by Steve White
As if that thought summoned the inevitable into existence, a wash of red pinpricks started flooding out of the purple hoop that designated the warp-point in the holoplot. “Transit,” shouted Sensor Ops.
“Readings?”
“Mixed, sir. Various classes of ships, highest concentration of arrivals supportable by this warp point. And apparently some hulls are immediately undergoing modular separation, Admiral—and the modules are putting out a heavy density of defensive fire against the forts’ missile barrages.”
“Then save the forts’ missiles, and task our energy torpedos to kill those modular ships.” Amunsit’s Arduans had evidently saved another surprise to spring on him. It rapidly became clear that the modular ships were conjoined hulls that were detaching from each other, each part serving as what might be called a defensive fire dreadnought. They were immense hulls with nothing but armaments designed to burn down the missile salvos that the Arduans had rightly come to expect from the forts defending a warp point.
Watanabe frowned. But surely the Arduans would therefore be expecting his shift to energy torpedoes. It was the best way to kill these defensive ships, which came through linked so as to maximize the number which transited the warp point without increasing the risk of having multiple hulls catastrophically rematerializing in the same volume of space. But if that were true—
“Comm ops, immediate message to fleet: shift energy torpedoes back out of the offensive fire net immediately.”
“Sir? Do you intend—?”
“Immediately! They are suckering us, damn it. Send that order!”
“At once, Admiral—”
No sooner had the countermanding order to detask the energy torpedoes been sent and obeyed than enemy SBMHAWKs began flooding out of the warp point. Watanabe leaned forward to issue the order he had foreseen giving. “Energy torpedoes are to commence anti-missile defensive fire. Immediately.”
“Yes, sir! But now, how do we engage those defensive dreadnoughts?”
“Instruct the forts to use their missiles. They are to employ launch protocol Zulu Hotel Five. That won’t get all of the defensive dreadnoughts, but it will attrit them significantly. And at their current range, the armaments on those dreadnoughts can’t hurt us.”
In the next half minute, it became obvious that the Arduans’ attempt to catch Watanabe off guard—with his batteries dedicated to killing the dreadnoughts, not guarding against a torrent of missiles—had mostly failed. The unprecedented number of SBMHAWKs that came through the warp point in one long rush did manage to score a few hits upon the forts, but none suffered any disabling damage.
But in the meantime, Amunsit had fed in even more of the modular defensive dreadnoughts during brief lapses in the SBMHAWK barrage, so that the net effect was that she had slightly increased the number of them on the Zephrain side of the warp point by the time five minutes had elapsed.
At which point, Arduan monitors started rushing in and Watanabe realized how wrong his analysts had been, and how limited the reports they’d been working from.
Firstly, the transits of these new Arduan ships were so closely spaced that they were arriving faster than they were being reduced to junk, even by the combined missile fire from the forts and, now, Watanabe’s own capital ships. But it wasn’t just that the numbers of Arduan monitors were increasing too quickly; they were also dying a little too slowly. “Sensor Ops, get me data on those Arduan monitors. Do they conform to the class stats reported in prior engagements?”
“Sir,” replied Sensor Ops with a slight quaver in his young voice, “our technical intelligence on their monitors is still incomplete. But these seem to have more armor and shields than were reported to us. Of course, it’s possible we just didn’t get complete data on—”
“No,” Watanabe cut him off. “It’s a new sub-class. Look at the drive field characteristics, the power spike, the tuners. These ships are heavy assault hulls, designed to secure a foothold by being able to absorb more damage for a short amount of time. They’re not meant to last for years but months, at most. They exist solely to function as the edge of the wedge when the Arduan fleet has to crack its way through warp point defenses.”
Which is just what they were doing. Now that a frail ring of what Watanabe already thought of as heavy assault monitors had established a thin perimeter beyond the warp point, conventional capital ships started flooding through. Along with them came immense framework hulls that were nothing but engines propelling a huge grid of flimsy, single-shot missile bays. Once these bays were cut loose from their tugs, selnarmic fire-control directors on other ships sent launch commands almost immediately. Each framework annihilated itself by unleashing a single wave of heavy missiles equal to the combined broadsides of any two of Watanabe’s devastators. Watanabe’s defensive assets labored to keep up with this flood—which allowed yet another wave of conventional ships to pour in through the warp point.
“Sir,” Commo Ops obtruded cautiously. “I’ve had a contingency warning alert from our lead minisensor. Enemy hull density near the warp point has now reached Stage II.”
Which meant that, although it would take hours yet, the mathematics of the engagement were already inevitable: the thirty-eight forts guarding the warp point from Rehfrak were ineluctably doomed. The enemy weight of metal was already too great to retake and effectively “shut” the warp point again. The rate at which incoming tonnage was now accumulating would be able to absorb all the damage the forts and Watanabe’s fleet could throw at it, and still increase sufficiently to be able to reduce the forts to junk. And once that happened…
“We hold here for the planned duration,” Watanabe ordered through a long, faint sigh. “We will commence withdrawal evolution Romeo Baker One when that time has elapsed, or until I either move up or countermand that evolution. At that time, the forts’ commanders are to switch over to automated control and their crews are to abandon their facilities by individual escape pod. Until then”—Yoshi leaned back in his chair—“we stand our ground and kill them.”
