by John F. Carr
Second Rank’s throat was tight with hope. “Forty-seven percent casualties on core force, Dictator; but factoring the addition of Hourglass North’s Remotely-Piloted Vehicles into TF Damaris’ total number of vessels…”
“…would be irrelevant, Second Rank,” he finished. “If TF Damaris is destroyed, Hourglass North’s RPVs will be taken over by Sauron-based controllers under System Defense First Rank Eglin. Whose Second Rank, Pell, against all odds, has survived to achieve command rank while still believing in the existence of an impregnable defense.”
He smiled at Second Rank. “And probably the Tooth Fairy, as well.” He returned his attention to the display. “Status Task Force Keegan.”
“Continuing only light harassment ops against Intruder Two’s perimeter,” Second Rank reported. “Enemy task force still shows only minimal refueling of elements…” she lowered her voice… “Non-secure signal intercepts imply Falkenberg still active in Ostian atmosphere, Dictator…thus far.”
Diettinger tracked his gaze slowly across the room to regard Second Rank, dropping his chin and raising an eyebrow as he did. “Well,” he answered in a low voice, “we simply must do something to save the gallant Captain Hawksley, if only for the sake of old friends who might be commanding critical task forces.”
Second Rank’s back stiffened, her embarrassment undiminished by the fact that Diettinger’s rebuke was too low for anyone else to hear.
“Send Keegan,” Diettinger continued. “Hourglass North at your disposal. TF Keegan to engage and destroy all elements, Intruder Two. Strongest emphasis: Casualties immaterial.’”
Second Rank’s gaze swept back and forth across the array, and at once, she understood: It was Carrhae. Ten Roman legions, far from home, cut off from reinforcement, surrounded by horse archers, locked shields in defensive formation against the Parthian horse archers that circled them for hours, releasing volley after volley of arrows into their midst. The Romans had seen it before; they knew they had only to wait out the enemy cavalry, maintaining dispersed formations to minimize the effects of the enemy army’s fire, and when its horses tired and it ran out of arrows—as they always did—the Roman allied cavalry would pin their flanks, holding them until the legions could engage, and the legions, as ever, would triumph.
But the young Parthian general knew his Romans, as surely as Diettinger knew his Imperials. First contacting the legions in the dry Mesopotamian flatlands, he deprived them of water; then, driving off the unreliable allied cavalry auxilia, he deprived them of mobility; and, with the deployment of a thousand camels bearing baskets of arrows to replenish his archers, he deprived them of hope.
Whenever the Romans dispersed their formations to lessen the impact of the Parthian volleys, Parthian heavy cavalry, armored lancers, charged the legions’ ranks. The only defense against such a massed cavalry attack was to close ranks and lock shields, which concentrated the Roman infantry and made it once again vulnerable to the hail of arrows from the Parthian horse archers. Heat, thirst and the erosion of morale that followed constant attack by an enemy with which the legions could not come to grips, all took their toll. It had taken over four hundred years, but a means had at last been devised to defeat the mightiest organization of men under arms in history.
But at Carrhae, Second Rank caught herself, the Romans surrendered; and Diettinger has made it clear he does not believe the Imperials will do that, here…which meant that the Sauron System must be the grave of the Imperial Fleet, if its people were to survive.
It scarcely mattered. Like every Sauron, like every human since the dawn of intelligence, the moment of the kill flooded Second Rank with emotions beyond number. It was more than enough to distract her from her observation of Cyborg Rank Köln, whose own glittering grey eyes left the immersion display to sweep across the bridge, flicker briefly over Second Rank, then Diettinger, then back to his own duty station.
His scrutiny had taken less than two seconds; more than enough time to gauge the distance between himself, Second Rank’s concealed weapon and the Dictator, as well as to calculate how long it would take to reach each of them in turn.
There was more than enough time for that, too…
III
Doubtless there were many in the Imperial force of Intruder Two who felt that their portion of the battle, though frustrating, must be close to an end. Sauron Task Force Keegan had shown such lack of commitment in its attacks since breaking off that it could only be due to lack of fuel, morale, ordnance and surviving crew.
