
nal lasers, and X-ray lasers. No amount of ship armor could withstand such a battering.
Indiya had seen many simulations and recordings of this happening, but to see a drone attack roll out before her was knotting her guts tight with fear.
No warship could survive a close assault by drones. That’s why fleet combat came down to who had the best and most drones. Every tactical guide said that once your drone defenses were overrun, you had to flee or die. No other choices.
Until today.
Because the difference between the newly reclassified Ram Speed-class battlecruisers leading the carrier groups and the conventional cruisers behind was their upgraded shields. They used the same shield innovation that had caused such trouble to the Legion when Indiya’s Littorane flotilla had first captured the system.
The Fermi beams hitting the battlecruisers were absorbed by the new energy shield design, which meant the enemy’s neutron bombs were disabled by the still-intact Fermi point defense systems. They rattled against the hulls like oversized hail stones, their fuses ruined. And when the third wave of drones swept in to finish off the Legion battlecruisers, they encountered a deadly quarry with point defenses bristling and energy shields supercharged.
The enemy drone attack that should have been so one-sided resulted in heavy drone losses for the 3rd Fleet. But the enemy commanders were no fools. The enhanced shields had defeated energy beams, but railgun rounds had gotten through to erode the hull armor of the Legion ships. They spotted that straight away.
Realizing that their standard attack tactics could not defeat the self-strengthening energy shields, they switched to an alternate strategy, crude yet effective. The drones surrounded each heavy cruiser at a relatively safe distance and then flung themselves against the ships in full-speed Kamikaze death dives.
The drones came in at such extreme velocity that even when shot to shreds by railgun point defenses, or sliced clean through with lasers, the debris of the ruined drones still pounded against the cruiser hulls with the same momentum. It was the crudest attack possible. For all the high-tech assets, the end result of drones smashing against their targets was essentially the same as humankind’s very first battles fought with fists and clubs.
Under this primitive pounding the enemy numbers counted. Indiya watched helplessly as the cruisers began to suffer serious structural damage. The armor and shields degraded, weakened, and then failed.
Now You Listen was the first battlecruiser to explode. Seconds later, so did her sister ship Deep Current.
When Deep Current blew up it looked as if the Legion was lost but the Kamikaze waves had been spent. The few surviving enemy drones fled to the shelter of the ships and boats of the enemy advanced force.
Another wave of drones emerged from the hangars of the heavier enemy warships. This time, the enemy commander reasoned, the drones needed close support. This was the moment Arun had planned and for which Indiya had prayed. The warships and boats of the enemy advanced force began to move inside the minefield shell.
An alert flared at the edge of Indiya’s virtual battle map. Incoming!
“Admiral,” said Kreippil from inside his acceleration cylinder, “missile barrage against First Carrier Group is aimed directly at our ship. They’re also targeting the Lance in the other carrier group. I am moving picket ships closer in to link their point defense with ours.”
“Only to be expected, Kreippil. Continue the advance.”
“Of course, Violet One.”
Indiya groaned inwardly. The more intense the crisis, the more the Littorane admiral saw her as a religious totem rather than a flesh and blood Navy officer. So long as he obeyed her orders, she guessed she really didn’t care.
As the enemy surged forward, Kreippil withdrew the battered remnants of the Legion drone force to form a close space patrol, an outer ring of defenders protecting the two carriers: Lance of Freedom and Vengeance of Saesh.
Long distance laser fire flared between opposing forces. Larger ships such as the carriers were proof against these attacks for now but the smaller warboats had no energy shields. By combining laser batteries of many ships against a single target the vulnerable smaller craft of both sides began to burst their contents into the vacuum.
Missile barrages were hurled across the ever-decreasing gap that separated Legion from New Empire. The 3rd Fleet concentrated their missile attacks on the Legion carriers. Damage was minor, but the expenditure of point defense munitions reached critical levels.
Two columns of enemy missile warboats emerged from behind the cover of larger enemy warships to catch the vanguard of the Legion 1st Carrier Group. Kreippil immediately replied by flinging forward a shield of warboats – spherical Tactical Units, each with a squad of Marines inside. McEwan, Xin Lee, and Tremayne had all trained extensively on similar TUs. It was why they were called Tactical Marines. The TUs that brushed aside the missile boats and carried onward to make their own attack were crewed by Littorane Marines, but their tactics and training were almost the same.
