And that estimate seems a little high, she mused. But we’ll see.
***
Hoshiko felt sweat trickle down her back as the fleet entered the enemy system and advanced towards Tokomak Prime. The system was ancient, so heavily industrialised that the locals were in serious danger of literally running out of asteroids and gas giants to mine, but most of the planets and settlements were unimportant. Tokomak Prime was the target, Tokomak Prime and its monstrous defences. She could do a great deal of damage if she hit the remainder of the system, but it wouldn’t win the war. She had to capture the enemy homeworld.
And they know it as well as we do, she mused. They’d simulated dozens of possibilities, from a deep space ambush to an enemy force that challenged them to come within range of the orbital fortresses, but there was no way to know what the enemy would do. We’re attacking a target they must defend.
She glanced at the timer, then at her staffers. She’d been tempted to make a speech, but Solarians were a practical breed. They wouldn’t be impressed if she recited lines from Henry V or another movie based on a world few of them had seen. They’d be more impressed if Admiral Teller managed to join them while the attack was underway. Hoshiko would have welcomed it, if there had been a way to make it practical. But there’d been no hope of getting a message to him before it was too late.
“Ten seconds to sublight,” Yolanda said. “Admiral?”
“Hold your course,” Hoshiko said. She’d wavered between bringing the fleet as close to the alien homeworld and dropping out of FTL some distance from the planet, giving her the chance to organise her fleet before the enemy opened fire. She’d decided on the latter, knowing there was no way to gain the advantage of surprise. “And prepare to engage any targets.”
Defiant lurched as she dropped out of FTL. Hoshiko braced herself, half-expecting to see missiles roaring towards her ships. Even with the new FTL baffles, there had been little hope of concealing their approach vector. Given time, she would have tried to yank the fleet out of FTL early and batter it to rubble before her crews could react. But the Tokomak hadn’t tried anything clever. They’d just lined their fleet in defence of their homeworld and waited.
“Holy God,” someone breathed.
Hoshiko was inclined to agree, although she would never have admitted it. There were hundreds of fortresses orbiting Tokomak Prime, a degree of overkill that even the Tokomak would have agreed bordered on paranoia. Three giant rings circled the world, as if they were planning to eventually enclose their homeworld in a suit of armour. She sucked in her breath as her display picked up drive signatures, hundreds of thousands of drive signatures. It looked as if every starship the Tokomak possessed had rallied to fight their final battle. Her sensors noted the presence of thousands of civilian ships, holding station with the warships. There were so many ships she honestly doubted the enemy commander could control them all.
Although they have always had that problem, she reminded herself. They’re probably figured out a way to cope, even if they haven’t solved the problem completely.
“Admiral,” Yolanda said, slowly. “I count upwards of nine thousand warships holding position near the planet.”
“Then I shall be most displeased if anyone should happen to miss,” Hoshiko said, keeping her voice under tight control. The Tokomak intended to throw everything at her, up to and including the kitchen sink. “Launch recon probes, then transmit the formal demand for surrender.”
She waited, trying to ignore her heart pounding in her chest. Steve and the xenospecialists had concluded that the Tokomak wouldn’t surrender, not as long as they thought they could still win, but she liked to think they’d see sense. She hadn’t been joking about being annoyed if her tactical officers happened to miss. There were so many targets that missing everything would be difficult ... and, behind them, there was the planet itself. She shuddered at the thought of what would happen if an antimatter warhead hit a planetary surface. The resulting explosion would do immense damage to the entire biosphere.
See sense, you fuckers, she thought. We’re not giving you a bad offer.
The seconds ticked away. The enemy fleet slowly organised itself, altering position until it was drifting between Hoshiko’s fleet and the planet itself. There were thousands of gunboats taking up position, backed up by everything from freighters to worker bees that had been pressed into service. Hoshiko watched as more and more data flooded into her terminal, the recon probes lasting barely long enough to send back a few images before they were detected and destroyed by the enemy defence grid. They’d blanketed the system in so much energy, she noted, that it would be almost impossible to get a stealthed or cloaked starship into the high orbitals. And they probably knew the electronic terrain well enough to tell when something was wrong.
“No answer,” Yolanda said. “But their fleet is powering up its weapons.”
“No great surprise,” Hoshiko noted. “It would be more astonishing if they weren’t powering up their weapons.”
She waited, wondering how long she should wait before she opened fire. They had to give the enemy some time to respond, but how long? The range was steadily closing. She’d have to fire the ballistic missiles in less than five minutes or she’d sacrifice whatever advantages they’d give her. Hell, she wasn’t sure they’d give her any advantage. The enemy sensor network was on alert, backed up by enough point defence weapons to give a gunboat pilot nightmares. They didn’t need solid targeting locks to make life difficult for her. They had enough weapons that they could afford to fill space with plasma bolts, in the certainty they’d probably hit something ...
