The Long-Range War

by Christopher Nuttall

  ... And she had to take it too.

  ***

  “The enemy fleet is deploying now, Captain,” Commander Wiseman said. “It won’t be long before they go into FTL.”

  Sally nodded. The enemy were playing it carefully, even though there was no indication that they’d detected her ships. Whoever was in charge on the other side was clearly feeling cautious. But they’d have to move sooner or later, if only to keep her reinforcements from jumping through the other gravity point. The chance to fight a gravity point defence of their own had to be tempting.

  Although we might have cured them of that impulse, if they saw the assault pods at work, she thought, wryly. And we probably taught them how to build assault pods of their own too.

  The enemy icons glided forward, their sensors sweeping through space. There were a lot of starships, enough ships to pose a very real threat to hundreds of advanced worlds. It was terrifying to realise that they were nothing more than a tiny fragment of the enemy fleet, which was itself a small proportion of the fleets the Tokomak could deploy. She wondered, grimly, just how many of those ancient ships could really be manned, updated and sent to the front. Intelligence had produced a number of possible scenarios, ranging from suggestions that the enemy could deploy all those ships, given time, or that only a small percentage could actually be put back into service. The ships themselves wouldn’t have decayed, of course, but the crews were another matter. It was hard enough to crew the Solar Union’s fleet. The Tokomak would need millions of trained personal to crew theirs.

  She put the thought aside for later contemplation and considered the situation. There was nothing stopping the enemy from dropping into FTL at any moment and racing to the other gravity point. She had a feeling that whoever was in command would want to keep his ships under tight control, but they’d be idiots to throw away the chance to seize the gravity point before human ships started popping out of it. Sally had only a small window of opportunity to hit the enemy ships, but it would only be open while her squadron was too close to the remainder of the enemy fleet for comfort. They were still gliding out of the gravity point at a terrifying rate.

  “We’ll open fire when they reach Point Omega, unless they see us first,” she said, looking at the tactical officer’s back. “If they do see us, fire at once. Don’t wait for orders.”

  “Aye, Captain,” the tactical officer said.

  Sally felt the tension start to rise as the enemy ships drew closer. Her cruisers were faster than anything the Tokomak could put into space, at least as far as they knew, but the range was closing rapidly. The Tokomak would get at least one shot at her ships, once they knew they were there. And while she had a lot of faith in her point defence, she also knew the Tokomak would be firing thousands of missiles. They might break through her defences by sheer weight of numbers.

  And if they see us, they’ll get the first shot, she thought. It could get very bad.

  “They’ll be at Point Omega in two minutes,” Commander Wiseman said. “Captain?”

  “Fire as soon as they reach Point Omega,” Sally ordered. “And then bring up our shields and drives.”

  She braced herself as the final seconds ticked down to zero. The enemy ships were sweeping space thoroughly, with an intensity she had to admire, but - so far - the cloaking devices were holding. They’d get one free shot, assuming the enemy hadn't seen them already and was playing dumb while the range closed. There was too much room for second-guessing herself as the fleet reached Point Omega ...

  “Firing,” the tactical officer said.

  Freeman shuddered, violently, as she flushed her external racks, followed rapidly by her internal tubes. Sally smiled, coldly, as the enemy ships appeared to flinch. It was an illusion, she knew from bitter experience, but one she clung to anyway. The enemy ships would have seen the missiles come out of nowhere. She leaned forward, hungrily, as the enemy ships altered course slightly, bringing up their datanets. Did they have time to spin up their stardrives and jump into FTL?

  No, she thought, as the enemy ships spat missiles back at her formation. They would have jumped into FTL if they could, rather than wasting time trying to destroy her ships. They don’t have time.

  She allowed herself a cold smile as the missiles plunged into the enemy datanet. The Tokomak had clearly been improving their defences, but they weren’t ready for the latest generation of penetrator warheads. A handful were wiped out, blasted by the enemy point defence, but the remainder struck home. Antimatter explosions ripped through shields and destroyed ships, leaving the enemy formation in disarray. It looked as if they could be wiped out at minimal cost ...

  “Captain, we can take them,” the tactical officer said. The enemy missiles were already entering Freeman’s point defence datanet. “We can finish them off and then ...”

  “No,” Sally said. She understood the impulse. She even shared the impulse. But their orders were clear. And she understood the logic behind them too. They simply didn’t have the firepower to do more than harass the enemy fleet. “Pull us back; drop into FTL as planned once we’re clear.”

  “Aye, Captain,” the tactical officer said.

  Sally nodded shortly, watching as the enemy missiles sliced into her point defence network, trying to push their way through. The enemy had definitely been caught by surprise or they would have fired more missiles, although they were trying to make up for that now. It didn't look as though they’d managed to make any significant improvements in their warheads and penetrator aids, certainly nothing better than what had already been seen ...

  “Dropping into FTL now,” the helmsman said. The display blurred, then froze. “Setting course for Point Theta.”

