In the holotank Absen saw Warsprite combat drones stream out of launch tubes in the rear of the two dreadnoughts. He knew that deep within the ships, Aerospace controllers lay in VR coffins, each linked with several craft that would act together.
The drones took up positions to the rear of the two squadrons. Because of the crystal-teardrop design of the EarthFleet ships, more than three quarters of their firepower faced forward. This maximized combat effectiveness, but created inevitable weak spots from their six o’clock positions. The Warsprites would cover this vulnerability.
Absen suppressed his urge to give tactical orders as he was used to. He’d personally commanded Conquest for so long that letting his flag captain fight the ship didn’t come naturally. Instead, he kept his eyes on the overall situation.
The Jericho Line was doing its job thinning out the enemy, but having no specific effect on any one swarm. The unexpected numbers of the Scourges meant that the Line was being quickly torn to pieces, and Absen dismissed it from his mind. Like any minefield, doing its work expended it.
He shifted his attention to his own flag officer holoscreen, installed at his order so he could keep track of fleet operations. Putting on a headset, he spoke quietly to Michelle. “Give me a view all the way out to the orbit of Venus.” Once the display had expanded, he examined the deployment of his forces.
Task Force Bravo was in position near Earth. He could see several ships racing to join it, abandoning other assigned tasks around the solar system in order to assemble at the homeworld. As the Scourge would take at least eighteen hours to get there, Absen knew the defending forces would be ready.
Task Force Charlie, composed of ten Meme Monitors, was accelerating in leisurely fashion along a curving chord cutting inward across the orbit of Venus. A rough mental calculation showed that they would reach a position to intercept the majority of the enemy in plenty of time as they headed for Earth, so he didn’t bother to send them any orders. SystemLord knew his role in the defense, and despite Absen’s slowly dying hatred of all things Meme, he’d found the blobbo leader kept his word.
Until he doesn’t, a little voice whispered in his mental ear. Rae said the Meme are utterly pragmatic. If SystemLord decides we’re a lost cause, he’ll run, so my job is to maintain his belief we can win. That’s why his forces are out here and not near Earth: to make sure he’s fully committed before the endgame becomes clear.
Absen turned his attention to the main holotank, noting that the Line weapons and the long-range fire had knocked the enemy swarm they faced down to eighty-three percent.
“One minute,” Michelle said in Absen’s ear.
“Signal to execute the second extension maneuver,” Absen replied.
In good order, the task force flipped end for end once more and blasted at flank speed directly away from the enemy. Tongues of fusion fire reached across hundreds of kilometers and touched the leading edge of the swarm, an incidental benefit, but doing so pointed most of their weapons in the wrong direction.
When the maneuver was completed and the task force, now speeding backward even faster, once more pointed toward the enemy, Michelle said, “Two minutes now. Closing velocity has been halved. Main weapons have resumed firing.”
Slowly the countdown continued. Absen disliked this pulling back, for he considered every minute valuable to Earth’s defense, but the first battle was the most important, for it would give them critical data on friendly and enemy performance in actual combat, allowing him to adjust tactics for the next.
“Entering point defense range,” Ford said.
“Hold fire, Mister Ford,” Captain Scoggins replied. “Let’s see how Constitution does, since she’s a bit ahead of us.”
This was all according to Absen’s plan, an interdependent ballet of steps designed to maximize the effectiveness of the task force’s firepower. Allowing the optimized dreadnought to engage first might allow Ford to adjust Conquest’s tactics and techniques.
On the holotank, Constitution’s enormous main laser ceased fire just long enough for a pulse of blazing red lines, so thick in the display that one couldn’t be separated from another, to reach out and strike the enemy.
Absen watched the enemy percentage until it updated, falling from eighty-three to eighty-one.
“Yes!” Ford cried. “Ninety thousand shots, about twenty thousand hits. Twelve second recycle time…”
“Approximately ten percent per minute for Constitution alone,” Michelle murmured in Absen’s ear. “It seems we may win handily.”
