Darkness Beyond (Light of Terra: a Duchy of Terra series Book 1)

by Glynn Stewart

  Against the might of Bellerophon’s plasma lance, those defenses failed and plasma gutted the ship. The implosion of her gravitic singularity contained the explosion and compressed the heavy armor into a crumpled ball.

  A single cruiser lance couldn’t duplicate that impact—but that was why TF 77–1’s cruisers had fired their lances by eight-ship echelon. Eight cruiser lances were more than enough to obliterate even the mightiest Taljzi warship.

  The problem, Morgan realized, was that the lances were lightspeed weapons, invisible before they arrived…but the hyperfold cannons were faster-than-light weapons. They’d arrived instantly, a cascade of energy fire that had washed over the Taljzi fleet, demonstrating they’d been seen but wrecking only half the battleships.

  None of the battleships that survived the hyperfold-cannon bombardment survived the plasma lance fire, but all of them lived long enough to launch missiles.

  As did the cruisers. Thousands of missiles were now in space, charging toward TF 77–1. More plasma fire and hyperfold beams lashed the Taljzi fleet, and the defenders’ missiles were also on their way. Cruisers started to die, and not a single Taljzi ship retreated. Even without the battleships they’d come in to escort, the cruisers charged forward.

  Stealth fields dropped and a second salvo of missiles lashed out. Cruisers passed into the firing arc of Morgan’s plasma lance, and even a glancing blow from Bellerophon’s spinal cannon was enough to obliterate the lighter Taljzi ships.

  The Imperial and Terran destroyers did what they had to do, flinging themselves forward into the teeth of the missile storm as it passed through the shield of Buckler drones. Sixty destroyers backed up almost a thousand drones, but they had only fractions of a second to stop the Taljzi missiles.

  It wasn’t enough time.

  Destroyers burned in the fire, but they weren’t the targets. Cruisers interposed themselves, taking hits meant for the Bellerophons. The escorts flung themselves between the battleships and the incoming fire.

  It was…enough. All three battleships took hits. Herakles’ shields collapsed and missiles hammered into her armor, but she was intact.

  The Taljzi were not. Eighty warships had tried to sneak up on TF 77–1 and none of them had survived. Almost half of the Return’s initial capital ship strength was gone, a stunningly lopsided victory by any calculation.

  Except Morgan was grimly certain that the Taljzi weren’t done yet and the Imperial losses were now being tallied on her screen.

  Eighteen destroyers and six cruisers had died to save the battleships, including one of the precious Thunderstorm-Ds. They’d taken a hundred times their tonnage and firepower with them, but it wasn’t going to be enough.

  Morgan wasn’t sure that anything was going to be enough.

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Twenty-four ships gone in a blink. As many damaged, and Harold was getting no information on whether some of them would be able to fight again.

  In fact…

  “Nahid,” he addressed Ling Yu. “Inform Captain Ngo that if she doesn’t get me a detailed status report on Fēngbào Yún’s status in the next five minutes, I’m going to assume that she’s not combat-capable and order her to withdraw.”

  He didn’t want to lose a Thunderstorm-D from the order of battle, but if Kimberly Ngo wasn’t telling him whether or not her ship could fight, his suspicions went the wrong way.

  “I’ll tell her,” his chief of staff confirmed.

  Harold shook his head and returned his attention to the holographic plot. Regardless of Fēngbào Yún’s status, he was down at least ten cruisers. He had five good salvos of hyper missiles left to open up the battle with, and then they were down to fighting the Taljzi in their range.

  And they still had over ten times as many capital ships as he did. They’d tested his people, then they’d tried to sneak up on his people.

  The next step was to line up forty-odd capital ships and clobber his people. There wasn’t much else they could do…and there really wasn’t a need for them to do more. The sneak attack would have worked if their stealth fields were effective against his people, but the Taljzi would figure out that the attempt hadn’t worked.

