by Ira Tabankin
The Lincoln’s AI alerted them, “Warning, warning wormhole opening five million miles above the Earth.”
Rhett said, “No good, much closer than we could manage. Put the fleet on general quarters.”
A moment later a group of rocks appeared in the event horizon of the wormhole. Rhett yelled, “Target those rocks. If they land, they’ll tear up much of the Earth and cause billions of deaths.”
“Admiral, the system military AI has taken control of the system defenses. It’s already opening fire on the rocks. At the close range they appeared, the AI said they are going to miss some.”
“Order the planetary fighters to target the rocks in support of the planetary systems. We’re running out of time.”
“Yes, sir.”
The two admirals watched the rocks falling and the counter showing the number of rocks falling onto Earth slowly decreasing as the planetary defense particle beams sliced into the rocks, many times only breaking them into millions of small pieces which struck with less damage, but still destroyed buildings and infrastructure.
Rhett shook his head, “Damn, we missed that one. All because we couldn’t open a wormhole that close to a gravity well didn’t mean they couldn’t. Shit, even Kalteck told me he couldn’t open one that close either. I bet their ships will enter in a similar location. Move as many of the mines in close as possible and also the Monitors and Battleships.”
As if Rhett could see the future, a series of wormholes opened between five and twenty million miles from Earth. Large ships which made the Earth’s Monitors look small began entering Earth’s system in groups of threes.
Rhett shook his head, “When Kalteck told us they had a tendency to build large ships, he wasn’t kidding. These make the Neanderthal ones look small. They must out displace us by millions of tons.”
Admiral Dune looked at the ships entering the system when the mines began exploding. “Here’s hoping they can take out some of the ships. Admiral do you want me to send in the Cruisers and Battleships?”
“No, they won’t stand a chance against these monsters. I hope the Monitors can hold their own. Send in the minelayers. I know they can’t survive but maybe they can release their mines into their path.”
“Done.” The two watched the over ten thousand mines fly towards the oncoming ships. Rhett looked at his friend, “Admiral, fight your ship.”
“Yes, sir. Admiral, you manage the fleet, the Lincoln will hold her own. We’ll go in with the Enterprise and Patrick Henry as a three-ship attack fleet.”
“Admiral, send in the Piranhas in front of the Monitors.”
“Admiral I’m sure you realize none of them will most likely survive…”
“I know it, you know it, and the pilots know it. It’s the assignment they signed up for. Have them launch their missiles as soon as possible. Order them to salvo them at one ship. Maybe we’ll get lucky. Admiral, warm up the main railgun and the plasma weapons.”
“Yes, sir.”
“One more thing. Both of us shouldn’t be in the same bridge at the same time. Go with God.”
Admiral Dune smiled at his friend. “You look like you’re thirty and yet I know you’re over a hundred. When this is over you’ve got to tell me your secret.”
“I promise me if we survive this, I will. Now go fight your ship.”
“Yes, sir.”
Space was filled with energy beams, missiles, kinetic masses, and plasma slugs passing through space. Ship’s shields glowed from the impact of more energy than the Earth generated in a year. Shields blackened trying to throw off excess energy. Some shields fell, which allowed weapons to strike ship’s armor and their hulls. In some cases, even the thickest armor both races knew how to build were overloaded, allowing energy to cut into the interior of the ships. Damage control alarms screamed as crews ran to seal hull ruptures.
Rhett felt good about the way the battle was proceeding when another series of wormholes opened behind his line of Monitors, of which only eight remained. Moscow had exploded when she was hit by nine massive energy beams. The Chinese lost the Sun Tzu when she was struck right behind her arrowhead, a defect with the design where the shields were the weakest.
Rhett checked the AI, “What’s coming through the wormhole?”
“Nine massive ships, they are over twenty times the size of the Lincoln. Enemy ships coming up from our stern where our shields and armor the weakest. It’s also where we have the least weapons.”
“What’s the condition of the remaining Monitors?”
“All are taking a lot of battle damage. Admiral, we can’t take this pounding much longer.”
“What’s the condition of the Lincoln?”
“Six major hull breaches. Our armor wasn’t as good as we thought it would be.”
“We did the best in the time we had. We came a long way since 1947 when Kalteck arrived. Speaking of which, where is he?”
“He just drove his ship into the opening wormhole directly behind us. It appears his plan is to find a way to collapse the wormhole before their ships can fully emerge.” The Lincoln was rocked by a massive explosion and a wave of radiation. A warning sounded through the ship, “AI is rebooting, AI is rebooting.”
Rhett smiled, “I’m happy we thought of this and had a series of smaller AIs encased in thick lead to save them from a hard radiation strike. What hit us?”
“Kalteck was successful at slamming the first wormhole shut while the ship was partially exited. The enemy ship was destroyed.”
“What happened to Kalteck?”
