by Lee Guo
CHAPTER FIVE
12 days later.
January 10th 3987 AD
7th Vanguard Fleet
Flagship, Dreadnought Beginner's Luck
Flag Bridge…
Rear Admiral Vier Kleingelt, newly promoted to Upper Half, felt it again. Never had she felt so much power in her life. She gazed at the holo of all nine hundred and thirty ships in her fleet. Nine hundred and thirty ships!
The largest flotilla of ships she’d ever commanded before was one hundred and twenty vessels, and that was during the Orion Wars. Back then, the Orions had weapons that were equal to human weapons. Not this time.
Her flag bridge wasn’t much different from the bridges of most dreadnoughts. Officers manned interface panels with vast displays. Bluish holograms hovered in every direction. In front of her, the central hologram constantly updated the whereabouts of every important object in hyperlight transit around her.
Hyperlight. Everything was to happen in hyperlight.
The thing about faster-than-light battles was that because distances between ships was so much further away, you couldn’t see everything you wanted to see. Accurate tachyon scanning range was still twenty five light hours. In hyperlight that was a short distance, measured in seconds of hyperlight travel. You could not directly see the ship next to you, much less the entire fleet, much less a distant enemy fleet. `, the best solution required all ships to network together in a massive sensor net, and, with the help of thousands of detection drones, you could extend your sensor range dramatically. What this meant was that, in order to find out the composition of an enemy fleet, you had to infer from past data or send faster-than-light sensor probes.
However, although tachyon scanners could only scan accurately at a range of twenty five light-hours, that didn’t mean they couldn’t detect ships as far away as a thousand light hours. They could, but the information they obtained was fuzzy. The T-scanners could not determine if there was one large ship or three thousand small ships. This meant that, aside from using FTL drones and direct contact with your sensor net, there was no way to determine whether a distant fleet was friendly or hostile.
Vier gazed at the central holo. Her fleet, officially named the 7th Vanguard Fleet, was tasked to understand the enemy’s capabilities in FTL. And she would do exactly that. Her nine hundred ships gathered around her dreadnought, each cruising at the speed of the slowest ship, 15,000 times the speed of light.
She smiled, recalling the name of her flagship—Beginner’s Luck. She wondered which admiral in drydock had such a sudden fling of humor and the willingness to follow it. It was such an innocent name for a warship that was over one and half kilometers in length, manned by over ten thousand people, and had enough power to glass a planet twenty times over. Not that it meant much compared to the enemies she faced. Her enemies had ships ten times as large, after all.
This thought made her tense, again. How would her ships face against the Cats’ behemoths? Hyperlight combat with them was a complete mystery.
Captain Kahle Willock cleared his throat. “Admiral, have you decided yet on an unofficial name for the fleet? “
Vier gazed away from the main holo. She turned to gaze at the CO of her flagship. In short time, she had recognized Kahle Willock’s mischievous personality—confident, contemplating, quick, and always with a grin. That grin made all the female ensigns unprofessionally giddy. But Vier kept comparing him with her old CO, Anton Shenks, who was recovering in a hospital bed 1000 light years away. Anton...if only you could be here to witness what I’m doing now. “Not yet, Captain. I want to see this fleet in action first.”
An old custom in the federation navy was for the commanding officer of a fleet or starship to nickname that entity with whatever name he thought fit. However, crews had a habit of giving the entity nicknames themselves. For instance, “Ghost Fleet” was given to Rear Admiral Geary’s fleet after he survived numerous battles with the Orion Pirates. “Sentinel” was given to Captain Cleitus’s ship because it saved his admiral’s flagship on many occasions.
Vier didn’t want to name her fleet. She just wanted it to survive. Throughout the fleet, she had a reputation for being extremely aggressive, and one of the negative aspects of that almost impulsive aggression was everything had a relatively lower shelf life.
“The ratings are still panicky,” Captain Willock said.
“Still?”
“Yes. They’re still distraught with our orders,” Willock replied, who for once, wasn’t smiling.
