Seventy-two percent of both militaries’ reconnaissance craft were equipped with the cloaking technology, as well as a few additional tricks that had been dreamed up.
The Prevos had spent much of the intervening time combining the Alliance and Federation forces into a cohesive whole, then rearranging them into new groupings based on role and purpose. Miriam had twitched at each shuffling of ships and alteration of formations, but she couldn’t argue with the results: after twelve or so hours they had legitimately constructed a single United Fleet.
Alliance and Federation ships not only not shooting at one another, but working together side-by-side as one force….
She didn’t know what that would mean for the world should they wake up tomorrow victorious, but she would worry about it on said morrow. This was also when she would worry about her daughter, about what she may be and become and what this too may mean for the world but mostly for Alexis. The morrow.
There was so much more which, given a little time, she could do to ensure they were adequately prepared for this battle.
But there was no more time.
She directed her attention to the Seneca tactical map. As if they had been awaiting only her notice, a legion of red dots exploded on the screen. The aliens had arrived.
Her focus shifted to the holo positioned conveniently at her eye level. “Admiral Rychen, you are a go.”
44
KRYSK
SENECAN FEDERATION COLONY
* * *
THE SIYANE’S WIDTH MEASURED ALMOST thirty percent the length of an Alliance frigate. The narrow, tapered nose tore into the frigate’s hull, bringing the rest of its width ripping through the thick walls along with it by sheer speed, which was so fast they were out the far side in a blink and a roar of shearing metal.
Caleb had only an instant to align their heading before they were crashing into the next frigate. He felt the drag brought on by the resistance of meter-thick reinforced metal and had an extra breath to glimpse the blurred rush of interior on the other side of the viewport and a wall of metal, then gleaming sky.
His nanobot-enhanced combat senses were in full effect now. Time slowed to a tick of each microsecond as they closed in on the cruiser. Though less than fifteen seconds had passed since his arguably kamikaze run had begun, the Akagi was already turning toward him, denying him the broadside and creating a diagonal trajectory for impact. Three times larger than the frigates, tearing a thirty-meter-wide hole into the cruiser might not be sufficient to bring it down.
He caught a flash of fire and metal in the rearcam as the frigate behind them broke into two jagged pieces—then metal struck metal once more.
Entering all but dead-on beneath the bridge, the Siyane careened through the innards of the cruiser, slowing as it ripped apart internal bulkheads and wall after wall. They had decelerated enough for him to perceive bodies bouncing off the nose, causing a brief twinge of regret in his chest. Some of those people didn’t want to be here; some wouldn’t have supported O’Connell’s actions. But in more than a week they hadn’t killed their general or relieved him of command, so they bore a portion of the blame for the man’s continued carnage.
The Siyane shuddered and cavorted as it continued to meet greater resistance. He no longer had any control over either their trajectory or speed.
There was a loud crunch above the constant roar of wrenching metal. He dared not ponder if it originated from the Siyane or the Akagi.
The nose lurched downward sixty degrees, and with a violent jolt they lurched to a stop.
“Jesus, Caleb. Okay…our ship is now inside a ship filled with renegade Alliance soldiers. What next?”
He had unstrapped from the pilot’s chair and was hurrying into the cabin. “Now we go kill this fucker.”
He lugged the bag out of the storage cabinet and tossed a Daemon to Noah—they had donned the new shield generators earlier—then fished out a couple of blades as well. The TSG was too bulky to haul around in the confined quarters they were going to be facing, and he regrettably decided to leave it behind.
As they strapped the weapons on Noah threw a glance his way. “I don’t actually make a habit of engaging in close combat, you know. Or any combat really, other than the occasional drunken fistfight.”
“But you know how to shoot, right?”
“Sure. Press the trigger while aiming in the direction of something you want to hit.”
“Um…that about covers it.”
“Got it then.” Noah straightened up, Daemon in hand, and cracked his neck.
