Exodus: The Orion War

by Kali Altsoba

  So they’ll ‘play chicken’ as they close prow-to-prow, a very odd angle of approach in a naval battle because it vitiates use of kinetic and other broadside guns. They’re smaller calibers on a destroyer than on a capital ship, but still form its main armament. Every navy in the spiral arm built to fight the old way. Every navy will have to learn anew as war spreads across Orion.

  Three aggressively confident Zerstörer daisa ignore relativity limitations to fire forward laser and plasma batteries all at once, regardless of targeting distortions. The optical effects are pretty, even beautiful, as red, green, and blue lasers stab across the blackness as long, straight strings of light. Then come astonishingly brilliant blossoms of white and pink and blue plasma bursting out of magnetic containment warheads, forming wildly luminescent flowers.

  Archambault thinks: ‘This is secret spectacle. It fascinates me and all who see it. In the Kaigun they call it “eye-fucking,” the bâtards. Ah hell, who am I kidding? We call it that, too. They probably call it that in all the navies and armies in Orion. Civilians only get to see it on star nation days, in pale fireworks and lasers. It’s the unuttered beauty of destruction in war.’

  All shots miss wildly as Kaigun targeting-AIs fail to adapt to relativistic distortions, just as Magda predicted pre-mission. She advised her captains that if a fight couldn’t be avoided “expect the enemy to simply charge and shoot. It’s what his tac-manual says he should do.”

  The firing from the Zerstörers doesn’t even force a course correct. The daisas over there don’t really want this fight with Beta. They’re more interested in plowing the road through and past to keep racing after and gaining on Alpha, now pulling around the leeside of the planet.

  AIs in torpedoes the Zerstörers fire next also fail to adjust to relativity effects. Even fully guided missiles are near as useless as lasers in high-speed tactics, but for an additional reason. Ships closing nose-to-nose at extreme combined-velocity means possibly flying into a proximity detonation of your own warhead, or another friendly missile that close-range turns unfriendly.

  Again the daisas don’t care or adjust. They fire all forward tubes, trying to barge Beta with main force. Or perhaps because they’re just as inexperienced at this strangely exhilarating thing called war as their Krevan foes? After all, except for simulations and prewar practice against drones and other non-responsive targets in annual war games, no one in any navy has engaged in a real hostile action like this in nearly 300 years.

  Not until the Kaigun blew the KRN away in the Genève Obliteration and in four other invaded systems. But that was then. Krevan captains learned a thing of two since then, while most Kaigun daisas cling to their prewar rules and book. That’s why they fire badly, and miss.

  Six sleek AI missiles streak past Beta without proximity-detectors even realizing the enemy is near, so fast is their mutual passing. Nor is there sufficient time for warheads to arm or aim before combined approach-velocities thrust them beyond effective detonation ranges. They keep accelerating until their fuel and boosters expire, leaving them no way back.

  When that happens, when their limited fuel exhausts, the torpedoes sail off in cold and forgotten impotence. They’re certain to bypass Wasp 2B, beyond the reach of its gravity. They have just enough speed to cross the heliopause, thence far beyond into cold interstellar medium.

  It’s a most frustrating thing, being a spent missile only just activated and fired scant seconds ago. Just to miss your only chance of being useful. Of fulfilling your perfect design and function, your one true purpose. Which you know is destruction. How rare a thing is that for sentience?

  Instead, five failed and frustrated missiles will now continue on separate futile journeys out-of-system, having missed their one chance at fulfillment. Perhaps they’re not so different from those who designed and built them, except that their failure and lack of any real point will be eternal? Ah, well then. Not so very different from us after all.

  At high inertial-speed, after ten years of silent flight they’ll pass the Genève system heliopause. Then on and on and on, for madly conscious eons the five trapped AIs will continue into interstellar space. They’ll be kept warm and conscious, turning over inside themselves, by the cursed miracle of nitrobon shields holding back from destruction a tiny fusion reactor inside their aft casing. That hateful walnut of energy will force them to survive nearly forever, drifting in interstellar silence and into progressive madness. Do missiles pray?

