by B. V. Larson
“Why isn’t the inner surface of the tunnel calving snowflakes or ships? You can’t tell me that every Litho or template or whatever already made it through.” Silence greeted this question. “Work on that one, Marvin,” I said. “We still have a couple minutes before we commit.”
“Maybe it’s the same reason that their main fleet didn’t seem to coordinate with the cruisers that ran into our fire,” Hansen said. “What if this moon is part of a different—uh, call it a collective? Like Litho nations. Maybe they had permission to pass through another Litho nation’s territory, but they aren’t really allied.”
“You’d think the local moon-Lithos would defend their own home, in that case,” Adrienne countered.
“They might have had an agreement not to launch anything for a certain period of time,” I said. “For example, until the tunnel closed. Lithos appear to have a machine intelligence in that they use concrete words, just nouns, which indicates inflexibility. They didn’t even negotiate when we had the upper hand. Possibly, when they have agreed to something—for example with another Litho collective or nation—they like to stick to it as long as they’re not provoked into a change of plan. We’re not attacking the moon so they aren’t attacking us.”
“Kind of like the Macros except the Macros didn’t divide themselves into groups,” Hansen said.
“Not as far as we know.” I cracked my knuckles. “There’s so little we do know about these beings.”
“Right now,” Hansen said, “I know you have to make a decision, sir.”
He was right. Within two minutes we would zoom through.
“Do you have enough room to brake?” I asked.
“I’ve kept our speed down enough with the forward repellers. No problem.”
“Then let’s go through. Put two-thirds of the combat drones in front, then eight frigates, then us, then the rest. Turnbull, ensure everyone spreads out when they enter the sphere.”
“We’re not going straight into the ring?” Adrienne asked.
“I want to scout around first. If something happens inside the moon we can escape through the ring, but until then, let’s be a bit cautious. Once we brake, apply the formation we’ve had so much success with. Point your weapons at the ring and be ready to blast anything coming though—on my confirmation, of course.”
The transit through the rabbit hole was quick and painless. Marvin’s trick with the silicon-nanite drones seemed to have worked. In fact, when I looked for Marvin on the holotank, I saw him right behind Valiant. I had figured it was a fifty-fifty shot whether he would come along with us, but I guess his neural circuitry had come down on the side of loyalty to Star Force. Or perhaps he was curious about what was on the other side of the ring.
Once we’d positioned ourselves in front of the ring, far enough out to react to a surprise, but near enough to enter it ourselves within a minute, I ordered a pair of combat drones through. They had orders for one to return after five seconds and the other to return after thirty. When they disappeared into the ring, I crossed my fingers.
After one anxious minute had gone by with no sign of the little ships, I spoke a few choice epithets.
“Prep four this time, with orders to return in one, two, three and four seconds respectively. Send them through backward so they don’t even have to turn around.” I hoped this approach would be fast enough for one of them to make it back, but I was beginning to doubt the ring was safe.
“Why not just send a nuke through, first?” Hansen asked.
“I thought of that,” I admitted. “But what if it’s a biotic species fighting the Lithos that knocked the combat drones out? I don’t want to start off by killing potential allies. Still, it may come to that if we can’t get any data.”
The next flight of four went through, tail-first as I’d directed. One second later the first one that had entered returned, spinning and partially slagged. The other three never came back. I stared at the holotank, waiting for the vital data but saw nothing.
“Marvin, go retrieve that combat drone and see if you can recover any data from its brainbox. Share it with Valiant’s brainbox immediately. No delays for curiosity’s sake—but feel free to examine what’s left of it after you’ve transmitted your report.”
Greyhound swooped forward to pick up the combat drone in its tentacles. I figured it should keep Marvin busy for a little while. He always liked a puzzle.
Long minutes passed hanging in front of the ring. I could imagine a battle raging on the other side, and I itched to find out what was going on. That must have been how Marvin felt when he desperately wanted to tinker with something but couldn’t.
