Storming Heaven

Chapter Six

“I have a live feed from the Observer,” Lieutenant Gary Young said, from his position at the tactical console. “They’re transmitting directly to the attack wing.”

“Show me,” Captain Andrew Ramage said, linking his mind into the Lightning’s main computer. “Put it on the main display.”

The image of the Killer starship appeared in front of him, sending a shiver down his spine. It was over twenty kilometres long, far larger than any starship in his attack wing, and looked as if it was effortlessly maintaining its speed, a leisurely four hundred times the speed of light. A human starship could have matched that in a warp bubble, but hundreds of years of research hadn’t managed to determine how the Killers achieved such speeds without a warp bubble themselves, or an Anderson Drive. The massive starship seemed unaware of the Observer, which had been tailing it for the last three years ever since human explorers had stumbled across its course, but Andrew doubted that the Killers were truly unaware of the picket’s presence. It was far more likely that they just didn’t care.

But they had good reasons not to care, he reminded himself bitterly. No Killer starship had been lost in combat against the Human Defence Force since the Defence Force had been formed. He wasn’t expecting to take out this Killer starship either; the attack wing was there merely to distract the Killers and preventing them from realising that they were being boarded until it was far too late. The plan had seemed workable on paper, but now he was looking at the starship, he had an urge to go find a less daunting target instead. It seemed impossible that the Killers could fail to realise that they were being boarded. They would swat his fleet like gnats.

He sent a command into the system and watched as the seventy-two destroyers of his attack wing checked in, confirming that they were ready for action. Humanity could have built their own starships to the same scale of the Killers, but it would merely have given the Killers a target they could hardly miss. Their weapons would blow the Lightning apart with a single shot, if they scored a direct hit; the only defence the destroyer had was not to be there when the Killers fired. At seventy meters long, the destroyers were the most manoeuvrable starships in the galaxy. If anything could evade the Killers and their impossible weapons, it was his attack wing.

“Stand by to jump,” he ordered, as the final results downloaded into his head. They had drilled and simulated and exercised every contingency they could, but if the Killers had any additional surprises, they wouldn’t know until they actually engaged the enemy. They should have had weapons that matched and exceeded everything humanity had produced, even in a thousand years of concentrating on building the most formidable weapons possible, but they had only showed humanity a handful of surprises. Perhaps they didn’t feel they needed more, or perhaps they were keeping their deadliest weapons in reserve for a real threat. There was no way to know. “Charge weapons.”

“Weapons charged,” Gary confirmed.

“Jump coordinates said,” Lieutenant David Dunagin confirmed, from the helm. “Anderson Drive is online and ready to jump.”

Andrew tensed. “Jump!”

There was a barely-perceptible sense of dislocation and then the display cleared, revealing the Killer starship, now close enough to be seen with the naked eye as a dark shadow blocking out the stars. The Anderson Drive, humanity’s proudest technical achievement, used a tachyon field to provide nearly infinitive speed. It couldn’t reach infinitive speed — the starship would quite literally occupy every point in the universe simultaneously — but it could get a starship clear across the galaxy, or outside, in a matter of hours. Hundreds of human starships had used the drive to flee the Milky Way for somewhere more habitable, with less hostile natives, but the drive had its own limitations. Moving the entire Community out of the Milky Way was logistically impossible.

“Enemy vessel twenty thousand kilometres away and closing,” Gary reported, as the destroyers proceeded under more normal warp drive. The Killer starship ignored them as they rocketed towards it, already falling into evasive patterns that should have made them hard to target. “No sign that they have detected us or are responding to us.”

“Understood,” Andrew said, watching the Killer starship though the Lightning’s sensor blisters. It didn’t seem to have any distortion caused by an FTL drive, or even any temporal shifts or space warps. It was just something else that the Killers did that humanity couldn’t do — yet. He had to remind himself that if they succeeded in capturing the Killer ship, they would have their first real insight into Killer technology. “Lock weapons on target and inform me when we are coming into firing range.”

“Weapons locked,” Gary confirmed. “The attack wing is following us and targeting their own weapons.”

Andrew smiled bitterly. They were about to unleash enough firepower to disintegrate several major worlds, yet the Killers would barely be troubled by the assault. They might not even respond, but based on prior encounters, they would eventually try to swat the gnats surrounding them. Oddly, he found that a hopeful sign; if the human assaults were so useless, why would they bother to try to drive them away?

On the other hand, gnats are just irritating, he thought, grimly. Humanity had managed to bring flies and cockroaches into space with them, along with a handful of farming animals, even though the rest had died off when Earth had been destroyed. There was no one, outside the MassMind, who had seen a tiger or a lion, an elephant or a rhino. There was nothing left of them, but radioactive ashes and memories the MassMind had turned into educational realities for the children, teaching them about what the Killers had stolen from humanity. Maybe they just want to swat us because we annoy them.

