“Then we should beat them easily?” Scoggins asked, surprised.
“If this were a simple fight between fleets, I would say yes. But like every attack on Earth, they only have to get one asteroid strike on Earth to do us terrible damage. Even though we’ve moved a lot into space, Earth is still the prize. So we don’t have to just win. We need absolute victory, every time. Though the odds of winning the asteroid fight are still in our favor.”
“But…”
Absen said, “But I think the asteroids, like before, are just a powerful distraction. They are a threat we cannot ignore, but they are only rocks, after all. Even if we blast every one, that still leaves sixty-four Destroyers, and many of our asteroid fortresses will be hopelessly out of position.”
Rick nodded. “And if we don’t send all the asteroid fortresses we can, one of their rocks might make it through. It’s a good plan.”
“It’s an effective plan.” Absen felt a chill go through him. “If Huen doesn’t have anything up his sleeve, something we don’t know about, then it’s going to be a tough fight.” And by that, I mean, we’re going to lose. What would I do in his place? What could they have developed in our absence? He signaled to cut off the PA for now.
“I’m going to take a break,” Absen said. “Keep refining the setup here, record everything, and let me know if anything major happens. Don’t stay here too long. The big engagement won’t be for at least twenty-four hours, inside Mars orbit.”
***
The crew had normalized to the situation, coming in during off-shift times and checking the situation, restless. To Absen it was surreal, just waiting and watching from light-years away, with no way to affect the outcome.
The captain forced himself to visit Michelle in her room, where she could manifest as a hologram, and talked with her for several minutes. Much more and it would seem like favoritism, though he wondered if her rank and status was really just a fiction. She seemed happy and at peace, not frustrated by the limitations that had been placed on her. Absen hoped the slow loosening of restrictions would mimic the progress of any organic’s career path.
Now creeping, time finally progressed until he made his way back to his position in the control room overlooking the flight deck. When he got there, he wished he’d come sooner.
“Major Markis,” Absen said as he extended his hand to the slim, intense man awaiting him in a standard Aerospace Forces flight suit. “What can I do for you?”
“Where are the attack ships, Captain?” Markis asked without preamble. Absen looked a question, but did not speak. “The AA-36 Thunderchief IIs. The follow-on to the old Aardvarks.”
“What about them?”
“I’ve just spent the last ten hours with my squadron staff, looking through the intel and the operational order of battle data. We found a few Thuds here and there, but nothing larger than a flight of four. That can’t be right.”
Absen clapped Markis on the shoulder. “Good catch, Vango. I hadn’t noticed.”
“You’re Navy, sir. You were looking for ships. I looked for Aerospace craft.”
“There should be thousands at least,” the captain mused. “EarthFleet shifted to capital ship production since the Conquest class was introduced, but there are still plenty of jobs for heavily armed missile boats. They provide unmatched flexibility – small enough to deal with stingships but big enough to threaten Destroyers with their large bombs – which can only have gotten more powerful over the last decades.” Absen snapped his fingers as a thought occurred to him. “Ford!”
“Sir?” The weapons officer hurried over from where he had been standing, talking to his wife.
“What’s the yield on EarthFleet’s largest fusion bomb?”
“About one hundred megatons.”
“Why haven’t they made anything bigger?”
Ford considered. “Ah…at an educated guess, it’s a tradeoff. Bigger bombs, fewer of them, easier to intercept. But the data says they are far more effective than they used to be.”
“Explain.”
“Well, sir, we could make hundred-megaton warheads long ago, and we did. But these new ones are made like shaped charges. Instead of sending their energy in all directions, most of it goes in a focused cone, multiplying the effect by a factor of at least ten, probably more. And at the same time, they have the bomb-pumped graser head that takes some of the fusion blast and channels it into gamma ray lasers of immense power for just a fraction of a second before they are destroyed. Those can target specific weapons ports, sections of a ship, or even multiple smaller vessels.”
“Technology marches onward,” the captain mused.