“Never tempt fate that way,” Absen said as six seconds later the enemy gunboats and fighters, emerging from behind their screen of low-value assault craft, opened fire. Their plasma torpedoes and lasers packed only slightly more power than Fleet point defense lasers, but the difference came in accuracy. While Earth’s ships had to engage small, maneuvering targets, the Scourge aimed at much larger ships that, at this range, couldn’t dodge.
Rather than EarthFleet’s two shots striking for every nine fired, the enemy hit percentage approached eighty percent. Therefore, their return blow was about four times as heavy, and it concentrated entirely on Constitution.
As the energy weapons struck, Absen could see Captain Huen had already begun to spin her ship, a cheap way to spread their impact, though it cost something in accuracy.
Captain Scoggins ordered the same maneuver, and the admiral could feel the rumble as thrusters strove to roll Conquest around her axis like a spinning arrowhead.
In the holotank, energy weapon impacts blazed all along Constitution’s nose, and her large laser flickered out. “Heavy damage to her main weapons array,” Fletcher said from Sensors. “About four thousand point defense lasers down as well. Armor appears to be holding.”
“Tell the cruisers to support more closely,” Absen snapped. “And message Huen to flip and fall back if she has to. If the enemy wants to concentrate on her, then that’s exactly what we want to prevent. Make them run a gauntlet or change tactics.”
“Yes, sir,” Johnstone said, closing his eyes.
“You may fire when ready, Mister Ford,” Captain Scoggins said.
The two dreadnoughts’ point defense weapons lanced out almost as one this time, now joined by the heavy cruisers, and more than two hundred thousand lasers speared thirty thousand more of the enemy.
“Fortunately they’re strung out and uncoordinated,” Michelle said through Absen’s headset. “We are killing them as fast as they approach.”
“Except for the gunboats and fighters. Centurions are smart enough to maintain their coordination and distance. Look.” Absen pointed unnecessarily at the holotank, which showed a loose formation of enemy elite craft holding optimum range, letting masses and mobs of assault craft absorb EarthFleet’s fire.
“I see.”
“Can we target those gunboats?” Scoggins asked Ford.
“Already doing it with our particle beams, but they’re staying at the edge of point defense range. If we fire at them instead of the assault craft, we get a lot lower hit percentage and risk the Scourgelings and Soldiers landing on our skin.”
Scoggins grunted unhappily. “Keep hammering our closest targets, then.”
Constitution flipped end for end once more and lit her main engines, withdrawing further behind her screen of cruisers. Absen could see her drones move up to interdict as well.
“Get our squadron in closer,” Scoggins ordered. “They’re pressing after Huen, so we don’t have to worry as much –”
Just then, the holotank fuzzed and Conquest shuddered with a sound like the grinding crash of a train wreck, a noise that lasted several seconds.
“What was that?” Scoggins snapped.
“We got hit,” COB Timmons replied, consulting his board, which now showed a blaze of red across one of Conquest’s six facets. “They missed the main array, but they took out about seven thousand lasers, most everything on panel number five, along with a hundred meters depth of armor.”
“They’re fighting smart,” Scoggins snarled. “Unlike last time, they’re concentrating their fire. That means there’s no reason to keep our ships spread out. Admiral, if you please, we need to close with those gunboats. They outrange our point defense by about twenty percent and they’re staying out of our optimal effectiveness envelope.”
“That’s going to mean assault landings on us,” Absen replied.
“Not many, if we’re blasting straight for them. And we can use the drones for skin coverage.”
“Fine. Pass to all ships: close to minimum safe distance, forming a wall of battle like we practiced. Prepare for flank acceleration toward the enemy.”
Absen waited, his hands gripping the armrests of his crash chair, and then gave the hated order. “Everyone cocoon up. We’re going VR.”
“Aye, sir,” Johnstone said, passing the command through his CyberComm systems.
On all the ships’ bridges and fire control centers, everyone sat back into their crash chairs and allowed the devices to enfold them. Induction fields and hard links connected each organic brain into a network of shared VR space, more than doubling efficiency while incidentally making the bodies of those within more likely to survive.
