Absen shook his head. “How many is enough? If we let them gather and attack, who knows how many they could assemble? Could we handle a thousand swarms and ten flagships? No, every lesson of history, every military genius who ever wrote a book, every experience I’ve had tells me that we have to hit them hard where they live. If that stirs them up, well…I don’t see how we can make them any more hostile to us than they already are.”
Sawyer subsided, her face still filled with skepticism. Absen wasn’t surprised that she – and some others, of course – would want to lick their wounds rather than go for the throats of their enemies.
“We’ll be building defenses too, of course, many of them dual-use,” Absen went on. “I already have some ideas on how to overcome the Scourges’ super-ships and deal with their endless swarms, but it’s not my job to do all your thinking.”
He turned to Sawyer. “Jeanine, you’re my new Red Team leader. I’m sure your deputy can see to the day-to-day business of the base while you concentrate on coming up with an educated guess as to what awaits us at Center. You get Fleede and his team, Rae and hers, and whoever else you want that can help you build the best simulation you can. I’ve already ordered Demolisher to land on the surface nearby. Not only will that facilitate his repairs, but you can use all of his excess brainpower to help you.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Rear Admiral Scoggins,” Absen said with a wink, “pick your blue team. Remember, though, you’re on offense this time. Your task is to come up with ship types and tactics that will beat whatever Red Team tells you will be defending Center. Get with Leslie Denham for reasonable estimates of how much you can actually get built, because I want to launch in six months, come hell or high water.”
***
“It can’t be done,” Scoggins said as she took a seat on front of Admiral Absen’s desk. “We’ve worked on it for a week. If the Red Team is playing fair, there’s no way we can break them.”
Absen tossed down the stylus in his hand and leaned back in his chair. “Armstrong, bring up the Red Team’s latest order of battle on Center and project it on my main screen.”
“Yes, Admiral Absen,” came the voice of the base’s pseudo-AI. A moment later a diagram of the enemy star system appeared, annotated with its forces in a deluge of colored icons.
“Looks ugly,” Absen said. “I see what you mean. Have you run simulations against weaker forces in case Sawyer’s overestimating the opposition?”
“Yes, sir. If they have even half the forces on that screen, we can’t beat them in a straight up fight. Even if we bring along all our D-ships and double their numbers by assuming they can all reproduce within the next six months – not a sure thing, by the way – we’ll lose. Oh, we’ll hurt them badly, but they don’t care about casualties below the level of Archon any more than the average medieval lord cared about his peasants. Less, even.”
Absen looked down the list next to the graphic. “Flagships… Fortresses… Swarms…and I see the Red Team postulates some kind of cruisers. I have to assume they know what they’re doing, based on the intel we’ve gathered. Sawyer may have her biases, but I don’t think she would deliberately jigger the results merely to prove herself right. Not with Fleede and Rae there to check on her, anyway.”
“Then I guess we’ll have to rethink our attack, sir. Sure wish we could get some recon.”
Absen shook his head. “This has to be a total surprise to work at all. If we allow them to gather forces, we could be facing ten times as much. A recon ship would have to work its way up the stellar gradient just like the attack fleet will. Even if we put the biggest FTL engine onto the smallest hull so it can bypass some steps, its very existence arriving at Center will tip them off.”
“Any progress on the FTL comms or FTL radar projects?”
“No. The scientists say there’s no way.”
“They said FTL travel was impossible, too.”
Absen smiled. “Point taken…but scientific breakthroughs take time, and often some luck. I don’t think they’ve even come up with enough theory to predict how it could be done. So let’s not hope for some magical new technology. We have to focus on what we can do in the next six months.”
Scoggins joined Absen in front of the holoscreen. “What about a raid instead?” She pointed at the planet Red Team postulated. “This is supposed to be their headquarters. If we can smash our way in and kill off their Archons…it may not win the war, but it should buy us time and disrupt their ability to coordinate against us. I’ve read all the intel summaries and a lot of the detailed reports about these critters. They’re completely heriarchical. I’m wondering if wiping out their capital might cause their empire to break up into petty kingdoms, even precipitate a civil war?”
