Astraeus Station

by D. L. Harrison

  All of the enemy fleets were moving at forty gravities, though I suspected many of them could do sixty like us and Grays. They were obviously coordinating to arrive at Earth at the same time.

  I gathered up three coffees, the god drink, and headed back to the command center.

  Cassie asked, “What’s bothering you.”

  I shrugged, “I don’t see how we can lose, they’re completely outclassed, as long as we keep our distance. A battle of this size without a single casualty on our side, it just seems… too good to be true.”

  Cassie nodded, “Which violates the whole Murphy principle.”

  I laughed, “Exactly, I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop. The Grays have had five weeks to analyze the attack I fought off. That they haven’t run away in just the face of four hundred thousand ships, less than a fifth of our true fleet, is… disturbing. They’re not stupid, and they should know they don’t have a chance at this point.”

  We were relatively silent then, for a little bit, thinking dark thoughts. I had no doubts we should remove the grays, genocide was an ugly thing, but they’d committed genocide on perhaps hundreds of thousands of plants over the last tens of millennia, for the length of their empire. Attempting to kill all of us, well it was self-defense. If even one got away, they could rebuild quickly, given their technology.

  That was another worry, I suspected we had all of their worlds in Andromeda, but they also had millions of scout ships spread out in the fifty galaxies. How could we ensure getting them all? I wasn’t sure we could. Unless, I went along, and sent out an update to brick all their ships. Still, that wouldn’t be all that easy, unlike the probe network the ship network was different, less capable that way. Which meant I’d have to trace every ship one at a time with my magic to take it out. Even if I did one a second, that would take years. It wasn’t really practical. It’d be more practical to deploy a ship to each system with a scout in it, take out a million ships per mission. About the best I could do would be to get access to the system again from another ship, or on their home world, and then pass along the target information to the fleet, and I’d send updates if any of the ships moved or fled.

  I didn’t know, and of course the world leaders and militaries would get a say and probably set the tactics to be used.

  Still, I didn’t imagine it would easy to take down an ancient space empire. They’d just made it necessary by their perfidy.

  “Here we go,” Cassie said.

  The ten thousand sub-fleets of two hundred ships took a wormhole in, behind the ten thousand enemy fleets they were assigned to. They all locked on their assigned ships, and in total they launched six million mini-platforms. One hundred of them for every ship, we were pretty sure that would be major overkill, no ship outside of the Grays could defend from that many, not before they removed the ship from existence. Most of the ships would probably die as soon as they got within a light second, and they could fire their energy beams. Some few might survive and take out a few, before they got to an eighth of a light second and fired the disintegrator beams which their shields would be useless against.

  Thing was, overkill wasn’t a waste. Any surviving platforms would be recalled, which I suspected would be most of them.

  The mini-platforms jumped forward at six hundred gravities, and a short time later, the ships started to follow at a speed that would maintain the longer range.

  The enemy ships all fired back with their own missiles, a volley every thirty to sixty seconds depending on the fleet or their technology. As expected, our ships launched a hundred thousand missile shield, no point in launching a full million after all.

  The only different battle among the ten thousand fleets, was the fleet going after the Grays. They launched much more than a hundred missiles per ship. They in fact, they launched a total of two million missiles. That was one thousand mini-platform missiles per ship. The Grays’ point defense might be able to handle that, except as soon as they were in range each ship would be hit by a thousand energy beams from those assigned missiles. That would take out their shields without a doubt, and it’d dig into their ships enough to disrupt that kind of thing.

  The Grays launched twenty million missiles back. One hundred thousand at each of the ships.

  “That’s not nearly enough.”

  Not even close, and I got a really bad feeling about it.

  Chapter Nineteen - Interlude

  Admiral Naveen was nervous. She hadn’t liked the fact the humans had four hundred thousand ships, when there were less than a thousand just five weeks ago, and no data indicating such a build up from the intelligence section. Incompetent bastards. Most of them had already been executed, following yet another debacle of four days ago, when their systems were hacked, and their stealth network was discovered and destroyed.

  She suspected all the fleets present except hers would be destroyed. That wasn’t really her concern, the other races present in the attack knew the humans had Gray technology. They were probably just greedy enough to make the sacrifice of people and equipment to claim nine living worlds and another hundred light year diameter sphere for their empires. Even if all the ships blow up, all ten thousand of them would have an equal chance to claim the prize when it was raffled off.

  Of course, she hadn’t expected they’d all die when they got here. At last report they could’ve easily overwhelmed them with all the numbers, but such were the vagaries and risks of war and conquest.

  Then, she’d gotten another shock, as two million more ships had arrived through wormholes, and fired at their backsides, then launched missiles.

  “Kalen, are you sure about this?”

  Kalen was one of their head scientists, and he had come to a surprising conclusion by researching the Grays’ technological archives. If he was right, they had a chance, if he was wrong, they were just totally screwed.

