A Learning Experience 2: Hard Lessons

by Christopher G. Nuttall

  Moments later, the alarms sounded.

  “Shit,” Yolanda said, springing to her feet. “They’re nearly here!”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  War graves in Arlington Cemetery were desecrated yesterday by what is believed to be a Jihadist Group. Arabic graffiti was painted over the tombstones, while several graves were uprooted and the various war memorials were defaced. The President attempted to downplay the incident at a press conference, but widespread public anger may force him to take a different path.

  -Solar News Network, Year 53

  “They’re due in one hour,” Commander Gregory said, as Yolanda hurried onto the bridge and hastened towards her console. “You don't need to run.”

  Yolanda flushed and hastily sat down, wishing she could die of embarrassment. Her nanotech would clean her up, she knew, but it was nothing like as good as a proper shower, perhaps one shared with Martin ... she pushed the thought aside and brought up the status display, cursing her timing. If the enemy had waited for just one more hour ...

  She plunged her mind into the sensors and shuddered, inwardly, as she saw the sheer scale of the enemy fleet. There were so many gravimetric signatures approaching the Sol System – and the Solar Navy – that they were blurring together, making it impossible to determine precisely how many there were. Perhaps their obsession with perfect formations had a point after all, she reasoned; random flight paths and positions would make it much harder to compensate for so many starships in FTL so close together at the same time.

  “There are at least three hundred signatures,” she said, out loud. “But I can't be sure.”

  “It may make no difference, Lieutenant,” Commander Gregory said. “Just relax and wait.”

  Yolanda couldn't do either. How could the human fleet be planning an ambush? There was no way to engage starships in FTL, as far as she knew. They might as well be on the other side of the galaxy for all the Tokomak would see of them. But she had to assume that Admiral Stuart knew what he was doing ... gritting her teeth, she forced herself to continue to parse out the gravimetric signatures, trying to isolate as many separate starships as possible.

  The minutes ticked away slowly, leaving her feeling more and more frustrated with every breath. It just didn't make sense ... angrily, she called on her implants, dampening her feelings as much as possible. But even with her emotions under control, her thoughts still chased themselves round and round in circles. There was no way they could ambush the enemy fleet, was there?

  “Signal from the flag,” Lieutenant Elves said. “We are to move to a new position.”

  “Make it so,” Captain Singh ordered.

  Yolanda rolled her eyes – that joke had been old long before her mother had been born – but obeyed. The human fleet was now spread out in a giant arc, surrounding the least-time course from Varnar to Earth. But it still made absolutely no sense ... she worried at the thought as the captured freighters were moved forward, dumping their cargo of long-range missiles into space. Even if the Varnar attacked the human fleet, the moment they saw the missiles they would drop back into FTL and retreat. They couldn't be pinned in place, exposed to incoming fire ... could they?

  She stared down at the display, studying the handful of unmarked units. What were they?

  The seconds ticked down to zero. On the display, the Tokomak fleet drew closer, travelling at many times the speed of light. It was impossible for her to grasp just how far apart the fleets actually were, not when it seemed she could reach out and touch them. And then ...

  She blinked as waves of gravity – artificial gravity – started to pervade space. Understanding followed, moments later. No one, not even the Galactics, could go into FTL close to a large planetary mass. Now, human technicians had created an artificial gravity well, right in front of the Tokomak fleet. And they were about to run right into it ...

  ***

  It was sheer luck that Neola was in the CIC when the entire starship shook violently, then crashed back into normal space. Standard procedure was to spend time in FTL burnishing the inner hull or simply relaxing, not running endless drills. If she hadn't been trying to set a good example, if she hadn't insisted that full watches be online at all times, the human ambush might have wrecked her entire fleet before she had a chance to react.

  Even so, comprehending what had happened pushed her to the limit.

  She had known the humans would detect her incoming fleet. There was simply no way to mask a single gravimetric signature, let alone a giant haze of gravimetric distortion generated by hundreds of starships flying in close formation. But she had never imagined anyone using an artificial gravity field to yank an entire fleet out of FTL. She cursed under her breath as the datanet rapidly updated, warning her that nearly seventy battleships had crashed back to normal space so violently that their drives were permanently offline. A light year from Sol, the closest star, they would take at least four years to reach somewhere safe ...

  “Your Excellency,” the Admiral said. “We are surrounded by human starships. They are demanding our surrender.”

  Neola fought down panic. Some of her ships couldn't escape? So what? The humans wouldn't be able to escape either, not as long as they kept the artificial gravity field in place ... and they would have to, unless they wished her remaining FTL-capable ships to continue the advance on Earth. They were prisoners of their own success ...

  She studied the display, thoughtfully, allowing cold logic to banish panic. There were over four hundred ships facing her, but most of them weren't warships. Indeed, most of them were converted freighters. And most of the warships were ancient designs. There was no need to panic, not really. The humans might pack a punch, but she still had the advantage.

