UnArcana Stars

by Glynn Stewart

  “Five carriers,” she reported. “Three are fifty megatons, two are forty. Five forty-megaton battleships, two thirty-megatonners. Eleven cruisers; all but three are twenty megatons. Three are fifteen.”

  She shook her head.

  “Seven hundred and thirty-five megatons,” she totalled it up aloud. “Not sure on the gunship numbers; we’ll see shortly, I guess. The big ones definitely have over two hundred apiece.”

  “We’ve blown enough of the little buggers to hell over the last couple of weeks that they should be short a few,” Kulkarni suggested. She paused. “Orders from the flag. All destroyers are to move forward into screening positions. Cruisers, guardships and frigates to form the second line. Battlewagons are the hammer.”

  Sixty destroyers made one hell of a screen, but Roslyn was grimly aware of what their true purpose in this battle was going to be. Her screen showed the formation Admiral Medici had ordered them into, a wall of light warships ten wide and six high. Any incoming fire was going to have to make it past those escorts.

  It let them bring their own RFLAM turrets to bear well before the incoming weapons were a threat to the heavies—but it also meant that the destroyers were going to take the brunt of the gunship strike. It was going to fall to Stand and her sisters to take the fire of those massed salvos to spare the bigger ships that would be needed to fight the Republic’s capital ships.

  “We’re ready, sir,” Roslyn reported to Kulkarni. “All launchers are online. All missiles are primed. All capacitors are charged. I’ve linked in to our share of the preplaced missiles as well.”

  “We’ll be in formation in two and a half minutes,” Lieutenant Coleborn reported as well. “Heavyweights are falling in behind.” He paused. “That is a lot of cruisers.”

  “If only the Republic’s cruisers weren’t twice as big,” Kulkarni replied. “Plus twice as many battleships. Watch your maneuvers and your safety lines, Helm. The last thing we want is to accidentally run into a friendly—but any missile we can dodge is a missile we don’t have to shoot down.”

  An alert flashed on Roslyn’s screen and she swallowed hard as she updated her scanners.

  “RIN fleet has launched gunships,” she reported. “I’m reading one thousand units, even. Repeat, one-zero-zero-zero enemy gunships.”

  She kept running through the details.

  “Looks like their bigger carriers have two-fifty aboard and the smaller ones have one-fifty,” Roslyn noted aloud. “They’re fifty short on one of the carriers. That could be us, that could be Montgomery…that could be any of the systems they took along the way.”

  “I’d hope they lost more than fifty gunships getting this far,” Kulkarni said, “but I’ll take what I can get. Stand by for target allocation from the flag. What are we expecting them to pull, Chambers?”

  “They’ve learned their limits versus ours pretty well, I suspect,” the Lieutenant admitted. “I’m guessing they’ll hit zero velocity relative to us inside their missile range and outside of ours. We can close the range, we have the acceleration advantage, but…that’s the Flag’s call.”

  “That it is,” Kulkarni agreed. “And it would give up the preplaced missiles. No, Lieutenant Chambers, I think you’re right. We get to take this one and smile—but we’ll pay it back with interest when it comes time for the real fight.”

  “Gunship strike acceleration dialed in at ten gravities,” Roslyn confirmed a few minutes later. “Assuming they’re going for a zero velocity within their range, they’ll begin deceleration in about two hours and range on us in four.”

  Their fleet had formed up into their assigned positions but weren’t accelerating. They’d leave the entire approach to the Republic. It was always possible, after all, that more reinforcements would arrive. Roslyn had to presume that someone on the surface had used the RTA to inform the rest of the Protectorate of what was happening.

  Even she hadn’t truly believed that the Republic would muster a more powerful force than the one Hand Montgomery had gathered to protect Ardennes. She’d have to look it up to be sure, but she suspected there had never been a larger space battle, at least as far as tonnage went, in human history.