Finally, the robot uploaded some data to our system. I made a smaller, separate space for the synthetic 3D model the holotank brain was trying to fill. Setting it for one-tenth slow motion, I watched.
First, it showed the four combat drones and the ring around them on the other side. Half a second later all of them registered incoming beam fire of some sort, causing extreme heating of the small hulls. At the same time, their radar pulses revealed hundreds of ships battling one another nearby.
The Litho fleet seemed to be fighting its way out of the kill zone in front of the ring. It was impossible to tell what condition they were in for along with the many large Litho craft, the holotank displayed thousands of smaller ones—fighters, missiles, and snowflakes.
Other shapes were unfamiliar. These ships resembled deadly raptors, birds of prey with folded wings and outstretched talons. I had no idea whether their appearance was utilitarian or purely aesthetic, but at least they were distinctly non-Litho and non-Macro.
“They’re beautiful,” Adrienne said from beside me, reaching out with one slim-fingered hand to touch the glass. “There’s no question those ships were built by biotic creatures, and they must be a sensitive people. We have to help them, Cody.”
“Sensitive people who are taking a pounding,” I said, examining the slow-motion snippet of battle with a tactician’s eye. “Yes, they need help, but they’re also the ones that are shooting our combat drones.”
I wondered if Adrienne was being hypocritical, but I didn’t think now would be a good time to bring it up. Previously, she’d been upset at me for crushing the Lithos, but now that more familiar creatures were endangered by them, she had changed her mind. I restrained the impulse to point this out, especially as I agreed with her for more practical reasons: The enemy of my enemy was a potential friend.
Using a handheld cursor, I traced a circle around a group of eight alien craft that were the size of gunships.
“These ships are picking off our combat drones as they come through. Marvin,” I said into the air, trusting that he was listening in. “What did they hit us with? Lasers?”
“Grasers, actually,” came his reply. “Gamma-ray lasers. Not particularly effective against our ships, but an interesting optimization versus Lithos. Rather than attacking Litho ship material directly the way antiproton weapons do, the gamma rays should theoretically reach into the Lithos to disrupt their templates. However, this approach will obviously fail against large enough Litho ships, with sufficient mass as armor.”
“Are our magnetic shields effective against grasers?”
“They can be adjusted, but doing so will increase vulnerability in the more common laser wavelengths.”
“Do it. Pass the word to adjust all the magnetic shields for grasers, but be ready to reset them again as soon as we have formed an alliance with these, ah, raptor people. Report when ready.” I wondered whether there were sentient birds inside those ships. Eagles, maybe?
“All frigates report ready,” Adrienne said after a moment.
Unfortunately, our combat drones didn’t carry shields. Especially with craft that small, every bit of mass and power involved tradeoffs. Now I wished I had equipped a few of them as scouts, recon drones with no weapons but more survivability. One more thing for the list.
“Marvin, will the frigates’ shields hold against those
grasers?”
“They will hold against the gunboat grasers, but there are other, larger Raptor warships in the vicinity.”
“Sounds like you just coined our name for these people. All right, Hansen, when I give the word put your shields up. Set the combat drones to follow, but do not engage the Raptors until one of our manned ships does. Set them in free-fire mode against the Lithos. Can we do that?”
“It will take a moment to program,” Hansen said.
“Take that moment. We won’t be able to direct the combat drones with the shields blocking our transmissions, so we’ll have to hope their brainboxes are smart enough to do what they’re told. Frigates will do the same: only fire at the Raptors if it’s life or death, until we do. For Valiant’s gunners, hold fire. Remember, with the shields up, we can’t shoot or even communicate easily.”
“What’s the overall plan, Captain Riggs?” Marvin asked.
I stared intently at my short 3D holo-vid, mindful of the fact that the longer we waited, the further reality would diverge from the only snapshot of the battle I had.
