Counterstrike

by D. J. Holmes

  “If it’s possible, there’s nothing stopping us from raiding the systems we pass through on the way,” Maleck suggested.

  “No, I suppose there is not,” Becket replied as she mimicked Shraw’s facial expression.

  Shraw bobbed his head towards Becket and his forked tongue flicked out several times in quick succession. “The hunt is on to kill more Karacknids!” the reptilian Admiral said with ferocity. Not for the first time Becket thought how glad she was that the Gramrians were on her side.

  Chapter 29

  Though interstellar geography does not play the same role in multi-system wars it once did; understandably of course due to shift passages losing their significance, it is still vital for any budding strategist to grasp. Often battles are won or lost long before two fleets meet actually meet in combat. Decisions and maneuvers carried out weeks ago can dictate the fate of fleets as much as missile numbers can.

  -Excerpt from Empire Rising, 3002 AD.

  IS Scharnhorst, Western Valley shift passage.

  Captain Warnock rushed onto the bridge of her destroyer. Her First Lieutenant had called her less than thirty seconds ago. As soon as she saw the holo projection of the end of the shift passage, she understood why. Amongst the usual heavy traffic of freighters coming in and out of the Valley, there was a new group of contacts. Their formation immediately singled them out as warships. Four weeks ago, Scharnhorst had detected the first group of Karacknid warships that had rushed to the shift passage and out of the Valley. Their speed had been a clear indication that they were carrying news of Becket’s invasion. They had let them go as per her orders and she had fantasized about taking on the single ships that had come one by one. No such thoughts came to her now. Two hundred and fifty Karacknid warships was not a force to be trifled with. “Track and identify them,” she ordered as she moved over to her command chair. “And doublecheck all the freighters, make sure there isn’t a single stray emission.” She had officers checking every six hours but given the circumstances it wouldn’t hurt to check again.

  As she settled into her command chair, she watched the progress of the Karacknid fleet. For four hours it headed into the single system that had a shift passage that led westward out of the Valley towards the rest of the Karacknid empire. At the heart of the fleet were six dreadnoughts and ten battleships. Alone they had the firepower to seriously threaten Becket’s fleet. And that assumes her fleet is still fully intact, Warnock thought.

  When the view on the holo projector changed Warnock sat forward. The Karacknid fleet was splitting in two. One hundred and seventy ships altered course slightly and headed towards one of the shift passages that headed out of the system. The remaining ships altered course towards another shift passage. They are splitting up! Warnock glanced at her First Lieutenant and flashed him a smile. Becket’s ruse was working. By now Warnock was sure the Rear Admiral would have her ships operating in the Upper Valley. Yet the bulk of the Karacknid fleet, operating on intelligence that was weeks out of date, was heading towards the shift passage that led to the Lower Valley. “Unless they get word quickly, it will take a week or more for them to double back, perhaps even longer,” she said to her First Lieutenant and the rest of her bridge officers.

  “That will let them spend more weeks raiding Karacknid systems,” Scharnhorst’s First Lieutenant commented with a grin.

  “I wonder how much damage they’ve done already?” Scharnhorst’s tactical officer asked.

  “Who’s to say?” Warnock responded. “Though I imagine they’ve been having a lot more fun than we have over the last couple of months. Of course, that wouldn’t be hard, Warnock thought. Since escorting the ten freighters she had under her command to the only westward shift passage out of the Valley, they had been hiding. Getting here had been an interesting mission. A couple of times they had almost been discovered by Karacknid freighters. But that felt like an eternity ago now. But I bet they’ve also seen a lot more danger, she had to admit. There was something to be said about boredom when it came to being a naval officer. It was usually accompanied by a much longer life expectancy.

  “What do we do now Captain?” Scharnhorst’s tactical officer asked.

  “Nothing, nothing at all,” Warnock responded. “We’ll wait until they have left the system and then we’ll give them half a day. There is no rush after all. Contact Swift and Beacon, inform their captains they are to prepare to leave as soon as both Karacknid fleets enter shift space. They are to carry out their primary orders.”

