Barbarians at the Gates

Chapter Thirteen

Jefferson System, 4092

“Admiral Drake, we have multiple incoming contacts on attack vector,” the sensor officer reported. Her well-trained voice revealed no panic. “Designating contact details now.”

Only a few hours into the system and everything is going to hell, Marius thought bitterly. But at least the penny has finally dropped. We finally know where Justinian is.

“Show me,” Marius ordered.

He swallowed a curse as the holographic display lit up with red icons. His first inclination was to dismiss what he was seeing, for it looked like something out of a first-year tactical planning assignment at the Academy. Entire fleets of superdreadnaughts and carriers were bearing down on his fleet, lighting up their drives in a manner that ensured they would be detected. It looked as if the entire Federation Navy had rallied to fight beside Admiral Justinian and his allies. His second, more coldly rational thought was that it was a trick. The sensors were picking up over ten thousand superdreadnaughts, an impossible figure. If Admiral Justinian had had such a force, he would have blown through Earth’s defenses and Home Fleet, winning the war in a single blow.

“Designating group one as Bogey One,” the sensor officer said, attempting to give shape and form to the oncoming threat. “Designating group two as Bogey Two…”

Marius nodded to himself as the display continued to sharpen. The sight before him suggested that Justinian was deploying decoys, using ECM to fool his long-range sensors into having flights of fancy. But the rogue admiral would know that Marius wouldn’t be fooled—and he’d positioned his decoys so that the Retribution Force would have plenty of time to get over their panic, if Marius had been inclined to panic. Most of those ships weren’t real, he knew; the only question was which ones were genuine starships. Picking the wrong course could lead to a close-range engagement against a superior force.

“Admiral, Bogey Four is launching starfighters and gunboats,” the sensor officer reported. “The smaller craft will reach the Asimov Point in seven minutes—mark.”

New red icons flared into life on the display. Bogey Four was behind the Asimov Point and piling on the acceleration, attempting to reach the Asimov Point before Marius and his fleet could double back and escape. It showed a degree of tactical coordination and flexibility that should have been impossible. All promising officers were taught to hold to the KISS Principle—Keep It Simple, Stupid—and Justinian, it seemed, had tried to launch as complicated a feint as possible.

Or they might transit the point themselves, Marius thought coldly. The third prong of the Retribution Force was still on the other side of the Asimov Point, awaiting orders to transit into the Jefferson System. They weren’t escorted by anything larger than a battlecruiser, which meant that a single superdreadnaught squadron could slaughter the transports and commandeer the yachts before they could scatter and run. If the supplies were lost, the Retribution Force would be unable to reload its missile tubes once the engagement was over—assuming a victorious engagement. Admiral Justinian might just have pulled off the strangest victory in the history of space warfare.

“Communications, prepare a mass launch of courier drones,” Marius ordered. A mass launch would fire upwards of a thousand courier drones towards the Asimov Point. The enemy wouldn’t be able to intercept all of them, unless they’d manage to develop something completely new. But the enemy starfighters would be on the Asimov Point before the courier drones got there. He shook his head. It was the best warning he could give the remainder of the Retribution Force. “Stand by to record a message.”

“Drones ready, sir,” the communications officer said. “Standard emergency protocols engaged.”

“Record,” Marius ordered, keying his console. “Admiral Hawser, this is Admiral Drake. The Retribution Fleet has been ambushed; do not attempt to transit the Asimov Point into Jefferson. Cloak your ships and withdraw from the Asimov Point; I say again, cloak your ships and withdraw from the Asimov Point. If you do not hear from us in twelve hours, or if enemy ships start transiting the Asimov Point in force, declare yourself in command and head back to base—the long way around. I am attaching an up-to-date copy of our sensor logs with this message. Good luck.”

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.

Not for the first time, Marius wondered just what had gone through Justinian’s mind when he decided to rebel. Did he have an ambition to become emperor, or did he have another aim in mind? And if so, what was it?

“Get us as close to the Enterprise as you can,” he ordered finally. “Stand by to engage the enemy.”

He knew it would take ten minutes to reach weapons range of Enterprise, providing they were not impeded. On the other hand, Bogey Seven was clearly much weaker than the other enemy fleets, unless they were superdreadnaughts posing as battlecruisers and Marine Landing Craft.