“We’ll enter at full acceleration along this curve.” I drew an arc with my cursor. It curved out the other side of the ring and toward a region full of Lithos. “Valiant first, then the frigates, then the combat drones. If the Raptors are cocked and locked to shoot, we’ve got the heaviest shields–double shields, in fact. As soon as the frigates and combat drones come through, they will speed up and spread out to precede us in standard attack formation. You’ll have to use your best judgment from there, but my intent is to begin firing at Lithos as soon as they come into AP range. Hopefully as soon as the Raptors see we’re on their side, they’ll leave us alone.”
“What if we can’t win?” Hansen asked.
“I’ve heard enough what-ifs, people. You have your orders. Frigate crews, Godspeed—and go kick some ass.”
I took a breath as people went into motion all around me. Boards lit up, weapons and engines thrummed into intense life.
“Restraints on. Shields up…Let’s fly.”
We slid into the ring and everything vanished.
-31-
“Graser impacts registered,” Valiant reported the moment we exited the ring. “No significant damage.”
The main screen whited out and then dimmed as nearby nuclear blasts flared into life and quickly faded to a dull bluish radioactive glow.
“Punch it, Hansen,” I said as I watched the rest of my small fleet follow us through. As ordered, the frigates and combat drones went to flank speed and overtook my battlecruiser, spreading out in a shotgun pattern in front of us.
We swiftly passed the eight small Raptor gunships guarding the ring. They kept firing at our stern, but they’d been waiting in a slow holding pattern. Their engines glowed white as they began to follow us, but we pulled away easily, leaving them in the dust. That made me happy. I didn’t want to have to kill my potential allies, or vice versa.
As we slipped beyond the range of the ships guarding the ring, we were free to concentrate on the main battle ahead. Valiant displayed input flowing from her sensors revealing a nearby knot of ships. I stared at a force of about twenty Litho ships locked in combat with six Raptors. They were mopping up the badly outnumbered handful of bird-shaped vessels.
More data came in to be displayed as soon as the ship could make sense of it all. I saw the battle swell in scope. Squadron versus squadron engagements were taking place all around us. In most of these small fights the Lithos were winning, but the Raptors had the upper hand in a few cases.
We sailed forward, bearing down on the closest fight. With our weight added to the Raptors’ side, the numbers would become even, but our beams and missiles were Litho-killers and could change the outcome of the fights. Until we ran out of juice, I estimated we had at least a four to one advantage in firepower—and I intended to use it.
“Turn off the shields,” I said. “Save the power for weapons.”
Watching in satisfaction as the capacitors topped off again, I waited for the frigates to notice and drop theirs as well. That allowed us to communicate again. “I want a high-speed pass along the edge of the Litho formation, targeting their ships with our APs,” I said. I marked four of them with cursors. “Drop as many powered mines as you can in our wake and set them to seek nearby ships. That will keep them busy.”
Adrienne passed on my orders and the combat drone directors maneuvered their flights. My squadron of drones spread into a plane formation, angled so we would strafe the huge Litho ships.
In the holotank, pixels fell out of our vessels and drifted behind us. The repeller mines immediately decelerated, steering for their targets. We’d optimized these warheads for Lithos as well, creating enhanced-gamma warheads that would disrupt their templates. As they were area-effect weapons, they should kill snowflakes and missiles with their gamma pulse on detonation even if their blasts could not reach the enemy directly. If they got close enough, they should give the bigger vessels a bad sunburn as well. If they actually impacted a Litho ship, their small nuclear warheads would take chunks out of them.
Our ships’ main batteries were already firing as we’d entered the battle well within medium range. Swaths of rocky Litho-armor boiled away under our AP weapons; hulls annihilated as the antiprotons found their normal-matter counterparts and converted all the mass of both into energy. This effectively split most atoms, creating local fission, which released neutrons in a chain reaction that split even more atoms. These tiny impacts multiplied as trillions of particles struck their targets. Whole sections of the Lithos turned into low-grade atomic piles, going instantly critical and igniting. The cascade reactions were not quite bomb-grade yield, but they were close.
