Warlord's Invasion (Starfight Book 1) (13 page)

At a distance of one light-hour, the Valkyries activated their M-E-C jammers. Mass-Energy-Conversion jammers worked by casting a dampening field around a target. When this field was activated, any type of nuclear or subatomic reaction was disabled. Fission and fusion reactions were incapacitated. Matter-Antimatter annihilation halted. It was the same technology that antimatter storage pods used. The only way to prevent an M-E-C jamming field was through creating an
inverse
jamming field, and most targeted ships did not have the capacity to do that. The marine assault boats, however, did have such a capacity. They could simultaneously create an M-E-C jamming field and create an inverse jamming field to prevent itself from being jammed. The purpose of this technology was to incapacitate the target to prevent it from running away on hyperlight propulsion or to prevent any number of self-destructive escapes such as the target detonating its fusion core or setting off antimatter explosives throughout its own body. When the field was active, the target could not activate its hyperspace translators and thus, could not open a portal back into normal space. The target was essentially powerless.

The fact that its main power was offline also created a certain problem, which was solved by the
Valkyrie projecting its own warp bubble around the target. When the field was active, the target’s hyperspace suspender was deactivated and thus, its warp bubble would begin to fade. If the Valkyrie did not extend a warp bubble around the target, the target would disappear out of hyperspace and the universe altogether within a matter of minutes.

Vier watched tediously as the marine boats extended their jamming fields around the five heavily damaged targets. If it was successful, the marines on board each Valkyrie would be able to send troops to board each disabled and powerless feline craft, and the holygrail of the second part of mission could be accomplished. She might finally capture technology and data that would enable humans to understand how to engineer competing sublight technologies or how to counter act the sublight combat imbalance.

But it was not to be.

The five alien roaches exploded.

Vier watched. Her eyes opened wide, jaw dropping.

They were gone—just like that.

A massive debris field expanded where each roach ship was. As the debris collided with the barrier between normal space and hyperspace on the borders of each warp bubble, the matter simply disappeared from existence. Soon, the bubbles themselves would fade and ultimately collapse and nothing the Cats had would still exist in the universe.

“All Valkyries,” Vier shouted. “Extend a warp bubble around the debris field and collect any debris!”

“Relaying command, ma’am.”

Vier sat back in her chair, stunned. How had they done it? The Cats must have realized that their ships were about to be hijacked and then simultaneously self-detonated their power cores
before
the M-E-C jamming field could envelope them. That’s the only possible explanation, she thought.

Now, she would have no technology to give Mu Pei or Sector Command.

Well, she sighed, at least she had the data concerning their h-space abilities. That was a victory in and of itself.

Vier rested her head onto her headrest and reflected about it a little bit longer. Then she ordered her fleet to reform back into a standard formation. She ordered data packet ships to where Admiral Mu Pei’s main fleet of 4000 ships hid in the Trion Nebula. The Vice Admiral would be overjoyed by the data, she thought. A massive counterattack might become very likely. She thought about the amount of people and ships that would be involved and knew that her place in it would be huge as well.

But what about the enemy’s hypermissiles?

At this moment, she still didn’t know much about them except that they were probably equipped with the same hyperspace suspenders as her own missiles. Nothing she saw about the feline ships suggested their hyperspace propulsion technology was any different from the humans. Their missile propulsion mechanism was probably similar to hers—but then again, she was just conjecturing. Who knew what differences there might be as well? The warheads on their missiles, she knew for a fact, were more powerful and used an unknown technology.

Vier stood up and nodded at Willock. “Captain, I’m retiring to quarters. Collect all the data you can from the debris field.”

“Yes, Admiral.” Willock nodded. “I will make sure we get as much info from that explosion.”

Then she turned towards the fleet controllers. “As for all ships, we head back towards Admiral Mu Pei’s fleet. Send out scouting probes throughout the region to detect any more enemy ships.”