The Tactical Units covered their attack with sprays of defensive munitions. It was not enough. Not against such a strong force of enemy warships. The little TU warboats were wiped out, though not before ejecting their Marine cargo, using the debris of their own destruction as cover for the disembarkation.
How many Littorane Marines had survived, using the stealth function of the battlesuits to hide in the void? Not even Indiya knew the answer. The prospect of running through powerfully armed Marines forced the enemy to advance cautiously, which no doubt had been Kreippil’s plan all along.
Now the enemy brought up their own TUs behind protective shields of warboats. Kreippil fired missile barrages and withdrew some of the drones to stave off the threat from the TUs. Many of the enemy craft were destroyed but some survived, disembarking their cargo of human Marines.
Human versus Littorane in the cat and mouse of close quarters void combat, and Indiya was on the side of the Littoranes. She searched herself for any crisis of loyalty, but discovered nothing. Humanity’s hope lay in the Human Legion, not in the false promises of the New Empire. Her support was unconditionally for her Littorane comrades.
“Over 50% of enemy warships now inside minefield,” said Admiral Kreippil.
Indiya sent an order to the commanders of both Legion carrier groups “Retreat. But do not disengage.”
Pride swelled in Indiya’s breast as she watched her command back away under fire with skill and bravery. But neither were enough to save them from the heavy pounding of the enemy force. Malaya exploded in a fireball, soon followed by Swiftness and Unswerving. Fire raged through Zetland’s upper decks. The only question was whether any crew could escape before she blew.
Captain Cythien of the Lance gave an urgent update, the bass growls of her Jotun voice translated into expressionless computer speech. “Admiral, our dorsal hangar has suffered multiple missile hits. Damage control teams say twenty minutes to restore launch capability.”
Cythien’s update was the closest anyone came to complaining about the hammer blows they were suffering. Indiya glowed with pride in her command. Only one person was begging her to turn and run.
That person was her.
Orphanmaker succumbed to a volley of X-ray lasers.
Then Furious and Ajax were lost, picket frigates taking missile hits aimed at the Lance. A dozen Legion craft had been lost already. She had no idea how many Marines were silently dying in the void.
Each one was a burden.
Just a little longer.
The enemy advanced group had a single capital ship, a cavernous beast that had spit out the bulk of the enemy drones, but whose hull was also pocked with missile ports. It came in for the kill, sensing the weakness of the Lance of Freedom.
“Now!”
Indiya’s order went to the mudsucker-controlled base on Khallini-4’s surface. They immediately activated the mines.
Were the ships in the minefield friend or foe? The mines conferred amongst themsel
ves using the medium of magnetic resonance signals that stretched all the way back to the planet’s surface.
The enemy showed no sign of noticing.
Now they were active, the mines should be self-organizing into the most effective blast shapes to strike each ship they identified as a target. But the enemy kept coming, aiming to take out the Lance first.
Captain Cythien pulled her pickets in to practically within touching distance. The smaller ships slaved their point defenses to the control of the carrier, and immediately began taking the hits aimed at the larger ship.
“Now!” screamed Indiya. “Set off those mines now!”
“They are self-organizing, Admiral,” reminded Kreippil, as Dauntless succumbed to a missile strike aimed at the Lance.
“Sod that. Override their programming. I need them now.”
There was a short delay before Furn replied from somewhere on the Lance. “Sorry, Admiral. We can’t do that. Signals ripple through the minefield slowly and silently. If we could have set them off with an instantaneous signal, the enemy would have detected them by now.”
The mines exploded. All at once.
Indiya had expected a dramatic fireball, a blaze of light illuminating a vast region of space. Instead the mine blasts were largely invisible.
Energy spikes were detected simultaneously across the enemy vessels in the minefield. Some of the enemy ships caught fire, a few exploded, most died silently, but die they did. The tactical feed to Indiya’s head reported all enemy craft had been disabled. All of them.
“Mine blast effective,” reported Kreippil. “No friendly craft damaged. Debris pattern suggests friendly Marine casualties.”
“How many?”
“Approximately… forty-one caught in the blast. Several hundred killed or missing in the attack on the missile boats.”
“Navy casualties since the start of this engagement?”
“Three battlecruisers cruisers, eight destroyers, seven frigates, thirty-five TUs—”
“I don’t mean the hardware, Kreippil. How many people?”
Human Empire Page 24
