by Peter Grant
He glanced at the Plot. Belladonna was sitting a quarter of a million kilometers below her minefield, her solitary icon looking very lonely. Two groups of three icons apiece were to left and right of her, a quarter of a million kilometers distant on either side. They would open fire, but Belladonna was under strict orders not to do so at first. Instead, she would stand by to deal with any damaged enemy stragglers after the main battle was over.
Wallace took a deep breath. The die was cast now.
“Command to Weapons. All mines to the active state, using passive sensors only. Command nodes are to allocate mines equally between the targets. When the enemy is in the trap, the command nodes are to initiate the attack. Weapons free on the mines only, I say again, the mines only.”
“Weapons to Command, aye aye, sir.” The Weapons Officer read back his instructions, to show that he’d understood them.
“Command to Weapons, make it so. Break. Command to Communications. As soon as Weapons has activated and programmed the mines, go to full communications lockdown. Don’t let anyone hear another peep out of us.”
NSS VELOS
The team in the patrol craft’s tiny Operations Center watched as the time display clicked over to read 02:00. Captain Kokinos snapped, “Signal to System Control, copied to Aspis and Doxa. ‘Squadron will depart at max acceleration. Maintain radio silence until I order otherwise.’ Read back.”
The communications operator read back the signal, then transmitted it. As soon as he had done so, the Captain added, “Send one word, ‘Zodiac’, on channel HF 928, directed via tight-beam at Pagoménos. Lieutenant-Commander, drive full ahead, steer for Pagoménos. We’ll meet the destroyers and depot ship a couple of hours out.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
The patrol craft and her two sister ships scorched away from New Skyros, to complete the last part of their charade.
BROTHERHOOD DESTROYER TAURUS
“Signal received! It’s ‘Zodiac’, sir!” The communications operator’s call was sharp, alarmed.
Captain Toci cursed beneath his breath. He’d hoped the destroyers and depot ship might make it all the way to Pagoménos without their absence being noticed, but that was no longer an option. What pursuit might be mounted? Where were New Skyros’ patrol craft? Was there any other vessel in the system that might pose any threat at all?
He glanced at the time display. It read 03:51. He snapped, “Commander Dauti, I need a better picture of what’s out there. Signal all vessels to stop their gravitic drives and drop their gravitic shields, so they make no emissions at all. We’ll use reaction thrusters – they won’t interfere with our sensors – to move out of the planet’s shadow and listen carefully on passive sensors. The others are to continue on course and wait for further orders.”
“Aye aye, sir!” the destroyer’s commanding officer acknowledged. He volleyed orders at his Communications, Navigation and Helm operators. Tight-beam signals flew between ships. As the time display clicked over to 03:53, Taurus began to be pushed sideways by her reaction thrusters.
HCS BELLADONNA
“Holy shit! What do we do now, sir?” the Weapons Officer exclaimed.
Every person in the corvette’s OpCen stared in disbelief at the Plot display, where every enemy emissions signature had suddenly vanished. They had been only minutes away from cruising into the trap, between the columns of waiting mines – and now they were invisible. Using their passive sensors alone, the mines would not be able to locate or attack them.
Lieutenant-Commander Wallace thought furiously. There was no time to ask for orders from Captain Haldane; and if he did, the enemy might detect traces of even a tight-beam signal at such close range, and be warned. The mines were his responsibility, and everything was up to him.
He hesitated a moment, then spat out, “Weapons, they should be centered in our trap at zero-four-hundred. At that time, I say again, at that time, but not before, tell the mines to go to active sensors. Weapons free is still in effect.”
“Weapons to Command, aye aye, sir!” The Lieutenant’s fingers flew over his console as he tapped in commands. “Programmed, sir!”
Two minutes later, two hundred and fifty thousand kilometers directly above Belladonna, a hundred mines and their control satellites received the signal and bloomed into radar-guided life.