“I see.” Vier nodded.
When the orders oozed down the chain of command, there had been an initial panic in the fleet. Her orders ‘use whatever means to find out the combat capabilities of enemy ships in hyperlight’ meant she ought to sacrifice her whole fleet, if need be, to determine that answer. That, combined with the fact that there was so much mystery and fear about the aliens, especially after the lopsided sublight encounters, made every techie tense. It didn’t help that there were rumors of small human recon elements failing to return. What probably made it even worse was the fact that their admiral was known for making bold and risky moves...and who may still hold a grudge against the enemy.
The grudge was true. Vier did want to beat the aliens for what they did to her people in Meerlat, but she wasn’t going to suicide her fleet stupidly or for no good reason. Vier had originally thought about giving a fleet wide speech about how necessary their orders were, that it was their duty to sacrifice for the greater good of the race, but then she’d decided against it. No matter what motivated her orders, nothing would soften the idea that everyone had a good chance of dying. The only thing that could alleviate that was an reassurance that they wouldn’t die, but Vier didn’t know enough to believe that. She didn’t want to lie.
There was too much mystery.
Then again, she thought, even if most of her fleet did somehow die in the coming weeks, it was still better that—the men and women trained to serve humanity—than the rest of her race. She knew that in the history of her species, and probably most technic species in the galaxy, the idea of sacrificing one’s life for the Greater Good was common. She just hoped her decisions wouldn’t amount to futility.
Hell, she was going to try her best to make sure that didn’t happen.
Twelve hours later...
“Unknown Contact! Updating the holomaps!”
Vier tilted forward in her seat, eyeing the signals appearing on the central holo. A blip. They were on the farthest reach of tachyon scanner range, too far to tell what or how many.
By convention, the ship closest to the unknown contact was to send a probe. That ship was the Vesuvius, a human fast attack cruiser two hundred light-hours away.
Seconds later, naturally, the signal of the friendly probe appeared on holo, moving at a speed of 80,000 times the speed of light SL, a tad slower than the fastest mail packet.
Then there was nothing to do but wait until the probe scanned the unknown contact and returned back. The new Class V probes were fast and agile, nearly impossible for human technology to kill, but with the Cats, who knew? The Cats, if it was Cats, could have some type of super weapon or sensor technology that could snipe probes out of hyperspace.
Standing next to her, Captain Willock spoke, “Have a guess, Admiral?”
“A last-minute civilian freighter escaping from the neutral zone,” Vier smiled.
“Of course.” Willock nodded.
It was a bad guess. Probably wrong. But she wanted to hope for the good guys. By now, any hyperlight-capable civilian craft would have vacated the war regions. A last minute civilian transport was completely unlikely. Most likely, it was a straggling human warship from a past battle or an alien scout. She hoped it wasn’t an alien scout. Scouts were fast. She didn’t want the alien ships to outrun her fleet before she could do whatever she wanted with it.
Time ticked by slowly. She watched the probe creep forward and make a 180. Good. It didn’t get taken out.
&nbs
p; Four minutes later, the probe returned. The computers on board every fleetship automatically updated the maps with new data.
Five distinct contacts popped up on the central holo.
Cats!
Vier gazed at the holo with interest. Now, she could visually see what they looked like. Each of the five alien ships looked like the warships that had invaded Meerlat. Insect-like with long abdomens and hundreds of legs. Roaches. Except smaller than most of the warships that had invaded Meerlat.
Three of the warships were two hundred meters in length. The other two were a bit larger, four hundred meters in length.
It wasn’t jackpot, but it was close to it. It probably was as good as it gets. If they had been smaller, they might have been able to outrun her. But who knew what technology these Cat ships had?
So much for suiciding her fleet to reach mission objectives. It felt too good to be true.
