The Catherine Kimbridge Chronicles #1, Inception (23 page)

Cat had an ugly thought. "Cal, how many of the remaining D'lralu ships are estimated to have been within the lethal radiation blast zone of the SJ round we deployed last week?"

"
Approximately five percent.
" the Heshe AI responded.

"Good God" said Ken who had joined the conference with Sherry and Chief Wroblewski a few minutes before. "It's a suicide run..."

"Earth, Mars?" Thais asked. "They could jump anywhere... That much kinetic energy makes even one ship hitting a planetary body an extinction event... There are over a hundred of them!"

The Admiral looked at each individual standing around the table. “The question is how do we defend against this?"

"We need to move, and redeploy the jump shields as fast as we can." Cat said.

The Admiral looked puzzled, "Explain."

"Cal... Draw a vector along the path the bulge is taking... They will be the first to attack because they are dying... They've got to get their attack off while they can. That vector is the only angle they can attack along... So if we redeploy our jump shields along that vector we can force them to jump farther out and give us more time to react."

"Comms..." the Admiral said into the air.  "This is Admiral Faragon. Cal will provide you with a transcript of the last 10 minutes of our conference. I want a copy sent to United Space Command, as well as the Earth and Mars directorates... On my authority they are to redeploy their jump shields accordingly... ASAP, Lieutenant!"

"Understood, Sir!" the disembodied voice of the bridge officer answered.

"Well, Cat, you bought us a little more time... How do you propose we use it?"

Ken broke in, "Since we know the path they will be taking... Why not deploy Dusties in their path?"

"Dusties?" Thais said quizzically.

"Clouds of disassembly nanites, programmed to replicate, based on any available source material, for about four hours... Then they automatically go into self-cannibal mode and destroy each other. For those four hours, anything caught in their path, that doesn't broadcast a shutdown code, is effectively torn apart." Cat explained.

"The problem is... Destroying the ships with a Dusty does not help us" Chief Wroblewski said. "Momentum in conserved... A ton of steel hurling at forty percent the speed of light, has the same kinetic energy as a ton of dust traveling at forty percent the speed of light."

"The Chief makes a good point..." the Admiral said.  "But we may still want to deploy the Dusties. They effectively eliminate the ability of the attacking fleet to adjust course. Once done we have the option of simply deflecting the mass."

Cat looked at the hologram. "If we only had the ability to drop a line of nuclear charges along the flight path, we could subtly change the debris' direction."

"Damn..." Sherry muttered.

The Admiral looked pleased "I'll expect the credits deposited..."

"Already done, Sir." Sherry said glumly.

Ken looked between the Admiral and his aide... A slow smile growing on his face. “I understand what we were doing in engineering"

"My guess is you were setting up the nanite replicators to produce jump capable nuclear warheads with their own AIs... Or even better, entangled quantum communicators that would allow rapid precision deployment." Cat said.

Sherry's jaw dropped.

The Admiral's grin threatened to stretch from ear to ear. "I told you that PhD was not just wallpaper. What we spent days figuring out she had in minutes."

***

The First of the First sat in his small cabin. He knew he was only hours from death. His bitterness knew no bounds. He had expected to jump his armada within a scant three or four light minutes of the fourth world. Enough time for the humans to appreciate the author of their doom, but not so long as to allow any but the lucky to escape. Instead, their ships had been forced out of the hyper fold a good three light hours out. How the humans had managed that, was beyond him, but the result was a bitter pill. At .4c he was a good six or seven hours out. With most of his crew dead, it was all he could do to adjust the ships course to compensate for the translocation, and still hit the planet. A full forty of his ships would miss, because the crews were either already dead or too incapacitated to make the adjustment.

As it was, he was now near the rear of his attack formation, rather than leading it... Simply another shame visited on him by these humans. He kept his view screen locked on his forward most ships. If fate were to smile on him one last time, perhaps he would be privileged to see the first of his ships hit this world the humans called Mars.

The First of the First thought his eyes were giving out. The lead ship seemed to shimmer and dissolve into dust. Then the ship behind and off to the right dissolved. Soon ten, then twenty, then forty or more of his ships seemed to shimmer. Moments later, bright flashes, which the First of the First had long ago learned to associate with nuclear weapons, began to go off in front of the dust clouds that had been his ships. 

***

"Excellent targeting Chief." Cat told her weapons officer.

"Sensor plots show the debris field will brush Phobos but that is as close as it will get" Ken reported.

"We still have the seventeen ships that managed to get by the Dusties." Cat said. Turning, she called out to the communications officer.

