Black Ops (Expeditionary Force Book 4) Page 25
“Very well, Colonel.” He didn’t even tell me I was dismissed, he didn’t even look up from the tablet. I let myself out quietly. “I will consider the operation, and inform you of my decision before the end of the day.”
I later learned Chotek had called in Chang, Smythe and Adams to get their perspective on the plan. The three of them didn’t tell me about it, because Chotek ordered them not to; Skippy told me. Chotek had to know Skippy would tell me, so I don’t know what he thought he was accomplishing with the attempted secrecy. Or maybe secrecy wasn’t the point; maybe he wanted me to know he was getting second opinions because he didn’t trust my judgment. Either way, I did not care, because he approved the plan without a single change. We jumped with two hours left in the deadline.
We were going to steal another alien starship!
Damn, as much as I hate my job sometimes, I do freakin’ love being a pirate.
The Thuranin plan to hit the Jerpatha was bold, and required aggressiveness and precise timing. Near the Glark system was one wormhole, and two clusters of two wormholes each. The Thuranin force came through three wormholes simultaneously, at points when the wormholes were almost the farthest distance from Glark in the figure-8 paths they had traced for millions of years. While the Jeraptha had sensor nets and a small force of picket ships guarding the areas where the wormholes were at their closest approach to Glark, it was not practical to cover all the other emergence points. The Thuranin plan did not depend on emerging as close to Glark as possible; it depended on their three groups of ships coming through wormholes at the same time. With five wormholes to choose from, the mission planners had at first assumed it would be easy to coordinate the timing of the three task forces. To their great frustration, they were wrong. During many of the times when three wormholes were open simultaneously, one or more wormhole was at or near the closest approach to Glark. That meant a task force emerging there would immediately be detected, and attacked while the ships were nearly blind and defenseless after coming through a wormhole. It took several AIs more than an hour to determine when three wormholes would be open and also none of them close to Glark. The analysis showed such a result was rare, almost as if the Elders who built the wormhole network had planned to protect the Glark system. The next time three wormholes were available was distressingly soon; Thuranin Naval Command had to scramble to pull enough ships together to launch the operation before the window of opportunity closed for another four months. Ships had been pulled out of spacedock with only partial repairs completed to battle damage, some ships departed with only half their typical missile load. The mission to hit Glark was important enough that risks had to be taken. Destroying Glark’s spacedocks and fueling facilities would severely hurt the Jeraptha’s ability to control that part of the sector, requiring the nasty beetles to pull back from other areas where their fleet was pressing the Thuranin back with every passing day. To achieve such a result, to hit the Jeraptha in such a critical area, Thuranin Naval Command was willing to sacrifice the ships in the three task forces; the best result expected to lose half of their ships in the operation.
That grim information was not directly shared with the commanders and crew in the three task forces. Knowing the strength of their target, the crews could calculate their odds of survival by themselves.
The three task forces did not send all their ships through the wormholes in one continuous line. First, each task force sent two unlucky destroyers through, to scan the area and report on any threats. Waiting for the sensors of the destroyers to recover from the disruption of passing through the wormhole burned valuable time, and waiting for those sensor fields to expand at the slow speed of light, then report their results at the same slow speed, was agonizing for the task force commanders. Every second they delayed going through the wormholes was another second ticking away until the wormhole closed. The three task forces could not talk to each other or share sensor data; each task forced feared they would be going in to attack Glark alone, if the other two task forces had been detected.
All three pairs of destroyers reported the area around their wormholes were clear, and the task forces began to come through, two massive star carriers at a time. Pairs of star carriers, heavily laden with battlecruisers, cruisers, destroyers and frigates, streamed through nearly nose to tail. As soon as the first pair of star carriers emerged from each wormhole and moved aside to clear navigation space for the next pair, one destroyer jumped away to scan deeper into space, in case a stealthed Jeraptha force was waiting just beyond immediate sensor range. As none of the three destroyers jumped back warning of danger, the task forces continued to stream through, with the ships maneuvering to clear jump space and allowing time for their defensive shields and sensors to recover from the wormhole’s spatial disruption.
