Launch Sequence (Genesis Book 2)

by Travis Hill

  Irina and the others endured the crushing pressures of their burn across multiple stellar borders, never dallying for more than a few hours as ALVIN aligned the fleet to the next jump point. The worst leg of the journey by far was through the Rathala inner regions, where the Rathala Empire guarded their civilization with a zeal that nearly matched the Kai’s when it came to war. Except the Kai didn’t seem to take any pleasure or regret from the conflicts they found themselves in. The Rathala, on the other hand, were always the quickest to threaten military action against any perceived threats.

  Admiral Huang knew the Rathalans would detect their relativistic wakes, especially since they knew humanity was on its last leg in their foolish war with the Kai. The Rathalans had long ago warned the Coalition to keep their fight with the insectoids far from Rathalan borders unless they wanted war on another front. Huang suddenly wished, not for the first time, that humanity had picked the Rathalans as their enemy. The Rathala Empire, a mighty force in the local stellar neighborhood, loved to wage war, but they also understood mercy and allowed a vanquished foe to learn from its immature mistakes—usually under a heavy tax penalty, if not outright occupation.

  After six days at nearly 25g, Nightfall’s ships began a series of braking maneuvers that would allow them to jump to the very edge of Rathala’s “southern” borders. Only the Rathalans knew what existed beyond their outback. The Coalition’s stealth drones had only been able to pierce a dozen light-years beyond the outback before becoming lost or disabled. Huang didn’t like the look of the massive black hole of data on his HUD. He was of the mind that if the spy drones had disappeared so quickly, the two seedships had even less of a chance of surviving.

  “Admiral,” Lt. Hellewege said over the comm.

  “Go, Lieutenant,” Huang replied.

  “Jump plot complete, FTL is ready to engage in four minutes,” Hellewege said.

  “Roger that. Sound the alarms.” He waited until the klaxon became silent and the ship’s lighting was a solid red. “Give me a chron update.”

  “Admiral, we’ve accrued twelve years, seven months, and just over two days of time debt so far. We’ll have accrued a little over seventeen years at the Genesis-5 launch point.”

  “God,” Huang said.

  He thought of Kina, his younger sister. He blinked rapidly at the thought she would now be fifty-six years old if she were still alive. That hurt worse than the fact that he was now a senior citizen of sixty-two years—though he had started the mission a month after his fiftieth birthday. The idea that he could return to Earth and find seventeen years had passed for them since his last visit while barely six months had actually passed aboard Raiden was too confusing.

  Huang cursed Irina Drazek, Admiral Karlsson, and even Chancellor Ryley for the mission he found himself performing. In his thirty years of service, time debt from relativistic travel had barely totaled six months thanks to the Wire. The Wire’s instantaneous communications across light-years of space allowed navigation and calibration beacons to guide ships with pinpoint accuracy using their FTL drives. Huang had even joked once about how the fusion engines on the ship were merely afterthoughts, just in case the FTL drive broke or the ship survived an engagement with the Kai long enough to need them.

  “Do you think it’s over by now, Admiral?” Hellewege asked softly, interrupting his thoughts.

  “The war?” he asked.

  “Yes, Sir. According to Commander Drazek, when we started, the Coalition was maybe a decade from total collapse. We’ve been off the grid for almost thirteen years…”

  “Commander Drazek says a lot of things,” Huang growled, even though his leisure time with Irina had left him wanting her more than ever.

  “I apologize, Sir,” Hellewege said, well aware of the Admiral’s dislike of the Special Forces spook who had legally hijacked the fleet.

  “Don’t apologize, Sten,” Huang said. “I’m just pissed that so far, all the shit she’s said has come to pass. If she’s right about this Genesis stuff, then I wouldn’t second-guess her words when it came to the parts about humanity’s spark being extinguished.”

  “We launched two seedships so far,” Hellewege offered helpfully. “And it looks like we’ll get -3 and -4 launched as well.”