“Yes, sir. Remember, they had all those years we have been traveling to do research and development. One more thing…”
“Yes?”
Ford waxed enthusiastic, as usually happened when talking about weapons. “The computers and detonation timing has gotten better. We sent thousands of heavy warheads against the first Destroyer. Had we been able to detonate them precisely at the skin of the enemy, we would have taken it down after a few dozen blasts, but that was impossible back then. Like World War Two airplanes dropping dumb bombs, we had to just send as many explosives their way as we could and hope to get lucky. Now, Admiral Huen has the equivalent of the smart bombs of the 1990s, where just one of them could take out a target that before would have needed hundreds to hit.”
“Thank you, Mister Ford.” Absen sat down in his own chair, drumming his fingers on the console next to him. “What’s the yield on an Exploder?”
“Depends on how much antimatter we want to load into one. Normally, about forty thousand megatons. Forty gigatons.”
“Four hundred times as powerful. Enough to kill a Destroyer in one blow.”
“Actually, sir,” Ford smiled grimly, “it’s enough to flash-fuse and vaporize any conventional matter within ten kilometers. It would make one hell of a dent in even Desolator’s neutronium-collapsium composite. Or our own.”
“How long would it take EarthFleet to gather enough antimatter to make an Exploder? A bomb of the same power?”
Ford’s eyes crossed and he reached slowly toward the console, then realized it was made to control flight operations and, even worse, was jury-rigged for crew audiovisuals. “I need to get to the bridge,” he muttered.
“No need,” Rick Johnstone said as he pulled out his link and plugged in. “I can access everything from here.” A moment later he spoke. “Six months to two years, depending on how efficient their collectors are. They don’t have Desolator’s technology.”
“So depending on how soon they started, they could have anywhere from a handful to several dozen Exploders.” Absen turned back to Vango Markis. “Well done, Major. The attack ships are hiding somewhere, and I’d bet my last bottle of real Earth champagne that the fleet’s biggest bombs are with them. Exploders, might as well call them, and probably the largest fusion missiles they can build.”
“That’s a pretty big deductive leap, sir,” Ford said.
Absen nodded. “It is.” He turned in his chair to face the weapons officer. “How do you find something that isn’t there?”
“What?”
Patiently, the captain said, “How do you locate something you can’t see?”
“By its absence,” Scoggins said excitedly. “By the hole it leaves.”
“Exactly. Scoggins, Johnstone, search the data for anything included about antimatter – research, projects, weapons, testing, anything.”
Several tense moments later, Rick shook his head. “There’s nothing. Absolutely nothing. In fact, I found deleted file markers where some things logically should be, as if someone made a hasty final global purge of anything related.”
“That proves it,” Scoggins added. “Why delete something that isn’t important?”
“Exactly,” Absen replied. “No matter how unlikely it would be for the enemy to intercept and decrypt this data package, someone wasn’t taking any chances. Just in case, th
ey hid the most important secrets of this battle. The Thuds, and the Exploders. Together…together they could turn the tide.”
“If they get in close enough. If they can strike home,” Ford said, voice gloomy.
“We’ll do it if anyone can,” Vango said coldly, staring at the weapons officer. “I was on the original Aardvark missions, my Final Option bomb armed. With tens of thousands of Aerospace pilots ready to make the ultimate sacrifice.”
“And yet you’re still here,” Ford sneered. “Did you chicken out?”
Johnstone and Scoggins both leaped to intervene as Vango took an angry step toward Ford, raising his fist.
“Belay that!” Absen roared, rising to his feet. “Ford, you’re done for today. Confine yourself to quarters for twenty-four hours. No visitors, no communications. Dismissed.”
“Aye, sir,” Ford replied, stalking out.
“And you,” he pointed at Vango. “Officers do not brawl on duty. I decided to keep Aerospace as an elite and separate service of EarthFleet because of the unique demands on individual pilots. That doesn’t mean you get to fan rivalries among your fellow officers, all of whom have gone above and beyond the call of duty time and again.”
