“Come for a look-see, eh?” DPN Fleet Admiral Conrad Benton said. “All right, Brian. Let’s go to general quarters and get everybody’s plasma bottles up to pressure. Looks like we’re going to have visitors.”
“Yes, Sir.”
Fleet Admiral Espinoza looked into the tactical display.
“What are they doing there, Jay? Maybe a tenth-gravity?”
“That’s what it looks like, Ma’am.”
“The least acceleration they can do while keeping down down enough to keep the silver on the table.”
“Yes, Ma’am. Conserving their reaction mass. And those light recon destroyers are over here.”
Admiral Kim indicated a section of the display and Espinoza nodded.
“So I see. Looks like four hundred or so of them. So what do you think, Jay? PS-2?”
“Potshot-3 has a lot to recommend itself here, Ma’am. Considering where those destroyers are.”
“I see that. I think you’re right. All right, let’s go with PS-3 for this system.”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“All right, what’s next?”
“The Homestead system, Ma’am.”
Kim set the tactical display to show the next system. Espinoza stared into the display.
“OK, here I think it’s PS-2. Either that or PS-7.”
“PS-2 for me, Ma’am.”
“All right. PS-2 in Homestead. Who’s next?”
Each Sintaran combat commander in theater had twenty-five occupied systems to consider. Each selected a plan from the maneuvering plans sent out from Sintar for each of the enemy forces in Sintaran space.
When they had finished, Admiral Jeremy told Fleet Admiral Dexter McGee, “You know, at the end of each of these maneuvers, we could just wipe out their whole force in the system.”
“Yes, and that’s the point, Jeremy,” McGee told his chief of staff. “We could, but we don’t. Kill thirteen billion of their spacers, and the Democracy of Planets will be a seething pit of rage. We’ll never put that down. The goal here is to convince them they can’t win. And they’ll end up shot out with their box launchers with no hope of resupply. We could just punch them out at any time later, if it came to that.”
“I see, Sir. Action delayed. Tantamount to a threat.”
“Yes, Jeremy, but not an outrage. Not senseless slaughter. They’ve been really good about not violating the Treaty of Earth so far, and, even while punching out their fleets wouldn’t be a violation, we don’t want to go giving anybody any ideas.”
“Yes, Sir. I understand.”
“Status change. Major down-transition. Estimating thirty thousand warships, destroyer through heavy cruiser, outside our position from the planet. Not within missile range yet, but they’re heading this way, making one-point-five gravities.”
“Go to battle stations,” Admiral Cheng said. “Bring us face on to the enemy. One gravity acceleration. Stand by box launchers.”
“I have an image, Sir, from a sensor buoy.”
A warship, though a warship unlike anything Admiral Cheng had ever seen, appeared on the tactical display.
“What the hell is that thing? It looks like a garbage can with a broomstick in it.”
“Mass readings indicate a heavy cruiser, Sir, but the length of that barrel makes it a battleship impeller. The other classes are similar.”
“Are you sending this all to headquarters in real-time?”
“Yes, Sir.”
Cheng continued to watch the tactical display as the two forces moved toward each other.
“Coming within missile range now, Sir.”
“Let me know when their entire force is within our range.”
“Yes, Sir. Estimating two minutes.”
Cheng looked again at that ship image. The much-vaunted Sintaran new construction. Well, we’ll see.
“In range now, Sir.”
“Fire first box launchers.”
“Message transmitted. Formation responding. Estimate two point four million outbound, Sir. Status change. Missile separation. Estimate two point four million incoming.”
The two titanic waves of missiles sped toward each other. They collided and intermingled in a paroxysm of nuclear explosions. The few thousand that staggered intact out of that maelstrom were easily dispatched with point-defense lasers.
“Fire second box launchers.”
“Message transmitted. Formation responding. Estimate two point four million outbound, Sir. Status change. Missile separation. Estimate two point four million incoming.”
Again, two titanic waves of missiles sped toward each other, and again a few thousand staggered intact out of the carnage to be picked off by point -defense lasers.
‘Status change. They’ve flipped, Sir. Estimating just three seconds to flip ship. Now making over six gravities outbound.”
That made no sense. They came all the way here, for what?
“Sir, we’re being hailed. They’re asking for the DPN commander. It’s a Fleet Admiral McGee, Sir.”
“Put him on, Comm.”
“You’re live, Sir.”
“Admiral Cheng here, Admiral McGee.”
“Hello, Admiral Cheng. I just wanted to let you know I still have one salvo of my box launchers left. Two point four million missiles. I think we both know what would happen if I fired them. But I won’t slaughter you and your spacers, Admiral. I would ask instead that you commend my restraint to your commanders back in the DP.
“And, lest you think that’s an empty boast, I can show you it’s not.
“McGee out.”
“Status change, Sir. A hundred of those light cruisers just transitioned out. On their own, no projector ship. They’ve just reappeared a third of the way around the system. Missile separation. Estimate sixty-four hundred incoming. They’ve targeted the recon destroyers.”
