The Far Bank of the Rubicon (The Pax Imperium Wars: Volume 1) (31 page)

After the fleet depressurized its ships, Jonas began to understand the truth of Brennen’s words about waiting. There was a four-hour gap, with little to do, as the final preparations wound their way through the fleet. But now, as Jonas watched the distant Wy’east gate on the view screen, the wait was about to end.

Brennen checked in with her fleet commanders. Inside his pressure suit, Jonas watched on his own invisible heads-up display as each of the nine hundred and fifty captains checked in, signaling their readiness to proceed.

When that was done, Brennen made one final check with Wy’east gate command, making sure they had a solid hold on the gate at Wales, and that there had been no signs of detection. There shouldn’t have been. The Wy’east gate was well beyond the range of the Wales system. A traditional gate wouldn’t have been able to even get close to Wales from this distance, but the Wy’east gate wasn’t a traditional interstellar gate. It had been modified enough to be able to just barely pick up Wales, which now lay well inside enemy territory.

“I sure hope this works,” muttered Brennen under her breath.

“If not, we’re going to get one hell of a light show,” answered Jonas.

Brennen acknowledged the humor with a short, nervous, “hmmm.”

With her last checks done, she gave the order. She broadcast it on the fleet-wide PA. “Strategic Weapons, the weapons are go for transit. Repeat, you are free to accelerate the nukes on the mark. Blow down the door, and may God save us all.”

The transit of a fleet into enemy territory was a complex ballet of moving parts. It had taken the better part of the last forty-eight hours to put all the pieces in position.

The nukes went first.

For a couple of minutes, there was nothing to see. Then the display at the front of the command center on the
Ares
polarized as a long series of flashes erupted on the other side of the gate. Jonas lost count at twenty-three. To Jonas, everything appeared to happen at the same instant. However, in reality the nukes had passed through the gate between two and thirty milliseconds after the gate had ripped an unwanted hole into Korpi-held territory. The human eye couldn’t see the difference. Since their flightpath and detonation pattern had been predetermined, they moved fast. Some of them went off within a few hundred meters of the gate. The high speed of the missiles propelled the clouds of expanding gases away from the gate, building up a more damaging shock wave as the high energy particles tended to pile up on each other as they approached C. It also limited how much energy came back through the gate.

Their job was twofold. First, such a fast moving blast of high energy particles created enough EM interference to keep the Korpi commanders busy while they sorted out their sensor readings. Second, if possible, it was hoped by Allied commanders that they might get lucky, and the nukes might punch open a corridor right through the middle of the enemy lines, or at least soften up the targets.

Brennen put her hands on her hips and pressed her lips together as she watched. “Knock, knock.”

Then she turned to one of her sensor officers. “I want to know the first instant we have a reading from any of the sensor packages.”

Taking advantage of the fact that the blast had disorganized the space around the gate, Brennen sent in a whole series of small missiles seconds behind the nukes to gather information on the enemy forces. The first ones to enter carried shells hardened against the blast waves from the fleet’s own weapons. They could give little valuable information, carrying mostly cameras and infrared detection devices.

“Yes, sir,” answered the officer. “We’re getting our first look as we speak. It looks like intel may have finally got one right, sir. We’ve got the
Paris
and the
Delaware
, along with the
Kirov
and the
Liaoning
. Nothing more than that at this point, sir.”

Brennen nodded. “Get the information over to Cyber-Ops, and tell them to get the Big Board started and watch that sensor data. Let me know right away if there are any sudden changes.”

Then with a momentary sideways glance at Jonas, she said, “That’s where they’ll try to hit us, once they realize we aren’t on the grid. They’ll come at us through our remote sensors.”

Jonas nodded his agreement.

At the gate, thousands of redundant, small sensor probes were flooding the system, moving out in all directions. Some of these entered at quite high speeds. Riding on the coattails of the nuclear detonations which had only just begun to dim, a good percentage of these sensors were designed to pass quickly through the battlefield, while sending data back to the ships. Their job was to give Allied commanders an instant snapshot of the enemy’s disposition of forces. Once they flew past the battlefield, these sensors were designated to move on to key areas of the system, looking for hidden fleets, bases, and other enemy assets. Using their FTL communications capabilities, they allowed commanders a much more accurate understanding of the nature and activities of the enemy than any other method.

