“What about a SLAM?” Riggin said.
“We’re out of SLAMs,” Scoggins replied.
“I mean an improvised SLAM. We could evacuate the Loxley, load an Exploder warhead aboard, and aim her by remote.”
Absen held up a hand, thinking. “Michelle, is that flagship still taking evasive maneuvers?”
“Yes, sir,” the AI said. “It’s making constant and apparently random course changes, enough to make long-range targeting quite difficult. They saw what the SLAMs did, and they assume we have more.”
“How close would an improvised SLAM have to be to guarantee a hit?”
“If by guarantee you mean –”
“I mean guarantee, Michelle. Probability exceeding 99.999 percent, let’s say.”
“Not possible. Each impact from anything in a TacDrive-equipped ship’s path alters its course. With millions of maneuvering small craft nearby–”
Riggin broke in. “How about if the cruiser pulsed in to point-blank range, retargeted itself, and then pulsed again directly at the enemy, so close it couldn’t possibly miss?”
“Yes, Captain,” Michelle replied evenly. “That solves the accuracy problem, but not the issue of enemy weaponry. Even under computer control, there is a delay of at least two seconds before sensors recover from the drive field’s effects. Then, ship’s thrusters have to fire to line up for the next pulse, resulting in more delay.”
“All true,” Riggin said, standing up to emphasize his point, “but it’s worth a try. Trade one ship – my ship – for the opportunity to take that bastard down? I’m willing to take the chance.”
Absen looked around the room, trying to gauge his captains’ reactions. While a fleet was no democracy, only a fool didn’t pay attention to the effect major decisions had on the people who had to carry them out – or in this case, to watch. Most of them were nodding, if grimly, some staring at Riggin in open admiration, some in bleak sympathy. Nominating one’s own vessel for destruction couldn’t be easy, even for a hard-charger like Riggin.
“All right. We’ll do it,” the admiral said. “It’s worth the gamble. If it doesn’t work, we’ll lose one ship, but the enemy will likely have to reveal his capabilities. We’ll adjust from there. Captain Riggin, dock with Conquest and evacuate the Loxley. Get everything of value off her you can. Michelle, pass the word to Mister Nightingale to pull an Exploder warhead out of the magazine. No need for a detonator, either. The impact will set it off…either that, or the first Scourgeling to take a bite out of it will.”
Antimatter, unlike other explosives, was inherently unstable, held in check only by triple magnetic bottles keeping it from contact with normal matter. Rupture those fields and everything within a five-kilometer radius would be utterly vaporized, no matter what the armor. Beyond that zone, damage would be proportional to distance from point zero.
“What if this doesn’t work?” Scoggins asked.
“We’ll figure that out when we find out why it didn’t work,” Absen answered. “But you make a good point. Captain Doughty, dock with Constitution and evacuate Montgomery as well. We’ll operate her by remote, and if we have to make a second try, we’ll have saved preparation time.”
“Sir, I must protest!” the captain said.
“On what grounds?” Absen said with a lift of his eyebrows.
“My ship represents an enormous investment of materiel and time. You can’t throw it away like this.”
“I didn’t notice you protesting the sacrifice of Loxley,” Absen replied in a cooling voice. “One might wonder if your objection wasn’t more…personal in nature.”
“Of course it’s personal, sir. I might never have another command like this.”
And you just ensured you never will, Absen thought to himself. The man is concerned about himself and his career, not the mission and the needs of Earth. How’d this one slip past me?
“Sorry, Captain, but someone has to do it,” the admiral said.
“Senegal volunteers,” Captain Figueroa spoke up, standing.
“I’ll keep that in mind if we need to try a third time,” Absen said drily, “but for now, my order stands.” He stared at Doughty until the man swallowed and nodded. “Get to work, then. You’re all dismissed.” The avatars of all but Scoggins and Michelle faded around Absen.
“That was embarrassing,” Scoggins said.
“He won’t be getting another ship,” Absen replied. “Not for a while, anyway. Michelle, any indications in Doughty’s service record that he’s less than dedicated?”