  If anything, Harold was curious as to how long the Taljzi would wait for their stealthed force to report back. Presumably, there had been a time limit. At some point, the Return would have to send new scouts through.

  Which left him with an idea.

  “Nahid.” He gestured his chief of staff over. “How many more hyper missiles than the cruisers do the battleships have?”

  “Cruisers are carrying five rounds per launcher. Battleships have ten apiece.”

  “Make sure the battleship tactical officers know they are authorized to fire at enemy scout ships that come through,” Harold ordered. “They’re to maintain a five-missile reserve per launcher, but I want the Taljzi completely uncertain what’s happening here.”

  “I’ll pass it on.”

  Ling Yu had barely returned to her console when the first hyper portal opened. A stealthed cruiser slipped through, the portal closing behind her as she tried to get into the system to see what had happened to her sisters.

  Bellerophon might have been missing twelve launchers, two full batteries, but Casimir and Masters had received the orders first. Twelve hyper missiles bracketed the cruiser moments after the hyper portal closed, making sure that stealth ship wasn’t going to report back to the Return.

  “My compliments to Captain Vong’s tactical officers,” Harold said with a smile. “I suggest that the battleships take turns. Let’s blind these people.”

  Three more scout ships followed over the next two and a half hours, each cruiser creeping out of hyperspace slower than the last. Each cruiser was allowed to enter the system and close their hyper portal behind them, and then Harold’s people blew them to hell.

  “That’s our time window,” Ling Yu murmured to him. “Tanaka could be here anytime now.”

  “Anytime in the next two days,” he replied. “We still need to hold.”

  “Then it’s a good thing they’re still wondering what the hell happened to their scout ships, isn’t it?” she said. “How long before they try something more significant?”

  “We might be lucky and get another hour so before—”

  “Hyper portal! Big one.”

  “Never mind,” Harold said with a wry smile as he studied the hologram. The Taljzi had apparently guessed roughly what was happening and were damned determined to find out what had happened to their fleet.

  Sixty destroyers screened the remaining super-battleships, and Harold considered for several long seconds.

  “All ships with hyper missiles are to target the super-battleships,” he ordered. “They’re going to learn what they came here for. Let’s bleed them for the privilege.”

  His battleships and remaining Thunderstorm-D’s obeyed instantly. The first super-battleship died quickly, their initial evasive maneuvers only enough to drag two Taljzi destroyers into the Imperial fire with her.

  The second died almost as quickly, but the rest of the Taljzi ships evaded, diving back into hyperspace and wasting one of Harold’s precious salvos of faster-than-light missiles.

  “How long were they in for?” he asked.

  “Seventy-six seconds,” Ling Yu confirmed. “Enough. They know we got hurt; they know they lost their entire fleet. Everyone knows all of the pieces now.”

  He grunted and brought up an estimate of the enemy strength.

  “We’ve got two salvos of S-HSMs left?” he asked.

  “Two salvos on the cruisers, nine on the battleships,” she confirmed. “It won’t be enough.”

  “No.” He looked at the timer for their estimate of Tanaka’s arrival as it flipped into the green zone. “We might be able to throw back one more attack. Maybe. But it’s down to Fleet Lord Tanaka now.”

  Minutes bled into other minutes and then into hours as time passed without anything changing. Harold remained on his bridge,
watching the plots and waiting for the final hammer to drop.

  Somehow, he wasn’t entirely surprised when someone linked his wife into his communicator earbud.

  “So, Harold, your staff is calling me again,” Ramona said with a throaty chuckle. “Are you zombie-pacing around your bridge, scaring them?”

  “Not this time,” he told her, keeping his voice quiet so his flag bridge crew couldn’t really hear him. “Mostly zombie-staring at the main tactical plot. I can’t be anywhere else at this point.”

  “Your quarters are literally seconds from the flag bridge. You can sleep, love.”

  “Not without medication,” Harold admitted. “And we can’t afford that, not at this point. No, Ramona, at this point, all I can do is stand the watch.”