  “Never count your money before the last hand has been dealt,” Huang said absently. “It’s been smooth so far for the fact we’ve averaged almost 20g to get here. The Rathalans have surely detected our wakes since we blew right through their inner core systems. It wouldn’t surprise me if they spent the time calculating where to jump two dozen battle fleets to try and intercept us should we pop out in their territory.”

  ***

  “Captain, we have jump signatures,” Lt. Mikkelsen said over the comm.

  “Roger,” Meyer replied, pulling up the tactical window in his HUD.

  Meyer scanned the data but it was too early to tell exactly what had jumped into the system. Without the Wire, they were at the mercy of the fleet’s enhanced active and passive scanners, though no matter how enhanced their systems were, the speed of light was still the bottleneck.

  “What do you think?” Huang asked on the command channel from his quarters.

  “I’m guessing Rathalans,” Meyer said. “From what I know, the Kai and the Rathalans avoid each other as much as possible, so its doubtful the Kai would be out here.”

  “I’ll be on the bridge in five minutes,” Huang said. “Find Drazek and let’s prep for combat. How long until we reach the launch point?”

  “Six hours.”

  “Let’s hope they’re only here to make noise and act scary. Admiral out.”

  Meyer closed the connection and pinged the Special Forces commander.

  “Drazek,” Irina’s voice said.

  “Admiral wants you on the bridge ASAP,” Meyer said. “We’ve got FTL contacts and a six-hour window to launch point.”

  “Rathalans or Kai?”

  “We should have that info in less than ten minutes.”

  “See you in five.”

  ***

  “Status?” Huang asked as he sat down in his command creche.

  “Sixty-four contacts, definitely Kai fusion signatures,” Lt. Aweke replied.

  “Christ,” the admiral grumbled. He opened the ship-wide channel, using the command console to sync the other ships in the fleet to it as well. “Listen up. Sixty-four Kai contacts at eleven light-hours are bearing down on us. Initial estimates have them moving within weapons range in less than two hours. We have five hours until launch point.

  “Since there’s still one more Genesis craft to escort, we’re going to try and keep this engagement short and sweet—sweet in this case means bailing from a fight the instant our two charges are safely on their way. Unless something crazy happens, we’ll keep the fleet compressed and our CAP at zero. However, we will begin braking in three minutes while Genesis-3 and -4 accelerate to hit their pocket so we can get the fuck out of here. Huang out.”

  No fleet member would ever mistake Admiral Mattias Huang for a coward. A few mudfoot senators or councilors back on Earth probably would, but they were hawks who had no guilt or shame about sending in fodder for the Kai to annihilate based on their own interpretations of fleet strength statistics. Any veteran of the Human-Kai war who had actually faced a Kai combat fleet—and every member of Task Force Nightfall had seen action at least twice against the enemy—knew a Kai fleet half the size of the one they faced would likely destroy Silver Fleet.

  Irina watched her HUD in silence, knowing better than to insert herself into an active naval battle. On the ground, she spent most of her time solo or commanding quads, but had the training and experience to lead entire battalions. Space warfare was too abstract for her to follow since the action took place over the span of hours, but only a fifth or less of that time was spent actually fighting. For a mudfoot spook assassin, waiting hours for a missile or plasma bolt to hit its target seemed worse than being cut in half by a Kai heavy mech chaingun.
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  Silver Fleet flipped and decelerated while the seedships continued their journey, their fusion engines running at full thrust as they accelerated. Huang and Meyer agreed that engaging the Kai was risky, especially against sixty-four capital-class warships. The seedships would enter their pockets in less than twenty hours, and both men knew that they were to be protected at all costs. With two of the five ships already launched, four out of five would be far better odds, even if Silver Fleet was decimated before they could reach Genesis-5.

  “Admiral!” Captain Sawalha shouted four hours later, just after Silver Fleet’s deceleration burn. “We have a mirror!”

  “Disperse fleet!” Meyer commanded before Admiral Huang could reply. “Hold CAP but have them prepped for launch.” He opened the fleet-wide comm. “Silver Fleet, prepare for immediate engagement.”

