“Send a signal to command,” said Suttler, eyes wide. “We have identified the enemy, and are engaging,” he said, his voice rising to a shout. “For the Empire.”
* * *
“Admiral Suttler is reporting that they have identified the enemy platforms.”
Platforms. Not ships, thought Sean, pulling up the latest tactical feed from the stealth/attack force.
“Shit.” What he saw were objects that had been there all along. The anti-matter satellites. Hidden in plain sight. And no one had noticed them, except in passing.
“Are they able to engage?”
“They are engaging, your Majesty,” said McCullom, her image appearing in a holo. “The problem now is they are no longer in stealth, and the platforms appear to have the same defensive firepower as battleships.”
The Empire was struck wordless for a moment. Stealth ships had no business going head to head with battleships. But if they were there they might not have a choice. And they also might not be enough.
“Can we get a launch from any of our other forces in on those ships? Platforms? Whatever the hell they are. In time to stop them.”
“No, sir. The closest launch would come from Admiral Mei’s scout force, and it would reach in one hour and twenty minutes at best.”
“Have them launch anyway. We can’t see the future, and they might get there in time if something else interferes with the event.”
“Sounds good to me, your Majesty,” said McCullom with a look that told her monarch that she had been about to order that anyway.
If they could get them in there in time, they might take out the platforms before they could complete the action. Which brought another thought. When would that action reach the point of no return. He pulled up the data they had, mostly second hand reports with a few long range observations. Besides that there was the theory, poorly developed. Which didn’t give any indication as to what would happen if the action was interrupted in the late stages. Or even in the mid stages. If it was stopped at the point where there were only major flares rising above the star would it settle down? Or at that point would it keep building on itself? They didn’t know, though they might find out in an hour or so. At the cost of too many lives.
“Any words for Admiral Suttler?”
“No, Sondra. The man knows what he needs to do, and there’s nothing I can say that would help. Just make sure that he’s tapped into our data feed. I don’t want him to fail for lack of information.”
No, he would fail, if he did, because no one in higher command, the Emperor included, had seen the obvious, staring them right in the face.
* * *
“Missiles away, ma’am,” called out the tactical officer, voice pitching high from excitement and fear. The tension was so thick in the air that it would deflect a particle beam, and it would only get worse by the moment.
Ninety capital ship missiles had appeared briefly on the plot before disppearing, moving at point nine five light, the maximum velocity for a wormhole launch. Thirty seconds later and ninety more wormhole launched capital ship missiles were away, followed by one more launch, until two hundred and seventy weapons were in space. All they had been ordered to release. If they took out even half of the enemy platforms it was thought that the event couldn’t propagate further. If it had been up to her she would have launched another volley, maybe two.
How in the hell did we miss it? thought Mei, mentally beating herself. The Cacas had pulled one over on the Empire. That hadn’t happened very often, but when it did, it was always something epic. Well, this was epic alright. Looking back in hindsight, it would have been better for Suttler to go in and just fire up everything in sight. If something else appeared he could have engaged them with another launch, and there would have been no possible unseen threats.
“We’re ready to launch, ma’am,” called out another voice, coming over the com speaker system. “Any last minute orders.”
“Just do whatever you can, Captain Snyder” said Mei, looking up at the ceiling of the room as if that would reveal the owner of the voice. “And be careful.”
She wasn’t sure she would have ordered the deployment of the Alcubiere drive fighters, or warp fighters as they were known. They didn’t perform to the top specifications around gravity wells or in particle dense space. As near to that star as they would be going there was both. Their warp bubbles would be weakened by the well, reducing them to only a bit above light speed. Possibly below it. And the particle soup, bound to thinken as flares reached the star, would be pounding on those bubbles. But this one wasn’t her call, and the crews had seemed to be quick enough to get on board with the mission. Command was throwing everything they could at the problem and hoping something would work. They weren’t panicking, yet, but that might be the next reaction when nothing worked.
Just keep the Fleet alive, she thought, as she watched the ships engage their drives on the plot and speed off. Interupt those bastards at the very least, and give us time to come with something else.
“We’re picking up strong hyper emissions near the star, ma’am,” said the sensor officer, near panic in her voice showing that she understood the ramifications of that fact.
A representation of the star appeared in the central holo, taking the place of the system plot. Twelve point sources, stationed equidistant from the star. And one stronger source, right at the core, the combination of the transmissions from the ships. Normally those ships would be moving toward the portals they were generating, which in a gravity well would not be stable enough to transit. The platforms were stationary, and no one was trying to transit. But the space in the core was suddenly a very strange place, its fabric stretched and compressed, the nuclear furnace moving with it. Strengthening the reactions, then damping them for an instant before strengthening them again. The reactions would continue to strengthen, until pressure reached the point where an enormous blast worked its way out of the star and blew off the outer layer. A nova increased ten thousand fold, enough to fry everything in the system that wasn’t shielded, and anything even with a shield that was still in the range of destruction. Something like both of the human forces still driving in.
