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  We’ll send them a warning, and leave it up to the people on the spot to decide, thought Sean. Maybe they could come up with something. In the meantime, he had some bad news to give to Len.

  * * *

  “Time to move,” said Lenkowski, talking with the com people. “Make sure all units move in the proper order.”

  His force would start the move, and the enemy would see them coming through hyper. Three thousand ships, a mighty force, but one the enemy was sure to think they could take, even with the force within the system. The others were a little closer to the system, and they would start off at a time that would bring them back to normal space an hour after his. Everything was going according to his revised plan, except for the carrier force. He only had half the warp fighters he had counted on. The Emperor had pulled four of his hyper VII carriers and their embarked warp fighters away from him to support an effort to rescue the threatened the Republic world on the other side of this front. He would have gone after that force after this battle was over, but plans changed, especially when he was not the ultimate commander.

  “Jumping,” called out the captain of the Romanov, and the translation nausea struck.

  Within ten seconds three thousand ships were in hyper V and accelerating inward at five hundred gravities. They would be accelerating the entire way, hitting about point two nine light by the time they jumped back to normal space. As soon as they were heading into the system in normal space all of his wormhole launchers would be firing, putting out streams of missiles at point nine-five light, coasting without power toward the enemy fleet. He had fifty wormholes in his force, and forty-five of them were linked with launch systems that carried ten accelerator tubes each. They could put out thirteen hundred and fifty missiles every thirty seconds, over thirteen thousand in five minutes, after which they would have to wait over an hour for the next loads of weapons to be accelerated up to launch speed.

  His other groups also had wormholes, thirty each, while the inner force had twenty-five. Those would be used for launching different weapons, which hopefully would surprise the Caca commander.

  * * *

  “My Lord. The enemy fleet is moving in.”

  The high admiral looked at the plot that showed the mass of icons that was the enemy force his subordinate had reported on. The numbers below indicated about three thousand ships. With the force waiting for him in the inner system that was a total of five thousand. While his own group consisted of five thousand ships as well, with the second group bringing his numbers up almost nine thousand vessels. Like most Caca forces, a quarter of his ships were superbattleships, giving him an even greater preponderance of capital ships verses the enemy. He did not intend to underestimate this enemy though. The humans had proven themselves too capable in the past.

  “Prepare to launch our inertialess fighters. I want them to meet the enemy soon after they enter normal space.” He had a little under a thousand of the craft, and he intended to use them while the enemy was still not aware they were in space. And he had one other thing. Five wormholes.

  “Send a request back to base. I want as many missiles as they can send through the holes, timed to reach their ends about the time the humans jump down to normal.”

  His people still didn’t have the launch facilities that the humans used. Some were under construction, about thirty of them, with eight tubes each. For now they had to launch missiles through open space and let them build up velocity on their own, then speed through the gates to appear on his end. They lost much of their internal energy stores, though, since they had to boost up to between point eight and point nine light, but they really didn’t need all that much to change vectors at the end of their attack. And they came out in much greater swarms than the enemy’s. Each wormhole would send a hundred missiles through at a time, and they could be staggered out so succeeding waves could transit every minute. That was five hundred a cycle, and they could keep it up as long as the ships on the other end had missiles in their magazines. And they were just as stealthy in their approach as the human weapons. They had used wormhole launched weapons before, but never in this quantity, and he expected that the humans would receive a shock when they hit.

  “What about the ships around the planet?”

  “They have arrayed themselves in a defense before the planet, my Lord. It seems that they wish to intercept anything we throw at them.”

  “Then let’s start throwing it. All ships are to fire two volleys at the planet. That should keep them too busy to do anything about us.”

  The subordinate gave a head motion of acknowledgment and turned to relay the order. Two volleys from the entire force would equal about two hundred and fifty thousand weapons. Enough to take out a good portion of that defending force, if not all of them. And his ships carried many times that amount of missiles, with even more on the other force.

  “Inertialess fighters are ready to launch, my Lord,” reported the lower ranking male twenty minutes later.

  “Then launch them. I want them to blood the enemy as soon as they enter normal space.” Moments later a little less than a thousand new icons appeared on the plot, acceleration figures showing fourteen hundred gravities, better than the human made craft. They accelerated for about an hour and a half, then raised their negative matter fields and were cut off from the universe. Now they would go up to twenty thousand gravities, getting up to two and a half lights while heading out toward the enemy. Of course they would need to decelerate to attack, but if timed correctly they would hit about the time the humans were just getting into the system, before they could be tracked and before the humans could react to them.

  Ten minutes after the fighters had disappeared warning klaxons went off.

  “What is the emergency?” demanded the great admiral.

  “We are picking up three other enemy forces closing in on the system.”

