by D. R. Rosier
We couldn’t wait any longer though, we only had about ten minutes to button up and make orbit.
Janson asked, “We won’t be able to come back for the last two hundred, will we?”
Vik said, “Not until we’re ready to start the offensive. We can liberate the Sol system first, and pick up two hundred more people, but I’m not sure if two hundred of the ships having one inexperienced crew person is better than being one short. There won’t be any time for training at that point. The assistants will have to take up the slack on those ships.”
Jillintara reported, “Ship’s secure captain.”
Vik ordered, “Take us up Telidur. Rilok, get the stealth system up as soon as we reach orbit.”
I smirked, when the ship disappeared off the CNN camera, which was wiped off my face a moment later.
Rilok said, “Sir, there are two incoming missiles, launched from just off shore. They’re on an intercept course.”
Janson cursed.
Vik said, “Raise the shields.”
Rilok said, “Already up sir, to deflect and scatter radar. They must be targeting us another way, they’ll hit us ten miles up.”
Janson said, “Probably your heat signature.”
Vik frowned, “Impulse doesn’t have a heat signature.”
Janson laughed, “No, but a large hunk of metal sitting in the hot sun all day is a lot hotter than the surrounding air.”
Vik said, “We should be fine, if we can absorb our weapons without a problem, two Earth weapons won’t harm us.”
Rilok said, “Five seconds.”
I reported, “Sir, point defense is ineffective, and the primitive guidance system is ignoring our countermeasures. The atmosphere is scattering the laser too much to penetrate the steel cone.”
The ship shook.
Vik growled, “Report.”
Jillintara said, “Low yield nuclear sir. The shields are holding at ninety seven percent, and the radiation did not get through the hull, but some did make it to the hull.”
I frowned, “The CNN chopper just dropped out of the sky, and there are power outages in the electrical grid, but they don’t know the extent of it yet.”
Vik shook his head, “Why?”
Janson said, “I didn’t think they’d take it this far. Obviously, someone doesn’t want us to reach those ships to learn their secrets. Is the ship okay? My people?”
Jillintara nodded, “Your people are fine. Minimal damage from radiation on the hull, I need to swap out a few burned-out emitters which will take a couple of hours. Cleansing the radiation from the outer hull plates will take eleven hours.”
Vik asked, “Do you have the source of that missile?”
I nodded, “Submarine off the east coast.”
Vik ordered, “Remove it.”
“Launching sir, kinetic only.”
The missile left the ship at four hundred gravities and ripped through the atmosphere, the sub was cut in half, and the splash was so large it was seen from shore…
Chapter Twenty-One
“What’s wrong?”
Vik, Rilok, and Telidur looked tense.
Vik said, “The radiation on the hull, we can turn on the stealth systems, which will stop the incoming fleet from seeing us or any of our normal energy emissions, but they’ll see the radiation and will know another ship is in the system. Which means we need to play hide and seek with fifty ships in this system for eleven hours. We can’t afford to lead them back to the fleet.”
Oh. That was bad.
Janson asked, “Can we do that?”
Vik shrugged, “Depends on what the ships do when they get here, and how determined they are to identify or stop us. They may assume we’re a Stolavii ship here to pick up slaves, and in that case I’d expect they’ll try and chase us down. A solar system is a big place to run around in, and we’ll be invisible again in eleven hours.”
I updated, “Looks like the north east United States is in the dark. No further launches or military activity.”
Or will be dark, when the sun goes down anyway.
Janson said, “Most likely it will stop there. Whoever fired that missile will take the political heat from the U.S. Any idea?”
I shook my head, “The ship’s sensors could just see the sub was there, not the markings on it.”
Denik’s fifty ship fleet dropped out of subspace and we all waited to see what they would do. A few minutes later, forty of them disappeared, and reappeared around the system in five ten ship formations which were equidistant around the globe of the solar system, then they started in at two hundred gravities.
Vik said, “Well there we have it, they’re hunting us. Coming in like that, any one group will be able to adjust course to intercept us no matter what direction we go to exit the solar system. Two of them will arrive at Earth within eight hours, which gives them three hours to spare.”
Janson said, “Can this ship take ten destroyers?”
Vik grunted, “Six would be an even fight, ten would rip right through us.”
Janson asked, “What if we head toward the sun, would that give us the extra three hours?”
I said, “No, that only gives us an extra A.U. It would only take eight point four hours, instead of seven point eight, and we’d be dodging all fifty of them.”
Janson frowned, and his voice sounded doubtful, “That’s not much of a difference.”
I nodded, “Just one A.U. would take us almost three and a half hours, if we accelerated at two hundred gravities for the first half, and then decelerate the second half. Each additional A.U. of distance adds a shorter and shorter amount of time to our total travel time. It’s because our highest velocity goes up geometrically the further we go. It isn’t intuitive, or a linear problem.”
Vic asked, “Suggestions?”
Rilok said, “Head directly toward one of the groups of ten ships, which will immediately take the other forty out of the equation. At the very least, we’ll be going close to maximum acceleration when we meet them. Depending on what they do, we keep our distance as best as possible, and slap down their missiles until we’re out of range.”