BROTHERHOOD DESTROYER TAURUS
“What the hell?” The Plot operator’s agonized yell drew all eyes to the display. Suddenly, around the space where their four colleagues were cruising under emissions silence, five long columns of radar emitters appeared out of nowhere. Taurus was just outside their lines, moving away to port.
Captain Toci instantly understood what had happened. Those were powered space mines! They had to be! Whoever had sown them must have been tracking his ships using passive sensors only. His decision to shut down all emitters had forced them to go to active sensors. By moving sideways, Taurus had, all unknowing, evaded the trap by the narrowest of margins.
He opened his mouth to shout an order – but the mines forestalled him.
The control satellites’ active sensors immediately picked up four large targets, moving within the tube formed by their columns. Working at battle computer speeds, the controllers allocated mines to ships and ordered them to take targeting information from their own sensors. Less than five seconds after the mines had gone active, the first one exploded, sending a cone of bomb-pumped lasers into the armed freighter Oraku. More than eighty others followed in rapid succession, a rolling, actinic glare of fireballs and stabbing laser beams.
The holocaust in the center of their pattern was catastrophic. All four Brotherhood freighters, the two armed ships and the unarmed replenishment vessels, staggered under the impact of dozens of laser strikes each. Oraku, the first hit, was also the first to die, as a laser beam pierced her forward fusion reactor’s magnetic containment field. She flared into thermonuclear oblivion in a fireball three kilometers wide. She was followed in rapid succession by the two replenishment freighters. Every member of their crews was killed instantly.
Only the last armed freighter, Lasus, did not blow up – but she was riddled from bow to stern by scores of laser beams. All her systems shut down. Most of her internal atmosphere vented to space. Almost all her crew died in her colandered hull, flailing uselessly in their airless attempts to cling to life. Only seventeen, in compartments that retained at least some air for long enough to let them struggle into emergency spacesuits, survived the devastation. They headed for three lifeboats, and cast off from the shattered hulk. The lifeboats’ emergency beacons began to wail automatically, plaintively, for rescue.
BROTHERHOOD DESTROYER TAURUS
Captain Toci’s jaw hung open in sickened disbelief as he watched his squadron’s destruction. The reality of the disaster crashed in upon him. He would not be able to save the new warships and depot ship now heading toward him from New Skyros, in desperate need of resupply. All the efforts of their crews, his brothers in arms, would be in vain – and some of them now faced the certainty of arrest and trial. His destroyer did not carry enough supplies or reaction mass to replenish even one of the new ships, and he could not possibly accommodate all their crews in her limited free space. Taurus would have to pack aboard as many of them as possible, then return to base alone.
He knew with gut-wrenching certainty that even if he and his ship somehow escaped this trap, he would be branded forever as the man who had led the Brotherhood’s forces into the worst, most disastrous defeat they had ever suffered. His gorge rose, and a red curtain of rage washed over his vision. No! Never that! Better to die fighting, and take as many enemies as possible with me!
He roared at the top of his lungs, “Sensors to active! Tell me where our enemies are!” Commander Dauti tried to say something, but he overrode him. “Silence, Dauti! There is no time!”
The Plot operator called, voice high-pitched with shock and desperation as Taurus’ radar came to life, “Targets! Three vessels below and sli
ghtly to port. One small echo below and slightly to starboard. Three more below and further to starboard. They are all at point-blank range! One much larger vessel is behind the planet.”
Toci didn’t wait for more. “Weapons free! Weapons officer, hit that big ship behind the planet with two missile pods, and the three below and to port with the other four. Flush your pods! Fire all your missiles at the enemy, offensive and defensive! Overwhelm their defenses!”
Dauti yelled, “Wait, sir! Let’s classify the targets, so we know what we’re shooting at, and we can pick the most important!”
“There is no time, you fool! Look!” Even as he spoke, the first missile traces began to appear in the Plot from the enemy ships closest to them. “We are going to die, Dauti! Our final duty is to take as many of them with us as we can!”