While they—increasingly—kill us in return.
*
Amunsit recovered readily from the shock of warp-point transit—she was always among the first to do so—and noted that the command system recovery subroutines initiated by proto-selnarmic biots already had her ship ready for orders, even before her crew had recovered enough to carry them out personally.
“Evasive protocol Sefnur-two,” she sent at the selnarm pickups. “PDF batteries are to preferentially sort enemy missiles by proximity and time to impact.” Her flagship, the monitor Rakhu’umt, cut sharply to starboard and pitched down, but thanks to the inertial compensators, Amunsit felt only the faintest hint of that motion. Even that marginal sensation was probably imagined, suggested by the rapid change of perspective relayed by the primary viewscreen.
Her crew now recovered, Amunsit allowed herself to relax into her command couch once again. “Report,” she ordered, glancing at the holopod.
“The human—apologies: the griarfeksh—capital ships are finally withdrawing from the forts, as per the most recent report—”
—After twelve hours instead of the estimated eight, Amunsit fretted behind the high selnarmic wall she maintained as part of her command image—
“—and their deployment is not structured so as to suggest the presence of cloaked formations.”
“Confidence of that projection?”
“Results differ when considering enemy elements employing tactical cloaking versus strategic cloaking.”
“I require tactical assessments only. I know there is no way for us to infer distant reserves that might be cloaked. I seek only gaps or misleading weaknesses in the present battlesphere.”
“Yes, Admiral. Confidence regarding the absence of tactically cloaked adversaries stands at eighty-five percent.”
Amunsit allowed herself the luxury of savoring that estimate for a long moment. “Excellent. Commence phase two.”
“Sending courier b
ack to alert the echelons in Rehfrak now, Admiral.”
Amunsit sent (acknowledgment, approval), considered calling for a casualty report, but simply glanced over at the holopod again. Most of the murn-colored human forts were now ringed with a vrel-hued sheath: they were heavily damaged, probably in imminent danger of becoming inoperative or of being wholly destroyed. Most of the enemy’s largest ships had pulled well back from them, although one devastator had lagged behind. Still near the forts, it seemed to be covering the withdrawal of a slightly smaller ship—a monitor—that had apparently suffered some species of drive failure. Several of Amunsit’s heavy superdreadnoughts, the backbone of her fleet, veered out of echelon to engage: perfectly acceptable, since they were part of the reserve kept to exploit unforeseen opportunities. At almost the same instant, the human ship adjusted heading to better face these new threats—despite the fact that the range was three light-seconds. Amunsit was suffused with (exhalation, smugness, arrogance): such an immediate response should have been impossible at a range of three light-seconds, since the information could not travel faster than light. Unless…
The extent of the First Dispersate’s betrayal is as reported, then. It is most fortunate that we have confirmed this so inexpensively—
An urgent probe from her Tactical Prime lashed at the edge of her selnarm. “The griakfesh are communicating faster than they should, Admiral. I can’t explain it—wait. No! It is—they are using selnarm, Admiral! Selnarm links! But I thought the humans were incapable of selnarmic—?”
“No,” Amunsit interrupted, uncoiling from her semi-repose, “it is not the humans.” Her bridge staff turned, puzzled, in her direction.
Amunsit savored the moment. The time had come to share the outrage of which her intelligence operatives had heard whispers, and about which defectors had speculated. And she would be able to reveal it as having been finally confirmed here, in the very teeth of the battle, as the great mass of her fleet came flooding through the secured warp point to sweep the last of the forts aside as so much irradiated junk. Revealing this horror now would double the implicit outrage at the underlying treachery, since the vast majority of her Destoshaz warriors would be learning it at the same moment that they arrived in the Zephrain system, witnessing how many thousands of their cherished comrades had been discarnated. All because the humans had been aided by an even worse enemy of Illudor.
Amunsit rose. “The humans are not responsible for what you are detecting,” she repeated for emphasis. “The griarfeksh hide no greatness. They are just what we have determined them to be: soulless zhetteksh, without reincarnation or selnarm. What you are detecting are the traitors of the First Dispersate who refused to join us in Zarzuela. Instead, they have joined the enemies of our race—the enemies of Illudor—in an attempt to ensure our destruction.” She paused, and to amplify the effect of that caesura, stared around at her rigid crew before she finished. “You see now the depth of our peril and the urgency of our quest. These humans were able to turn our own kind—our own brothers and sisters—against us. And in so doing, they have split the heart of Illudor in two. We must make Him whole again, must purge the traitors of the First Dispersate from the Holy All that is His Mind and His Will. Then, and only then, may we be one people, will our narmata be serene and unified once again.”
Among the Destoshaz of the Second Dispersate, selnarm had only been used for basic communication since its contingent of shaxzhu were purged. Consequently, the bridge crew not only sent a wild maelstrom of (rage, vengeance, hatred, horror) but emitted a vocal chorus of sibilant barking coughs that were the Arduan equivalent of roars of incoherent fury.