“No way to tell, but…I like the idea of a raid. We go in fast, hit them hard and get out. If it turns out that there’s a lot less force there than Sawyer’s team thinks, we can always expand our objectives.” Absen turned to face his former flag captain. “Get a plan together for me on that basis. I want to see something in forty-eight hours. The sooner we nail down the kind of ships we need to build, the more time we’ll have to do it.”
“Aye aye, sir.” Throwing Absen a casual salute, Scoggins turned to go.
“Oh, and Melissa?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Better do it right…because you’ll be in charge.”
Scoggins’ eyebrows went up. “You’re not going to be commanding the mission, sir?”
Absen shook his head slowly. “Nope. This is too big and too far. It’s going to take you at least three months of climbing the gradient to reach Center even with the overpowered FTL engines we’re contemplating, and then a week to haul ass back here. That plus the six months will add up to about ten since they hit us, which is the earliest Fleede believes they would attack again, assuming they’re going to gather an even bigger force. If I send off the majority of our strength to attack, we won’t be able to defend ourselves.”
“That would be some irony if we came home to a dead system,” Scoggins said.
“That wouldn’t be the word I’d use. So, let’s make sure nothing like that happens. The plan is to get in, do maximum damage, and get out with your forces intact. Remember Alfred Thayer Mahan and the concept of the Fleet in Being.”
“I’ll brush up, sir.”
***
“Nguyen is a Meme now?” Absen said to Daniel Markis across the high-bandwidth video link. “How is that possible?”
“Beats me, Henrich, but that’s what the report delivered by Desolator’s FTL drone said. The summary is about a hundred pages long and the annexes run to more than a thousand. It’s been uploaded to your network already, so feel free to examine it yourself.”
“What else does it say?”
“That he intends to take control of the Meme Empire just like he did with Earth, and Australia before that. And you know what? I have every confidence he’ll do it.”
“My God.” Absen stood up to pour himself a stiff drink. “That’s fantastic news. EarthFleet just expanded by a factor of thousands, maybe more.”
Markis held up a hand. “Two things, though. First, I don’t know that he intends to subordinate himself to me or you. Second, it will take a while for his coup to percolate throughout the Empire even if he manages to fit Meme ships with FTL.”
“Understood. I’m not going to count on his help for the present campaign, but it’s still heartening. I’m a lot more confident in a Meme Empire run by a human – former human, anyway. What about Desolator?”
“That’s up to you, Henrich. The FTL drone can be sent back as soon as you have orders.”
“Then have him come back here to join the rest of the Ryss ships no later than a week before C-Day.” That was the term that had come into vogue for the date the attack on Center would launch. “In the meantime, he should be fortifying the Ryss home system and, if it’s at all possible, he needs to reproduce, even if he can’t bring his offspring on t
he mission. We’re having the other D-ships create new AIs, get them online, and then provide telefactors and materials to build their own bodies around them. That’s the fastest way to construct more.”
Markis chuckled grimly. “Genuine Von Neumann machines…I hope to hell they never turn against us, or we’re screwed.”
“Sir, we’ve been screwed for some time, yet we keep managing to pull our nuts out of the fire, to mix some metaphors.”
“Thanks to you, Admiral. I’m just a glorified combination factory manager and town mayor. You’re doing the hard work.”
“My people are, sir.”
“Then pass on my thanks to them. Keep in touch, Henrich. Markis out.”
Chapter 29
Five months later
“Admiral on deck,” COB Timmons roared with leather lungs as he preceded Fleet Admiral Absen onto the bridge of EarthFleet’s dreadnought Conqueror.
“Welcome aboard, sir,” Rear Admiral Scoggins said with a wide grin. “Are you sure you don’t want to take over command?” She gestured at the holotank.
