First Strike (26 page)

Bulk freighters had been designed by the Cats as little more than massive holds with drives, the bridge and crew quarters added as something of an afterthought. Unlike some of the freighters Mentor had brought with him to Earth, they were incapable of landing on a planetary surface, requiring an orbital station and a small fleet of shuttles to unload their cargo.
 
Lightning Lass
 
had had her cargo space crammed with missile pods, a concept that the Galactics had abandoned as unworkable. Point defence could take out torpedoes unless they were fired in vast quantities or at very close range; what did they have to fear from missiles that were launched so far out that there was plenty of time to track and destroy the missiles before they entered attack range?

Each of the missile pods carried ten missiles, each one several times the size of a standard Galactic torpedo. Ivan had watched as the concept was tested several light years from Earth and he’d noted that the missiles were actually easier to detect than torpedoes. The Funks, once they’d realised what was happening, would have good reason to be overconfident, at least until the second surprise was unveiled. Their ships didn't have to fear missiles so large that tracking them was easy. The only danger they’d see lay in the sheer volume of missiles that were about to be launched at them.

It had been an open question if the Funks would realise what was happening before the missile pods were fully deployed. They showed no response, not even directing an additional flight of shuttles to attempt to take out the pods. But then they had good reason to feel unthreatened. Galactic torpedo drives provided an immense burst of speed, yet they didn't last long before burning out, limiting their range. Targets flying a ballistic trajectory would be even easier to track than oversized missiles.

“All pods deployed,” the weapons officer reported.

“
Bart Simpson
 
reports that a couple of pods got snarled in the chutes,” the communications officer reported. “They’ve isolated the pods from the command network; the remainder are ready to fire at your command.”

They’d rehearsed the whole operation time and time again, but there had always been problems in deploying so many pods so quickly. The engineers claimed that the problems would eventually be ironed out, yet it would come too late to help his crewmen. They’d just have to hope that the absence of two missile pods out of hundreds wouldn't be decisive.

“Fire,” he ordered.

* * *

It had taken several minutes for the battered sensor network to confirm that the humans were deploying missile pods. Lady Dalsha had watched without being quite certain of what the humans were doing, although she was sure that there was a nasty surprise waiting for the defenders. The human tactics made no sense when considered conventionally, which suggested that there was an unconventional tactic about to be deployed.

The missile launch had been detected at once, the sensors reporting over ten
 
thousand
 
missiles being deployed from the pods. Each of the missiles was an obvious sensor target, to the point where she wondered if the humans had deliberately made them rather more detectable than they should have been. Unless they’d made a colossal improvement in drive technology, and they’d seen nothing to suggest it, the missiles would burn out long before they reached their targets. The whole tactic made no sense.

At least a new commanding officer had finally been able to assert her authority. Her orders echoed through the remains of the command network, organising the fortresses and starships to prepare to destroy the enemy missiles once they went ballistic and raced through their formation. It was possible that the humans were trying to bombard the planet – it wasn’t as if there was a population that could be exterminated – but it would have been a pointless exercise in mass destruction. Even the Empress wouldn't engage in mass destruction for the sheer hell of it.

As predicted, the human missiles started to flare out, their drives dying into nothingness. There were no longer any active missile drives to track, but they couldn't change course – and their trajectories would be easily predicable. They’d be wiped out long before they reached attack range, even if they were crammed full of antimatter...

And then new icons flickered into life on the display.

No!
 

Tobias watched the missiles deploy with heavy satisfaction. He’d had his doubts about the whole concept – rumour had it that the design team had borrowed it from a science-fiction book written in the days before humanity had discovered real aliens – and it had been impossible to test it under anything like realistic conditions, but they appeared to be performing perfectly. Each of the oversized missiles had been carrying no less than five standard missiles, ready to be fired directly at the enemy. The Funks would see
 
fifty thousand
 
missiles bearing down on their positions, almost all of them targeted on the starships. A handful had been detailed to attack the industrial nodes and shipyards in orbit around Hammerfall, although Tobias knew that destroying them was very much a secondary objective. The starships were the main target.

But antimatter missiles weren't the only things that had been fired towards the enemy. Some of them had had their warheads removed and replaced with ECM nodes that disrupted the enemy’s best efforts to lock onto the missiles. They’d
 
know
 
that most of the missiles coming towards them were nothing more than sensor ghosts, but it would be incredibly difficult for them to isolate the real missiles from the illusions. Their defences would have to try and engage
 
all
 
of their sensor returns, both illusions and real missiles. Even the most advanced datanet in the galaxy would be swamped.

