Deathtrap Page 10

  The Jeraptha had not been blind to the threat of an enemy possessing Nubrentia, so they had fortified the two gas giants with orbiting strategic defense satellites and based a squadron of destroyers there. Over many centuries when the Thuranin did not dare attack the desolate star system, maintaining and upgrading the orbiting SD stations had become a low priority, and the destroyer squadron had become mostly a training unit, composed of obsolete hull designs.

  When the Bosphuraq attacked, they graciously allowed the Thuranin to take lead, as that area was technically adjacent to the space controlled by the little green cyborgs. The Thuranin had a choice between objecting to being used as cannon fodder and appearing weak in front of their hated rivals, or sucking it up and accepting murderous losses.

  For their part, the Bosphuraq were totally Ok with the Thuranin sustaining terrible losses.

  To the surprise and great relief of the Thuranin, and to the unspoken disappointment of the Bosphuraq, capturing Nubrentia proved to not be the one-sided slaughter the planners had anticipated and feared. Many of the SD platforms misfired or failed to react at all. The destroyer squadron was outside the system on a training maneuver at the time, and wisely jumped away.

  It took the Jeraptha Home Fleet sixteen days to pull together enough ships to respond to the Nubrentia crisis. By the time frigates were sent in to scout the enemy’s strength, the war planners of Home Fleet were forced to conclude that retaking the system would require pulling so many ships from other duties, many other vital areas would be open to attack. The staff of the Home Fleet were deeply shocked and enraged.

  Except, of course, for those lucky individuals who had wagered on the longshot chance of the enemy capturing Nubrentia. They were secretly very pleased with their winnings.

  When Tashallo proposed to use his Mighty 98th to recapture Nubrentia, his request was at first denied as unrealistic and ridiculous. Then the Central Wagering Office issued their odds against the operation’s success and many senior Fleet officials became very interested. Of course the crafty old Tashallo must have a trick hidden under his carapace somewhere.

  The admiral did have a trick in mind, that is why he requisitioned over forty obsolete, decrepit support ships. He also knew something few other people knew.

  The 98th’s attack began with a dozen old support ships squeezing through an Elder wormhole four at a time in tight formations, with the three formations almost nose to tail. To get the ships to fit through without disrupting the wormhole’s integrity, Tashallo had crew strip away hull plating, any offensive and defensive capabilities the old hulks still possessed, even major sections of the cargo holds. As the ships did not need to jump, their jump drives had been salvaged, and reactors brought up only to the minimum state of functioning. The ships did not even need to maneuver in normal space, they had been accelerated to an unusual and even recklessly high speed by a star carrier that later had to limp back to base, its engines wrecked from the effort.

  The first four ships to transit the wormhole emerged going like a bat out of hell, a truly hazardous maneuver for a manned vessel. That did not matter because all dozen ships were fully automated. The pair of Bosphuraq guard ships monitoring the wormhole were surprised by the hulks racing past them, and by the time their captains decided to jump away to report the unusual incursion, the last quartet of ships was past the event horizon and moving shockingly fast.

  Those last four ships exploded simultaneously in a blue-white shower of hard radiation that had no effect on the Elder wormhole. In the hard vacuum of interstellar space, the expanding force of the explosions also had no effect on the two guard ships. The purpose of sacrificing the four hulks became evident when the guard ships tried and failed to jump away.

  A great part of the explosive energy had been channeled into a short-lived damping field that saturated space around the wormhole. In sequence, the other quartets of ships exploded, expanding the area within which a jump wormhole could not be formed. Even the safety ship, parked farther from the wormhole, was caught in the damping field.

  All three ships turned and burned hard to get to the edge of the rapidly-dissipating damping field. Their acceleration was impressive, though nothing like the speed of the railgun darts fired by the Jeraptha heavy cruiser Come Over Here And Say That Again, which had been given the honor of following the dozen hulks. The railguns of the Come Over Here had been lovingly cranked up past their designed maximum yield, boosting the exotic matter of their darts to fourteen percent of lightspeed. The darts quickly caught one, two, then all three of the Bosphuraq ships.

