Tactics of Conquest (Stellar Conquest)

by VanDyke, David

  Most of the people in the room froze again as Bull ben Tauros leaped to stand on the table and bellow in his best parade-ground voice. “Shut up! You should all be ashamed of yourselves. Show some discipline. Don’t make me bring my people in to clear this room.”

  Absen put his hand on Tobias’ shoulder as the Steward shoved his captain toward the door and interposed his body. “It’s all right, Dwayne, I think.” It looked like the crowd’s mood had moderated as quickly as it had flared, and they slowly took their seats.

  A moment later all four doors were flung open and Marines filled the entrances, some with weapons drawn. Bull waved them back and jumped down to the deck with a clang of boots, saluted the captain and backed up to stand at the ready with his troops.

  “Thank you, Bull,” Absen said, both still on their feet. “Commander Bogrin, you are one hundred percent right. We cannot, we will not treat this conquered Meme system any differently from any other. Common human ancestry is not a good enough reason to make special allowances. Any ship or facility that shows itself hostile will be dealt with accordingly. No one on this boat is dying because we hold back. Is that clear?” His eyes swept the room.

  After receiving confirmation from everyone, Absen sat. “Mister Bogrin, please continue. Tell us about the BioMed situation.”

  “Is difficult to determine. Much is assumption that Meme have organized your system the same as ours, the same as all conquered worlds. Eden Plague is one unusual factor. We have no way of knowing how it affected the new Blends. In non-Blended humans, it improves their positive social tendencies. In my limited knowledge of Blended human Plague carriers, it seems to strengthen the human mind and will. Therefore, I suspect that Blending will not be allowed with sentient Eden Plague carriers.”

  Absen replied, “You mean they will revert to their original intention – find non-Eden humans, infect them with their own plagues to wipe out their minds, and Blend with those.”

  “Yes. Or they will use cloned Pureling bodies, though for cultural reasons difficult to explain, this option is viewed with disfavor.”

  “So they prefer genuine human bodies, not clones.”

  “Yes. Rather like a connoisseur prefers wild to farmed game.”

  Absen said, “All right, I get it. But there are very few if any non-Eden humans left. Even by the time we departed, the number was less than point one percent. Just some die-hard nut-cases.”

  “Agreed. But they only need several hundred, perhaps a thousand, for those of the Pure Race to take their bodies.”

  Clearing his throat, Absen said, “Their race is no more pure than yours or mine. As you are concerned about words and definitions, Mister Bogrin, let’s do away with that one. Some evil humans also believed in the bullshit of racial purity not so long ago, and I detest the sound of it. Let’s just call them Meme.”

  “As you wish, sir. I meant no disrespect.” Bogrin sat.

  “CyberComm next.” Absen waved at Commander Johnstone.

  “Good news, I think. While we’re too far away to access the residual human comms and computer systems, the protocols I can pick up look pretty standard to me. I should be able to find at least some back doors and hacks. But sir…” Johnstone glanced over at Michelle, “I could be much more effective if Warrant Officer Conquest could assist me. Her familiarity with machine code will help a lot.”

  “Familiarity,” Absen replied with amusement. “That’s one way to put it. Her mind is machine code, n’est-ce pas? Permission granted.” The captain pointed a finger at the avatar. “Conquest, you’ll tell us if we begin to strain your capacities?”

  “Of course, sir.”

  Doctor Egolu coughed, or perhaps choked a laugh, and Absen turned to the diminutive woman. “Something to say?”

  “Only that we are far from stressing her. Michelle, what’s the highest load ever placed on your system outside of a test?”

  Michelle stood up. “Nearly seven percent, Doctor.”

  “And that is peak load even in your current, restricted configuration? Only seven percent?”

  “Yes, Doctor.”

  “You two can stand down now,” Absen said. “You’ve made your point. It’s not lack of capability that causes me to only gradually add responsibilities, it’s developing judgment.” He looked around the room at the hundred-odd people packed into it. “Did you know that when I spoke with Desolator, he admitted he had made errors in judgment? I was even able to set him straight on a couple things.”

