Storm of Vengeance Page 15

  It did make sense.

  But Strand didn’t buy it.

  It looked like desperation, but she didn’t think it was. The attacks, as aggressive as they’d been, as much as they had inflicted damage on some of the fleet’s ship, just hadn’t been that strong. The enemy had committed a few large battleships, but most of the attacking craft had been smaller, lighter vessels.

  They want us to think they’re desperate…but Admiral West is right. They’re luring us in. This is a trap.

  And, yet, she knew they had to go in. For all the reasons she and West had already discussed. For all the reasons that had been and still were painfully clear to her.

  Midway shook, lightly…another glancing blow, she realized almost immediately. No real damage this time.

  The fleet had to advance into the G48 system, come up against whatever forces the enemy had positioned there to ambush them, and somehow fight their way through into range of the planet. Then they had to bombard the hell out of it.

  No…it’s worse than that.

  Strand knew a bombardment alone wouldn’t get the job done. It might do some damage, knock out the enemy’s landing pads and surface facilities, even some of the solar power collectors. A well-executed surface attack might cut down power generation and antimatter production…but it wouldn’t take them out. And, one thing was damned certain. Whatever storage facilities held the precious antimatter the factory world had already produced would be deep, deep underground, far enough to be safe from even a massive nuclear attack.

  Which means we need to get ships in orbit. We need to land Marines.

  She watched as display updated, the enemy ships moving closer. The range was dropping quickly, far faster than she’d expected.

  The First Imperium ships were accelerating hard, moving right toward her own positions.

  They’re blasting away at almost 90g.

  Even for a First Imperium ship, that meant they weren’t fully powering their weapons. It didn’t make sense. They were in close range now. Their particle accelerators would be deadly from so close in. There was no tactical reason to divert so much power to acceleration now.

  So, why are they…

  She felt as though her blood froze.

  “Commander, put me on fleetcom now!” She tried to catch her voice, to hold back the panicked tone, but she knew she’d let it burst out anyway.

  Hercule moved his hands rapidly over his station, and then he turned and stared across the bridge toward Strand. “On your comm, Admiral.” She couldn’t tell from his voice if he’d figured out what she had, but it was clear he understood the importance.

  “All ships, evasive maneuvers, nav plan Beta four.” Her eyes darted back to the display.

  “Now,” she yelled into the headset.

  Those enemy vessels weren’t advancing to shorten the firing range.

  They were going to ram her ships.

  * * *

  “All fleet units, forward now. Maximum acceleration.” The order was issued with all the guttural force Erika West could muster, as though verbal urgency could somehow alter the laws of physics, overrule the constraints of time and distance, and get her ships forward faster.

  “Yes, Admiral.” The cadence of Sampson’s voice left little doubt that West’s aide understood what was happening as well as the admiral.

  West had been watching Strand’s advance guard, one instant as they were shredding the First Imperium attack force in a lopsided energy weapons duel…and the next as they were blasting their engines at full, trying to escape from oncoming ships moving in excess of one percent of lightspeed.

  Ships that were going to try to ram Strand’s vessels.

  Ramming wasn’t a common tactic. It was rare enough to make recalling more than one or two examples a fruitless endeavor. Apart from the suicide aspect for the vessels involved, it was just too difficult to pinpoint a target in the vast distances of interplanetary space and plot a collision course. But Strand’s ships had been at almost a dead halt, and the enemy vessels were ripping toward them, tearing through space at nearly 0.012c and still accelerating. Strand had initiated evasive maneuvers, but from a standing start there wasn’t much time to build up velocity.

  West saw the situation, and, as she stared at the glow of the screen, she understood the foolishness of the deployment, the sheer idiocy of having the entire task force sitting dead in space while coldblooded, robot-controlled vessels were bearing down on them. She felt rage at the orders that had put so many of her ships and spacers in that situation, at the foolishness that had forgotten just how cold and bloodless an enemy they faced…and it was all the more intense because it was directed at herself. She had issued those orders, and Josie Strand had merely followed them.

  West considered herself a hardcore veteran, an admiral with half a century’s experience commanding fleets in war. She’d ordered the fleet into its current deployment after reviewing approach angles, the firepower of her vessels…everything but the suicide runs now menacing her ships, an oversight that was now likely to cost many of her spacers their lives.

  She cursed herself silently, drove the self-loathing guilt deep into her psyche, as much because she had nothing else to do. She held herself responsible, knew she should have been ready for any action by the enemy…but she was just as aware that there was nothing she could do now.

  Ordering the back line forward was a vanity, she knew, and nothing more, a way to feel as though she was doing something. The reserve ships would never get forward in time, and certainly not quickly enough to blast the approaching First Imperium hulls to slag before they could close. Strand’s vessels would escape—or they would face their doom—on their own, outside the reach of any help she could give them.

  She grimaced as she felt the acceleration slamming into her, pushing her hard back into her chair. Garret was blasting forward at better than 50g, and even the battleship’s powerful dampeners couldn’t offset that much force.

