by B. V. Larson
The bogeys lit their fusion engines as they detected our active sensor pulses hammering at them. Their positions resolved from fuzzy anomalies into eight bright pinpoints of light. I compared their engine power with their change in vector to get a rough estimate of size. They appeared to mass considerably less than the Demon cruisers, so what I was seeing were smaller ships, even smaller than our Nano frigates. I designated them “stealth corvettes.”
I adjusted the holotank to display their predicted path. I was relieved to see the end of their path begin to diverge from our position about ten minutes later. This showed that their course changes couldn’t overcome their great speed. It was just like a supersonic fighter plane from old Earth. It had limits to its turning ability, so did the Demon ships, and as we accelerated, we were exceeding them.
Before I could get too happy, Valiant spoke. “Missile launch detected,” the ship said with its damnably calm voice.
Apparently, the Demons had done their math homework, too.
-5-
As I’d expected, missile tracks appeared, matching the ones we’d observed in the surprise attack on the Whales and Elladans. Of course, missiles could maneuver at much higher G limits than ships. The predicted weapon plots quickly intersected us and clung stubbornly even as the corvettes’ paths continued to diverge. Thanks to Marvin, we were prepared for them, but we didn’t have an asteroid this time to provide cover and an alternate target.
Hansen glanced over with a question on his face. For the benefit of everyone on the bridge, I spoke up. “Their ships can’t turn fast enough to catch us, so it looks like they’re not trying anymore. They’ll sail on past and probably continue toward the inner planets.”
I took a second to glance around, seeing worried faces everywhere.
“Unfortunately,” I continued, “we’ve still got sixteen heavy nukes tracking us that will be here in about thirty-five minutes. Odds are we won’t be able to out-turn them, so everyone get ready. We need one hundred percent kills, people.”
I could feel the tension build as the minutes ticked down. Our missile spread, the first line of defense, interposed itself between us and the enemy weapons. With difficulty I kept myself from reminding the controllers to take the high velocity into account—I had to trust my people and not micromanage them.
Explosions blossomed as our warheads detonated in the enemy’s path, trying to catch their weapons as they flew through. Three Demon missiles disappeared, and another seemed to lose tracking, going ballistic while still accelerating into empty space.
“Good job!” I announced, despite the fact I was disappointed in the kill ratio. “Four down, twelve to go.”
The Daggers engaged next, blasting at maximum Gs to match course and speeds with the incoming nukes. Instead of trying to take them nose-on, the drones were setting up to shoot as they fell in behind the enemy missiles, which were making themselves easy to spot by the fusion engine flares of their constant course corrections.
Each drone only got a couple of shots, though, before the distance increased again. Hits were scored, but it wasn’t clean. We lost a Dagger when one nuke sensed a passing target and exploded itself.
Our small ships had laser cannons that were too small to reach far, and the missiles rapidly outdistanced our Daggers.
“Five more missiles down,” I said. That left seven coming in at us. “Fire with our mains as they come into range. Valiant, signal all ships to open up with beams.”
“What about more missiles, Captain?” Bradley asked.
“Not yet. Prep a spread for final defense, but I’m hoping not to use up any further nukes.”
He looked concerned, but he turned back to his staff. I knew what he was thinking—that it was much better to expend missiles than lose ships—but I had to balance the probabilities of the moment with the needs of the future. Missiles we didn’t fire now might save our lives later.
“Remember, everyone, Marvin already gave us a test run on their missile capabilities. We’ve had plenty of time to practice in simulation, which is more than we’ve ever had before. Keep sharp and we’ll nail this.”
Rolling barrages of long-range heavy laser fire knocked out one more missile, and then Valiant’s secondaries opened up at the midranges, which was where she shined. The medium-sized beams hit hard enough to kill a missile in one shot and were accurate enough to pick them off, given time.
The enemy weapons began to corkscrew as they approached, apparently to mess up our targeting. Hopefully that would make them less accurate as well, but three missiles remained when they came into point defense range. One aimed at Stalker, one at Valiant, and the last at one of our Nano frigates.
Stalker presented her tail and easily clawed the first missile out of space with a blaze of point defense beams, but the other two shot past too quickly to track. At these speeds, anything not coming directly toward a target became near-impossible to hit.
Half a second later, Valiant’s combined weapon suite slagged the one locked on us.
Then, everything changed. The missile that had been locked onto the Nano ship dove right down into Valiant. Everyone held their breath as our point-defense cannons swiveled with fantastic rapidity, locked on and fired dozens of intersecting beams…
The missile, sensing its own demise and the nearness of its target, detonated early.
In space, there are no shockwaves, but the energy released along with a gush of hard radiation struck Valiant. The power went out and the troop deck went red on my displays. They’d hit us in the gut.
For a moment, everything flickered black, including my brain. Radiation, EMP effects and a physical jolt knocked me to the deck.
My arm was pinned for a moment, and I had to roll an unconscious staffer away. Picking myself up, I realized my arm was more than pinned, it had been broken and hung limply at my side. I tapped desperately at the console with my good hand. Blood trickled from my scalp down into my eyes, and I blinked it away. It stung.