He ran through the converging vectors in his head and frowned. Admiral Justinian had timed it just right. If they attempted to save Enterprise, they would be caught by four converging enemy fleets and forced to accept an engagement on very unfavorable terms—assuming that all the enemy ships were real, which they couldn’t be.

It was an old adage in military history—even back in the days when navies meant ships floating on the ocean—that a stern chase was a long one. On the other hand, the starfighters launched by Bogey Four were capable of accelerating to their maximum speed almost instantly, in harsh contrast to the lumbering superdreadnaughts, and were rapidly gaining on his fleet.

He braced himself as the starfighters raced towards the blue sphere surrounding his craft on the display, the moment when they could be engaged by his point defense, wondering what particular tactics would be used by the enemy this time. Would they try to strip away his screening elements first, or would they ignore them and press in towards the superdreadnaughts? If Admiral Justinian anticipated a long battle, it would be the former; hell, that was what Marius would do, if the positions were reversed. Assuming that they couldn’t return to the Asimov Point they’d used to enter the system, it would take hours before they could retreat through another Asimov Point or escape the mass limit and go to stardrive.

The CSP spread out to intercept the incoming starfighters. Standard doctrine stated that the best counter to one starfighter was another starfighter. Unlike some of the standard tactical doctrine, it wasn’t something Marius had any real objections to, even though he was a big ship admiral. Keeping the lethal little starfighters and their shield-penetrating shipkiller missiles as far as possible from the battle wagons struck him as a very good idea. The CSP had only seconds to intervene before the enemy fighters blew through them—their escorting fighters peeling off to take on the CSP, forcing the invading pilots to worry about defending themselves—allowing hundreds of starfighters to flash through and fall upon the fleet like wolves upon a herd of sheep. Some of the CSP moved in pursuit, leaving Marius to whisper a silent prayer under his breath that their IFF systems wouldn’t fail at a crucial moment. It was an unacknowledged reality that, far too often for comfort, the point defense networks had been known to engage friendly fighters.

“Point defense network switching to condition one,” the tactical officer said. “Point defense engaging the enemy…now.”

A single superdreadnaught mounted hundreds of point defense weapons. Seventy superdreadnaughts—and their escorting carriers, battlecruisers and destroyers—mounted enough point defense to make the cockiest of fighter jocks blanch. Now, with the datanet weaving the ships into a single entity, hundreds of starfighters were picked off one by one. No starfighter could survive a hit with a point defense weapon, although a lucky fighter jock might—might—manage to eject into space before his fighter disintegrated. Marius wondered grimly what would happen to his pilots if they were rescued by the enemy. The Inheritance Wars had seen a wide range of prisoner treatments—some had been treated well, others had been stranded on hellish worlds, if prisoners had been taken at all—but surely Admiral Justinian would be smart enough not to annoy the Senate any more than he already had.

And then, there was the Federation Navy’s attitude to consider. Treating captured prisoners badly would fuel a desire for victory and revenge.

“They’re targeting the carriers, sir,” the tactical officer said. The sheer randomness of the enemy flight paths had defeated any attempt to analyse their targeting priorities, until it was too late. “Illustrious and Shokaku are primary targets; Graf Zeppelin may be a third…”

“Steer the CSP over to cover the carriers,” Marius ordered calmly. The enemy targeting made perfect sense. Picking off the carriers would destroy his ability to mount a proper CSP, leaving his ships naked and vulnerable to repeated fighter strikes. “Refocus point defense; defending the carriers has absolute priority.”

It was too late. The starfighters had already started to launch their missiles towards Illustrious, hammering the fleet carrier hard. For a long moment, Marius allowed himself to hope that the carrier would survive, seconds before it blew up into a ball of radioactive plasma.

Shokaku was luckier; one of her primary flight decks was wrecked, but the remainder of the ship survived intact. Her other flight decks would still be able to launch and recover fighters.

The remainder of the enemy starfighters pulled back, abandoning the attack and racing back towards Bogey Four. Marius knew they’d be back.

“Admiral,” the sensor officer snapped. “Look at Enterprise!”

Marius stared.

“What the…?”