  That’s about 4g…maybe 4.5. West had served many years in space, fought aboard warships in the days before technology offered any meaningful way to endure g forces, save to lock an entire ship’s crew in huge tanks, immersed entirely in thick goo. She had a feel for reading force levels that rivaled the most sophisticated sensors, and when her eyes moved down to her screen she saw the exact reading…4.315g.

  “Commander…I want all ships ready to fire as soon as we enter range.” It was pointless, but it was all she could do.

  “Yes, Admiral.”

  Her ships might not get there in time to blast the enemy ships before they reached Strand’s line, but they’d damned sure be waiting for those that missed their targets and zipped forward at high velocity. She didn’t know how many of the enemy vessels would claim one of her own…but she was sure about one thing.

  Not one of the ones that missed was going to get another chance.

  * * *

  “Admiral…Thames…”

  Hercule’s tone would have told Strand all she needed to know…if she hadn’t been looking at the battleship’s projection in the display when six million tons of First Imperium warship slammed into it. Thames wasn’t torn apart, it wasn’t even disintegrated, at least not in the sense of being reduced to a cloud of smaller chunks. The two vessels just vanished utterly, replaced by a massive surge of energy and wave after wave of hard radiation.

  Strand’s mind had always been quick, and despite her attempts to stop the morbid calculation, she found herself coming up with a rough total on the energy released when the mass of First Imperium steel slammed into Thames at more than one percent of the speed of light. It was the kind of figure that made one think they’d made some kind of error, added half a dozen too many zeroes or a few exponents…but Strand knew it was correct.

  Midway had been more fortunate than Thames in its encounters with the approaching First Imperium ships. Strand’s flagship had been targeted by two separate enemy vessels, but somehow, her last-second maneuvers had evaded both,
the last missing by less than six hundred meters, a hair’s breadth in the vast distances of space combat, and one she knew represented some fraction of a second in terms of thrust and maneuver.

  “Bring us around, Commander…all batteries to bear, coordinates 120.009.330.” Strand had taken a second to let out a sigh of relief when she realized her own ship had escaped the deadly danger that had come so close. But now, she regretted even that instant, time wasted that should have been used to help the rest of her people. Riverlands was the closest vessel, and Strand’s best guess was the cruiser had about a 50/50 chance of evading the enemy Gargoyle bearing down on it. Midway didn’t have any real chance of vaporizing the incoming enemy ship, not in the seconds remaining, but even a single hit, a section of hull blown out, or an explosion in the right spot, could alter the vessel’s trajectory. Even the tiniest fraction of a degree could be the margin that saved Riverlands, and her sixty-eight crew.

  The targeted cruiser was firing at it pursuer as well, and engaging in its own evasive maneuvers, but the First Imperium ship was matching its course changes and closing rapidly. Strand watched, even as she waited for Midway’s course adjustments to bring her weapons into fire arc. She couldn’t help but wonder about the thoughts that would be going through a crew’s thoughts on a suicide run, as they gave everything they had to ensure their own destruction. She realized the First Imperium ships didn’t have crews in the sense she imagined them, but their intelligences were extraordinarily capable, and she wondered if they didn’t have some sense of self-preservation, if the Regent’s coldly analytical orders ever spawned a reaction something like resentment, if not outright insubordination.

  “All batteries, open fire as we come to bear.” It was an unnecessary order. She knew her gunners were at the ready, waiting for Midway’s realignment to give them the shots they needed. But necessary or not, she gave it, and she did it with all the command authority she could muster.

  “Yes, Admiral.” A pause. “Forward batteries will be in arc in fifteen seconds.”

  “Very well. Her eyes darted to the display, checking the stats even though she was sure she remembered correctly. Riverlands had thirty-four seconds until the enemy ship was on her. That gave her batteries a single shot…just maybe a second one if all systems functioned perfectly.

  She heard the familiar whining sound, Midway’s batteries firing, and a few seconds later, the stream of data scrolling down her screen, hit report and damage assessments.

  Her gunners had scored two hits, one serious. There was some release of gases and liquids, and signs of internal explosions. The effects of the barrage definitely affected the oncoming vessel’s trajectory, minimally, at least. Whether it was enough to push the ship aside from a collision course with Riverlands—and enough to overcome the First Imperium ship’s own efforts to correct its vector—was too close to call.

  There was nothing to do but wait…and see.

  And hope her gunners got in one more shot in time.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Flag Bridge, E2S Midway

  System G48

  Earth Two Date 02.15.43

  “I want all active scans on full power. Forward scouts are authorized to risk overloads.” Strand knew she was jumping the gun. Midway had just transited, and the battleship’s electronics were still scrambled from the strange effects of warp gate travel. Strand didn’t have communications or scanners yet, nor even onboard computers. The automation of Earth Two’s ships carried one negative effect with it, at least. Human vessels had always been helpless for the first few minutes after a transit, but the massively powerful vessels Strand commanded were worse off even than their predecessors had been.

  “Yes, Admiral…waiting for onboard systems to reboot.” It wasn’t information Hercule had to share…she was well aware of the timetable of post-transit recovery.

