The Battle of Sauron

by John F. Carr

  “Enough.” The voice came from the left side of the High Command Council table.

  One moment, the three Cyborg members of the High Command had been seated, quietly conferring with one another. The next instant, Ulm was standing, Saentz was holding up a communicator and speaking in the Battle Tongue, and Manche stood over the bodies of the First Citizen and Councilman Panades. Both members of the High Command were dying of broken necks, both taking time to finish doing so. Manche was holding them in their chairs with one hand to each throat.

  The speed of the coup was enough to make Diettinger think he was hallucinating. I never dreamed even a Cyborg could be so fast! Is that how we look to human norms? No wonder we terrify them so! In seconds, two dozen Sauron norms in battle armor had flooded into the council chamber, led by another Cyborg Diettinger didn’t recognize, a giant with the name tag: “SARGUN.”

  “By order of Emergency Security Provision 12156,” Saentz declared, “The High Command Council is hereby dissolved as being inimical to the interests and continued survival of the State. It is the motion of this member that Fleet First Rank Galen Diettinger be appointed Dictator Pro Tempore for the duration of the current crisis, said crisis to be regarded as the threat of imminent invasion by forces of the Empire against Sauron.”

  “The motion is seconded,” Ulm said, without looking up from the communications panel with which he was directing the sealing-off of the capitol.

  “How say the remaining members of the Council?” Manche asked… he still had one hand against each of the dead men’s throats.

  The remaining members seemed more relieved than anything else. The “aye” vote was immediate.

  “The motion is carried,” Saentz said. “This council is adjourned sine die.” Only then did he release the bodies of Panades and the First Citizen. Both dropped to the floor with solid, final sounds; Sauron muscle mass made for very weighty dead weight, indeed. Saentz turned to Diettinger.

  “This body stands ready to carry out your commands in defense of the realm, Dictator”

  For one surreal instant, Diettinger would have sworn he saw the Cyborg actually smile.

  “What is to be done?” the Cyborg asked.

  II

  The Sauron populace was informed, briefly, of the implementation of Security Provision 12156. Although few citizens knew of Fleet First Rank Galen Diettinger, everyone knew the law, and Diettinger abruptly found himself without any resistance whatsoever to his plans for the defense of the Sauron System and Homeworld.

  “It’s a bit like walking into a stiff breeze all morning and having it change to a tailwind at noon,” he told his Second Rank during a staff meeting.

  Althene declined to comment. She had heard Diettinger’s account of the coup and realized, as he did, that its speed was illusory, that all the elements of the takeover must have been in place for weeks, perhaps months, before the Cyborgs had made their move; then left in place, ready for activation whenever the Cyborgs judged it necessary. They would not move for simple power over Sauron society; that they had already, in abundance. They would only take such drastic action for what they deemed the welfare of the Race. Despite a ruthlessness unmatched even by other Saurons, Althene knew that all Cyborgs’ actions stemmed from motives based on the Sauron vision of human destiny.

  She also knew that Diettinger could not be unaware of the peril of serving as a Cyborg cat’s-paw, and that he could not seriously think that he was really in control. His current status could only mean that the Cyborgs thought he could actually defeat the Imperial Fleet which must even now be en route to Sauron System.

  “Second Rank?”

  “My apologies, First Rank. I was distracted.”

  Diettinger ignored the lapse and continued entering data on the pad before him. A moment later, he engaged the holographic units and activated the War Room display of Sauron System.

  Landyn, the system’s F9 star, had produced seven worlds. Dawkins, Proteus and Niobe marched outward from the star to the Homeworld of Sauron itself and its large moon, Poictesme, both now bearing a single green nimbus of enhancement. Next was the wellspring of Sauron power and prosperity, an asteroid belt of a density so great that it had required a century of regularly visiting astrophysicists to explain its origin; a giant planet of heavy matter and radioactives which had cooled too quickly and literally collapsed under its own weight. These asteroids were Sauron’s primary safeguard against invasion, the most heavily fortified defense line in the history of warfare. Of the number of emplacements hidden within the slowly rotating field, System Defense Boat squadrons alone ran to the hundreds. Missile bases, particle accelerator and beam weapon bays and thermonuclear mines brought the total figure of defending elements well into four digits.

