Drifter's Folly (Peacekeepers of Sol Book 4)

by Glynn Stewart

  Those flashed bright red on the exterior of the dreadnought’s immense hull. Forged out of a handy asteroid and still armored with the bulk of that rock, no dreadnought was quite the same shape as any other.

  “Assuming standard ratios, that would give each dreadnought forty-five heavy lasers and seventy-five missile launchers,” the Operations officer continued. “According to the Drifters, their engines have been heavily upgraded, permitting one-point-five KPS-squared of fully compensated thrust.

  “Shields have similarly been upgraded, including an underlayer similar to the Guardian we encountered at Ra-Two-Sixty-One. We do not know what their new anti-fighter weapon system is,” she concluded, “but their plan and deployment strength strongly suggest they think it will counteract multiple carriers’ worth of our best.”

  The conference was silent until Henry leaned forward.

  “There is a standard eight-megaton dreadnought accompanied by six escorts guarding the Drifter Convoy itself,” he told them. “Only one of the eight warships we saw at the Convoy belongs to the Drifters.”

  “According to our intel from the Drifters,” Ihejirika pointed out. “This could all be a deception.”

  “Yes,” Henry agreed. “Eowyn?”

  “We have confirmed the presence of the Kenmiri superdreadnoughts at Blue First Dawn Beta,” the young woman said grimly. “We believe they have another six escorts with them—and I suspect even the smaller ships and the older dreadnought have been refitted with the new engines.”

  “The Drifters may be lying to us,” Henry said. He shrugged. “We can’t really guess one way or another, but the story Blue-Spirals-On-Silver spins fits the known facts. And the superdreadnoughts they warned us about exist.

  “I do not wish to underestimate or overestimate our enemy,” he continued. “But if the Kenmiri believe that two of these superdreadnoughts can challenge a major UPSF deployment, I am uninclined to let Twelfth Fleet walk into the trap unwarned.”

  “Drones with all of this information have already been sent to La-Tar,” Chan said. “It will be weeks before Twelfth Fleet arrives. There will be plenty of time for us to assess the threat of these new ships before Admiral Rex needs to deal with them.”

  “There is one more problem,” Sylvia said. Every one of Henry’s officers turned their attention to her.

  “According to Blue-Spirals-On-Silver’s message, they are expecting to rendezvous with the superdreadnoughts after they refuel the fleet. While Admiral Rex will still likely have overwhelming firepower, he will need to be far more careful with the application of that firepower if the Kenmiri forces are intermingled with civilian Drifter ships.

  “I would hope he would hesitate to cause massive collateral damage if the Drifters were actually our enemy—but now that we suspect that they have been trapped and forced into this, permitting them to be used as living shields both risks atrocity on our part…and limits the UPSF’s ability to properly engage the superdreadnoughts.

  “What would the usual solution to that be, Commodore Wong?”

  Henry concealed a wince as she turned to him.

  “Close-range fighter strikes,” he said levelly. “Especially given the Lancers’ increased defensive shields and maneuverability, sending them into the Drifter Convoy to launch their missiles at close range, where there can be no errors.”

  “And if the Kenmiri truly have some kind of anti-fighter superweapon…” Teunissen trailed off. “That’s exactly what they want.”

  The conference was silent for a second as everyone stared at the hologram of the superdreadnought.

  “So, what’s the plan, ser?” Ihejirika finally asked. “I’m guessing you have one.”

  “I do,” Henry agreed. “The Drifters believe that they can secure the Convoy against the escorts, bombs and garrisons the Kenmiri have emplaced. Of course, doing so while there is a pair of Kenmiri superdreadnoughts mere hours away is suicide.

  “So, we remove the superdreadnoughts.”

  “Ser, DesRon Twenty-Seven is currently two destroyers,” Teunissen argued, slowly trailing off as she realized both Ihejirika and Eowyn were looking at Henry and still waiting for the rest of the plan.

  “You’re insane,” she finally said.