  “Advance forward to firing range,” she ordered, coolly. Maybe some of her commanders would take the humans seriously, now. “And chart out their gravity field.”

  “The humans are opening fire,” the Admiral said. “They’re launching missiles at us.”

  For a moment, Neola couldn't grasp what she was seeing. Everyone knew that missiles – long-range missiles – were useless in ship-to-ship engagements. If the humans wanted to waste their firepower, who was she to stop them? And yet, she knew they were up to something ...

  It struck her in a moment of blinding horror. The long-range missiles weren't wasted, not when her fleet couldn't escape into FTL. They were about to be ripped apart ... unless she reacted quickly. None of their scenarios had envisaged being locked out of FTL; at worst, she’d always known she would be able to escape. But she’d been wrong.

  “Bring up the point defence,” she ordered. For once, the routine formations they’d practiced would work in their favour. “And launch our own long-range missiles back at them.”

  The Admiral swing around. “Your Excellency?”

  “If we’re locked out of FTL, so are they,” Neola snapped. She cursed her superiors under her breath. Perhaps this entire disaster could have been averted if they’d encouraged the youngsters to develop an imagination. “And we can hit them too.”

  Moments later, her battleships started to spew missiles into space.

  She watched, coldly and dispassionately, as the gravity field was slowly charted out in front of her. A planetary gravity field was easy to track; it was a sphere, surrounding the planetary mass. There were rarely any fluctuations in its strength that made life interesting for starships trying to cut their travel times to the bare minimum. But the artificial gravity field looked hazy and imprecise, as if it had multiple sources ...

  “Locate the generators,” she ordered. Blowing apart an entire planet to escape the gravity field was excessive, even by Tokomak standards, but she could locate the gravity generators and destroy them. “Once you have located them, destroy them.”

  She watched, helplessly, as the waves of missiles descended on her ships. Most of them were clearly of Tokomak origin, taken – she assumed – from Hades. The Varnar had been right, she understood now, to point ou
t that the entire plan had been badly flawed. It had rested on the key assumption that the human race would be mesmerised by the sheer level of firepower arrayed against them and when that had been proven false, so had the plan. The Tokomak had provided their enemies with the weapons to use against them.

  Hundreds of missiles were swatted out of existence, but hundreds more made it through. She cursed her own oversight even as she mentally praised her gunnery crews, who had improved a hundredfold in the weeks they’d spent drilling, after watching the Battle of Hades and how quickly a formerly-invincible squadron had been torn apart. But there were just too many missiles ... she gritted her teeth as they started to slam into shields, weakening some and shattering others. Far too many shield generators were too old and outdated to stand up to sudden blows.

  “The enemy fleet is taking losses,” the Admiral reported. “But they’re continuing the attack.”

  ***

  Mongo hadn't been enthusiastic about the idea of hurling the Tokomak missiles right back at their designers. There hadn't been time to take the warheads apart and make sure they didn't have any backdoors, which would have allowed the Tokomak the chance to turn them off before it was too late. But he had to admit that the idea had worked surprisingly well, even though the Tokomak had promptly copied his idea and started to return fire. Some of his older ships had already been destroyed by their missiles.

  “Launch the hammers,” he ordered. “And then follow up with the ECM drones.”

  The gravity field shifted, suddenly. “Report!”

  “They took out one of the Zahn Generators,” Commander Wilson snapped. “They’re actively searching for others.”

  “Of course they are,” Mongo said.

  He smirked, then mentally tipped his hat to the Tokomak commander. A human commander would have started to hunt for the gravity generators at once ... and, by their very nature, they were impossible to hide. But, caught by surprise, he was moderately impressed the Tokomak commander had caught on so rapidly. It wasn't something she would have known to expect.

  But she should have, he reflected. The Tokomak had practically invented gravity-related technology, even though they hadn't taken it to its logical extreme. But then, some of the ideas human science-fiction had devised had proven surprisingly practical, when twinned with alien technology. If the idea for boosting the sun’s gravity field ever proved workable, they could ensure that no alien ship could ever approach Earth without being forced to leave FTL a long way before its prime targets.

  He dismissed the thought as the Hammers plunged towards their targets, wondering absently what the Tokomak made of them. They would be easily detectable, but – by their very nature – hellishly hard to destroy. If he’d had a few thousand of them, the battle would be over by now, yet there were only a handful on hand.

  A few more years, he thought, and we would have utterly destroyed the fleet without taking a single casualty.

  The Hammers approached their targets ... and drew fire. He watched with grim amusement as energy weapons flared out ... and vanished. Moments later, the Hammers smashed home, crashing right through the enemy shields and into their hulls. Several of them kept plunging onwards, others were caught and destroyed as their targets exploded. The survivors altered course and started to hunt for new targets.

  And they could have built Hammers for themselves, if they’d thought of the concept, he thought. Instead, they let themselves ossify and decline.

