The Memnon Incident: Part 3 of 4 (A Serial Novel)

by Marc DeSantis

  Imagawa turned sharply, followed by Percy, and headed back at the trailing mass of enemy fighters. She scored a hit on a rolling Barracuda, but was then caught in the starboard engine by a furious laser salvo from the lone Wyvern. The unit sputtered, then flamed out. Imagawa's Wildcat suddenly lost half its remaining thrust. Imagawa pulled up sharply, hoping to avoid a second salvo.

  The Wyvern pilot, he was a good one, and likely the leader of the formation, instead rolled away and came up behind Percy, who was alone once Imagawa had swerved. It was only for a second that he was vulnerable. The Wyvern unleashed a hellstorm of grapeshot that ripped apart his engines. His Wildcat lost power, except for its emergency back-up, and sped onward, unable to maneuver.

  The Wyvern pulled up and away, taking position above and behind Percy's stricken machine. Next, a K-76 Drake settled in directly aft of Percy, and launched four Poison Darts.

  "Eject, Hammer, eject!" Imagawa shouted. Better that he be captured and tried as a criminal than be blasted into particles.

  There was no response from Percy, but, in the moments before the Darts impacted his Wildcat, there was a small, brief flare of an ejection pod lifting away from his fighter. Imagawa rolled once more, and flung her machine at the Drake that had smoked Percy, roaring in as fast as her wounded fighter would let her. She tore off the nose section of the Drake with a blast of her M53's, and then fell away in a hard, high-g deceleration that saw the Drake tumble past her. She was now at a virtual standstill compared to the remaining Memnonian fighters.

  Incredibly, the Wyvern pilot had predicted her maneuver, and had decelerated too so that his machine remained above and behind that of Imagawa. She turned furiously, first to port, then starboard, but the Wyvern was much more maneuverable than her Wildcat, had full use of its intact engine, and stayed behind her each time. The bleating of the threat warning receiver was a constant buzz as it alerted her to multiple target locks from the Wyvern and the surviving Memnonians. Her scope began to light up, registering at least a half-dozen new contacts at fifty thousand kilometers distance. She would soon be outnumbered even more than she was currently. It had been a good showing. She and Percy had given far better than they had gotten. She transmitted her final coordinates and farewell message. If Steadfast were still in the system, she might pick it up. More would know that Percy still lived, and that they had both gone down fighting.

  A deep voice bearing the aristocratic accent of Memnon crackled over her comm. "I believe that you are reading me, Halifaxian pilot. Acknowledge."

  "I'm a little busy here," Imagawa snarled. "What do you want?"

  "A terrible attitude for one who comes bearing arms into a friendly system, I think," the man said. "I will not waste your time," he continued. "I am Commander Alexander Mendel of the Royal Memnonian Navy. You have fought well. Honor demands no more of you. Surrender and you will be spared, as will your wingman. Our search and rescue units are on their way, and will take him prisoner shortly."

  "Go to hell."

  There was a short pause as Mendel digested her defiance. "Suit yourself."

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  RHS Steadfast

  "Birds outbound, time to impact, thirty seconds," Amy called out. "Enemy missiles inbound, forty-one seconds."

  "Teddy, how are the shields?"

  "Full strength, captain," Tan reported. "I've put magnesand clusters downrange along the most probable routes of attack, and all CIWS's are ready to go."

  Very good, ensign," More replied. Magnesand was probably the simplest weapon in the Navy's arsenal. Meant for use at only the closest of ranges, it was a slurry of ordinary sand grains that had each been given a microscopically-thin coating of steel so that they could be electromagnetically accelerated out of tubes. Once the magnesand had been ejected, it would form a widening cloud of tiny but hard particles in the void. Magnesand was scant danger to warships, though it could take out an unlucky fighter. The true use of magnesand was defensive, against the antiship missiles that were routinely flung by interstellar navies in the initial stages of their battles.

