Command Authority, page 16
part #5 of Last Hunter Series
When they exited hyperspace once more, they were less than fifteen hundred kilometers away from the exploration ship and could watch the attack they’d just conducted take place at light speed. At first, the motherships and drones were speeding toward their position with nothing in their way, and then Hunter appeared in front of them and fired missiles back toward them. His ship vanished moments later and seemingly appeared behind them to open fire before disappearing again.
That was one of the quirks of having a battle that took place at faster-than-light speeds. They saw what occurred closest to them before what happened farther away. It would’ve been very confusing if they hadn’t known what they were seeing.
It was gratifying to see it work so well. They’d likely have a chance to use the technique for a while, and it should have an oversized impact on the enemy. He just hoped some smartass didn’t try to name it after him because The Romanoff Maneuver sounded ridiculous.
The motherships responded as well as they could, ordering the drones to scatter, but it was far too late. Overrun by almost five thousand missiles coming from two directions, the massive force was virtually obliterated.
Surprisingly, about ten percent of their number came out of the fireballs and continued toward the exploration ship. He hadn’t expected to see that many survivors, but he’d been willing to bet what they’d do, and he’d been right.
“Signal Captain MacKinnon to withdraw to a safe distance,” he ordered. “We’ll let them come to us and give the lasers a chance to do their business. Even though that’s still a lot of motherships and drones, we can win that kind of fight without wasting missiles.”
His ship had survived fighting roughly this number of ships at point-blank range when they’d defended Port Royale. It was by no means a small force, and he was happy they had more lasers than they’d started with. His ship was far from invincible, but this was a force he knew he could defeat. Let them come.
He’d considered using the hyperdrive to jump back and attack them directly, but now he was the target, and they’d have to come to him.
When they arrived, there was a lot of laser fire and ramming, but the end had never been in question. After a few minutes of intense battle, the last of the drones and motherships were gone.
They’d taken some damage, but most of it was minor. The only major systems offline were the hyperspace detectors and the Novarite passive sensors. They’d lost power, and engineering was working on laying more protected lines. That would take a number of hours, so he’d have to hope they didn’t need them in the meanwhile.
There were smaller groupings of motherships and drones still making their way toward them, but they weren’t a threat. Based on how they were dispersed, many of them would reach him before they could be called back by the commanders at Argent.
That would take care of most of the danger, but it still wasn’t going to get him the ships in orbit around the planet. To free Argent, he would have to go deeper into the system, which would put his ship at risk. Still, that’s what battleships like Hunter were made for.
“Do you think we should call on them to surrender, sir?” Derek asked. “The ships around the planet, I mean.”
Jack considered that and decided the suggestion had merit. They weren’t going to give up, but it might cause them to do something they otherwise wouldn’t. The very fact that they could speak their language would be disturbing at the very least.
“I think we will,” he said. “We’ll use the translation program because we don’t want them to realize we have someone that can speak their language working with us. That information will get out as those original six warships reach their destinations, but it won’t do them any good here and now.”
“At a guess, I’d imagine two of those warships are coming here,” Amanda said. “Since they broke into three separate pairs, I’d wager they’re headed for the three primary occupation points. How far are we away from New Copenhagen, Derek?”
“About thirty light-years, so if they run at ten times the speed of light, it’s going to take them three years to get here. The lack of quantum gates will mess up their ability to coordinate. Even once they figure out what we’re doing, we can move so much quicker than they can that by the time they figure it out, we may have freed the cluster.”
“Let’s not get cocky,” Jack warned. “Those warships now know that the Novarites are here and that we have a battleship. They might very well try to kick it up a notch or two and use one of the faster hyperspace bands. Maybe that’ll be the death of them, but it might also mean they get here much faster. The Novarites were going at twenty times the speed of light. What if they risk going a hundred times faster?”
That grim warning quieted his exuberant young bridge crew. He didn’t want to worry them, but they couldn’t count on anything. Once the Tardans realized what they were facing, it was all too likely they’d try to modify some of the hyperdrives in their motherships. If those could be made to go faster, that would change the tempo of this war.
“Let’s record our demand for their surrender and get it translated,” he said. “Once we transmit, they’ll have a little less than four hours before they receive it. By then, they’ll know how dangerous we truly are. I figure they’ll do one of two things. They’ll either hunker down around the planet or make a run for it.”
“As outgunned as they are, they’re going to make a run for it,” Amanda said. “Once they see what we did to their friends, they’re out of here.”
Jack could appreciate the confidence of youth, but he wasn’t going to count on anything like that. Odds were that they’d run, but if he had to go deeper into the system and fight them around the planet, there was a chance his ship would take enough damage to set them back. He’d like to avoid that if he could.
It took less than five minutes to get a suitable surrender message recorded, translated, and sent off. With that done, they let the motherships and drones come to them. Over the next four hours, they obliterated more than ninety percent of the motherships and drones inside the system.