For the next few minutes, Jonas watched as the data rolled in.

As the sensors swept by, they sent their pictures and other data back to the core computers of the fleet, which processed the data and started spitting out their conclusions within seconds. The ships named by the sensor officer weren’t the only capital ships the Unity had at the gate. Despite the redeployment of their forces to respond to the Allied threat to Apollos, the Unity had by no means given up on the gate at Wales. Slowly at first, ship names started popping up on his heads-up display as the computers identified vessels. What started as a drizzle became a torrent when the high speed sensors passed through the bulk of the fleet.

Jonas shut off the information on his heads-up and turned his attention to the front of the room where Brennan gestured and brought up the Big Board next to the ongoing images of the gate. The Big Board was a ranking of all known targets in the enemy fleet, based upon position, speed, and threat potential as analyzed in real time by the AI. From this ranking system, fleet commanders would assign forces to take care of the most potent threats first.

At this point in time, in meatspace, things were still moving too fast for Brennen and the other fleet officers to have much say. When the first jamming devices followed the sensors, the targets were picked out by the computer.

In her pressure suit, Brennen clicked on her heads-up. “Gregory, time to get your folks moving. Start at the top of the board, but be ready for reassignment as threats become apparent. And do me a favor. Report any successes in real time for a while. I’ll pip you if I need you to stop so I can pay attention to other things.”

Marine Brigadier General Adrian Gregory served as the Seventh Fleet’s chief cyber-warfare officer. He had personally been involved in developing many of the new strategies for the fleet. He was promoted to his current position when General Goring was put into early retirement. Goring’s prewar opposition against strong cyber-defense tainted his leadership once the war began.

Brennen turned away from the board and went to the display table at the back of the command center. With a gesture, she brought up a three-dimensional representation of the known location, speed, and direction of the enemy fleet. None of it made a whole lot of sense at first to Jonas as he was not used to looking at such things, but he dutifully stared along with the Admiral.

After studying the board for a few seconds, Brennen brought up a copy of the Big Board on the display table right next to the three-dimensional model of the enemy’s forces. Now, two minutes into their attack, some of the Korpi’s smaller ships were beginning to move. Brennen tied the two displays together so that she could see which forces the AI had decided posed the greatest threats. Without looking at Jonas, she said, “Computers are fantastic decision makers—until they’re not. When the AI gets a bee up her bonnet about something, things can go to hell really fast. It’s always a good thing to keep an eye on her.”

Apparently satisfied, Brennen turned to watch her officers as they worked. She couldn’t hide a small smile. “I think we caught them with their pants down. Tech weapons go next…”

A voice interrupted, cutting into their conversation. “I have a five-gigaton detonation, twenty clicks from the gate.”

Brennen’s expression hardened, and she nodded. “It’s about time they responded. It took them forever.” Then she brought up on her data-port an information tree which laid out all the available communications channels. Picking that for gate command, she tuned in. Slaved as it was to her suit, Jonas’ data-port picked up the conversation, as well.

“We have an energy spike coming back through the gate. I have an overload on primary buffer number three.”

“Sensors concurs. They’re trying to close the wormhole.”

“Gate control AI has rerouted around the buffer overload, and we have bots in route for repair.”

Brennen interrupted. “Sensors, this is Admiral Brennen. What do we know about the source of the blast. Did we pick up anything inbound?”

Sensors responded. “Negative, Admiral. Based on the location and magnitude of the blast, this thing went off in the sweet spot. I would guess it was a pre-placed defense weapon.”

“Thank you, Sensors. If you can spare it, get something in there to take a sweep. If we can avoid any more attempts on the gate, that would be good.”

“Yes, sir.”

Another officer interrupted on the com. “Sensors report that the
Kirov
and the
Yorktown
are in motion. The Korpi fleet is maneuvering. flak fields are going up. Also, Sector Four reports that we are losing sensor capabilities rapidly.”

