The computers tallied up the results grimly. Over a hundred platforms had been smashed, a minor loss under normal circumstances, but these circumstances were far from normal. The fleet could normally replace them long enough to rebuild or construct new planetary defences, but now the fleet was engaged with the enemy…and it was taking a beating. He had lost almost seventy ships in the first ten minutes of the battle…and the humans had lost around sixty. The loss rate was grim; a single mistake by a point defence computer could cost one side the victory. Even now, it was impossible to determine any real winner; part of Dataka’s mind just wanted to ask the human commander for terms, the remainder kept reminding him that the humans couldn’t be let out of their solar system. It would spell doom for the Oghaldzon.
This mad battle might spell doom for the Oghaldzon, part of his mind whispered, with black humour. No one, human or Oghaldzon, had predicted such a battle, or even a slaughter. His first formation, composed mainly of warships, was slowly being ground out of existence, while the backup flotilla was still having to defend itself against the occasional shower of missiles. If nothing else, the human assault proved that they knew just how important it was to wipe out the warships; any thought of going after the bigger ships just because they were big had been pushed aside. One by one, they were grinding down the warships…and once they had completed that, they would turn their attention to the mother ships.
Victory might go to the side that has one or two ships left, he thought coldly.
“War Commander, War Commander,” Fanaya burst out, almost as excited as a human. Dataka almost clicked a reproof to her, but there was no real point; besides, she might have found something useful. “I have identified the human command ship!”
Dataka leaned forward as the information appeared in front of him. Most of the human craft followed one of two basic designs, which really had a great deal in common with both each other and Oghaldzon designs. The laws of physics would admit nothing else. A handful, including the craft that had launched the missiles at Earth’s surrounding orbital weapons platforms, were clearly not designed with fighting in mind; the two that had launched the attack were now trying to make their escape, rather than rejoin the fleet. It was a decision that was so…Oghaldzon that he wondered for a moment if renegade Oghaldzon were controlling the ship. And one craft…
“It’s twice the size of the other craft and they are moving to cover it as a priority,” Fanaya said, her voice excited and relieved, perhaps under the impression that her discovery would win them the battle. Dataka knew better; it might disrupt the human command network, but that would be all it did. Still, if the human Combined Fleet lost its leader – perhaps it would fall apart…?
“Pass the order to all ships,” Dataka said, hoping that he was right. “That ship is to be destroyed.”
* * *
The display ran through a quick update as laser signals from Earth – relayed from America to Sri Lanka, where they were beamed into space to reflect via a piece of space junk in a helpfully geostationary orbit – updated the fleet on the status of the planet. Waikoloa felt relief as he realised that the Oghaldzon positions on the ground were also under attack globally, even if these attacks didn’t have the sheer power of the counteroffensive that the Russians had instigated and lost. The orbital platforms had been seriously damaged; the forces on the ground had a chance to move without interdiction and they took it, launching furious attacks against alien outposts. It looked as if the aliens were taking a beating…but then, so was the human fleet. The battle could still go either way…
“Admiral, I am picking up additional alien targeting scans,” Brown said. Waikoloa nodded; the aliens had a habit of scanning their targets first, just to make sure they had their coordinates accurate before launching the missiles. “I think that at least ten of their ships are scanning us!”
Waikoloa blinked at her. “Us?”
“They’re targeting us and launching missiles,” Brown said. Her voice broke off. “Admiral…”
It was a swarm of missiles out of nightmare, a hundred missiles, all launched at a single target: the Enterprise. The escorting ships wove a deadly web of point defence around the flagship, taking advantage of the enemy’s single-minded focus to concentrate on covering the flagship and launching a few blows back towards the alien craft, but there was no way they could take down all of those missiles.
“It was an honour to serve with you all,” Waikoloa said. He hadn’t wanted to die with those words left unsaid. “I think…”
A four-megaton warhead detonated bare inches from the Enterprise’s hull. The ship was vaporised in a split-second.
Chapter Fifty-Six: Armageddon, Take Three
Earth-Moon Lagrange Point One
The Admiral’s command screen went blank with a sudden terrible finality.
Jake Ellsworth didn’t waste time wondering if there were survivors. The sheer force of a multiple-megaton blast so close to the hull of a starship would have turned it into free-floating dust in space; any survivors would have somehow managed to live through that, and then the sudden loss of oxygen. The Rockrats knew on a deep and primal level just how dangerous and unpleasant space could be; Ellsworth knew that the Admiral was dead, along with his command staff. The aliens had finally deduced that the Enterprise was the command ship and targeted it…
“Commodore Qiu is on the link,” Cindy said. “He wants to know if you will be taking over command, or is he to do it?”
Ellsworth almost laughed. “Contact the fleet, tell them that I am assuming command,” he said. The Rockrats would go along with him; the Americans knew that their Admiral had trusted him enough to make him second in command…and he had won the Battle of Freeport One, even if the Chinese had completed the destruction of the alien fleet. “I want to continue the assault on the first body of the alien fleet.”
