According to plan, he had approached the enemy from a perpendicular angle, having made not one but two TacDrive pulses. The first took him to a flanking position; the second, very short pulse, brought him behind the enemy, landing at a spot thinned of swarm craft. The escorts had naturally flooded toward their first seven threats, leaving one area relatively open.
It was into this space that Deathbringer arrived, his rear quadrant already three-quarters turned toward the enemy super-flagship. Extra-thick ablative layers had allowed him to withstand the hundreds of collisions with swarm craft.
These layers also saved Deathbringer’s life when the mega-ship slammed a well-aimed graser strike into him from much closer range. The bolt of energy blew a kilometer-wide chunk of material from the Ryss ship’s flank, but the stuff had been specifically designed to resist gamma rays, at least for a short time.
Chiren hardly noticed when Devastator, a little ahead of and apparently unluckier than his kin, staggered under a double blow that blew his prow and left shoulder off. Immediately, he began spinning, all cohesion lost.
Instead, the commodore watched as Deathbringer rotated on his center of gravity to line up his stern with the two gargantuan particle beams, his only capital weaponry. As soon as they bore, one fired, and then the other.
Deathbringer immediately disappeared, leaving nothing but a TacDrive trail in his wake.
The enemy super-flagship shuddered like a giant punched in the gut by a demigod. Twin sprays of debris vomited forth from either side as the particle beams hammered through the incomprehensibly thick armor, into the interior of the mobile fortress, and out again.
Most of its energy dumped into the ship’s structure, blowing through deck after deck and igniting everything in its path with superheated plasma. As the beam exited the other side, the hot gases of the inferno had only one place to go.
Out the holes.
To Chiren, the sphere looked like a celebratory firework, four jets of plasma lending a kind of deathly beauty to the scene.
Amazingly, the ship continued to fire. Apparently it was so large, automated and redundant that even blowing two holes in its torso couldn’t kill it. But the twin bolts of lightning, aimed at the exact center of the sphere where its commander presumably resided, had done their work; the shots coming from the great vessel now seemed ill aimed and badly coordinated.
“All ships, break off,” Chiren ordered, though his Ryss blood roared with battle-lust to finish off the enemy. “That is my order. Transmit, all ships break off!”
“Devastator is gravely wounded,” Desolator’s voice spoke. “His TacDrive is inoperative. I request we come to his aid.”
Chiren studied the situation, the millions of swarm ships converging on the stricken vessel, and the still-potent graser fire coming from the dying enemy even while Devastator tried to escape on fusion drive. “No. We all knew what must be done when we began this mission. Delay no further: pulse to the rendezvous point.”
“Forgive me, Commodore, but I calculate that by assisting him, we can increase his probability of survival by more than fifty percent, while reducing our own chances by less than five percent.”
Glad of the excuse of statistical reason, Chiren reversed himself. “Very well. Help him, but I may re-evaluate as we proceed.”
“Of course, Commodore. Thank you.”
Immediately, the six warriors turned toward their brother, thousands of point defense lasers and dozens of particle beams clearing the way toward his position. Swarms thickened around them as more and more small craft arrived from the planet’s surface.
Graser beams continued to fly around Devastator, some striking him, as the enemy mega-ship apparently decided to concentrate on its closest and easiest target.
“We’re not going to make it in time,” Chiren said.
Suddenly, another Ryss ship dropped out of TacDrive nearby: Deathbringer, returning. As before, he had chosen a spot thinned of defensive swarm craft, and had placed himself in optimum position to quickly swing and fire his recharged particle cannon.
This time, the two discharges speared the enemy far off center, apparently deliberately so, in order to devastate undamaged portions of the super-ship. The blows ripped canyons along the hull and imparted enough kinetic energy to cause it to begin spinning slowly.
Thrusters flared, apparently trying to bring the sphere under control. The smashing impacts bought time for Devastator to accelerate away at a tangent while his approaching brother ships covered him with their concentrated fire. As the six closed ranks, their point defense created an impenetrable curtain of laser fire that burned everything that pursued.