  Kalen replied, “Yes, Admiral. I am sure, it’s the only thing that fits. Fifty-three-thousand years ago our scientists made a similar breakthrough. The only way they could be shielding missiles or powering something that small and powerful is vacuum energy, nanites that are self-powered. We used them instead of fusion for a few decades without incident, until we found out they had a fatal flaw. A vulnerability we were never able to overcome. The Stolthrim discovered it, or I should say, they wiped out whole fleets until we analyzed the data and figured out what they were doing. We tried for a long time to fix it, but we were forced to return to fusion power. The project was shelved several years later, and we flagged it for review if we ever increased our theoretical knowledge relating to that phenomena. Obviously, we never did.”

  The Stolthrim were one of six of their long-standing enemies, a bug-like race, and quite powerful in their own right. There was a reason the Grays had stopped expanding after taking over fifty galaxies. Not out of boredom, or lack of ambition, but because they’d ran into several other multi-galactic empires who were more than a match for them. There’d been a ceasefire the last ten thousand years or so, but they were ever vigilant on the borders just in case war came again.

  Kalen added, “It would also explain how they built so quickly, the entire ship being a powerhouse of energy. The numbers add up, if you multiple their starting fleet by sixteen every week. I apologize for not anticipating this.”

  The admiral waved her arm, “Not your fault. One of the other races must’ve warned the humans this was coming, else they wouldn’t have built such a large fleet. Do you think we set them up?”

  The admiral wasn’t sure, but just based on what she knew it seemed likely. It tweaked her sense of honor, but she was forced to admit the humans having their stuff plus advances was a frightening one. The first time their empire was truly endangered from within since the time they’d started to forge it.

  “Forget I asked that. Time for missiles?”

  The weapons officer said, “The missiles have already passed each other, they took out almost half of ours.”

  The Admiral said, “Go
od,” and then she brooded as she looked over the command table.

  She wondered if they’d survive. She supposed it all depended on how fast they could react and adjust. It’d still be close to eleven and a half hours before she got in range to their inner fleet, and she fully expected some of them to flee, which meant finding them and chasing them down later, without a stealth probe left in their empire. At least their world would be dead. She’d been expecting to close with them first, less time for them to adjust or run, which made the two million ships behind her fleets even more unwelcome, as they forced her hand early. She had no choice but to use the new weapon, or her ships would be destroyed. Tactically, it sucked to use the surprise so early in the battle, but she had little choice.

  Those incompetent bastards in intelligence, if they weren’t dead already, she’d skin them alive and then kill them slowly.

  Chapter Twenty

  The missiles had crossed, and many of the enemies’ missiles had been taken down, but the volleys sent weren’t enough to get them all, not even against the Grays. Still, there were tens of thousands of defensive mini-platforms for what was left before the ship’s defenses would be tested, it shouldn’t be an issue. Regardless, for the other fleets, not the Grays, they’d taken down several missiles in each volley.

  Yet, I still worried, the Grays just couldn’t be that stupid. They’d run an empire for who knows how many millennia, perhaps even from the time of the dinosaurs, whatever it was in truth, it’d been a long ass time.

  I stared in shock, at what took place next.

  The ten thousand fleets, as expected, were totally annihilated, and they’d managed to take out maybe five percent of the missiles fired at them, the rest were recalled to the ship. The destruction of sixty million enemy ships happened in seconds, and none of their missiles even came close. All were destroyed in the first moment they crossed the one light second line to the missile shield, much less the ships point defense.

  As for the grays, our missiles arrived and crossed that one light second barrier, then exploded. The gray ships didn’t fire even one point-defense beam, all the missiles blew up, and it looked a lot like a nuclear explosion would. It didn’t make sense.

  The Grays’ missiles on the other hand all exploded before our defense missiles could fire. A split second later, all twenty million defense missiles, and all two hundred ships, went up in nuclear fire. I felt a chill go down my spine, and couldn’t help but doubt the evidence of my eyes.

  “What the fuck just happened?”

  Jayna sounded shocked, but said, “That’s not very presidential.”

  Cassie shook her head, “He gets a pass on that one, that was… what the fuck happened?”

  There was no indication on the plot of what happened, but that didn’t mean the scanners missed it. It just meant whatever that was, the scanners weren’t programmed to display it on the command hologram.

  Diana shook her head, and grimaced as she brought up the scan data.

  “There’s not much data here on what the ship was reporting to us, whatever happened, it was fast. I doubt we’d even be able to figure it out at all, if they weren’t all technically probe warships constantly sending us data. Just a second.”

  It was closer to a minute later, when the blood drained from her face.

  “The power systems. The nanite vacuum reactors exploded.”

  I frowned, “I thought that wouldn’t be a problem with a distributed system.”

  Diana nodded, “It wouldn’t be. If they were hit by a blaster beam, or there was a fault, the explosion would be relatively small, and be absorbed by the nanites around them. But what happened is there was a huge power spike. For about three nano-seconds the amount of power they pulled from the universe was off the scale, thousands, perhaps millions of times more powerful than normal. Like a reactor overload.

  “That changes things, the released energy was millions of times more powerful than a reactor breach at normal power would’ve been. It doesn’t make sense. I’m assuming those missiles did something to cause it, but I’m not sure what yet.”

