“The Alpha Centauri Incident began with a four-ship formation of strange destroyers with unknown, Core Power–level technology and a fundamentally Kanzi design,” she explained aloud. “They were trying to steal the Precursor ship and landed Kanzi troops.
“Those destroyers are over a ninety percent match to the ships over there. If they’re not the same class, they’re from the same designers with the same tech base.”
“Kanzi,” Captain Vong said slowly, clearly listening in. “Like the battleships at Powell.”
Morgan nodded.
“Similar, sir. Kanzi-style designs but built around tech the Kanzi don’t have.” She was pulling more data as she spoke. “The troops they landed were definitely Kanzi but had a degree of ritual scarification and other body mods the Kanzi Theocracy would not tolerate.”
“Fifteen years and we don’t hear a peep from these strangers, and now they’re blowing up worlds and Frontier Fleet battlecruisers,” Masters said thoughtfully. His harsh tone toward Morgan had faded again, back to something closer to the professional evenness she’d grown used to.
“Indeed.” Vong leveled his gaze on the hologram tank. “Lieutenant Commander Antonova?”
“Sir?”
“Any response?”
“Nothing,” the blonde Russian officer confirmed.
“The super-battleship is a definite match for the Mesharom data—and she and the destroyers are maneuvering in our direction,” Morgan reported. “That’s a response of one kind, I suppose.”
“Yes.”
The bridge was silent for several seconds and Morgan studied the incoming ships. They’d brought their own drives up to point two five cee, clearly agreeing with Bellerophon’s crew on the safety of the debris field.
The three logistics ships were going in the other direction, but five warships were heading their way.
“Let’s not play games with these people,” Vong finally concluded. “Commander Masters, Black Dragon Protocols, if you please. Confirm our hyper missile status.”
Morgan swallowed as a new set of batteries appeared on her screens. “Batteries” was a misnomer for the Golf series, though. There was only a single weapon in each of the twelve Golf batteries, a vertical cell-launched missile twice the size of Bellerophon’s assault shuttles.
“We have twelve Black Dragon III dual-portal hyperspace missiles,” Masters said levelly. “All are reporting green and ready to deploy.”
“Target the destroyers with two apiece, plus one each on the logistics ships and the lead unit,” Vong ordered. “Let’s clear the pawns off the board, people.”
The same Alpha Centauri Incident where humanity had seen these alien destroyers before, three of the Core Powers had also ended up engaging each other. The Mesharom were long-standing informal allies, but they had hard rules on tech transfer.
The Laians were now formal neutrals, using that nonaggression pact to enable their war against the Wendira, who were arguably informal enemies of the Imperium. Their presence at Alpha Centauri, however, had been because of old Laian technology that had ended up in human hands.
Alpha Centauri had been humanity’s first colony and, even before that, had been a logistics depot for their privateering campaign against the A!Tol. By the time everyone had decided to fight over the Precursor ship there, the Duchy and the Imperium had had the system completely wired up with scanners of every type.
The Mesharom had intentionally sold the Imperium hyperfold communications technology in exchange for the Precursor ship on Hope, the colony in Centauri. They’d hinted at how to build the hyperfold cannons that formed the backbone of Bellerophon’s armament.
Morgan was relatively sure they hadn’t expected humanity to manage to reverse-engineer their hyperspace missiles from the scan data, and to be fair, humanity hadn’t. DragonWorks was an Imperial project, with scientists and engineers from all twenty-eight species of the Imperium and access to every scrap of data and technology the Imperium had ever acquired from the Core Powers.
The Black Dragon III was an exact duplicate of the Mesharom weapons deployed at Alpha Centauri in capability. In order to cram in the ability to generate an entry and exit portal from hyperspace, a twenty-gigaton antimatter warhead, and even the relatively weak and short-lived interface drive they had, however, the Imperium’s weapon was over twenty times the size of the Mesharom version.
Bellerophon massed over ten million tons. She carried exactly twelve of the weapons, and Captain Vong’s orders sent every one of them into space.
