“Have we heard anything from these aliens or humans or whatever?” Geary asked. “There’s been time for at least a challenge to reach us from that fortress.”
The comm watch answered him. “No, Admiral. Not a word that we can tell was directed at us. And nothing that gives any clue to who they are. We’re picking up lots of their comms, but it’s all heavily encrypted.”
“Everything?” Desjani demanded.
“Yes, Captain. There’s no civilian comm traffic that we can find. It’s all military-grade encryption. At least, that’s what we’d call it if they were human.”
“Humans with that kind of discipline? No one taking shortcuts or ignoring comm requirements?”
“That doesn’t seem too likely, does it?” Geary agreed. “We don’t have time to consult the experts, and as long as whoever is directing those small craft keeps charging at us, we also don’t have any option but to defend ourselves.” He turned to look back and saw Rione in the observer’s seat, sitting silently, her eyes watching her own display. “Try to establish communications with them. Tell them we’ll be happy to leave and didn’t intend staying anyway and have no hostile intent. We don’t have much time to get those messages across,” he added, not sure if Rione understood just how bad the situation was.
Rione sounded resigned as she replied. “They have made no attempts to communicate, not even demands that we leave or surrender. I don’t think they wish to talk, Admiral Geary. They appear to have enough hostile intent for both of us, and they don’t seem to care about our own intentions.”
“Do your best, Madam Emissary.” He eyed his display again. “If we can’t get them to break off their attack,” Geary commented to Desjani, “we’re going to have one hell of a fight on our hands.”
“Target-rich environment,” Desjani remarked in a cheerful voice that carried across the bridge. Her watch-standers, tense gazes alternating between their superiors and the huge number of attackers, relaxed slightly at that display of their captain’s confidence.
Geary had trouble showing the same enthusiasm for the situation, though. “That’s one way of looking at it. There are so damn many of them.” He ran yet another maneuvering check despite knowing that he would get the same awful answer. After an awesome surge of acceleration at launch, the alien craft seemed to have steadied out at a still-impressive rate of increasing velocity. His own warships had come around to point almost directly away from the oncoming aliens and were all pushing their propulsion systems to the limit, but the maneuvering systems confirmed that the best that most of Geary’s combatants could manage wouldn’t be good enough to avoid interception, though the battle cruisers should be able to just pull out of contact. The cruisers and destroyers could almost match the battle cruisers, but that “almost” meant the aliens would almost certainly manage to catch many of the escorts. The four assault transports would be doomed, along with the Marines and liberated prisoners on them, and the battleships and auxiliaries also had no chance at all. Even dumping all of the mass the auxiliaries held in their raw materials bunkers wouldn’t allow the auxiliaries to accelerate fast enough to give them any chance, and while the battleships could gather speed more quickly than the auxiliaries, with this little time to accelerate, the massive warships weren’t all that much more agile.
Geary focused intently, trying to close out normal fear, trying to find some room to maneuver against these opponents. But there didn’t seem to be any, not when the opponent had nine hundred ships too close and coming on too fast, and he usually had a lot more time to think things through, to evaluate the situation before making plans. In this situation, he knew too little and had too little time. “Advantages,” he muttered.
“We’ve got a lot more firepower,” Desjani pointed out. “And with our ships moving away at maximum acceleration, and the aliens caught in a stern chase, that reduces the closing rate. That means we’ll be within firing range of those things for minutes instead of milliseconds, giving us a lot more time to pound them. On the other hand, one shot from a hell lance probably isn’t going to take out one of those. We’ll likely need multiple hits, and there are so many of those things that we’d have to fire repeatedly as fast as possible. The weapon systems aren’t designed for that.”
“I know all that!” Why was she telling him things he already knew when what he needed was answers? All right, maybe he hadn’t thought all of that through yet, but he would have. His reply came out sharp and abrupt, fed by an awful sense of futility, and he saw her answering frown.
