Time Strike

by Doug Dandridge

  What the hell did they expect me to do? he thought as he started into the bush. All those people they killed on Jewel. My wife. Devera, the love of his life, had been injured when the Cacas attacked Capitulum, the largest city of the Planet Jewel and the capital of the Empire. He wanted to punish the Cacas, and not by leading other soldiers to do the fighting. He wanted to kill the bastards himself. With the warheads, from rifle range, with his hands if necessary.

  Something moved to his right, rustling the foliage. His rifle was up in a moment, tracking in on the sound. He relaxed when the alien came into sight, a spider form with ten limbs and a sextet of eyes on its head. It wasn’t really a spider. It had an endoskeleton and lungs much like his own. The straps and pouches across its body showed that it was at least associated with intelligent creatures, while the rifle, configured for its physiology, showed that it was a tool user itself.

  It spoke in a screeching sound, translated from the box held in place by straps near the junction of head and body. “Welcome, Colonel.”

  “Thank you. Are the troops ready?”

  “As you asked. And the squad of your men are also ready.”

  “They don’t know I am coming?”

  “As per your instructions,” said the creature, as another, different sentient being stepped up beside him. This one looked like some kind of hexapodal marsupial, also carrying a weapon that had been configured to its own peculiar physiology.

  Those guys will be surprised to see me, he thought with a smile. The twelve Rangers would lead a group of six hundred guerillas out here in the bush, sniping at the Cacas in hit and run raids. They had weapons, they had ammo, and they had a half dozen caches of more weapons and ammo for the long fight.

  He had given up command of a regiment of troops, to assume command of a squad of his own and a battalion of irregulars. And he was looking forward to it like nothing since he had become an officer.

  * * *

  “Enemy force heading straight into the ambush, sir,” came the call of a com officer sitting several hundred light years from his recipient.

  “How many do you have?” asked Grand Fleet Admiral Duke Taelis Mgonda. His flagship was sitting outside a rally system, one with a gathering of logistics ships refilling the missile magazines and antimatter stores of ships that had already expended some in combat. His own ship was taking on antimatter, crew pulling containment vessels from the tanker and maneuvering them into the chambers that fed the engines. Thick hatches, heavier that the armor they sealed to, were open. In an emergency those hatches could be blown off the ship, the containment vessel rocketed out at a thousand gravities by its built-in grabber units. It didn’t always save the ship, but it had in over a thousand occurrences, enough to guarantee that the system would continue to be in use until something better came along.

  “We’re counting two hundred and fifty-one moving through hyper VII, sir. Fifty-four battleships, sixty-four cruisers, the rest scouts.”

  The Cacas were operating a little differently on this front that they were in the Republic. They had, at first, moved in nine large formation, the same as on the other front. But after weeks of hit and run attacks on their force, and no large stand up battles, they had broken those formations up. There were still nine major groups, one in each flank larger than the others. But they were also cutting lose smaller formations, about two hundred ships each, letting them cover more systems while still presenting enough power to fight off the hit and run tactics the humans seemed determined to continue.

  That’s the only way we can slow them down and keep hurting them, thought Mgonda. He didn’t have enough ships for a stand-up fight, not even against the smallest of their larger formations, the kind of battle that Lenkowski would be fighting. One fight like that would see his force destroyed. All he could do was hurt them, bleed them, take out some ships here and there while his ground forces fortified planets the Fenri would want back, and making the Cacas and their allies fight for them as well.

  “Preparing to fire,” called out the com officer.

  Mgonda watched the plot that was being transmitted over the wormhole. The marker of the transmitting ship was there, sitting in normal space, seen by him, not by the enemy. And the icons of the enemy ships were heading toward them, moving at point nine light in the upper dimension. The transmitting ship was a ways back, for good reason.

  “Firing.”

  A thousand missiles appeared on the plot, fired in normal space, then jumping up to VII. They were only four light seconds away from the enemy in hyper VII when they appeared, with a closing speed near light. The enemy had little time to react. They still took out over half the incoming missiles with lasers and close in weapons. And one hundred and thirty-seven of their ships flashed into plasma and fell out of hyper.

  At the same moment the missiles were launched the two wormhole capable hyper VII battle cruisers of the force jumped up to the same dimension as the enemy and released streams of preaccelerated missiles. The weapons engaged their hyperfields an instant after leaving the wormholes and flew toward the enemy. Twelve seconds after launch the missiles hit and the battle cruisers dropped back into normal space.

  Thirty-one battleships, eighteen cruisers and fifty scouts continued on. They were moving too fast to drop into normal space. It would be many hours before they were down to translation speed. Even missiles they launched would have to decelerate down, and by that time the human force would be gone.

  A moment later the visage of the rear admiral in charge of the human task group appeared on the holo, a smile stretching her face.

  “Good job, Admiral,” said Mgonda, his own smile matching hers. Another hundred plus enemy ships had been removed from their order of battle, at no loss to his own. It wasn’t often these days that he got to smile.

  * * *

  “Mgonda has hurt the enemy, your Majesty,” said McCullom over the com, a smile on her face. “His ambushes have caught them off guard, and they have slowed their advance.”