“Relaying orders, ma’am.”

She walked to the exit. For a moment, she paused. As far as she or anyone knew, she was doing exactly as ordered, but a thought flitted in her mind—what if that wasn’t enough?

CHAPTER SIX

Three days later.

January 13
th
3987 AD

7
th
Vanguard Fleet

Flagship, Dreadnought Beginner's Luck

Admiral’s Ready Room…

“I
see,” Vice Admiral Mu Pei, Lower Half, said on Vier’s private holodisplay.

Mu Pei’s dreadnought, the
Excalibur
, was only 0.2 light-seconds away, hovering in the same dark matter nebula as Vier Kleingelt’s
Beginner’s Luck
.

“Your summary report confirms what I already know. If there is no new material,” Mu Pei continued, “I will have no reason to delay the counteroffensive.”

Vier nodded. It was common knowledge that other scouting fleets had also encountered the enemy.

“Commodore Wei and Commodore Pusan have already encountered several enemy elements like this one,” Mu Pei explained. “Stray scouting squadrons of two or three ships, mostly cruisers, with few countermissiles. I’ve read their reports. Unlike your encounter, Wei met several missile ships in the Delphi Expanse. Their missiles, while devastating, were not so extremely dangerous that we won’t have the opportunity to close the distance and begin the hyperbeam duel.”

“Can you tell me more about them?”

“Their missiles move just like ours, but have a different type of warhead that we cannot yet classify. It has approximately four times the yield as our standard antimatter warheads per size class. Devastating, but not decisive,” Mu Pei continued. “The enemy ships were also destroyed when the commodores tried to board them with marine assault craft. It seems….” He stroked his gray beard. “…That the enemy knows when their ships are no match against our boarding parties. They have witnessed the ground battles on Meerlat and other worlds. They know their ground infantry is just as equal as ours but not much more.”

Vier bit her lip. Something about the news made her hesitate. She couldn’t put a finger on it—until now. “Sir, what if they’re hiding something?”

Mu Pei continued stroking his beard. “Of course, they’re hiding something. They don’t want us to access any of their technological database. Acquiring their computer cores will tell us everything we need to know about how to duplicate all their technology. They’re still significantly superior to us in hyperlight battle, although not by the incredible margin as in sublight.”

“Then why not wipe their data cores?” Vier asked.

“And let their ships be boarded with their pants down? You forget that once we acquire just one of their ships, we don’t even need their computers nor their databases. We’ll have all we need to know just by studying the insides of their ships. Sublight propulsion data, energy core schematics, sublight and hyperlight shields, weapons, and armor. We’ll have it all. No,” he said adamantly. “They knew it was impossible to win an infantry battle within their ships, not with the numbers advantages we enjoyed against their stray fleets of cruisers. You forget that in all cases, Wei, Pusan, and yours, we outnumbered their ships…marine contingents included, by as much as twenty to one. Their ships were already dead, so they self-destructed them.”

Vier thought about that. It was an entirely possible that the enemy guinea pigs sacrificed themselves for that reason. But what if it wasn’t? “Sir,” she asked calmly. “Don’t you think it’s odd that even their scouts cannot outrun our scouts or our LACs?”

Admiral Mu Pei was quietly sitting back, thinking.

Vier sat back and gulped the saliva in her throat. A new thought emerged in her brain, a thought that suddenly found solidness after what she just recently heard. “It’s like they want to be found and caught, sir.”

“That is suspicious.” Mu Pei’s eyes thinned. “I have to agree with you on that. Given the sublight technology gap between our races, it seems that their hyperlight scouts should be at least as fast as ours. The only good news is that once we’ve started attacking their scouting parties, they’ve rescinded those ships, so that would suggest that they feel the threat. But the purpose of those stray enemy cruiser squadrons may not be to just scout us at all. They may be to hunt and kill stray civilian and merchant freighters or attack wounded human ships.”

