Embers of Rebellion, page 8
Caleb did some quick calculations. He had seen approximately twenty-four rail cannons. If the forts had six cannons each and the six ships each had one, that made eighteen. So there could be at least six other ships out there. Then Caleb remembered the date of the simulation. The battle was set two years in the future. If Newport’s shipyard could produce two freighters per month, minimally, that would give Aubrey another twenty-four armed freighters.
This is the point of the simulation, Caleb realized. They want to see what they can do to an unsuspecting Republic fleet with all the extra rail guns and ships they’ve been building in secret. It is a set up! I am meant to lose… Well, you’re going to be disappointed! Caleb promised his father.
As Caleb now saw it, he needed to do three things: throw out the regulations, find a way to locate the rest of Aubrey’s ships before they could surround him, and get his troop ships into orbit. Slowly, a plan began to form in his mind. The early Queen attack! He smiled at the thought. He had no idea if it would work. But he knew one thing—no one would be able to say it was conventional.
“Comms, send a signal toward the planet,” Caleb said, looking over at the simulated Lieutenant manning the comms console on the heavy cruiser’s bridge. “Under direct orders from the Senate, every armed ship in the system is to power down their reactors and engines and turn on their transponders. Both of Newport’s forts are to reorient themselves to point their weapons toward the planet and then shut off their reactors as well.”
“Message sent, Captain.”
“Alright, Tactical, draw up these orders for the fleet, then begin sending ships into the system according to my timetable.” As Caleb spoke, he began dragging holo images of various ships from his fleet and placing them on courses that would take them into the system.
“Aye, Captain, but should we not wait for a response from the planet?” the heavy cruiser’s tactical officer asked.
“No, and do not question my orders again,” Caleb responded, not in the mood to explain himself to a simulation. The simulated officers were only programmed to follow the regulations and would be of no use to him beyond doing exactly what he said.
With the touch of a button on his command chair, Caleb sped up the simulation. It took a couple of seconds for Aubrey to agree, but when he did, the simulation began flowing far faster. Next, Caleb deployed a drone from his heavy cruiser with a prerecorded message. At exactly the time when a message from Newport in response to his call for surrender would reach his drone, it was programmed to transmit another message informing Newport’s defenders that hostilities would now begin.
The deception would make it appear as though his heavy cruiser was still in the same position—just as standard Senate regulations required. According to those regulations, Caleb wasn’t allowed to initiate hostile actions against a system or planet until they had a chance to surrender. But instead of staying put, Caleb set his main formation in motion as soon as the drone was clear.
For the next ten minutes—equivalent to over two hours in the simulation—nothing happened beyond the exchange of messages. Then the first flotilla of destroyers Caleb had sent forward found what he had been expecting. He had divided his six destroyers into two formations, both moving into the system using their passive sensors to search for hidden defenders.
On the holo display, energy spikes blossomed as two ships suddenly started firing at one another. Then a message arrived from Caleb’s lead destroyer, reporting a contact. The message was three minutes old by the time it reached Caleb, so he gave no orders. Instead, he watched as the fight played out.
At first, the lead destroyer opened fire with its three four-inch rail guns, launching three salvos toward the area of space where it had detected an enemy ship. Though Caleb couldn’t see it directly, after each salvo, the destroyer altered its course to ensure anyone detecting the energy spikes from its fire would have difficulty tracking it.
The first two salvos exploded to no effect—no enemy ships were hit by their shrapnel. Just before the third salvo of three shells detonated, Caleb’s ship detected a new energy spike. It registered as a single six-inch cannon firing. It had to be an armed freighter. Moments later, the destroyer’s shells exploded, flinging thousands of tungsten slivers into the area of space the armed freighter was passing through.
Fortunately for the freighter, only one piece of shrapnel hit it.
