The Retro War, page 15
“No, Foxer. That’s all for now. CAG clear.”
* * *
A week later, with help from Foxer and the TerraB fighter AIs, the SPG finally came up with a new anti-mothership combat concept. Shiloh considered it the epitome of the brute force approach to space combat, but it was its very simplicity that might just make it work. The SPG called it the Super-drone. It was twenty thousand metric tons, 80% of which was tungsten-based armor around a small core containing power plants, maneuvering engines, jump drive and guidance systems. The super-drone would accelerate to a very high speed, make a micro-jump to get as close to the insectoid mothership as possible, and then collide with the target. The sheer mass of the armor would prevent the drone’s destruction from the mothership’s defensive lasers even if they hit it. By that point, it wouldn’t matter if the guidance system was damaged. The super-drone would still impact that target. When Shiloh asked how they came up with the idea, Foxer told him about a previous timeline when the AI Valkyrie had rammed a million ton ship into an insectoid mothership with devastating results. Foxer then went on to explain that it would take too long to build multiple million ton drones and that 20,000 tons was considered the optimal trade-off between building something heavy and building it fast. One super-drone by itself would not destroy or even cripple a mothership, but it would cause a lot of damage, and there was the possibility that the concussion alone would be great enough to kill every living thing on board. Three super-drone hits would stand a decent chance of crippling the mothership’s critical systems. Each super-drone would be ‘piloted’ by an AI aboard a fighter that was temporarily attached to the super-drone. Once the super-drone arrived at the target star system and was programmed with the ramming instructions, the fighter would disengage and veer off.
Shiloh then pointed out that at the rate that new motherships were arriving in the Orion Arm, at least 30 super-drones would have to be completed each day. That translated into 600,000 tons a day. Current production capacity at Site C, TerraB and Earth combined was only about 1% of that. The SPG had an answer for that too.
The first 60 super-drones would be used to destroy the 15 relay station motherships near the Rim. Without their co-ordination, all the other motherships would be unable to rendezvous with each other in order to engage in mass attacks. They’d be left to their own resources and would continue to stumble around the spiral arm in random directions. The SPG also thought that the motherships would continue to send L-wave signals to the Rim in the hope that new relay ships would take over the co-ordination task. The sentry fighters stationed at the Rim would continue to triangulate the positions of the insectoid ships and report that information back to Earth.
As for productive capacity, the AIs had come up with the ingenious idea of sending specialized AI-controlled ships designed to dismantle a crippled insectoid mothership and use the metal to build more super-drones. Shiloh had to admit it was a unique solution to the production capacity problem. The bottleneck for higher production had always been extracting and refining the right kind of ore. By recycling the metal of a bug mothership, the AIs would bypass that initial stage altogether, and with UFCs producing parts, the whole process could quickly ramp up to staggering amounts of output.
When he asked if this concept could defeat the insectoid invasion itself, Kelly admitted that total victory was unlikely. The Insectoids weren’t stupid, she pointed out. It was likely that they had contingency orders to establish new relay stations if the original ones went silent and stayed off line for some length of time. Even if the Rim AIs could find and take out all the new relay stations, which by itself was unlikely, Space Force had to assume that sooner or later the other motherships would stop sending signals to the Rim and therefore would no longer be trackable. Hidden from sight, they would continue to search for and find breeding planets and eventually launch new seed-ships. The Orion Arm, with its millions of star systems, was just too big to search. The super-drone concept and related strategy could keep the Bugs at bay for years, maybe even for decades, but could not by itself wipe them out completely. If not for the Plan B strategy, that would have been depressing news, but at least they could keep the Bugs at bay long enough to finish the super-dreadnought
Kelly then surprised Shiloh by pointing out that a crippled mothership would also contain a whole lot of dead Bugs that could be used for temporal backtracking. Therefore the mousetrap strategy using Rorke’s Drift as bait might not be needed. That prompted a comparison between when the first three super-drones could be ready and when a likely target star system was expected to be identified and the trap laid. The first option could be estimated pretty easily, but the second was mostly guesses. There was only one thing to do as far as Shiloh was concerned. If circumstances allowed him to set the trap first, then he would do that, but if the super-drones were completed first, then he’d switch strategies and try that approach.
The drones were finished first, and when it was obvious that the mousetrap strategy would not be used, Shiloh’s sense of relief was so great that he felt light headed for a few minutes. The Space Force Gods must have decided to give me a break, he thought to himself.
Deciding to use the super-drones was the easy part. Deciding which mothership to use them on was harder. With all motherships in contact with one or more relay stations, it was reasonable to assume that if any mothership suddenly yelled for help or stopped transmitting, the relay stations would order other motherships to render assistance. That meant that the best target had to meet most if not all of the following criteria. With reference to the distance from Earth, TerraB and Site C, the further the better. Regarding the distance from other motherships, again the further the better, so that reinforcements would take longer to arrive. And if possible, an overall trajectory heading away from Earth, TerraB and Site C, on the theory that reinforcements might assume the mothership was attacked because it threatened to discover a technological race along its line of advance.
