by John Carr
“Could be evasive maneuvering?”
“Oh, it’s evasive, all right, Exec; but it’s not evasive enough to prevent a lock-on - these sensor logs prove that - and it’s too erratic for couriers, they fly straight and fast and pick a clear lane before they start. Remember where we are and what’s out there. No, my friend; I’m afraid those are Imperial heavy fighters - I’d say Legionnaire-class, from the looks of the exhaust spectrograph figures.”
Willoughby grimaced, realizing that Hawksley was right. “And here we wallow in the muck and mire.” Willoughby caught his CO’s look and stopped himself. He had already lodged a bitter complaint over the special weapons packages Diettinger had ordered installed aboard Falkenberg; bitter, and futile. Despite the fact that the agile and graceful Burgess commerce raider now maneuvered like a crippled barge, Hawksley did not seem to share his XO’s outrage. Truth be told, Falkenberg still had most of her speed - which was one of the reasons she’d drawn the short end of this particular duty stick.
Willoughby managed to keep the “I-told-you-so’ tone out of his voice, and finished, “If they spot us, we could be in deep shit, skipper.”
Hawksley looked out once more through the tiny porthole above his desk, at the sickly green-brown swirl beyond.
“We’re already deep in shit, Commander Willoughby.”
On the Sauron Homeworld the battle was also being monitored in SDD sector, the vast System Defense Display complex which had been built centuries before. Upgraded yearly, no one on Sauron had ever seriously considered that it would be necessary. Until now.
The members of the High Command watched, and wondered, and all of them, Sauron norm and Cyborg alike shared the same thought: What was Diettinger up to?
They watched as the Sauron Home System defense forces withdrew from the Alderson Jump Points, and ever more twinkling lights appeared, signaling the arrival of ever more Imperial ships.
Twenty-Two
I
“Imperial elements at station-keeping in the Alderson Jump zones” one of the Sensor Ranks reported. “Task Force Damaris reports no concentrated pursuit, harassing fighter activity only,”
“Enemy activity level Ostia?” Diettinger asked.
“Three under-strength squadrons of heavy fighters; reconnaissance sweep patterns.”
Diettinger’s eye’s narrowed, the patch over his empty left socket rasping against his brow. Hawksley, he thought, do not disappoint me...
The tactical display showed all six of Sauron’s Alderson Jump Points firmly in Imperial control. Their supply lines thus secured, the Imperials could now mount their offensive against the Sauron Homeworld almost at leisure. Shifting perspective, Diettinger watched as the pace of the tankers traveling between Sauron and Ostia slowed, then stopped. After a time, roughly half the displays indicating tanker ships began to come about to opposite headings, and soon the entire line of tankers - two hundred and seventeen in all - were on the same course; away from Sauron, toward Ostia, all to enter near orbit around the gas giant.
This was not immediately obvious, however. Tankers which carried liquified hydrogen were dispersed structures, a dozen spherical containers held together by massive lattice frameworks, with drive and attitude thrusters arrayed along their surface in patterns that looked random to everyone but the engineers who had designed them. Efficient they might be; lovely, they were not.
But their ungainly shape concealed an elegant capacity for vector maneuvering, and incidentally made it difficult to tell their fores from their afts when they were moving slowly, and impossible to do so when they were still, as now. In fact, the tankers had no such dimensions, being capable of moving along any axis drawn through their centers of mass and connected by any two of the eight monstrous thrusting engines which they bore.
Only Diettinger, and one other, knew which way the motionless tankers would go next - or, at least, which way they were supposed to go...
II
Sauron’s six Alderson Points had all been secured by the enemy. At each, Imperial warships consolidated their control of the space surrounding them while the flood of reinforcing vessels slowed to a trickle, then stopped. Scarcely seven days after the first Imperial nuclear precedents had emerged from the Alderson Points, the Empire of Man had closed the ring around the neck of its most hated enemy. The battle to come would break the might of Sauron forever, and if the Empire was to fall in that cause, few in its ranks felt the sacrifice a vain one.