Vango stiffened to attention. “I apologize, sir.”
“Not good enough. When Ford is ready to be released for duty, you will be the one to tell him in person, and you will hash it out with him in his quarters. You can talk through it, you can put on the gloves and have a slugging match, or you can both stay in there and rot until you resolve your differences.” Absen gave an exasperated sigh. “Dismissed.”
Once the two men had gone, the captain eyed the rest of his officers. Scoggins seemed embarrassed for her husband, while Fletcher appeared cool and observant, and Rick Johnstone had a disgusted look on his face. Okuda caught Absen’s eye and shrugged slightly. COB Timmons stage-coughed and handed his boss a cup of coffee.
When he took a sip, Absen’s nostrils flared and he glanced at his old friend. The COB’s mouth twitched in a slight smile. “A little added punch. Since we can’t do anything but watch anyway.”
“This tastes like my best brandy. Tobias?”
The Steward’s ebony expression did not change as his head swiveled to reply. “It seemed appropriate to open your liquor cabinet for the occasion, sir.”
“Oh, I agree. Pass the bottle around.”
As they did, one of the audiovisual techs signaled Scoggins, who turned to the rest. “Looks like the battle is about to begin.”
Chapter 16
The flight deck fell silent as the AV team brought up the tactical overview on the main display and stabilized the many sub-screens surrounding it. The icons for the enemy’s cluster of powered asteroids crossed the orbit of Jupiter in a swarm, multiple attached fusion engines flaring like fireflies, maneuvering them in random directions, but always headed toward Earth.
The Jupiter system itself lay far from the enemy’s path, or one could say that the Meme had chosen an attack route well away from any obstacle. Instead of splitting their efforts, this time they bored straight in for the prize, apparently convinced they would smash through and win a frontal assault.
A line of EarthFleet asteroid rams and armed fortresses pointed directly toward the enemy group as if fired from Earth itself. Given the space between all the combatants, these formed a gauntlet of nearly seven hundred expendable giants. All personnel had been removed and computers controlled them now. The extra efficiency gained by putting crew on them was offset by their targets’ simplicity – just a bunch of big rocks.
Behind each grouping lay their respective combatant fleets.
The Destroyers had fallen back from the rocks about thirty light-seconds, two and a half minutes of travel at current speeds, like cavalry waiting to charge after the infantry engaged. Before them, between them and the asteroids, flew their swarm of stingships.
The Home Fleet, anchored by the seven teardrop dreadnoughts and twenty-two wedge-shaped battleships, hovered between Earth and the enemy, ready to finish off any rocks that made it through and, more importantly, to react to the Destroyer fleet’s movements.
Like football backs, they could shift in any direction to cut off the Meme drive toward the goal of Earth. They had the advantage of interior lines; every move they made could be shorter and quicker as the enemy tried to sweep down the sidelines. More like the soccer form of football than rugby or the American game, the goal was small, and in the center. If they swung wide, at some point the attackers had to angle inward toward the planet, or risk flying past and having to turn around.
Absen and the rest of the crew watched as the lead rocks engaged, some firing massive weapons or launching missiles, others merely smashing into each other. The Meme ram-bodies jinked and dodged, if those were words that could apply to such mountainous things, but at the speeds involved, a nudge of a hundred meters in any direction caused fast-flying projectiles, even energy beams, to slip by or strike only glancing blows.
A number on one of the smaller screens kept statistical track of the remaining total of enemy craft. Sixty-four large rocks had begun the engagement. Absen watched as that tally counted down into the fifties and then the forties as the lead asteroids were annihilated within seconds.
The Destroyers made a sudden and coordinated turn away from the stream of incoming EarthFleet fortresses, as many of the defenders’ rocks flashed by their targets. Once the asteroid fortresses had passed, the EarthFleet fortresses immediately focused their weapons on the enemy ships, which explained the Meme fleet’s maneuver. The massive living craft would simply avoid the lumbering human rocks, letting them drift helplessly into interplanetary space. By the time they reversed course, the battle would be over.
