The Thunder of War (Thunder in the Heavens)

by Dietmar Wehr

  “Like hell he will!” LeClair’s response was immediate and emphatic. “Is everyone on the line yet?” LeClair’s Comm. Officer’s answer was clearly not what the Co-Fleet Commander wanted to hear. “Well then get them on NOW God dammit!”

  As they waited, Harrow suddenly realized what was bothering her about this latest message. “How can the Tyrell be targeting the carriers if they’re beyond our detection range?” Even as she had the thought, it dawned on her that she had spoken out loud without meaning to.

  “That’s a damned good question, Cate,” said LeClair. Another pause was followed by, “Okay, we’re all on line now. Suku’s carriers are taking inaccurate KE fire from somewhere beyond their detection range. That seems to mean that the Tyrell know roughly were his carriers are but haven’t been able to get precise fixes yet. How they’re managing that I don’t know, but what I do know is that I’m not releasing my squadrons to Suku’s tactical command. T.O.? I want those co-ordinates displayed on the main and shared with all three ship Bridges and SL corvettes. I also want to see where that picket corvette was that stopped transmitting. Let’s see if we can figure out where the enemy might be.”

  Harrow checked her main display just as it reformed a tactical map showing Korel-C, the position of Suku’s carriers, the silenced corvette’s position and the requested rendezvous location. As she watched, the map rotated to give her an idea of the relative positions of everything in three dimensions. LeClair began speaking again.

  “I’m going to assume that the destroyed picket ship was in between the attacking force and Korel-C. Plot the estimated position where the enemy fleet would be able to detect that corvette that corresponds to that assumption.” A red circle appeared a short distance from the picket corvette’s position. “How far is that circle from Suku’s carriers?”

  The displayed sidebar showed the answer, and Harrow was shocked by it. A Tyrell ship or sensor drone was picking up the carriers from almost 15 light-seconds away. That was one and a half times the range that the standard system could achieve and would explain the inaccurate KE fire. Luckily, all three of Suku’s carriers had been repaired enough to be able to maneuver and evade. Unfortunately, only two of them now had the ability to jump through hyper-space. One carrier would have to stay and fight it out no matter what, and from the little Harrow knew of the culture that Suku came from, he would insist that the other two carriers stay and fight no matter what too. A brave thing to do, but sometimes the smart thing to do was to cut your losses and withdraw. LeClair interrupted any further thoughts she might have had.

  “What would you do here, Cate, if it were up to you?” he asked. There wasn’t time for a well-thought out answer. Suku was undoubtedly waiting for a reply from LeClair, and he was waiting for hers.

  “That rendezvous point is no good, Admiral. It’s off to one side. I’d send one, no two squadrons to a position that was thirty light-seconds behind that circle with orders to micro jump toward it in increments of five light-seconds at a time, and do it as quickly as possible. We have to assume that the enemy fleet will detect them first, but if they can jump fast enough, they might be able to pinpoint the enemy’s position and then surge forward before the enemy can adjust the range on their counter-fire.”

  “I can see some potential flaws with it, but I can’t think of a better plan, so that’s what we’ll do. Eagleton’s squadron is still down one corvette, so the Reapers and the Hellhounds will carry out that mission under Commander Saville’s leadership. Any questions, Commander?” asked LeClair.

  “No questions, Admiral.” Saville hadn’t hesitated. Harrow would have had at least a couple of questions if the mission had been given to her, but she stayed silent. She had made her contribution, and now it was up to LeClair and Saville.

  Alliance Mobile Command Ship, eight days later:

  Mirakova stepped into the conference bay reserved for humans and moved over to the windows. The view never failed to impress her. All hundred of the conference bays overlooked a holo-display that was big enough to hold an assault shuttle. At 25 meters high, and almost as wide, it could project a holographic image of a section of the galaxy big enough that individual stars could be seen and identified. Right now, the star map was showing a sphere of angry red dots representing the best estimate of the extent of the Tyrell Empire, plus a volume with no discernable shape containing the blue stars of the home worlds of the Alliance races. The Tyrell sphere dominated the image. The Alliance now had 13 full members and another 8 associate members, and visually at least, that still seemed an inadequate force to defeat the Tyrell.

