Doom Star: Book 03 - Battle Pod (37 page)

“The missiles are headed for the PC-Fields,” the targeting officer said.

Blackstone slammed an open hand against the map-module as a cold wave of logic quelled his raging heart. He saw the Highborn plan, or this part of it, at least. They would blast a hole through the prismatic-crystal field and only
then
fire their hated heavy lasers. But he had a reaction team, a squadron of battlewagons. If they could move in time—

“Communications, get me the
Fidel Castro
. And
hurry
!” Blackstone added, his voice having the power of a lash.

***

The
Thutmosis III
had passed Mars by ten million kilometers. That no enemy missiles burned at high gravities after them showed the Praetor and his crew that the premen had failed to spot the giant stealth-ship. A sense of calm filled the vessel. The great danger was over. Now every resource and effort was bent on one task, using the teleoptic scopes to locate everything behind Mars and behind the prismatic-crystal fields. There were obvious gaps in their knowledge, the areas hidden by Mars for one. What they already knew was vital.

The Praetor watched the enemy through his VR-goggles. Excitement caused him to rise from his chair. SU battleships and… missile-ships engaged their engines.

“Are their ships using full burn?” the Praetor asked.

Computers analyzed the intensity of the various ship exhausts and they analyzed the brightness of the expelled propellants.

“They’re using emergency speeds,” a Highborn answered. “They must have spotted our incoming missiles. The computer gives it an eighty-seven percent probability that they’re sending those ships around their own PC-Fields so they can try to laser our missiles.”

The Praetor gave a sharp, sardonic bark. That was the danger of creating a prismatic-crystal field too soon in a battle. It stopped the enemy from hitting your ships, but it also stopped you from firing lasers at the enemy.

“Ready the lightguide system,” the Praetor ordered. “Then relay our information to the Grand Admiral.”

The Grand Admiral had long ago shot probes in a lateral direction. Otherwise, Social Unity’s PC-Fields would have blocked a lightguide message beam as effectively as it would a battle-beam. Now, the
Thutmosis III’s
lightguide laser would hit the communication probe, which would relay the message to the
Julius Caesar
.

The Praetor sat down, although he kept his spine stiff and his pose that of a conqueror. The premen moved predictably. They were such simple creatures, really. How they could ever hope to win against their genetic superiors was beyond him. It was like a child groping to fight an adult. They so yearned to ape Highborn combat efficiency. Inevitably, utter failure was the result.

The Praetor let out his breath as the message was beamed to the
Julius Caesar’s
probe. If the premen had good equipment, they might spot the lightguide beam, but fail to crack its contents. That meant the premen could theoretically spot the
Thutmosis III
. It was unlikely, however, as the lightguide beam had been sent in a short burst. If the pathetic premen hadn’t spotted them yet, it was unlikely they would when they had so many other things to worry about.

***

The Praetor was correct concerning the SU Battlefleet. Every ship, every piece of detection equipment was aimed toward the Doom Stars and the stellar voids in that general direction. It was a massive volume of space. That the
Thutmosis III’s
stealth-missiles and drones had only been spotted now was not incredible or surprising. A cold dark object fashioned to give almost no radar signature was a maddeningly difficult thing to find. Radar and teleoptic technicians were trained to search for any telltale clue, but until very near, the stealth-missiles simply hadn’t given those clues.

Almost everyone in the SU Battlefleet concentrated on the Doom Stars and on the fast-approaching missiles and drones. But the radar and teleoptic technicians on the Phobos moon scanned in the opposite direction. Phobos was presently on the other side of Mars as the Battlefleet and thus couldn’t track the Doom Stars. The commander of Phobos didn’t expect to find anything. The commander merely wanted his crews busy because busy people had less time to think themselves into useless nervousness.

One radar specialist, a Corporal Bess O’Connor, noticed a blip on her screen, a flash and then nothing. She ran a diagnostic on it and keyed for a computer suggestion. The computer flashed a single message:
lightguide beam
.