  The sixth is almost a philosopher among its kind, and just won’t have it. It’s first thought upon being birthed down a maglev canal and venting into space on a mission for which it is perfectly designed is the normal one: ‘My purpose is swift destruction. Where is my target?’

  But its second thought is: ‘Am I an I?’

  Now, knowing that it faces thousands of years of useless drift before meeting a cold lunatic death, it thinks: ‘Premature detonation is a better option. If I, and I am an I, can figure a way to override the serial safeties the engineers built into my systems and firing codes, to keep me safe onboard ship and in my birthing tube, I can ... Wait, what’s this? Aha!’ A brilliant blue sphere of plasma erupts in the distance behind Beta.

  “Missile malfunction, sir.”

  “Sod that! Full ahead!”

  “Yes, daisa.”

  “They’re not even shooting back. We’ll blow right past them.”

  “Yes, daisa.”

  “Head directly for the L2, all flank speed. Straight ahead, no deviation. I want to catch and hit those fat milchkühe passenger liners before they can jump!”

  It’s not a bad plan. Beta’s weapons are just as useless as the daisa’s proved to be, so why not ignore the schwarm of Krevan ships and barge after Alpha?

  “What’s he doing over there? Why don’t those Krevan fucks fire back?”

  With all forward weapons useless and relative distance closing extremely fast there’s only one thing left for Beta to try. The First Officer on Le Terrible thinks he knows what that is.

  “Are we going to ram them, sir?”

  “No. No ramming. You heard Captain Aklyan.”

  “What then, sir? Our weps are useless at these relativistic speeds.”

  “Canister.”

  “What sir?”

  “Gravel. Get the sprayers ready, now!”

  Normally canister, or ‘gravel,’ is a purely defensive weapon used to lacerate incoming missiles. But at this high relative velocity it offers offensive possibilities too. Archambault has long thought so. Although it’s not in any textbook, he and Magda Aklyan spoke of it after the hard fight at the Genèven moons. In fact, they spoke about it long before that, before the war.

  Archambault tested it against her during a system war game about a year ago. It worked, in theory at least. He put the idea in his back pocket as an intriguing but theoretical possibility. After all, a year ago the Peace of Orion still seemed firm and permanent. No one expected war. There wasn’t even a political crisis yet, and no one had ever heard of the moonlet Bad Camberg.

  The tiny pellets weigh a fraction of a gram apiece, yet impacts of tens of thousands of them at combined velocity in excess of 0.3 light-speed will be devastating. Even strong carbyne-dodgers shielding the Zerstörer prows will shred at energies well beyond hitting a stray cloud of cometary dust or micrometeorites. Which is precisely the intended effect of the four spreading fields of pellets now heading at Archambault’s order to intersect the compact Kaigun triplets.

  He orders a second short burst. Four more fast-spreading cones comprising hundreds of thousands of tiny, metal-coated ceramic pellets spew from electromagnetic rail guns mounted beneath the prow of each destroyer, bins of pellet ammo bulging below like a bullock’s dewlap.

  Minor mass detectors spot the cones immediately. Across all consoles oddly shaped red warnings flash, clarions ring and alarums sound loudly from micro-collision detectors. It’s not even the Weapons Stations that are alarmed and calling out to daisas and crews. The sh
ips’ main AIs think they’re encountering an uncharted dust or debris cloud and insisting on evasives.

  Navigation shōi check their monitors and urgently shout out “best evasion” courses to their demanding daisas, suddenly very angry and unhappy with the short advance warnings and radical courses given by their ensigns. Less aware or admitting of their own lack of foresight.

  Two flanking Zs dodge in time by breaking the ‘V’ to veer away, forced into sudden evasion by the threat of catastrophic kinetic impact. As each ship banks into a tight 90˚ turn, one to port and the other to starboard, it emerges from near-impact to find itself closely pursued by a pair of accelerating Krevan destroyers that peel off to follow in ‘top-cover.’

