“Fire missiles at both of those attacking forces, above and below,” ordered the great admiral. Neither of those forces would be enough to cause too much harm. More of a nuisance. Of course, not a nuisance to the ships that were hit. He would be able to judge their ability to maneuver from the results of his volleys. He suspected the force coming in from below would have the greater advantage.
“We have missiles on final approach,” called out the voice of the sensor officer, on the edge of panic. “Impact in twelve seconds.”
The great admiral turned to look at the plot with a tremor running through his body. They had timed this perfectly. From the position of the missiles on the plot they wouldn't be threatening his flagship. Also, with the tactic of using scouts as command relays still in place, they weren't painting targets on their hulls.
There were twenty-two bodies of missiles on the plot, two coming from behind and up, probably from their stealth ships. Eight were coming in from the asteroid belt, possibly the moons of a gas giant. Twelve were on a vector that indicated the habitable planet. Of course, any of them could have been launched from those positions, or anywhere in space from near those points to his fleet. Thirty seconds after the first volley had hit, another would be coming in, and another.
Is that all the human admiral has? he thought. On the other front they were in battles facing hundreds of those launchers. Or course there they would have the full production of their Empire sending them to the front by the hundreds each week. Here, they only had what the small Klavarta wormhole industry could provide them, and what could be sent on the six month or longer trip through hyperspace. His intelligence had told him that a convoy was on the way with more, but it was probably more than a month out. They wouldn't get to here in time to have any impact on this battle.
The defenses fired on the missiles; a display of firepower that would make any Caca commander proud. Ten thousand counters, thousands of lasers, to track and fire on six hundred and sixty missiles. But those missiles were traveling at point nine five light, with only ten seconds warning prior to contact. Still, they were able to take out over half the missiles before they could go into their final attack maneuvers. Not all that got through could actually acquire a target. Still, over forty Ca'cadasan ships were destroyed, others damaged.
“Throw out a far cordon of scouts between us and the launch points of those weapons,” ordered Mrastaran, looking over at his com people. “Thick enough to take them under fire while they're warning us of their approach.”
Despite all the scouts he had, it was still a massive volume of space they had to cover. Knowing where the missiles were originating from, or at least the vectors they were on, meant they could put large groups of scouts in their way and still maintain the heavy cordon around the fleet close in.
“Our first volleys will be approaching their targets in approximately ten minutes, my Lord.”
Mrastaran gave a head motion of acknowledgment as he chewed his lip with his sharp teeth. This would give him vital information, unless their commander decided to simply let him hit his targets to deny him that intelligence. He couldn't see her doing that. From what he had seen the humans were not willing to do that, unlike his own people. They were soft hearted, and would do their best to prevent collateral damage to the people under their protection.
“We're picking up massive graviton emissions from around those targets, my Lord,” called out the sensor officer. “Also, many of our missiles are falling off the plot short.”
That meant lots of counters were being fired, maybe as many as his fleet could put out. A lot of his weapons were being taken out. What he couldn't see were the lasers and other weapons that were being used to take out his missiles close in. He also couldn't see the effects of his weapons, since they weren't targeting ships that were boosting. Some would be hitting, something, and causing some damage. That wouldn't become apparent until the light reached the Ca'cadasan fleet in an hour or so.
“Launch missile volleys from all ships at the locations of those wormhole launchers.”
He might not hit them, or he might get very lucky and blow some of those ships out of space. He might even hit some of their missile streams in transit. What he was sure of was he would get the attention of the human admiral. Maybe he could spark a reaction from her that would help him to figure out just where the hell she was deployed.
It was frustrating. He was a third of the way to the main target, the inhabited planet, and still had little idea about her deployments. Even sending out the most powerful pulses of active sensors, radar and lidar, there was very little chance of detecting them if they were keeping system bodies between themselves and his ships. It took minimal grabber power to maintain station, or they might have actually been set down on some of the smaller asteroids.
Since he didn't know where his main opposition lay, he really couldn't decide what to do. Decelerate to a standstill next to the planet Pleisia? Go by slowly? Or fly by in high velocity and take everything under fire on the way by. Or possibly go ahead and split up his fleet and send detachments at everything of interest in the system? Since he wasn't sure where her force was deployed, and in what strength, that was inviting defeat in detail.
He would just have to stay patient, bide his time, and make his play as the information firmed up.
* * *
“Their missiles are about to hit, ma'am,” said Captain Sigurd Janssen, looking over from the plot.
“I guess we'll get a chance to see how well we've defended this space,” said Beata, trying to put a smile on her face and failing.
Romulus was sitting behind far out in space, near the hyper barrier. She almost wished that she could put all of her fleet in the way of the enemy weapons, but to do so would let the enemy know exactly where the main body of her fleet was. Well, it would, if her main body had actually been near the planet. Quite a bit of her fleet was, but not even half of it.