Even though a lightguide beam out there seemed impossible, Corporal Bess O’Connor logged the blip at the computer’s suggestion and passed it along the chain of command. Others in teleoptics received it and that caused a flurry of excitement. Teleoptics backtracked and used percentage probability analyzers. As they did so, they caught a flash of the second lightguide beam sent from the
Thutmosis III
.

That created an emergency and triggered several command decisions. First, even though the black-ops enemy vessel moved at extreme speeds away from Mars, the Phobos commander ordered a missile launch. Several minutes later, huge hunter-seeker missiles lofted from Phobos and charged into the void after the last known location of the enemy. With them lofted several specialized missiles whose sole purpose was to find and fixate upon this craft and relay the information to the deadly killer missiles. The second command involved three cargo ships. Those three cargo ships engaged emergency thrusters, hurrying into position. Once there, they would begin spraying a fine mist of aerosol gels. That mist was meant to blind the stealth enemy from observing anything more of military importance around Mars.

***

Grand Admiral Cassius closed his eyes, quietly exuding in his brilliance. He loved chess. He loved any competitive game but especially enjoyed those that involved long-term strategy and careful moves. The moves that now brought him this joy had been planned nearly a year ago.

He had received the Praetor’s lightguide messages, which had given them the precise locations of everything they on the Doom Stars couldn’t see because of the prismatic-crystal fields. Now the desperate premen used battleships to kill the
Thutmosis III’s
missiles. It was the obvious thing to do. The better strategy would have been to let the missiles hit the PC-Fields as the enemy fleet raced to get behind Mars. Nevertheless, Cassius had given the present action a seventy percent probability. Running for cover behind Mars would have meant leaving the moons to heavy laser attacks. It was only reasonable that the premen would have stocked the moons with weaponry, hoping to use the moons as heavy platforms. What it truly did was leave the moons hostage to the Doom Stars and force the enemy commander to shield them. No prismatic-crystal field guarded Deimos yet. Cassius was certain it was in order to try to fool him into thinking Deimos was harmless. Unfortunately for the premen, he wasn’t fooled in the slightest.

“Enemy vessels have left the protection of the prismatic-crystal field,” a Highborn officer said.

“Begin firing,” Cassius ordered.

***

The lasers of the battlewagon
Fidel Castro
speared into the starry darkness. Nearby sister-ships did likewise. From farther away, missile-ships launched anti-missiles. Mars was behind them. A vast prismatic-crystal field like a nebula cloud-system glittered strangely in the vacuum blackness closer to them, but still to their rear.

The commander of the
Fidel Castro
felt naked and alone out here. His battleship was the oldest in the fleet, but it was still a deadly vessel. The 600-meter thick particle-shields were in place. And the battleship changed positions constantly, jinking, engaging engines, shutting them down and swerving to a different heading. They did all that to avoid the heavy lasers of the Doom Stars one-million kilometers away. All the while, the battleship’s lasers burned the incoming missiles and drones.

Then, out of the voids, incredibly huge lasers stabbed with hellish fury. Those heavy lasers were three times the diameter of the
Fidel Castro’s
lasers. In them had been pumped five times the killing power. Because the Doom Stars possessed such massive fusion engines, they could afford to pay the energy costs to fuel these lasers.

Nine giant lasers hit the
Fidel Castro
in unison. It was a display of incredible targeting skill. Three Doom Stars from nearly one-million kilometers away sent nine beams into the SU battleship’s guts. They sliced off huge chunks of the particle-shield. Then the
Fidel Castro
, which was always moving, changed heading enough that the nine beams stabbed around it. The commander and crew hoped they had time to escape. The Highborn probability computers or maybe the genetically enhanced gunners guessed right again. Six beams chewed off more of the particle-shield. For eight minutes and twenty seconds, the uneven game played out. Then the heavy lasers struck past the ruined particle-shields and slammed into the battleship’s hull.

Titanium and steel burned in nanoseconds. Clouds of heated gas and molten droplets shed from the hull. In another minute, it was over, as the
Fidel Castro
floated in space, a dead and irradiated hulk.