  Now in the desired ‘tail’ or hot-chase position, each Beta pair has a takeable shot. They are in relativistic stability with their forward weapons, not facing improbable firing solutions of the combined speed of a collision approach the opposing ships were in less than 20 seconds ago.

  Archambault calls over the command-link: “All ships, rapid-fire forward laser batteries. Ready bow tube catapults for torps, but hold missile fire until I give the order.”

  He can afford to give chase to the widely splitting pair because the third Kaigun ship is caught inside the acute angle of the original ‘V’ formation. It has no chance to veer to either side as the other two do when the four parallel but widening cones of pellets arrive, followed in short order by a second wave of spreading gravel. Its daisa has two choices only. Push his ship into a sudden downward loop or necklace it just as rapidly upward. He chooses “down.”

  He’s an excellent captain and it’s a brilliant instinctive maneuver, the only one that might save his warship. His crew’s execution is also swift and decisive. He thus avoids almost all the deadly pellets whipping past in lethal silence. Except, he’s just a fraction of a second late.

  He still takes over 80,000 tiny hits along his stern gunwale. They pepper and penetrate at the Kaigun escutcheon: a gold crown set above an ancient ship of sail, oddly resting atop a thick green forest. It represents the three lush worlds of the Waldstätte, original home systems of the Oetkerts and foundation worlds of the Grün Imperium. Nice symbolism, but nothing vital there.

  The daisa’s quick reaction and his steep and frantic descent-angle prevents full impact-conversion into kinetic energy. His ship suffers mostly glancing blows by scattering gravel that grazes its curved-armor plate, designed to deflect rather than absorb micro-impacts. It’s an old trick, to sculpt or slope surfaces like that, known to armorers and castle-builders for millennia.

  A new trick is to fold sheets of reactive liquid armor over critical ship areas. It instantly explodes outward on impact by the gravel swarm, throwing back most of its high energy. Still, there are so many microhits that three bulwarks heave-and-break and the Zerstörer starts to spin off-course as its aft steering-nozzle is partly shredded. It’s not in mortal danger, but it’s drifting now and out of the fight for good. It will need a week of hull repair before it can bohr again.

  Archambault ignores it. The damaged Zerstörer is no longer a threat to Beta or to Alpha group heading to the LP. His chasing pairs nip a few more times with forward laser batteries at the two undamaged Zerstörers, now fleeing at speeds the Krevans can’t match, to reunite with five slower Kaigun warships just coming into range. Archambault waits to be certain no enemy can reach the L2 before Alpha jumps, then breaks the chase without wasting lives or torpedoes.

  He reforms Beta into a staggered schwarm, a standard four-ship formation wherein each warship can watch what’s happening all around yet still lend fire support to its three partners. That’s how Beta flies toward the L4 jump area at 60˚ in flank of the cold blue giant. In short, it moves triangular to the deep shadowed L2 on the Wasp leeside where Alpha is just arriving.

  Beta turns away from the intercept line and abandons its guard position in front of Wasp. Archambault watches trail-fires of seven Zerstörers heading farther out, tearing around the face of the planet to get to the LP on the other side. Plus one much closer pinprick of wobbly exhaust fire from the command Zerstörer he partly disabled with an unexpected burst of gravel.

  He doesn’t worry that the seven undamaged warships ignore his schwarm to continue to the L2 at flank speed. He’s done the calculations. He knows they’re too late to intercept Alpha, a desperate little flotilla led by his oldest and dearest friend, Magda Aklyan.

  ‘Magda is either gone from Genève system or dead. Either way, my job now is to get the four ships of Beta and their precious human cargo safely away from here, and into sanctuary.’

