The Long-Range War

by Christopher Nuttall

  Hoshiko smiled, coldly, as the fleet advanced on its target. If she was lucky, if she was really lucky, she’d have a chance to pick off the enemy ships before they could decide to fight or run. But, as the wavering lines of FTL gave way to normal space, she realised she was too late. The enemy ships were already making transit into GS-3532. The last one vanished before she could even begin to issue interception orders.

  Irritating, she thought. Destroying a mere handful of ships wouldn’t slow the Tokomak down for a second, but it might have worked in the Galactic Alliance’s favour later on. We’ll just have to cope.

  “Detail another squadron to cover the gravity point, with orders to harass the enemy if they appear,” she ordered, instead. The minelayers would be on their way from Apsidal as soon as she sent the order. They’d give the enemy a few nasty moments before they were brushed aside. “And take us straight to the planet.”

  “Aye, Admiral.”

  The population of Mokpo, she noted, didn’t seem to believe that the human starships were coming in peace. Hundreds of freighters were scattering in all directions, dropping into FTL and running into interstellar space. She felt a moment of sympathy for the aliens who’d had their lives disrupted, even though they were the enemy. She’d heard enough stories about just how unforgiving the interstellar combines could be - they embodied every stereotype of the black-hearted capitalist - to know that those freighter crews were going to have a very hard time. They might never be able to get their cargoes to their destinations before the penalty clauses in their contracts wiped them out. She wondered, with a flicker of amusement, just how many of them might take their ships and join the Galactic Alliance, if they were asked. Even a handful of additional freighters would be very helpful. But she couldn't afford to make the offer now.

  “Admiral, the planetary defences are coming online,” Yolanda said. “They’re deploying gunboats and armed shuttles.”

  They must have stripped the cupboard bare to try to hold the gravity point, Hoshiko thought, relieved. Intelligence had been vague on just how strong the defences actually were. Or they decided it would be better to rely on fixed defences ...

  “Target their orbital industries,” she ordered. There was no point in battling the orbital defences, let alone the ground-based PDCs. She would have nothing to gain and a great deal to lose. “Fire on my command.”

  “Aye, Admiral,” Yolanda said. “Weapons locked.”

  Hoshiko took a breath. She’d considered, briefly, trying to take the planet’s industries and putting them to work. Mokpo didn't have the vast industries of Apsidal, but they weren't anything to sneer at either. Every little helped. But she knew, all too well, that she couldn’t hope to hold the system when the Tokomak came knocking. Better to smash them now, before they could be turned against her, then give the enemy another advantage. The Tokomak already had too many advantages.

  The enemy gunboats swooped into attack formation, their weapons tearing through space and slamming into her shields. Her ships returned fire, picking off the gunboats with terrifying ease. The enemy pilots clearly hadn't had any time to practice. They’d probably never done anything more challenging than customs and patrol work for the last thousand years. Mokpo - and Apsidal - had been too heavily defended for pirates or rebels to challenge the status quo. They’d allowed themselves to go slack ...

  “Fire,” she ordered.

  Defiant shuddered as she unleashed a barrage of missiles, plunging down towards the planet below. The other ships followed suit, their missiles flashing past the remaining gunboats and heading towards their targets. Hoshiko watched, grimly, as the enemy point defence attempted to sweep the missiles out of space, but there were too many missiles. One by one, the giant orbital industries began to die. Pieces of debris flew in all directions, some heading into outer space and others falling down to the planet itself. Hoshiko hoped, desperately, that anything large enough to do real damage when it hit the surface would be picked off by the PDCs before it was too late.

  “All targets destroyed, Admiral,” Yolanda said.

  We just wrecked the work of hundreds of years, Hoshiko thought. And we did it in bare seconds.

  She dismissed the thought, angrily. There had been no choice. The human race was already on the brink. Allowing the enemy to keep and use a sizable chunk of its industrial base would just make the odds against humanity even steeper. There was no time for sentiment or guilt, let alone room for negotiation. The Tokomak intended to exterminate mankind. She was authorised to do whatever it took to stop them.

  “Take the fleet back to the gravity point,” she ordered. Things had been a great deal simpler when she’d been fighting the Druavroks. There weren't any enemy forces waiting for her in Apsidal, she thought, just paperwork and endless discussions with the provisional government. “We’ll sit on top of it until reinforcements arrive.”

  “Aye, Admiral,” Yolanda said.

  “And send a signal to the LinkShip, once we arrive,” Hoshiko added. There was no point in sending the signal now. The fleet would outrace the message on the way back to the gravity point. “She is to come through the gravity point at once.”

  “Aye, Admiral.”

  Hoshiko leaned back in her chair, suddenly feeling very tired. The brief engagement had been very satisfactory - and she’d send ships further up the chain to Winglet once Mokpo was secure - but she was all too aware of just how little damage they’d done, compared to the sheer might the Tokomak could bring to bear against humanity. Their industrial base was still intact. The capture of Apsidal and the destruction she’d wreaked at Mokpo had barely taken out a percentage point of a percentage point. Given time, the Tokomak would simply crush the human race under a tidal wave of production. No, humanity had to go on the offensive.