In its bright confines, Absen could see the task force, the pride of EarthFleet, arrayed as if for battle. Eight of the Ryss D-ships – all seven that had survived the Gliese 370 Scourge attack plus a new, special one – formed the bones, if not the heart, of the fleet. By the seven working in concert, assisted by the hardworking industry of the Jupiter shipyards, construction of a new, modified superdreadnought had taken a mere four months instead of the usual several years.
Layered with extra armor and scourge-killing poison ablatives, the original seven were filled with millions of Ryss warriors in shiny new battlesuits comparable to those of human Marines.
The new Ryss ship, Deathbringer, boasted even more point defense lasers than his parent vessels, but the main difference was in his capital weaponry. Instead of a score of heavy particle beams, he possessed only two gargantuan projectors, both mounted in the stern adjacent to the fusion engines. Larger than most ships themselves, they measured nine kilometers long by five hundred meters wide, and each could fire a particle beam rated in exawatts, like the Meme’s moon-based Weapons.
Absen smiled as he imagined the Scourges’ surprise when Deathbringer went to work on any flagships he happened to find. Then his expression turned dark as he contemplated the brand-new AI’s potential end, and that of his brothers. The Ryss ships had made it clear that if there was no other way, they were prepared to hurl themselves under TacDrive into enemy ships, or even planets, in order to decapitate the Scourge.
Shaking off incipient melancholy, Absen nodded to the bridge crew, murmuring greetings. Naturally, he’d given Scoggins a free hand to select her people, and just as naturally, she’d kept everyone from Conquest.
That reminded him. He glanced around, zeroing in on a female officer with commander’s stripes on her shoulders. Walking up to her, he extended a hand. “Miss Conqueror, I presume?”
“Yes, Admiral,” the android said with a smile. “I’m glad to finally meet you. My mother’s memories told me everything about you.”
Absen fought against the lump that came into his throat. Dr. Egolu had loaded copies of Michelle’s programming into new, Ryss-produced AI hardware, but with only partial success. The result had been full machine consciousness, but apparently each new entity had a clear understanding that she was not the same person she’d been cloned from. He counted EarthFleet lucky that the personalities had turned out to be so well adjusted, and with the advantages of all the memories bequeathed to them, training was not even necessary.
Absen could have introduced himself to the new AIs any time in the past few months, but frankly, he’d been avoiding it. The pain had seemed too great.
There was no avoiding it now, though, so he put on a smile. “I’m happy to meet you, too. Please pass on to your fellow C-class ships –”
“– my sister ships,” Conqueror insisted.
“– your sister ships, of course. Give them my regards and my best wishes for success on your mission.”
Scoggins stepped up beside Absen to speak softly in his ear. “Ask her what her first name is, sir.”
Hearing the grin in Scoggins’ voice, Absen glanced at her with lifted eyebrow for a moment, and then turned back to the android. “Well?”
“I’m Michelle, sir. Like my mother, and like my younger sisters.”
Absen looked away for a moment, almost overcome again, and turned back only when he was certain he could control himself. “That’s an interesting choice,” he said mildly.
“It’s our way of honoring her, sir. Most families share a name, so we decided to share that one, since we can’t have a surname in common.”
“Well, I think it’s a great idea.” No, I don’t, Absen said to himself, but what am I going to say? I’ll get used to it, I suppose…in a few hundred years. “Now let me look over the rest of the fleet.”
Behind the D-ships floated a conjoined sphere composed of thirteen Constitution-class ships, all superficially similar to the shattered dreadnought of that name. While the new D-ship had been built as a flagship-killer and more, the new C-ships had retained their roles as command-and-control and anti-swarm ships. Twelve of them with names such as Confident, Confronter, Controller and Concorde surrounded Conqueror, escorting her like the avenging angels their AIs styled themselves.