Caleb moved to the hatch, but paused prior to activating it. “The bridge will be to our left, and up at some point. We’ll move fast and to the extent possible quietly. I’d prefer not to kill anyone other than O’Connell unless I have to, but it’s safe to assume the people on this ship will treat us as hostiles. So if it’s you or them, don’t hesitate. And stay with me.”
Noah nodded understanding, and Caleb opened the hatch. Shouts filled the air, frenzied but retaining the orderliness of trained military personnel. Gun at the ready, he leapt out of the opening rather than extend the ramp, slapped the panel to seal the hatch as soon as Noah was out and hastened along the Siyane’s hull to the left. He noted in the back of his mind that while dark scoring marred the hull in multiple places, it appeared undented and fully intact. Damn. Impressive.
He stepped over a body as he reached the rear of the ship, acknowledged the new twinge of regret and kept moving. Photal fibers hung in shredded drapes from the ceiling and lay strewn across the floor alongside rectangular modules. It seemed they had crashed into an engineering hub.
Laser fire streaked centimeters above their heads from behind as they came to a doorway. They ducked and sprinted through the opening into a tight hallway full of ninety-degree angles. He remained close to the walls, checking each corner as they progressed forward.
The next hall contained a burly soldier barreling toward them. Caleb crouched low on the balls of his feet. As the man rounded the corner he pounced to tackle him at the knees.
The soldier crashed to the floor but was raising his gun. Caleb slammed his wrist into the gun arm to send the gun flying and punched the soldier under the chin. “Knife him in the calf—shove the tip straight in or it won’t penetrate his shield.”
“Right.” Noah’s voice was clipped, but solid. Good, because however intense or disturbing this might be for someone who wasn’t him, there was no time to shore up faltering courage.
The soldier recovered from the punch enough to take a haphazard swing at him, but Caleb was already leaping up. He knew Noah’s blade had connected when the guy howled in pain.
“Let’s go.”
As they hit the next turn the sizzle of Noah’s shield filled the air with the pungent odor of ions. “Son of a—!”
He shoved Noah back around the corner and leaned out firing. A soldier advanced swiftly down the corridor as he returned fire. There wasn’t the space to deplete the man’s shield. Caleb flicked the toggle on his blade, angled his arm and waited.
The instant before the man arrived at the corner he spun out and thrust the blade forward in an overhand stabbing motion. The man’s eyes bulged as the gun fell from his hand; the blade had penetrated the shield and blade-resistant material of his uniform to sink six centimeters into the man’s chest. Grabbing ineffectually at Caleb as he withdrew the blade, the man collapsed to the floor, blood pumping out of the hole in his chest.
Caleb found time for a glance at the body and a murmured, “I’m sorry.”
Then he was rushing down the hallway, trusting Noah to follow. Doors now lined both walls, but he sensed they were moving in the correct direction.
Thirty meters later the hallway split into opposite paths at a door. A peek inside revealed the armory and several soldiers arming themselves. He took the left split.
For such a sizeable ship the interior was surprisingly cramped, a veritable maze of rooms connected by narrow passages. There was
no sense of size or scope. He didn’t know how people lived in such confining environs for months at a stretch. The Siyane was a fraction of the cruiser’s size, but its open design meant it felt spacious by comparison.
The sound of a door opening behind him sent him spinning. Before he could react further, Noah had cold-cocked the soldier emerging from the door across the jaw with enough force to send the man sprawling to the floor with a sharp crack.
“Hell of a right hook you’ve got there.”
Noah shrugged as they resumed moving forward. “Like I said, drunken fistfights.”
The corridor emptied out into a rectangular room, still narrow but longer than the others they’d seen. The whoosh of a lift descending came from the alcove recessed into the center of the far wall. He took up a position on the wall beside the niche and indicated for Noah to do the same on the opposite side.
When the lift settled to the floor he leveled his Daemon and fired at the soldier who stepped out.
