Reclamation (Book One of the Art of War Trilogy), page 12
‘Still looking,’ Smith replied, using the microsatellites to amplify the Retribution’s void radar signals.
Rynn checked the engagement counter. They were scanning in real time and had already spent the best part of ninety seconds searching for the provar cruiser.
‘It must have refraction shields at maximum,’ Smith complained. ‘I’m not going to get it on voidar; we’d have picked them up by now.’
Rynn clicked his tongue irritably. ‘All right. Take us down to point-oh-one lightspeed. Rankin, bring the Seraph and the York into diamond defence pattern three.’
‘Aye, sir.’
They were being too aggressive, he realised. High-G low-orbit passes were too hostile a manoeuvre; it was little wonder that the provar were cloaking. ‘Any sign on voidar?’ he asked.
‘Still negative, sir.’
He sighed. At the very least he would have liked to have known where they were. ‘All right, take us to geosync L1, equatorial planar. Mr Burkhart, ensure all weapon systems are on full standby, please.’
‘Aye, sir,’ he replied.
‘Rankin, prepare a status report for command. Post-EH defensive manoeuvres completed. No sign of the Impraxes, assuming position at L1 geosync. Bounce it off Fleet Comms Array at Navem Sigma.’ He paused. ‘Actually, find out where the nearest array is.’ The Fleet Comms Array was now many thousands of light years away; it was far better to have the message safely logged at a closer relay first.
‘Aye, sir.’ Rankin replied.
Rynn studied the astrograph again. It was like standing in the middle of a glass bubble in space, a sensation that took many weeks to get used to. He cast his eyes over the readouts with a practised ease, selecting pieces of information with his IHD, scanning, processing and discarding them, all, often literally, in the blink of an eye. As he did, the green-and-blue orb of Uvolon slowly filled the fore VL sensor feeds.
‘Hold on,’ Smith said suddenly, leaning in towards his console. ‘I think I’m getting something.’
Rynn looked up. There was nothing on the astrograph overlay. ‘Where?’
The LRIS hit them entirely without warning and with the electronic warfare equivalent of the force of a nuclear bomb. Immediately, warning graphics and alarms filled the sync space, and countermeasures sprang into action, terminating already corrupt programs, setting up firewalls and proliferating junk signals to flood the enemy LRIS bandwidth. Within a few microseconds, the Retribution’s plasma core had diverted power to the refraction shields, and full-spectrum defences leapt up to maximum efficacy.
‘Contact,’ Smith reported. ‘Two million klicks four-three-oh-four spinward and closing fast.’
‘What?’ Rynn shouted, his IHD cycling through the voidar readouts. It was large – larger than his destroyers – and from its electronic signature almost certainly the Impraxes. ‘Ping it. IFF, immediately.’
‘Aye, sir,’ Rankin replied and fired off the standard Tier-Three identify friend or foe signal. There was no reply.
‘That’s not good,’ Burkhart mumbled.
‘It’s not, is it,’ Rynn murmured in agreement. The Retribution’s VR sync had automatically slowed their time perception down to half-speed, giving them a good five minutes of adjusted time before the Impraxes would reach them on its current trajectory. But two million kilometres was already too close if the provar had hostile intentions; effective range of naval-pattern rail cannons was theoretically infinite on a stationary target.
‘Rankin, keep trying to hail them,’ he said, ‘and inform Sigma of the situation. Have you found a closer station?’
‘The UNIS Vadian Mission Station is the closest,’ Rankin replied. ‘Already on it, sir.’
‘Good. Burkhart, tell Mr Grosvenor and Mr Aulden to prepare diamond defence pattern one, with a five-hundred-klick spread. No guns yet.’
‘Aye, sir,’ Burkhart replied.
‘Mr Smith, let’s have a decoy barrage as well. Voidar pods set to maximum resonance. A hundred should do it.’
‘Aye, sir.’
Rynn took a deep breath. These naval manoeuvres were a tense affair. At the moment they were jostling each other with garbage comms chatter, decoy voidar pods and the more extreme LRIS, despite the fact that the use of LRIS on another ship was technically a hostile act. One slip or misinterpretation would see the whole thing blow up, all too literally, and usually within a few split seconds.