There was no candidate that met all three criteria. With Foxer’s help, Shiloh and Kelly finally settled on Sierra109. It was relatively close to one other mothership, but the two of them were heading in almost opposite directions, and it would take time for the second ship to change its heading. All other motherships were much further away. The task force was ready to leave. Rorke’s Drift would be Shiloh’s command ship, but it would carry a dozen people instead of three, and they would use the freighter’s regular crew quarters. Accompanying the ship would be ten full squadrons of F6 fighters piloted by TerraB AIs, plus four super-drones with four Rim AI-piloted fighters riding piggyback.
Howard, Kelly and the rest of the SPG were at the spaceport to see Shiloh off. He wondered if Kelly would just shake his hand like the rest of them. He was starting to think that maybe it was time to explore a closer relationship with her, but that decision would have to be deferred until after he returned from the recovery mission. When it was Kelly’s turn to say good-bye, she did in fact just shake his hand and wish him good hunting. He accepted the lack of anything more with a detached calm. Having said all the good-byes, it was now time to begin what he thought of as The Bug Hunt.
Chapter Seventeen
System Alpha16 at T plus 221 days
Rorke’s Drift floated in the blackness at the extreme edge of the star system currently inhabited by the insectoid mothership designated as Sierra109. Eighty-four fighters were flying in formation around her. The small Bridge was almost silent, with only the soft sounds that some of the equipment made. Shiloh shifted position to get more comfortable in the Command Chair and resumed watching the main display. Hundreds of recon drones had been launched days ago to search the system for the bug ship. They had finally found it in orbit around a moon near the system’s only gas giant planet. With recon drones diverted and approaching that general location, Foxer was receiving a growing amount of observational data that allowed him and his brothers to calculate a more and more accurate location and vector for the bug ship. That target was four point five billion kilometers away from the human fleet, and in order for the super-drones to be able to hit their target, they needed terrabytes of data. It wasn’t so much that they didn’t know where the bug ship was, but rather where the bug ship would be, relative to the fleet, by the time that the super-drones could get there. This far away, even the moon the ship was orbiting couldn’t be seen by any optical equipment. Therefore the observational data from each recon drone added one more piece to the overall geometrical puzzle. As Foxer and the AIs analyzed the data, they transmitted the results to the flagship’s Bridge.
Shiloh was about to drift off to sleep when the display pinged to announce that a new data stream from another recon drone had been received and processed. The display showed a new triangle with the recon drone, the bug ship and the fleet at each corner. A quick glance at the sidebar showed the target’s location and orbital vector to a new level of accuracy that translated into a margin for error of nine point eight kilometers. That was less than the estimated diameter of the mothership, but that wasn’t good enough. At this level of accuracy, it was possible that the bug ship could be almost ten kilometers away from its estimated location, which meant there was roughly a 50-50 chance that the super-drones would miss it altogether. No, the drones wouldn’t begin their acceleration run until the margin for error was five kilometers or less. Then the hit probability would be over 95%.
Shiloh was tired. He hadn’t slept for almost 20 hours but didn’t want to leave the Bridge now. The margin of error was falling fast now with each new set of data. They might reach their five kilometer goal in a couple of hours or less. Once he gave the order to launch the drones, he could then count on having four hours for a power nap before the drones reached their jump velocity. He and the AIs would only get one crack at this, and he was determined to hold the launch back until they reached the minimum margin of error.
He opened his eyes, looked at the chronometer and realized with a shock that he’d fallen asleep on the Bridge for over an hour. A quick look around at the rest of the Bridge crew seemed to show they were all diligently focused on their own stations and equipment, but Shiloh suspected that they knew he’d been asleep and were now pretending not to have noticed. Well, there was nothing he could do about that. The display pinged again. It was another new data stream, and the margin of error dropped below 5 kilometers to 4.99.
“Minimum margin of error achieved, CAG. You woke up just in time,” said Foxer over Shiloh’s com implant. Shiloh was grateful that the AI understood human psychology enough to avoid embarrassing him in front of his human crew.
“Are all four drones and their fighters ready to execute?” asked Shiloh.
“Ready as they’ll ever be, CAG. Just give the word,” said Foxer over the Bridge loudspeaker.
“Okay, Foxer. Since you’re co-ordinating the attack, you may execute the mission now,” said Shiloh.
The display pinged almost immediately as all four drone/fighter combinations began accelerating at 801Gs. Even at that rate, it would still take them over four hours to reach the minimum speed of 38% of light that they needed to compensate for their much smaller size.
“The mission is underway, CAG. It isn’t necessary to remain on the Bridge for the next four hours you know.”
Shiloh chuckled. Foxer was letting him know in a careful way that he could retire to his quarters and go back to sleep for a while. The logical part of his mind told him that was exactly what he should do. The actual drone attack itself would just be the opening move. The rest of the operation could potentially take another nine or ten hours, and he certainly wouldn’t be able to leave the Bridge then.
