“And time enough to select a new tech-chief, I presume?” Dardas glanced at Kolstar and saw that the purifier was smiling a thin smile and fingering his ceremonial termination rod.
“No doubt that, too.” Dardas shrugged. Kolstar undoubtedly knew that the tech-chief was a genetic-sibling of Dardas’s, but if he thought there was any sentimental connection, he was mistaken.
The purifier said no more and Dardas went back to studying the enemy dispositions. Twenty-four of their ships had come out to meet them, while six, including their other battleship, had remained in the rear near the gate construction site. That fact alone nearly convinced him that the tech-chief’s analysis was correct. Surely if the other battleship was operational it would have come out, too.
He wished that the enemy had come out a little farther to meet them. The battle was taking place uncomfortably close to the gate. That worried him; not just because of the danger that some errant torpedo might destroy the prize, but because the area seemed extremely crowded. Swarms of vessels, large and small, clustered around the construction site. Three days of analysis had concluded that the majority of those vessels—along with all of those other mysterious contacts—belonged to a previously unsuspected indigenous race. It seemed clear that they were some brand of humanity, too, although doubtless hopelessly inferior. Well, that was a mystery that could wait for later; he had a battle to fight.
But it was not just the ships that bothered him. The Anderans clearly had a major ore-processing operation going on to support the gate construction, and they had disposed of the dross by simply ejecting it into space—a sloppy and dangerous procedure. There were clouds of dust, pebbles, and larger rocks littering his path. The sensor displays were filled with tiny returns. The danger of collision had forced him to reduce his velocity below what he would have wished. He half-suspected that the enemy had done this deliberately and perhaps an approach from another direction would have avoided the hazard, but his dangerously low fuel tanks didn’t allow that in any case. So, it was straight in.
“We are in effective range, Lord,” said the weapons officer.
“Excellent. Communications, signal the battlecruisers to open fire. Concentrate on the battleship.”
“At once, Lord!”
“You will not demand their surrender first?” asked Kolstar.
“No. Not immediately anyway. You have heard the messages they have been beaming at us for the last four days: haughty demands that we vacate the system. No offers to negotiate, not a trace of the proper humility. Such arrogance needs to be punished. We shall bleed them a bit and then listen to their cries for mercy.”
“Very wise. I am impressed, Squadronlord.”
“Princess Kars and Archduke Schtorm acknowledge, Lord,” said the communications officer.
“All three battlecruisers are scoring on the battleship, Lord,” added the weapons officer.
“Their armor is thick. We won’t do much at this distance: knock off a few sensor clusters here, jam a turret there. We’ll keep their damage control teams scrambling, but not much else until we close the range.”
“There is no additional incoming fire, Lord,” reported the sensor technician after a few moments. “Only the enemy battleship is firing.”
“Excellent. I’m glad I won’t need a new tech-chief, this one has served well.” He looked at Kolstar who shrugged and smiled.
“Change in status,” announced the sensor tech. “The enemy battleship has shifted its fire to the destroyer Askold.”
“Cowardly scum!” snarled Dardas.
“Is this important?” asked Kolstar. “I would have thought you’d prefer to spare your flagship.”
“We’re built to take the damage,” snapped Dardas. “A destroyer isn’t. Even at this range, a battleship’s main battery could turn a destroyer to scrap all too quickly.”
“I see. They hope to do what damage they can before they are overwhelmed.”
“Apparently. But I am not prepared to let them do it. It occurs to me that if the bulk of their ships are strictly on manual control, we can end this farce in a far quicker and easier manner.”
“Oh? How?”
Dardas ignored the purifier and turned to one of his other officers. “Communications! Signal to squadron: ‘pepare to launch torpedo salvo’.”
* * * * *
“Oh crap,” said Charles Crawford. “Are those what I think they are?”
“Yes, sir,” said Lieutenant Lindquist. “The enemy is launching torpedoes.”
A cluster of small red blips had broken away from the enemy force and was heading toward the fleet. The range was just under fifty thousand kilometers, and at the scale the main tactical display was set for, the torpedoes pulled away from the launching ships slowly, but began closing on their targets with increasing speed. Crawford had learned that the torpedoes possessed three separate engines; the first and largest could produce about a hundred Gs for two minutes and gave the weapon its initial boost. After that, a much less powerful engine would provide a couple of gravities of acceleration on the trip to target. This was to allow modest evasive action to throw off any long-range fire from enemy vessels. When the torpedo had closed to point-defense range, about five thousand kilometers, the final approach engine would take over, delivering another hundred Gs until the torpedo reached the target and detonated. All of this meant that they had about eight minutes to wait for those red blips to arrive.
“Signal from flag,” announced the communications tech. “Assume defense formation Delta.”
“Acknowledge,” said Crawford. He took a deep breath and then swallowed nervously. This would be his first real combat order. “Signal to squadron: execute Delta-two. Standby on point-defense.” He tensed, but the ship didn’t explode, and on the squadron status display he saw his command moving to obey the order he had just given. Wow. It worked. He relaxed slightly.