If the raiders—or, as all were now sure, only one raider—hiding in Ostia was making it difficult for the Imperial force to refuel, then surely the Sauron force at this side of the system could be faring no better. At which moment, the blackness of space between Intruder Two and the asteroid belt was filled with hundreds of glittering lights, the distinctive flares of spacecraft engines in vacuum.
TF Keegan leapt from the asteroid field, a pouncing tiger; patient for days, its hunger would wait no longer. TF Keegan had been mauled, to be sure; her original complement of thirty-seven vessels now numbered only twenty-one, but all had been refueled and rearmed from the hidden supply caches guarded by the Banshee, the Ire of Eire and the dozen other ships left hiding in the asteroid field when Falkenberg had broken off to play raider in Ostia’s atmosphere.
These too were now placed under Dannevar’s flag, raising TF Keegan’s twenty-one to thirty-three, which in turn were now reinforced by over one hundred of the same Dragon-class defense vessels that had been working such grief upon Intruder One.
Lacking Alderson Drives, Dragons were able to commit far more of their displacement to weaponry and maneuvering engines; lacking living crew, remotely controlled by weapons rankers throughout TF Keegan’s elements, they could use both assets to excess, and this they did now.
Intruder Two began to turn more and more of its flanking ships to meet the onslaught, TF Keegan closed remorselessly, and the battle began to resemble a general melee.
Diettinger alerted his Signals Rank. “Send First Rank Eglin: Fire at will.”
The defense platforms scattered throughout the asteroid belt were concentrated at those portions of the belt’s orbit which corresponded to the general approach routes toward Sauron from the system’s Alderson Points. For the last six weeks, all of the defensive asteroid platforms under Eglin had been slowly shifted with thruster packages to concentrate their fields of fire in line with Diettinger’s overall plan.
At a signal from Eglin, those fields were now flooded with hundreds of missiles, each bearing dozens of multiple seeker warheads, comprising every last vestige of fissionable material the Saurons had been capable of producing. There was not one thermonuclear weapon left on the Homeworld; a fact which would have gladdened the heart of every Breedmaster, but for the circumstances which brought it about.
Millions of megatons raced toward the ships of Intruder One, still clawing its way out of the wreckage of its ships in the line of mesons between Barlowe and Freas. Like Viking raiders clambering over walls only to see rank upon rank of archers, Intruder One’s remaining ships stepped into death. The missiles detonating all around them were joined by TF Damaris and its own cat’s-paw fleet, the Dragons of Hourglass North.
Halfway across the system, Intruder Two was amazing its Sauron attackers simply by remaining intact. Now outnumbered and outgunned, the Imperials would not be outfought, and while the heavily reinforced TF Keegan, its supporting Dragons, and wave after wave of asteroid-launched missiles steadily decimated its ranks, Intruder Two mounted savage counterattacks and simply refused to die.
IV
“Christ, Skipper,” Willoughby breathed at the sight in the display. Falkenberg had climbed out of Ostia’s atmosphere to chance an attempt at gauging the progress of the battle. With the reduction of interference from Ostia’s ionosphere, the immersion display had abruptly conjured a vision of an inferno.
Hawksley nodded. “The Saurons are going to win this one, all right,” he
agreed, “But by God, they aren’t going to enjoy it.”
“Incoming signal from the Fomoria,” the commo officer called out.
“Put it through,” Hawksley spun himself around a handhold; Falkenberg was on minimal thrust, so down to microgravity and giving the crew a respite from the punishing maneuvering of the past few days. He glided to the readout panel and keyed in his command code, reading the message.
“Mister Willoughby,” Hawksley called out as he cleared the panel, swinging his own archaic hooded viewscreen into position before him.
“Captain?”
“Take a look at that Sauron computer game they plugged into my bridge, and tell me what you see at…” he keyed his viewscreen controls and read: “Sector one-two-seven mark zero-niner-eight; over at Intruder Three.”