  Jessica interjected, “An Admiral has tasked the closest eight sub-fleets to intercept, and immediately launch missiles.”

  I growled, “Idiot,” then hit the comm line, “This is President Akin. I suggest we hold for now. We have ten hours or more before their fleet will close with our inner fleet. We need to figure out what happened, and how to adjust, or we’re just throwing their lives away, not to mention wasting missiles. If you must do something, then just launch missiles. For all that’s holy, don’t let any ships get within two light minutes of that fleet, or they’re dead. Give us a little time to figure this out.

  “All we know right now, is they somehow caused our reactors to overload and explode, at a rate and power that should be impossible.”

  I released the button, sort of like mute.

  Diana frowned, “I don’t think our scanners caught it, or maybe they just didn’t have enough time to pass it along. Systems status on the ship is constantly reported, in real time, outside sensor data is different. There’re a few milliseconds of delay in processing it, and the ship blew up in nano-seconds. If we want to know what they did, we need to preserve one of their ships, and get a hold of one of their weapons.”

  I frowned.

  Diana gasped, “Wait. I think we have the answer on our sensors.”

  “How is that possible, they’re several A.U.s away.”

  Diana said, “Subspace. There was a perturbation in subspace at the exact moment their missiles exploded, and around their ships when our missiles exploded.”

  I frowned, “Subspace is a mess inside a solar system, isn’t it, unusable?”

  She bit her lip and nodded, “Which is probably the only reason every ship in the system didn’t explode. Subspace destabilized the energy field they generated past a light second. If we’d have met them out in the void between stars, we’d all be dead. We’ll, maybe not all, I suspect the range of the weapon is close to two A.U. where FTL is possible.”

  Oh, good to know.

  “Any idea what it does?”

  Diana smirked, “Give me another five minutes.”

  I nodded, “You have a few hours, no need to rush.”

  Jayna choked, and I winked.

  Cassie said, “You seem rather relaxed.”

  I shrugged, “If Diana doesn’t figure it out, we’ll just launch old style missiles, without vacuum energy. We have enough to overwhelm them before they can get close to our fleet. Actually, let me set that up now, just in case.”

  Cassie said, “The old missiles have a two light minute range, that means by definition our fleet would need to be in their firing range as well.”

  I nodded, “Yes, but I was thinking a hybrid set up. The current missiles, but at one light minute from target it will power down most of the nanites, build a honking big supercapacitor, charge it, and shut down the rest of the nanites. No vacuum reactor power at all, when it gets in range. Still, I’d rather fix the issue, because then it will just be an old-style missile without energy beams of any kind or shields, but if not, we can always fix it later. That fleet is dead, they just don’t know it yet.”

  “Honking?” Cassie asked in an amused voice.

  “Yup.”

  Silly perhaps, but it was a relief valve of sorts for our anxiety. It could be a lot worse. We’d lost two hundred ships, and four hundred soldiers. If they hadn’t been forced by our sneak attack to give up their technological edge early, it’s entirely possible they’d have easily destroyed the whole inner fleet before we could fix the issue, or at least work around it. Even if some managed to run, the Earth would’ve been destroyed. One way or the other, we were going to win this.

  It took me maybe fifteen minutes, it was all there already, the old missile specs I mean. I just needed to program a trigger for transformation.

  Diana said, “It seems to change the laws of physics. Almost like shorting out a battery, it thins the b
arriers and causes a major surge. It’d be like… the water pressure to your house going from fifty PSI to fifty million psi for a short moment, exploding pipes. Obviously, nothing like that, I’m just trying to put it in terms easily understood. The problem is, how do you counter something like that, or put in a failsafe.”

  “I’m not sure I get the problem,” I admitted.

  Diana said, “They’re not doing anything to our devices, to our pipes that are taking in the energy. They’re effecting the universe, in a limited way. No safeguards we could come up with on the reactors could balance that out, no more than the toughest pipe fittings could withstand fifty million psi.”

  I nodded, “So you’d have to shield the universe to stop it. Preserve the water pressure at fifty PSI, to continue your simile.”

  She nodded, and started to laugh, “Shield the universe, of course, why didn’t I see that.”

  “No need for sarcasm, but it does get right to the point. Of course, we don’t have to shield the whole universe, just the part our pipe runs through. Maybe a containment shield, that keeps the subspace energy field weapon away from the reactor nanites and the laws of the universe in that small spot.”

  She frowned, “You’re not wrong. If we could shield the miniscule microscopic part of subspace that the nanite reactor’s location corresponds to there’d be no effect. Absolutely right. Of course, that begs the question of how to do that.”

  I snorted, and waved my hand, “No problem, my head scientist will figure it out.”

  Cassie giggled.

  Diana glared.

  I shrugged, “Sorry, but I am confident in you. At least I understand the problem, and sort of barely understand the fix, but I’m afraid I don’t understand how difficult that fix would be. Is there a chance at it, or do we go with my plan B. It also will mean converting all the ships back to the old power systems, that’s too big of a vulnerability to risk if we can’t remove it. We might be able to depend on it for building fast, but after the build we need to put reactors in place. Can you do it, the attack part I mean?”