Twenty two minutes was the goal time for the ships in each task force to pass through the wormholes, reset their systems, and ready their jump drives for the high-speed approach to Glark. Because of the inevitable glitches and delays with such large forces, the planners had allotted an extra three minutes before the initial jumps. Each of the three task force commanders were proud their ships had completed the wormhole transition at least two minutes ahead of schedule. All that remained was for the massive star carriers to spread out so their jump wormholes did not damage each other, and that phase of the operation was also slightly ahead of schedule. Much danger lay ahead, but the critical passage through the wormholes was completed successfully. The only anomaly detected was a cloud of pebbles dispersed around each wormhole. Such rocks should not be in deep interstellar space; only individual hydrogen atoms were typically found so far from a star system. If the three task forces had been able to communicate, they might have been mildly alarmed that all three wormholes were surrounded by anomalous clouds of pebbles. As it was, each task force dismissed the pebbles as interesting phenomena to note in their navigation charts, but not at all dangerous.
Then the Thuranin in the three task forces began to have a very, very bad day.
Admiral Tashallo, commander of Blue Squadron’s 98th Fleet, touched an antenna to the pocket where he kept the original flimsy message slip, and resisted the temptation to take it out and read it for the hundredth time. The information provided by Fleet Intelligence was either accurate or it was not, reading the message again obsessively would not change reality. Having the crew see their admiral constantly checking the message was bad for morale, so Tashallo used the antenna to tuck the slip deeper into the pocket, then tried to forget about it. If the information was wrong, then Admiral Tashallo had dangerously depleted the Glark system’s defenses, and he would know about it too late to prevent the enemy from hitting critical Fleet facilities.
At the last moment, just in case Fleet Intelligence was wrong and Tashallo had ruined his career, he took a wager at sixty to one odds against Fleet Intelligence. If the information was wrong, he could at least spend his forced retirement in relative comfort. If the information was correct, Tashallo would consider the lost wager to be a guarantee of success.
Normally, detecting enemy ship formations in deep space was difficult, and taking action before an enemy could jump away even more difficult. The Flash Gold message had provided the exact time and place Thuranin task forces would come through three wormholes. From long experience, Tashallo knew approximately how long it would take before a Thuranin task force could assemble and jump. And he knew when the wormhole opened; surely the Thuranin would send their ships through as quickly as possible. He therefore knew exactly where the enemy would be, and for how long, within a seven minute window. If you know where the enemy is, his first tactical training instructor had told him, you can hit them. Tashallo knew where the enemy was, and he planned to hit them hard. “-three, two, one, jump!”
Each Thuranin task force was suddenly and simultaneously surrounded by an overwhelming number of Jeraptha warships, and damping fields propagated outward to prevent the Thuranin from jumping away. One star carrier, taking a chance be
fore the multiple overlapping damping fields became firmly established, initiated a jump. It was still too close to the massive bulk of its companion star carrier, and the damping field grew stronger with each nanosecond. That star carrier’s jump field failed catastrophically, releasing the energy stored in its drive coils, and the star carrier disappeared along with the eight warships it was carrying. The waves of spatial distortion from its failed jump snapped the spine of its companion star carrier, causing that ship lose all power except in the aft third of the spine. Without power, the defense and stealth shields blinked out, leaving the star carrier and its attached warships vulnerable to massed maser and railgun fire. The Jeraptha wasted no time taking advantage of their good fortune; within sixteen seconds, all the warships attached to that star carrier were disabled and useless.
The Thuranin task force commander ordered all her star carriers to eject their warships in an emergency separation maneuver; an act of pure desperation. While attached to a star carrier, a warship could not activate its own stealth and defensive shields, and with the intense firepower of the Jeraptha hammering the star carriers, none of those giant space trucks would survive for long. Warships broke free of their docking platforms, some being ejected by their host ship, others firing engines and tearing themselves loose, regardless of the damage. A few warships, unable to detach from their docking platform in time, ripped their platform away from the star carrier’s spine. Those ships trailed sparks and debris, rendering their attempts to form a stealth field useless.