They appeared on the battleship’s scanners for several seconds as their launchers blasted them into space and they cleared the shields. Then twelve relatively tiny hyperspace portals tore through the accretion disk and the missiles vanished.
They were still over two light-minutes from their targets. The sensor solutions Morgan was providing for the targeting data were that far out of date…but the weapons themselves would arrive almost instantly.
It took almost two minutes, even with the closing velocity involved, before Bellerophon’s crew saw the results of her missiles, and Morgan barely suppressed a victorious whoop at the sight.
“Destroyers one, two and four are down,” she reported. “Two of the logistics ships are gone; the third is crippled.” Her elation faded as she studied the data. “It doesn’t look like we even penetrated the super-battleship’s shields.”
“I didn’t expect to,” Vong admitted. “Commander Hume? Bring us to combat speed, if you please. Commander Masters…deploy the Bucklers.”
“We’re going to lose them fast,” the tactical officer warned.
“That is what they exist for, Commander,” the Captain reminded him. “ETA to interface missile range?”
“At full speed, assuming they don’t adjust to match, one hundred thirty seconds,” Masters said. “Cut thirty seconds off of that if they accelerate to point five as well. Assuming they have the same missiles as at Centauri, they outrange us.”
“Understood. Hyperfold cannon range?” Vong asked.
“Forty seconds after missile range. Lance range ten seconds after that, proton beam range ten seconds after that.” Masters shook his head. “At some point in there, they’re going to try and break off.”
“Perhaps not,” Vong murmured. “Lieutenant Commander Casimir, what was the effective range of the weapon the aliens used against the Centauri picket?”
Morgan checked the neatly summarized data in the warbook.
“One light-second, sir.”
“Commander Hume, we don’t know how fast our friend actually is,” the Captain said conversationally, “but consider yourself authorized to use every scrap of sprint speed and maneuverability we have to keep us at least one million kilometers from the enemy.
“There’s going to be more surprises today. Let’s make sure the ones they give us aren’t fatal.”
The enemy capital ship increased her speed as Bellerophon charged toward her, stabilizing at point six cee. The Terran battleship could match that, but not for extended periods. The increasing velocities meant that the distance between the two ships was evaporating like snow in a desert.
“Drive metrics and hull design match Kanzi standards, like the destroyers,” Morgan reported. “She’s three million tons bigger than even their Grand Protector–class ships, though, and the Protector can only make point four eight cee.”
“Keep that surviving logistics ship and the damaged destroyer dialed in,” Vong ordered. “We’re going to want to board them when this is over.”
Assuming they survived. Morgan wasn’t sure that was a reasonable assumption. Bellerophon was the most powerful battleship the A!Tol Imperium and its Duchies possessed, but the strange Kanzi ship outmassed her two to one and had a clear speed advantage.
Then her musings were interrupted and training took over.
“Vampire!” she snapped. “Target has opened fire at one point two light-minutes. Missiles incoming at point eight five cee. Defenses engaging!”
At e
ighty-five percent of lightspeed, the gap between the light of the missile launch reaching Bellerophon and the missiles themselves arriving was measured in seconds. Their active missile defenses were designed for this environment, though, and the Buckler platforms were already out.
Lasers lit up the darkness as Morgan’s computers struggled to resolve individual missiles and parcel them out to her defensive systems. She’d loaded in the parameters and would adjust as they got more data, but there was only so much human intervention possible in ten seconds.
The numbers were terrifying. The hostile ship had launched over a hundred and fifty missiles at Bellerophon. A dozen Buckler platforms swung into the path of the weapons, lasers firing in rapid sequence to reduce their numbers.
Sword turrets mounted on the battleship’s hull followed suit, but shields still glittered under the impact as the tsunami of fire smashed through the debris field.
“Return fire as soon as you have the range,” Vong said calmly as a second salvo came crashing toward them.