“Launch the ballistics in two minutes, if they don’t reply,” she ordered, curtly. It would mean committing herself to the offensive, but she wasn’t going to give the enemy any more time than strictly necessary. “And then we’ll move on their heels.”
***
“No answer,” Neola said, as the human message scrolled up in front of her. It sounded reasonable, but it was nothing more than a rehash of terms the council had already moved to reject. “Is Force One ready to jump?”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” her aide said. “They are ready to move on your command.”
Neola nodded, slowly. Force One was crewed with volunteers, crew who knew she was asking them for the ultimate sacrifice. She hated the thought of sending Tokomak on missions when they would almost certainly die - that was for the servitor races - but there was no choice. Their deaths would buy time for her fleet to finish its preparations and move to the attack. And if it damaged the human fleet, so much the better.
She gritted her teeth. That wasn’t guaranteed. She knew there couldn’t be more than four thousand starships facing her, but the human ECM was very good. Her sensors were insisting that the human fleet outnumbered her ten to one, something she knew was flat-out impossible. If the humans had such a large fleet, they’d have won the war by now. But merely knowing that the fleet couldn’t possibly exist didn’t help her sort the real ships from the fakes. She wouldn’t know which ships were real until they opened fire. Until then, she’d have to assume that all the ships were real until proven otherwise.
“Then order them to jump in ten seconds,” she said. “And the remainder of the fleet will hold position here.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
Neola sat back and waited. She’d done all she could, although she knew it wasn’t enough to guarantee a victory. The days when they could crush an enemy, even a more advanced enemy, by sheer weight of numbers were gone. But ...
Maybe we can surprise you one final time, she thought. And that might just give us an edge.
***
“Ballistic missiles away, Admiral,” Yolanda reported. “The enemy hasn’t reacted.”
Hoshiko nodded. Launching unpowered missiles on ballistic trajectories was risky - their flight paths would be easy to predict, if the enemy saw them coming, making them sitting ducks - but it might just get a few thousand missiles into sprint-mode
range before the penny dropped. The alien fleet was sitting right on top of the gravity well, too close to the planetary gravity shadow to jump into FTL without serious risk. They might just be caught in the open if her missiles managed to get into range before they were detected ...
“Long-range sensors are picking up odd emissions,” Yolanda said. “I ...”
She broke off as red icons flared into existence on the display. “Contacts! Multiple contacts! Right on top of us!”
“Engage at will,” Hoshiko snapped.
She sucked in her breath. A large fleet of enemy ships - warships and converted civilian starships - had appeared right in front of the human fleet, so close they’d practically slid into the forward elements. Two starships had died in colossal explosions, explosions so powerful that nothing short of interpenetration could possibly explain them. But that was impossible ... she swore under her breath as she realised she’d underestimated her foe. The alien ships had jumped through FTL, at such short range they’d practically carried out a Picard Manoeuvre, arriving before her FTL sensors had a chance to realise they were coming and sound the alarm. Their coordination was shitty - their ships were so badly scattered that a number had arrived well clear of the fleet - but it hardly mattered. They’d dropped out well inside her defence perimeter.
“They’re launching missiles in all directions,” Yolanda snapped. “And the civilian ships are moving into attack vectors ...”
“Ramming vectors,” Hoshiko corrected. A civilian ship couldn’t beat a warship, but if two starships collided at a reasonable fraction of the speed of light they’d both be destroyed. It wouldn’t matter if one of them was a civilian ship or not. “Concentrate all fire on ships intending to ram.”
She cursed the enemy commander, again. There was something oddly mechanical about the warships - how they moved, how they fired - that suggested, to her, that they were largely running on automatic. The Tokomak had been strongly opposed to developing AI systems, but their automatics could keep a ship flying and fighting with a skeleton crew until it was destroyed. And they’d already smashed her defence plans. They volley-fired missiles into the teeth of her point defences, aiming their courses to take them through the gaps and ram their targets. It was going to cost them, but she had a feeling it was going to cost her more. The Tokomak had their backs pressed firmly against the wall. Of course they’d pull out all the stops to keep her from hitting their homeworld.
“Nelson is gone, Admiral,” Yolanda said. “She was rammed by a liner. I think they must have loaded the ship with antimatter.”
“... Shit,” Hoshiko said. The blast hadn’t been that big - she guessed the liner hadn’t been crammed with antimatter - but it had been big enough to do real damage. If other ships carried more antimatter, the results were going to be explosive. “Order the forward elements to flatten, then bring up the rear. I want those ships taken out.”
She frowned as she watched the ballistic missiles start to go live. “And lock hammers on the enemy fortresses,” she ordered. “Firing pattern three ... fire!”
“Aye, Admiral.”
***
Neola allowed herself a tight smile as the human force wavered, wondering if the humans would have the sense to retreat and run for their lives. They hadn’t expected her to expend upwards of a thousand warships and nearly three thousand civilian craft, not in a tactic that would normally have horrified a civilised race like hers. They certainly hadn’t realised that she’d be willing to take the safety interlocks off her drives, even though they were the ones who’d first realised that the interlocks weren’t as necessary as everyone thought. They should have guessed ...
