Sojourn
Page 26
“You do realize, Ellie, that the individuals who can best answer that question aren’t here,” Hector replied, with a lift of one eyebrow. “The Sardi-Tallen platform installed the beam weaponry, and I set sail. We’ve never had an opportunity to use them in a fight.”
Ellie didn’t have any more time to decide. “Place this city-ship in the missiles’ paths,” she ordered.
Hector hesitated for a tick. The kernel’s conflict reached a crescendo, and he chose. Alex directed him to protect the fleet, but he decided to support his admiral. In the end, he thought that’s what Alex would do despite his advice.
<Étienne, the city-ship is moving to an interception position,> Alain de Long sent to his twin. He copied their commodore, Descartes, on the transmission.
As the city-ship took up the optimum position to intercept the oncoming remaining armament, Ellie said to Hector, “Set us up.”
“You’ll need to be more specific, Admiral,” Hector replied firmly. It was evident to him that his knowledge of military tactics and vocabulary was sadly lacking.
Hector’s comment caught Ellie off guard. He wasn’t Cordelia, and she wasn’t surrounded by the fleet’s experienced staff.
“Apologies, Hector,” Ellie said. “Orient the ship like a wheel intending to roll over the missiles. Open your bays, and run out your beam tubes. Then start your wheel spinning slowly.”
“To allow the ship to distribute the energy load across the beams’ power crystals,” Hector finished. “A clever tactic. Alex?” he guessed.
“Cordelia,” Ellie supplied.
Descartes was calculating the trajectory of the incoming projectiles. The narrow profile of the city-ship provided it maximum protection, which he approved, but it also limited its ability to cover the widest field.
Alain smiled. His brother was planting an idea without directing their new commodore, and Descartes would recognize it. The ploy would keep the command balance.
Descartes ordered the sister aboard the battleship to move forward, turn the ship broadside, and eliminate anything that came their way. Then he selected positions around the Our People for his Tridents, and his warships accelerated to join the city-ship’s fight.
Ellie saw the Tridents and the battleship of Descartes’s augmented command shift on the holo-vid. She approved of the movement. It provided a better defense against the missiles. However, she made a note in her implant to have a discussion with her new commodore and set some boundaries. She did choose to send,
The twins grinned and shared a brief exchange. Descartes would receive a bit of Ellie’s thoughts for his unapproved action, despite its cleverness.
Before the missiles arrived, Descartes launched his travelers and positioned them to the rear of the Tridents, but well clear of the Our People’s gigantic engines, which spun the city-ship.
Of the Omnians’ beam-capable warships, the Our People’s weaponry had the greatest reach. They opened fire first, and the massive ship cut a swath through the middle of the oncoming danger. The Tridents were next, and they added their twin beams to the rotating fire of the city-ship. As effective as the defenders were, the missiles moved too fast for a static group of ships to eliminate them all.
The travelers had formed a ring to the rear of the city-ship. Their bows faced outward, and their controllers were linked to that of the Our People’s. The city-ship provided detailed telemetry of what was transpiring, as the projectiles shot past the ship’s stern.
Pilots let the controllers handle the targeting. They’d only get a single shot in passing. In some cases, the travelers leapt forward to close the distance and increase the chance of a successful shot. Faster than the eye could blink, the missiles were past. Humans had stood by, while SADEs and controllers handled the encounter.
Ellie thought for a moment, and then sent,
The rest of the fleet waited. The vast majority of the Rootogs’ anger had been blunted. It was estimated that the remaining armament wouldn’t cause any significant damage to the planet. If the missiles were sufficiently hardened, they might make it through the atmosphere. However, the sisters would be tracking them. They would have time to clear anyone out of the danger zones. No, Ellie’s concern was for the orbital station and the battleships standing in the remaining missiles way.
The sister aboard Descartes’s Talus battleship was frustrated that she wasn’t linked to a controller to manage the battleship’s defenses. She settled her hierarchy, calculated the spread of the oncoming missiles and their trajectories. She calculated that they wouldn’t get them all. Her priority was to save the station. She was connected to the battleship’s defensive prioritization network.
There was a hole in the thirty-eight missiles. It had been cut out by the city-ship and Descartes’s command. It made the sister’s job more difficult. She tasked the missile launch crews with targeting the inner portion of the ring.
Immediately, the battleship launched four hundred antimissile projectiles at the incoming armament. Simultaneously, the sister ordered the defensive gunners to lay down a hail of fire on the outer ring.