‘Sir… target is deploying voidar countermeasures. Discrimination programs are cutting through the chatter but at the moment I am now tracking eighteen objects instead of one, and that number is increasing,’ Smith said, perspiration marking his brow. ‘It’s definitely provar.’
Rynn felt his heart rate increase slightly. High-velocity, head-on manoeuvres with advance-masking decoy pods was about as aggressive as one could get short of actually firing. He was beginning to regret his cavalier entrance into Uvolon’s territorial orbit.
‘Right, time to move I think,’ he said. ‘Smith, take us away at point-two lightspeed, please. Withdraw the voidar pods and tone down the junk chatter, will you? It’s just pissing them off.’
‘Aye, sir,’ Smith replied.
Rynn watched the astrograph as they twisted away from Uvolon and accelerated to sixty thousand kilometres per second. He felt his pulse slow. They were conceding the territory, recalling their pods. There was a fine line between protecting and consolidating one’s position and being deliberately provocative. He had leaned a little too far the wrong way and now he was doing the gentlemanly thing and retreating. There was no shame in that. Besides, he had been given strict orders not to engage under any circumstances by the fleet marshal.
‘Uh, sir? Target has increased speed and is running codebreakers on our transmissions,’ Rankin said, clearing his throat.
Rynn’s eyes widened slightly. ‘They can’t do that,’ he said with a frown, more to himself than to anyone else. Hyperspace transmissions to home bases were protected under Galactic Naval Protocol. Of course, no one paid much attention to GNP, but in peacetime you at least had the manners to make an attempt at secrecy.
‘Smith, increase speed to point-three and bring us about. Follow this trajectory,’ he added and sent a course map over his IHD. ‘Rankin, pip them again, please.’
The Retribution, with the York and the Seraph in tow, performed a long, slow parabolic pass out and back towards Uvolon, all the time broadcasting IFF. The Impraxes, larger and more cumbersome in its acceleration, peeled off from its pursuit and instead followed an intercept vector.
‘What on Earth are they doing?’ Rynn breathed. ‘Can’t they see we’re retreating?’
‘Cruiser not responding to pips, Captain,’ Rankin said, looking over at him. ‘Or any transmissions.’
Rynn’s features creased in frustration. ‘Is that because they aren’t actually receiving, or are they receiving and ignoring us?’
‘Comms would indicate the latter, sir,’ Rankin replied. ‘I also have Lieutenant Aulden on the line, sir. He wants to know “what the fuck is happening”. Sir.’
Rynn cursed. It was not like Aulden to break comms discipline. ‘Do not respond. Maintain silence for now.’
‘Aye, sir.’
‘Sir? We’re heading for deep space,’ Smith informed him. Rynn checked the astrograph to see that they had completed their pass and were currently hurtling at ninety thousand kilometres per second away from the solar system. Uvolon was already a shrinking dot behind them.
‘Bring us about, slow to point-two and keep making elliptical passes. Rankin, I need orders from command, see to it,’ Rynn barked.
‘Aye, sir,’ came the chorused reply.
He checked their voidar readouts on his IHD but the provar decoys were still scrambling the Impraxes’ precise location. Discrimination subroutines had selected several of the most likely targets – all of which were still pursuing them.
‘Sir, might I suggest we power up defensive batteries?’ Dieter, his damage-control officer, asked. ‘Should be unreadable on LRIS.’
‘I’m not going to take that chance,’ Rynn replied curtly. The provar LRIS could see power blooms within the Retribution, but given their own sophisticated countermeasures, it would not be obvious exactly what they were channelling power to. From the provar perspective, it could just as easily be the Retribution’s rail cannons.
Rynn reviewed their movements and formation. Currently they were still in diamond pattern one, a defensive combat stance, but one into which they had been goaded. He felt perfectly justified within it, but evidently it was still not having the desired effect. What was more, he would have a hard time explaining it to the fleet marshal if they and the Impraxes came to blows. In the circumstances, it would probably be better to adopt a neutral formation or disperse entirely.
‘Rankin, inform Aulden and Grosvenor to break formation.’ He paused. He had half a mind to order them to leave the solar system altogether. ‘Order them to disperse to L2 and L3, equatorial planar, respectively. Hold there and broadcast IFF until further instructions.’