“You take chances with this planet,” said Captain Lokar Thrandos, the Klavarta liaison officer.
“We all take chances, Captain Thrandos,” Beata replied. “We only have one chance to win this thing.”
“I think we should engage with the rest of our wormholes, ma'am,” said Janssen, while Thrandos nodded his head in agreement.
Sixteen wormholes had yet to engage. Beata had thought long and hard about how she was going to open fire with those weapons. They were all she had, along with the eleven that Mara's force carried. It was tempting to use all of them to whittle away at the enemy fleet on the way in. However, she could see no conceivable way she could have killed enough of them to keep them from closing with her force. Those sixteen weapons would open up when she was ready, along with Mara's, and she was hoping it would come as such a shock that the enemy might recoil. It probably wouldn't stop them for good, but if it bought her more time it would serve.
“Counters firing now,” called out one of the officers, while the plot filled with the hazy mass of tens of thousands of the anti-missile weapons, more tens of thousands appearing every second.
“They're just about into the laser kill zones,” said Janssen, as some of the enemy missiles, fewer than any commander would expect, made it through.
Beata had done something that no naval commander had ever done. Not in the known history of warfare. The Emperor couldn't give her any wormholes, and warships were in short supply. What he could give her were weapons. He gave her in as many of the defensive weapons as he could ship from their storage facilities with as many freighters as he could get his hands on. Since the storage facilities were filled to capacity, and there were lots of freighters available, she had gotten millions of counters and hundreds of thousands of laser sats, and she had seeded them as thick as possible around the vital facilities of the system. Fifty percent had been placed around the planet, since it was the habitat of ninety-five percent of the intelligent life in the system.
Now we find out if this works, she thought, her nerves on edge as she watched t
he act play out.
* * *
“Get to the shelters, immediately. We are under attack from space. All citizens need to get their families and themselves to the shelters.”
Captain Xferd Canara looked up at the hovering drone that was broadcasting the warning to the populace, while sirens blared in the background. There were very few civilians still out. Most had taken cover, though the shelters were filled to overflowing, and many of the natives had to hide in the inadequate cover of basements and underground transportation lines. Not that the shelters would do much good if a ship killer hit the planet. The kinetic energy itself would collapse everything on a continent. The gigaton blast would also kill most life for a thousand kilometers in every direction.
Canara looked over at the entrance to his own shelter, the command bunker for his company. Most of his staff were in it, but he thought it pretty much useless. It would protect them from artillery and maybe some light orbital kinetics, but would do nothing to save them from a ship killer.
“All citizens, stand clear of the launch field,” came a final warning.
Canara looked over at the large open field to one side of the spaceport they had been set to protect. Thousands of large box launchers sat on that kilometers wide field, angled up. Scores of boxes opened and missiles popped out, accelerating up into the sky. At the edge of the officer's vision they went into high accel, disappearing as if they had teleported away.
Another score fired, then another, until the one launch site had released several hundred weapons, leaving thousands for later use.
The warrior looked up, into the night sky, to see the bright pinpoints of warheads breaching far out. Some moved closer, until one final blast that was a small disc appeared, and the miniature battle was over. For a minute, when it resumed with the next volley coming in.
* * *
There were over a hundred thousand laser heads in orbit around the planet, all now aligned on the night side, facing the incoming missile storm. Thousands had been mounted on existing platforms, docks, habitats, everything that could mount a mass of weapons. Many more were on specially developed weapons platforms that carried hundreds of short-range counter missiles as well as scores of lasers. And then there were the one-use versions, similar to the mines that had hit the Cacas prior. They were stationed further out, where the fusion blasts that unleashed the lasers would not have an effect on other objects in orbit.
These were made with a different focus though. Instead of a relatively thin beam, such as burned through the hulls of the Caca warships, these were more of a wide-angle projection made to send the most energy possible into the mass of approaching missiles. Burning off grabbers, turning seeker heads into vapor, rendering precision weapons imprecise, making them wander off target.
A few pieces of missiles made it through, parts of bodies, a small section of grabbers, flying through at high relativistic speeds. They hit the atmosphere as streaks of light, impacting, even with their tiny masses raising blasts in the low kiloton range, mushroom clouds rising into the atmosphere. A few small towns were flattened, but casualties were very light, the shelters good enough to protect against this kind of bombardment.
After that volley there were three more, the final one actually sending some larger fragments into the planet. Afterwards the shuttles and small carrier ships reseeded space with more laser sats, while reloads were manhandled into the counter box launchers. Making ready for the next volley, at that moment ten minutes out from the launching ships and accelerating at eight thousand gravities.