Fortune as it was, the incoming flock of armament went active before the defenders’ missiles reached them. The two groups of missiles passed each other before the antimissile electronics could initiate near contact detonations. Most of the Talus battleship’s armament went off after their targets had passed.
Descartes’s squadrons eliminated less than a hundred of the small deadly projectiles that flew their way.
The more effective defensive work was delivered by the heavy projectiles fired by the gunnery crews. The guns’ autotargeting mechanisms sprayed heavy slugs in front of the missiles’ paths. The slugs broke apart fourteen of the passing missiles and destroyed three, with direct hits to the warheads.
Descartes’s battleship wasn’t in danger from the oncoming missiles. The city-ship and the squadrons had carved out too big a hole, but it wasn’t known if the missiles had the intelligence to arc around the battleship and strike the platform.
As it turned out, that wasn’t the case. Twenty-one of the Rootog armament flew past the battleship toward the planet. They entered the atmosphere, endured the tremendous frictional heat generated by their passing, and plowed into the surface. The eruptions destroyed kilometers of beautiful forests and meadows, but no one was hurt. The sisters saw to that.
The one ship to suffer damage was Taralum’s ship, Dark Whispers, which blocked
the orbital station. The seventeen missiles that the first battleship broke up or detonated threw their debris in all directions. Some were directed toward the platform but ended up being near misses. Other chunks of missiles were directed onto new courses that smacked into the Dark Whisper’s hull, denting and scarring it in many places.
One significant errant mass of Rootog armament struck the seam of a pair of bay doors. It opened a minor crack. The explosive decompression killed the crew in the bay. Eight Toralians died in defense of their new home, as their bodies were crushed and sucked through the narrow opening.
When Ellie received the report of the Toralians’ deaths, she was upset that her defense of the planet had cost lives. The number was small, but she would have preferred that no one died. She cleared her head, shaking off the brief malaise.
“Well done, Hector,” Ellie said, laying a hand on the SADE’s shoulder.
“The compliments belong to you, Admiral Thompson,” Hector said formally. “This could have been much worse, the deaths and the damage. I was pleased to have you in command of the fleet.”
“This may have been my strategy, but it was your execution,” Ellie replied. “I realize now what probably happens aboard the Freedom with Tatia and Cordelia.”
“May the stars protect us from gaining as much battle experience as those two have accumulated,” Hector replied in mock horror.
“And may I add my congratulations, Admiral?” Sargut asked. He’d stood at the rear of the bridge during the action, to allow Ellie and Hector to concentrate on their strategy without his presence disturbing them. “The Rootogs feel vindicated, and the home world suffered only minor damage. The loss of our eight new citizens will be keenly felt, but I can assure you that the rest of us are rejoicing at having survived a perilous event.”
“It was a successful encounter for our side,” Ellie agreed. “I just wonder how many other races have deep-seated grudges against the Toralians and will decide to come here and vent their anger.”
“The numbers of those who have a legitimate desire for revenge are many,” Sargut replied. “Some of the races never recovered; most have. How many will send fleets to exact retribution? That I don’t know.”
-24-
Aggressors
For a period of several months after the Rootogs’ attack, there was peace for Talus. It allowed development of Toral to move swiftly. Each cycle, the sisters established more kilometers of high-speed transport lines, thanks to an increased supply of metal from the system’s mining sites.
Reconstruction began on the most ancient of Toralian cities. The structures couldn’t be saved, and the sisters, who inhabited the construction bots, demolished them and built new housing.
The Dischnya became bored with their protection duty. Attacks by the renegade bots, during Talus light, slowed. For excitement, the warriors waited until their charges slept, then they indulged in some night hunting. In the morning, the warriors returned with minor injuries that they wore like badges of honor.
The orbital station continued to turn out Tridents, while the Our People provided bays for the construction of travelers.
Hector sailed the city-ship to the mining sites, domes, and fleet positions to give individuals downtime aboard the city-ship. Watching the sisters, SADEs, Toralians, and humans mix reminded Hector of Alex’s number one goal for the races he encountered and absorbed — inclusion, not exclusion.
Over the course of the next few hours, while fleet crews scrambled to regain their ships, Genoa identified the transit of five battleships and reported that they headed inward.
“This group doesn’t appear to be as passive as the Rootogs,” Hector remarked to Ellie and Sargut.
“Who are they?” Ellie asked Sargut.
“Unknown,” Sargut replied. When Ellie frowned at him, the president said, “Only when our fleet crossed the path of another race did we learn to identify ships by their hull configurations. In the course of my service, I’ve seen a fraction of the federacy’s ships.”