“Those two asteroids,” Absen leaned over Scoggins’ shoulder to tap the small screen at her console. “They didn’t seem to guide on the enemy rocks. They just zoomed through the formation and are now guiding on the Destroyers. And they have a lot of engine power, for rocks.”
“Yes, sir. You’re right.” Scoggins expanded the view of those two on a sub-screen, then let out a sound of exasperation. “No real data on those, sir. Just ID number and size, tonnage…almost nothing.”
“But the other fortresses and ram-bodies have more on them?”
“Yes, sir. Even the simple rammers have more stats listed.”
Absen punched Scoggins lightly on the shoulder, and then pointed at the screen. “I need all of the actual sensor data possible integrated into the synthesis, and focus the big screen on those two.”
“Sir?” Scoggins seemed surprised, but rushed to comply. Soon the main display showed the two rocks following the Destroyer fleet as it blasted sideways. The Meme seemed desperately to be trying to avoid those two lonely harmless asteroids.
The stingship swarm on the other hand kept itself in a loose disk, flattened like a shield between the Meme fleet and the pair. “Damn, they’re being cagey,” Absen said. “It was a good try, Huen, but I don’t think it will work this time.”
“What is it, sir?” Johnstone asked. “And do you mind being on speaker?”
“Go ahead, Rick,” the captain said. “I believe in just a few seconds you will see Huen’s first attempt at a surprise…there they go.”
Suddenly the icons for the two asteroids winked out, replaced by a blizzard of new ones that seemed to burst forth from the rocks. The fused realtime sensor feed, combining optical, radar, infrared and other data, showed pinpoints spreading out from the two flying objects, forming up into fleets of more than one hundred, and leaping toward the Destroyers.
“Thunderchiefs, ladies and gentlemen,” Absen narrated with grim acceptance. “Each armed, unless I miss my guess, with the heaviest missiles EarthFleet can fashion. They were able to get in close because the Meme did not consider those asteroids a threat at first, but they turned out to be one-time-use aerospace carriers.”
The missiles he predicted appeared a moment later, more than two thousand accelerating
from the Thunderchiefs like cheetahs spotting antelope. Stingships leaped to intercept them.
One wave of fusion rockets led, another lagged. “At least two different types of missiles,” Absen said. “The first will run interference for the second, and the Thuds will follow them in. Damned brave people. This is another kamikaze run.”
The first wave of four hundred missiles met the cloud of four thousand stingships, and for a moment it seemed as if they would be wasted, picked off easily at a disadvantage of ten to one. But the lead warheads began winking out, replaced by enormous flares of energy that overloaded the sensors, forcing Scoggins’ AV team to pull the view back and engage virtual filters to try to make some sense of the engagement.
Seconds later, the first wave had done its work. Instead of easily picking off the missiles to protect the Destroyer fleet, the stingship screen had lost nine tenths of its number in the driving sleet of hard radiation and heat released by fusion warheads larger than Absen had ever seen. “Yield?” he asked.
“Raw energy in the hundred megaton range, as we predicted, but also, I picked up a lot of gamma. It looks like these were advanced bomb-pumped graser packages, very well aimed. At a guess, I’d say each had ten or twelve tubes, and most of them struck home.”
“That’s some fine shooting,” Absen replied. “Well planned, Huen. This may work out better than I thought.”
The second wave of about sixteen hundred missiles lost a hundred or so as it flashed through the remaining four hundred stingships, but at the speeds and accelerations involved, the enemy fighters seemed far less efficient than before. Absen thought probably many of them still suffered from the effect of the first wave, as if the living Meme ships were in shock.
The two hundred trailing Thunderchiefs easily finished off the stingships, firing their inline masers and defensive suites to cook the water-based Meme bioplasm of their enemies as they tried to chase down the missiles accelerating toward the Destroyers.
Tactics of Conquest (Stellar Conquest) Page 14