The Funks opened fire desperately as the missiles closed into attack range and went to full power, zeroing in on their targets. It looked as if someone had ordered the assault shuttles to try to intercept the missiles, but they didn't have the time to get into position before the missiles blew past them. Their only real hope was to pick off enough of the ECM missiles so the illusionary missiles would just vanish, yet even locating them would be difficult. The designers had spent years building in enough countermeasures to make it almost impossible to isolate the real missiles. A tachyon net might be able to separate out the real missiles from the illusions, but the tachyon net had been shattered by the antimatter blast. They’d never be able to get another one online in time to save themselves.

Hundreds of missiles vanished as the Funks picked them off, but thousands survived to strike home. There hadn't been enough space onboard the missiles to stock them with significant amounts of compressed antimatter, yet the warheads carried enough to unsettle even a superdreadnought – and the superdreadnoughts were the prime targets. Even when the Funks hit the command and control missiles, the remainder – suddenly finding themselves on their own – homed in on the closest available enemy target. The designers had warned that it was possible that some of the missiles would fling themselves on other missiles, but it hardly mattered. Task Force 1.4 had fired enough missiles to swamp the defenders, even if a number were destroyed by their fellows.

No starship in the universe could survive hundreds of missiles striking home in quick succession. Four superdreadnoughts lost their shields, wallowed out of formation and were destroyed in quick succession. The fifth was only saved by a battlecruiser that physically imposed itself between the superdreadnought and certain destruction, vanishing in a blast of superhot plasma. Dozens of other ships died as missile after missile slammed home, tearing the formation apart. The sole superdreadnought survivor was accompanied by nothing heavier than a light cruiser. All of the battlecruisers and heavy cruisers had been wiped from existence.

Other missiles, deprived of their original targets, slammed against the fortresses. They were tougher targets, but even they weren't designed to take such a hammering. One fortress was destroyed outright, another nudged towards the planetary gravity well...and several more were badly damaged, if still trying to fight. They’d been so intent on saving the fleet that the missiles aimed at the shipyards managed to home in and destroy their targets. One way or another, it would be years before the Funks managed to rebuild the installations the missiles had destroyed. Hammerfall had only had one purpose – a purpose it could no longer carry out.

“Shame we can't do that again,” he commented. One secret that had been very closely held was just how many multi-missile missiles the human race had produced. He’d fired around 90% of the human race’s entire stockpile at Hammerfall and it would be months before the freighters could be reloaded. But the Hegemony wouldn't know that. They’d be forced to deploy hundreds of remote platforms to defend their starships and orbital fortresses, cursing the day they’d accepted the Cats military doctrine without question. It was true that hiding in a planet’s gravity well, supported by one’s fortresses, would force the enemy to come into range – until the human race had changed the rules. “Task Force 1.4 is to return to quantum space and inform Task Force 1.5 to deploy into the system when ready.”

He smiled as he settled back in his command chair. If the Funks had been shocked by the Battle of Terra Nova, they’d be terrified when they heard about the Battle of Hammerfall. It had been probably the most one-sided victory in galactic history, superseding the Battle of Terra Nova. Who knew? Maybe they would back down and offer humanity acceptable peace terms if they believed that they were totally outmatched. And if humanity no longer looked weak, the other Galactics might come out in support. A Tarn offensive would destabilise the Hegemony still further.

It was tempting to consider entering engagement range and taking out the remaining starships, but that would bring them into range of the fortresses. Besides, there was little need to risk his ships. Task Force 1.5 had its own surprise for the Funks. They were about to get another lesson in what human ingenuity could do when mixed with Galactic technology.

“Broadcast a demand for surrender,” he ordered. It would be a bluff, but the Hegemony might not know that. “And then order Task Force 1.5 to move to attack position.”

* * *

The fleet had been crippled.

No, Lady Dalsha told herself firmly; it had been destroyed. The sole surviving superdreadnought was badly damaged, to the point where it would be cheaper to replace it than to make the necessary repairs. Most of the other starships had been badly damaged, with destroyers and frigates being the only undamaged ships. The human missile cloud – she could think of no other term – had devastated a fleet that had considered itself safe. It was only through the surprisingly
 
limited
 
destruction that she realised that most of the missiles had been illusionary. If there really
 
had
 
been fifty thousand missiles, the defenders would have been completely obliterated.

The command network, already badly damaged, had been destroyed. Most of the officers who had claimed supreme command were dead. Some of the datanets were being re-established – the Cats had designed them to be resilient – but there was so much confusion that it was difficult to say how many senior officers remained alive and in control. The entire defence force had been badly shocked. They’d never run into anyone who could give the Hegemony such a bloody nose, ever. Even the Cats, if they’d worked up the nerve to intervene, would have found it costly.

“Send a general signal to the entire fleet,” she ordered. “I am assuming command.”