“No, sir. On paper, he’s perfect.”
Absen lifted his eyebrows. “Perfect? How perfect?”
“Top marks on all FITREPs and evals. Top scores in all categories for Montgomery. In fact, technically, his ship has the best record in the fleet.”
“Hard to believe,” Scoggins said with a scowl.
“Very hard,” Absen said, his eyes narrowing. “Let’s go to the bridge.”
When the three arrived, the admiral called Rick Johnstone to his ready room and waved Michelle in too. Addressing the CyberComm officer, Absen said, “I have reason to suspect someone falsified the performance records of the Montgomery, Captain Doughty, or both. Others of his officers too, perhaps. I need you to take a look. I presume you have codes that will get you inside the systems of all of our ships?”
Johnstone smiled. “If I didn’t, I’m sure Michelle and I could crack them.” His mien turned sober. “Do you think this is anything sinister, or is it just misguided ambition?”
“That’s what I want you to find out. Doughty grew up in the defense forces under the Empire’s Blends, if I recall correctly. From his interview, I felt like he had the right attitude, but maybe he’s just a face man with personal ambition.”
Scoggins said, “The non-Blends weren’t encouraged to take risks, sir. Maybe it’s a case of being accustomed to telling his superiors what they want to hear. He performed creditably in the battles up until now.”
“I can’t take ‘maybe’ for an answer, Melissa. Johnstone will dig it out, and then we’ll know.”
Chapter 22
“The evacuation of Loxley is complete,” Michelle reported to Admiral Absen as he drummed his fingers on the arm of his flag chair.
“Spread her crew around among Conquest’s, but keep her sections together. Make it clear to them that they’re not being broken up. At least, not now. If possible, I’ll give Riggin the next cruiser to come out of Jupiter’s shipyards.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“Is the Exploder aboard?”
“Yes, sir. Mister Nightingale reports it’s been welded to the deck in a forward compartment, no special bracing, as you ordered.”
“Yes,” Absen said. “We want it to detonate when the ship takes catastrophic damage.”
“Understood.”
“What about Doughty and the Montgomery?”
“Evacuation is proceeding, but more slowly than Loxley’s,” Michelle replied.
“More evidence of a lack of enthusiasm. If you haven’t already, get some of your maintenance drones in to speed things up. Once that’s done, go ahead and bring the Senegal to dock for evacuation. I’ve decided to take Captain Figueroa’s offer as well.”
“If it doesn’t work, sir, we’ll have wasted three heavy cruisers for nothing,” Scoggins said.
“And if it does, it will guarantee our survival. Each heavy represents what, about three percent of Fleet’s raw combat power?” Absen asked.
“Three point one six percent, approximately,” Michelle said.
“Thank you, Mister Spock. I’ve decided it’s worth the risk, so do it.”
Michelle’s avatar and the admiral stared at each other for a moment.
Eventually, Absen said, “No need to delay further. Captain Scoggins, tell Okuda to push her out to sea.”
The captain cocked her head. “Viking funeral?”
“You got it. Go.”
Scoggins cleared her throat. “Helm, launch o
ur fire-ship.”
“Pulse in three, two, one, mark,” Okuda responded immediately.
In the holotank, Absen watched as the Loxley’s icon moved rapidly toward a position on an imaginary line directly between the sun and the enemy flagship. At lightspeed, it took only minutes to get there.
Now, the suicide ship was out of their control. Light-minutes away, no transmission could move fast enough to provide data or instructions; the computer network aboard, programmed by Commander Johnstone, was running the ship.
Absen watched as the icon turned its tiny arrow, pointing toward the enemy and then moving again. As it did, the holotank view zoomed in closer and closer, scale adjusting continuously to show both ships.
The Loxley passed by the superdreadnought. It had been aimed directly at the flagship, but as expected, collisions with swarm craft had deflected it from a direct hit.
As soon as it dropped pulse, at a mere two hundred kilometers distance, it began to alter aspect, thrusters flaring violently to adjust the ship’s vector as quickly as possible.