There was no noticeable sensation when Bellerophon fired. Morgan didn’t feel anything, but one moment, the screen only showed Bucklers and incoming missiles. Then next, ninety-six green icons lit up on the screen as their own interface-drive missiles launched into space.
At point eight cee, the new missiles were significantly deadlier than the ones the Imperium had brought to the Alpha Centauri Incident. The enemy missiles were still more powerful.
“Commander Hume, get us to hyperfold cannon range as soon as you can,” Captain Vong asked calmly.
Morgan wondered just how he could sound so calm, so level, as dozens of missiles slipped past their active defense screen to hammer into the shields. Bellerophon’s shields could take dozens of these missiles, but she could see weak points starting to appear.
She moved Bucklers and reprioritized Sword targeting to keep those weak spots covered. Engineering officers moved power around as well, and the weak spots began to recover as she made sure missiles hit elsewhere.
The missiles were damn fast and damn smart. Her ECM didn’t seem to be doing much of anything, though her Bucklers and Sword turrets were massacring the incoming fire. There were still too many making it through for her peace of mind.
“Enemy performance aligns with the strangers at the Centauri Incident,” Masters observed as the results of their first salvo came back in. “No active defenses, but powerful shields.” He paused. “Our new shields are comparable.”
“Bogey is continuing on a direct course for us,” Morgan said. She winced as debris took out one of her Bucklers, tapping commands to deploy a new unit—and then two more as stray missiles hammered into her defense platforms. “Thirty seconds to one light-second.”
“We’ll end this first,” her boss promised. “Hyperfold cannon range!”
A hyperfold transmitter was almost instantaneous inside a star system, but the amount of power that could be transmitted fell off rapidly. In communications, this translated to bandwidth. A hyperfold com would allow a real-time video transmission inside a star system, but at the ten-light-year range used to build the relay network, it was far more restricted.
If you built a powerful-enough transmitter, however, and ran enough energy through it, you ended up with an overpowered maser that reached its target instantly at about ten light-seconds.
Each of Bellerophon’s six Charlie and six Delta batteries held four hyperfold cannons. The big ship passed that line in space and all forty-eight of the energy weapons spoke in anger for the first time.
Their targeting data was out of date, but it was accurate enough. Morgan couldn’t tell how many of the maser strikes hit, but the battleship’s shields clearly fluctuated. She wasn’t sure if they’d punched through the shields, but if they did, they didn’t pierce the armor underneath.
The range was dropping fast now, and all of Bellerophon’s different weapons systems were in play. Masters was continuing to run them all himself and Morgan could see the reduced efficiency from that. She wasn’t sure why he wasn’t trusting her, but he also wasn’t trusting the Chiefs whose job it was to take that load off his console.
More missiles and hyperfold cannon shots blasted across space, and Morgan found herself deploying a second wave of Buckler drones to try and buy the battleship time. So far, the only weapons the enemy had deployed were regular missiles—but at a range rapidly dropping toward two million kilometers, point eight five missiles were bad enough.
“Does this asshole have anything other than missiles?” Masters asked.
“I’m guessing he has whatever hell weapon the strangers had at Centauri,” Vong pointed out. “Where’s my plasma lance, Commander?”
Morgan blinked. They’d crossed the range line for the massive weapon that ran the length of the battleship’s hull and Masters hadn’t fired it. He’d been distracted managing the hyperfold guns and the missiles.
“Commander?” Vong repeated a second later—and then Morgan’s screen lit up with the controls for the big gun.
“Take it over, Casimir,” Masters snapped. “Don’t fuck it up.”
The enemy was evading more now, trying to dodge the hyperfold cannon blasts that were materializing around her. Between missiles and maser bursts, she was in serious trouble—but she was continuing to blast a hundred and fifty-six missiles at Bellerophon.
Both ships still had their shields. Whatever fire had made it through on either side had failed to penetrate the heavy compressed-matter armor. The bogey’s additional mass and firepower wasn’t making up for Bellerophon’s active defenses…yet.