  Despite the huge indigenous population of their asteroid belt, the Saurons did not count the area as one of their system’s worlds. The fifth true planetary body occupied the sixth orbital path, a gas giant called Ostia, which Sauron had tapped for fuel since the earliest days of colonization. Ostia was surrounded by a dozen refueling stations, among which twice as many tankers were engaged in transfer rotation, the ships constantly ferrying hydrogen to refueling stations in orbit over Sauron itself.

  Diettinger did not expect to hold Ostia for long. Its status as a fuel supply source and its position outside the main defenses of the asteroid belt had doomed it. So the ferries ran hourly, building the fuel stores for the Homeworld’s defense, and they would do so even after battle was joined, until Ostia was captured or the last of them was destroyed.

  The last two worlds of the Sauron System, Freas and Barlowe, were mixed blessings. At this point in their respective orbital years, they were almost exactly opposite one another on the plane of Sauron System’s ecliptic. Both were occupied by extensive research facilities, lately reinforced by massive shipments Diettinger had authorized immediately upon returning from an inspection of the sites, presumably to augment their extant defense emplacements and, perhaps, allow him some edge in the coming battle, if the Imperials were sufficiently obliging in their approach patterns.

  Even without such reinforcements, Barlowe and Freas’ opposing orbital positions and extensive supply caches provided Diettinger’s forces with Jump-off Points to the areas of greatest danger and greatest opportunity; Sauron’s Alderson points. But it also made it apparently impossible, for task forces detached from either world, to reach the other quickly enough to provide any meaningful mutual support.

  Sauron boasted six Alderson Points, where the stellar thermodynamics of Landyn’s Sun generated “tramlines” between itself and six of its stellar neighbors. These lines had made interstellar travel possible and empire logical; they would now seem to make the imminent destruction of Sauron inevitable.

  Widely referred to as “Points,” Alderson himself had never failed to cringe at the misnomer. Alderson Points were not easy to find. Alderson tramlines formed between points of equipotential thermonuclear flux located near stars. Not all star pairs formed Alderson tramlines, and not all those tramlines which did form were large enough to take a spaceship. For travel between star systems, it was frequently necessary to carry out a series of Alderson Jumps interspersed with periods of travel in normal space between different points. Which often meant starships had to travel circuitous routes, from system to system via Alderson point to Alderson Point, to reach their destination.

  Alderson tramlines, when they formed, formed instantaneously, and travel between them appeared to take no elapsed time. The tramlines began and ended in specific areas, which did not necessarily orient themselves along the line of travel, and just to keep all stellar navigators honest—and rich—they sometimes shifted position. Gauging the winds of old Earth in a clipper ship had been child’s play by comparison.

  Diettinger’s viewing console for the immersion display was at the general position of Jump Point One, the route from Sauron to Wayforth Station. This viewpoint was two point four billion kilometers beyond the orbit of Barlowe,
twenty-three degrees above the plane of the ecliptic in a wedge-shaped area one hundred-seventeen degrees from a zero point line drawn between Landyn and the galactic center. The zone defined was roughly equivalent to Sauron’s orbital position during the planet’s month of March.

  He pressed a key and the point of view changed to forty-one degrees below the plane and further along in the year, around late July. This was the route to Dropshot system, a little closer at about two billion kilometers distant, and through which had come the last of his reinforcements, nineteen days ago. No courier ships sent through any of these Jump routes in the last seven days had returned.

  “Dictator.” Cyborg Rank Köln had entered during Diettinger’s observations of the system map. He was serving as liaison for the High Command Council, and had returned with a list of updates on the System Defense Boat squadrons based on Sauron’s moon, Poictesme.

