by D. R. Rosier
Vik said, “Good. Any other updates on our projects since yesterday?”
Jillintara shook her head, “They haven’t responded to Solyra. Our DE sensor project hasn’t changed either. Though I believe that to be just a matter of time.”
Time that we didn’t have, no doubt we’d lick the problem as soon as peace was declared by all.
Vik sighed, “It sounds like the best-case scenario is to crush their fleet, and hope that brings them to the table. If the fight is close, even if we win, they may continue on the course.”
No pressure.
“We don’t really know enough about them. It could go the other way, they’re a peaceful race, but the aggression comes from xenophobia. If they kick the shit out of us, they may turn around and stop attacking, and decide it’s safe to ignore us and that we’re not a threat. Kind of like what we just did, in regard to the Stolavii. A rout against them could raise their fear, and cause them to double their efforts.”
Vik frowned, “That’s a cheery thought.”
“Sorry, but we don’t really know enough about their psychology, they’ve been good neighbors up until now, and both sides have left each other alone. That was a good thing, except of course we know almost nothing about them. I hope you’re right though, that we kick their ass and it makes them either back off or talk to Solyra.”
Damn Denik, again.
Telidur said, “I agree, all we can do is react for now, and hope for the best. None of us want to move to an aggressive footing, given the facts. There may come a point we have no choice though.”
We all went quiet for a while, there was no point for further speculation or trying to predict their actions or reasons. We were prepared for their attack the best we could, so there was nothing to discuss on that end either. The day dragged as we waited…
It was mid-afternoon when it broke.
Jillintara said, “Sir, all the rest of the unaccounted for ships, a hundred and ten Suateran vessels, just de-cloaked thirty light seconds in front of our ten visible ships in the Vehiri system. They’re hailing.”
We weren’t in the system, but Vik was the admiral of the fleet, and it was child’s play for the A.I. on site in those ships to route the comms over our secure network. They were finally going to talk to us, but I wouldn’t bet against it being an unconditional demand for surrender. Still, talking was better than firing, theoretically.
My crazy switch also failed to flip, I knew they weren’t a danger to us or our fleet here in the Isyth system, which meant I felt really nervous. It was… annoying.
We were also getting a great view of their ship. Our sensor network was great for picking up moving ships, and was possibly the best tactical asset the Isyth had. But… they weren’t nearly as discerning as a tactical scan from weapons grade sensors at close range.
The Suateran ship looked like tall saucer, or perhaps an upside down shallow bowl with a slightly concave lid would be a better description. The hull was absolutely bristling with emitters. Far too many emitters for them just to be shield and sensor blisters. What they all did nagged at the back of my mind, but I didn’t come up with any answers. There were only four plasma weapons on the ship, and as far as I could see, no missile ports, or missile defense lasers, which worried me.
Vik ordered, “Open a channel.”
A hologram of a Suateran appeared. He, or perhaps she, did look remarkably like the grays of Earth legend, except he wasn’t naked. Of course he wasn’t, Earth science fiction could be weird, he was in a ship suit uniform like we were, in case of decompression. Only his thin chin and face, the bulbous and unusually large crown of his head, and large black eyes were visible. The uniform the creature wore had a silvery sheen to it, the collar was very thick, and had alien designs on them that I was hard pressed to describe, but that Ann had no problem translating to English and throwing it up on my overlay. He was an admiral.
“You have transgressed against us, an act of war which cannot be forgiven. Your apologies and desires for talk are meaningless, we cannot trust your word, only your actions matter. You will surrender immediately, and abandon your ships. You will no longer be allowed to terrorize our people.”
I felt really pissed off at those accusations, and just a little guilty. Fucking Denik.
Vik replied, “The one responsible for the unwarranted aggression has been killed, and left stains of dishonor and harm on our society as well. We have not occupied your system with ships since, nor have we tried to hinder or hamper your passage in space. We contacted you numerous times, with the desire of giving reparations for the harm we caused.
“You talk of actions, that is four actions in our favor since the incident, though the latter one has not been fulfilled because you refuse to discuss it. We have been at peace for thousands of years, what happened over the last year is unfortunate, and we deeply regret the insane actions of one of us, but we cannot roll over and die.
“You may leave us in peace if we disarm, but the Stolavii would enslave and kill us, and eventually turn toward you. I ask you not to throw out the thousands of years of peace and stabilization the Isyth empire has brought to our portion of space, for the actions of one insane individual.”
The Suateran admiral looked unimpressed, “It was more than just one man that destroyed our ships and infrastructure, and threatened our world from above.”
Vik sighed, “It would appear so, but we made a grave error in not anticipating a dire possibility. That one man held our empire hostage through the use of artificial intelligences, through forceful overrides that gave them no choice. It took us a year to retake the empire. That system has also been repaired, it will not happen again.”
The admiral shook his head, “We cannot take that chance, our people’s survival is at stake. You will abandon your ships and return to the planet, you have fifteen minutes to comply, and then we will force you.”
Vik frowned, as the hologram winked out.