Amunsit rode the surge of their emotions, used the dominance of her selnarm to bind it into a wave, a unified collective will. “Now, we sweep them before us. All of them.”
Her crew, released from the mesmerizing shock of the moment that she had bound into her charisma, returned to their tasks with a vengeance.
The human devastator was already catching up with its fellows, the monitor having recovered from its brief engine failure. Tactics Prime stared into the holopod, estimating distance, and sent, along with (eagerness, vengeful rage, precision), “If we accelerate quickly, we can catch the griarfeksh devastators. Our ships are smaller, faster, and they will not perceive the special threat that we bear within the hulls of some of our monitors. We could destroy many, maybe most, of them if you would allow—”
Amunsit soothed his (eagerness) with (sagacity, patience, savoring a kill). “Never spring a big trap to catch small game, Tactics. You will show little promise as an aspirant to command, if you cannot innately understand that. And there is no game in this system that is large enough to be worth revealing the to which you allude. We must come up with another stratagem to overwhelm the humans, today.”
Tactics Prime thought. Then sent (canniness) and “That means we must resist any impulse to strike or chase them hard, now. We must wear them down.”
“And then?” She wondered if his tactical thought would be a recapitulation of her own.
“And then, when we have chased them far enough, we will use our fighters to destroy them. And by using our fighters to cripple their largest ships, we will, in turn prompt them to misconceive the doctrine we have developed for the greater engagements to come. They will see us use our fighters decisively here and project that this is the diadem in the crown of our campaign strategy. They can hardly have reason to believe otherwise: since the Traitor Narrok offers his counsel to them now, and was the one to develop the selnarm-controlled fighter concept, our enemies will thus know that we are not losing pilots, only easily replaceable equipment. They will therefore presume that this use of fighters is our trump card. Which will ensure that they are wholly unprepared for the greater surprise we hold in reserve, at such time as we spring it.”
Amunsit felt an unuttered nuance in his plan. “I sense that, when referring to our use of fighters here, you do not simply refer to the wave attacks we have used elsewhere.”
Tactics Prime answered, “No, Admiral—or to put it more accurately, what I envision is a wave attack, but they will not see this one coming. Not in time.”
Amunsit felt the images and outlines of his nascent tactical innovation, sent (approval, congratulations) as she reassured him, “Yes, Tactics, I suspect you may indeed have a future in command.”
After all, his plan did closely match her own.
*
Yoshi Watanabe accepted the cup of green tea proffered by the limping ensign—well, the CPO who had been brevetted to ensign—but waved away the accompanying cup of noodles. He knew the Arduans were up to something. He’d learned to sense it in the last war. However, the last five days—during which he had mounted the most desperate fighting retreat of his career—had sharpened that sense to razor’s-edge acuity.
Over the course of those days, Watanabe had been the one springing the surprises. That is largely why his fleet was still in existence, although it had now been chased halfway back to Xanadu. He’d fought a sharp engagement just within the heliopause of the main system, then seemed to run—only to unleash his cloaked reserve of devastators and supermonitors when the Arduans pressed their pursuit within ten light-seconds of the system’s outermost planet. Using selnarm to communicate through the field effect that concealed his force in the shadow of the planet, Watanabe had sprung his hulls out of stealth at the optimal moment and then watched them spend two hours sending an unrelenting torrent into the enemy’s trailing flank. Whereas eight years ago, the impact of the attack would ultimately have been limited by the number of missiles available, this time it was able to continue nonstop, carried out by the immense array of energy torpedo batteries on all the humans’ capital ships. The Arduans were so badly hit, with so many ships flaring and tattering into mobile debris fields even as their drives gave out, that Amunsit eventually had to retract that flank and withdraw to dress her ranks. By which time Watanabe had scooped his units back together and quit the battlespher
e just far enough to reform into a refreshed and strengthened line.
But ultimately, that had only bought him half a day. The Arduans of the Second Dispersate came on harder than ever. And while they could be slowed, they could not be stopped. It did not matter how many times Yoshi was able to tempt them to overextend into a gap in his lines that was actually a prepared kill zone, or how often they fell for his trick of dressing his ranks for the final showdown—which compelled them to do the same—only to scoot off and leave them with nothing to show for their efforts but three wasted hours. No matter how many skirmishes he won, the Arduans’ numerical advantage was always decisive, always washed over whatever tactical innovation he had employed and set him back on his heels yet again. And he was running out of both time and space.
Watanabe had been able to spring one last trap—set up weeks in advance—when the Arduans, of necessity, chased his fleet past the main system’s largest gas giant. There Watanabe once again stood his ground, a bit starside of the huge planet’s orbital path. Seeing their prey inside the gas giant’s large Desai radius, the Arduans deployed their fighters—and as they did, came under extremely high-velocity railgun fire from several of the sizable nearby moons. The Arduan fleet hitched to a stop while their fighters turned and hunted down their mostly automated bushwhackers, taking some significant losses in the process. And in that interval, Yoshi once again slipped away.