  Mirakova was nervous about the upcoming session, which was only moments away. The results of the Korel liberation mission had just been disseminated to the rest of the Alliance, and she knew they were not going to be happy about it. The mission as a whole had failed. The Korel system was once again in Tyrell hands. In terms of ship losses, a case could be made that the mission was an Alliance victory since a minimum of seven Tyrell super-ships had been destroyed for the loss of three alien carriers and 46 corvettes, but Mirakova didn’t think of it as a victory. In addition to the lost ships, there were their crews, plus Admiral Suku, Commander Saville and Commander Montoya. Suku died when the attacking Tyrell fleet jumped into what could only be described as knife-fighting range and smashed all three carriers into drifting wrecks with their KE projectiles, while ramming what few corvettes Suku had left over after the previous battle. And when Saville realized that sneaking up on the Tyrell fleet from the rear was no longer possible and that the large enemy fleet could detect his two squadrons much further away than expected, he had done the only thing possible and jumped his squadrons into firing range of the carriers and ordered his corvettes to destroy what was left of the carriers to prevent their capture.

  Poor Saville. His assumption that the Tyrell hadn’t had time to deploy sensor drones had proven correct, but his conclusion that his birds were safe as long as they stayed at or beyond the 1.4 light-second firing range was wrong. Only 10 of his 24 corvettes had survived that last ditch battle to deny the carriers to the enemy. The fact that the carriers were already crippled due to Tyrell fire would undoubtedly be ignored by the other Alliance members, particularly the three races that had fielded those carriers. What they would concentrate on was the fact that those carriers, and whatever crew were still alive, were destroyed by humans who then abandoned the star system. But Mirakova was of the opinion that LeClair had done the right thing. With only his three carriers left, and more importantly only 21 out of his original 36 corvettes left, there was no sense in staying there and trying to re-take the system from the Tyrell. He would have needed to deploy all of his remaining corvettes to have any chance at all of defeating the Tyrell fleet, with no guarantee of success, and that deployment would have meant violating standard orders not to leave his carriers totally undefended.

  At least there was enough left of the EAF command structure that the loss of two squadron leaders could be overcome. Eagleton would now become the most senior of the human squadron leaders in terms of experience and seniority, while Cate Harrow could be promoted either temporarily or permanently to Vice-Admiral and take over a task force if the need arose. LeClair seemed competent enough, but he didn’t inspire the same level of confidence in her that Cate Harrow did. Mirakova considered it vital that the EAF get Cate back into the TFL or FC position as soon as possible. She checked the time. The session would start as soon as all the Alliance representatives were ready. The Human Representative wasn’t there yet either. Mirakova knew that he was conducting unofficial one-on-one negotiations with the more influential reps. As he had tried to explain to her, the really important decisions were always made prior to the official sessions, which then rubberstamped those decisions. She hoped he was right and that he could prevent the Alliance Council from doing anything drastic. Everybody needed time to replace losses and build up larger forces, and in the case of the EAF, Eagleton’s recommendations on developing the stinger
concept would just add another layer of complexity to the whole strategic plan. In the meantime, the Tyrell Empire would continue to grow.

  Her train of thought was interrupted by the arrival of Human Representative Foxworthy. He nodded to her but did not speak. As he stepped up to the podium, he activated a control to signal the rest of the Council that the humans were ready. The responsibility for chairing this session now belonged to the Metrone Representative. Each session was chaired by a different race.

  “We’re ready to start,” said Foxworthy. “Please remember to keep your voice down if you need to say something to me. These mikes are quite sensitive and we don’t want everyone hearing our private conversations, right?” Mirakova nodded.

