by Lee Guo
Battle of Sol
By Lee Guo
Copyright © 2018 by Lee Guo
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, and places are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual people, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Dedication:
For all the war gamers out there…
Table of Contents
Book 1
Book 2
Book 3
Book 4
Aftermath
Links
Dear reader, this novel has no chapters. I hope you don’t mind.
Book 1
Bridge, Federation Starship Yorktown, Alpha Centauri System
“General on the bridge!” yelled Captain Fletcher.
Sector General Harvey Yamato returned the salutes from all the bridge crewmen and commanded, “Return to your posts, everyone. We have a big job to do today.”
Yamato watched as all sixteen crewmembers of the flag bridge returned to their stations and computer consoles. There were light fixtures everywhere. Even the holograms had light, and Yamato knew that any time now, these holograms would show the states of the enemy fleet.
Captain Fletcher approached him. “General, all ships are in position as you ordered, except for two. The Aristotle and the Archimedes. They are currently twelve hours late. Both ships report that they suffered primary drive failure and couldn’t repair them in time for the battle.”
Yamato nodded. “Tell them to get here as fast as possible, Captain. If they don’t get here in time, tell them to hide in the system.” And prey they don’t get caught by Argonan hunter-killer parties.
“Yes, sir,” nodded the captain, transmitting the orders.
Yamato waited a moment. “How is the wormhole matrix?”
The captain looked up. “The wormhole is at full power, sir. It’ll be able to transport our entire fleet back to Sol if and when we need it.”
“And the bomb?”
“Fully operational and in place, sir.”
Yamato nodded. “Good. What does the sensor probes show about the enemy fleet?”
“Let me pull it up, sir. Ah, here we go. After the 8th battle of Alpha Centauri, they are left with 2 Titans, 12 Superdreadnaughts, 48 battlecruisers, and 120 smaller vessels. A full 20% of them are under repair, according to the sensor probes, and exactly 5% have suffered drive failure and won’t make it to the next battle with the rest of their fleet.”
Yamato understood. “That’s their mistake.” Actually, it was not a mistake at all. Time was of the essence. Any time the Argonans gave to humanity meant more time for the remaining human forces within the system to finalize repairs and regenerate shields. In all likelihood, time was not on humanity’s side. “You may return back to your duty, Captain. I’ll call when I need you.”
“Aye, sir.” The captain bowed and walked back to his chair in the middle of the flag bridge.
Yamato’s chair was a little bit more to the aft. The admiral’s alcove, or Fleet Combat Information Center (FCIC), stood in the back quarter of the flag bridge. It contained numerous hologram projectors and hologram charts. Data Display panels surrounded the admiral’s chair, as did the holograms. Three officers worked there along with Yamato.
Harvey Yamato took a seat, surveying the data displays before him. He literally saw the enemy fleet, heading towards him. It would take 6 hours for them to enter combat range. He had that long to wait for the final showdown.
He sighed and closed his eyes.
The war was not going well. Not at all.
The Third Intergalactic War, or what some people simply called the Argonan War, had started three years ago when the Argonans, a race of bipedal lizards, declared the human sphere as part of its economic expansion zone. The Argonan leadership, under their leader Emperor Zegrwa the Second, had declared that humans were nothing but bipedal competitors to the entire Argonan species. This culminated in the War Amendment to their then-constitution, which stated that all alien races within the Galaxy must obey the Argonan Emperor or be vanquished. A year later, the Argonan constitution was abolished and all power came to the Argonan Emperor.
Soon after, the warmongering Argonans declared war on Earth.
The Third Intergalactic War had started well for humanity. The Argonans’ initial offensive across three crucial star systems was pushed back by the human 2nd, 4th, and 8th fleet. For a while, it seemed that humanity had a good chance of winning. However, it all changed when the Argonans developed the artificial warp nexus.
Typically, all stars were connected to each other through wormholes created by two nearby stars’ gravitation attraction to each other. When one large gravitational mass was placed near another gravitational mass (ie: two nearby stars), a natural phenomenon occurred that created a wormhole. Using wormholes; fleets, warships, starships, and civilian vessels could traverse the distance easily. Also because of wormholes, a friendly fleet could protect the stars deeper in the chain if it could block an enemy fleet from reaching the stars behind the friendly fleet. This was called bottlenecking and it made intergalactic warfare very intuitive. If you could prevent an enemy fleet from reaching deeper into the chain of interconnected wormholes between systems, you could prevent them from ever attacking the highly population dense regions of your star nation ‒ which usually were also the industrial breadbaskets crucial to maintaining the war effort with new off-the-line warships.
But the Argonans’ artificial warp nexus broke all that. Using new unrivaled technology, the Argonans could create a new and sudden artificial wormhole that could connect to certain stars within the spectral O class. These super large stars like Betelguess and Mu Cephei would aid in creating an artificial wormhole between it and the artificial warp nexus that the Argonans controlled in their own territory. Which meant… that the Argonans had obtained a technology that could traverse extremely large distances and bypass dozens of interconnected stars’ wormhole chains. In other words, they could suddenly appear in your backyard, behind your standing fleet, and attack your industrial worlds before your blocking fleet could retreat fast enough to repulse them away.