“Kwon, report!” I demanded.
There was only a crackling sound. Were communications out? Or was he dead? I wasn’t sure.
“Sir,” Hansen said, looming at my side. He helped me to a fully standing position. “We’ve got one dead on the bridge. Six below. What are your orders, sir?”
I looked at him. “You were right, Hansen. I should have fired every missile we had. I thought we had it handled.”
Hansen’s mouth worked, but he said nothing. Finally, he spoke again. “What are your orders now, sir?” he repeated.
“Find Kwon. Dead or alive, I want to know his status, and that of his marines.”
“Right—on it.”
Hansen left the bridge. The lights flickered as if they were going to come on fully—but died down again into a dim emergency-red glow.
Sucking up the pain of my broken arm, I helped tend to the wounded.
I’d fucked up, and everyone on the bridge knew it. That was the hardest thing to take.
I vowed to myself not to underestimate the Demons or their smart weaponry again.
“Continue maximum sensor sweeps,” I ordered when we had the fires and the wounded under control. “Don’t lose track of the enemy ships. At this point I don’t care that we’re lit up like Christmas trees. I don’t want as much as a speck of dust anywhere near us without knowing about it. The Demons have proven themselves hostile, so there’s no need to act neutral anymore.”
Hansen returned in time—without Kwon. “As far as we can tell, he was blown out of the deck. There’s no signal, but he could still be alive…”
We exchanged glances. Hansen was telling me the worst, but he was doing it gently.
“Hansen, reduce acceleration,” I ordered. “Send the Nano ships back to search for our lost marines.”
While he complied, I turned my attention to the incoming stealth corvettes that had launched the missiles. All I could think about was Kwon. It seemed wrong that the big man had accompanied my father on countless campaigns and I
’d managed to get him killed by being arrogant and cocky. Internally, I was seething for revenge on these Demon ships.
Gauging and extrapolating, we plotted their likely courses over the next hour. They should pass us at long range. I had to make a quick decision. Should I take a few shots at them and watch them blow on by, or change course to put ourselves in their way again in order to take them out?
I decided on the latter. They’d expended one salvo of what must be a limited stock of missiles, given the small size of their ships, and there were only eight of them. Our seven ships and sixty Daggers outclassed them by at least a factor of ten. The only advantage they had was speed, now that we had good sensor locks on them. By taking the fight to them, we could not only win an easy battle, but pick up more information on our enemies.
The tickle and burn of nanites reknitting my broken arm caused me to sweat, but I didn’t ask the medics for any relief. I needed every ounce of brainpower I had to defeat this enemy—cleanly this time.
“Hansen, bring us around on a converging course,” I said. “Valiant, pass orders to all ships to maintain formation. We have a huge advantage in firepower, so I want to maximize our chances on offense, which means we need to sidle up to them as they overtake us.”
“We can’t catch them once they do, Skipper,” Hansen said. “They’ve built up too much velocity.”
“I know that. I just want to increase the time they spend in our weapons envelope.”
“Got it.” Hansen aimed Valiant in the same direction as the approaching Demon ships, angled inward, and smoothly increased thrust to maximum. Once the courses of our other ships had matched ours and stabilized, I had a thought. “Bradley, can your Daggers sow some mines in the enemy’s path?”
My CAG shook his head. “No time, sir. All our drones are out, and it would take too long to recover them, load mines, launch and get them there.”
There was no accusation in his voice, but there could have been. I’d wanted maximum anti-missile coverage so I’d deployed every drone we had, but that had given up our ability to quickly launch anything new. I filed that lesson away for later.
“What about missiles?” I asked.
“The Daggers are all clean for defensive work, sir. No missiles. We can launch a spread from Valiant’s tubes.”
“Do it. Fire one per. Maneuver them in front of the enemy and park them. Use them like mines. Maybe we can catch some in the blasts.”
Eight green tracks in the holotank showed our missile salvo curving to take position ahead of the rapidly closing Demon corvettes. It would be interesting to see how they handled the challenge, given that the specs on the other ship types showed substandard point defense.
Adjusting the holotank further, I finally began to get some good optics on the corvettes, making sure to record. They appeared as black cylinders similar to Demon cruisers, but of course smaller…much smaller than I’d expected. I didn’t see any weapons at all on them, in fact. The missiles they’d launched must have been externally mounted.
My supposition was confirmed as I watched them maneuver during the final seconds before they ran over our waiting missiles. The eight small tubes arranged themselves into a circle, ends pointing perpendicular to the center point, and then performed a starburst maneuver, scattering in all directions. We detected no point defense fire of any kind.
Our last-ditch attempt caught six of them in explosions triggered immediately before they arrived. At such speeds in space, split-second timing was critical, but our controllers were veterans and triggered the detonations so that the corvettes flew directly into the blasts just as they peaked.
Two of the enemy ships managed to partially avoid our trap, but both were carried tumbling outward by their velocity and were significantly damaged.
“Put me through to Marvin,” I said. I had noticed Marvin had carefully positioned Greyhound in the lee of Stalker and her powerful point defense phalanx, undoubtedly calculating that to be the safest place around.