“We’re receiving a signal, sir,” the communications officer said. “It’s some type of digital code.”
“The motherships and drones in range to receive that message are breaking off,” Derek said. “It looks like the drones are loading aboard the motherships, so I think odds are they’re going to run.”
“The ships just broke orbit around the planet, sir,” Amanda said. “It looks like they’re headed out as a unit. I am seeing eight ships. I can’t tell at this range if they are all warships.”
“What’s left in orbit?” he asked.
“I can’t see what’s on the far side of the planet, but there’s at least one fusion plant. It might be one of the space elevator ships, but it’s hard to tell. I hope the folks at New Copenhagen can work out some kind of probe design for us. Those would be useful.”
Jack agreed. Being unable to get sensor data from deeper in a system without going there in person was dangerous and time-consuming. He’d much rather be able to jump outside a system and dump dozens of probes to scout everything before he had to risk his people.
The engineering teams and manufacturing companies at New Copenhagen were working with folks from Port Royale to build that sort of thing, but they were still getting prototypes together. Whatever they came up with had to be stealthy enough not to be detected, and that was proving challenging. Civilian companies rarely had to build something designed to avoid detection.
The expertise for that was coming from Conner’s people. It seemed smugglers liked the idea of not having things spotted by the authorities. That meant they were more than happy to build things out of stealth material, but some problems still had to be overcome to make this work.
“It looks like the Tardan warships are staying together,” Amanda said. “How do we want to take them down, sir? We can’t let them get all the way out to where they could use their hyperdrive, or they’ll just vanish. They’ve seen us use our hyperdrive, so they know we have that capability, and we can use it closer to the jump limit than they can. Still, I’ve got a plan.”
“Give it to me,” he said. “Lead off with what you expect them to do.”
Amanda turned to face him. “Since the ships know we have dual capability, they’re going to split apart before they get close to the jump limit. They’ll split off and try to reach a distance where they can engage their hyperdrive. Frankly, I don’t expect them to stay together much longer. It makes more sense for them to split apart sooner rather than later.”
“I can see the logic of that, but why did they head out in one group to begin with? Why not split apart at the planet and make it difficult for us?”
She shrugged. “I have no idea. All we can do is work with the facts as we find them. At some point, they’re going to split apart. To do anything else would be suicidal. Once they do, we’ll have to use our independent quantum drive to dance around that side of the system and fire missiles when they get close enough. If we could do it all at once, that would be great, but I expect them to make that hard.”
He leaned back in his chair and considered the scenario she was proposing. If they had a system on that side they could use as a destination, they could jump away from Argent and then jump back to fire a load of missiles. It would make things difficult if they had to do it for each of those eight ships during the short window where they’d be in missile range but unable to use the hyperdrive.
If they stayed together too long, it might make more sense for him to use the hyperdrive to dance between the individual ships, but they’d split apart soon enough. The timing that the aliens decided on would drive their tactical response. Even if they played their cards perfectly, he wouldn’t be surprised if some of their enemies escaped.
And if they did, they did. There was nothing they could do to change the outcome of the battle. They’d won the system. Now they just had to do what cleanup they could. If it wasn’t total, so be it. He’d take the win.
“It’s pretty apparent at this point that they’re not going to directly respond to us, but I think we must’ve spooked them by sending a message in their own language,” he said at last. “We’ll see how much when they execute their plan. Let’s hold here until the time comes to jump. Derek, plot a course that will take us to that side with as few jumps as you can manage. Amanda, set up as many missiles as we need to fire to guarantee a kill on a warship. You’ve probably got more data about how tough they are now.”
“I do, sir,” she confirmed. “It’ll be even fewer if they’re not close together. Without having their defenses integrated, they’re much weaker. I’ll set up some firing scenarios and go with the best option when the time comes.”
He was willing to bet they’d get more than half the ships, but not all of them. Some of them would get away and eventually bring word to nearby systems about what was happening. They still didn’t have a decent tactical knowledge of how many motherships and drones were in each system in the cluster, but the number would be significant, he was sure. How could it not be with so many sent to overwhelm the anticipated dozen battleships?
One of the benefits of the Confederation being trounced early in this fight was that a significant amount of force had been trapped in the gateway system. He still didn’t know how many had been there, but even with a fully repaired battleship, he wouldn’t have wanted to face them in a straight up battle.
Those ships would take a while to get back into the cluster. They would be far too tough to handle if they stayed as one unit. If they split up, it was possible they could fight them. Time would tell.
As anticipated, the warships split up about two hours from the jump limit. Each individual ship headed off at an angle, so it was like a flower blooming. That allowed Derek to plan a series of jumps and coordinate with Amanda to fire missiles at each exit. The challenge would be catching them while they were inside missile range but short of the jump limit. That was a very narrow window, particularly since they could take a risk and jump early.