He glared at the display. The aliens were adjusting their own course again, their second force accelerating to catch up with the motherships and their escorts, while their first force, unable to escape the fight at nearly point-blank range, turned to try to kill as many of his ships as he could. He wondered, briefly, why the aliens hadn’t simply ordered the motherships to flee, but the question created its own answer. The motherships were massive; whatever advanced drives the aliens had, they could not have outraced his fleet unless he chose to let them go…
Damn you bastards to hell, he thought coldly, feeling his hands crushing themselves into fists. I’m going to kill you and beat you about the head until you surrender, or I’ll kill the fucking lot of you.
“The fleet is acknowledging,” Cindy informed him. She had glanced at him then; he caught, just for a moment, worry in her eyes. That was unlike her; what was she thinking, just at that moment? Had she expected Commodore Qiu Xiaoshuai to decide that Ellsworth wasn't a suitable commanding officer and challenge him in the middle of the fight? “They’re forming up again on the Lead Pipe…”
“No,” Ellsworth said. He was as certain as he was that his name was Jake that that was how the aliens had deduced that the Enterprise was the command ship; it was not only different from the other ships, but the warships were concentrating on protecting it. Any fire-pattern analysis would have suggested that to an alert alien intelligence officer – one of their Researchers, perhaps. “I want us to continue being treated as a regular warship in the second group.”
He gazed down at the display. It was weird, in a way; he was shifting velocity at rates that would have awed the first astronauts who had sailed to the moon and back, but everything was happening…so slowly. The aliens were moving away from him and he was eternally chasing them, but he was catching up…if he could punch his way through the warships of the first force. He knew now why Waikoloa had been so careful; a single mistake could cost him the battle…and humanity the war.
The exchange of fire was only getting sharper as the two fleets drew closer to one another. Mass drivers and railguns hurled their loads into space on probabi
listically-determined trajectories – the vast majority of their fire missed, but a few lucky shots scoring hits that appeared to come out of nowhere. Lasers burned in the darkness of space, invisible except for their effects as they hacked missiles out of space and sometimes prematurely detonating them like tiny stars blinking briefly in the darkness of space. He wondered what these aliens were thinking; did they know that their leaders had chosen to sacrifice them, or had they volunteered for the mission? It was becoming more and more clear that the first alien force would not survive the battle; the only question was how many of his ships would they kill?
“Missiles locked on target,” Cindy said. There was a feral gleam in her eye; he hadn’t seen anything like it, not even when she had jumped him one evening during the training session and practically raped him. He smiled briefly at that memory; they’d both left their marks on each other, hadn’t they? “I have the aliens staked out for the kill.”
“Fire,” he ordered.
The fleet was concentrating its own fire now, although not to the extent that the aliens had concentrated their fire to destroy the Enterprise. There were only thirty alien craft left in the first force; he gambled and muttered additional commands, ordering his force to spread its fire a little further apart, gambling on the pounding the alien defences were taking at his hands.
The alien defences were falling apart now; slowly, oh so slowly, he saw the alien craft start to fall back on their own resources, and then on surprises like metallic chaff and radar jammers that confused both sides. He found himself smiling and surprised himself with a moment pure humour; the aliens had to know that they were on the ropes, so why didn’t they just kill themselves and get it over with?
“I have incoming fire from the second group,” Cindy said, as calmly as ever. “I think they’re trying to cover the remains of the first group…”
“Ten ships,” Ellsworth sneered, unable to hide his contempt. The aliens should have bugged out long before, or surrendered…not that he would have accepted anything short of unconditional surrender. “Raise Commodore Qiu; tell him to engage the aliens with the remaining long-range missiles…and I’ve just had an idea.”
He studied the display for a long moment. He had, like all Rockrats, an instinctive sense of orbital motion and velocity, particularly when it related to spacecraft, and he had had an idea. “I want you to raise the Lightning Roasted Lemur and the Ferret on Crack,” he ordered. The two freighters were almost defenceless, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t still be useful, not the way they were heading out around the planet. “I want them to loop around, as if they are feinting towards the motherships and taking them up the arse.”
Cindy frowned. “They don’t have any weapons left but a handful of modified mining lasers,” she said. “They’re not going to be allowed close enough to use them against the motherships before they get blown apart.”
“They don’t have to attack them,” Ellsworth said. “I just want them to worry the aliens a little…”
The final ships of the first alien force were wiped out, one by one. They took ships with them; the Qingdao, the Yulin, the Guangzhou, the Mother’s Milk, the Marching Position, the Constellation, the Britannia, the Yamamoto…but in the end, they all died. Ellsworth allowed himself a moment of pure relief; the battle had been costly, with one hundred and seven ships of the Combined Fleet blown to dust, but the aliens had been hurt too. It could still go either way, but now, with the Combined Fleet closing in on the second force and the motherships, the aliens had to know that whatever happened, the number of Oghaldzon in the solar system was about to take a vast drop.