I frowned, but I honestly couldn’t think of a better plan.
Vic said, “Do it.”
Rilok’s hands flew across his board, “Course set.”
Telidur said, “Engaging.”
Janson said, “Will this work, or are we just committing suicide?”
I cleared my throat, “There is a possible solution sir, but we’d be giving up a technical edge four months before we’re ready to launch our campaign. Four months is more than enough time for Denik’s people to analyze what happened, and update their own fleet with the technology.”
Vic asked, “What solution?”
I said, “Well sir, we could start launching missiles now. At four hundred gravities, traveling several A.U., they’d be going incredibly fast by the time they reached the ten enemy ships. So fast, that the weapons officers would have very little chance of getting them with point defense, they’d simply close too fast. At this distance, we could also program and stagger the velocities so multiple waves arrive at once, they might get one or two, but if say sixteen missiles at each of the ten ships arrived at the same time, they’d be toast. That would be ten coordinated waves. Especially with them accelerating at two hundred gravities in the opposite direction, that cuts out even more reaction time for their point defense system. But as I said, we’d be giving away our enhanced missile capabilities past two light minutes very early in the game, giving them time to adjust, and I have no doubt even a dimwitted scientist will figure out how we accomplished it and duplicate it. I’d hate to give away that tactical advantage before we even started the campaign, but it won’t do us any good if we’re dead.”
Vik grimaced, and looked thoughtful.
I understood the delay. We’d win, and take out ten destroyers in the process, but it would still feel like we’d lost.
Vik shook his head, “We don’t ha
ve many options, they can put eighty missiles in play every minute to our sixteen if we wait until we’re in range. Your sim scores are good, but no one is that good.”
Vik frowned, “Alright, but let’s do it this way. Wait until we’re at double the normal missile range between us and them. At that range, we can still get ten volleys out long before we close to the old range, and coordinate them to strike simultaneously. They might assume we figured out how to double the range only, by waiting to fire that long we may throw their analysts off. They may assume we had to wait until we reached that distance, and dimensional port power might not occur to them. I hate to trust to chance like that, but it’s the best we can do to throw them off the scent. They’ll have a better chance to knock them out since they won’t have the same high accelerations, but it will still be significant.
“We’ll be accelerating for the next four hours, and they’ll be accelerating toward us, plus the four hundred gravities after they’re fired. The missiles will still be going incredibly fast. Even if they manage to take out more than one or two, we only have to hit them with half to take them out. Even if half of their ships take out more than eight of the sixteen targeting them, we’ll be on a far more even footing as we cross paths and exchange missiles for the time we’re in range.
“Once our ships pass each other, their missiles will never catch us, since they’d have to decelerate for a couple of hours before they’d even start moving toward us, and they won’t have the power for that, much less the ability to catch up. Once we’re passed them, we’ll cut impulse, and coast for three hours before we start our deceleration. It will take us further than we need to go, but it will also put us far out of reach for anyone else to catch us. By the time we achieve zero velocity a little less than eleven hours from now, the radiation will be cleansed from the hull, the cloak solid, and we can FTL to Alpha Centauri in less than three hours.”
It was a good plan, better than the idea I’d had to launch now, and it wouldn’t blatantly give away the extent of our true advantage.
I blew out a breath, “Good idea. Wouldn’t a wormhole be faster.”
He said, “Yes, but there’s a chance their local space scans could pick up the other side of the wormhole well enough to identify the location. We have to assume they’ll be within five A.U. of it, better not to take the chance.”
Janson asked, “Missile advantage?”
Vik nodded. “Lori redesigned our missiles to use a remote power source. Technically they don’t have a range anymore, at least not one of power and practicability.”
Janson smirked, “But there’s an impractical limit?”
Vik laughed, “Yes. I could fire a missile at another star system, and it would have the power to get there in several years, but without shields the missile’s hull would slowly degrade and systems would fail long before it arrived.”
I started to snicker as an obvious thought occurred to me at his nonsensical point. I felt a little silly for not thinking of it before now.
Vik looked at me and raised an eyebrow.
“Why don’t missiles have shields? It would be so handy to get past point defense.”
Vik replied, “Because of the power require… damn. That’s so obvious, power requirements don’t mean a thing anymore.”
I winked, “Time for another upgrade.”
Vik said, “Later, we have four hours, let’s get something to eat and clear our heads.”
True enough, space battles were long drawn out things, though our missile exchange window would be relatively brief at the speeds we were going, it would take a while to get to that point.
Janson said, “I’d like to check on my people, and let them know what’s going on.”
We all got up and left the bridge.
Chapter Twenty-Two
A missile’s range was two light minutes for the old missiles. But that was from a standstill. When the launching ship was at velocity, it affected the range since the missile would already be moving quite quickly at launch, thus able to cover more distance with the same amount of power and acceleration.