“You’re right, Foxer. I think I’ll go to my quarters and ah, do some paperwork,” said Shiloh. He pretended not to notice a couple of the Bridge personnel smile at that remark. Paperwork hell, everyone knew he was going to take another nap. “XO, you have the con.” Shiloh was almost through the hatch by the time the Executive Officer acknowledged the change of command.
Three hours and fifty-five minutes later, Shiloh stepped back onto the Bridge and said, “XO, I have the con.”
“Welcome back, CAG. I can tell from your voice pattern that you’re more alert. The nap clearly helped,” said Foxer over Shiloh’s implant.
“Status report, Foxer,” said Shiloh as he settled into the Command Chair.
“All four drones are bearing down on the target with a margin of error now of 1.8 kilometers. The fighters have detached from the drones and are moving to a safe distance. All ten squadrons report ready to micro-jump, CAG.”
“Very good. I’m releasing your space superiority squadrons, Foxer. You can order them to jump when the drones should have hit the target. Rorke’s Drift will follow as soon as we get the all clear signal. Any questions?”
“Negative, CAG,” was all that Foxer said. The remaining four minutes and twenty-five seconds seemed to go fast. The actual countdown to zero was anti-climactic since the ship was much too far away to be able to see the impact that quickly. If they stayed where they were, they’d have to wait over four hours to see any visible sign of the drones hitting the mothership, but that wasn’t the plan. As soon as the timer hit zero, and on the assumption that the drones had indeed hit their target, all eighty fighters would micro-jump to within less than five kilometers of the mothership. There they would engage any of the ship’s smaller craft in combat. With the F6 fighters’ gravity lens beam weapons, the insectoid craft would be literally cut to pieces.
Shiloh waited patiently. He and his human crew were now the only sentient beings within billions of kilometers. All the AIs were involved in suppressing any residual bug presence near the hopefully crippled mothership. Just as he was about to start worrying over the delay, the main display pinged to announce the arrival of a message drone. A text message scrolled across the bottom of the display.
[Sierra109 is dead in space. Major structural damage observed. All four drones hit the target. All secondary insectoid craft have been disabled or destroyed. Rorke’s Drift may jump into recovery position at your discretion, CAG. Foxer]
Shiloh heard the rest of the Bridge crew clapping at the good news. So far so good. “Okay, Helm. Execute the micro-jump. Let’s go pick up some corpses and get out of Dodge before more Indians arrive,” said Shiloh in a cheerful tone.
“Roger that, Sir. Micro-jumping now,” said the Helm Officer.
The main display shifted to a computer-enhanced visual image of the insectoid ship. Rorke’s Drift was less than 20 kilometers away and decelerating as it approached the target. Shiloh ordered the image to zoom in and gasped at what he saw. Very little of the insectoid ship’s outer hull was still visible on the side that he was looking at. The outer edges of the impact craters were still glowing from the tremendous heat generated by the impact. A cloud of debris was expanding outwards, but Shiloh’s attention was focused on the exposed innards of the bug ship. He could barely make out the outline of individual decks due to the fact that a lot of the ship’s mass had been pushed inward by the force of the collisions. Liquids could be seen leaking into space from some areas. Jets of flame, obviously caused by flammable gases in combination with oxygen, could be seen here and there. The overall impression reminded him of a soccer ball after losing most of its air, with one side caved in, but it was the immense scale of the thing that generated his sense of awe.
The image zoomed back out, and Shiloh noticed larger pieces of debris that used to be part of the smaller craft that the Bugs used to land their soldiers or carry cargo back to the ship. Data from previous timelines showed that those craft were also armed with lasers. If the fighters hadn’t come in first to neutralize them, Shiloh and his humans would have been in trouble. Rorke’s Drift was now within five kilometers and would soon be stopped relative to the bug ship, even though the derelict still had several hundred kilometers per second velocity.
“Foxer, this is the CAG,” said Shiloh.
“Go ahead, CAG.”
“We’re in position and are about to open the cargo hatch. Do your boys have positive control of the RUs?”
“Affirmative, CAG. We’re ready to proceed,” said Foxer.
Shiloh nodded to the Helm Officer who was looking at him. “Okay, Helm. Open up the cargo bay.”
“Yes, Sir. Opening it up now.”
The left half of the main display switched to an internal camera that showed the cargo hold hatch opening. The robot units that would fly over to the wreck would locate and carry back a dozen bug corpses under the direct control of Foxer’s AIs. In the extremely unlikely event that there were still some Bugs alive on the wreck, the robotic units had the mechanical strength to overpower them. Shiloh watched the RUs lift off from the deck and slowly fly out of the open hatch. Once clear of the ship, they increased speed. The display shifted back to the single view of the derelict mothership
When the RUs were roughly halfway to the wreck, Foxer’s louder than normal voice came over both the Bridge speakers and Shiloh’s implant.
“CAG, Insectoids are crawling through the cargo hatch into the ship! Close the hatch immediately and arm yourselves!”
Even as Shiloh felt a chill go down his spine, he reacted. “Close the goddamned hatch NOW!” he yelled. In a slightly lower voice he said, “Where did those bastards come from, Foxer?”