  “Yes Captain,” Scharnhorst’s COM officer responded.

  Warnock stayed on the bridge for the next several hours until the Karacknid fleet jumped out. Then she watched as the only two other warships under her command left Scharnhorst’s side. Both frigates had orders to race into the Upper Valley, find Becket and inform her about the new fleet’s arrival. Even if only eighty Karacknid ships were heading her way, she needed to know about it. Once both frigates faded out of view of Scharnhorst’s optical sensors, Warnock retired to her quarters.

  It wasn’t until two days later that she felt comfortable beginning the next phase of her orders. When a suitable lull in the Karacknid freighter traffic appeared, she sent word to the freighters to deposit their cargo. From each freighter more than two hundred stealth mines were laid across the entrance to the shift passage. When the operation was done Warnock sat back in her command chair and rolled her shoulders. As far as she could tell, none of the passing freighters had detected anything. The mines were in place. And so we begin waiting again, she thought. Sooner or later one, two or even three Karacknid fleets would try to leave the Valley and head back westwards. It was her job to determine which one was the most suitable target for her mines. And then the real action will begin. Somehow she would have to find a way out of the system and back home. Given how furious she expected the survivors of her surprise attack to be, getting out in one piece would be difficult.

  *

  IS Intrepid

  “We’re here,” Lieutenant Jones commented as Intrepid dropped out of shift space well behind the system’s mass shadow. “As an uneventful trip as we have had.”

  “It was,” Emilie agreed. Almost too uneventful, she thought. A little excitement would have broken the monotony of the last four weeks. They had been escorting a single Gramrian freighter into the eastern end of the Upper Valley. Twice they had encountered Karacknid squadrons rapidly heading towards the Lower Valley and they had passed through several systems with Karacknid fleets guarding them. Not once had there been any indication they had been detected. The freighter that was holding station with Intrepid had been specifically upgraded for this mission. Her stealth coating was just as effective as Intrepid’s.

  As Intrepid’s sensors began to make sense of the system before her, every conversation on the bridge died down. More than a hundred freighters were traveling across the system. A squadron of twenty warships was also detected along with several other ships on patrol. The system is a hive of activity, Emilie thought, just as the Kalassai intelligence indicated. One thing that was out of the ordinary, at least for an uninhabited system, was the location of the activity. The freighters and warships that were all on the move were not focused around one of the system’s inner planets. Instead the activity centered on a large and unusually dense asteroid field that was only a few light minutes away from the system’s mass shadow. “Zoom the image in,” Emilie requested.

  Intrepid’s sensor officer didn’t have to be told what Emilie wanted to see. Everyone knew what they were here to do. The image on the main holo projector zoomed in on one of the largest asteroids in the field. It was roughly one tenth the size of the Earth’s moon and the Karacknids had completely hollowed it out. Now it served as a massive ship retrofitting base. According to Kalassai intelligence, Karacknid ships from up to a thousand light years away were sent to the asteroid to be retrofitted with upgrades or decommissioned. The freighters streaming to and from the large asteroid were no doubt carrying supplies
and parts used in the retrofitting process. Amongst the hundreds of other asteroids that surrounded the shipyard, other mining activities were going on as raw materials were gathered from the asteroid field.

  “It looks peaceful,” Jones observed. “They clearly have no concerns about Becket’s fleet reaching this far.”

  “Let’s hope they remain that way,” Emilie added. The less suspicious the Karacknids were, the better chance her attack would have. For a couple more hours she sat on Intrepid’s bridge and watched the system. As she engaged officers in small talk, she kept an eye on everything that was happening. When she was finally happy that nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary and that the Karacknids were not on any kind of heightened alert, she nodded to Jones. “Okay, I think we can proceed. Signal Vendor, instruct her to begin her launch maneuver.”

  “Yes Captain,” Sub Lieutenant Ramires responded. She tapped on her console for several seconds before looking up again. “Vendor acknowledges the order. She is beginning now.”