The Thuranin task force commander, aboard a battlecruiser that was itself being pounded by accurate maser and railgun fire, saw with shocked dismay that all attempts to use stealth were for nothing; somehow the enemy knew exactly where each one of her ships were, even before the Jeraptha sensor fields had time to propagate and send targeting data back to their motherships. She could not understand what was happening. It was as if the Jeraptha had been surveilling the Thuranin ships before they jumped in, which was imposs-
Pebbles. Too late, she remembered the cloud of pebbles.
“The data feed is becoming incoherent,” a Jeraptha sensor technician reported.
Tashallo laughed. Loss of critical sensor data from the cloud of smart pebbles was not a laughing matter, the admiral’s glee was due to the reason the sensor feed was failing. Space around the Thuranin task force was becoming so cluttered with hard radiation, high-energy particles and debris flying off at near-relativistic speed that ships could not interpret data fed back by their own sensor fields, and the passive sensors of the smart pebbles had become nearly useless. The pebbles had served their purpose; silently and passively recording the location of every enemy ship, and transmitting that data when ordered by Tashallo’s ships. Once the battle started, the pebble network was no longer needed.
Most of the debris flying around, so much that it was becoming a hazard to ships on both sides, was pieces of the Thuranin task force. In the first minute of fighting, half the ships in the Thuranin task force had been disabled or destroyed completely, another thirty percent had their combat power reduced to the point where their only option was to run for the wormhole before it closed. Tashallo ordered one of his battleships moved into position to block escape through the wormhole. The giant ship slowly turned and accelerated with painful slowness, Tashallo could see six enemy ships burning hard for the wormhole, missiles on their tails. More enemy ships had gotten the message to retreat or had made that decision on their own. The battleship would not arrive in time to prevent the first six enemy ships from transiting the wormhole, so Tashallo offered an incentive. “Three to one odds at least one of those enemy ships escapes,” he told his own task force.
Almost instantly, the task force’s Action Officer reported seven Jeraptha ships had taken the wager. Those seven ships broke formation and burned at full emergency thrust for the wormhole, while other ships in the task force furiously wagered with or against them. Before the seven ships could engage, missiles claimed two of the six enemy ships, and the Action Officer updated her handicapping in real-time. She knew that two ships falling victim to missiles, before the seven wagerers could reach cannon range, would be the subject of endless arguments after the battle, and would likely be submitted to the Fleet Action Board for a final ruling. That was a problem for another day.
The seven ships reached targeting range and launched missiles, letting those weapons run on ahead under their own guidance. It was unlikely the missiles would score a damaging hit by themselves but they would tie up enemy defenses, and force those ships to maneuver away from a direct path to the wormhole.
When the enemy was in effective range of maser cannons and railguns, the Jeraptha fired those weapons, and Thuranin ships began to slow and stagger as they took hits. The enemy was not waiting for death, they hit back, concentrating all their fire on the cruiser Never Tell Me The Odds, knocking back that ship’s shields and forcing it to break away. Knowing the nature of the Jeraptha, the Thuranin ships continued firing at the cruiser even after it had altered course. The Thuranin knew the crew of the Odds had wagered none of the Thuranin ships would escape, and that ship’s wager would be considered null and void if the Odds backed away from the conflict.
As the Thuranin predicted, the cruiser swung back onto her original course, after a quick internal debate about whether the wager action was worth risking their very lives. Of course it was worth it! The ships of the 98th Fleet had not seen action this hot in years, no way could they resist taking part. The Odds signaled its intention to rejoin the fight.
“Admiral,” the Action Officer of the 98th called, “we are now offering five to seven against the Never Tell Me The Odds surviving the battle. Do you want in?”
“No. Aargh!” Tashallo grunted in frustration. While he was sorely tempted, and while it would be legal for him to take either side of such a wager, it would be bad for good order and discipline within the 98th. “I have to let this one play out on its own. Although, blast it! I would love to get in on this one.”
“Me too, Sir,” the Action Officer agreed unhappily. By Fleet regulation, she was prohibited from wagering. Sometimes, that made her want to quit her lucrative job.
The cruiser Odds survived; sustaining heavy damage before the two remaining enemy ships plunged through the wormhole. The damage the cruiser took, and its brave or foolhardy return to the battle, ensured the ship’s crew would be allocated a cut of pot, if the wager was successful.