"Ziggy, let the Admiral know we are bringing up the holographic CIC and going to full battle mode."

"Yes, Ma'am."

Cat stood to face the CIC display. She rotated it with her hands. Ken stood next to her.

"They're still accelerating which is going to make this a little tougher... Their shields are stronger than ours and while we can program our micro-jumps to simulate their acceleration it's going to make ship to ship combat pretty tough"

"Don't forget it's not enough to disable them... We have to deflect their mass, and every second we get closer to Mars that task gets mathematically more difficult."

"Admiral on the Bridge." Ensign Zimmerman announced, as everyone came to attention.

"As you were." Admiral Faragon responded, as he walked up to the CIC.

He looked over the display for a moment before speaking. Cat kept running simulations on a side screen. She was not liking the outcome. She was just formulating a different approach when the Admiral spoke up.

"What's our ship count?"

"We have three fully configured and ready battle groups, each with forty-nine ships, plus about two dozen ships with enhanced shielding partially installed but not fully operational... Given the effectiveness of the of the D'lralu beam weapons, we might be better off holding those ships in reserve."

"Agreed, Captain." The Admiral looked at Cat with a speculative glance. "I'd like to hear your thoughts about how to proceed."

"Well, Sir, given what we know of the D'lralu from the Heshe and Ben... I don't see us effectively taking them on ship to ship... Our nanite regenerative shielding is effective for making a heavily damaged ship combat ready again, but it's not a significant advantage during the primary engagement... Simulations are showing a heavy crew loss with any direct confrontation scenario I've run through the computers" Cat answered.

"That's assuming the D'lralu are fighting at full effectiveness..."

"Yes, Sir, it is."

"Can I assume you have a different proposal?"

"Sir... I'd like to reconfigure one of our smart missiles to carry a shield array."

"If we can't adequately shield our ships why would we shield a missile?"

Cat paused to think of a quick way to describe what she was thinking. "Sir, we've talked before about jumping a nuclear payload directly into an enemy's primary hull."

"Can't be done with active shielding in place... The hyper field prevents the jump in."

"Sir, it occurred to me, in World War Two, the lowest ranking soldier would be ordered to wear padding and jump on the Concertina wire that would protect an enemy's position... Not dissimilar to shielding... The advancing troops would then run over the breach made by the first soldier."

"Not a bad approach, so long as you are not the lowest ranking enlisted." Ken added.

"True," Cat said... "Now suppose you jumped a missile with a hyper field shield generator right next to another shield..."

"The ships AI would simply tune the field to compensate for the interaction." the Admiral stated.

"Yes Sir it would, but remember... Our computers seem to be much faster. We can leverage that speed differential to jump a second missile in..."

"Before they can close the gap in the Concertina." the Admiral finished. "I like it. What do the simulations say our success rate is likely to be?"

"Well, Sir, it's hard to calculate but I'm conservatively estimating 15%"

Ken looked at Cat and the Admiral. "Excuse me if I'm being dense here, but with those numbers you are only going to get two or three of the remaining seventeen."

The Admiral winked at Cat. "Not if we adopt terrorist tactics."

"Exactly, Sir." Seeing the confused look on her First Officers face she paused to explain. "The D'lralu can successfully stop us many times... We only need to be able to get past them once."

"How soon can we deploy?" the Admiral asked.

"We can go now but our ordnance counts are low... We may have to slug it out with the last of them."

"Alright, I'll brief the fleet on our approach... I want the Yorktown out of the fray, but doing real-time combat analysis, and feeding the results into the general battle grid. I want our reserve ships in position to engage in any way possible, should any of that first group get through"

An alarm klaxon woke the First of the First. Initially he was confused. It was becoming more and more difficult to remain awake. The AI was reporting a proximity alert. Something had jumped right next to the ships shield array. The array was momentarily disrupted. The AI which was among one of the best in the fleet quickly compensated. The ship rocked as a twenty megaton blast impacted against the newly reestablished shield.

The First knew that if his systems had been any slower compensating his ship would not have survived that last blast. These humans were a force to be reckoned with. In a different time and under different circumstances he might have liked knowing them.

A flash in the corner of his view screen told him one of his remaining fleet had not been so lucky. The ship rocked again.

"Computer... Report... How many ships remain?"

There was a brief pause as the cybernetic AI reviewed the existing sensors and tabulated a result. "Seven vessels remain intact, however, four are no longer on an intercept course for the primary target. Most probable explanation would be that the crews are incapacitated."

"Assume remote control and bring those ship back into attack posture" The First barked at his AI. The effort resulted in a bloody coughing spell that lasted until the First collapsed in exhaustion.