Time Strike Read online

  Sean felt a shiver run up his spine. How in the hell did he know that we have Augustine back? That information was top secret, with only the Secret Service and some few of the palace staff in the know. But then, this being he was talking to had what was widely acknowledged as the best intelligence service in known space. Still, there was a leak somewhere, and it needed to be plugged. All of these thoughts went through Sean’s quick mind in an instant, while he thought of a response. He didn’t think lying would help. At least lying about actually having Augustine back.

  “Questionable? I have my son back.”

  “But what else have you caused?” said the High Lord. “There are consequences for such actions. You may have gotten away with it this time, but I caution you to not try another episode. It will not hurt my nation, but it may end yours.”

  “I’m not sure what you’re talking about, High Lord. Augustine was recovered, in bad shape, but still recoverable. A stint in cryo and a mass of cellular surgery and we have him back.”

  The High Lord gave what Sean could only think of as a questioning expression. He’s not buying it. But did it really matter if he bought it or not. He was sure the High Lord would do nothing to discredit him and his government, since that was sure to be devastating for the alliance, and the war effort.

  “What you say,” said the other being. “I will not dispute your narrative, but again caution you.”

  The holo died, and Sean had to admire the other being. He had asked for what he had wanted, then made the one point he had wanted to make, ending the conversation before the Emperor could come up with another lie.

  As he said, it isn’t his nation, thought Sean, scowling. He didn’t lose three hundred million citizens. He didn’t lose ten billion more during this damned war. Sean still wasn’t sure if he would allow the time strike, but now his stubborn nature was causing him to lean even more than way.

  * * *

  “Why can’t we just do the strike on our own?” asked Achieng Okoye, the woman Kenji thought of as the Disapprover because of the constant expression on her flat face. She was the most terrifying person he had ever met, a former assassin for some covert operation who had signed on with the count.

  “Because, my dear,” said Nick Stumpfield, probably the only man alive who could take that tone with the woman and have no concern for his own safety, “we need one of their launch tubes. If we just stole a missile and fired it through, it would have to accelerate toward the target, giving itself away the entire time.”

  “And what could they do? They’re just a merchant ship.”

  “They appear to be a merchant ship,” said the count, his voice level, as if explaining something to a child. “But make no mistake. They were a warship, with a complete electronics and defensive armament suite. It would be long odds to get a hit with a single missile. And we can’t afford to miss. If we launch a preaccerelated missile at them, they will only have seconds to react to a target that will at most appear as a fleeting image on their sensors.”

  “So we need the Emperor?”

  “So we need the Emperor,” said Stumpfield with a nod. “And if we don’t get him on board, we’ll have to do it your way. Which may lead to having to try and try again until we achieve the desired result. And with the Cacas on the offensive, I’m not sure how many tries we’re going to get.”

  “Or the Empire could win this battle,” said Kenji, cringing slightly as the assassin looked over at him with a deeper frown.

  “You just worry about your part in this operation, Doctor,” said Stumpfield, pointing a finger his way. “And leave the strategic decisions to myself and those I trust.”

  Guatarrez gulped and nodded, all he could do, while reminding himself that he was still a prisoner of these people, and lived or died at their whim.

  * * *

  The Ca’cadasans thought they had the system secured. They had landed on the habitable planet and put the Fenri back into power. They had left a picket force that should have been able to handle any raiders, and started using the system as a depot for their invading force. Now it was crawling with missile colliers and antimatter tankers, enough to keep the entire fleet supplied through several battles. They had even brought one of their massive mobile bases in to repair ships and give crews a secure place to rest and relax. Everything was placed a light hour within the system, protecting them against anything popping out of hyper. The commander of the system felt good about this base, though he was sure to enforce discipline upon the security forces so they didn’t get complacent.

  The hyper VII fleet carrier and its six escorts crept in through hyper III, then came back into normal space two light weeks from the hyper barrier, well out of the detection range of their jump. The six squadrons of warp fighters were launched as soon as the hangar doors had opened.

  Captain Wilma Snyder watched as the eighty-four ships engaged their Alcubierre drives and sped into the system by warping space, a pseudospeed of twenty lights. They were not picked up until they reached two light hours out from the barrier, three from their targets. They covered that distance in nine minutes, well before anything outside their approach corridor could react.

  Snyder used the time to locate targets and hand them off to her squadrons. Her eighty-four ships carried three hundred and thirty-six of the very expensive warp drive missiles. Each cost as much as twenty standard capital ship killers, and no one wanted to waste them. But ships cost a hell of a lot more, and Wilma wasn’t too worried about some misses.

  At nine minutes and five seconds most of the craft fired, and almost a hundred support ships, without the heavy protection of warships and carrying volatile loads, exploded into waves of plasma. Some of the closer escorts took major hits from those blasts as well and joined them as new clouds.

  “All squadrons. Head onto attack vectors. Take them out, ladies and gentlemen.”