‘Aye, sir,’ Rankin replied.
Rynn watched the astrograph as the Seraph and the York twisted away on high-G trajectories, while the Retribution banked back around in a long, smooth arc. Rynn checked the engagement counter. The ship’s VI had been altering their time perception up and down by the picosecond, but at the moment they were running close to real time.
‘Smith, how are we doing?’
‘We are still being pursued, Captain.’
Another alarm wailed into life as a fresh bout of LRIS hit them, battering their refraction shields, shutting down and corrupting programs and triggering another wave of firewalls; then, over the existing cacophony, another alarm – one which Rynn had not heard for a long time.
‘Enemy is running out guns!’ Burkhart shouted, a look of incredulity written across his face.
Rynn felt a chill run up his spine. He gripped the railing of the command pulpit in front of him, a grimace twisting his mouth. ‘Dieter, force shielding at maximum. Rankin, I want those orders from base, please, immediately, and send warning pips to the provar. Smith, engage LRIS, now.’
If this was bluster, it was fast becoming bad taste.
‘Sir, I have Lieutenant Aulden on the line,’ Rankin said.
‘Captain, they’re drawing a bead on us,’ Aulden’s voice sounded over the net. It was strained with an undercurrent of what sounded uncomfortably like fear. ‘Shall I return to formation?’
‘Fuck buggering fuck,’ Rynn hissed, running a hand through his hair. He considered their options for a long second of adjusted time. ‘Yes, Aulden, return to formation immediately, trinity pattern five.’ Trinity pattern was an active, three-ship combat stance, recognisable under GNP standardised tactics as “back off”. Coupled with full force shielding and warning pips, they were now at their highest alert short of combat.
‘Rankin, bring the York back in as well, please,’ Rynn said, wishing more than anything he had orders.
‘Aye sir,’ Rankin replied, and he issued coded missives over the net. They were intercepted almost immediately. ‘Shit, they’re in our comms!’ he said, thumping the console in front of him. Immediately the network was filled with junk chatter, thousands of gigabytes of information clogging up the bandwidth which the Retribution’s discriminatory programs struggled to keep up with. It was fast becoming impossible to ignore the fact that they were being engaged.
‘Rankin, where are my orders?’ Rynn shouted to his comms officer.
‘There’s nothing coming through, sir; they’ve jammed up our FTL array. Short-range and sublight comms only.’
Rynn wrung his hands around the rail in front of him. They were alone with no hope of instructions from Navem Sigma or Vargonroth for at least a dozen hours. Three UN destroyers could take a provar cruiser, though they would undoubtedly lose at least two ships in the process, and more likely all of them. They had the advantage of greater acceleration and manoeuvrability, but that was tempered by the Impraxes’ far superior firepower and armour.
He watched the astrograph as the Seraph accelerated smoothly into the aft starboard slot of the trinity five formation, but the York was lagging nearly quarter of a million kilometres coreward.
‘Rankin,’ Rynn asked, trying to calm his adrenaline-fuelled heart. ‘Why is the York where it is?’
‘I can’t raise Mr Grosvenor, sir; I told you, the provar have jammed all comms. Last orders to get through were to the Seraph.’
‘Christ,’ Rynn breathed. Some mammalian reflexes were impossible to eliminate in the VR sync – sweating was one and trembling was the other. Rynn felt himself experiencing both as he cleared his throat and gave his orders.
‘Run out guns,’ he said, in a slightly hoarse voice.
‘Running out guns,’ Burkhart replied, his tone admirably unquestioning. Outside, across dozens of ordnance pylons, the Retribution’s guns – mass drivers, quad-powered lasers, chaff pods and Star Witch flak missile launchers – extended from their recessed hard points so that the destroyer resembled something like a sea urchin.
‘Power to all weapons,’ Rynn recited. Given that power was always a scarce resource on board a naval warship, almost all systems remained dormant until required. He still hoped he was wrong, that they would not need the guns and that he was just being overcautious. His stance thus far had been reactive – after all, the damned aliens were drawing a bead on one of his ships! What was he supposed to do? – but this course of action was, undeniably, an escalation. In exercising these defensive manoeuvres, he was almost guaranteeing an engagement.