Her shield flared as she spun and struck Noah in the throat with the rigid edge of her hand then whirled back to Caleb, gun pointed at his chest. “Don’t shoot me again, and I won’t kill you.”
45
SPACE, NORTH-CENTRAL QUADRANT
SENECA STELLAR SYSTEM
* * *
ALEX: NI KHUYA SEBE, NAM POLNYI PIZDETS….
Morgan: Má tón Día, gamiseme tora….
Devon: Ladies, speak English for us rubes—holy fucking shit!
Alex checked Admiral Rychen’s reaction. He swallowed once, then he turned from the substantial viewports to issue orders while studying his tactical screens. The level of discipline required to perform such an action must have been immense, and definitely more than she possessed.
No, all she could do was gape out the viewports in awe, in horror, but mostly in sheer amazement.
Two hundred six Metigen superdreadnoughts within scanner range. Estimated 1.3 million swarmers detaching from their host vessels. Ten fewer superdreadnoughts than we predicted—this is good news, yes?
Um…right, Valkyrie. Good news.
Is something wrong, Alex?
You’re seeing this, aren’t you?
Yes. It looks approximately like what I expected 206 superdreadnoughts and upwards of one million swarmers in a three megameter vicinity would look like. Were you expecting a different scene?
She chuckled to herself and shook her head to snap out of the trance.
Nope. Time to go to work.
She moved over to the 4x6 meter transparent screen to the left of the overlook. It had been added to the bridge of the Churchill specifically for her use, so she should probably do so.
A touch of her hand and it lit up in a labyrinthine collection of data. All the data Rychen received fed into the screen in two columns on the left. A variety of data streamed from Devon/Annie to columns on the right. But most of the information displayed came directly from her head—or rather Valkyrie’s head. The middle was occupied by an overlay of the locations of all ships on the field, updated every 0.8 seconds.
She let Rychen handle the opening volleys of the engagement while she oriented herself to the stark and fairly intimidating reality of what would be the largest single battle in human history.
The Federation forces were waiting for the Metigens; it was anticipated, and they could hardly leave the planet undefended in any event. They took up defensive positions in high orbit above the planet to prevent the Metigens from emerging behind them. When the alien armada materialized out of superluminal ten megameters away, the Federation fleet quickly closed the distance to meet them, leaving several formations in a staggered pattern covering the region between the planet and the initial clash.
The Alliance forces on the other hand had taken cover on the far side of Seneca’s sun. They held little illusion that the aliens didn’t know they were coming. Secrecy had of necessity been abandoned in the rush to get here, though they doubtless would have known regardless. But it didn’t mean they knew precisely where or when.
As soon as the enemy appeared the entire Alliance contingent executed a pinpoint superluminal traversal from their location beyond the sun to positions behind and on both flanks of the Metigen fleet. Three times larger—if admittedly not three times stronger—than the Federation contingent, the result was that upon arriving to begin their assault on Seneca, the Metigen ships found themselves boxed in and surrounded on all sides by thousands upon thousands of human warships.
As the battle was joined, the distinctions between Alliance and Federation ships vanished excepting their identification codes, and they melded into the force she and the others had shaped over the course of the previous day.
The United Fleet opened fire immediately upon coming into range, as did their opponent. Space—all the space, in every direction—shattered into spectacular brightness in an avalanche of laser fire, impulse engine iridescence and the sparking collisions of energy against metal.
Alex took a deep breath and dove in.
“Recommend moving EA#102 S 65°, 12° z E into Quadrant Eight. Three SDs there turned to engage the lower rear line and aren’t watching their tail.”
—two SDs accelerating on heading N 87°, 47° z, extrapolate EAS Roosevelt is target—
“The Roosevelt’s going to need major backup in eight seconds, SF#217 is closest, send them in beneath.” She was nominally speaking to Rychen, though she wasn’t sure how long it would last. There was nothing stopping her from directing the ships herself.