Vier bit her lip, again. “Perhaps you are right, sir. Yet, I still feel their scouts ought to be just as fast as our fastest ships.”

“So do I,” Mu Pei agreed-. “However, I cannot delay the counteroffensive based on suspicions alone. They will soon near our sector core and that cannot be allowed. We are fortunate that their h-space tech is not so disparate.” He suddenly looked at Vier with a stone cold glance that didn’t waver. “I plan for the following counteroffensive to begin in less than a week. We will attack their main thrust with a massive counter thrust of our own. Do you think you’re up to the challenge, Admiral?”

“I think I’ll manage,” Vier answered excitedly. “With their h-space tech superiority, we’ll still need to be careful. But at least the odds aren’t abysmal.”

“We will have the power of speed on our side, hopefully,” Mu Pei added. “You, I, and the other admirals and commodores will have to go through some significant planning if we are to win. Our counterthrust will not need to be perfect, but that won’t hurt. As you know, nothing in war is ever perfect.”

“Of course,” Vier replied. She’d been in enough battles to know that nothing ever happened to plan. The question is—what exactly were the enemy’s plans?

Mu Pei reclined back. “If this war has shown anything, it is that errors will always be made like in every other war, but hopefully...theirs will be greater. We have a far less margin for error. We will look for opportunities to take advantage of when they arise. Well then, until we meet, again, Admiral. Yan Mu Pei out.”

When the holoimager on her desk turned off, Vier sat silently for a moment. Then, she glanced at the viewport. A Dark Matter nebula was anything but dark. Dark Matter had a special quality. From far away, no signal about its existence could be detected. Tachyons did not bounce. Electromagnetism was void. That was why it was easy to hide ships in dark matter. All signals get obscured. But close up, dark matter had a variety of self-emitting signals. It looked, well—like a rainbow of colors. Hues in every spectrum, gamma-ray, micro-ray, it was beautiful.

The idea came to her that if humans were deceptive enough to hide important information from their enemies, how could anyone not assume the same thing about those same enemies? These enemies weren’t stupid. They had gone through the same process before, against numerous races, probably, as seen by their methodical approach. Why couldn’t the enemy be hiding something important?

She decided. Next time she met with the admirals, she would push her point further. After all, even if she was an aggressive admiral who wanted to fight every battle to the end. In the end, she could not suspend caution. She was wise enough to know that much. Being an aggressive commander, her enemies had once attempted to lure her into traps, but she had ultimately prevailed.

Would she prevail this time?

Mu Pei was too optimistic. SECTOR INTEL did not know for sure how many ships the enemy had in this invasion. SECTOR INTEL could only predict based on sensor readings from numerous data sources in the systems that were invaded. According to that, the enemy had thousands of ships, but not tens of thousands. But what if, again, the enemy was being deceptive? At this point, no one knew the size of their industrial base or even their history. No one knew where they came from or how they got to be. The only thing people knew was what they had seen, and Admiral Mu Pei trusted this on sight.

Vier crossed her arms and stared out the window. If Shenks were here, he’d know exactly what to think and do. But Shenks was 1500 light-years away. Shenks...
Why are you in that hospital bed while I’m left with decisions affecting entire sectors? Why did fate decide for you to leave me here?

Interstellar space

Imperial Mothership Ro’Zur’Gur

Great Commander’s Private Kohlar…

El-Sur did not know what to expect. Sitting in the Great Commander’s own lavish
Kohlar
, she awaited the summoning. She did not know why she was called into his presence, only that she was willing to give everything she owned to satisfy his commands. Out of all 16,000 linguistic collectors within his army, she was honored to be chosen. It must have something to do with linguistics, mustn’t it? Why
else
would he
want
her? She smiled incredulously.

The last time she had seen Gor-Eben was three
tras
ago, during the War Target Psychology Debriefing. She had summarized her findings about the humans’ culture and the psychological mechanisms underlining their behaviors. As she recalled, he had given her a smile and a nod…then he had left.