The Killer starship came closer and closer. It seemed impossible that the starship wasn’t aware of their presence — he was chillingly convinced that it was looking at the attack wing and dismissing any possibility of a threat — but the Killers just ignored the fleet. The range was closing rapidly — they could have fired at extreme range, but he intended to fire from point blank range — and he prepared himself. The time was almost right…

“Fire energy torpedoes,” he ordered. The starship jerked slightly as it unleashed its main weapons onto the Killer starship. “Helm, begin random evasive manoeuvres!”

The energy torpedoes lanced out of the starship’s weapons blisters, crossed the distance between the two ships at just under the speed of light, and detonated against the hull. Each shot would have been enough to seriously damage the Lightning, but the Killer starship was barely scratched, if at all. The explosions lit up the darkness of space, yet there was no trace of any serious damage. The bombardment from the other starships lit up the entire side of the Killer starship in flickering eerie light as the remainder of the attack wing followed them in… and then the Killer starship vanished.

“They’ve cut their drives,” David reported. That was another mystery about the Killers. They seemed to be able to come to a dead stop instantly without suffering any damage or losing their drives. No one quite understood how the Killers did it. “Course laid in.”

“Take us back to them, attack pattern alpha-four,” Andrew ordered, tightly. At such speeds, the distance between the attack wing and their target closed rapidly. “Gary, open fire as soon as they come into range.”

The Killer starship was already dumping heat from the attack, he saw, but the starship seemed undamaged. It waited patiently for the human attack ships to come back into range, seemingly ignoring their shots as they crashed against its hull and faded out, watching them. He had the sense that it was angry now at having been forced to cut its speed, or perhaps at the imprudence of the gnats who dared to launch an attack on it’s monstrous bulk.

“Weapons locked,” Gary said. “Opening fire… energy spike!”

The Killer starship came alive, launching a ball of white light towards the human starships, which broke into a series of evasive patterns to avoid the incoming shot. It missed, but the Killers kept firing, launching ball after ball towards their targets. One of them struck a human starship directly and blew it into flaming debris; another came too close to a second human starship and was somehow attracted to its hull, acting almost like a missile as it blew the starship apart. Andrew tensed as a ball of white light came too close to the Lightning, but apparently not close enough to be attracted to the human ship.

“Keep dodging,” he ordered, tartly. Oddly, now that the penny had dropped, he felt more reassured. The worst was already happening. “Take us in. Attack pattern beta-nine.”

The Lightning and four of her consorts swooped down on the Killer starship, firing as they came. Andrew watched as the energy torpedoes struck home on the Killer weapon ports, but they didn’t seem to be enough to prevent the Killers from firing back, even though every time an energy torpedo struck the hull the Killer starship’s power curves seemed to jump. The human researchers suspected that the Killers actually used their seemingly unlimited power reserves to strengthen their hull against attack, but no one knew for sure. It was just another mystery that he hoped capturing one of their ships would solve.

“They hit the Defiant,” Gary noted, as one of their wingmen blew apart in a blaze of white light. The Killers were firing much more rapidly now as the Lighting flew away from their starship, allowing other units to launch their own attacks. Andrew called up the readings from the active sensors and studied the results grimly. Apart from massive fluctuations in their power grid, the Killer starship might almost have been untouched. “Sir, I request permission to engage with antimatter torpedoes.”

“Permission granted,” Andrew said, shortly. “Fire at will.”

Antimatter torpedoes were the most powerful weapon humanity had invented, yet they had their own limitations. They couldn’t be used as energy weapons, but had to be fired as material missiles that could be shot down by the enemy point defence — if the Killers had their own point defence. They had certainly never demonstrated any such capability in the past. Gary launched a spread of torpedoes right towards the Killer ship, joined by spreads from other starships as they joined the attack before evading the furious return fire, and Andrew watched as the torpedoes struck home. The entire Killer starship seemed to be wrapped in white light for a long second, and he wondered if they had, by some miracle, destroyed it, and then it burst out of the explosion, still firing. It seemed totally untouched.

That’s not possible, part of his mind gibbered. The Killer starship was taking a beating that should have destroyed it long ago, yet if there was any actual damage, there was no sign of it — apart from the fluctuating power grid. He sent a query into the MassMind, which was watching through the live feed from the attack wing, asking it to compute if the Killer power grid could be overloaded. If it were possible to overload the field holding the Iceberg together, perhaps the starships could be destroyed after all.

The response came back within three minutes, which was unbearably long for the MassMind, the greatest computing resource that humanity had ever created. It should have had the answer almost instantaneously. It had concluded that it should be possible, but the power levels required were astronomical and the Technical Faction would have to invent a whole new kind of weapon to handle the task. Andrew fired a request that the Technical Faction invent the weapon yesterday and turned his attention back to the battle. It wasn’t going well. The Killers had picked off twenty-three starships so far and were concentrating on the others. The more they picked off, the less damage humanity could inflict — such as it was — and in the end, they would have to flee the battle.