  “Will that do them any good?” asked Sean, rubbing his eyes.

  “Probably not. They’ll still be going too fast to drop back into normal space, and that space is just too vast for them to scout it sufficiently.”

  “I’ll still bet the Duke will be happy to get enough ships for a stand up fight,” laughed Sean. That wouldn’t be happening anytime soon.

  “Most of the ground troops are in place and setting up the resistance,” continued Sondra. “Baggett’s corps got caught in space before they could deploy, and they lost two transports, but the rest made it down.”

  Sean stared at the holo for a moment. He had been second guessing the decision to deploy Imperial Army troops and special ops since he had proposed it. It was a risk, and he doubted many of those troopers would make it back. But they were assets, to be used as needed, and their sacrifice might slow down the Cacas, who were expecting easy conquest of systems as they passed. But Baggett was known to him. The general had been with him when he took the throne.

  “Baggett made it, sir. He has set up a command post on the planet and is expecting to contest the Caca landing when they get there.”

  “Thank God,” blurted Sean. That didn’t mean that the general would make it back, though his chances were slightly better than his front-line troops. Unless the man decided to lead a close in attack himself, something he wouldn’t put past the soldier, who was really much too young for his rank.

  “We also have news about Colonel Walborski,” said the woman, now frowning. “I wanted Mishori to tell you, but he said since I was briefing you anyway…”

  “Did something happen to Cornelius?” asked Sean, a sinking feeling in his stomach. Walborski was acknowledged to be the greatest combat soldier of his generation, and while the loss of one man would have little effect on the army, it would be bad for morale for the Ranger to be lost.

  “He stayed behind, your Majesty. In a clear violation of his orders.”

  Sean sighed with relief. Yes, he wanted
the man back. But he could also understand that the Ranger wanted to fight, and he was another who might have been advanced too fast. He would take care of Cornelius if he came back, and he would bet the man would make it. Something that the colonel wouldn’t like, but which wouldn’t reduce him in rank or embarrass the army.

  “Lenkowski should be going into action within the hour, your Majesty.”

  “Send the feed to my office.” He wouldn’t interfere with the admiral’s decisions, but he would watch closely. As long as the technology existed for him to watch the battle in real time, he would be a fool not to use it. “And meet with me in the Hexagon five hours from now. We need to talk about future deployments.”

  The admiral nodded and the com faded, leaving Sean alone with his thoughts. Over a thousand ships that we would have now if not for the Caca strike on the home system, he thought. Those ships would help, especially with the fleet already stretched to the limit. Enough? Maybe not, but he would prefer having those ships than not. The time strike was looking better and better all the time.

  Chapter Eight

  Time abides long enough for those who make use of it. Leonardo da Vinci

  REPUBLIC SPACE. MAY 20TH, 1003.

  “Another empty system,” cursed the Ca’cadasan high admiral, pacing the bridge of his flagship.

  He had led a force of over four thousand ships to this system, which intelligence had said was a major military and industrial base of this nation. He had already been to two other systems on the way in, decelerating down to jump speed and entering the gravity well for nothing. Just wasted time as they clawed their way out and accelerated back in hyper.

  “When will these damned humans fight?”

  “We are picking up signals from inside the system, my Lord,” said the tactical officer. “Two hundred and thirteen ships accelerating away, toward their primary. Mixed military and civilian craft. They appear to be making a break for the hyper barrier.”

  And we can catch them if they have commercial craft slowing them down, he thought. “Order task group five to make a run around the system to cut them off. The rest of the fleet will move in and give chase.”

  “Do we need to take the entire fleet in, my Lord?” asked his chief of staff.

  “These humans are tricky, and they may be laying a trap for us by the habitable planet. I would have my entire force there to meet them.” And surely they can’t have gathered enough of a force here to achieve a victory, he thought. It was more than likely they would have enough ships to hurt him, possibly destroying more than they lost. But if he had his entire fleet, any attempt at an ambush would lead to their destruction.

  “Move the fleet into the system,” the high admiral ordered after a moment’s more thought.

  * * *

  “The last ships are coming through, Admiral.”

  Grand Fleet Admiral Gabriel Len Lenkowski nodded as he sat back in his command chair on the flag bridge of the super heavy battleship Anastacia Romanov, his preferred flagship. It had been one of the first ships through the wormhole gate, and had then been mated to one of wormholes that had come to this point in hyper. He wished to use this particular ship, named after the late empress and his former lover, for the entire battle, though he realized that might not be possible.

  Zoomed in on the main viewer, several hundred thousand kilometers away, were a trio of wormhole gates. They had been moved here by warships, then inflated using the transited frame method to become squares two kilometers on a side. Ships had been exiting all of the gates for the past twenty-three hours, giving him a fleet of over eight thousand ships. He could wish for more wormholes, since he only had thirty-one for use as weapons in the coming battle. Still, he had over two thousand capital ships, seventeen wings of inertialess fighters, and even three wings of the new warp fighters. From what he understood the warp fighters had entered service, successfully, over on the Fenri front just days before. He was sure that the Cacas here would not be ready for them. At least that was what he was hoping.