  She keyed her console, bringing up the starchart. The Tokomak had a cluster of stars in the centre of the known galaxy, stars that were almost completely theirs. Even the other Galactics tended not to visit. And humanity would have to invade those stars if they wanted to win the war. There was no other way to win. Hoshiko knew, from history, that her ancestors had won great victories in the Second World War. But they hadn’t been able to destroy their enemy’s industrial base ...

  ... And so they’d been ground to powder.

  Lying to their people, even to their own government, probably didn’t help either, she thought, sourly. At least we don’t have that problem.

  She studied the starchart for a long time, considering options. Humanity would have to go on the offensive, sooner rather than later. And humanity couldn't do it alone. They’d be fighting a war on an unimaginable scale. No wonder the Tokomak had built and deployed such huge fleets. Hoshiko had been born in space and even she had problems grasping the sheer immensity of the war. It was truly the war to end all wars.

  Hah, she thought, as the gravity point blinked into existence on the display. A handful of reinforcements had already arrived. There’s never been any such thing.

  Her mind raced. Perhaps, once they’d smashed the enemy fleet, they could ravage the nearby sectors or push directly into Tokomak space. Her orders didn't include any suggestions that she should take the war to the enemy, but ... she might never have a better chance to actually win. Or even to land a knock-out punch. If they could raid their cluster, they could devastate the enemy industries. They might even be able to convince the Tokomak to come to the negotiating table.

  If they can be convinced to take us seriously, she reminded herself. The Tokomak had a towering superiority complex - and the hell of it was that they deserved to think highly of themselves. They’d built a star-spanning civilisation while humanity had been crawling in the mud. We’re a very young race to them.

  Yolanda interrupted her thoughts. “Admiral, the LinkShip just transited the gravity point,” she said. “The pilot is hailing you.”

  “Put her through,” Hoshiko ordered. She waited until the image blinked into existence, then leaned forward. “Captain Hameeda. I
trust you had a pleasant rest?”

  “I slept, Admiral,” Hameeda said. She didn't look very rested. The briefing notes had suggested that part of her would always remain awake. “Is it time to proceed to N-Gann?”

  “Yes,” Hoshiko said, putting her doubts aside. It was a risk, but she needed as much warning as possible before the enemy fleet arrived. And the LinkShip was the best scout under her command. “Go there, watch the enemy, run back here when they start to move.”

  “Understood,” Hameeda said. She sounded confident, at least. “I won’t let you down.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  N-Gann had been a dead world when the Tokomak discovered it, hanging on the end of a gravity point chain like a piece of rotting fruit. It wouldn't have been considered useful, certainly not to a race with access to most of the riches of the known galaxy, if it hadn't been lucky enough to be located near to a handful of very important and wealthy worlds that might have developed ... ideas ... if they hadn’t been carefully watched. N-Gann had been converted into a naval base and industrial node and, over a thousand years, it had grown into an important and wealthy world in its own right. It even had a massive planetary ring of its own.

  And facilities to support a major fleet deployment, Empress Neola thought. She sat in her command chair and studied the display, watching her ships as they were replenished for the next stage of their voyage. We don’t have to worry about bringing supplies all the way from the homeworld.

  It was, she had to admit, an awesome sight. The N-Gann Ring was impressive, but so were the thousands of starships holding station near the planet. It had been hard - almost impossible - for the planet to supply them all, despite the warnings. But N-Gann was steadily converting its industrial base to support a truly massive fleet. There would be a price to pay for that, Neola knew, but the bill wouldn’t come due for years. By then, she would have exterminated the human race, crushed any of the servile races that dared to raise a hand against their masters and taught the other Galactics that there was a reason the Tokomak ruled the known universe. No one would dare question ever again.

  As long as I get the fleet to Earth, she reminded herself. The galling part was that the deployment wouldn't take anything like so long if the gravity points weren’t bottlenecks. She couldn't speed up the transits any further without risking absolute disaster. But once we get there, we can destroy the humans and end the war.

  She looked up as an aide hurried over to her. It was bad news. She could see it in the young male’s eyes, the fear of giving his superior something they wouldn't want to hear warring with the fear of not doing his job. She held out a hand for the datapad before he could say a word, took it and scanned it quickly. The humans had attacked Apsidal. The humans had attacked and taken Apsidal. She had to smile, coldly, at just how badly the messenger was trembling. The idea of a younger race attacking a major world was unthinkable.

  But not to me, Neola thought. She’d learnt hard lessons in the Battle of Earth. The human creatures were revoltingly ingenious. Apparently, they’d spent centuries considering space tactics before they’d even made it into space ... no, they hadn’t made it into space. They’d stolen the technology off someone else. I planned for this, did I not?

  She tapped the messenger’s bowed head. He flinched, as if he’d been expecting a blow.

  “Inform my senior staff that there will be a conference in two hours,” she said. “Go.”