  Nubrentia’s early-warning system was offline.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  By the time the last ship of the 98th Fleet came through the wormhole, the vibrations of the damping field had dissipated enough for ships to jump. They only had to wait for the last ship to retune its sensors from the distortion of passing through the wormhole, then all the ships of the Mighty 98th jumped within a second of each other. Their destination was a spot just beyond the last icy planet of Nubrentia, several lighthours away from the gas giant planet where the Bosphuraq had quickly established a refueling and servicing base. More importantly, they had established strong defenses based on heavily armored strategic defense platforms in orbit. Fifty-two SD platforms, all of them carefully maintained in excellent condition, guarded the vital facilities the Bosphuraq relied on, and tolerated the Thuranin using.

  Captain Dahmen checked the tactical display holo tank with concern. “The situation at Prime,” the Jeraptha designation for the innermost and larger gas giant, “is as predicted. Two reinforced battlegroups in orbit, one Bosphuraq and one Thuranin. Four battleships between them,” he looked up at Tashallo, who dipped his main antennas languidly in a beetle shrug.

  “Four of their battleships, to three of ours,” Tashallo examined the holo tank’s projected details. “We have an advantage in secondary ships. We have three battlecruisers to their two, four heavy cruisers to two of theirs. Our throw-weight,” he used a term for the amount of destructive energy the fleet could deliver, “exceeds the enemy’s by a comfortable twenty-three percent. I like those odds.”

  To draw defenders away from Nubrentia, Admiral Sashell’s 67th Fleet of the Blue Squadron had conducted a diversionary attack on a star system the Bospuraq had recently captured. The 67th, depleted from a successful offensive only two weeks prior, lacked the strength to press the attack but the enemy did not know that. Two battlegroups, each built around two battleships, had departed Nubrentia to respond to the diversionary attack. Tashallo’s 98th intended to seize the opportunity before the enemy returned in strength.

  And before that greedy bastard Sashell demanded an even larger cut of the 98th’s wagers for his part in the operation.

  “The enemy has an advantage in destroyers,” Dahmen noted without enthusiasm. If the outcome of the battle was able to be affected by destroyers, the 98th had lost already. “The real problem, as you know, is those enemy SD platforms. Between them and their ships, they have three times our throw-weight.”

  “Dahmen,” Tashallo waved a claw dismissively. “You worry too much.”

  “Part of my job is keeping my commanding officer out of trouble.”

  “And you perform most excellently in that regard. Those SD platforms can only hit us with two point three times our throw-weight at any one time,” the admiral observed. “The other platforms will be on the other side of the planet.”

  “That is a great comfort to me,” Dahmen muttered.

  “Sarcasm, Captain?”

  “Of course not, Admiral.”

  “Ah. That was sarcasm. Signal the Sucker Punch to jump on schedule. Then all ships will jump on my signal. The Mighty 98th rides to glory!”

  “You hope. This maneuver of yours is extremely risky.”

  “No guts, no glory, Dahmen,” Tashallo chuckled.

  The light cruiser Sucker Punch jumped by itself to within three lightseconds of the gas giant planet designated as Prime. The crui
ser’s weapons were warmed up and ready, though its most dangerous equipment was its communications gear, and it broadcast a powerful signal, then jumped to the other side of the planet and began launching missiles at the refueling platforms orbiting so low it appeared they were skimming the blue-gray cloud tops. The missiles were intercepted long before they posed any threat to the vital platforms, which only paused their fuel-extraction activities and began retracting the drogues that dipped into the swirling gasses. If necessary, the drogues could be cut loose to spiral down through increasingly dense atmosphere to the solid core of the planet. Maser bolts from the Sucker Punch were deflected by energy shields of the fuel processing stations, then the light cruiser staggered as it was struck by masers from two SD platforms. Wisely, it used the last of the charge in its banks of capacitors to jump away again.

