by Lee Guo
Time to send another volley. Now, we will test their armor.
Vier looked at the stats on her pad. There wasn’t much missiles left in her vanguard of seven attack cruisers. The fact that missiles in hyperspace had a much higher chance to hit was diminished by the fact that each ship had so much fewer missiles. Equipping warheads with hyperspace suspenders was much more costly. Missiles in hyperspace were bigger and much more difficult to make.
Everything that happened so far just confirmed what she knew—the Cats had significantly better shielding inside their warp bubbles. Nevertheless, she had to penetrate these shields to test their armor.
“LAC group 1, fire all remaining missiles,” she ordered, all the while gazing intently at the map.
Battlespace…
The 108 remaining missiles of all seven LACs sped out into the void. Each one of them injected into the warp bubbles of the two aft most enemy ships. The following detonations blew away the enemy’s shields completely. The remaining gravitron layers flickered and died. Spastic fiery explosions cratered against the black hulls of the roaches. Pieces of ebony armor exploded outward, touching the barrier between normal space and hyperspace, and then disappearing from the universe altogether. The two aftmost roaches, targets of the entire attack, limped along with fires spread across their entire body.
Flag Bridge, Beginner’s Luck…
Why aren’t they firing back? Vier wondered.
Everything looked perfect. The antimatter explosions had wrecked havoc to their hulls after the shields had been wiped out, but by this time the enemy should have fired back at least something.
Perhaps these cruisers didn’t have missiles or torpedoes.
As the seconds passed, Vier became surer of it. These cruisers are torpedoless. She glanced at Captain Willock. “What do you think?”
Willock looked passive in the chair next to her. “From all appearances, Admiral, it looks like the enemy, or at least the ships we’ve encountered here, still have better hull armor and better shields. Normally a blow from 100 antimatter missiles would have wiped out those two ships...if they were human. However, things don’t look so bleak. The difference between technologies isn’t so high like the encounters we’ve had in sublight. It seems that, at least in the missile duel, our missiles are able to do far more damage to them in hyperlight than in sublight because of the innate inability for ships to create effective countermeasures and certainly, it seems the Cats haven’t found a way around that. We may be looking at a breakthrough,” Willock said grimly.
Vier wondered why her flag captain was so sullen. Ordinarily, such news ought to make every federation soldier happy. The Cats were far more vulnerable to human missiles in h-space than in subspace. The invasion now had a chance to be stopped! “Why do you look so depressed?”
Willock cleared his throat. “Because it still took so many missiles to take down their shields, Admiral.”
Vier nodded. “It’s true. But we have only tested how well our missiles work against their defenses. We have yet to test our hyperbeams against what they have to offer to protect against it. Perhaps they will be much less dominating in that arena.”
“Perhaps, Admiral.”
“LAC group 1 and 2, proceed with the next step,” smiled Vier. “Fire on all bogies!”
Battlespace…
All seven human attack cruisers opened up their hyperbeam ports. The hyperbeam used the same gun turrets as the main sublight polaron cannons, which were simply augmented, so they fired hyperbeams instead. As the beam cannons began to charge, massive amounts of energy flowed through them. Then, in a split second, they fired. Long, thin destabilizing warp fields extended instantaneously in multiple light-hours in front of each human LAC. The fields slashed into the warp bubbles of the enemy roaches.
...And slammed innocuously into the enemy’s stabilization shields. None of the hyperbeam fields did any damage, because the roaches had activated their hyperdeflectors in the direction that the beams had come.
Flag Bridge, Beginner’s Luck…
Vier blinked. Then, she blinked, again.
It was so obvious. It was so expected. The enemy did exactly what any human warship would have done if the hyperbeam attack had come in one direction. They had activated their deflectors in the rear.
Well, thought Vier. At least so far, she understood that the enemy had h-deflectors just like humans. Now, it was time to see how well they could adjust their h-deflectors when surrounded by hostile ships. To do that, she would have to wait for her vanguard to overrun the slower enemy ships.