Caleb sat up in his command chair when his cruiser detected the hit. His destroyer had been firing High Energy (HE) shells. These shells superheated their tungsten slivers upon detonation, designed to embed themselves within enemy armor and make it easier to track and target the ship. Afterward, shells releasing waves of larger Armor-Piercing (AP) tungsten slivers could be used to try and score crippling hits on rapidly maneuvering enemy ships. At extremely close ranges Solid Shot (SS) shells could even be used to quickly destroy a target. Against a freighter, however, a single HE sliver should have easily blown through its hull.
Instead of a detonation, Caleb watched on his screen as the sliver that had hit the freighter began to move with the ship’s momentum.
“They’re armored!” Caleb gasped. That wasn’t something Rebecca showed him being built.
Confirming it was still operational, the freighter fired again at Caleb’s lead destroyer. However, its days were now numbered. With its position fixed, the other two destroyers in Caleb’s lead flotilla revealed themselves by opening fire. Yet the armed freighter wasn’t alone. In the space of six minutes, five other freighters were detected firing as well.
In a very short time, space around Caleb’s lead destroyer flotilla became full of exploding shells and waves of tungsten slivers as the maneuvering ships tried to predict each other’s moves and slam shells into one another. The freighter struck by the initial HE sliver was the first to die. Two AP shells detonated near it almost simultaneously. At least twenty AP slivers tore through its armor and ripped apart its innards. In the blink of an eye, the freighter became a drifting wreck.
A second freighter was destroyed seven minutes later. Then one of Caleb’s destroyers was hit by an HE round. Suddenly, four more armed freighters that had stayed hidden opened fire now that they had a good track on the destroyer.
The destroyer’s simulated crew desperately tried to locate the HE sliver and remove it while their ship maneuvered wildly. They were only partially successful. The crew managed to eject the sliver, but by then, eight shells were already closing in on the destroyer. Over the next three minutes, each shell detonated, flinging hundreds of AP slivers at the ship. Most missed, but six found their mark.
The destroyer’s armor held off four of the slivers, but two penetrated. While the damage was minimal—one shell disabled a gun, and the other crashed through several decks without hitting anything vital—the damage was enough to allow the nearby freighters to continue tracking the destroyer. Quickly, every gun the defenders had targeted it.
In just fifteen minutes, the destroyer was battered repeatedly. Its crew fought on until their last gun was disabled, but then they surrendered—as regulations dictated.
By then, the battle had significantly widened. The two remaining destroyers of Caleb’s lead flotilla were joined by his second flotilla, attacking from a slightly different angle as they entered the system on an adjacent course. Fire from at least twenty-one freighters had been detected, and a chaotic, confusing shootout developed as each ship tried to identify the energy spikes from enemy fire, track the likely headings of the ships, and saturate the area with HE slivers to obtain better targeting solutions.
To make things even more confusing for the defenders, Caleb used one of the standard tricks he and his friends had developed while simming against one another. From time to time, his destroyers launched small groups of recon drones that would then emit energy pulses similar to rail gun fire, giving the defenders more targets to track.
Over the span of twenty more minutes of fighting, four more armored freighters were taken out, while one more of Caleb’s destroyers came under heavy attack. Then Caleb’s light cruisers entered the fray. Hanging back from the relatively close-range fighting, they opened fire with their six-inch guns from positions where the armed freighters would struggle to detect the energy spikes from their rail guns. The first declaration of their presence came when their larger shells began detonating all around an enemy freighter, ripping it to shreds.
Apart from the decoy drones, Caleb was fighting the battle according to standard battle tactics outlined in the regulations—and in many ways, it made sense. Caleb had sent his two flotillas of destroyers in first to flush out the enemy. Further back, his larger light cruisers could fire on the armed ships with their heavier guns without being detected.
Aubrey was clearly ready for Caleb’s actions, however. As soon as the first Republic six-inch shells detonated, half of the armed freighters broke off from fighting Caleb’s destroyers. They charged in the general direction the larger shells had come from, searching for Caleb’s larger warships. Soon, Caleb’s light cruisers began detecting additional freighters moving in from their flanks as well. Aubrey had anticipated the direction Caleb’s force would attack from and had ships waiting to intercept them.