  One squadron veered off and went after the mobile base, firing well out of range of the defensive weaponry of the massive structure. Twenty-eight missiles sped toward the base in warp, nine blown out of space as they ran into a mass of close in weapons fire, enough of a swarm to get some matter through the warp field. Nineteen hit, and the station reeled under the strikes. When the fighters flew past the base was still there, but it was a wreck, all of its repairs bays open to space or sealed behind blast doors.

  “Run wild my little birds,” said Snyder under her breath as she watched graviton sources fall off the plot one after the other. All the ships in the system were now under way, most times a good plan, now not so much, as they pinpointed their positions to small craft that could run them down without a problem. She knew that not every graviton source falling off meant a kill, but even badly damaged ships were a plus.

  The fighters spent another twenty minutes running wild through the system, hitting everything they could, leaving ruin in their wake. This was a new kind of war, and the Cacas didn’t know what to do about it. Ships started launching missiles at the fighters, not a useful response, but not unexpected either. The warships had to do something, and firing let them think that they were, even though the craft they were firing at could outrun the missiles without even trying.

  At the end of the attack period eighty-three fighters headed back out, one of their fellows taken out in an accidental impact. In just over seventeen minutes they were back at the carrier, almost out of energy, brought aboard, while the three battleships of the escort took on the four outer system cruisers that had tracked the fighters. The force jumped into III and started to move away, while the fighters were rearmed and fueled, ready for the next mission.

  “How did you do?” asked Commodore Lo, the overall force commander.

  “We might have done a little better,” said the smiling Snyder, her expression showing that it couldn’t have been much better. “Until the Cacas figure out what we’re doing, I think we’re going to be a terror to their logistics. When do we get to do it again?”

  * * *

  The high admir
al was already angry, to the point where his subordinates were afraid to approach him. Yet another system where he had expected to fight, and had only run into a few vessels laying in ambush and then running. The only thing he had found to fight were a swarm of inertialess fighters that had launched missiles of impossible power into his mass of warships, killing several hundred. The weapons hadn’t been very accurate, but then again, they hadn’t needed to be, since they were so destructive.

  Every time we think something is impossible, the bedamned humans come up with it, thought the raging admiral.

  “We need to refuel our scout ships, my Lord.”

  The high admiral gave a head motion of acknowledgement. Many of the scouts had gone twice the distance of the capital ships, darting around, looking at systems where the enemy might be hiding. Some had found nothing. Some had not come back, and other squadrons had returned some ships to report on others being destroyed. Ships sent back to those systems had found nothing. It was maddening, and it was using up a lot of antimatter. The great admiral in charge of the front had ordered that support ships were to be kept at least ten light years back. The high admiral didn’t like the decision, and could do nothing about it.

  “Order the tankers forward,” he told the subordinate. Now that he needed fuel he could give that order.

  “I will send the order,” said the subordinate, turning and walking from the chamber.

  The high admiral went back to looking at the map of the region. He would again advance on a wide front, his force split into five battle groups. He didn’t see why not, since the enemy weren’t placing any major forces in his way. The way it looked, they were concentrating on the other front. Bad news for the forces heading into the other human kingdom. Good news for himself and his career. If he could meet and destroy a major human force, he might see great admiral coming his way. But the damned creatures weren’t sending a major force his way. Not more than a squadron at a time, except where they were ambushing his scouts.

  The male who had been sent to give the message to one of the couriers to take to the supply train came running back into the chamber.

  “My Lord. A courier has just come in from the supply train. It was almost totally destroyed.”

  “What? How? What the hell happened?”

  The subordinate looked confused at having so many questions thrown at him at the same time. The high admiral stopped himself from yelling at the male, realizing it would only make it worse, and it would take more time to get the information.

  “They say that the enemy came in faster than light ships and shot up the logistics force. It was almost a total loss.”

  “Inertialess fighters?”

  “No, my Lord. The new ones. They came from out of the system and were on the fleet before they could do anything.”

  The high admiral was about to take his anger out and strike the male. But that was not the way to encourage people to deliver bad news. And bad news couldn’t wait.

  “Send a request to the great admiral. We need tankers up with us, now. And give him the locations we will be at when they get here.”

  The male gave a head motion and ran out of the chamber, anxious to be away from the male who could order his death for anything or nothing.

  * * *

  The stealth attack ship Grampus had waited for days outside the system, a hole in space. Many ships had come into normal space within attack range, but none were the type that were on its target list.

  The captain had watched as fat superbattleships jumped into normal space within attack range. She watched as cruisers and scouts came in. Those ships were not worth giving her position away, though she would have taken a chance against one of the capital ships if she had permission.

  “Ma’am. We have something coming in that you might be interested in.”

  “Show me,” said Commander Stella Koslowski, the captain of the Grampus.

  The plot narrowed, focusing on their area. The other ships faded away as the sensor officer phased out their signals, showing one vessel stairstepping down through hyper.

  “It appears to be in the eight million ton range, ma’am. Resonances match one of their missile colliers.”

  Koslowski whistled. Tankers were the priority target, but a missile supply ship was nothing to sneeze at. The Caca ships would eventually need to have their magazines refilled, and fewer ships to carry those refills could only help the empire.