Telidur asked, “Orders?”
Vik sighed, “It seems we can’t avoid battle, but I won’t fire the first shot. The orders and plan of battle stand, as soon as they open up on those ten ships, we close the trap. I don’t like it, but they’re forcing our hand.”
It seemed so stupid. The Suaterans were citing Denik’s attack, and giving us time to abandon our ships to gain the high moral ground, while we were waiting for their attack before responding for the same exact reason. To gain the high moral ground in our minds.
That didn’t make it false, but it was still stupid. Neither side wanted to fight, but their side would attack out of fear, and we would defend to preserve our lives and freedom. Neither side saw themselves as the aggressor either, we didn’t believe we should be held accountable for Denik’s actions, which made the Suateran’s guilty of aggression, while they didn’t believe our excuses, making us the aggressors in their minds. Well, no one ever said war wasn’t absurd.
Still, at least some wars were to stop tyranny, this one would be fought out of fear. Well, it could be argued the Suaterans were exercising tyranny against us, trying to isolate us to our worlds.
I was thinking too hard about it. Us verses them was much cleaner and simpler. Sure, they might have been self-justified, but so what? That didn’t mean we wouldn’t stop them from forcing their will on us. Being understanding could only be taken so far, and real lives were about to be lost because of their paranoia and inability to accept an apology. Isyth lives, that would be wasted because of their paranoia.
Fucking Suaterans.
Plus, those bastards use anal probes. That deserved death, didn’t it?
I suppressed a snicker, it was just my nerves talking and sending stupid thoughts into my head. I closed my eyes and tried to clear my head. I couldn’t flip the switch, but light meditation would focus my thoughts. Not to the same clarity perhaps, but still far clearer than most beings could manage thanks to my designers.
“Analysis of their ship?” Vik asked.
Jillintara said, �
�No point defense, only four plasma weapons, no missile launchers. That points to an unknown weapon type being in play, especially given all those emitters on the hull. I estimate only ten percent of them are sensor blisters, cloaking, drive, or shield emitters. That leaves thousands of emitters of an unknown weapons type, or perhaps types. I’ll run an analysis as soon as the battle starts, I have no idea what they could be.”
I reported, “I came to the same conclusions in my review of the scans. They have to be weapons of some kind, otherwise these ships are far too weak to stand against us. The Suaterans are smarter than that, and have been watching us and know our ships’ capabilities.”
Vik said, “Maybe. Remember, they only know they’re confronting ten ships right now.”
I snorted, “They also are only guarding their home world with the same sized fleet, and they know we have over four hundred ships and just gave the Stolavii a severe spanking.”
We could only hope whatever those weapons were, the higher numbers and shielded missiles would win the day.
We waited tensely, or at least I felt tense, as the seconds and minutes slowly passed. Unknowns in battle weren’t good. At least they didn’t use dimensional technology, otherwise their ships wouldn’t look like a porcupine with all those emitters. It seemed only the empire used them, outside of the Alirann I mean, in empire space.
No matter how I felt, I wasn’t sure it was comparable to what the men and women in the fleet at Vehiri felt, or Natalya. I was positive the governor was monitoring things by now.
The fifteen minutes slowly passed.
Chapter Fourteen
The ten unmanned ships for bait were annihilated without warning. It looked like nuclear explosions walked down the hull until they cracked in half, and moments later exploded.
The shields hadn’t detected an impact, from energy or matter.
What the fuck?
Vik growled, “Attack.”
One hundred and forty ships appeared, and simultaneously fired sixteen hundred and eighty plasma attacks, along with eight hundred forty missiles at point blank range. In addition, all those bored A.I.s launched the thousands of mined missiles at the same time.
The Suateran ships absorbed the plasma fire easily enough, they were only outnumbered three to two, so split up between the fleet it degraded their shields but not by that much. The Suaterans clearly had shields on par with ours, or perhaps even better.
There was no way they could absorb all those missiles though, and they didn’t. They didn’t have to.
Before the missiles could finish crossing the distance, the enemy fleet blurred, and then disappeared off sensors. They hadn’t just cloaked, cloaking had a distinctive signature as the scan data was slowly cut off. They’d just… vanished.
Vik barked, “What the hell was that?”
Jillintara said, “Unknown, analyzing. The ships have reappeared two light minutes away. Missiles have reacquired them, but it will take several minutes to close.”
Vik snorted, “Unless they blur again and show up somewhere else, any ideas? And what the hell did they do to our ten ships?”
Jillintara answered the first question, “I think they used subspace, but didn’t fully enter it. That would have destroyed them so far in the system. They… skipped? Like a rounded rock thrown sideways, off a pond. They skipped off of the subspace barrier, I would estimate such an ability would be limited to light minutes, and would cost a great amount of power.”
Vik asked, “Can we do that?”