  “As Blue-Spirals-On-Silver said, desperation without limits,” Henry said grimly. “I have to fear that the Kenmiri commander has a solid idea of what we’re likely to send against him. That means that they truly believe that three dreadnoughts and twelve escorts—maybe with a gunship or two among the escorts—are enough to face down Twelfth Fleet.

  “No Kenmiri Warrior would rely on the Drifter Guardians and escorts to even up the balance. They’ll use them, but only in the way they always used slave janissaries. As cannon fodder.”

  He shook his head.

  “No, their plan is based on those two superdreadnoughts outweighing three fleet carriers and six battlecruisers. I don’t see it, but we don’t know what upgrades they’ve applied beyond the size,” he reminded his team.

  “But right now, they don’t know we’re here. We know exactly where they are—and they’ve conveniently positioned themselves next to the second-largest object in the entire star system.”

  He had their undivided attention. Rank and authority commanded their obedience, so all of them would listen—but that wouldn’t be enough for this. For this to work, everyone from his Captains down to his most junior gunnery officers had to believe it could work.

  “Thanks to the Drifters, we know their every weakness and they have handed us every advantage,” he said quietly. “We may have ended the War in the worst way possible, but we fought it for good reasons and for a good cause.

  “Six million people in this system are now slaves of the Kenmiri once more. If we strike hard, if we do this right, we can free them. Render Twelfth Fleet’s presence entirely unnecessary—and send a message to the Kenmiri Remnant that will echo across the galaxy.

  “We can do this,” he finished fiercely. “Ihejirika, Teunissen? Are you with me?”

  “Never haven’t been, ser,” Okafor Ihejirika said instantly. “Paladin awaits your command.”

  Everyone looked at Nina Teunissen and she snorted.

  “It’s not like I’m not going to follow your orders, whatever they are, ser,” she pointed out.

  “This is going to take more than obedience to orders, Captain,” Henry told her. “It’s going to take the kind of mad courage that won the Red Wings Campaign. The kind of do-or-die that the United Planets Space Force is known for. So…are you with me?”

  This time, she laughed and shook her head.

  “Who am I kidding?” she asked. “Aye, ser. To the depths of hell and out the other side. Damnation to slavers and kings, after all.”

  “Damnatio est praefectis,” Sylvia murmured, the Latin sounding surprisingly appropriate and terrifying at that moment.

  “What do we do?” Ihejirika asked.

  “First…how many penetrator-warhead busses do we have and can we fabricate in the next few hours?”

  Chapter Fifty

  For the second time in less than twenty-four hours, Henry’s ships blasted past ten thousand kilometers per second and cut their acceleration. This time, they were hurtling toward Blue First Dawn Beta and the Kenmiri fleet waiting for them.

  That felt strangely right in a way that many of Henry’s battles of the last few years hadn’t. The Kenmiri had been the enemy for most of his adult life, and while he regretted what he’d done to them as a species, he was unsurprised to see them back.

  “Range is one light-minute,” Eowyn reported calmly. “We are closing at ten thousand kilometers per second. Current acceleration…point-zero-two KPS-squared.”

  Enough to keep the gravity drive up and smear their thermal signature across thousands of kilometers of space.

  “The Kenmiri are smart,” Henry murmured. “They’ll see us coming sooner rather than later.”

  “Hopefully not soon enough, right?” his Ops officer asked.


  He smiled predatorily.

  “They’re already too late, I suspect,” he told her. “Time to weapons range?”

  “Our base velocity puts missile range at over three and a half million kilometers, ser,” she noted. “Twenty-four minutes.”

  “And laser range?” he asked.

  “Five minutes after that, we’ll hit two light-seconds,” Eowyn told him.

  “And we’ll clear through laser range in two minutes,” Henry calculated aloud. “And once we’re past them, nobody’s missiles are hitting anybody.”

  Unless the Kenmiri had dramatically upgraded their missile launchers, they gave their missiles the same initial thousand kilometers per second as his did. Against a base velocity of ten thousand KPS, the missile didn’t have the delta-v to play catch-up.

  He leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers together, studying both the big tactical display on the screens around him and the additional layers fed into it by his internal network. Battle stations meant there were no true holograms visible anywhere on the flag deck—the tech was still too fragile for the UPSF’s designers to include as part of the combat systems—but his network implants could duplicate the effect.