The fleet, and the squadrons that made up the fleet, realigned themselves into a formation which would give the ships with working point-defense systems the best possible chance to protect those which did not.
“Seventy-two inbound, sir,” said Lindquist. “They only launched a single salvo.”
“Testing what we’ve got, I guess. Sure hope we’ve got enough.”
“I’m sure we do, sir. Indomitable alone can handle over fifty torpedoes at a time. Uh, at least that’s what it said in the manual.”
“Right. Well, let’s pray that our tech people got all the wires hooked up right.”
“Yes, sir. And let’s hope the clan ships hold their fire.”
Crawford grunted agreement. There had been a major concern that if the Venanci used torpedoes this early that the clans, remembering what torpedoes had done to the Clorindans, might panic when they saw a salvo coming toward them and give the game away by firing their EMP cannons at them. He held his breath as the red dots passed through the cloud of green ones. No one fired. They were through the clan and coming on. The blips got closer and then closer yet. Crawford noticed that he was drumming his fingers nervously on the arm of his chair and forced himself to stop. He grasped the water bottle clipped to the chair and took a drink, trying to look as casual as he could.
“Targets are in range, point defense is engaging,” announced the weapons officer.
Blips began winking out on the screen and in just a few seconds they were all gone. Crawford blinked in surprise and then snorted out a laugh. “Well, hell, that was easy!”
“Torpedoes are nearly useless against ships with intact defenses, sir,” said Lindquist. “Or at least that’s what it said in the tactical manuals.”
“Yes, Lieutenant, I read those manuals, too, I’m just glad they were right. So, they can’t hurt us with torpedoes right now. But the three enemy battlecruisers are all concentrating their fire on Agamemnon. How long can she last under that?”
“Quite a while, I would think, sir. A battleship is built to stand up under a long range pounding for hours.”
“B
ut unless the Venanci get closer, none of our other ships can do a damn thing.”
“They are closing, sir.”
“Yeah, but too damn slowly. And if they decide to veer off and not close, we are screwed.”
* * * * *
“So, the enemy has some operational torpedo defenses,” said Squadronlord Dardas. “Not unexpected, but irritating.”
“The point-defense fire came from the battleship, two of the battlecruisers, a light cruiser, and one of the destroyers, Lord,” reported the sensor tech.
“But those same two battlecruisers are not firing their main batteries?”
“No, Lord, only the battleship.”
“The analysis of your tech-chief—and yourself, of course—seems to be accurate,” said Kolstar. “So, we will continue this pounding match?”
“It is tempting. If we reduce speed and keep the range open, then eventually the combined fire of our battlecruisers will disable the enemy battleship and then we can stand off and smash the rest of them at our leisure. But that could take several more hours. Our current vector will bring us into range of the heavy cruisers in another twenty minutes and then the destroyers another ten minutes after that. The added fire of those ships would resolve things more quickly.”
“Assuming none of the Anderan lighter ships have effective weapons.”
“True.”
“Lord, the destroyer Askold is reporting heavy damage to their armor,” said the communications tech. “They request permission to drop out of formation and shelter themselves behind the larger ships.”
“Blast. In another two hours our escort vessels could be gutted.”
“A difficult tactical conundrum, is it not?” asked Kolstar. “We are fortunate to have one with your skills in command.”
Dardas glared at the purifier but said nothing to him. “Signal to squadron: ‘all ships hold formation and close with the enemy. Increase velocity on present heading by three KPS. Glory to the Queen!’.”
* * * * *
Tad grabbed at his seat as the ship lurched again. The shaking was becoming more violent, it seemed to him. Or was it just his imagination? The ship had been under fire for over half an hour, although it felt like far longer. Lord Frichette and his officers were reacting very calmly as they carried out their duty, receiving reports and issuing orders. But Tad, with nothing to do, flinched each time the ship was struck. He’d been told that the battleship’s thick armor was absorbing the punishment well, but he still kept expecting the bulkheads of the flag bridge to explode inward at each blow.
“Sir! The enemy is increasing speed! They’re heading right at us!” The exclamation jerked Tad’s attention back to the tactical display. New information had appeared next to the icons for the enemy ships. If he was reading it correctly, the Venanci were accelerating, adding to their current vector, closing the range faster…
…and heading right into the cloud of green specks which represented the clan strike ships.
“They’ve taken the bait, my Lord,” said Lieutenant Jones excitedly. “Going after the destroyer to goad them in was a brilliant stroke, sir.”
“Just something I read about somewhere,” said Frichette distractedly. “Do we have a damage estimate on the ship?”
“Uh, still mostly armor impacts, sir. A half dozen sensor clusters are out, but DC is on them. Secondary turret six is jammed.” Jones paused as the ship jerked again. “Lieutenant Himmens thinks we have another half-hour at this rate before we’ll start taking serious damage—unless the range drops significantly.”
“What about the Venanci destroyer?”
Jones turned to look at another display and it was a moment before he answered. “We are starting to read some debris and escaping air, My Lord. Looks like we’re hurting them.”
“Good, shift fire to another destroyer. Let’s hurt someone else for a while.”