HCS JAGUARUNDI
Commander Stroud saw the mines go to active sensors, and didn’t hesitate. “Command to Plot, active sensors now!”
“Plot to Command, aye aye, ma’am!”
Frank watched the destruction of the four freighters, fascinated, but Sheena had eyes only for the one ship that had avoided the mines. She snapped, “Command to Weapons, hit that bastard with everything you’ve got! Don’t let him get away! Weapons free!”
“Weapons to Command, aye aye, ma’am!”
All the Weapons Officer had to do was indicate the target to the battle computer, and let it have its head. Five seconds later, the first of Jaguarundi’s sixty main battery missiles speared out of its vertical-launch tube, soaring upward at the target almost directly overhead. It was only a quarter of a million kilometers above, a trifling distance compared to the big weapon’s maximum powered range of twelve million kilometers.
Jaguarundi’s hull trembled as missile after missile was ejected from her tubes by mass drivers. Since the ship was not under power, their gravitic drives did not have to worry about interference from her power plant. They kicked in immediately, sending the weapons screaming toward their prey.
However, the enemy’s reactions were almost as fast. Before even a tenth of the frigate’s missiles could be launched, the other ship began to volley-fire missiles as fast as she could, heedless of gravitic drive interference between them. Sheena blinked at their unexpected numbers, then realized what her opponent must be doing. “That’s got to be a destroyer, not an armed freighter! She’s firing everything she’s got at us, offensive and defensive missiles together! Weapons, get on them!”
“On it, ma’am!” the Lieutenant at the Weapons console snapped, fingers already flying over his controls.
Captain Toci’s last order had been, albeit unknowingly, the most effective he could possibly have issued. Hawkwood’s ships had discovered to their cost during the Second Battle of Mycenae, a few years before, that when a hostile missile bored in at a significant fraction of the speed of light, surrounded by scores of other targets to confuse guidance systems, it took an average of more than three defensive missiles to stop it. At such desperately close range, offering so little reaction time, it would need even more.
The three frigates at which Taurus had fired possessed a total of two hundred and sixty-four defensive missiles. However, they now faced one hundred and sixty incoming enemy missiles, all ripple-launched within a few seconds of each other in a deadly cloud. They didn’t have to wait to get clear of the destroyer’s gravitic drive field before activating their own, because she wasn’t using her drive – only reaction thrusters. What’s more, at so short a range, the frigates’ defensive missiles didn’t have enough time to spread out and aim at individual targets. They could only try to form a firewall of thermonuclear detonations between the ships and the approaching missiles, to destroy, or blind, or confuse as many of them as possible.
Their efforts met with considerable success. A radioactive holocaust erupted about a hundred thousand kilometers above the frigates as their defensive missiles spewed out. New arrivals kept thickening the barrier, even as enemy missiles blasted through it. About two in five of the incoming weapons were destroyed in the explosions. Another two in five found their sensors blinded by the effects of radiation and electromagnetic pulse. Unable to see their targets, they zoomed past the frigates, to lose themselves in the blackness of space. Most would self-destruct when their fuel ran out, so as to remove the hazard to navigation that would otherwise be posed by their drifting hulks.
That left about one-fifth of the incoming weapons. The main battery missiles screamed into range of their targets, rolled to present their bomb-pumped laser warheads at the right angle, and detonated. Out of each fireball, clusters of laser beams slashed and tore at the frigates.
At the head of the formation, furthest from the enemy destroyer, Jaguarundi was targeted by fewer missiles than her consorts. Her laser cannon, eight of them, took out several before they could explode. However, five warheads sent at least some of their laser beams into her hull, shattering steel, blowing compartments open to space, causing major damage – but miraculously missing her Operations Center and all her critical systems, the fusion reactors, the gravitic drive, and the capacitor ring. She was gravely wounded, and lost almost a quarter of her crew killed and injured, but was still able to move under her own power.
Her two sister ships were less fortunate. They were closer to the incoming missiles, and therefore received the most attention from them.