  Murmuring arose briefly in the room, and Absen let it die down before continuing. “Even an old, powerful AI like Desolator can make mistakes. AIs are not gods, and if I have anything to say, they won’t become our gods. The Ryss achieved remarkable things with their artificial brains, but their AIs weren’t perfect then and aren’t perfect now. It’s great that Michelle can assist us in our duties, but that’s what she needs to do. Assist. There may come a time when we can, or must, turn over functions to her, but not yet, and not just because we can. Now, who’s next? Navigation?”

  Master Helmsman Okuda stood up, his fireplug body and bald dark head resembling nothing so much as a human version of a Sekoi. “Lots of debris in the system, from all the fighting. When we use TacDrive, we’re going to be slamming into a lot of small stuff. I recommend manufacturing a lot of spare sensors and any other fittings on the outside of the hull. If we go forward and backward, almost any part of the boat not under armor might be subjected to the equivalent of a bomb blast.”

  “So if we pulse with our eyes open, we’ll get a lot of grit in them.”

  “Yes, sir. Or we keep everything under armor and take the extra second or two to pop them out.”

  Scoggins said, “I’ve been working with Michelle to get the unmasking and recovery times down. All told, we can drop from pulse, open our eyes, target and fire in about six seconds now.”

  “Six seconds isn’t four, but that’s not bad,” Absen said with a stroke of his chin. “All right. Make more spares, but plan on keeping sensors under armor for now. If we have to we can always take the risk.”

  “Yes, sir.” Okuda sat down.

  “Engineering?”

  Quan Ekara stepped forward with his usual dour expression. “All systems are nominal, sir. With Warrant Officer Conquest’s assistance, we have increased availability of power by an average of six percent. Per your order, we have still not cross-connected the TacDrive capacitors with the rest of the grid.” His tone said he still disapproved of that decision.

  Absen said, “Is there any chance of getting a fourth pulse out of the system? Or recharging the capacitors faster?”

  Ekara sighed theatrically. “If, sir, we could link up the rest of the power grid, we could use the weapon capacitors to feed the TacDrive and vice versa, as I may have mentioned before.”

  The captain shot his chief engineer a warning glare. “That was not a definitive answer. If you cross-link, can we get a fourth pulse out of the system right away, assuming we have also fired all weapons twice within the allotted time?”

  “No sir.” Ekara stiffened. “However, if we fire only once, and use an Exploder for the other attack, it can be done.”

  “So help out an old sea dog, Commander, and put it in terms all of us can understand. A short pulse and an alpha strike from our weapons each use about the same amount of energy.”

  Ekara seemed to squirm slightly, but eventually nodded. “Approximately, sir.”

  “So all together, our total capacitor power gives us five actions – pulses or strikes. Maybe it’s two pulses and three shots, or four pulses and one shot. Right?”

  “Yes, in layman’s terms. But –”

  “But me no buts, Commander. I know you’re itching to have the flexibility you want, and I’ll let you, but here is my ironclad order. The last slug of power is always for a TacDrive pulse. No matter what, you never dip into that reserve except to run us out of trouble, except at my order. Ellis,” Absen turned to the weapons engineer, “you and Quan build that
into the system. Hardwire it. And,” he said as an idea occurred to him, “I want Okuda and Conquest to be part of the process, so everyone understands. In submarine terms, we always keep enough juice to submerge and get away. Got it?”

  Assent became enthusiasm as the engineering teams began jabbering about modifying the systems. “Anyone else got anything vital?” Absen called. “All right, then you’re dismissed to your sections.”

  “You just made Quan Pham happy,” Spooky said at the captain’s elbow.

  Absen chuckled. “He’s another one of your cousins?”

  “Grand-nephew twice removed, actually.”

  “I figured.”

  “You could have checked his personnel record.”

  “I prefer to form my own impressions of people directly. I find that dossiers often obscure more than they reveal. Yours, for example, contains many facts, but not enough to really understand who you are.” Absen finally turned to look up at the slim man in the Steward’s uniform standing next to his seat as the rest filed out of the room.

  “I could say the same about yours, Admiral.”

  “Captain, please.”