Battlespace…
Five minutes later, the human LACs overtook the slower Ga vessels. Flanking the roaches from all sides, the seven human cruisers fired their hyperbeams. Destabilization fields slammed into the warp bubbles of each alien ship. The alien ships did not have enough hyperdeflectors to create enough stabilization shields to protect against the attacks from all sides. The sides without stabilization protection dematerialized from existence. Holes suddenly opened in armor. Parts of the hull disappeared. The roaches began to vent atmosphere, like any ordinary vessel successfully attacked by hyperbeams.
Meanwhile, the roaches fired back. Their own hyperbeams were stronger, wider and just as quick. These bigger, more powerful destabilization fields slammed into LAC group 1. However, the human cruisers were ready. Human stabilization shields protected against most warp bubble incursions, but some of those fields got through. The surrounding human cruisers experienced the same crushing blows as the roaches—armor began disappearing, hull plates dematerialized, atmosphere spilled out—but to a lesser degree because of the firing angles. The surrounded roaches could only fire at one side of the human LACs, while the human ships could fire at all sides of the roaches, thus it was easier for the humans to block the hyperbeam attacks with their deflectors.
Flag Bridge, Beginner’s Luck…
Yes! Vier glanced gleefully at the holomap where colorful ships exchanged blows with each other. The five feline ships were failing, mostly because they were overwhelmed, but that wasn’t what gave her joy. It was the fact that human hyperbeam and hyperdeflector technology was not different at all to Cat technology. In fact, the Cats did not have any advantages in this arena. What made it even more joyful was that the Cats were limited to the same technologies.
This meant a world of revelations and a possibility of a complete successful showdown against the Cat invasion force. Finally, humanity had an arena where the combat was even.
Even if, weight by weight, a human ship could only come even against a feline ship that was only half as large, it was enough to bring hope that the invasion could be stopped—as long as the battle was limited to the hyper arena.
Vier perused the data being displayed on the central holomap. “Captain, I believe we’ve found great news to report to Admiral Mu Pei.”
Willock nodded in the seat beside her. He smiled. “Yes, Admiral, I think we do.”
She flashed a smile back at her flag captain, then turned towards the holomap. By now, the alien ships were heavily damaged. “All LACs, disengage. It’s time to test to our marine assault portion of our orders. All marine assault boats, come within range of the enemy and activate your M-E-C jammers and began landing troops on those bogies.”
“Yes, ma’am. Relaying orders,” the controllers replied.
On the holomap, she watched as her fast cruisers stopped firing their hyperbeams at the surrounded enemy ships and vacated the immediate battlefield. Now, a new portion of her fleet began to close in on the enemy. The Valkyrie Marine Assault Transport was a two hundred meter wedge-shaped ship with the flat side facing the enemy. Numerous hyperdeflector ports covered its frontal side. It could move at 29,000 SL, outpacing most other starships it was designed to target. Its grav shield matrix was also concentrated at the front. Fifty of these came to within ten light-hours of the five run-downed enemy ships. Then, the distance shrunk to five light-hours. Then, three.
At a distance
of one light-hour, the Valkyries activated their M-E-C jammers. Mass-Energy-Conversion jammers worked by casting a dampening field around a target. When this field was activated, any type of nuclear or subatomic reaction was disabled. Fission and fusion reactions were incapacitated. Matter-Antimatter annihilation halted. It was the same technology that antimatter storage pods used. The only way to prevent an M-E-C jamming field was through creating an inverse jamming field, and most targeted ships did not have the capacity to do that. The marine assault boats, however, did have such a capacity. They could simultaneously create an M-E-C jamming field and create an inverse jamming field to prevent itself from being jammed. The purpose of this technology was to incapacitate the target to prevent it from running away on hyperlight propulsion or to prevent any number of self-destructive escapes such as the target detonating its fusion core or setting off antimatter explosives throughout its own body. When the field was active, the target could not activate its hyperspace translators and thus, could not open a portal back into normal space. The target was essentially powerless.