  “This session will now commence.” An electronic voice conveyed the translated message. “Are there any motions before we start on the agenda?”

  There was one, and it wiped the smug, arrogant expression from Foxworthy’s face. One of the three races that had lost a carrier at Korel-C proposed a motion that the Council officially place responsibility for the failed Korel mission and the loss of three carriers on the humans. That set the tone for the whole session. Thirty-four minutes later, the session was officially adjourned, and Foxworthy looked like a convicted murderer who had just been sentenced to death by hanging. The Council had voted almost unanimously that a separate command structure would be created, one that excluded humans, and that if humans wanted to participate in any future Alliance operations, it would be under a single alien commander. No more co-equal commands. As far as the Alliance was concerned, humans were no longer a voting member and were now reduced to the status of Observer only. So much for Foxworthy’s careful, pre-session negotiating.

  “The session didn’t quite go as planned,” said Mirakova in a tone that was almost casual.

  Foxworthy looked for a moment as if he was going to throw up. “This is a disaster! We’ve effectively been kicked out of the Alliance that we started! How am I going to explain this?”

  Whatever sympathy Mirakova might have had for him disappeared as she saw him direct his anger at her. “It’s your fault, you know. Your last three commanders have all fucked up royally! Well, I’m not going to take the blame for this fiasco. That’s going to fall on your shoulders, Senior Fleet Admiral Mirakova. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a report to write.”

  Mirakova watched him leave with mixed feelings. It was unfair to characterize all three mission failures as due to incompetence. It was obvious to anyone with even a small amount of knowledge of space tactics that the Tyrell had come up with an improved mass detection system without which the last two missions would have gone quite differently. She would have some difficulty deflecting that unwarranted blame on Harrow, Harkaman and Saville, but not as much as Foxworthy might be expecting, not with the silver lining that she would point out to her superior. With the new separate command structure, the EAF was now completely free to conduct whatever operations it desired without any further interference from alien commanders. And if Eagleton’s stinger concept was approved and implemented, she would make damn sure that the Alliance would not hear about it, or if they did, they wouldn’t get any technical information. That was the flip side of kicking humans out of the Alliance. No more technical co-operation. Just as she was about to turn toward the exit, she took one last look out the window to the other conference bays. In one of them she saw the representative of the race that had proposed the first motion and had pushed hard to disenfranchise humans from the Alliance. He was looking at her, and while his alien expression was unreadable, the mere fact that he was standing there staring at her made her think that he was gloating. You smug bastard! We’ll see who has the last laugh. She raised her right arm and gave him the middle finger, then quickly turned away from the window and walked out.

  Chapter Seventeen:

  Eagleton saw Harrow enter the briefing hall and waved to her. She nodded and sat down beside him.

  “Not like the last time we were in this hall, is it?”

  He chuckled and looked around. The time that she was referring to, the hall had been filled with people. Now there were less than fifty, and none of them were below the rank of Commander. This briefing was clearly going to be something special. As he watched a few more late arrivals enter and either sit down or join a huddle of officers chatting, he thought back over the events of the last three months.

  Somehow, and no one really knew how, Senior Fleet Admiral Mirakova had managed to retain her post as CEO of the EAF after the demotion of humanity in the Alliance. The politicians had decided to allow the Alliance Council to continue to meet aboard the Mobile Command Ship that humans had built and operated. At the time, that had seemed like an invitation to be kicked around again, but Cate had explained the logic of it to him. As long as the Council was using the MCS to plan their strategy, the EAF would also know what they were doing and could co-ordinate its own actions to avoid potential conflicts. Additionally, human ‘Observers’ could still interact with the other members and perhaps eventually reverse the demotion.