  The Eugenicist Wars between Mars and Earth, back before the Protectorate, had seen more ships, but the largest ships in those fleets had barely massed a million tons. The Great Armada that Earth had thrown at Mars in the final days of the war may have been a thousand ships, but it had been closer to the incoming gunship strike in terms of mass than to either of the actual fleets.

  For all of the firepower the gunships mustered, the combined strike only massed as much as one of the bigger carriers. The sixty destroyers positioned to guard the Martian fleet outmassed them and certainly had more sustained firepower.

  Six thousand missiles in one shot, however, was a tad more dangerous than twenty-two thousand missiles fired over almost twenty minutes. The gunships wouldn’t be a match for the destroyers in a beam engagement, but then, a quarter of the destroyers had amplifiers.

  The gunships would be massacred if they entered the range of the Royal Martian Navy’s amplified Mages. Unless Roslyn was mistaken, though, they had no intention of doing so. They hadn’t even been designed to do so.

  The Protectorate might still be learning the tricks and tactics of their enemy, but the Republic knew the Protectorate’s manual inside and out. The Republic’s fleet had never trained with the Protectorate, but the Legatus Self-Defense Force had.

  “If it’s going to be four hours until we get to play, then let’s stand down the alpha crew,” Kulkarni announced. “All of you, call in your replacements and go grab a sandwich. Make sure you’re back in two hours when these bastards hit turnover—or don’t. Either way, things are going to get much more interesting at that point.”

  45

  “You know, I almost wish they’d summon us to surrender,” Damien said conversationally.

  Duke of Magnificence’s flag bridge was as still as the grave, every eye focused on the tactical display showing the oncoming gunship strike—and the slower, but in many ways more ominous, approach of the Republican capital ships.

  The gunships were sprinting toward the defenders at ten gravities, a crushing experience for the crews aboard the small ships no matter what tech they were using. The main battle line of the Republic fleet was advancing at one gravity.

  Presumably, whatever internal structure they rotated for pseudogravity while immobile could adapt to allow them to function under acceleration as well. The Republic ships’ need for that structure was one of the few advantages Damien’s fleet had.

  “Why bother?” Jakab asked. “We know they’re here to take the system. They know we’re not going to let them. We’ve each gathered one of the largest fleets seen, well, ever.”

  “No subtlety to their approach, either,” Damien pointed out. “They’ve got a hammer of three-quarters of a billion tons, and clearly, they don’t see a need for anything fancier.”

  “Would you?” his subordinate asked.

  “Yup,” the Hand replied. “Save as many of my people as possible, avoid any tricks we had waiting for them. They have to know we’ve got surprises waiting for them, and given their loss aversion so far…”

  “There’s only so much clever maneuvering you can do when you need to take a planet and your enemy is in orbit of it,” Jakab noted. “Not to mention that this fleet is as much a strategic target as Ardennes at this point. Every deployable warship several of the most powerful System Militias have, plus three of the RMN’s battleships? I don’t care how risk-averse they are; that’s a target they’ll take on.”

  “I still feel like they’ve got something planned we haven’t anticipated,” Damien said. “I’m all too aware of our vulnerabilities.”

  “And they may not be. They could easily not have expected our reinforcements,” Jakab said. “You got a lot more people to show up and help than even I expected.”

  “Part of why I want to play for time is that we were pr
omised more,” Damien countered. “I don’t know how much Amber’s going to put in play, but I pulled some strings there we didn’t have anywhere else.”

  “I don’t expect much from the Cooperatives myself,” the Commodore told him. “I wouldn’t rely on them to turn the tide.”

  Damien smirked.

  “You haven’t been to Amber, have you?” he asked.

  “No. Why?”

  “I expect the ADC to send everything they can, but you’re right. They won’t have much. I also put out an open call for mercenaries, Commodore, and while there may not be very many ships in Amber…well, I suspect that there are people there who can get their hands on a few.”

  “It still won’t be enough,” Jakab said after a moment’s thought.