Deathbringer, for his part, lived up to his name, engaging his TacDrive to slam a swath through the thickest part of the swarm, using his armored prow as a ram as he escaped.
The combination of the second pair of shots and the steadily increasing distance rendered ineffective the diminishing fire of the super-ship, though the swarm pursued, stinging.
“Give me a strategic view, planet ring and inward,” Chiren ordered. When that was displayed, he saw the fifteen flagships and their attendant swarms moving as fast as they could toward Center Prime…a planet now largely undefended.
***
Admiral Scoggins observed the D-ship battle taking place near Center Prime from five light-minutes outside the orbit of the seventeen planets. As intended, the D-ships had drawn the enemy inward toward the system’s star, leaving the far side only lightly defended by small craft.
Conqueror and her twelve sister ships had arrived at this point via TacDrive, and had maneuvered using only cold thrusters in order to minimize detection. Scoggins wasn’t concerned about being attacked this far out – after all, five light-minutes was roughly two-thirds of an AU, or almost a hundred million kilometers – but she didn’t want anything to interpose itself between her squadron and Center Prime.
“Tightbeam only to Confident. Open fire as plotted,” she ordered, arms crossed as her fingers gripped them tightly with tension.
Beginning the bombardment, Confident sent her entire complement of six TacSLAMs rippling from her forward facets. The missiles, each the size of a frigate, popped from launch tubes under cold thrust and, as soon as they reached minimum safe distance, aligned themselves and engaged their TacDrives ten seconds apart.
“Pulse inward, four light minutes as planned, “Admiral Scoggins ordered.
Okuda nodded. “Pulse in three, two, one, mark.”
The short jump directly toward Center Prime left them sixty light-seconds, or about eighteen million kilometers, away from the planet, out of any conceivable weapons range. From this position, though, it would only take one minute for the C-ships to see what the effect of their initial TacSLAM fire was.
“Six good hits,” Ford said exultantly, throwing a long-range optical shot onto one of the screens. “The shockwaves are spreading around the planet. That’s gonna hurt.”
“Show me,” Scoggins said.
Fletcher nodded. “Yes, ma’am. Here’s some realtime opticals.”
On several screens, shaky pictures displayed the aftermath of the gargantuan strikes. Here and there, creatures writhed among incomprehensible swirls of junk, apparently the detritus of nests or buildings or whatever passed for industry and housing. Mostly, it looked like the involuntary muscle twitching of earthly creatures with their heads cut off.
“If these critters weren’t so evil, I could almost feel bad about this,” Johnstone said from his station. “We’re doing to them what the Meme did to us.”
“Except we’re doing it in self-defense,” Ford replied hotly. “They tried to eat us, you know.”
Johnstone waved a hand. “No argument here. It’s just hard to fathom that we’re wiping out whole planets now.”
“Only what’s on the surface,” Scoggins interjected. “They might have a lot underground, like ants. Commander, can you tell me anything more about their comms yet?” She said this more to head off the arg
ument between the two men than because she really thought the CyberComm officer might have new info for her.
“We haven’t been able to hack them, if that’s what you mean. Getting in from the outside is a lot harder than from within.”
Scoggins grunted. “What about traffic analysis?”
“We just wiped out every installation on the surface, at least on this side of the planet. I’m watching their satellites for where it’s routing, but I can’t tell you anything yet. Besides, the fusion blasts from impact put out a lot of EMP, so some aren’t even operating.”
Confronter fired next, sending a salvo of six TacSLAMs into new locations on Center Prime. “This is fun to watch, Skipper,” Ford said, “but there’s really nothing left on the surface to hurt until the planet rotates under us. That will take about ten more hours. Or we can move to the other side.”
“Cease fire, then.” Scoggins moved to look closely at the holotank, which now displayed the conclusion of the D-ships’ fight with the enemy super-flagship. “The other side is too thick with enemy. Any TacSLAMs we fired would probably get knocked off course. How long until reinforcements get here from the other planets?”