  In the immediate aftermath of the Battle for Korel-C, as it was being called, Task Force 1.2 was ordered to stand down. The squadrons had to be rebuilt to full strength with new corvettes and new crews. As well, a fourth carrier, the Saratoga, had become operational and needed its own squadron. Eagleton’s stinger concept received enough support from the upper levels of the EAF that conceptual design studies were initiated, and he was temporarily re-assigned to the Design Team. It had very quickly become clear that the key to making the stinger work was an anti-tachyon projector that was roughly half the size of the smallest projector ever tested so far. So while the Design Team waited for the engineers to test a prototype projector, it concentrated on exploring the tactical uses of a stinger craft.

  The challenge there was the fact that Tyrell mass detection capability had improved, but no one knew how good the new system really was or how close a stinger craft could get without being detected by it. The old threshold range for a 21,000 metric tonne corvette was 1.35 light-seconds. Anything beyond that would make the corvette invisible. Careful analysis of the After Action reports of the battles at Korel-C showed that corvettes were being detected at least as far as 1.92 light-seconds and probably farther than that. To avoid the risk of underestimating the new system’s abilities, it was assumed that the new threshold was twice the old one, and given the well-understood equation that defined the detection threshold for different masses, the result was that the stinger’s projected mass of 1,597 tonnes, which could have remained completely undetected under the old system, would be detected at 0.85 light-seconds. That was still very close but not invisible, and the team of engineers looking at potential Tyrell technical improvements had raised the frightening possibility that future super-ships could be equipped with turrets containing anti-tachyon projectors for use as defensive fire against small ships like corvettes…or stingers. The message from the senior ranks in the EAF was that further support for the stinger would depend on it being able to use a particle beam projector that had an effective range of at least 1.0 light-seconds.

  And while Eagleton and the team waited for the prototype test, the other races in the Alliance built up their own fleet of corvettes and six carriers. Rumor had it that the Council, now that humans had been kicked out, were no longer united and were having difficulty in deciding what to do next. Some wanted to go back to the Korel system and try once again to liberate it and maintain a substantial presence there to keep it liberated. Others were pushing for a series of raids, including at least one more raid on the Tyrell home system. Cate had pointed out to him the weakness in the way the Council was currently conducting the war.

  “They’re going about this all wrong,” she told him one day over lunch. “They’re in such a hurry to strike back at the Tyrell Empire that they’re willing to field task forces and fleets composed of carriers from more than one race, even though any carrier that gets into trouble wouldn’t be abl
e to transfer its crew to a carrier of a different race, because they aren’t bothering to design that capability into their ships. Orphaned corvettes might be able to be carried back by a different carrier, but we know how hard that is. What they should do is to build up each race’s force to at least a two carrier task force level and then conduct their own individual operations. There’s what, thirteen other races in the Council right now? How much bigger of an impact would raids on thirteen Tyrell-controlled systems at the same time generate? But no, they piss away their carriers in dribs and drabs and end up inflicting pinpricks instead of deep cuts. Meanwhile, the Tyrell Empire keeps getting bigger. We aren’t pushing the Tyrell back. Hell, we aren’t even slowing them down!”

  Any additional thoughts Eagleton might have had were interrupted when the briefing was called to order. As soon as everyone had taken their seats, Senior Fleet Admiral Mirakova strode out from the side entrance and took up her station at the podium. As she gathered her thoughts, Eagleton took a quick look at the other attendees. There were only about a dozen present who were not flag officers. The rest all had stars on their collars, and Eagleton recognized LeClair sitting in the second row.

  “As you can all see,” began Mirakova in a low tone, “this is a special briefing for invitees only. You can consider yourself to be part of a select group by virtue of having been invited here today. I’m going to share information that is so sensitive that it has to be restricted, even though the risk of contact with the Tyrell directly is small. Some of you will be fighting the enemy in the field and therefore face the possibility of being captured. If you are going to remain here and listen to this briefing, then you must agree to not let that happen under any circumstances, and that includes suicide if there’s no other option. If you’re not prepared to do that, then leave this briefing right now.” The room was dead quiet as Mirakova paused to see if anyone would leave. No one did.