‘Under fire,’ reported Lieutenant Grosvenor over a concentrated, narrowband beam of coded information that barely penetrated the Retribution’s firewall. It was his first, and would be his only, transmission on the engagement counter. The struggling York, now close to half a million kilometres away within the high-orbit band, suddenly vanished from the astrograph in a blaze of crimson graphics, wideband ghost chatter and full-spectrum radiation.
Rynn felt the blood drain from his face as information reached the Retribution’s sensors and drip-fed the ship’s VI with data on the exact time and manner of the York’s termination. It would be another point-five seconds of real time before the light of its destruction reached them; their perception-adjusted dumb optics still registered the destroyer as intact, a tiny spec silhouetted against a band of bright white Uvolonese cloud.
‘Smith, point-six lightspeed, now!’ Rynn shouted, fear and rage in equal measure pervading his every fibre. He took two deep breaths. ‘Rankin, get the Seraph, reaper three formation, all guns authorised. He is to engage and destroy.’
‘Aye aye, sir.’
The two UN destroyers accelerated smartly to one hundred and eighty thousand kilometres per second and began twisting about on high-G evasion vectors, throwing out decoy pods, microsatellites and comms-scramblers in their wake. Immediately their voidar profile changed from that of two ships to a couple of hundred – most of which the Impraxes’ discrimination programs could eliminate in a matter of microseconds, but some of which would provide for very convincing doppelgängers.
‘Rankin, get a report back to base at the double, as a priority,’ Rynn said, swallowing back the anger. ‘Do whatever you have to. Tell them the York has been destroyed in an unprovoked attack and we are engaging. Bounce it off the Fleet Comms Array as well as the Vadian Mission Station, understood?’
‘Aye, sir,’ Rankin replied.
The Retribution and the Seraph curved violently through Uvolon’s high-orbit band, seeking out the Impraxes. The provar were using the magnetosphere to enhance their junk chatter proliferation, and it was making their voidar profile almost impossible to track. On the astrograph, ghost signals were appearing in dozens of places anti-sunward, and Rynn quickly realised that they were far more outmatched than he had initially thought.
‘Smith, where is it?’ he asked, eyes searching frantically across the spherical surface of the navigation suite.
‘I’m running full discrimination, sir, but I can’t get a fix on it. It could be any number of those decoys,’ he said, using his IHD to project onto the astrograph the swirling cloud of false cruiser signatures sweeping through the high-orbit band. To the uninitiated, it looked as though an entire fleet of provar ships was less than fifty thousand kilometres away.
Rynn snarled his annoyance. ‘Burkhart, hit ten of the most likely targets with Star Witch,’ he said. ‘Rankin, have Lieutenant Aulden do the same.’ He nearly asked for Lieutenant Grosvenor, but realised, with a pang of adrenaline, that the man was dead – and the rest of them were likely to follow suit at this rate.
The Retribution blossomed with flashes of light as ten event horizons seared into life and swallowed ten Star Witch thermonuclear missiles. Rynn smirked; their FTL comms array might have been jammed, but their FTL weapons array wasn’t. A split second later, EMP from the nukes wiped out all ten targets – revealing them all as decoys.
‘Rankin, engage LRIS on all remaining targets. Take power from the mass drivers.’ He was going to smoke the provar out, one decoy at a time.
It took four more salvos from the Retribution and the Seraph for the provari cruiser to move. Their LRIS picked it up immediately – it was the only power bloom in the high-orbit band not to have a voidar profile associated with it, a dead giveaway for a fully refraction-shielded warship.
‘There!’ Rynn snapped, pointing at the astrograph. He absentmindedly checked the engagement counter to see that just over six seconds of real time had passed. The Retribution and the Seraph continued on their violently twisting, curving trajectories, directionally randomised by their respective VIs to minimise the risk of the provar displacing a missile within their force shields.
The cruiser’s engines left a bright violet flare on the astrograph as they powered to full thrust. The inertia of the ship meant that, initially at least, the going was slow, but once it reached full power its straight-line speed would far outmatch theirs. Still, its turns were slow and ponderous in comparison, and that made it a prime target for their Star Witch targeting computers.