  Antiship missiles were ordinarily launched when opposing ships were separated by enormous distances, as these bore the only chance of securing any hits against maneuvering vessels. Lasers and plasma cannons, though much faster than missiles, could be dodged at long range, where even a slight deviation error in targeting would result in a wide miss over extreme distances. But missiles were vulnerable in that they could be destroyed by defensive fire before they could reach their targets. Warships were therefore festooned with many batteries of lighter, high-rate-of-fire laser guns, as a whole referred to Close In Weapon Systems, or CIWS, and these would attempt to pick off incoming missiles before they could strike. In the neverending contest between offense and defense, missile designers had in some cases eschewed trying to have their products make contact with the target at all, which would in almost all cases be shielded from an explosion by shielding, and instead of an ordinary nuclear warhead installed a fusion device that, once it burst, would channel the tremendous release of energy into a direct energy blast of high-powered x-rays. While this too could and would be dissipated by functional shields, the x-ray laser could be fired while the missile was still likely to be out of the range of the target ship's defensive weapons.

  Nonetheless, some missiles would be able to dodge the blizzard of antimissiles and defensive fire thrown up in front of them by their targets, and these would, just before striking the shields, detonate with titanic fury. Nullspace vent shields could absorb vast amounts of energy, channeling it into hyperspace, but could not assure that all would be stopped by it. Any excess would wash over the target, potentially rupturing the hull or bringing down the shields altogether. Magnesand was a last-ditch weapon against such strikes. Hundreds of thousands of metallized grains would be flung into the path of oncoming missiles. Any weapon that struck them with a closing speed of around 25,000 meters per hour might as well have hit a mountainside. Magnesand was almost impossible to detect by a missile's onboard sensors, and so evading the particulate storm was unlikely if their paths crossed.

  Memnon's standard shipkilling missile was the SIM-86C Firestorm, a Halifax-supplied weapon a generation out-of-date. What it lacked in evasive ability or stealth was made up by weight of numbers. Two hundred and six missiles were closing with the seven RHN ships, giving about thirty missiles per ship.

  Not that they had been parceled out evenly. Forty-nine of them were headed for Steadfast alone. Admiral Wu had taken this whole affair way too personally, More thought grimly. He turned his attention to Del Rio. "Our birds - time to intercept?"

  "Five seconds, captain!"

  Forty-two Halifaxian SIM-99B's reached the colloquially termed 'death zone' in which their warheads stood a chance of doing damage to a target. Missiles, no matter how fast they were, approached their quarry at the equivalent of a crawl when compared to lasers, since their fusion engines could only push them at speeds well below that of light. There had been talk for many years of producing missiles fitted with small FTL drives, as this combination of velocity and long-range accuracy would, it was argued, be a marriage attribute of the best of missiles, their ability to make course corrections, with that of lasers, which hurled x-ray blasts at the greatest speed possible.

  Technically, it was entirely feasible to insert a faster-than-light drive inside a missile. Courier capsules were staples of the naval service, and these were usually smaller than the shipkillers that the RHN's warships carried. Each mounted a little displacement drive inside it. On a few occasions prototype missiles with DP units had undergone trials at the RHN's testing center on Weyland in the Hamilton system. Several factors had prevented the Navy from fielding them. A displacement drive was hideously expensive, and almost always represented the single most expensive system to be placed aboard a starship, whether military or civilian. Also, courier capsules were reusable, missiles weren't. It made no economic sense to shoot objects that would be so costly. Sec
ond, a missile traveling via displacement could never get closer to its target than the nullspace vent shields that surrounded it. The missile would immediately fall out of hyperspace, and often it would come apart and explode violently when doing so. This left a DP-driven missile no better than a conventional weapon in striking a target, and perhaps worse. Lastly, getting close to a target was more challenging for a missile traveling in hyperspace than for one moving through realspace. Astounding accuracy was possible for a DP drive-equipped ship that jumped from one system to another over many light-years. This accuracy was achievable only through constant course corrections administered while transiting hyperspace. A missile was to be fired at targets just a few hundred thousand kilometers away from its launch platform, and in the scant microseconds it would be in a higher dimension, it lacked the needed time to ensure it emerged near its target. Even missiles armed with x-ray warheads would be of uncertain effectiveness since there could no guarantee that the weapon would emerge from displacement close enough to the enemy to fire with a chance of hitting.