In the first months after the Argonans began using their AWs ‒ artificial wormholes ‒ they had completely annihilated the industrial breadbasket of the human star federation using their hit and run tactics behind the main frontlines. Humanity was powerless to stop them. A full 600 billion had died on those eradicated planets, a full testament to the power of these artificial wormholes.
Because of losing the industrial core worlds, humanity could not afford to lose any more human warships because they simply could not be replaced easily. The Argonans, on the other hand, could afford to do so because they had a fully healthy undamaged industrial core of systems that pumped out more ships. Within months, the war went from being slightly in humanity’s favor to being out of control to the point where the human federation’s star parliament began seriously considering surrender as a possibility. The only thing that prevented the human federation from all-out surrendering was Earth.
For hundreds of years, Earth was the center of the Federation’s industrial might. It could produce 30-40% of all of humanity’s warship production capacity. Thus, it was a very enviable target for Argonan strategists. If the enemy could glass Earth and its orbital manufacturing bases, then the enemy would have struck a deep blow to humanity’s war effort. There were two things that made that nearly impossible. One ‒ Earth was not connected to any O class stars that had allowed the Argonans easy access and acted as staging points to trans
port their striking fleets deep into humanity’s heartland. Secondly, it was not connected to the wormhole chain system like nearly all stars were connected to neighboring stars ‒ at least not in any usual way.
Earth had only one wormhole connecting it to the rest of the galaxy and it was an artificial wormhole created using wormhole gates. This artificial wormhole, using technology completely different from the artificial wormholes the Argonans had discovered, allowed for dual way transport between Sol and Alpha Centauri. Alpha Centauri, on the other hand, had 8 naturally occurring wormholes connecting it to the rest of the galaxy.
But the Argonans wanted Earth, and they wanted it badly. They sent fleet after fleet in attacks on Alpha Centauri in hopes of controlling the system and gaining the only passageway to Sol, and Earth. After months of effort, at last they succeeded in whittling down Alpha Centauri’s far numerous orbital forts and defenses to the point where the only defenses left was the hypergate to Earth.
That set up the ninth battle of Alpha Centauri, where the remaining fleet elements of the human sphere collected around the hypergate to Earth along with all the fixed defenses that protected the entrance to the human home system. That led to now.
Sector General Harvey Yamato opened his eyes, and stared at his remaining task force elements displayed holographically before him. He had about 60% of the enemy’s total tonnage for the coming battle, and that didn’t include their technological inventiveness. The enemy’s technological strength was due to the fact that they had developed along different lines with a different purpose. From the beginning, Argonan warships were made to conquer. Human warships were made to defend. In other words, Yamato’s remaining ships were behind numerically and qualitatively. It would be a hard battle.
Luckily, he had fixed defenses that made the two soon-to-engage forces more equal. He gazed at the holos before him, seeing his stationary pulsar guns and stationary HET lasers, which were powered by antimatter and could generate extremely energetic gamma ray beams.
He switched the holograms so that it showed a map of the system. Now, he saw everything. And… it was clear to him that ‒ except for the area around the wormhole gate to Sol and Earth ‒ the enemy controlled everything in the Alpha Centauri system. It was sad. Alpha Centauri had two habitable planets, with over 8 billion population in total. And yet, keeping them safe was not a priority for Sector General Yamato. He was effectively giving them up, because he simply could no longer defend them from annihilation level blasts that the enemy would surely do when ‒ if ‒ the enemy kicked the remaining human ships out of the system.
Their lives, all 8 billion humans within the system, were no longer defendable. Harvey Yamato shook his head. To think that he’d gotten to the point where he could play around with 8 billion lives as if they were only resources to use to combat the enemy. It saddened him. Yet doing so was essential if he wanted to win. And in order to win, he had to make sure the 20 billion lives on Earth remained safe, and this meant he must protect the artificial wormhole to Sol over the 8 billion lives in Alpha Centauri.
And if he couldn’t do that, then he would have to do the unthinkable. He would have to disconnect the artificial wormhole connecting Sol with Alpha Centauri. The reason was none other than the fact that he could not allow the enemy to kill off all 20 billion humans living on Earth. If the enemy did that, then it would be impossible for humanity to win against the Argonans. Earth was the last industrial manufacturing center for the entire human star nation. Without it, there would be no more new ships to enter the fight. And there would be no more hope. Earth had to live, and if that meant disconnecting the only route to Earth, then so be it. One day ‒ if disconnected ‒ that route could be opened again, and Yamato would still have a chance of retaking all the planets and star systems that he had lost so far in the war. But if Earth was bombed, then that would be it. The war was over.
So this was why all his ships were being routed to a position above Alpha Centauri’s wormhole gate to Earth. He must protect that wormhole gate, to prevent the Argonans from reaching Earth, and if he couldn’t protect it, then he would have to order all his ships through the artificial wormhole back to Sol, and then destroy the wormhole gate to Sol.
