A Deep Sleep (Valhalla Book 1) (10 page)

All eyes in CIC remained fixed on the tactical display as the seconds ticked by. Athena felt the tension increasingly slowly but inexorably as the seconds turned to minutes. It took a half-hour for the tension to plateau. The Russians were still working hard to localize Unger, but it wasn’t something that could be rushed. First they’d look for the telltales of the frigate. When they thought they had something, some small return, their combined sensor sweeps would activate and interrogate the offending region with powerful pulses. The Russian sensors were, however, not as modern as the American’s stealth systems. The generational gap was telling. Even still, it would take time, but with maintenance the Russians could find the frigate. They knew she was there somewhere. The
Gnevny
was the weak link in the chain and Athena approvingly noted that Unger used that to his advantage. The antiquated sensor set allowed him to slip through gaps in her coverage when she focused. The older sensors didn’t have any capability to split their attention on active sweeps. They had to focus along a set of bearings, not bounce around. The newer sensors aboard the
Kresta
didn’t suffer the same issue. They were the true danger and best avoided.

As their game of cat-and-mouse approached the ninety minute mark, the tension ratcheted up again, abruptly this time.

“
Fort Totten
just dropped stealth, she’s pouring on the speed. I’m getting solid returns from passive alone now. That
Gnevny
is going to see her now. At least 110% on both fusion reactors.” Johnson sounded like she might be getting a little shaky, tracking what was no longer a slow game of cat and mouse.

“Easy does it now everyone, their doing their jobs, let’s do ours.” Athena soothed, still watching the tactical display. She watched as the indicators around the icon for
Fort Totten
flashed. First,
Totten’s
own active sensors flared to life, firming up her own firing solutions. Then, her targeting radar drilled the
Gnevny
and loosed 3 fragmenting-warhead nukes at the ship. Her aft main battery, twin 105mm railguns, also opened up on the Russian ship. Both ships had been closing on the frigate, moving to sneak up behind her and pounce. The Russians still seemed convinced they were sneaking up on her and that the American thought she was evading successfully. Unger was playing his role well.

Now that
Totten
had accelerated rapidly and obliquely to her previous course track, the Russians were caught out of place. Additionally, the Russians had been sailing in a beam apart formation, giving them better long range detection percentages. Now that they were in a relatively close range fight, they should be closing. The
Kresta
moved towards the center of the formation, but the
Gnevny
maneuvered in a corkscrew; first moving towards the
Kresta
but then beginning to spiral away. Just as she did this, the first of the railgun rounds arrived.

Athena could hardly believe what she was seeing; instead of combing their point defense envelopes, the
Gnevny
was partially sacrificing that. Athena briefly wondered if the ship even had the capability to link up with her somewhat more modern sister, but even still the effect of simply being close together would provide more protection. The corkscrew maneuver couldn’t confuse the high-g capable missiles that Unger had fired at her. The
Kresta
, having a less favorable intercept geometry,
only downed one before it separated. The two survivors split, each releasing 5 warheads from the missile body. The unburdened missile continued its attack profile, an ECM jammer coming online to add haze to the enemy targeting. The destroyer continued its pointless evasive maneuvers, point defense claiming 4 of the warheads. The 6 that made it through the point defense detonated in a broad ring around the
Gnevny
, compensating for the loss of their brethren. While each weapon was small, the
Gnevny
was old and her point defense systems were much more susceptible to the ECM than the newer Russian naval designs. The detonations achieved a near perfect circumferential detonation and the Russian destroyer was crushed in the middle, fires and gaseous explosions bursting from her hull. The destroyer snapped in half and the two pieces continued their breakneck pace, ceasing only the corkscrew maneuvers. Amazingly, the fusion reactors didn’t detonate, ejecting safely off into space.

“Hotel 1 destroyed.” Johnson sounded solid again.

“Sir,
Fort Totten
’s missile attack profiles were not operating within normal tolerances.” Heath sounded slightly confused.

“I suspect that Captain Unger bet on the old systems on that destroyer not having been upgraded, thus leaving them more susceptible to ECM and allowing his warheads to move closer prior to detonation.” Athena responded, having noticed the same discrepancy a moment earlier.

“Risky play, sir.”

“Indeed it was, but it paid off for him.”

“Yes sir, it did.”

“Hotel 2 is launching, sir.” Johnson reported. “4 heavies, based on thrust profiles. The main railgun batteries are starting to score some hits across
Fort Totten
’s stern.”

Athena continued to watch the display. She was surprised that the
Kresta
had launched heavies, especially against a frigate. A single warhead was more than capable of destroying the frigate, but point defense was good and Russian ECM wasn’t. The chances of a none-fragmenting warhead weapon getting through were nowhere near as high.

The railgun battery, however, was a different story. The cruiser might not be new but 185mm railguns didn’t care how old they were. Those rounds were already knocking systems offline, at least one point defense turret and an ECM jammer. Even still, the three missiles began closing the distance and one at a time
Totten’s
point defense neutralized them.

“Another round of missiles, same thrust profile, classifying as heavies. 6 this time, full spread.” Johnson was just full of good news today.

“They probably had to clear the other tubes of comm drones or sensor probes.” Athena said absent mindedly.

“Doubtful sir.” Heath spoke up. “Those
Kresta’s
carry their sensor and comm drones in special tubes, different diameters than their missiles. It wasn’t until the
Kresta
IIs that they standardized the tube sizes to allow for multi-use launchers.”