“Come on,” Ford muttered, rising from his seat to grip the holotank rail.
Before it had made it far enough, the Loxley exploded.
“Damn,” Scoggins breathed. “What just happened?”
“Trying to reconstruct…” Fletcher replied, fingers skimming over his console, adjusting Conquest’s sensor feeds. The holotank froze, and then reset from the moment when Loxley dropped pulse.
Now in slow motion and with overlays of optical false color, synthetic aperture radar, gamma, neutron emissions and every other sensor type available, the picture became clearer.
A beam of energy reached out from within the flagship, boring a hole in its own inflated latticework to splash against the Loxley. Fletcher slowed the recording further, allowing all watching to see the cruiser’s armor ignite as if made of pure explosive.
Within half a realtime second on the chrono, the effect vaporized more than a hundred meters of the hardest armor known to Earthtech. A moment later, the cruiser vanished as the Exploder blew its antimatter containment, but at two hundred kilometers, nothing but a few dozen swarm craft died.
“What was that?” Absen asked.
“Graser, sir,” said Fletcher. “Gamma ray laser in the exawatt range. Almost as powerful as the moon Weapons were, sir. Bigger than anything we have now.”
“On a mobile warship,” Scoggins marveled. “Obviously set on automatic, as we suspected.”
“And I’d bet dollars to doughnuts they have more than one of them,” Absen said.
“How do you know, sir?”
“Think about it, Captain.” Absen fell silent, waiting.
Scoggins furrowed her brow for a moment. “The flagship barely adjusted its attitude before firing. So unless the Loxley just happened to drop pulse directly in front of its single main weapon, there must be multiples.”
Absen nodded. “Michelle, given equivalent technology to ours, estimate the amount of power that ship has available to give me a likely range of the number of weapons of that size they might have.”
“I’d call it more of a guess than an estimate, as we have no idea of the ship’s design. They might have a hundred beam projectors aiming in all directions, but only enough power to fire one at a time, for example,” Michelle replied. “Also, how much power can be stored in its capacitors? And there are a dozen lesser variables.”
“Guess, then. If EarthFleet designed that ship, how would we do it?”
Had Michelle’s mind been organic, she might have hesitated, but at AI speeds, she answered immediately. “If it were me and I had few resource constraints, I’d mount at least twenty of those guns pointing in all directions, with enough swivel on each that no matter where an enemy appeared, I could hit him almost immediately. Especially if I knew my enemy had TacDrive and I didn’t.”
“So this is a counter to TacDrive?” Scoggins asked.
Michelle said, “They did wait a year before this follow-up attack. Perhaps the first fleet sent an FTL drone back with a report. Or maybe they’ve encountered something like TacDrive before in one of the races they wiped out, but weren’t able to salvage the technology. This automated super-point-defense system is one way I’d counter my enemy’s advantage. The dense swarm is another way. Between the two, they’re damned hard to reach, much less kill.”
“Layered defense, like an old carrier battle group,” Absen said, chin in hand. “And probably more surprises to come, hidden by that shell. What’s our logical next move?”
“More improvised SLAMs – the Montgomery and the Senegal. Maybe one will make it through, sir,” Captain Scoggins replied.
“Maybe isn’t good enough. We need a plan. While Senegal is evacuating, you smart kids come up with one. We’re going to get a drink.” With that, Absen jerked his head at Timmons and together they walked off the bridge.
“My place or yours?” the COB asked.
“How about yours? I’m getting tired of drinking quality whiskey. Maybe some cheap hooch will do me good.”
The Chief of the Boat chuckled and led the way down a deck to his stateroom. Not nearly as grand as the admiral’s, still the most senior noncom aboard had enough space for several people to sit comfortably and shoot the breeze. When they arrived, he pulled an unlabeled bottle out of the freezer module of his personal cooler. “Try some of this, sir. It’ll make a real man of you.”
“So you haven’t tried it yet?”