  The high admiral looked at the plot, which was now populating with the other forces. Two of them were about two thousand ships each, the third was the smallest at about four hundred vessels. If he had to guess, the smallest formation would be their carriers. The Ca’cadasans didn’t use that kind of ship. They carried all of their fighters in their warships, but command was wondering if such a ship as the humans used might be worth it.

  And all of my advanced fighters are already off, he thought with a grimace. There was no way he could send them after new targets. Once they were off, they were committed. The only way he could communicate with them now would be to send a coded grav pulse or radio transmission and hope they got it in the seconds they were back in normal space. Until they developed some kind of instantaneous com that worked through the warp bubbles they had no control over the fighters once they were off. And the research and development people had little hope of developing anything like that anytime in the near future.

  “All ships, prepare to fire another volley at the planet,” ordered the high admiral. He would give the enemy even more to concentrate on in that direction. And if they didn’t go for stopping the attack on their world, they would lose it, and all of the humans and industry on it.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Success is simple. Do what's right, the right way, at the right time. Arnold H. Glasow

  “All forces are in normal space and are accelerating into the system, admiral” called out the fleet com officer.

  “We have missiles heading for the planet, sir. ETA, seven hours.”

  “Order all inertialess and warp fighters to concentrate on those missiles,” ordered Lenkowski. That took a vital portion of his order of battle out of play, but he couldn’t allow the planet to be destroyed. The enemy knew that, of course, and were counting on this move from him.

  “All wormhole equipped ships are to launch continuous fire on the enemy fleet. Everything they have, for as long as they have it.”

  “What about our conventional missiles?” asked the tactical officer after he had transmitted the admiral’s orders.

  “Let’s
start the fight off with four volleys from every ship,” ordered the admiral. “That ought to get their attention.”

  The wormhole launched missiles would get there well before their other weapons, coming out of the darkness at point nine-five light, covering the distance in a little over an hour. A half an hour later the streams from the other forces would start hitting. Hopefully they would hurt the enemy fleet, and hurt it badly. It was a great advantage they still had over the Cacas.

  “Sir, we’re picking up inertialess fighters in the area.”

  “Ours?” asked Lenkowski, feeling a faintness in his stomach.

  “No, sir. Not ours.”

  * * *

  “Gates are ready, my Lord,” reported the tactical officer. “First wave should be coming through in ten minutes.”

  The high admiral looked at the plot that was now filled with clusters of objects. The missile storm heading for the planet, the missiles heading in from the enemy groups, and now the disconcerting signals of the new warp fighters, streaking in at twenty times the speed of light, their final target still unclear. And then there were invisible missiles from the other side, the ones he knew they were putting into space as fast as they could. And soon he would have a surprise for them as well.

  “First wave coming through, my Lord.”

  Out in space, through each of the five expanded gates, a hundred missiles came. Of course they didn’t appear on the plot. They were not boosting, not giving out any signals. They had built up to speed in another system, the one the gates linked to. Traveling at point eight light, the best they could get them to before they reached the gates, they were traveling invisibly toward the main enemy fleet. The five hundred missiles would fly silently toward the enemy fleet until they were within engagement range, then accelerate ahead at fifteen thousand gravities.

  A minute later five hundred more missiles were on the way. A minute later a further five hundred, and on, until there were twenty thousand missiles in transit. There was a five minute break at this point, and the gates were realigned to aim at one of the other human forces. Ten minutes later five thousand missiles were on their way toward the force. After that there were no more missiles ready, at least for the next couple of hours, the time it would take the next launch to accelerate toward the gates. The gates on the fleet side were quickly collapsed down to small portals to make them smaller targets, hopefully not noticed by the enemy.

  “Start launching standard missiles at the enemy. Three volleys toward the main force, one each toward the others.”

  “And the fourth force?”

  The high admiral looked at the plot. He would have loved to destroy the carriers as well, but they were beyond the hyper barrier, and could jump well before anything got to them. “If they’re still there after we finish the rest of their forces, we will see if they like our new surprise as well.”

  * * *

  The ships guarding the planet prepared for the onslaught. With the exception of twelve battleships, all of the vessels were new antimissile cruisers and destroyers. All had been overloaded with counter missiles, every cargo hold, every hangar. And they had ten wormholes, all now hooked in to launch tubes at the other end.

  The ships started to fire with their wormholes. A stream of thirty missiles, traveling at well under the speed of most preaccelerated weapons, point three light, left each of the wormholes, three hundred weapons. Twenty seconds out each missile came apart into ten counters, until there were three thousand missile killing counter weapons in space. Thirty seconds later another three hundred weapons were in space. They went through the entire cycle, ten tubes each, until there were thirty thousand counter missiles flying silently through space, set to activate when the enemy weapons entered a range of twenty light seconds. Not near enough to do the job, but enough to whittle down a lot of missiles before they actually got into engagement range of the missile defense ships.