Brennen turned around, and using her hands, enlarged a portion of the three-dimensional display behind her. Her jaw muscles tightened. “Are they hiding something there?”

“It’s possible, sir.”

“What’s the AI doing to compensate?”

“So far it’s sending in additional sensor resources, favoring those with lower profiles. It’s trying to get a good look, sir.”

“Let’s help it out. Divert a couple of low-yield, high-pulse weapons in there. Let’s see what we can see if we light it up.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Get back to me when you know something.”

“Aye, sir.”

One of the officers on the bridge approached, “Tech weapons in transit now, Admiral. I thought you might want to see where the AI sent them.” She handed the Admiral a data pad.

The first targeted offensive weapons through the gate moved at speeds not all that much slower than the nukes and the sensor packages. They had been accelerating for several days to arrive at the gate at this moment in time. Their transit, flight, and detonation all happened in the time it took to breathe in a single breath. Despite having transited gates before himself, Jonas still found the speeds involved unfathomable.

Even as Brennen was taking the data pad from the hand of her officer, a voice came back over the com. “We have detonation of the tech weapons, sir.”

Without taking her eyes off the pad, Brennen keyed her com. “Thank you. Get back to me with a damage report when you have anything.”

She looked back at the officer who had handed her the data pad. “So far it looks good to me. I assume you must have some concerns.”

“It seems a little heavy on the capital ships. I don’t think we had a simulation in which this high of a percentage of the weapons targeted their big boats.”

Brennen looked at the data pad again and then nodded. “I see your point.” She turned back to the three-dimensional model of forces, trying to make sense of what she saw. Jonas stared blankly at the complicated display.

“Well, what do you make of it, Prince Athena?”

The question startled Jonas. “Well, I uhh…” He stuttered for a moment while he thought it over. The attack pattern from the AI seemed all too familiar. It reminded him of all the battles they had fought up to this point in the war. It reminded him of the strategies that hadn’t worked, but this battle was supposed to be different. This AI was supposed to have different priorities. Somehow it had reverted to the old programming.

Jonas became painfully aware of Brennen staring at him. He looked up. “Have we had any cyber attacks yet?”

Brennen furrowed her brow and keyed her com. “Gregory, have we had any incoming attacks, yet?”

“No, sir, we haven’t. We haven’t heard a peep.”

Brennen let out a small “hmm” sound, expressing her surprise. “What do you make of it?”

“To tell you the truth, Admiral, I’m getting a little concerned. Either they are still trying to locate us in cyberspace, in which case they won’t find us, or they knew we were coming, and they’re waiting to play their hand until after we’re committed. It’s possible we severely overestimated their ability to adjust to a cyber dark fleet.”

“Which do you think it is?”

“I couldn’t tell you, Admiral. If you ordered me to make a guess, I would have to say I’m still leaning toward the first, though I’m not sure at all any more. None of our simulations had them taking this long to counter our ghost strategy.”

“Well, if they are trying to get us off our plan, they certainly have done so. The AI reverted to type and sent a large portion of the tech weapons against the capital ships. It looks like a straight by-the-book battle plan.”

The surprised Gregory answered, “Shit. Well, I guess that’s to be expected, Admiral. With nothing to target, it was bound to return to its old programming.”

“That has to change for next time. We’ll debrief on that one later. For now, I want you to keep up your work. See if you can actively hack any of the sensor nodes on ships you think likely to be cyber-ops centers.”

“Aye, Admiral, I’ll do that. We may know more in a few minutes. We have chum due to pass through the gate in about twenty seconds. That ought to light up their boards with better opportunities. Look on the bright side, Admiral. They don’t know that we have new capabilities and a new strategy, yet.”

“Thank you, Gregory. Report in as necessary. Brennen out.”

Brennen turned back to Jonas and the officer with the data pad. “We’ll chalk this one up to not having anything to target. We never simulated what would happen if the Korpis didn’t bite on our sensor packages. They ought to have figured out that we’re dark by now and have adjusted. We’ll have to keep an eye on it to make sure we aren’t being played in some way.”