HCS Caracal staggered under the impact of dozens of laser beams. They eviscerated her, shutting down her reactors, rupturing her capacitor ring, leaving her a ruined wreck without power. Even as the incoming main battery missiles ran out, the enemy’s defensive missiles were close on their heels. They did not carry bomb-pumped lasers, but nuclear blast warheads. Three of them closed in on Caracal, no longer able to defend herself, and scored almost simultaneous direct hits. She vanished in their fireballs, taking her entire crew with her.
HCS Margay fared somewhat better, but not much. She, too, was riddled by laser beams, which sent her forward fusion reactor into emergency shutdown, destroyed her gravitic drive, and cut her wiring harness in several critical places. However, her capacitor ring continued to provide power to the four laser cannon around her stern. They were able to fend off the last missiles closing in on her. Even so, she was a dead hulk, no longer able to move under her own power. She would have to be ferried to a dockyard – but there were no ferries available. The surviving members of her crew tried desperately to rescue those who were trapped, and account for those who did not answer their calls.
The enemy’s last thrust reached out and annihilated the unarmed freighter Porpoise in a welter of explosions and laser beams. Unable to defend herself, she staggered under their impact, then she and her crew were reduced to radioactive molecules in the actinic furnace that consumed her.
However, the destruction worked both ways. Even as Frank Haldane and Sheena Stroud fought to save their ship, and looked on in horror at the destruction of her sister vessels, the frigates’ missiles reached Taurus. By using all her defensive missiles as offensive weapons, she had left herself almost completely unarmed. All she had left were her laser cannon. They scored impressively against the incoming missiles, shooting more than twenty of them out of space; but that wasn’t good enough. The remaining weapons, all cruiser-size missiles with outsize warheads and massive laser cones, smashed the Brotherhood destroyer into scrap steel and her crew into bleeding corpses, then blew them all to oblivion. By the time more missiles began arriving from Bobcat, Lynx and Mandrake, further away from the destroyer, there was nothing left for them to hit. They veered from side to side, seeking a target, then self-destructed in a welter of pointless explosions.
HCS JAGUARUNDI
Frank shook his head violently, as if to clear it of the fog of war, and snapped, “Communications, signal Bobcat and Lynx to assist Margay and look for survivors from Caracal. Signal Mandrake to check for survivors from the enemy ships. Signal Belladonna to program any remaining mines and control nodes to self-destruct, then che
ck for survivors from Porpoise.”
“Communications to Command, aye aye, sir.”
He turned to Commander Stroud. Her face was pale, droplets of sweat clearly visible on her forehead. “Sorry, Sheena. I should have done that through you, to preserve the chain of command, but…”
“No problem, sir.” Her voice was shaky. “I… I can still hardly believe what we just went through. Somebody up there must surely love us! We were amazingly lucky to survive that.”
“We were indeed! Remind me to show you the post-combat analysis I did after the Second Battle of Mycenae. Against that weight of fire, at such close range, our survival was definitely against the odds. Now, check your ship for damage and casualties, and let me know how badly she’s hurt. I’m going to coordinate the other ships’ efforts while you do that.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Mandrake reported in due course that the only survivors from the enemy ships appeared to be three lifeboats from one of the Brotherhood freighters. “What do you want me to do with them, sir?” her skipper asked.
“Leave them in their lifeboats for New Skyros forces to collect. Over.”
“Understood, sir. What about the wreck of the freighter? Over.”
“Leave her for the New Skyros people as well. It may be useful as publicity material for their news media. Form up on Jaguarundi, and let’s wait to hear from the others.”
In a short while, Bobcat reported, “We can’t find any survivors from Caracal, sir.” Even over the flat, crackling radio circuit, profound sadness was evident in her commanding officer’s voice. “As for Margay, she has over fifty per cent casualties, mostly fatal, and she can’t move under her own power. I’m transferring her survivors to my ship and Lynx, sir. Over.”