Christopher Nuttall - Democracy's Light

“Negative,” the analysis officer reported, through the intercom. “The enemy units are using heavily and randomly encrypted communications. Their command centre cannot be located.”

So they’ve learned that trick , Katy thought, sourly. Back during the early days of the rebellion, the Empire had kept the standard fleet control networks in operation, despite the fact they pointed the flagship out clearly to anyone with the right technology. The analysts didn’t have to know what the ships were saying to one another to locate the one that was giving the orders… and decapitate the squadron permanently. The standard Imperial Navy squadron was a hornet’s nest of rivalries, jealousies and worse. In the time it would take for the Captains to sort out who was in command of the remainder of the squadron it would have been reduced by several more ships. Sometimes, according to surviving records, it had been the destruction of additional ships that had terminated the infighting. No good deed went unpunished.

“Never mind,” she said. They were coming right along the edge of the gravity shadow now, poised to dive down towards the planet and the web of orbital industries. “Confirm firing patterns?”

“Confirmed,” the tactical officer said. “Missiles locked on targets…”

“Fire,” Katy ordered.

The arsenal ships rolled and fired the first salvo of multi-missiles down towards the planet… and the fortresses orbiting the blue-green globe.

Unlike Joshua Wachter, who had been caught out by the same trick at Second Morrison, Admiral Wilhelm had had the sensor records to prove that missiles with such impossible ranges actually existed, even without the warning from the Nerds. He’d deployed so much additional point defence, at least in part, to cope with just such an offensive, expecting one to materialise if it came to blows. Why, he’d asked his fellow Admirals, would the rebels fail to use such an effective weapon, particularly when they knew that there was no chance of facing it themselves?

“Deploy point defence drones and ECM,” he ordered, as the impossible missiles raged down towards two of his fortresses. The rebels had, through the luck of the draw, managed to avoid engaging both his command fortresses, much to his relief. If he allowed them to locate him, the next attack would be focused on him personally. “Contact the Avid and order it to flicker out, now.”

“Aye, sir,” the communications officer said. The Avid , a destroyer that seemed to be trying to remain away from the fighting, flickered out and vanished from the display. The rebels probably wouldn’t notice in the fury of the fighting… and even if they did, they wouldn’t understand its significance.

“Commit the remaining point defence units to the defence of Fortress #10 and Fortress #11,” Wilhelm continued, turning to the tactical officer. They were playing for time, now, and even as the missiles stormed towards the two fortresses, the rebels had their neck in his noose. “Commit everything we have, apart from the superdreadnaughts. They are to remain where they are.”

The rebel commander hadn’t done it badly, he noted, with a reluctant flicker of admiration. He had never heard of an Admiral Garland, although the name was familiar from one of the war reports he’d read, but she’d played her cards well. He might have had more point defence than anyone, but a supremely paranoid and resourceful officer would have deployed, but she’d managed to neutralise most of it just by firing from her position. He would have to alter some of the platforms to force them to engage… and that would reveal their positions ahead of time.

Interesting , he thought. The trick was impressive… and, in hindsight, rather crude. I wonder what else she has up her sleeves.

The timing seemed skewed, just because of the long-range missiles, but finally they flashed into point defence range. The timing wasn’t quite perfect this time, he noted with a flash of triumph; his point defence weapons were picking off several of the multi-missiles before they had a chance to deploy. They vanished in bright sparks of fire, dancing just at the edge of perception, before the remainder multiplied into a wave of onrushing destruction. The fortresses and their supporting point defence were firing rapidly now, using everything from pulsars to their heavy fission beams to sweep hundreds of missiles out of space, but still they came on. Several hundred missiles survived to slam against Fortress #10… and the entire structure vaporised in a blinding flash.

Fortress #11 was luckier. Only a relative handful of missiles survived to strike him, but their cumulative effect was to knock down the shields and ram into the hull. If it had been a superdreadnaught, he thought numbly, it would have been an expanding ball of plasma by now, but the monstrous armour protecting the fortress held most of the effects contained, barely. The interior of the fortress, for the crew lucky enough to survive, would reassemble hell. The fortress might not have been destroyed, but looking at it, Wilhelm suspected that they would have to scrap it and build a new one from scratch.

Jake sounded as stunned as he looked. “How many more of those missiles do they have?”

Wilhelm shrugged. The Nerds had confirmed something he’d suspected; the rebel superdreadnaughts couldn’t fire the missiles, which meant that they had to deploy them from arsenal ships. They’d fired off roughly a third of the arsenal ships in their fleet, which might allow them two more comparable attacks, unless they hadn’t expended all of the missiles in the first ships.

“I have no idea,” he said, truthfully. He looked over at the timer. There were only a few minutes left. “It won’t matter much longer anyway.”

“Target One destroyed,” the tactical officer said. The satisfaction in his voice was unmistakable. “Target Two effectively destroyed.”

Katy nodded. Judging by the confused readings spilling off the fortress, the missiles might not have destroyed it outright, but they’d left it a burned-out shell. The shipyard below might be able to repair it, but she’d be astonished if it took them less than six months. Her engineers would have a look at the remains after they’d won the battle.

“Retarget the remaining missiles on the next pair of fortresses,” she ordered, calmly. It was a wasteful exercise in missiles, but not in lives. The missiles were replaceable, while the lives were not, an argument that made perfect sense to her. She would almost hate it when they ended up budgeting properly for military supplies again. “Prepare to…”

“That’s odd,” the sensor officer said. He was peering down at his console, working frantically to see through the sensor distortions caused by the exchange of fire. “Admiral, I have something odd here.”

Katy pulled up the results on her own display, but they made little sense to her. It might have been a sensor ghost, one caused by the presence of so many starships, or it might have been something more sinister.

“Report,” she snapped. “What is it?”

“I’m not sure,” the sensor officer admitted. His inexperience was showing, Katy saw, but she had no time for it. A more experienced officer might have made a guess and stood by it. “It looks almost like turbulence…”

Katy felt her blood run cold. “Launch a spread of probes, full active, towards the source of that disturbance…”

“Too late,” the tactical officer said.

The display filled with angry red icons.

“Fire!”

The plan had sounded simple on paper, but Admiral Wolfsan had worried that it wouldn’t be so easy when it came to actually implementing it. In his experience, the simpler the plan, the better… and Admiral Wilhelm’s plan for engaging the Imperial Navy — or the rebel fleet, depending on the terminology — was too complex for certain victory. He’d watched the fleet nervously as the superdreadnaught had crept closer and closer to their positions, but they’d managed to get into firing range undetected.