At the speed we were moving after accelerating for almost four hours, the range was extended if we shot a missile straight ahead, and the range to fire behind us would actually be a negative distance as the missiles power was wasted in deceleration.
In the case of a pursuing ship that would be okay, since the pursuing ship would catch up to the missile as it decelerated. But in this case, accelerating and moving head on, once the ships passed each other and left plasma range, the battle was over.
Our only advantage to offset the ten to one odds, or almost two to one odds based on tonnage and weapon weight, was we would be firing twice as early as they would be. With a little luck, the odds would be more than even before they could launch.
Unfortunately, the enemy realized what we were up to and started to decelerate three hours ago. They couldn’t risk bleeding off all their speed, or we’d simply change course and completely evade them, but they’d managed to extend the window of engagement by another ten minutes. Once we were in range, I’d have to stand off thirty volleys of missiles before the engagement was finished, assuming they survived that long.
It also meant, we could send over thirty volleys before they could even fire. Since I was coordinating ten volleys, we only fired ten initially. There was no point wasting the missiles.
Three of the ships were struck by ten or more of the sixteen missiles assigned to them, and were destroyed.
They were moving fast, but with the large distance there was still plenty of time for their weapons officers to assign point defense to them. The lack of time for the point defense to take them out at these speeds, once in laser range, was the true limiter. At least at this range it was.
Four more of the ships took some damage from four missiles or less, leaving only three of the seven remaining ships at full functionality. Those were able to spoof or destroy all the missiles but one or two, which their shields easily absorbed.
I sent a follow up seven volleys, which destroyed two of the damaged ones. And further damaged two others. When we finally reached the point where we were in range of their missiles, there were five ships left to face, only two of them completely undamaged.
Technically, we were a match for them, but I’d be having the same problems they did with point defense, and their five ships could still put forty missiles in space every minute, while I launched all sixteen at one enemy ship, which was five short of three times as many as any of their ships had faced. I started to regret not sending every missile we could fire as I scrambled to assign point defense, and launched ghosting and spoofing countermeasures.
Over half the missiles went off course, but that still left eighteen for point defense. Not impossible for a cruiser at a low velocity, but at these speeds it was more than problematic. I managed to knock out nine of them, and the ship rocked as the same amount exploded against our bow.
Jillintara reported, “Shields at seventy two percent.”
The only good news was my sixteen missiles had taken out one, so the next time they launched it was only thirty-two missiles. Once again, I sent all sixteen against one ship.
Eighteen went off course, and of the fourteen left I took out eight, and six slammed into our hull. My heart rate picked up, but I felt icy as I watched another of their ships explode.
Jillintara updated, “Fifty seven percent.”
They last three launched twenty-four missiles, again I sent all sixteen against one. Sixteen went off course, and I knocked out six more with point defense. Two missiles impacted our ship. Only three of the sixteen hit the enemy ship, and it was fine. I took a deep breath.
Jillintara noted, “Forty four percent.”
Another round of twenty-four from the enemy, and I once again sent all sixteen at one. Fifteen went off course, and I took out six of the nine, and we were hit three more times. This time, I got the bastard, and the enemy ships were down to two.
J
illintara sounded nervous, “Thirty percent.”
If they’d had our missiles with the higher damage yields, we’d already be dead. As it was, we hadn’t even taken damage.
Sixteen missiles from the enemy, and sixteen from us. Nine were spoofed and went off course, and I knocked out the rest of them with point defense. First time we weren’t hit at all. The enemy ship was hit four times, and was hurt but still in the game.
Fourteen missiles from the enemy, I must have taken out two of their launchers, and sixteen from us. Eight went off course, and I took out five of the six left. Our shields took another hit, while the damaged ship was destroyed.
Jillintara said, “Twenty four percent.”
Eight missiles from the enemy, to our sixteen.
Janson said, “Why didn’t he break off? He’s got to know he doesn’t have a chance.”
Three missiles went off course, and I managed to get the rest with the very short reaction time I had, barely. The last ship wasn’t nearly as lucky, and went up in a ball of fire.
Vik said, “Change course to avoid the broken-up ships. At that velocity, they could do some serious damage to us.”
Telidur said, “Changing course.”
Vik looked at Janson, “My guess is it was under the control of a brainwashed human, and he or she was incapable of breaking off if it violated orders.”
Janson sighed wearily at that news, “Understood.”
Vik said, “Good job everyone, cut acceleration and coast, decelerate in three hours.”
I shook my head, it didn’t feel like much of a victory, but we were home free at this point. No other groups were in a position to catch up to us.
I didn’t know what was going to happen long term. We needed to meet up with the fleet, get the soldiers set up with implants, downloads, and training. After that, in four months, we’d take the empire away from that nut bag Denik.
I also needed to update the missiles again, if they had shields we’d have won it before they were even in range. That also meant I’d need to look at improving point defense, because if we could do it, so could the enemy. I also needed to review everything else I’d done, and all the systems, to see if there were any more practical and easy advances to be made. Things like shielded missiles, which is something obvious I completely missed until Vik joggled my thoughts with his comment.