“Unknown there’s too much hard radiation and debris in the area.” Said the backup AI. “Main AI back online, main AI is back on line.”
Rhett used his implant to chat with Admiral Dune. “How’s the Lincoln?”
“She’s holding up, which is better than I can say many of our ships are doing.”
“What’s the final count, what are we still dealing with?”
“To many for us to handle and they’re still entering our system. I don’t think they like us much.”
“Maybe we can make them like us even less, send the code…”
“Admiral, if we send it to early?”
“It’s a risk we have to take. Our losses are exceeding our worst projections. We have to try to stop them here and now. Send the code probe through the wormhole and pray.”
Chapter 25
The Earth Monitor class warships were monsters, but the enemy’s ships were larger and carried more firepower. Rhett had surprised the enemy with the mines and new multistage missiles which changed course and speed and carried jamming and spoofing which fooled the enemy’s point defense.
Rhett was about to issue a course change to the fleet when a brilliant flash whited out all of the monitors which looked outside. “What the hell was that?” he asked.
The weapons officer replied, “Sir, that was two of the enemy’s largest ships exploding. Our mines must have scrambled their AIs because they were close when six mines exploded. In the confusion each ship must have thought the ship next to it was one of us because they fired at each other and destroyed each other in the confusion.”
“I like that result, if only we could pull it off again.”
The weapons officer responded, “Sir, I have an out of the box idea…”
“Do tell, I love out of the box ideas.”
“Since we know they are not shielded against the X-ray mines, why not send every mine we have towards them. In addition, we can begin to pull back and leave a dense mine field between us and them. They’ll have to spend time clearing the mines, if they know how, buying us time we can use to reorganize and hit them again.”
“I like it, issue the orders under my name.”
Within minutes thousands of mines woke up and began moving towards the enemy’s ships. Most of the mines had small thrusters, which while slow did allow them to change their course. The mines surprised the enemy whose defense and offense were designed against attacks from large ships,
not very small objects which they usually would have ignored. It took precious time for them to reprogram their AIs and targeting systems to search for the small objects, many of them were now also masked by being inside debris clouds.
The mines could be detonated by remote control or when they reached a certain distance from their targets. In this case, Rhett ordered them program to strike the enemy from all degrees of a circle. He hoped the many small objects coming at them from every angle would confuse their point defense. To further confuse their point defense Rhett ordered jamming missiles launched. These spread small strips of reflective material causing the enemy’s sensors to ‘see’ over a hundred thousand targets and the missiles also carried small powerful electronic jamming devices which were designed to scramble the enemy’s point defense systems. They had been successfully tested against Kalteck’s ship.
The jamming and the small size of the mines, some only the size of a softball, others as large as a beachball, overwhelmed the enemy’s ships. While their crews and AIs struggled to determine which targets were real and which not, the mines struck.
The blast of X-ray radiation damaged the enemy’s AIs. While the AIs were rebooting and attempting self-repair, missiles loaded with antimatter struck the enemy. These ripped open their hulls. While the enemy was dealing with the mines and missiles, Rhett ordered his surviving Monitors and Battleships to fire their main weapons at the enemy fleet. These arrived at the same time as the second round of missiles arrived. The combination overwhelmed the enemy who attempted to flee through new wormholes, only as with the Neanderthals, they learned too late, that the wormholes sucked many mines in with them. These came as a very nasty surprise when they exploded, closing the wormhole before the enemy ships had reached their destination. Many of the ships were blown out of the wormholes, damaged, lost and without AIs. Many of the enemy’s ships drifted, powerless, without AIs in unknown space.
While the enemy was retreating, Rhett ordered his fleet to report their battle damage. He was saddened to learn he was down to four Monitors and all had sustained some amount of damage. He had twenty surviving Battleships, and three hundred assorted Cruisers and Destroyers which he knew couldn’t stand against the enemy’s ships.
Rhett set up a virtual ship’s captains’ meeting to discuss their needs. While he was holding the meeting, damage repair crews and nanites swarmed over the damaged hulls and interior spaces performing as many repairs as possible. Supply shuttles went from ship to ship delivering parts and rearming missiles while mine layers spread additional mines around Earth’s ships.
Rhett looked at his captains, three had patches over one of their eyes, four were missing limbs, six attended the conference while Rhett could see the lingering smoke covering the ship’s bridges. “My friends, we met the enemy and have stopped them, for now. I don’t want to sugarcoat the situation. The good news is we’ve done something that according to what the Neanderthals and Kalteck told us, no one has ever accomplished before, we stopped them. We’ve destroyed more of their ships in this battle then they’ve lost in many many years. At the same time, our losses were higher than we expected for the first battle. They have the resources to keep coming at us while we don’t have the resources to keep losing ships at the rate, we’ve been losing them. We’re building a new class of highly automated ships at the recently completed base in Jupiter’s orbit. These are based on a new design worked on by Kalteck, and the Neanderthal’s and our ship design groups. I have high hopes for these ships, but even with millions of trillions of nanites it takes time, time which we’ve seen, we don’t have.