But two enemy ships had escaped through the wormhole.
And three overzealous Jeraptha ships, still burning at full emergency power, followed them.
“Admiral, the wormhole is scheduled to close in sixty four seconds,” the battleship’s second officer warned. “We will lose contact.”
“Understood,” Tashallo studied the tactical display. Other than the lucky two ships who went back through the wormhole, every enemy ship had been disabled or destroyed. Tashallo’s task force, having the advantage of surprise and initial targeting data, had scored a resounding success. Two Jeraptha ships had been destroyed, four disabled, and seven others had battle damage serious enough to require a star carrier to bring them back to the Glark spacedocks. In anyone’s book, that was an overwhelming victory, but Tashallo’s face was a mask of unhappiness. He had boastfully and perhaps unwisely wagered with Admiral Sashell, and with Captain Dahmen who temporarily commanded the third task force, that not a single Thuranin ship would escape. Minutes ago, he had offered the other side of that bet to his task force, as extra incentive for them to crush remaining resistance. If no enemy ships escaped, he would lose that recent wager, but come out ahead overall. And more important, he would win the bet against the much-too-smug Admiral Sashell of the 67th Fleet. “Tell all units to stand down and affect repairs. I wish to return to Glark with all possible speed.” Then he waited, along with the entire task force. The battered cruiser Never Tell Me The Odds anxiously took up position close to the wormhole, in hope that the last two enemy ships had bee
n destroyed, and knowing that hope was extremely unlikely. The 98th’s Action Officer continued to update her handicapping even as the wormhole counted down toward closure.
“Wormhole closing in seven, six,” the battleship’s second in command said in a voice drained of emotion. “Five, four-”
And three Jeraptha ships came flying through the wormhole, just before it closed behind them. One of the ships was trailing fire, sparks and smoke, and another ship’s shields were flickering alarmingly. No one in the task force cared, least of all the triumphant crews of the three ships. The ships transmitted sensor recordings to prove they had killed the last two enemy ships. They had won their wager and as the ships most active in achieving the result, they would split most of the winnings between them. Those in the task force who had bet against them could not help congratulating the victors, while silently cursing their own bad luck.
The crew of the cruiser Never Tell Me The Odds also rejoiced. Their share of the winnings would be reduced, but they knew a far larger prize awaited. As the Odds had acted to help Admiral Tashallo win his wager against Admiral Sashell, they would be cut in on the action.
And nothing was better than that.
Admiral Tashallo’s task force was the last to reach the spacedocks and refueling stations of Glark, but his task force was the most successful. Though he had given one of his powerful battleships to Sashell’s force, and two to the force temporarily commanded by Captain Dahmen, no enemy ship had escaped from Tashallo. Two had managed to get away cleanly from Sashell, and one from Dahmen. Sashell was already arguing that because he had only one battleship, the points system should have been weighted more in his favor. This despite the fact that Sashell’s 67th Fleet had three powerful battlecruisers that were faster than any battleship, and despite the fact that the points and odds had been worked out in heated discussions before the operation commenced. Tashallo sighed. This matter would take months to sort out by the Fleet Action Board. Then Tashallo sighed. The people on the Fleet Action Board, all retired combat commanders, were widely known to reward success in combat regardless of other circumstances. There was no way anyone could argue with the results Tashallo had achieved. The Thuranin had been hurt badly, enough that Fleet Command needed to be careful about their next move. While the Jeraptha now had the ability to push the Thuranin back anywhere in the sector, they could only push so hard and so far. If the Thuranin were pushed to the point of collapse, their Maxolhx patrons might step in directly by hitting the Jeraptha. While the Maxolhx did not seem to mind a limited amount of weakness in their client species, they also would not tolerate outright defeat. None of the Jeraptha, nor the Thuranin, wanted the Maxolhx or Rindhalu to become involved directly. It was an unwritten Rule in the endless conflict that species fought other species with roughly comparable technology, rather than beating up on those with lesser technology. Tashallo thought adhering to that unwritten rule was an excellent idea.