* * *
“Admiral. The platforms near the star have engaged, whatever that means,” said the com officer, looking back at Low Admiral Grassafa with an expression of confusion.
Well, I’m not about to enlighten him. Like most of the crew, the com officer had no idea what was really going on here. While he trusted his crews, more or less, he didn’t want to risk a revolt from males who found out they had been sent uninformed on a suicide mission. Most likely they would simply accept the fact, conditioned as they were to obedience. He wasn’t willing to bet on it, though, not with stories coming back of rebellion on the home world.
“They’re also reporting that they are under attack from human ships. So far they are fighting them off.”
“How in the hell did that happen?” roared the admiral, stalking over to the com station. Possibilities were already swirling through his mind. The most likely was that a squadron of their stealth ships had cruised by on a ballistic trajectory. None of his ships would have been able to pick them up, unless they were right on top of them, and the humans would have done everythihng they could to prevent that from happening.
“Order our warp fighters to vector toward the star and assist,” he ordered, looking into the eyes of the com officer.
That male still looked confused, but there was also a glimmer of fear there, as if the officer was starting to figure it out. But he got to his board and started to send the signals, first to the fighter squadron, ordering them into action, then to the platforms, letting them know that help was coming.
“We just picked up some graviton emissions from minor course changes from several hundred missiles, my Lord,” called out the tactical officer. “We have enemy missiles on the way, heading toward the star.”
That was also new tech, just developed by some of the alien sla
ve scientists. An increase in sensitivity of the graviton detection systems, and the use of several ships to form a long baseline sensor net. They needed to be pointed in the proper direction, of course, easy in this case since the enemy scout force was plain for everyone to see. They were still hard to detect unless all of the variables were just so, and the admiral hadn’t been sure it would work. He was pleasantly surprised that it was so.
“Launch time on target. Let’s put up a barrier for them to run through. And get our warp fighters out there for intercept.”
The tac officer gave a head motion of agreement, then got to work, giving the com officer a nod as that male also got to work. The barrier of submunitions they would lay might not stop all the missiles, but it would greatly degrade that missile wave. The warp fighters could then intercept those that got through, coming out of warp in positions where they would get a quick particle beam shot and blow a missile out of space. Then going back into warp and honing in on the next weapon. Now, if nothing else happened, he thought the situation well in hand.
Why am I doing so much to make this plan work? he thought, sinking back in his chair, feeling the fatigue that conflicting strong emotions were bringing on. He had his orders, but his orders asked him to commit what amounted to a crime, both against the Gods and the people of this system.
“We have human warp fighters spinning up their drives, my Lord,” said the sensor officer. “Give me a second to determine their vector.”
“We know where they’re going,” said the admiral. Unlike his people, the humans knew what was going on, and were sending what they had to stop it. “Order the warp fighters to vector in on those fighters after they hit the missiles.”
“The enemy fighters will be past them before they can finish the missile intercept, my Lord.”
The admiral sat and thought for a moment, his face held in his two upper hands. Too much was going on at once. If he had a real battle force he would have more options. But he had what he had.
“Order the warp fighters to hit the enemy fighters first. Then go after the missiles.” He looked over at the tac officer, who was already running numbers on his board. “Possible?”
“Barely, my Lord. And we don’t know how many fighters we’ll have left after the intercept.”
Which means possibly none of them. The humans fighters were better than his, and even outnumbering them two to one he would only have the one pass to hit them before they were past and his craft wouldn’t be able to catch them from behind.
“Send out the orders,” he said, shaking his head in the comfort of his hands.
Maybe we’ll fail, he mused, almost a hopeful thought. Would the Gods forgive him if the action he was attempted was a failure. Or would they look at intentions, and judge him from those? Not a comforting thought.
* * *
“Okay. Everyone stay in tight and follow my lead.”
Captain Wilma Snyder was already having doubts about this run. She was a veteran warp fighter pilot, which meant she had been in them for almost a year. That was longer than ninety-nine percent of her people, most of whom had only just come out of training, with possibly a mission or two under their belts. Most often not that much.
She didn’t doubt them and their lack of experience that much, since every one of the twenty-four ships under her command, much fewer than the wing she was used to commanding, had an experienced officer in charge. What she doubted was the environment they were about to operate in.
Warp fighters, using Alcubierre drive to actually shorten the space in front of the ship while simultaneously lengthening it behind, depended on space that was as still and calm as possible. Space that was roiling, changing its own length and breadth from moment to moment, made the normally smooth ride quite bumpy. To the point where the ride could abruptly end with the ship ejected out into normal space with damage to its systems. That could be caused by gravity wells, with the interference increasing geometrically with the strength of the field. Asteroids, even the larger, were so minor that it almost took a collision to have an effect. Moons could cause problems out to a thousand kilometers, depending on their mass. Rocky planets, several thousand kilometers. Gas giants could roil space out to tens of thousands of kilometers. Stars were a major problem. A G class like the one in this system could affect space out to several million kilometers, making that region unnavigable, with varying effects out to ten million kilometers or more.