  The Sucker Punch reappeared exactly where it was supposed to be, although eight seconds early. Those additional seconds of exposure greatly concerned the ship’s crew, as their single vessel became the focus of every enemy strategic defense platform within line of sight. Four seconds after the light cruiser emerged from jump, its defense shields were painted by tentative targeting lasers from eleven SD platforms. Once the photons of those lasers bounced back to their home platforms, the Sucker Punch would be subjected to concentrated fire from maser and particle cannons, railguns and a volley of missiles. Several Thuranin destroyers had broken away from their normal positions guarding heavier ships, climbing to intercept the lone interloper before all the glory of the battle was stolen from them.

  One point five seconds before the first SD platform was ready to fire its maser cannons, the entire 98th Fleet of the Blue Squadron emerged from jump around the comparatively little Sucker Punch.

  The AIs in control of the SD platforms hesitated. The light cruiser’s big brothers had arrived at the fight, and they made tactical decisions enormously more complicated. All the strategic defense AIs sent frantic queries to the central defense control AI aboard a Bosphuraq battleship, awaiting orders before they took action.

  The reply from the Central Defense Control AI was delayed, because by the time it began processing targeting priority requests from the SD platforms, the Control AI had another problem to consider. A wholly unexpected, perplexing problem, coming from an astonishing source.

  A big, BIG fucking problem.

  Below the orbiting battleship, the mottled blue-gray cloud tops of the gas giant were erupting with bright glowing flames, and unfamiliar shapes emerged, rocketing upwards at high acceleration.

  “See, Dahmen,” Tashallo almost giggled with delight, “I told you there is nothing to worry about.”

  Captain Dahmen grunted, distracted by having to manage the battleship while he kept one eye on the overall tactical situation and humored his eccentric admiral. “So far, all I see is a pretty light show. We haven’t done anything.”

  Tashallo turned toward his flagship’s captain with a mock scowl. “I find your lack of faith… disturbing.”

  The objects, that now were above the clouds and had clear line-of-sight to the SD platforms above, made the Central Defense Control AI’s processors noticeably degrade in performance as they struggled to identify, locate and retrieve data from long-forgotten archives. In its long existence, the Control AI had never accessed that data. It only knew what to look for because a neglected submind raised its virtual hands, for the first time in over three hundred years.

  The objects were a very, very old type of ‘pop-up’ strategic defense mechanism. Such devices were once deployed widely across Jeraptha space, originally designed to be housed in hardened silos buried deep beneath the world they protected. When activated, the devices popped up above the atmosphere, propelled by chemical rockets of stunning violence, their chemicals being made of exotic matter. The rockets only served to get the devices into position where they could use their weapons most effectively.

  They were Tashallo’s ace-in-the hole for the operation to retake Nubrentia.

  Few people even at Home Fleet Headquarters knew of the pop-up defenses that had been floating deep in the clouds of the innermost gas giant, ever since a cost-cutting decision was made to reduce maintenance cycles of the SD stations there. Some of the Jeraptha SD platforms would be recovered and moved to more important star systems. Others would be harvested for parts to keep the reduced number of platforms active as long as possible.

  When the decision was made to reduce the Nubrentia system’s defense priority, another move was taking place. Ancient pop-up devices, that had long gone out of service and been sealed into their launch chambers, had to be relocated and decommissioned. The devices were so old that their cores could become unstable, and growing populations on the worlds which housed the devices had caused developed areas to encroach on the originally isolated launch silos. A compromise was reached; several hundred of the pop-up defense rockets, those in the best condition, would be modified with balloons to float hidden in the clouds of a planet so unimportant its only designation was ‘Prime’. A single support ship stopped at Nubrentia to drop off the modified defense units, and that lowly ship was escorted by one destroyer.

  The executive officer of that destroyer was a young officer named Tashallo.