  Emilie nodded to Ramirez and looked up to the main holo projector. Ever so slowly at first, but then with a gradual increase in velocity, the freighter moved away from Intrepid. She was just using two percent of her maximum thrust, but given enough time, it would still allow the freighter to get to a significant velocity. With her stealth coating and low thrust, Intrepid was only able to track Vendor with her optical sensors. After thirty minutes the freighter disappeared from view. For three more hours Emilie sat on the bridge as she waited to see if the Karacknids would detect anything. “They should be launching their ordinance about now,” she commented to her officers.

  In her mind’s eye she could picture what was happening. They had simulated it enough times. Within Vendor’s hull there were forty asteroids. Each one had been hollowed out and its insides lined with a stealth coating and energy dampening field. Hidden behind that technology was a single missile pod that housed four Alliance missiles. Once released from Vendor, the asteroids would set off on a ballistic course that would see them pass by the large asteroid field the Karacknid retrofitting yard was in. Given the size and mass of the field, its gravity would capture the asteroids and pull them in on a gradual arc, the focal point of which just happened to be the Karacknid retrofitting yard. It would take four months, but eventually the asteroids would get close enough that their concealed charges could detonate, shattering each of them and revealing the weaponry within. Emilie had no idea how much damage the thermonuclear detonations would do to the warships within the giant Karacknid asteroid, but Becket’s engineers had assured her that they would produce enough force to crack the asteroid open. With luck all the ships within would be destroyed. But even if not, the retrofitting yard would be critically damaged. Which will delay hundreds of Karacknid warships from being put into service. Warships Emilie knew would be sent to the warfront with Humanity. At least, that’s the plan, she said to herself wryly. Her orders were for Intrepid and Vendor to jump out of the system as soon as the freighter returned. Whilst she had no problem with that, she didn’t want to wait around for four months to see what would happen, it meant there would be no way to confirm if their attack had been successful. Either the asteroids would reach their target or they wouldn’t. It would probably be years before Emilie found out one way or another. If we ever do, she admitted.

  “Plot us a course out of here,” Emilie ordered when Vendor finally came back into visual range of Intrepid. “It’s time to make our way back to Becket’s fleet.” And that is going to be a little more interesting, Emilie added to herself. She had no doubt Becket was causing more mayhem in the eastern end of the Upper Valley. That meant there would be Karacknid warships and squadrons on high alert all over the place.

  *

  IS Viper, 29th January 2484 AD.

  As soon as her fleet exited shift space, Becket sought out the Karacknids. She pursed her lips when she saw them. For the second time they had chosen not to try and ambush her ships. Since her destruction of the supply hub, the Karacknids had been constantly fleeing from her fleet. Now, as before, instead of waiting at the edge of the shift passage to strike when her ships emerged, they were racing across the system. “Give chase,” she ordered at once. Having jumped her fleet out just before the system’s mass shadow to avoid an ambush, her ships were already behind. It took an hour to catch up. By then, it was clear where the Karacknid fleet was heading next.

  “Inform Maleck, Shraw and Faroul this will be the last system we chase them through. Every missile is to be made to count,” Becket ordered.

  “Right away Admiral,” Lieutenant Rondon said from his COM terminal.

  Becket nodded to Rondon. Maleck, Shraw and Faroul would know what she was thinking. The Karacknid fleet was on a course to a known Karacknid fleet base two more systems away. Either the Karacknids had come from there in the first place, or they were hoping to draw Becket in so that the Karacknids could combine with the fleet stationed there and crush her. Either way, she had no intention of following. As soon as they crossed the system and jumped out, she was going to reverse course. Until then, she could continue to hit the Karacknids. Sooner or later they would figure out she had backtracked and come looking for her.

