“Grav pulse com coming in, my Lord. Something is taking out our mines.”
“What?” growled the great admiral, turning to stare at the com officer.
“We, we don’t know, my Lord. They are reporting that there is nothing on their scans. Only flashes of laser energy and exploding mines.”
“They are clearing the mines with small stealthy ships,” said the tactical officer. “That can be the only answer.”
“There are not enough ships coming from that vector,” said the chief of staff. “That cannot be their main thrust.”
The great admiral stared at the plot, tuning out the conversations going on around him. No one knew. It was all just conjecture at this point. One thing he could be sure of was that wormhole launched missiles were on the way in from every force on his plot, with the exception of the small group maneuvering on the other side of the star. It looked like the humans were using a complicated plan, one to insure that the Ca’cadasans couldn’t maintain their balance. The humans were tricksters. You could never be sure what they were up to until they actually showed their hand.
“Ships in the outer picket are dropping off the plot, my Lord. Coms are coming in from ships that saw them explode.”
“They’re taking out the pickets with wormhole launches,” said the tactical officer.
“How soon can we expect wormhole missiles to hit any of our deployed forces?” asked the great admiral, his stress rising until his head ached.
“The force in the asteroid belt could be receiving fire in less than forty minutes, if they know where they are,” reported the tactical officer.
“Assume that they do. Order that force to consolidate for missile defense.”
“And what about their inertialess fighters?” asked the officer.
“We will worry about them when they appear,” growled the great admiral. They were out there. Everyone knew it, from the signals they were putting out through all of the dimensions. But they didn’t know where they were with any certainty.
“Are our inertialess fighters ready?”
“On your command.”
The admiral still wasn’t sure what use they were, since he couldn’t contact them to change vectors like the enemy could theirs. But he had them, and he needed to use them.
“Launch them at the largest enemy force. Vector each wing in to hit them across any conceivable move.” He wouldn’t get all of them onto the enemy force. But if he tried to send them all at them on their current position, he might not get any of them there. At least this way he had a chance of getting some onto the target, and the others could still be vectored to later targets after they came out of their field to check the situation.
“And start generating firing solutions on all of their forces. I want missile launches on them all as soon as possible.” He thought it about time that he got them reacting to some of his moves, instead of merely dancing to theirs.
* * *
“Enemy ships have opened fire on all of our forces that they can see,” announced the com officer. “And they’re all starting to move.”
“Where are they moving to?” asked Len.
“It looks like they are congregating for missile defense, sir.”
Len smiled. That was what he would have done as well before the advent of the new inertial rebound missiles. It was still the smart move against normal missile attacks, and might even eventually work against warp missiles. But it was the wrong move against the rebound weapons.
“Vector inertialess fighters onto every formation they can get to. Warp fighters are released to attack targets of opportunity.”
“We’re almost at the point where we need to initiate our own boost, sir.”
“Hit it when the time comes. Then initiate slingshot on schedule.”
* * *
“We’re losing ships on the other side of the star, my Lord.”
“How many of them. Who is killing them?”
“As far as we can tell, it’s that force we are tracking. Though it seems a lot of launches, a lot of wormholes for a force that size.”
The great admiral looked at the plot, focusing on those icons that were on a vector to the flank of the star. There weren’t that many of them, really only a weak task force. But fifty ships had disappeared in the last couple of minutes. Unless every single one of those ships had a wormhole, and that would not seem possible. It could be real, but he doubted it.
“They have a larger force coasting in,” he finally said. “That small task force is a decoy.”
“We cannot be sure, my Lord.”
“No,” growled the great admiral, raising a pair of left hands to cut off any reply. “We cannot be sure. But I feel it in my bones. The rest of their fleet. That is where we will find it.” The great admiral pointed a pair of right index fingers at the plot, a little way from the icons that were already there. “That is where we will find them.”
“And what do we do about them, my Lord?” asked the chief of staff.
That was the question, and one the great admiral had no answer to.
“More of our mines are going off, my Lord. We think they are losing some small ships as well, but since they aren’t boosting, we really don’t know.”
We really don’t know much, thought the male. They knew where some of the enemy forces were, at least half of them, and were launching on them. And those forces were firing back. There were surely wormhole launched missiles heading for his main forces, and already hitting some of his that were further out. There were enemy inertialess fighters out there, as well as their new warp fighters. The warp fighters were all boosting, so he had a good idea where they were and where they were heading, but wasn’t sure what they could do about it, if anything.
“We fight this battle in front of us, and worry about what we haven’t seen when it comes into view,” he ordered.
“Group six is being hit by their inertialess fighters, my Lord,” called out one of the com techs on the intercom. “They’re reporting massive blasts, massive losses.”
