Christopher Nuttall - Barbarians at the Gates

He released the key. “Message saved, admiral,” the communications officer said. “Permission to launch the drones?”

“Permission granted,” Marius said. He turned to face the sensor officer as the first drones appeared on the display. “I want you to launch a second shell of sensor drones towards the advancing contacts. Ideally, I want to get drive field readings on the craft before they get into weapons range. And then launch a third shell of drones towards Enterprise . I need to know what happened to the admiral.”

He settled back in his command chair and caught his breath. On the display, a cloud of blue icons flashed towards the Asimov Point, while smaller red icons moved to intercept them. Courier drones were the only way of communicating from system to system—and only then when the system possessed Asimov Points—and the enemy would have no difficulty in understanding what Marius was trying to do. If the third prong received no warning, they might be caught by surprise if— when —enemy superdreadnaughts came after them. He caught his breath as blue icons started to vanish, only to smile in relief as a handful of drones made it to the Asimov Point, flickered and vanished. The third prong would be warned, unless there was another enemy force lying in wait.

He shook his head, dismissing the thought. Unless Justinian had somehow developed the coveted interstellar FTL communicator, that would be a trick too far.

“Enemy starfighters are redeploying, sir,” the sensor officer reported. “They may be falling back from the Asimov Point…”

“Or preparing to come after us,” Marius finished. Starfighters were the most dangerous threat to starships, providing they operated in large numbers with suitable bases. The price they paid for being so fast and deadly was short legs. Unless there was a fleet of cloaked carriers floating nearby, it would be hours before Admiral Justinian could direct starfighters against his fleet. Gunboats, on the other hand, had much longer legs, but they were also easier targets. He ran through the possible outcomes in his mind and scowled. Admiral Justinian was very definitely calling the tune. Or maybe…

“Raise Captain Al-Barag,” he ordered. “We will take the fleet into cloak for a few seconds and then start randomly cloaking and uncloaking our ships, When his ships are cloaked, he is to detach himself from the main body and split up his squadron. They are to attempt to get close to the incoming forces and determine which ones are more than just sensor ghosts.”

“Aye, sir,” the communications officer said. He paused. “We do know that Bogey Four includes some real carriers, sir.”

“True,” Marius agreed. No one had yet found a way of using ECM to create a false impression of starfighters in combat. “Let’s see if we can find out how many of his ships are real, shall we?”

The seconds ticked away slowly as the enemy fleets continued their stately advance. It was maddening, in many ways; he could pick an enemy fleet at random—except Bogey Four—and advance on it, knowing that if it was nothing more than decoy drones and sensor ghosts he would punch right through and put himself beyond all possibility of interception. And yet, there was the unanswered question of what had happened to the Enterprise . Magnificent hadn’t recorded a signal reporting the carrier’s destruction, which suggested that the ship had merely been disabled—and Admiral Parkinson was definitely out of contact. The time delay alone would have made it impossible for him to exercise any kind of command, at least over Marius’s force. And yet, if Enterprise and her escorts had been destroyed, Marius could have broken free of the trap, gambling that they wouldn’t run into a real enemy force.

He reviewed ONI’s data and scowled. How many superdreadnaughts did Admiral Justinian have under his banner? Officially, he shouldn’t have had more than one hundred—not counting the losses he’d taken in the Battle of Earth—but if ONI was right and the admiral had spent nearly ten years preparing his rebellion, he’d had time to more than triple his fleet. And then, there was the question of what other forces might move to support Justinian. How many local defense forces had added their firepower to the admiral’s fleet?

“Sir, Bogey Four is launching additional starfighters towards us,” the sensor officer reported. “Interception in nine minutes—mark.”

“Launch the ready starfighters,” Marius ordered. The CSP would need to be reinforced, and quickly. Admiral Justinian was clearly intent on wearing Marius down as much as possible before he committed his superdreadnaughts to the battle, which was…interesting. If he was being sensitive to losses—starfighters were regarded as expendable, not an attitude that endeared senior officers to the fighter jocks—it suggested all kinds of interesting thoughts about how strong he actually happened to be. “Load the remaining starfighters with standard gun packages and prepare them for launch.”

“Aye, sir,” the CAG said, through the datanet. “I am launching fighters now.”

Marius allowed himself a tight smile. Admiral Justinian had committed one tiny, but potentially fatal error. He had given Marius as much time as he could possibly want to prepare his starfighters, switch out antishipping packages and replace them with gun packages, and even give his fighter jocks some rest before they were launched into combat. Standard tactical doctrine called for the immediate launch of all starfighters as soon as danger threatened—an attitude shaped by the loss of FNS Invincible in the assault on Crichton during the Inheritance Wars, when her commander had decided to shelter his pilots inside the bays for as long as possible, only to lose his ship to an enemy battlecruiser at point-blank range.

Who knew—perhaps it wouldn’t be Marius’s force that was worn down after all.

“Bring up the point defense datanet and hold it at condition two,” he ordered. They needed the datanet if they wanted to win this battle, as it linked the entire fleet into a single whole, coordinating point defense and making it far harder for starfighters to penetrate to engagement range. If it went down, Marius’ fleet would suddenly become a ragtag handful of starships, each one thrown back on its own resources to defend itself against incoming starfighters. “Switch the controlling hub randomly and set up alternate command networks. I do not want to lose the network, even for a second.”

“Aye, sir,” the tactical officer said, nodding. Fighter jocks hated the datanet—datanet systems had killed more fighter jocks than any other invention, even antifighter missiles—and knocking the datanet down as fast as possible was standard tactical doctrine. “Condition one at engagement range?”

“Yes,” Marius said, shortly. “Switch the datanet to condition one automatically as soon as they enter engagement range.” He settled back in his command chair as the enemy starfighters closed in on his ships.

“Admiral,” the sensor officer said, “we have a reading on Enterprise . She’s adrift—very low power. There are no emissions from the hulk, not even her IFF. Bogey Seven is advancing on her position.”

Marius was unwillingly impressed. There were plenty of stories about starships being disabled, rather than destroyed outright, but few of them had any basis in reality. Normally, inflicting enough damage on a starship to cripple it meant destroying it, either directly or when the target ship lost its antimatter containment fields and vaporized. But whatever had happened to the Enterprise , Admiral Justinian had managed to target his shots precisely, leaving behind a dead hulk. And that meant he intended to capture the fleet’s flagship and use it to bolster his cause.