  But then, you didn’t give him much choice, did you, snapping out an order you knew he couldn’t obey yet?

  Strand’s people had fought in half a dozen systems, on their route to G48, struggled to beat off one First Imperium assault after another. They’d even endured ramming attacks, though only the first one the enemy tried had been truly effective. Erika West was no one’s fool, and she only made mistakes once. Strand was far from confident she wouldn’t have done the same thing the fleet commander had, blundered into a vulnerable position for a suicide attack, but she shared one thing with Erika West.

  She didn’t make stupid mistakes twice either.

  She looked down at her screen, frustrated at it dark blankness. She tried to will the system to come back online, as if that could have any effect on recovery from the still only partially understood physics of warp travel. No one had ever adequately explained the variation in recovery times, why in some cases, ships regained operational status as quickly as forty-five seconds, and in others, the same vessels were disabled for as long as five minutes.

  Her insides felt tight, the tension that had been growing as the fleet clawed forward from one system to the next taking its toll. She’d had a bright spot in the otherwise disastrous engagement in G45. Six of her ships had been obliterated by the surprise ramming attack, but her last ditch effort had saved the cruiser Riverlands. Midway’s batteries had been the difference there, the desperate effort to get firing vectors, and the near-perfect marksmanship of the human-AI team that directed the fire of those guns. The enemy ship had missed by almost one thousand meters, not much distance in space, but enough to save the ship and crew.

  For a short while, at least.

  Riverlands had been lost in the fighting in G47, just a few days after its salvation at the hands of Midway’s gunners. Strand tried to draw solace from the fact that the stricken ship had been able to evacuate almost half its crew, giving some permanence, at least, to the benefits of Midway’s actions.

  The fleet had taken significant losses before even entering the target system, and the fact that the seemingly desperate, almost random First Imperium attacks had cost the enemy even more was less than reassuring. Strand was more certain than ever that the Regent was intentionally throwing its ships at the fleet in an effort to disguise the trap she was sure was waiting right now, out beyond her darkened displays and scrambled scanners.

  She wasn’t sure if she was satisfied that the Regent had wasted so many more of its own ships than it had cost the fleet…or if she was even more concerned about the machine’s true plan and the trickery surrounding it.

  The damn thing didn’t have to go to this much effort to lure us here. We know it’s a trap—at least Erika and I do—but we don’t have a choice. We can’t win the endless standoff, wait until the murderous machine finds us.

  Strand understood just how important the mission was. Destroying the antimatter production facility was just about the only tactical advantage that could truly blunt the Regent’s relentless efforts to find and destroy Earth Two…and that was why the fleet was there, knowingly walking into a trap.

  A flicker of light caught her eye, a static pattern coming onto her workstation screen. She looked around the bridge, seeing the same thing pop up on one screen after another, and then the huge central display began to glow, as the ship’s AIs rebooted and restarted the complex series of holograms that gave Midway’s bridge crew an astonishingly complete view of the space surrounding the big ship.

  She almost repeated her order, now that she could see the ship recovering, but she stopped herself with the realization that Hercule hadn’t needed the first reminder…and he certainly did not need a second.

  Her imagination was running wild, her thoughts projecting images of massive enemy fleets out there, waiting in front of her ships, preparing to fire at any moment. But, she checked those thoughts, reminded herself she still had no idea at all what was out there.

  Then, her workstation screen flashed completely to life, followed ten or fifteen seconds later by the big 3D display. The data was still incomplete. The scanners were functioning again, too, but the AIs w
ere still analyzing the flood of data coming in.

  There were ships waiting, that was immediately clear. A large fleet…though not as massive as she’d feared. And not waiting close to the warp gate to hit her forces as they entered the system. The First Imperium fleet was deployed well in-system, fairly close to the target planet itself.

  That seems foolish…they should be far out, positioned to keep us from getting into launch range of the planet.

  The enemy formation didn’t seem right to Strand, but she didn’t let herself believe the Regent had made any serious mistakes. The First Imperium intelligences lacked the intuition and gut feel that made human commanders so good at waging war, but the incredibly complex computers didn’t make outright deployment errors either. The Regent had five hundred millennia of data on warfare, and it wasn’t about to position its fleet badly…not without a reason.

  It wants to lure us in…and it’s giving us a run at the planet to do it…

  Strand felt her nervousness rising, moving dangerously close to uncontrollable fear. She’d faced death before, and she’d come back from it. Strand’s Stand was required study at the Academy, a fact from which she’d drawn immense pride, as well as her fair share of embarrassment.

  This was different, however. Knowingly leading her people into a trap was one thing for which she felt entirely unprepared. But, it was just what she was going to do, nevertheless.

  “All ships, battlestations. As soon as the entire formation is operational, we will move forward…8g acceleration, right for the enemy line.”

  Right for whatever they’ve got waiting for us there.

  And, right for that antimatter production world…toward the one stroke that could even the fight, give Earth Two a chance at victory…