Unlike his commander, Willoughby liked the Sauron immersion display; of course, he had always liked computer games, too. “Display; enhance detail, Intruder Three.” Willoughby watched as the display kicked up the resolution of the requested area in preset powers of ten. “Stop…” he was silent for a moment as he read the figures. “Skipper…”
“They’re starting to burn thrusters, aren’t they?”
“Yes they are.”
“Yeah,” Hawksley breathed, then looked up at nothing in particular. “Shit,” he hissed, moving back to his acceleration couch and strapping himself in as he issued commands: “Commo, send Fomoria, ‘Signal acknowledged, moving to intercept.’ Mister Willoughby, get us over there with all speed.”
“Aye, aye, Skipper. All hands, six-G maneuvers in thirty seconds. Helm,” Willoughby ordered, “Lay on a six-G intercept with the Intruder Three element and initiate at twenty seconds from my mark…Mark.”
“Six-G intercept, aye,” the helmsman acknowledged while his second repeated the warning to Falkenberg’s crew to get to their acceleration couches; anybody not in one in twenty-one seconds was unlikely to get into it before blacking out in twenty-three.
Willoughby moved over to Hawksley’s side and asked in a low voice: “We going in, Skipper?”
Hawksley shook his head. “Just a quick pass-through; Diettinger wants to get an idea of which Imperial group they’re going to try to rescue; although if we can—uhh!” The Falkenberg’s engines roared into life and the privateer’s leap wrenched Hawksley’s words from his tongue—“… can break up their…formation…that’d be…nice, as well.”
Willoughby nodded; scarcely a lowering of the eyes at six-Gravities’ acceleration. Well, he consoled himself, we shouldn’t have to hold this speed for long. Six-Gs would take them across the roughly 400 million kilometers to intercept in less than thirty hours, if they didn’t turn at midpoint to slow down—and as Falkenberg would be outnumbered one hundred and forty to one by the ships of Intruder Three, Willoughby was very sure they would not.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Diettinger watched as the display icons representing Intruder Three began, perceptibly, to move. At the moment, the enemy vector was detected as being a constant one-G acceleration directly for Sauron, a maneuver which would steadily diminish their chances of coming to the relief of Intruders One or Two, and bring them directly into contact with Diettinger’s own Task Force.
Which wouldn’t be the worst thing they could do, he reflected. Intruder Three held one hundred and forty fast ships, while TF Fomoria topped out at fifty slower, but much more powerful platforms. A few dozen Dragons whose maneuvers had carried them away from their respective control groups were now in high-speed orbits around Landyn’s Star, creating a small reserve for TF Fomoria, but their fuel and ordnance would be essentially spent. They could be regarded as bonus skirmishers, at best. The Homeworld itself bristled with planetary defense stations which would provide adequate support to his command if the Imperials maintained their course to intercept.
“Signal intercept, Dictator.”
“Speak.”
“Message scanning lasers interfacing all elements of Intruder Three, but…” the communications ranker frowned. “None between Intruder Three and other Imperial forces.”
“Your point?”
“Dictator, Intruders One and Two have maintained contact throughout the engagement, but no one has been, or is currently, talking to Intruder Three.” The Communications Ranker was at a loss to explain the data, but in that moment, something passed between him and Diettinger that told them both there was something crucially important about the fact.
“Do you have any message fragments?” Diettinger asked, rising from his command couch and joining Communications at his station next to Cyborg Rank Köln. Second Rank turned uneasily in her own seat, apparently trying to maintain her view of the display on the other side of him.
Communications heaved a sigh. “Only that, Dictator. All messages coded and no progress on it yet with the cryptography programs. In addition, it is different from the codes being used to communicate between Intruders One and Two; those codes are modifications of older encrypts, relatively familiar, decipherable with some difficulty. But we are at least able to eavesdrop on those communications; whatever the ships of Intruder Three are telling one another, we cannot know.”
Second Rank frowned. “Why would they upgrade one fleet element to this new code and not the others?”
Diettinger knew the question had been addressed to him, but instead of answering immediately, he turned to the command station behind him. “Cyborg Rank Köln. What is your assessment of this information?”