  Sally nodded. “Tactical? Your analysis?”

  “We caught them by surprise,” the tactical officer said, studying his console. “They would have fired more missiles at us if they’d realised we were there. That said, their missiles did show a certain degree of improvement.”

  “Really.” Sally’s eyes narrowed. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, Captain,” the tactical officer said. “They didn’t fire enough missiles to make it evident, but there was some additional improvement. Their penetrator aids were actually a generation in advance of those we saw during the Battle of Apsidal. I think the same is true of their warheads, although we didn’t really get a good look at them. And if these aren’t their front-line forces ...”

  Sally frowned. The Tokomak wouldn't consider their own people to be expendable, would they? She doubted that any government, human or alien, could survive such an attitude, not when its angry servants commanded starships, missiles and beam arrays. But if they were giving advanced - or at least improved - weapons to their servants, what might their own ships be carrying? There was no way to know.

  “Add it to the report,” she ordered, finally. “We’ll send it to the courier boat once we’re out of FTL, then we can return to the attack.”

  And see what else they throw at us, she added, in the privacy of her own mind. And if we get a look at their advanced weapons now, they won’t be a surprise when the fleet encounters them.

  Chapter Eighteen

  There was surprisingly little debris near the gravity point itself.

  Or perhaps, Neola told herself as her flagship moved back into normal space, it wasn’t that surprising at all. The layers upon layers of mines the humans had laid to trap her fleet had taken out dozens of ships, some of which had been armed with antimatter weapons. They’d been vaporised by the blasts, but their deaths had served a purpose. The human defences had been cleared with minimal cost. She’d expected far worse.

  “Get me a status update,” she snapped, glowering at her aide. She really was going to have to replace him before the big battle. Her staff would have to check the lists of up-and-coming young officers and see if there was one who could think outside the box. “Where are the humans?”

  “Slipping in and out of cloak,” the aide reported, as the display rapidly upd
ated. “They’re engaging us briefly, then retreating back into cloak and vanishing. Long-range sensors insist that there are hundreds of human ships in the system.”

  “Sensor ghosts,” Neola said, dismissively. If there had been hundreds of human ships in the system, they’d have inflicted a great deal more damage before they were finally forced to retreat. They certainly didn't gain anything from hiding in cloak when they had the opportunity to weaken her flanks. “There won’t be more than a couple of dozen at most.”

  She turned her attention to the display. GS-3532 was useless - and more useless to the humans than her. They couldn’t afford to get a sizable number of their ships cut off from the remainder of the Apsidal Chain, not unless she’d vastly underestimated their numbers. The handful of ships that were sniping at her might have orders to go into cloak when she finally secured the system and then attack her supply lines, but even that would be risky. Battles had been won or lost before on the presence or absence of a single ship. Would the humans take the chance?

  “Concentrate four squadrons of superdreadnaughts,” she ordered, shortly. The humans had led her subordinates by the nose - she gave them that much credit - but the game was about to come to a crashing halt. “They are to proceed into FTL and secure the Mokpo Point. The remainder of the fleet will follow when ready.”

  The aide hurried away to carry out her orders. Neola scowled at his retreating back, then started to consider her next move. She’d known about the problems with using the gravity points for such a large fleet before, of course, and there was no way to avoid them, but the sheer scale of the problems was magnified when the fleet was under fire. She really should have secured the second gravity point immediately - it was only minutes away in FTL - yet she hadn't had the mobile firepower on hand. It wouldn’t surprise her if the humans fired their wretched missile pods through the gravity point when her squadrons arrived, catching them by surprise. She had to admit the cursed devices were a neat solution to the problem of assaulting a defended gravity point.

  And we never came up with the idea for ourselves, she thought, irritated. In hindsight, it was more of a cultural blindspot than a technological problem. The very concept of a single-use jump drive seemed wrong, although she could see some advantages. Her engineers were already working on a design that could be put into production relatively quickly. She might not be able to use them on this campaign, but the next ... anyone who challenged her people was in for a nasty surprise. And everyone else will be coming up with their own versions too, now they know it can be done.

  Neola dismissed the thought as the superdreadnaughts jumped into FTL, speeding across the system towards the second gravity point. She tensed, half-expecting a gravity well to appear out of nowhere to yank the superdreadnaughts out of FTL, but nothing happened. She’d drilled her crews to expect to have to fight at any moment, even though everyone had known that a starship in FTL was untouchable ... right up until the moment she’d flown her first fleet into an utterly inconceivable trap. It had never crossed her mind that they might be yanked back into normal space without even a second’s warning.

  They showed us what could be done, she reminded herself. And we have profited from the experience.

  “The superdreadnaughts have reached their target,” her aide told her. “And they’ve returned to normal space.”

  “And now they’re out of contact,” Neola said, tightly. She’d ordered her commanders to back off if they ran into overwhelming force, but she knew that not all of them would obey orders. They’d grown up in a universe where they were the overwhelming force. Some of them were still in denial. “Bring the remainder of the fleet through the gravity point, then we will proceed to Mokpo.”