Shit, Athena thought, sitting bolt upright in her chair, stopping suddenly when her harness came up tight. Daniels and Heath caught the motion and glanced worriedly at the tactical display. Athena cursed at herself for her lack of control and then composed herself.

“The first wave were heavies, not standard doctrine against a frigate since they know that point defense will just chew them up. Against a frigate, the best option is to fire fragmenting warheads to give them as many targets as possible. The thrust profiles are the first indicator, but not certain ones. Now that we’ve seen heavies though, we’ve already jumped to that conclusion. Nobody would reload with heavies, not unless the skipper of that cruiser is tactically incompetent. The Russians don’t promote idiots up to cruiser captain, the ships are too capable and valuable for that. We’re looking at 6 fragmenting missiles, not heavies. The thrust patterns have probably been told to mimic the heavies until they enter the point defense envelope.”

The heavy anti-ship missiles had enough of a variance in mass over the fragmenting missiles that the computer could differentiate the two based on thrust velocities. It wasn’t typical for the Russians to play with the thrust profiles. Normally they didn’t afford their cruiser captains that much latitude to modify their weapons in the field. Maybe something had changed, though Athena doubted it. More likely, the captain has taken it upon himself to make the changes.

“Enemy warheads are approaching point defense now sir.” CIC held its collective breath. Sure enough, the missiles cut thrust and the plot for each became fuzzy. “Separation event, all 6 missiles. 36 warheads, make that 34 point defense just dealt with 2.” Johnson reported.

“Damn. Have to remember that one.” Heath said aloud.

“All warfare is based on deception.” Athena said simply.

“And when you always react to the enemy’s deception, you’ll certainly lose.” Daniels added. Athena gave her a nod.

On the tactical display the Russian warheads had closed to within kinetic point defense range, with the shotguns and mini-railguns adding their fire to the laser batteries. There were still 15 inbounds, more than Unger could take down in time.

“Sir, detecting subspace ripples, originating from
Fort Totten
, she’s about to go to FTL.” Johnson sounded relieved.

“Very well.” Athena nodded, he’d taken the game as far as he could. Now it was time to run. She forced herself to turn away from the projection. She could only hope the small ship could run the gauntlet and make it back to friendly space.

“Ensign Conway, time to slip gate?”

“At present velocity we will transit the slip gate in approximately 4 days 3 hours and 4 minutes, sir.” Conway rattled off.

“Approximately?” Athena said, grinning at the Ensign.

“Yes sir. I can take it out to the seconds if you’d like.” He responded with feigned offense.

“That’ll be alright, Ensign, approximately should be sufficient.” Athena laughed.

“It’ll be tight sir, making it into position.” Heath said quietly. The tactical station was immediately to Athena’s left, allowing for Heath to discuss with her in a low voice.

“Yes it is. We may have to do some hard maneuvering to get to cover in time.” Athena turned to face him. “The Russians like to send a scout ship through to take peek before bringing through a convoy. With one this valuable, you can bet they’ll be following procedure.”

“I concur sir.” He agreed.

“
Fort
Totten
has gone superluminal, sir.” Johnson broke in.

“Thank you, let me know when they drop back out.” Athena responded.

“Yes, sir. We’re still tracking them.” Johnson said. She heard something through her headset that made her snap her head back down to look at her display. “Hotel 2 is giving chase, powering up to go superluminal. Estimate 20 seconds to entry.”

“Well that was pretty much expected. Now let’s just hope that they chase them right out of system.”

Twenty-five minutes later they had their answer.
Fort Totten
had transited the alpha slip gate two minutes earlier and now Athena watched as the
Kresta
dropped sub-luminal and followed her through.

“There they go.” Athena said quietly. Suddenly the tactical plot seemed very empty. Other than some asteroids and other plotted debris, there didn’t seem to be anything left in the system. The only red dots were the three automated comm relays near each of the three gates known to the Russians. They had no sensors for sweeping a system though and weren’t really capable of detecting them so long as they kept their distance. “How are we looking?”

“Scope is clear, sir. Nothing in-system that we can detect and we have no superluminal targets on our scopes.” Johnson responded.

“Tactical, Lieutenant Heath, assessment of risk?”

“Sir. If there were any enemy contacts in system they likely would have helped in the engagement in some way.” He paused, frowning momentarily. “Unless they have a stealthy surveillance vessel hanging out to look for additional ships. So long as we stay stealthed that shouldn’t be a problem, but if we want to go superluminal and cross the system, they’d likely see us.”

Athena selected a comm channel from her quick connection list and buzzed the compartment.

“Intel, Ensign Bower here.

“Ensign, this is the captain.” Athena prompted.

“Yes, Captain, what can I do for you sir?” Bower didn’t sound at all surprised to be hearing from the captain.

“Well, Mister Bower, we are sitting here in this system with a perplexing situation that could use an expert’s input as to the disposition of certain assets in this system. Are you that man?” Athena inquired nonchalantly.

“If you’re inquiry is in regards to Russian stealth platforms and their likely deployments, yes sir, I am that man.” Bower replied, clearly having a good idea of the question on his captain’s mind.

Athena smiled lightly at his nonchalant response. “Very good then, lay it on me.”

“Yes sir. The Russians have about a dozen of their stealth platforms remaining in service. Intelligence suggests that they have been unable to build any additional platforms in the last year due to shortages of the particular composites that they need to conceal themselves from high intensity scans. Further, we are fairly certain about the system location of eight of these. The remaining four are thought to be deployed to border worlds, including at least two along their border with the Chinese. I would evaluate it as unlikely that they have one deployed in this system sir.” Bower finished a little less certainly than he delivered the rest of his information dump.