Several minutes went by before his flag scanning officer turned around at his console.
“All the recon destroyers were destroyed, Sir. Those light cruisers just flipped ship and transitioned out again. The rest of the Sintaran force has also transitioned out.”
Again and again across the DP-occupied planets, large Sintaran forces appeared, exchanged huge volleys with the DP forces, then disappeared without delivering the coup de grâce. In each case, they did destroy all the recon destroyers in the system, with a third box launch from a small minority of ships.
Worse yet, while the attacks weren’t simultaneous across all hundred and ninety-nine remaining occupied systems, they occurred in such a short period of time across all hundred and ninety-nine systems, it was clear these were all separate forces.
As they approached the convergence point of their net on the Annalia border, the picket ships separated into two groups. One group of more than two million turned around and went back into Sintaran space. They reported in to the individual combat commanders.
The other force, also over two million picket ships, continued on into the DP to make up attrition losses and lend their additional weight to keeping the shipping embargo on the Democracy of Planets.
No restock or resupply would reach the DP fleet.
Pavel Isaev had just sat through a briefing by his general staff on the current status of the war against Sintar.
“All right, let me summarize what we know, and you tell me if I got anything wrong.
“First, Sintar has destroyed all the orbital military infrastructure in the Democracy of Planets, from one end to the other. We have insufficient capability in civilian platforms even to service that portion of the fleet that remains here.
“Second, Sintar has effectively embargoed freight shipments within our own systems, and seems willing to throw absolutely whatever it takes at our shipping to keep us from moving anything, especially to keep us from moving anything to the front.
“Third, all our combat groups at the front have now shot out their box launchers, with no hope of resupply due to the embargo, while Sintar can reload theirs. Which means Sintar can
take our forces out whenever they want. Could already have, in fact, but they abstained for their own reasons.
“Fourth, the one shot we had of seeing what was going on, of finding their fleet or their supply caches, was the old-design recon destroyers, most of which have now been destroyed.
“Fifth, our crews are going to begin starving within about two months, aboard their own ships, unless we make a massive effort to bring up fresh food or transport them all down to the surface, which we better do while we have sufficient reaction mass for the shuttles.
“And sixth, we have finally seen Sintar’s new construction. They went light instead of heavy. Their ships can outshoot us, outmaneuver us, and outaccelerate us. Oh, and they have sixty percent more platforms in theater than we do.
“Does that about sum it up?”
The fleet admirals at the table squirmed at the frank assessment. The senior of them finally spoke up.
“Yes, sir. There are two mitigating factors, however. One is that we believe their new construction is also unmanned, like their picket ships. The incredible speed with which their warships turned and accelerated away, combined with their small size for their firepower, argues against any crew or life support equipment being aboard at all. Which means their actual crews are ground-based somewhere. If we could find them, and take them into custody, we may be able to kill their ability to command their ships.
“The second factor is that we have been working on cracking the encryption on the radio channels to the Sintaran missiles. While they are physically incompatible with our impellers, those limits do not apply to box launchers. If we can command the missiles, we can simply mount the containers like our own. That would make their supply caches very valuable. We already know where one of them is. If we can find others – through intelligence work at one of their fleet bases, for example – we might be able to overcome those cargo shuttles and use the reaction mass and the missiles there.”
“And do you have a plan for taking a supply cache without the attacking force getting their asses shot off, Admiral Jeffries?”
“We believe so, sir.”
“All right. Well, I’m off to brief the prime minister. I’m sure he’ll be thrilled at learning our current status. Get your plans in order for those two operations. I’ll see if I can get approval.”
Cache 32 Revisited
Rear Admiral Dorothy Conroy stared into the hyperspace map. She had been called in by the officer of the watch, as it was about three in the morning on Imperial Fleet Base Pannia.
There was the cause for the alarm. Five DP formations were on the move. The mass readings on their hyperspace tracks indicated all five of them were the entirety of their assets in the system they were leaving. Call it twenty thousand ships apiece.
The actual destination of their hyperspace track wasn’t certain yet, but Conroy could make intelligent guesses. One of them was making progress in the general direction of Perchon, but it was likely a second attack on Cache 32. That had to drive the DP nuts to know so many supplies were there and they couldn’t get at them.
The other four were in different directions, but....
“Highlight sector and provincial capitals.”
Across the eight sectors she was viewing, four hundred stars glowed brighter.
“Double highlight sector and provincial capitals within the reasonable maneuvering cone of the highlighted tracks.”
Four star systems glowed brighter still. There they were. The provincial capitals closest to the DP’s existing locations. The DP had bypassed capitals before, hoping perhaps for experience with Sintar’s new-construction vessels before tackling the harder nuts. Now, though, they were headed right for four provincial capitals, two in Pannia and two in Estvia, that they had bypassed before.
Conroy collected the information in an alert message, marked the destinations ‘Tentative – Subject to Confirmation or Change,’ and sent it on to Leicester, with copies to the Emperor and Admirals Cernik and Svenson.