  "Contact," said Del Rio.

  Across a zone of some 200 kilometers, twenty-seven Halifaxian missiles erupted in bursts of nuclear fury. The arcane technologies embedded within the missile focused their titanic output of energy into directed x-ray blasts that scythed through the intervening distance to the Royal Alfred. The shields the battleship's generators erected around the vessel were enormously strong, and much of the power of the lasers was dissipated into hyperspace. Not all of it, though. Even with stout screens deployed, baleful energies penetrated and struck the hull of the Memnonian flagship.

  Great gouges, several meters long, were torn in the thick hull of Royal Alfred. The main bridge of the colossal vessel was struck, as was one of the maneuver drives. Then came the remaining nukes. Most of these were picked off by the battleship's CIWS, leaving seven to run into the wavering shielding. Three missiles, stopped by the shields, still conveyed sufficient energies through their titanic explosions to crush the Royal Alfred's port side, and blow a dorsal railcannon turret clear off the craft. The four remaining missiles came up from beneath to impact the ventral shields, and detonated in silent blossoms of atomic fire.

  The Royal Alfred bucked upward, like a stallion unwilling to be saddled. The ship did not crack open, as More had dared to hope. A battleship was almost always too stoutly constructed to be susceptible to breaking apart. Smaller vessels might crumble, their hulls too light to absorb the vast energies hurled at them. Battleships were intended to stand right in the line of fire, take vast amounts of punishment, and dish it back out. Royal Alfred was wounded, but remained in the fight.

  Retaliation was soon in arriving. Ensign Tan's defensive weapons slapped dozens of speeding Firestorms before they could come within range of Steadfast. Ultra-high rate of fire lasers burned through the outer casings of the missiles, ripping open the miniature fusion reactors that drove them onward. Clouds of magnesand slammed like tidal waves into others, penetrating the warheads and exposing the small quantities of deuterium inside to space.

  Forty-nine of the giant weapons had been shot at Steadfast. Only nine remained. Four were x-ray detonators, and these delivered searing laser blasts against the Halifaxian heavy cruiser. The ship rumbled as the shields absorbed the strikes. The lights in the bridge dimmed briefly as Amelia funneled extra power to the roiling defensive screens. Then came the last five, which, passing through the hail of protective fire, hit the Steadfast's shields.

  The cruiser rocked so hard that More's jaw slammed against his upper teeth, as one after another, the nuclear detonations washed against Steadfast. The lights went out completely, until Amy brought them back up on auxiliary power. "Main reactor is offline, Captain More," she said. "Commander Koslov reports that he is restarting the powerplant immediately."

  More keyed his comm so that he could speak directly to the Steadfast's chief engineering officer. "Better be quick about this Boris. Without shielding we won't be long for this galaxy."

  "The outage is only temporary captain. The fusion reaction was knocked out. Power's back."

  On the bridge, the lights returned to full illumination, and the Steadfast's shields returned at full vigour. "Power levels nominal," Amy reported.

  "Feeney," More asked, "what about the rest of our ships?"

  "Completing scan now, captain." Cassandra Feeney's eyes darted back and forth across her personal vidscreen, which displayed a welter of symbols signifying Halifaxian warships, RMN craft, and the myriad fighters that were swirling about them all. "All ships still here, captain," she reported in a relieved voice."

  "The Cormorant's taken the worst of it, Captain More," Garand interjected, clutching his earpiece. "One maneuver drive unit out. Limited mobility. Power still there. Adonis says that one launch/recovery tube has been wiped out. Otherwise its fully operational. Kestrel reports that dorsal turret A has been destroyed. Theseus has had a landing bay blown wide open. Kongo's shields have been weakened by energy feedback. Golden Lion is untouched. All missiles that approached it were either destroyed or missed."

  More grinned. "Good for Vince!"

  "Fighters inbound," Feeney said, and this brought More back once again to the dire situation that confronted them. "How many?"

  "Counting at one-hundred-fifty-three bandits, captain."