“But at least its not like it was at High Singapore,” he muttered. He’d not been present at the battle, but he had studied it carefully. The Killers had forced the Defence Force to stand and fight, while his attack wing could keep ducking and dodging, forcing the Killers to work to hit each of his ships. He could drag the battle out indefinitely, yet the Killers would eventually open a wormhole and escape, or force him to back off, having inflicted little damage. Another human starship’s icon flickered and vanished.

“Gary,” he said, suddenly. “Open a general channel to the attack wing. I want everyone concentrating on targeting the following coordinates; I want them to break off and form up on us.”

“Aye, sir,” Garry said, as Andrew sent the coordinates. The attack wing fell back, leaving the Killer starship to lick its wounds, and assembled around the Lightning. “Concentrated fire, sir?”

“Yes,” Andrew said. He heard the savage tone in his own voice and it shocked him. “Take us in.”

The Killers didn’t ignore them this time, he saw, as they opened fire savagely as the fleet descended on their target coordinates. Two more human starships vanished in flares of white light, but the remainder survived and opened fire, pounding the same coordinates time and time again. Wave after wave of energy torpedoes, antimatter torpedoes and even high-power plasma cannons slammed into the Killer hull, sending the power curves spinning like crazy. Andrew felt an absurd moment of hope. Were they actually going to blow right through the Killer hull? It was almost worth losing the chance to capture a Killer ship just to prove that it was possible to destroy one. The War Council and the Admiral would be annoyed — no, the Admiral would understand. Humanity needed the boost in morale dreadfully. The War Council might even be delighted themselves, although they would be worried about Killer retaliation. Andrew tended to dismiss that thought himself. What could the Killers do that was worse than what they’d already done?

A shockwave rushed through space and knocked the starships away from their target, sending them spinning helplessly through space. It took the helm several minutes to regain control, by which time they were already hundreds of thousands of kilometres from their target. Andrew watched red lights flare up on the ship status board and cursed. The Killers had revealed another surprise.

“Report,” he barked. It was almost like being caught up in a wave. He’d never been in a real boat, but he’d been in simulated perceptual environments in the MassMind. They were almost real. “What did they hit us with?”

“Some kind of gravity wave,” Gary said, concentrating on his console. “They just knocked us away from their position; seven starships were destroyed by the wave. We got lucky, sir. If we’d been closer, the gravity wave would have ripped us apart.”

Andrew brought up the feed from Observer and scowled. The Killer starship actually had been damaged, he saw now, but it had been able to counter their attack with a new weapon. It was the first time any human starship had been able to make them sit up and take notice, yet it wasn’t enough to destroy them, only enough to force them to reveal a whole new weapon system. It would have to be countered and that would take time. It was even possible that the entire mission would have to be called off…

He shook his head. They’d lost too many people to call off the mission, not now.

“Order the fleet to regroup around us,” he said, examining the live feed. He’d started with seventy-two destroyers, a full wing. He was down to forty craft, two so badly damaged as to be beyond savaging. There was little point in asking them to remain with the fleet and he ordered them to jump home. “Prepare to fire noisemakers.”

He checked the feed from Observer again and noted the position of the Footsoldier landing craft. Unlike the destroyers, the landing craft were doing everything in their power to remain unnoticed. They weren’t firing or broadcasting anything; they were just using the live feed from the other starships and the MassMind to keep on course. They would be in launching position within seconds…

“Take us in,” he ordered, and designated a course with his mind. The remaining starships fell in around the Lightning as it raced back towards the Killer starship. It grew closer again and, this time, he had the satisfaction of seeing that it was definitely damaged. Whatever self-repair functions the Killer starship possessed, it was already using, but it was damaged! They had scored a victory! It might not be a true victory, it might not have been a destroyed ship, but it was something to take home and use to boost morale. “Lock noisemakers on target.”

“Noisemakers locked,” Gary confirmed. A moment passed as the Killer starship drew closer. “Entering effective operating range now.”

“Fire,” Andrew ordered tightly. “Full spread.”

Noisemakers weren’t weapons at all, not in a conventional sense. They caused nothing, but a volley of heavy distortion that would confuse any sensor for vital seconds — any human sensor. The Killers would be blind for just long enough to allow the Footsoldiers to land without seeing them, unless they had impossible sensors to go with all the other impossible things they had. If they saw the Footsoldiers coming, there would be a quick slaughter and that would be the end of the mission.

“The Footsoldiers are launching now,” Gary confirmed. “They’re on their way.”

“Good,” Andrew ordered. “General signal to the attack force; pull back to observation position and wait. It’s out of our hands now.”