  * * *

  Captain Anvi Patel did not like this kind of mission. Not because she thought it a waste of the capabilities of her brand new eight thousand ton ship, though it had been made to attack other ships. Not because they lacked sufficient training for this kind of mission, though their training had been sparse. No, she hated it because it was so frigging dangerous. This space was full of objects that were on the plot. And there were probably thousands of other things that weren’t on the plot, including inertialess fighters. They wouldn’t know if those fifteen hundred ton objects were even moving into their paths, and there were sure to be some out there.

  “Take us into the stream,” Patel ordered her pilot. “Keep her under point three light.” She looked over at the com tech. “And make sure the rest of the ships know the plan.”

  Of course they knew the plan. But the captain still worried about her people, and they were about to enter into extreme danger. The ships were well spread out, so they wouldn’t run into each other when they had to make radical course changes. That was still a risk when objects could seemingly come out of nowhere.

  “Approaching the stream,” called out the pilot, pushing the stick down a bit to make a minor course change.

  Patel grabbed the arms of her charge, trying to stay calm in front of her crew, and failing. This was like cruising through a minefield, where any wrong move could be their last. She would have preferred to just shoot her missiles, but they only had the four, and it was thought they could take care of a lot more of the attacking missiles in this manner.

  “Approaching first missile.”

  The warp fighter was still in warp, even though it was shifting space at a pseudospeed much less that of light. They could actually move as slowly as a twentieth light, or as fast as twenty times c. And the space warping field still reached out in front of them, and behind. Not the same distance as when they were at maximum, in fact much less than a light second. Matter entering that field was still stressed by the compression and expansion of space. If it was massive enough it could shrug off that effect. If not?

  The pilot swept the warp field over the missile for a fraction of a second, then changed his course until he was moving at an angle to the missile, staying far enough away. The momentary stresses of the warp field were enough to breach containment in the warhead, and the missile detonated, filling space with heat and radiation. Another nearby missile’s hull flared, two of its grabbers melted, and it flew off course.

  The pilot stopped the fighter for a moment outside of the stream, looking for the next target and making sure nothing else would get in their way. Finding one, he pushed forward at point three light and destroyed another missile.

  “Good job,” said Patel, trying to smile at the man, then stopping herself, hoping that she didn’t distract him. Every pilot in her wing were the top of their craft, or they wouldn’t have been assigned to the warp ships. Still, all it took was one error and they were dead.

  “All fighters reporting successful intercepts thus far,” called out the com tech. Then she turned with a shocked expression on her face. “My sister just went out of link.”

  Which meant we lost the fighter her sibling was on, thought Patel, closing her eyes. “How did it happen?”

  The pilot went back to moving toward another target. The captain knew he had heard the com tech, and knew that one ship hadn’t made it. But he showed no hesitation, maneuvering the ship into position and picking off another missile.

  “That’s four so far,” reported the pilot. “Going for number five.”

  And so it went, for over an hour, her one hundred and six ships, after the loss of four of their fellows, taking out over three thousand weapons. A veritable drop in the bucket. Still, it was over three thousand missiles the planet didn’t have to worry about.

  “We’re getting an order to clear out and head for our primary target,” said the com tech. “Inertialess fighters are coming in to hit them. We are to hit their fleet, then come back and take out more of their missiles.”

  “Send that order out to the other ships, quickl
y,” ordered Patel. The last place she wanted to be was in this space when the inertial rebound weapons came in.

  Minutes later the inertialess craft launched their weapons. Four wings, over a hundred craft each, they launched toward the center of the first missile wave. It was a hard target to miss, even with such inaccurate weapons. Still, almost a hundred weapons did miss, completely. But fifteen hundred flew into the wave, most toward the center, some to the outskirts. When the pentaton blasts cleared, the wave of two hundred and fifty thousand missiles was reduced by a hundred thousand. Still not enough, but a significant reduction. And four more wings were on the way.

  * * *

  “The shelters are almost full, ma’am.”

  “And how many people are there left outside?” asked the planetary governor, Trish Vanderhoof.

  The shelters were something that most civilized planets had installed starting five hundred years in the past. The most modern in the Empire were battleship central capsules, able to hold tens of thousands of refugees in relative comfort behind ten meters of armor, buried under a kilometer or more of soil. There were many older shelters. Since there were never enough, old ones were refurbished and kept in service. The Republic also used shelters, and though of a different design, they were just as effective, which meant effective against some threats and not others. Explosions on the surface wouldn’t penetrate the soil and rock overhead, and the armor was a last barrier that kept everyone safe inside. Kinetic penetrators were another thing entirely. A near miss wouldn’t do much to a shelter, though it would devastate the surface. Some hits wouldn’t do much more, depending on their mass and speed. Heavy, fast moving penetrators would go through twenty kilometers of soil and armor like they weren’t even there, and anyone inside the shelter would be instantly killed by the energy release. A major kinetic bombardment would kill a lot of people, though some would probably still survive as their shelters were missed.