Setting up the lance took her less than a second. Morgan had already been feeding Masters the targeting solution; he just hadn’t used it.
This time, the entire ship did vibrate. Powerful electromagnets ran the length of the battleship, gathering superheated, still-fusing plasma from the fusion cores and pulsing it toward the enemy at near-lightspeed. The pulse followed a magnetic channel that latched on to the enemy and held on through their maneuvers until the round impacted.
The lance shattered the enemy’s shields. Hyperfold cannons and missiles hammered home, sending energy and explosions glittering across the enemy hull. For a moment, Morgan thought they’d got her.
But the enemy ship was huge. She took the pounding for ten seconds. Fifteen. Twenty—and then her shields flashed back up and she was blasting away from Bellerophon at sixty-five percent of the speed of light.
“Break off, Hume,” Vong ordered.
Morgan swallowed an objection, looking at the screens to see what the Captain saw. Bellerophon’s shields were still up…barely. If they pressed the encounter at this range, it wouldn’t take “hell weapons” for the strange Kanzi ship to take them down.
Interface-drive missiles could more than handle Bellerophon.
With the black hole and its accretion disk in the background, the two massive ships broke away from each other at nearly the speed of light.
Even Morgan, though, was grimly certain this fight wasn’t over.
That had just been round one.
Chapter Seventeen
“Status report,” Vong ordered as the ships finally drew out of missile range of each other.
“Shields are intact,” Morgan reported immediately, having spent the withdrawal consulting with the engineers. “We’ll be back to full power within two minutes. No critical hull damage; the new armor-support matrix seems to have helped absorb the impacts.”
The support matrix was a Gold Dragon tech, subtle enough to go unnoticed even as a layer of active microbots—based on the Mesharom technology—absorbed impact and moved support as necessary.
Point eight five cee missiles could dent compressed-matter armor, but the support matrix had prevented that. It also helped avoid the usual problem of CM armor, which was plates detaching from each other under impacts.
“We’ve fired off our entire stock of dual-portal hyper missiles and roughly ten percent of our interface-drive missiles,�
� Masters reported. “Plasma lance is fully recharged and the hyperfold cannons performed roughly as expected.”
“We will have a conversation about that later,” Captain Vong said calmly, and even Morgan winced. The Duchy of Terra Militia had learned many of its traditions from the particular habits of Admiral Jean Villeneuve—among them the simple dictum of “praise in public, criticize in private.”
Vong’s statement was as close as any Militia officer would come to criticizing a subordinate in public.
“Hume?”
“Engines are running without issue; we didn’t use our sprint capacity, so Engineering tells me the capacitors are still at full strength,” Hume reported.
“And what about them?” the Captain asked.
Morgan looked at Masters, who gave her a go-ahead gesture. His expression was odd…was he actually looking guilty? Just what had been going through the tactical officer’s head when he tried to run the ship’s entire armament himself?
“We hit her pretty hard,” Morgan said slowly. “Her shields were down for almost thirty seconds, during which we hit her with roughly a hundred and eighty missiles and a similar number of hyperfold cannon blasts.
“She’s huge and her armor took most of that,” she warned. “There was some outgassing and vapor trails before the shields went back up. I’d guess we separated at least a few CM plates, but she didn’t fire while she retreated. We can’t judge the damage to her armament, though I would think we’d done some.”
The strange Kanzi ship outmassed them two to one, but it was Bellerophon that had landed the hardest hits. The enemy’s missiles were better, but Bellerophon had entire weapons systems they didn’t appear to.
“What about our friend’s logistics ship and destroyer?” Vong asked.
“The logistics ship is headed toward the black hole,” Masters reported. “I’d say she’s trying for a slingshot to make up for her lower interface-drive velocity.”
“At a third of the speed of light, that requires going damn close,” Hume noted. “It’s almost suicide at that speed. Any faster…it would be suicide for us.”
Darkness Beyond (Light of Terra: a Duchy of Terra series Book 1) Page 10