Several hours later, Adrianna sent to Ellie,
It was another two hours before Alphons sent a similar message, and Adrianna teased him about being slow.
Ellie was about to order both commands to intercept the aggressors when she hesitated.
“This is what Alex must feel sometimes,” Ellie mumbled.
“What?” Hector asked. His curiosity was piqued.
“Not sure,” Ellie replied.
“I’m here to listen,” Hector said.
“And I’m intrigued,” Sargut added.
“The strong play would be to move both fleets on interception courses,” Ellie explained. “Adrianna’s command is closest. She could force the battleships to launch early. That would give us more time to deal with their missiles.”
“Wouldn’t that maneuver endanger the ships in Adrianna’s command?” Sargut asked.
“You’ve yet to see our Tridents’ full capabilities actualized,” Ellie replied, with a grin. “As I was explaining, Alphons’s command is near Toral and should head toward these aggressors. Their task would be to handle any projectiles that get past Adrianna’s command.”
“A sound strategy,” Hector said.
“That’s the problem,” Ellie said in exasperation. “It should be, but it doesn’t feel right.”
“Alex is a great one for listening to his intuition, those feelings you’re referencing,” Hector said. “Do you believe in yours?” he asked.
Hector watched Ellie gaze at him, and the SADE believed she was looking through him, searching for an answer. When he saw her eyes focus, he knew she’d made her decision.
Adrianna immediately acknowledged her orders, but Alphons hesitated. He had no doubt that Adrianna’s robust fleet of Tridents and Talus battleships could defeat the new aggressors. But if he could join her forces, the damage to the defenders’ ships should be less. However, after a moment of consideration, he acknowledged his orders.
The five incoming battleships entered the outer belt, which confirmed to Ellie that they were intent on inflicting maximum damage on the Toralian home world.
It was the following day, and Ellie still hadn’t shaken the nagging feeling that things were about to get worse.
“Could this fleet have some motive other than conflict?” Hector asked Ellie.
“Sometimes you can judge intentions as much by what they don’t do as by what they do,” Ellie replied.
“What haven’t they done?” Hector asked.
“They didn’t wait,” Sargut said. “If they had peaceful intentions, they would have followed federacy approach protocols.”
“Which are?” Hector inquired.
“Your fleet arrives. You come to a fixed position outside the system’s space. You wait a cycle or two. Then one ship, and only one ship, sails to the orbit of the outermost planet. Home world forces board the arriving ship and determine whether to let the arriving fleet enter the system.” As Sargut finished, he held his hands wide to indicate it was a well-known and established practice.
“While we’re discussing protocols and standards,” Ellie piped up, “I want to know why every federacy race possesses battleships.”
“You’re actually wondering why they possess only battleships,” Sargut corrected.
“Better said,” Ellie acknowledged.
“It’s the only hull type Artifice allowed,” Sargut explained. “It created parity, which was something the entity found highly desirable.”
“Mutual destruction,” Hector reasoned, recognizing Artifice’s intent. “The fleets would be closely matched. In a battle, both sides would suffer heavy losses.”
“Come to t
hink of it, one race had another design,” Ellie said. “We encountered fighters in our first battle with federacy forces.”
“Yes, the carriers,” Sargut said, as if recalling some distant memory. “Our fleet was stationed at Talus, when the carriers left. Those were Artifice’s weapons … device-controlled fighters.”
“That’s what they were,” Ellie acknowledged.
“Terrible weapons,” Sargut said in disgust, his wings shuddering. “The races were frightened of them. Without a mind, without feelings, the machines would drive the fighters deep into a battleship. One or two strikes on vulnerable locations would destroy a ship and its crew.”
“I reviewed the telemetry of that battle,” Hector said. “It was a skillful execution of strategies by our forces against overwhelming odds.”
“We presumed some of the carriers had been relocated to other systems,” Sargut said in surprise. “Am I to understand that you fought thousands of fighters?”
“Fought and destroyed,” Ellie replied with heat. “Those machines cost us some good Omnians.”
“There’s the answer to my itch,” Ellie remarked,
“Do you know this race, Sargut?” asked Ellie, when Hector displayed the ship on the holo-vid.
Sargut studied the imagery and answered with his usual response. “Unknown,” he said. “However, I can tell you that this ship design hasn’t been produced in generations. The missiles they carry are slow and primitive.”
Ellie relayed Sargut’s assessment to Alphons.