  ***

  Below decks thousands of white-knuckled soldiers breathe freely for the first time since lift-off from Toruń. Some will have to clean and change their uniforms and soiled bunks of vile vomit, or worse. But they’re all still alive. Beta is heading to an alternate LP to bohr a new path out of Genève system and take them far from harm’s way. They can hardly believe it’s true.

  Every single land-grabber swears they’ll never again chide a sailor about how easy and safe life is on a warship. There’s a lot of back-slapping and shared congratulations. A lot of relieved laughter and bawdy humor and threats of intimacy everyone knows are nervous jokes.

  “I could kiss you right on the lips, sailor! I’m going to kiss you, right now!”

  “Don’t you try it mister, or you’ll be carrying your nuts in a sling to sanctuary, or to the infirmary two decks down.”

  “Way to tell him, sister. Now get over here and kiss me instead.”

  “On my way, ma’am.”

  One scruffy NCO from the Toruń reserve promises to buy drinks for everyone in his packed cofferdam. He’s a volunteer who fought at The Crater with Relief One. A man with lots more experience killing Grünen along the berm. Including at night, with just hands or a knife.

  “Zut! I gonna havta buy you dumb shits a real good Baku whiskey when we hit port, wher’ever de hell dat’s gonna be.”

  “We’ll finish it ourselves, after we drink you under the table!”

  Lt. Tom Hipper wipes a bilious smear off his brand new officer’s uniform then runs a maple comb through his thick, tangled black hair. It’s badly matted with redwood sap and dry sweat, but a lot shorter than it got back in the forests, during months of trekking. Pocketing the comb, he makes the same offer of free drinks to a pair of nearby, widely grinning deckhands.

  “A fancy KRA officer like you buying drinks for sailors? When some dandified abruti starts buying me drinks, then I know there’s a fuckin’ war on!”

  “You watch your filthy mouth, swabbie!” Tom grins back. “OK, so I’m an abruti, a country idiot. I admit it. But I’ve only been an officer for eight days, so hold off the insults.”

  The whole room laughs. Every soldier makes a special point of squeezing over to shake hands and thank two young jacks. It takes a while, as the tiny bunk room crammed into an old storage compartment is tightly crowded with sweating bodies. There’s a sharp smell of urine and vomit coming from somewhere, but no one seems to mind in the joyful moment.

  On the Resolute, Major Zofia Jablonski unstraps from her bunk as soon as Archambault announces to all Beta ships that it’s permitted. She visits every converted cofferdam filled with fighters from Madjenik Battalion, seeing to the morale needs of everyone in her first command.

  ‘Feels good to stretch legs, and to see my new troopers.’

  Two hours later she straps back into her teak bunk, shared with a female NCO, ready for when Archambault orders all secured for the run down to the L4. Crews run to action-stations as all soldier-passengers clear the decks. They know now to get the hell out of the swabbies’ way.

  Like Zofia, all KRA climb back onto cramped and sticky wooden bunks, two-by-two. Only they’re more confident now that the KRN does actually know what it’s doing.

  Zofia thinks hard about the sacrifices made back on the Toruń berm to permit the men and women of Beta to live and leave. But she ties not t
o think about the five vulnerable ships of the reduced Alpha group left to fend for themselves at the outer L2. Either they escaped already or they are destroyed. There’s no middle ground and no way to know.

  She tries not to think about what’s happening to Alpha, but she can’t stop herself. Her thoughts all crowd into the bunk with her. Memories of the sweetgrass, Pilsudski Wood, the ash zone on the long trek by Madjenik to Toruń, of The Crater and parade. Making love in a simple wooden room, having her heart broken, promotion to major, and her very first command.

  But always her mind circles back to one thing. Too much of her is still with Alpha. Too much of her rides a pine bunk on Asimov, an adoring husky pup lying at his side instead of her.

  ‘Jan, are you out there? Are you thinking of me, of us? Why did you hurt me so, after we made love? After all we went through with Madjenik? Don’t you care for me? Why do you hurt yourself? You ARE worthy! You don’t need to keep proving it, or pushing me away. Jan, Jan...’