Admiral Ivar Svenson was appreciating the view off his deck this morning. There was a thousand-foot drop over the railing on the far side of the deck from the house. Of course, it presented no danger to him, but he found it thrilling nonetheless.
When the alert message came in from Admiral Conroy, Svenson wasn’t surprised. He had expected another attempt before this, to be honest. He remained on his chaise, and took a simulation of it with him into the tactical display of Cache 32. He surveyed the current status for several minutes, and then a smile spread across his face.
Yes, that would do nicely.
Cache 32 was somewhat in disarray. In the preparation for Operation Butterfly Net, all five million participating picket ships had traded missile containers for reaction mass containers at one of the caches. Almost two hundred thousand picket ships had been through Cache 32, dropping their missile containers and being loaded with reaction mass.
The emphasis being on speed at the time, the missile containers had simply been discarded. The shuttles were too busy loading reaction mass to do an orderly swap. As a result, discarded containers were scattered all about the site. The cargo shuttles would take weeks to get it all cleaned up.
Admiral Svenson had them stop doing that, and simply sit and wait for the DP formation.
The two DP projector ships dropped into the Cache 32 system both above and below the ecliptic and well out of any traffic lane. They scanned the system and sent the scan results to Admiral Powell Getty’s formation, waiting in normal space about a light-year away.
Getty’s formation had gotten to Cache 32 without incident. He had been expecting to be harassed along the way by picket ships teasing him to shoot missiles in hyperspace and burn his tubes. His orders to his formation before the up-transition into hyperspace was to only use two of the forward tubes for missile firing in hyperspace, and to leave the other tubes undamaged for use in normal space. That would still leave them two clean tubes, which was one more than they used to have anyway.
But there had been no attacks in hyperspace.
Now he looked at the scans from the Cache 32 system. There were all the reaction-mass and missile containers, Block after block after block of them, stretching for miles. Reaction mass and missiles, both of which he and the other formations desperately needed. There were also a lot of discarded containers floating around. A hundred thousand or more. That was sloppy.
There were the shuttles. Wait a minute. He checked the scans from the other ship. No, it was real, all right. The shuttles were unloaded. Those five hundred shuttles, with thirty-two missile containers aboard, would pack a hell of a punch. A hundred and twenty-eight thousand missiles. But right now, they were unloaded!
“Prepare to get under way,” Getty ordered. “Looks like we caught them napping.”
Admiral Svenson watched the DP warships down-transitioning into Cache 32 in his tactical display. He expected a full DP formation, twenty thousand ships, and they didn’t disappoint. They got their formation together and then went to 1.5 gravities toward the cargo shuttles. The goal was clearly to take them out before they could load up with missile containers.
Svenson gave orders to the robotic cargo shuttles to retreat and hide among the discarded containers.
“Sir, the cargo shuttles are withdrawing in among all those loose cargo containers.”
“I see that,” Getty said. “Close the distance. We need to get close enough to be able to distinguish targets.”
“We’ll be in missile range soon, Sir.”
“Excellent.”
Svenson had his command options all displayed in his VR, in a sidebar to the tactical display. He had worked them up in the days it had taken the DP formation to reach Cache 32, and he was ready with multiple options.
It just remained to see what the DP commander would do.
“We’re in missile range now, Sir. Targeting is clear.”
“Fire all tubes,” Getty said.
Svenson saw the launch in the tactical display
. Eighty thousand missiles, four from each of the DP warships. That was all they could launch with their impellers, their box launchers being shot dry. That was also his expectation, and he triggered his Plan Alpha response.
A twelve-foot-by-twelve-foot-by-eighty-foot Imperial Navy missile container held eight five-foot-diameter, thirty-foot-long missiles. The container had remote control doors on both ends, so the load could be inserted or withdrawn at either end.
What Svenson had been experimenting with in the weeks since the First Battle of Cache 32 was launching missiles from a static container. If one opened the front doors on the container and ignited the front four missiles, they launched properly, but burned the second set of four missiles, which were now useless. Which would have been okay if there were no better option.
If one ignited the rear four missiles, however, they pushed all eight missiles out of the container. More accurately, they pushed the lighter container off the back of the heavier missiles. The first four missiles and the packing material fell away to the sides as the rear four missiles pushed through. One could then ignite the first four missiles as well. About five percent of the missiles got tangled up with each other, but that was okay. Ninety-five percent successful launch was much more than he needed.
As the twenty thousand DP warships closed on the cargo shuttles and the loose containers among which they sheltered, twenty-five thousand of those loose containers suddenly shot out two hundred thousand missiles.
One hundred and ninety thousand of them successfully cleared each other and the packing material.
“Status change, Sir. Missile separation. Estimate one hundred ninety thousand incoming.”
“From where?” Getty asked.
“They’re from those loose containers, Sir.”
“Retarget to missiles.”
“Retargeting to missiles.”
EMPIRE: Conqueror (EMPIRE SERIES Book 6) Page 10