Alarms shrilled. “Your Majesty, they’ve launched cloaked missiles at us!”
Neola leaned forward, all good humour gone. The humans had surprises of their own ... she frowned as she saw hundreds - no, thousands - of missiles powering up, angling straight towards her fleet. ECM drones accompanied them, confusing or blinding her sensors. Behind them, she saw the tell-tale signs of hammers racing towards their targets. They looked to be targeted on the fortresses, rather than the fleet ...
“Deploy point defence, then antimatter countermeasures,” she snapped, knowing it was already too late. Thankfully, her crews had clear orders to fire on any close threat. “Angle the antimatter warheads towards the hammers.”
She watched, grimly, as the human missiles tore into her formations. She’d massed a vast array of point defence weapons, but they’d had very little warning before their targets flashed into range. She felt a moment of admiration for the human who’d launched the missiles, calculating that they’d remain undetected until they powered up their drives, then turned her attention to monitoring the human fleet. It had taken a battering - and a number of sensor ghosts had been revealed - but it was still intact. She wasn’t too surprised. The humans were tough.
“Your Majesty, they’re starting to close the range,” her aide reported. “They’re coming in behind the hammers.”
And depriving us of the chance to catch them by surprise again, Neola acknowledged. Her fleet was going to be pinned against the planet, unless she acted fast. She would have preferred to make her stand in unison with the planetary defences, but she didn’t dare risk a single missile hitting the surface. Or even one of the rings. They’re pushing us to the wall.
“Your Majesty, we’ve lost four fortresses,” her aide warned. “They were smashed ...”
Neola winced. If a hammer hit one of the rings, the devastation would be beyond imagination. She’d seen simulations that suggested even a glancing blow would do horrible things to the planet below. The shockwaves would travel down the orbital towers and literally shake the entire world. In hindsight, linking the rings to the orbital towers might not have been a good idea.
She shoved the thought aside. “Order the fleet to power up the gravity projectors, then advance,” she said. There was no point in letting the human fleet escape, if the battle went against it. “It’s time to put an end to this.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
This is war, Hoshiko thought, numbly.
She watched the enemy fleet slowly advancing away from the high orbitals, heading straight towards her fleet. It represented so much firepower that even her most fanatical ancestors would have turned tail and run, if they hadn’t blinded themselves to the fleet’s existence. The culture shock of knowing they weren’t alone in the universe, and that they were pretty much at the bottom as far as the Galactics were concerned, would have given them a collective heart attack. Hoshiko had little regard for that side of the family - reading between the lines, she thought her grandmother had moved away because of that sort of thinking - but she understood, now, how they must have felt. She had enough firepower and technological tricks to meet the alien fleet on near-equal terms and she was intimidated.
“Order the fleet to concentrate fire on the alien battleships, unless a civilian ship attempts to ram,” she said. It looked as if the civilian ships accompanying the fleet were converted freighters, with missile pods and point defence weapons bolted to their hulls, but it was impossible to be sure. “And continue to target hammers on their orbital fortresses.”
She sucked in her breath as the range steadily closed. The aliens had to see that, win or lose, their system was going to take one hell of a beating. She reached for her console to resend the surrender demand, then stopped herself. The Tokomak might take it as a sign of weakness. They knew she would lose the war if she lost the battle. They might assume she thought she was on the verge of defeat. She frowned as a hammer struck a fortress, the impact sending pieces of debris flying in all directions. Their entire civilian population was in terrible danger. Surely they knew they should come to terms.
“Admiral, their gunboats are pulling ahead,” Yolanda warned. “Tactical analysis suggests they’re carrying shipkillers.”
“Order the point defence to engage as soon as they enter range,” Hoshiko said. “Do we have targeting lock o
n the enemy command ships?”
“Unsure.” Yolanda looked up from her console. “They’re switching command frequencies every five minutes. We may not have their command ships identified.”
“But close enough for government work,” Hoshiko said, wryly. The Tokomak practiced top-down control. Their command and control networks had a clearly-defined hierarchy, with one ship in command of an entire squadron. The human networks were far more flexible. “Lock missiles on them, fire when we enter range.”
“Aye, Admiral,” Yolanda said. “Engagement range in ten seconds ...”
Hoshiko silently counted down the seconds until her flagship unleashed her first spread of missiles. It was a shame they’d already expended the external racks - she’d had the missile pods specially designed to launch missiles on ballistic trajectories - but even so, the salvo from her entire fleet was formidable. There were so many missiles that even Admiral Webster’s latest control networks were overwhelmed. The Tokomak fired a second later, filling space with a cloud of missiles. She couldn’t help wondering just how many human missiles were going to crash into their opposite numbers as the two clouds converged.
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