The plot zoomed in on that force, moving out among the asteroid belt. It had been firing on the enemy for fifteen minutes, and boosting to try and change its position after wormhole launched missiles had struck. They were in close formation, so they could put up a wall of laser fire to kill the missiles. And a number of the inertialess fighters had launched some of their new, ultra-powerful weapons into them, taking out several hundred of the thousand-ship force.
He had planned to bleed the enemy, to hit them over and over again as they fought their way inward. And they were avoiding everything he had put into place and were ripping his force apart. The male stared at the plot, wondering what he could do, then came to a decision, one wired into his genes. To move along the primary course of his people, the one they had followed for ten thousand years. To attack with everything he had, until either the enemy force, or his, was destroyed.
* * *
“Crakista force has just been hit by enemy inertialess fighters, sir,” called out the com officer. “One wing only. The others all missed the target.”
Len looked quickly at the plot, zooming in on the right wing of the force that was plowing straight ahead at the enemy. There were twenty red blotches showing where ships had been destroyed, and about sixty others blinking, indicating damage. The enemy fighters had already blown through and went back into their bubbles, off the plot.
“They’ve lost four battleships and some cruisers. The rest were destroyers,” continued the com officer. “Sixteen battleships damaged. And they report that the enemy is starting to boost all of their forces their way.”
“Why the hell would they do that?” asked Len, getting up and walking to the plot, which was in the process of repopulating. “They’re abandoning all of their defenses in orbit around the planet.”
They didn’t have a perfect handle on what the Cacas had at the planet. They had identified some assets, but had to assume there were more. Particle and laser beam sats, miss
ile batteries, waves of fighters. The fighters could go with their fleet, the sats couldn’t.
“It’s the way they used to fight,” replied the tactical officer. “Before they started getting smart. Maybe their admiral can’t think of a way to win, so like a wild animal he attacks.”
Len thought about that for a moment. The Caca admiral had to have a suspicion that he wasn’t going to win this battle in the first place. But he had expected to destroy a good portion of Lenkowski’s fleet in this fight, and possibly get some of his ships out through the wormholes. That was no longer possible.
“Starting boost in thirty seconds,” called out the navigator.
And now they will know what is coming for them from around the star, he thought. It would take them one hour to circumnavigate the central body, and they would keep most of their velocity as they came around. The enemy would have been moving for that hour, and would be up to about point zero six light. They would have the catch-up speed, and everything they launched would too.
“Boosting,” called out the navigator, and every ship in the fleet started changing its vector at four hundred and eighty gravities, the most some of the older battleships could make. At their velocity there wouldn’t be a lot of effective curving from the star, but it would be enough.
“Order the Crakista and Elysium fleets to keep firing at the forces closest to them, and to start deceling. I want them back across the barrier before the main Caca force gets to them. Tell their commanders that we’ll take care of the Cacas coming out from the planet.”
The com officer nodded, then got to work on his board, sending out the orders.
Len wanted to destroy this Caca force, and he would have a better chance of doing that if he threw the allied force right into the teeth of the enemy. But Sean had cautioned him to not throw away too many allied lives. Not to keep them out of the action, not to keep them in a safe place. But also not to let them take casualties disproportionate to his own. They were volunteers in this war, and getting a lot of them killed might not go over well in their homes.
* * *
“My lord. We’re getting signals from the ships that still have over watch on the other side of the star. The enemy force is boosting. It looks like they are going to curve around the star and come up on us from behind.”
“How many?” asked the great admiral.
“They’re indicating over twenty thousand, my Lord.”
That’s their main force, thought the great admiral. They had gotten their main force into the system, just over an hour away from popping around the star and bringing his own fleet under fire, without him knowing it. There were no minefields on that side, not enough ships, and none of his inertialess fighters. So they had penetrated deep into the system, and nothing he had could touch them for the next hour.
“What should we do, my Lord?” asked the chief of staff.
The great admiral stared at the other male for a moment. That male was old, he had already achieved all he would. His sons were well along in their careers. He would not be blamed for a historic defeat.
“We can decel and get back to the planet in a couple of hours, my Lord,” said the tactical officer.
And what difference will it make? “No. We continue to move out. We will try to blast through the force waiting out there and get what we can into hyper.”
* * *
This was not going to be good. The enemy had not done what he had expected them to do, not unexpected in its own right. He would still ream them. Very few, if any, of their ships would make it out of the system. He would still lose the same number of vessels, within a couple of percentage points. The only real problem would be who those ships would belong to.
Sean didn’t want me to get the allies chewed up too badly, he thought with a grimace as he studied the plot. Well, your Majesty, I’m sorry I failed you this time. The ships in the enemy’s way were mostly Crakista and Elysium vessels, with a smattering of Republic craft. They were going to take the brunt of the enemy fire. And he was sure there would be some in their governments who would blame him, who would say that he had put them on the chopping block to save Imperial lives.