  “Sir.” Xun Huang approached him. “I don’t want to interrupt, but our damaged ships are loaded up with their new cargo. They’re ready to make their run.”

  “Thank you, Yong,” Harold told him. He checked the screens, then turned his attention back to his wife.

  “I don’t suppose I could convince you to get on one of those ships?” he asked his wife.

  “Your very kind staff already tried,” Ramona said brightly. “I don’t think it would be right to stick the Admiral’s wife on the last convoy out, not when the governor’s people pulled together a lottery for those few spaces at such short notice.”

  “That’s what they did?” Harold asked in surprise. “I just told them to stick as many people as they could fit onto our cripples before they ran.”

  “I don’t think anything else would have been fair,” his wife admitted. “Are…are they going to be safe, Harold?”

  “There’s no guarantees at this point,” he reminded her. “I’m sending extra ships with them to keep an eye on them, but that’s all we can do.”

  “I know. I’m staying,” Ramona told him firmly. “I can’t make you rest, but know that I’m here. To the end.”

  “Thank you, love.”

  She dropped the call and he turned back to Xun Huang.

  “How many people did we get on the new convoy?” he asked.

  “Three thousand on the cripples. Another eight hundred on the escort squadron.”

  Harold snorted.

  “I don’t recall telling Commodore Huber she could load civilians onto her destroyers,” he pointed out. Sixteen of his Bonnie Tyler-class destroyers, the latest out of the Militia’s non-DragonWorks design crews, made up Commodore Hillary Huber’s command. Their role in the battle to come would be minimal, so he’d assigned them to make sure his crippled cruisers and destroyers made it back to Sol.

  “I don’t believe the Commodore asked permission,” Xun Huang replied. “She’s waiting on orders to get underway.”

  Harold checked the time. Six hours since the last scouting wave. Those six hours had let them pull almost four thousand people off the planet.

  It was all they were going to get.

  “Tell her to get underway,” he ordered.

  As his coms officer moved away, Harold studied the tactical plot once more.

  The Taljzi had made their scouting run. They knew what he had left, that stealth had failed them. The only option left to them was to repeat their initial charge, a plan that Harold was grimly certain would work.

  So…where were they?

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Harriet glared at her screens and holographic plot, as if her angry half-muffled hum could accelerate starships faster than all the artifice of over two dozen species. They’d gained a couple of hours on their original estimate, but it had still been sixteen tenth-cycles—over thirty-six hours—since they believed the Taljzi would have arrived.

  Even with the Gold Dragon tech and the supplies and defenses in Asimov, Harriet saw no way that Rolfson could have held for thirty-six hours. Not against ten times his numbers and a dozen times his tonnage.

  Her fleet was still a full tenth-cycle away. Even if a miracle had preserved TF 77–1 this long, could they hold another two and a half hours?

  “Fleet Lord, we’ve got something on the anomaly scanners. Heading our way, fast.”

  She turned to face the Indiri officer speaking.

  “How many signatures, Commander Ilaize?” she asked.

  “Perhaps two squadrons’ worth, moving at point five five cee,” she replied. “The anomaly scanner doesn’t give us much more.”

  Anomaly scanners were the only thing that could see through hyperspace beyond the one-light-second visibility bubble. Given that bubble translated to light-weeks to light-months of real space, depending on the current hyperspace density, anomaly scanners could sometimes see light-years away.

  But all they could see was interface drives, and only interface drives in hyperspace. They couldn’t tell Harriet, for example, if she was looking at two squadrons of destroyers—or two squadrons of Laian war-dreadnoughts.

  Two squadrons totaled thirty-six ships. Most likely they weren’t a threat, but…she couldn’t take anything for granted.

  “My compliments to Rear Admiral Jung-Hee Rhee,” she said after a moment. “Her Manticores have a full point six sprint capability. I want her to use every scrap of it to get to the one-light-second range of those ships.”

  “Yes, sir,” Commander Miril Ilaize responded. She shook slightly, scattering water droplets from her damp red fur. “What if they’re Taljzi?”