Harvey Yamato stood there, in the middle of a vast array of holograms, fully knowing that his next decisions ‒ with or without his direct command ‒ would influence the future of the human race and the future of the galaxy in this region of space. He knew it and he stood idle, gazing at the vast foray of movements, both enemy and human.
Now… there was nothing else to do but wait.
Officer’s Mess, Federation Starship Yorktown, Alpha Centauri System
Trevor Gray knew he was as good as dead when he saw his cards. He gulped, and assembled a bet. He pushed 20 green chips forward. And his opponent, Marcy Devries, called.
Trevor wasn’t aware he was giving any tells but he was a gambler, and he wanted to win, so his only choice was to continue bluffing. He gulped, again, and assembled an even bigger bet - 60 chips this time - and pushed them forward.
His opponent thought for a while, then called, again.
The final street came. It was the last opportunity for Trevor to take down this pot by overbetting and the only solace was that he had seen his opponent hesitate before calling him down in the previous street. Trevor was not one to give up - especially to a girl - and so he assembled a bet ‒ an over bet ‒ of around 200 chips, and he splashed it forward confidently. To make it even worse for his opponent, he eyed her with a stern and confident expression that said, “I beat you.”
His opponent called instantly.
Trevor sighed, told her, “you got it” and mucked his cards.
His opponent turned over A-2, meaning ace high, and smiled while taking all the chips back to herself.
“A month’s pay… gone,” said Trevor.
“A good player like you? You’ll win it back in no time,” said Marcy Devries.
Trevor was only barely aware that his opponent was needling him, but he relaxed anyway. Against any other player, his bluff may have worked, but against a skilled opponent like Marcy Devries… well, he should have known better.
Suddenly, the audience that had been watching the two ‘pros’ play… they all laughed. And Trevor’s wingman, Mark ‘Maniac’ Styles, yelled out, “Still trying to manhandle female cockpit players, eh Trevor? You should know female fighter pilots are the best at Texas hold’em.”
“I have to do what I always do,” answered Trevor. “I play like I fly, dangerously and like a gambler.”
The audience laughed, and then one by one they disappeared. Female fighter pilots or not, Trevor knew that fighter pilots were a unique group, especially when they were gambling. He, among them, liked to take chances, and loved to be showy, and he supposed that it was a natural trait that accompanied the profession. In every war, in every battlefield that had fighters, it was well known that fighter pilots were the ones to suffer the greatest casualties. It came with the job. Along with smoking and being a soldier, one had to live wild or not live at all, and that was how all the fighter jocks dealt with their life and the possibility of death.
And especially in this war, where death was literally everywhere.
“What is it, Gray?” said Marcy ‘Captain’ Devries in front of him.
“Huh, cap?” answered Trevor.
“You have a look on your face. Care to tell me your thoughts?”
“I just have a bad feeling about the next battle,” said Trevor. “I feel like I’m not going to make it back. Never going to see Starla or Earth, again.”
“You love Starla?”
“Yea, she’s my ex. I love her and I hate her.”
Cap was silent, but Trevor could see an intense expression on her face. It was only temporary and it disappeared within a heartbeat. “I’m glad you have someone to fight for,” she said. “I don’t. Not anyone personal, anyway. Except for all of you. I’d die for all of you.”
Trevor
nodded as well. After all the battles, after all the thrills and all the ‘we must fight to save humanity’ propaganda, everyone ended up fighting for everyone who fought with them. War buddies. Trevor felt the same. “Why don’t you marry me, Marcy?”
The woman’s face suddenly turned blank, as if in shock, freckles and all, and for the longest moment, Trevor couldn’t tell if she was about to blanch and explode ‒ he supposed it was as good as it could get without downright rejection, and then she opened her mouth to reply, “Sure, Gray. I like that. I’ll marry you. What’s there to live for, anyway?”
**
They got married two hours before the enemy arrived and it was time to sortie. Under the fleet chaplain’s cloak, Marcy ‘Captain’ Devries married Trevor ‘Sandy’ Gray. There were five witnesses to attend the short ceremonial wedding. Trevor’s wingman Mark ‘Maniac’ styles was among them. For about an hour, it was like a blur for Trevor, who said his vows like a robot, and then they had sex in Trevor’s quarters ‒ after inhaling some legalized happy-sticks, which were frowned upon but not banned ‒ this was as good as honeymoons went, considering they had to go to battlestations within another hour.
And one hour after that, they were 10,000 kilometers away from each other again, in their own respective cockpits inside their own unique birds, all the way out there in the deep darkness of space, each awaiting for the order to attack the enemy fleet.
Trevor casually gazed at his wife’s fighter so far away in the void. He spoke to her on the private net, “I love you, Marcy.”
“Same to you, Gray,” Marcy replied.
Suddenly, Trevor knew something bad was about to happen. Something bad always happened when something good happened, at least to him, and he prayed for everyone’s safety, including Mark ‘Maniac’ Styles and his newly wedded bride.
Then… it was all up to fate and the battle commands of the overall fleet commander, Sector General Harvey Yamato.