  ***

  Neola watched in disbelief as twelve battleships died a fiery death, four of their killers escaping onwards, then turning around to seek new targets. It was impossible ... she forced herself to put her emotions aside and reason it out logically. What was she actually seeing?

  “Microscopic black holes,” one of her officers said. “They actually generated a self-sustaining gravity well.”

  It made sense, Neola realised, coldly. The humans had produced a black hole generator and loaded it on a missile. Instead of a drive, the missile had plunged towards the black hole ... but as the black hole was always a set distance from the missile, it had effectively pulled itself onwards and onwards. And it had swallowed everything in its path, from energy weapons fire to hull material. The concept was far from impossible. It was merely something the Tokomak had never bothered to develop for themselves.

  Because we saw ourselves as invincible, she thought, coldly. What would happen to the Tokomak Empire, which was dependent on its vast fleet of warships, if someone produced a relatively cheap weapon that could smash a battleship without breaking a sweat? And black hole missiles would have altered the balance of power against us.

  “Continue firing,” she ordered. “And take us right towards them. We have to close the range.”

  She tapped her console, issuing updates. There were ways to deal with the black hole missiles that didn't involve panic, as long as they were used carefully. Her crews might be shocked, but at least they weren't coming apart. She silently thanked her foresight in ordering endless drills, then turned her attention to the battle. Sooner or later, the humans would run out of tricks. All she had to do was hold her fleet together until then. And then she could jump back into FTL and continue the advance on Earth.

  ***

  Yolanda gritted her teeth as the Tokomak advanced, clearly trying to either force the humans into a close-range engagement or escape the artificial gravity wells. Either one would offer them a chance to turn the battle around, even though they were taking a beating. The endless stream of updates, processed and analysed by the AIs, suggested that a number of Tokomak ships had actually lost their FTL drives. If so, they could remain in place and harass the human ships while their compatriots attacked Sol.

  Freedom shuddered as an antimatter missile detonated far too close to her shields. Yolanda altered course randomly, as Commander Gregory picked off another two missiles that would have otherwise have posed a threat. Thankfully, the combination of ECM and sensor decoys was making it harder for the Tokomak to target their weapons, or the humans would be in considerably more trouble. Even so, the losses were starting to mount ... and they were running out of stolen missiles.

  “Orders from the flag,” Commander Gregory said. “We are to advance and harass the enemy.”

  “Take us into the fire,” Captain Singh ordered. “Random course changes, remember.”

  Yolanda smiled, then plunged her mind back into the computer datanet until the ship was practically an extension of her own body. Freedom seemed to brace herself, like a man waiting to bungee jump off a cliff, and then lunged forward at her command, weapons flaring with deadly light. She twisted her flight path and lanced between two lumbering battleships, Commander Gregory launching torpedoes with wild abandon. One of the battleships exploded, the other stumbled to one side, but kept firing. Yolanda threw Freedom into a madcap series of evasive manoeuvres, then yanked the ship to one side as the enemy fire suddenly sharpened up. Either they'd replaced the gunnery crews or they’d allowed their electronic servants to take over targeting ... it hardly mattered. She whooped – not out loud, she hoped – and spun the ship close to her next target, dodging blast after blast of incoming fire. The enemy ship was even hurling long-range missiles towards Freedom, at alarmingly short range.

  “Keep us as close to them as possible,” Captain Singh ordered. “But not too close.”

  Yolanda frowned. Lightning had already died, simply from accidentally ramming one of the giant battleships, destroying both ships in a single blast. The Tokomak could keep trading battleships for cruisers and still come out ahead, even if ... Freedom shook violently as a phased energy beam struck her shields, sending her spinning through space. Yolanda regained control and swung the ship into a different series of patterns, before the enemy could capitalise on their success and hammer her shields into nothingness.

  “Aye, sir,” she said.

  Commander Gregory kept firing, beams of energy raking the hulls of additional battleships as they lumbered onwards
, trying to ignore the deadly gnats shooting at them. It wasn't a bad tactic, Yolanda had to admit; they couldn't hope to catch the human cruisers if they tried, so they were attempting to escape the gravity field. And the humans had to close in and enter weapons range if they wanted to kill the aliens ...

  “New targets,” Captain Singh said. “Alter course and engage.”

  Yolanda fought to control the ship. It was easier said than done, particularly as the Tokomak were altering their formation to allow more of their ships a shot at the gnats. They were actually making it harder for her to enter close range ... she swung Freedom around, then powered her way right towards the enemy formation. There would be a moment, she was sure, when they wouldn't dare fire on her because of the risk of hitting other ships.

  You shouldn't have devised such a tight formation, she thought, as she flew past the enemy vessels. It's not tight enough to stop me and too tight to let you fight back effectively ...

  “Approaching new targets now, sir,” she said. Alerts flared up in front of her mind. “They’re locking weapons on us.”