  His own fighters would never stand a chance against that many, now matter how brave and skilled they were. Adonis' pilots would fight hard and die. He could not allow their vain sacrifice. Morrigan was awake and defending herself. There was now another option.

  More keyed the squadronwide commchannel. "You're all still with me, I see." A half-dozen voices answered in the affirmative. "It's time to leave. Morrigan can protect herself. I'm recalling the fighters. Adonis will recover them. Once that's done, we will displace immediately."

  "Are you sure that's wise?" Carey asked. She had always been the most eager to go, but now, with Morrigan alive, at least partly, she seemed to be having second thoughts. "I thought we couldn't allow her to fall into their hands."

  "That was before she turned on her shields," More answered. "We've never seen screens that powerful. We don't have enough to destroy her. Certainly not with the RMN here."

  "It sounds like your expecting Morrigan to fight back," Vokey said. "We haven't seen her open up yet. Two nukes missed Golden Lion, and hit Morrigan directly behind us. We picked up a massive power spike coming from her, we thought she was charging weapons, but she didn't respond in any way."

  "I can't help that," said More. "If I can't destroy her I'm not obligated to stick around."

  "We'll be abandoning our people. Who knows what Morrigan will do with them. Damn, that's cold, Andrew," Heyward said.

  "Cold," Calder agreed, "but the right thing to do."

  "We won't be abandoning them. We'll keep track of Morrigan as best we can. We won't be jumping far. Just enough to get out of here so that we don't lose all seven of our ships."

  "Understood, Andrew," Carey acknowledged. "I can displace in sixty seconds."

  "Then let's go," Augustine added. "The Memnonians are closing to within gun range. Soon they will be hurling shells at us. Our shields will have more trouble trying to stop railcannon warshots. Let's not put them to the test any more than necessary."

  Railcannons were the preferred weapon of major warships in the Great Sphere. Usually mounted in revolving turrets, they magnetically accelerated dense alloy shells at high velocities. Though much slower when compared to lasers or particle cannons, they were the most effective at breaching the hyperspatial shields that routinely protected all naval vessels. A five metric-ton shell could punch through even the strongest shields if struck at the right angle at sufficient speed. Railshots did their damage first via pure kinetic energy. Then came the detonation of its atomic warhead. A single hit in the right place could wreck or even destroy a ship. Since railcannons were effective, but slow, they were almost always used at comparatively short ranges. Naval combat
would start at long range with the launching of missiles, which were usually not enough to decide the issue. Then the warships would close, their big gun would open up and slug it out until one side ran or was blown to pieces.

  "Massive power spike from Morrigan," Amy reported.

  "I'm reading that too," Carey said.

  "Same here," said Rahal."

  "Yeah," grunted Heyward.

  "Weapons?" asked More.

  "Unable to determine," Amelia said. "The power is increasing exponentially."

  Aboard Morrigan

  Howell huddled on the bridge as sparks cascaded from damaged consoles and power conduits. Jenkins and his marines stood erect, untroubled by the furious electrical shower. "You can be brave in power armor," he said to Chandler and Venn, who were kneeling beside them, their arms over their heads.

  "Cose says he has made it to the reactor," Jenkins stated calmly, as if the environment around him had not turned suddenly lethal. He says the plant is pumping out power too high to measure."

  "What the heck is it doing?" Chandler demanded. "Is it getting ready to jump? It would be nice to be anywhere but here."

  Jenkins' face was hidden behind the full helmet that shielded his face from view. His body language indicated, however, that he was listening to someone. "Copy that."

  The marine turned back to the navy people. He seemed to Howell like a tall giant inspecting an ant he was about to step on. "Cose says Morrigan is tractoring something. Something very big, if the power is any indication."

  RHS Steadfast, Memnon system

  More could not believe what he was hearing. "Amy, what the hell is she tractoring?"

  "Unable to identify, Captain More. I am counting many individual objects, numbering over one-half-million."

  "Ice chunks from the Oort cloud?" Feeney ventured. "There's enough of them around."

  Lieutenant Del Rio looked up abruptly from his monitor. "They're mines!"