Glowering at her display, Desjani sat back, pointedly ignoring him as she prepared her ship for action.
Damn. I don’t need this kind of personal distraction. Why the hell does she have to be so sensitive now, of all of times? She’s the best damned ship driver I’ve got, and if anyone could maneuver us through this, it would be her, though she’d probably prefer just charging at those—
Geary’s mind froze, trying to retrack and find the idea that had almost been lost as it had raced past at the speed of thought multiplied by irritation and dismay. Charging. “Tanya.”
“What? Sir.”
“We don’t know how maneuverable they are. But we can judge how fast they can move since they must be coming at us at their maximum sustained capability. We have a very narrow chance to control when we come into contact with these attackers, but we’ll have to time our own maneuvers just right.”
Her glower didn’t subside, but Desjani’s expression took on a calculating measure. “They could be holding their velocity down to ensure their own targeting systems are effective and preserve their fuel reserves for what might be a long chase, but more likely we’re seeing the best they can do.” Desjani’s eyes were narrowed as she looked at her display, as if she were aiming a weapon. Raising her voice, she addressed her watch-standers without taking her eyes from the display. “I want human eyes on the fleet sensor readings. The sensors are telling me they haven’t identified any weapons on the alien craft yet. Tell me what you see.”
There was a pause as the officers and senior enlisted personnel called up and focused intently on the depictions of the alien craft created by the sensors, then a lieutenant spoke slowly. “Captain, maybe they do things really differently from us, but I can’t see anything that looks like firing ports or hard points. No external weapons are visible, and there’s nothing that could blow out or open to allow internal missiles to fire. They’re just tubes.”
“Bullets,” Lieutenant Castries said. “Really big bullets.”
Desjani swung her head to look at the others, and all of them nodded; then she finally looked at Geary again. “We have to assume that those things don’t carry weapons, they are weapons. Since those craft don’t have stand-off weapons, we do have some chance to decide when we engage. That’s the bright side of it. I’m not still boring you with things you already know, am I?”
“I’m sorry. I’m under a bit of pressure right now—”
“If Dauntless is destroyed, Admiral, then you and I both die. What’s your idea?”
Geary kept his reply short. “Concentrate the fleet by reducing acceleration sequentially by unit type.”
“Produce an easier target for the aliens that they’ll catch sooner? That’s counterintuitive, at least. Concentrating the force . . . sequentially?” She paused, thinking, then Desjani’s hands were moving, tracing maneuvers on her display. “I see what you’re thinking. It won’t be pretty, but it might work, and it beats any option I’ve come up with.”
“Link me to your display so we can do this fast.” The next few minutes passed in a blur as Geary worked on his maneuvering display, planning out hundreds of ship movements in conjunction with Desjani as the maneuvering systems automatically generated orders for the necessary turns, accelerations, and decelerations for each individual ship while also figuring out how to avoid collisions as all of those ships darted through the same region of space. It was the sort of problem that would have taken humans weeks to work out, bu
t the fleet systems produced answers instantly in response to the commands that Geary and Desjani were entering.
Of course, every system, no matter how good, still generated a few flaws, a few errors. Ideally, people would have time to discover those using the intuitive ability of the human mind to scan over a big picture and spot tiny inconsistencies. But there was no time for that now. He could only hope that those inevitable errors wouldn’t be critical ones. Two ships crossing the same point at the same moment in time would produce one cloud of debris and zero survivors.
“You’ll need to let individual ships maneuver independently when the attackers get close enough,” Desjani cautioned. “That will seriously stress the ability of the maneuvering systems to predict movements of other warships and avoid collisions.”
“I don’t have any alternative, do I?”
“Nope. But you already knew that, didn’t you?” she added.
Even with nine hundred alien attackers closing on the fleet, Geary couldn’t help wincing at Desjani’s jab. “Yes. But please keep telling me things I already know.”
“I’ll consider it. This plan looks as good as we can possibly manage in the time available.”