The forty-year-old battleship had tried to defend the prismatic-crystal field and destroy enough of the incoming missiles. The question was, had it been enough?

***

Eighty percent of the
Thutmosis III’s
stealth-missiles and drones perished under a flurry of SU laser beams and anti-missile missiles. They were winks of bright light in the darkness, sometimes a red glow that died like a shooting star.

Twenty percent of the missiles in layered waves hit the prismatic-crystal field. The nuclear explosions blew vast holes in the field. They opened it up and exposed a portion of the SU Battlefleet behind it. They exposed SU ships to the heavy lasers of the
Julius Caesar
, the
Hannibal Barca
and the
Napoleon Bonaparte
.

The attacked showed to great effect the deadliness of long-rage beams. Blackstone shouted himself hoarse. Ships churned out more prismatic-crystals. But many ships perished under the Doom Star lasers.

“Head behind Mars!” Blackstone shouted. “Hide behind Deimos!”

All around him, battleships, missile-ships, ECM vessels and minelayers engaged their engines and slammed their crews with six Gs of acceleration. Like terrible searchlights, the giant lasers stabbed and killed. They moved so much faster than the sluggish spacecraft. Sometimes they seared chunks of particle-shields off huge battleships. More often, the lasers struck thinner-skinned vessels, cutting some in half so living beings tumbled like space-scum into the black vacuum.

Commodore Blackstone’s plan to absorb energy by taking days of heavy laser fire was destroyed. Yet by sending the
Fidel Castro
and other ships to their deaths to kill the majority of the enemy missiles, he had saved the majority of the SU Battlefleet. At least, he’d saved it from annihilation here at the opening of the battle.

Like thieves frightened by policemen, the SU Battlefleet scattered for safety. All the while, the terrible beams from the voids fired. The untouchable Doom Stars lived up to their names. The master plan to envelop the Doom Stars had fallen apart days before it could be implemented.

Commodore Blackstone gripped the map-module as he listened to the list of ships destroyed and those that had taken heavy damage. The
Fidel Castro
and two other battleships were gone, along with two missile-ships. Those were appalling losses when he had absolutely nothing to show for it.

“We have eight battleships left,” Blackstone said tonelessly, “and seven missile-ships. That’s unspeakable. We didn’t even touch them.”

General Fromm looked up from the map-module. He had never changed expression throughout the disaster. “You are incorrect in saying we have achieved nothing.”

Blackstone stared open-mouthed at the stout Earth General. He finally managed to ask, “What are you talking about?”

“The Highborn have played one of their surprises,” Fromm said in his maddeningly calm voice. “We still have our surprises.”

“But three priceless battleships—”

Fromm shook his round head. “The Highborn have a limited number of surprises. Now they approach Mars where our surprises wait. They have damaged us, but we still possess a Battlefleet.” Fromm’s fat fingers indicated the list of other destroyed vessels displayed on the holographic module. “Twenty other vessels destroyed. The greater majority of these are the decoy ships.”

“Which were still full of personnel,” Blackstone half sobbed.

“Battle entails losses, Commodore,” Fromm said without any change of inflection. “The decoy vessels have served a useful purpose. They fulfilled two purposes, in fact. They perished so battle-worthy craft could live to fight again. And they have no doubt given the Highborn a higher sense of accomplishment than they should have. That will heighten one of their greatest weaknesses.”

“Highborn don’t have weaknesses,” Blackstone said. “This attack should have proved that to you.”

“They are arrogant,” General Fromm said. “They are insufferably arrogant. That, in the end, shall be their undoing.”

Commodore Blackstone glanced at Commissar Kursk. She stared at the list of destroyed ships. The
Vladimir Lenin
along with most of the Battlefleet was now behind Mars in relation to the oncoming Doom Stars. Supreme Commander Hawthorne’s grand plan—Blackstone sneered. They should have kept the fleet in small pieces between the Inner Planets, harrying the Highborn where they were weakest. To try to match the nine-foot super-soldiers in a head-on battle, it was suicide for Social Unity.