“Ouch. Okay, I deserved that.” Timmons set down two battered steel cups and poured. They immediately began to sweat from the subzero temperature of the liquor he’d dispensed.
“Absent friends,” Absen toasted with his, and the COB murmured agreement. When the frigid stuff hit his tongue he gasped. “What the hell is this, battery acid?”
“Pepper vodka…sort of. Chief Yastrepsky makes a batch of it every now and again. A few bottles of it is my payoff to keep it quiet.”
“Keep it quiet? We’re not a dry service, COB.”
“Don’t tell him that, sir, or he’ll start charging me a hundred FleetCreds a fifth, like all the rest.”
Absen burst out laughing, and then he sobered. “I just realized something… We’re still in VR. I’d totally forgotten. We can get rip-roaring drunk within the space of a few minutes, and then tell Michelle to sober us up hangover-free when we need to get back to work.”
“That’s scraping the surface of what VR can do, boss…which is why it’s so addictive. As long as the AI is willing to indulge you, you can make all your problems disappear and do anything you want. Shoot heroin without getting hooked. Have an orgy with real people or virtual ones – not that you’ll know the difference. Lie on the beach for six months while a day passes in the real world. Make yourself Emperor of Earth.”
“But Michelle would never go along with anything like that…right?”
Timmons shrugged. “Not anymore…but when the technology first came online, there weren’t enough rules and principles to guide her. She got quite an education in human vice before she really understood what she was seeing. Once Dr. Egolu and her team added some ethical structure, things settled down.”
“Oof. I never knew.”
“You’ve always had too much on your plate to worry about little things like that. That’s what you have smartass officers and crusty old chiefs for.”
Absen sipped at the liquid fire in his cup. “So why tell me now?”
Timmons shrugged and winked. “Have to talk about something while the rest brainstorm and the universe goes to hell. Might as well remind you that it’s me that really runs this ship.”
***
“We’ve come up with a plan, sir,” Captain Scoggins said as Absen strolled onto the bridge again, stone cold sober despite the amount of alcohol he’d seem to have drunk.
“Let’s hear it.”
Scoggins gestured to the holotank where a tactical diagram floated, showing the enemy flagship, its super-swarm and three Fleet ships o
ff to the side. Two of the vessels were labeled Senegal and Montgomery. The other icon read Constitution. “You’re not going to like it, sir.”
“I may hate it, but I’ll do it if it fends these bastards off one more time.”
“Captain Huen is going to hate it even more.”
Absen’s voice rose slightly. “Spit it out, Captain.”
Scoggins stepped over to the holotank, nervously tucking her straight brown hair behind her ears. She reached into the display and lined up the ships as if playing with models. “The main problem we have is the swarm, sir. It’s a mobile shield that keeps us from TacDriving in point-blank and nailing the flagship. So, what we need is a battering ram to make a temporary hole in that shield.”
The display ran forward, showing the EarthFleet dreadnought plowing through the swarm toward the flagship.
“I see where you’re going with this, Melissa. Pulse Constitution in and the two ships cruisers behind, hoping Connie is big enough to hold course and clear the way like an icebreaker. One of the three should slam into their flagship, and if not, they might be able to turn around and try again if they survive passage through to the other side.”
“Yes, sir. That’s one possible COA, and it’s part of another. Michelle?”
The AI avatar stepped forward, looking completely human in VR space. “My estimates say the icebreaker tactic has about a forty percent chance of success. We can improve this to better than seventy percent if we bring out our grand fleet – all three task forces – and engage the enemy conventionally. That should draw their forces toward us, thinning them out on the flanks and rear. They might even leave their backdoor completely open, in which case we can pulse the three ships individually.”
Absen stepped forward to the rail. “Where would our grand fleet meet them?”
The holotank reconfigured to show a medium-scale tactical diagram including the Earth-Moon system. “About two hours outside of the range of our lunar heavy batteries, unless you want to let them in closer. If we do that, though…”
Conquest and Empire (Stellar Conquest Series Book 5) Page 21