  The messenger turned and walked away, his stance suggesting that he wanted to run for his life. Neola waved her hand in irritation. The gerontocrats probably would have killed the messenger for bringing them bad news - or at least destroyed his career - but she wasn’t going to do that, not when she needed to hear bad news. She turned her attention back to the datapad and reread the brief report. The humans had attacked through the gravity point, demonstrating a new weapon in the process, and then taken the planet and the remaining gravity points. And it looked as if they’d brought a major fleet of their own.

  Good, Neola thought. The more ships I destroy here, the fewer I’ll have to face at Earth.

  She tapped her console, bringing up the starchart. She’d expected some response to the fleet, assuming the humans knew she was on her way. An invasion of Apsidal was a logical response. Indeed, she could admire the cleverness and daring of the move. The humans would bleed her fleet white if she mounted a conventional attack through the gravity point herself. She had plenty of expendable units, but ... she didn't want to waste them. Fortunately, there was another option.

  “Divert a courier boat to contact Task Force Gamma,” she ordered. “I want them to be ready to move in two weeks.”

  She studied the starchart for a long moment, then started snapping out more orders. The fleet was ready to proceed to Winglet. It was going to be difficult to get through the gravity points to Mokpo, let alone Apsidal itself, but she had vastly superior firepower. She doubted the enemy would risk making a stand anywhere short of Apsidal itself. As long as they held Apsidal, they could force her to call off the campaign or take the very long way to Earth; if they lost Apsidal, they’d have to either retake the system, whatever the cost, or resign themselves to eventual defeat. She could pin them in place, then crush them when her surprise went into play.

  The humans might see it coming, she mused. One thing she’d learnt was that the humans were cunning enough to anticipate what she might do and plan countermeasures. But she’d worked hard to ensure that there were no countermeasures. And yet, there’s nothing they can do to stop it.

  She keyed her console, bringing up the latest readiness reports. The fleet would be departing in an hour or so, travelling directly to the nearest star. And then ... the humans would see them coming, of course, but they wouldn’t see the real threat. She wondered, idly, just how they’d feel when they finally saw it. She’d taken a leaf out of their books and turned it against them.

  It doesn’t matter what they think, she told herself, stiffly. All that matters is that they die.

  ***

  Hameeda had thought that Apsidal had been a big system, with hundreds of thousands of starships coming and going, but N-Gann managed to be bigger. The single gravity point was surrounded by hundreds of ships, yet there were many - many - more surrounding the planet itself. N-Gann wasn't anything like as heavily populated as Apsidal - Hameeda’s sensors insisted that the planet’s atmosphere was pure poison - but it was clearly significant.

  And yet, the planet was almost dwarfed by the enemy fleet.

  Hameeda could barely keep her awareness off the enemy ships as the LinkShip drifted into the system. There were thousands upon thousands of warships, ranging from giant battleships to tiny destroyers and gunboats; there was enough firepower, right in front of her, to devastate the Solar Union from one end to the other. And the enemy fleet was slowly coming to life. Her sensors noted drives and weapons systems coming online, while merchant shipping was steadily directed away from the giant formation. She’d seen the simulations, she’d watched as Admiral Stuart’s fleet left Earth, but she still couldn't grasp the sheer size of the enemy fleet. Her sensors couldn't even give her an accurate ship count, not without going a lot closer. There were so many ships that their energy signatures were starting to blur together.

  A flicker of fear ran down her spine as the datanet analysed the raw data, trying to tease out hard information from the blur. There were so many ships that they could mount a conventional assault on Apsidal, pushing through the gravity point one by one, and win. And they had a giant support base, only a few days behind them. They could be churning out assault pods already, preparing to tip the odds back in their direction. She dreaded to think what would happen if the Tokomak started mass-production of assault pods of their own.

  This could get really bad, she thought, numbly. She’d thought she’d grasped the size and power of the Galactics, but now ... now she was starting to realise she hadn’t had a clue. A race that controlled nearly a third of the galaxy, directly o
r indirectly, wouldn't deploy fleets of a mere few hundred ships. Hell, Admiral Stuart’s fleet numbered nearly two thousand ships. This could get very - very - bad.

  She forced her awareness away from the fleet and studied the planet itself, trusting in the analysis subroutines to alert her to anything important. It wasn’t something she would have trusted a standard RI - or even an AI - to handle, but the LinkShip datanet had a combination of high-speed processing power and an almost human intuition. The scientists had told her that it would learn from her, and eventually embrace her mental engram for itself, yet she hadn't really understood that either. Perhaps no one understood it. The LinkShip was both part of her and yet separate from her.

  Perhaps it’s just a suit of clothes, she thought. She giggled at the thought of putting the LinkShip on as easily as she donned a shipsuit, then forced herself to concentrate. We don’t have much time before their fleet leaves.

  N-Gann was, if anything, even more heavily defended than Apsidal. She could see a dozen battlestations on this side of the planet alone, protecting a formidable industrial base. Worse, it had a planetary-scale forcefield. The entire planet was wrapped in a bubble of energy. It wasn't something she’d seen before - her records noted that planetary forcefields were actually relatively rare, even for the Galactics - but it was there. Invading the planet would be an utter nightmare.