  Diettinger downloaded the information without acknowledgment, nor was one expected. But Köln watched the Dictator, while Althene watched the Cyborg. Köln’s eyes flickered upwards once, briefly, to meet hers. The Cyborg’s gaze was placid, neutral, unconcerned. He never blinked and finally looked back at the system display suspended in the center of the War Room.

  Diettinger frowned, leaning forward even as he entered several enhancement commands. A section of the asteroid belt leaped forward, expanding into ever-finer detail. At 1:100,000 scale, the display was filled by a single large body dotted with circular slabs. The slabs were laid out in five-point star patterns, each surrounding a massive particle beam array in an armored turret. Diettinger called up a schematic for the turret, then suddenly laughed without a trace of humor.

  Several of the staffers who had been bustling about the War Room stopped in their tracks.

  Now it was Köln’s turn to frown. “Dictator,” he asked, “what is amusing?”

  Diettinger turned to Althene. “Nothing at all, Cyborg Rank Köln,” he said. “Do you see anything amusing in this, Second Rank?”

  Althene looked at the schematic, then back at the asteroid’s image in the system display. “This can’t be right,” she said.

  Diettinger motioned to one of the staffers wearing a system defense badge on his sleeve. “Third Rank Pell, what is the operational mode of this type of defense system?”

  Proud of his expertise, Pell only glanced briefly at the display; he knew the system implicitly. “The circular areas are missile ports, Dictator. Each contains twelve independently targetable anti-ship missiles with high-yield nuclear warheads, one-hundred megaton range. The turret is a quad particle beam mount containing four thousand gigajoule particle beam projectors in a linked array with a three-hundred and sixty degree field of fire and a forty-five degree vertical traverse. An approaching invader would receive fire from the beam weapons until directly over the missile ports; the missiles are then fired at a sufficiently close range that the intruder’s Point defense systems cannot lock on and destroy them before intercept.”

  “This assumes such an intruder approaches parallel to the plane of the ecliptic, does it not?” Diettinger asked.

  Third Rank Pell blinked. “No Alderson Point in Sauron System is more than thirty degrees above or forty-one degrees below any such plane, Dictator, nor closer to Landyn’s Star than two billion kilometers. Fuel constraints force incoming vessels to approach in this pattern to minimize their time-in-flight to Ostia and the system’s other refueling stations. Such an approach pattern provides raiding vessels with the maximum opportunities for cover from planetary bodies, as well as exploitation of the gravity wells of said planetary bodies for maneuvering purposes. Any approach beyond this envelope leaves the intruder dangerously exposed and consumes profligate amounts of fuel.”

  Diettinger nodded, watching the young ranker in silence for a long moment. “Carry on,” he finally said quietly. He turned to Althene, who was beginning to pale. “He certainly knows his textbook on in-system defense, wouldn’t you say, Second Rank?”

  Althene noted, “It has evidently displaced anything he learned from his historical or tactical training.”

  Köln looked again, then turned to Althene. “Tyre,” the Cyborg said, “Aqaba. Maginot. Correigidor. Dien Bien Phu. New Delhi. Second Beijing.” He stopped speaking, but the battle names continued to roll off in his mind: Giennah Prime. New Washington. Meiji Four. All of them disastrous defeats, all of them brought about when a statistically perfect defense had been surmounted by an enemy who had simply done something statistically improbable.

  “How?” Köln asked, turning to Diettinger.

  The Dictator looked at the Cyborg without expression. He understood what the Super Soldier was asking him. “How not?” he said. He went back to the console and returned the display to its original detail, then stepped it one setting farther out. Landyn was a bright spark at the center; the outside of the sphere was broadly defined by glowing red ovals which showed the general positions of the system’s six Alderson Points. None was closer than two half billion kilometers.

  “Sauron’s first line of defense is the garrison patrols at the Alderson Points themselves. Distance precludes these forces from supporting one another effectively.” Diettinger grimaced. Before the Second Battle of Tanith, they could have stationed ships at each Jump Point with enough firepower to blast any invading force into little more than mathematics.

  “Drawing the garrison patrols inward, however,” he indicated two positions, each about eighty degrees above the orbital plane and only forty million kilometers from Landyn, “splits them into two forces rather than six, and places both less than half an AU from Sauron itself.”