“We’re ready to kick off Operation Gopher Stomp, sir,” Derek said.
Jack shook his head. “We’ve got to work on your ability to come up with names for this sort of thing, Derek. That’s terrible. Trust me when I say that the historians who look back on this war aren’t going to be kind if that’s what you stick with.”
“I suppose I’ll just have to take my chances, sir. Everything is recorded on the bridge, so I’m committed now.”
“Be it on your head then. Execute Operation Gopher Stomp.”
Derek jumped them to a nearby system, off to a second, and then back in front of one of the warships. Amanda fired two hundred missiles, and they jumped back out to the system they’d come from and returned to a new location.
In the end, they got six of the warships. The two survivors jumped early, and one of the readings was very strange. It was as if the ship had gone into hyperspace but was traveling a thousand times faster than light. Jack was willing to bet that ship had just suffered a catastrophic failure of the hyperdrive and its crew was dead. No one would ever see that ship again.
The last one headed off at ten times the speed of light toward a nearby system. It was one of half a dozen potential destinations, but it would take them three to four months to get there. So be it.
That just left whatever was in orbit around Argent. It was time to go in and see just how badly the Tardans had wrecked the place. Jack expected this to be horrific with a population in the tens of billions.
“Take us in,” he ordered. “Keep monitoring for any radio signals. If you detect anything, I want to know about it. Keep an eye on those stations or ships still in orbit. I expect they’ll want to fire on us when they get an opportunity, and we’d best be ready for it.”
As Hunter entered the system, he started planning what they’d have to do next. Whoever was in charge on this planet would feel like they had more pull than the government back on New Copenhagen. Someone would try and dictate how the fight against the invasion went, and he needed to be prepared for that.
Over the last few days, he’d worked out several potential scenarios with Sara. Personally, he didn’t expect to be welcomed with open arms. They were more likely to blame him for being late. Still, time would tell.
18
David sat at his console in the operations center and parsed the data they were able to pull from the active sensors as Hunter approached Argent. They still weren’t picking up any Confederation radio signals, but based on how the Tardans had behaved on New Copenhagen, that wasn’t a surprise.
What did surprise him was that there wasn’t a great deal of debris and smoke in the atmosphere. Even on New Copenhagen, the destroyed cities had put a lot of particulates into the upper atmosphere where they could be detected. He wasn’t seeing anything like that on Argent.
They even had a space station still in orbit. It looked like Confederation manufacture, so he was shocked the Tardans hadn’t vaporized it. What had they been using it for? How had they taken it intact? There was something of a mystery afoot, and he was curious to solve it.
The Novarite passive sensors were able to pick up quite a bit of information as they approached the planet, and the more data they got, the more it confirmed his suspicions that things were definitely different on Argent than they had been on New Copenhagen. There was no sign of widespread destruction on the planet.
“What are we seeing?” a woman asked from behind him.
He turned and saw that Lisa had come into the compartment. He gestured for her to join him.
“Quite a lot, actually. It looks like the Tardans didn’t devastate the planet. They even left one of the space stations intact. It looks like a cargo and passenger transshipment hub. There used to be a Navy base in orbit as well, but that seems to be gone.”
“It seems like they wouldn’t have any incentive to leave Confederation hardware in orbit,” she said as she sat down. “They brought their own.”
“I’m not picking up any radio transmissions now that the Tardans have departed, so I believe they didn’t leave anyone in orbit. I have no idea what they could have been using that station for.”
“I suppose we’ll find out soon enough,” she guessed. “How long until we arrive in orbit? What is the commodore’s plan?”
“We’re still about an hour and a half out, so there’s plenty of time to figure out what he’s going to do. In any case, he hasn’t discussed his options with me. I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on so that when he makes up his mind, he’ll have options. How goes your work with the Tardan military computers? Do they have any word about what was going on here?”
“I’m fully in. It mentions this system is a major control center for the Tardan occupation, but it doesn’t have anything as detailed as how many troops were assigned here or what they were doing. I expected it to be similar to New Copenhagen, but they obviously had something different in mind. They were trying to suppress New Copenhagen’s population and perform experiments. It hardly seems Argent would be so calm if they were doing the same here.”
He nodded. “Perhaps they were only doing their research in one system to see if they could implant themselves into humans. They didn’t plan on being separated by the destruction of the quantum gates. That may mean all their scientists ended up at New Copenhagen. We won’t know for sure until we start talking to people, and since the Tardans have left, getting reliable information will be difficult.”
She sat with him while he went over the data. The closer they got to the planet, the more certain he became there had been no widespread devastation, other than taking out the majority of the orbital infrastructure. In fact, he wasn’t even detecting any space elevators.
About half an hour out, they’d gone far enough around the planet to be sure that there were no Tardan vessels in orbit. The only thing left there was the space station. Dozens of others had served the same purpose, but all were gone. For whatever reason, the Tardans had decided to spare this one.