  When the fleet got close enough, the various elements involved in Shraw’s tactics began their operations automatically. Having spent ten hours in the previous system doing what they were about to do, they were well practiced. A full third of the Human and Alliance destroyers, frigates and corvettes went to full acceleration and pulled ahead of the combined fleet. After fifteen minutes, they turned to present their broadsides towards the Karacknids. Then they cut their engines. Just as they did, the rest of Becket’s fleet got into missile range of the Karacknids with their forward missile tubes. A hundred and eighty missiles shot towards the enemy ships. The Karacknids had already opened fire and had one hundred and ten of their own missiles tracking back towards Becket’s ships.

  Seconds before the Karacknid missiles got into point defense range, the main part of Becket’s ships caught up with the light ships that had charged ahead. The light ships, with their broadsides facing the Karacknid missiles, used all of their point defense weapons. The boost in firepower meant Becket’s ships destroyed all but one of the Karacknid missiles. The Human light cruiser that the sole missile targeted swerved enough that the proximity detonation was mostly absorbed by its gaseous shields. Only light damage was reported. In contrast, of Becket’s one hundred and eighty missiles, six detonated and released grazer beams or thermonuclear detonations into their targets. One Karacknid frigate was destroyed outright. A medium cruiser took enough damage that it fell out of formation. Alone and damaged, it was taken out by a second smaller salvo.

  Just moments after the single Karacknid missile detonated amongst her fleet, Becket gave the order for her ships to slow to bring her ships out of missile range. The light ships that had turned broadside were quickly left astern but they soon turned and accelerated to catch up. When they did Becket ordered her fleet to close with the Karacknids again. By then another third of the Alliance and Human destroyers, frigates, and corvettes had accelerated beyond the capital ships. They would move ahead of the fleet and repeat the maneuver their comrades had just completed.

  In this fashion Becket chased the Karacknid fleet all the way across the system. Twice every hour for seven hours she moved into missile range and peppered the Karacknids. By the time the Karacknid fleet jumped out the system was littered with a trail of destroyed warships. Eighteen in total had been wiped out. The Karacknid force had lost one quarter of its warships in the stern chase through both systems.

  “Begin deceleration,” Becket ordered as soon as the last Karacknid ship jumped out. In between missile salvos she had been analyzing the star map of the local systems. She intended to take her fleet in almost the opposite direction of the Karacknid fleet base. There, if resistance was limited, she could split up her fleet and begin raiding more systems. All the way to the upper end of the Valley, sh
e hoped as she stared at the holo map. There were three hundred systems in the area of space between where she was, the eastern end of the Valley and its upper limit where space opened up and the Valley ended and the rest of the Karacknid empire began. There was no way she could raid them all, but she could hit many of them and there was more than enough space for her to keep maneuvering and hiding from enemy fleets. There is much more damage to be done yet, she thought with anticipation.

  Chapter 30

  During my only visit to the Sol system I was privileged enough to be able to visit Home One. Within one of its strategic planning rooms is a large holo map of the entire Human Empire. System defenses, fleet strengths, supply conditions and estimates of enemy positions are all displayed there. To say that it was mind boggling is an understatement. For the officers who work there, the responsibility that rests upon their shoulders is immense.

  -Excerpt from Empire Rising, 3002 AD.

  IS Viper, 12th February 2484 AD (two weeks later).

  With her office to herself Becket had her holo projector displaying at its maximum resolution. As she often liked to do, she was walking back and forth through the projection. Surrounding her was a star map of the Valley. The map showed the progress of her rapid advance into Karacknid territory along with markings identifying the various battles that had taken place. In total, her fleet had advanced nearly three hundred light years into the Karacknid empire. They had raided more than forty systems and destroyed two hundred and sixteen Karacknid warships along with hundreds of freighters. And the targets have gotten juicier and juicier, she thought as her focus rested on the eight flashing systems that were nearest to her fleet’s current position. After chasing the Karacknid fleet and then splitting up her forces, her fleets had destroyed enough orbital and asteroid mining facilities to almost match what was in the entire Human Empire. According to the Kalassai, the systems her ships were passing through had been conquered or colonized more than three hundred years ago. Everything the Karacknids had built since then was being destroyed.