Our invisible human “friends” still have some missiles left.
These ships carried a variety of high-intensity spotlights on board, which could illuminate the exterior of the asteroids in normal light, as well as a full range of scanners that could analyze them in the entire spectrum, from infrared to ultraviolet. Although the surfaces initially appeared irregular enough to be naturally occurring asteroids, in-depth analysis of the photographs revealed that all three displayed curious “lumps” that were suspiciously arranged in fairly regular rows of various sizes and similar arrangements.
That isn’t natural.
Infrared analysis revealed faint straight-line cracks resembling small doors in most of those lumps, and what appeared to be very large ones at the rear of the asteroids.
Doors? Is it possible there could actually be someone inside those asteroids?
Tzal then sent a dozen more ships to some of the still-surviving mining facilities within the asteroid belt, to gather ground-penetrating scanning equipment, specially designed for analyzing the interior of asteroids. Only one actually managed to retrieve the desired equipment and made it back to reach the suspicious asteroids that needed analyzing. All the rest fell victim to those maddening human ghost ships, who obviously still hadn’t run out of missiles yet.
* * * *
The new Confederate stealth cruiser CSS Banshee and two of the smaller Infiltrator-type intelligence vessels, CSS Phantasm and CSS Apparition, were tracking every cat ship that moved in and around the asteroid belt by passive infrared scans, and moved invisibly with their unique, undetectable gravitic drives into position to kill them. They’d been having themselves a field day so far, killing over thirty cat ships having heat signatures resembling cruiser mass vessels and ten of what appeared to be small carrier massed ships. They’d also destroyed over forty of those small corvette-class warships, whose heat signatures were well-known to the fleet, and almost fifty Raknii mining facilities they’d located scattered throughout the asteroid field.
Phantasm and Apparition were both out of missiles by now, but they could still inflict some damage with their single 5-gigawatt pulse lasers… more than enough for dealing with mining outposts and those small corvette-type warships the cats had so damned many of. CSS Banshee still retained about fifty high-yield, short-range, ship-killer missiles, as well as her three double, 11-gigawatt main turrets and her light cruiser’s complement of twin 5-gigawatt mounts.
Confederate Captain Michael Diamond had been thoroughly in love with his prototype intelligence-gathering vessel, the original CSS Ghost, for which that class was named, but what he felt about Banshee was damned near sexual. Even the surfaces of her massive weapons barrels were all angled and coated, so even allowing her additional size, her scanner reflection profile was no more than the size of a man’s head.
This wicked bitch gives me a hard-on!
* * * *
The one converted Raknii “destroyer” to have survived to make it back with the ground-penetrating scanners matched speed and landed on the surface of one of the outermost of the three asteroids that were headed inbound, approaching Slithin. Space-armored Raknaa assault-troops helped to wrestle the scanner out onto the asteroid’s surface, so that an Engineering-Master could make recordings of what lay beneath the surface in various places on the asteroid. The cruiser was uploading the data coming from the scanner to their secure comm, and was beaming it back towards the asteroid belt, so that Tzal could receive and record the readouts in somewhat time-delayed, real-time.
The asteroid itself was showing a relatively standard nickel-iron composition to a depth greater than the scanner’s design limits of 150 body-lengths of scan range depth could penetrate. One great oddity noted was that the outer surface seemed to have been heat-treated somehow — artificially hardened to a depth of approximately one body length. Tzal couldn’t imagine what kind of facilities the humans would have needed to employ to accomplish that sort of thing intentionally.
Was it possible that it was a naturally occurring phenomenon from some close encounter with a star in the distant past?
On their current trajectory, the three asteroids were projected to pass through the outer corona of Slithin’s primary. It was possible the three would survive and swing around the primary in a long elliptical orbit of several hundred cycles in duration.
Was this a natural occurrence, or were the humans really that detail-oriented in their attempts to mask their involvement in launching these asteroids into the system?
The larger lumps showed a hardened depth of about 1.5 body-lengths, with a cavity of some kind within. The medium-sized ones showed similar cavities at a depth of approximately one body-length, while in the smallest ones, the interior cavity began at approximately three-quarters of a body-length depth. Tzal’s engineering-masters were of two minds about these cavities and lumps —they could be naturally occurring phenomena as the result of out-gassing, which could conceivably occur within the outer atmosphere of a star, or they could be artificial. There was something within those cavities, but the resolution was fuzzy, so they kept trying to sharpen the images of the interiors of those cavities through computer enhancement.
* * * *
The Raknii Imperial Planet of Raku
May 17, 3868
Xior awoke to find his heir, Drix, at his bedside. Xior was momentarily startled at seeing another wearing the rank-stones of the supreme-master, as he’d not seen such since his own sire wore them before Xior had ascended to the supreme-mastery himself.
“How are you feeling, sire?” asked Drix.
“Feeling? Actually, I feel pretty good, for being dead,” chucked Xior. “Why did you not kill me, as I commanded you?”
“Hal was extremely confident that he could concoct new drugs that would both alleviate your pain and arrest the progress of your disease, thereby extending your life,” replied Supreme-Master Drix. “He also believes that, with time, he may also discover a means by which your condition may be cured entirely.”