The four chief advisers, all old Cats, had been very pleased about her reports, but...she didn’t care about what they thought. She only cared about that fashionably handsome alpha Cat, dressed in the white cloak of the royals. The one who was head of his clan, a clan that he had built and lead from a minor system alliance to one that encompassed an eighth of the galaxy. It was true, that same Cat had done terrible things to pursue his ambition—El-Sur’s knowledge of this wasn’t a secret—but the Cat was brilliant. And if she could only harness his heart, well...

The door opened. A female dressed in light red, obviously a command rank, walked in. “His magnificence will see you now.” She bowed.

El-Sur stood up and followed the female into Gor-Eben’s inner chamber.

When she entered, the first thing she witnessed was its scale. For a room on board a warship, even one as massive as the command ship, the chamber was extravagantly large. Although she’d never been in any of the crucial command centers on board his ship, she knew this had to be luxury reserved for him only. Objects decorated every portion of it. A giant mesmerizing painting of the Battle of Inner Stars hung in the distance. She had studied the Eben clan’s history. She knew what that battle meant for him. Half a century ago, before the Eben clan became a dominant power, it had allied wisely with another minor clan. In a war of terrestrial dispute with a more dominant power, together, the two minor clans had defeated their nemesis then gained recognition and preeminence. Many marked it as the beginning of the rise of Eben, but El-Sur knew it had started long before that...

Next, she saw a hologram of a white
Krushcha.
She didn’t know what that signified to him personally, besides the fact that those wild beasts were prized targets for hunters on the home world. To kill a Krushcha and obtain its body whole was not an easy task, even with modern weapons.

She continued walking. As she followed the red uniformed female, she gasped when she saw a
Huka
to her right—an adornment of a glassy feline with a sword decorated by platinum leafs.

“Do you like it?”

“My eminence!” El-Sur exclaimed, startled.

“A trophy I won as a litter kitten,” Gor-Eben said from her left, eyeing his prize. He waved the assistant away. “The master of ceremonies said I was destined to become a great warrior. It is one of my most prized possessions, but not as much as what stands before me.”

El-Sur’s heart leapt. What did this mean...?

“You have a talent few others possess, and one that I want to possess through indirect means,” the alpha Cat purred.

“Anything I have is already yours, your eminence,” she bowed.

“And that is why I have asked you here.”

El-Sur felt dejected. Her hopes of sharing litter suddenly diminished. “What is that, your eminence?”

“Your skills as a collector are unparalleled. You have been of much use to me in the past, perhaps more useful than even my most skillful subjugators. There is something I need you to do.”

“Anything, your eminence,” El-Sur replied.

The clan leader gazed at her. “I want you to communicate with the humans and offer them terms of surrender.”

El-Sur smiled. Really? Her? This was the first time she’d been given such a task. But she couldn’t let down the Great Commander. If she succeeded, wouldn’t he be just more impressed with her? “I can do that, your eminence. Tell me when.”

“We have invaded a large swath of what the humans call a
starzone
. They will counterattack, of course. And we will defeat them. When the humans are defeated in the Nakra Space, I will grant you a fast battleship. You will take this battleship and hail any human ships using their channels. You will then deliver the detailed message. It will not be dangerous, as I will have other ships escort you, despite our qualitative superiority.”

“Can I see the contents of this message?”

“To cut it short...” He told her.

She recognized it. It was the same terms of surrender given to most conquest targets. Except...she thought it was perhaps too lenient. It sounded as if the Great Commander was too eager to have them part as of his
Suffra
. “I will deliver it, your eminence.”

“Good.” Gor-Eben smiled. “Now, we will only have to wait for Hal-Dorat to do his dirty work and persuade the humans that defeat is inevitable. In the meantime, allow me to show you something of far greater importance to me than this simple trophy.” The clan leader clapped his paws and suddenly the wall to her right opened up.