We closed in and made our pass, raking the enemy stern. At point-blank range the devastation was spectacular. The enemy was soon obscured. Our active sensors couldn’t even penetrate the cloud of plasma we generated as the Litho ships transformed into blowtorches. They were flying mountains, and we’d just turned them into volcanos.
Before the first pass ended, the enemy cruisers met their doom. We left the four ships smoldering with hulls that resembled molten lava.
“Shields up!” I ordered. “Casualty report, Turnbull?”
“One combat drone impacted—a stray snowflake,” Adrienne said. “We pretty much creamed them.”
It was less than a professional estimate, but it made me smile.
“A more than fair trade,” I said. “Well done, everyone. Continue until we’re out of their effective range then drop the shields and bring us about smartly.”
I felt the shudders of beam impacts as we executed this maneuver. The other sixteen or so Litho ships had now taken note of us and were firing with a mix of APs and lasers. A group broke off and charged our flank. I watched with grim pleasure as the two dozen mines we’d dropped began to explode in their faces.
Most of the mines blew up before they reached their targets or were taken out by Litho point-defense beams, but two reached the largest ship-mountain among the enemy squadron. The mines detonated against its hull in sequence, spaced well apart. They left twin glowing pits a hundred yards deep and destroyed several of the huge weapon structures. The large ship—a battleship by the look of it—came on, damaged but still intent on catching us.
After a minute of evasion, we drew ourselves out to extreme range. In space almost nothing is truly out of range but beams eventually attenuate and missiles can be picked off. Everything gets harder to hit the farther away it is. Thus, range was a judgment call, but we’d set up parameters beforehand in our extensive practice runs.
Hansen shut down the shields without me ordering the action—and correctly so. As the guy really flying the ship, he remained hypersensitive to our energy reserves. Without fuel, the big fusion engines weren’t much use. Without energy reserves, our repellers and beams were useless as well. Sakura and the engineering team were supposed to keep it all running and in balance, but no ship ever designed ha
s enough power to do everything.
I glanced over and saw Valiant was at three-quarters capacitance or so, not bad after taking out four Lithos, but we had hundreds of targets remaining on our scopes. Hansen flew the squadron in a smooth turn that made us hard to hit and kept the G forces down—heavy inertial stabilization sucked juice as well.
While he executed this maneuver, I tried to get a sense of the overall battle. Broadly speaking, the Raptors were fighting on the outside of an expanding hemisphere of Litho ships, as if the rock fleet had pushed outward from the ring in the shape of a mushroom cap. This made sense as it spread them out of the bottleneck as fast as possible without wasting the effort that turning around completely would require. A high radiation count and the amount of debris in front of the ring was evidence the Raptors had hit the attackers with a nuclear bombardment or mines and had done some damage, but the situation was still too confused for a ship count. The Lithos might have lost up to seventy ships, but our sensors may have missed some, and others had apparently broken up into fighters, snowflakes, and missiles.
As the squadron commander, my main concern was where to apply my firepower. We resembled cavalry on this battlefield, a mobile but fragile mailed fist. We were a force that could hit hard, but which couldn’t afford to slow down and get swamped by the enemy’s slower, more powerful forces. We had to strike suddenly, drive through, and keep going to set up another strike. I couldn’t see any other way to help the Raptors achieve victory.
“Here,” I said, shoving aside an overeager restraint-tentacle to mark a course that cut behind the ring and across to the other side of the mushroom cap. “Push us along that line as fast as you can while keeping formation. Have a dozen combat drones fall back to knock off those missiles chasing us.”
“This wastes a lot of time,” Adrienne said. “The Raptors are fighting and dying.”
“And more will die, but I’m not going to throw away this force. Ops, pass the damned orders!”