  “No,” Damien agreed. “We’re going to get hammered, Commodore. But we have to show everyone—Republic and Protectorate alike—that the running is over. We have to stand, my friend.”

  He grimaced.

  “Even if all that means is that we die on our feet.”

  “Turnover is on schedule. Gunships are decelerating for zero velocity relative to us at twelve point seven million kilometers. Capital ships are continuing to accelerate towards us at one gravity.”

  “A good light-second or so outside of our range,” Jakab noted. “We could try and close, see if we can pick some of them off.”

  “It’s Medici’s call, Mage-Commodore,” Damien told him. “But the gunships aren’t our target. We could obliterate every last gunship they’ve brought with them and still lose Ardennes.”

  “I know.” Jakab sighed. “And I agree with the Mage-Admiral. It just pisses me off to have to take their fire and let them walk away.”

  “I don’t think anyone is walking away today, Commodore.”

  Two hours to the gunships being in range. There were at least half a dozen clever tricks Damien could think of, but none of them had a potential reward worth the risks. The best thing that the defenders could do was hold position and let the Republic make the mistakes.

  “I’ll have coffee and sandwiches brought up,” Jakab said after a few minutes of watching the displays in silence. “Rank hath its privileges…and today, I think that means that none of us are leaving the flag deck until this is over.”

  The gunships launched roughly a minute before they hit zero velocity, again as they hit zero velocity—and once again a minute later as they fled back toward their motherships.

  Eighteen thousand missiles hurtled through space, and Damien made a conscious show of leaning back in his chair and relaxing. He had enough scanners and displays built up around him there on the flag deck that he could intervene once the range dropped, but for now, he needed to visibly have faith in the people and ships he’d gathered around him.

  “Gunships are fully out of range,” Jakab said quietly. “First stage initiating.”

  Two thousand missiles had been quietly drifting outward from the planet since the formation change after the Republic had arrived, their initial engine flares concealed behind the maneuvers of the warships. Now millions of kilometers ahead of their motherships, their drives came alive.

  Sparks of antimatter fire lit up across the void, and the weapons flung themselves through space towards the incoming fire…and detonated. They weren’t even trying to hit the Republican missiles. Their purpose was to create a shield of radiation through which the RIN warships couldn’t control their missiles.

  The missiles were smarter than the Protectorate’s missiles. But they weren’t enough smarter to make up for not having shipboard support when the defenders’ missiles did.

  “All ships are firing in defensive mode,” someone announced. “Flag has ordered five salvos, then hold.”

  Duke of Magnificence trembled under Damien’s feet, an almost-imperceptible vibration as her dozens of launchers flung weapons into space.

  Hundreds of preplaced missiles came alive alongside the missiles launched by the warships, and thousands of missiles blasted into space toward the salvos from the gunships. Five salvos from the defenders put over twice as many missiles in space as the gunships had deployed.

  The first two salvos simply evaporated in the firestorm. The third made it through, vastly diminished, and collided with the destroyer screen. Sixty destroyers mustered thousands of RFLAM turrets, however, and the last of the missiles died well short of the screen.

  They came closest, however, against the Navy ships, and Damien took note.

  “I don’t think the amplifier really makes up for the lack of RFLAM turrets on our destroyers,” he pointed out to Jakab. “The Tau Ceti ships have a lot fewer battle lasers but more defensive lasers. We may want to consider adapting our own designs.”

  “As opposed to mass-producing an upgrade of the same design we’ve used for a hundred years, I suppose,” his subordinate noted. “We probably should have thought of that.”

  “Why?” Damien snorted. “The Honor-class ships have served in their designed role perfectly. We’ve upgraded our cruisers and our battleships all along. I don’t think we ever really considered our destroyers as screening ships, after all. More anti-pirate ships.”

  “War teaches a lot of lessons,” Jakab said quietly.

  “It does. And if we want to survive, we need to learn them. What’s our timeline looking like?”