  It only took Irina twenty seconds with her HUD to find out a “mirror” was the double signature of a ship or fleet performing an FTL jump at close range during an engagement. She replayed the tactical log, her heartbeat doubling in speed when the Kai fleet suddenly also appeared less than a light-hour away on the scanner. It hurt her mudfoot head to work out how the return signatures of the enemy ships were still coming in from their old position at eight light-hours along with the much closer return signatures from where the Kai fleet was now.

  “Sixty-four, I repeat six-four enemy contacts at 037-012,” Lt. Anders announced at the same moment ALVIN displayed the data on her HUD.

  “Dispersion pattern Gamma complete,” ALVIN announced, mostly for any crew who couldn’t take the half-second to focus their eyes away from the combat data they needed to assist the AI.

  “TTL is twenty-six minutes,” Aweke said, announcing the estimated impact time for the incoming Kai missiles.

  “Light ‘em up,” Huang ordered. “And let’s pray to whomever that they focus on us and ignore the seedships.”

  “CAP, Sir?” Captain Fitzhugh from Hercules asked. He sounded eager to unleash his carrier’s fighters and bombers since the carriers had almost no offensive weapons within their hulls.

  “Negative,” Huang said. “Korrigar, sync us to 125-180.”

  “Aye, Sir,” the navigator said, though ALVIN was already guiding the fleet to its new position.

  “Weapons hot,” Meyer announced, checking one final time that Silver Fleet’s weapons were online and ready to fire.

  “Light ‘em up,” Huang said, his stomach doing a nosedive along with everyone else’s.

  For the next twenty-four minutes, Irina clenched her jaw until she heard her tendons hum like violin strings. Within seconds of Silver Fleet’s initial salvo, the Kai fleet returned fire. Huang swung the fleet above the Kai, then pointed them to the enemy’s rear. Alarms rang steadily as a number of the fleet’s ships were hit with glancing blows from the Kai railguns. The upgraded shields and combat armor repelled most of the tungsten-nickel slugs, with only Forenza suffering any real damage—a lucky shot cratered an entire shuttle hangar. Since it had been depressurized and the air evacuated when battlestations were announced, there were no crew casualties to display on her overlay window.

  “Kaiser impact,” ALVIN announced. “Sixty-ton shaped plasma-magnesium warhead.”

  Irina closed her eyes for a second in mourning, imagining the warhead’s first stage of supercharged plasma overloading local shield relays enough to heat the armor under them to twenty thousand degrees, which allowed the second stage’s tungsten core to punch a hole through it and detonate a sixty-ton explosive charge within the inner hull. She knew a second wasn’t enough time to properly mourn the loss of a destroyer. The only positive she took away from it was her relief that Silver Fleet was running a skeleton crew and only twelve sailors were aboard Kaiser. The railgun charges were annoying more than deadly, but the Kai missiles were lethal if they penetrated a ship’s flak cloud. Irina nearly ground her teeth into dust in frustration at Huang’s seemingly nonchalant strategy of allowing the Kai an easy, predictable target.

  “Jump plot ready, Sir,” Hellewege said, bringing Irina back to the strange mix of action and waiting.

  “Mark,” Huang said. “Shit,” he growled thirty seconds later when his display remained dark.

  The tactical data in Irina’s HUD froze for two full minutes before repainting itself on the screen as the new tactical data flowed in. She immediately understood his strategy of jumping the fleet two light-minutes behind the pursuing Kai. She also understood the incredible danger of performing such a close-range FTL jump in the middle of an arena littered with hundreds of thousands of particles and munitions. The momentary deactivation of the ships’ forward charged deflection field as it moved through FTL space meant an unlucky break could destroy a ship instantly and in spectacular fashion. Or dozens of ships.

  “We’ve overshot by three light-minutes, Sir,” Aweke said.

  “Recalibrate to 219-301,” Huang said. “Keep firing until we’re ready to jump again.”

  Irina plotted the destination into her tactical overlay, smiling once she saw Huang’s plan was to try and orbit the Kai fleet with a series of short-range, extremely dangerous FTL jumps. If he was able to pull it off, Silver Fleet would translate to each new position before the Kai’s missiles arrived. If the Kai were their typical selves, they would anticipate Silver Fleet’s seventh or eighth jump plot and aim there to hit the human ships as they translated from Q-space.