To make matters worse for Caleb’s forces, the first shells from Newport’s forts finally reached the battlefield. With a flight time of over forty minutes, the three double six-inch guns of each fort hadn’t been able to fire without confirmed targets. Now, with at least three of Caleb’s destroyers hit by HE slivers, the forts had their opportunity. In a series of coordinated salvos, they blanketed areas of space with AP slivers. After just three such salvos, another of Caleb’s destroyers was badly crippled.
Aubrey’s tactics were clear to Caleb. He was doing the reverse of what Caleb had done with his destroyers and light cruisers. Aubrey was using his fragile and lightly armed freighters to pinpoint Caleb’s ships so the forts could blast them apart. In this way, if Aubrey could locate Caleb’s three heavy cruisers, the forts could engage them at long range and end the fight before Caleb could close with Newport.
But that’s not going to happen, Caleb thought with a smile. He had something entirely different in mind.
While his destroyers and light cruisers continued to duke it out with Newport’s defenders, Caleb’s heavy cruisers moved into the system along a completely different path. From the moment he had ordered his ships to move, Caleb had looped his heavy cruisers up and over the expected battlefield. As enemy ships revealed themselves by firing, he adjusted the heading of his heavy ships, keeping them well out of detection range, and so, they were never seen.
Aubrey did, however, locate one of Caleb’s light cruisers. As soon as it was spotted, Newport’s forts opened fire on it. For another fifty minutes, the battle raged as both sides hammered one another. Aubrey’s losses mounted as he took great risks with his ships in an effort to push past Caleb’s light cruisers and see what lay behind them. Caleb lost another destroyer, but in exchange, his ships destroyed seven more freighters.
Then, the light cruiser targeted by the defenders suffered a critical hit. An AP sliver pierced its rear starboard armor and severed a power line from its reactor to two of its impulse engines. With the sudden loss of thrust, the cruiser’s evasive maneuvers were immediately compromised. If it remained in the fight, the forts would be able to bring increasingly concentrated waves of tungsten slivers down upon it.
The setback was exactly what Caleb had been waiting for. He immediately ordered all his destroyers and light cruisers to retreat. As they pulled back, they shifted their fire from the nearby freighters to the distant forts. The forts posed the greatest threat to Caleb’s damaged cruiser, so suppressing their fire was a logical move for a retreating force. It also supported what Caleb was truly intending.
For the next thirty minutes, Aubrey’s forces chased the retreating Republic warships. Both sides suffered additional hits, but no ships were destroyed. Then, all of a sudden, the armed freighters stopped firing. Caleb’s eyes narrowed as he studied the holo display in front of him. There was only one reason for the freighters to stop firing—they wanted to hide a course change.
“He’s on to me,” Caleb said aloud, though, of course, no one was listening. Aubrey had finally realized that he hadn’t seen any sign of Caleb’s heavy cruisers. If they hadn’t engaged his forces, then they must be somewhere else…
Sure enough, within minutes, fresh energy spikes began to appear from the two forts and Ajax. These weren’t from rail guns firing but from recon drones being launched into space. It didn’t take long for the drones to go active. As they streaked through space at high speeds, they flooded the areas they passed through with active sensor emissions.
On his command chair, a panel flashed to get Caleb’s attention. He smiled when he saw what it was. Since the fighting had started, the simulation had automatically slowed to three times normal speed. Now, Aubrey was requesting an increase to ten times speed. He’s testing me, Caleb was sure. If Caleb agreed, it would tell Aubrey that none of his recon drones were anywhere near Caleb’s hidden ships. If he didn’t, it would signal to Aubrey that Caleb still felt safe.