“You entrusted my life to an enemy alien?”
Drix snorted. “Why not? You were ordering me to kill you anyway. Where there is life, there’s hope, and even a slight hope is better than no hope at all.”
“Why did you not tell me of this before? Before I ordered my own death and relinquished the supreme-mastery?”
“Hal told me that his new drugs would leave you incapacitated, as you’d be very weak and your mental processes degraded,” replied Drix. “He said that arresting the disease would require long periods of almost total rest and that stress had to be minimized for the treatment to work. He believed that the continuing burden of your office would aggravate your condition and threaten the effectiveness of the treatment.”
“Understandable,” mused Xior, nodding. “You knew that I would have never neglected my duties, even to save my own life.” Xior paused a moment and shook his head before continuing.
“Still it was a bit of a shock, momentarily thinking I had woken up ‘on the other side’ and discovered that Dol looks just like Varq.”
Drix laughed. “Yes, I can see how that might have been somewhat disconcerting for a moment. Are you feeling up to having visitors?”
“Visitors? More of the OverMaster brotherhood?”
“Not quite,” chucked Drix. With that, he nodded towards Varq, who then opened the door. N’raal entered carrying little Eryx, who immediately squirmed out of his dam’s arms and scurried into his grand-sire’s lap.
Xior laughed with unabashed glee, as he roughhoused with his grand-cub, but was startled when N’raal approached and said, “It is good to see you feeling better, sire of my mate.”
“You can see me?” Xior asked in astonishment.
“Of course I can see you,” N’raal stated, perplexed at such a ridiculous question. “Why would I not see you?”
“But that means…”
“Yes,” chuckled Drix. “Exactly… she’s always been able to see Varq too. That little
surprise almost got me killed, the night Eryx was conceived.”
* * * *
Chapter-19
The enemy is here and if we do not whip him, he will whip us. — General Robert E. Lee
The Slithin System, Raknii Space
May 17, 3868
Computer enhancements of those blurred areas inside the cavities within the lumps on the asteroid’s surface gave the merest hint of straight lines, but Tzal knew what those had to mean.
Weapons barrels.
As fantastic and unbelievable as it sounded, those huge asteroids were actually gigantic warships, each bearing an incredible number of energy weapons. He had already had his staff develop attack plans, just in case his instincts proved correct. All he had to do was give the order, and 50,000 fighters would rise to swarm the attackers and over 9,000 heavy cruisers would lift and engage.
Tzal gave that order and prayed to Dol that they would be enough against those three monstrous ships. He also sent a message back towards Slithin for Planet-Master Paeb to send him what old-style warships remained in orbit around the planet. Tzal was relieved when he finally received a confirmation message from Paeb, informing him that he had received confirmation from multiple reliable witnesses that Blug had apparently spontaneously combusted when Slithin Station exploded and was a smoldering pile of ash, the last anyone saw of him. As Tzal was now confirmed as ranking master within the system, Paeb was immediately sending him approximately 20,000 of the old-style warships, per his earlier request.
They’ll at least provide decent decoys for my real warships.
* * * *
When heat signatures by the thousands began suddenly appearing within the asteroid belt and heading towards the asteroid-battleships, CSS Apparition responded to her standing orders and accelerated to up jump speed, to call for the cavalry. CSS Phantasm fired off a laser squirt towards Rear Admiral Irwin’s flagship, CSS Behemoth, to give her warning that the enemy was on the warpath, and CSS Banshee took up station between the asteroid belt and the planet Slithin.
* * * *
“Admiral, incoming message on the spook channel… ‘The bees are swarming.’ I repeat, ‘the bees are swarming.’”
“All right, ladies and gentleman, time to earn our pay for the month,” said Rear Admiral Stacy Irwin. “Captain Cameron, call the squadron to general quarters and light off the scanners… let’s see what’s what, out there.”
“Aye, aye, Admiral!”
Alarms clanged and horns hooted, as the crews of all three gigantic asteroid-battleships ran towards their battle stations. Crew personnel all changed into hardened, self-contained battle armor. Secondary and tertiary systems were powered up, calibrated and synchronized with their primaries. Battle-shorts were enabled on all vital systems. Armored doors on the weapons blisters opened and weapons were run out into firing position. Turrets were rotated and weapons were run out and elevated to check for functionality. Search and fire control scanner masts elevated and began searching surrounding space for enemies. Internal armored doors sealed and damage control parties readied their equipment.
Time to party!
* * * *
The Rak troopers who had been crawling around on the surface of CSS Leviathan for several sub-turns howled in horrified astonishment, when the “lumps” they had been investigating suddenly came to life all around them. Incredibly thick doors opened and impossibly large weapons extended. One moment they had been standing on the surface of a relatively barren asteroid, and the next they were virtually surrounded by a forest of 21, 14, 11, 8 and 5-gigawatt pulse laser tubes.
Horror quickly turned to anger as they watched their ride home lifting away from the asteroid, trying desperately to escape the deadly transformation going on all around them. But that anger was short-lived… turning to bleak despair as they watched helplessly when just one of the smallest of those weapons suddenly discharged and blew their escaping new destroyer to atoms, at virtually point-blank range. With nothing left for them to do, they simply gathered together and began singing their death chant — which was the Raknii version of kissing their asses goodbye.