Every Imperial sailor, marine, officer and midshipman in the armada had lost someone, somewhere to the Saurons or their allies. Every one of them was eager for the final drive against the Homeworld of the self-styled “super soldiers.” None of them wanted to die, but few expected to survive, and all of them, from Fleet Grand Admiral Ede down to Able-Spacer Murphy, were asking themselves the same question: “What are they waiting for?”
Cyborg Rank Manche had allowed a hint of annoyance in his voice when he asked the question, “What are they waiting for?” and Cyborg Rank Ulm ignored him out of spite. Ulm had been watching the tactical display in the High Command bunker on Homeworld for twelve hours, since taking over for Saentz who had been there for thirty-six previously - eventually, even Cyborgs needed sleep, Imperial invasions or not. Cyborgs were not loquacious, and never asked rhetorical questions. It was therefore part of their peculiar social structure that to presume such about another Cyborg’s inquiries was considered insulting.
Manche perceived Ulm’s disrespect, making a mental note to remember the slight and deal with it later. He walked slowly around the massive holographic immersion display, reviewing the suspended readouts of enemy ship numbers and wondering if there would be a later. In a week, neither the Imperial nor Sauron fleets had moved to engage one another. The Imperial bridgeheads in Sauron space had crawled forward from the Alderson Points, linking up and forming three vast task forces of more or less equal size. The term “bridgehead” had no rational basis whatsoever in terms of a space battle, nor did “beachhead” as applied to planetary positions secured after orbital invasions, but after seven centuries in space, humanity had yet to come up with any better ones.
Even without data displays, Manche could see that the Sauron Home Fleet was outnumbered by at least five to one. Still, Diettinger is operating on interior lines, he considered. The enemy can only observe, communicate and react as fast as the speed of light will allow him; Diettinger is on the inside of that sphere of activity.
Manche knew that meant the Dictator could be reacting to one event (in the literal, relativistic sense of the word) before it had been - or indeed could be - perceived by enemy forces on the far side of Sauron System.
He stopped abruptly. In fact, it was such an obvious advantage, he found it impossible to believe that the Imperial commander would not have thought of it and made some allowance for it. Turning, he strode directly through the center of the display, projected data streaming across his features and uniform in a rain of light.
Typical Cyborg, one of the technicians thought to himself, deft as a tank.
Ulm looked up, the faintest depression over his right brow; an awakening frown on the countenance of a human or Sauron-norm, it was the equivalent of a snarl from a Cyborg. “What?”
Manche leaned across Ulm’s console and addressed one of the Communications Rankers.”Direct link to the Dictator, immediately.”
“Not possible, Council Member Manche,” the Ranker explained, and it was only the fact of his being a Sauron that kept the terror from his voice. “The Fomoria is under communications blackout as per the orders of the Dictator.”
Manche calmed himself. It was not his responsibility - or place - to second-guess the legally appointed Dictator. In any case, he decided that Diettinger must surely have dealt with this consideration already.
Hadn’t he?
Manche returned his attention to the display and its representation of the relative fleet positions... then to the relative positions of the worlds of Sauron System.. .the
n to the assets around and on those worlds.
He noted that the outer worlds of Freas and Barlowe bore no orbital forces of any kind, and began to wonder anew...
III
So far, Diettinger thought, So good. Every hour the Imperials delayed was another ounce on Sauron’s side of the scale, a growing probability that his gamble could work. Reconnaissance and intelligence reports told him that the composition of the Imperial Fleets was exactly as he’d expected. An operation such as this required little in the way of innovation; in any case, intelligence reports indicated that despite the current five-to-one numerical advantage in vessels they enjoyed in this battle, they still had an Empire to control, after all. The requirements of doing so, while simultaneously invading Sauron, meant that the war had left the Empire with only a few more options than Sauron in the number and type of ships available - and thus, how they could be used.
Diettinger had been glad to see Hawksley had kept his nerve. Despite daily Imperial patrols across the upper gaseous atmosphere of Ostia, the Falkenberg had neither been discovered nor succumbed to the temptation to engage.
