The Complete Thunder Series (Thunder In The Heavens)

by Dietmar Wehr

  “Good. Do not allow the battle lust to cloud your judgement or that of your pilots, Group Master. End of message.” Torq quickly shut down the privacy shield.

  “I want Second Group to be vectored toward the multiple ship contact position at maximum speed, Flight Master.” Torq smiled as the red icons denoting Second Group craft changed direction and accelerated. At maximum speed they would get within firing range in a matter of a few cyclets.

  Carrier Waterloo:

  LeClair was just about to give the order to deploy the RD2s into their pre-jump positions when the tactical display double-pinged and the icons representing Bismarck Sea and Valley Forge suddenly began flashing to denote damage of some kind. Before he could say anything, Waterloo’s icon started flashing too.

  “What the hell is happening?” snarled LeClair.

  “Admiral, Waterloo has multiple hull breaches and the number is continuing to grow!”

  LeClair recognized the voice of Waterloo’s C.O.

  “Valley Forge reports they’re under attack, Admiral!” shouted the com technician.

  “But from where dammit?” yelled LeClair.

  “We have to jump away, Admiral!” Waterloo’s C.O.’s voice was on the ragged edge of panic.

  “NO!” shouted CAG. “The squadrons don’t have a rally point! If we jump away now, they’ll never find us again!”

  “And if we stay long enough to give them a rally point, we might not be able to jump away at all!” said the C.O.

  The CAG started to say something, but LeClair cut him off. “We jump right now! Fleet Commander to all units, emergency jump NOW. I repeat NOW!”

  Tyrell Carrier Natron (One hour later):

  Torq left the debriefing room and headed back to his quarters. He had heard enough from the reports of the pilots to know that the enemy had been dealt a serious blow. Three carriers, including the larger one, had gotten away in spite of being damaged. One had not and had ended up destroying itself to prevent capture. Of the 48 smaller craft left behind by the carriers, two thirds had been destroyed when Second Group switched fire after the carriers jumped away. The remaining third did jump away, but from the lag between the carriers jump and the smaller craft jump, it looked to Torq as if the smaller craft had not been ordered to jump away and had done so out of sheer desperation. Did the hesitation mean that the smaller craft did not know where their carriers had jumped too? If that was the case, then those ships might still be in the star system. He had to make sure that they did not try another attack on the shipyards. Third Group was still on patrol. He would order them to sweep the space above and below the planet out to the same distance as the enemy carriers had been. In any case, he had two pieces of good news to relay to High Command. This attack proved that the enemy was intercepting Tyrell FTL communications, and now that his people knew that, they could do something about it. The second piece of good news was that none of Second Group’s pilots had succumbed to battle lust. He had proven that Tyrell warriors could fight without being overwhelmed by their bodies’ addiction to the stress-induced hormones. His own personal experience showed that resisting battle lust got easier the more one practiced doing it, and now that Second Group had experienced it as well, there would be less skepticism of the idea. With his quarters just around the corner, he smiled and allowed himself to swagger a bit more than usual.

  EAF HQ:

  Harrow stared at the opposite wall of the CEO’s outer office and pretended she couldn’t hear Mirakova’s voice. LeClair was in the inner office with Mirakova, and for Harrow to be able to hear anything at all meant that the CEO was yelling at LeClair. Seconds later the door opened, and a white-face LeClair walked quickly past Harrow without looking at her and left the room. Mirakova’s Aide turned to Harrow and said, “The CEO will see you now, Commander.”

  As she entered the inner office, Harrow saw that Mirakova was facing away from the door. When she turned around to look at Harrow, there was none of the usual warmth in her expression. When she spoke, her voice had no apparent emotion in it at all.

  “Have a seat, Commander.”

  Harrow thanked her and sat down.

  “I assume you heard the news?” asked Mirakova.

  “Yes, Admiral. May I ask how many we lost?”

  Mirakova shook her head. “Too Goddamned many.” Harrow saw a hint of the rage that LeClair must have seen come over Mirakova’s face for a couple of seconds before she took a deep breath and calmed down again. “Thirty-three corvette crews lost completely plus another twenty-five carrier crew dead and a further thirty-four injured. That’s not including the entire crew of the Valley Forge.”

  “My God,” said Harrow quietly. It was worse than she’d heard.

  “I can’t believe he didn’t…” Mirakova let the sentence dangle as she shook her head while staring off into infinity. Turning back to Harrow, she said, “Admiral LeClair hadn’t bothered to set up an emergency rally point for either the carriers or the corvettes. It’s only sheer luck that any of the corvettes happen to stumble across Third Fleet after the emergency jump. God, that man has single-handedly set us back by fifteen months. It’ll be months before any of those carriers are operational again. You haven’t seen the damage have you?”

  “No, Admiral.”

  “Well then, let me show you.”

  The wall screen on the opposite wall lit up, and Harrow gasped at the sight of the Waterloo. Almost the entire area of the bottom of the mail hull was gone. She could see into the guts of the ship, and there were penetrations in some places that were three decks deep.