“All ships,” Vier announced, when suddenly she saw all five alien ships turning tail and run. No doubt their probes saw enough of her nine hundred ships to make them panic. “All ships, chase the bogeys!” Vier ordered. “If we catch them, all ships are to enter enemy weapons range but only fire on one of their ships. We need the other ships to be undamaged, so they can fire back.” With any luck, we can damage them. Hopefully, they are running in fear.
“Yes, ma’am,” the officers all replied.
What she was hoping for was that her fast attack cruisers and speedy destroyers would be able to chase them down. Of course, those five Cats could be leading her into a trap, but at this point, she couldn’t see anything to suggest that.
Minutes later, she watched the alien ships speed away. They were quick. If she used human standards, they were probably cruisers themselves. But from their speed, they weren’t as fast as her attack cruisers. Her LACs and destroyers were gaining on the enemy. Human light attack cruisers had a speed of 32,000 SL, whereas her destroyers had 27,000 SL. Her marine assault boats could move at 29,000 SL. The aliens were too far to determine their speed accurately, but she guessed they moved at about 20,000 TSL.
At this rate, she estimated the gap would be closed in fifteen minutes. “It looks too good to be true,” she murmured. “Captain, what do you think?”
“Well…” Captain Willock turned to face her. “…We already know their warship hyperspace speeds can’t outpace us by a large margin. Otherwise, our warships and civilian ships would never have outrun the vanguard of their invasion fleet. However, the fact that they have killed each of the recon probes we’ve sent to the conquered systems suggest they have a way to disable our hyperspace propulsion, or they do have some method of achieving extreme H-speeds. This contradicts what we know. Those five ships. It could be trap, but if it is, I’d rather we finally find out what they’re using to trap us even if we risk losing a lot. If we can’t find an answer with as many ships as we have now, we never will. So the biggest question is….Are their other hyperspace technologies limited, too? Whether or not we can outrun them is secondary to whether or not we can beat them in a knife fight in H-space.”
Vier nodded. “I agree wholeheartedly, Captain.” She prayed the state of the alien’s H-tech was at best equal to theirs. Vier had been in a lot of H-battles to know all the intricacies of fighting one. Just a little advantage could be decisive.
During the invasion of Meerlat and the subsequent sublight battles in nearby systems, intel suggested that the Cats had an advantage in every aspect of sublight warfare. They had better shields, armor, better missile countermeasures, better main guns, better secondary guns, better missiles that could deliver more blow while evading human countermeasures, better propulsion, and even some things that gave SECTOR INTEL fits of aneurysms. Mobility, firepower, defense, and extra—they had it all. Would the same happen in H-space?
H-space combat was a bit different, but not by much. H-space combat relied on three technologies specific to H-space…The hyper-beam, hyper-missile, and hyper-deflector. All three technologies relied on a simple property particular to H-space: neither normal matter nor energy could exist unless protected by a warp bubble. Thus, federation hyperspace generators on board h-space capable vessels had two components: a hyperspace translator that opened a portal between normal space and hyperspace, and a hyperspace suspender, which maintained a bubble of normal space around the ship to ensure safe passage. Once this bubble collapsed, the ship vanished in H-space. All the matter and energy within the ship simply disappeared from existence. Nobody knew where it went. There has never been a record of any matter or energy returning after disappearing into H-space when the warp bubble protecting it collapsed.
Because of the unique property of H-space, weapons in H-space had to evolve around this. Since neither energy nor matter could exist, no direct energy nor particle weapon such as lasers, anti-proton beams, mass drivers, neutron cannons, phased nanopulses, nor its ancillary, the polaron cannon…were applicable in H-space. In fact, the only way to transfer destructive energy is through a hyperspace missile equipped with an h-space suspender, allowing the missile to move with a warp bubble. There was only one exception: the hyperbeam. However, this technology did not transfer energy nor matter, it simply extended the warp bubble of an h-space starship, except whereas the normal warp bubble protected the starship, the h-beam destabilized the enemy’s warp bubble. It was a very strong, thin field that could extend many light-hours. Once the enemy’s warp bubble destabilized, parts of the ship would disappear out of existence.