It was a sign of how badly shocked they were that no one tried to argue, or to point out that a failure and an outcast had no place in command of an entire defence force. Outcasts couldn't be trusted, even if they
 
did
 
sometimes serve a valuable role in society. Females thought to the long term, but an outcast had
 
no
 
long term. Maybe someone would brush her scales with poison or slice her throat with the traditional knife, yet she found it hard to care. The important issue now was saving what she could.

The sensor network had been badly crippled, but it still managed to detect a new force of human freighters manoeuvring themselves into position around the planet’s gravity well. They would have seemed laughable if another squadron of human freighters hadn’t just crushed an entire fleet. Now...what did
 
they
 
intend to unleash upon Hammerfall? Some of her subordinates were suggesting retreat, that the remaining starships should attempt to escape, leaving the rest of the planet’s defences to their fate. The energy storms that pervaded this part of quantum space might have seemed a safer alternative to facing the next human surprise.

Ignoring them, she ran through some calculations in her head. The humans had launched ten thousand of their missile-carrier missiles at Hammerfall. That much was fairly certain. Assuming that their pods were no bigger than the ones the Cats had experimented with, they could only stuff no more than fifteen missiles into each pod, probably fewer. And that meant...she wasn't sure, but quantifying the threat seemed to calm her mind. The human tactic had been devastating, yet it hadn't been devastating
 
enough
. If they had had more freighters stuffed with missile pods, they would have deployed them. And
 
that
 
suggested that they didn't have any more missile pods in their fleet.

Unless they thought that the first attack would be enough to destroy us
, she thought.
 
They might have held some pods in reserve
.

She would never have been so unsure of herself before Terra Nova, but now she found herself questioning everything. The Hegemony had studied Galactic doctrine, yet it had never seriously
 
questioned
 
the tactical knowledge it had learned from the Cats. But it had all seemed to work perfectly, the best tactics to use in every possible scenario worked out centuries before her people had known that the lights in the night sky were other suns. And yet when the rules changed, so did the rule book. They’d never considered the possibility of someone developing new technology before it had been far too late.

Because we would lose if someone did develop new surprises
, she admitted, to herself.
 
We told ourselves that it was unthinkable. We wanted to believe it
.

“The human freighters are holding position,” the sensor officer reported. “It is difficult to generate a sensor focus on their ships. They may be deploying missile pods.”

Unsurprising
, she thought. It needed an intact sensor network to generate a sensor focus and the defence force’s sensors had been shot to pieces. But missile pods would have shown up, wouldn't they? Unless the humans had some new surprise.

“Watch and wait,” she ordered. There was too much to do, starting with sorting out the command network and reforming battlegroups. “And pass a signal to the destroyers. If the humans start flushing missile pods at us, they are to advance and engage the missile-carriers before they can deploy their parasite missiles.”

It was a sound tactic, she told herself firmly. She just hoped that it would be enough to deal with whatever else the humans had waiting for her.

* * *

“We’re ready,” the military officer said. Captain Verity Lambert snorted inwardly at his spit and polish attitude. She might have been part of the Federation Naval Reserve – a formality that had allowed her to apply for a loan to purchase a starship – but she’d never considered herself part of the military. Even though she detested the Funks with as much feeling as the rest of the human race, she didn't want to be anywhere near armed starships.
 
Trade Hard
 
was unarmed, save for a pair of popguns that might –
 
might
 
– discourage pirates. “You may start deploying the dupes.”

“Of course,” Verity agreed, sweetly. She was in command of her ship and God help anyone who tried to take her ship from her. It gave her a life less ordinary, even if her ship was several hundred years old and originally designed for a race of aliens that were smaller than the average teenager. “Mr. Thompson, begin deploying the dupes.”

The Cats had been in space for so long that they’d forgotten some of the technology they’d originally developed to challenge the high frontier, while the Funks had never had to go through the long process of developing steam, oil, nuclear and eventually antimatter power, let alone build rockets and focused drive fields. They’d been given their Galactic technology, just like the human race, but they’d been far less well equipped to start understanding the technology, let alone considering whole new applications that even the Cats hadn’t considered. Or so the briefers had confidently claimed. Verity would have been happier if the briefers had accompanied the ramshackle squadron on its mission, preferably fixed to the hull with duct tape. They might just provide enough armor to save the ship for another few nanoseconds.

Human researchers had been working on railguns long before Mentor had arrived at Earth and instantly made much of their research outdated, but they hadn’t given up. Human technology might not be able to produce starships, yet it
 
could
 
produce items that were so heavily stealthed that the Galactics would have had trouble detecting them, and railguns that could impart enough velocity to direct them towards Hammerfall. With enough care, the mines would enter stable orbits around the planet until they hit something. And each of them carried enough antimatter to seriously disconcert a starship. It had certainly discomfited her when she’d heard what her ship was going to be carrying. Mines were cheap, easy to produce, and extremely difficult to detect except at very close range.