  “Yes…and I’m just a Steward.” Spooky’s teeth broke out in a smile.

  “Touché. I’ll be an admiral if and when I have a fleet again.”

  “But you do have a fleet, of sorts.”

  “Small craft don’t count. Not even your little Meme boat.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Nguyen…” Absen turned and signaled to Bull, who hastened to clear out the stragglers and shut the doors, leaving just the two and Tobias in the room. “What do you and Denham plan to do?”

  “I thought I’d ask you about that, Admiral.”

  “No more haring off on your own?”

  Spooky chuckled, reaching over to pour a glass of water from the pitcher on the table, and then took a seat. “We arrogant sons of bitches are prone to such things, aren’t we?”

  “Please don’t equate us, Nguyen. We’re different animals, even if we both have wielded great power. I’ve accepted the fact that any control I have over you is an illusion, and the best I can do is try to make sure our efforts are coordinated, so please, drop the bullshit and let’s just work out what we’re going to do.”

  Spooky raised the water glass to Absen and toasted him. “Very well, I’ll explain my ideas plainly…though one does miss most of the fun that way.”

  Chapter 22

  Okuda’s synthesized voice droned from the speakers. “Dropping pulse in three…two…one…mark.” The odd noise Conquest made under TacDrive ceased, replaced by the more prosaic sounds of the ventilation systems and the cracks and pops of changing structural stresses as the bridge crew’s bubble helmets flipped up and tucked themselves down to rings around their necks. Absen appreciated that feature, as the clear flexible material before his face always made him feel confined.

  Screens and holotank came to life as armored covers on Conquest’s skin snapped open and sensors shot out on high-speed mechanisms, the whole process taking less than one second, due to the efforts of Michelle, Scoggins and her technical team.

  When the picture emerged, Absen started, and his heart pounded with sudden adrenaline before he remembered the massive image he saw was expected. “In place behind Titan, exactly as planned,” Okuda reported.

  “Well done, Helm.”

  “Time to impact is one hour, twenty-nine minutes,” the helmsman continued. “We’re falling already.”

  “Then let’s not dawdle. Deploy the drones,” Absen ordered.

  “Drones away,” Scoggins grinned. “No worries, sir. We’ll have a good picture of what’s going on long before we crash.”

  Conquest had arrived at near relative rest as the combined gravitation of Saturn and Titan leached the kinetic energy out of the boat under TacDrive, as expected. With no orbital velocity, and without using fusion drive, the dreadnought immediately began to fall toward the large moon. Lighting engines would advertise their presence to everyone, so the massive reactors remained in generator mode only.

  Over the next few minutes, tiny stealth drones used cold gas thrusters to maneuver outward, giving Conquest views of the entire solar system with the exception of the space directly behind Titan. Absen kept the crew at battle stations for now. He relaxed slightly when Ekara reported the boat’s energy stores topped off to full again.

  On the holotank he could see the two Guardian ships, more than twice the diameter and ten times the mass of Destroyers, floating inward of Earth’s orbit. One lurked near Earth itself, an enormous spheroid, while the other had flattened itself into a great disc near Mercury, a pancake to soak up the sun’s radiation.

  “Looks like we’ll have to deal with both,” Absen said. “And that fleet of eight Destroyers is still in orbit around Jupiter.”

  “We’re being pinged, sir,” Scoggins announced. “A sentry just went active.”

  “So soon? Damn. Put us in a slingshot orbit of Titan and line us up for our first TacDrive pulse. How close are those Destroyers together?”

  “They’re spread out around Jupiter, sir.”

  “Fine. We leave them for now. Our best shot will be the first one. Prep an Exploder and hold it in the forward launch tube, and have another one ready in the magazine.”

  “We’re using two of them?” Ford asked in surprise.

  “I hope so.”

  “Only leaves six,” the weapons officer nagged.

  “Understood, Mister Ford. Just make sure you don’t miss.”

  “Miss what, sir?”

  “The Weapon, Ford. The Weapon. Remember, that’s the Sword of Damocles. Attack this system, and the Meme can deny us the prize of Earth.”