He nonetheless paused to look over it, dismayed by the hundreds of separate projected tracks for individual ships weaving in and out of each other in a pattern so dense it almost resembled an impossibly huge tangle of string. The time counter in one corner was scrolling down, indicating that he had only two minutes left to order these maneuvers, or else there would be too little time for the individual ships to execute them, and a whole new plan would have to be crafted. Murmuring a prayer to his ancestors to ask the living stars to keep his ships safe, Geary hit the approve command, and the plan flashed out to every warship, transport, and auxiliary in the fleet.
“This is Admiral Geary to all units. Individual ship movement orders are en route to you. Our attempts to communicate with the inhabitants of this star system have yielded no results, and the force closing on us appears intent on a fight. We will engage these alien craft and destroy every one that threatens our ships. After doing as much damage to the attackers as we can using the orders being transmitted, be prepared for follow-on orders for every warship to maneuver independently as required by the actions of the enemy.” He had a momentary impulse to add something stupid like try not to collide with other ships, but managed to block the words before actually saying them. “We will re-form following the engagement.” Assuming there are enough of us left to re-form. But I do need to say something else. We’re going into a tough fight. I have to tell everyone that I expect victory despite how bad things look. “Let’s show whoever lives in this star system that they made a serious mistake when they chose to attack the Alliance fleet. To the honor of our ancestors, Geary, out.”
Desjani glanced at him. “You didn’t tell them not to hit each other—”
“I managed to stop myself.”
“—but they already know that, don’t they?”
Geary paused before saying anything else, facing the reality that after very tense minutes of working and thinking as fast as possible, he would now be forced to watch events unfold, unable to intervene for a while without throwing the plan into confusion and ruining what seemed to be the fleet’s best chance to defeat this threat. “How long am I going to have to pay for that remark?” he finally asked.
“I haven’t decided yet,” Desjani replied. “It’s a good plan, Admiral, better than anything I could have come up with in the time we had. Let it run and watch the big picture so you know when to call out orders again.” She raised her voice to speak to everyone on the bridge, keying a command that also broadcast her words through the entire ship. “We are heading into battle now, and Dauntless will be leading the way. I want maximum combat readiness for all crew members and systems. Let’s show the rest of the fleet how it’s done.”
Dauntless began pivoting in response to her maneuvering orders, her bow where armament and shields were clustered most heavily coming up and around to face the oncoming horde of alien small craft. Geary sat back, watching silently as the other battle cruisers did the same.
Viewed rationally, none of it made sense. The battle cruisers were going to charge the enemy, despite the overwhelming numbers of attackers, and even though the charge was just a matter of the battle cruisers ceasing their own acceleration so that they continued moving rapidly stern first in the same direction as the fleet but also slid toward the rear of the fleet as the battleships, cruisers, destroyers, transports, and auxiliaries continued to accelerate past them as quickly as possible. Moreover, the atmosphere on Dauntless’s bridge could only be described as jubilant even though slightly more than nine hundred alien ships were closing rapidly and would soon enter hell-lance range. This was what the crew believed that battle cruisers were supposed to do, leading the fleet against the enemy, and between the upbeat attitude of their commanding officer and their own confidence in Geary to get them out of any mess, they were ready to fight even the odds they now faced. “All units, engage targets as they enter weapons envelopes,” Geary ordered. Mines might not be of much use in these circumstances, but this was no time to try conserving missiles.
Dauntless trembled slightly as specter missiles leaped out, racing toward their targets. The other battle cruisers fired missiles as well in a staggered barrage caused by their differing distances to the enemy. “Here’s where we see what kind of point defenses they have,” Desjani commented.
Whatever those defenses were, they couldn’t stop specters. Many of the alien small craft managed slight last-instant jogs in their vectors that caused the specters to detonate too far from their targets, but other alien vessels vanished under the blows of the Alliance missiles, blown into tiny pieces by the warheads, the force of the collisions as the missiles hit home, and the explosion of their own payloads. “Look at the size of those detonations,” Desjani marveled. “Those things have some humongous warheads on them.”