  “The engineers, who’ve had a chance to exam the hull closely, are of the opinion that the Tyrell fired dispersed anti-tachyon beams that overlapped in some cases. And since none of our carriers had nearly as much hull armor as the Tyrell super-ships, those dispersed beams ate away at the hull enough to seriously compromise hull integrity, damage critical systems that were close to the hull, and cause explosive decompression in almost a hundred compartments. The fact that no large ships were detected before the attack pretty much confirms that this damage was caused by their system defense craft. Tactical analysis suggests that Third Fleet was detected by their recon drones, and the planet-based defense craft were vectored in.”

  “Any chance that the Tyrell used a carrier to launch those craft, Admiral?”

  “Given that we know their only carrier was destroyed at Zulu3, I don’t see how they could have built another carrier that quickly,” said Mirakova.

  “That would be a logical conclusion IF their carrier really was destroyed,” said Harrow.

  Mirakova nodded slowly for a couple of seconds before responding. “Are you suggesting that their FTL report of the damage to their carrier was disinformation designed to throw us off the scent?”

  Now it was Harrow’s turn to nod. “And set us up for an ambush at Yankee1. Yes, that’s what I’m wondering.”

  Mirakova sighed. “I suppose I was wondering the same thing unconsciously. I had a feeling that something wasn’t right when I read that tactical analysis. If the Tyrell became suspicious over the timing of your attack on Zulu3-C, then sending false messages would be the logical thing to do. It’s what I would have done under the same circumstances. Damn, that means we can’t rely on any message we intercept from now on.”

  “That may not matter if they switch to a new and more complex code,” said Harrow.

  “I almost wish they’d be that stupid.” When she saw the puzzled look on Harrow’s face she explained. “If we suspected that our FTL messages were being intercepted and decrypted and we received confirmation from a test ambush, we wouldn’t shift to a new code. We’d continue to use the old one and try to set up more traps or at least attempt to keep the enemy off balance until it was obvious that they knew that we knew they were reading our mail. If they switch to a new code now, that would confirm that Yankee1 was an ambush, and we’d know for sure what really happened.”

  Harrow didn’t have any response to that, so she
kept quiet. Mirakova now seemed to be staring off into infinity, obviously deep in thought.

  Eventually she looked back at Harrow. “How about you and I do a little brainstorming now. Try to put yourself in the uniform of my opposite number. Your suspicions about the enemy tapping into your communications has just been confirmed by the attempted attack on the ambush system. Let’s assume that you’ve decided to keep using the old code to see what other mischief you can engineer. Now what do you do?” Mirakova was amused to see Harrow’s caught off guard expression.

  “Well…ah…I’d have my planning staff come up with ideas for another ambush. I’d also have them try to figure out a way that we could establish a secure method of FTL communication without changing our codes. Perhaps establishing a network of relay stations…”

  Mirakova noticed that Cate had started blinking a lot as her voice trailed off. Mirakova kept quiet and let Harrow think. As she watched Cate’s eyes carefully, she saw the blinking stop and the eyes opening wide. Harrow leaned forward, and when she spoke, it was in a lower voice.

  “Another ambush would be nice if possible, but that would not be my first priority. My first priority would be to send a ship into every unconquered star system that has been put on notice of a future assault and have that ship attempt to pick up and track incoming FTL messages. In other words, do to us what we did to them. If the Tyrell do that, they’ll know who is talking to who, and since they already know how to translate our languages into theirs, they’ll be able to figure out what we’re doing and are planning on doing. We have to start encrypting our own transmissions, but that’s not the real problem.”

  Harrow saw Mirakova have her own aha moment. “You’re right, Cate. Even if they can’t decode our messages, the mere fact that we’re communicating with each other will tip them off that we’re cooperating with each other. God, I wish I had managed to talk the civilians out of that last raid on Zulu3. If the Tyrell get a good idea of who is working against them, they might throw their conquest timetable out the window and set up simultaneous attacks on all alliance home systems with overwhelming strength. This war could be over in a matter of months, hell maybe of weeks! Thank you for that insight, Cate. I might have come up with it on my own but maybe not or maybe too late. Any ideas on how to prevent this disaster?”

  After a few seconds, Harrow shook her head. “Not at the moment, Admiral, I’m sorry to say.”

  “Me neither, but at least we know what the problem is. Go ahead and discuss this problem with anyone you think can be trusted to keep their mouth shut. The last thing we need is rumors of doom and gloom spreading throughout HQ and beyond. If you think of something, I want to hear about it, no matter how crazy or bizarre it may sound. Got it?”

  “Yes, Admiral.”

  “Okay, you’re dismissed.” Just as Harrow reached the door and was about to open it, Mirakova said, “Oh, by the way, Cate. I forgot to tell you. Admiral LeClair will no longer be leading Third Fleet. You’ll be taking over officially in a couple of days as Acting Fleet Commander. As soon as I can get approval to permanently promote you to Vice-Admiral, your command of Third Fleet will be confirmed as well. I’d offer my congratulations, but under the circumstances, I’m not sure I’m doing you any favors.”