  “They’ll pick up their gunships in just over three hours. At that point, we’ll see just what they’re planning—they won’t have time for another gunship strike before they get into range unless they change their course, but they’ll still be well short of turnover for reaching Ardennes.”

  “Based off their approach so far, I’m expecting them to assemble everything into one giant hammer and come right at us,” Damien admitted. “But underestimating them is a bad idea. Let’s use that time, Commodore.”

  He shook his head.

  “Let’s work out how they can hurt us the worst, and then see if we can counter it.”

  46

  They were still alive.

  That was something of a surprise to Roslyn. The entire purpose of putting the destroyers out in front, after all, was to protect the heavy warships. The Republic’s new gunship strike had come in and done their worst…and the defenders hadn’t lost a single ship.

  They hadn’t even taken a single hit.

  “Well, let’s hope they think we can do that again,” Captain Kulkarni murmured. “We shot off every spare missile we had to do it.”

  The young Lieutenant checked the status reports for both Stand in Righteousness and the fleet and saw the Captain’s point.

  Everything smaller than a battleship carried fifteen missiles per launcher, a standard the RMN had decided on long before and the System Militias had copied. They’d fired off a third of their magazines to stop the gunship salvo…and the weapons they could have reloaded those magazines with had been preplaced in orbit and fired as well.

  Roslyn checked the vector data on the enemy ships.

  “The gunships are vectoring to rendezvous with the carriers,” she reported. “We don’t know how long rearming will take, but they almost certainly have missile reloads aboard their motherships.”

  “And the rest of the fleet?” Kulkarni asked.

  “Advancing at one gravity. Just over three hours to gunship pickup; ninety minutes after that before they enter their missile range. Assuming we don’t go out to meet them, anyway.”

  “That’s Medici and Montgomery’s call,” the Captain replied. “I don’t expect us to, though. If they’re prepared to come straight at us, we’ll sit here nice and pretty and wait for them.”

  “Shouldn’t we be doing something?” Roslyn asked. Just…sitting didn’t feel right.

  “I imagine the Admiral and his people are going over scenarios as we speak,” Kulkarni agreed. “And they’re at least as smart as I am and there’s more of them than me…but I don’t see any option where the rewards would outweigh the risk.

  “No. We wait, Lieutenant. Four and
a half hours, then kick the sons of bitches with everything we’ve got.”

  Roslyn nodded silently, checking on the formations around them again. Eighty-eight other warships drifted in space, maneuvering at random intervals. Just enough to throw off any long-range missiles trying to come in on ballistic courses.

  Engaging this close to Ardennes meant that they were “under the guns,” so to speak, of the planetary fortifications. Another eighty-odd launchers should have been a game-changer, and yet…they were so badly outgunned today that Roslyn wasn’t sure anything could make that much difference.

  Her career in the Royal Martian Navy was looking like it was going to be short and eventful. She couldn’t see herself having done anything different at any step of the way, though. This was where she was meant to be.

  “And until then, sir?”

  “We indulge in the mixture of terror and boredom that is unique to space combat in my experience,” Kulkarni told her with a chuckle.

  The process of the carriers collecting their gunships was fascinating for Roslyn. She didn’t have a perfectly detailed view of it, but with the number of sensor platforms watching the Republican fleet, she had a decent one.

  The two classes of carrier the Republic had fielded were based around fundamentally the same structure: two of the cylindrical hulls all of the RIN warship designs shared, linked by a one-hundred-meter-wide central deck.

  The smaller of the two carriers had a pair of thirty-meter diameter airlocks at the front and back of that deck. The larger carrier had two offset rows of two on each side, giving it twice the landing or launch capacity of the smaller ship.

  When the RIN fleet had launched gunships for the attack, they’d deployed the entire contingent of a thousand ships in barely five minutes. It rapidly became clear, as Roslyn watched the recovery, that the carriers were far better set up for launch than for recovery.