Chapter Fifteen#stop#
Work together. Do not purge your allies because of purity. Greg Gutfeld
“We won't have missile damage assessments for almost an hour, my Lord,” reported the chief analyst of the Ca'cadasan fleet tactical section.
Mrastaran grunted. He already knew that, and having his people tell him what he had figured out on his own was aggravating. Of course, it was their job, and there was also the fear factor. Ca'cadasan's who didn't perform their duties perfectly risk execution, which made them go overboard at times.
The great admiral was one of the senior officers who had actually supported the policies of the last Emperor. He didn't like the fact that every subordinate in the fleet feared for their lives with their every action. They were supposed to be warriors, brave, risking their lives with courage and conviction. The last Emperor had stopped the traditional demand that his advisors only tell him what he wanted, and that failure, no matter what the warrior was facing, meant they were subject to capital punishment.
The warriors of the people had responded well to that kind of treatment, though there were commanders, tradition bound fools, who balked. Mrastaran was not one of them. However, since that progressive Emperor had died under suspicious circumstances, and the young fool of a son had taken over, tradition was once again in force, and the morale of the fleet was dropping like an asteroid caught in the gravity field of a black hole.
If I were Emperor things would change again, thought Mrastaran, dismissing the dangerous thought as soon as it came. If any knew he was thinking of a coup he would be dead. And not swiftly, oh no. His demise would be slow and painful.
“My Lord,” called out the tactical officer, glancing over at the sensor officer for a moment before looking back at the admiral. “We have ships moving toward us.”
Mrastaran looked over at the plot, which was heavily overpopulated with vector arrows and figures. He could see one attacking force at first glance. “That one.”
The take he was looking at showed a couple of hundred medium sized warships, the largest massing eight million tons, and only about fifty of those. Coming in from below them on the system ecliptic. There were also some one million ton and many more four hundred thousand tons vessels. The acceleration figures are what caught his attention. Over six hundred and fifty gravities. He would expect that of fighters or fast attack craft, but not what appeared to be small capital ships.
Something new, he thought, staring at the vector arrows that were pointed to where his fleet would be when their vectors crossed. The resonances from the ships were also something new, nothing they had ever picked up before on their sensors. New allies of the Klavarta? From the space outside their nation, or from the other side of the Ca'cadasan Empire, where the New Terrans were set up. No matter, what was important was that it was something new and unexpected. Never good when facing the humans.
“That's one of them,” said the tactical officer, pointing to another track coming in from above them on the ecliptic. From the resonances these were something the Empire had already run into, in very small numbers. Slarna, he thought they were called. Very small warships, four million tons at most, over a thousand of them heading in at five hundred and fifty gravities. So their acceleration tech was at least as advanced as that of anyone else in this war, with the exception of the newcomers coming in from below.
“And here.”
Another track, this one of Klavarta ships, the fast attack craft that had hit them before. Two thousand of them this time. Coming in from the stern at six hundred and fifty gravities. The Klavarta, or at least their Alpha line, were designed to breath in an oxygenated liquid environment that allowed them to handle more gravities than their compensators could account for. Two thousand of them. building up enough velocity to catch up with his ships, though not until a couple of hours had passed.
“And here.”
Three thousand more fast attack craft, not boosting quite as ferociously as the Klavarta ships, leading him to believe these must be crewed by humans, the Terran variety. Or Klavarta who were holding down their acceleration to fool him. The human commander was using deception like an artist painting a scene she wanted him to focus on. These ships were coming in from the front. They were coming in straight on, the perfect firing solution to use the velocity of his own ships against them. Of course, it would also allow his own shots to close with them at maximum velocity, near light speed.
; “Prepare to fire on all of them. I want them blown out of space. I...”
“We're picking up warp fighters, my Lord. Five hundred from astern. Another five hundred from forward and above.”
“How many warp fighters do we have left?” asked the great admiral, knowing that he couldn't have all that many after the human variety had ravaged them in passing.
“We have seventy-three fighters battle worthy, my Lord,” said the tactical officer, his expression one of a male wanting to give his commander good news, and unable to give him such. “We can always get more from the Capital yards once we have a wormhole gate in place.”
“Which does us no good at the moment,” growled the admiral, glaring at the officer, who turned his gaze away and tried to become as small as possible in his chair. Quite the challenge for the three-meter tall being.
Mrastaran had to consider for a moment if he wanted to launch those fighters. They might take out a dozen or so enemy if they were all sent at one of the formations, but they would surely all be destroyed. Or he could hold them, hoping to use them for some other purpose. He couldn't think what that would be, but something was sure to come up, and he preferred to keep his options open.
“Hold the fighters. But make sure their crews know they are to remain near to their ships; in case I want to launch them at a moment's notice.”
“Yes, my Lord.”
Exodus: Empires at War: Book 15: All Quiet on the Second Front? Page 19