Linking this way did nothing for the helmsmen of the ships or the fire controllers, as they already worked mostly within the VR synthesis, but for everyone else, slowing the universe around them allowed more ability to make and implement good decisions.
In VR space, Absen found himself free of his chair. Inertia had no power over his virtual presence as he stood to pace around the holotank, knowing his body was held securely within his cocoon.
Within the display he saw his sixteen ships form a disc, flat side toward the enemy: a wall of battle. Salvoes of point defense fire stemmed the flood of tens of thousands of enemy small craft, but every few seconds the Scourge fighters, and especially the plasma-torpedo-equipped gunships, would also vomit forth a coordinated deluge, each time striking a different target.
Three times those blasts had slammed into Constitution, tearing great gouges from her armor and vaporizing swaths of point defense lasers. Absen knew that right now her damage control bots were frantically repairing and replacing the modules, but that process was slow compared to the frenetic pace of combat.
Conquest had been hit twice and was making her own repairs far faster than her sister ship, as her AI control and suite of maintenance drones significantly exceeded her sister ship’s efficiency.
Two blasts had impacted cruisers, in each case stripping half the smaller ships’ weaponry from them, but their armor held. It would take repeated strikes to actually penetrate the thick layers of ferrocrystal sandwiched with neutronium and other exotic materials.
“Task force to accelerate at flank speed on my mark,” Absen said as he observed them all in position. “Mark.”
As one, the tails of sixteen ships lit with sun-bright fusion flares, and the range began to fall rapidly as they surged forward. The holotank showed the enemy gunboats and fighters reversing course to counter, their own tiny drives working frantically, but the maneuver had been sudden and violent, evidently catching them by surprise. Inertia would favor the big ships for a while.
Had the enemy been Meme, this would never have worked, but Scourge conventional drive technology was on a rough par with EarthFleet’s, perhaps not even as advanced, and for a brief time the range fell to optimum for the point defense arrays.
“Pass to all ships: shift targeting to the enemy gunboats,” Absen ordered. “Fire at will, maximum rate.”
Now, rather than the more efficient salvoes by ship, volleys that allowed each fire direction center to assess its hits and retarget weapons to enemy effectives, all ships lit up with thousands of laser lances as individual controllers aimed groups of weapons as they wished, firing as fast as power cycles allowed.
The Scourge assault craft, no longer dying in droves as the EarthFleet lasers fired past them at the gunboats, now arrowed in toward the big ships, turning to fire engines in retro mode, trying to slow their headlong rush enough to crash-land on the surface of their enemies. However, the dreadnoughts and cruisers accelerated so powerfully toward them that most either missed entirely or were smashed to bits against the armored skins.
Unfortunately, some of these assault boats crashed down directly atop point defense lasers, optical and radar sensors, heat flanges and other necessary fittings, further reducing the effectiveness of the EarthFleet ships. And, some of the Scourgelings and Soldiers within survived to begin rampaging across the skins, destroying more weapons.
“Get the drones working to clean off our hull,” Scoggins barked. “Pass the word to Brigadier ben Taurus to please ready his Marines for exo.” She couched this order as a request, as technically Bull outranked her, but as the captain of the ship, her word was law aboard, subject only to Admiral Absen’s review.
Chapter 14
Bull ben Tauros received the attack order via the HUD on his upgraded Avenger battlesuit. As the commander of all Marines in the task force, he had extra comm channels as well as a direct link to Conquest’s AI. This latter sometimes made it seem as if Michelle shared his head, despite assurance from the cyberware team that she couldn’t actually read his thoughts.
What she could do was monitor his biometrics, anticipating his needs and orders based on past actions, and he shrugged internally. A commander didn’t have the luxury of turning down systems that increased battlefield effectiveness just because they made him personally uncomfortable.