  “Ihejirika, Teunissen,” he greeted his Captains. “We’re well past the time to tell me if you have a problem, but now is the time for concerns or suggestions.”

  “There’s a lot of damn metal over there, Commodore,” Ihejirika said grimly. “Two superdreadnoughts and we got the escort number wrong. I make it eight escorts and four gunships.

  “This is going to hurt.”

  “Them,” Henry replied. “Ignore the escorts and gunships. We tank their fire on the grav-shields and we focus our lasers on Target Bravo.”

  “We can do this,” Teunissen said—but there was a shakiness to her voice. Maharatha’s Captain was senior to Ihejirika—Paladin was Henry’s flag captain’s first command—but Henry knew Ihejirika had seen more action.

  There was a reason he’d picked the brand-new Lieutenant Colonel as his flag captain, after all.

  “Yes, we can,” Henry told her.

  “And the Drifters?” Ihejirika asked.

  “No way to tell if they got our message,” Henry admitted. “But if they did, they’ll be kicking off in about thirty minutes.”

  They were almost four light-minutes from the Drifter Convoy. The Kenmiri detachments would probably have instantaneous communications—but if it worked the same way as the listening-post system, Henry would know when the superdreadnoughts told the Convoy escorts they were in trouble.

  Part of him hoped that the Warrior in command of the ships in front of him would underestimate him. That they’d see two destroyers and assume there was no real danger.

  But the Kenmiri were smart and the Warriors were good at what they did. The Kenmiri commander would almost certainly make the same assumption versus Henry’s two destroyers that he’d made versus their two superdreadnoughts: that the operation wouldn’t have been launched without a plan for success.

  “Missile range in ten minutes,” Eowyn reported. “Range is nine-point-seven million kilometers. Kenmiri force has not yet reacted to our approach, and no active scans have been detected.”

  Henry could live with the Kenmiri seeing his ships earlier than he wanted. Active scans, though, would be a pain in the ass.

  “Now we wait,” he told his Captains and flag-deck staff. “We wait and we see if the Kenmiri are half as clever as I think they are.”

  “Missile range.”

  The two calm words hung in the silence of the flag deck. Even Henry was trying not to hold his breath as he checked a countdown.

  “Thirty seconds to Point Weber,” Eowyn continued a moment later. “Checks are commencing.”

  “Do we open fire?” Ihejirika asked.

  “Negative,” Henry ordered. “They’d see it now. We wait until we’re seen—or we hit Weber. Dial in Target Bravo as closely as you can without active sensors and prepare to go to full thrust.”

  Fifteen seconds. Ten. Five.

  “Weber. Salvo one activating,” Eowyn barked. “Salvo two activating. Salvo three activating.”

  The chant echoed through the flag deck as salvo after salvo of preplaced missiles lit off their drives. They’d been fired ahead of Henry’s ships, their launcher velocity adjusted to match his planned ten-thousand-kilometers-a-second approach.

  Now twenty full salvos from his two ships, seven hundred missiles, came to life and hurtled toward Target Alpha at their maximum ten KPS2 acceleration—and their activation sequences had been carefully programmed.

  Those seven hundred missiles didn’t come at the superdreadnought as twenty separated salvos. They came in a single coordinated time-on-target salvo, screaming in almost two million kilometers ahead of Henry’s two ships.

  “Enemy defenses active,” Eowyn reported. “Damn, that was fast.”

  “They were already up,” Henry replied. “Kenmiri don’t shut them down. They’re heavily armed professional paranoids. Impact?”

  “Sixty seconds and counting,” she snapped. “Enemy defensive lasers are firing. I have active sensor sweeps—they’re looking for us.”

  “Ihejirika, Teunissen. Now, please.”

  Destroyer Squadron Twenty-Seven came to life in the wake of their missiles.

  Gravity shields went to full power, twelve-thousand-gravity defensive shears snapping into existence and tearing the incoming sensor data to pieces for a moment before the computers compensated. Gravity maneuvering systems went from a trickle of minimum power to full strength. Active scanners flickered to life as well, responding to the Kenmiri radar and lidar with scanning beams of their own.