The fact that its main power was offline also created a certain problem, which was solved by the Valkyrie projecting its own warp bubble around the target. When the field was active, the target’s hyperspace suspender was deactivated and thus, its warp bubble would begin to fade. If the Valkyrie did not extend a warp bubble around the target, the target would disappear out of hyperspace and the universe altogether within a matter of minutes.
Vier watched tediously as the marine boats extended their jamming fields around the five heavily damaged targets. If it was successful, the marines on board each Valkyrie would be able to send troops to board each disabled and powerless feline craft, and the holygrail of the second part of mission could be accomplished. She might finally capture technology and data that would enable humans to understand how to engineer competing sublight technologies or how to counter act the sublight combat imbalance.
But it was not to be.
The five alien roaches exploded.
Vier watched. Her eyes opened wide, jaw dropping.
They were gone—just like that.
A massive debris field expanded where each roach ship was. As the debris collided with the barrier between normal space and hyperspace on the borders of each warp bubble, the matter simply disappeared from existence. Soon, the bubbles themselves would fade and ultimately collapse and nothing the Cats had would still exist in the universe.
“All Valkyries,” Vier shouted. “Extend a warp bubble around the debris field and collect any debris!”
“Relaying command, ma’am.”
Vier sat back in her chair, stunned. How had they done it? The Cats must have realized that their ships were about to be hijacked and then simultaneously self-detonated their power cores before the M-E-C jamming field could envelope them. That’s the only possible explanation, she thought.
Now, she would have no technology to give Mu Pei or Sector Command.
Well, she sighed, at least she had the data concerning their h-space abilities. That was a victory in and of itself.
Vier rested her head onto her headrest and reflected about it a little bit longer. Then she ordered her fleet to reform back into a standard formation. She ordered data packet ships to where Admiral Mu Pei’s main fleet of 4000 ships hid in the Trion Nebula. The Vice Admiral would be overjoyed by the data, she thought. A massive counterattack might become very likely. She thought about the amount of people and ships that would be involved and knew that her place in it would be huge as well.
But what about the enemy’s hypermissiles?
At this moment, she still didn’t know much about them except that they were probably equipped with the same hyperspace suspenders as her own missiles. Nothing she saw about the feline ships suggested their hyperspace propulsion technology was any different from the humans. Their missile propulsion mechanism was probably similar to hers—but then again, she was just conjecturing. Who knew what differences there might be as well? The warheads on their missiles, she knew for a fact, were more powerful and used an unknown technology.
Vier stood up and nodded at Willock. “Captain, I’m retiring to quarters. Collect all the data you can from the debris field.”
“Yes, Admiral.” Willock nodded. “I will make sure we get as much info from that explosion.”
Then she turned towards the fleet controllers. “As for all ships, we head back towards Admiral Mu Pei’s fleet. Send out scouting probes throughout the region to detect any more enemy ships.”
“Relaying orders, ma’am.”
She walked to the exit. For a moment, she paused. As far as she or anyone knew, she was doing exactly as ordered, but a thought flitted in her mind—what if that wasn’t enough?
CHAPTER SIX
Three days later.
January 13th 3987 AD
7th Vanguard Fleet
Flagship, Dreadnought Beginner's Luck
Admiral’s Ready Room…
“I see,” Vice Admiral Mu Pei, Lower Half, said on Vier’s private holodisplay.
Mu Pei’s dreadnought, the Excalibur, was only 0.2 light-seconds away, hovering in the same dark matter nebula as Vier Kleingelt’s Beginner’s Luck.
“Your summary report confirms what I already know. If there is no new material,” Mu Pei continued, “I will have no reason to delay the counteroffensive.”
Vier nodded. It was common knowledge that other scouting fleets had also encountered the enemy.