  “What is the report from in the system?” he asked his chief of staff.

  “The Crakista commander says that the enemy fleet is coming into the system in force, just as you predicted. Estimated four hours until they are deep enough for us to move.”

  That was a big part of the plan. Once the Cacas had boosted into the system for four hours at their maximum acceleration, they would not be able to escape the system before his fleet could engage them. The one worry was that they might fire on the decoy ships before he could engage, in which case they would probably overwhelm those vessels, and force the crews to abandon. He hoped that didn’t happen, but it was a small price to pay for taking out the larger Caca force. Especially if he didn’t lose any decoy ship crews in the process.

  And he had some new weapons to show the Cacas. One had been used before, but none of those Cacas had seen the finished weapon, and none had survived the battle, so it should come as a surprise to these. Hopefully one they really wouldn’t like.

  Len took one last look at the tactical holo. The ships were moving, putting out gravitons, and could be tracked from the range of a half light hour. They were moving too slowly to be putting out enough for tracking beyond that point. As he watched, the ships moved into their formations, far enough away so that when they jumped into V they would still be sufficient safe distance from each other. They formed into four groups, three battle formations and the carrier force to the rear. The center most force was made up of Imperial ships, and was the largest at over four thousand. The one to port was Crakista, comprising over two thousand ships, while the starboard group, just under two thousand, was Republic. All were fresh and ready to enter battle, morale good. But this was just the first of many battles these ships and crews would go through in the next couple of weeks, and he wondered how their morale would be after half of them were gone.

  I may not have to worry about that myself, thought Len, pulling on his pipe. After all, there was no guarantee he or his flagship would make it through the gauntlet he was planning on putting them through. It might be another admiral leading the fleet by that time, since the Romanov was one of his heavier combat units, and was sure to be in the thick of things.

  * * *

  The Crakista commander of the decoy force didn’t really feel comfortable with his mission. It was logical that they would be used to pull the enemy into normal space, where some of the Imperial weapons had to be to function. It was also logical that they would abandon their ships before the enemy missiles struck them. But he didn’t like the idea of leaving behind perfectly functional, if not the most modern, warships. It offended his sensibilities, and those of his ordinarily frugal species.

  The specially prepared shuttles should do the job. They were fast and stealthy, and should get the truncated crews of the ships to safety before the missile storm reached them. Still, abandoning working ships during combat was something that did not sit comfortably with the officer. Looking around the bridge at the other members of his crew, mostly fellow Crakista, with a few humans among them, and one Klassekian, he had to think that it was a good idea to get them out of the target zone. He would have stayed himself, just to make sure that everything went as planned and the deception worked up to the last moment, but he had orders to evacuate, and Crakista officers didn’t disobey orders, unless they were the unlawful variety.

  “Fleet is jumping, sir,” said one of the bridge crew, manning a com board. “ETA to normal space, three hours.”

  “Best time for enemy fleet to get out of the system?” he asked, already very sure of the answer, but wanting to run the figures past his tactical people.

  “It will take them over two hours to slow to a stop and start accelerating out, which should take another five hours. If they try to accelerate away, they can get out on another vector in nine point five hours.”

  And missiles and fighters will reach them well before they can get away, thought the force commander. He watched the tactical plot as it li
t up with eight thousand objects jumping into hyper V. The Cacas would see this too, and it was up to his people to make sure Admiral Lenkowski knew what they were doing.

  * * *

  “We’re picking up a great number of ships jumping into hyper V from normal space,” called out the sensor officer.

  “How many? On what heading?”

  “It will take a minute to get a fix on the number and heading, my Lord.”

  The high admiral growled, but kept his words to himself. Analyzing the data coming across the sensors would take the time it took. The data was still being gathered, and whatever it was, it wouldn’t be attacking them for quite some time.

  “Preliminary estimate, eight thousand vessels, my Lord. Twenty-one hundred capital ships, the rest a mix of their cruisers and escorts.”

  That gave him a number, twice his own strength, though not quite double his capital ships. But that didn’t give him the whole picture. He had no way of telling how many of their wormholes they carried, how many of their inertialess fighters. That last thought brought a predatory grin to his face. They had a surprise for the humans as well. He only had three wormholes with his force, all that could be spared from the limited quantity his people had been able to produce. But he had something else, over a thousand of them.

  “Accelerating into the system through hyper V. Best estimate is that they will stair step in, arrival in normal space in three hours. They will be at point three light at that time, coasting into the system.”

  The admiral sat back in his chair, taking a moment to think. He would be engaged in a battle no matter what in just about three hours. The enemy would fire on him, and he would fire back. That was a given. How he would maneuver, how they would respond, that would settle the issue.

  “What is our best path out of the system that will avoid close contact?”

  The tactical officer stared at the admiral for a moment, and he knew what the male was thinking. In the past, Ca’cadasan forces would always engage, moving into close combat. That was the arrogance of his people, and it had hurt them. He would maneuver as if there was more out there, ships he had yet to be shown. Then he could still escape. And he could still bring them under missile fire while he maneuvered, while he was unleashing his secret weapon on them.