  “Jump plot ready,” Hellewege said two minutes later.

  “Admiral, we have FTL translations!” Lt. Mikkelsen practically screamed before Huang could give the order.

  “Are they in our destination pocket?” Meyer asked coolly.

  “Negative, Sir. Signatures are at 040-002.”

  “Execute jump,” Huang said. “Did the Kai just drop another fleet on us?”

  “We’ll know in less than thirty seconds,” Aweke said, his eyes glued to his personalized tactical windows.

  “Mikkelsen, target but hold, I repeat, target but hold half our firepower on those new contacts. Aweke, your half is to continue firing on current targets. Carriers, prepare for CAP. This is going to get ugly fast and with all the lead flying, which means no more FTL fun.”

  Huang was worried about how many captains and XOs he would have to apologize to for scaring them to death with his FTL insanity. He hated Irina even more at that moment for putting the idea in his head to take advantage of ALVIN and its fellow AI’s improved jump plotting abilities. Jumping to within minutes of a gas giant’s gravity well had nearly given him a heart attack. Translating across an active battle arena was psychosis-induced suicide.

  “Admiral, eighty new contacts,” Sawalha said.

  “Great,” Meyer said sarcastically under his breath, his mic picking up the words with crystal clear detail.

  “Rathalan signatures!” Sawalha said fifteen seconds later.

  “Hold fire!” Huang and Meyer said in unison.

  The entire bridge crew, including Irina, chuckled at the voices coming into their ears in stereo. The stress was beyond paralyzing for the Special Forces commander. The helplessness she felt at being useless in a space battle dissipated for a few seconds before returning with a vengeance as her HUD filled with dozens more red icons.

  Huang remained quiet for almost a minute as his eyes studied the tactical overlay. Once he was sure of the newcomers’ positions, he quickly calculated a new jump point then sent it to Lt. Hellewege and ALVIN. The bridge remained quiet as everyone watched their HUD overlays, waiting to see what the Rathalans would do.

  “Jump plot ready, Sir,” Hellewege announced, his voice far too loud.

  “Come on, you self-centered assholes,” Huang whispered, uncaring that his crew could hear every word. “Let’s see what you’re up to.”

  “Kai weapon impacts in thirty seconds,” Anders said, his voice steady but strained.

  “Come on,” Meyer said, his voice tight and directed at the Rathalans.

  “First impacts in ten, nine, eight—
”

  “Weapons hot!” Sawalha said the same instant hundreds of red lines streaked from the Rathalan ships.

  “Execute jump,” Huang said calmly.

  The tactical overlays updated thirty seconds later, showing nothing other than the distant red giant.

  “Fuck,” Huang growled. “Where the hell are we?”

  No one answered, their eyes and fingers working in unison to coax the scanners for answers. After three more minutes, Irina’s HUD drew in the Kai and Rathalan fleets.

  “Hellewege, keep us on the periphery and jump us every seven minutes,” Huang ordered.

  “Admiral, the fleet only has seventeen translations left before subcapital reactors are drained,” ALVIN said.

  “Noted. Depending on how this goes, we’ll either need only a dozen, or it won’t matter anymore.”

  Irina became frustrated after the third jump. Silver Fleet’s distance from the battle meant it took almost five minutes for her tactical overlay to update. Two minutes later, the tactical markers froze then went dark again as the sensors waited for data to cross the four light-minute distance.

  “It’s like watching a video that keeps freezing every few minutes,” she complained aloud without realizing it.

  “Be thankful ALVIN and his pals are one big parallel processor,” Meyer said. “They can at least predict the action accurately while we wait for real data.”

  “It’s driving me crazy,” Irina admitted. She didn’t like using the comm during a battle, but the silence within the bridge was even more unnerving.

  “I’m sure it’s driving the Kai even more crazy,” Huang said, his eyes locked onto the tactical data. “I don’t think they planned for the Rathala to show up, which is typical of them.”

  “We didn’t plan for the Rathala to show up either,” Irina chided lightly.