“I’ve implemented part one of the rescue plan. Thirty massive colony ships departed minutes after the enemy left to begin taking fifty million of our citizens to a new world the Neanderthals had discovered and were preparing to colonize. Now we’ll colonize it together. No matter what happens here, our species won’t die. My hope is we can hold off the enemy until we can move at least one hundred million of our people. It’s all going to come down to the following, when does the enemy return, can we hold them away from Earth, and how quickly can the colony ships travel, unload, and return to repeat the process.
“Our job is to buy time for our people. The longer we can hold off the enemy, the more of our people survive. I’m, our people are counting you, on me, on all of us to buy them time, time to survive. We may fall today and think we’ve lost, but if we can get enough of our people off the planet, and to a planet the enemy doesn’t know about yet, then we’ve won! Remember that. Our goal now is to buy time. Every minute is more people who get away. May God smile on all of us and may we meet again in Valhalla.”
Admiral Dune asked Rhett, “What about, and I hate asking, which is why I’m asking you on this private channel, have you considered using the small ships as kamikaze ships loaded with antimatter?”
“I have and the orders have already been given. Crews are working to turn the control of those ships over to their AIs. I’ve worked with the fleet AI. We both estimate only ten percent of them will survive to reach their targets. Space is different than fighting on Earth, the blast waves are different. There’s no atmosphere to compress and use to crush the enemy. We’re also running low on antimatter, I’ve got Oak Ridge working around the clock producing every ounce they can squeeze out of their reactors. I have one crazy last plan, one so insane even Kalteck thinks I’m certifiable.”
“Oh, I love these kinds of plans, what are you thinking?”
“As soon as their wormhole begins to open, I plan to order our small ships loaded with antimatter to jump to the event horizon of the enemy’s wormhole and then explode. I’m hoping we can catch them exiting their wormhole. If we do, we can destroy them before they exit the wormhole. It’s tricky because our drives aren’t designed to operate so close to a gravity well. Kalteck’s AI is working with ours to fine tune our drives so we can pop out of FTL drive into the mouth of their wormholes.”
“Crazy, but it might work. What happens when we explode that much antimatter in the event horizon of a wormhole so close to Earth?”
“Ah, I see you’ve quickly found the core of problem, the energies released could do something really nasty to our atmosphere.”
“How nasty?”
“Blow holes in the atmosphere that could alter our climate. We could end up with holes so large that radiation floods in or we could end up with a global ice age or even global warming. No one seems to know until it happens.”
“Oh shit! Please tell me you’re kidding.”
“My friend, I wish I was. How long until we’re rearmed?”
“Two hours if they leave us alone that long.”
“We can pray.”
A wormhole opened over the moon’s southern hemisphere. Twenty giant ships began to exit, each sending friendly IFF codes. Rhett told the assembled captains, “Here come our colony ships. I hope the people on the moon base are quick in loading. Look at them, take a good look at those ships, those are our back up plan. If they destroy Earth and those ships survive, our race survives. If we lose those ships, we lose. Remember that. We have to buy them time to load our people and make a clean get away. Those ships will jump through different wormholes to their destination making the enemy’s chance of finding them more difficult.”
The captains agreed with Rhett. They told their crews the same thing, that they may be asked to lay down their lives in order to make sure the colony ships survive. On the moon, the colony ships landed in a large crater. As soon as they landed, ramps lowered, fifty lines of people pushed antigravity pallets loaded with sleeping tubes of people. As soon as one ship was filled, it took off and jumped to our new home.
Kalteck’s implant pinged Rhett’s, “My friend, you’ve done a magnificent job. Better than anyone before you. I’m sure you realize you can’t win, have you considered my offer?”
“I thought your fleet was coming to support us, where are they? We both knew our fleet couldn’t hold off the enemy alone.”
“My friend, I’m sorry to have to inform you the enemy caught my fleet by surprise before they arrived over Earth. We thought we had hurt them. It appears the enemy built a secret fleet much larger than either of us ever imagined. They raided our three major shipyards and my home world. The short answer is my fleet was destroyed. They’re not capable of coming to Earth’s aid.”
Rhett sat stunned. He’d hoped his ace in the hole was going to be Kalteck’s fleet coming like the calvary riding over the hill to save the Earth. He responded to Kalteck, “I’m deeply sorry for your losses. I understand the remains of your fleet must do whatever they can to protect your people. I thank you for the assistance you’ve given my people. Had you not accepted your mission and put up with us, we would have already been crushed. Are you returning home?”
“My friend, I wanted to tell you, I am. I am worried about my family line and I want to offer my ship and my service to the fleet.”