  “Thank you for that vote of confidence, Admiral,” said Harrow in a somber tone. She wasn’t sure this promotion was a good thing right now either. If the Tyrell showed up at Earth with a massive fleet of super-ships and possibly a carrier or two, Third Fleet could be facing impossible odds. She was so absorbed by her thoughts that she didn’t remember walking through the HQ building, Cate suddenly found herself standing on the outside steps. There was a cool wind blowing, with dark clouds on the horizon. The weather matched her mood. She needed to talk things over with someone, and Gort was the obvious choice. Not only did he have a knack for thinking outside the box but he was also in the city right now. A quick check of the time told her that it was almost time for dinner. She would invite him over to her place, and they would discuss ideas for dealing with this frankly scary turn of events while she prepared the meal and while they ate it. Gort arrived half an hour later. Cate told him about the conclusions she and the CEO had come to. His expression lost its friendly smile when he learned about the nature of the final shoe dropping.

  “Son-of-a-bitch, Cate, we really fucked up badly, didn’t we?”

  Harrow sighed as she cut up some vegetables. Very few people bothered to make a meal from scratch nowadays, but Harrow found the preparation of the food strangely relaxing.

  “We sure did, Gort. I can see all kinds of challenges. We’re going to have to encrypt our FTL messages between our own ships and HQ, but protecting the contents of messages between humans and other races is not going to be that easy. Every race in the Alliance will have to encrypt its messages, and I don’t think all of us should be using the same encryption algorithm. That would be asking for a disaster if the Tyrell somehow broke the code. So if each race has a different algorithm, communications are going to be problematic unless everyone has everyone else’s encryption key. Even if we manage to solve that problem, how are we going to prevent the Tyrell from triangulating where the messages are coming from and therefore who is sending them?”

  Eagleton pondered that question while he watched her work on the food. “The only idea that’s popped into my head is that we could stop transmitting messages directly from home system to home system. Instead, everyone would transmit their messages to the MCS. Those outgoing messages wouldn’t have to be encrypted because there’d be no way for the Tyrell to intercept them since they don’t know about the Mobile Command Ship or where it is. Getting information from the MCS to Alliance member races that can make use of it would be the hard part. If the MCS transmitted encrypted messages to Alliance home systems and the Tyrell had snooper ships in those systems, they might be able to pinpoint a spot in open space via triangulation, and they’d send at least one ship to investigate it. The Command Ship gives us a huge advantage, and we can’t risk it being destroyed or worse, captured.”

  After a few seconds of silence, Harrow stopped cutting and said, “What about using courier ships to physically carry messages from the MCS to each Alliance home system?”

  “That would work if we had a fleet of courier ships available, but we don’t,” said Eagleton.

  “Well, we have a couple dozen recon ships that are currently deployed in Tyrell-conquered systems recording incoming transmissions. If those recorded messages are likely to be bogus, then what’s the benefit of keeping those recon ships there? We may as well bring them back, and they can then take on courier duties.”

  “You’re right, Cate. I think we’ve come up with a solution. I have another idea too. Before we bring back all of our recon ships, let’s mess with the Tyrell and have some of our recons transmit encoded but meaningless message traffic to various Tyrell-occupied star systems. If they’re paying attention, they’ll pick up the messages and pinpoint the sources, and with a little luck we’ll have them chasing their tails wondering what’s on the receiving end of those messages.” They both laughed.

  Harrow’s expression quickly became serious again. “That’s worth a try, and I agree that we seem to have come up with a solution that prevents the Tyrell from listening in on our communications, but the fact remains that we’ve lost the advantage of listening in to their chatter. And with their improved detection system, our recon ships can’t even keep a visual eye on key systems or what might be happening in them. We’ll have to fight blind again.”

  “Yeah, it does seem that way. Maybe after dinner, with our brain cells stimulated by the wine, we can do some brainstorming. Right now I’m starting to get hungry, and you’ve stopped preparing the food!”

  “Okay, your offer to help is accepted, Gort.”

  Before Eagleton could protest that he had not made any such offer, she continued. “Here, wash this, and then cut it into thin slices.”

  It was 2 a.m. when Mirakova�
�s personal computer notified her of an incoming file.

  “Who’s it from?” she asked.

  “Sender is Senior Commander Cate Harrow,” replied the electronic voice.

  Mirakova was surprised that Cate was still be up at this time of night, but then again, SHE was. Somehow the work days just kept getting longer, the hours of sleep shorter.

  “Display file on the wall screen.”

  As she started to read the document, the thought crossed her mind that she wouldn’t be going to sleep anytime soon.

  Chapter Four:

  Five days later Harrow was in Kursk’s Flight Operations section watching the first six stingers come in for a landing. The chatter between the Flight Ops controller and the stinger pilots was being broadcast over the loudspeaker.

  “Stinger zero zero one, this is Kursk Flight Ops. You are clear to enter the approach vector.”

  “Roger that, Flight Ops. I’m coming up on your six now.”

  Harrow turned to look at the officer in charge of Flight Operations. “Who is that pilot?”