I answered, “Yes, I can see it in the math now that I know it’s possible. It would be a software update only for our current subspace drives, but it would require a hell of a lot of unmanned testing before I’d declare it safe. I don’t imagine it will ever be more than an emergency maneuver in battle, it’s just too risky to use to speed out of a system a hop at a time. The emitters would have to be perfectly calibrated, or like a miss thrown rock sinking into the pond, it wouldn’t skip but sink past the barrier into subspace and be destroyed. I suspect after a couple of skips, the drive would need to be realigned before it was safe again, due to the strain.”
“How does that help us?”
I shrugged, “They can only dodge our missiles one more time, maybe twice. Unless they have multiple drives and far better systems than we do. I suppose we can’t rule that out. Unfortunately, I don’t think they’ll need to dodge again.”
“The unknown weapons?” Vik asked again.
I sighed and nodded, “The shields didn’t register an impact, of either energy or matter. That means it can only be one thing, unless they know something we don’t. Dark energy beams. Those explosions were literally the matter of the ship itself being ripped apart, they cut the ships in half.”
Vik grunted, “Don’t we have a project to create those?”
I nodded, “I suggested the possibility, at the same time I deduced we could use dark energy as a sensor, in smaller concentrations for the latter application of course, that weren’t strong enough to rip matter apart, or even damage a lifeform’s DNA.”
Jillintara said, “You did, and Vik did have me pass that on to the scientists. The project is in progress, but the priority has been on the sensors.”
He frowned, “The Suaterans beat us to it, and worse we don’t have a defense against it.”
Missiles started to explode, as they neared the Suateran fleet, and I sighed.
“I’d estimate the range is short, comparable to plasma weapons. The shields around the missiles can’t stop it, and they have thousands of those emitters on the hull. They probably only retreated to get enough distance to give them time to target and take out the missiles before impact.”
“Possible defenses?”
The Suateran ships were swarming back toward our ships at two hundred gravities as they annihilated the missiles.
I frowned, “Nothing we can implement in the next few minutes. Obviously, matter and energy won’t do, it will have to be a gravity shield, like our deflectors but reversed. Gravity is the containment mechanism for our DE reactors, and the only thing we know that will attract or repel dark energy. Well, field technology might work, but I doubt it. I’ll start working on it now.”
The battle after that was a nightmare. Our shields were comparable in strength, but their shields effectively blocked our plasma, and took time to ablate. While our shields were useless. Missiles didn’t work either, we couldn’t launch such a big mass again, and the DE weapon emitters on the enemy ships took them out quickly and easily.
Our fleet combined plasma firepower, but in the five seconds it took to destroy twenty enemy vessels, they’d destroyed one hundred and ten of our ships. It was short, and almost as one sided as our battle against the Stolavii.
Vik growled an order to the Vehiri fleet, “Cloak and retreat on random vectors!”
The last thirty ships cloaked, but eleven more were destroyed by lucky shots, they hadn’t veered from their predicted vector fast enough. Only nineteen survived.
I watched horrified, as our shipyards and sixty half completed ships were destroyed, then ninety remaining enemy vessels cloaked. I guess we’d only have a hundred twenty new ships in just over two weeks. This would set back our plans for the fleet by months, assuming of course we didn’t just lose. We had to assume they were already on their way to Isyth, and would be there in the early morning hours day after next. About thirty-six hours.
The question was, had they left a couple of ships in Vehiri to watch for more traffic in space?
Vik distracted me, “Why only one ship each, their ships are bristling with DE emitters, why didn’t thirty of them target two of our ships each, they’d have finished the job in one volley.”
I frowned, “The fields that concentrate dark energy enough to destroy matter take a very large amount of power. I’d estimate it would take a large chunk of the reactor power just to power one beam strong enough to rip a quarter mile long ship in half.”
Vik shook his head, “Then
why thousands of emitters, if they can only power one beam?”
I shrugged, “It wouldn’t take nearly as much dark energy to destroy a small missile. A single explosion of separated matter at the nose would take it out, and cost a lot less energy. They wouldn’t even have to maintain a beam to do it, just a short pulse. I’d speculate the extra emitters are for point defense, or possibly to prevent feedback.”
“Feedback?”
I wasn’t sure how to explain that, but Jillintara interjected.
“They’re firing a highly concentrated beam of dark energy, if it’s not completely contained, it would leak leaving high concentrations of dark energy in the area until it could naturally disperse. That would be bad, if they were both moving and firing forward, eventually that lower concentration of leaked dark energy would degrade their hull’s structural integrity by wearing at the bonds of matter. It wouldn’t have an immediate effect, but over time it would be disastrous. Just like the way our old power cores degraded before Lori gave us gravity containment. It is one of the problems that was predicted in our own project during simulations.
“These extra emitters may be set up to either reabsorb the dark energy they run into safely back into the system, or disperse it so it doesn’t impact their own hull. They are probably there for point defense as well, but that one extra function still wouldn’t account for having thousands of them, and I agree with Lori.”
“Is it dangerous right now, for our nineteen remaining ships?”
I shook my head, “No, even high concentrations of dark energy will disperse back to the universal constant within a couple of minutes given no supporting fields. It’s just during the battle, and immediately after firing, where it can cause an issue.”