Bull keyed the general brigade push and said to his battalion commanders scattered across the task force, “Ladies and gentlemen, prep your people and stand by for exo. Take your orders from your ship chains of command. Contact me if you need to, but only you know what you need for your own fights, so ask forgiveness, not permission. Acknowledge.”
One by one, twenty-four green icons lit, and he switched freqs to address only the five battalion commanders aboard Conquest. “All right, Marines. I see from my feed that the old girl has a rash on her skin, and we’re the cure. The flyboys are trying to use the drones to blast the enemy off, but they’re causing incidental damage from missed shots, so we’re gonna need to do the detail work. Get your people to the egress points and ready to go exo.”
Once he’d received acknowledgements, Bull closed the channel and spoke to Michelle. “Warbots up and ready?”
“Yes, Brigadier. They will precede the Marines out onto the hull.”
Bull ran his eyes over his HUD, changing its display to get a picture of the battle for Conquest’s skin. “Looks like the damage is spreading.”
“I estimate you will need to attack in four minutes sixteen seconds.”
“Why not go now?”
“Egressing at the calculated optimum time will reduce casualties by approximately eight percent.”
“That’s four hundred Marines. Will going now kill the enemy faster?”
“Yes,” Michelle said reluctantly. “By approximately half of one percent. But ship acceleration must be reduced as well, which impacts the greater battle.”
“That half percent may be the difference between success and failure.”
“So might four hundred casualties.”
“Most of those will survive and heal. The rest can’t be helped. I want to get out there as soon as possible. Put me through to Scoggins.”
“Yes, Brigadier.”
Bull waited.
“There is a delay reaching the captain.”
Bull snorted. “A delay I think you’re causing, Commander. On my own say-so, then, we’re going in thirty seconds, with or without explicit approval. That’s an order. If you want me to wait, you can put me through to someone with the authority to countermand me. Otherwise, open the damn egress doors.”
Silence was all he heard for tens of seconds, and he began moving toward the nearest assault airlock to override it personally if necessary, when finally a voice came on.
“Absen
here. What is it, Bull?”
“I’m trying to get my forces out to clear the hull, sir, but your damned pet AI is slow-rolling me because she’s afraid of the casualty count.”
“Thanks. Michelle, do as my commander of Marines says and stop second-guessing him.”
“Egressing now will limit the ship’s ability to maneuver,” said Michelle.
“We won’t be maneuvering for a while. Do it.” Absen’s voice was firm.
“Yes, sir,” came Michelle’s voice, a bit sulky, Bull thought. “Opening egress locks.”
Bull closed the channel and checked his chrono. Almost three minutes had passed, so it looked like the AI had gotten most of what she’d wanted anyway. He watched in 3D as the icons representing his battlesuited troops streamed up the egress tunnels Conquest had opened within her armor, and then out the airlocks.
Spidery warbots exited first, creating perimeters to guard the Marines as they deployed. Flashes within his HUD, indicating weapons discharge, appeared and disappeared intermittently before the units began moving to stamp out the landed Scourges. Above them, fighter drones withdrew from close aerospace support, turning instead to engage approaching assault craft.
Glad that Repeth had returned from her detached assignment with the Stewards in time for the battle, Bull turned to her and said, “Let’s go, Reap.”
“I won’t bother arguing with you, Bull, but try to remember you’re commanding a brigade, not a company.”
“Leading from the rear is an oxymoron,” he replied.
“You’re the oxymoron if you get yourself killed because you can’t resist the urge to shoot something. If you didn’t want to be a general officer, you should have turned down the promotion.” Repeth grabbed Gunderson and turned him toward the tunnel’s mouth where the warbots waited. “Swede, open her up, textbook deployment. If you let this oversized idiot get scragged, you’re next. Got me?”
“Sure, boss,” the Scandinavian answered. “All right, you diggers, you heard the SMAJ. Anyone who lets the Brigadier get killed might as well defect to the Scourges, because you’ll get more mercy from them than you will from me. Conquest, open the doors!”
Conquest and Empire (Stellar Conquest Series Book 5) Page 14