“Combat systems estimate from the destruction patterns that the alien craft have substantial armor of some kind in their bows,” the combat systems watch reported.
“That’s going to make it harder for the hell lances to achieve kills,” Desjani complained. “They’re not making this easy at all.”
Geary, inwardly marveling at Tanya’s ability to find humor at times like this, just nodded in reply and waited, wondering what hidden weapons the alien ships might be armed with. But no weapons fire stabbed out from the aliens as they got closer to the Alliance battle cruisers, which now formed a rough barrier between the aliens and the rest of the fleet. “Entering hell-lance range in five seconds,” the combat systems watch reported.
One by one, the battle cruisers opened fire again, their hell lances hurling out spears of high-energy particles, the shots invisible to human eyes. The leading alien craft trembled as hits went home, knocking down shields and tearing holes in their bows, but they kept coming.
“Tough bastards,” Desjani said.
“Yeah.” He had one eye on the advancing aliens and another on status reports from the battle cruisers. As Desjani had noted earlier, combat systems were designed for very quick engagements, slashing firing runs in which a single volley or at most two could be unleashed. Hell lances could be fired repeatedly for only so long before they began overheating, and now he watched the warning signs begin popping up on battle cruiser after battle cruiser.
“Hell-lance batteries 1A and 2B are experiencing serious overheating,” Dauntless’s own combat systems watch-stander reported. “Estimated time to temporary shutdown ten seconds maximum.”
“Very well,” Desjani replied. “How long will the others keep firing?”
“One minute maximum estimated, Captain, but combat systems predict in thirty seconds we’ll be down to only twenty percent of hell lances still firing. Five seconds to specter reload completion.”
“Fire specters as soon as they’re ready.”
The missiles tore away fr
om Dauntless again as the fire of the hell lances faltered. Geary studied the readouts for the other battle cruisers. Leviathan and Dragon had already temporarily lost several batteries to overheating, and the fire from the other battle cruisers was weakening fast. Increasing numbers of alien ships were coming apart under the battle cruisers’ barrage, but so far the losses had barely dented their numbers, and the aliens were closing quickly.
Even though he knew it would happen, Geary was momentarily startled when Dauntless and the other battle cruisers pivoted again, putting their sterns to the enemy as their main propulsion units lit off once more. The fleet’s combat systems had been able to approximate beforehand how long the hell-lance batteries could fire before overheating, so the maneuvering orders had been based on those calculations. Now the closing rate of the enemy ships slowed dramatically, but the battle cruisers also could no longer engage the enemy nearly as effectively with their bows pointed away.
Desjani had one hand supporting her chin as she watched the fight. “And here comes the second team.”
The maneuvering commands sent earlier had kicked in for the mass of escorts in the Alliance fleet. Scores of destroyers and light cruisers and dozens of heavy cruisers swung around bows on to the aliens, and the Alliance battle cruisers began overtaking the smaller warships. As the alien craft continued to close, the destroyers and cruisers joined their fire to that of the rear batteries on the battle cruisers.
Alien missile craft staggered, some disappearing in tremendous explosions while others were torn to pieces. But for every alien ship destroyed, more came on from behind. Geary watched the hell-lance readouts on his escorts rapidly climbing to overheating while a third volley of specters were launched from the battle cruisers. By now the aliens were so close that the missiles were having trouble achieving lock-on before the battle raced past them, and most were clean misses. “All units, cease firing missiles unless you get a solid firing solution on some alien craft.” Their hell lances falling silent from overheating, the cruisers and destroyers pivoted again, sterns to the enemy, accelerating once again at maximum, joining the battle cruisers in trying to keep ahead of the alien attackers as long as possible.
The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Dreadnaught Page 36