Assuming, of course, that the poor devil’s ship hasn’t been dragged into the gas giant’s gravity well and crushed at Ostia’s metallic ammonia core, Diettinger thought grimly.
Soon enough, the Falkenberg would be allowed to engage. Incommunicado via normal means, Hawksley would nevertheless receive a signal he could not possibly miss, and then the Burgess privateer would bring his ship into battle at what might prove to be the most crucial juncture. Hawksley’s action could be no more than a Forlorn Hope, of course, but insofar as he was the hinge of Diettinger’s plan, it was only fair that he have at least a remote possibility of survival. That was more than could be granted a great portion of the Sauron Fleet.
Second Rank had argued that no non-Sauron could be trusted with the mission Diettinger had given Hawksley. But it was crucial that a non-Sauron ship carry out the action, and Falkenberg’s configuration and telemetry were so similar to those of an Imperial vessel that she was actually safer engaging close in with the enemy than fighting alongside her allied Sauron vessels. The few seconds, perhaps even minutes of confusion at the appearance of an apparently friendly vessel might prevent the Imperial commanders from reacting soon enough.
Whether or not Hawksley, his ship or his crew lived or died was not a factor in Diettinger’s planning, of course. He was not a reckless man, and did not stake the success of his battle plans on the sacrifice - or the survival - of individuals participating in them. But it would please him if the man from Burgess somehow found a way to live through this.
It will please me a great deal if any of us do, he thought.
“Code Red,” one of the Sensor Ranks declared, almost startling him. “All elements.”
Diettinger watched the numbers of the display, hanging in mid-air, flickering as the Imperial Fleet elements began to accelerate inwards from the Jump Points, reducing their relative distance to Sauron, the Home Fleet, the Fomoria, and Fleet First Rank Galen Diettinger’s last gamble in a long war.
Or perhaps, he reconsidered, the next-to-last...
Diettinger adjusted his point of view within the immersion display, sweeping across the battlefield to a point above and behind the largest of the approaching Imperial fleet’s three elements, designated on the display as Intruder One. In four hours the lead ships of that element would reach the actual perimeter of Sauron System: The orbital path of Barlowe, outermost of Landyn’s Star’s seven planets.
Intruder One would never actually come anywhere near Barlowe itself. The small planet had long since passed the point in its orbit which would intersect with Intruder One’s present flight path.
“Intruder Two,” Diettinger addressed his Sensors Ranker, ”Enhance.”
Being the first large Imperial element engaged by Emory with Task Force Damaris, so now reduced from one hundred fifty-three to one hundred and twelve contacts, Intruder Two was seventy-percent the strength of Intruder One’s even two hundred enemy vessels. But the ship classes are larger overall, Diettinger noted. A follow-on force, intended to exploit a breakthrough ...
“Second Rank. Evaluation: Remaining Imperial force elements.”
Second Rank did not take her eyes from her own data displays; her report had been ready for the Dictator ten minutes after the Imperial elements had formed up in line of battle: “The remaining Imperial force, Intruder Three, is the smallest element, at one hundred and forty ships. The majority of these are faster, lighter vessels, comprising what Imperial strategists have called an “operational maneuver group.” If Intruder One’s mission is to pierce the Sauron fleet defense and allow Intruder Two’s forces to pass through that opening and press the attack on the Homeworld, then Intruder Three’s mission will most likely be to operate on the perimeter of the battle as a harassing force, causing as much damage as possible while constituting a potent reserve of firepower with a rapid response capability.”
Second Rank finally turned to look at Diettinger. “This is implied by the preponderance of Chinthe-class light cruiser escorts - extremely fast vessels with high firepower-to-tonnage ratios - comprising Intruder Three.”
