Warlord's Invasion (Starfight Book 1) (12 page)

The only protection against the h-beam was the h-deflector. This technology reinforced a section of a vessel’s warp bubble with a stabilization shield. The shield prevents h-beams from passing through.

“Admiral, permission to speak freely?”

Vier climbed out of her daze and looked beside her. “Yes, Captain Willock?”

“I’ve been thinking about our mission orders from SECTOR COMMAND and I have some hesitations.”

“And you’re just voicing them now?” Vier asked, gazing at the holomap. The five enemy ships were six minutes away from her vanguard.

“It just occurred to me, Admiral, that it was very odd that Senior Vice Admiral Mittermeyer had wanted you to supervise
both
the scouting mission and the marine assault portion. Wouldn’t it be better to have you focus your responsibilities on just one portion and leave the other to another admiral?”

Vier bit her lip. What was her flag captain asking? Was he questioning her abilities? Was he concerned with the success of both missions because she now had her attention divided on both? “The reason the Sector Commander assigned both to me is because there was a chance the marines could be useful during the scouting portion of our orders. In that instance, it was better to have both responsibilities under one commander.”

“But don’t you find it odd that he’s putting a lot of responsibility in an admiral whose largest previous command is CO of a flotilla of missile boats? This is a very big promotion, almost unheard of.”

Vier bit her lip even harder, pretending to focus on the holomap. It was true. There was
almost
no precedence for such a promotion. To think of it, hadn’t Vice Admiral Mittermeyer been at her graduation twenty years ago? He must have followed her semi-illustrious career steadily throughout the decades. In a world where eugenics and nano-medical enhancement has extended average life spans almost to a century and a half, Mittermeyer must have thought her unique climb through the ranks to be dazzling. She shook her head. She couldn’t say what she thought. The answer was too nefarious to publicly admit. She glanced at Willock hesitantly, almost apologetically. “Now, is not a good time to discuss this, Captain. We are minutes away from weapons contact.”

“I understand.” Willock nodded.

Minutes later, the five bogies entered missile range, approximately ten light-hours away.

“LAC group 1, fire two missile salvos!” Vier yelled at her control officers.

“Relaying the command,” they replied.

Now is the moment.
Soon, she would know their hyperspace combat capabilities. She crossed her fingers and watched the holograms unfold.

Battlespace…

In hyperspace, or null space, as called by the Gas, sixteen short range hyperspace missiles exited the human fast attack cruisers
Bellerophon
and
Salamis
at the speed of 80000 TSL. The missiles warped through null space—a void that had no light, no mass, no anything—and closed the distance within fifteen seconds. Armed with antimatter warheads, they collided with the warp bubbles of two Ga heavy cruisers. The warp bubbles of the missiles and their targets meshed, forming into one. In picoseconds upon entering the targets’ bubbles, these missiles detonated. The hard gravtronic shields of these Ga ships splashed with raw white energy, and then—nothing.

Flag Bridge, Beginner’s Luck…

Damn.
Vier gazed at the holomap. The ships were still there, still very strong.

I didn’t think that would work. Their shielding technology is as strong as it was before.

The bogies continued moving away, although it was apparent to everyone, including them, that escape was futile. They were guinea pigs, Vier thought. And if she was given an opportunity like this, she would and could not waste it. “LAC group 1, fire ten times as many missiles,” Vier ordered, gazing at the map, all the while waiting for the enemy to fire back.

Battlespace…

160 warp missiles sped out of the tubes of the
Gamli
,
Duke Buckingham
, and five others. Twelve seconds later, they crossed the 6.8 light-hour distance and jammed into the warp bubbles of bogies 1 and 2. Their detonations caused the shields to flash in brilliant cascades of light, and for a temporary minute fraction of a second, more power than any star.

Flag Bridge, Beginner’s Luck…

Score!
Vier gazed at the diminishing shields of bogies 1 and 2. Their shields flickered, almost dying out. The t-sensors read that their shields had lost 7 percent of their graviton concentration. Another volley of 160 warp missiles would obliterate them.

Time to send another volley. Now, we will test their armor.

Vier looked at the stats on her pad. There wasn’t much missiles left in her vanguard of seven attack cruisers. The fact that missiles in hyperspace had a much higher chance to hit was diminished by the fact that each ship had so much fewer missiles. Equipping warheads with hyperspace suspenders was much more costly. Missiles in hyperspace were bigger and much more difficult to make.

Everything that happened so far just confirmed what she knew—the Cats had significantly better shielding inside their warp bubbles. Nevertheless, she had to penetrate these shields to test their armor.

“LAC group 1, fire all remaining missiles,” she ordered, all the while gazing intently at the map.

Battlespace…

The 108 remaining missiles of all seven LACs sped out into the void. Each one of them injected into the warp bubbles of the two aft most enemy ships. The following detonations blew away the enemy’s shields completely. The remaining gravitron layers flickered and died. Spastic fiery explosions cratered against the black hulls of the roaches. Pieces of ebony armor exploded outward, touching the barrier between normal space and hyperspace, and then disappearing from the universe altogether. The two aftmost roaches, targets of the entire attack, limped along with fires spread across their entire body.

Flag Bridge, Beginner’s Luck…

Why aren’t they firing back? Vier wondered.

Everything looked perfect. The antimatter explosions had wrecked havoc to their hulls after the shields had been wiped out, but by this time the enemy should have fired back at least something.

Perhaps these cruisers didn’t have missiles or torpedoes.