The only protection against the h-beam was the h-deflector. This technology reinforced a section of a vessel’s warp bubble with a stabilization shield. The shield prevents h-beams from passing through.
“Admiral, permission to speak freely?”
Vier climbed out of her daze and looked beside her. “Yes, Captain Willock?”
“I’ve been thinking about our mission orders from SECTOR COMMAND and I have some hesitations.”
“And you’re just voicing them now?” Vier asked, gazing at the holomap. The five enemy ships were six minutes away from her vanguard.
“It just occurred to me, Admiral, that it was very odd that Senior Vice Admiral Mittermeyer had wanted you to supervise both the scouting mission and the marine assault portion. Wouldn’t it be better to have you focus your responsibilities on just one portion and leave the other to another admiral?”
Vier bit her lip. What was her flag captain asking? Was he questioning her abilities? Was he concerned with the success of both missions because she now had her attention divided on both? “The reason the Sector Commander assigned both to me is because there was a chance the marines could be useful during the scouting portion of our orders. In that instance, it was better to have both responsibilities under one commander.”
“But don’t you find it odd that he’s putting a lot of responsibility in an admiral whose largest previous command is CO of a flotilla of missile boats? This is a very big promotion, almost unheard of.”
Vier bit her lip even harder, pretending to focus on the holomap. It was true. There was almost no precedence for such a promotion. To think of it, hadn’t Vice Admiral Mittermeyer been at her graduation twenty years ago? He must have followed her semi-illustrious career steadily throughout the decades. In a world where eugenics and nano-medical enhancement has extended average life spans almost to a century and a half, Mittermeyer must have thought her unique climb through the ranks to be dazzling. She shook her head. She couldn’t say what she thought. The answer was too nefarious to publicly admit. She glanced at Willock hesitantly, almost apologetically. “Now, is not a good time to discuss this, Captain. We are minutes away from weapons contact.”
“I understand.” Willock nodded.
Minutes later, the five bogies entered missile range, approximately ten light-hours away.
“LAC group 1, fire two missile salvos!” Vier yelled at her control officers.
“Relaying the command,” they replied.
Now is the moment. Soon, she
would know their hyperspace combat capabilities. She crossed her fingers and watched the holograms unfold.
Battlespace…
In hyperspace, or null space, as called by the Gas, sixteen short range hyperspace missiles exited the human fast attack cruisers Bellerophon and Salamis at the speed of 80000 TSL. The missiles warped through null space—a void that had no light, no mass, no anything—and closed the distance within fifteen seconds. Armed with antimatter warheads, they collided with the warp bubbles of two Ga heavy cruisers. The warp bubbles of the missiles and their targets meshed, forming into one. In picoseconds upon entering the targets’ bubbles, these missiles detonated. The hard gravtronic shields of these Ga ships splashed with raw white energy, and then—nothing.
Flag Bridge, Beginner’s Luck…
Damn. Vier gazed at the holomap. The ships were still there, still very strong.
I didn’t think that would work. Their shielding technology is as strong as it was before.
The bogies continued moving away, although it was apparent to everyone, including them, that escape was futile. They were guinea pigs, Vier thought. And if she was given an opportunity like this, she would and could not waste it. “LAC group 1, fire ten times as many missiles,” Vier ordered, gazing at the map, all the while waiting for the enemy to fire back.
Battlespace…
160 warp missiles sped out of the tubes of the Gamli, Duke Buckingham, and five others. Twelve seconds later, they crossed the 6.8 light-hour distance and jammed into the warp bubbles of bogies 1 and 2. Their detonations caused the shields to flash in brilliant cascades of light, and for a temporary minute fraction of a second, more power than any star.
Flag Bridge, Beginner’s Luck…
Score! Vier gazed at the diminishing shields of bogies 1 and 2. Their shields flickered, almost dying out. The t-sensors read that their shields had lost 7 percent of their graviton concentration. Another volley of 160 warp missiles would obliterate them.