“Possibly a ruse, Dictator,” Second Rank continued.”The Imperials may be holding their motherships out-system as a strategic reserve.” Second’s voice lowered, and now it was her turn to frown. “Or they may be using them as point defenses elsewhere in the Empire. The Outworld Coalition has, to our knowledge, signed no separate peace with the Imperials. The presence of motherships at key systems along the Jump routes would be an effective deterrent to large scale “Outie” raids, while allowing the Empire to deploy the bulk of its Fleet here.”
Diettinger frowned. Chinthes were most commonly used as escorts for motherships; there being no such large ships among the forces of Intruder Three, Second Rank’s assessment seemed reasonable. But there were fewer than ten motherships among all the other Imperial elements combined, and since their appearance ten years earlier, motherships - and the extremely potent attack fighters they carried - had rapidly grown to dominate Imperial fleet tactics. Over the years, Sauron naval strategy had given elimination of motherships top priority in engagements with Imperial forces, but not enough to explain the current lack of such vessels here, at this most crucial of the Empire’s battles.
Diettinger nodded, not entirely convinced. He looked back to the immersion display; at this point in their respective orbital years, Freas and Barlowe were on opposite sides of Landyn’s star, the sun of Homeworld. A line drawn between the two worlds would barely miss the system’s central body, passing comfortably within the gravity well of the F9 star. Diettinger keyed in a command to draw just such a line now. The beam leaped between the displays showing Freas and Barlowe’s positions; on one side, toward the galactic core, were Dawkins and Niobe, Landyn’s first and third worlds, with half the asteroid belt beyond them. On the other, away from the core and trailing, lay Landyn’s star itself, then Proteus, Sauron and Ostia.
Intruder One, on a bearing from the Wayforth Alderson Point, was coming from Coreward, and would cross that line - if it maintained its course for Sauron - at almost the same moment it entered the fringes of the asteroid belt defense zone. Intruder Two, coming from the Dropshot and St. Ekaterina Alderson Points and heading straight for Ostia, would cross it at a point nearly equidistant from the gas giant and the asteroid belt perimeter. On entering orbit at Ostia, Intruder Two would be much closer to the asteroid field than to the Freas/Barlowe line, and Diettinger decided to let it pass over without incident; Hawksley’s Falkenberg and the units waiting to support it should suffice to deal with that element of the Imperial forces.
As always, the real worry continued to be the enemy unit whose intentions were unknown; in this case, Intruder Three.
“Sensors.”
“Ready.”
“Display projected intersections of Intruders One and Two with Freas/ Barlowe line.”
“Affirm.�
�
Now green traces of light stretched ahead of the Intruder icons, datalines above them displaying velocities and timetables. Diettinger saw that Intruder One would reach the line in sixteen hours. Intruder Two would cross it in twelve, but not be in position to attempt to secure Ostia for another six.
“Signals.”
“Ready.”
“Send Task Force Keegan: Engage Intruder Two at Freas/Barlowe line. Delay enemy arrival in Ostia zone for four hours, fifteen minutes.”
If Diettinger’s first plan worked against Intruder One, it would take almost half-an-hour for the event to be perceived by Intruder Two; or indeed, for any laser-borne message from the former to reach the latter.
And if it works well, I want Intruder Two’s ships to be too thoroughly committed to come to their comrades’ aid.
Twenty-Three
I
The Keegan and her escorts leaped toward the Imperial ships of Intruder Two. Outnumbered three to one, Vessel First Rank Dannevar was determined to make up in ferocity what he lacked in numbers.
Not a reckless man by nature, Dannevar was fully aware of the value of such tactics against numerically superior foes. Strapped into his acceleration couch on the Keegan’s bridge, he directed each element of his own command as they maneuvered for position against the oncoming Imperial fleet elements.
Despite closing thrusts in excess of five gravities acceleration, the act of closing to battle in space is slow, slower than the tacking and jibing of ancient sail-powered warships, slower even than the scull and pivot of their decked-oared forebears. The distances in space battles are vast, but there is no horizon to mask an enemy’s intent. Little subtlety is possible or warranted, and while the exercise lacks a measure of visual splendor, it wants for nothing in the earnestness of its participants’ intent.