As the seconds passed, Vier became surer of it.
These cruisers are torpedoless.
She glanced at Captain Willock. “What do you think?”

Willock looked passive
in the chair next to her. “From all appearances, Admiral, it looks like the enemy, or at least the ships we’ve encountered here, still have better hull armor and better shields. Normally a blow from 100 antimatter missiles would have wiped out those two ships...if they were human. However, things don’t look so bleak. The difference between technologies isn’t so high like the encounters we’ve had in sublight. It seems that, at least in the missile duel, our missiles are able to do far more damage to them in
hyperlight than in sublight because of the innate inability for ships to create effective countermeasures and certainly, it seems the Cats haven’t found a way around that. We may be looking at a breakthrough,” Willock said grimly.

Vier wondered why her flag captain was so sullen. Ordinarily, such news ought to make every
federation soldier happy. The Cats were far more vulnerable to human missiles in h-space than in subspace. The invasion now had a chance to be stopped! “Why do you look so depressed?”

Willock cleared his throat. “Because it still took so many missiles to take down their shields, Admiral.”

Vier nodded. “It’s true. But we have only tested how well our missiles work against their defenses. We have yet to test our hyperbeams against what they have to offer to protect against it. Perhaps they will be much less dominating in that arena.”

“Perhaps, Admiral.”

“LAC group 1 and 2, proceed with the next step,” smiled Vier. “Fire on all bogies!”

Battlespace…

All seven human attack cruisers opened up their hyperbeam ports. The hyperbeam used the same gun turrets as the main sublight polaron cannons, which were simply augmented, so they fired hyperbeams instead. As the beam cannons began to charge, massive amounts of energy flowed through them. Then, in a split second, they fired. Long, thin destabilizing warp fields extended instantaneously in multiple light-hours in front of each human LAC. The fields slashed into the warp bubbles of the enemy roaches.

...And slammed innocuously into the enemy’s stabilization shields. None of the hyperbeam fields did any damage, because the roaches had activated their hyperdeflectors in the direction that the beams had come.

Flag Bridge, Beginner’s Luck…

Vier blinked. Then, she blinked, again.

It was so obvious. It was so expected. The enemy did exactly what any human warship would have done if the hyperbeam attack had come in one direction. They had activated their deflectors in the rear.

Well, thought Vier. At least so far, she understood that the enemy had h-deflectors just like humans. Now, it was time to see how well they could
adjust
their h-deflectors when surrounded by hostile ships. To do that, she would have to wait for her vanguard to overrun the slower enemy ships.

Battlespace…

Five minutes later, the human LACs overtook the slower Ga vessels. Flanking the roaches from all sides, the seven human cruisers fired their hyperbeams. Destabilization fields slammed into the warp bubbles of each alien ship. The alien ships did not have enough hyperdeflectors to create enough stabilization shields to protect against the attacks from all sides. The sides without stabilization protection dematerialized from existence. Holes suddenly opened in armor. Parts of the hull disappeared. The roaches began to vent atmosphere, like any ordinary vessel successfully attacked by hyperbeams.

Meanwhile, the roaches fired back. Their own hyperbeams were stronger, wider and just as quick. These bigger, more powerful destabilization fields slammed into LAC group 1. However, the human cruisers were ready. Human stabilization shields protected against most warp bubble incursions, but some of those fields got through. The surrounding human cruisers experienced the same crushing blows as the roaches—armor began disappearing, hull plates dematerialized, atmosphere spilled out—but to a lesser degree because of the firing angles. The surrounded roaches could only fire at one side of the human LACs, while the human ships could fire at all
sides of the roaches, thus it was easier for the humans to block the hyperbeam attacks with their deflectors.

Flag Bridge, Beginner’s Luck…

Yes!
Vier glanced gleefully at the holomap where colorful ships exchanged blows with each other. The five feline ships were failing, mostly because they were overwhelmed, but that wasn’t what gave her joy. It was the fact that human hyperbeam and hyperdeflector technology was not different at all to Cat technology. In fact, the Cats did not have any advantages in this arena. What made it even more joyful was that the Cats were limited to the same technologies.

This meant a world of revelations and a possibility of a complete successful showdown against the Cat invasion force. Finally, humanity had an arena where the combat was even.

Even if, weight by weight, a human ship could only come even against a feline ship that was only half as large, it was enough to bring hope that the invasion could be stopped—as long as the battle was limited to the hyper arena.

Vier perused the data being displayed on the central holomap. “Captain, I believe we’ve found great news to report to Admiral Mu Pei.”

Willock nodded in the seat beside her. He smiled. “Yes, Admiral, I think we do.”

She flashed a smile back at her flag captain, then turned towards the holomap. By now, the alien ships were heavily damaged. “All LACs, disengage. It’s time to test to our marine assault portion of our orders. All marine assault boats, come within range of the enemy and activate your M-E-C jammers and began landing troops on those bogies.”

“Yes, ma’am. Relaying orders,” the controllers replied.

On the holomap, she watched as her fast cruisers stopped firing their hyperbeams at the surrounded enemy ships and vacated the immediate battlefield. Now, a new portion of her fleet began to close in on the enemy. The Valkyrie Marine Assault Transport was a two hundred meter wedge-shaped ship with the flat side facing the enemy. Numerous hyperdeflector ports covered its frontal side. It could move at 29,000 SL, outpacing most other starships it was designed to target. Its grav shield matrix was also concentrated at the front. Fifty of these came to within ten light-hours of the five run-downed enemy ships. Then, the distance shrunk to five light-hours. Then, three.