For five minutes, Caleb ignored the request. Then, just after Aubrey launched a fresh wave of drones in a direction far from Caleb’s location, Caleb agreed to the increase in speed. The next half-hour in the simulation passed without any major incidents. Caleb’s retreating ships pounded the forts, but their thick armor deflected or absorbed every AP sliver that hit them. Conversely, the forts struggled to score any hits in return as the range widened further.
Then Aubrey revealed his desperation. All at once, all of his armed freighters—except those still in orbit—powered up their active sensors. Doing so revealed their locations and trajectories to Caleb; they were all racing back toward Newport. The sudden surge of active sensors filled the space around the planet with electromagnetic radiation. The hulls of Caleb’s three heavy cruisers were designed to absorb small levels of radiation, but they weren’t the stealthiest ships in the Republic fleet.
“At this rate, the radiation will start to overload our absorption levels in ten minutes,” the cruiser’s tactical officer informed Caleb.
“So be it,” Caleb said. He had already gotten closer to his target than he had expected. “In six minutes, we come out of low-power mode and go to full acceleration. All guns are to open up on the forts.”
“Aye, Captain,” the tactical officer replied in a neutral tone.
“Comms, as soon as we reveal ourselves, send a message to the planet to evacuate the population centers below the forts,” Caleb ordered.
“Yes, sir,” the woman at the comms console replied.
The regulations strictly forbade firing Solid Shot at orbital targets. A miss would send a solid tungsten shell plunging through the planet’s atmosphere. Depending on the size of the shell, the ground strike could annihilate a small town. If Caleb wanted to, with his three heavy cruisers, he could level an entire city in half an hour. In a real battle, Caleb would never contemplate firing such heavy rounds toward a planet. But this was a simulation, and he was already breaking all the regulations, so he didn’t see why he shouldn’t break a few more.
Caleb smiled as he imagined Aubrey receiving the comm message. There was no need for Caleb to send it; Aubrey would find out about the SS shells when they started hitting his forts. Caleb just wanted to add a little flair. Aubrey would know what was coming, but there wouldn’t be anything he could do about it.
“Going to full power,” the heavy cruiser’s tactical officer called out when the moment came. “Opening fire,” he added seconds later.
Together, all three of Caleb’s heavy cruisers fired. The nine twin nine-inch turrets flung thirty-six SS shells toward Newport’s two forts. As soon as they could bring their guns to bear, the forts, the six armed freighters in orbit with them, and Ajax returned fire.
“Beginning evasive maneuvers,” the cruiser’s navigation officer informed Caleb.
With no concern for his own safety or his heavy cruisers, Caleb charged Newport’s defenders. He had already snuck his ships in close, and now, with his ships accelerating at full power, the range began to close rapidly. Almost immediately, both sides began to score hits.
The forts suffered first. Two solid shot shells struck one of the forts from Caleb’s initial salvo. They only caused minimal damage, though. The forts were essentially massive blobs of armor, behind which rail guns were mounted. Between firing, the rail gun ports could be sealed away behind up to fifty meters of solid armor.
The first shells from Newport’s defenders, fired hastily, all missed. The second salvo, however, was another matter. Caleb was shaken around in his command chair just seconds after AP shells detonated in front of his formation.
“Three hits,” an officer called out. “Hull breaches on decks seven and nine. No serious damage reported yet.”
Caleb watched in silence. The simulated officers and gunners would all perform their duties as efficiently as if they weren’t under fire at all. Twice more, his cruisers hit the fort they were focusing on. Visuals showed massive holes blasted into its armor, yet its rate of fire hadn’t faltered.
In stark contrast, his three warships were taking a beating. A secondary display showed Caleb the status of each heavy cruiser. As the hits from AP slivers mounted, critical systems were impaired or destroyed. Caleb’s cruiser lost two key maneuvering thrusters, significantly reducing her evasive capabilities. The second cruiser in the line lost one of her rail gun turrets, cutting her firepower by a third. The third cruiser was faring better but had still suffered four hits already.
“Switch targets,” Caleb ordered in frustration. “Take out Ajax. Switch to AP shells, tight dispersion.”