Just as bad was the particle density that close to a star. In the outer system, even close to a planet, particle density was very sparse. Particles hitting the bubble were ripped into their constituent particles and thrown back into space. But it wasn’t a one way interaction, and energy was drained from the warp field, proportional to the force required to rip the particle apart and move it at relativistic velocities. Not a problem with the density of particles in outer system space. Near a star, where particle density was high, it could become a major problem. And if the star was ejecting flares? It could quickly turn into a disaster.
No choice, thought Wilma as she watched the pilot push them up to twenty lights, their limit. An entire battle force was at risk of destruction, and command didn’t have time to worry about the safety of twenty-four small craft and under three hundred people.
“The admiral is reporting a missile launch from the enemy,” said the Klassekian com tech, her four eyes looking over at the captain. “They appear to be on a course to intercept our missiles.”
“Most probably to put up a submunition barrier between the missiles and the star,” said the pilot, Lt. SG Ramirez, who was also the acting tactical officer since he had control of the weapons.
“So a change of mission?”
“Yes, ma’am. We are to hit those missiles in passing, taking out as many as possible, then continue on a heading to the primary target.”
Wonderful, thought the captain, her tension level rising to the point where she started to feel slightly faint. Intercepting missiles was not that risky, but it would delay them, while the platforms near the star continued to do their business and increase the particle density around them.
“Change course, Lieutenant,” she ordered, tasking a glance at the plot. “Let’s take care of things in order.”
Hopefully this detour wouldn’t cause too many problems. From what she had learned in battle, it was sure to cause as many problems as possible.
* * *
“Can’t we get one damned hit?” yelled Suttler, watching as another stream of wormhole missiles missed the target by a wide margin. “And what the hell is wrong with our aim?” As he said this last he glared at his tactical officer.
“The only thing I can figure is that the particle density is degrading the sensor heads,” shouted that officer back, anger and embarrassment in his tone. “Maybe when we get closer.”
The admiral shook his head. Outside their ship was still as near a vacuum as humankind could have produced in the prespace era. Near a vacuum was the thing. Each particle that hit a relativistic missile did a little bit of damage, and they were sweeping through billions of particles while traversing over a million kilometers of space. The seeker heads, the sensors of the missiles, were degraded to the point where they were no longer functional before they were halfway to the target, and they continued in on purely ballistic courses. While the particle field pushed them off course in random directions.
Grampus shook from a laser hit, this one striking to the port side. They were capital ship lasers, blasting through the electromagnetic fields and vaporizing tons of metals, armor and hull.
“Helm?”
“I’m trying, sir,” said the chief, his fingers dancing over his board, sending the ship into random maneuvers and trying to give the enemy as difficult a target as possible.
He was succeeding, mostly. Grampus had only taken three hits so far, all on the outer reaches of the ship, all minor. Two stealth/attack ships had dropped off the plot, no longer generating gravitons, their grabbers offline. The admir
al didn’t know if that meant they were drifting in space, or had turned into spreading clouds of plasma. Since there had been no distinctive flares of antimatter blasts, it appeared that they were still there. What had happened to the crews was an unknown. And with the blasts of missiles in space around them, it was possible that they might have missed the antimatter breaches that went along with total destruction. Whatever happened they were off the com net, never a good sign.
“Yes,” called out the tac officer as the last stream approached the target platform. “Crap.” His tone changed as the four missiles that were on target exploded, hit by lasers or close in weapons systems that put out scores of exploding rounds each second.
“That might have put some heat into them,” said officer with a sheepish look.
“What we need, Tac, is something that put the entire blast into them. Try some shots with our onboard weapons. And configure the wormhole to transit a particle beam.”
The officer nodded and went to work. The ship shook slightly as two missiles were accelerated through their tubes. They left the ship at point two light, the velocity of the ship combined with what had been imparted to them by the magnetic accelerator tubes. Just over a fifth of what the wormhole launched weapons carried, they would hit with less than point two five light velocity. The hope of the admiral was that they would get through with minimal damage to their sensor heads. That might have worked, but…
“Crap again,” yelled the tac officer part way through their run, when both missiles converted to bright points of light, well short of their target.
At least when they’re firing at our missiles, they aren’t shooting at us, thought Suttler. He looked over at the tac officer again. He had to admit that the man was doing as good a job as possible. Suttler didn’t think he could do better himself, or he would be over there punching in the commands. If only we could get some laser hits and take out some of the defensive weaponry. Unfortunately, every laser on the ship was currently targeting missiles.
Exodus: Empires at War: Book 14: Rebellion. Page 28