EA Recon Unit #3 is in position—
“Have Recon #3 deposit their payload and bug out.”
—‘bug out’? Where did that come from?
Valkyrie and Rychen shared the information at the same time. “Recon #3 is clear. Detonating in 3…2…1…mark.”
From the center of the Metigen armada a ball of obsidian flame erupted with such ferocity the twelve SDs in close proximity were hurled along expanding trajectories as they cracked apart, many crashing into their brethren to multiply the destruction. The four SDs that had been located near the core of the blasts were effectively vaporized.
She caught Rychen smirking slyly out of the corner of her eye. “I’d call that a success.”
The cloaking technology she’d brought back from Portal Prime and utilized on the Siyane had proved difficult to implement across the United Fleet in the short time they had, for several reasons. The power required to operate the shield increased multiplicatively with the radius it covered, and military vessels’ power distribution was rationed to an extent she had found shocking. Also, using their current technology they were unable to get the performance needed out of it at the high speeds utilized in combat.
Third and perhaps most importantly, in a crowded and chaotic arena if any measurable percentage of ships were stealthed, they were highly likely to start colliding with the good guys. Beacons inside the cloaked ships broadcast their movements to the battlefield commanders, but out there amid the bedlam there was no practical way for the other ships to keep track of multiple stealthed vessels.
That didn’t mean the technology was of no use—quite the contrary in fact. Seconds earlier two reconnaissance craft equipped with the cloaking shield had snuck into the heart of the Metigen forces while they still retained a cohesive grouping. There they’d deployed sixteen experimental negative energy bombs.
This was the reason for the unusual obsidian color of the combustion, which would have been essentially invisible if not for the contrasting brilliance of the surrounding space. Once the recon craft had ‘bugged out’ the bombs were detonated, and with impressive results.
The cloaking shield was being used tactically in other ways as well. For instance….
“Activating signal buoys.”
They had made progress on the nature of the aliens’ signal frequencies during the last twelve hours far above and beyond what Mia and Meno had puzzled out prior to the Messium battle. Now thirty tiny buoys placed in a ring surrounding the area b
egan broadcasting a wave pattern designed for one purpose: to bollocks up the aliens’ internal communications. They couldn’t engineer a complete block on the comms—again, their technology simply didn’t match that of the aliens—but the signal should at the very least create drops, garbling and general fuzziness.
Devon: Is it working?
Her mind filled with an image of the EM readings detected across 0.1 AU; it resembled a child’s angry scribbling replicated and layered messily atop one another.
Mia: From a technical perspective, it’s working. Hopefully we’ll be able to see its effects soon.
An explosion off the port bow shook the dreadnought. EAS Lexington hit, 380 on board, rescue shuttles en route from EAS Annapolis. There wouldn’t be many survivors, however. She forced her heart rate down.
Alex: Morgan, you’re up.
Major Dave Bowman squinted at the viewport overlay, trying to select a single swarmer for his flight to target amongst the multitude clogging the area. The combat needed to spread out and quickly, else they were going to be crashing into each other as much as into the enemy.
Major Bowman: Flight, vector is S 22°, 37° z W. Let’s try to peel a few out of the crowd—
Without warning his fighter jerked downward into a vertical dive. The restraints held him tight against the seat as his hands instinctively fought to ease the angle—but he no longer controlled the ship.
They had warned him this might happen when they installed the additional hardware for the new arcalaser. Still, he was not amused.
His brain and his internal organs lurched when the ship strafed 40° to starboard and opened fire on a swarmer. He vaguely noticed the other members of his flight had also opened fire from positions in a 60° arc and 15° plane. Freed of the need to fire from a direct vantage to the oculus, they were now swarming the swarmer. Funny.
The core of the alien vessel crumbled with astounding speed. Then his ship was spinning around, rocketing upward and firing on another. This one was charging them, and his flight had closed in so much he could sense them in his peripheral vision.
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