“The enemy is launching another volley at the outer force,” called out the fleet tactical officer. “That makes ten so far since they started moving.”
And the outer force was firing everything they had, and trying to maneuver back beyond the barrier so they could jump to hyper. Two problems with that. The enemy had five times their tubes. And they would not reach space where they could jump before the missiles got there. They would take heavy losses. The Elysium commander had already screamed his panic through the wormhole com. The Crakista commander was of course outwardly calm, but after dealing with the creatures for some time, he could recognize the anxiety of an officer who was about to see most of her, the people she was responsible for, killed.
“We have firing solutions on the enemy force,” called out the tactical officer.
“Give them everything we’ve got.”
“Even the standard missiles, sir?”
Len knew what the man was asking. The standard missiles, launched from shipboard tubes, would not reach their targets in time to make much difference. But they would still give the enemy something to think about.
“Everything,” said the admiral, fixing the other officer’s eyes with his glare.
“Aye, sir.”
The young man really hadn’t deserved that show of anger toward him, but Len was frustrated, and he would be on edge until this battle was over. Over a hundred wormholes launched their missiles, a stream of more than three thousand traveling at point nine-five light, untraceable until they were very close to the targets. Thirty seconds later the next streams flew out. In five minutes there were more than thirty thousand weapons travelling at the enemy. In the meantime the fleet had launched hundreds of thousands of the standard missiles that would have to accelerate up to attack speed, giving away their locations the entire way.
“Fighters are going in,” reported the com officer.
Those would strike well before any launched missiles. And though the enemy would know they were coming, there was very little they could do about it. Five thousand inertialess fighters would go in first, almost half of them carrying the new inertial rebound weapons. Five minutes later the warp version would attack. The hope was that they would take out a considerable number of enemy ships. The reality could go either way.
“Republic outer fleet is reporting a strike by enemy intertialess fighters, sir,” called out a second com officer. “Several thousand of them. The admiral is reporting the loss of over two hundred ships, with almost a thousand damaged, including his flag.”
It had to happen eventually, thought Len. The enemy had been missing in past fights, unable to find the ships that had moved while they were in their bubbles. This time they had gotten lucky, and the Republic was paying the price.
“We will have new missiles ready to go in fifteen, sir.”
Which meant the other ends of their wormholes were in the process of being moved to new launch tubes, where the missiles were already up to speed. It would take over an hour for the weapons in the tubes they had just used to get up to launch velocity. Which meant it would be forty-five minutes before they had more missiles ready after the next launch.
“Yes,” cried out the tactical officer, pumping a fist in the air.
Len looked over to the plot, to see gaps in the enemy fleet appear as rebound weapons went off in close proximity to ships. It was a lot of ships, at least a couple of thousand, but too many of the rebound weapons had gone off on the perimeter, or missed entirely. If he had more of those weapons they might be able to take out thousands more of the ships. But he had no more for this battle.
The warp ships went in next. Their weapons were not as powerful, though they were a hell of a lot more accurate, and over a thousand more ships were hit, some killed, most damaged to the extent where they would not be able to keep up with the fleet
.
“Track their ships. I want to know as soon as possible if their commander decides to hold back his force to protect them.” Knowing the Cacas he would bet against it, and several minutes later he knew he would have won his bet.
* * *
“We lost over four hundred ships on that last strike, my Lord. One hundred and thirty-four vaporized, the rest damaged, most critically.”
The great admiral growled deep in his throat. Only the first wave of wormhole launched weapons had come in with warheads. His fleet had put out wide beams of laser energy after that first strike. It was a tactic that had worked in the past, putting enough heat into the missiles to breach their antimatter. The only problem was the next waves were without warheads. They would absorb quite a bit of laser energy, sometimes sufficient to render the missile body all but molten, but not enough to destroy the crystal matrix batteries or render the gabber units, which only needed to work for a couple of seconds, inoperable.
A two-hundred-ton missile striking at point nine-five light carried enough kinetic energy to more than make up for the lack of a one gigaton antimatter warhead. If they hit a twenty-five million ton superbattleship dead center they created a twenty-five-million-ton cloud of plasma. Striking the bow and stern would take off a good portion of the ship. Even a glancing blow along the hyperdrive array would cause significant damage to twenty percent or more of the ship.
Thirty seconds later the next wave came in, missiles going active in the last ten seconds, pulling fifteen thousand gravities as they attempted to adjust vectors onto targets. Some were hit by concentrated laser fire, others by close in projectile weapons. Some of those still did damage as they broke apart and those pieces hit the vessels. One missile hit as a spreading molten blob that still burned through armor to turn into expanding plasma within the ship, filling fifty percent of the internal spaces and incinerating everything in its path. Moments later antimatter breached and the ship turned into expanding plasma itself.
Exodus: Empires at War: Book 12: Time Strike Page 23