* * * *
CSS Defiant, just outside of the Slithin System, Raknii Space
May 17, 3868
“Admiral, incoming message on the spook channel. ‘The bees are swarming.’ I repeat, ‘the bees are swarming.’ Wait one… another message follows. Admiral, it says the cats have fighters… I repeat… the cats have fighters!”
“Acknowledge receipt of the message and give them our thanks for the heads-up,” said Admiral Ben Stillman.
“Aye, aye, Admiral.”
“Damn,” said Captain Dorothy Fletcher-Stillman. “Our carriers don’t have any anti-fighter missiles aboard.”
“Comm, send to our carriers and advise them that the cats reportedly have fighters and to make sure their birds all have full loads in their chain-guns before they launch,” said Stillman. “Advise we’ll give them one hour to finalize their preparations before we jump into the Slithin system. Also, advise the fleet to accelerate to jump speed and to break out the stimulant injectors, as we’re gonna have a short jump.”
“Aye, aye, Admiral.”
Ben then turned to his beautiful wife and said, “Fighter combat will be new to the kitties, and I doubt seriously if their first attempt at building them will even begin to approach the sophistication of our birds. Besides, what could cats possibly know about dog-fighting?”
* * * *
The Slithin System, Raknii Space
May 17, 3868
Tzal sent in his fighters, in fifty waves of 1,000 fighters each. They each carried a single, heavy-yield, medium-range missile with rudimentary onboard scanners having both target acquisition and tracking capabilities. Over the next few hours, a repetitive pattern developed. The attacking Raknii fighters were subjected to fire from the hundreds of 5 and 3.5 gigawatt pulse-lasers from each of those massive ships, having interlocking fields of fire, so about 2.5% were destroyed before they got within firing range to release their missiles. Once launched, about 10% of these new Raknii missiles tracking systems failed to acquire a target at all. 60% of those missiles that did acquire a target had their initial target-locks broken by active electronic countermeasures from the gigantic human warships, so they had to reactivate search mode after being drawn off-course by the enemy’s deceptive signals. Only half of those missiles reacquired a target before running out of fuel. Fully half of those that reacquired targets a second time were again drawn off-course by the human electronic countermeasures, and ran out of fuel, to go drifting off in space along with their earlier brethren.
Half of those that managed to hold target-lock in spite of the humans’ ECM, fell victim to another new weapon the Raknii had not encountered before. Hundreds of various types of point-defense weapons like lasers, charged particle beams and Hail Storm defense systems that utilized chain-driven, rotating, multi-barrel shotgun type projectile launchers spitting thousands of tiny kinetic penetration pellets, produced a cloud of outgoing metallic particles between the ship and incoming missiles.
Of the few that survived that gauntlet, a full 30% experienced either premature magnetic arming failures, or failed to arm their warheads at all. Thus it was that for every 1,000 missiles the Raknii fighters carried out on the attack, only about 20% of them actually impacted on the human warships and exploded, as designed. Unfortunately the Raknii had not yet developed effective armor-piercing warheads, and depended entirely on shaped explosive yield for penetration power. So each missile explosion that actually impacted on the surface of the huge asteroid-warships produced only a small crater in the humans’ hardened alloy surface armor that was about two body-lengths across, to a maximum depth of only about a quarter body-length.
* * * *
Confederate Captain Michael Diamond couldn’t believe his luck. When his stealth cruiser CSS Banshee arrived at her assigned patrol station prompted by the cats’ massive launch, he found that the cat commander
had positioned what appeared to be almost a thousand light carriers planet-side of the asteroid field, to shield them from scan view of the asteroid-battleships still inbound — right in Banshee’s lap. Diamond couldn’t imagine any culture that was capable of designing, building and fielding a thousand light carriers from scratch, less than five years after Minnos first introduced them to the concept of fighters, but somehow the cats had done it. He imagined the cats were having quite similar thoughts, and were shaking their furry heads at the bizarre idea of anyone turning nickel-iron asteroids into massive weapons platforms, too.
At any rate, with a thousand juicy targets to pick from, Diamond and his crew felt like kids turned loose in the galaxy’s largest shooting gallery. Diamond preprogrammed a random figure-8, racetrack course just within range of the cat carriers into their navigation computer and then slaved their master fire-control system to it.
11-gigawatt pulse-lasers did terrible things to lightly armored carriers and Banshee carried six of them, mounted in three twin turrets. Independently targeting different carriers with each of her turrets, Banshee’s three 11-gigawatt twin turrets literally destroyed a different carrier with each firing pass, as she fired and moved, fired and moved —in a random path designed to frustrate any kitties trying to draw a bead on her.
Several hundred fighters came back their way, searching for their tormentor, but Banshee’s compliment of twin 5 and 3.5 gigawatt mounts swatted them away at longer range and her point-defense weaponry knocked down the few who inadvertently managed to wander within their much shorter range.
Wrath of an Angry God: A Military Space Opera Page 21