  The concerns of Captain Dahmen, after the admiral revealed his secret plan, were well justified. The pop-up devices were ancient and had been subjected to the heat, pressure and corrosive effects of the gas giant’s atmosphere. Over the years, as their internal diagnostic systems determined a unit had failed, its balloon deflated and the device was allowed to fall to the planet’s core. When the coded activation signal from the Sucker Punch was received, another eighteen units failed to respond. Between units that had already self-destructed and units that were unable to respond, eighty-seven of the devices were lost. Another six units failed to pop-up above the atmosphere properly.

  That left only three hundred and sixty-two devices to pop up.

  The Bosphuraq Central Defense Control AI had only nanoseconds before it completed analysis of the threat posed by the unexpected weapons emerging from the clouds, when the devices finished their pop-up phase and activated their weapons. The Control AI’s conclusion was the quantum-computing equivalent of OH SHIT and instead of carefully calculating intercept trajectories and transmitting detailed targeting instructions to the anxiously waiting SD platforms, the Control AI simply sent out a panicked SOMEBODY SHOOT NOW NOW NOW.

  Inside each of the pop-up defense devices was a miniaturized nuclear warhead. Composed of extra-massive exotic quantonium, the warhead exploded in a coordinated fashion, guided by the instructions from the Sucker Punch. If the rugged brains of the pop-up devices experienced any emotion, it was severe disappointment. So many of them, so few targets.

  As the hellish fires of the nuclear detonations expanded inside their armored casings, much of the energy was channeled into X-ray lasers. The planet’s sphere was suddenly dotted with the intense light flares of nuclear fire, the X-rays visible to the naked eye only when those beams contacted stray hydrogen atoms.

  The SD platforms, which had no need to house crews, move or do anything other than provide a stable base for heavy weapons, had armor thicker than the most powerful battleships. When the beams sizzled through the energy shields and struck the thick armor casings of the Bosphuraq SD platforms, at first the armor effectively absorbed the directed energy, the outer layers of armor boiling and exploding outward. That happy situation lasted only several nanoseconds before intense X-rays from multiple sources struck each platform, and the combined photons seared right through to the capacitor banks buried deep within the platforms.

  They exploded.

  There were enough X-ray beams available that, rather than waste them on hitting SD platforms that were already doomed, some were directed to target two of the enemy battleships, one Bosphuraq and one Thuranin. Those ships, which were still in the process of energizing their defense shield generators when the X-rays bombarded their reactors, al
so exploded. The loss of the Thuranin battlewagon also took out a cruiser and a destroyer unlucky enough to be orbiting nearby.

  Captain Dahmen shook his head in disbelief as the holo tank aboard his battleship Beat-Down showed not one enemy strategic defense platform was operational. Also, that the enemy had lost two capital ships and two lesser combatants. “My lack of faith has proved shameful to me,” he admitted. “Enemy formations are breaking up, they are climbing to jump altitude.”

  “Activate the damping package,” Tashallo ordered eagerly, leaning over the railing of the holo tank.

  On receiving the order from the flagship, the remaining hulks from the Ready Reserve allowed power to flow to their damping field generators, supplementing the fields projected by the ships of the Mighty 98th. Within seconds, the space around the gas giant was saturated with energy disruptive to the formation of jump wormholes. Seeing the danger, the two enemy fleets began targeting the lightly-protected hulks and those Reserve ships began exploding, but the math was on the side of the Jeraptha. By the time all the hulks were destroyed, the 98th’s warships would be in position to block enemy ships from reaching safe jump distance.

  Their entire defense plan of the Bosphuraq placed ships in low orbit, where they could be protected by the impenetrable shield of their SD platforms. Now, both Bosphuraq and Thuranin ships were trapped.

  “Your orders, Admiral?” Dahmen asked as Tashallo leaned back from the holo tank, relaxing on his couch.

  “Oh.” The fierce light had gone out of the admiral’s eyes. Now that he was sure of the battle’s outcome, he had almost lost interest in the details. “Ships are free to pursue targets of opportunity, but conduct the fight as you see fit, Dahmen.”