  “All laser capacitors report full on both ships,” Eowyn told Henry. “First salvos on Target Bravo are away. Defensive network is online—enemy escorts are pushing forward to cover Target Alpha from the Weber salvo.”

  “It won’t be enough,” Henry said flatly.

  He was right. He had to be right. He’d built the entire plan around the fact that his enemy wasn’t expecting an attack and didn’t know what warning signs to look for to find GMS ships. That had let him set up a single salvo with a third of his squadron’s missiles.

  “We’re losing missiles fast. We’re coming in fast but their defensive gunners are good.”

  “They’re Kenmiri,” Henry snapped. “Leave Weber to the onboard AIs. Run the defensive algorithms, Eowyn. We’re coming into the teeth of way too many missiles.”

  The Kenmiri had nailed down DesRon Twenty-Seven’s location as the UPSF missiles drove home—and now three hundred missiles blazed into space to return the favor.

  It was the last salvo Target Alpha would ever launch. The systems had been online and the Kenmiri gunnery teams were good, but they hadn’t been expecting an attack, and missiles hurtling in at over twelve thousand KPS were a challenge at the best of times.

  Three hundred of Henry’s missiles reached Target Alpha and vanished from three-dimensional space. He’d put every single penetrator missile his squadron had on that strike—and even a superdreadnought wasn’t built to handle that.

  “Target Alpha is… Holy shit,” Eowyn whispered. “Target Alpha is gone.”

  Dozens of five-hundred-megaton warheads detonated between the capital ship’s two layers of shields—but dozens more detonated inside her armor. When the explosions cleared, a sixteen-million-ton superdreadnought had been completely vaporized.

  “We have incoming plasma fire!”

  Henry wasn’t sure which one of Eowyn’s team had barked the alert. In almost the same moment, a dozen red, flashing warning lights appeared on his screen.

  “No blowthrough,” Ihejirika snapped. “But that came way too clo—”

  The missiles were right on the plasma blasts’ heels, detonating in their own shaped-charge plasma blasts that washed over the gravity shield like a breaking tsunami.

  Paladin spasmed around Henry and more warning lights flashed up on his scree
n.

  “Blowthrough,” the destroyer’s captain said, almost unnecessarily. “Lasers are still up and it’s our turn now.”

  The dreadnought had big plasma guns, both longer-ranged and more powerful than Henry was used to. They’d hit at almost seven hundred thousand kilometers—but both of his ships had survived.

  There were warning signs scattered across both his ships’ schematics in his displays. Target Alpha’s death hadn’t been without consequences, but both of his destroyers were still entirely in the fight—and their lasers stabbed across the void toward Target Bravo.

  “Target is evading. Target is returning fire.”

  For every beam Henry’s command flung at the Kenmiri, the superdreadnought alone flung ten back. The escorts added another twenty, but the gravity shields twisted the photons and flung them away.

  “Superdreadnought is lighter on beams than projected,” Eowyn said grimly. “Forty versus forty-five expected. Just as many turrets, though.”

  Those turrets were on full rapid fire now, spitting near-cee blasts of plasma at Henry’s ships. For the first time since taking command of the Cataphracts, Henry truly appreciated how powerful the new ships’ shields were.

  He’d commanded Panther at the end of the war, a Jaguar-class battlecruiser a generation behind Raven. Designed to fight a Kenmiri dreadnought and win without significant damage, Panther would still have been obliterated in the first salvos from these superdreadnoughts.

  But the Cataphracts had more powerful shields than even Raven, shields the wartime battlecruisers would have killed for, and those shields shrugged aside the superdreadnought’s massive beams and plasma cannons as the two destroyers hurtled into the heart of the enemy formation.

  “We’re through their shields!” Ihejirika snapped from the bridge as Paladin’s paired lasers were finally carried to a range where even the superdreadnought’s mighty energy screens failed. Iron and ceramics boiled away as the beams hammered into the ship’s hull, cutting massive gouges through her.