“Commodore Wei and Commodore Pusan have already encountered several enemy elements like this one,” Mu Pei explained. “Stray scouting squadrons of two or three ships, mostly cruisers, with few countermissiles. I’ve read their reports. Unlike your encounter, Wei met several missile ships in the Delphi Expanse. Their missiles, while devastating, were not so extremely dangerous that we won’t have the opportunity to close the distance and begin the hyperbeam duel.”
“Can you tell me more about them?”
“Their missiles move just like ours, but have a different type of warhead that we cannot yet classify. It has approximately four times the yield as our standard antimatter warheads per size class. Devastating, but not decisive,” Mu Pei continued. “The enemy ships were also destroyed when the commodores tried to board them with marine assault craft. It seems….” He stroked his gray beard. “…That the enemy knows when their ships are no match against our boarding parties. They have witnessed the ground battles on Meerlat and other worlds. They know their ground infantry is just as equal as ours but not much more.”
Vier bit her lip. Something about the news made her hesitate. She couldn’t put a finger on it—until now. “Sir, what if they’re hiding something?”
Mu Pei continued stroking his beard. “Of course, they’re hiding something. They don’t want us to access any of their technological database. Acquiring their computer cores will tell us everything we need to know about how to duplicate all their technology. They’re still significantly superior to us in hyperlight battle, although not by the incredible margin as in sublight.”
“Then why not wipe their data cores?” Vier asked.
“And let their ships be boarded with their pants down? You forget that once we acquire just one of their ships, we don’t even need their computers nor their databases. We’ll have all we need to know just by studying the insides of their ships. Sublight propulsion data, energy core schematics, sublight and hyperlight shields, weapons, and armor. We’ll have it all. No,” he said adamantly. “They knew it was impossible to win an infantry battle within their ships, not with the numbers advantages we enjoyed against their stray fleets of cruisers. You forget that in all cases, Wei, Pusan, and yours, we outnumbered their ships…marine contingents included, by as much as twenty to one. Their ships were already dead, so they self-destructed them.”
Vier thought about that. It was an entirely possible that the enemy guinea pigs sacrificed themselves for that reason. But what if it wasn’t? “Sir,” she asked calmly.
“Don’t you think it’s odd that even their scouts cannot outrun our scouts or our LACs?”
Admiral Mu Pei was quietly sitting back, thinking.
Vier sat back and gulped the saliva in her throat. A new thought emerged in her brain, a thought that suddenly found solidness after what she just recently heard. “It’s like they want to be found and caught, sir.”
“That is suspicious.” Mu Pei’s eyes thinned. “I have to agree with you on that. Given the sublight technology gap between our races, it seems that their hyperlight scouts should be at least as fast as ours. The only good news is that once we’ve started attacking their scouting parties, they’ve rescinded those ships, so that would suggest that they feel the threat. But the purpose of those stray enemy cruiser squadrons may not be to just scout us at all. They may be to hunt and kill stray civilian and merchant freighters or attack wounded human ships.”
Vier bit her lip, again. “Perhaps you are right, sir. Yet, I still feel their scouts ought to be just as fast as our fastest ships.”
“So do I,” Mu Pei agreed-. “However, I cannot delay the counteroffensive based on suspicions alone. They will soon near our sector core and that cannot be allowed. We are fortunate that their h-space tech is not so disparate.” He suddenly looked at Vier with a stone cold glance that didn’t waver. “I plan for the following counteroffensive to begin in less than a week. We will attack their main thrust with a massive counter thrust of our own. Do you think you’re up to the challenge, Admiral?”
“I think I’ll manage,” Vier answered excitedly. “With their h-space tech superiority, we’ll still need to be careful. But at least the odds aren’t abysmal.”
“We will have the power of speed on our side, hopefully,” Mu Pei added. “You, I, and the other admirals and commodores will have to go through some significant planning if we are to win. Our counterthrust will not need to be perfect, but that won’t hurt. As you know, nothing in war is ever perfect.”