“At least seven hours,” Fletcher replied.
“Would it be tempting fate to comment on how well things have gone so far?” Michelle asked.
Scoggins smiled bleakly. “Probably…but I’ll risk it on everyone’s behalf. I can hardly believe how easy it’s been, for us, anyway. Devastator’s in a bad way, with over a million Ryss warriors dead, but the other ships have only sustained a few casualties, and none for us.
“I’ll take it,” Bull ben Tauros said from behind her. “Thought I’d come up and say hello, Admiral. Nice to not have to pull the Fleet’s nuts out of the fire this time.”
“We don’t have nuts, Brigadier,” Michelle said primly.
“Your mother sure did,” he said without missing a beat. Turning to the holotank, the armored Marine walked over to stand next to Scoggins. “The Ryss got some action.”
“Yes, they did, but as you well know, this was supposed to be a raid, not a slugfest.”
“Seems a bit premature to travel for three months, pummel them for a few hours and then leave.”
Scoggins turned to Bull. “What do you suggest?”
“Deathbringer did one hell of a number on that super-flagship. Can’t he knock out the rest of them? I mean, isn’t it better to do it here than wait for them to show up at Earth again – or somewhere else? Here and now, we know where they are. We know they haven’t equipped their flagships with TacDrive. We know their leadership must be here. Nothing else explains the weird setup of this system. I submit that, no matter what Admiral Absen said, it’s worth a lot of our lives to burn this system to the ground. Not one stone upon another, as the prophecy said.”
“A Jew quoting Jesus?”
Bull shrugged. “I quote Hitler too, when it makes my point. In this case, the Romans were right. Nits make lice.”
“Not familiar with that one.”
“They meant, if you’re going to wipe out an enemy, don’t even spare the children, for they’ll just grow up to hate you anyway.”
Scoggins sniffed. “In this case, Bull, I have to agree with the principle, but I’m not willing to sacrifice ourselves to do it. I was already planning to pump a few TacSLAMs into each planet, which should devastate their economies, and I’m sure the D-ships would love to chew on a few more flagships, no matter what the cost.”
“Well,” he said, “you got about six hours to think about it before the nearest flagship and its swarm arrives.”
Scoggins laughed. “Not really, Bull. We have all the time in the world, because we’ll be gone before they get here. We’ll move to a new position, SLAM the rest of Center Prime, and then move to the next planet, and the next, and so on. All we have to do is select spots that give us clear shots to the surface of each. Should take a couple of days of dancing around, and the flagships will never catch us.”
“They may not have to,” Fletcher said. “Look at the plots.”
The holotank view pulled back to show the inner system. The courses of the flagships and the hundreds of motherships, some empty, but some loaded with their swarms, had turned away from Center Prime in the last few minutes.
Toward the star.
“They’re making a run for it,” Ford said.
“Worse, I suspect,” Bull replied. “What would you do in their position?”
Scoggins stepped back, seeing what he meant. “I’d try to do to us what we’re doing to them. I’d send everything I had toward Earth.”
“We can’t let them enter FTL ahead of us,” Bull said.
“That won’t be a problem. We can easily beat them to the star under TacDrive. The question now becomes, should we fight them here, or haul ass for home and make a stand there?”
Ford said, “Skipper, here they’re disorganized and stunned. It’s three times as far from their planets to the star than it is from Sol to Earth, so we have longer to clobber them. We need to take them down here.”
Scoggins looked at Bull, who shook his head and said, “Slugging it out with them here means we’ll lose people we don’t have to, because it’ll be damn hard to evacuate dying ships. More importantly, most of their big ships aren’t prepped for an attack. They don’t have their swarms attached. Millions of their small craft will have to be left behind, leaving them vulnerable to attacks we couldn’t make before, such as with TacSlams.”