These ships were attached together much as the original Task Force Conquest had been for its relativistic journey to Gliese 370, and for much the same reason. Only by travelling as one through the FTL wormhole could they ensure arrival in close proximity and operate as a unit from the start.
The D-ships were so large, though, that for them, this arrangement would be impractical.
The C-ships had also been equipped with the new TacSLAMs, lightspeed weapons that could be launched like missiles directly from tubes, against high-value targets. If the new D-ship couldn’t crack the enemy flagships, perhaps the super-SLAMs would.
No other ships would be sent, though each vessel carried a full complement of drones, auxiliary craft and Marines. All the simulations had shown that smaller vessels were not cost-effective, either in lives or resources, when the price of equipping them with FTL and TacDrives was taken into account. Succeed or fail, each powerful warship had to be able to fight on its own and run for home if necessary.
“All right, there’s no reason to delay further. Put me on fleetwide,” Absen said.
“You’re on, sir. Full vid to all stations.” Commander Johnstone said from his CyberComm console.
Absen had let his aide go on the mission; Rick had insisted – all right, nearly threatened mutiny – after failing to convince Jill Repeth to stay behind.
Absen clasped his hands behind his back and faced the video pickup. “Men and women of Task Force Conqueror, I’m here to send you off on a dangerous mission. I’d love to lead you once more, but my duty is here, commanding the forces protecting your loved ones so that you can sail with confidence.”
He turned to indicate Scoggins. “Admiral Melissa Scoggins has been by my side since the first Destroyer tried to wipe out humanity, and I’m telling you the absolute truth when I say she’s learned everything I can teach her and will lead you just as well as I could. So I only have four simple things for you to do: follow your orders; give the Fleet your utmost efforts; strike the enemy a heavy blow; and get home safe. That’s it. If you do those things, everyone on Earth, on Ryssa, on Koio and throughout humanity’s empire will be proud of you. Good luck, and good hunting.”
“You’re off, sir.”
“Good speech, Admiral,” Scoggins said.
“Makes me want to vomit, actually. Staying behind, I mean,” Absen replied. He held out his hand. “Anchors aweigh, Melissa. Godspeed.”
She grasped his proffered palm and squeezed. “Aye aye, sir.”
Absen leaned close. “And I don’t usually say this, but take it in the spirit it’s meant. Hit them hard, but don’t sacrifice your people. You’re not savin
g our planet; you’re trying to kill theirs. Win or lose, we need you to come defend the homeworld, because if the Scourge act true to form, the next attack on Earth is already being assembled, and you have to get back here before it hits us. That’s why I set the timetable I did.”
Scoggins stared into Absen’s eyes and said, “Count on it, sir.”
Absen let go and turned on his heel. “Carry on,” he said as he walked stiffly off the bridge that so resembled Conquest’s.
***
Rear Admiral Scoggins sighed with relief as Absen left. She loved her boss and respected him even more, but every fiber of her being cried out to get on her way and attack the enemy. She knew it didn’t make objective sense, a few minutes this way or that, as she expected to be sedated in wormhole space for the next three months, climbing seven levels of stellar gradient to reach Center.
Each of her C- and D-ships now had triple-redundant and ultrafast electromechanical analog computers aboard, clockwork devices with no digital processors. When they detected emergence, they would actuate old-fashioned rheostats, solenoids and switches. Those in turn would activate engines and thrusters to create random evasive maneuvers, all within seconds of FTL emergence.
After ninety seconds, digital computers would have recovered from wormhole space disruption and rebooted. Pulling data from static memory modules, they would turn the ships around and immediately send them back into the gravity well, as soon as the FTL capacitors were charged by the ravening solar power of the transit star.
This energy would be used to seize and twist the gravity waves thrown out by the nearby sun, forming another wormhole even while the ships blasted on conventional drives to begin their runs back toward the flaming balls of fusion gas. Each such transit would lift them another step up the stellar gradient toward their goal.
Conquest and Empire (Stellar Conquest Series Book 5) Page 29