  “Earth’s no prize now, sir,” Fletcher said. “Even after fifty years of planetary engineering and repair, it’s pretty messed up.”

  “Two Destroyers slamming into it at half lightspeed will do that,” Ford muttered. “We’re not going to let them keep it, though.”

  Titan loomed uncomfortably close as Conquest dove toward its edge. “Rounding the moon in seventy seconds,” Okuda reported.

  “Once we’re past, line us up for a pulse run at that moon laser. Remember how that thing works: it will go into wide-beam mode and fry anything coming near it, so Ford, you have to punch that Exploder missile into it before it can react. The rest of you, do it just how we practiced. I want a sequential strike on the Weapon – lasers, particle beams, railguns, fusion missiles, and then the Exploder missile. That way if they react faster than we think, maybe the smaller weapons will shake them up enough to get the antimatter warhead in close.”

  “I have the run locked in, sir,” Okuda reported after a moment. “Distributing it to all boards. Sir, what’s our course for the second pulse? Or do you just want to jump onward and out of the way?”

  “Can you set it up so we can turn and pulse straight into an attack on the nearby Guardian?”

  Okuda closed his eyes and played his board like a concert pianist. “No, sir. It’s too close. We can pulse out, then turn and reverse pulse back in to strike the Guardian.”

  “But that’s all five actions. If we fail to vaporize the Guardian with the second Exploder, we’re screwed,” Fletcher objected.

  “Not necessarily, Mister Fletcher,” Absen said, thinking out loud. “Pulse in, one. Weapons fire makes two, plus the Exploder missile, which needs no power. Pulse away, three. Pulse backward on our run at the Guardian. Deploy the second Exploder, then pulse away. Five.”

  “Looks like Ekara was right,” Johnstone said with a hint of amusement.

  “I’m happy to admit it, Commander,” Absen replied. “Assuming Murphy doesn’t show up.”

  “Sir,” Scoggins spoke. “This first shot is the most important. May I suggest we try to gain ourselves a full second by leaving half the targeting sensors unmasked? If we lose them, we can replace them from spares, but if even a few survive, they will give us a quicker lock-on.”

  “Excelle
nt idea, Scoggins. Do it.”

  The Sensors officer made a few adjustments to her console, then nodded her readiness.

  “Initiating firing run on my mark,” Okuda reported as the dreadnought rounded Titan. In the holotank, the bridge crew could already see the flares of nearby scout craft and other unknown ships, firefly specks moving outward in a lightspeed-defined sphere as they detected Conquest’s presence and blasted for position.

  “In a normal battle, we’d be in deep trouble,” Absen said conversationally. “We’d be shadowed by a few dozen enemy sentries and soon we’d have to slug it out or run.” He laughed, a cold thing that brought chills to his officers. “If everyone’s ready, let’s go kill these bastards. Okuda, kick her in the ass.”

  “Aye aye, sir. Pulse in three…two…one…mark.”

  More than ten AU, or eighty light-minutes of distance, collapsed into seconds within the relativistic cocoon of the TacDrive field. Absen barely had time to lean forward when the pulse ended.

  Immediately the viewscreens updated. Apparently some of the sensors had made it. “Target locked. Firing lasers…particle beams…Dahlgrens.” At this last, Conquest shuddered with the release of kinetic energy. “Waist missiles away. Exploder away.”

  Within the space of five seconds, Absen observed first a light show on the surface of the moon at the spot where Intel said the Weapon emitter lay buried under a thin sheen of lunar dust. The massive energies of hundreds of lasers and the three titanic particle beams, firing at a range of less than a thousand kilometers as the dreadnought hung above the enemy installation, vaporized so much material that the main display completely whited out.

  The holotank, with its synthesized inputs and computerized interpolations, provided a representation that showed the energy weapons and then the millions of railgun shots gouging a kilometer-deep hole.

  Possibly that’s all we really needed to do to put that thing out of commission, but it’s too late to recall the Exploder now, Absen thought. He watched as sixty fusion-warhead missiles converged on the same place and arrowed into it, detonating so nearly simultaneously as did not matter.