“Oh, come on, Bull!” Ford said. “We don’t even know for sure they’re going to Earth. What if they’re running away to other strongholds? They’ll organize even more, bigger attacks on Earth. But if we kill them all, it might be a long time before they pull themselves together. It might even precipitate that civil war Admiral Absen talked about. You just said yourself, we can’t miss this opportunity!”
“I changed my mind when the Scourges changed theirs,” Bull replied.
Both men turned toward Scoggins, awaiting a decision.
“I need to think about this,” she said after a moment. “In the meantime, instruct Concorde to pulse over to the star and send an FTL drone with a complete record of what happened here, and then rejoin us. Tell her to make sure to attach a warning order up front, because whatever enemy makes it into FTL will be only hours behind the drone. Michelle, slow time for me, ten to one, will you?”
While the C-ship raced off on her mission, Scoggins paced around the bridge and stared at the holotank from all angles, the rest of the crew except for Michelle’s avatar seemingly slowed to statues. The AI, of course, thought much faster than a human, and so had no problem adjusting her apparent pace of existence.
Eventually, the admiral rejoined realtime and spoke. “Sorry, James, I have to go with Bull on this one. Johnstone, pass the word. Deathbringer will break off immediately and enter FTL as soon as possible. More than any other single ship, we’ll need him at the other end. The other D-ships will proceed as fast as they can under conventional drive so they can keep Devastator safe. The C-ships will pulse to appropriate positions and fire two TacSLAMs at each planet, saving the rest for the fight at home. Michelle, you coordinate that. Once that’s finished, prep for FTL. We’re going home.”
Chapter 32
Two weeks of sedated FTL travel seemed like only a brief night’s sleep. Admiral Scoggins found herself right back in VR on Conqueror’s bridge, without the careful transition of the first journey. At least the trip was much faster descending the stellar gradient from Center.
“I have Admiral Absen for you, ma’am,” Johnstone said.
“Put it on the main screen.”
“Welcome back, Admiral,” Absen said when his face appeared. “We’re several light-minutes apart, so I’ll give you all this up front. Thanks to your report and Deathbringer’s further observations, we are prepared as well as we can be. You absolutely did the right thing, Melissa, no matter how this works out. You conducted the raid, you took down their meg
a-ship, probably killed their boss and his cronies, and you brought all ships home with minimum losses. That was the mission I assigned you, and that’s what you did. Don’t let anyone tell you different.”
“Thank you, sir. What are your orders?” Scoggins said, and then chuckled to herself. She would have to wait quite a while for a genuine reply.
Fortunately, Absen continued, apparently anticipating her question. “You will spread out to positions I’ve assigned along the Jericho Line. You should already be receiving a data package on a separate freq. We’ve had almost four months to build, and we’ve concentrated on SLAM III production. We have over a hundred of them scattered around Sol now. They’ll fire immediately on any enemy they identify. As soon as we see how they do, your ships will take independent action using TacSLAMs or capital weaponry to destroy them before they can deploy swarms or gather their forces. Good luck, Melissa, and good hunting.”
Immediately, Scoggins began issuing orders to each ship and crew to take their positions along the Jericho line according to the details in the data Michelle had received.
“Skipper, I have an urgent request,” Commander Johnstone said to Scoggins as soon as he could get a word in edgewise.
“What?” Scoggins barked, preoccupied.
“The automated SLAM IIIs need to concentrate on the fifteen surviving flagships. Hell, Deathbringer alone could probably kill every mothership core they can throw at us, and he’d hardly take a scratch. It’s the heavy grasers that are the threat.”
“So what are you saying?”
“I need the entry codes for the SLAM software patching process so I can tweak their attack criteria. From headquarters, I mean. Right away. They’re only a few hours behind us, and I may need that time to make the changes from the inside.”
“Request it under my signature, then.”
Johnstone smirked. “Already did, ma’am.”
“Better to ask forgiveness than permission, eh?” She chuckled.
“You taught me that.”
Conquest and Empire (Stellar Conquest Series Book 5) Page 31