  “It also leaves the Alderson Points completely unguarded,” Althene pointed out.

  “‘He who would defend everything, defends nothing,’ Second Rank,” Diettinger reminded her. “It is unlikely that the Imperials will oblige us by attacking precisely as our statisticians”—he made the word sound distasteful—“declare they will. But they must have fuel, and that means they must capture Ostia or take and hold access to a Jump Point which they control. Once committed to battle in-system, the Imperial fleet will have to consolidate a bridgehead at either or both locations. This may prevent them from pressing their attack on the Homeworld for days, perhaps even weeks. Ultimately we can be assured of denying them only one of these objectives. We must therefore make the second prohibitively expensive.”

  He sat back from the console. Precious few decisive battles in history had proven to be bloodier than the attackers could tolerate. Even if the entire Imperial fleet were obliterated, it would only mean a respite before another was built and that one launched against Sauron as well. The resources of an Empire—even a crumbling one—far outweighed those of a single system.

  Diettinger looked back at the Alderson Points, thinking, But perhaps time is all we need. If we can somehow get enough of it…

  He stood up, stretched slightly. His implant chronometer told him the planetary time was 1100 hours.

  “Signal the Fleet,” he told Althene. “Patch through to all force commanders and have them standing by for briefing at 1600 planetary time. Cyborg Rank Köln,” he turned. “I will brief the High Command Council at 1300.”

  “Dictator, permission to speak,” Köln interrupted.

  “Do so.”

  “Your decision to withdraw the garrison patrols from the Alderson Points will not be received favorably by High Command.”

  Diettinger only looked up at him. “Less favorably than the First Citizen’s orders to me to proceed with the invasion of Sparta?” he asked quietly.

  “I would not know, Dictator,” Köln answered smoothly. “I merely point this out as a possible complication you might wish to prepare for.”

  “Noted, Cyborg Rank Köln. Dismissed.”

  Diettinger watched him go, then returned his attention to Althene. “Signal Fomoria, inform them I will be transferring my flag aboard at 1300.” He looked about the room briefly. “And find that Third Ranker: what was hi
s name?”

  “Ah? Excuse me. Pell, Dictator.” Althene was considering the implications of Köln’s warning.

  “Yes, Pell. Have him report to me with his staff immediately.”

  “At once, Dictator.” Althene began to withdraw.

  “Second Rank,” Diettinger recalled her. “The garrison patrol redeployment will make sense when it is complete. More importantly, it will be effective, but only if it is carried out exactly as I have planned it. Therefore, do not allow any outside comments or opinions to incline you toward any modification of my orders on this matter. I will not tolerate any deviations to the implementation of this plan.”

  “Understood, Dictator.”

  “Carry on.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  I

  “…the garrison fleets are now deployed in an hourglass configuration,” Diettinger said, as he concluded his report, “two cones, one above and one below the plane of the ecliptic, with Sauron at the center of the converging cones. This will allow these fleets to support one another as well as to rapidly redeploy to any point above or below the plane of the ecliptic in the minimum amount of time. The programs for the realignment of the asteroid defense batteries have been completed and are ready for initiation on my command.”

  Ulm began to ask a question, “Dictator; your assessment of the defensibility of Ostia—”

  Diettinger interrupted. “Is irrefutable. The solution I have provided is the only practical one. It is being implemented as we speak.”

  The briefings were held not to receive any stamp of approval, but simply to keep Sauron’s various planetary administrators apprised of what was required of them. Diettinger was Dictator, after all. Even so, some of the Sauron-norm members of the Council shared looks between themselves; the Cyborgs said nothing.

  This will force the move, Köln thought to himself. The imminence of the Imperial invasion meant that Diettinger would soon be boarding the Fomoria to command the defense of the Sauron System from his flagship. The plan to put Köln in charge of ground forces for the invasion of Sparta presumed victory over the Imperials in the coming battle. That plan had not changed, but its means of implementation had.