“Captain Marvin here.”
“You’ve got by far the fastest ship, Captain Marvin. Can you chase one of those damaged corvettes down and recover it?”
“That would result in significant fuel expenditure, Captain Riggs.”
“Granted, but wouldn’t you like to examine the Demons’ technology firsthand? Wouldn’t our chances of survival increase significantly if we had details on what we were fighting?”
“That is true. Will Greyhound be refueled when I return?”
I sighed. “I give you my word I’ll make sure you have enough fuel, just as I would for any captain and his ship.”
“Define ‘enough.’”
“Dammit, Marvin, every second the damaged corvettes are moving farther away. I’ll make sure you’re taken care of—just get going!”
“Command accepted. Captain Marvin out.”
Hansen looked over at me. “You shouldn’t let him get under your skin.”
“Don’t you have some damage reports to check on?”
“Command accepted.” Hansen replied, and he turned back to his display.
I turned to the holotank, watching as Greyhound accelerated to maximum on her three outsized engines. Marvin’s ship had started out as Adrienne’s father’s space yacht, and the name had been no accident. She was fast. Maybe even faster, now that Marvin had modified her.
“Hansen, bring us around easy, repellers only. Get us back onto a course for Trinity-9. Once you’re done, meet me at the holotank.”
My XO nodded, beginning the maneuver. Using only repellers would save fuel and mask our change of direction if the enemy wasn’t tracking us closely. When he’d finished, he returned control to Valiant’s brainbox and stepped over to me at the holotank.
“What did that attack tell you?” I asked.
“That they don’t like us?”
“Obviously. But why don’t they like us?”
“Why would they?”
I made a sound of exasperation in my throat. “The Whales have established relations with us. They’ve sent useful information. The Elladans at least haven’t shown themselves to be hostile. Why did the Demons attack us without even talking?”
“Because they’re an aggressive race that wants to take everything for itself. They’re bugs, Captain. Most bugs on Earth defend their territories and try to take over more. They don’t negotiate.”
“These bugs are intelligent enough to build starships. Your explanation is that they’re acting on mere instinct? I don’t believe that. Any alien this technologically advanced must understand basic politics and strategy. Why attack a newcomer and make enemies immediately before attempting negotiations? In order for those ships to have arrived when they did, they would have had to divert those eight corvettes from their main fleet when they first saw us arrive through the ring. Instead of talking, they dispatched a strike force.”
Hansen turned to stare at me and lowered his voice. “You’re a thinker, Captain. I get that. But sometimes you over think things. Did the Mongol hordes try to talk every time they encountered a new village or castle? No, they had a policy: surrender or die.”
“But they didn’t ask us to surrender. That’s my point. They simply attacked.” I rubbed my neck, trying to work through the situation in my head. “I think you’re right about one thing, though—policy. Whoever’s in charge of the Demon fleet is following a policy of destroying everyone else. Maybe like any military leader, he has political masters back home. If their command structure is particularly rigid, he’s not going to deviate much from his orders. So…”
“That’s a lot of conjecture,” Hansen replied skeptically.
“But the Whales’ intel confirms it. Their messages said the Demons have been attacking them for decades. Every year, they send a bigger fleet than the last.”
“Then why aren’t they better prepared?”
I shrugged. “Maybe the stealth corvette surprise attack is a new development. If the Whales thought they had more than a month bef
ore the Demon fleet arrived, they’d become complacent doing their final refits. Crews would be taking leave, stuff like that. You can’t keep warships at high alert for too long.”
“Yeah. Speaking of that, I think we should go back to normal operations and shut down the active sensors. They’re like beacons announcing our exact positions all the time.”
“Agreed. We’ll stay at battle stations for the rest of this rotation, and then stand down. Use repellers only to change course enough that we aren’t predictable. We can rotate a few recon drones out for constant coverage.”
Hansen nodded and resumed his position at the pilot’s console. I checked on Marvin and saw he had a long time before he would be able to overtake the damaged Demon ship, probably a full day or so. Good thing everyone was heading generally in-system.
“Sir,” Hansen said suddenly. “The Nano ships you sent out to look for our lost marines have returned.”
I looked at him, trying to get some clue what he was hinting at. He had a poker face, and I assumed the worst.
“Kwon’s gone, isn’t he?”
Hansen broke into a grin. “Not quite. Let me pipe the channel through to the bridge speakers.”
“—that was total bullshit! You tell Riggs that!” Kwon’s voice boomed. “I don’t like to die. Especially not in space. Bullshit!”
“Kwon!” I shouted, grinning. “You’re alive!”
“Only barely. I think my dick was blown off. Your doctor-boxes had better have a way to grow me a new one, dammit.”
“I’m sure we can do that, Kwon. Did your men survive?”
“Nah—well, two of them did. We lost three. They got torn apart and fried. I was lucky because I was up against the blast doors, ready to fly out if needed. When the deck came apart under my boots…that was quite a surprise.”
“Yeah, sorry about that. Glad to hear you’re still breathing. My father would never have forgiven me.”