  “Prepare to take a shot,” ordered Koslowski, mentally ordering in the fill of other ships on the plot. There were a cruiser and two scouts escorting the collier, and nothing else within five light minutes of the entry point. Of course there isn’t, thought the commander. The Cacas hadn’t picked up anything in the area for days, so there couldn’t be anything there.

  There would still be a lot of danger when they fired. The ships along with it would immediately start the search. Not for the first time she wished she had one of the new twin wormhole stealth/attacks. Some of those would be entering this campaign, later, since they had to be brought up by hyper VII ships. Unfortunately, Grampus had to use its lone wormhole as a heat sink in order to not show up on their passive scanners. But they still had a surprise for the Cacas.

  All they could do was wait while the enemy supply ship made its way through hyper. Everyone was anxious. Koslowski could smell the nervous sweat on the bridge, everyone in their armor with faceplates up. She could smell her own fear. It was normal, and something no stealth crewman loved, but it was a part of the job.

  “Enemy ships are at point three light. Entry predicted in five seconds.”

  “Missiles ready.”

  Koslowski kept her mouth shut. There was really nothing she could add to the situation. Everyone knew their jobs and were ready to execute.

  “Ships jumping, now.”

  The cruiser was through a half second before the collier, which came through a half second before the scouts. It was a perfect jump, one to be proud of. Except.

  “Missiles locked onto target. Firing.”

  The twin missiles accelerated through the tubes and into space. Normally it would take weapons launched from this kind of vessel ten to fifteen seconds to reach the target. That was normally enough. This time they were far enough back that it would have taken thirty-one seconds, too long for slow targets to last against ships with the missile defenses of the escorts.

  These missiles went into warp as soon as they have left the tubes, covering the less than a light second in a twentieth of a second. Both were right on target. Against a tanker those hits would have resulted in an immediate catastrophic detonation, probably taking out all of the escorts as well. The two blasts flew out of the collier, which pitched away for a moment, but didn’t go up.

  “Prepare to fire again,” ordered the commander.

  She hated giving that order, since a second shot would triple the chances the enemy would locate them. A second later she cheered as the collier went up in a bright flare, warheads aboard breaching containment. The bright flare expanded again as the rest of the warheads detonated. Enough large fragments survived the first blast and were accelerated out, one hitting the nose of one of the following escorts in a devastating strike that almost stopped the scout in its tracks. Of course no one knew what was happening aboard, but it looked like enough of a momentum change to cause devastation on the interior of that ship. As it started drifting to the side, still moving with enough forward momentum to move into the system, it appeared they were out of the battle.

  “Get us out of here, helm. Slowly.”

  The helmsman nodded and started to back off at ten gravities, too little to be detected with their heavily stealthed grabbers. The surviving warships started into a search pattern, both going off in directions that wouldn’t take them any nearer to the Grampus.

  The crew sweated out the next couple of hours, until it was obvious that the Cacas didn’t have a clue as to where they were. After that it again became a waiting game, hoping they weren’t found while
they tried to get another target. No matter what happened, some Cacas ships would not be getting resupplies of long range weapons.

  Chapter Eleven

  Men talk of killing time, while time quietly kills them. Dion Boucicault

  FENRI SPACE. JUNE 3RD, 1003.

  Cornelius sat close to the fire, trying to absorb its warmth. While the days on this area of the planet were warm, as befitted the season, the nights were damned cold. Most of the guerillas sitting around the fire with him carried fur or feathers of one type or another. A reptilian form to his right, covered in fine scales, leaned even closer to the fire. The glow of the flames danced on the walls of the cavern, giving the small chamber a feeling of warmth besides that put out by the fire.

  Walborski wasn’t sure how long this cave would be useable. The Fenri lackeys of the Cacas were looking for them and the hundreds of other guerilla bands in the wilderness of this world. Scores more guerilla bands fought within the cities. Those had an easier time fading into the populace of multiple species of slaves. But they also had to be on constant guard. At least the bands operating in the hinterlands could relax every once in a while. But despite the forest, they had trouble blending in when it hit the fan.

  “Sorry that you came here?” asked the ten-limbed being that was folded up on the floor on the other side of the fire.

  “Not really, Sgornar,” replied the Ranger. “I have staunch warriors, and lots of Cacas to kill.”

  “But you may not make it out of here. You have told us of your family. Don’t you want to see them again?”

  Yes, many of the aliens had told them of their families. Many had family structures much different than humanity. The reptilian being came from a group family, where the five or more males protected the more than ten females and their children. He still wasn’t sure what kind of family Sgornar had, only that he talked about hundreds of children. Of course, none of them were totally free to have the kind of families their species had developed over the generations of their cultures and biological imperatives. Their own desires meant nothing to their masters. They were selected and bred like cattle, and assigned the tasks their masters decreed. It was no wonder they were willing to give their lives to prevent the bastard Fenri from taking over, and from what Cornelius knew, the Cacas were no better.