“I need reports,” he snapped, knowing the Rockrats would hate that. The idea of reporting to anyone was alien to their nature, a reminder of the bad old days of confrontation and the endless scrabbles with the IAU. “What is the fleet’s current status?”
Silence fell as the fleet accelerated slightly, matching course and speed with the second alien force, which was doing its own formation-shifting. The Oghaldzon weren’t playing dumb, he noticed, with a droll feeling of amusement. They were being very careful, building a formation that would both protect the motherships and give some protection to their own remaining warships as well. He wondered, briefly, if he should transmit a surrender demand, but he suspected it would simply be ignored. The aliens had to know, one way or the other, that this battle would decide the system.
“The ships are mainly intact,” Cindy said dryly. “Some of them are pretty short on ammunition, though; I think we’ll have to watch that carefully. It won’t do us any good to catch up with the bastards and then discover that we can’t actually hurt them.”
“Of course,” Ellsworth agreed. He muttered some additional orders; the fleet would pause just outside extended missile range to make some repairs, knowing that the alien warships couldn’t outrun them without leaving the motherships at his mercy. He was a little surprised they hadn’t begun mass bombardment of the population centres of Earth, but the aliens probably intended to use humans as slaves and wouldn’t want to kill more than they had to…or, perhaps, they intended to complete that after they had destroyed the fleet. “We will proceed into a more direct engagement range as soon as we can.”
* * *
“They will come after us as soon as possible,” Takalak-Researcher-Seeker proclaimed, ignoring the single human female who was still held by the guards, her hands secured by clamps intended for an Oghaldzon. His voice was showing definite signs of strain. “They will attempt to crush us completely.”
Dataka clicked an irritated inquiry to him. “Then why are they holding position?” He had worried the humans would have come right after him, just to make sure that his fleet had little time to reform and prepare to fight the final battle, but instead they were holding position right at the edge of his range. “They could be coming after us now.”
“They’re carrying out repairs and perhaps reloading their ships,” Takalak said. He clicked a scornful note into the air. “They cannot be allowed to get any closer to the motherships.”
Dataka looked sharply at him, turning his head and peering at him through his eyes. “And how exactly do you suggest we prevent them?” he asked. “We cannot outrun them. We cannot split the fleet to engage them because they will defeat that force in detail and then come after the remainder. We have to wait for them to come to us and defeat them then, or offer our surrender at once.”
He watched as Takalak blanched, his sonar reflecting a cascade of doom and nightmare into the air. The Researcher had absorbed humanity, to the point where he had almost abandoned the central tenant of being a researcher – first, remain impartial and neutral, at all times. Takalak was no longer neutral; he understood enough of the dark side of humanity to be determined to win, whatever the cost.
He looked at the human. Even pushed against one of the bulkheads, her hands secured and sealed to the bulkhead like a common prisoner – and looking particularly alien, unlike an Oghaldzon prisoner – she seemed defiant and worried at the same time. Her interior was changing slightly; he wondered just what it meant, or if it had been triggered when the Researchers had used nanites to destroy the contraceptive implant that had been placed in her body for some mysterious purpose.
“Your people,” he said, using the translator and trusting the Researchers to have worked out all the kinks by now. “What will they try to do to the fleet?”
He wondered what the thin sheen on the human’s face meant, or her voice, thin and flat compared to the voice of an Oghaldzon. “They will try to destroy the fleet,” she said. He wondered just how much of the battle she had understood; the human designs for their own spacecraft interiors were different, just because their biology was different. She didn’t see the way he did, literally or figuratively. “They want to defend Earth and you’re threatening it.”
“We came with the intention of helping your people,” Takalak interjected. “Your people were too unwilling to change to embrace us.”
“Knowing humans, would you have let yourself be captured by them?” Takalak demanded. “How do we defeat the human fleet?”
The human laughed; Dataka heard some of his command crew joining the laugh in their own fashion.
“War Commander,” Fanaya put in, “we have two human craft turning to engage us from behind.”
The display altered; two human craft were trying to curve around the planet on a wide orbit, riding twin plumes of fusion fire. Dataka studied their course as the probe relayed the image and saw Nemesis approaching; if the two craft were armed with missiles, they would be able to destroy several of the motherships before dying themselves…unless he acted quickly. The main human fleet was trying to push forward again, ending the brief unspoken truce while both sides repaired damage, and that meant he didn’t dare call ships back from the second force.
“Order the lunar squadron to pull out of orbit,” he ordered sharply. The humans on the moon would have to look after themselves for a few hours, perhaps longer; they weren’t in any real danger for the moment. He would have ignored a feint towards the moon in any case; it just wasn’t a priority. “I want them to engage and deflect those human craft…”
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