  “As you command, Your Excellency.”

  ***

  Sally rubbed the sweat from her forehead as the enemy superdreadnaughts dropped out of FTL, right on the edge of the danger zone. The gravity tides around a gravity point could be dangerously unpredictable and very few spacers would risk coming out of FTL too close to the point. She was mildly impressed that the Tokomak had taken the risk. They were normally so safety conscious that they never left home without a map, a compass and a GPS navigator.

  And they imposed that view on the rest of the Galactics, she reminded herself. God, the laughter when the penny had finally dropped and the Solar Union had realised why the Galactics were so blind to the potentials of their technology. They put so many limitations on their technology for so long that they came to be seen as natural laws.

  “Fire,” she ordered, quietly.

  The cruiser shuddered as she emptied her missile tubes, launching a devastating salvo towards the enemy ships. Her consorts followed, the missiles linking together into a coordinated swarm as they approached their targets. The enemy ships returned fire immediately, trying to overwhelm her point defence by sheer weight of numbers even as they brought up their own point defence. Sally wanted to retreat at once - there were so many missiles coming at her ships that some of them were bound to strike home - but she wanted to see the superdreadnaughts in action. The largest ships the Tokomak had produced, they were normally kept in reserve. It said something about how seriously the Tokomak took the human race, she supposed, that they’d dispatched hundreds of superdreadnaughts to the front.

  Her eyes narrowed as the superdreadnaughts launched another massive salvo. That was quick, uncomfortably quick. They didn’t seem to mount external racks, as far as her sensors could tell, but they didn’t seem to need them. There was a professionalism about their conduct that was almost human. She had the nasty feeling that, for the first time, humanity was facing the best the Tokomak could produce.

  “Our missiles are entering engagement range,” Commander Wiseman said, quietly. “The enemy point defence is opening fire.”

  Sally nodded, curtly. The enemy point defence didn’t seem to be up to human standards, but the superdreadnaughts were putting out so much firepower that it hardly mattered. They weren’t making any attempt, as far as she could tell, to figure out the difference between real missiles and sensor ghosts. The enemy ships had enough point defence firepower to engage both sets of targets. And she had to admit it was working. Her missiles were amongst the most advanced in the known universe, but the enemy fleet was defending itself rather well.

  And their shields are tough too, she noted, as a handful of her missiles slammed home. One superdreadnaught exploded into a ball of plasma, another shuddered and fell out of formation, but the remainder stood up to the antimatter blasts and kept advancing on the gravity point. And whoever’s in command of the formation didn’t lose sight of what their real objective is.

  The enemy squadron belched yet another salvo of missiles, an instant before the first salvo entered point defence range. Sally braced herself as her ships opened fire, slicing dozens - hundreds - of enemy missiles out of space, yet barely making a dent in the sheer weight of enemy fire. A handful of missiles appeared to be modified penetrator aids; others appeared to be completely focused on ECM, blasting out everything from basic radio jamming to EMP pulses. She puzzled over it for a moment, then realised the truth. The Tokomak were attempting to destroy her datanet. They clearly hadn’t realised it was impossible.

  Yet, Sally reminded herself. She had to admit it was a logical approach. The Tokomak knew that humanity’s datanets were better - humanity’s RIs were far more capable than anything the Tokomak had produced - and weakening them made sound sense. They might come up with something new, given time.

  “The enemy missiles are nuclear-tipped,” the tactical officer reported, as the swarm entered terminal attack range. “But there are a lot of them.”

  Sally smiled, despite herself. Clearly, the Tokomak were still safety conscious. Nuclear warheads were deadly on a planet’s surface, although she’d heard stories of wars where they’d been used in vast numbers, but in space ... well, they weren’t firecrackers, but they weren’t antimatter warheads either. Her ships had a slightly better chance of
survival against enemy superdreadnaughts if the latter weren’t allowed to carry antimatter warheads. Not, she supposed, that it mattered that much. The sheer number of missiles the enemy ships were firing was more than enough to make up for their deficiencies.

  “Comms, signal the courier boats,” she ordered. “Copy our last records to them, then tell them to jump out now. The Amethyst Contingency is now in effect.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Lieutenant Lafarge said.

  Sally nodded. “Order the fleet to pull back and drop into FTL,” she added. “It’s time to take our leave.”

  She leaned back in her chair as Freeman dropped into FTL, not a moment too soon. The enemy would be frustrated at having wasted so much ammunition, she supposed, although if they had a fleet train and support base comparable to Admiral Stuart’s they could probably recover and refurbish most of those missiles. Either they hadn’t realised that her ships had also been on the edge of the danger zone or they simply hadn’t cared. Probably the latter, she decided. They’d had to drive her away before her second salvo, programmed with all the intelligence gained from the first, started to tear into their defences. It was a shame her ships hadn't had the firepower to take advantage of what they’d learned.