  “Rhee is authorized to use whatever force is necessary to protect her command,” Harriet replied. “I trust her discretion.”

  Harriet watched the icons representing Rhee’s understrength battleship echelon leap ahead of the fleet. If she’d judged wrong, she’d just sent six battleships of her home star’s Militia to their deaths.

  It was unlikely, though. Thirty-odd ships was unlikely to be a major force, no matter who it belonged to.

  She hadn’t given orders to keep communications open, but Admiral Rhee had assumed that was part of her orders. A coil of destroyers expanded out behind the Manticores, each slightly less than one light-second from each other.

  Hyperfold communications didn’t work in hyperspace, but they were relaying Rhee’s sensors and coms back to the fleet following in her trail.

  The farther the ships moved, the older the information she was receiving from them became. Every ten seconds’ flight added another second to the information delay.

  By the time Rhee broke into the visibility bubble around the other ships, she was almost a full light-minute ahead of the main fleet—easily half a light-year in real space.

  “Confirmation is coming back,” Ilaize reported. “Admiral Rhee reports a mix of Imperial and Militia units, cripples with a destroyer escort. Commodore Huber sends her regards and reports that Admiral Rolfson was holding as of six hours ago.”

  “Make sure we get the Commodore’s full report,” Harriet ordered with a concealed sigh of relief. “I want to know everything that happened in Asimov before she left.”

  “The Commodore is on your wave, Fleet Lord,” the Indiri replied. “Data transmission is already commencing.”

  Harriet nodded her thanks, her gaze still locked on to the tactical plot. Rhee had slowed her ships down and was waiting for the fleet to catch up. Huber would continue on. Harriet saw no reason to pull the destroyers off their escort duty, even if they were probably safe now.

  Six hours. Could her people have held for six more hours?

  Sier stepped up next to her, the blue-feathered chief of staff looking disturbingly refreshed and calm despite the situation.

  “Admiral Rolfson bought us more time than we dared hope,” he said. “I fear the price.”

  “There was no price we weren’t prepared to pay,” Harriet noted. “That he had a chance to send away his cripples tells me he’s paid less than I was prepared to lose.”

  She shook her head.

  “Rolfson understood his orders: hold at any cost. If he has lost every ship under his command, but the Taljzi have not yet bombarded Isaac when we arrive
, then he completed his mission.”

  Harriet grimaced.

  “I just hope he’s still there when we arrive.”

  “May the wind carry your words to the sun,” Sier told her, the phrase half a hope and half a prayer. “We’re at least an hour away from being able to detect ships in hyperspace around Asimov.”

  “And then we will know,” she agreed. “Let me know as soon as we have a full download of Huber’s data. I need to know where we were when she left.”

  The hyperspace missiles were terrifyingly more effective than Harriet had ever predicted. She watched the battle to date on fast forward, slowing down to study the individual portions of the engagement and stunned by the sheer amount of damage Rolfson had inflicted.

  Huber’s report suggested that Rolfson was almost out of HSMs, but he’d smashed the capital ship strength of the Taljzi Return. She could understand why the aliens were hesitating. Without evidence that the defenders were low on ammunition for their weapons and without time to assess just what the hyperspace missiles were, the Return faced the distinct possibility of repeating the losses from their first attack if they charged.

  In their place, she’d be going over every piece of data she had with a fine-toothed comb. Eventually, they’d come up with the conclusion that the closer they got to the Terrans, the more effective their missiles were—though without the data about what had happened to their stealth attack, they wouldn’t realize there was a danger to getting too close as well.

  In their place, Harriet wasn’t sure she’d make the assault at all. There was nothing in Asimov worth what they’d already lost trying to attack the system. The cold calculus of war said that they could take Asimov, but at a price that was ridiculous, considering the mere three capital ships defending it.

  A chill ran across her neck as she considered that. There was something worth taking in Asimov, though there was no way the Taljzi could take them intact.