“Yes, sir.” Jones relayed the order. Meanwhile, Frichette touched some controls at his station and the main display zoomed in on the Venanci squadron. Their icons were only a very small distance from the edge of the clan formation. ‘Small’ on this display, of course, much farther in reality, but still very close relatively speaking.
“Just a few more minutes,” muttered Frichette so quietly that Tad could barely hear. “It all depends on the clan ships holding their fire.”
“And the Venanci not looking too closely at their sensor read-outs,” said Jones. “Surely, they must be getting some returns from the closest strike ships. Look, they’ll pass within a few dozen kilometers of the closest ones.”
“Hopefully, they’ll think they’re just more of the junk we scattered out there. But if any of those people start to power up their weapons too soon, it will be a disaster.”
Tad certainly wouldn’t blame any of the warriors out there for going early. If he was out there, himself, he doubted he could force himself to sit there, helpless, watching the Venanci behemoths bearing down on him. It would take an incredible amount of nerve.
But the red icons neared the first of the green specks and nothing happened. This was the critical moment, just another minute and they would be right in the midst of them.
“Optimal firing position in thirty-five seconds, My Lord,” said Jones. “We should be able to hit them with about…”
“Communications,” snapped Frichette, interrupting Jones. “Give the execution signal: all clan ships in range may fire at will.”
* * * * *
“Askold is reporting moderate damage, Lord, but they can maintain position. The enemy has shifted fire to Kagoul.”
“Estimates of damage to the enemy battleship?”
“Still no air or significant debris reading on the scans, Lord. Their rate of fire is constant.”
“That will change very shortly,” said Dardas with satisfaction. “The cruisers will be in range soon and the battlecruiser’s fire will become more effective.”
“But it seems to me that we are going to get very close to the enemy in about a half hour, Squadronlord,” said Kolstar. “Won’t their weapons, even on manual control, be able to hurt us?”
“We will have to be within a few thousand kilometers for them to have any chance of hitting us, Purifier. And before we reach that range, we will have torn the heart out of these mongrels. I don’t imagine I need to explain the inverse-square law to you, do I?”
Kolstar frowned. “Not the principle, no, but perhaps how it relates to our tactical situation.”
“The laser beams from our weapons spread as they get farther from us,” said Dardas, enjoying the opportunity to lecture Kolstar. “That is what restricts our range. We could easily hit the enemy at five or even ten times the ranges we do, but the beams will have spread so much that they will do no damage, merely heat up a section of the target’s skin.”
“I understand this,” said Kolstar stiffly.
“Well, the principle works in reverse, too. The main battery of our battlecruisers can start to do real damage at a range of about fifty thousand kilometers. So, if we halve the range, we will increase the concentration of the beams by a factor of four. At twenty-five thousand kilometers, the beams will be able to punch through far more armor. Halve the range again and the beams are sixteen times as concentrated. So at twelve thousand five hundred kilometers, our weapons will be able to blast through the battleship’s armor and savage their lighter ships. The process does not continue indefinitely, but once we are under ten thousand kilometers, the end will come very quickly—and the enemy still won’t even be able to fire back. Sometime before then, however, I’ll allow them to surrender…perhaps.”
“I see. But will not their battleship, with its even larger weapons, do us some serious damage, too?”
“We will probably have a few minutes where it will be able to hurt us, but our massed fire will quickly overwhelm it and it will pose no more…” Dardas paused when he saw one of his techs staring at him, wide-eyed, nervous, obviously wanting to say something, but not daring to in
terrupt. The punishment he had meted out on the communications tech a few days ago had clearly made its point. “Yes? What is it?”
“Lord, we are detecting multiple energy sources. Very strong and very close by!”
“What? Put them on the display.” The man swung his chair around to comply, and a moment later a swarm of yellow specks appeared on the tactical display. There were several hundred, at least, and they were all within five hundred kilometers. A few were only a dozen kilometers away! “What are they? Where did they come from? Why weren’t they detected before?”
“I… I don’t know, Lord! They just appeared! And the readings are getting stronger by the second!”
“A minefield of some sort…?” said Kolstar.
“No, they are too far away and too thinly scattered to do harm, even for a very large nuke,” said Dardas distractedly. What were these things?
“Maker!” blasphemed the tech. “Lord the readings are…”
“Signal to squadron!” cried Dardas. “All point defense to en…!”
Before he could get the command out of his mouth, there were a dozen bright flashes of light from all over his command bridge and several loud cracks and bangs. The main display dissolved in a sizzle of static and the overhead lighting dimmed to half intensity. Shouts and cries came from all his people. An instant later, his senses told him that the drive had shut down and the artificial gravity was off.
“All stations report!” shouted Dardas into the bedlam.
* * * * *
“The clan ships are attacking, Sir Charles,” said Lieutenant Lindquist. “EMP cannons are firing… hell, a lot of EMP cannons are firing.”
“But are they doing anything?” demanded Crawford.
“Uh, reports coming in now… two of the battlecruisers have stopped firing on Agamemnon… drive shut downs on five of the ships… active sensor emissions are way down…they’re doing it, sir! They’re doing it!”
Across the Great Rift Page 41