Köln answered immediately, as much a function of lightning Cyborg reactions as to show that he had been eavesdropping all along, himself. “Outdated Imperial tactics; they believe that upgrading one system to a secure code confers some measurable advantage in terms of reserve tactical surprise, when, statistically, our ability to monitor two-thirds of their force’s communications,”—Köln lifted his head briefly to indicate the display—“provides us with the results we see before us.”
Diettinger nodded, a grim amusement confined to his remaining eye. “Yes, statistically.” He began to enhance the display sector depicting Intruder Three. “Or, perhaps, because the Imperials want us to listen to Intruders One and Two and rely on our knowledge of them to convince us that—statistically—our then assured guaranteed victory over them will leave us sufficient surviving forces to destroy Intruder Three, as well.”
The detail enhancement on Intruder Three stopped when the Imperial fleet element was a glittering array of ship icons, headings and data. Originally arrayed as a sphere, now there was discernible shifting of vessels into a new formation, a lozenge shape which continued to elongate over the minutes of observation by the Fomoria’s bridge crew.
Ships at the rear maintained constant thrust, while those at the van increased speed slightly to draw ahead, maneuvering to close ranks. Within an hour, the formation had become a tight cylinder, roughly six ships around and twenty long, each vessel separated by a scant half million kilometers, with a core of the twenty heaviest vessels traveling in-line down the center of the “tube.”
“I’ve never seen that formation,” Second Rank wondered aloud. “It would allow a rapid break-off; splitting down the long axis to engage both our element and that of TF Damaris…”
Diettinger granted the notion a half-nod. “And mask their intentions until absolutely necessary. Minimal vectoring would bring the formation in line with Landyn’s gravity well; that would allow—” He stopped, frowned, and forgetting he could order enhancement of any aspect of the immersion display, left his acceleration couch and stepped directly into the simulacrum to confirm what he saw. “Sensors.”
“Dictator.”
“Confirm telemetry this image.”
The Sensor Ranker, charged with monitoring the immersion display computers and the accuracy of their projections, double-checked his station readout. “Display accuracy confirmed, Dictator.”
Diettinger swung back into his couch and strapped himself in. “Helm, all speed to intercept. Cyborg Rank Köln, raise
alert status on all EVA Commando units to Level One. Communications, get me the Falkenberg.”
“Falkenberg laser signal incoming, Dictator, seven minute lag time”
“Put it through.”
Hawksley’s image appeared in another sector of the immersion display; the Burgess privateer’s face sagged with the G-forces of Falkenberg’s acceleration.
“Flag, this is Falkenberg, on intercept with Intruder Three; by the time you get this signal, you’ll probably know what we know. Intruder Three is accelerating toward Sauron in a cylindrical formation. As of this message the entire Imperial element has begun a constant one-half-gravity-per-hour acceleration. As vessels comprising enemy element are among the fastest in Imperial service, we assume they will exceed maximum survivable acceleration of ten-Gs in approximately fourteen hours. We have signaled same data to the Coalition vessels Banshee and Ire of Eire, these being the fastest capital ships in our sector.
“We are increasing burn to six gravities in an attempt to engage Intruder Three before intercept, but our effectiveness will be greatly reduced after such extended periods at high-G thrust. Request you signal TF Damaris to detach some elements to aid us until you can arrive with TF Fomoria. Falkenberg out.”
“Intercept…” Second Rank breathed; she started abruptly, her fingers flying over her console. The immersion display brightened as it extrapolated Intruder Three’s path, drawing its brilliant green line down the center of the cylindrical formation, through the orbits of Barlowe, Freas and Ostia, just skirting the “upper” side of the asteroid belt, narrowly missing Sauron’s moon of Poictesme…
… and impacting Sauron, beginning with the main continent of Lebensraum.
“Second Rank,” Diettinger’s voice cut through her horror, “Extrapolate.”
Althene only nodded, all the while entering commands into her console. The immersion display computers began pouring out data: over the course of the impacts, the Homeworld’s own rotation would expose seventy percent of its surface to the steady flow of one hundred and forty capital spacecraft massing over eighty-thousand tonnes each, impacting the surface at speeds well in excess of fifteen hundred kilometers per second…
